The Twelve Little Cakes (30 page)

No one said a word about Nurse Zdena's
vitakava.
When Nurse Magda finally trolleyed our dirty pots out of the room, I looked over at the pile of clean nappies and cotton pads on the changing table, and suddenly had an idea.

“Listen,” I said. “Why don't we take care of the babies by ourselves?”

“By ourselves?” Lucie gasped. “But we're too small. We can't reach them.”

“Yes, we can,” I told her. “If we push a chair over to the cots, we can get them out. And we can reach the sink that way, too.”

“I don't want to change their nappies,” Zoltan grumbled.

“Would you rather have Nurse Magda yell at you all the time?” I asked.

“No,” he said. “But are we allowed to change the babies' nappies?”

“We don't have to tell Nurse Magda, do we? We could do it without telling her. It would be like a game.”

The Gypsies pricked up their ears.

“We're the partisans, and Nurse Magda and Zdena can be the Germans,” I suggested.

“But I like Nurse Zdena,” Mirka whispered.

“She's the one who makes us shit, stupid,” Zoltan reminded her.

“Go on!” Gejza said excitedly. “So what do we do?”

“Well, the first thing we'll need is a couple of lookouts.”

 

 

FROM THAT MOMENT ON, we waged a defensive war against Nurse Magda. Zoltan and I were the joint leaders of the partisans, and Mirka, Erika, Lucie, and Gejza were our lieutenants. Our primary objective was to keep the toddlers out of Nurse Magda's hands. We couldn't wait for them to soil their nappies. We had a whole procedure worked out.

Whenever Fedor or Aranka started to cry, we would push a chair over to their cot and pull them out. Gejza and Lucie would stand look-out, while Mirka and Erika brought the chair to the sink. Then I would roll up my pajama cuffs and climb up into the basin, which was wide and deep enough for me to stand in. Zoltan was the strongest, so he passed each baby up to me. There was a rubber hose at the end of the tap that I used to wash the babies' bums. Then Mirka and Erika dried their bottoms with the cotton pads. Last, I would climb down and supervise the folding of the nappies. It was actually a lot of fun. We got to play with live dolls and pretend that we were in a German prisoner-of-war camp. As we refined our operation, I noticed that the kids from the other wards were watching us with interest instead of their usual scorn.

As the days slowly passed, it became apparent that Nurse Magda had no idea about the
vitakava.
It was typical of the way communism worked. The left hand didn't know what the right hand was up to. Our work with the babies kept Nurse Magda from yelling at Zoltan, but she was still grumpy about our full chamber pots and suspicious that our parents were sneaking us food. She was particularly vigilant on the days our parents came to visit. We were taken from the ward and washed in a large communal shower, and after we had made our beds, she let us climb up onto the radiator by the window and press our noses to the glass.

“Don't forget to smile at your mummies and daddies,” she said ominously. “We don't want them to worry about you, do we?”

“No, Nurse Magda,” we replied.

“Well, then,” she tightened her mouth into the most gruesome smile. “Make sure you look happy.”

Then she stood beside us for the whole hour that our parents came to visit, making sure it looked like we were having the time of our lives.

The Infection Pavilion was built like a bunker, so that parents could look in on their children without entering the building. There was also the large observation deck that ran past the six big windows at the back of the pavilion, and from the outside, the wards must have looked like a miniature zoo. A wrought-iron staircase led up to the deck, and I squealed with excitement as I saw my mother's hat. She was climbing the stairs with my father and sister behind her.

“Hello, Mum!” I cried.

“Hello, little one,” she called back. “How are you?”

“I'm okay,” I said bravely. “Can I come home soon?”

“Of course you can, my love,” she said. “You look awfully thin. Are they feeding you properly?”

I shot a look at Nurse Magda, who was watching me like a hawk.

“I think so,” I replied.

My mother opened her mouth to say something, but a huge Gypsy family swarmed onto the deck behind her; old women, children, and girls with babies in their arms.

“Zoltan!
Mro cho!
” a young woman with the most amazing hair cried out. She ran to the window and smothered it with kisses, while Zoltan made an embarrassed face and tried not to cry.

