My Own Revolution (5 page)

I have to find her. I check out hiding places in the lanes, behind bushes. A place where a boy could pull in a girl for a quick kiss. But there’s nobody.

I go back to our building and up the 115 steps to our apartment to lie in wait.

I position myself at the open window, my heart doing cartwheels.

Sure enough, when she comes, she’s with him. They come up the walk together. My heart twists. I peer out, but keep hidden. She mustn’t think I’m spying on her.

She and Bozek are standing close. The schoolbooks in their arms almost touch. They’re both still wearing their red scarves. They’re still wearing those even though it’s after school and they no longer have to demonstrate party loyalty.

They’re idling on the walk, which is edged with flowers that Mrs. Smutny planted, kneeling in those cold fall days, pressing bulbs into the soil with her arthritic fingers. They’re looking into each other’s eyes right where Danika and I have played jump rope and hopscotch.

I lift my camera over the windowsill and, without sighting, snap a photo of her. At the last second, before I can lift my finger, Bozek moves into the frame. Now I have mistakenly photographed not just Danika, but Danika and Bozek.

“Patrik!”
Mami calls. “Come for supper.”

“In a minute,” I call back. “I’m finishing some homework.”

I can’t leave while Danika is down there. I have to know what happens. I can’t just leave these two unobserved. Maybe she’ll come up when the light falls. And Bozek will go away. Far away to wherever he lives. And then I can eat.

At last he leans a little closer. The books touch. Is she holding hers like a barrier? Or does she tilt them just to the side so that Bozek can edge closer? I lean farther out.

Too far. Danika looks up, sees me, waves. She calls out, “I see you up there, Patrik!”

But she doesn’t guiltily draw back from him. She doesn’t think I care.

Shielding his eyes with one hand, Bozek looks up, too. He waves as well. I wave back. But I’m not waving to him.

Finally they whisper something together, laugh together, and Bozek goes off down the walk, looking back once, then again. I hear the big door of our building slam. Danika is inside at last.

I go out and race down the stairs.

Coming up, she’s a little breathless, her short hair ruffled. I want to toss aside her books and tell her everything.

But she speaks first, her cheeks flushing. “I saw you take a picture of us, Patrik. Can you develop that photo tonight? I want to show my friends.”

I stare at her. And stare some more. How could she ask such a thing? How could she
dream
of asking?

“You don’t have to blow it up big,” she goes on. “Small is fine.”

“Not tonight,” I tell her. “There’s too much film left on the roll.”

I turn up the stairs, away from her. I fly up the stairs and into our apartment.

Mami has put on the burgundy cloth and the lace place mats under the plates. Bela is already sitting at the round table, eating applesauce alone instead of with her pork chop. She spoons it in, and it runs down the sides of her mouth.

Danika is probably at the door to her apartment. She is fitting the key into the lock since no one is home. I should go on up. I should apologize.

Mami goes to the window and looks out at the path that Bozek just walked down. Bozek, going away. She’s waiting to see Tati walk up it.

I take a pork chop and dollop on some applesauce. I fork a pile of sauerkraut onto my plate, and then Mami cries out and hurries to the front door.

Instead of using my knife and fork, I pick up the pork chop and take a bite.

“Patrik!”
Bela says, and I stick out my tongue at her.

“Yuck,” she says, “your mouth has chewed-up pork chop inside.”

I laugh, teasing her.

Tati comes up the stairs. He comes inside but doesn’t greet any of us. He sits and rubs the back of his neck with one hand. “Jakub Machovik has joined the party,” he says.

Mami’s eyes grow wide. “No!” she exclaims.

“Yes,” Tati says simply.

“I can’t believe it.”

I too think Tati must be joking. How could our family doctor have done such a thing? Not long ago, we were all together at his vacation house in the pines. And Tati was even telling him about Mr. Bagin. . . . My mind flits away from that terrible thought. Instead I wonder if now Mr. Machovik will report all his vegetables and honey and give half to the government.

He won’t. All party guys get rotten to the core. Even I know that. The party is like a worm working its way into a crisp red apple. It gets at your soul. I wonder what’s become of the newborn bunnies.

“How did you learn this news?” asks Mami.

“It’s official. He’s closed his office and moved downtown.” Tati glances at Bela, who is scraping up the last of her applesauce, then goes on: “He’s evidently in a position of power. Probably because they snared a doctor they did that for him right away. Word has it that he’s demoted Dr. Csider. For the way he joked about how the building materials for the new post office got carted away and sold on the black market.”

“What’s happened to Dr. Csider?” I ask, Mami’s food now funny in my stomach.

Tati spears a pork chop and lands it on his plate with a little thud. “Dr. Csider,” he says, “is no longer working as a doctor. He’s been sent to do roadwork way up by Prikra.”

Mami gasps, and Bela looks at her sharply.

Everyone is getting demoted these days. Lawyers become window washers. Teachers go to factories. And Adam Uherco, a kid just like me, is locked up.

But I can hardly imagine Dr. Machovik making skinny old Dr. Csider work with asphalt. Just for cracking a joke.

Will something now happen to
Tati
?

Will something happen to all of us?

“Why would Dr. Machovik join up?” I ask.

Tati shrugs. “For the money.”

“But he’s a doctor,” Mami says. “Surely he’s got a decent income.”

“For the power, then. For even more income.”

A cold shadow falls across us.

“But a little while ago, he was on our side,” I say. “He was bragging about how he cheats the government.”

“Becoming a party member doesn’t mean he likes the government any better than he did before.” Tati cuts the pork chop off the bone. “He just sees an opportunity to use that government.”

“Against us?”

“Let’s hope not.”

