EAST SIDE STORY: Chapter 2

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page number;}}{\info{\author Jozef Imrich}{\operator Jozef
Imrich}{\creatim\yr2001\mo10\dy9\hr22\min9}{\version1}
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Chapter 2 / {\field{\*\fldinst {\cs17 PAGE }}{\fldrslt {\cs17 30}}}
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False Spring of 1968 \par \pard \qr\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par The
Prague Spring \par \par \pard \widctlpar {\i It is dangerous to be
right \par \par when the government is wrong. \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar -Voltaire \par {\cf1 \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\i\f4\cf1 \lquote My name is Margalo,\rquote
said the bird, softly, in a musical voice. \lquote I come from fields
once tall with wheat, from pastures deep in fern and thistle; I come
from vales of meadowsweet, and I love to whistle!\rquote }{\f4\cf1 \par
-E.B. White \par }\pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar {\f4\cf1 \par }{\f4
\par }\pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\f4 Once upon a time, my soul
happened to love dessert more than girls. So popular was dessert time
that I never questioned Mamka\rquote s rule of eating everything on the
plate. My}{\f4\cf1 first taste of Mamka\rquote s chocholatte pancakes
came years before my first kiss, but it was just as sensational.
Pancakes must have the right heat. Too low, the pancake is soggy. Too
high, the butter fries black, smokes, the pancake crisps. In my
Mamka\rquote s kit chen I traveled to dreamlands where pancakes talked,
I composed the scariest stories, I deconstructed family history. For
years in a state of blissful fogginess my German auntie Ota cooked
pancakes in the same kitchen as my Mumka. \par \par Many times upon a
time I was accused of being the spoiled child in the family who got its
way. I do not remember demanding, Get me water. Get me milk. Get me
ribina and I want a pancake. And I want pancake in my auntie
Otta\rquote s plate. And I don't like that kind of soup and I don't
want to wear a bib and I want another pancake and jam. But not that
jam. And I want more water. And I am still hungry. \par \par As a
child, my parents were fond of joking that, quite unlike their other
five children, their youngest son, could eat like an entire army.
\lquote We rather dress you, Jozko, than feed you.\rquote \par By the
time I was seven, Mamka used to call me long legs. She told me I
reminded her of a May pole.}{\f4 \par } \par At dessert time, no one
had to say, \ldblquote Jozef! Look who\rquote s beside you!\rdblquote
Aga seemed to be always beside me and often arguing over the size of
Mamka\rquote s chocolate pudding on my {\f4 plate. }{\f4\cf1 My mother
marked the events of her life with dessert recipes, dishes of her own
invention or interpretations of old favorites. Food was her nostalgia,
her celebration, its nurture and preparation one of the outlets for her
creativity. }{\f4 The} kitchen was not simply a workspace of
mouth-watering excitement, it was command central. You were just as
likely to find Mamka sewing, plucking feather, reading, writing, or
wrapping gifts as you were to find her cooking pirohy - pillows of
pastry filled with potato.{\f4 \par \par At washing up time, just as
art students visit ancient castles to be inspired and mystified by old
masters, Aga and I liked to feast our senses in a place} where mother
nature\rquote s brilliance blended in perfect harmony with our vivid
imagination. Escaping to this place was never easy, so we often
pretended not to hear Mamka calling to us from the kitchen, \ldblquote
Play in our garden. Don\rquote t go into the street ... \rdblquote No
one could have designed safer streets for barefooted children. \par
\par Paved and unpaved streets were the heart and soul of Vrbov. The
stones in the center of the village were the s{\f4\cf1 ize of the human
heart and felt so warm beneath our barefeet any given July.} Nothing
seemed to happen, but everything was going on. Everything was subtle.
Every boy and girl loved to wrestle in the the grass knee-{\f4 deep
churchyard. Every child loved to dance when }{\f4\cf1 the sidewalk was
busy}{\f4 . Every boy liked to p}{ \f4\cf1 inch girls in the dark
corners of the church yard.}{\f4 \ldblquote Watch me,
grandma.\rdblquote }{\f4\cf1 Every person we glimpse through every
window of every passing bus is smiling, laughing, approving.}{\f4 \par
\par Streets seemed to spent time with time. }{\f4\cf1 It is impossible
to describe the joy I used to take in simply running along the banks of
the Black Creek. A place where my toes baked and caked with dark bowned
mud.}{\f5\fs18\cf1 }{\f4\cf1 The creek was a place where sheepdogs came
to quench the thirst and where the sheperds could be heard sending
dozens of calls and whistles that sent the dogs into a frenzy of
counterclockwise and clockwise curves. The creek served also as the
corridor f or the northerly wind making my shi rt fly like a wing and
forcing my lungs to drink the cold wind. The wind glides off the
surface of the water disarranging thousands of tiny grains of soil from
the mud castle walls, but the rocks and our turf build dam remained
unchanged. }{\f4 How could you know, when you were so young and
impossibly naive and unable to imagine yourself otherwise that time
would teach you that memories can measure} the quality of childhood by
the amount of time you made the d{\f4 ust rise like smoke under your
feet, or the countless times Father Glatz said to you }{\f4\cf1 "God
bless your soul," or }{\f4 the number of time you} smiled in the
streets? And when you are seven years old, smiles you remember seems
for ever. \par \par Smiley Aga was a sister I did everything with and
told everything to. Aga laughed at my jokes and I laughed {\f4 at
hers.}{\f4\cf1 }{\f4 We whispered words} like, \lquote Santa
Maria!\rquote and laughed and laughed and laughed. We cried for the
army of kittens Tato drowned in the Black Creek. I still wonder whether
there is anything deader looking then a drowned kitten. We made crosses
for the bees buried in our garden. As a five year olf I spend countless
hours collecting beetles and other insects from the front of our
garden. We watched the reddest sunsets from Mamka\rquote s kitchen
table. {\f4 She}{\f4\cf1 showed me how to ride a bike without training
wheels and how to get noticed by a folklore teacher Marta Chamillova.
}Aga shared with me everything except a {\f4\cf1 small vinyl orange
purse given to her by auntie Ota.} \par \par In Mamka\rquote s absence
i{\f4\cf1 t was nothing to us to dance on the kitchen table, or to
swing on the door handles. Unlike Aga though, I didn't cry, not even
when the door came off the hinges and Tato\rquote s loud voice woke up
all the dead at the cemetery, not even when I got a splinters the size
of a matchstick in Tato\rquote s workshop. A workshop that smelled of
cedar shavings and Tato\rquote s burst blisters. One of the few things
my father ever read to himself was the Bible and the Old Testament
especially was marked by pussy blister stains of different depth on its
pages. I still don't know if he was more fas cinated or terrified by
God of the Old Testament who could strike down thousands of his people
if they disobeyed him! Just like Stalin. \par \par Tato and Mamka
secretly enjoyed their evening ritual. \ldblquote Looks like the
children are now settled for the night,\rquote Tato used to break the
silence. \ldblquote Suppose we might make some garlic bread and
tea?\rdblquote Mamka pretended to keep sewing, her eyes rolling over
the same stich on her tablecloth, again and again. Mamka was amused and
angered everytime Tato said used the expression we. Nights stoked with
Mamka\rquote s strong rosehip tea and the birth of garlic bread
wondering along the bedroom walls. \par } \par For one thing, the only
time I ran out of Mamka\rquote s kitchen was when she chopped onions or
when she resorted to singing some of the funeral sounding songs. I
loved the smell of garlic. High level of crocodile tears were mostly
shed at night when Tato refused {\f4 to }{\f4\cf1 performs another
magic tricks with cards or }{\f4 read another page of our favourite
fairy tale. When it came to fairy} tales, moderation was a key word in
Tato\rquote s vocabulary, \ldblquote All stories in
moderation!\rdblquote \ldblquote A fairy tale a day keeps the sleepless
night away. Two give you nightmares!\rdblquote \par \par {\f4\cf1 It is
difficult to exaggerate the importance of fairy tales in Slovak culture
where \ldblquote }{\i\f4\cf1 Rozpravky}{\f4\cf1 \rdblquote word comes
in handy even in adult conversations. }{\f4 \ldblquote Seven times upon
a time, when pigs were communists and before the Russian lost the
formular on when to smile, there was a little boy who lived at the foot
of the rainbow in the middle of the universe, defined by historians as
Mittle uropa, at the bottom of mortuary garden ...\rdblquote \par \par
}{\f4\cf1 Slovaks take seriously their }{\i\f4\cf1 rozpravky}{\f4\cf1 ,
fairy tales. Our }{\i\f4\cf1 rozpravky}{\f4\cf1 are not just intended
for children. Trading fairy tales for schoners of beer has been
identified by MBA students as the second oldest tradition in Slavic
culture. My parents and older siblings }{\f4 looked forward to
Christmas}{\f4\cf1 just as I did. Each season has its particular
sensations, the smells, tastes, sounds - and sights - that help give it
a unique character. Christmas, the favourite season of }{\i\f4\cf1
rozpravky}{\f4\cf1 fanciers, has more than}{\cf1 its share of these
identifying phenomenon. Just as carp was part of our Christmas taste
buds. So in the eyes of most Slovaks, the sight most indelibly
associated with Christmas was the television screen filled with Slav
}{\i\cf1 rozpravky}{\cf1 . Indeed our lunches, suppers and visits to
and from friends and family were carefully arranged} to fit the visual
{\i rozpravky}. S{\cf1 ame films were watched religiously every year,
and all were enjoyed just as much as they were in previous years.
Really real tears came out if I missed on }{\i\cf1 The Song of
Viktorka}{\cf1 or}{\i\cf1 Proud Princess}{\cf1 or }{\i\cf1 Once Upon a
Time} {\cf1 }{\i\cf1 there was a King}{\cf1 . \par \par Perhaps the
most celebrated of all fairy tales became}{\i\cf1 Three Hazelnuts for
Cinderella. A}{\cf1 film graced by Karel Gott's (Slavic edition of Tom
Jones) splendid rendition of the unashamedly romantic and
crowd-pleasing title song }{\i\cf1 Where is your nest, o little
bird?}{\cf1 Artists understood how to transfer classic }{\i\cf1
rozpravky}{\cf1 to silver screen where personalities jump off the tube
without losing any of their magic, and they treasured this }{\i\cf1
rozpravky}{\cf1 tradition even under televised communism when so many
other traditions have been obliterated. They were notable for their
exuberance, wit and escapism. }Life without {\i\cf1 rozpravky} was like
summertime without holidays in Pilhov; Holy communion without snowy
bread; Christmas without presents.{\cf1 \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par \pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar When I was
seven and Aga twelve, I sensed that somehow the story of Christmas was
no longer a big mystery to Aga. \ldblquote Where is Aga?\rdblquote
neighbours asked. {\cf1 The streets ran again with the blood of
thousands of slaughtered carp of our childhood, but }Aga no longer
wished to play long, imaginative games in the blood soaked snow or
build Saint Nicholas (Svaty Mikulas). {\f4\cf1 Talk of welcoming Santa
Clause were met with half-hearted attempts at enthusiasm. Aga
couldn\rquote t hide that doubting teenager look in her eyes. While
}Aga was still sledding in a mountain{\cf1 edition of a} rock chair
with our neighbours, Ondrej and Ferko Hrebenar, She simply stopped
talking about what she hoped to get from St Nicholas and Jezisko
(Christ, the child). \par \par By December 1967, the year that a new
Russian fairy tale by the name {\i\cf1 Old Father Frost} came on TV
screens to us, I too felt somehow reluctant to broadcast a sighting of
the man with the biggest backpack in the world. Somehow I too began to
doubt St Nicholas\rquote test of goodness: Do you help with carrying
water from the pump? Do you eat up all the food on your plate? Do you
go to bed when you\rquote re {\f4 told? Do you make }{\f4\cf1 the snow
go yellow in the churchyard? Do you slide down well-salted mountain
roads?} \par \par \pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar {\f4\cf1 At Christmas
time nobody seemed to be surprised to see adults sledding down the
middle of the road. T}{\cf1 he air just cold enough for you to see your
breath. Fresh breaths of a}{\f4\cf1 dults and children }{\cf1 flying
out slammed doors, diving head first into new snow, red faces, steamy
grins, the same swearing words covered in steam, the same whistles
echoing off the icy white walls. }{\f4\cf1 On a bright Sunday you see
all of Vrbov fr om old grandmothers to children, coasting solemnly down
the steep hills roads, sitting on elevated wooden toilet seats with the
smiling expressions on all their faces. Teenage boys steer with their
feet stuck straight out in front with wiggle different pa rts of their
anatomy in order to stay on top of the heavy plastic garbage
bags.}{\cf1 \par \par }{\f4\cf1 Snow and Christmas made children of
everyone. The people of Vrbov know it better than most. }They know also
better than most that new beginnings were exactly what Christ\rquote s
birt h was all about. Each Christmas was all about dreams, innocence
and hope. Well, our house was filled with Christmas and New Year
resolutions: each year my Tato and Mamka promised themselves a trip to
visit auntie Ota in West Germany. Still, each year the reality of
communism prevailed. \par \par At Christmas, abundance of happiness was
allowed. There floated the sense that Christmas was paradise. Slovaks
live and cook by the seasons and so all of Mamka\rquote s dishes used
the flavours of winter. Mamka {\cf1 worked her fingers to the bone
skinning the freshly slaughtered carp, preparing fish soup, buckets of
potato salad, a geese or two, and mainly hundreds of tiny, delicious
Christmas cookies so that we would have something to eat through the
holiday period. Fascination with f ood and tradition knew no bounds.
The food that called forth my most Proustian raptures were the simple
ones: the return of the nut bowl to its crowning spot on the living
room coffee table, Mamka\rquote s }walnut cakes, or Gitka\rquote s
Pavlova, or auntie Anna\rquote s caramel pies. \par \par Christmas was
Father Glatz dressed in brightly coloured robes swishing around in
front of the golden alter with incense burner swinging backwards and
forwards. All I had to do was breathe and sing a role in a Christmas
Carol. Indeed there was even little homework. For someone who was
perceived in the village as the youngest son of Jozef and Mary,
Christmas was about raiding the fridge and storming into a pantry.{\cf1
Someone would say, \ldblquote Don\rquote t eat too many sweets or
you\rquote ll spoil your appetite.\rdblquote Even I was shocked into
recognition of my own amazing appetite. \par \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult1\widctlpar Carefree school years with snowmen and sandpit
games rolled by as Aga and I watched the slow rhythm of the happy
seasons and the glad world go by. Tender Sundays were full of joking,
teasing, boasting and bragging. One cousin was going to be a film star,
and another a singer. Even the adults were promising to become
travellers and {\f4 artists. }{\f4\cf1 In one corner of the kitchen
stood a barrel of fermenting cabbage. To sit on top of the round wooden
area gave me t}{\f4 he most wonderful}{\f4\cf1 source pleasure. Here I
passed long winter evenings spying on my aunties and neighbours, as
they sat embroidering by the fire and plugged feathers from geese, made
delicious jams as a row of apples, pears and cherries roasted and
spluttered everywhere ar ound the stove.}{\f4 \par \par }At that time,
homebaked poppyseed cakes and relative peace existed around every
corner in Vrbov. Routine enveloped us, punctuated by visits from the
ragman and chimney sweepers. Each year we watched the slope across from
our verandah turn golden green, then gradually frosty white. We were
given everything we craved, except a real bicycle. Unseen, we lived an
exciting life and knew nothing about chaos. There was only one type of
chaos that our parents knew and that was the time between coming home
from school to bedtime: a familiar and desirable type of chaos between
'Please' and 'Mash potatoes.\rquote \par \par Mamka seemed to take time
to tell us about the old world as she cooked gnocchi or preserved
plumbs or divided her gladiolus bulbs or tied bunches of rosemary.
Mamka took time to share stories with our neighbours who told us the
latest village news. Vrbov was a village of actresses. While to lie and
to find loopholes in the bible was the kingdom of men, dreams,
adventure and intensi ty of truth was the land of queens. In Vrbov you
did not need to be a blond or have implants, but long conversations in
German helped, \ldblquote Ya, Yes, I dreamed about so and so ... Not a
good sign. But a sign. Ya. Ya.\rdblquote \par \par {\f4\cf1 As a little
boy, I watched Mamka and her f riends closely. The women were a bit
like my dog Zahraj, they liked to circle things and strangers a few
times before they decided if they were going to go in for a closer look
or before they engaged in a conversation with a stranger. Like Zahraj,
they we re fascinated by bad behaviour. They became walking
encyclopaedias on this appalling disease. They had keen intuition, they
would know sometimes what would happen minutes, months, even years
beforehand. In our community were herbalists, midwives, and stor yt
ellers with a third eye. Like my grandmother, my Mamka depended on
other women to divine the meaning of dreams, to foresee and prepare for
natural disasters, to spy on her children, to heal illness and deliver
babies, and to perform rites associated with death. These women were
well-informed community organizers who prepared the rituals of the
Catholic church-baptism, communion, confirmation and sometimes helped
the priest to settle family disputes. In our house, we lived in fear of
Mamka\rquote s pointed finger, for whatever she said while calling upon
Jesus, St Mary, and St Jozef came to pass in short order.} \par \par
Once in fluent German even my Mamka\rquote s face looked worried. When
she ran out of the sweet Slovak look I knew I was safe to run away and
play with other children. I would return from time to time to pull
Mamka\rquote s long skirt. \ldblquote Mamka, lets go!\rdblquote I would
{\f4 plead. Under the }{\f4\cf1 gently aging poplars next to the pump
m}{\f4 y small voice tended to be h}{\f4\cf1 alf unheard}{\f4 as} Mamka
would continue to draw water and open her heart to her friends. H{\f4
ome economics }{\f4\cf1 wrapped women\rquote s stories round like a
shawl:}{\f4 l}{\f4\cf1 ittle by little}{\f4 words became stories about
how }{\f4\cf1 distant freedom was, how the bones ached, how quickly the
fruit run out,}{\f4 }{\f4\cf1 whether there would be one a week}{\f4
without money} {\f4 worries, and sons who keep telling them it was time
to go home. Women were strong. On daily basos Mamka\rquote s}{\f4\cf1
fingers hugged heavy wide baskets and buckets filled with water. }{\f4
Men couldn\rquote t please them. They were too much this or that or not
enough} of this. They ate their own husbands . Their eyes would mist
over as they looked at me and recall the magic happy childhood days of
their lives. They dreamed the impossible dreams. For t{\f4\cf1 he
legacy of women's power was associated with the "curse of
Eve.\rdblquote } \par \par My dearest Tato, I was told was a busy man
and had an important work to do. Since I was seven, every minute and
every haler (cent) of my Tato\rquote s time and saving was invested in
building a two storey house next to our old house. Tato was hardly ever
in the pub. Like with rain, snow and sun, Tato\rquote s opportunities
to tell stories at breakfast time was unevenly distributed. Too often,
it was feast and famine. \par \par We knew that it was Mamka\rquote s
birthday, 14 February, when Tato\rquote s glasses were looking at me
from the side of his bed. After breakfast, Tato even stayed to dry the
breakfast dishes at the sink. We knew this was the time when Tato liked
to take part of the da y off to turn our Mamka into his child. He knew
Mamka liked her tea weak and toast hot. Sooner rather than later, Tato
would use Mamka\rquote s favourite phrase, \ldblquote The greatest
soccer players in the world would be worn out in a day if he had to
take care of seven children and a dog.\rdblquote Once we came home from
school Tato would tell us for the seventh time how their eyes met at a
Christmas ball. Even though Slovaks do not celebrate Saint Valentine,
this was the day that Tato was drawn to remember various ineffable
stories about different times of their courtship that only his
expressive eyes could capture. I used to put my head on Tatos\rquote s
wide shoulder and watch his lips repeat his favourite yarns. The more I
heard those spins the more they seemed to communicate an aura of
timelessness. \par \par \pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar I felt a
curiosity for everything, almost an addiction, of the kind that used to
get me into trouble. Boys in the village knew that I was not afraid to
take a shortcut through cemetery at midnight. They knew that it was me
who howled and scared people who took the churchyard shortcuts on All
Souls Day. However, I was never alone when we pelted snow balls at the
church windows du ring a church service. Girls knew that I swam without
underpants on the western side of pond, where the ghosts of the drowned
witches groaned with the creaking willows. \par \par However, only Pan
Rambacher knew that I still enjoyed carrying the grain on a plate and
getting a joy from cuddling his geese. As always, Father{\cf1
Glatz\rquote s stern eyes recognised my faked explosive sneezes in
church as a prank. } Everyone knew that stitches on my scull, forehead,
chin, knee and fingers were my essential features. The only other
person who beat me to a wholesome sense of curiosity and the number of
stiches was my soccer friend Stefan Bartko who one day dived into the
Black Creek with his stomach discovering a broken bottle. Each hockey
team and soccer team wanted us. In my childh ood Vrbov, it was a badge
of honour to be bitten by a dog on the ankle. Dr Rusniak had never seen
a generation of boys who loved so much the inner-tubes from {\f4
tractors and who needed several skins and an infinitely renewable
capacity to produce blood. }{\f4\cf1 It takes three sevens or
twenty-one days for wounds to heal. My Mamka never got better.}{\f4
\par } \par After each accident nothing stopped {\f4 Mamka from trying
to tell me that she wished she was as sure of anything as I was sure of
everything. Just as}{\f4\cf1 the lawn met the trees, }{\f4 I was and
still am know-it-all Jozo. Yet little did I know that the nineteen
sixties were the golden age of Czechoslovak culture. New theatres}
appeared in Prague and Bratislava. Writers like Kundera, Skvorecky,
Hrabal and Havel, appeared and immediately found avid readers in my
older sisters Gitka and Lidka. The only art I experienced was a cinema
silver screen flickering the names of film directors such as Milos
Forman, Vera Chytilova, Jiri Menzel and Jan Svankmajer. \par \par \pard
\sl480\slmult1\widctlpar Two weeks before my 10th birthday, I paid
little attention to radio other than the time when I heard a voice of
Karel Gott, Elvis Presley or the most famous American Indian Winnetou.
