Vyhľadávanie
After I began studying at university, I became an entirely different person for Uncle Rudolf. Perhaps it was because I came home rarely and from a great distance that I was now included among those it was necessary to shake hands with. The moment he caught sight of me, he did just that. On each occasion, however, (his question returning me almost to my childhood) he immediately asked me whether I had washed my hands after my train journey and I, in the hope of relishing the sight of uncle washing my germs off his hands and drying them on his own towel, could never resist the temptation to reply in the negative.
My uncle and father's genteel ways had nothing to do with reserve and aloofness. They both enjoyed discussions and liked to seek company. Although father used to say that thanks to his meditations on higher things he could enjoy himself even when alone, nevertheless on occasion rather than indulging in philosophical solitude he would give preference to a visit to the pub.
Uncle Rudolf, who was not as keen on higher things as my father, was much more practical with regard to contacts and social interests. He took advantage of the new situation and wheedled himself into Barn's favour, with the aim of getting into Bokoš's villa, occupied by the militiaman František Ilavský. For this he was temporarily willing to sacrifice even his love of clean hands. He inspected everything in Ilavský's house and then reported in detail what he had seen and experienced there. He said that as the militiaman František Ilavský had called him by his first name from the very outset, he, too, had automatically returned the compliment. He described in detail how the wilderness of a garden had been completely cleared and the militiaman was now building a summer kitchen there, in spite of the fact that Bokoš's villa already had as many as three kitchens: one on the ground floor, the next upstairs and the third – the one used in wartime – in the basement. He talked at length about the building material piled up in the hall, as well as in one of the ground-floor rooms and about the militiaman's plans that would enable him – of this there could be no doubt – to spoil Bokoš's villa once and for all.
When now, years later, I recall uncle's visit to the militiaman, I wonder whether the words of Viktor Pavlovič Bochňa about language and literature as a sphere that concerns every atom, proton and neutron of this world do not apply to a considerable degree to uncle's account of the militiaman. The way – almost like an actor – he imitated in a ridiculing, but lively manner Ilavský's rapid, jerky speech, with its west Slovakian dialect; the way he demonstrated his waddling gait, strict, distrustful gaze, meliorated by the occasional tap on the nose with his index finger, all this together with other features of Ilavský's speech and behaviour, made a great impression on me. I thought his entire narration was entertaining and comical. It also seemed comical when uncle, imitating Ilavský, said how terribly bourgeois Bokoš had been, adding, as if just by the way, that according to the militiaman it would now be the turn of other, less rich members of the bourgeoisie. They were gradually being moved to the Czech borderlands or to infertile, stony central Slovakia. I felt amused and strangely delighted by my uncle's entertaining account until the moment when one of my sisters asked who were these less rich members of the bourgeoisie and Uncle Rudolf answered that these included citizens who had a house, a garden, a yard, car, garage, five rooms and so on. My sister didn't ask anything more; maybe she was afraid to hear uncle's reply, but from that moment I was troubled by the question of whether we ourselves would not be included among those citizens to follow Bokoš and be moved out from our street to the Czech borderlands or to infertile, stony central Slovakia. We had a house, an old Praga car, a wooden garage, a yard, a garden, but not five rooms, only four. That thought reassured me for a minute. But only for a minute, because it suddenly occurred to me that those who would decide could consider the summer kitchen – which had nothing in common with a kitchen or with summer - to be the fifth room. It was a storeroom for the most varied junk, tools, screwdrivers, superfluous tyres, mudguards, nails, wooden boxes, wobbly and broken chairs and it was at the same time a kind of repairman's workshop. It was Mum's youngest brother, the darling of their family, Uncle Filip from Varávka – who goodness knows why, we had from childhood called Eugen – that spent the most time there. Always dressed in overalls saturated with some kind of pleasant, indestructible smell of oil, wood, paint, glue, rust, tar paper and cleaning liquids, he would mend various broken household appliances and, although he was not a driver, some of the parts from the worn-out Praga car that was on its last legs. Even though I was fond of the summer kitchen, after uncle's news about moving out the less rich bourgeoisie, I thought we'd be better off without it. I wished we didn't have the wooden garage, or even the car. That was used only on rare occasions by my father, who was a very untrustworthy driver. He had almost insurmountable difficulties just driving off, since he first had to reverse out of the garage. It was not often that he managed to drive down the path between the fence and the house without bumping into the wall. In the end he gave up trying to get into the street, but he did not give up the car and driving. Instead, he got Ján Bojna from Ajcingova Street to reverse out for him. Ján was a professional driver who delivered margarine, bread, rolls, buns, potato sugar and heavy canisters of watered-down milk to the dairy shops every morning. When Ján Bojna appeared at our house, we immediately knew that father was preparing to go somewhere by car, which might be dangerous for himself and the whole town as well; after all, if someone doesn't know how to drive backwards, he will not be a reliable driver even when he goes forwards. Father didn't agree with this. He used to say that he had no problem with driving forwards, because that was natural and in accordance with human nature. Which is why it was possible to reflect at the same time on higher things.
