Before and After

{\rtf1\mac \deff8\deflang1033{\fonttbl{\f4\fnil\fcharset77\fprq2
Times New Roman{\*\falt Times New Roman};}{\f5\fnil\fcharset77\fprq2
Arial;}{\f8\fnil\fcharset77\fprq2 Times{\*\falt Times New Roman};}
{\f24\fnil\fcharset77\fprq2 Georgia;}{\f40\fnil\fcharset77\fprq2
Verdana;}{\f46\froman\fcharset0\fprq0 scoo{\*\falt
Times};}}{\colortbl;\red0\green0\blue0;\red0\green0\blue212;\red2\green171\blue234;\red31\green183\blue20;\red242\green8\blue132;
\red221\green8\blue6;\red252\green243\blue5;\red255\green255\blue255;\red0\green0\blue128;\red0\green128\blue128;\red0\green100\blue17;\red128\green0\blue128;\red128\green0\blue0;\red128\green128\blue0;\red128\green128\blue128;\red192\green192\blue192;}
{\stylesheet{\widctlpar \f8\lang3081 \snext0 Normal;}{\*\cs10 \additive
Default Paragraph Font;}}{\info{\author Jozef Imrich}{\operator jozef
imrich}{\creatim\yr2001\mo10\dy5\hr19\min46}{\version1}{\edmins1}{\nofpages0}{\nofwords0}{\nofchars0}
{\vern49231}}\widowctrl\ftnbj\aenddoc\hyphcaps0\formshade \fet0\sectd
\linex0\endnhere
{\*\pnseclvl1\pnucrm\pnstart1\pnindent720\pnhang{\pntxta
.}}{\*\pnseclvl2\pnucltr\pnstart1\pnindent720\pnhang{\pntxta
.}}{\*\pnseclvl3\pndec\pnstart1\pnindent720\pnhang {\pntxta
.}}{\*\pnseclvl4\pnlcltr\pnstart1\pnindent720\pnhang{\pntxta
)}}{\*\pnseclvl5\pndec\pnstart1\pnindent720\pnhang{\pntxtb (}{\pntxta
)}}{\*\pnseclvl6\pnlcltr\pnstart1\pnindent720\pnhang{\pntxtb (}{\pntxta
)}}{\*\pnseclvl7 \pnlcrm\pnstart1\pnindent720\pnhang{\pntxtb (}{\pntxta
)}}{\*\pnseclvl8\pnlcltr\pnstart1\pnindent720\pnhang{\pntxtb (}{\pntxta
)}}{\*\pnseclvl9\pnlcrm\pnstart1\pnindent720\pnhang{\pntxtb (}{\pntxta
)}}\pard\plain \qc\widctlpar \f8\lang3081 A SANCTUARY UNDER
MARIA\rquote S TABLE \par \pard \qr\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par White
Christmas 1957 \par \pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par {\i Swimming is
the first thing we ever do. \par Before we breathe, before we cry,
before we crawl, \par we swim in the waters of the womb. Then the walls
close in \par and we tumble-turn into position, ready to dive into the
open air. \par }- Fiona Capp in Sane Days{\i \par } \par \pard
\sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\f4\cf1 You will not believe me, my story
cannot be believed, but you can only gain an understanding of my
Mother\rquote s village if you visualise a colorless light of the
Central European winter. The village had no beginn ing it was as
eternal as water. Somewhere between Poland, Russia, Austria and Hungary
was the Village\rquote s Black Creek covered in ice and snow. A place
where no villager could resist a small talk and gossip. Villagers
trapped by a life they didn \rquote t choose, and had no control over
the direction of their East Side Story.}{\f4 \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar {\f4 \par }Tucked away in the folds of the
ancient mountains that embrace the Kezmarok and Poprad valleys lay a
royal town called Vrbov (meaning "willow"). \par \par {\i Insert a map}
\par \par \par \par \par A weeping at times. But mostly happy little
village of a few hundred souls with a robust sense of humour. {\f4\cf1
It gets dark early in December. The Vrbov definition of winter: streets
are snowbound, the road is quiet, the mountain air is very, very cold.
}{\f4 That day in 1957, Vrbov was gripped by mid winter night
frostiness. It was two evenings before Christmas Eve. Children and dogs
no longer romped in the snow watched over by women wearing headscarves
and long dresses. All the children were inside warm hous es listening
for the bells of Saint Nicholas' sleigh and motherly figures were
bustling about with Christmas preparations. Every twig }{\f4\cf1 is
draped in red and green memory.\~}{\f4 \par } \par Slowly, like the
heavy curtain of a play's final act, white night descended upon the
small mountain village. It was impossible not to notice how suddenly
the temperature dropped, and how the fragile leaf-like frost built up
icicle by icicle on the glass i n the windows. Footpaths lay buried
under piles of snow. {\f4\cf1 Snowmen stood in public places lording
over Vrbov territory.}{\f24\cf1 }The village was all wrapped up in
white like a giant Christmas present. \par \par For more than seven
hundred years, Vrbov's 200 or so chimneys had faced the winter
northerly wind which would wake up in Poland (to be exact, in Krakow)
at around five, pass through Zakopane ten minutes later and almost
immediately strike Vrbov's isolated white streets with a vicious force.
The blizzard, like the thunder, in the High Tatra Mountains, could be
heard in full voice across both sides of the border. \par \par {\f4
That night} b{\cf1 irds were perched on low branches of every poplar
and seemed to be watching a human figure walking briskly below. T}he
whipping wind shouting in the tops of the poplars didn\rquote t seem to
bother that determined little figure, rugged up in a black woollen
shawl and long skirt, who plodded doggedly through the milky snow,
leaving deep footprints that soon vanished like liqui d silk in the
gale. There were few paths more heavily beaten or more slippery in
winter than those leading to a cream terrace situated in the Horna
Ulica (Upper Street). \par \par She stumbled often. Yet with every
slip, her determination to dive headlong into the deep white emptiness,
her stubborn resolve to reach her destination in the face of nature's
hostility, only seemed to increase. The air, cold as ice, appeared to
have tak en shelter in the warm flood of her whistle. \par \par The
happy whistle was interupted when she almost slipped on the steps
leading to the cream terrace she knew well. Now she wiped the snow off
the ends of her chestnut hair, and removed her s hawl. Aware that her
teeth had bitten into her lip, she took a deep breath and rang the
doorbell. Her breath steamed in the evening chill. On the other side,
the sound of footsteps grew louder and when the door opened, a familiar
odour of pharmaceuticals wafted out, embracing her with reassurance.
\par \par Number Seven at Horna Ulica looked like a set for a Christmas
movie, except instead of a facade of shopping centres it had a facade
of white {\f4 forests and a garrage doors}{\f4\cf1 hidden by
one-meter-snowbanks. }{\f4 The terrace} house was as private as a
priest's confessional. Confessions, in the shape of exceptional
happenings, often stopped here. The terrace was full of warmth from the
open fire, huge divans, bright embroidered cushions and the smell of
baking and pharmacy rol led into one. \par \par A pale orange light
radiating from the street lamp just metres away gave the moment a
mystical aura. {\f4 The soundtrack of knifes and} forks clinked
invitingly. A middle-aged man wearing a white coat opened the wooden
door and looked down {\f4 at the p etitely built, woman who stood
five-foot-three. She had sky-blue eyes and wore her slightly
gray-streaked, honey brown hair in a bun. } The corridor felt like holy
ground, a place where she took off her shoes because custom also
demanded it. Shoes were removed so that dirt and chaos of outside was
left behind. \par \par No one ever forgot the first time they met the
only man in Vrbov who got away with wearing white{\f4\cf1 mask and
rubber gloves. }People marvelled that anyone could be so at ease and at
peace with the world and at the same time claiming to be a keen
supporter of a local soccer team. A team that seemed to lose every {\f4
match. To the men of Vrbov he was a \lquote c}{\f4\cf1 ity boy,\rquote
as he could not tell a difference between a goat and chamois. It was
even less well known that the medical profession had a stronger
connection to music than animals and that doctors were often good
musicians. Dr Rusniak was often found polishin g his precious musical
instrument using the soft, piable chammy}{\f4 i}{\f4\cf1 n the living
room of his home, where an upright piano had pride of place.}{\f4 \par
\par }\pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\f4\cf1 "Ahoj, Maria!" called Dr
Rusniak, the keeper of every woman\rquote s secret fears and wishes.
Welcome was in this greeting and a amiable curiosity. Peached skinned,
Maria Imrichova, born and bred on Vrbov\rquote s customs, is more
likely to kiss than to shake hands eve n with a person she is meeting
for the first time. If you are in Vrbov you kiss. Dr Rusniak kissed
Maria on her rosy cheeks three times without thinking about it. For
someone who could not manage one kiss without}{\cf1 looking embarras
singly ackward not so long ago, he has come a long way.}{\fs28\cf1 \par
}\pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par Politeness was his old trademark:
\ldblquote After you,' 'No, no after you.\rdblquote He stood out in a
village crowd, not just because he always dressed impeccably, but also
because his deep educated voice belonged to another part of
Czechoslovakia: Bratislava maybe or eve n Martin. He spoke proper
Slovak, like radio announcer or the school principal, and even better.
Every one around him sprinkled {\i shs} and {\i cheshes} in their
sentences as often as they could. This was Spis region! \par \par He
spoke softly, looking at people\rquote s eyes and touching their very
soul. His eyebrows were as black as the coal from Ostrava, his
spinach-coloured eyes penetrating and dominant, and behind them worked
a methodical and intellectual mind. \par \par For seven years now his
thorough approach to mind and body had won the confidence of many of
the Vrbov folk. Nothing important happened in Vrbov that Doctor Rusniak
did not know about. People liked him, but he imagined whispers behind
his back. Men were wary of anyone who had a gift for success.{\f4
However, w}{\f4\cf1 herever he went women insisted on confiding in
him.}{\f4 \par } \par Rumour had it that Dr Rusniak laughed at
villagers who thought that evil eye existed. It was said that he held a
view that no amount of garlic in the house was going to ward off the
bad spirits. No one has ever seen a lucky horseshoe in his house!
However , his{\f4\cf1 house was crammed with folkloric memorabilia,
\ldblquote Don\rquote t open a drawer or fujara will fall
out.\rdblquote } \par \par \ldblquote Maria, what's up? Is something
wrong?\rdblquote Doktor Rusniak said in a soft voice as he offered her
a chair. \par \par She replied, \ldblquote Doctor, I've lost all my
appetite. Maybe I've got some kind of bad food poisoning. I am alos
finding it difficult to name objects and people. I think I am becoming
forgetfull in a way I find difficult to make even a shopping list.
Maybe it's just the change of life. . . you know, the one Helena told
me she was going through". \par \par Maria\rquote s voice was half
women half child. Men liked it. Women liked her long thin fingers, once
a source of embarrassment. If you squinted in a smoky room she looked
like Audrey Hepburn. \par {\f4 \par He laid her gently on his
examination table and checked her closely. At first he frowned with
concentration, but soon his eyes grew large and he tried hard to keep
the crinkles from forming. First a broad smile began to emerge. \par
\par Why is Dr Rusniak chuckling, where is the traditional medical
precept, \lquote First, do no harm? Maria thought but did not ask
aloud. How could he be so rude, laughing at me? \par \par He did his
best to control himself, but it proved too much and a gust of laughter
filled the room. \par \par He chuckled more, 'Well, Maria, every house
in Vrbov has a garden, but yours is particularly fertile. The end of
this "sickness" will be a baptism - congratulations!' Maria's jaw
dropped with the shock of the diagnosis. There was a truckload of
baritone l aughter loud enough to rattle the metal instruments sitting
on top of the chifforobe. \par \par An astonishing range of expressions
crossed her face- astonishment, deep thought, and a strange awe that
bespoke a sense of joy. \par \par 'Boh, Pane Boze, Boh, Pane Boze.'
Maria, addressed God several times. She searched for words halfway
between joy and surprise. She laughed enough for both of us. Maria
would raise me in the heart of a modest village, poor in things and
rich in soul. \par \par Life is strange and getting stranger, she
thought to herself. Maria would not tell you her age, but Dr Rusnak
would. At 42, Maria} was pregnant with her sixth child. Her fair hair
was pulled back in a ponytail. Because of her height Maria tended to
look up at things and people, as if the world were composed of
fascinating tall trees. You would think if Maria didn\rquote t know,
that the doctor was an ordinary man. It took million smiles for him to
get those irresistable crow\rquote s feet. Dr Rusniak\rquote s face was
at once open and close His smile, ever contradictory. Dr Rusniak\rquote
s amazement at the pregnancy was borne out by statistics showing that a
woman\rquote s odds at conceiving in her 40s are about 700 to
one.{\f4\cf1 Maria had come to beli eve strange things about
pregnancies. She felt mother and child were together in deep spiritual
ways, ways deeper than physical touch and ways that surpassed physical
passing. For the sixth time she realized she was no longer separate.
She was part of eve rything, one with the spacious sky and limitless
ocean. It was an easy way to be, the right way to be. It was easy to
believe that the next world was separate from this world but a
different dimension of it.} \par \par Dr Rusniak's laughter lifted
Maria's heart and peeled away her anxiety. How could she and her
sisters miss the signs? How ...? The familiar morning sickness.
Previously everyone knew when she was pregnant. She\rquote d left and
kept coming back for things she\rquote d forgotten, like keys, shopping
lists or the candles for the church. Maria\rquote s sisters would
notice her behaving forgetfully and say, \lquote Oh yes, Maria you are
pregnant.\rquote \par \par In less then five months time she was going
to surrender to the mysterious biological forces of labour and love.
