The Twelve Little Cakes (17 page)

“It's been fifteen years since we played together,” my mother said quietly. “I'm sure he'd be delighted to know that his granddaughter has inherited his love of music and dance.”

“Would he?” I exclaimed. “Well, why don't we tell him? He might become friends with us again!”

“I'm afraid it's not that easy, Trumpet,” my mother sighed.

I kept my eyes on my grandfather's window as we curved around the river beneath the Prague Castle and clattered past the narrow streets of Mala Strana, until the blue light disappeared from view.

The following Monday, I began my new ballet routine. I would get up very early and accompany my mother to work. She, Klara, and I would eat a hasty breakfast, tiptoe across our muddy front yard, and dash down the hill to catch the 7:15 train. More often than not, we would arrive at the station just after the rickety wooden road gates had fallen, but with just enough time to cross the rails to the opposite platform. A few seconds later, a train would thunder past without stopping, and everyone on the platform would groan. Trains always ran late under communism, but you could never actually rely on their lateness. Whenever you tried to anticipate the delay, the trains would miraculously arrive on time, or even half an hour early. The unpredictability of public transport added tremendous latitude to the Czech working week. Commuters could arrive at their offices anywhere from late morning to the mid-afternoon, raise their hands in defeat and say “Trains,” and all their colleagues would shake their heads knowingly. My mother, who prided herself on being very punctual, would insist upon us being at the station at 7:10 sharp. I would stand beside her and Klara, hugging the little backpack that contained my leotard, legwarmers, and
piskoty
slippers. They were the smallest slippers we could find, but my feet were so tiny I had to wear three pairs of socks to keep them on. My leotard was also too big, and my mother had tried to take it in by hand. She had spent a whole day working on it, but she wasn't very good at sewing. In spite of her efforts, the leotard hung raggedly on my body, making me look more like a wet chicken than a swan.

Usually at about quarter to eight, the 7:15 train would shudder into the station, and everyone would fight for seats. My mother, Klara, and I would invariably end up standing in the aisle, and the train rattled so violently I would have to hang on to my mother's legs to keep from falling. After about twenty minutes, the screech of rusty brakes would announce our arrival at the Central Railway Station, and the disembarking crowd would push us out onto the platform and all the way down the steps to the tram stop. Klara's school was right in the center of town, so she would run for the number 9 tram, while my mother and I would squeeze inside the number 18, which went to the Prague Castle and the Embassy District, where my mother worked. The Embassy District was where all the foreign diplomats and high-ranking Soviet officials lived. The streets were lined with chestnut trees and the embassies were surrounded by a large, floating population of cigarette-smoking, newspaper-reading STB agents propped up casually against lampposts and road signs. I was quickly able to recognize their faces in spite of the position rotations they halfheartedly undertook. The Czech secret police agents took their jobs about as seriously as everyone else in the country. Many an arrest was botched as a result of bad public transport; many an interrogation was suspended because the interrogating officer was too hungover. Whenever we walked past, they would pretend not to see us, but I often caught them staring at my mother's legs from behind their newspapers.

On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays, Mother and I would climb the steps of the Economic Institute, which had a crumbling facade and a yard filled with stinging nettles. Her office was on the ground floor and was furnished with a battered desk and a single filing cabinet. She would make me sit on the floor and draw pictures while she worked. When I got bored, I would get up and walk through the building in search of someone to play with. Fortunately, there was usually some kind of party going on. Of the fifty economists who worked at the institute, my mother was the only one who appeared to take her job seriously. Everyone else, including the two men whose names appeared on her books, seemed to spend their afternoons celebrating their colleagues' birthdays and name days.

By lunchtime, a crowd would gather in one of the larger offices to drink wine and sing “Happy Birthday” to a colleague, and by mid-afternoon, the damp corridors would be echoing with laughter. I was always welcome at these parties, and had lots of fun drinking lemonade and eating little cakes with the people who would end up running the country after the revolution. I spent many a happy afternoon watching the future leaders of Czechoslovakia drink themselves under the table, until my mother finished work and came to collect me. Then we would walk down the hill from the castle and cross the Charles Bridge to the Old Town and take the tram to Mrs. Sprislova's school.

