The Twelve Little Cakes (49 page)

My new friends were very sad when I told them that we had to go home to Prague in the morning. They insisted on swapping addresses, and we ended up writing to each other for many years on.

 

 

THE NEXT MORNING, my parents and I drove to Gdansk. It was only three hundred kilometers away, but it took us the whole day to get there. It was long after sunset when we finally arrived. We drove around and around, looking for the garage the mechanics in Szczecin had told us about, until we took a wrong turn into a narrow cul-de-sac that ended right at the dockyards. My father changed gear and attempted to execute his famous three-point turn, but the engine spluttered to a halt as usual. Push-starting the car without help was impossible. We sat in exasperated silence, staring at the sea. A searchlight cone randomly pulsed across the water, and the sound of police sirens echoed in the distance. It was nearly midnight and we were completely exhausted.

My dad opened the door and climbed out of the car.

“I'm going to ask for help,” he said wearily.

A nearby house had a light in the window, and my father paused in front of the high wooden fence. He rang the bell on the gate, and a couple of dogs started to bark in the yard. After a few moments, a man unlatched the window.

“Kto tam?”
he called out. “What do you want?”

“Dzien dobry,”
my father said. “I'm sorry to disturb you, but my family and I are from Czechoslovakia and our car broke down in front of your house. Do you know if there is any kind of hotel or a hostel around here?”

“Wait a minute,” the man said.

He shut the window and appeared at the gate a few minutes later. We could hear him talking to my dad, and he cautiously stuck his head outside the fence to verify that two women were sitting in a broken Czech Skoda.

“Honza, Dominika, come here!” my father called.

My mother and I climbed out of the car and ventured over to the Polish man's gate.

“These are my wife and daughter,” my father explained. “Don't worry, I understand your concern.”

The Polish man was a stocky, tough-looking fellow. He looked us up and down suspiciously, registering our exhaustion and my mother's beauty. Then he checked the street to see if there were any suspicious cars parked nearby. When he was satisfied that our plight was genuine, his face relaxed.

“You'll have to forgive me. But when a stranger turns up in the middle of the night wearing one of those”—he pointed at my dad's Solidarnosz pin—“you immediately assume he's with the secret police. Why don't you get your things and follow me inside?”

We were greeted by a plump woman whom he introduced as his wife. She had no idea who we were or why her husband had invited us in, but she led us into the kitchen and offered us a cup of tea and biscuits. She also brought a jar of pickled fish from her pantry, along with a loaf of chewy black bread.

“We'll put you up in our spare room,” the man said. “The child looks like she's about to fall asleep, and there are no hotels around here you'd want to go to. This is a dangerous town. You hear those sirens? The police cruise the bay looking for people trying to jump a boat to Sweden. It would be hard to make them believe your car just happened to break down near the water.”

My dad was very grateful for the Polish man's offer. He opened his suitcase and produced the last bottle of homemade gin, which my mother had hidden in her nightgown. The Polish woman brought four glasses from her cupboard, and my father filled them and passed them around.

“My name is Jarda. This is Jana and Dominika,” he said. “I worked for the Czech government during the Prague Spring. The Communists have been on our case ever since.”

The Polish man snorted with amusement. “No kidding?” he said. “I'm Tadeusz, this is Elena. We worked with Walesa organizing the strike of '81. The Communists have been making our lives hell for the past four years as well.”

“Really?” my father said. “You're with Solidarity, then?”

“Tak jest,”
the man nodded. “I'm a dockworker. It comes with the territory.”

The adults drank their gin, and my father cheerfully poured a second round. The kitchen, like so many kitchens I sat in as a child, was quickly filled with cigarette smoke and laughter. I ate my pickled fish and struggled to keep my eyes open until suddenly my dad was carrying me upstairs. He tucked me up in a strange bed and kissed me on the nose, and then I heard him creaking back down the staircase. I fell asleep listening to voices floating up from the kitchen.

“. . . becoming desperate!”

“. . . heads will roll like cabbages!”