All her womanly instincts were moved and excited by the unexpected
opportunity to once again create a new human being. \par \par \pard
\widctlpar Maria bid farewell to the amused Doctor and again made her
way on the slippery path. {\fs36\cf1 \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar {\f4\cf1 Doctor returned back his other
life-long patient, his passion for all manner of things electronic:
cables, soldering irons, integrated circuits, manuals, radios,
oscilloscopes, capacitors, resistors, transmitters, transformers. \par
\par }{\f4 Still blushing, she wondered how she was going to break the
unbelievable news to her husband Jozef (Jozo).} She tightened her scarf
and drifted through the snow, filled with a happy feeling of {\f4
well-being under a }{\f4\cf1 silvery, slivery crescent moon which
hanged above motionless snowclouds. Maria} looked in time to see part
of the moon reflected in a monochrome mirror on {\f4 the pavement. On
the way to the Doctor, Maria was oblivious to the mirror of }{\f4\cf1
packed ice in the pavement, ruts as hard as steel, made the going
dangerous for Maria. }{\f4 It would not be the first time that she slid
on ice. As she was looking for a better foothold in the thinner snow
to} the side of the walk she tried to convince herself with muttering,
"I must not fall!" Mindful now of her unborn child. She wished Jozo
could have made it to the doctor with her, but someone had to serve the
dinner and read the usual 'Dobru Noc' good nigh t story to the
children. \par \par \pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar The night was young,
but by six the village was motionless. No footsteps. Cold. The wind had
now faltered. Her crisp footsteps were lost in the black air and the
silver gleam of the moon. {\cf1 Slovak moon loomed in Maria \rquote s
peripheral vision. She walked towards St. Servac\rquote s parish
}{\f4\cf1 church. She thought of an old folk song,\rquote Icy
Moon.\rquote }{\f4 Nothing is as beautiful as when the edges of the
moon scribble hidden messages. \par \par Maria's heart was unusually
light when, she decided to sit down and stare at the moon from the park
fence facing the village well with its wooden pump. }{\f4\cf1 People
walk a lot in Vrbov. Its main street is usually crowded. But not on a
icy night in the midle of winter. Maria sat alone, save for a black and
brown cat next to the pump visibly busy chasing snowflakes.
Maria\rquote s}{\f4 body feeling tired, but mysteriously filled with
peace and that special delight in being alive right now. The low shrubs
in a corner of the park looked exquisite like a bevy of swans. The
needle-sharp branches floated like wings of feather. }{\f4\cf1 The wind
brought down branches from the pine trees in the cemetery, and the
power winked out, streetlight by streetlight.}{\f4 \par \par Born in
the shadow of High Tatra peaks, Maria, like her highlander mother and
her mother's mother, never seemed to feel the icy cold. Often she would
quickly carry her children to the outside toilet in her bare feet,
undaunted by the midnight snow. It helped to have a grandmo ther who
pioneered an ice swimming for the girls. \par \par For a while she
pondered at her good fortune, at being two instead of one. In the
moonlight, the tall bell tower and the sign of the cross leaned against
her silhouette like a royal crown, studded with dia monds. From the
tower all her family forests and seven different towns could be seen,
the view had never }{\f4\cf1 come unstuck through the mouth of
time.}{\f4 }{\f4\cf1 While Maria went to sleep few years before
Hitler\rquote s invasion and awakened on her honeymoon as owner of one
of the forest, when she walked through a main door of the town hall in
1948 and came out from a side door all the family forests were taken
from h er and her siblings by the socialist state. During the Great
Soviet Experiment at the heart of Europe in 1948 Orwell acquired the
necessary knowledge and insight for backdrop to }{\i\f4\cf1 Nineteen
Eighty-Four.}{\f4 \par \par }{\f4\cf1 Maria learned early that a
daughter who loses her father aches. Maria had a father who loved his
daughters better even than his pipe. The smoke coming from her
father\rquote s mouth was always there in her thoughts, like an echo
across barren hillscapes. Almost made her to take up smoking pipe. His
image danced down to a children made, silver icering, to a glassy part
that not so long ago tested the skills of the goalkeeper. \ldblquote
Marienka! Marienka!\rdblquote he would cry so excitedly when he saw her
coming back from school. Much happens in life, but that central absence
of voice and image persists. }{\f4 Maria found it hard to speak with
her late father } about the fate of the family forest and her sister
Otta. {\f4\cf1 Their conversations avoided uncomfortable subjects.
Maria guessed it was not so bizarre talking to the dead after all, or
was it? Maria had many memories of her father, and among them is the
memory of him saying 'Yes, dear,' to Maria, to her mother, to her
sisters all the time. \par \par \lquote You didn't even hear what I
asked, Tato!\rquote \par \par A moment past and he replied. \lquote
Yes, I did. And it is not strange to argue with the dead.\rquote \par
\par Tonight sky was inky black in some places, but} {\f4 the inside of
the growing baby seemed to hug itself around her. \par \par The unborn
baby fuelled her happy whistling and brisk walk while her mind was
drawn back to images frozen inside Maria\rquote s head. Memories
reserve its best tricks at the most unusual times. She could see the
landscape above sp read like another world, monochrome, shades of
charcoal bathed in the bluesilver light of the full moon.\~Maria heard
someone call her name, and the voice mesmerized her. She felt herself
drifting, drifting.}{\f4\cf9 }{\f4 Maria drifted into her childhood
chair, seated by the burning fire listening to her Father\rquote s
story about a cross dancing in the moonlight when in fact she sat on a
cold stone fence by the ancient cross. Oh, what stories Father told.
Father used to put Maria to bed making her promise to be dream about
sweet dreams. }{\f4\cf1 He was blessed by God with a desire to share
stories. There was a genius in the way he made stories so vivid: not by
describing the world but by recording the way it registered on a human
mind. Maria\rquote s father never doubted that Vrbov, a child of the
Tatra Mountains, had something to crow about. Vrbov was the best place
to watch thunderstorms or listen to the tolling of St Servac bells.
\par }{\cf1 \par }{\f4\cf1 Stories about the Catholic traditions such
as the Angelus\emdash a devotion that honors the Annunciation three
times d aily at the tolling of church bells. The painting in their
dining room displayed an image of Mary and her child. The bell ringer
signalled the Angelus bell each day at 6 pm by pulling in steady
rhythms the long rope that led to the great chimes above. \par \par
Three sets of three peals for each of the petitions and nine straight
peals for good measure. Maria recalled another the painting of the
peasants pausing from their labors in the field with bowed heads to
take part in this ritual. The Catholics world refl ects three times a
day on God's enfleshment in Jesus and on the role of the Jewish servant
girl, Mary of Nazareth. \par \par Maria did not know whether she
thought much about the Annunciation as a child. But when she said these
prayers tonight, the power of God's word had a totally different
resonance for her. In the Annunciation Mary receives a gift and
conceive a child. }{ \cf1 She felt God's presence in the design, and
nothing seemed out of place. Every tradition was like a piece of glass
in a giant rose window. }{\f4\cf1 It was fun to belong to something, it
was fun to believe that God was close to her, loving her like a
daughter, a parent, a friend. }{\cf1 The thoughts her pregnancy gave a
particular sweet pang. }{\f4\cf1 This was too good too good to be true.
Too good to happen to her. \par \par }\pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar
Like Annunciation, the cross was a symbol on which she was raised. Sign
of the cross on her forehead came to her as a second nature. It was a
symbol in her bone marrow. She learned to cross herself-dipping her
hand in the blessed water, thus recalling the waters of b aptism. The
cross dominated the sanctuary of the Roman Catholic Church which stood
next to the bell tower. The stations of the cross dominated the nave
area of the church. All prayers began and ended with the sign. She made
the sign on her forehead at her going in or coming out of the house,
when she lit the candle, when she went to bed. On the bedside table was
the cross in a form of crucifix and bible which were handed down in
family. \par \par Her feelings were no less intense than those of a
gifted poet, but she felt lost for words. Falling pregnant, like
falling in love, revived the Slavonic poetic urge. The urge to see the
sky as yellow and violet. The urge to witness pale green sunrise above
the rich blue snow. The urge to feel suspended in the air and to he ar
again the echo of unstoppable thunderbolts as they sang and sang and
sang inside her diaphragm. Those roomy highlander's diaphragms were
like the engines of the Tatra wind. Those diaphragms could repeat by
heart the great collection of church hymns and S lavonic poems and home
recipes. All life's wisdom could be found in those remembered verses.
Those bible verses never lied. Those poems of slavery stood the test of
time. The recipes left clues to shock. The diet, even under communism,
was still based on the golden values of Austro-Hungarian cuisine. It
contained enough calories to sink a battleship. \par \par Maria
obsessively returned to the suspicion that her fluid thoughts tried to
give her history lessons. Some say that an Englishman's home is his
castle. But, Czechoslovakia is the most densely castellated country in
the world. Here squabbling used to be a national pastime. Just as each
castle owner in fairytales was master of all he surveyed, each castle
was dominant only as far as the eye could see. Where the re were
castles, there were slaves. Vrbov was at different times slave to lords
in the watchtowers of Kezmarok, Levoca and Poprad. In Poprad's center
near the river that gave the town its name is a unique cast of a 90,000
year old skull of a Neanderthal m an. \par \par The geography of the
royal towns and their encompassing hamlets made it a crucial trade
route between Kingdom of Hungary and Poland as well as connecting
routes to the west and east. The area was under the control of Poland
between 1412 to 1772. German co lonists set up shop and mined silver
and copper in the hills in the 14th century. \par \par Tall pine trees
growing inside the park and cemetery cast dark gaping jaws on aged
stone church and houses. All around were reminders of a more elegant
past when Vrbov was the 17th century playground of the rich and regal.
Surviving were many medieval burghers' houses in Gothic, Renaissance
and Baroque style. Like everywhere else, t{\cf1 he official
Czechoslovak crest on government buildings featured the Soviet star
above the lion instead of the now-restored crown. However, }Vrbov
escaped the madness of {\i panelak} , the high-rise blocks of flats,
constructed of pre-fabricated concrete panels, which dot the rest of
the country. One in three Czechoslovaks would live in one. Those were
th e days when Vrbov had royal markets every Saturday, and when
silversmiths and merchants came to enjoy the natural hot spa. The
village boasted buildings like a renaissance tower and a Gothic church.
\par \par Imagine. In Vrbov, the day began and ended at this same
normally crowded village well. As it had for centuries, life in Vrbov
revolved around the market square in front of the St Servac church. The
peasants from the hilltops who used to sell {\i syr} (cheese), {\i
grule} (potato), and wheat had come over the years to be replaced by a
grocery shop. However, this ancient pump continued the tradition. Every
day for centuries, the pump had greeted women, children and the
occasional visitors who gathered in front of it to collect water for
their drinking, cooking and washing. It had heard their banter as they
paused in their daily chores, had listened to a multitude of stories,
jokes, sobs, gossip, laughter. In front of its rusty arm had passed
life in all its richness. Bizarrely stitched-together images and voices
overlappe d her memories. \par \par There was something intriguing
about watching lighted windows in the moonlight. Behind the curtains,
Maria caught a glimpse of mothers going through the fluid movements of
needlework on Home Sweet Home ('Dom Drahy Dom') samplers, while the pot
simmered aw ay on the stove and a child poked at the fire. Everywhere,
decorated Christmas trees blossomed in the background. \par \par
However, it was not all harmon y and light. After a decade of Soviet
presence, there was a certain sadness that tinged even a small village
such as Vrbov, removed as it was from the cities that sheltered the
Communist elites. It was a sadness that reminded her of the time when
her olde r sister Otta left for West Germany in 1948. {\f4\cf1 Just the
mere thought of her sister Otta was enough to sink Maria\rquote s
spirits. }The reality of closed borders did not come without emotional
cost for Maria. {\f4\cf1 Learning that she might never see Otta
devastated Maria. Writing truthful letters about life in Slovakia could
get her and Jozo in jail.} \par \pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\f4
\par Maria and Otta had both been born with the help of a midwife who
had delivered babies for the Austro-Hungarian empire. As little girls
they had run through the enchanted forest of the Czechoslovak
Democratic Republic. As young mothers they had cooked food for
partisans who fought the Nazi occupation. What would come next? What
type of country would her grandchildren inherit? \par \par Maria's
brightest memory was of forest barbecues on 2 8 October, the day that
marks the birth of the First Czechoslovak Republic in 1918. Those hours
around the fire with Otta and her other sisters made her aware that
something was changing, that it was considered momentous, although she
wasn't sure what it meant for her. She remembered watching adults
eating, drinking, gossiping, singing and dancing. Maria watched
open-mouthed at the men jumping over the fire and shouting as they
leapt. Childlike, graceful, they amused and entranced her. Remembering
the son gs they sang, their power and unity, she felt goosebumps down
her back. The Czechoslovaks during the 1920s were full of freedom,
possibilities and a bright future. The characters came with many names:
Masaryk, Benes, Stefanik. They were guardians that took good and bad,
poor and rich under their wings and overcame any obstacles. \par \par
But by that year,1957, October day, the day of freedom, was no longer
celebrated. By November 1957,}{\f4\cf1 twenty-three years old Brigitte
Bardot who starred in the film \lquote And God Created Woman\rquote was
banned from the screens across Eastern block. }{\f4 By then, not even
Christmas was a time for rejoicing. The communists 'tolerated'
Christmas. If it had been called Stalin Festival (Man of Steel
Festival), or White or Red Festival, the communists would certainly
have officially endorsed the idea of celeb rating it. However, since
Christianity was not only discouraged, but persecuted, judging by the
number of priests who were jailed in the 1950s, Christmas as a festival
was very low on the Communist list of celebrations. \par \par The birth
of freedom for Ota began in the cold exile where it was silently
admitted in letter\rquote s to Maria that life is not free if the
homeland is missing. Ota\rquote s spirits cradled the hope of freedom.
Those who love freedom will dream, dream when all hope is gone. Amid
the abuses of power. No matter how powerless in exile or under
communism at home, those ordinary dreams of freedom refuse to wash
away. \par \par Maria shivered, not from cold but from a certain sense
of regret and resentment. As most highlanders discovered, as soon as
the communists came to power in the fateful 1948 putsch, there was not
much celebration in the new regime. How can you genuinely celebrate
without freedom? \par \par As a result of the putsch, certain dark
secrets lurked behind some of our family. Maria's family had one black
mark: the Ota Pecharcik file. Ota's name was often uttered in whispers.
Maria, like her other four sisters, could only dream about visiting
thei r sister Ota, who lived only several hours away in West Germany.
Ota escaped on foot to Germany in 1948 with few belongings, but with a
heart full of hope and dreams. \par \par Remember Christmas of 1948?
