The Twelve Little Cakes

by Dominika Dery

  “Goodness me! Haven’t you grown up!” he would say. “And what is your father up to? I keep smelling ammonia and almonds. What’s going on inside your garage?”

  Mr. Hasek always looked up and down the street because he wanted to avoid Mr. Simek, the other neighborhood gossip. Poor Mr. Simek had a terrible speech impediment that made him very hard to understand, and his snooping technique consisted of him coming out of his garage with a rake and pretending to rake the leaves beneath his walnut tree. He did this in all seasons, even when the snow was thick on the ground. He’d rake for a while and then suddenly pretend to see me. Then he’d shuffle over for a neighborly chat, hoping to learn what Mr. Hasek had learned.

  “Hello, little girl. Haven’t you grown up?” he would say. “I hear that your father has been busy building some kind of chemical factory in your garage. Is it true?”

  Actually, I had no idea what he said. Apart from the speech defect, he also spoke too fast, running his words into each other. It often sounded like he was speaking Hungarian.

  “Huurgleh. Granneh? Iceland yer gargoyle magland hallelujah. Goulash?” he would ask. Our conversations were very strange. The fortunate thing was that no matter what I told him, he could never really repeat it to anyone. Even his wife had trouble understanding him.

  As Mr. Hasek left and Mr. Simek appeared, a black Tatra 613 drove up the street. The Tatra 613 was a government car, an East European Cadillac. Cars like this were only driven by high-ranking Communist officials, because no one else could afford them. They consumed so much gas, you had to fill the tank every hundred kilometers. Mr. Simek’s jaw dropped as he saw the car coming, and he hurriedly raked his way back to his garden.

  I jumped down from the barrel and rang the doorbell.

  “Dad! Dad! This is it! They’re here!” I cried.

  The Tatra rumbled to a halt, a little flag with the Austerlitz coat of arms fluttering on its hood. Behind me, the garage door flew open and my family and Dr. Stein-Ein came out wearing white lab coats. A short, energetic man leaped from the car and made a huge show of kissing my mother’s and sister’s hands. This had to be Comrade Maxian. Despite the fact that his Tatra (and his shoes) were covered in mud from our construction site, he really did seem like an aristocrat. Two men climbed out of the car behind him, and he introduced them as Comrade Drapal and Comrade Fejk. Comrade Drapal looked like a big, sleepy bear in a gray suit, whereas Comrade Fejk reminded me of a ferret. The three men spoke in the same “long beak” dialect as Mrs. German, and I had to stop myself from giggling. Comrade Drapal made small talk with Dr. Stein-Ein, and Comrade Fejk made eyes at my sister, while in the background, Mr. Simek raked his invisible leaves and Mr. Hasek loitered in the street, struggling to memorize Comrade Maxian’s plates.

  “Who ares these people?” Comrade Maxian demanded. “Ares they friends of yours, or neighbors?”

  “They’re neighbors,” my father said. No other explanation was necessary. Everyone knew exactly what he meant.

  “Well, then,” Comrade Maxian said cheerfully. “You must takes us inside and shows us this machine!”

  Dr. Stein-Ein’s cheeks flushed with pride as he led the comrades into the garage. He launched into a long speech about electromagnetic energy, using technical terms that no one understood. He was tiny and intense, and with his mane of white hair, he really did look like a mad scientist. He switched on the computer, and the aparatura came to life. Comrade Maxian put on a pair of glasses and smiled with anticipation, while my mother pulled me toward the door. My father stood beside the machine, pointing out the different kettles and tubes as the pressure slowly built inside the distillery. The thermometer climbed past seven hundred degrees, and the smell of ammonia was so strong you could taste it. Comrade Drapal collapsed into a chair and mopped his forehead with a handkerchief. Comrade Fejk looked like he was going to faint. Twenty minutes later, a rich, honeylike liquid poured into a test tube at the bottom of the aparatura.

  Dr. Stein-Ein handed the test tube to Comrade Maxian.

  “What we have here is an antifriction lotion capable of attracting molecules of water from the air,” he said excitedly. “By applying it to any synthetic surface, you can neutralize the antistatic charges caused by friction. Nylon threads won’t snap while running through a loom, and vinyl plates in a press won’t attract dust from the air!”

