Chapter ten in which an ugly twist of fate gets Eugene a coal-burning job  Predictably, Mother and Dad told all their friends about Uncle Stan and everything else we were going through on account of his defection, namely the work interrogations, the phone bugging and Peg doing the rounds with her relatives, badmouthing the Dribblers and sucking up sympathy wherever she set foot, and of course, everyone understood.      ‘We know how it is,’ everyone nodded. ‘We all have a cross to bear.’      Looking at them spread around the living room, I envisaged quite a number of crosses for each of them.       Take Drystool, for example, blacklisted by the communist party.      ‘Ouch! It hurts!’ Drystool, grimacing, would cry just for a lark when conversation ebbed, and of course  everybody always laughed and so did Vendula although she didn’t quite grasp why. All she knew was that  Drystool was a le...