The Twelve Little Cakes (4 page)

I pushed the door open and walked down the hall into the stairwell, where I could hear my mother and sister laughing. I decided that before I went down and joined them, I would go and say hello to Mr. Carp. I climbed to the second floor and tiptoed into the bathroom. The Nedbals' door was slightly ajar, but the house was quiet and I hoped they might be out. The Nedbals were very old and they smiled all the time, but I never had a good feeling when I saw them. They didn't seem like nice people, and Mrs. Nedbal smelled like old sheets.

There was a rusty metal bucket beneath the sink, and I pushed it over to the tub and climbed on top. The fish was floating motionlessly in the bath. His back was close to the surface of the water, and I reached down and gave him a pat.

“Hello, Mr. Carp,” I said softly. “Are you asleep?”

He squirmed at my touch but eventually got used to my patting. I followed his long, slick body with my hand, stroking him from head to tail.

“You're a good boy,” I told him.

There was a faint creaking behind me, and I turned to see Mrs. Nedbal in the doorway. She was a plump and wrinkled lady who always dressed in faded tracksuits and cardigans.

“Hello, Mrs. Nedbal!” I said. “Look! There's a fish in the bath!”

“So I see,” Mrs. Nedbal said pleasantly. “This is a communal bathroom and there's a fish in the bath, and yet no one has bothered to ask me or my family if we wanted to use it.”

She gave me a tight-lipped smile that sent a shiver down my spine.

“Do you want to take a bath?” I asked.

“Not at this moment, no,” she replied. “But if I wanted to, I wouldn't be able to, would I?”

She took another step toward me and broadened her smile into a grimace. Her hair smelled like she hadn't washed it in months.

“And you're standing on my bucket.” Mrs. Nedbal sighed. “It's my private property and you've taken it without asking. I do hope you haven't broken it.”

I climbed off the bucket, and she made a show of checking its rusty bottom for damage.

“Dear, oh dear,” she said tartly. “An apple never rolls far from the tree, does it? You start taking people's things without asking, the next thing you know, you'll be stealing the very beds they sleep on. It's no wonder your grandmother keeps her room locked downstairs.”

I looked up at Mrs. Nedbal in surprise. “My grandmother?” I exclaimed. “Do you know her?”

“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Nedbal smiled. “This is your grandmother's house. She used to live here before your father drove her out.”

“She did?”

“Yes. This whole house was hers. Now all she has is that one room downstairs, which she keeps locked because your parents were very cruel to her. Such a terrible shame.”

I thought about the locked door opposite my parents' bedroom.

“Is she still there?” I asked.

“Your father drove her out before you were born. Imagine! His own mother-in-law!” She leaned down and lowered her voice confidentially. “It's all in the courts, you know. I wouldn't be surprised if you found yourselves looking for a new house next year.”

“But I don't want a new house!” I cried. “I like this one!”

“So did your grandmother,” Mrs. Nedbal said quietly.

She put the bucket back under the sink, shaking her head and smiling bitterly as I fled. I ran for the safety of my parents' bedroom, but stopped in front of the locked door on the opposite side of the hallway. In the whole time I had lived in the house, my grandmother's door had never been opened. It was a high, white door with a shiny brass handle and a large keyhole that I was too small to look through. I pressed my ear to the door and wondered whether my grandmother was still inside. The room was very quiet, so I lay on the floor and peeked under. I was able to make out the legs of what looked like a bed, but I couldn't see any sign of my grandmother. Maybe she was asleep. I didn't want to wake her, so I got back up and ran down to the kitchen where my mother and sister were baking Christmas biscuits.

“Hello!” I called out. “I'm awake!”

“Yes you are,” my mother laughed.

“I went and said hello to the fish!” I told her. “And then Mrs. Nedbal came and took the bucket and told me that we might have to find a new house!”

“Really?” My mother stopped laughing.