Mum was always adamant that he should not dare let anyone from the house go with him in the car. He was only allowed to drive scoundrels. These were the friends and acquaintances he used to meet in pubs.
My secret fear of being evicted resulted in me having an anomalous attitude towards things I had previously disliked. I delighted in the ugly, drab façade of our house, the shabby gate and fence, consisting of a crumbling brick base and rusting spiked railings that hadn't had a fresh coat of paint for a long time. While I had before admired the wonderful garden of our next-door neighbour, a Slovene by the name of Branko Parič, now I was glad to see our unattractive, almost off-putting functional garden, in which neither chickens nor hens were lacking. I no longer secretly watched with admiration the taciturn Slovene changing into his overalls and getting down to enhancing his garden when he came home from Nupod, where he worked as a clerk. How many times it had seemed to me that in a garden where there were ponds, gravel paths, ornamental bushes, trees and flowers in the most varied colour combinations, there was nothing left to do, much less improve, apart from cutting and watering, but the Slovene always found so much work that he devoted whole afternoons in spring, summer and autumn to this fragrant garden.
Now he could pay dearly for his care and gardening fanaticism. At that time both the Slovene's garden and his neatly-kept house gave me hope that there were those in our street whose turn for being moved elsewhere would arrive sooner than ours.
Many of the houses looked far better than ours. I now took a very different view of distinctive features such as the little tower on the house where my classmate Milan Radimák lived. I knew from him that no one could squeeze into the little tower, but as a decorative element it must catch the eye of every militiaman marching down our street. Maybe someone would consider that very tower to be a superfluous bourgeois luxury.
In our own house it was the dining room that worried me most. No one ever ate breakfast, lunch or dinner there. It was an unused room, full of carpets, lace mats and well-preserved, unspoiled furniture. With its strange musty smell it seemed to be waiting indefinitely for some special visit. Gradually everything in it began to disturb and irritate me. The walnut sideboard, the glass cupboard holding a set of crystal glasses and Chinese porcelain cups, plates from which no one ate, as well as the three pictures. One was of a castle, the next wild countryside and the third depicted part of the main street in our town. From time to time a sinister, haunting thought entered my mind, that the mysterious visit the dining room in its proud, stuffy inviolability had been waiting for all these years would be some inspector, militiaman or other dignitary. When he stepped into the house he would immediately be shocked by the glazed veranda, and when he entered the dining room, he would sit down in the brown armchair, in order to view it all at once with astonishment and unconcealed indignation. Then he would get up, pull some official papers out of his briefcase and begin to note down the different pieces of furniture, as well as the contents of both the glass cupboards, the sideboard and the lower, enclosed shelves. He wouldn't overlook the paintings, either. This vision, where the inspector comes to the conclusion that we are after all members of the bourgeoisie, although less rich than Bokoš, was so powerful and harrowing that it persecuted me in various forms and fragments even in my sleep. I couldn't put the dining room out of my mind. That superfluous, senseless, stupid room looked to me like a trap set long ago for our family. It probably held everything that was of any value that our parents had acquired or bought with my mother's inheritance and my father's selling at the market. As I walked to school in white canvas shoes and old, worn track suit trousers, which in the stressful period of my fear of being evicted I felt to be the most suitable clothes, I wondered why my parents did not hide or bury somewhere the unused crystal set, the porcelain cups, lace mats and other useless things in the dining room. Perhaps Uncle Rudolf's one-room flat in an old block in Predmerský Street would serve as a good hiding place. No one would ever think of looking for anything in his rented flat.
