The Twelve Little Cakes (47 page)

“Why are the Polish people starving?” I asked. “There's food everywhere.”

“It would be stealing from the State,” my father explained. “All this food goes straight to Russia. After the Solidarity uprising in 1981, Russian tanks threatened to roll into Warsaw. Everyone thought they were bluffing, but they weren't, and when it became clear that the Americans weren't going to intervene, the Polish Communist Party was forced to cut a deal in which they agreed to export their crops to Russia immediately after the harvest.”

“Would the Polish people be starving if they hadn't stood up to the Russians?” I asked.

“Probably not,” my dad replied. He tapped the Solidarnosz pin on his suit. “Mr. Poloraich may think it's a joke, but you have to admire a nation that's prepared to fight for its freedom. The Poles may have nothing to eat, but they still have their pride.”

I was very impressed by this, and started waving at all the Polish cars we overtook. Most of them were tiny Fiats overloaded with large Catholic families. I waved at all the children in these cars and they waved back at me. A road sign informed us that we had 350 kilometers to go before we reached the Baltic Sea. It was a beautiful day and we were making good time. Then my father changed gears to overtake a tractor, and the Skoda's engine began to shudder. A cloud of steam billowed from the hood, and the temperature needle climbed high into the red. We pulled off the road and the car spluttered to a halt. It was a familiar situation in an unfamiliar environment. My father leaped out of the car and popped the hood. The engine sizzled like a pressure cooker, and I could hear my father yelling in the background.

“Do prdele!”
he roared.
“Na hovno!”
He kicked the front tire viciously.

My mother walked around the front of the car and handed him a rag so he could unscrew the radiator cap. Boiling water spurted out of the pipes.

“The money!” my mother cried, jumping back.

“Kurva fix!”
my dad hissed as he dove beneath the hood. A second later, he had the aluminum package in his hand.

“Run to the river and bring some water!” he told me, pointing to a creek two hundred meters away. I took two empty bottles, filled them with water, and ran back to the car. I handed them to my dad and watched as he poured the water onto the radiator. The cloud of steam cleared and the engine cooled down. My father bent down to inspect the damage, and when he stood up, his face was white with anger.

“Those bastards in the garage!” he said grimly. “They've swapped my engine for an older one! This one has a crack. We're going to have to drive very slowly from now on.”

The practice of switching car parts was common in Eastern Europe, but my father was not only on friendly terms with the mechanics in the garage, but he had paid them under the table to do a good job. He glared at the engine for a long time, and then we rolled up our sleeves and push-started the car. My dad put his shoulder to the door frame and his hand on the steering wheel, while my mother and I pushed the car from the trunk. We pushed the Skoda until it gathered momentum, then my father jumped inside and hit the gas. The exhaust pipe spewed a cloud of smoke across my mother's favorite dress.

“Hurrah!” my father cheered.

We jumped inside and no one said anything for a long while. Eventually, my father attempted to make lemonade out of the lemon we were driving.

“I've switched on the heating to cool the engine,” he said cheerfully. “But if we roll down our windows, we can imagine we're driving somewhere exotic and warm. Like Italy.”

We didn't have to stretch our imaginations much. For the remainder of the trip, it felt like we were driving across the Sahara Desert. Our average speed was twenty kilometers an hour, and when the engine died (which it did often), we would push the Skoda past dunes of barley and corn. We ate and slept in the car and bathed in the various creek beds we were able to find. It took us a day and a half to push the Skoda to the resort town Miedzyzdroje. We were dirty and hot when we arrived, and wasted no time in running down to the beach. We dove into the water and swam for less than a minute. I now understood why there was no waiting list for the hotels in Poland. The Baltic Sea was freezing and full of jellyfish. The other beachgoers wore sweaters and scarves, and watched us dive into the surf with openmouthed amazement. They sat in old-style canvas beach stalls, watching the cold waves and drinking hot tea out of plastic cups.