The first Christmas without Ota.}{\f4\cf1 Ota\rquote s image was always
with Maria, like a perpetual Christmas from which she were excluded.
Life in the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was glorious, they said.
Yet Maria knew that before Communism there was more colour. A friend of
a friend knew someone who had been to Ota\rquote s West Germany, but
the tales of wealth and freedom were unreal.}{\f4 \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par Mari a's diary was filled with censored
letters from Ota. From the beginning of the Soviet period,
correspondence from the West was viewed as criminal. After the
Hungarian revolution of 1956, such correspondence was further
discouraged as the communists' insec urity grew. Only criticism of the
west was tolerated. Maria never threw anything away, not letters or
photographs; and if rummaged through Maria\rquote s wardrobe you would
come across three dresses that Ota sent with a friend of a friend in
1951. They simply wore out with too much use, but Maria is still
attached to them. \par \par Maria often questioned the absurdity of the
situation. To the communists, Ota was an 'enemy of the state' and no
amount of tragic letters was going to change that. The fact that she
had not seen her family for ten years meant nothing to them. Indeed,
tha t punishment was considered paltry. According to the law, Ota
should have been spending many years in hard labour camps for crossing
to the "other side". \par \par There was more to writing Christmas
letter for Ota. The usual ten page letter took Maria several evenings
to compose first some village gossip, then stories about family and
finally Maria\rquote s children who were also Ota\rquote s godchildren:
Eva, Vlado, and Gitka. Every time she wrote a letter, Maria felt lucky.
She had a loving husband and lively, although mischievous, children.
Kafka said a letter ought to be an axe to break up the frozen sea
within us. But Maria was afraid to open too much in case she offended
Ota. There was a fraction of envy. Sh e could not tell Ota, even after
9 years, how or why she felt betrayed. Betrayed by a banality of evil
system. If Martin Niemoller, a heroic opponent of Nazism happened to
live in Czechoslovakia around1957 his striking words would be an
accurate echo what h appened in communism. First they came for the
factory owners - so I said nothing. Then they came for the Christian
Democrats, but I was not a Christian Democrat - so I did nothing. And
then they came for the intellectuals, but I was not an intellectual s o
I did little. Then when they came for my land and forest, there was no
one left who could stand up for me. Ota used to stand up for Maria and
she left. \par \par There were so many facts that Maria had to keep to
herself or even less of her letters would ever get to Ota. Over time,
communist tactics started to work. Maria would not even dream of
writing in her letter about the Soviet advisors who arrived in Czecho
slovakia few months after Ota left to show the locals how best to
search for class enemies. Not suprisingly, their first victims were
families who had relatives living in the West and all letters were
censored. \par \par When Maria was pregnant with Aga in 1952 it was at
he high point of the Communist Patry\rquote s purges and her happy news
to Olga was marred by the trial against the Secretary General of the
Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Rudolf Slansky - alegedly the ringl
eader of a group of treasonous, counter-revolutionary conspirators.
Maria would describe the show trials, the most ruthless of their kind
outside th e Soviet Union. Fourteen Party members were sentenced to
death, eleven of them Jewish including Slansky, as
Trotskyist-Titoist-Zionists. The executions left peoples\rquote
stomachs temporarily behind with the speed of a bumpy descent. The
execution of Vladimir Clementis, the former foreign minister, infused
an universal terror. \par \par No one was safe. Gustav Husak, the post
1968 president, was given a life imprisonment for no reason at all. If
Jozef was caught listening to foreign radio station it was considered
subversive and he would be thrown in jail. \par \par Maria never
mentioned the fact that the newspapers articles claimed that the
Americans did not liberate the western part of Czechoslovakia after
World War II. Or that all street were renamed or committed to corroding
concrete or peeling vinyl or tacky slo gans such as \ldblquote Metal at
All Cost.\rdblquote Censors or the Big Brother would have made her an
enemy of the state. \par \par Time created unease even between Maria
and Ota. Ota seemed more ingrainedly German than she realised. She used
verbs in her letters that were so uncommon \lquote I dishwashed the
dinnerplates,\rquote or \lquote We dined at a restaurant.\rquote Every
blade of grass in her garden was lawnmowered. West German people were
similar to us but, who at deeper, more complex levels, were remarkably
fa scinating. Ota had forgotten what it was like without washing
machine. Ota had no idea what it was like not to be able to buy leg
stockings. Ota would not be able to grasp the way God was taken out of
every official document. How long would it be until Ot a visited them?
\par \par When Ota left, Maria\rquote s oldest daughter, Eva, was
almost 10 years old and not allowed to travel by bus to Kezmarok in
case she got lost as Maria and Ota did when they were little. Gitka and
Vlado had milky teeth and Gitka\rquote s eyes were level with the
peepho le of our front door. Maria had to have her eyes in the back of
her head, but she learned to close them. Someone once told her that
even Mother Theresa was once misunderstood for a year or two. Maria
still remembered what it was like to be 1 9 like Eva. But Maria could
find her way around the golden lanes in Prague better anyone in the
family. And she did not have a boyfriend until she was 22 year old the
age of Eva\rquote s boyfriend Franto who considered a midnight to be
only few minutes after 10 pm. Wherever Eva was she always found her way
home for her birthdays on 5 December and put out at night the most
polished shoes. Ota used to say no child in our family was as excited
about Saint Nicholas as Eva. God timed the first birth of my daughter w
el l. Eva received birthday presents one day and St Nicholas the next.
Ota would not recognise Eva who grew past my head. Indeed he had a
another great timing with Lidka who was born one night before the
Christmas Eve so she also received a present from Jezi ska (Jesus). Ota
never set eyes on Lidka or Aga. However, she heard Lidka kicking in my
tummy, just before she ran away to West Germany. Ota missed Aga\rquote
s pregnancy and my this mysterious pregnancy. Maria would have to write
another letter to let Ota know about her latest motherhood journey.
\par \par To Maria it seemed like yesterday that she and Ota were
decorating the freshly cut pine tree, thrilled that St Nicholas was
coming but scared of the Devil, Diabol. Traditionally, on the evening
of 5 December, the Devil and St Nicholas (dressed up parents or uncles)
come to the homes of very young children to find out if they were good,
and leave gifts- usually fruits, nuts, and chocolate wrapped in red
see-through paper. St Nicholas dresses a little like the Pope, with a
tall white hat decorated with a cross, and a long white coat. The Devil
carries a bunch of twigs to punish the naughty ones. He wears a mask of
heavy black make-up, a bit like a chimney sweeper, with horns on his
head, on old black fur coat, a tail and so me chains to rattle. \par
\par Christmas celebration begins on Christmas Eve, or Generous Day
({\i Stedry Den}), the big day for family meals and gift-giving. Most
people wait until the morning of this day to put up their Christmas
tree, usually a spruce. {\cf1 . When the day s work is over, the family
bathes, dresses in their best clothes and with the appearance of the
evening star, sits down at the table. } The traditional Christmas Eve
dinner starts with carp soup, followed by carp fried with bread crumbs
and potato salad. Desert is usually {\i vianocka}, a light fruit cake.
{\cf1 The table is spread with hay, in memory of, the birth of Christ
in the manger and covered with a white linen cloth. The dishes are
prepared from wheat, out and barley flour and groats, and from fish,
mushrooms, poppy-seeds, fruit, berries and honey. As a rule twelve
courses are served. }After dinner everyone attacks the presents under
the tree and later goes to midnight Mass. \par \pard \widctlpar \par
{\cf1 \par }\pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar {\cf1 On Christmas Eve
people used spells and charms to foretell future events, especially
death, marriage and harvest. Young girls would seize an armful of wood,
carry it indoors and count the pieces, if the pieces of wood fell into
pairs, a wedding would foll ow.} \par \par Christmas Day itself begins
with a mass and is mainly the day for visiting, or being with family
and for eating the big mid-day meal, typically roast turkey. St
Stephen's Day or Boxing Day ({\i Stefana} ) is everybody's chance to
get over it all, a ritual practiced all over the world. \par \par Even
in the grey of late winter with an isolated smoky smudge of snow cloud
hugging the shoulders of Tatra Mountain, Vrbov was breathtakingly
lovely under its moonlit mantle of thick, sugary, snow. Maria shivered,
not from cold but from a profound spiri tual joy. There are about 100
billion stars in our galaxy, the Milky Way. As Maria\rquote s milk was
being generated on this night, it seemed as if she could see most of
them with her naked eye. Looking up at the stars in their spectacular
wheeling across the p artly clouded sky, she felt her soul lifted up by
the breath of God. Her lungs full of cold air, she had an urge to
awaken the world to the wonder of the scene, to toll a church bell to
alert townsfolk. \par \par Maria was now used to sitting in her
mother's pew. The pews were ordered according to a person's position in
life -- young girls and single women in the front pews on the left of
the altar, boys on the right side. When Maria married Jozef, she joined
the other women on the wooden benches at the back most uncomfortable
during her pregnancies. The pews harboured many mysteries, including
the one which Maria had stumbled across when she was first pregnant.
The most mysterious of all, the miracles swimming and diving between
the flesh inside her swollen tida l tummy. \par \par Like her mother
who came to church every day till she passed away, Maria was a woman of
habit and great faith. Not even pregnancy stopped her from sitting in
the pew every day. \par \par Broadly speaking, there were four kinds of
church pews, those for boys, those for girls, those for married couples
and those for spinsters and bachelors. You could walk into any church
service and tell without difficulty who sat where. The front of the ch
urch was dotted with neat ponytails and flower dresses on the right s
ide and unruly boys in toilet-bowl haircuts on the left. Few husbands
sat with their wives in the center areas of the church. Most sat at the
back under the choir gallery. Most spinsters sat in the middle row at
the back, while bachelors stood under the g allery or were sitting
upstairs in the gallery. \par \par She thought of her long-dead father,
of how proud he would have been to be having another grandchild. He had
been a landed proprietor, an owner of a local hotel and forests, until
1948, when the Communists arbitrarily took it all away and reduced him
to the status of a common worker, along with his brothers. And yet he
had withstood that hardship, and even rejoiced in the land and
surroundings he at least spiritually owned. The way she always saw him
was th e way he used to be in Sunday afternoons, wearing a dark blue
striped suit. \par \par During those fading afternoons, he would make a
special effort to explain to Maria the beauty of the air, the wind, the
sun, the light of the moon. He loved those glorious mounta in meadows
that gradually changed into deep coniferous forests and mountain pines,
right up to the naked, sheer, rocky granite giants -- the Tatra peaks.
Each of those stone summits, like each of his grandchildren, had its
own name, shape, soul and histor y. \par \par Across the park, she
could clearly make out the branches of the poplar trees that he had
planted many years before.{\f4 Maria felt t}{\f4\cf1 he unborn baby
swimming in the warm waters of her womb. }{\f4 A tumult} of thoughts
passed through her mind, while the silky sky l eaned against the top of
the trees. Her father's voice sliced through the silence. She heard his
words: 'Volaj ho Jozef ked to je chlapec.' (Call him Jozef if it is a
boy). There and then Maria decided to name the child after her father,
who had the sa me name as her husband, if it was a boy. Despite the
fact that it was Stalin's name, she was choosing it for family reasons,
obviously not political ones. When her first son was born, she like
many others greatly admired the bravery of the Russians and na med him
Vladimir (Vlado) after Lenin. The Soviets had been the liberators
during the war. However, in 1948, Soviet ideas were exposed as being
akin to those of murderers and rapists, and hard-line apparatchiks
commanded obedience to communist ideology. \par \par Even if Maria was
able to close her mind's eye to everything else, her children would
still be hopping, walking, laughing, arguing before her. At any hour of
the day, like now, Maria's mind would drift to her children, to Eva,
the eldest in faraway Prague , to others - Vlado, Gitka and Lidka and
Aga who would soon have a new sibling to contend with in their already
crowded home. \par \par She looked up, suddenly realising that she was
still in the streets of Vrbov. How had the years passed by so quickly?
She still felt like a young girl even though she had four of them at
home. Had she really matured into a 42 year old? Or had everything e
lse changed around her unnoticed? She looked all around her. No, the
streets had not changed. She whistled, the echo was the same. The
church was definitely the same, its bell tower and spire still the
central landmark of Vrbov, although it did need a new coat of paint,
not surprising given that it had not been repainted since the
Depression. \par \par Taking a resolute breath, Maria made up her mind
then and there that she would not venture into the impersonal
atmosphere of the hospital as Dr Rusniak had suggested, with its
strange nurses and even less familiar doctors. Despite having already
had five children, she was a still a modest soul who preferred the
comfort of wearing clothing in front of everyone except her husband.
Now she no longer felt embarrassed when Katka, the village mid-wife,
was in the room, so she preferred not to have to undergo the ordeal of
undressing in front of strangers in the hospital. Besides, Katka was a
fourth generation midwife: in her family, delivering babies was a task
that was inherited through the female line. Five times now, Maria had
watched Katka washing water over her tired body after the arduous
process o f labour, comforting it with soothing lotions and gentle
massage. \par \par Wroom! The unmistakable sound of a bus engine
reverberated through the empty street. It was this rumble of the
delayed seven o'clock bus which prompted her to think, {\i\cf1 God, no.
It was already past seven. Jozo will be worried were I am.} \par \par
Maria stood up and stumbled the final passage home into the welcoming
arms of her husband -- Jozef. \par \par Maria! Really,! repeated Jozef.
We can\rquote t possibly afford another child, his rational mind
thought for a second. \par \par But, Jozo's face registered the same
surprise and then the same warmth as he embraced his wife with joy.
That night they celebrated their sixth blessing with rosehip tea,
French potatoes and garlic bread. A middle-aged Doberman called Zahraj
(Play music), a bit of a mangrel and a little bit of {\cf1 aristocrat}
but {\cf1 inseparable companion,}{\fs28\cf1 } barked furiously at the
wind and from time to time came to the kitchen window to look back at
them. For a dog who measured his days by quantity of food, it was a
really bad day for Zahraj. It was a long time since Zahraj received so
much food on his metal dinner, but if children could not eat it how
could he? With Maria\rquote s cooking less was in fact more. \par \par
Zahraj w{\cf1 as neither house-dog nor kennel-dog. The whole Vrbov was
his. He shared the playground with numerous cats and dogs. Zahraj was
one of those attentive dogs who will take a run at you if you slow down
at our gate. On wintry nights he was let inside, but not always. He
escorted Maria to post office, Tato on long walks; he carr ied children
on his back or pulled the sledge. In winter Vrbov was dotted with
sledge runs. On summer afternoons he rooled in the grass, and guarded
the house. He was really the seventh member of the }{\f4\cf1 family.