Uncle, who was on first-name terms with the militiaman and dignitary František Ilavský, could persuade him to leave us in peace, I thought to myself, and various arguments immediately began to occur to me that uncle could use to convince Ilavský that we were one of those families who lived on the brink of privation and poverty.
They eat mainly potatoes, Uncle Rudolf tells Ilavský. Leder's wife knows how to prepare them in twenty ways. She even makes them look like meat, which they only have once a week and that only thanks to the fact that they keep their own chickens. At the Leder's potatoes alternate with food prepared from what they grow in their unsightly, obnoxious garden. This is where they get the ingredients for various preserves and sauces, most often prepared from green cabbage or beans, and tomato soup, which the younger members of the family eat with noticeable distaste. The same goes for savoy cabbage sauce. They'd probably prefer to eat something else. But then they would have to be at least a bit better off. As for the wooden garage or the Praga car, I'd never get in a car like that. It'll soon end up on the scrap heap, among the rubbish, junk and spare parts that clutter up that hideous room they call the summer kitchen. If they had a horse or some cattle it could easily be a barn. But to get back to the car. One of these days that awful Praga car may cost my brother Anton his life. He used it when he was a young man eking out a living at the market. That ruined his health. Since his operation he has only half a stomach. Now he's an invalid. He used his savings to buy a dilapidated, decaying house, but his savings alone weren't enough to buy even a house like that. The cost of that third-rate house swallowed up part of his wife's modest inheritance. Her father saved a bit when they were building the railways. That wore him out too. The Leder family has working class blood in their veins. You can see that from her brother Eugen. I can't even imagine him in anything other than overalls. That's the kind of family they are. Even the enclosed veranda or silly glitzy things they have in the dining room make them look ridiculous. The Leders couldn't even send their children to university. Their two daughters and their son are already working. As my brother's an invalid they have to help to make a living. Their education finished with the school-leaving exams. The youngest son and daughter are still at school.
These considerations calmed me down and in the unsettled, mercurial period of my boyhood, when I experienced everything intensively, but not long lastingly, they helped me, in that the fear of being moved away evaporated bit by bit and when none of uncle's reports and Ilavský's forecasts were fulfilled in our street, it almost disappeared altogether.
One day, however, the Sedlár family was moved out of our street. While Valentín Bokoš, charged with arson, was for us a well-known figure, but in fact a stranger, our family was not only in contact, but even friendly with Mrs Sedlárová, who used to sew dresses for my mother and sisters. This was particularly true of my mother, but their friendship was not entirely on equal terms. Although Mrs Sedlárová sewed clothes for my mother and not vice versa, it was my mother's dressmaker who had the upper hand in their relationship. Under the influence of Viktor Pavlovič Bochňa I wondered whether apart from her elegant way of dressing and genteel manners, she had not gained this superiority partly thanks to her linguistic talent and ability to talk about higher, nobler society, of which she felt she was a part, even though she had spent most of her life sitting at a sewing machine and didn't even have an elementary education. However, she knew how to speak in an interesting way about anything, for example, about her already deceased father, a shopkeeper who sold miscellaneous goods, or her husband, an expert and adviser on railway transport, who was forever away on his travels. What interested me most was that not long ago this railway adviser had pulled a gun on Mrs Sedlárová's mother, a powdered old lady. My attention was also caught when she spoke about how once in the night her dead brother had appeared to her in a strong draught and told her he would come for her in a year's time. However, this dead brother had not kept his promise. Usually Mrs Sedlárová and her only daughter, who was a year younger than I was, came to our house; Mum and my sisters visited the Sedlárs only when they went for a fitting, or when Mrs Sedlárová and her mother invited them to hear Miška (as her daughter Michaela was called) play the piano. From her Mum took over the habit, and Dad supported her in this, of getting me or Valika, my youngest sister, to sing or recite something for our guests.
