Silver Wattle (2 page)

Klara was usually unmoved by our stepfather’s admonitions against her vegetarianism until his fierce blue eyes shifted to Mister Rudolf swimming in his tank on the sideboard. Milosh had threatened to dump Klara’s pet carp into the Vltava, where he would die of cold, and just his glance at the fish was sufficient to make Klara scoop a slice of beef onto her plate and nibble at it. Her face was always impassive, but I knew that her stomach was retching. Milosh did not understand what it was about Mister Rudolf that stopped Klara from eating meat or fish, but he sensed the connection and found it a useful threat.

Czechs eat fish for Lent and our farmers have been breeding fat, thick-boned carp for centuries. Carp and potato salad are the traditional Christmas dishes, and it was with the intention of buying a juicy fish for Christmas that Mother, Klara and I set out, canvas bag in hand, one frosty December evening.

It was the first time Klara had accompanied Mother and me to the Christmas markets. She reached out one hand to Mother and one to me, and skipped along between us through the streets. When we reached the market, her eyes widened and she let go of us, running towards the brightly decorated huts. ‘Look, Maminka. Look, Adelka!’ she cried, pointing to the rows of wooden toys and straw and paper ornaments. The Christmas lights danced in her eyes like tiny flames.

After a sip of the hot spiced wine Mother bought from a vendor, Klara grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the nativity scene, where both of us patted the heads of the clay donkeys and sheep. Mother reminded us that we had to hurry because she had other things to prepare at home. The fishmongers were at the far end of the square. The cobblestones became slicker the closer we got to the stalls, and the air was especially chilly around the wooden vats where dozens of silvery carp swished together. Klara brought her face close to one, watching the fishes’ mouths gaping for air. The enchantment on her face disappeared.

‘Adelka, they are drowning,’ she said.

‘How do you want it?’ a fishmonger asked an old woman, dipping a net into the vat and scooping up a fish. ‘You’d be best to let it swim in the bathtub until Christmas Eve. It will be fresher that way.’

The woman pulled her shawl tighter around her head. ‘I don’t have a bathtub. Kill it for me, please.’

Mother always brought our Christmas carp home to swim in the bath as the fishmonger had suggested. I had never seen one killed. Somehow I had missed the connection between the live fish that came home with us and the fried one that appeared on a platter on Christmas Eve.

The fishmonger dropped the writhing fish onto a pair of scales and from there to a wooden block. It stared up at the man with a bulging eye, as if begging for mercy. The fishmonger held the fish and lifted the mallet. Klara clenched my hand so tightly that her fingernails pierced both of our gloves. I tried to stretch my free hand over her eyes but was too late. The fishmonger slammed the mallet down. The ‘bang’ sent a jar through me. He sliced off the fish’s head and wrapped it with the body in a cloth which he handed to the woman.

After the woman left, my mother lifted her bag to the fishmonger. ‘Ours will be going in the bathtub for a few…’ She stopped short when she saw that the fishmonger was looking beyond her, not listening. She turned and saw Klara backing away, gazing from myself to Mother with tear-filled eyes. Her mouth moved as if she wanted to say something, but no sound came out. She reminded me of the fish we had just seen killed, writhing and wriggling away from me each time I tried to grab her hand.

‘Klarinka, what’s wrong?’ my mother asked, rushing towards her but looking at me for an explanation.

‘The fish,’ I stuttered. ‘She saw him kill the fish.’

Mister Rudolf, the carp we brought home from the markets, swam in our bathtub for the next three nights. Mother had promised to keep him as a pet, secretly hoping Klara would turn her attention to something else. But Klara watched over the fish vigilantly, regarding anybody who went to the bathroom to wash their hands or sponge their face as a potential murderer. When we wanted to take a bath, we had to do it quickly, because Mister Rudolf needed to be moved to a bucket, and he would often flip himself out and onto the floor. Finally, in exasperation, my mother bought a tank for Mister Rudolf and served another, less fortunate fish from the markets for Christmas dinner. But Klara was not fooled that the cooked fish had suffered less than the one she had seen killed at the markets. Mother and I realised then that Klara was seeing us differently, and that we would have to win back her trust. After that, my mother indulged Klara’s whim to never touch meat or fish and instead fed her nuts, dates, figs, grapes, raisins and mushrooms as substitutes. As for Mister Rudolf, carp were supposed to die a while after being removed from their pond, but he thrived in his tank.