\par \par {\f4 \ldblquote Winnetou\rdblquote is what I thought when I
was not dreaming of being \ldblquote Old Shatterhand.\rdblquote My head
was filled with the im ages of the Great Chief, Winnetou, "the Red
Gentleman," son of Intshu-tshuna, and chief of the Mescalero clan of
the Apaches and his blood brother "Old Shatterhand," the
eighteen-year-old German university graduate who\emdash in a series of
more than thirty novels by Karl May\emdash came to the wild west of
America in 1860. Old Shatterhand and Winnetou became more real than any
communist reality could ever be. \par \par Then, when I was not bathing
}{\f4\cf1 myself in the magical light of Winnetou\rquote s images,
}{\f4 the melting of the snow was the most essential event in my life!
My heart would whisper, \ldblquote May spring last a hundred
years!\rdblquote \par \par It was time our annual spring cleaning when
I smelled evergreen needles burning and heard acorns crackling in the
fire. I knew little of voices which throbbed with excitement as they
revelled in the mandatory celebration of the 1st of May 1968. It was at
one of the May parade organised by the school away from Vrbov that I
first experienced }{\f4\cf1 the usage of the public toilets. A place
where a militant looking attendant robbed me of my pocket money for one
square of scratchy toilet paper. }{\f4 The only celebration in twenty
years when communist leaders were spontaneously cheered by the crowds
which believed the reforms, named after a stranger from another village
called Alexander Dubcek, would go on. Czechoslovakia began to develop a
sunnier di sposition and seemed to matched the sign next to the bible,
\lquote Good news is on the way.\rquote The Times of London\rquote
could be even found at newsagencies at Prague and Bratislava. \par \par
\lquote }{\f4\cf1 In Czechoslovakia, anything is possible!\rquote What
could possibly go wrong in a country where anything is possible? In
lands of possibility, much can go wrong.} \par \par {\f4\cf1 Fifteen
days after the Times\rquote prediction, something like a miracle
happened during the night: my age grew an extra digit. I was nine years
old when he went to sleep, but ten years old when he woke up. The extra
number had weight, like a muscle, and I adored it like a prize. My tato
\rquote s age contained two numbers, and now my age contained two
numbers as well. \lquote How in the world did I get to be ten years
old? Well, I am an adult now.\rquote I thought.} \par \par \pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar Along the wild road that led to Levoca or
Poprad, vulgar communist posters lined the wayside, crying out their
parodies, blotting the tranquillity of the fields with their obscene
and absurd messages. Streets can be silent and solitary by day,
cushioned w ithin stone walls and laneways, dotted with a few battered
tractors or trucks and some grandmothers with children perched on
knees. There was a distinct absence of rush. My life revolved around
dogs and cats even if it contained the same reply to my requests. 'One
dog and one cat in this house is enough.' I admired the way dogs {\cf1
cantered under the front axle of a carriage, very close to the heels of
the horses; and the way they shook hands. } Time loitered on the wooden
step of our verandah with my dog and cat where I nuzzled their long
eyelashes, my flattened palm stroked their tails and my lips whispered
sweetly in their ears. \par \par Just as the physical realities of
Vrbov - its trees, plants, fields, streams, pond, and the wildlife
within - stood in sharp contrast to the communist - made town of Svit,
so the Vrbov bakery stood in contrast to the bread sold in communist
shops. \par \par While very few bakeries from emperial times survived
anywhere, Vrbov boasted one. So the first thing to strike our visitors
was the fragrance of freshly baked bread. They noticed what
communist-made towns had since 1948 learnt to ignore: the fragrances, t
he sights and sounds, textures and the tastes of the w orld around
them. They notice the fresh breezes that sweep over the velvet hills
and gust playfully on Vrbov streets. They notice that the place for a
man to socialise is the pub. Walk as a female tourist into Vrbov\rquote
s pub and you will hear the wind shear as every head turns. Picture the
wooden door of Vrbov pub. Walk through it in your mind and turn right
towards a wooden floor area no more than 20 m square with a the
hazelnut colour laminated bar top at the end of it. In this square, a
female would be th e pigeon among the Slovak cats. {\f4\cf1 The
tribe\rquote s eyes and whistles would have spoken -- behind the pigeon
back.} \par \par Vrbov is a village with a creek at one end, a cemetery
at the other and the pub right in the centre. For the men of Vrbov,
with hacking cough and fingers that were tangerine to the knuckles, the
pub was critical. For the women of Vrbov, the church was ess ential.
And for us, the children of Vrbov, the old bakery was everything. \par
\par The baker was a Vrbovian Uncle ({\i Ujko}), teasing curious
children about Hansel and Gretel as he kept his oven alight, feeding in
doughy loaves that soon became firm and golden brown. \par \par
\ldblquote I am baking some bread rolls,\rdblquote I heard Mr Zummer
ask. \ldblquote Would you like some?\rdblquote I wasn\rquote t
listening much till then. I was just playing \ldblquote Pomaranc!
Pomaranc!\rdblquote (Orange! Orange!) But, his voice was like an
invisible hand. Everyone stopped. We would smile without meaning it. As
we ate the divine crusts that failed to make my hair curly, we watched
the oven fire jump. Zummer\rquote s fire was our best friend. It always
smiled. And in winter it changed our nails from dullish white to {\f4
radiant pink. Zummer often looked at}{\f4\cf1 me like I knew everything
about me, as if you could know a child just by looking in his face.}
\par \par Baker\rquote s courtyard was a social corner for children.
There was always someone to play with. One day it would be Jozo
Maslonka, whose nose never stopped running, who would show me how to
make a wooden gun. Or Tono Zivcak would ask me to join him and Jozo, t
o play poker for money. I was always somebody\rquote s cousin or
somebody\rquote s friend. It was all things to all games: musical
rocks, ball, skipping, marble, chalking noughts and crosses or card.
{\cf1 How much fun I had around bakery: squishing mud into patties of
bread rolls, climbing just one branch higher in that old bakery apple
tree, and swinging so high on the swing of the poplar tree I thought I
would fall from the sky. } Now not for nothing is a loaf of bread
called the staff of life. The loaves by which I counted myself to sleep
late at night. \par \par The bakery has been part of my village since
the end of 14th century, when the king relinquished the right to build
ovens. The baker has ever since underpinned the social life in my
village. His bread was the daily miracle of flour and poetry that gave
life. \par \par Of all the colourful characters in Vrbov's history, few
would top the legendary Zummers. It is a family of bakers, carpenters,
artists, organists, bell ringers and rebels. There are few families
that can boast over 250 years of continuous business. When Z ummer's
family fled L evoca in 1788, their only asset was a peel and a bag of
wheat. They settled in Vrbov, a village of fugitives, where the eighth
generation still presides over a small business based on the main
street of Vrbov. Zummer family has never seen anything else bu t the
flour and the mountains. One of the qualifications for membership of
Zummer family was that they should have an opinion about everything.
Everything. Zummer repeated, \ldblquote Dubcek is{\f4\cf1 someone my
second cousin Jan used to know. \rdblquote Zummer so cherished his
cousin\rquote s brush with fame. To be in a presence of Dubcek was like
being granted the presence of God. \par }{\f5\fs28\cf8 Little did I
know when I boarded that train in Detroit in the spring of }{\f4 Little
did I know when I was running in Zummers courtyard that one day I would
meet Dubcek, in a continent I never heard of yet then, and share with
him our village baker\rquote s views on liberty. Zummer believed that
freedom is like bread. \lquote You must make it fresh every day.\rquote
\par } \par In 'world events' terms, the business survived many major
imperial skirmi shes, copious border changes, the bloody uprisings of
1848, the Great Depression, two world wars fought on the bakery
doorsteps, and even the Russian occupation. Zummer's bread was offered
to many famous leaders, including Alexander Dubcek and Cardinal To
masek. History does not record whether they ate the whole loaf and
asked for more. Remembering my appetite for Zummer's bread, I somehow
believe it. The {\cf1 mythical status of the bread cannot hope to
succeed anywhere else without what Zummer called the "indefinite"
properties of the Vrbov spring water. }Legend has it that many love
affairs has blossomed under the romantic smell of Zummer\rquote s
bread. So if you spy an old women who can manage no more than a dozen
steps at a time before they have a rest, you can be sure they either
head for the memories of the old bakery or are on the way back from the
church. \par \par This is a classic story of Slovak Catholic family:
the flight from war stricken town, a family stability built on hard
work and spiritual flair. The oldest sons , the master bakers,
represent the locals with great devotion, and despite the communist law
that banned all small businesses, Stefan Zummer continued to mix the
bread at home in that vast stone room. A room immersed in the warmth of
that mysterious wood, ash, metal, water and fire. The communist
anti-private business agenda taught them things no small business could
ever dream of learning elsewhere. 100 percent of industrial workforce
was employed by the state and 99.9 percent of small tradesmen and shop
keepers were employed by the state. Each day that 0.1 percent was
confronted with communist realities and not even Zummer can explain how
his business survived. He jokingly cites, \ldblquote I prayed harder
than anyone else.\rdblquote \par \par Zummer never ever had a sign on
his double wooden doors saying. \lquote Sorry. We have sold out
bread.\rquote \par \par He had a good grasp of how to greet people and
how to gossip with them. He tested the waters. To communists, Zummer
would say, \ldblquote Cest Praci,\rdblquote or honour to communist
work. To others, \ldblquote Ahoj\rdblquote , or \ldblquote Servus,
\rdblquote or \ldblquote Lord be with you.\rdblquote I understand that
his philosophy in relation to becoming a member of a communist party
has been heavily influenced by beer and by the principles espoused by
Marx who said, \ldblquote I refuse to belong to any club that would
have Groucho as a member.\rdblquote \par \par We all have smells that
awaken insulated memories; these bouquets cause the head and heart to
soak with an overwhelming rush of nostalgia. It was one of those
fragrances that you could only smell in Vrbov. \par \par There are
traces of the Vrbov brea d, faint paw prints left deep in my psyche,
whenever I walk pass the bread section of David Jones in Sydney. Such
aromas trigger these vivid childhood memories. While the reality of
David Jones stays outside, inside I hear the word \lquote Basta\rquote
so used and wit hout discrimination by Zummer. The fresh crusty bread
makes me drool, hungry not only for the physical satisfaction but also
for the memory of days long gone, days that can never return, days
where the simple things ruled and the complexities of life had yet to
emerge. My goodness, imagination meets reality at DJ as I habitually
wolf down the golden crust. \par \par On warm days, the emotional
domain moved from the kitchen to the outdoors. Folks of all ages sat
out the front of their homes or on benches at the town square, chatting
to passers-by and neighbours. A small group of women in headscaves
would settle down n ext to their sowing baskets, laden with threats,
scissors and needles, and embroider to the rhythm of their chatter.
Every now and then they would pause, spying with their alert eyes the
time on the church clock. Then the flashing needles would resume their
ancient pace. \par \par There was always a good deal of laughter among
the adults. Every indiscreet affair and every sin was subjected to
scrutiny and imagination by the priest on Sundays. They developed close
relationship between tears and laughter. They felt deeply their mise
ries as well as joys. They have made an artistic pleasure of sadness in
their rich music and myths. \par \par In our part of world, vocations
men and women announce when they introduce themselves had nothing to do
with the way they made money. Mr Zummer, the baker, is really a poet.
Mr Rambacher, the priest\rquote s brother-in-law and a war pensioner,
is really a storyteller with the funniest accent{\f4 . Both were men
}{\f4\cf1 with dark, knowing eyes. \par \par }{\f4 Ms Chamillova, the
history teacher and choreographer, is really a nun who practices
anthropology. Mr Malinich}, the geography teacher, is really a dreamer
who never visits America. Malinic{\f4\cf1 was not a man of physical
fitn ess, the butt of the school comedians of the day for his
swaggering gait and bulging eyes. He was a man of the long acid
look.}{\f4 With} Malinic we traced the growth of Russian Bear, starting
from a tiny dot, the city of the October 1917 Revolution Leningrad, and
spreading like a bloody stain to encompass all of Poland, Hungary,
Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Cuba, and so on. He used his sac charine
ruler to trace the evil cities of Vienna, New York, Rome and to
repeatedly flick the ears of boys who could not tell the difference
between East and West Berlin. \par \par It was Russia, not America,
which God used as a training school for learning how to tell a joke.
Even though, no one had the slightest desire to travel to Russia
promises to take you there polluted the air. \ldblquote Must take you
to Leningrad to cheer you up.\rdblquote We could call ourselves lucky,
as almost every day some new evidence of Russian insanity popped
up.{\f4\cf1 Malinic\rquote s }{\f4 Vrbov was like Good Soldier Svejk
who refused to acknowledge that anything could be more important than
getting food and} even more drink. Somehow the membership to the
Communist Party was sort of like the last cake on the plate. Everyone
insisted he would not take it, but somebody always does. Even my sister
Eva did. \par \par In Vrbov, laughter was not merely laughter; it was a
biography. My Tato\rquote s sounded like an old model of Tatra car.
Paul's had been affected by heavy smoking it sounded like muffled
exhaust pipe. Peter's had been compared to a horse, racy and shallow.
Janko's had been identical to his father, deep and hearty. The trouble
with Ondrej's was that it simply did not come at appropriate places.
How people laugh managed to sustain dinner-party conversations. \par
\par Whistle too was not only a whistle. I recognised my tato\rquote s
from a bus stop after six notes from any of his favourites. Footsteps
of members of the family and friends were unique as well. In
particular, mamka\rquote s footsteps indicating meal time were so
urgent that I felt my heart bouncing against the ribcage before she
could call out: \lquote Obed\rquote or \lquote Vecera.\rquote Our grace
was dictated by another Zummer, the church bell ringer,: breakfast,
lunch and dinner. \par \par {\f4\cf1 In our children imagination
adult\rquote s bottoms were expressive, like laughter or faces.
Buttocks of communists could be recognized immediately: wobbly cheese
with a disjointed line in one direction -usually the town hall-that was
burried in bored walk, they looked like creatures who had forsaken
choice. Cheerful bottoms always turned in different directions; or, as
if a horn of bees happen to land inside filled wi th another sting of
laughter. And there were bottoms which so enjoyed life that they danced
like gossip stories on owner\rquote s lips. All those cheerful bottoms
who were at my communion. At holy communion time I got to study
sociology of kneeling with my snigg ering friends. One and all of my
partners in communion seemed to be experts at reading bottoms. Of all
the bottoms and gaits, only Ms Polomska\rquote s radiated upwards to
the shoulders.}{\f4 \par \par }If you ask a villager where he had been,
he\rquote ll tell you where he was going. If you ask a question, a
seemingly simple question, you will get two responses: \ldblquote
ano,\rdblquote and \ldblquote nie.\rdblquote The timing might vary, or
the order and number of repetitions, but you always get \ldblquote
yes,\rdblquote and \ldblquote no.\rdblquote Whatever the real reasons
behind it, while the conversations were important, they were never
about anything much important. They were just about staying in touch.
Just a matter of making and remaking reality. Anyway, in Vrbov nothing
was quite what it seemed to be. \par \par {\cf1 Everything had t o be
done just so in Vrbov. Monday night was washday. Tuesday night Mamka
did her mending and darning, with a solid wooden ball that had been in
her family for generations for the toes of the socks. Wednesday night
the hairdresser came to the village. Thu rsday or Friday night women
cleaned the parish church. Saturday was the day the house was done top
to bottom and Sunday meals were prepared. Sunday was the day for
squealing and howling soccer or hockey players names. \par } \par \pard
\sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\cf1 Still every day was a bribery day. Peo
ple would arrive with a thick roll of bank notes and a large bag filled
with boxes of chocolates, bags of coffee, bottles of cognac, and other
'proofs of gratitude' for distribution among the hospital staff, the
university staff, the court staff, the shop staff. It is through small
bribes of chocolate, coffee, cognac and the like that customers,
patients, students were able to assure themselves of quality care.
Communist created a society where}{\f4\cf1 amorality reigned supreme
and trying to act like a decent human being could kill you.}{\cf1 \par
\par }\pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar {\cf1 Radio and television
propaganda failed to convince citizens that there was no need to give
an envelope when you go to the doctor, butcher, grocer, teacher because
they are paid for their services by the state. The bribery culture
responded to the miserabl e state funding for services and production
of goods. Citizens knew the truth: such noble sentiments were words,
not realities. Even the most basic everyday goods and services were
acquired by a bribe in an invisible social geograph y, one where the
unannounced rules of life had to be understood. It was not the amount
of the bribe that is significant. The policeman takes the bank note and
admonishes the driver instead of writing out a ticket. What was
significant was the act of bribe ry itself. Bribery became a 'natural'
way of acquiring goods or favours. \par \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\cf1 For ordinary people during the communist
era, the value of a bribe differed according to the complexity of the
"problem" to be solved. Cash payments were not always involved. For
exam ple, to file a request, the simple act of filing was "naturally"
connected with handing in the form with one of those ubiquitous bags of
coffee or boxes of chocolates. Checking the status of an apartment
application at the local housing authority? Applyin g for any official
document? Planning on getting a fishing license? Then bring a bag of
coffee. In the 1960s coffee, chocolates and hams were so scarce that
they became coin of the realm. Passing along a ham, some bars of
chocolate or a few pounds of coff ee was the price you paid to make
certain that your request would not be put on the bottom of a pile. The
citizen who wanted to have a request put somewhat higher in the pile
had to arrive with, for example, a bottle of good foreign cognac or a
few boxes of Western cigarettes. To move a request to the top of a pile
required substantial resources and some imagination. \par \par In some
weeks, when store shelves were literally empty and basic goods became
luxuries, bribery became a means of survival. The bribe currency slid
downscale to the level of a few pounds of meat or several rolls of
toilet paper. Since toilet paper was almost unavailable, a few rolls --
especially the softest kind -- made a better bribe than money. Like
Plzen beer, soft toilet paper became more v aluable than cash. \par
\par }\pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar If passers-by stayed long, they
might witness ruddy-faced workers trudging towards a well-earned beer
from the local {\i druzstvo} (communal farm). Returning from a hard
day's work and dressed in dirty overalls, men would walk in sober and
wa lk out drunk from the pub that my grandfather once owned. Vrbov's
workers flocked to its door, to indulge, young and old in an eternal
swirl of smoke, song and debate. A term for hard work is {\i robota} ,
a word now known to the rest of the world through Karel Capek's play{\i
Rodrum's Universal Robots (R.U.R)}. Robot literally means hard-working
machines. Capek\rquote s play warned us about the dangers of
totalitarianism. \par \par A common expression which mixed many
metaphors includes, \ldblquote I work from when I cannot see to when I
cannot see.\rdblquote A Pilsner\rquote s belly and Budweis\rquote nose
were anatomies that needed oiling - that much was certain. T{\cf1 his
Vrbov creature which seemed to live on nothing but beer, constantly
darting around the pub, always giving the impression that it has just
come from, or was just on its way home. } Beer was more than a drink,
it was an expression of the village's complex culture layered with
happiness and sadness. Beer has long been like mother's milk to
Slovaks. Do not be fooled into thinking that you will get a very small
glass of beer if you ask for {\i pivecko}. Slavs are very fond of
diminutives or nicknames. They will call an old fat cat a 'kitty.' With
per capita consumption of an astounding 170 liters a year, \ldblquote
another beer\rdblquote is a well known national weakness and strength.
So much so that beer is not considered alcohol. {\cf1 What is saddest,
and most amusing, about Slavs is that their aspirations are so modest.
}The habitual drinkers had a favourite greeting line, \ldblquote Give
me some liquid bread, for God\rquote s sake.\rdblquote \par \par On the
wall coming up the sharp steep steps a message printed in a nice
handwriting, \ldblquote Everybody has to believe in something. I
believe I\rquote ll have another medical vodka.\rdblquote There is no
difference in Slovak language between water and Vodka. {\i Voda}
(water) is diminutively referred to as {\i vodka} or {\i vodicka. \par
} \par Of course, everyone in Vrbov had a different idea of beer taste.
What pleased a delicate Ferko Zummer\rquote s palate was not identical
to what may excite the taste of Jano Zivcak, or Peter Buc. While Fero
liked a dash of strawberry syr up in his beer, Jano was partial to a
nipple of Slivovica in his. \par \par Everybody in Slovakia is old
enough to drink. And everyone gets a free ticket to see the rehearsal
of the local dramatic society where each rages at the other in turn,
rising from seats to slap the table and make the glasses jump. Every
pub in Slovakia is famous for its choreographers of silly talks and
even sillier walks. After Gejzo shouts \ldblquote Time, Gentlemen.
