The Twelve Little Cakes (15 page)

“I should probably make you and Klara some dinner,” she said. “If you go to the kitchen and get some onions from the pantry, I'll come down and join you in a few minutes.”

We had a very tense dinner. My father tried to make cheerful conversation while my mother subjected him to the most withering of silences, and the second we had finished, she left the table and stormed upstairs. Klara, Dad, and I huddled together in the kitchen until we ran out of things to wash and dry, and then we summoned our courage and went up to the living room.

We found my mother reading a book under the piano. She had carried a single mattress down from the garage and positioned it on the opposite side of the pedal stand from the mattress she usually shared with my dad. My father crawled beneath the piano and attempted to reason with her, but she made it very clear that she would have nothing to do with him. In the end, he sent Klara and me up to the bathroom. We shared a bath and changed into our pajamas, and then my father came up in a very bleak mood. Without saying a word, he pulled himself up through the beams of the truss, and then he sat on the exposed roof, smoking cigarettes and looking out across the valley.

“
Dobrou noc,
Dad,” I sniffed. “Night, night.”

“
Dobrou noc,
Little Trumpet,” he said gently. “Don't worry. Tomorrow is a new day. We'll wake up in the morning and everything will be back to normal, I promise.”

“I hope so,” I said tearfully.

I followed Klara downstairs and crawled into my cot. I felt terribly afraid. I understood that things were hard for my parents, but as long as they loved each other, the outside world didn't matter very much. When they fought, it was worse than an army of secret policemen sniffing around our house, and the image of my mother's suitcase beside the front door was so haunting I found it hard to fall asleep. After what seemed like hours, I heard my father come down from the roof and run himself a fresh bath. Some time after that, he crept into the living room and crawled beneath the piano, and then the whole room became very quiet and still.

I awoke to the familiar sound of birds chirping in the forest, and the warm, safe hum of my grandmother's piano. I opened my eyes and listened. There was no mistaking the sound of my dad moving around to the other side of the pedal stand. The piano sang as he bumped the frame with his shoulders, and I could hear him whispering to my mother in the same way he did every morning when he came home from work. After a moment's pause, I heard my mother whisper back, and I snuggled happily in my blankets as the predawn light seeped into the room.

It was indeed a new morning, and my dad had kept his promise.

We would wake up and face the day together as a family.

THE SWAN

MY DAD WORKED TIRELESSLY on the roof for the next three months, padding the space between the rafters with big pillows of asbestos and laying all the tiles before the snow started to fall. Despite his efforts, we had a cold and austere winter. Our boiler and central heating remained broken, and the topsoil my father laid in the yard didn't mix well with the clay. Whenever it rained, the garden turned to mud, and countless pairs of shoes and boots were ruined. We had a nice, level yard that was impossible to walk on. Even when it was covered with snow, it was so sludgy and horrible that no one except my father was prepared to brave it.

Barry spent most of his time on Mr. Kozel's doorstep, howling indignantly until we let him in downstairs.

We spent our winter nights in the kitchen, watching television and drinking tea and hot soup, and I was delighted to see Barry on TV at Christmas once again. There was a carp in the bath and the Baby Jesus sneaked another tree into the house without my catching him. The highlight of Christmas, though, was the morning my father took Klara and me upstairs to see the bedroom he had built us. The walls were roughly plastered and would require a few coats of paint, but the room had a big window that looked out across the valley and there was plenty of space for both of us. My sister was particularly happy. She was fourteen years old and this was her first bedroom. She immediately claimed the space beside the window and announced that she wanted to paint the walls yellow.

“When I catch my breath, I'll build you a room next door,” my father told me.

“I like this bedroom!” I assured him. “And I like sharing with Klara. It's nice to have someone in the room with me at nighttime!”

“Nice for you,” Klara said. “Some of us like to read or sleep when we're in bed. You just like to talk.”

“I like to read and sleep, too, but I like to have someone there in case I get scared,” I admitted.

A few weeks after Klara and I had settled into our new room, my mother woke up earlier than usual one morning and left the house while it was still dark. She returned home that evening with a mysterious smile on her face, and we later discovered that she had spent the morning standing in the freezing cold, waiting to buy tickets for the National Theater Ballet Company's production of
Swan Lake.
Tickets for the performing arts were very cheap, but the price was offset by the long time you had to stand in line to buy them. Working-class families were usually too busy to wait, so the tickets that weren't automatically sent to high-ranking party officials tended to be snapped up by housewives and pensioners who would bring sleeping bags to the box office and camp out. On this occasion, my mother had managed to outwait the waiters, and she was rewarded with four excellent box seats, which was the family's present to me for my fourth birthday.

I was very excited about turning four. My dad had removed the bars of my cot so that I could sleep in a proper bed, like my sister, and whenever he and I went driving, I would sit on the passenger seat instead of climbing into the space behind the gearbox. I was growing up quickly, even though I was still small for my age. The night of my birthday, my mother cooked a delicious dinner and then we took a bath and put on our best clothes. My father sucked in his tummy and squeezed into his old tuxedo, while my mother put on a lovely red silk dress and one of her exquisite hats. Despite the fact that we didn't have much money, my mother always looked great whenever she went out in Prague. She knew a good tailor who was able to work magic on the expensive clothes she had worn as a teenager. My mother still had the figure of a seventeen-year-old, so most of those clothes still fit. With a bit of clever tailoring, they could be altered to look like the most recent fashions. The material was of the highest quality, as the Red Countess had used her party connections to buy her daughters clothes made in Paris and Milan. All of my mother's dresses were at least fifteen years old, but she took such good care of them that she really was one of the best-dressed women in Prague. She knew how to match colors and accessories, and could throw on the most flamboyant of hats with an aristocratic carelessness. Hats were a big part of who my mother was. She wore them defiantly, knowing that they were symbolic of the capitalist values the party elite pretended to despise (while secretly raising their children to embrace them), and she would be damned if she was going to dress badly to keep a bunch of hypocrites in the Politburo happy.