And Zahraj knew it. If he could talk he would probably bark-whisper,
\ldblquote Mamka, save yourself a trip to Dr Rusniak. These are not
hunger pangs or some exotic pang. These are growing pains.\rdblquote
}{\f4 \par \par Maria then grew ... and grew ... \par \par Five months
passed. \par \par The shadows in the sub-tatran countryside lightened.
The land scape became a pale-indigo blur, landlocked with flowing
grass. There were only few traces of snow at the top of the Tatra
Mountains. There was, if only in the air, the first faint spectre of
summer. At 6 am, Kezmarok, the main town near Vrbov and histori cally
known as a royal town, was starting to come alive. The shutters and
grills on the local breadshop next to the hospital were lifted. \par
}\pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\f4 \par }{\f4\cf1 Then, t}{\f4 hat
spring morning, on May 16, }{\f4\cf1 the sheets were stained with
Maria\rquote s water, breaking one week early, and her difficult, and
very last, labor began. }{\f4 A}{\f4\cf1 fter many hours of pushing and
shoving, the head came out, but since the room was very cold the baby
was unwilling to stick its neck out. The baby\rquote s bloody crown
several times bloomed between her thighs }{\f4 testing her again and
again beyond endurance. \par \par But there were no complications
beyond the end result of the misdiagnosed menopause, as I tumble-turned
head first. To my surprise I was born in hospital in Kezmarok}{\f4\cf1
. Actually I wanted to come from Vienna, but communists had other
ideas}{ \f5\fs28\cf1 .}{\f4 Regardless, the sloppiness of my coming
into existence was not to be into the family midwife Katka's loving
arms. I was the only baby in the family to draw my first screaming
breath into the ears of a strange warden of the Kezmarok hospital.
Maria was Dr Rusniak's oldest expectant mother and he had been firm.
When I was born my Mamka was 42 and} my Tato was 48. Both appeared to
other adults much younger than they were, but to me they wo uld often
seem like grandparents. I was to be the last child they had. \par \pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par The sister on duty filled in the details
on my birth certificate. I was in luck. There was a high shortage of
birth certificates, but that had not affected Kezmarok\rquote s
maternity hospital. The zealous inventory officer knew too well that
the world was in the middle of baby boom and ordered enough to last
till the next Millenium. {\cf1 When a mother needs a birth certificate
for her baby, the first item needed is bribe money. In Czechoslovakia,
a good bribe can keep shortages of any supplies at bay for awhile.}
\par \par Another register, in the sanctity of the St Servac church,
twenty meters from the room in which I was conceived, records the
misdiagnosis: '1958-Jozef Imrich,\rquote Catholic, male, legitimate
child. Parents: Imrich, Jozef-father, carpenter; mother, Pecharcikova,
Maria, daughter of Jozef and Maria Hrobakova.\rquote \par \par A
dubious honour of history was bestowed upon me at this time of birt{\f4
h. }{\f4\cf1 It was the same month fourteen years ago when Franz
Kafka's sister was deported to Auschwitz. }{\f4 I was a child of the
Leninist era, the initiator} of the single most tragic event of our
time. Lenin would be relieved to know that in our village a handful of
fools still agreed with him. By 1958, Leninism controlled 36 \% of the
earth's population and 26\% of its land mass. At that time, it was
consider ed a crime to claim middle class grandparents in what way was
the birth certificate claiming them as middle class w hose attitudes
could be harmful to the communist cause. I was not born in the land of
free, it was a home of petty apparatchiks. An auspicious beginning,
wouldn't you say? \par \pard \widctlpar {\f4\cf1 \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar Every day in the typical climate of Tatra,
long cold pale-anaemic winters and short hot, bright, colourful
summers, my Tato (father) strived hard to earn enough money to support
us. {\f4\cf1 Neighbours never questioned my Tato when he told them to
turn on the radio. They knew something significant must have happened.
}He rose, tuned up the radio to Radio Free Europe, ate his breakfast
and shaved, put on his overalls, picked up his joiner's bag and went to
the bus stop. On 17 May 1958, his routine was slightly altered as the
world listened to the latest development on the 'putsch' which
overthrew the faltering Fourth Republic and eased General de Gaulle
into power. Tato stayed at home to prepare the room for the newly born
boy, me. \par \par When I arrived home, Tato's descriptions were
dominated by adjectives, as if bestowing on me my future well-built
frame: 'sturdy', 'handsome', 'big', 'tough'. \par {\f4 \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\f4 \ldblquote He looks like he is already
seven months old,\rdblquote a voice rang out from behind Maria. It
belonged to her sister Ilonka. My blue eyes unnerved most female
relatives of my family - they said I was like a little old man staring
into their souls. }{\f4\cf1 And milked my Tato of every spare crown to
stage a party years before I was born to party.}{\f4 \par \par Mamka
knew the Slovak way of brining up babies, which was to give them breast
milk till they were at least one. I always said 'yes' to the breast.
}{\f4\cf1 According to the story, when my Tato first took me in his
arms, I squealed with such volume that my auntie Ilona declared: "I'll
grow up to be a mountain." }{\f4 I was definitely no weak or undersized
baby and later grew to 6 foot 3 (188 cm), an inheritance I gained from
my Tato's Tato. To him and Vaclav Havel I owe my trademark moustache.
My snub nose belongs to Mamka's genes. You could tell any of our family
whe rever you went, because our round faces were a family trademark,
stamped on at birth. To eerie nature I owe the fact that lastborn are
rebels. \par \par I have several unusual features which clearly
distinguish me: what anthropologists call changing eyes, when calm,
blue-green, when stimulated, green-blue; my bear-like hairiness which
covers all my scars except on my face, and the one that had amazed our
family Doktor Rusniak, my four nipples on my chest which developed when
I was seventeen and remain to this day unexplained. Dr Rusniak can
account for most of the fructures in my skull. \par \par Other people
remember being in their prams, but I remember Tato\rquote s workshop
which }{\f4\cf1 overflowed with unruly stacks of wood. A portrait of
the Jesus adorned one wall. Bellow the portrait was a} huge wooden
{\f4\cf1 workbench, a stool, some rough-cut planks, electric saw and
lathe, and a large pile of wood shavings and saw dust. }The smell of
saw dust in an unspecific light was my first memory. I licked the dust
like icecream. The rhythm of Tato\rquote s shaving falling on the
wooden from his large plain came to me before walking. In a sense, the
plain was the most treasured toy. {\f4\cf1 An older version of me bend
over a piece of wood.}{\f40\cf1 }{\cf1 I see Tato carrying heavy planks
of wood on his shoulders, I see his solitary form shaving raw pieces of
red spruce over the workbench, I see him surrounded by wood shavings,
his hands lost in }{\f4\cf1 their embrace. His hands were the hands of
a man accustomed to cutting trees, mowing hay, and splitting firewood.
The}{\cf1 shyness generally saved his singing for times when his sawing
machine mad loud noises. Usually, he would burst into loud singing
everytime the saw was going through a knot. Most of all I was grateful
for the sound of his pockets. The coins and nails in his pockets
clinked, ding-donged, and jingled as he walked or slapped his thighs.
\par }\pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par But first, I must introduce
you to my Tato\rquote s family. \par \par \pard
\sl480\slmult1\widctlpar Jozef, my Tato, was born to a largely
self-supporting farming family in Pilhov few days after Valentine's day
in 1911. His childhood passed amid the gathering storms of the
horrifying First World War. Both Tato and Mamka were born citi zens of
the Austro-Hungarian Empire (called 'the people's prison') during a
time when momentous social movements were preparing the ground for the
new nation in the aftermath of the First World War. The catalyst of
World War One enabled the Slovaks to s eparate from the empire and find
the way to national liberty. Slovaks had nothing to lose but their
chains. \par \par Like most children, I admired many traits of my
parents. A born joygiver, my Tato was a hard-working man who relished
his physical environment. He w as a carpenter by trade and loved the
smell of the wood in the forest as well as smoothing it into shape in
his workshop. {\cf1 I watched him million pf times dressing odd strips
of wood as the tongue of his foreplane whistled its Slavic lisp. All
carpenters and poets know that ghostful voice, the voice of hisses.
\par \par }\pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar He was a great walker, as
most Slovaks were given their mainly rural upbringing and also the
enticement of their surroundings, with blooming meadows to stride
through, rivers and overgrown creeks to wa de in and mountains to
climb. Hours of walking ensured that my Tato could work from dawn to
dusk without complaint. A rare individual who never {\cf1 needed alarm
to wake up in the morning, the smell of the rising sunlight or noise of
children let him know when it was time to rise. } \par \par Tato was
also an epicentre of fun, a teenager in the roaring twenties when
cabaret and Slovak national awareness were loudly celebrated, and he
maintained that spirit right throughout our lives. He was always a
storyteller and a crow d pleaser and yet a simple man who enjoyed
simple tastes. He considered his family a sanctuary, and that included
his fellow villagers. \par \par Tato was distinctly Slovakian, stockily
built like his six brothers, with a deep baritone voice that emanated
from a solid squarish face and a stack of black hair. Tato's nose and
mouth suggested more than a trace of Polish features, but his
wedge-shaped profile spoke of that non-Slavic touch. His taut Hungarian
cheeks were slightly hollow with age, and deep crow's feet we re
heavily etched around his eyes. He had changing eyes, like me, and a
slight gap between his two top front teeth, giving him a down to earth
expression which fitted his personality. A noted feature was his limp,
which resulted from an accident. \par \par As a young carpenter, his
leg was squashed in a pile of wood that fell on top of him. He
survived, but his right leg remained 7cm shorter as a result of complex
breakage around his calf and knee. The inside of his carpenter's boot
and the Sunday shoes wa s a speci ally moulded cork. Even if Slovak men
wore shorts, which they did not, my tato would not wear such things.
His other key feature, played a cruel joke on his carpenter trade. One
day his fifty-two year old grizzly voice ordered my mother to run to
the wor kroom to find his thumb. By the time my mother found it, on the
floor in a messy glue, saw dust and nails, it was too late for the
nerves to accept my Tato's limb. So when ordering beer, my Tato would
lift his four digit hand and say, 'I have been working with machinery
for 25 years and there is nothing wrong with me, "Waiter, five beers."'
\par \par Tato grew up in Pilhov, a town on the border of Slovakia and
Poland, which at 700 meters, is the highest village on the banks of the
Poprad River. Pilhov is a pop-up fairytale book. Local folks happily
trudge up hills just to have a look down. Visitors g asp at the beauty
of Pilhov. It is like somewhere from a story by Dostoyevsky. Sheep are
scattered like popcorn across the pages. Dozens of hilltop hamlets with
thatch-ro ofs hugged the dirt paths, among them one that harboured the
childhood days of my Tato, occupy the high ground in this country. With
its wooden church radiating authority, the ultra-Catholic village lies
in green, rolling countryside, in the foothills of the Carpathian
mountains. It is a terraced world of {\cf1 four-leaf clovers,} fruit
orchards and potato fields. Manure has never been a dirty word in
Pilhov. \par \par If you are lucky enough to have been retold the
stories about the rituals practiced in Pilhov as a young boy, then
wherever you go for the rest of your life those stories which decompose
into images stay with you. You showed a girl at Easter you cared for
her when you washed her face in icy cold water. They pretended they did
not like it, but the same girl w ho kissed you in the evening was the
ones who had her faces washed with freezing water. Pilhov wits call
government officials \lquote undertakers,\rquote a village mayor
\lquote seven meter wide and one straw deep,\rquote and undertakers
\lquote seabones.\rquote Shakespeare must have been half Pilhovian, as
there is no sea in Slovakia or Bohemia. \par \par My grandfather\rquote
s 1000 watt smile lived in an unelectrified world held together by the
intricate tapestry of myths, religious symbols, legends and stories.
Like the foot of the rainbow on the banks of the Poprad River, every
object and event was meaningful and demonstrated tangled roots of
bittersweet harshness and poverty. My grandfather\rquote s two Catholic
wifes earned him a fertile nickname The-Father-In-Law of Pilhov. Maria
Theresa of Austria admired Pilho v subjects who could match her own 16
children. My grandfather was only four children short from the scary
ideal number of this Slovak Queen. One and all of Imrich clan tend to
broadcast our shortcomings before anyone else does it for us. \par \par
A curl of smoke rose every morning from the chimney of my
grandfather\rquote s wooden house. It stands sweetly at the midway
point and only one pathway takes you there from the village centre. The
bus doesn\rquote t take you quite far enough. Nor does the road. If you
want to visit the house then the last part of the journey is by foot or
horse and cart. It passes a cemetery, several pear and cherry trees and
two neighbours. For reasons that have been forgotten, houses are built
in a set of three. {\cf1 In Pilhov your property ends and your
neighbor's begin where your dog stops barking and his starts.} \par
\par Although the surroundings were supremely beautiful, the Pilhov
region was notoriously poor. Pilhov hills were divided into two areas.
The poor lived in farmhouses on the sides of the hills, and the worse
than poor lived at the top of the hill. Basically there was only one
thing in Pilhov you had to do. To worry about what you eat. In Pilhov
you could eat anything - as long as it was potato (grule) and onion.
