The Twelve Little Cakes (20 page)

“I asked my dad if you could come with us, but he said it might be better to wait until next time. He has to show total force to a bunch of old drunks!”

“Yes, maybe next time would be better,” Mrs. Sokolova agreed.

I started to tell her about the clever way my dad had bought a chalet from a man he met in his taxi, but as I talked, I realized that Mrs. Sokolova was having difficulty staying awake. Holding her hand, I felt her arm become heavy and then she started to snore. I didn't want to wake her, so I tucked her hand beneath the blanket and pulled the shawl around her shoulders.

“Good-bye, Mrs. Sokolova,” I whispered.

I tiptoed out of her apartment and closed the door quietly behind me, and as I trotted down the steps, I saw a man walking up our street alone. It was my father's best friend, Tomas Glatz. He was carrying a large backpack and he didn't look very happy.

“Hello, Mr. Glatz!” I called out. “Did you catch the train to Cernosice?”

“Yes, what a nightmare,” he replied. “Are your parents at home? I was going to drop in and see them.”

“I'm going home, too, so we can walk home together,” I told him. “What are Andy and Monika up to?”

“They had to stay home,” Mr. Glatz said quietly.

We walked up the street to our garage and found my father and Klara tying our skis to the top of the car. Barry was eyeing the trailer suspiciously.

“
Ahoj,
Jarda!” Mr. Glatz called out from the doorway. “What are you up to? It looks like you're going somewhere.”

“
Ahoj,
Tomas!” my father bellowed back. “We're off on holidays, believe it or not. What are you doing here on foot? Has something happened to your Skoda?”

Mr. Glatz dropped his backpack on the ground and stared at his shoes for a long time. He looked as though he was going to burst into tears.

“Oh, no,” my dad said. “Don't tell me.”

“It's serious this time,” Tomas muttered. “She wouldn't even let me take the car.”

My father walked over to his friend and threw an arm around his shoulders.

“Well, luckily for you I have more beer in my trunk than I know what to do with,” he said. “Let's go down to the kitchen for a quick drink, and you can tell me all about it.”

“Thanks, Jarda,” Mr. Glatz sniffed.

My dad pulled a couple of Pilsner bottles from the trunk and led his dejected friend down the front steps to our house. Klara and I inspected Mr. Glatz's backpack, which looked as though it contained all of his worldly possessions. Even his sleeping bag and bedroll.

I looked at my sister.

“They've been fighting for years,” she explained.

She leaned against the car and watched me as I persuaded Barry to climb into the trailer. As easygoing and lazy as he was, Barry hated this trailer with a vengeance, and getting him to climb inside was a major operation. In his movie star years, when my dad used to chauffeur him to and from work, Barry always sat in the front. My dad had even gone so far as to remove the passenger seat entirely so that Barry would have more space. Whenever the family would go on holidays, my mother and Klara would sit in the back while Barry assumed his position beside my dad, sticking his head out of the window to soak up the adulation of his fans. After I was born, he was banished from the front seat, and despite the fact that I was the cause of his misfortune, I was the only member of the family who could get him to climb into the trailer.

“Come on, Barry!” I told him. “We're going to the mountains! You can't just sit around in Mr. Kozel's apartment all the time. You have to get out and see new things.”

By the time I managed to coax Barry into the trailer, my parents and Mr. Glatz came up from the kitchen and announced that Mr. Glatz would be coming to Semily with us. My father picked up his friend's backpack and loaded it onto the roof. He and Mr. Glatz sat in the front of the car while my mother, Klara, and I squeezed into the back. As we drove down our street, I turned around to look at Barry. His fur wasn't as glossy and his eyes were less alert than they had been when he was younger. Poor old Barry was getting on in years. He huddled miserably on the floor and prepared himself for an undignified trip as we rumbled down the hill and into Prague. We reached the city and followed the quay through Mala Strana to North Prague and the road that would take us to the mountains.