“Mirka! Lucie!” two teenage girls shrieked. “
So tuke? Soske tut o Del marel!
Guess what, Gejza? You have a new baby sister!”

The Gypsies were making so much noise it was impossible to hear what anyone was saying. Some of them danced and sang to entertain the kids. Lucie had at least ten relatives in front of her, and my parents were pushed aside by her extended family. In the end, I found a tiny square at the bottom of the window and pressed my face against it. My mother touched the window with her fingers and smiled, but I couldn't hear what she was saying. My breath fogged up the window, and I choked on a big lump in my throat. I drew a picture on the fogged-up glass with my finger, and my mother got teary. She wiped her face and hid it under the brim of her hat. I rubbed the picture out with my pajama sleeve and breathed some more mist onto the glass. Then I wrote on the window: please bring biscuits. My parents looked puzzled at first, but then they signaled okay and my mother blew me a kiss.

“End of visiting hours!” Nurse Magda said, clapping her hands.

The Gypsy kids began to cry and my own eyes filled up with tears. Nurse Magda helped us down from the radiator and tucked us up in our beds. I watched my mother's hat as it drifted down the hill, disappearing behind the row of chestnut trees that lined the path to the hospital gate.

Later that afternoon, Nurse Zdena appeared at my bedside with a big bag of
piskoty
biscuits my father had sweet-talked her into sneaking into the ward. These were the same sponge biscuits my mother fed my sister and me when we were dieting. They were small and plain, but there would have been at least sixty in the bag.

“I shouldn't be doing this,” Nurse Zdena said. “But I don't think they'll do you any harm.”

“Thank you, Nurse Zdena,” I said gratefully.

“You're welcome,” she smiled. “If I were you, I wouldn't let Magda catch you with them. Maybe you could put them in your bedside drawer.”

“Okay,” I nodded.

The second Nurse Zdena had left the room, the Gypsy kids leaped out of bed and surrounded my bedside table. They stared at the drawer with their hungry black eyes.

“Would you like some biscuits?” I asked.

“Yes, please!” they all exclaimed. Gejza stuck his tongue out and nodded so hard he almost bit it in half.

I opened the drawer and gave a sponge biscuit to each of the kids. Then I ate one myself. Piskoty biscuits were my least favorite in the world, but in the ward that afternoon, they were an incredible treat. Some of the kids actually groaned as they ate them. I handed out a second biscuit, then a third one, then a fourth. We really were starving. All we had to eat was one bread roll three times a day, as well as dry mashed potatoes and semolina pudding. I had lost so much weight, my legs looked like broomsticks. All the children in the wards were on the verge of starvation.

“Can I please have another one?” Mirka whispered after she had eaten her fifth.

The packet was now half empty.

“We should save some for later,” I told her. “I'm not sure if I'm going to get any more, and we don't know if they'll make us go to the toilet. How about if we have some more in the morning?”

“In the morning?” Gejza cried. “But that's a long time away!”

“Can't we just have one?” Lucie whined.

After a lot of protesting, the kids grudgingly returned to their beds and spent the rest of the afternoon whispering to each other in Gypsy language. They were angry, and our nappy changing was less fun than usual. When Nurse Magda finally switched out the lights, I put the bag under my pillow just in case. I could hear Zoltan and Gejza creeping around in the darkness as I tried to go to sleep. Every so often, my bedside drawer would creak open, and one of them even put his hand on my pillow.

“Go away!” I whispered. “Leave my biscuits alone!”

The following morning, we didn't have to drink Nurse Zdena's
vitakava.
The young nurse with glasses brought us a jug of black tea instead and told us that we would have to wait for breakfast, because an American boy with meningitis was on his way to the pavilion. The head of the hospital had come down and insisted that a good impression be made. The kids in the ward next to ours were relocated to other parts of the hospital, and the staff had to drop whatever they were doing and help the doctors get ready. Nurse Magda mopped the floor and changed the sheets on the one remaining bed, and then a fleet of doctors came in and surrounded it with surgical tables and lots of expensive equipment.