The onion was a must. It released th e tears into mashed grule adding
the flavour of centuries of Pilhov suffering. Like the vast majority of
central Europeans, from medieval Europe to the early twentieth century,
his small peasant community rarely owned their homes. They had to work
arduous ly for their masters, and had no education or even a remote
chance of improving their station. There was a joke made by a Pope who
was the son of peasant farmers that went "there are three roads to
poverty - drinking, gambling and farming.\rdblquote My grandfather
chose the slowest of the three.' \par \par Pilhov life was very crude
in many ways. For over 500 hundred years no peasant quarter in Pilhov
had any other than a dirt floor and few had a chimney or windows. Low
ceilings, heavy dark-wood beams and oil lamps tell the ta le of a harsh
existence. Women not only washed clothes by hand, but ironed them with
flat iron heated on a woodfired stove. Most farmhouses had a small
parcel of land in which potatoes and vegetables were grown for home
consumption. Everything was of valu e here from a nail to a piece of
driftwood. Chickens and geese were kept in straw-filled stables and
were very common. However, only a few people made enough profit to
acquire horses or rude machinery. Those who saved money used it as a
dowry to marry da ughters to a member of the {\f46 aristocracy}. \par
\par The struggles were not purely a result of the harsh feudal system,
but were also the outcome of being forced to play a part in wars that
continually called their menfolk to arms. Not long after the birth of
his youngest sister, Tato, aged seven, witnessed the birth of an
"independent" Czechoslovakia; however it was never truly independent
and continued to feel the force of both Soviet and the Allied Forces in
determining its fate. Like many of Tato's aunties, many wives became
widows during this time. \par \par Until the beginning of the twentieth
century, peasants who were born and raised in Pilhov hardly ever moved
beyond Stara Lubovna where the lively medieval markets opened every
Saturday. A splendid medieval town with ancient castle, Gothic church
and livel y marketplace, Stara Lubovna dominated the area. It was a
place where merchants owned their own stores and small factories, where
craftsmen of considerable skills sold their art. As merchants,
craftsmen and clergy were of ten the only people in the area who could
read and write, they were the authority on news, stories and opinions,
so it was a town of information. However, such isolation and
specialisation of skills had to change as poverty struck many families
in the 192 0s. Families were forced to move to survive. \par \par For
his farmer parents, the move from a feudal system based on rural
organisation, heredity, detailed stratification, and a network of
carefully defined social obligations, with payment often in kind, to
the impersonality of the industrial revolution, was a huge shock. It
was like an earthquake shattering their lives, their social fabric,
their sense of security. The high speed introduction of
industrialisation became apparent with the arrival of railways and
telegraphs. The trains took many sons and dau ghters out of Pilhov to
new horizons, forever changing the focus of village life. \par \par
Given the harsh and changing conditions, mass unemployment and hunger
was rife amongst Slovakian villages. Generations of families migrated
when possible. Tato, at seventeen, was forced to leave his village, his
boyhood friends, the wheat and potato field s that had been his
childhood playground, in search of a more fruitful existence which he
could extend to his family. He would not see his home until ten years
later. \par \par Yet he considered himself very lucky. According to one
Ukraine apprentice, hunger claimed the lives of his entire village,
only 60 kilometres across the border from where they were working. It
was a time of much suffering across the Soviet--influenced empire wh
ere neighbourhood countries felt the full brutal force of its evil
master. While t{\cf1 he Stalin's terror-famine ravaged the Ukraine,
human meat was sold at markets. A decade later, during the siege of
Leningrad in 1942, cannibalism became again widespread. \par }{\f4\cf1
\par }\pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\f4\cf1 Th e first time I heard
the name Josef Stalin I was about five years old. My father said it,
and then he spat. The spitting I had seen before. I watched my father
spit out his toothpaste into the sink. I saw him spit on Mamka\rquote s
kitchen floor, like everything else in my Mamka\rquote s world, was
kept meticulously clean, and so even as a child I recognized the utter
seriousness of his gesture. \par \par \lquote Murderer,\rquote my
father said. Later I hear him muttering to himself. \lquote A murder of
one person is the same as the muder of all hum anity. No country
deserves to exchange the murderers of a loony right with murderers of a
loony left. One's curses run dry\rquote \par \par Then I did not know
that orders used to be given from Stalin's country house at Kuntsevo.
Orders to the secret agents in charge with no greater emotion than for
the killing of kulaks or clergy or the outspoken wives of very dear
friends. The ideal of libe rty, equality and fraternity gave way to the
terror. \par \par In Czechoslovakia, everyone carried ID card. The
communist undertood the conne ction between IBM and the Nazis and how
the old Hollerith punch card (the predecessor of modern computer
records) did greatly increase the efficiency of the Nazi machine in
making lists of victims for the Holocaust. \par }{\f4 \par Hardship was
part of daily life and the only way out was individual} effort or
marriage. Whilst Tato's older sister married in Vrbov and remained
poor, the two older brothers were successful -- at least in terms of
their native village, Pilhov. From time to time not only a letter would
break the routine, but sweets would arrive from the magic city in
Morava, Ostrava, where Uncle Peter landed a job as coal miner. \par
\pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par Uncle Pavol settled in the town of
Hrabusice working on communal farm (Druzstvo), and he too sent news of
a better life compared to the one he had left behind. \par \par Tato's
family had to wait many years before they declared that he had "made
it" in Vrbov. I understand that he starved for a week to save for the
sweets and it took another two weeks of sacrifice before the post
office accepted the stamp value on the parcel. He worked at many menial
jobs, serving under all kinds of masters, not all of them kind and
considerate. In Vrbov, he landed apprenticeship under a talented German
carpenter called Schwager. Even though it was unpaid, he gai ned a warm
bed and was fed hearty German cooking, which considerably improved his
health. It was here that he found the secrets of the trade that he grew
to love and cherish, slowly moving up from raw skills to a finer
craftsmanship. \par \par It was here too that he developed another love
-- for Maria. \par \par \par \pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar They began
a life together in a roofless three roomed home, a former Catholic
mortuary with a massive cross in front of it, on the edge of the church
cemetery. So our{\f4\cf1 house was once a restplace, the home of the
victims of Black Death. The shape of the house itself was a character,
noble yet haunting, evocative of the past. }{\cf1 At more than twenty
feet, the cross nearly matched the height of the roof, although not the
rusted TV arial. The nearest \par building, close enough to hit with a
stone thrown from the foot of the cross, was the church. \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar {\f4\cf1 \par } What attracted him to this
part of the village was the 11th century church of St Servac, and, most
certainly, the surrounding nature with its thick evergreen trees, green
meadows and plenty of space. Within a few years, he had expanded the
three rooms to eight. \par \par Now, it was not easy to find the house;
it was hidden between vicarage and St Servac church on a nameless
secondary street with a number 132. \par \par He soon lost his label as
a 'migra nt' (as he wasn't originally from Vrbov), and became an
important local figure, slowly building both his house and his
reputation as a tradesman to create a stable environment for his
family. He lived inside the walls he meticulously crafted, under the c
eiling he scrupulously designed. \par \par It was in this house that he
shared his jokes, prayed to God, saw the miracles of birth and tragedy
of death and dreamt of delightful futures for me, my brother and four
sisters. That these futures were not what he would have hoped was
beyond his control. \par \par Mamka, Maria, was born in February 1917.
Unlike Tato, she came from wealthier Slovak stock, the daughter of a
publican who came from a modestly well-to-do family with stands in some
forests. Her parents, like most other landowners, were later
impoverishe d when the Communists claimed title over Slovakian soil and
private property became State-owned. \par \par Mamka had the physical
qualities of a typical Slav, snub, upturned nose, prominent cheekbones,
and rosy cheeks. Her face w as captivating in its frankness of
expression, her manner as bold as the calluses on her hands that had
become ingrained after years of toiling at both home and at work. Mamka
worked for wages as a forestry worker and a cook. Rest and leisure were
scarce for women with six children. \par \par {\f4\cf1 Slovakia is not
rich in farmland, and its climate can be less than ideal for growing
things. As a result, the history of its cooking demonstrates the
Slovak\rquote s skill at making a lot from a little. The Slovaks are
devoted to rec ipes that are based on root vegetables like potatoes and
turnips. Because of the intensity of the winters, Slovaks created a
cuisine designed to produce a sense of inner warmth -- lots of thick
soups, endless rounds of buchty, and ginger cake.} \par \par I
distinctly remember Mamka's starched flowing skirts swishing ominously
as she moved around the kitchen, rationing out a modest supply of food
for many hungry mouths and whipping up delicious homemade plum chutney.
She cast a potent spell, her food devou red and her story-telling in
great demand. \par \par To my Mamka's side of the family, Vrbov was
their place of birth and place of death. To this day, she still lives
in the village. However, Vrbov is a very different place today compared
to the peaceful and undisturbed village of my youth. \par \par When I
was a boy, there wer e no computers, no television, or credit cards.
Cars were just beginning to appear on the scene and amounted to nothing
more than a nuisance that scared the horses, cows and sheep. Even after
I reached school age, a car was a rarity and when a car went pa st our
school the boys would endlessly discuss the most likely reason for its
passing through the village. Petrol was then hugely expensive,
particularly in comparison to potatoes and wheat. \par \par I remember
being told on daily basis, \ldblquote {\f4 Be Quiet, Be Quiet, Be
Quiet.\rdblquote } I remember the Vrbov co-educational school, situated
on large grounds at the outskirts of the village, a five minute walk
from my house on the way to Zakovce next to the gypsy ghetto. This
ghetto area contained what I thoughts were gingerbread houses as n ot
one of the buildings was at right angles. They were overgrown and
strewn with old ploughs and truck tyres. \par \par I followed my dear
sister Aga's routine - wake up at whenever, breakfast, mass at St
Servac, school after nine, taste Mamka's lunch at the sc hool's dining
room, from three play games till five, dinner at six and homework at
home or in the houses of the Hrebenar or Zivcak families before going
to bed. \par \par Around 8 o'clock in the morning the smell from the
kitchen was wonderful. Aga\rquote s breadrolls with jam reminded me of
weekends in Levoca picking fresh strawberries. I could not tell berries
apart. By the time I was seven, I rarely saw Tato in the morning or
hear Mamka\rquote s sleep-filled voice, \ldblquote Our Father, thank
you for letting me this New Day. Bless this house and everybody in
it.\rdblquote It was Aga who would say, \ldblquote Come along now,
Jozo. You can\rquote t stay in bed all day. I made you
breakfast.\rdblquote We walked 300 meters to our school. Ten year old
Aga took her duties seriously for six years. Then, at sixteen she left
me to go to a boarding college to study chemistry at Ruzomberok, a town
a far way from Vrbov. \par \par God only knows how many troubled days
there were, but I recall spending some time begging for His divine
assistance at St Servac. Like everyone else, I am sure I made God laugh
and I imagined Him rocking back and forth in his seat. \par \par
Schoolday had its own set of rituals and institutions. We had shoe
inspections and random underwear inspections. Anyone with the wrong
colour was meted out punishment. Most of my primary school years {\i
ucitel,} a teacher, was a kind word. As my lazy bones began to stretch
skywards, I found creative ways to break dress regulations. There were
always aunties\rquote and uncles\rquote wedding anniversary or birthday
celebrations I had to rush to immediately after school. The importance
of soccer and card games doubled each year as got older. Anything that
would divert me from homework. \par \par Even so, I could not
understand anyone who did not like studying stories about the Celtic
tribes, the Boii and Cotini, who settled in Bohemia as early as 500 BC.
\par \par Besides, Mr Malinic, the history and geography teacher, was
the most eccentric of my teachers, a plump and dreamy character who
regularly fell asleep with his eyes open during class. His name was so
easy to remember and pronounce Malinic (malina mean raspberry). He was
the model for a really memorable teacher. As you looked under his desk,
there was often caramel-colored mud on the floor from his shoes. It did
not always mean spring. So much depended on our imaginat ion as no one
dared to ask where the mud came from. He taught, in different shoes but
same color mud, all of my sisters and my brother except for the oldest,
Eva. \par \par On the one hand, he was single and insecure: if children
laughed he assumed they laughed at him and sometimes he was right. On
the other, he had a wonderful laugh and a sense of humour and
forgiveness. {\cf1 Mr Malinich was the living prove that those who
suffered most were most considerate. }He was a rare creature who mixed
geography with Tolstoy: 'How much land does a man need?' One school
lesson started with an opener worth Dostoyevsky, \ldblquote Juraj{ \cf1
was so in love, he did not even notice the war."} \par \par As far as I
know, he was the only person who could close his eyes, turn around,
walk to the map and place his finger on the wall map and point exactly
the location of two cities Reims and Munich. The very cities that
surnames of my aunties Zofka and Ota appeared on the electoral rolls. I
looked and looked, but there was nothing on the surface of that map to
help him. It was knowledge that did it. \par \par While school was
obviously central to my life at this stage, my real view of the world
tended to come from time spent in the natural surroundings, dominated
by the overshadowing presence of the High Tatra, whose great gr ey
steely peaks, sharply rising from the flat plains to pinnacles beyond
the eye, covered in snow and misty clouds, formed the physical barrier
between us and Poland. The mountains developed our first sense of
dimension and our first reading and mapping o f the world. \par \par
This mountain range, the largest chain of mountains in Europe after the
Alps, runs through the whole of Northern Slovakia, its highest massif
being the Tatra. Snuggle-tooth mountains soar above pretty valleys
whose villages consist of carved wooden houses, with shutters that
creak with wizened age. In summer the valleys are ankle-deep with
flowers and caramel-colored cows chewing green clover, watching you. In
winter the landscape is much more austere; the cows are brought down
from the high country to farm barns, the windows boxes moved inside,
and the mountains turn to blue ice. Under Masaryk's Republic, these
natural wonders were formed into series of national parks to protect
them as the people's sanctuary. \par \par At the feet of the blue
castles of Tatran rock are antiquated towns and villages of simple folk
who feel uncomfortable in a big city. The pub ({\i krcma}), the bastion
of comfortable male chauvinism. In the safety of the pub, men{\f4\cf1
had a disturbing tendency to hold their gaze as long as they liked on
any female who walked past the pub windows. }{\f4 The} church ({\i
kostol}), the general {\i store (druzebny obchod}), the post office
({\i posta} ), and the local administrative hall were other focal
points of Tatra life. The village hall was a communal and
multi-functional place that housed the theatre, music hall, art
gallery, library, and Saturday night dances. \par \par Time was
measured by the rhythm of work in the fields of collective farms ({\i
druzstvo} ), or the opening times of the factories, industrial
monstrosities feeding the Soviet machine that dictated massive
industrialisation at the expense of agricultural production. \par \pard
\qc\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par \par \page DAILY SCOOPS OF MEMORIES
\par \par \pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar {\cf1 Anyone in Vrbov will
tell you that witches were as real as the Soviet slogans above the
shops. Some boys and girls have fairi es at the bottom of the garden
but I had witches and ghosts. I guess the most spookiest stories of all
time end in mortuaries - where my story usually began. Our house, the
old mortuary, as it was known among unkind friends and strangers, but
conveniently forgotten by my family, served me with a mixed blessing.