“Yes! And she said that the grandmother lives in the room next to yours, and this is really her house. We don't have to leave here do we, Mum?”

A look of sadness passed across my mother's face.

“Come here,” she said.

She picked me up and hugged me tightly to her chest.

“We're not going anywhere,” she said. “We're going to stay here and have a lovely Christmas. Don't worry about the house, and don't you listen to the Nedbals. If anyone is going to find themselves looking for a new house next year, it will be them.”

She sat me down on my special place at the counter. There was sugar and cocoa and flour everywhere. Several trays of biscuits sat cooling on the floor and the smell of vanilla wafted sweetly from the oven.

“We're making strudel. Would you like to help?” my mother asked.

“Yes!” I said. “Can I have a biscuit?”

“Of course you can,” my mother smiled.

She rolled a sheet of dough while my sister peeled and chopped some apples, and I crushed cinnamon and cloves with a mortar and pestle. Outside, snowflakes fell from the sky like feathers. By the time the sun had set, the garden was covered in white. My dad came in with a box of wood for the stove, and we huddled in the kitchen, talking and laughing as we baked the strudel and spread jam on the biscuits. I could hear Mr. Kozel's radio playing Christmas carols in the next room, and an owl began to hoot in the forest. The forest was full of owls and badgers and pine martens, and the nights were very noisy with the sound of them hunting. As part of the old winter-solstice tradition, my mother filled a large wooden bowl with water and put it on the table. She put four little candles inside four walnut shells, lit them, and floated them together in the middle of the bowl.

“One candle for each of us,” she said.

We switched off the lights and watched the candles as they slowly drifted apart and burned out, which is the way it goes in life. On this night, they seemed to stay together much longer than usual, and I went to sleep feeling happy and safe.

The following morning, I leaped out of bed and raced into my parents' room. I dove beneath their blanket and snuggled up between them.

“Hello, Dad,” I whispered in my father's ear. “Wake up! It's Christmas!”

“Jezis Marja!”
my father growled. “What time is it?”

“Shhh, little one,” my mother said softly. “Pretend that you're a biscuit in an oven and you have to bake for another fifteen minutes before you're ready to be eaten.”

I loved this game. My parents threw their arms around me and I squirmed happily between them, imagining myself turning brown and crispy in a big warm oven. They would try to keep me in the oven for as long as possible and would sometimes overbake me by accident. My dad loved to pretend he was asleep. He would snore theatrically and make his arms very heavy, and I would have to yell and wriggle like a fish before he would wake up and let me out of the oven.

“Is the Baby Jesus coming?” I asked excitedly.

“Of course he is,” my mother replied. “He'll be here this afternoon and he'll bring the Christmas tree with him.”

“Will we see him?”

“We'll try,” my mother smiled. “He's very shy, you know. But we'll definitely hear him. He always rings a bell when he comes to visit.”

In Czechoslovakia, Christmas is celebrated on December 24, which is when families eat a big dinner and open their presents in front of the tree. When I was growing up, the Christmas season began with the arrival of Saint Mikulas on the “Angels and Devils Night” of December 5, and would climax with the Baby Jesus visiting each house on December 24, bringing not only presents but the Christmas tree as well. During the day, children watched fairy tales on TV (fairy tales were the mainstay of the Czech film industry during communism, as they were politically harmless and a lot of fun to make), and then the family spent the late afternoon waiting for the Baby Jesus to arrive.

The magical appearance of the Christmas tree was one of the things I loved most. My parents would get my sister to take me for a walk, and as we made our way around the village, I would see Christmas trees in all of the neighbors' windows. The Baby Jesus was obviously in the area, so I would beg Klara to take me home in time to see him, but she would always be too slow and we would arrive at the house at the exact moment that he was ringing his bell to signal his departure. I would race through the house trying to find him, but of course he would be gone, and then I would see the tree for the first time: all decorated and surrounded by presents. Each year, the tree would turn up in a different place in the house, so a big part of the fun was checking each room to see if it was there.