I finish eating and rinse my plate. “More homework,” I say, excusing myself. I go to my room and into the closet, which is my darkroom.

I shut the door, and the room goes black. I can’t stand having a picture of Bozek with Danika in my camera. Even though the film isn’t completely used and film is sometimes hard to get, I take it out and roll it onto the reel.

I plunge the reel into the baths and go to work. At the end, I turn on the red light and look at the strip of negatives. Only the last shot is important. It shows Danika and Bozek on the walkway, leaning close with their books almost touching. Even though the negatives aren’t completely dry, I make a print of the shot. Before the paper even dries, I take a pair of scissors and cut Bozek out of the shot. I cut him away from her so that she is separate from him. I hang the image of just her on the inside of the door, then hesitate over Bozek’s image. I could burn it. Or cut it into a million pieces. But I just drop his face — smiling over his red scarf, which is just dark gray now — into the wastebasket.

Danika lives two floors up in an identical apartment. Years ago we lined up our beds so hers was right on top of mine. At this moment, she may be exactly above me. Is she lying up there daydreaming of Bozek?

When we were little, Danika and I started the note dropping, and we’ve kept it up all these years. She lowers a note on a string until it dangles where I can see it. She used to tell me how her teddy bear lost its button eye or ask things like what Mami made for dessert. Now she tells me different things. She tells me when she’s had a fight with her friend, asks my advice on how to make up. After I read her note, I always scribble a response. When I yank on the string, she pulls the message to her window.

Because she lives above, Danika has to be the one to start. Now I wish she’d send a note down. Say something. I’d answer right away. I’d send her a sweet note. I’d apologize. She’d sweetly accept.

And then I’d send her another message with three simple words.

I wait for Danika as usual on the walkway. But this morning I combed my hair and pressed my shirt. I shined my shoes until I could see my face in them, so distorted I looked ugly and thought: how would she ever love me back? I’m even wearing my stupid red scarf because I think she must like it.

Danika is late this morning, so I pace the walkway. I see a pink flower with a yellow heart and think I should pick it for her and spill out the words that go with it. But I’m not ready yet. Not now that we are late.

She comes out the door, letting it bang shut behind her. Her hair falls carelessly over her forehead. She’s carrying her violin case, and I remember that today after school she has her lesson.

“Let’s go,” I say, but she’s rustling in her bag. She’s off-kilter and distracted.

I offer to carry her violin case.

She looks at me funny, since I’ve never offered before. “Why, thank you, Patrik.”

We walk to school with the lilacs blooming, birds nesting in the trees. We walk over a fallen nest with tiny crushed blue eggs.

We arrive at the blocky building, the looming trees, our vandalized slogan, so sloppily repaired. The statue of Lenin lifts an arm as if to say,
Here I am, ruler over all of you.
Once he may have been famous for fighting for the downtrodden, but now he’s the one doing the trodding. I mean treading. He’s a giant stomping boot.

I follow Danika through the big door, and then she is gone. She’s lost to me in the sea of red scarves. She goes so quickly that she forgets her violin.

I leave the violin in the office. I write a note, then hesitate before signing my name. Should I draw a heart? That would be a girlish thing to do. The secretary is already holding out her hand, so I skip it.

The bell rings, trilling through the chatter, the stamp of feet on the stairs.

My first class is the history of ancient Greece. Mr. Noll writes the timeline of the Peloponnesian War — 431–404 BC — on the blackboard. I wonder if Bozek is in the same mathematics class as Danika. I wonder if they’re passing notes when Mrs. Hathazy’s back is turned. If they’re risking standing in the corner for passing notes.

A new and horrifying thought comes to me that maybe I won’t find her after school. Maybe he’ll whisk her away. And then I remember her violin lesson at Lada’s house. Lada, the girl with the braces and thick ankles who plays first violin with the orchestra. Lada, who gives lessons in her apartment on a narrow side street.

“In the Peloponnesian War, democratic Athens was roundly defeated and dominated by oligarchic Sparta,” says Mr. Noll.

Like us now with Russia,
I think. I wonder if Mr. Noll is trying to let us know that he can’t stand the stinking Russians. I look at him more closely with his curly blond sheep hair. Is he a
real
teacher and not just a propaganda machine?

But then Mr. Noll says the Spartans were strong and disciplined, and I understand that I got my hopes way too high. He likes the occupying Soviet Russians just fine.

At break time, when we march around the gymnasium, Danika marches in the opposite direction, and as we pass, I catch her eye and make a funny face. She makes a funny face back. But she thinks we are just being kids together.

Bozek marches on the opposite side of the gymnasium, swinging his arms with gusto.

In my last class, which is botany, I tell the teacher I have a dentist appointment.

Mr. Ninzik asks, “Where is the note from your mother or father?”

I pretend to look in my pockets while hating doing this to Mr. Ninzik, who is the only teacher I like. He’s the kind of guy who would hate the Spartans. I shrug, saying, “I can’t find it.” I open my mouth and point to a back molar:
“Cavity.”

He looks out the window and back at me and nods.

I grab my books and head out the door, down the hallway and stairs and outside, where I lie in wait beside a lilac bush, my heart thumping like a dog’s leg when it scratches fleas.

The bell rings, and kids start to come out. I put my hand on my heart to keep the sound in. Will she come out with Bozek? Will he be telling her all about the wonders of Bratislava, where you can hear little snatches of Beatles songs and where boys have electric guitars and play the Beatles — muffled in a back room — whenever they want. With no Mrs. Zeman banging on the ceiling.

But no. Today is the day of the violin lesson. She must go to Lada’s. It wouldn’t be right to keep Lada waiting.