  Comrade Maxian dipped his finger in the test tube.

  “Incredible,” he said politely. “So how does we makes money with this, exactly?”

  “Well, for a start, we can sell it to the textile industry as a prevention against combustion,” my father explained. “This is a serious problem in Russia. Factories burn down all the time because of the sparks generated by static electricity and friction.”

  Comrade Maxian looked at the yellow goo on his hands.

  “I see,” he said doubtfully.

  There was an awkward pause. My mother tightened her grip on my hand while my sister unbuttoned her lab coat and started fanning herself like Marilyn Monroe.

  “It’s hot in here,” she moaned. “Can’t anyone open the window?”

  Comrade Fejk leaped to attention. He strode manfully across the laboratory, leaned forward, and reached over a row of bottles sitting in front of the window. He pulled the window open, knocking the stopper out of a large bottle of alcohol that my father had recently distilled.

  “I’m so sorry!” he exclaimed. “I hopes this is not some kind of—”

  His face changed.

  “Good Lord,” he sniffed. “This smells like booze!”

  Comrade Drapal bounced out of his chair and immediately joined his comrade at the window. Comrade Fejk lifted the bottle and inspected it against the light.

  “Oh, that,” my dad said nonchalantly. He tilted his head toward the door, indicating that the neighbors might be out there listening, and then he whispered something in Comrade Maxian’s ear.

  “Really?” Comrade Maxian’s eyes lit up. “In this garage?” My father nodded, and the agricultural chief burst into laughter. “What an interesting machine,” he said, patting my father on the shoulder. “Shows us more!”

  My father demonstrated the aparatura’s versatility, filling test tubes with homemade gin and handing them to everyone except me. “To perestroika!” he declared. “To the successful harvest!” Comrade Drapal responded, draining his tube in one gulp. “To your beautiful wife and daughter!” Comrade Fejk exclaimed. Comrade Maxian tasted the gin like a connoisseur, swishing it around in his mouth until the strength of the alcohol made his eyes bulge, and then he shot my father a conspiratorial smile.

  “Very promising, this invention of yours,” he said gleefully. “Perhaps we coulds discuss the technicalities in a less formal environment?”

  My mother could barely conceal her relief as she escorted the comrades into our dining room. She filled our best glasses with gin and told my sister to carve the goose. My sister took off her lab coat, revealing a white stretch top without a bra, and leaned low over the table as she carved, much to Comrade Fejk’s delight. I ran in and out of the kitchen, carrying bowls of steaming cabbage and dumplings. The room quickly filled up with cigarette smoke. The comrades drank and ate heartily, paying little attention to Dr. Stein-Ein, who kept trying to redirect the conversation to the more important subject of electromagnetic energy. Suddenly, Comrade Maxian slapped his forehead with his hand.

  “Jezis Marja!” he cried. “I nearly forgot! We haves brought you a present from Moravia.”

  “Oh, you shouldn’t have,” my mother smiled. “You have given us so many sacks of onions and potatoes, we really have nowhere to put them.”

  “This one you must puts in your freezer,” Comrade Maxian said seriously. “It is the finest product the Austerlitz Cooperative has to offers the top members of its scientific community.”

  We followed the agricultural chief outside and watched him unlatch the trunk of his Tatra. A sweet smell wafted out of the trunk, making my mother cover her
mouth with her hand.

  “His name was Pepa,” Comrade Maxian said proudly, pulling a sheet of blood-soaked newspaper off what appeared to be a headless pig. “He wons the Pig of the Year contest! But we only gives you half, otherwise you will be eating him past Christmas!”

  Comrade Drapal hoisted what was left of Pepa onto his shoulder and carried it down to the kitchen. He threw it onto the counter and went back to the dining room, where my father had cracked open another bottle of gin, and was toasting the pig and Mikhail Gorbachev’s health. My mother was shocked by the huge amount of work the meat represented, but she didn’t complain. She armed herself with a cleaver and a carving knife and began to disassemble Pepa before the smell became too bad. My sister sullenly threw on an apron and started cutting chunks of pig fat into small pieces. I was in charge of the big pot. Wielding the wooden spoon my mother used to pasteurize milk, I stirred the melting fat until it turned into lard. Then I poured it into jars, securing them with pieces of cellophane and rubber bands while my sister refilled the pot with more cubes of fat.