The privilege to tell the spookiest stories and still find serious
faces in front of me. My stories filled their days with terror and
their sleeps with nightmares as our house was the most powerful a
phrodisiac for seven year olds. No other house in the village happened
to be roofed with wolves or other strange creatures even those were
simply created by the moon shadow. How do you convince boys convince
boys that the cross in front of our verandah wa s not a place where
witches met and danced all night? Most boys would be disappointed if
the witch\rquote s nose looked like ours. \par \par \ldblquote I am
telling you the truth, I swear, I heard one say that she prefered to
drink green eyes. Another said how easy it was to turn green eyed girls
into bugs. Why are you getting yellow, Peter? She said girls not
boys.\rdblquote I\rquote d say as I stared into Peter\rquote s green
eyes. \par \par Once the low frequency of tingle reentered my tongue
and I could give vent to my standard fantasy, the one about me riding
on a witch at slow canter to the far away galaxies. I had a library of
detailed fantasies custom-tailored for any witch situation. I was able
to showed my friends the galaxy of different eyes. Always red, as in
bleeding. With a square of yellow in the midd le. The center of the eye
stank even I had to hold my breath. Who likes the smell of a rotten
egg? Face, was never oval or round, but triangular. There was only one
witch who did not have a rotten tooth, but she was still very young:
seven hundred years old was considered young. She was the only one I
dared to kiss. But, to get a ride on the witch\rquote s back I had to
pretend to enjoy eating the inedible mash of bones and flesh. Anyone
else telling the same story, might cause a generous laughter. Not me.
\par \par It wa s a common affliction that those who were stereotyped
as friends of witches could not tell a funny story. It was my turn to
feel the pain of a leaden tongue. Few laughed to what I considered to
be pretty good punchlines. My Mamka sometimes did, provided I began
with something obvious such as \ldblquote Mamka, I heard this funny
story.\rdblquote \par \par }I am what Vrbov made me. Hard to handle.
Imperfect. Know it all. Full of contradictions. Since in Vrbov, there
were hundred perfect ways to hurt yourself. Especially in summer when
shoes were seen as a sissy item on the hot pavements of my childhood.
\par \par \pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar It was the geography which
turned the local tree into talking to me. You cannot measure effect of
limb-like branches on the boy. Paths of trees which remember all kinds
of things about you even you do not know. I {\cf1 loved to run down dry
watercourses, and to creep and spy upon the bird life in the trees.
\par \par For a day at a time I would lie in the thicket where I could
watch the storks strutting up and down with a frog legs sticking out
from the long beak. But especially, I loved listening to the modest and
sleepy murmurs of the forest, and guessing the mysterious something
that called--called at all times , for me to stay. \lquote Don\rquote t
go home. Stay.\rquote \par }\pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par \pard
\sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\cf1 Each season, the trees changed into
different characters, the white stuff falling through the air shaped
them into white costumes with icicles representing icecreams, candles
and walking sticks. Once I was tall eno ugh to reach and break an
icicle, my innocent tongue realised that Mamka\rquote s icecreams
certainly did not bite like the fire. The fire lasted only a split of a
second. Just like a rainbow: utterly unexpected. And, like a rainbow,
it took me by surprise, woke me up, and shot me through with
gratefulness. \par }\pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar I spent the richest
hours of my life when I reached the outside toilet. Needless to say, my
family did not approve of me reading, smoking or taking friends in the
toilet. This little wooden box was {\cf1 a river of g ift to me: the
most priced was privacy. Eight of us}{\f4 in a house with one outdoor
toilet. You learn to always check the newspaper, our version of
toilet-paper roll, before you use it to make sure there's paper there.}
\par \par My sister Lidka, a nurse, went furious whenever I drove a
bicycle with no hands on the handlebars. How did she know? If the speed
and quality of my sisters\rquote spy network was copied by any agency
the world would have a problem. As I did. Truth very was dangerous.
However, that kind of cycling had a tendency to make tiny bubbles of
joy inside me. \par \par Everything in Vrbov was a promise. A promise
of being in trouble. I spent a lots of my time wondering how my shoes
got so dirty whenever Mamka looked at me. I sometimes wondered if it
was the ancient mortuary ghost my brother Vlado told me about who tore
my sleeves and trousers the minute I walked into Tato\rquote s
workroom. I almost started to believe in it myself, but again the spies
knew better the details of how, where, and even when than I knew.
Fights with dobbers came in the shape of a rubber hose weighted with
sand. \par \par Going into bed in my clothes was as bad as practicing a
new vocabulary of swearing words. It is strange how loud swearing words
become in front of parents or how suspicious sounds become when you are
trying to borrow few korun\rquote s from Tato\rquote s Sunday suit. One
minute I was {\cf1 swinging out over the deep waters of adventure, the
next instance I was dropping down into sour hands of my Tato. }Summer
or winter, the delicious hazelnut chocolates, 3 Koruny a block,
suntanned me from within. It was worth the risk to get black bottom
marks on the outside! \par \par For all the appeal of hazelnut
chocolate and sweets at Gejzo\rquote s pub, it was the church where
Catholic priest Glatz told us many angel and saint stories that became
most stimulating to me. When I was a child, Vrbov supported two
churches, (Lutheran and Cath olic), one grade school, one baker, one
general store, one post office, one blacksmith's, one doctor and a few
hundred mostly peeling houses. At the general store, managed by a
calculative Jan Polomsky, you could buy anything from sugar to beer.
Polomsky and the cast of characters like my cousin Tibor and Gejzo were
quirky enough to fill a Karel Capek book. \par \par Around the village
were rutted dirt roads, trodden heavily with cattle hooves and human
feet. At the centre of the village, hidden behind pine and fruit trees,
stood a house with a large wooden verandah, a pair of huge reindeer
antlers attached under the attic window. A Gothic church and clock
tower occupied the eastern side, a site of spiritual harmony that
radiated right through the house. The house, my home, was almost
painfully cosy to the eye, a symphony of creamwashed walls. \par \par
Every boy with the tiniest interest in watching the chimney sweeper at
work had seen how painfully dangerous our slippery roof with four wide
flues could be for the inexperienced sweeper. Our roof offered
opportunities for breaking bones. \par \par I was brought up in the
crowded yet comfortable house that my four sisters and a brother
slipped into well before me. The house awkwardly accommodated the time
gap between my \par sister Eva, twenty, brother Vlado, eighteen, Gitka,
fifteen, Lidka, ten, and Aga, five. Nowhere was the bible\rquote s
influence more noticeable than in giving of name to Imrichs. \par \pard
\li720\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par Jozef born on 23 Feburary 1911 \par
Maria born on St Valentine Day: 14 February 1917 \par Eva, Adam\rquote
s rib, was born on the eve of St Nicholas and few months after Britain
and France betrayed my country in Munich: 5 December 1938 \par {\cf1
With Eva\rquote s birth was born Slovak saying \ldblquote He who holds
an eel by the tail or a politician by his word, may say he hold
nothing.\rdblquote } \par Gitka or Margarita like Sofia Lauren has told
so many lies about her age that my family only remembers that she might
be few days older than Vlado: top secret \par Vlado or Vladimir, no not
and yes of course named after Vl - ADAM - ir Lenin; born few months
before Russian liberated Slovakia and one day before the Australia Day:
25 January 1945 \par Lydia or Lidka was born on the eve of the Chistmas
Eve: 22 December 1948 \par Agnesa or Neska or Aga: 1953 - 1975 \par
\pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par At night the history of the former
Catholic mortuary clung about like a climate, like wood-vapour in a
Tato\rquote s workshop. But, mainly in the room where we kept our six
toothbrushes. The contrast between the dislocated and unfriendly
bathroom and the few ste ps that took you to get through the door to
our cosy kitchen was amazing. Even adults stayed the minimum amount of
time to wash, to dry, to brush teeth and out of that frosty, poky room.
Trust my Tato\rquote s sense of heritage. The bathroom\rquote s
original window, the one and only window facing north-west and
overlooking seven hundred twenty headstones of the ancient graveyard
survived all his drastic renovations. Renovations that avoided the most
expensive word in Slovak vocabulary: PLUMBING. \par \par Once when I
was about five, I sat on the special bucket doing what nature does best
and eating apple at the same time when there was a knock on the window.
I stood up and tried to cream, but I could not breathe so I could not
scream. Mindful of references to ghost, horror pressed against the
inside of my face and the lower part of my anatomy. So I ran outside,
with my pants down, leaving two thirds of my body weight behind.
Humiliation was total with no exit. Auntie Ana who knocked on the
bathro om window, as she was too lazy to walk around to talk to Mamka,
swore not to tell anyone what happened. \par \par No matter how much
the bathroom demanded to be loved, after that episode my heart found it
impossible. \par \par I grew up in a house of talkative girls, girls
blessed with the art of laughter. I was described as a grandchild of
the family and for many years five beautiful women gave me their
undivided attention. Five beautiful women bathed me in a white
porcelain basin in the house that Tato built without runn ing water.
Five beautiful women read to me and in the summer months sat with me in
the verandah as they sewed, cooked, and sang. \par \par Given these
differences in age, and in particularly between my busy hardworking
parents and myself, it was only natural that m y closest sister in age,
Aga or Neska as I also called her, became my closest companion. We
became entwined as both soul- and play-mates. She was the perfect
mixture of tomboy and princess. \par \par We ate together, played
together and watched the sky change from its early dawn rays to its
wintry starry nights together. It was only natural given this situation
that I saw the world more and more through Aga's eyes, as Mamka toiled
with the duties of f amily livelihood, if not working for money then
cooking and hand washing. \par \par \pard
\sl480\slmult1\widctlpar\brdrr\brdrs\brdrw15\brsp20 {\f4 I often think
of those washing days of my childhood, when family washing was done by
hand in large wooden tubs, using a metal scrubbing board and plenty of
soap. }{\f4\cf1 On those washing days Mamka always found something in
the pockets of my dirty clothes. I used to receive her secret look as
she examined a broken-off pencil stub; bird feathers, matchboxes of
marbles and rubber bands; but the most secret look was reserved at the
discovery of half eaten sticky lollipops. \par \par }{\f4 The perfume
of the soap penetrated the house and the smell of sweetly drying
clothes mingled with the flowers in the garden in summer, and in the
attic in winter. }The smell of starch has {\f4\cf1 the power to
transport me}{\f4 to the images of my Mamka's least favourate exercise
ironing. The flat iron was heated in front of the glowing embers of
fires that were not} allowed to be smoky least they soil clean linen
and cotton shirts. \par \pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par The
seductive notion that flowers and herbs had magical qualities went hand
in hand with my childhood. Willow ({\i vrba}) branch would be
transformed into a magic wand. Even a humble garlic ({\i cesnak}) or
onion ({\i cibula} ) suspended from a ceiling would absorb the evil
maladies and keep out witches. Christian symbols and legends relating
to gardens produced trances and ecstasies. The fragrance had a lot to
do with Mamka's orchards and nectar-scented beds consisting of her bs
and bursting with old roses and gladioli. Herbs wept fragrance
especially in the rain. \par \par Speaking of fragrance, a dunny was a
feature in our landscaped garden ably serving six children who used the
dunny breaks as a way of escaping chores. This dunny of ours situated
next to the bees holds {\f4\cf1 a swarming beehive of memories. There
are times when it is better that memories are not expressed in images.}
\par \par For me, the kitchen was always a haven, a place where I
sought refuge, where I knew that my Mamka would be or soon be in. It
was also a place for village gossip, school reports, happy or sad
stories, and expressions of inner feelings without fear. In our kitchen
all major decision were made. \par \par Whenever Aga and I wanted
someone to play with us all we had to do was to climb the cemetery
fence and cross the graves, knock on Mrs Hrebenarova's or Mrs
Zumerova's door and ask if Ferko, Anka or Palko could come out and
play. We would use outdoor therap y in all seasons, but in the long
summer days we never tired of playing hide and seek in our garden or
the grass patch behind the church or in front of our barn. \par \par I
can still see the open-air boudoirs, and the playground where we were
free to be pushed on a swing, explore the fruit trees, let our
imagination and cartwheels run riot, pitch blanket-tents and invent
chasing and war games. Spying games were paramount a t this stage
involving a magnifying glass, binoculars and hand-held mirror. It is
ironic how schoolboy games imitate life. \par \par The most popular
game was one called orange. Basically any number can join and with a
charcoal you draw a map where you hide and t he group has to find you.
There's a lot of fast running and then once you reached your mapped
destination you keep still for hours if needed. We all often hid in the
cemetery and sometime in a freshly dug grave. \par \par Wherever we
played, the backdrop landscape had the Roman Catholic influence: the
church, the bell tower and clock spire south, the priest's vicarage
where tea was served day and night, west, and the cemetery, north-east.
Our lives were measured out by the church bells, we were lifted and
struck by melodies of Georgean litanies humming in our ears ... glory,
glory alleluia!{\f4 My Tato measured his life by the daily dozen
steams}{\f4\cf1 which rose lazily from the surface of the rosehip tea.