Time!\rdblquote the street entertainment is at a premium. Sublime
moments made special by th e enduring power of hop or potato to move
people. Vrbov was really great if you fancied hops or potatoes or bad
poetry. \par \par I like to compare my grandfather\rquote s pub or the
hairdressing salon where Mamka spent hours and hours at a time with our
local church. While, Bruce Larson and Keith Miller would have spent a
considerable length of time in that smoky room mentioned in {\i The
Edge of Adventure, }same could be written about the spirit behind the
hair salon my Mamka introduced me to: \par \par {\i The neighbourhood
bar is possibly the best counterfeit there is to fellowship Christ
wants to give His church. It\rquote s an imitation, dispensing liquor
instead of grace, escape rather than reality, but it is permissive,
accepting and inclusive fellowship. It is unshockable. It is
democratic. You can tell people secrets and they usually don\rquote t
tell others or even want to. The bar flourishes not because most people
are alcoholics, but because God has put the human heart the desire to
be known, to love and to be loved, and so many seek a counterfeit at
the price of a few beers.} \par \par A popular rhyme of my great
grandsires goes \ldblquote Unus papa Romae, una cerevesia
Vrbovae\rdblquote (One pope in Rome, one beer in Vrbov). The history of
beer may also explain why my ancestors called King Wenceslaw as Good
King. Until 13th century only some Slovak {\f4\cf1 monks could make a
drink called "the water of life." } In the 13th century, few decades
after the time Vrbov church St Servac was built, the Good King
Wenceslaw convinced Pope to revoke an order banning the brewing of
beer. It w as a small step up from there for breweries to start
marketing their wares to general public as well. The Good King
Wenceslas as well as one of the Czechoslovak Republic\rquote s most
famous beer drinkers, the protagonist of Jaroslav Hasek\rquote s novel
\ldblquote Good Soldier Svejk\rdblquote knew how political the beer
was. It was the cute and cuddly Svejk who said that the government that
raises the price of beer is destined to fall within one year. The
Communists doubled the price in 1984, so it took 5 years instead of one
for the prop hecy to come to pass. \par \par Villagers live by what to
some seem a romantic fantasy which is central to the yeasty life of the
ordinary pub-an irresistible combination of nature and culture. Walking
from work in dirty Bata boots, settling inside the pub to a game of
cards and the rhy thm of the news: the sweet and sour chronicle of
'what is happening?' Singing the handy phrase 'Na zdravie,' 'To
Health.' \par \par If people thought soccer was about a matter of life
and death, in this pub it was much more serious than that. Soccer was
not a small beer. When they told a soccer anecdote out of the past,
details of the winning event emerged - how the striker looked, what he
was wearing, how he kicked, something about the colour of the sky that
day, or the way the beer felt in your tummy - that you could swear the
event happened just two minutes ago. Soccer had made more liars out of
Vrbov men than some of their more serious illegal activities. Different
points of views were not {\cf1 without a bitter quarrel, sometimes
involving fistcuffs. }{\f4\cf1 To be without a soccer story was like
living in Sydney without a car. People wondered what you were up to.}
\par \par Every facet of Vrbov daily living was affected by the
delicate tension between truth and lying, sobriety and drunkenness.
Lying about soccer was even a more painful duty than telling fibs about
their many love affairs. They would gladly admit to stealing a bag of
cement from the state building site, however it was a treason to admit
that it was not some bribery or some conspiracy which lost Vrbov the
last game. As a boy, I{\cf1 used to hear some outlandish stories and
most of the time I passed them off as true. Once in a while, though,
when they tested my credulity to the breaking point, I'd say,
\ldblquote Was that really how Vrbov won?" They would laugh and
respond: "Well, that's how it ought to have won." Those who had
experienced how a leaden chain in a rubber hose felt on their head,
knew that p} ub atmosphere did not make good losers. No winning
visiting team, as far as I can recall, ever dared to stay for a drink
after the match. I can only imagine what might have happened. \par
\pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar \par {\cf1 Vrbov women had many remedies
and rituals. If you wanted to win a soccer game, you put the name of
the team name on a piece of paper and placed it in your soccer shoe, so
that you walk on them all day. To win, in addition to prayers to Mary,
Saint Servac, Saint John, they had done special penance on their knees,
and, for good measure, had their children go to church every evening. A
piece of bread behind the image of the Sacred Heart abov e their bed
ensured victory and prosperity in the village at all times. \par \par
}\pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar {\cf1 If you dreamed of losing a game,
that was very bad. Spiders were good. If you fell and cut yourself
during the game, you could put a spider web over the cut to heal it.
Soccer inspired food. Barbequed sausages, Zummer \rquote s bread and
cottage cheese played a big role after the game. } \par {\cf1 \par }The
most famous soccer team in Czechoslovakia is Slavia Prague. Great many
Slovak names end in \lquote -slav\rquote , as in slave, but which comes
from the word slava, which means celebration. Another popular ending is
\lquote -mir,\rquote which means peace, or \lquote -mil,\rquote which
means love. Majority of these names were created during the era of
Slovak national revival and were translated from Latin. I have yet to
meet someone called Pivosla v, or celebration of beer. However there
are many who celebrate peace, Miroslav. Vladimir means ruler of the
world. \par \par \pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar High amusement surnames
denote different nationalities, trades, vegetables and fruits, animals
and one of the most unusual are surnames adjectival in form. We have
Pan Moravec, Mr Moravian; or Pan Nemec, Mr German. There is obligatory
Pan Kovac, or Mr Smi th. My publican grandfather was called Pecharcik,
Mr Baker. My great grandfather was Chrobak, Mr Bug. Some surnames could
fly. Pan Holub, Mr Pigeon. Pan Hren, Mr Horseradish. Pan Buchta, Mr
Cake. Mr Pan Tichy, Mr Quiet. Pan Smutny, Mr Sad. Some of the biz arre
names are Pan Tlusty, Mr Fat. Pan Pachac, Mr Stinker. \par \par There
was no Slovak word for Imrich. However, the bible has a reference to a
suicidal king Zimri who reigned in Tirzah, not Tatra, seven days and
who set the royal palace on fire and died like Jan Hus or Jan Palach.
But the Bible was full of bizarre surna mes. It refered to one priest
as Zadok. I couldn\rquote t believe that the bible would literally
refer to a priest as a \ldblquote Bum.\rdblquote George Frideric Handel
even wrote a choral anthem about Bum and that royal ant hem is still
performed at British coronation ceremonies. The crown that sold my
country in 1938, shuffled few cards of history and made me her subject
in 1983. Ach, historical results! How could I have known that I would
serve the Queen of England. \par \par Oral history, intimacy and
community was built around world soccer results with England, Russia,
Brazil, or West Germany. In the pub, in addition to famous soccer
players, leaders of the new and old world were summoned from the smoky
air. Anyone could su mmon up a mental image of Maria-Theresa, King
Wenceslaws, King George, Hitler, Janosik, Stalin, Kennedy or Dubcek.
\par \par Here, even if men did not dare to live their dreams, they at
least dared to dream their dreams. Longing for news is longing for true
stories, for unlocking images that will connect with-in vivid colours-
and shed their cumulative light on our world of the certain past,
instantly forgettable present and uncertain future. Here the stranger
is welcomed in, is given liquid bread and a place at a table. In
Slovakia a stranger is a prince or a sage. And rewards flow from the
stranger's lips: kindness is returned with news. \par \par \pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar My grandfather once made a good living in
Vrbov since it was impossible for many Slovaks to walk home from work
without stopping at his pub filled with loud talk, waving arms, and
pronouncements on every subject. Certain drinkers exhibited some
appalling behaviour that was most in evidence on Saturday night. One
Sunday, Father Anton Glatz made a remark from the pulpit something
about th e love of liquor-saying that even the rumour of a bottle of
borovicka being lost off a passing delivery truck was enough to bring
certain men down the road looking for it. For Father Glatz, one half of
men were practicing alcoholics and the other half pot ential
alcoholics. Father Glatz {\cf1 had his last drink on 20 October 1939.
A}{\f4\cf1 lcoholics}{\cf1 can always remember the date. Father Glatz
was d}{\f4\cf1 ynamic, sympathetic and ingrown, like a toenail
especially when it came to alcohol. }{\cf1 Father Glatz used to say
that the difference between an alcoholic and not alcoholic was that
when it came to philosophy on life: \lquote Not alcoholic\rquote would
start a philosophical argument and it tended to go on until you died.
\lquote Alcoholic \rquote would talk an hour or two and say it's very
interesting, but I've got to have another beer and with each beer he
would begin a new philosophy. }A{\cf1 lcoholics or not, all came to
church from week to week with one question in mind: Was it true?} \par
\par Oh, Father Glatz could walk down any street and tell without
difficulty where practicing and potential {\f4 alcoholics lived. Under
the leaking roofs of alcoholics, t}{\f4\cf1 he golden maxim ruled,
\lquote Spare the rod and spoil the child.\rquote }{ \f4 The potential
alcoholic's house} was like ours. It was painted once every three
years. The gutters never leaked. The scrap metal went straight into the
village tip which was located behind the vicarage. The dog only barked
at strangers, whiners and nitpickers. \par \par {\f4 There were four
cardinal commandments in Vrbov. Don't go to church drunk. Don't make
jokes about dead people unless you are one. Don\rquote t marry a
gypsie. Don't reheat things made with pork. } \par \par My cousin Gejzo
who could not stomach pork was very much the grandson and
great-grandson of publicans, a profession known both for
entrepreneuralism and emotional openness. None of those strengths were
valued by the State that in our day employed Gejzo as the publican. But
the Vrbov pub, with rough-hewn floors and stone walls, laminated
counters and plastic chairs and tables, was always warm, brimming with
bodies and bonding. \par \par Next to the pub was the butcher, Tibor,
who was also my cousin. Here Mamka always{\f4\cf1 pointed out the exact
seven pieces of veal she wanted. } Gejzo and Tibo were brothers married
to very different women from which stemmed many arguments. Despite the
communal nature of Vrbov and its quite village state, family feuds
still occurred. \par \par The shops usually opened at 8:30 am. Shops
bore a stained plaque that said {\i 'Druzstevny obchod}': 'Friendly
Shop.' There was always a dusty parking area. The shop sold one kind of
anythi ng. Staunch comrades, managers of shoes and clothes shops,
seemed to stock only sizes to fit themselves. We had a choice of three
lollies: one with raspberry flavour, one with peppermint and one with
lemony taste. Homes were privately owned and rarely sol d. There were
no real estate offices. In 1970s, Vrbov had what few towns had. There
was one restaurant and hotel situated on the bank of the fish pond
appropriately named 'Flipper.' Slovaks think dolphins can talk in
whistles and clicks. After all, Flipp er could. \par \pard
\sl480\slmult1\widctlpar \par It is hard to imagine Vrbov without
tourists who soon learned to avoid our graffitied bus stop. It
practically smelled like a toilet. The entrance to the Town Hall was
also vandalised. {\cf1 The idea that we were all walking on thin ice
was apparent in places of marked by graffiti. }Vandals usually took a
mickey out of the Russians. \ldblquote Great Satan, Russian, Go Home
...\rdblquote may have been the most common form of graffiti, but so
were slang phrases citing other countries and nationalities. \ldblquote
Do not mention the War,\rdblquote and \ldblquote Munich Treaty of
1938.\rdblquote \ldblquote Disappear like an Englishmen, \rdblquote is
a Czechoslovak equivalent of the English saying to take French leave.
Slogans{\cf1 could never convey adequately the deepest of our
experiences, but that was no reason we should have stopped trying.
Clearly, life was not fair. But within the essential paradox, slogans
found room for humor as well as pathos. It was often written that th e
Munich Treaty was the longest suicide note in history. \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar To anyone not born to dairy farming, the dairy
farming of Tatra Moun tain was almost frightning. My auntie Zofka and
uncle Gustav who lived down the street were up before dawn, rain, snow,
shine, milk a couple of hundred cows, put them out to pasture and,
about 3 pm, round them back. In the meantime there is cleaning to be
done, calves attended to, paddocks to be ploughed, stock feed to be
prepared and tractor and machinery maintained. \par \par When you visit
Vrbov, the summer sun tends to change people\rquote s priorities. On
hot days a queue would form quickly outside the local icecream store.
Slovaks love icecream. Icecream licking is contegious. The square place
around {\i mliekaren} (milk shop) becomes a haven for promenading as
women come out to sew, children swung on trees limbs and babies jiggled
in their prams. On hot day the area around Cierny Potok ({\i Black
Creek} ) and the Protestant church is animated by the street vegetable
market. The green waterway overhung with shade trees accommodated
sunbathing grandmothers, groups of young men playing cards and children
steering with sticks miniat ure boats in the shallow creek. \par \par
By evening, the streets would be jammed with cows and {\f4 villages
}{\f4\cf1 on frail legs}{\f4 would be} heading for the evening church
service{\f4 . }{\f4\cf1 A place were children and elders became caught
in a reverie full of mystery and possiblity of answers to impossible
questions.}{\f4 Inside the church the c}{\f4\cf1 andlelight danced and
danced on the butter-snow, stark walls that contrasted drastically with
rainbow colours of the stained glass windows. }{\f4 The visitors would
find it hard to accept that history and mystery abound in the small
contorted streets} skirting the village church and cemetery. Together
with the pine forests, wheat and potato fields, the narrow hillside
streets form a community of living around one of the dead. \par \par In
the evening boys demonstrated a village larrikinism that I was quickly
infected by and pursued on a regular basis. One summer evening, using
my Tato's superglue, we stuck a {\i koruna} (crown) to the sidewalk
that led to the Mayor's administrative building ({\i radnica}). We knew
it was old curr ency called haler, but the communists working in the
buildings, made an amusing sight trying to pick it up. We watched one
visiting communist official whacking at it with an umbrella for about
three minutes, and cursing it thoroughly. This was one of the oldest
tricks in the book. Few communists or even Americans realise that the
dollar was named after the ancient Czechoslovak currency: the mighty
haler. \par \par A newer trick could have been tried the next day. Once
older boys stuck an official notice on the town hall building saying
that on such and such a day, the Czechoslovak telephone bureau would be
'blowing dust out of the phone lines' and that all phone owners should
cover their phones with a bag to catch the dust. It worked! The mayor's
secretary marched t o the local shop asking what sort of bag she should
use! Ah, the innocence of our criminality. \par \par My friends and I
developed an addiction to games. We played a spy game whenever we
could. We stood behind a tree and counted to hundred. Then the first
person wh o passed us, we follow wherever they went. The idea was to
follow them without them noticing us. Girls seemed to walk home to make
bead necklaces and bangles. Women seemed to spent hours decorating the
church, shopping, sawing, cooking and walking around the house with a
mop. We spent hours watching men doing the strangest things in the most
strangest places. We saw primitive Slovak paintings in reds, browns,
yellows, orange, gold, azure, in the fields where tadpoles became
frogs. Was the pond half full o r half dry? A dynamic world contacted
our greater selves, making us see the world in a parabolic bowl. The
towering sunflower saw a million starbursts of a boy kissing a girl. I
was glad that I could never play any of the hugging and kissing games.
I was gl ad I could never fall so low from grace through weakness of
character! \par \par \par \pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar One day I
suddenly realised that I was also changing into an odd kind of
stranger. I no longer viewed the world through child-like eyes. I
realised then that things were rarely what th ey seemed and that I
could never again be sure of what was what any more. My cousin Gejzo
showed me a bathing-beauty card. My eyeballs popped out as this young
beauty seemed to wear a bikini one second, and the next, appeared stark
naked. I hummed with or iginal questions, but I was laughed at when I
attacked the topic. How could a triangle of autumn-leaf-color hair make
the body become such an amorous landscape? Sex and the reality of the
Iron Curtain seemed to be taboos veiled in absolute silence. Girls and
the Iron Curtains were like a wall of wet paint and all the signs said,
\ldblquote Don\rquote t Touch.\rdblquote \par \par {\f4\cf1 My
playmates who happened to have pretty sisters or mothers were always
first on my list to visit at Easter. }{\f4 Easter Monday remains the
stuff of legend }{\f4\cf1 and psalm tunes}{\f4 . I} will remember them,
but the day I first whipped a certain girl more than others. The day
when boys and men men may not only touch but as part of the pagan
fertility rite they must whip females with plaited switches. As boys,
we used to patrol the stre ets armed with whips and buckets of water
and if we caught a girl in a street we dunked her in ponds. This
ceremony was supposed to endow them with the gift of everlasting youth.
In return, girls presented us with decorated hen\rquote s eggs. Easter
{ \f4\cf1 gave me a sense of the mysterious anxieties of the male
psyche, something I urgently wanted to understand.} \par \pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par The guiding principle on sex in my family
was Catholic discretion. We young boys thought we knew a great deal
about sex, most of it wrong as it turned out, much of it extrapolated
from the behaviour of sheep, horses, dogs and poultry. Seeing nature in
the raw can be corrupting. Vrbov pigeons were very obviously not
saints. Indeed, they valued our leftover school lunches as highly as
sex. Though we knew regular pe ople in the town had children, they
could not have anything called sex. We all held a deep, dark suspicion
that somebody somewhere was having fun but it was not till much later
did we find that out for ourselves. Even then, ignoring the female
chest was a s easy as falling off the tree and not hitting the ground.
Our stolen glances confirmed the fact that Slovak boys never get
weaned. Any girl who was five years older than us was like a quarter of
a century in adult years. \par \par Somehow at the age of nine, we knew
that women chat or love, men hunt or lust. that women were softer,
sweeter, that sort of thing. Pale on the outside, glowing within. The
more they hid it, the more we wanted to talk about it. Half-asleep for
the late ev ening, we would ask our parents, 'Bu t how are babies
actually made?', I would ask. 'I do not really know!' my embarrassed
Mamka would mumble. To stir the mystery, a rumour about a certain young
man in a neighbourhood village who he lost his right leg to a venereal
disease was doing rounds i n 1967. \par \par I can remember as a young
boy hearing the outrageous word sex in the churchyard and I knew it was
outrageous because of the ambiguous expressions on other boys\rquote
faces. Sex had been explained to me earnestly by older boys in medical
terms-and ' Sex is when a man put his thing in the woman's thing.' I
remember the days when I refused to believe the older boys who insisted
'Is too!' I argued 'Is not!' Like I was secure in a knowledge that
priests did not go to toilet, I was also certain that my Tato c ould
never do something so vile to my Mamka. The notion that my parents
might enjoy love-making made my thoughts very awkward and embarrassing.
A copy of Kama Sutra, buried behind the bibles, had a intrigue factor.
However, most ideas of sex positions and the numbers associated with
those positions were based on what I had read on toilet walls. Maths
would never be the same. The love for pictures and Tato\rquote s words,
\lquote as long as he reads, I don\rquote t care what he reads\rquote
helped me to internally justify all that guilt which came from the
collection of nerve endings responsible for contractions that lie at
the center of every culture. \par \par \pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar
There were countless morbid Catholic women who thought sex even within
marriage was evil. Even though, the bible implies that s{\f4\cf1 ex and
death are our original parents. For some of us, the only family we'll
ever have.} As eight year-olds, we were aware of some of the facts of
life, one of which was that there were men who liked women other than
their wives. That there were men who liked other men in addition to
their wives did not come to light until I went to college. A Red-light
district was not a communist zone that housed library with little red
books. \par \par {\f4 When I was a boy gypsies lived opposite the
school in a quarters which was cons idered a kind of red light district
or so my friends and I believed. The gypsie dreamer lived in run-down
cottages surrounded by their symbols three string violins, ruptures
armchairs next to broken windows, all kinds of things rusting in the
rotten sheds with only children standing. As children we were wicked to
almost everyone, but we saved the greatest mocking for gypsies. All my
childhood I could not help thinking that somehow gypsies, who were the
colour of the coal, were definitely people to avoid. Caste type of
feeling was so embedded in Slovak cultures that I accepted my
aninomisity as normal. Girls used to know where they were with gypsies.
As Gypsies knew how to harangue, badger, whistle, shout and call out:
\lquote cheer up, love,\rquote \lquote hello darling,\rquote or ooze
out \lquote hello sexy.\rquote \par \par The houses were gypsies lived
were dilapidated, set in grounds where weeds grew to a tremendous
height in order to entrap trespassing children. Rusted buckets that, in
various stages of disrepair, were scattered across the yard. It n ever
occurred to me that the houses were in disrepair and the garden
overgrown because for them happiness never equalled with tidyness or
because they lacked the means to maintain their homes: we invested
Gypsies with all kinds of evil intentions, and the n avoided them (with
fear in our hearts) as though we had actual experience of their evil.