While our stepfather took exception to Klara’s eating habits, he used our mealtimes to improve my education. The impromptu lessons made me so nervous I could not swallow my food.

‘Adela, what is that allows a ship to stay afloat?’ Milosh asked me one day. He always used my formal name, never the diminutive, Adelka, as the rest of my family did.

I stared at the plate of beef soup and liver dumplings that were our meal that day, unable to think of the answer. He had explained it to me the previous summer when we were walking alongside the Vltava River. I knew it had something to do with the boat pushing water out of the way and some ancient Greek who had discovered the principle of displacement. But beyond that I could not explain it exactly, and a precise answer was the only kind my stepfather would accept.

Sweat gathered under the arches of my feet.

Milosh closed his eyes and repeated his question so slowly that my face burned with shame. It was unfair of him to say that science was for men and then teach it to us in dribs and drabs. Klara still attended a school for young ladies three days a week, but Mother was mainly responsible for our education. She encouraged us to pursue our natural strengths. That was music for Klara and literature for me. I had read everything from the Czech poets to Chekov’s plays, and Uncle Ota’s letters were an education in themselves. If my stepfather had asked me about the geography I had learned from Uncle Ota’s travels, I could have answered him. But he was not interested in other countries and their cultures.

‘So you don’t know? Then I suggest you look it up and give me an answer tomorrow,’ he sighed, before turning to Klara. ‘And you, young lady, what is the difference between a butterfly and a moth?’

Klara thought for a moment before answering. ‘Moths fly by night and rest during the day. Butterflies love sunshine. A butterfly rests with its wings closed but a moth sleeps with them spread open.’

Klara was in her element. She had an eye for the wonders of nature: the fall of light on a landscape, the rustle of wind through the trees. She loved to watch living creatures and could spend an afternoon studying an army of ants or an evening listening out for nightingales. But Milosh was interested in facts, not poetry.

‘Anything else?’ he asked.

‘Moths are not as colourful as butterflies and have a fatter shape.’

Milosh gave a satisfied laugh and returned his attention to his food. I glanced at Mother. Her face was expressionless, but I saw the glint of tears in her eyes.

Mother’s hand on my shoulder stirred me from sleep later that night. ‘Adelka,’ she whispered. I struggled to open my eyes and focus on her standing next to the bed in her dressing gown and holding a lamp near her face.

‘What is it?’ I asked, glancing at Klara who was sleeping beside me. ‘Is anybody sick?’

Mother put her finger to her lips and shook her head. She moved towards the door and then turned, indicating that I should follow her. The house was silent except for the creaks of the floorboards under our feet and the occasional groan of its ancient walls. It had been in our family for nearly a century and had been left to Mother by her parents. My father had owned a family home too, where Aunt Josephine now lived, but had resided in Mother’s house for, while it was not the grandest in Prague, it was one of the most beautiful. The exterior walls were pale blue with white portals and dormers decorated with carved birds and flowers. The house resembled a jasperware vase, and its rear courtyard was a secret garden of ivy-covered fountains and benches. Once you had lived in the ‘blue house on the corner of the square’, you were spoiled to live anywhere else.

I followed Mother down the hall and wondered if we would meet any of the family ghosts on our journey. There was Great-grandfather Francis who coughed before dashing from one room to another and then disappearing; and Great-aunt Vera who appeared whenever a change was made to the house. She either slammed doors in disapproval or left petals on the doorstep to demonstrate her pleasure. The ghost of Aunt Emilie, who I saw every few years, was the most intriguing. Her face was young and tranquil and there was no inkling in it that her life had ended tragically. One Christmas, I came across Emilie when I thought I had heard Klara singing carols in the music room. I opened the door to find a woman by the piano. She vanished in an instant but I recognised her as Emilie from the picture in the locket Mother wore around her neck, which also contained a snippet of Father’s hair. Mother, who was not able to see the ghosts, was happy when I told her that I had discovered her younger sister in the house. She was comforted that Emilie seemed to have found the peace that had eluded her in life.