I loved these walks with my mother. We would explore the ancient streets of Mala Strana, looking at the houses with painted or sculpted signs above their doorways. My mother told me the stories of these buildings—wonderful tales of ghosts, mysterious deaths, and intriguing historical events. Mala Strana after dark was the haunt of headless knights, black dogs, and howling women, according to local folklore. We would buy cheese rolls at our favorite little bakery and carry them over the Charles Bridge, looking out across the Vltava River and up at the blackened statues of the saints. Then we would make our way around the Klementinum Library until we came out into the Old Town Square, which has always been my favorite place in Prague. I always nagged my mother to let me watch the striking of the hour on the Astronomical Clock. The clock was mounted on the tower of the Town Hall. Whenever it chimed, the twelve apostles would appear in little windows, and a tiny figure of Death would ring his bell. It was over almost as quickly as it had started, but I would always watch it with great anticipation.

“I wish the apostles would hurry up,” I would complain as we waited. “Do you think the clock might be broken?”

“No, but it's been damaged a number of times,” she told me. “The eastern wing of the Town Hall was blown up by the Nazis on the very last day of the war. And when the Red Army came to liberate Prague in 1945, one of the first things Marshal Konev tried to do was have the clock dismantled and sent back to Russia. Fortunately, it was too big for their transport vehicles, so they had to leave it here.”

“Why would the Russians want it?”

“Good question,” my mother smiled. “For some reason, the Russians have always been obsessed with clocks and watches. Whenever their armies came to Prague, the first thing their soldiers would do was steal every wristwatch and clock they could find.”

“Well, I'm glad they didn't take this one,” I said.

“So am I,” my mother laughed. “Ah, here come the apostles now.”

After the striking of the hour, we would walk along the side of the Town Hall, with white crosses embedded in the cobblestones. They represented the twenty-seven Czech aristocrats beheaded in 1621 for trying to lead an uprising against the Hapsburgs. Then we would cross the square and eat our cheese rolls on the steps of an enormous statue of Jan Hus surrounded by a group of defeated men and women groveling at his feet.

“He was a Catholic priest who was killed in 1415 for preaching against the Church,” my mother told me.

“Why did he want to preach against the Church?” I asked.

“Well, back in those days, the Church was selling pardons, which were like tickets to Heaven, to anyone who was rich enough to pay for them. Jan Hus didn't think that Jesus would have approved of this, so he accused the Church of making an enterprise out of the Christian faith.”

“But why did they kill him?” I asked. “Couldn't they have just told him to stop?”

“They did, but he refused. The Church was very angry, because people were listening to him and not buying their pardons, so they called him a heretic and had him burned at the stake. He had many chances to back down, but he ended up dying for what he believed in. After he died, he became a symbol and a hero of the Czech nation in much the same way that Joan of Arc became a French one after leading an army against the English.”

She took a bite of her cheese roll and smiled at me.

“We're not a particularly religious or righteous country, but in times of war or occupation, many Czech parents will name their children ‘Jan' or ‘Jana' as a form of protest,” she said. “You can always tell when we've been invaded by the number of little Johns and Janes running around.”

“Your name is Jana,” I pointed out. “So you must have been named after Jan Hus as well!”

“I was,” my mother said. “I was born during the German occupation. My father was hoping for a son and he had the name Jan already picked out, but when I turned out to be a girl, he named me Jana instead. But he would often call me ‘Jan' or ‘Honza' as a joke. He wanted a son so that he could teach him medicine, but he ended up teaching my sister instead.”