Many gypsy stories generated an involuntary shudder. My school friends
and I would sit on wooden benches in front of the school facing the
gypsie quater and bitch a bout the aliens who did not care to come to
school. How they lied, making stories about their satanic powers. \par
\par I feel guilty, the way you feel when you bad-mouthed some limping
person walking in the street or the supermarket}{\f4\cf1 aisle and then
you realise they're syndromed in some way.}{\f4 The temptation to
justify one's unreasonable fears by claiming that they derive from a
dangerous reality is always with me. The division of the world into
indisputable good and unspeakable evil has the advantage of making it
psycho logically manageable: moral ambiguity unsettles me and makes me
uncomfortable. Gypsies, or their equivalents, have their uses,
especially when they are accused of crimes of which we ourselves are
guilty or which we might like to commit. What we felt about gypsies was
also true about the Russians. All Russians. \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar {\f4 \par Odd moral stories had a habit of
circulating in the playground. One story told of a Soviet passport
officer who was asked by his seven-year-old son to tell him what was
meant by a moral decision. After some thought he replied by giving an
example: \ldblquote If a Slovak gives me a bribe of1000 korun in a
brown envelope to stamp a visa in his passport for Austria I have to
make a moral decision. Do I tell your mother?\rdblquote \par \par Even
odder stories circulated at the Sunday school and cathetism classes.
Here Father Glatz taught us letters of the alphabet by linking each
letter with a biblical person or idea. It began with my sister Eva or
Adam\rquote s rib. If we were told in Genesis 1 that God created us
male and female in God\rquote s own image and if we saw a picture that
gave Catholic painters the opportunity to portray our first mother
without the leaf, on the very next page, we were told that Adam was
created from the dust of the earth. It was very uncomfortable to think
that Eve w as even less than a leaf. \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\f4 \par }{\f4\cf1 Father Glatz once went to
the test room of an iron factory in Poprad. At the factory the iron had
been tested to the limit, and marked with figures that showed its
breaking point. Some pieces had been twisted until they broke, an d the
strength of torsion was marked on them. Some had been stretched to the
breaking point and their tensile strength indicated. Some had been
compressed to the crushing point, and also marked. The master of the
iron mill knew just what these pieces of s teel would stand under
strain. He knew just what they would bear if placed in the great ship,
building, or bridge. He knew this because his testing room revealed it.
\par \par It is often so with God's children. God does not want us to
be like vases of glass or por celain. He would have us like these
toughened pieces of iron, able to bear twisting and crushing to the
uttermost without collapse. He wants us to be, not hothouse plants, but
storm-beaten oaks; not sand dunes driven with every gust of wind, but
granite r ocks withstanding the fiercest storms. To make us such God
needs to bring us into His testing room of suffering. \par \par Happy
are those who are\~ persecuted because they are good, for the Kingdom
of Heaven\~ is theirs. When you are reviled and persecuted and lied
about because you are my\~ followers--wonderful! Be happy about it! Be
very glad! For a tremendous reward awaits you up in heaven. Matthew
5:10-12}{\f4 \par }{\f4\cf1 \par Father Glatz also used to share with
us there is a fable about the way holuby (doves) got their wings at the
beginning. Holuby were first made without wings. Then God made the
wings and put them down before the wingless holuby and said to them,
"Come, tak e up these burdens and bear them." \par \par Holuby had
lovely plumage and sweet voices; they could sing, and their fea thers
leamed in the sunshine, but they could not soar in the air. They
hesitated at first when bidden to take up the burdens that lay at their
feet, but soon they obeyed, and taking up the wings in their beaks,
laid them on their shoulders to carry them. \par \par For a little
while the load seemed heavy and hard to bear, but presently, as they
went on carrying the burdens, folding them over their hearts, the wings
grew fast to their little bodies, and soon they discovered how to use
them, and were lifted by them up into the air--the weights became
wings. \par \par It is a parable. We are the wingless holuby. We look
at our burdens and heavy loads, and shrink from them; but as we lift
them and bind them about our hearts, they become wings. \par \par }In
the garden of alphabet there was one topic under letter \ldblquote
H\rdblquote that seemed extremely cruel to us little boys, but the
horrid girls in a class looked as if they were enjoying reading every
word about Herod\rquote s slaughter. The tree of alphabet usually ended
with a person whose name was so close to Eva Hlavackova\rquote s maiden
name, Imrich. Zimri\rquote s royal flames. Bible lacked the last word
in the Slovak albabet - Zh. So after the class our school director was
a good enough substitute. Zemba\rquote s, pronounced Zhemba, school was
like Spanish Inquisition! F ather Glatz knew that the communists taught
us about the dark side of the Roman church. {\f4\cf1 To Father Glatz
God's story was a romance. The entire Bible is God wooing man and
wanting a relationship with man. }At Zemba\rquote s school we learned
that Catholics were murderous bastards and one must never go to brutal
church. We were told that 1948 was the best thing for the Slovaks. If
Catholics were to return to power they would torture us in hideous
ways, mostly involving the rack, thumbscrews, boiling lead and whitehot
pincers, because unlike communists the Church was forbidden to shed
blood. The school trivialised gulags beyond recognition. My country,
more and more, treated our parents the way our parents treated us, as
chi ldren. I was about nine when the first time as I read a story about
Herord I saw my own situation, in some curious way reflected. \par {\f4
\par }{\f4\cf1 I don't remember not reading. My Mamka always said when
we were kids \lquote stop that racket and read a book.\rquote How many
times, as a child, have I recognized myself in someone else\rquote s
writing? I remember reading about a cockroach, an eagle, a dog,
}Winnetou,{\f4\cf1 a Santa Clause.}{\f4 \par \par I remember the shock
when I heard on a radio that it would take several generations of}
communist paradise to get rid of Christmas, Easter and all words that
rooted in the Bible. According to the program, studies have proven that
if a country has a religion, people will waste a great deal of time
thinking about God and celebrating countless holy days. The sound that
ran g deepest in the Slovak heart was not Skoda or May marches or even
Plsner beer, but Christmas, Easter and Pope. Indeed, it was the bible
that often gave communists a language for the inexpressible. Names and
words cropped up in the strangest places - New Ye ar speeches, when
communists described my country as the Garden of Paradise, 1st May
celebration, when the television announcer labelled each march being
bigger than Ben Hur, defections, when Martina Navratilova was refered
to as a Judas who escaped to a country of Sodoma and Gomorrah. \par
\par Now and then a day came along that made me want to say, \ldblquote
Every child should have honest parents like me.\rdblquote On my
parent\rquote s silver wedding anniversary Mamka confessed to Father
Glatz in front of everyone that there was a momen t in her life when
she said to Tato, \ldblquote I tell you, if it wasn\rquote t for the
children.\rdblquote They shared with us the painful days as well as the
funniest moments in their marriage. It was time to hear plenty of good
jokes. The stories were endless. Something about t wo kinds of people
rocky and sandy. Something about woman crying before the wedding and
the man after. Something about {\f4 spending half my life waiting for
her. She'll be late to her own funeral!} \ldblquote Wife, {\f4 if you
think Maria will do something, she will usually do something
else.\rdblquote }Something about Mamka singing: \ldblquote {\f4 You can
make anything work if you're both givers ...\rdblquote } \par \pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par Even before my first communion, Father
Glatz made me aware of the sense of the holy, \ldblquote {\f4\cf1 Call
in if you need me.\rdblquote } His sermons were the harvest of an
elegant selection of stories. Almost every child has had a similar
conversation with Father Glatz at some point between the ages of eight
and sixteen. This time Father Glatz didn\rquote t preach the
three-point outline of his sermon. He would hand us what he believed
life to be{\cf1 , \ldblquote I wish all people didn\rquote t get hurt
... This is how it is ... what are you going to do when you meet pain
and suffering and success? \rdblquote He wanted us to remember the two
best prayers he knew "God Help me, help me, help me," and "Thank you,
thank you, thank you." }One of the things I was told as a child never
to forget, and haven\rquote t, was that I am always carrying about
within myself kindness and unkindness, obedience and rebellion, trust
and fear, love and hate. \par \pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar \par \pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar {\cf1 Countless time Father Glatz would point
out that, "Each person carries in his heart a written record, as it
were, whereby his conscience accuses or defends him." \par } \par
Father Glatz had magic white hands and with the cleanest fingernails in
the world. His hands seemed to move with his soft lips. Those snowy
hands took great pleasure in shaping {\f4 metaphors of discovery and
revelation. Why did I admire his deep-well digging hands? His eyes
seemed to always enjoy a company of faces. What longings did his eyes
satisfy as they made their way down from the p ulpit? Each face was
studied. No face was off-limits to Father Glatz. He put his loving eyes
on every face just like God seemed to put his fingerprints on every
rock and tree. Father Glatz possessed a sense of indestructable wonder,
he forever studied the full moon, as he sat outside on his stone bench.
There had been times when he pulled all the children out of pews to run
to the churchyard to watch the rainbow. Twice I witnessed one of the
rarest sights in the sky: a full rainfow. Millions of raindrops each
producing one colour. \par \par As an alter boy, I enjoyed being
responsiblity o}{\f4\cf1 f the velvet-lined offering plates passed down
the pews on Sunday. The coins and buttons, rarely notes, sprinkled
there reflected how children were able to save a crown for the
charitable purpose of later buying themselves a block of chocolate in
the pub. \par \par }{\f4 From dust though art and unto dust though
shalt turn. This was a common refrain of my Catholic growing up,
affirmed each Ash Wednesday at the commencement of Lent. It} served to
rem ind us that we were born to sin. And would depart this world in
sin. Life\rquote s challenge was to die after having accumulated the
most good works on earth. Whatever happened in Vrbov was already
written in heaven. Holiness presented itself in the form of natu re and
symbols. The wedding bells stood for more than just two people kissing.
The vestments rustle during funerals had more important things to tell
than the cellophane wrappers on funeral flowers. Observing others when
they imagined themselves to be in private communion with their deeper
souls was the closest I could get to someone else\rquote s fears. \par
\par Father Glatz faithfully served my and my siblings\rquote childhood
church for over 35 years. How many sermons did he preach during that
time? At least seven thousand in his three different churches. I
probably hear d few hundred out of those. A story I heard over and over
again was a tale about a loving father. It is a story of amazing grace.
A father knows his son is an alcoholic, a womaniser, a thief, and a
gambler, but he welcomes his son home with open arms. Rea dy to forget
and forgive, if his son comes to his senses and comes home. \par \par
From Father Glatz\rquote s perspective {\cf1 the Christian message was
that God would help fathers or mothers; sons and daughters; brothers or
sisters bear up under anything. You would not escape tribulation or
suffering or defeat, but God would give you the grace to bear it with
dignity and courage. \par \par Who else could teach us} about the
bloody footnote to Christmas: the slaughter of the innocent children?
How the birth of new ruler threatened Herod\rquote s own tenure and the
stability of the society of Jerusalem: and how the removal of potential
threat solved both problems. The method of killing heirs to throne was
a time-honoured practice. To Father Glatz there was nothing new under
the sun. Stalin \rquote s solution was an excercise in realpolitics by
a ruthless communist. \par \par The church saw suffering and it
insisted something had to be done, but in the face of ideologically
driven machinery it could only watch the prophesies made by Virgin Mary
at Fatima in relation to the spread of communism fulfilled. {\f4\cf1
Everything that happens must happen: to you, to me, to the whole world.
}The utiopian substructure explained one of the strangest
characteristics of human nature under communism - the liquidation of
their own people. The moment the utopia proved impossibly unrealistic
in practice, the communists put the failure down to the unhealthy
elements, at fault on account of religion or class, and they than set
about purging millions of innocent people. As {\f4\cf1 Proverbs 16:9
tells us, \lquote A man's mind plans his way, but the Lord directs his
steps.\rquote } \par \par Under communism there was plenty of old
suffering, but less and less of the old pleasures that used to push
Slavs forward. This philosophy represented a threat to everything {\f4
Catholics believ ed in, beginning with a threat to jail teachers and
people in management positions who came to church. \par \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\f4\cf1 Yet in Father Glatz\rquote s sermons
the catholic suffering under communism was seen as one of the grandest
testimonies ever given by man to the moral government of God. The
sorrows of communist life was supposed to be the source of life's
enlargement. \par }{\f4 \par }{\f4\cf1 Father Glatz painted on 19 March
each year landscape of Egypt and description of what jail looked like
from the inside. He created character whose name was cele brated in
liquid terms in the pub that night. The he would tell us that it was in
jail that the iron curtain entered into Jozef\rquote s soul. For a long
time his soul only saw the glitter of the gold. The gold is but a
vision, a dream; the iron is an experience . The chain which unites me
to humanity must be an iron chain. That touch of nature which makes the
world akin is not joy, but sorrow; gold is partial, but iron is
universal. \par \~ \par Jozef\rquote s prison cell was the road to his
throne. The door of our prison-house, ou r police state, was a door
into the heart of the universe. God has enlarged Vrbov villagers by the
binding of sorrow's chain. If Jozef had not been Egypt's prisoner, he
had never been Egypt's governor. The iron chain about his feet ushered
in the golden c hain about his \par neck. \par \par The only gold or
winning Father Glatz was partial to was when Vrbov team won the soccer
competition. When it came to soccer or a game of cards Father Glatz
would fogo his religious principles. As an avid card player, Tato,
often compla ined to Mamka that Father Glatz was partial to taking
chances and not afraid of running a bluff when it came to raising the
stakes in a game of poker. Few people could compete with Father
Glatz\rquote s face as solemn as a hired mourner\rquote s expressions
at a wake. Even though he argued that the only side he could see God
taking was the side of the loser, the outcast, the prosecuted, the
powerless. There was no reference in scripture that suggested that
Vrbov must win soccer games. However, even Father Glatz had h is
weakneses. Boy, did our players get into trouble at confessionals when
they lost. The punishment of extra \lquote Marys\rquote and \lquote Our
Father in Heaven\rquote was aportioned in odd inflection of his voice
to the number of the goals given to the other team. A Slovak priest was
reluctant to see his parishioners to lose a soccer game to another
parish.}{\f4 \par \par Heavens made sure that my ten year old
conscience was in the church when Father Glatz made it known that he or
any other priest could not be blamed for my ignorance when I met my
Maker face to face. \ldblquote Please don\rquote t say, \lquote Oh God,
why did you make the evidence of your existence so insufficient?\rquote
\rdblquote \par \par }{\f4\cf1 Why does death have to happen? Sermon
after sermon, Father Glatz preached that ancient story from the Garden
of Eden. In almost shockingly straightforward language, it said we have
brought it on ourselves. Like Adam and Eve, we wanted to be like God -
we claimed to know what was good and what was evil, and then acted on
those short-sighted, self-serving revelations. We made ourselves out t
o be supermen. We decided that the pursuit of illicit pleasure involves
little or no risk - liver failure only happens to other people.
Supermen, we think ... like God.}{\f4 \par \par \par }{\f4\cf1 In
three-point sermons to answer where people and animals and birds and
trees came from, we heard about the Garden of Eden. To answer where all
the evil in the world came from, we heard about Adam and Eve and the
serpent. To answer why people speak so man y different languages, we
heard the tale of the tower of Babel. We learned all about St Augustine
and his confessions. Indeed, }{\f4 Father Glatz\rquote favourite quote,
aimed at non-believers came from St Augustine\rquote s Confessions. We
learned that l}{\f4\cf1 ife was a gift and we were too carry them on.
Father Glatz admited that he was not surprise that the heart swings
like a pendulum toward and then away from God. Toward and then away.
Nearer and then farther. Catholism is a religion of pendulums and
words. }{\f4 \par \par \ldblquote What was God doing before he made
heaven and earth? ... He was preparing hell for those who would pry
into such profound mysteries.\rdblquote \par \par }{\f4\cf1 Father
Glatz, being a rock climber in his youth, used to point out that our
lives were like a climb up a mountain-we start our eager, excited,
filled with goals and aspirations. Somewhere on the journey, however,
it seems that two things happen to us. We lose sight of our ultimate
goals when faced with the roots and trees and rocks in our path. They
become all-consuming. \par }{\cf1 \par }\pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar
{\cf1 Climbing\emdash like our lives\emdash is hard work. We get tired.
It's enough to simply put one foot in front of the o ther, to make it
from one step, to the next. It's enough to make it from home to school
to Tatranka dance rehersals or to dinner, to soccer, to bed.} \par \par
{\cf1 I love that old classic about the country preacher who announced
that his sermon the following Sunday would be about Noah and the Ark
and told the congregation the scripture reference ahead of time so they
might read it in preparation for worship. A coupl e of youngsters
noticed something interesting about the page layout of the story in the
church's Bibles so they slipped into the sanctuary during the week and
glued two pages of the pulpit copy together. Sunday came. The preacher
began to read his text. "Noah took himself a wife," he began, "and she
was..." He turned the page to continue, "...300 cubits long, 50 cubits
wide and 30 cubits high." The preacher paused for a moment with a
quizzical look on his face. Slowly he turned the page back and read it
silently then turned the page again and continued reading. Then he
looked up at the congregation and said, " I've been reading this old
Bible for close to 50 years, but there are some things that are still
hard to believe."} \par \par \ldblquote Give me a child until he or she
is seven,\rdblquote and \lquote \ldblquote Devil can quote scriptures
for his purposes.\rdblquote were Father Glatz\rquote s favourite
saying. {\cf1 Adam ate the forbidden fruit, then when confronted about
it, he came up with an excuse: "The woman whom you gave to be with me,
she gave me fruit from the tree, and I ate." Eve? What about it? "The
serpent tricked me, and I ate." }When I was ten, a{\cf1 ny excuse
seemed to be better than none}. How it was not my fault that my fingers
began to perfect the art of rescuing loose change from my Tato\rquote s
pocket, how my tongue excelled in double-dealing because my sisters
made me to, how my eyes only spied girls\rquote bedrooms because they
forgot to close the blind at night. \par \par The bible said \ldblquote
Ask and keep asking,\rdblquote and my shopping list of desires grew: a
bicycle, a tape recorder, a pair of denims, a Beatles\rquote LP, a kiss
from Sofia Loren, a hidden Slav smile just like Karel Gott (a Czech si
nger), a physique just like Sean Connery. \par \par Even greater than
the crush on Anka Semankova was one I had on Sofia Loren. She was
wonderful to me when I was growing up. There seem to be only two people
in my life who I find very hard to accept have experienced bowl
movements, one is Father Glatz and the other is Sofia Loren. \par \par
I had plenty of time to feel that I was special to her. My Lady,
Madonna Sofia, watched me in her spare time from the covers of
magazines and a black and white cinema poster in my bedroom. She sent
me thousand of smiles. Sofia\rquote s affections were not lost with me.
I loved the way her hair misbehaved. I loved her Italian Catholic body.
All the power of summer\rquote s sun and winter\rquote s frost were in
those dinner plate eyes. I never met any boy who did not love her.
Father Glatz did not say anything, but he must have had a soft spot for
the girl from Rome. Why else would he want to visit his Catholic
neighbour Karol Jozef Wotyla, who moved away from the glorious Tatra
Mountais, if not also to visit our Madonna? Somehow I could not imagine
any women characters in the bible casting a spell over Father Glatz. I
could imagine Sofia doing it. \par \par Crushes were something I should
not have confessed about. As alien as most of my sins were to Father
Glatz, he urged me that whatever it was that weighed on my minds all I
needed to say \lquote Palms Down.\rquote After several moments of
surrender to turn my palms up to receive peace from God. My greatest
concern, the nitty gritty of my everyday life, was of course Sofia
Loren. Li ke with most addicts I was the last to know that there were
limitations to my prayers of marrying Sofia in front of all my friends
and especially those who didn\rquote t like me. \par \par I remember
well one warm evening when Father Glatz sat on the stone bench in front
of his vicarage and watched us play soccer in the park. After Ferko
Hrebenak, my twelve year old neighbour, almost went under the wheels of
a truck when the ball steered to wards the road, he called us to sit on
the bench to tell us a story about a wise man. I am still discovering
the ways in which that story has shaped me. \par \par \ldblquote I will
have you hanged,\rdblquote said cruel and ignorant king who had heard
of a wise man\rquote s powers, \ldblquote if you don\rquote t prove you
are a mystic.\rquote \par \par \ldblquote I see strange
things,\rdblquote said the wise man at once, \ldblquote a golden bird
in the sky, demons under the earth.\rdblquote \par \par \ldblquote How
can you see through solid objects? How can you see far into the
sky?\rdblquote \par \par \ldblquote Fear is all you need.\rdblquote
\par \par {\cf1 It was not fear, however, that made me see through
solid things like roads and cars. When I was little whenever the
snowflakes came down I would often sight one big guy in a suit rushing
through the snow. With winter came Father Glatz\rquote s observations
that snowflakes were like fingerprints and Christmases, no two were
ever alike. Yet each Christmas one American editorial underpinned many
of his sermons. \par \par "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus." The
editorial was as current in 1966 when I was eight as it was in 1897,
when it was published in }{\i\cf1 The}{\cf1 (New York) }{\i\cf1
Sun.}{\cf1 "I am 8 years old. Some of m y little friends say there is
no Santa Claus. Papa says, 'If you see it in }{\i\cf1 The Sun,}{\cf1
it's so.' Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?" \par \par
When I was older I heard Tato once teasing Father Glatz, \ldblquote
Father, if you see it in }{\i\cf1 Pravda,}{\cf1 it's not so."} \par
\par Father Glatz was well-disposed to explain how God\rquote s love
and spirituality could be expressed through symbols. Saint Nicholas,
the Slovak equivalent of Santa Clause, stood for the gift of giving and
receiving. His gifts were of spiritual kind there were few ma terial
possessions in the fourth century. His eight reindeer are mystical
beasts. They use the power of thunder and lightning to dash and dance
about the earth at comet-like speed. \par \par Father Glatz measured
Chritmas by asking, \ldblquote Do you see more smiles than
usual?\rdblquote or \ldblquote Are people more at peace with
themselves?\rdblquote or \ldblquote Is there something special inside
you at this time of the year?\rdblquote There was something about
Father Glatz\rquote s voice when he quipped, \par \ldblquote Who are we
to say that Saint Nicholas, or any other saint, does not know how to
walk off the edge of the painting?\rdblquote He was so convincing that
I find it impossible to look at religious paintings without the shadow
of mystery. There are paintings of saints in Vrbov, Prague, Vienna,
Brisbane that have the power to leave me s peechless. His stories
created moments in my life when I felt part of a something larger. The
effect of some stories was that certain images were as clear as
physical touch. They made certain chemicals move through my heart. \par
\par Books at Father Glatz\rquote s library never went moldy.
