Chapter two in which Uncle Stan's foreign correspondence comes under scrutiny, and Cousin Alice ends up writhing on the tiles

Chapter two in which Uncle Stan's foreign correspondence comes under scrutiny,

 and Cousin Alice ends up writhing on the tiles 

Predictably, after the festivities died down, things turned a bit more serious. Before the week was out, 

Mother and Dad and the old folk had some interviews at the police station regarding Uncle Stan's departure. As customary in those circumstances, everyone was just devastated.

     'We'd never have guessed he coud do such a thing!' Mother, suitably appalled  at Uncle Stan's behaviour, clutched her head theatrically for the benefit of the interrogators. Bemoaning Uncle Stan's weak moral fibre, Mother declared his conduct at odds with the strong communist tradition we've apparently nurtured. 

     'Utterly incomprehensible!' Mother wailed, proposing diminished mental capacity and citing numerous case of it in the family. At this point, babka Zlatka, bless 'er, inadvertently advanced the argument when she piped up about Uncle Stan's foreign correspondence.

     'What correspondence?' Special Agent Sharp perked up, taking out his notebook.

     'You know,' babka nodded to the bewildered crowd, 'the Bulgarians.'

Interrogation revealed that, when in junior high, Uncle Stan exchanged letters with a Bulgarian schoolgirl, whom he met at an asthmatic children's summer camp.

     Despite Mother's protestations... 'But they're ours, the Bulgarians are on our side...' Special Agent Sharp wrote everything down. Promising to look into it, he terminated the interview. For now. 

September came and with it the start of a new school year. As usual, Vendula hung out with her honorary 

cousin Alice. The kinship, like their relationship, was defined by its very tenuity. The girls’ family ties 

dated back to the golden days of the Austro-Hungarian Empire when Alice’s gr-gr-greatgrandad and 

Vendula’s gr-gr-greatgrandad had been village idiots together, their combined intellect employed to keep 

the geese off the village green. The girls’ relationship worked along similar lines.

     In the mornings the girls walked to school together and in the afternoons they walked back home. 

On the way Alice talked and Vendula listened. Frankly, it wasn’t much fun. Alice, a short fat lump 

of a girl with a horsey face, was conceited and a bit of a bully. She constantly talked about herself; her 

hair, her face, her make-up, the boys who liked her and the ones she liked, and she also talked about 

her clothes. Vendula walked two steps behind her, listening and nodding, and sometimes she even said 

something but Alice always shook her head and said: don’t start with your bullshit, Vendula, not now, 

listen to this, and Vendula just sighed and kept quiet.

     One day I asked her why she put up with it.

     I don’t know, Vendula replied, looking grim. It’s the way things are.

     Now it was my turn to sigh. Things can be changed, you know, I told her but Vendula just sat there 

looking like a small sad puppy. To cheer her up I promised her that Destiny would soon lend a hand.

     We didn’t have long to wait. The very next morning when the girls were getting ready for school, 

an opportunity for payback presented itself. Alice was in front of her mirror, combing her hair. Vendula 

was just then telling her something but Alice wasn’t paying attention. She was busy shaping her fringe. 

When she ordered Vendula to bring the hairspray, I noticed Alice had forgotten to take out some curlers 

pinned up on top of her head. Had she not whipped up her fringe into a great whirlpool of curls at 

the front, Alice would have easily spotted those two fat beauties perched up there, but as it was, she had 

no idea ‘cause she declared herself ready to go. We walked out into the corridor. Vendula and I were 

deliberating (I was against telling Alice, the situation had potential) when the door of the apartment 

directly opposite the lift opened and a tall young man emerged. At that point Vendula ceased to struggle 

with her conscience and we proceeded to the lifts.

     ‘How are you, girls?’ asked the tall young man, giving a dazzling smile.

     Alice beamed like a lighthouse. Turning to Vendula as if to say: see, I told you he likes me, she winked. 

Meanwhile the lift arrived. We entered the cabin first, with the tall young man gallantly holding the door 

open. Then he followed us in, closed the door and pressed the lift button. The lift shuddered, then 

lurched, and finally began its creaky ride down the nine floors. Throughout all this Alice kept smiling at 

the handsome young dude who could not take his eyes off her hairdo.

     ‘Soooo,’ the young fellow said, making a vague gesture towards Alice. ‘New trend?’         

     ‘What? This old thing?’ Alice, none the wiser, blushed, wriggling in her brand new Levi’s. The young 

man with the engaging smile turned slightly towards Vendula and raised his eyebrows in the way 

I envisioned people would. Vendula beamed. The two stood there grinning at each other until the lift 

touched down.                                             

Alice speculated on her chance all the way to school. Vendula was cautiously optimistic; maybe the young 

man was just being polite, she opined but Alice shushed her.  

     ‘Are you crazy?’ she snorted. ‘Didn’t you see the way he smiled at me?’   

Of course, we saw the way he smiled at her. The same sort of smirk she was getting now walking through 

the school gate, the school yard, the corridor and all the way to her desk. Eventually, someone took pity 

and tapped her on the shoulder. Alice then fled to the loo where she shrieked writhing on the tiles.