The Gypsy kids and I watched with interest, waiting for the American boy to turn up.

“Is he going to speak American?” Lucie wanted to know.

“Americans only speak American,” I said. “They don't speak anything else.”

“Why not?” Mirka whispered.

“They won the war,” I told her. “When you win a war, everyone has to speak your language.”

“That makes sense,” Gejza nodded approvingly.

A few minutes later, there was a loud clattering in the corridor and we all rushed over to the window and peeked under the blinds in time to see the young nurse with glasses pushing a bed into the room. A boy was lying on the bed, and a very well-dressed man and a woman walked in behind him. Dr. Kopecky and a team of doctors and nurses followed.

“Nice sweater,” Gejza whistled. “These people must be rich!”

“Is that Mickey Mouse?” Mirka wanted to know.

“No, it's not Mickey, it's Yerry,” I told her, pronouncing the J the Czech way. “The cat is called Tom and the mouse is called Yerry.”

A huge doctor with a sausagelike mustache entered the room. He smiled politely at the boy's parents and laid a thin metal suitcase on the table.

“
Kurva fix,
I knew it!” Zoltan swore under his breath.“It's Dr. Horvath! They're going to give the kid a spinal tap!”

Zoltan shuddered. “See that suitcase?” he said. “There's a huge needle inside it, and Dr. Horvath is going to stick it all the way in the boy's spine!”

“You're just saying that to scare us!” I cried.

“No, I'm not. I've seen him do it to three kids already. They bring in a special chair and make you sit backward, and then he sticks you with the needle!”

I thought Zoltan was making this up until Nurse Magda brought in a big silver chair. Dr. Horvath opened his suitcase and pulled out a syringe with the longest needle I had ever seen. The blood drained from the American woman's face as she stood behind the chair and stroked her son's hand. Then Dr. Horvath stuck the tip of the needle into the boy's spine. The American kid screamed so loudly, the doctor jumped away. When he tried again, the boy squealed like a pig being slaughtered. This went on for five minutes, until Nurse Magda whispered a few words to Dr. Horvath and then led the boy's parents out of the room.

Once they were gone, three nurses pounced on the boy and held him down while Dr. Horvath drove the needle into his spine. The kid screamed even louder than before, but all of the doctors and nurses ignored him. Finally, Dr. Horvath removed the needle, and the nurses laid the boy on his belly and then his parents were allowed to return. The father thanked the doctors and nurses, and the mother rushed over to her son. She stroked his hand, but he furiously pushed her away; then she opened a big cardboard box and started to pull out an assortment of toys.

The Gypsy kids and I watched in amazement. She was like a magician pulling rabbits out of a hat. There was a toothbrush with Mickey Mouse on the handle (I pointed him out to Mirka), and a little music box that played “Silent Night,” but the best toy by far was a miniature BMW that the woman put on the floor. She picked up a remote control and made the little car drive all by itself. When it crashed against the side of the bed, she handed the control to her son, but he threw it across the room. In desperation, the woman pulled out a plastic bag filled with candy. There were Kinder Eggs and Swiss chocolate, as well as pralines and nougat and Mars bars. The American woman offered the sweets to her son, but he angrily pushed the bag away.

The sight of the sweets made me sick with hunger. Saliva flooded my mouth and I pressed my lips to the window, trying to taste a bit of sweetness on the glass.

“You know,” I said miserably, “I would have a spinal tap if they gave me a bag of chocolate at the end.”

Lucie's eyes widened. “Is that true?” she asked. “Will they let you?”

“Probably not,” I sighed.

“Aren't you frightened of needles?” Gejza asked. “I am!”

“I am, too,” I said. “But I've always wanted a Kinder Egg.”

“You have biscuits!” Gejza said accusingly. “At least you have something. We have nothing!”

I was about to point out that I had offered to share my biscuits in the morning, when the door crashed open and Nurse Magda walked in. The young nurse with glasses followed, pushing a trolley with our dry rolls. She handed them around while Nurse Magda distributed charcoal pills and thermometers. Then she collected our pill cups and loaded them onto the trolley, and would have left had Lucie not stopped her.