“. . . can hear the Politburo grinding their teeth!”

The following morning, I woke to the sound of my parents carrying our bags down the stairs. “Hurry up.” My mother poked her head inside my room. “Tadeusz has made an appointment at a garage. He knows a mechanic who might fix our car for free!”

We spent the morning at a small garage in Gdansk, where Tadeusz's friends did their best to fix our car. My father handed out his remaining beers, and the Polish mechanics filled the crack in the engine with some kind of silicon glue. They treated Tadeusz with great respect, and later on, my father told me that he was an important member of the Solidarity movement. He had gone to a lot of trouble to help us get home safely. He had even taken the morning off from work.

“This is only a temporary solution,” the mechanics told my dad. “You can drive at normal speed, but whatever you do, don't let your engine die or you might not be able to start it again. When you get back to Prague, you had better get your mechanic friends to give you back your old engine. This one's ready for the scrap heap.”

“Don't worry,” my father snorted. “I'll be paying their garage a visit as soon as I get back.”

We said good-bye to Tadeusz and gave him our address in Cernosice. He and his wife would be welcome to stay with us whenever they came to Prague.

My father turned the ignition and the engine came to life. It sounded strong and confident. The mechanics looked pleased.

“Remember. No stopping between here and your front door!” Tadeusz grinned.

“Dzienkujemy bardzo!”
I called out as we drove away.
“Dowidzienia!”

 

 

WE HAD A SEVEN-HUNDRED-KILOMETER drive in front of us, no money, and almost no food. Fifty empty beer bottles rattled in our trunk. Our financial situation was so bad that my father intended to return the bottles for their deposit once we were back in Czechoslovakia. Each empty bottle was worth one crown, and fifty crowns would buy us a cheap meal at a pub across the border. As we drove out of Gdansk, the sky became overcast. It started to rain, and the rhythm of the window wipers made me sleepy. I snuggled up in a blanket and felt warm and safe.

“I can't wait to get home,” I declared. “I'm going to have my ears cleaned out, and then I'm going to eat something yummy. Maybe Renzo will have some Italian food left over!”

“Don't get too excited,” my mother said from the front seat. “You're going to the conservatory, remember? You don't want to end up like Vendula Backyard.”

“She gets to eat chocolates and ride horses all day!” I pointed out.

“Yes, she does, but she doesn't get to dance in
Swan Lake.
You still want to dance in
Swan Lake,
don't you?”

“I guess so,” I sighed.

“Well, now,” my father said with his usual optimism. “This was a bit of an unusual holiday, but everything turned out okay in the end. Next time, it's going to be really great! Once we make some money with the
aparatura,
we'll buy a new car and drive to Italy!”

“But we're not allowed to travel to the West,” I reminded him.

“Says who?” my father demanded. “With Gorbachev in power, the Iron Curtain has got to fall. I bet all my money we'll be seeing some serious changes in the future!”

“You don't have any money to bet,” my mother smiled.

“Not yet, I don't,” he growled. “But just you wait!”

 

 

WE ARRIVED AT THE BORDER at nine in the evening. I woke up as my father jammed on his brakes. He really had managed to drive the whole way without stopping. I sat up and pressed my nose to the window, and recognized the red-and-white-striped tank barrel blocking our path. The Polish border guards waved us through, and then a Czech policeman in a green uniform came out of his office.

“Your passports!” he said harshly.

My father rolled down his window and gave the policeman our passports. He kept his engine running and the man waved his flashlight over the documents. Then he shone his light inside the car.

“Engineer Jaroslav Furman and Engineer Jana Furmanova!” he said in the sneering tone Communists often used to address white-collar workers. “And what are two university-educated people like yourselves doing in Poland? Studying their agriculture?” He snorted and swept his light across my face. “Open your trunk!” he ordered.

“Excuse me, comrade.” My dad stuck his head through the window. “We have a problem with our car. The mechanics in Gdansk have fixed it so that we can get back to Prague, but they told us not to switch off the engine. I can't open the trunk unless I pull the key out of the ignition.”