He{\f4\cf1 looked for christian stories that would leave him crushed at
the end, books which produced a lump in his throat. In his books God
was a passionate lover, but passion can fuel anger. Like the folk
singer who wonders, "if I saw you, would I kiss you or wan t to kill
you on sight?" Many of his stories were filled with characters who
indulged in the ultimate risk of giving themselves to others over whom
they had no control. They were rejected. They were manipulated,
cheated, or used. Still , God commanded them to trust, to love even
their enemies, who were indeed likely to reject and use them in return.
}{\f4 I} can\rquote t remember the words he liked to used at Easter
time, but they could have easily come from {\i The Velveeteen Rabbit}.
\par \par {\i When someone Really loves you you become Real. It
doesn\rquote t happen all at once. It takes a long time. Generally, by
the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your
eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But
these things don\rquote t matte r at all, because once you are Real you
can\rquote t be ugly except to people who don\rquote t understand.}
\par \par In Vrbov Father Glatz\rquote s middle name was \lquote
comforter.\rquote {\f4\cf1 He explained how much our wholeness depended
on someone outside ourselves. }{\f4 He} had an ability to hear wider,
to see deeper, feel louder. He had the power to draw us happy and sad.
Who else could have smoothed rituals which initiated people into each
successive passage of life, from baptism, through the first communion
and the confi rmation, to marriage and death? \par \par A day unlike
another was 15 July 1968. A day that God moved a mountain jam-packed
with chemicals through my heart and shook the Vrbov\rquote s
foundations. \par \par Vrbov was unusually bright and exotic, deep in
sultry July sun of summer holidays, well above 30 degrees. Hills of
potatoes, wheat, grass and insects seemed an ideal open air theatre, as
the sculptural shapes of stems caught the light. Just outside the vi
llage, many families focused their energy on hay fields. The hay
hillslopes looked like combed, tightly braided bride\rquote s hairdos,
but in purple green, cut by rows of meadows. \par \par Opposite our
honey-coloured timber verandah and the huge outdoor cross, Aga and I
were just passing the time of the day, helping Mamka dry the newly mown
grass of our meadow. The raking, flower picking, dreaming, bee and bird
watching had been going on f or hours. If the flies did not sit on our
eyelids, their buzzing was bursting our eardrums. \par \par As the
afternoon crept greyly over my shorts caked in green slime, Mamka was
carving the earth with a silent shovel and Tato was carving church pews
with a screaming electric saw. \par \par I was lost in my dreams: of
turning obscure girls into frogs, my fantasy of flying, and my fear of
death. Until the black Polish clouds met the Slovak side of High Tatra
and began to snort soft thunder. All the sun\rquote s warmth left the
air, strange odour came from the grass. Then the sky opened. A violent
storm started. The thunder had taken on a nasal quality. By the time we
reached our doorstep, only a few metres away, rai ndrops drenched every
inch of our clothes and mud was on our shoes. Pelting big splatters
against the windows of our verandah continued for a long time. \par
\par Taken aback, Aga and I crouched down inside, eyeing the
lightning-covered sky with awe. Was anything more frightening than
thunderstorm? Maybe death. There was nothing more soothing than leaning
against your sister watching rain from a comfortable rug. Th e soaked
window boxes filled with black soil and geranium drew running rivers on
our cream walls outsi de. Distorted flies and mosquitos tested the
windows as condensation cried down the glass disfiguring every object
outside. Exquisite drops of rain appeared on our golden-green
gooseberries speckled with veins. Redcurrants looked like tiny jewels.
Among f ive of us, we ate two loaves of bread and drank a good quantity
of leftover butter milk that afternoon. Mamka had few words to me and
Tato about me wearing{\cf1 part of a hollowed-out loaf like a boxing
glove.} The spirit of Zummer's bread overwhelmed the scent of moist
wooden walls of the verandah and fermented damp grass on our shoes.
Later my family stained the lips and tongues with blackberries. Of
course, adults used communion cups, small wine glasses, and filled them
with any one of the variety of berry fr uit coloured wine from white
grape to strawberry-peach. God wept for the full hour. \par {\f4 \par
}{\f4\cf1 I found that he enjoyed the carpenter\rquote s life. Sitting
on a chair crafted by my Tato and listening to his stories inside the
verandah he built with his own hands. I was beg inning to know all the
people that he knew at work, in church, even his childhood. I could
imagine sitting on the chair listening to my Tato for the rest of my
life.} I was a bit sad when it {\f4 stopped raining as Tato moved back
to his workshop. }{ \f4\cf1 Everyone knew that if Jozef Imrich promised
a job will be done on time, it would be, for he was a man of his word,
as dependable as he was kind, the sort of individual who never
disappeared with the last ten percent of a project left undone, windows
left unvanished, for instance, or closet doors unhung.}{\f4 \par } \par
The pale clear sunshine lay like moss on a sloppy surface which
stretched from the garden to the lane. When Tato opened the window, the
juicy scent of spring grass was very powerful. Then I noticed two
drenched figures covered in muddy shoes coming back f rom the fields.
The storm caught them out in the fields long way from the village and
there they wasted the entire afternoon. However at least they had
returned alive. They brought with them sad news - Magda Hrebenarova ,
our neighbour, had been struck by lightning. \par \pard
\sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\f4 \par The church bell brought the news of
Magda's death at twilight. Silence entered our house. And tears
returned to hundreds of red and swollen eyes. A sudden }{\f4\cf1 fog
was sweeping over the wall of the church, devouring the lights behind
the stainedglass windows. Nine out of ten villagers went into the
impromptu evening service.}{\f4 The children\rquote s section was
calm}{\f4\cf1 , like a full cemetery. \par \par }{\f4 The steely
Slovaks recognise the inevitability of death, but in a case of a young
mother a sharp spear cleft through villagers' chests. Slovaks view
death in simple} terms as a physical process to be planned and managed.
Our ritualistic culture, where cemeteries are like parks and where the
survivors tend daily the grave, was shocked at the unexpected event,
one of their fellows taken by the cruel forces of nature. M uch later I
would reflect that maybe this is preferable than the crueller forces of
man. \par \pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par It was hard to imagine
that my Mamka would never again exchange with our neighbour Magda:
\lquote \ldblquote Anything you need, just sing out.\rdblquote For
months we felt the veil that dropped on our neighbour\rquote s house.
After all, here was a close Slovak family and neighbours, where a loss
was mourned for at least a year. \par \par Inside the
temperature-controlled Gothic church, the air was painfully cold like
that of a wine cellar. The Catholic church of St Servac is normally a
spacious building of cream sandstone, with lofty, decorated inte rior.
The previous yellow paint job seeps through in tawny spots. The tawny
spots and creamy dust smell of time. The time of struggle between birth
and death. On that Saturday afternoon members of the Catholic community
crammed into the sacred place to pa y respect to one of their local
daughters, Magda Hrebenarova. The pallbearers entered through the
ancient wooden door, the procession walked passed the offertory box and
placed the coffin in front of altar steps. Opposite a stained glass
window dedicated to St Cecilia, the patron saint of music, bronze
candles flickered in the northerly breeze and from the echo of the
powerful Hildergard's chants. All around were explosions of weeping,
the tears for Janko her husband, Pavel the oldest son, Ferko, and Ondr
ej the youngest. \par \par \pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar That day the
children\rquote s section was frozen. No wiggles and giggles over Mr
Rambacher\rquote s well-known broken Slovakian or over Mrs
Zummerova\rquote s high pitch singing voice. At the core of the service
was a sense of communal grief where several bodies functioned as one
mind. The children had the time to think {\cf1 "Good Lord, this could
have been my mother," or "Alas, my mother was the same age as auntie
Magda." Not one child held up five fingers close to his or her chest.
But that did not mean that none of us had to go to the toilet. Even
after the service, no one compared notes who had cried best. \par \par
}{\f4 After we left the cemetery, I couldn't speak for a day. There was
nothing I could say. For the life of me, I just did not understand
death. For months, I did not play among the gravestone or climbed any
trees in the cemetery.}{\cf1 \par }\pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par
The funeral formed indelible impressions in a my mind. The event is
still so vivid that I feel like weeping, but I manage to control my
tears and wonder what events will so impress on my own children's
delicate minds. Will they have reverence for life and death, for
rituals, for the sanctity of peace ... it is such a different world
that they and I live now, a far cry from Vrbov and village life. \par
\par But, I can still hear Father Glatz\rquote s words at Magda\rquote
s funeral, \ldblquote If the man dies, will he live again?\rdblquote
That was Job\rquote s question. And this was Job\rquote s answer.
\ldblquote Naked I came from my mother\rquote s womb, and naked I will
depart. The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away; may the name of Lord
be praised." \par \par There was much more for me to learn following
Magda's death. The local tragedy was soon eclipsed by those involved in
the national fervour for change. Political forces, increasing the
stranglehold of communism, made my generation a rebellious one, and o
ne not willing to suffer submissively as our parents had done. {\f4
Magda}{\f4\cf1 death foretold the horror of the coming days.} \par \par
Prague Spring \par \par {\f4 When Kubrick's film came out in 1968, the
year of Odyssey 2001, seemed as distant to me as the second
coming}{\f4\cf1 . I was 10 and I can recall reflecting that I would be
43 when it finally arrived - unthinkably old. \par \par }In 1968, the
year of the unthinkably old flower child, mass student rebellions
flared almost simultaneously - for different reasons - in Madrid, Rome,
Belgrade, Warsaw, London, Berlin, Paris, Prague, Tokyo and Mexico City.
{\cf1 The entire world appeaed to be plagued by a sense of ennui and
futility.} Despite all the differences in their national situations and
the regimes they faced, they saw their struggle as one. They dreamed
utopian dreams-of a free society run by workers, where there would be
no great divisions between rich or poor, where war and violence would
evaporate, and where nothing any questions could be asked. \par \par
Those who regularly eavesdropped on Radio Free Europe, l ike my Tato,
were perhaps surprised to hear President Johnson's strategy of
'building bridges' in August 1968: 'One great goal of a united West is
to heal the wound in Europe, which now cuts East and West and brother
from brother ... We must turn to one o f the great unfinished tasks of
our generation- and that ... is making Europe whole again.' These words
proved to be empty promises as when the struggle began the West refused
to lend a helping hand to my countrymen to make a 'whole' Europe. Never
had the C zechoslovak radio so many foreign correspondents swearing on
the stack of bibles that western assistance would assure that the
repressive Russian occupation of Czechoslovakia did not take place.
Foreign correspondents refused to believe that Russia would be crazy
enough to repeat Hungary of 1956. \par \par The flocks of blackbirds
that soared and wheeled above Vrbov seemed like an alarming omen on
that day of the invasion. The raven is the first bird to be named in
Genesis: Noahs dispatched a raven from the arch to see if the flood had
abated but the bird went to and fro without returning. The black
plumage serves to reinforce their association with death. The
blackbirds would enthrone themselves on weeping willows and telephone
wires above the Black Creek. \par {\f4 \par How can esctasy in mid
afternoon shade into despair by dusk? There was no warning. Most of the
mountains surrounding Vrbov disappeared into the oppressive silver gray
clouds that clung like the Russian flag over the Mayor\rquote s
windows.\~ When the enormity of what happened to my country hit as hard
as the tanks had minutes before, Czechoslovakia} became just a real
estate, a place where Russians parked their tanks and {\f4 aeroflots.
This was the night when even my Tato\rquote s face screwed up into a
knot. \par \par }\pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar The night the Russians
invaded in 1968 is a night that I will remember with horror to this
day{\f4 . Nearly every summer in High Tatra you can hear thunder. Our
national anthem is based on that summer thunder. If the thunder}
heralds rain, Slovak farmers a re on the verge of happiness. But that
night the sounds were those of the storm clouds of rape. That night a
roar emanated from the rocky hills echoing upwards and in the heart of
every Czechoslovak. The source of the thunder was not God but the devil
met al of tanks. Throughout the night and into the day, the roar shook
the windows of empty homes as hundreds of vigilant villagers surged
forth and back across the market square, looking for information and
comfort from their fellow villagers. The High Tatra Mountains, my
mountains, became a busy flight path. \par \pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par {\f4\cf1 No event is so utterly
immediate, so nakedly emotional, as an act of invasion. Suddenly planes
roar above your house. The instant assault - on one's nerves, on one's
sense of justice - remains whether you're on the front line or watching
from afar. } The deadly bullets fired in Prague did more than kill or
injure a few demonstrators. They reverberated through every living soul
in Czechoslovakia. Dreams were falling like dominos. The whole world
for us went m ad. It was the beginning of the end. That much was
obvious{\f4 . The Great Czechoslovak dream shattered into a hundred
pieces. \par \par }The first many Czechoslovaks knew of the invasion
was from one of the announcers at the headquarters of Prague Radio:
\par \par \lquote FRIENDS, I THINK THESE WILL SOON BE THE LAST WORDS
YOU WILL HEAR FROM US.\rquote \par \par {\f4\cf1 Suddenly, the minute
after this comment, an entire generation realized it wasn't merely
afraid, or a little anxious. It was paranoid.}{\cf1 Was anybody out
there to help us? Anybody at all, France, G ermany, US, maybe the Great
Britain? For years, and years of communism, }{\f4\cf1 Czechoslovaks
managed to contain their paranoia on the interpersonal level, their
imagined lovers were cheating on them, co-workers were spying or
plotting against us, people on the bus were looking at them strangely
and so on. Fear is a self-preserving i nstinct useful in helping people
escape from marauding bears or co-workers. }{\f4 Even as explosions
rocked Prague underground leaders remained defiant and said they would
fight to the last breath.}{\f4\cf1 \par \par But the Russian bear
brought with them a super slogan: CONSPIRACY, in which the most
intriguing scenarios were implemented by dark-hearted, spying
organizations. Many sets of initials became universally recognizable
during the twentieth century from SS to FBI to CIA. But everyone knew
the KGB. Even the baker, uncle Zummer, would joke}{\cf1 , "I'm not one
to believe that I am on the famous \lquote enemy list,\rquote but
}{\f4\cf1 I hope I am important enough that KGB is out to get me}{\cf1
\rdblquote } \par \par \pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar The reality of
KGB blew away my childhood castles in the air. Until the false spring,
{\cf1 I }{\f4\cf1 vaguely knew about the nuclear thing.}{\f4 In the
middle of the unfolding drama, the invasion seemed to be inside me. And
no aspect of life, I felt no matter how trivial, could be normal again.
I was scared, but tears were not an option. I will never forget the
noises I heard on that August night , cracking noises that rumbled like
electrical thunder. I felt my bed trembling, the walls shaking. The
roar was rolling down the road behind the cemetery, the road which swep
t past our meadow was choked with khaki-crawling, jolting vehicles,
including tanks. No less than 50,000 Warsaw Pact troops passed through
the village that night and the following day. \par }{\f4\cf1 \par There
was almost no choice but to keep standing in the street, partly because
there was a safety in numbers, partly because it seemed to take
repeated exclaiming, "Oh my God." for the horror of it to sink in. It
couldn't be real. Every sound was cause for alarm. Each sound was
making the nation feeling more vulnerable and victimized than any
single day since Hitler\rquote s invasion fifty years before in 1938.
Like during the second world war, everyone flinched when planes went
overhead, and everyone started stockpiling. \par \par The horror
arrived in episodic bursts of chilling disbelief signified by trembling
voices on the radio. My cousins\rquote wives, Viera and Sylvia, who
once wouldn't speak to one another cried in each other's arms. Everyone
started preparing for somethi ng, but didn't quite know what. Perhaps
the loudest lingering question was "Why would this happen?" }{\f4 \par
\par On 21 August 1968, no one imagined that those troops would
continue to patrol the village for the next 21 years trying to put the
genie back in the bottle. Many times over the years, I have tried to
replay that August day in my mind. At best, the three se vens are dim,
mixed with symbols of death and confusing recollection. }{\f4\cf1
Suddenly, I found it harder to be very trusting, to reach out to
people, wanting to be close to people. It was not a dream that Russian
bears stepped beyond their border and shots were fired at my
countrymen. And then there was Bobbie Fischer, chess master saying
that, "Communism was a mask for Bolshevism, which is a mask for
Judaism. \rquote }{\f4 \par \par }{\f4\cf1 As the day unfolded, t}{\f4
he black birds rose and fell on surges of sound, while The London Times
wrote headlines that screamed 'A Savage Challenge to D\'8etente:'
}{\f4\cf1 Czechoslovak independence was the great international liberal
cause of the day. Some newspapers claimed to have a presentiment that
one day this small country will astonish world.}{\f4 \par \par
\ldblquote A few hours after it happened, the Czechoslovaks staged a
haunting protest. They froze. Whenever they were, at work or in the
streets, they stood still in a silent outcry against the invaders. When
news spread of what the Russians had done, the world, to o, froze for
an instant.\rdblquote \par \par From this moment on, the whole of
Czechoslovakia appeared to become tuned to the Radio Free Europe.
Headlines of papers and the wireless often repor ted the opposite. The
State-owned paper said: Czechoslovakia liberated. Liberated again.
Radio Free Europe said: \ldblquote Czechoslovakia raped.\rdblquote
Raped in a snap. Rape is a crime of power, not passion. August of 1968
reads like Shakespearian plot. Bloody vendetta, power struggle and a
dull acceptance of rape. Slavs have many words for rape and every time
we say rape we cry a little. For the memory of rape lasts much longer
than rape itself and hurt as much. Some boys}{\f4\cf1 somewhere deep in
their heart, longed for a catastrophe like this and somehow imagined,
while panting up the hill in the churchyard that they were sneaking
away from their parents to join some partisans in the forest.}{\f4 Some
boys }{\f4\cf1 wet themselves wherever they happened to be. Fear grew
and grew in many hearts. \par \par For several hours, the decibel level
of excitement in children voices matched the distress on our parents'
faces and the strength of our parents' grips on our little hands.
Yesterday, parents were concerned with small things: how to buy the
next pair o f shoes or save for a trip to High Tatra. Today, every
parent was too shocked to worry about your marks at school. Everyone,
everywhere, was trying to reach everyone, everywhere. The public
outpouring of grief here dwarfed anything evoked by funerals in Vrbov.
On street corners families and neighbours mostly huddled and hugged.
Some shared tales of reassurance, others shared their fear. There was a
weird sense of unreality about the whole thing. The full enormity of
what had happened soon sank in. When two boys erupted in raucous
laughter as they pulled faces immitating their parents\rquote
expressions the effect was like someone farting or playing a saxafon in
church. Thse two boys had lost not just the freedom to laugh but the
peace of innocent minds. Their loss of innocence was also the
world\rquote s. \par \par It is evening in the village. The last
tractor had rattled down the road, the rooks were screeching and
wheeling above their tall poplar trees. Most people saw only those
tractors or busses that were going to run over them in the next minute
if they don't pay attention.\~ No one paid attention to the lavender
sky. Behind the coal-black hill the sun set in ocherous splendour and I
could scarcely believe my childish hope that this could never happen to
me. Because I was n ot a boy who wets himself, and because I wanted to
believe that Vrbov ten-year olds did not even cry. I have never told
anyone about the day when I and my friends Tono and I cried as we sat
on a park bench. I cannot find the right words how on a evening o f the
invasion our parent seemed to be frightened of every shadow in the
dusk. I cannot show how my Tato was also pushing himself through the
line to put his hands on the few remaining bags of flour. I cannot tell
what my Mamka felt all I know is that at t his time of life preferences
towards freedom and capitalism and antipathies towards communism were
easily implanted, and grew to be ineradicable moral sentiments. In the
church that night, even Father Glatz was not exactly sure what emotions
he was feelin g. \par \par }{\f4 In my books, Lennon did beat Lenin.