The road to Semily was lovely. Baroque church towers dotted the hills, and we saw the snowcapped ruins of several medieval castles. Brilliant white fields lined the road, and if I looked carefully, I could see deer and hares digging for roots in the snow. It took us two hours to reach the Krkonose Mountains, and by the time we arrived in Semily, I could hardly contain my excitement. My dad stopped in the small town square so that he and Mr. Glatz could attach snow chains to the tires. The chains rattled and the engine shuddered and howled, but the Skoda steadily climbed the slippery, steep road, and as we rounded a curve at the top, an enchanting green cottage appeared in front of us.

“This is it,” my dad announced.

We stopped next to a matching green fence that was buried in a snowdrift, and I was out of the car before my father had time to switch off the engine. The cottage was made of wood and stone, and it must have been a couple of hundred years old. The wooden rafters were hand-carved and the gaps between them were filled with blackened mortar and lime. A tall hat of snow sat on the roof, and icicles hung down from the gutters like a row of jagged teeth. The house was surrounded by a pristine blanket of snow, and here and there, a trail of deer footprints lazily crisscrossed before disappearing into the forest. As the sun broke through the clouds, the chalet windows began to shimmer and dance in the light.

“This is just like The Grandmother's cottage!” I breathed. “It's exactly like the pictures from my book.”

“Isn't it?” my mother said behind me. “It really is from another time. I can't believe it's ours!”

Klara, my dad, and Mr. Glatz climbed out of the car and took a deep breath, savoring the fresh mountain air. As we stood together in a kind of stunned silence, the mountain was so quiet and peaceful, I could hear an underground stream gurgling beneath the snow.

“Wow!” my sister said finally. “This is a really nice cottage, Dad.”

“Yes, Jarda,” Mr. Glatz agreed. “You've scored yourself the bargain of the century.”

I ran to unlatch Barry's trailer. “Come on, Barry!” I urged. “Come and have a look! It's much nicer here than it is in Cernosice.”

Barry climbed down and began to suspiciously sniff his way around the side of the cottage. When he was satisfied that the new environment was safe, he lifted his leg and casually peed in the snow.

“Come on,” my dad said. “Let's get everything in from the car.”

He got a shovel from the trunk and cleared a path to the door, which he unlocked with a big, old-fashioned key. My mother, Klara, and I took a suitcase each and followed him inside, walking down a narrow hallway with a stone floor, past an ancient wooden staircase that led up to the attic. There was a single square room with a cooking stove in the corner. Both the ceiling and floor were made of big slabs of wood, and the walls were whitewashed. A big oak table stood to one side of the room, and there were two double beds beneath the windows. It was freezing cold, and the first thing my father did was light the stove and send Mr. Glatz out into the backyard to fetch some fire-wood. I followed him outside, and waded through the snow to inspect a little hut that stood near the fence. It was tiny and charming, with a heart-shaped peephole cut into the door, and I was disappointed to discover that all it contained was a wooden bench with a hole in the seat.

“Just like the old days, eh?” Mr. Glatz laughed as he came outside for more wood.

I shut the outhouse door and went upstairs to help my mother. While the outside of the cottage was picturesque, the inside resembled the front bar of the Rotten pub in Cernosice. A greasy deck of playing cards sat on the table, and over a hundred empty beer bottles stood on the floor around the stove. Soot covered everything, and the windows looked like they hadn't been wiped in years. Klara and I stacked the bottles on the porch while my mother swept the floor, and, once the cottage was clean, she cooked us lunch. The room quickly filled up with the delicious smells of pinewood and caramelized onions. We spent the rest of the afternoon transforming the chalet into our second home, and, once the sun had set, my father lit an oil lamp and we sat around the table, playing cards or reading. A big enamel pot warmed up on the stove, its lid chinking as the steam lifted it up. Barry snored at my feet as the wind sighed through the forest. After dinner, my mother gave me a hot bath in the sink, and I fell asleep in my red-and-white sleeping bag, listening to the crackling fire and the sound of my parents talking and laughing.