Whenever my grandfather came up in conversation, my mother would always become sad and reflective. We sat underneath the Jan Hus statue for a while, and as the Astronomical Clock began to chime the next hour, we got up and walked through the Jewish Quarter to the number 12 tram that took us across the river to Mrs. Sprislova's school.

The North Prague School for Junior Dancers was located in the basement of the Prague Transport Office; an ugly tower block covered in dirty white tiles. It was a strange place to study dancing, as the upper floors were teeming with disillusioned public servants who would roll their eyes at the young ballerinas who gathered in the lobby. My mother and I would take the ancient paternoster elevator down to the basement, where we would find the changing rooms overflowing with half-naked girls and their well-dressed mothers, and I would change into my leotard and slippers while my mother tied my hair up in pigtails. Then Mrs. Sprislova would appear in the room and clap her hands.

“Hurry up, and try to keep the noise down!” she would cry. “This is a ballet school, not a farm!”

We would trot out onto the floor of the studio, which was a shabbier version of those at the preparatory school. There was a battered grand piano in the corner, and as I self-consciously stood with the other girls, an elegant lady on crutches hobbled over to the piano, sat down, and started to thumb through the scores. The woman's name was Miluska, and she had contracted polio as a child. She was an excellent pianist, and after she had put her crutches on the floor, she would run her fingers effortlessly over the keyboard while Mrs. Sprislova took us through the basics. We would start with a warm-up and some stretching, and then we would exercise at the bar.

I was quiet and shy my first day, and looked at the other girls with envy. They were all at least a head taller than I was, and not only did their leotards and slippers fit properly, but they wore elegant cotton socks instead of three pairs of woolen ones. Mrs. Sprislova called out her instructions in French, and they executed them with confidence. I began to worry I might never catch up. I desperately tried to copy what the other girls were doing, which was particularly hard, as the bar was too high for me to reach, but to judge from Mrs. Sprislova's smile, I wasn't doing too badly. She didn't scream like Mrs. Saturday, and, if someone made a mistake, she would silence Miluska with a regal wave and patiently explain how to do the exercise properly. On my first day, she showed us how to make halos above our heads with our arms and how to keep our balance on the points of our toes. I followed her instructions until my whole body ached, and at the end of the lesson, she complimented me in front of the class.

“Good work, Dominika,” she smiled. “You have good endurance and a natural sense of rhythm.”

The other girls looked at me with surprise. It was common knowledge that Mrs. Sprislova didn't throw compliments around freely, and as soon as the class was over, I was surrounded by a group of girls who wanted to know who I was. They told me their names as we changed out of our costumes, and I tried to remember them all. Their mothers made polite conversation with my mother and then we had to run and catch our tram. As we rattled back toward Prague Castle, I sat in my mother's lap, looking across the river at the blue light in the windows of the Frantisek Hospital. I could see the silhouettes of people, and imagined that one of them was my grandfather. I was proud that he was a famous surgeon who had saved the lives of many people.

For the next six months, I worked very hard and became one of Mrs. Sprislova's favorite students. I think she had a soft spot for me because of my size. I was too small to work properly at the bar, but I would assume my position with a lot of enthusiasm, balancing against the mirrored walls whenever my arms were too tired to grasp the bar above my head. On the occasions when we were allowed to improvise, I would position myself as close to Miluska as I could. I would stand on the tips of my toes and use the steps that Mrs. Sprislova had taught me, letting Miluska's music carry me along. More often than not, when the music stopped, I would open my eyes to find myself on the opposite side of the room, with the whole class, Miluska, and Mrs. Sprislova watching me. I may have been small, but I was one of the most expressive dancers in the class, and as the seasons changed and December approached, Mrs. Sprislova rewarded me for my efforts. I was invited to perform the “Waltz of the Marionette” from
Coppelia
in my very own segment of the Christmas show.

“Normally, I get my girls to perform in groups,” she told me, “but I think we might let you dance this one by yourself. I'll show you the steps, and then you can practice at home with your mother accompanying you on the piano. What do you think?”