There was a danger of this that unpleasant day when as a third-former I hadn't managed to get to the toilet in time before the last lesson. Anxious and ashamed, I sat down at my desk along with what had suddenly happened to my insides. At first no one noticed. The teacher, Haranta, tested two pupils and then explained the new material, talking for quite a while about forest predators, especially about red foxes, which are capable of lying in wait all day in thick undergrowth. Suddenly, however, he broke off and said in his strict, deep voice: "Something stinks here!"
He stared suspiciously at Milan Tulčík, who was sitting in front of me, and then at the dirtiest, strongest and worst pupil, Emil Bordiš.
"Stand up, Bordiš," he said to him.
When this - for me and all the others dangerous – classmate, who had twice had to repeat a year, slowly, unwillingly and mulishly got to his feet, Haranta ordered him to take his shoes off and show the class his feet. First one, then the other.
"You see! And that's what we all have to breathe. Go and wash them immediately!"
It was only later that my conscience began to prick me for not having the courage to confess. At the time, I was first scared stiff, knowing that if Bordiš discovered what had happened to me and that he had had to suffer instead of me, I would not avoid being beaten up, and later I was caught on the hop when I discovered that Mrs Sedlárová and her daughter Miška were at our house. I began to sprinkle scent on myself on the veranda, because there was no time for washing and changing my clothes, as Mum had already caught sight of me. I was afraid she would want me to sing right there and then the Romanian song "Marynyka, Marynyka" that was played on the radio so often that I had learned it by heart and I had sung it for Uncle Eugen a couple of times, always earning a crown. Shortly before this I had also sung it for Aunt Františka from Varávka and for one other visitor. The Sedlárs had not yet heard Marynyka. On the other hand, however, when they had last been on a visit Mum and my sisters Lucia and Monika had heard, and then often spoken about, how beautifully Miška played The Dawn is Coming on the piano. Only Marynyka could compare to that my mother had announced and the moment these words of hers flashed through my mind I realised that I was not going to get out of it. However, nothing happened, because Mum, unlike Haranta, had a good sense of smell. I didn't even get to see the guests.
In the end it was the Sedlárs who were moved elsewhere, though who knows why them – maybe it was their property, piano, dress, genteel manners and inclination for higher society, or on account of a certain eccentricity and quirkiness of the railway expert Róbert Sedlár.
Then the Grapners, whose five-year-old son Mirko drowned in the nearby stream, were also evicted.
After the Sedlárs and Grapners no other family had to move from our street, but the fear that it could next happen to any of us remained with us.
That is why I was glad when someone showed an interest in buying the Praga, which had broken down and been lying in the garage for a good half year.
Two Czechs, whose clothing and appearance was reminiscent of characters from Verne's novels, bought it for a thousand crowns. They were short, talkative, cheerful men in chequered suits and peaked caps. Whistling to themselves, or even from time to time singing arias together in harmony, they spent two weeks enthusiastically repairing the car, but when they had said goodbye to us and set out on their journey to Mělník, outside Agrasol something exploded in the car and further repairs were needed. Out of sympathy our parents returned five hundred of the thousand crowns to the new owners of the Praga. Mum calculated that, taking into account the cost of feeding these men, who lost nothing of their cheerfulness and good mood even after the explosion, we had sold the car for a total of minus two hundred crowns. But it was a good thing anyway, she added, at least Dad wouldn't be driving scoundrels around town any more.
Translated by Heather Trebatická