The following morning, my father rose early and boiled some water so that he could shave. I crawled out of the double bed I shared with my sister and stepped over Mr. Glatz sleeping on the floor. I put on my boots, my thermal underwear, and my fleecy jacket and hat, and made a quick trip to the little hut. It must have been at least minus twenty degrees outside. I dashed through the snow, pulled down my pants, and climbed up onto the wooden bench, which stuck to my bum like a block of dry ice. It was so cold it took me ages to pee, and my hands were so frozen by the time I finished, I could hardly hold the paper to wipe my bum. When I unlatched the door, I saw a car driving up the mountain. It was a Soviet-made jeep called a GAZ, and two men in green overcoats sat inside it. There was no mistaking the fact that they were headed for our house, so I ran inside to alert my father.

“Dad!” I cried. “There's a car outside!”

My father got up and looked through the window.

“That will be the men from the cooperative,” he said calmly. “News travels fast in the country.”

“Jezis Marja,”
my mother sighed. “What do you want us to do?”

“Nothing,” my dad replied. “Barry and I can take care of it. Can't we, Barry? Come on, boy!”

Barry raised his head from the floor and slowly climbed to his feet. I ran to the window and looked outside in time to see the jeep stop at our front gate. Two men got out, and I could tell by the way they barged through the yard that they considered our cottage to be theirs. The driver was tall and stocky, with a head that sat on his shoulders like a log, but his companion was obviously the tougher of the two. He was short and surly-looking, with the red, lumpy nose of a heavy drinker, and a beer gut that strained the buttons of his overcoat. My father opened the door and intercepted them.

“Good morning, gentlemen,” he growled. “What can I do for you?”

“
Cest praci,
comrade,” the shorter fellow barked. “I'm Comrade Berka, the division chief of the local agricultural cooperative here in Semily, and I've come to rectify an unfortunate mistake that has been made concerning the ownership of this cottage.”

My father pulled out his cigarettes and took his time lighting one.

“An unfortunate mistake, you say?”

“That's right,” Comrade Berka said, puffing out his beer gut. “The man who sold you this cottage had no authorization to do so. The cottage has been requisitioned for state use by the state, and it's technically the property of the collective.”

“Requisitioned for state use by the state,” my dad said thoughtfully. “And what kind of state use would that be? I found a deck of playing cards and a mountain of empty beer bottles inside, but I had no idea that important state work was going on. To my eye, the place looked like the weekend house of a bunch of small-town apparatchiks.”

A look of outrage appeared on Comrade Berka's face, quickly followed by a look of fear. The only people who talked insolently to party officials were other party officials or people with serious party connections. By using the phrase “small-town apparatchiks,” my father was not only pulling rank from Prague, he was also alluding to the possibility that his connections within the party were better than those of Comrade Berka.

“What's that you've got there?” my dad asked, indicating a slip of paper the cooperative chief was carrying.

“This is a lease renewal form that has been stamped and notarized by the National Committee,” Comrade Berka replied. “As I said, the man who sold you this cottage had no authority to do so. The cooperative therefore requires you to sign this document and vacate the property immediately.”

He handed the paper to my dad while his driver nodded officiously. My father scanned the document, then folded it in half and put it in his pocket.

“Oh, I don't think so,” he said. “You and I both know that the man who sold me this cottage was its rightful owner. My paperwork is in order. If you would care to file an official request via the National Committee, I'll have my notary send you a copy of the deed. In the meantime, you're trespassing on my property . . .”

He shook his head and smiled regretfully at the comrades.

“. . . so piss off,” he added.

Comrade Berka let out an involuntary gasp of rage and strode furiously to the bottom of the steps. His driver followed, and the two men looked ready to attack my dad. They both had the thick wrists and battered faces of experienced bar fighters, but they were also thirty years older than my father, who himself was no stranger to fighting. He flicked his cigarette into the snow and descended until he was nose to nose with the comrades.

“You want to take this further?” he asked quietly.

“I don't see why not,” Comrade Berka replied. “You city folk are all show and no go. You want us to leave your yard? Go ahead and make us.”