  By the time the comrades had started to sing Moravian folk songs, I had prepared twenty-five jars of lard and my mother had frozen more than fifty pork chops. It was seven o’clock in the evening and Dr. Stein-Ein had finally left the comrades to drink in peace. Comrade Fejk wobbled down into the kitchen, carrying a bottle of homemade gin. He proposed yet another toast to my mother’s and sister’s beauty, and insisted on kissing my sister’s greasy hand. Halfway through kissing it, however, he passed out. We had to ask the agriculturalists to come and rescue their fallen comrade, which they did, dragging the semiconscious Fejk out of the kitchen in much the same way they had hauled Pepa in.

  At four o’clock in the morning, after the last chop had been thrown into the freezer, my father walked the comrades to the door and we were relieved to hear the Tatra 613 roaring down the hill. My mother collapsed into a chair and stared at the pile of dirty plates and glasses. She poured herself a glass of gin and told me to come and sit on her lap. She was exhausted and I could tell she was close to tears. She told me that she was sad she had to go back to the Economic Institute. She didn’t like her job, but was afraid to quit because my dad’s work was unsteady and she was worried we might end up losing the house.

  A heavy stomping echoed down the stairway and my father burst into the kitchen with a huge smile. His hair was messy and his shirt and trousers were covered in cigarette ash.

  “A triumph!” he laughed, waving the contract above his head. “Everything is signed, sealed, and delivered!”

  He threw his arms around my mother’s waist and squeezed her breathless. “Five thousand a month, full time!” he declared. “And the first thing I’m doing is hiring you as my assistant!”

  My mother pushed him away and burst into tears.

  “Are you mad?” she sobbed. “What if the comrades change their minds? What if they refuse to pay you? A contract means nothing in this country and you know it!”

  “Come on, Honza,” my father smiled. “Try to be an optimist!”

  “An optimist?” my mother exploded. “You know what an optimist is? An optimist is a pessimist without information!”

  She started to pace the room like a tiger. “I can’t sleep because I’m so worried,” she cried. “My hands shake. My parents don’t speak to me. My boss publishes my work under his name. I haven’t had a holiday in five years!”

  I had never seen my mother so upset. Her voice spiraled so high, she sounded like an ambulance.

  “I don’t get to go to the hairdresser!” she wailed. “I don’t get to go to the theater! I work like a donkey and get nothing in return except half a pig and a pile of dirty dishes!”

  And with that, she grabbed a plate and threw it onto the floor. It shattered loudly and her anger immediately disappeared. She looked shocked and vaguely surprised. She knelt on the floor and gathered up the shards of porcelain as though they were pieces of her own broken heart.

  My father threw his big arms around her.

  “Shhh,” he whispered tenderly. “Tomorrow you’ll quit your job and we’ll go on holiday.” He kissed her forehead like he was putting a stamp on a contract. “We’ll go to a nice place where you’ll have nothing to worry about except the weather.”

  My mother wiped her eyes with her sleeve. She was never very good at staying angry. She put her arms around my father’s neck, and I put my arms around both my parent’s knees. The three of us stood in the middle of the kitchen, which was cozy and full of steam. My sister had vanished as soon as the pig was in the freezer, so I was the only sober person in the room.

  “Where will we go?” I asked. “Terezka Jandova’s parents had to put their name on a waiting list for two years just to go to Bulgaria! All the seaside holidays are sold out.”

  My father considered this for a few seconds.

  “I have an idea,” he said. He tapped his nose with his forefinger, suggesting he had just thought of something extremely clever. “I know exactly where we’ll go. We’ll go . . . to Poland.”

  My mother looked up in horror.

  “Poland?” she said. “No one ever goes to Poland.”

  “Exactly,” my father smiled. “That ’s why it won’t be sold out.”

  NONE OF US BELIEVED MY FATHER was serious until he turned up the next day with a brochure from Cedok, the state-run travel agency. The brochure displayed a photograph of a Polish four-star hotel and a pleasant-looking beach dotted with sunbathers and umbrellas. The hotel was called the Hotel Romance, and my dad had already made a weeklong reservation. I couldn’t believe he had found such a nice place on such short notice. He sent our Skoda to the garage to be serviced, and bought two additional tanks of gas to keep in the trunk in case of emergencies. The big Michelin map of Europe was spread across the kitchen table, and a pyramid of canned food was piled up across it. There apparently wasn’t much to eat in Poland, so we would take our own supplies.

