Chapter one in which the family roasts a chook when Uncle Stan decides to search for greener pastures
I knew Vendula was special the moment I saw her. Clutching a ladybug in her chubby little fist,
Vendula sat in the meadow full of blooming daisies. A drunken bumblebee made her laugh, and her
voice, like silver bells covered with snow, chimed a quiet, pretty tune. I was enchanted and decided to stay.
At first, living with Vendula was plain sailing. Luck had always followed her like a puppy on a leash.
A skip and a sniff and a leg up every so often, we knew where we were going. Vendula, a ballerina in
a paper weight world, sailed through life as if every day was a walk through a rose garden where
friends gathered like fluffy clouds. But then the summer of ‘79 rolled in and overnight things started to
go pear-shaped.
Oh, Vendula. Tsk. Tsk. You’re such a child. Smokes were lit. Heads were shaken. It seemed
that a new attitude, new rules of conduct, had sprung up amongst the girls like mushrooms after
rain when Vendula wasn’t looking.
Then Sylvie, Vendula’s bestest friend ever, moved away to Cured Ham. Yes, Cured,
of all places. Like a stunned pig Vendula sat there when Sylvie told her. I’m moving to Cured
Ham. Vendula keeled over. You can’t be, she stammered in disbelief, but Sylvie shrugged.
That’s the way it is. Sylvie moved away, leaving a hole the size of the whole world. Of course,
the girls wrote a while but you know how it is. Out of sight, out of mind; the friendship died a
Cured Ham death.
To top it all, Uncle Stan defected to West Germany, causing a religious conversion
in the process. True, the fashion of the day dictated that every thinking, progressive human
bean make a stand against the commies; Mother, however, didn’t see it that way when Uncle
Stan first called with the news in the middle of the night.
‘You what?!’ Mother shouted, descending upon the telephone like a plague of locusts.
‘Dee-fected?’
We clustered around. A hush of biblical proportions fell as with bated breath we hovered
over the receiver like the three wise men over baby Jesus. Mother, for once speechless,
listened to the steady flow of Uncle Stan’s words. I’m not comin’ back, sis. I’ve had a gutful of it.
All them effin queues and what the fuck for? A miserable loaf of bread and a piece of cheese
if you’re lucky. That’s not the way I wanna live. Fuck the communists, they can build their
effin communism without me. On and on he went, venting to Mother who gradually lost all
colour and sat there gaping wordlessly, as white as a ghost. Indeed, in the feeble light of the
night lamp, she looked a fright with her plastered down hair, wide open mouth and bulging
eyes, and for a moment she appeared to be frozen in time. Eventually, though, she began to
show signs of life. She made a gesture as if she could not believe what she was hearing.
Then she made another as if she had no words to express what she was feeling. After that the
stupor eased and she let him have it.
‘Do you realize what you’ve done to me?’ Mother screeched, shouting that Pavel was in
his senior year at school, and what are the odds he won’t get into college now, and poor
Vendula, she’ll have no chance of a proper education at all, will she, she’ll be lucky to punch
tickets on the tram, you selfish fool!
In this vein the conversation continued for about fifteen minutes. Vendula and I loitered
while Mother and Dad argued. Well, Mother argued and Dad as usual kept calm;
nevertheless, a lot of unpleasant things were mentioned before the connection was suddenly
terminated. Mother began to weep. Dad stood there waiting for instructions while Vendula
nurtured a vision involving a new pair of jeans she dreamed Uncle Stan would send her after
he settles in and gets a job, and she was secretly pleased about Uncle Stan defecting ‘cause
she was busting to get out of Pavel’s hand-me-downs. However, right then, in view of
Mother’s condition (very troubled), Vendula said nothing of this desire. Meanwhile, Mother
scheduled a family council for the next morning. Then we all went to bed.
In the morning Mother broke the news to Pavel who had slept the night through and
was just now waking up, drinking a cup of coffee at the kitchen table. He took it
philosophically.
‘Hmmm,’ Pavel hmmed without enthusiasm, looking bored. I was not surprised.
Having no interest in politics or defecting uncles, this quiet teenage boy could hardly
be expected to react otherwise. Still, Mother might have taken exception, but luckily
she wasn’t paying attention. She was thinking of her parents, babka Zlatka and
deda Anton, who had to be told of this disaster, this dreadful turn of events, this
lamentable state of affairs which will prove to be our undoing, Mother orated to herself,
staring gloomily into the fridge. Eventually, she took out a chicken and decided to make
the announcement over lunch.
After the nocturnal kerfuffle, telling our grandparents was relatively easy.
‘Lord, have mercy upon his soul!’ babka cried, falling to her knees when, after the chook
had been devoured and the strudel not yet served, Mother, wearing a slightly constipated
expression, stood up and addressed the old folk as Dearest mother and father…
It was all over in two minutes.
Babka, the poor thing, cried buckets. Her tiny figure shaking and her ovine face contorted
with grief, babka cried drenching hankies, towels, and sheets. Deda, on the other hand,
couldn’t have been prouder. Dry-eyed, he sat at the table sipping slivovice, his imposing
corpulent self growing larger with every passing moment as he chest-puffed about his son
the freedom fighter. Every now and then deda’s nose, that enormous bulbous thing hanging
from his face like a good-sized cucumber, quivered and twitched as deda’s suppressed emotions
got the better of him.
In this fashion, the afternoon wore on. Babka cried, Mother fussed with her coffee and cakes
in the kitchen, Pavel sat somewhere quietly uninvolved and Dad retired to the toilet with the
newspaper. Deda Anton cornered Vendula in the living room where he held forth on the family
history of freedom fighting, crapping mainly about his brother, known to all as Uncle Bob who,
when the commies took over in 1948, had emigrated to Australia where, according to deda,
he done good. Throughout this speech babka cried, Mother served hard liquor, and the kids didn’t
care. After the coffee had been drunk and the strudel had been gobbled up, the family gathered to
pay homage to Uncle Stan.
The way we were going one would have thought we’d lost a truly exceptional human being;
a genius of immeasurable talent, a humanitarian worthy of a Nobel Prize nomination at the very
least, which, realistically speaking, was not the case at all. Truth be told, Uncle Stan was
uninspiring and uninspired. His idea of a joke was to fart loudly and then blame it on Vendula.
On a good day, he’d ask Pavel to pull his finger. Thus exhausting his bag of tricks, Uncle Stan
would then turn to drink. The kids never gave him a thought. So now, prattling about Uncle Stan’s
outstanding qualities, we stressed, most of all, his significance as the family anchor without which
our lives were bound to plunge into chaos.
The evening ended when deda Anton, due to excessive intake of slivovice, keeled over and fell
face down onto the floor, taking with him Mother’s prized possession, the cigar tree.
The cigar-shaped pods of the plant exploded on impact like fireworks, showering the prostrate
deda with tiny black seeds from top to bottom. Looking like a giant poppy seed bun, deda snored
wedged in the doorway. Well, what can I tell you? All’s well that ends well. We tried to move him,
I swear we did. We pulled him by the feet but his head bumped on the doorstep, then we tried
pulling his arms but this maneuver caused uproar as deda’s pants began to slip. In the end we left
him where he was and everybody went to bed.
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