We climbed the stairs that led to the attic. Mother opened the door and put the lamp on a table.

‘Here, sit,’ Mother told me, indicating a chair covered with a sheet. She switched on the attic light.

The attic was crowded with furniture of generations past that could no longer fit in the main rooms: a beechwood armoire with brass-banded doors; cherrywood bedheads; a refectory table with lyre-shaped legs. A corner of the room was cordoned off like a chamber in a museum. That place was devoted to my father’s favourite pieces for which Milosh had found no use in his rooms. They were arranged exactly as my father had positioned them in his study. I cast my eye over the walnut desk and matching bookcases, the gilt bronze inkstand, and the tall-case clock with the hands stopped at twenty minutes past eleven, the time we had received the telegram informing us of Father’s death.

Mother slipped a key from her pocket and opened a mahogany chest with a bear carved on it. I caught a glimpse of Father’s sword, Bible and officer’s helmet. Mother lifted a black case from the chest and placed it on the desk.

‘I was going to give this to you when you came into your inheritance, but I can’t see any reason to wait.’

She opened the case and produced a box Brownie camera and passed it to me. I recognised it was the camera Father had bought before he left for Sarajevo. It was a simple design with a rotary shutter and a meniscus lens. My father had never been anything more than an amateur photographer. Yet, I felt his spirit as soon as I touched it. I was taken back to those rides in the countryside around Doksy. I remembered the way Father regarded me with his gentle eyes when he helped me to mount my horse. I was sure that no other human being would ever love me as much.

‘Thank you,’ I said, looking up at Mother. One glance at the hopeful expression on her face and I understood the meaning of the gift. She was trying to compensate me for having married a tyrant in place of the angel who had been my father.

‘Your mother is one of those women who can’t not be married,’ Aunt Josephine told me the following day when I arrived at her house to show her the camera and to take pictures of her and Frip. ‘She was lucky with my brother, but her second marriage…what a mistake!’

It was not the first time Aunt Josephine had lectured me on the subject of marriage. The women in my family did not always make good choices.

‘Men can be so charming before marriage and so terrible afterwards,’ Aunt Josephine continued, positioning herself on the sofa with Frip sitting beside her. ‘My own father had an atrocious temper and used to order my poor mother around so much that I am certain it was he who sent her to an early grave.’

If Mother had known that Aunt Josephine lectured me against marriage her hair would have turned white. For Mother, marriage was a woman’s highest achievement. Not so with Aunt Josephine. Since the time I was old enough to visit her on my own, my aunt had plied me with articles from newspapers and magazines about women who had established themselves in occupations that had been previously forbidden to them: women physicians, astronomers, chemists, journalists and mountain climbers.

‘No, give me the free life,’ said Aunt Josephine, holding her straight nose in the air and lifting her chin as I depressed the shutter on the camera. ‘It might be simple but it’s mine.’

I walked the cobblestoned streets home and thought about Aunt Josephine. She lived more humbly than we did. Her house had been left to her by my father, but in order to keep it in good repair she lived on one floor and rented out the others. She had one maid, a stern but loyal German woman called Hilda. Aunt Josephine was always in good temper but the economies in her ‘simple’ life were obvious: daisies instead of roses in the vases; sponge cake instead of babovka; cotton instead of silk handkerchiefs. Could I be happy without the financial security a man gave? Then I thought about Mother, and the drain Milosh was on her fortune as well as her happiness, and wondered if Aunt Josephine might be right.

Before returning to the house I walked around Petrín Hill. Mother could not have given me a better gift than the camera. I had always seen the world in images but had been frustrated by my lack of ability to draw or paint. Suddenly I had a means of expression. I took pictures of trees, of couples sitting on benches, of elegant dogs with their equally elegant mistresses. One Afghan hound stopped on the path in front of me and held his chin in the air.

‘I think he is posing,’ I told his mistress. ‘Do you mind if I take a photograph?’

‘There is no opportunity Prince would miss for some attention,’ she laughed.