Waiting for the Baby Jesus was so exciting, it was hard to sit still for the fairy tales. I loved all the Czech fairy tales, especially
The Terribly Sad Princess, Cinderella,
and even the Russian classic,
Grandfather Frost,
but it was difficult to concentrate when every sound in the house made me think that the Baby Jesus might be sneaking in upstairs. My parents were in the kitchen and my sister was reading a book in the living room, and I was afraid that we might not hear the bell and he would come and go without us seeing him. Every time I heard a noise, I would run to the front door. After I had done this a few times, I decided to go up to the bathroom and say hello to Mr. Carp.

I trotted up to the second floor and snuck into the bathroom, this time closing the door behind me. I walked over to the bath and stood up on my tiptoes.

“Hello, Mr. Carp!” I said.

I peeked over the rim of the tub and discovered that the bath was empty. The water had been drained and I could hear the Nedbals laughing in the room next door. My eyes welled with tears and I ran downstairs to tell my parents.

My mum and dad were standing in front of the kitchen counter, and I dashed into the room and stopped dead in my tracks. My father's sleeves were rolled up and his hands were covered in blood, and the carp was lying on a sheet of newspaper with its head cut off and its belly slit open. Its bulging eyes stared blankly at the ceiling as my dad took a knife and started to scale its headless body. I thought that the Nedbals had stolen the fish, but I couldn't imagine that my parents had killed it. I turned around and ran back upstairs, finding myself in front of my grandmother's door. I pressed my cheek against it and started to cry.

“Granny, are you there?” I sobbed.

I knocked but nobody answered, so I tried to talk through the keyhole.

“Please, come out,” I said. “Please?”

I imagined that Grandmother was standing on the other side of the door, and I closed my eyes and pictured her kindly face and happy smile. I talked through the keyhole for a long time, then sank to my knees and curled up on the floor. After a while, my mother came up to find me.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“I'm talking to Grandmother.” I sobbed. “I want her to come out.”

“You want her to come out of this room here?” my mother asked. “She's not here, little one. She lives in Prague. Did Mrs. Nedbal tell you that she lives in this room?”

“I think so,” I sniffed.

“Oh, Trumpet,” my mother sighed. “This is your grandmother's room, but she doesn't live here. She just keeps her furniture in it. My parents live in a big apartment in Prague. This used to be their summer house until they were forced to give it up.”

“Did Daddy make her go away?”

“No. My parents owned too many houses and the housing committee made them give some of them up. They gave this one to me so that we could keep it in the family, and then we had an argument. My mother and my sister are trying to get it back.”

“Can't they just come and live here?” I asked.

“I don't think they want to,” my mother said sadly. “It's very hard to explain, but your father and I aren't friends with my parents anymore. We think they did a bad thing, and they don't like us because we tried to stop them.”

“You killed Mr. Carp!” I said accusingly.

“Ah, so that's why you're crying,” she smiled. “We killed him so that we could have a traditional Christmas. If you kill a carp and dry some of his scales and put them in your purse, it means you'll have lots of money next year. Besides, if we didn't kill him, he would have died anyway. Once you take a fish out of its pond, it doesn't last very long.”

“But I liked him.”

“Well, we'll be having him for dinner,” my mother explained. “And he'll taste very nice, because he was fresh. Fresh fish always tastes better than the fish you can buy at the market.” (The only fish you could buy at the market was the kind that came in cans.)

My mother pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and made me blow my nose. She ruffled my hair and talked to me until I cheered up, and then she took me into the living room where my sister was sitting with her book.

“Why don't you take Dominika for a walk?” my mother asked her. “You could go to the river and feed the swans.”

“Now?” my sister frowned. “Isn't it early? What time is the Baby Jesus supposed to come?”

“I think he might be a little early this year,” my mother said. “Dominika's a bit restless and a walk might do her good.”