We warmed ourselves up by pushing the Skoda to the Hotel Romance, which was a handsome art nouveau building with lovely wrought-iron balconies. We lodged the car between a BMW and a Mercedes, and carried our luggage up to reception. The clerk studied our passports and his warm smile became slightly forced. “Your suite will be in the Friendship Pavilion,” he said. “It's a hundred meters up the beach. Go out the back door and turn right.”

He kept our passports and handed us the key.

“I can't wait to take a hot bath!” my father exclaimed.

He grabbed our suitcases and carried them through the lobby. We followed him out the back door of the hotel, smiling with anticipation, and then our jaws dropped. The Friendship Pavilion was an ugly cement tower block covered in miniature blue tiles.

“Wait a second,” my dad growled. “This has to be some kind of mistake!”

He spun on his heel and went back to reception. We could hear his voice thundering in the distance. After a while, he returned with a defeated look on his face.

“Romance is offered exclusively to the Germans,” he said, crumpling up the Cedok brochure and throwing it into a bin. “Friendship is the best they have to offer us Czechs.”

We carried our luggage to the Friendship Pavilion. It was a classic, Soviet-style
panelak.
The front door was missing the handle, and the lock was stuffed with matches to keep it open. Half the tiles in the lobby had fallen off. The elevator smelled faintly of urine, and most of the lightbulbs in the hallway had been stolen. Our suite was a small room crowded with two beds, a closet, and a dining table. A noisy fridge hummed in a tiny kitchenette, and an even smaller balcony offered a view of the back of the Romance Hotel. We were disappointed, but far too tired to complain. We ate sausages and beans from a can and went to bed without the hot shower we'd been looking forward to all day. Cold water ran from both the red and blue faucets.

I awoke in the night to the sound of thumping. The lights were on and my father was crawling around the room with one of his shoes.

“What are you doing, Dad?”

“I'm killing earwigs,” he whispered. “This room is infested!”

I looked under my bed and saw a couple of fast-moving insects scuttling around in the shadows. They looked like tiny, armor-plated centipedes.

“Why are they called earwigs?” I asked.

“Because they crawl inside your ears and lay eggs in your brain,” my father grunted, pounding the floor with his shoe. I had no idea whether he was joking or not.

I pulled the blanket over my head and tried to go back to sleep, but the thought of tiny insects laying eggs in my brain was absolutely horrifying. I huddled under the bedclothes, and tried to fall asleep with my fingers in my ears. An hour later, I was still awake, listening to the sound of my father snoring. I climbed out of bed, tiptoed to the bathroom, and found my little overnight bag. Inside was a tube of my favorite strawberry-flavored toothpaste, which I carefully used to plug up both my ears. I waited until it had hardened, and then I crawled back into bed and promptly fell asleep.

The next morning, my parents shook me awake. The sun was up and they were already dressed.

“We're going to town,” my mother seemed to be saying. “Hurry up, it's almost ten o'clock.”

I went to the bathroom and attempted to dig the toothpaste out of my ears, only to discover that the paste had hardened into cement. My balance was slightly off and my parents sounded like they were talking underwater. I tried to tell my mother I had a problem, but my father was in his usual hurry, and before I had time to explain, we had push-started the car and were on our way to Szczecin, a big seaport town on the Polish-German border. As we drove, I began to understand what my father was up to. He intended to exchange our Czech crowns for Polish zlotys on the black market, and use them to pay for our car to get fixed.

We arrived on the outskirts of Szczecin and drove past many kilometers of barbed-wire fence surrounding the port. The bay was narrow and dirty and full of rusty boats and cranes. We eventually found the city center and parked our Skoda in the old town square.

“Why can't we just go to a bank?” my mother asked nervously. “I'd hate to spend my holiday in jail!”

“Come on, Honza,” my father said patiently. “The bank will give us two hundred zlotys a crown, which is less than a quarter of its market value. Never mind that the weekly exchange-allowance for a family of three is five hundred and fifty crowns.”

“All right,” my mother sighed. “Ptui, ptui, ptui!” She grabbed my hand and we followed my dad across the square.