Maybe I didn't know much about Lennon yet, but I could tell on some
level that I was entering an underground world that played neatly into
boyhood fantasies I had developed reading Kafka on the bankc of the
Black Creek. }{\f4\cf1 \par \par For the first time in their life many
teenagers were exposed to quotes in samizdat magazines about altruism
and heroism. If not for these twin radiant badges of our humanity,
there would be no us, and we know it. John Stuart Mill also knew it,
"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and
degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing
is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is
willing to fight; nothing he cares about more than his own personal
safety; is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless
made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." \par
\par }{\f4 For the first time in my life our baker Zummer did not
bother to produce the smell of freshly baked. He even failed }{\f4\cf1
to lit a fire. }{\f4 The smell of his chimney was replaced with tar. As
the morning ticked along, the smell was even stronger after the tanks
disturbed the warm surface of the road. Parents walking on melting tar
roads with umbrellas on this sunny day went unnoticed. We lear ned
first hand about the truth of Dostoevski\rquote s statement that
defined man as a being who can get used to anything. After all, man is
that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz less than 100 km
away from Vrbov, but he was al so that being who entered those gas
chamber upright. Some people for the first time}{\f4\cf1 experienced a
fluid sense of spiritual communion. As people started to get a feeling
that they lived on a Titanic, a spiritual life came to be lived
underground under the iceberg. Once underground activities were fought
on many fronts, as many agreed tha t inhuman act must not go
unpunished. \par \par What lesson did you hope to teach us by your
coward's attack on our country? \par \par What was it you hoped we
would learn?\~ Whatever it was, please know that you failed. \par \par
Did you want us to respect your cause?\~ You just damned your cause.
\par \par Did you want to make us fear?\~ You just steeled our resolve.
\par \par Did you want to tear us apart?\~ You just brought us together
in our velvet underground. \par \par Russians were like fish that hated
the very sea in which they swam, the vodka that bore a grudge against
the decanter: Decanting from liberators to traitors. \par \par The many
ways people found courage and others came together to help one another
may be the only redeemi ng factor of this horrible rape. All
Czechoslovaks needed love, care, prayer and their own personal ways of
showing defiance and that they would not accept defeat. The invasion
was an attack on Czechoslovak values and dreams. The values on which
many nati ons were founded: political and economic freedom, liberty,
self-determination, the democratic will of the people, resistance to
tyranny. \par The qualities that comprise a way of life many of us have
chosen: freedom, opportunity, \par prosperity, optimism, community,
justice, religion, energy, achievement, fun.}{\f4 \par \par }{\f4\cf1
The event which made the big Russian bear snap and tear our roads and
hearts was the publication of the so called 2000 Words Statement on 27
June 1968. The document, written by Ludvik Vaculik, himself a communist
party member, called for deepening of the political reforms even at the
cost of jeopardising the leading role of the Communist Party. The
material, which expressed the fear of a slow-down of the
democratisation process was published in several newspape rs and
addressed to entire nation. It analysed the decline and decay of the
past twenty years, and the betrayal by the Communist party of trust it
enjoyed after the Second World War. It is not important in communism,
how things really were, but it was imp ortant what they seemed to be to
the public and that was controlled by the media. It encouraged the
nation not to rely on reforms from the top, but to actively enforce
them at the local and regional levels. It also acknowledged the threat
to the democrati sation process by foreign forces, in particular the
joint-army training of the Warsaw pact armies held quite coincidentally
in mid-May. \par \par }{\f4 We saw the photographs in }{\i\f4
Pravda}{\f4 (Truth) and followed events in the daily paper. We listened
to broadcast speeches. None of that was the real revolution. Having
known a family whose uncle was shot dead by one of the Brezhnev's
bullets was real. }{\f4\cf1 Many years ago a Chinese theorist said:
"Kill one, frighten 10,000." The most horrid thought of all finally
dawned on everyone: no one was safe. \par \par Czechs and Slovaks are
slow to anger but robust when angry. Czechoslovakia became the target
because of its virtues. Principally democracy and freedom.}{\f4 \par
}{\f4\cf1 \par My Tato had developed a habit of listening to Radio Free
Europe. The need for truthful information was felt almost like a
physical need such as hunger or thirst. Time was thought of as either
when the Radio Free Europe was on the air or off. This special sense of
time persisted even at moments of great stress, emotional shock or
illness. I never forget when an announcer with a slight accent said,
\ldblquote In some ways the invasion set Czechoslovakia free. Now it
owes Russia nothing.\rdblquote }{\f4 \ldblquote How have you
been?\rdblquote foreigners asked. \ldblquote Fine,\rdblquote my country
said. At death\rquote s door, in the grip of a black depression,
Czechoslovakia always said fine. We had to pay the price for the new
found freedom. It was like being engaged to freedom and three days
before the wedding you get dumped. \par \par }{\f4\cf1 My nation that
has been betrayed many times. It has lost its innocence many times, but
this was a period to discover all over again that the country still had
something left to lose. \par \par Spots of tank oil were spreading in
the puddle everywhere. In the puddle, I saw, squirrels moving, the
street moving, and people moving in the street; and I neighbours with
bags under the eyes and the whole mad world moving. My new universe was
there in t hat little pool. My universe had an aghast change of heart
on 21 August 1968. \par }{\f4 \par }{\f4\cf1 My old world was a typical
Slovak universe: dinner at seven, animals fed, dishes washed up and
children in bed by nine. In the Dubcek\rquote s Vrbov, where squirrels
ate handouts impudently above park benches, squirrel hunting seemed
like poor sport even to us children. In the Russian\rquote s Vrbov
squirrels knew the me aning of fear. They leaped to the tree at the
first sign of movement. They }{\i\f4\cf1 baaaaaed}{\f4\cf1 to one
another like lambs on speed, sounding the alarm. They flattened their
bodies against trees, rotating slowly to keep the trunk between them
and the hunter, or just dive into the nearest knothole. \par }{\f4 \par
The churches were full for weeks and no one forgot they were alive
there. The invasion made people realise the lesson of history which
proved that to win a war was only to win untill the next battle. It
made me realise the impact of crises on the human so ul. All that
mattered was God and Dubcek. }{\f4\cf1 No one exhibited impatience and
none showed any inclination to leave. }{\f4 Parents}{\f4\cf1 did not
want to be alone just with their children. There was be a return to the
mood of the Second World Wa r, remembered popularly as a time of
neighbourly closeness. \par \par Parents stood in small knots outside
the church, pub, general store or cinema in various stages of dress and
undress and watched with unbelieving eyes the Russian tanks roar past.
Mothers, some in see-through gowns, were wondering how they would
explain t he inexplicable to the innocent children. Parents had never
appreciated a hug so much in their lives. The most independent
10-year-old was suddenly experiencing an intense sense of vulnerability
checking with his parents whether it was fine by them if he played with
friends for 10 minutes. Mothers waited until they nade it to the
nearest pillow to hide their tears.\~ \par }{\f4 \par Every cutting of
Dubcek\rquote s comments in underground newspapers went in a shop
window so the people in queues were kept up to date. While the
Czechoslovakian station called on the population to remain calm, go to
work, and send children to school as usual, e very one sensed war
mentality in the air and as soon as shops opened, panic buyin g and
preparation for war began. Hundreds of pigeons shared the same sense of
panic as a matter of right with the people in long lines. In towns all
over the country shopping often seemed more akin to performing
interpretive line dance. In these lines for consumer dancing some
people came to}{\f4\cf1 know the value of literature, the value of "a
line of words."}{\f4 As there was demand for shoes and God, there was
alos demand for the }{\f4\cf1 merchants of hope, writers and their
books. P}{\f4 eople also talked about }{\f4\cf1 Havel who made my
village see that the theatre of the absurd and laughter was the
currency of hope.\~ While Solzhenitsyn made everyone see the dark side
of communism, that inner evil that has the potential to manifest itself
in each and every one of our politicians.}{\f4 }{\f4\cf1 Communism
required that citizens under its rule must live within a lie. They need
not accept the lie. It is enough for them to have accepted their life
with it and in it. The villagers were ashamed to repeat that they
accepted the truth about the lie with a sense of shame. \par \par }{\f4
The demand for bread, flour, red paint, any slogan paint, created
legendary ever-lengthening queues snaking out and out. Curiosity lured
me to watch people standing in a line watching me watching them. I
think the most exciting thing ever was watching unb linking,
expressionless adults running to one line, then changing their mind and
move to the next line. Without question, I felt an odd lightness of
being when I realised that even the teachers were too busy lining up to
look at my homework. Males teachers who would never be seen in a
million years doing anything as digusting as copying some of the bad
habits of Slovak farmers could be observed in public places involved
in}{\f4\cf1 a liberal quantity of nosepickings.}{\f4 \par \par Having
considerable leisure on my hands I devoted it to observing uncommon
teacher behaviour in lines lived as a contest of wills. My eyes burnt
in their sockets like hot dumplings when I spied history teacher
Malinic exclaim, \ldblquote Will the milk be late again?\rdblquote And
I savoured one special moment-because, how often do you hear a neigbour
telling your sport teacher \ldblquote You are all fat, aren\rquote t
you ...\rdblquote The surest route to laughter is hearing the director
of my school shouting, \ldblquote Well, you cannot have both the toilet
paper and the money for the toilet paper.\rdblquote \ldblquote Stop,
stop laughing.\rdblquote \ldblquote Don\rquote t like this, not at all
...\rdblquote A volcanic resentment seemed to be deep inside each line
ready to erupt. No way anyone could be sure that any given line dancer
did not have a mad knife or crazy gun in his or her pocket. Yet, the
most terrifying thing about those lines was the fact that no matter how
hard they tried, they could never lose that sense of loud laughter that
erupted after each one liner. \par \par It was time to put plywood over
the pantry window and start hoarding bread, salami, toilet paper, rice.
Parents who remembered well the austerity of several World Wars,
scavenged for milk, prayed, and bit finger nails. Czechs and Slovaks
have a thing abou t queuing, but in 1968 Czechoslovakia had become one
long, long line. Could one c ountry secretly be a zombie - acting like
a conscious society, but having no inner experience? Even if you
stopped to look at a tree, people would walk up and stand behind you.
An alien would have thought that people tried to pick his pocket. This
had bee n my f}{\f4\cf1 irst experience of isolation: not only my own,
my Tato\rquote s, but that of the world. Yet as Dubcek said some his
better moments in 1968 were his worst. \par \par }{\f4 Awe struck, we
gaped as the dark-brown aircraft circled above and sick-green tanks
tore tar from our r oads. Childhood gallivanting stopped. We sat on the
side of the road mesmerised by the mysterious crowd mentality. When the
government-controlled evening news came out over the air, the villagers
blew whistles and banged on pots and pans so they would dro wn out the
state's lies and make the empty words disappear. \par \par The sight of
}{\i\f4 Vaclavke Namestia}{\f4 (Wenceslas Square) filled with
protesting patriots stirred my soul and I began to dream of being one
of the brave students attacking the tanks. Even tanks could
not}{\f4\cf1 dent the steel of Czechoslovak resolve.}{\f4 A mixture of
hay and smog out of tanks made for a confusing smell and the trees
surrounding the house looked darker than ever, pointing heavenwards. I
had a sense that all this had happened to my grandparents before, that
I was drawing out of the Slovak Emotional Bank Account. I had a
distinct feeling that I saw the streets with the eyes of a dead boy who
came back from another world and was studying two adult faces those who
seemed desperately lost in their world an d those who just realised the
meaning of being alive. \par \par Daily life in the village went} into
lie dormant for the winter. There was one exceptions to this: politics.
The war of nerves rumours that was waged on the tongues of all adults
was everywhere. Around me I could hear what seemed to be a thousand
voices together with a chorus of footst eps: \ldblquote This is not
good. I am telling on you. It is a world where everything is not black
and white, but dull red. Is it worth fighting? Star Wars. Rebel Forces.
Death Star. We could save the world if we all woke up one morning and
decided to do it, but instead we watch television. I am dobbing on you.
You have honey in your hair. Clonk ... Clonk... Plonk ... Plonk ...
Jozo, where are you? She turns up when he least wanted h er. \par \pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par Look at the Sloboda telling lies again. I
will not have that language in my house! The world is a joke. There is
no justice, everything is random. That man is mad, he will end up in
jail shouting those slogans. How silly it is to take any slogans or l
ife seriously. Tato, I want to go to the forest. Oh{\i pane boze} (my
god), how many tanks are there? Look at those marching ants. She is due
any day. Check the size of her stomach. Have you seen so much vaginal
fluid? That soldier looks drunk. Hearts are broken every day. Now, who
will clean up his vomit? The things y ou see when you haven\rquote t
got your gun. Napoleon knew it and he was great, if short. Russians go
home. Survival of the Fittest. You could use a bath. Oh, you and your
BO. Your destiny is to take the garbage out.\rdblquote \par {\f4 \par
The communists were disgusted, shocked, mortified at people\rquote s
unwillingness to be controlled by the power of the guns. The communists
despised the floppy brown bible that meditated upon our TV. The bible
contained words that prickled the Slovak soul. The rocky words that
tattooed every sermon given during those heady days by Father Glatz
\ldblquote Do not be afraid!\rdblquote \par \par }{\f4\cf1 Do not be
afraid of the snake bite which disabled the mind. Inside the
snake\rquote s magic circle, the mind moved in a fictitious world,
believed in lies, and could not distinguish reality from illusion.}{\f4
\par \par My other act of resistance was when I joined Aga and her
friends, at an hour that was normally my bedtime, to paint the roads
and walls in letters one meter high, \ldblquote SLOBODA!\rdblquote
\ldblquote Power to the People And Not the Party!\rdblquote and 'Thank
You, Central Committee of the CPSU, For Raping Our Future
Forever!\rdblquote }{\f4\cf1 About a dozen of us met on the street,
some dressed in black. Some wore skeleton masks with crossbones. It was
a true taste of guerrilla street night thea ter.}{\f4 \par \par
Demonstrations in Kezmarok against the Russian invasion provided me
with my first experience of active protest. At first our targets were
roads signs that were deliberately misplaced in order to confuse the
Russians. One batch of Russian troops in tank co lumns criss-crossed
through our village three times in one day while being pelted with
rocks from invisible sites about fifty meters from the road. Soldiers
stood by watching the youths shouting angrily about rape. As Vrbov
street demonstrations go, i t may not seem much to write about. Troops
did not fire shots at a couple of dozen young men and women, milling
about under the deciduous trees, shouting abuse at the Russian soldiers
and holding up flags the Czechoslovak red, white and blue. \par \par
}\pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\f4\cf1 I remember all the adults on
the streets in Kezmarok being jumpy. Some kept biting their nails, some
kept glancing behind them, some kept whispering to each other. Children
grew very immune to adults' anxiety and to adults' anger. We played
more hide and seek games and pomaranch in the two months of September
and October than for the last 2 years. \par My grey school satchel
contained marbles and wire covered in plastic instead of placing
pencils, pencilcase, ruler, rubber or books. I used people in lines for
bread and vegetable as barricades separating us from the enemy as we
through pieces of foams at each other. Behind the general store teenage
boys met for an all-day street fight. \par \par Parents kept telling us
that soon everything was going to be just as before. Except that it
wasn't. Like the neighbours, my parents continued to sleep in their
outdoor clothes. For months my parents stayed awake listening to sounds
in the night. The stongest memories are of autumn dawn. While eating
our breakfast under the grey skies, the ra dio news bulletin would come
on. The names of the newly jailed dissidents would be read out. \par
The sun rose, I went to school, I planned when to do the homework. Even
normality has never felt so strange. \par \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar {\cf1 Do you remember where you were when ...?
When my gener ation say this to each other there are several ways in
which the sentence might end: when Dubcek was demoted; when Havel was
arrested. But, more often than not, the sentence ends: when Jan Palach
took his own life.} \par \par The single most defining event in my life
occurred when Jan Palach, in protest against the repression of
occupying Soviet forces, burnt himself to death in front of the statue
of St Vaclac in Wenceslaw Square. That day my eyes lost their
cornflower-blue i nnocence and the Eden of my childhood Vrbov was cold
and lost. \par \par \pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar Like so many
anonymous faces in times of conflict, Jan Palach came to define the
tragedy of Czechoslovakia. When Jan Palach set fire to himself on 16
January 1969, I connected myself with the country, not the village.
Father Glatz ironically identified wi th misquoted Gogols {\i Dead
Souls}, \ldblquote God, how sad Czechoslovakia is.\rdblquote
Palach\rquote s death was the confirmation of Czechoslovak death{\f4 .
It was as if suddenly time stood still. }{\f4\cf1 The body turne d into
a torch. A lantern. A bell. A name. Janko indelibly put his name into
our history\emdash and now onto fixed streets signs. As China's writer
Lu Hsun said: 'Lies written in ink will never disguise truth written in
blood.'}{\f4 \par } \par It is difficult to imagine Andy Warhol would
have had much time for real heros, Jan Palach not being quite as
attractive a muse as Marilyn Monroe. It is also difficult to imagine
that Warhol would understand that heros have the gift of staying alive
in ou r collective minds for a lifetime r ather than quater of an hour.
Almost nobody knew his name. Nobody outside his immediate neighbourhood
had read his words or heard him speak. But he impressed his image on my
memory more intimately than even the 50,000 Warsaw Pact soldiers did.
Jan set him self on fire. And became human torch, both literally and
spiritually. His act shook a demoralised nation like nothing else.
Centuries from now on Jan Palach will continue to feature in our
collective minds. \par \par Vaclav Havel said that Palach's
self-immolation marked the beginning of a period in which nothing short
of 'human existence itself is at stake.' \par \par What is little known
is that two other men decided to become live torches after Jan Palach.
One was eighteen year old Jan Zajic, also a student and a budding poet.
He became the 'Torch number two' on 35 February 1969, the anniversary
of the 1948 communis t coup. Still less remembered is the forty-year
old Evzen Plocek, who became 'Torch number three.\rdblquote Plocek
burnt himself in the main square of the town of Jihlava, on 4 April
1969. \par \par {\cf1 It is difficult to hear about the flames without
a sense of crisis, and crisis invites fevered thinking. Somehow the
survival was an imperfect one, marred by flames. Czechoslovak boys were
like thousand gallon fuel tanks waiting the approach of a flame th at
could not be perceived or predicted. That the flame would appear again
was certain given the existence of Palachites, but when or where the
insanity of the human situation appeared was a mystery.} \par \pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par March marks the coming of my Name Day and
Spring. On 21 March 1969, for the first time in Vrbov history, hockey
became more important than soccer. There were few televisions at that
time so I sat with Aga in our neighbour\rquote s house. The mirror was
still covered by a blackcloth in respect of Magda\rquote s death, but
the voices and music from the television was so loud that it was
trembling the divan on which we sat next to Ondrej, Ferko, Palko. The
ice ring of Stockholm was looking at us. That night the house of my
neighbours laughed for the first ti me since 15 July 1968. Czechoslovak
ice hockey team clashed with the Soviets and won 2-0. \par \par Seven
days later. The second match was taking place in the Swedish capital.
This was the longest week in Czechoslovakia. Like a giant wave, the
living room rose and screamed. Magda Hrebenarova was the first ghost I
ever saw as we walked past the cemetery. My hair stood up and my eyes
thought they sighted her face in a window of a train. I assured Aga
that it was not a window of a ship, but we both agreed that her smil e
was as real as the hockey score retold over breakfast. The match was
over at 10 pm and in just a half an hour, Vrbov streets were full and
the pub for the first time in 20 years was serving beer after 9 pm. The
result was all over the village: Czechoslo vakia 4, Soviet 3. \par \par
The editors of daily press reflected the mood: YES, IT\rquote S TRUE!