I remember the aroma of clove. The fluffy feathers of steam spiralled,
rolled and rose and fell, tracing letters and numbers from some
religious alphabet.}{\f4 \par } \par Depending on how long flowering
trees held up their end of the deal, Tato\rquote s bee robbers carried
on their raids on the floral treasures. Oh the buzzing of the delicious
bee s. My sweet-tooth loved the prized golden produce. But somehow for
Tato to churn out 70 litres of honey, I and sometimes, Aga, Lidka,
Vlado and Gitka had to be bitten few times during the season. \par \par
Once, when I was about four, Aga told me a big secret. We were behind
one of the seven rustic hives in the front garden, watching the rhythm
of efficient cat chasing its tail. Most of our chattering were
secretive, however, this one had an exotic touch as she whispered it in
German so I could not tell anybody. For days, I hounded her before she
was willing to translate. Jozko, she said, I am going to leave you. I
am going to Prague to become a nun. No, I said. My eyelids stayed moist
all afternoon. That night I had my first vivid dream. All night I
searched and se arched through the Russia's Matreshka
dolls-within-dolls hoping to find Aga. Thankfully this was the stuff of
childish dreams. It was not to the Church that I lost my Aga. \par \par
As time went on, I began to assume more and more of the day-to-day
responsibility o f washing, cleaning and carrying water. The great
burden of village life in the 1950s and 1960s fell upon women and
children as the men would work long hours in fields, factories or
workshops. Women lived in houses with no running water or sewerage
syste ms. Water had to be carried from the village spring pump and most
of the work around the house was done by hand not machine. Even the
threshing of wheat was done as it was in Biblical times. \par \par
Those were the days when Lidka and Gitka, the former fourteen and
latter nineteen, read me many stories. My favourite stories came from
Bozena Nemcova's Grannie (Grandmother, Babicka). There seemed no limits
how often my family told me about Janosik or Babicka. Nemcova was one
of the first Czech women to become a best selling author. My
folkdancing teacher, Marta Chamillova, shared Nemcova's love for Slav
folk-tales, traditions and legends, which all became a core of my life
and my Slovak character. \par \par I began to think that everybody in
all the families of Czechoslovakia must have come from Imrich and
Pecharcik families. Whenever grandmother Imrich or Grandfather
Pecharcik was mentioned in conversation, someone was also their
grandchild, or was married to one, or lived next door to one. And
whenever Mamka said goodbye to strangers, who were my second or third
cousin removed, she said: \ldblquote Say hello to so-and-so for me, I
would not know how to make tapestry, but for her,\rdblquote or
\ldblquote Remember me to your mother, we were at school
together,\rdblquote or \ldblquote Don\rquote t forget to say hello to
your uncle or auntie, I used to act in the same play.\rdblquote \par
\par Vrbov was run by conventions and habits, as were most villages.
Ceremonies and symbols were of tremendous value to our community. There
was Easter Monday when a vigorous rite of spring called kupacka took
place, in which males of all ages try to throw wa ter on their
favourite women or spray them with perfume. The women usually respond
more peaceably with refreshments and gifts of hand-painted eggs. \par
\par Then there was the Maypole competition. Single men during the fir
st night of May get the highest, straightest Maypole they can find and
deliver it to the gate of the girl they love. A spring fertility ritual
consists of dancing around a decorated pole -- an obvious phallic
symbol representing the annual awakening of na ture. At a deeper level,
the pole symbolises the world axis -- a support that holds the heavens
aloft, and through which the realm of God may be reached. \par \par
Then, there was also the St Jan's (John) day when summer officially
started, and after which children were officially allowed to swim.
During the night a bonfire competition takes place between villages, an
all-night party which was considered a romantic time, where young
couples may jump together over the dying embers to signify their love
for each othe r in the summer night of 24 June. The bonfire had never
too many logs. At dusk, the thick columns of smoke from the oversize
bonfires streak the June sky. It is a magical night, the entire forest
is enchanted by the crackle of the flames. So are the coupl es who
cannot wait to come up with an excuse for getting extra wood when the
singing is over and while the partnerless guys have nothing better to
do but show how they can jump over the flames. \par \par \ldblquote
Youngest first,\rdblquote I liked to say at desert time. \par \par Food
played a central role in all of these celebrations and my Mamka dished
out many delights for us all, exotic richness and heartiness being a
central core of Slovak fare. Unlike the French who banned potatoes or
the Italians who thought if you ate a to mato you would die, Slovaks
never thought of the new world foodstuff as some monster too ugly to
eat. The gastronomic obsessions that play a pivotal role at Slovak home
cooking still remain: creamy butter! rich chocolate! cracking roast
pork ... I drowned in the aromas and felt my mouth watering. \par \par
It was heavenly bliss when we tasted Mamka\rquote s rice pudding and
Tato\rquote s smoked sausages that had hung up high in the pantry-
\lquote our sausage in the sky.\rquote A long spell of sensory
deprivation means that I can still smell somewhere dee p inside me
Mamka's {\i buchty}: rich doughnut-like cakes filled with cream. There
is a whole tradition associated with {\i buchty} in villages and small
towns. The fragrance of {\i buchty} adored the kitchen during those
midsummer late evenings when women gossiped as they plucked geese or
wove carpets. \par \par Bread is especially symbolic because it is
considered a breach of natural law to harm a person with whom one had
broken bread. The wedding feast and cake symbolise the link, stressed
by the Czech born Freud, between food and sexuality. They also
represent the pact of peace (the breaking of bread [cake]) between two
families united by marriage not blood. Water is purity, milk is about
motherhood and wine is linked with blood and sacrifice. One of the
glorious moments in l ife is to sit at the table and watch everyone
eat. Eating together cemented our community and family life. \par \par
Like food, the notion of God was also central to my life at this point
in ways other than straight worship. Religion seemed to infuse the very
air, u nderlining every greeting. Church halls were used for recreation
as well as worship. The village was divided belligerently between
descendants of German Protestants who went to the Lutheran church and
the descendants of mixed races who went to Catholic ch urch. The only
ones who did not go to church were hardline communists and gypsies,
both of which worshipped their own gods. \par \par The church also
proved to be a key to the ultimate overthrowing of communism, a last
bastion advocating care for the people of Czec hoslovakia as opposed to
furthering the concerns of the Soviet Communist Party. It was the
guardian not only of the national religion but also of the national
identity in these harsh times of repression. \par \par Sociologists who
adhered to the party doctrine, and discarded the doctrine of sin, had
prophesied that the extensive industrialisation and urbanisation would
ultimately change the cultural patterns and traditional society and
that would sever the close ti es between the people and the church.
They could not have been more wrong. \par \par Another critical
learning place was, strangely, my position under our dining table. My
childhood was built on stories traded around our table. There are
certain stories that will forever be associated with places they are
heard. The experience of listenin g to stories under Mamka\rquote s
dining room table was riveting and unforgettable. Stories that lulled
the senses; they hypnotised the innocent imagination. Thousand and one
stories, west and east, two ears, t wo halves of the brain, one Berlin,
one heart, one soul. \par \par \pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar As a
curious youngster, I loved crawling under the table where I would sip
on buttermilk and sample freshly baked village bread together with home
made sausages, salami and onion pickles while adults enjoyed their
feast above. Under the table I would list en and draw onion after onion
after onion. \par \par I would often stay late and fall fell asleep
under the table, and if Tato remembered, he would carry me to bed, but
not before I absorbed some of the fam ily secrets. Sooner rather than
later after grace, someone would start to remember, to tell stories
everyone already knew, and the fireworks of collective memory would
explode. As they teased, they laughed, they cried, an intoxicating flow
of tales, laugh ter, jokes, and anecdotes. The grownups would draw
vivid pictures for me and fill the gaps of my knowledge of family,
gossip and history. {\cf1 Everything was possible as a subject: a fly
buzzing in the air, a lighter, a window, the sound of footsteps. I was
lear ning about the world from sideways comments over lemon meringue
pie, sudden bursts of comprehension or strange parallels that come
rolling out of my family tongues, out of the radio, out of a movie, off
the pages of a newspaper, out of a joke--and my baff led self stood
back and said: \ldblquote So this is how it works.\rdblquote \par \par
My mamka would connect every event, in her memory, with some sort of
eating: "I was making mayonnaise when Stalin died.\rdblquote Mamka knew
we needed humor as much as we needed food or water. The chemistry o f
mayonnaise, like humour under communism, pleased my Mamka because it
gave a lie to one of nature\rquote s truths: that oil and water do not
mix. Mamka believed that mayonnaise and words were as medicine, they
had to be carefully measured, and precautions taken against an
overdose. \par }\pard \widctlpar {\cf1 \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\cf1 My family often attempted to unmask
stories and realities, in the deepest sense -not merely daytime
realities of truth in lies, but the realities that include dreams ...
the delirium of reality as well. Bittersweet tales of my family seemed
to breath the light breeze of Freud\rquote s basic thesis that
revelation was cure. Some stories started to sound like movie on the
life of Freud-Imrichs. \par \par A listening child never forgets the
scent of the uprushing darkness, the gleam of a white apron as mother
approaches. When we read the newspaper or book with a torch together,
Mamka had to establish the meaning of all the words and darkness. My
mother bro ached so many topics, always a topic that kept me aware of
my competition. Do you think you could run as fast as Zahraj (our dog)?
What about fox? Some things seemed to move, some somersaulted, just
because Mamka looked at them. \par \par The listening child never
forgets the towns, cities, deserts, and forests through which his
wobbly eyes wander are unforgettably dry, damp, wide, close, smoky,
noisy, or still. The listening child never forgets how long it took to
pull Mamka\rquote s tooth or boil rosehips or sweeten flour with
berries. Why some leaves can be crushed and held against his nose -
mint, lavender, thyme. W hy broken engagements were a subject of
considerable interest to my unties. How hard it was for Tatko to tell
the truth at the confession. Why steel was not as nice as trees in
godfathers Jan Brunovsky\rquote s eyes. Why my godfather}{\f4\cf1 sang
away summer evenings in the backyard, switching indiscriminately
through a repertory of songs I knew only by ear. }{\cf1 Seven sights
sister Eva saw in Prague on the day she was proposed by Franto
Hlavacek. The definition of an engagement. Twelve reasons communist
Presidents never smile d. How come grandfather Jozef rather freezed
than roasted. And seven questions that I wrote in my scapbook when I
was seven: \par }\pard \widctlpar {\cf1 \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar {\cf1 \ldblquote Did you know Sidka also
dreamed about Ota last night?\rdblquote \par \par }\ldblquote What do
you remember most about Maria when she was seven, Ana?\rdblquote \par
\par \ldblquote Did Prague come up to all your expectations?{\cf1
\rdblquote \par }\pard \widctlpar {\cf1 \par \ldblquote How do you keep
slugs from biting the heads off your marigolds?\rdblquote \par }\pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar {\cf1 \par \ldblquote Whose grandfather had a
tendency to wipe his nose with his sleeve?\rdblquote \par \par "Was
Stefan always content to take no for an answer? Ah, that's another
story." \par \par }{\f4 "What's the world coming to? A priest and in
love with a married woman!" \par \par \ldblquote Koruna now worth less
than sand!\rdblquote }{\cf1 \par }\pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\cf1
\par As a prophet my Tato was a disaster. If he prophesizes something,
it tended to turn out the opposite way. If it was not for my
Tato\rquote s prediction that man would never walk on the moon it would
have never happened. As a storyteller or whistler my Tato was a great
success. The year I was conceived, the Soviet Union shocked the world
by launching the first satelite, Sputnik. With its eerie beeping, S
putnik announced the arrival of the space age and turned the Cold War
from a brooding silent conflict into a heated race to reach the moon.
The year I was conceived, Cosmonaut Ledovsky was killed on a suborbital
space near the Kapustin (Cabbage) Yar rocke t base on the Volga River.
The year I was born, Cosmonaut Shiborin died the same way. But both
came alive in my Tato\rquote s stories. If it was not for my
Tato\rquote s imagination, stories which connected }{\f4\cf1 the brain
of the cabbage with the size of the stool of a comonauts would never
come alive. Every Slovak, my father believed, even if he is a village
idiot, is a millionaire in emotions. }{\cf1 Through Tato\rquote s
inflated words, }{\f4\cf1 I saw heaps of banknotes of his youth
discarded in the gutter with no one willing to pick them up. \par
}{\cf1 \par Tato trusted no other reality than what existed in the
past, in the past of his forefathers. }Accounts of my Tato's Tato life
{\cf1 multiplied realities, like a mirror or a fujara.} {\f4\cf1 It was
the most sensitive of times, it was the crudest of times ...}{\f24\cf1
}How my grandfathe r, then aged twenty-five, had his proposed wedding
announced on the same Sunday in two different churches (Pilhov and
Stara Lubovna) to two different ladies. His dangerous liaison with the
girl in Stara Lubovna was terminated by my entrepreneurial grandmo
ther. She dragged her opponent to a seance session in Stara Lubovna.
There an old woman who claimed to possess psychic gifts summoned
spirits of the dead who commanded that my grandmother marry my
grandfather. As for the other woman, she was ordered to go to America.
And she did. {\cf1 in any grand scheme mere individuals are. My
grandfather might be the only popular man with women who on his death
bed thought of the time he faced down a neighborhood bully as the most
triumphant moment of his life.} \par \pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar
{\cf1 \par }Tales of how Mamka's sister Ota escaped to Germany in 1948
through the dangerous swamps of Sudeten Land.{\cf1 Then one day in 1965
a letter arrived from Otta. This one, however, just exploded. It was
like holding a bomb - a good bomb - in Mamka\rquote s hands. It just
went off. \ldblquote Ota, Ota is coming!\rdblquote \par \par }Ota
became a hot topic in the village when the plans of her visit reached
the group of women outside the church. The village seemed to be filled
with suspended anticipation: what she looked like, whether she spoke
good Slovak, was she really rich ... \par \par Every day I stared at
the door, waiting for her to come, and when she appeared my spirits
soared.{\f40\cf1 . }One day we had a visitor, a woman in her late
forties. She came to my corner, pat me on the head and gave me a box of
presents and said in Rambacher\rquote s accent \ldblquote You must be
my nephew Jozo!\rdblquote \ldblquote Yes, Ota you in luck he was found
three times today. The last time it was our neighbour Wolf who found
him when he went fishing and saw Jozo {\f4 running barefoot}{ \f5\cf2
}chasing geese along the Black Creek,\rdblquote said Mamka{\cf1
.}{\fs28\cf1 } Auntie Ota, in tailored dresses and permed hair, looked
just like mother without the perm and tailored dresses. Ota brought so
many sweets and even sweeter stories about the shops that have nothing
but gums, chocolates, lollipops and icecreams. {\cf1 My first taste of
German fudge came years before my Slovak first kiss, but it was just as
sensational. }While Tato\rquote s teeth could not cope with some of the
fudge triangles, my little fingers could never get all the paper off.