  “There is no way I am going on this trip,” my sister declared. “The Poles are so religious and poor, all they eat are communion wafers! I have no intention of starving! I’m staying right here!”

  “No, you’re not, young lady,” my father growled. “You’re going to lie on a beach and have a wonderful time if I have to drag you there with my own hands, or else!”

  My sister burst into tears and fled the kitchen, and my father stormed after her. We could hear them shouting all the way up the stairs.

  I looked at my mother. My mother looked at me.

  “Perhaps we’ll let them sleep on it,” she said.

  Two days later, my parents and I arose at four in the morning and loaded our luggage into the car. My sister stayed in bed. She had won again, and had arranged to keep working at my grandmother’s buffet while waiting to see if Renzo would visit. Renzo had written her a letter saying he was thinking about coming to Prague in the summer, and wanted to know if he should bring his own food. The Italians obviously had the same preconceptions about Czechoslovakia as we had about Poland—preconceptions that Klara was in no hurry to change. “Yes. Absolutely. Bring Italian food,” she had written, along with a detailed list of suggestions. I noticed that she had stockpiled several bottles of gin. Her private holiday was shaping up nicely.

  It had been Hilda who had really pushed for my sister to stay at home. The idea of Klara and an Italian man occupying an empty house was something she found enormously appealing, and she made my father’s life hell until he finally gave in. Hilda was hoping that Klara would become pregnant and that Renzo would be her ticket out of Eastern Europe. This sounds terrible, but it was the private fantasy of hundreds of thousands of Eastern Bloc families. At any rate, Klara was allowed to stay at home, and I think my parents were secretly relieved. Driving with my sister was never much fun, and my father’s optimism was contagious. We were really looking forward to our Polish vacation.

  It was dark and misty when we left the garage. The car was loaded with cans of baked beans and s
ausages, two crates of beer, and thirty frozen pork chops in an ice chest. Six bottles of gin had been hidden in the backseat upholstery, and three thousand Czech crowns had been wrapped in aluminum foil and glued to the bottom of the engine. As we rolled out of the driveway, I saw Mr. Hasek staring out of his bedroom window. He was dressed in his black-and-white-striped pajamas and looked a bit like a prisoner of war.

  “Ahoj, Mr. Hasek!” I rolled down my window and waved at him. “We’re on our way to Poland!” I knew he wouldn’t remember, but it was nice to let someone know that we were finally on holidays.

  We drove down the hill and across the fields, watching the sun rise slowly in the eastern sky. We got on the D1 (the only highway in Czechoslovakia at the time), and my father floored the accelerator. We made good time to Ostrava, which I was looking forward to seeing, as it was the place where my dad had spent his childhood. We passed through the desolate landscape of smoking chimneys and mining towers, and I couldn’t help marveling at a huge concrete sculpture that dominated the skyline. It was a monument to the Russian Army, which had liberated Ostrava from the Nazis.

  “Do you remember the Nazis, Dad?” I asked.

  “Of course I remember,” he said. “I was about your age when the Russians drove them out.”

  “Was it exciting?” I asked. “Were you happy when the Russians came?”

  “No,” my father said grimly. “The Russians were worse than the Germans. They would point their rifles at Czech civilians and yell, ‘Davay cziasy!’ If you didn’t understand and didn’t give them your wristwatch, they’d shoot you on the spot.” He shook his head. “I saw them do this a few times. Some of the soldiers had their sleeves rolled up, and their arms were covered with watches right up to their shoulders. I saw a lot of things in Ostrava I’d rather forget. Living in Prague is much nicer.”

  It was forty years after the war, and no one had bothered to fix up the town. Many of the public buildings were still dotted with bullet holes. I couldn’t believe that my father had grown up in such an ugly place. Everything was covered in thick layers of soot, and the only decorations were the Communist posters in the shop windows: HONOR YOUR FATHERLAND! they exclaimed. WORKERS UNITE TO BUILD A BETTER WORLD!