I imagined we would find the black market hidden in one of the town's narrow streets. The stalls would be made out of black canvas, and there would be Barbie dolls and Swiss chocolate stashed underneath the counters. A barefoot boy would look out for the police, and the whole thing would be very dangerous and exciting. But we crossed the town many times and all we found was a greengrocer selling potatoes and apples that no one could afford to buy. Eventually, we came back to the square where our car was parked.

“Exchange?
Wechsel?
Exchange?” A man in a blue denim jacket appeared at my father's elbow. “Where are you from?” he asked.

“Prague,” my dad replied. “What's the going rate for Czech crowns?”

“One thousand zlotys a crown.”

The man had a shifty expression and a thick gold chain around his neck.

“Sounds about right,” my father said nonchalantly. “Can you handle three thousand?”

The man's eyes lit up. He smiled, revealing several gold teeth. It was like he was carrying his bank in his mouth.

“Follow me,” he said, and quickly darted through a passage leading into the courtyard of an old building. My mother sat on a bench and started to fan herself with her hat.

“I'll wait for you here,” she said apprehensively. “For heaven's sake, Jarda, be careful.”

“I can take care of myself,” my father growled.

“I'll come!” I said. “I want to see the black market!”

I was excited that something was finally happening, but I was also slightly afraid. My ears were hurting because of the toothpaste, and I didn't like the man with gold teeth. He seemed like a bad person. I tightened my grip on my father's hand, and we walked through the little passage together. We came out into the courtyard and the Polish man looked around furtively, even though there was nobody there except me and my dad. He gestured that we should follow him inside a half-open doorway where there was a spiral staircase, and the man motioned us into an alcove under the stairs. My father showed him our money, and the Polish man unzipped a kidney-shaped bag he wore under his jacket. He pulled out a thick roll of zloty banknotes, licked his thumb, and started to count them one by one.

“Fifty thousand. One hundred. One fifty. Two hundred,” he said in Polish, which sounded like someone lisping in Czech. He was very quick and professional, like a magician handling a deck of cards. He separated sixty banknotes from his roll and folded them into a little tube. He wrapped an elastic band around the tube and handed it to my father.

“Three million zlotys,” I heard him say.

My dad blocked the man's exit from the alcove, removed the elastic band, and recounted the money. The Polish man bristled with indignation, but my father silenced him with a glance. I had never seen my dad look so tough. He pulled his cigarette lighter out of his pocket and told me to hold it up so he could see what he was doing, and then he counted his way through the tube of zlotys. The man with the gold teeth looked annoyed but not nervous. He waited patiently until my dad had finished counting.

“Three million zlotys,” my father said decisively. “Forgive me for checking. You can never be too careful.”

He shook the man's hand and gave him our three thousand crowns, and we went our separate ways. I ran unsteadily across the square to tell my mother the good news.

“Guess what?” I cried. “We're millionaires!”

My mother heaved a huge sigh of relief.

“Not a problem,” my father said as he walked over. “I used to deal with
Wechsel
men all the time when I was driving taxis. The trick is to let them know that you're on to them.
Wechsel
men will only rip you off if they're sure they can get away with it. If you put up a good front, they won't bother, and besides”—he winked at me—“Dominika was there for extra protection. Weren't you, honey?”

“I have toothpaste in my ears,” I finally said.

My parents looked at me strangely.

“I put toothpaste in my ears because of the earwigs,” I explained. “But now it's gone hard and I can't get it out!”

My mother inspected my ears and told my father that we needed to find some hot water. So, with his usual logic, my father drove us around Szczecin in search of a garage, reasoning that we could wash my ears and fix the engine at the same time. The successful currency exchange had put him in a particularly good mood, and we eventually found a garage on the outskirts of the town. It was a small barn crowded with broken Trabants and Fiats. The mechanics were friendly but unable to fix our car. Skodas were rare and expensive in Poland, they explained, and parts were hard to come by. The best they could do was refer us to a big garage in Gdansk, a large seaport three hundred kilometers up the coast. They had no hot water for me to clean my ears with, either, but as a gesture of solidarity, they offered to help push our car out of the yard.