OUR HEAD IS SPINNING! In every village, town and city slogans appeared
on roads and walls again. Banners included lines like: THIS IS FOR
AUGUST! SLAVES 4 - OPPRESSORS 3! E ven soldiers left their barracks to
join the protest. The crowd in larger cities targeted Soviet bases. The
spirit of Prague Spring of 1968 returned. \par \par But, it was no
April Fool\rquote s joke when Defence Minister sent special troops to
maintain order in the cities. This was a great change in attitude
compared to August 1968. The open resistance era was over. When the
politburo met on 17 April Czechoslovakia wa s on its knees. Of the
highest communist leaders only 22 had the courage to support Alexander
Dubcek and 146 voted for his resignation. Hope was in short supply in
April 1969.{\cf1 This was the point at which not only has the world
gone mad, but the lunatics have taken over the asylum. It was a time of
universal deception, tyranny and chaos.} \par \par It is odd that
people who look like comedians often end up being members of the
nomenclature (special elite membership). You could swear that Gustav
Husak, the new chairman of the Communist Party, wondered in from the
circus still wearing his silly costum e. \par \par The Communist
experiment with language, literature and thought control had a huge
impact on me as I grew through my teens, when my hunger for information
became voracious. In the seminal work 'What needs to be Done?\rquote
(1902) Lenin laid the foundation for the future apparatus of agitation,
propaganda and the dissemination of information. Lenin was acutely
aware that the state's ability to control and to manipulate language
would be vital for the new society. \par \par \pard
\sl480\slmult1\widctlpar Every person in Vrbov was unique. However,
after the Russian invasion I spied that somehow this uniqueness morphed
into two different mountains of flesh and bones. One mountain when I
was a child and another mountain when I was a growing up boy. Two
completely different mountains which showed me modifie d levels of
fear, good temper, courage, optimism, pessimism, tolerance, passion,
charm, selfishness, fairness, mischief, cheerfulness, anger, snobbery,
boastfulness, or rigid as Berlin Wall. Those who could tell the
difference between a death of one of h is villagers and the death of
his nation. Patriotism was {\cf1 like the vampire, it has been dead
many times, and learned the secrets of the grave. \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par The police state cracked down one every
perceived attempt at challenging its authority. Less than three months
after replacing Dubcek as party secretary in April 1969, Gustav Husak
made it clear to a journalists\rquote conference that dissent had no
chance: \ldblquote No opposition forces, no anti-communist forces in
Czechoslovak society have the faintest hope of success. This is not due
to some aspect of foreign policy but actually to our own domestic
forces, which are absolutely sufficient for us to liquidate disruptive,
anticommunist groupings and tendencies.\rdblquote \par \par The purge
was officially known as \lquote normalization\rquote and bore certain
resemblance to an inquisition--making political and social survival
dependent on whether one approved of the Soviet intervention. {\cf1
Under the normalisation, criticizing the government in print or on the
radio was one of the fastest ways to end up in jail. }Fear fo rced most
people to lead a double life: a private life of home and weekend
cottage, of trusted friends and personal interests - and a public life:
job and daily contacts with people who might possibly be working for
the secret service. A few who still dar ed to challenge the system
landed in jail or exile. \par \par At this time, the cult of young
pioneer (scout) Pavlik Morozov who denounced his parents penetrated all
schools and radio programs. According to the propaganda blitz Pavlik
was killed by the enemies of th e state. He was accorded the status of
martyr, a posthumous example to all communist children. The simple
lesson was simple: if parents did not agree with the ideas of the
communist leaders they were to be denounced. \par \par The communists
took pleasure in doctoring the truth and demanding a proof of
submission from workers. Not content with eliminating the opposition,
it encroached on private lives as well. It controlled what individual
did, where he lived, what he owned, ev en what kind of toilet he had.
Obedience is obtained by direct threat of physical violence, preventing
travel abroad, keeping out of university, owning property. \par \par By
the time the Beatles completed their last album, in late 1969, all
western music and books were banned by Communists. My oldest sister
Gitka had in her book collection Josef Skvorecky's {\i The Cowards}
which was first illegally published in 1958, but in 1967 it was
available over the counter. The book was denounced again by Party
spokesmen as 'profoundly alien [in spirit] to our beautiful democratic
and humanistic literature' in 1969. \par \par Words used by leaders may
acquire a special, magical significance. However, cliched slogans such
as down with imperialism! Long live the workers! Workers of the world
unite! And death to the Fascist, Imperialist Warmongers! soon lose any
substance. Repeat ed ad nauseam, they are a verbal reflex which
suppress thought. \par \par At certain movies, I have felt the way I
did when I found myself engrossed in a particular type of novel. These
movies of Spring 1968 were open-ended in a way that communist style
films, which shy away from truth and untidy conclusions, always
avoided. \par \par When Milos Foreman explored characters, he captured
the subtle nuances of tone and conversation, all the complex shadings
that come into play between sisters and brothers, friends, parents and
children. There was certainly no lack of feeling for the mediu m in
movies like his {\i A Blonde in Love} (1965). A shoe factory employing
hundreds of women has a serious shortage of men and asks the army to s
upply the 'missing element', but instead of sending young soldiers they
receive a unit of middle-aged reservists- the witty satire on
bureaucracy's absurd way with coping with emotional human needs, full
of vivid observation of everyday life. Czech bureau crats were
traditionally rude. The majority did not believe the official ideology
and were compelled to live two lives - a public one where they repeated
grotesque falsehoods and a private one, where perhaps they faced the
truth, if they had the courage. The huge disparity between theory and
reality seemed to make them rude to the general public. \par \par Jan
Nemec's movie {\i Report on the Party and the Guests} (1966) was a
morality play dealing with the way 'ordinary' people can become
indifferent to the fate of others and even willingly accept force and
violence. This parable, was set at a large outdoor banquet, culminates
in a pack of dogs chasing the one gu est who decides to make his
escape. Nemec's, like many films, which dealt with the reality of what
Czechoslovakia had become, were not allowed to be shown until the
Prague Spring and after the Russian invasion they were immediately
banned once more. \par \par Anthropologists say tribes develop defence
mechanisms, providing moral and physical support and reinforcing value
judgments, however arbitrary. For those who understood how death by
information worked, the clandestine absurd theatre of human condition
bei ng irrational and silly made sense. The absurd theatre had the
ability to capture what was 'between the lines' or 'in the air'. Life
with a twist. The absurd theatre-jest, joke, pun, parody, sketch,
satire, sit down and fall over-helped many to keep the ground under
their feet. \par \par \pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\cf1 The
salvation of my body and soul depended on my reading Vaclav Havel. In
1970s my hero, other than my father, became head of dysfunctional
family. Numbering between 20 million at home and overseas. He could
lead millions of traumatised parents and childr en who did not want to
be led. He was the kind of leader who is supposed to have advised:
\ldblquote r}{\f4\cf1 eading is inseparable from questioning.\rdblquote
Neighbours can live next to each other for a lifetime without once
sharing a dream. Yet we can pick up a book written by a total stranger,
stare with rapt intensity at the images that words paint on the page,
and emerge from the page with common memories \emdash not of a shared
experience but of a shared fantasy. Stories can be magical when they
work, dissolving our differences by probing beneath our emotional
defenses to find our common humanity. Within my old Czechoslov akia
Havel was regarded as the storyteller who said what everyone else was
thinking. \par \par }{\cf1 No amount of communist persecution or
propaganda could erase Havel from public consciousness. Indeed,
i}{\f4\cf1 t was the chief cultural commissar, Brezhnev, who gave Havel
the courage to be born. Havel\rquote s irony was believable because,
well, in Czechoslovakia, anything could and usually did }{\f4 happen.
}{\f4\cf1 Havel}{\cf1 may not even remember what he wrote in 1969 to us
in samisdat magazines. Yet, his ironic words would continue to echo in
our heads . Once written, they took on a life of their own. } Havel the
philosopher-king of the theatre of the absurd movement brought to light
some of the most important elements to Czechoslovak culture: he linked
philosophy with humour. Havel provoked outright laughter at the absurd
reality of communist-style livi ng, marinating communist in jokes and
using them as conversation icebreakers. In Havel\rquote s plays
everybody tries to manipulate everyone else by lying so that it is
impossible to distinguish anything at all in the end. Havel was an
iceberg maker. Ninety nine percent of what went into his pieces of
writing did not show, but it was there supporting his ideas that
communists had nothing to hide, but the truth. Without this idea, his
writing would sink beneath the sea. \par \par {\cf1 Robert Kennedy once
described the improbably large changes for the good brought about
through individual bravery and idealism. "Each time a man stands up for
an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against
injustice, he sends fo rth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each
other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those
ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest wall of
oppression and resistance."} \par \pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par
{\cf1 While Havel was sure of the fact that truth would prevail, he
could never decide which of the many prison sentences and expreiences
had been the worst. Wh} at made Havel so big, so brave, so brilliant
was the fact that the hearts, minds, and spirits of the central
European tribe committed themselves as nev er before to him in a
do-or-die attempt to pull itself out of a deep, dark ideological hole.
Every one of these threads has lead to 'Golden Prague Spring' and later
to "Velvet Revolution" tapestry. Havel's whisper in cafes was louder
than shouting. {\cf1 Vaclav Havel has observed that "we all are, in
various ways, made complicit in the mechanism of repression. Everyone
becomes, if only to a minor -degree, both the object and subject of the
regime, both executioner and victim". }{\f4\cf1 His words didn't just
show images, they screamed images. }His language peppered and salted to
my young heart's taste. Yet, Havel never liked to be called brave:
\ldblquote Brave is when you have a choice. I didn\rquote t have a
choice. I just had to get on with it.\rdblquote \par \par Hus',
Masaryk's and Havel's 'living in truth' formed a key slogan for
Czechoslovakians at this time, being as they were so sheltered from the
truth. Their heart-piercing and soul-stirring words will forever echo
in my mind with the commitment, integrity and responsibility they held
dear. \par \par As the screening of party members reduced its numbers
from 140,000 to 100,000, Tato took time to have a talk with me about
how true was the depiction of Slovaks as 'slave' and 'less human'.
Determined to cheer me up, he recalled his happiest memories in a lauda
ble attempt to rebuild my self-esteem. But it was in the silent hours
of clambering up hillsides with Tato, traversing the edge of the
pastures that meet the line of forest, eyeing the edge of forest
treetops that reach for the sky, and searching for fore st fruits, four
leaf clovers and forest animals, that I sought my salvation. \par \par
Away from the man\rquote s world nature remained uncorrupted. Time no
longer passed aimlessly before our eyes. Deep inside nature\rquote s
world, it was virtually impossible to make sense of the ideological
madness that lived outside the forest boundaries. Here, there was no
need for the knowledge of the thesis, antithesis, and synthesis which
explain feudalism and foreign hegemony as well as revolution. I
remember walking into the hills unpacking and eating mountain of food
and drinking rose hip tea. \par \par My teenage years advanced and soon
I was at the state whereby my spare time was not as consumed by forest
walks with Tato as with earning spare pocket money so I could enjoy
festivities with friends. To get a bit of student red-wine money I kept
myself em ployed every summer, working as a labourer and a life-saver
around the emerald-blue waters of Vrbov fish lake ({\i Rybnik}). \par
\par The water of the Vrbov pond was clear enough to see carp and trout
swimming b elow the surface on which families of ducks and storks glide
silently past. The pond which prides itself with hidden wells, created
a strong undercurrent which claimed three lives since it was opened in
1970. The pond provided many days of work during my summer holidays and
the opportunity to become a good swimmer able to survive many of the
ponds undercurrents and struggling moments with the branches of willow.
I did not know back then that this skill would save my life {\f4 later.
The pond was God \rquote s gift to me. A place where I bathed in the
ice blue waters from spring to autumn at dawn and dust washing the
sweat and dust that went with my teenagehood filled with making mortar,
carrying bricks and cutting timber.} \par \par It was at Rybnik, pond,
that I made friends with Ondrej Brejka. Ondrej was the first person to
show me how to use a piece of plastic to produce a sound of a bird. Our
initial bond stemmed from the fact that we both made whistles out of
the willow trees. T here was no such thing as having too many whistle s
or carving knives. Carving knives were the leading actors during our
breaks at work. Since 1972 when Father Glatz came across documents
about the mineral rich waters and hot spa, Vrbov became a hive of
fishing and swimming activities in summer time. Whe re once was a dry
land, a reminder of my grandfather\rquote s land, there now lies a body
of warm water lake shaped into 210 meter cigar which once again beckons
the tourists to Vrbov. If you believe in legends, there is St
Servac\rquote s soul buried in my grandfather\rquote s land feeding the
hot water of the spa with his tears. \par \par Another fundamental
turning point in my life at this stage came when I joined {\i Tatranka}
, the dancing troupe at school. Fresh-faced-starry-eyed-school child
dreaming of his own glory, I allowed myself a week long smile for being
accepted by Tatranka. And here I took yet another step in my sister
Aga's footsteps. The mystery and allure of Tat ranka that had appealed
to me for so long with Aga's involvement was now to be opened to me. To
belong to Tatranka was my deepest and strongest need. \par \par I had
grown up watching Aga pirouetting, tapping, tumbling, whirling, and
twisting to Slovak folk music, while she was immersed in colours of
embroided cotton, laces, and tassels. Aga\rquote s dark gold hair swam,
almost like autumn leaves, timing each fall. I was fascinated by Aga's
friends some of whom could leap through the air like {\i Kamziks}
(Tatra's wild goats) and whirl like dervishes; others lumbered and
flopped about like beached whales, with big toothy grins on their
faces. \par \par When I came home that night of March of 1969 with the
happy news, Krushchev was in power, Martin Luther King was
assassinated, Laika, the first dog, aboard Sputnik was dead, Juraj
Gagarin was still alive and Neil Armstrong had not yet walked on the
moon. Juraj Janosik from Terchova, Slavic edition of Robin Hood from
Sherwood, was dead for 300 years. I considered joining Tatranka to be
amongst these momentous events. Have you ever been so happy that you
wanted to throw your shoes up over your school bui lding? That is
precisely how I felt. \par \par \pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar The days
when I had done nothing wrong and Mr Jozef Zemba, the director of the
school, p{\f4\cf1 rematurely bald and usually wearing a slightly
worried expression}, did not have to shout at me were few, \ldblquote
Not you again, junior Jozef Imrich! How many times must I tell you not
to run? Walk, don\rquote t run! And inform your teacher that you are to
clean the blackboard every day {\f4 this week!\rdblquote There was no
room in} my early primary school for fairy stories. My nine-year-old
playmate Ondrej was busy quoting Stalin and Leni{\f4 n. }{\f4\cf1 I
tended to believe Tono, who recited poems about what boys do with girls
in a haystack, a little more than I believed Ondrej. \par \par At
school we hear long rambling stories designed to teach us about
Stalinist atrocities being nothing more than asking questions such as
\lquote How far is it from here to Siberia?\rquote \lquote What do you
call a frozen moustache?\rquote Curiosity was not encouraged about how
many people lived Siberia beside those who froze to death in the rusty
tin homes or hanged themselves on few existing trees.}{\fs36\cf1 \par }
\par {\f4\cf1 I would have been happy never to have set foot in Vrbov
state school again. I once got a badge of honour for reciting a Russian
poem ten full verses in one breath, or was it ten words in broken
English, in any event, although I had to be trown out from th e
classroom after the class roared with laughter it was my crowning
achievement. }{\f4 Tatranka would save me from my usual visits to the
director\rquote s office. }{\f4\cf1 While my eyes were staring down Mr
Zemba form one end of the room, my head was turned in the opposite
direction towards the window.}{\f4 Those visits one doesn\rquote t
easily forget. Squeezing out tears and pleading with the director,
\ldblquote Please, sir, please don\rquote t tell my Tato that I broke
the} school desk. Please, sir, he will belt me!\rdblquote I pulled the
kind of {\f4 face you would pull if someone told you that a bomb was
about to explode in your head. I couldn\rquote t believe that the
director had swallowed my fib about Tato\rquote s spanking. I could be
a bit awkward. I didn\rquote t always say the right thing. Yet Tato
rarely shouted at me.} \par \par The architect of the dancing group
Tatranka, Marta Chamillova, clung to folkloric stories, in {\f4
particular, the story about Juraj Janosik, the Robin Hood of the Slovak
legend. Janosik was born to dance. He was this sort of open, outdoorsy
creature, very gutsy. }{\f4\cf1 No one preached the idea behind
folkloric art than Chamillova. A society that performed folkloric and
communal rites bounded its members in common values and was more
cohesive and therefore more equipped for survival than one that did
not.}{\f4 Chamillova} {\f4\cf1 helped me see the extraordinary in
ordinary songs, steps, springs. Janosik dance steps had come to occupy
a special place in the collective Slovak folkloric psyche. They
symbolize much that has been lost to communism \emdash wild jumping,
self-sufficiency and a sense of unabridged freedom. Slovaks, like
Janosik, identify with the underdog}{\f4 . \par } \par As a teacher,
Chamillova understood that children needed confidence and that this
confidence could be mastered through bodily discipline and practice.
For Cha millova, confidence was much more important than talent. The
most important thing was the experience of enjoying one's physicality
for its own sake and sharing the joy through performance with one
another and for an audience of doting parents. When asked once why she
had no children of her own, Marta Chamillova {\f4\cf1 proudly
announced, without feeling foolish, that }\lquote these are my
children.\rquote Like all mothers, she shouted, \ldblquote Keep your
backs straight!\rdblquote \par \par True, there was a story circulating
about how close to matrimony Chamillova once came. With her slim
figure, wavy hair, expressive eyes and Slav cheekbones, she certainly
was not unattractive. To Czech {\cf1 Karol Plicka, a famous
photographer, she seemed quite a likely prospect. And children looked
upon Plicka as father who knew how to tell amazing stories. When Plicka
was ten years old, he started to be interested in photography and
constructed a photograph ic instrument out of an old cigar box. His
photographs looked back to a simpler, idealized rustic past. His quotes
about Slovakia were memorable: \ldblquote This was a country very poor
for the gifts of land and rich in songs, full of mysterious contrasts
between the songs and crying}{\f4\cf1 ." There was a heartbreaking
simplicity about Plicka\rquote s photographs. There was however nothing
simple about taking a photograph of Marta Chamillova. It took
breathtaking bravery to capture in black and white film this simple
folkloring flower Marta: a dais y who had a bee in her bonnet. Plicka
took photographs as a kind of folkloric testimony before the traditions
melt away, like snow}{\cf1 under the sun. Like truth under communism.
\par }\pard \qj\sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\cf1 \par One powerful photo
featuring }{\f4 my sister who is wearing the wreath she had made from
greenery and daisies. \par }{\cf1 \par }\pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar
{\i\f4\cf1 \par }\pard \qj\sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\f4\cf1 More than
anything else Chamillova and Plicka most loved was that of the Golem
myth, a monster made of clay and soil by Prague's chief rabbi, to save
the Jews from persecution. To give the beast life, the rabbi placed a
slip of parchment under its tongue, on which was written the
unknowable, unspeakable name of God. \par \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\f4\cf1 Tatranka children needed to believe
in the possibility of super powers other than the Soviet Union. No
matter what culture we are from, we rise from myth. Myths fill a need,
a longing, a hope for salvation; they are our dreams and our
nightmares. They are answers to all things mysterious. Myth is magic.
\par \par Before Frankenstein\rquote s monster was created from spare
parts and the mind of Mary Shelley, a huge clay creature called a Golem
held the imagination of our greatgrandparents-children. Magic words
could bring t he sculpture to life in the feudalistic 16th century as
it could in the communist 20th century. In 21st century my children
recognise the name of one of their Pokeman characters: Golem. \par \par
The person who found or fashioned the image, knew the magic words, or
stumbled upon them, would gain power. Power so desperately needed by a
child, a victim, a helpless soul. The Golem could or would do simple
tasks, follow orders, and protect its creator from harm. Using clay,
the elements of fire, air, and water, the numb er seven, and the
unspoken name of God, a rabbi constructed a Golem to save his people
from harm. That the Golem goes out of control, due to a mistake or a
miscalculation should not surprise anyone familiar with what happens to
people who try to play God. \par \par Myths and legends have a life of
their own, because we need to believe in the possibilities they offer.
They don\rquote t die. Slovak view of the world includes miracles and
angels, beast-men and women of unearthly beauty, gods walking among us
and ceremonies th at can end a drought. All of these things are as
ordinary to you as tractors, mountain streams, and ice in the
tropics.\~ At the same time, the whole world is enchanted,
mysterious.\~ Cars, mountian streams, and ice are all as astonishing as
angels. Slovak flokloric ceremonies are not unlike magic painted by
Leslie Marmon Silko in his novel }{\i\f4\cf1 Ceremony}{\f4\cf1 . There
is a scene in which a abandoned woman is dancing very angrily.\~ Miles
away, the man who betrayed her is checking the commotion his cattle are
making in the night.\~ Descriptions of the woman's heels stamping the
floor are alternated with descriptions of the cattle trampling the man
to death, back and forth from one to the other.\~ No assertion of
causality is made, but the dancer's heels and the animals' hoov es
become linked so powerfully that the reader doesn't just "get it."\~
What's conveyed is not a symbol or a metaphor, but the reality that a
woman can be so angry that when she dances, her lover dies. \par \par
}\pard \qj\sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\f4\cf1 The reference from Psalms
139:16 grew into a full blown Mittleuropean magical tale as rich as any
Greek epic. Chamillova carried on her teaching tasks as a kind of
modern version of the Golem. But it was not only the God under
Golem\rquote s tongue that she had faith in. It was the word: the
unknowable word for whic h we search, for which we exhaust
dictionaries, for which we write and erase and write again, the word
whose existence we believe in without any proof, the next word we will
learn, which we pray will come closer to expressing our desired
meaning. \par \par As an ex pression of Slovak culture, some
superstitious practices had a deeper meaning. The whole neighborhood
was monoplolised with local tales about haunted spots. The breaking of
the glass at the conclusion of the wedding has many explanations.