Once I ran out of sweets to swap for the best marbles and kisses, I was
thankful to auntie Ota for the description of the tastes of Ge rman
icecreams. \par \par Like most children, I was cpativated by pictures
on the tins of shortbread and cookie monsters. They showed monsters,
cars and window boxes fil led with loud flowers positioned at various
German cities. I remember how cross I was with Mamka when she left one
of the tins sitting on the wooden table outside in a heavy rain. The
tin had a map of German region, and I made my first wish to visit the c
ities that were highlighted on it. Then I did not realise that I would
be dreaming of travelling for so long that as an adult it would become
a second nature. \par \par \pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar {\cf1 I was
also grateful for her comment how hard it was to learn a fluent German.
\ldblquote It's sort of like being a runner in the days before Anton
Zatopek, when no one thought he could run a two-minute kilometer
because nobody had before. Once you have actually lived in a foreign
country for a year or so, you realize it's possible.\rdblquote
}{\f40\fs18\cf9 \par }\pard \sl480\slmult0\widctlpar \par Stories of
how Tato's sister, Zofka, disappeared during the Second World War at
the tender age of sixteen. She was classified as a missing person for
many years and in early 1950s a small funeral service was held in
Pilhov church. Indeed this became the m ost talked about story when in
spring 1972 the Red Cross contacted my Tato to inform him that Zofka
was alive and safe, a mother of four children living in Reims in
France. Our family did not know exactly waht happened to Zofia during
the war when she caem face to face with terror. All we knew was that
she was robbed of her innocence . . . and almost her mind. \par \par Of
how Mamka's Tato travelled to Vienna to buy furniture and suits. How he
lost his pub and forests to communists in 1948. How in the Party\rquote
s first Five year Plan, ninety percent of industry was nationalised,
and compulsory collectivisation forced through. The story of the loss
operated on many levels. How 2.5 million class conscious Party members
were rewarded with positions of power. \par \par Of how in 1949 a young
priest, Karol Jozef Wojtyla, when asked a way of celebrating the golden
jubilee of the Niegowic parish said, \ldblquote Why don\rquote t you
build a new church?\rdblquote And that is precisely what they did in an
era when the Polish communists were determined to see them fall apart .
At a time when seminaries were being closed and the seminarians sent to
labour camps, to built a church was a short of miracle. In 1958, the
priest became the youngest bishop in Cental Europe and my Tato was in
Wawel Cathedral to see the thirty-eight ye ar old, the future pope,
consecrated. \par \pard \sl480\slmult1\widctlpar \par \pard
\sl480\slmult0\widctlpar {\cf1 Of how shoulder-to-shoulder with a crowd
of pilgrims in the bursting cathedral in Polish holy place of
Czestochowa and another time in Slovak Marianka Hora managed to kindle
unbelievable passionate emotions. How the tr umpet blew, the chains
rolled, and the devout gasped to see the Black Madonna revealed from
behind golden doors. Like those around him, many of whom had walked for
a month in the August heat to reach the pilgrimage site, he had the
impulse to fall hard, k nees to marble, at the sight of the simple
painting of a dark-skinned Mary on a cracked wooden board. They all
prayed to a Higher Power.} \par \par Snapshots of other stories
included disturbing tales about concentration camps, a man called
Schindlers, and countless Siberian stories about Stalin. \par \par
There were the conspiracies about Stepanik and his mysterious
catastrophe of his plane near Bratislava after the liberation in 1945.
Three years later, Benes\rquote fall from the presidential castle
window in 1948 has not been properly clarified. (More recently,
Dubcek\rquote s fatal car crash in 1992 just before the Velvet Divorce
is a mystery on the Slovak radar screen.) \par \par {\cf1 To understand
the history of Slovakia is to believe in miracles. }For centuries
Slovakia was ruled from abroad: fro m Budapest, from Vienna, from
Moscow. This inevitably created a rebel 'Robin Hood' mentality, often
inherently negative to outside authority with a natural
inclination-almost a psychological disposition to be in opposition.
\par \par The best stories showing how the historical destiny of Czechs
and Slovaks had gone ahead against the will of the majority of the
population came from various underground magazines and books. As
Slovaks, we are justifiably proud of our traditions of resis tance and
democracy, especially in recent history, although often enough it
didn't eventuate a lasting democratic system. \par \par I used to read
voraciously, taught by my elder sister Gitka who was a teacher. Through
reading I learned of the struggles of my ancestors, of their visions,
their heartbreaks, their victories, their failures, their audacity,
their stoutheartedness, their sense of personal honour, and their love
of God, of family, of home, of region, and of country. \par \par Books,
teachers, songs all pass by a child on a conveyor, and childre n select
what works for them. Garrick's acting did for Britain what Havel's
writing did for Czechoslovakia. Both were mediators, as Madame Necker
put it helping 'feelings to pass into souls of others.' I am not
tempted to be so arrogant as to believe that I can fully understand
Havel and the Mittleuropean history, but because of his writings I look
at life with eyes that track the absurd. \par \par Czechoslovak
authorities feared Havel, recognising that writing had an almost
magical power. Story of Havel moved more than eyes. It stirred hearts,
minds and spirits. Havel had a way{\cf1 of expressing the words that
had to be said.} It was Havel who showed how successive Communist
leaders interpreted the same national icons for different ends. In 1949
speech by Communist Prime Minister Antonin Zapotocky echoes of the
fifteenth century St Vaclav (Wenceslaw) chorale 'Do not let us or our
descendants perish,' a plea Zapotocky redirected from St Vaclav to the
equally mystical force of Soviet-Czechoslovak brotherhood. Loyalty was
to Stalin or Krushchev rather than to the tradition of Masarykian
democracy. \par \par One story, the story of Hitler, dogged my
childhood. Once I learned of Hitler, children books started to feel a
lot more complicated. From railway lines that I used to get to the High
Tatra entire trainloads of gold rings, diamonds, silver ignots were shi
pped to Hitler. Impossible, even two decades after his suicide, to
avoid his ravenous eyes which stared at me from newspapers and
newsreels. In 1938, Nazis carved up our country, o nly twenty years
after its foundation. This story about a famous piece of paper that
guaranteed \lquote piece in our time\rquote was alive with the events
that betrayed my country twenty years before I was born. \par \par
Every one of us, I imagine, has an image of slavery that leaves us cold
in the bowels of our souls. For me, it is the scenes of Slovaks being
beaten to death for attending a funeral of their wives. The cultural
memory of such horror never dies, the lack o f humanity a gross
aberration. It is an image that will s tay with me for the rest of my
life, and symbolises the brutality that man is capable of doing to
fellow men. I will come back to this image later, an image found in the
story of Slovak Robin Hood figure, Juraj Janosik. \par \par The key to
Slovak's past is captured by a cartoon drawn in 1848 when after the
uprising a Hungarian judge, perched on top of the hill, tells the
accused, at the bottom of the hill: 'You are a repeat offender! Your
grandfather was Slovak. Your father was S lovak. And now you are
Slovak.' \par \par Theodore Zeldin\rquote s research published in the
last decade of the 20th century sums up the story of Slavs: \par \par
{\i '[W]e are all of us descended from slaves, or almost slaves. All
our autobiographies, if they went back far enough, would begin by
explaining how our ancestors came to be more or less enslaved, and to
what degree we have become free of this inheritance .. . Before twelve
million Africans were kidnapped to be slaves in the New World, the main
victims were the Slavs, who gave their name to slavery. Hunted by R
omans, Christians, Muslims, Vikings and Tartars, they were exported all
over the world. Slav came to mean foreigner; most religions taught that
it was acceptable to enslave foreigners; British children who were
exported as slaves - the girls fattened up t o fetch a higher price -
ended up as Slavs. \par More recently, when Slavs found themselves
ruled by tyrants and saw no hope of escaping, some gloomily concluded
that there must be something in the character of Slavs which dooms them
into being enslaved. This i s a false reasoning, pretending that what
has happened had to happen. No free person can believe that: it is a
reasoning imposed on slaves to make them despair. Even Engels
arrogantly dismissed Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, Serbs, and Bulgarians as
the 'unhisto ric lesser people.\rquote \par \par }No one talks today
about the the slavery. No one writes today about the swastika that flew
over Kezmarok castle or Himmler who furnished his mistress's house with
chairs made from corpses from the nearby Oswiecim, Auschwitz. Had
Hitler triumphed the contemptible Slovaks, Poles and Czechs would be
used for slaves, for fuel, for medical experiments, for {\f4
upholstery. }{\f4\cf1 It's bizarre; you are pushed in a pram through
the flowering meadows, and forteen years ago one hundred kilometers to
the north these horrendous things were happening.}{\f4 \par } \par
Slovaks were condemned to survive in a world marked by tragedy. A world
of brutal feudalism, fascism and communism. There is a price to pay for
the knowledge what it really means to be truly a slave in your own co
untry. Thus, Slovaks know more about exile than any other nationality
in the world, bar the Irish. Whereas under capitalism man exploited
man, under communism it was the reverse and much much worse. For
Czechoslovak poets history spoke loud and clear and had one cardinal
names: oppression! The Slavic have a gift for trivialising the pain and
transforming terror into folklore songs and rituals. \par \par Vrbov
took time to explain not only how to make apple sauce, but also how to
tie bunches of Slovak heroes into our partisan games. On a patch of
grass in the churchyard I would discover them one by one. \par \par
True to our rebellious past, the Slovak National Uprising of 1944 had
given birth to several martyrs. Slovak know that pen is 'mightier than
the sword.\rquote If Slovaks value journalists, it is due to a brave
young journalist Julius Fucik who was killed by Naz is for spreading
the truth about Hitler. Julius who fought for a new world came to an
untimely death when he was guillotined by the Nazis executors. Although
his death did not solve the Nazi problem there and then, he became the
nation's living conscience and inspired a great many not to give in to
oppression, violence and lies, but to stand up to them. His name will
always symbolise truth, freedom and democracy ... na me used to uplift
the crushed spirit in times of oppression. To die in the name of
freedom and truth is the ultimate sacrifice a man can make in life. A
day devoted to Fucik's memory falls on 8 September and is known as
International Journalist's Day, a d ay of mourning. A day of reflection
on nobleness of the profession as preached and practised by a Slovak
journalist. \par \par After that, twenty-four years later, it was once
again a Slovak, Alexander Dubcek, who embodied the citizen's rights and
liberties at the time of the 'Prague Spring.\rquote \par \par Ladislav
Holy stressed a fact that is not widely appreciated. 'In
Czechoslovakia, socialism was not imposed by the bayonets of the Soviet
army at the end of the World War Two, but grew out o f the wishes of
the majority of the population, to whom the justice and equality it
promised seemed morally superior to the injustices and inequality of
capitalism.' \par \par What is also not widely appreciated is that in
1946, in the then Czechoslovakia's first post-war general elections,
the Slovak part of the country returned the Democratic Party with a
clear mandate. It was the victory of the Czech Workers' Party that resu
lted in a deal being struck with the communists and with the Cold War
in full swing, the Stalinization of the army and police force was quick
to follow. The rest is history. \par \par By the time the next election
fell due in 1948, the biggest statue of Stalin dominated the Prague
skyline. Following the election, Klement Gottwald used a few dirty
tricks to allocate many key posts to Communists. In attempt to force
exposure to the Presi dent's dirty tricks, a number of ministers
resigned and hoped that Gottwald would be obliged to follow suit.
Instead, he organised a mass rally in Prague, blamed the resig ning
ministers for the country's ills, announced formation of action
committees to purge industries of anti-progressive elements, and forced
Benes to accept a substitute government. \par \par It was a recurring
tale. 90 percent of the votes in the election went to this new
government. President Benes resigned in June and died under suspicious
circumstances in September. Gottwald took over the presidency. Certain
misgivings were also provoked b y a mysterious death of that year of
Jan Masaryk, the son of the former President, which further heightened
as the first of the great waves of purges began to take place from 1949
onwards. My parents shared the opinion that Masaryk\rquote s suicide -
if it was a suicide - was intended as a warning to the nation from the
communist plague ... the last option left to him, apart from
emigration, which was still possible in the early days following
February 1948, but from which he refrained. \par \par Containing the
Catholic Church was among the first orders of business for the scared
communists. Thousands of monks, priests and nuns were arrested. The
Archbishop Josef Beran received a sentence of fourteen years. \par \par
Milan Kundera's novel, {\i The Book of Laughter and Forgetting,} opens
with an image of the Communist leader Gottwald stepping out onto a
balcony in Prague's Old Town Square to proclaim to a vast crowd the
coming of the Communist power. \ldblquote It was, \rdblquote Kundera
noted, \ldblquote a crucial moment in Czechoslovak history - a fateful
moment of the kind that occurs once or twice in a millennium.\rdblquote
Standing behind Gott wald was one of his close associates, Clementis,
who, as it was cold and Gottwald was bare-headed, solicitously gave the
new president his own fur cap. The photograph of the balcony scene
became an image known to every Czechoslovakian school boy, with the
difference that in later versions of the pictures Clementis could no
longer be seen, the man having been accused of treason and hung only
four years after it was taken. \ldblquote All that remains of
Clementis\rdblquote wrote Kundera, \ldblquote is the cap on Gottwald's
head.\rdblquote \par \par A powe rful account of these years continued
to be told and retold at home and pubs and cemented our understanding
of the chain of events. Stories were recanted, such as when Krushchev
was speaking at the 20th Party Congress, retailing the horrors of
Stalinism, the real fates of deceased comrades. Many of the faithful
were in tears. A voice came from the hall, \lquote 'and what were you
doing during that time?' Krushchev stopped: 'Who said that? Stand up!'
No one spoke, no one moved. 'Yes,' said Krushchev, 'that was what I was
doing.' \par {\f4 \par }{\f4\cf1 The humor in communist stories is so
wry that at times I was not sure if I should be laughing or crying for
the characters.} \par \par \par \par \par \pard \widctlpar \par }