The policeman shrugged.

“Open your trunk!” he repeated.

“Comrade, please,” my father said humbly. “If I stop the car, it's not going to start again. I assure you, we have nothing in our trunk except dirty clothes and an empty ice chest.”

The policeman shook his head in disgust and walked back inside his office. A moment later, he reappeared with two Czech soldiers who pointed their rifles at my dad.

“Open your trunk, comrade engineer,” the policeman said quietly. “I'm not going to ask you again.”

My father sighed and switched off the ignition. The engine shuddered to a halt. He climbed out of the car and opened the trunk, and the policeman shone his flashlight over the empty beer bottles. He knocked the lid off the ice chest and halfheartedly unzipped our suitcases, and then he stepped away from the car and stamped our papers. Guessing from his expression, he was both satisfied and disappointed.

“Welcome to Czechoslovakia,” he said, handing my father our passports. He waved at the soldier who was in charge of the gate, and the tank barrel rotated to the side. The policeman disappeared inside his office.

The soldiers lowered their rifles and watched my father repack the suitcases. He shut the trunk and climbed inside the car, but when he turned on the ignition, the engine let out an ugly wheeze. My mother squeezed his hand and told him to try again. He switched the ignition off and on, and the engine kept coughing until the battery was out of juice.

We climbed out of the Skoda and looked at the soldiers.

“You want to give us a hand?” my father asked.

The soldiers looked at each other and retreated to the office. The windows were made of one-way mirror glass, but we could see the soldiers and the policeman watching us from inside.

My dad put his shoulder to the door frame and my mother and I took our positions at the trunk. Then we counted, “One, two, three!” and pushed the car into our country.

It was a mild summer night. The sky had cleared and the air smelled faintly of hay and fresh rain. We push-started the car and drove across the countryside all the way back to Prague. Poplar trees lined the roads, and the towers of the baroque churches slanted up from the hills. We were too tired to talk, too hungry to sleep. I pressed my face to the window and watched the world go by. The crumbling facades and peeling paint on the houses, the potholes and dirt and barbed-wire fences, and the Communist posters were now hidden in the dark. All I could see was the outline of a poor and generous soil that was my home.

This was the country of little cakes and sausages. This is the memory of my childhood. Driving back home in our old, rusty Skoda; my father's big hands steering us safely through the night; the soft touch of my mother's hand on my head. This was the happiest time in my life. The time when we had no money, no choice, and no chance.

It would take me another eighteen years to realize that what we had back then was as much as anyone on earth would ever need.

We had each other, and plenty of love in our hearts.

ADDITIONAL

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am very grateful to my little god for sending many nice people my way. I would never have been able to complete this book without their help. Elvira Schejbalova, Vaclav Jakubec, Petra Stypova, Eva Splichalova, Romana Krenkova, Martina Matouskova, Petra Langerova, Christine Williams, Brett Cheney, and Tanya Wolfe read my pages, comforted me when I was sad, and helped me in every way. My parents held their thumbs for me and provided me with a roof, bread, and butter. Dominic Buchta gave me love and hope when I needed it the most. Susanne Harrer, Pavel Konecny, and Martin Tucek scanned many photos and pictures and printed out numerous copies of the manuscript. Shannon O'Keefe and Julie Barer from Sandford J. Greenburger went out of their way to help me. Wendy Carlton from Riverhead did a great and thorough job editing the manuscript. Stephanie Huntwork designed the interior, Honi Werner is responsible for the beautiful book jacket, and Beth Krommes for the illustrations of the little cakes. Alexandria Morris was very lovely and worked hard to accommodate my needs and wishes. I really was fortunate to have had such great friends and collaborators.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DOMINIKA DERY was born in Prague in 1975. As a young girl, she studied at the State Conservatory in Prague, and danced and performed in the National Theater Ballet Company and later performed in the National Theater as an actor. In 1994, she was awarded a French government scholarship to study theater at the Ecole Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq. She is the author of four collections of Czech poetry and a play.
The Twelve Little Cakes
is her first book in English.