Marriage is not always as joyous as the wedding itself. The bad times,
when our hearts break, are symbolized by the shattered glass. A couple
that enters marriage, believing that their married life will always be
as blissful as courtship, is in denial and doomed to failu re. Breaking
the glass symbolizes a realistic approach. It may even be said to scare
off the real evil demon, which is denial. \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\f4 \par Marta Chamillova, cheekily nicknamed
}{\i\f4 'Stara'}{\f4 (old wise woman) in her early fifties, whetted our
appetite for Slovak folklore. We were trim and firm as Chamillova. She
used to say, \ldblquote Show me a fat teacher and I show you a lazy
class. \rdblquote All teachers and students play the cat and mouse. Our
day was filled with tested excuses and the finest word in Slovak
language, \ldblquote Pretoze,\rdblquote Because. But did we ever
outsmart Chamillova? Hardly! She made the gawky children of Vrbov
hungry for the oral history of our Slavic past. A folklorist, capable
of flashes of baroque wit, Chamillova was described as Shakespeare in a
skirt. She made us starving for tri cky Slovak steps and we were
deceived into living exclusively on ancient poems and balads. We leaped
into air to catch the invisible branches of trees, then found ourselves
sweaty sitting on a parquetry floor gazing across the shoulders of the
High Tatra Mountains. To be ten and in a distance Chamillova\rquote s
breath was }{\f4\cf1 to feel that touch of wonder at the unexplained
and come home after two hours of hard dancing and singing with stardust
in your eyes at the possibilities of Slavic magic. \par \par \tab A
camp fire that inexplicably turns itself on and off.\~ \par \tab A dog
who wakes his owner by pulling his shirt when he has fallen asleep at
the \tab camp fire and the wolves are beginning to encircle him.\~ \par
\tab A child who announces, "Grandpa's in heaven..." just before the
doctor walks \tab through the garden gate. \par \par Almost everyone
has little stories of unexplained occurrences. In that sense, 'magic'
is among us all of the time. If it was not for magic and storytelling
Slovaks would not survive. When there was no food, the story fed
something, it fed the spirit, the imagination. That is why music was so
important, stories in songs connect us, heart to heart. Where most
cultures tell history from the top down, Slovak songs chose to tell it
from the bottom up. One songs told me something once and f or a long
time I could not get it out of my mind. A man needs something that's
bigger than life, something he'd die for. I had been thinking about
that all night. I did not go to sleep until Tato helped me with some of
the Chamillova\rquote s riddles.}{ \f4 \par \par Here on Earth it's
always true, \par that a day follows a day. \par But there is a place
where yesterday (zajtra) \par always follows today (dnes)!}{\f4\cf1
\par }(Dictionary) \par \par The fact that Slovak folklore music lives
on in the High Tatra region today is largely due to the revival of {\f4
interest in Slovak culture achieved by Chamillova. }{\f4\cf1 There are
songs which can only be learned in the mountains. No art can teach
them; no rules of voice can make them perfectly sung. Their music is in
the heart. They are songs of memory, of personal experience our
forebears lived through. They bring out th eir burden from the shadow
of the past. }{\f4 Music} which took my grandparents from the first
luulaby to the last lament. Slovaks express their deepest truths in a
spirit of music. To attain wisdom one must learn to sing. She {\cf1
believed that peasants actually had twelve senses - the accepted five
plus thought, language, warmth, balance, movement, life, and the
individuality of the other. Slovak folk stories were like jazz; if you
played every note according to a set score, you w ere doing something
wrong. Slavic folkloric music unlike the rock-n-roll does not beat out
tunes for animals to dance to, it drums out a tune to move stars and
hearts with pitty. Slavic songs celebrate the ordinary deeds of daily
life }{\f4\cf1 translated so neatly by Marge Piercy:}{\cf1 \par
}{\f4\cf1 \par }\pard \widctlpar {\f4\cf1 To Be of Use \par I want to
be with people \par Who submerge in the task, \par Who go into the
fields to harvest \par And work in a row \par And pass the bags along,
\par Who stand in the line \par And haul in their places, \par Who are
not parlor generals \par And field deserters \par But move in a common
rhythm \par When the food must come in \par Or the fire be put out.
\par }{\fs36\cf1 \par }\pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar Chamillova was
like a huge flower opening more each year. To her the most basic
impulse of any child was a talent for dancing. Her gift for Spis a
ccents was a definite asset in collecting oral history, pointing at our
roots ... 'Look, this is where you have come from.' Our
ancestors\rquote \ldblquote Good Day\rdblquote sounded like \ldblquote
Gin Dobry.\rdblquote The greeting flowed as gently as the reflective
creek that bisected Vrbov\rquote s hea rt. There was a medical alcohol
within a greeting. We became peasant history buffs. We learnt that Spis
was a region that was almost wiped out by Tartar raids in the thirteen
century and that Hungarian kings encouraged Germans to colonise the
area. With t he whiff of valuable ore deposits in the air, families
from Saxony (to whom the area was known as Zips) came in ever greater
numbers, eventually establishing a federation of 24 Zips towns which
were granted special trading privileges. \par \par Our regular field
visits to Zdiar, Stara Lubovna, or Lendak helped us embarked on a quest
of (self) discovery as we focused on the life and times of village
traditions. Hours of audiotaping biographical extracts became fruitful
sources of knowledge for ou r young learning minds. {\cf1 We used to
sit on the sidewalk opposite the post office in Zdiar with a pencil and
paper in our hands while Chamillova urged us to describe the wrinkly
horse shoe at that sidewalk, also the wooden fences around the old
challets, or the doorway where Janos ik used to walk through. My first
painting classes began not in 1960s, but with Juraj Janosik in the16th
}{\f4\cf1 century. Hungarians destroyed Slovaks without mercy like
someone who steps upon a painting, forgets it, then sees the footstep
of fresh paint and tramp s upon it a second time. Being Slovak in 16th
century was so awful that even being Jewish was better. Slovak
bitterness was fired by being excluded from schools, land ownership and
work for government. \par \par \ldblquote We don't let Slovak
here.\rdblquote \par \par Even while he was alive, Juraj Janosik was
perceived by many as a kind of saint. Since his death, he had been
further mythologised. Slovak slaves needed someone they could
unreservedly admire, to express}{\cf1 in Slavic idiom that jaunty pride
and hope that has been the hallmark of the invaded nation where a
Hungarian lash (of up to 700) was freely used. His saint-robber career
began and ended as the Slovaks slided into Hungarian hands and poverty.
}{\f4\cf1 Like most Slovaks, Janosik ran across some people he did not
like and some who betrayed him, but not a dog. He was the dog\rquote s
friend. Legend says that when betrayed Janosik was told that the
approaching Hungarian group of police and army was so large that their
horses blocked out the sun, he replied, \lquote All the better.\~Then I
shall fight them in the dark.\rquote He died young at 25. \par }{\cf1
\par }\pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\f4\cf1 In the pantheon of Slavic
folk legends, the tale of Juraj Janosik, looms large. Large as he lived
among the ruins of slavery and war, hardened by fate as unforgiven as
the dark grey stone mountains that rise emperiously above our school.
I'm sure most chi ldren grew up in our school at least thinking about
what they want to be:\~ A doctor, an actror, a tractor driver, Janosik
usually offered from the same child, depending on what week a person
happens to ask him. Indeed, mos t of the Slovak boys have christened
themselves Janosik. In Tatranka Janosik loomed even larger.
Chamillova\rquote s choreography had a special place for him. The
embroided shirts from Janosik era were a bridge linking us to our
ancestors. It was also a bridge b etween cultures. Janosik looked to
me, as I grew fonder of Winetow movies, like pictures I had seen of
Indian tribal chieftains: he became a man covered with war paint and
standing tall among spears. \par \par "Juraj Janosik is coming!" the
Tatranka children shout. "Janosik!" \par \par A deep sound of fujara
and drumbeat of our feet announces his arrival. From the end of the
stage, gurale walk across the satge singing songs of slavery. The
procession begins, with Janosik leading a long line of male characters
dressed in regional costume s. Janosik, a saviour of the poor who wore
hat, the wide belt, and the }{\i\f4\cf1 kierpce}{\f4\cf1 (moccasins),
and held the mountain hatcher in his right hand. Passed through
generations by porch-sitting yarn spinners, twangy country singers, and
persistent pries ts, this tale has become a prism for some of
Slovakia's most enduring obsessions. The refrain of the popular song -
'' If you have baked me so you also should eat me!\rdblquote -
highlights the country's admiration for the individual's sweat and toil
as well as the struggles of Slovak peasants as they chipped away at our
country's monolithic feudalism. Town of Terchova and Zdiar possess the
Slovakia\rquote s largest collection of Juraj Janosik memorabilia. I
will never forget the goosey, sharp sadness tinged with elation I felt
hearing those words and music and singing with other Tatranka dancers
on stage in front of 10,000 people at Vychodna festival. To hear
hundreds of people sing to the sounds of fujara, violin, accordion out
in the open was to be transported from this world into another
universe, where nothing else mattered but the sound coming from the
stage. I was lucky enough to participate at the festival on six
occasions. From breakfast to dinner time, dancers circled and wheeled
and flew. Large parts of folklori c dance involved boys jumping over a
wooden stick and then making circular steps around the girls. The dance
utilised the body in a way no other sport did. As its heart, twenty to
fifty at a time together with their arms linked in a line, and legs
kicking a nd feet moving to rhythms like 3/7 or 7/7. The goral dances
have remained with me for all those years. \par }{\cf1 \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar F{\f4\cf1 or centuries the valleys of Slovakia
were dominated by powerful families who created city-states and spent
much of their time fighting for control of the land and the peasants.
But, for a short period the ancient mountain of High Tatra escaped
feudalism a nd their citizens lived on the mountains in relative
freedom. Juraj Janosik, a man who studied to be a priest, established
small assemblies that were an early form of modern democracy. The story
of Janosik represented the death of tyranny and the triumph of freedom
- and these are important elements in High Tatra tradition. High Tatra
area is the only region in the world that does not devote its most
important stories to a military hero or a political leader, but instead
chooses to honor its favourite pries t turned robber - Juraj Janosik
also dubbed as Apostle of Slovakia. There is a valley in High Tatra
that will raise your eyebrows, dilate your pupils and inspire thoughts
of deep smile the minute you set eyes on it. It is not the leaves,
although they are so green you swear they are not real. Nor the grass.
It is the spirit of Janosik that hovers palpably. When Janosik was
murdered in this valley many feared his message of Slovak hope had died
too. But then came Alexander Dubcek who brought Janosik \rquote s
philosophies to our generation. \par \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\cf1 Olympic legend Emil Zatopek, the only
long-distance athlete to have won three gold medals at a single Games,
was also embroiled in the traumatic events which overtook his country.
Zatopek had supported the reforms of the then Cze choslovak leader
Alexander Dubcek and denounced the invasion. But he chose not to flee
his native land and as a result, he was dismissed from the army in
1970, expelled from the Communist Party and stripped of his title of
Meritorious Master of Sports. Za topek\rquote s demotion made our
country famous again but for the wrong reasons. \par } \par \pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar The moral of those stories became for us that
you could force people to work in fields from dawn to dusk but you
could not own their souls. Our Slovak forebears, not necessarily the
winners in history\rquote s contests, but often the losers, still had
something striking to say. By a fateful chance the Slovak folk-song,
the rhythmic cry of the slave, stands today as the most wonderful
expression of human experience. I had been neglected, an d half
despised, and above all it had been mistaken as primitive. When it came
to culture, peasants may not have seemed of much weight in history
written by the elite. Yet, the Slovak language was unspoiled by foreign
influence not because the Slovak educ ated elite kept it alive. The
so-called cultural elite sold its soul to Germans and Hungarians.
Destiny did not keep Slovak from German and Hungarian publishers,
lords, robbers and ghost stories. \par \par {\cf1 Beneath the surface
of old proverbs was always some warning. Do not trust a Hungarian
unless he has a third eye in his forehead. God made serpents and
rabbits and Germans. Half a Russian is too many in a house. In Slovakia
we are poor, but, god forbid, we don\rquote t beg. We know people by
their stories; stories alone! \par \par }\pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar
{\cf1 The world we see is not the real world but it is our relative
world and everything we see is supposed to tell us something about
}{\f4\cf1 ourselves. To most mothers in Vrobov, just about anything was
a sign of ghosts: broken bowls, barking dogs, radio program with only
silence or cracking noise at the other end. I grew up with healthy
doses of black cats crossing the road. Slavic fairy tale s are salted
with superstitions, omens}{\cf1 or oracles. Ivo Andric, the Bosnian
Nobel Prize-winning novelist, expressed this beautifully. \ldblquote It
is useless and mistaken to look for sense in the seemingly important
but meaningless events taking place around us ... We should look for it
in those layers which the centuries have built up around the few main
legends of humanity. These layers co nstantly, if ever less faithfully,
reproduce the form of that grain of truth around which we gather, and
so carry it through the centuries. The true history of mankind is
contained in fairy stories, they make it possible to guess, if not to
discover, its meaning." } \par \par \pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar One
must turn to peasants for the true Slovak tongue. To peasant Slovaks,
dance was a profound metaphor for love, both human and divine. \par
\par Like all national treasures, this small unassuming woman with
drive and energy left a legacy of exiting folkloric festivals to the
present generation. Chamillova's dynamic personality helped make her a
dance teacher of great discipline. She had a passion, an obsession for
{\i Spis} folk art: stories and songs, music and dance, skills and
handicraft, food and drink, s peech, costumes, architectural styles.
Local artists may show off their skills by painting Easter eggs, every
day utensils, musical instruments, linen, furniture and entire
buildings may be adorned with carved or moulded plaster. She loved
traditions and she did everything possible to preserve them. \par \par
\lquote It is not easy to erase cultures if behind them is a rich
tradition and children who practice them on the stage,\rquote
Chamillova {\f4\cf1 boasted.} \par \par No other land in the world
displays as many distinctive costumes as Slova kia. Its culture has a
sense of ornamentation which can only spring from the soul of the
people, a true echo of their inner feelings. The inherited costumes and
customs of the villagers did not escape Chamillova. She observed their
talent for decorating h aywagons at the weekly and annual markets, the
celebrations of the local patron saints. The decorations glowed like a
variegated flowerbed. The ox-drawn hay racks floated with all the
colour of the spectrum and were alive with hearty gaiety. Knots of boy
s and girls in blue, scarlet and greens were strung like pearls along
the hay racks, dazzling in smiles and song. Slovaks have song-infected
tongues. Folk songs are a treasure trove of both joyous and sorrowful
melodies and can have as many meanings as the listener wishes to
project on to it. And significantly a common theme of the songs is 'it
is better to die on your feet than on your knees.' {\cf1 Songs that
painted images of screaming confrontations and tearful reconciliations.
Images upon images. \par \par }\pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\f4\cf1
Chamillova was a great teacher and I was the worst student she ever
had. As a fifteen tear old dancer, I was sacked and reinstated me
twice. Father Glatz told me during the confession, \lquote We are
hardest on the ones we love.\rquote On my reinstatement Chamillova
would privately say to me, \ldblquote I only met one child that is as
determined as I am to make a mess of life, and that\rquote s
you!\rdblquote Chamillova gave us all the same three pieces of advice.
\lquote Always remember people's names, invite friends to dinner, and
read and read and read every day.\rquote Chamillova once described what
dancing really meant to all of us. \ldblquote As dancers, we should
find that the ritual of taking class has a deep connection with our
feelings. Going through a set of various amcient steps put us in touch
with the sense of some thing and someone greater than ourselves. These
things that we do have been done by those before us and will continue
to be done after we are gone, limiting our self-importance, while at
the same time connecting us with our community.\rdblquote \par \par
}\pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar {\f4 As a result of Tatranka\rquote s
need for great willow whistles, our}{\f4\cf1 town of few hundred souls
and many more willows }{\f4 became the }{\f4\cf1 world capital of
whisteling. Whisteling like other drugs is infectious. Whisteling
became a language in Vrbov which did not get drowned out by the
communist radio and television slogans. More importantly, no one could
produce as many variety of whisteling "cattle calls\rquote like the
children of Tatranka.} \par \par We held great festivals of dance and
whisteling. These festivals gave Czechoslovaks and foreigners a chance
to see the regional variations of highly decorated traditional costumes
with symbolic designs (costumes vary in specific ways according to the
season and the age and marital status of the wearer) from west-Bohemia
and central Moravia, east (the Carpathia ns, the rest of Moravia and
Slovakia; and north-Polish, south-Austrian and Hungarian. \par \par It
was never Chamillova's intention to turn us into professional dancers.
Her ambition was to create amateurs so that we (and the public) might
salvage the joy of old wa ys of life, the slow rhythms, the rhythm of a
sheep grazing, or of cheese being churned and salted, or the rhythm of
a pilgrimage made one footprint at a time. Chamillova turned to folk
forms like the ballads, spirituals, and work songs to create a portra
it Spis peasants. Tatranka successfully brought the previously unmined
world of the Spis musical traditions into the realm of the recorded
history. Chamillova children weren\rquote t{\cf1 the ones out the door
when the bell rang. They were the ones who tended to linger, who wanted
to carry on a conversation. \par When possible, Chamillova\rquote s
classes went for a walk to recite verses of songs on a creekbank or in
the park. One big plank in Chamillova\rquote s platform was the
reference to the "Slovak soul." \par }\pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar
{\cf1 \par }\pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar {\f4\cf1 Imagine, A group of
Slovak dancers forms a human pyramid, fifteen strong at the base. When
the pyramid is complete, it's so high, the top man's head, like the
Slovak soul, is obscured by the proscenium.} \par \par I was so proud
to be part of the endless stream of Tatranka dancers and like Aga, I
was lucky enough to experience something beautiful and spiritually
enriching. \par \par In no time, I was fifteen, acquiring an Adam's
apple with a voice deep as Tato\rquote s, and tall for my age. To my
Mamka, I was expensive too as she had to spend a fortune on tailors to
fit my 188cm foot frame and cobblers size 11 (45) leather shoes. From
kin dergarten through school and into adult life I have always stood
head and shoulders above my friends. Given my height, it took time to
feel in {\i Tatranka} comfortable about performing most of the solos,
but I learned that being tall is something of which to be proud-even
though my cartwheeling technique was on occasions unpredictable.
Because I looked older, I was expected to act and achieve beyond my age
and experience, sometimes with painful consequences. \par \par Over the
arch of six years, at rehearsals, 36 pairs of stomping feet assailed
the rooms and corridors of Vrbov School. A bunch of Slovaks of both
sexes, aged 9 to 15, with backs straight and arms stiff f or the most
part, feet frantically flaying morning and night. Tatranka's
combination of music and dance set fire in the heart of almost every
native of Spis, young or old. \par \par \pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar
The cleverness of Chamillova's concept of a smorgasbord of dance had
enormous success, in particular the autumn and winter scenes where we
gather on mass around the fire. We held live performances not only in
Czechoslovakia but also in Poland, Hungary, Ea st Germany, Bulgaria,
and Ukraine experiencing the delights for the first time visiting
foreign countries. In Ukraine we drove and drove for ours and our
finger moved only a was few millimetres on the map. Kyev was another
day\rquote s drive from Moscow. To live next to Russia is{\cf1 like
being a mouse living next door to an elephant. \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par We realised how small our country was
drive two hours in any direction and you are in another country. We
would visit tourist delights: castles and places of historical interest
as well as many grim places where tourists were not usually allowed -
places with no running water to speak of, no public halls nor post
office. It was a rare experience as Czechoslovaks at this time were
confined within the State, and were not allowed to travel without the
approval (hardly ever given) of Communist officials. \par \par We could
only dream about being in the same shoes as the tennis player, Martina
Navratilova, who in early 1970 was given visa even to play at
Wimbledon. When we read in the Pravda on 5 September 1975 that Martina
ran away because she was scared of failing her school examinations. We
naturally believed the communist ironists. {\cf1 What we found hard to
believe, however, was the press reports that the survivors of a lost
plane containing a Catholic football team from Montevideo were found
alive at Andy because they ate the dead.} \par \pard
\sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\f4 \par Dancing or talking about defectors
was not my only activity as I soon extended the love for walking
inspired by Tato to the High Tatra Mountains range nearby. \par \par In
the next ten years, spring, summer, autumn and winter, I sought
inspiration in the ruminative atmosphere of Tatra's chalets. In spring
a majestic waterfall cascades down through dense rocks into a crystal
clear} lake. Like balloons, my lungs, loved the high altitude. Father
Glatz taught us that spirit came from the Latin spiritus which meant
breathing. In Tatra, meditation began with the simple fact that you
were breathing. All one had to do was to breath out of the tip of the
nose to the end of the breath and then following it back into the
stomach. Air crossing in and out can do wonders for dreams. \par \pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par First memories of a Tatra\rquote s
chalet: perhaps for many, a naughtily-delicious tea and rum just 2000
meters above the sea. Outside the sun was joyous, the air crystal sharp
on clear days and the outlook 'vodka clear'. The mountains sparkled
like diamonds. In side, in smoky cosy places such as {\i Brncalova
Chata} and {\i Bielovodska Cottage} , you could wash down plates of
veal and goulash with butter milk. The adults, filled with
belly-laughs, seemed far removed from all care, as they drank alcoholic
butter on a summer's night under the stars with the wind whispering
through the {\i kosodrevina} (trees growing at the top of the
mountains) of High Tatra above. Crowning the natural splendour is a
small mountain cable car filled with tourists who could afford such a
luxury. To foreigners the journey to 2500 m-high Tatransky Styt, the
cable car has a reputation for being inexpensive. As the family
official guide, I sat inside the cable car whenever my lazy cousins
from Germany and France came for a visit. My cousins liked to boast
that the High Tatra Mountains was their best kept secret. \par \par I
learnt through my mountain escapades that there were far greater worlds
beyond my own, worlds that I was officially not allowed to visit. \par
\par \pard \qr\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar {\i No matter what the party had
previously been now it is \par a prison for men\rquote s best and
boldest dreams.} \par -Howard Fast \par }