When we were all ready, my father picked my mother up and carried her to the garage to save her shoes from the mud, and then we drove to Prague. The Smetana Theater was a small but elegant neoclassical building at the top of Wenceslaus Square. We walked through the lobby and up a wide marble staircase to the first floor, where we were intercepted by an old lady who inspected our tickets and led us to our box. Inside, I crawled into my mother's lap and pressed my chin against the velvet upholstering of the balustrade, looking out through the opera glasses my father had rented for ten crowns. Then the orchestra walked out into the pit and started to tune their instruments. Ripples ran across the curtain, and the enormous chandelier was slowly pulled up through a reverse trapdoor. The lights dimmed, and I held my breath as the conductor appeared and tapped his baton on the stand. For a few moments nothing happened, and then the curtains drew open as a sad and beautiful overture surged up from the pit. Blue and white spotlights transformed the stage into a lake, and a flock of swans fluttered around the swan princess, Odette. As the music dipped and swelled, she began to dance on the silver surface of the lake, barely touching the stage with the points of her slippers. She was incredibly graceful, and it was just like watching a real swan gliding across the water. Then the kettledrums sounded, and the swans and Odette looked up in alarm. A moment later, a muscular prince bounded out onto the stage, and I almost dropped my opera glasses in astonishment. The prince was blond and handsome, and was exactly how I imagined a prince should be. I watched as he swept Odette off the ground and twirled her majestically above his head, and when he gently swung her back down to the stage, she seemed to be as much in love with him as I was. It was as though he had captured her heart with the grace and precision of his dancing, and now she couldn't take a step without swooning into his arms.

“I like the prince,” I told my mother during intermission. “He's strong and handsome, like Prince Bajaja!”

“His name is Jaroslav Slavicky,” my mother said, reading from the program. “He's the son of a famous composer.”

“I would like to marry him,” I announced. “If I married him, that would make me a princess, wouldn't it?”

“Maybe it would,” my mother laughed. “But don't you think he'll be too old for you by the time you're ready to marry?”

“I hope not.” That worried me. “How old is he now?”

“Shh,” my mother whispered. The golden chandelier had disappeared again and the house lights were starting to dim.

I spent the next hour imagining that I was Odette up there dancing with Mr. Slavicky. My childhood (and my imagination) was greatly influenced by Czech fairy tales, but as I watched
Swan Lake,
it occurred to me that Mr. Slavicky was a real prince, even if he didn't come from a royal family and live in a castle. For the two and a half hours that he danced, his kingdom was the stage and the lake, and everyone in the Smetana Theater was transfixed by his performance. When the curtains finally closed and opened and the dancers moved forward to take their bows, I applauded as loudly as I could and continued clapping long after everybody else had finished. From that moment on, I knew that what I wanted most in the world was to become a ballet dancer. When we arrived home, I leaped out of the car and danced all the way from the garage to the front door, humming part of
Swan Lake
as I kicked off my muddy sandals. My parents watched with amusement, but Klara frowned and tapped the side of her head as though she thought I was crazy.

“I hope she's not going to start dancing all the time,” she told my mother. “Talking I can put up with, but if it's going to be talking and dancing, our bedroom isn't big enough for both of us.”

“I wouldn't worry,” my mother replied. “I'm sure she'll wake up in the morning and find something else to do.”

But my mother was wrong. The first thing I did when I climbed out of bed was try to stand on the tips of my toes. Then I began to dance. I danced to the sound of Radio Free Europe; to the marching band music that echoed out of the speakers mounted on every telegraph pole in the village; even to the squeal of my dad's circular saw. If it was quiet, I would dance to the melodies I invented in my head. I performed for Barry at least three times a day. He wasn't a very receptive audience, though. He would fall asleep before my performances ended, so I took to dancing for the old ladies instead. The cold weather had confined them to their apartments, so they were always happy to see me, and I would perform in their kitchens and living rooms while they sat in their armchairs doing their best to encourage me.

One day in early spring, I went down the street to show Mrs. Noskova my latest choreography, but when I came to her door, I was surprised to discover that it was locked. It had never been locked before, because Mrs. Noskova couldn't open it and use her crutches at the same time. When I went next door to ask Mrs. Sokolova about her neighbor, she looked very sad and told me that Mrs. Noskova had gone away. Mrs. Sokolova and Mrs. Liskova said they would be happy to watch my new performance, so I danced for them in Mrs. Sokolova's apartment. Both ladies seemed terribly distraught. I tried my hardest to cheer them up, but on this occasion there was nothing I could do.

“I hope Mrs. Noskova comes back soon,” I told them. “It doesn't seem right just seeing the two of you. It's much better when you're all together in the garden.”

“We know, sweetie,” Mrs. Liskova said tearfully.

A few weeks later, my mother took me into Prague with her to buy tickets for
Romeo and Juliet.
The box office opened at ten o'clock, but there was a crowd of people already waiting when we arrived at seven-thirty. I was very excited, and I couldn't wait to see Mr. Slavicky again. As we waited, I danced on the sidewalk and did my best to imitate a swan. The pensioners in line watched with amusement, and one of the women even asked my name.