Part 3: The Road from Kozolupy

The Road from Kozolupy

The road from Kozolupy to Město Touškov cuts between two flat-lying fields. It is about a mile long and one can see Touškov clearly in the distance. Wild cherry trees flank either side.

Little Jana and I yell to stop. We want some cherries and we want them now.  Dad jumps from the car and grabs a few which we stuff into our mouths with sighs of ecstasy. The smell, the taste, the round, juicy plumpness, are all there still. We open the window and catapult our pips out with glee boasting a Goliath range. The road crosses a small river.

It was under this road that my dad had hidden with his bike by the water’s edge, years prior. He had fallen in love with a girl at school. She was tall and slim, very pretty and extremely clever; top of the form in fact. She had finally consented to a rendezvous. He had hidden so as not to be seen should she decide not to come and laugh at him waiting on the bare road in full view. She did arrive on her bike but at the same time another boy from the class arrived from the opposite direction. They both stopped to chat and make an enquiry as to where the other was heading. The beautiful young girl said she was supposed to meet Josef Novotný here, but she was early. She added that she wouldn’t wait and that anyway, he was such a stupid boy who just wasted his time in class. “I beat him hands down in every subject; he’s so daft and cocky and he won’t even admit it!” Dad told us how he’d frozen, hidden in opening by the under-road, scarcely able to breathe for fear of being found out whilst, at the same time, resolving to never again be beneath her in intellect; he would become top dog in everything and would thereby teach her a lesson and get her to fall madly in love with him. The very next day, he beat her in a spelling test.

Now we reach the wider river which boasts a deep sandy basin to the left-hand side.  It is here that we would spend hours, splashing about, swimming and playing with all the village kids; it was here that dad fell through the ice as a boy and nearly drowned; it was here that we skidded or skated when frozen; it was here that little sister Jana learnt to swim, way ahead of me. To us it was the finest lagoon in the world – clear, silky water and overhung with willows which we would grasp and swing on, bounce up and down on… dive from. But here, as we passed by en route to Touškov on this spectacular Summer’s day, it was strangely empty.

We burst into the village – the large municipal town hall to the left, and to the right, Jarka my half-brother’s house, where he lived with his wife Mimi. The town square is there, surrounded by its little canopied shops and cafés. The centrepiece is a huge statue of a saint. On market days the square is full of brightly-coloured stalls and wonderful smells of pancakes, coffee and ice cream. There would be livestock, chickens, geese, rabbits; butters, cheeses, curds and fruit; homemade wines and pickled gherkins, eggs, walnuts and peppers. People would lounge with a coffee or an iced drink outside the shops under canopied tables. Often there would be some little event going on with singers or dancers from another village. People would stop and embrace and chat and a general air of well-being would pervade.

Why was it so dead now? What was that horrible feeling? What had happened?  Where were all the people? Why this odd… stillness?

In the place of these things a miasma draped itself like a thick, dense fog, around me; it was a feeling so frightening, so horrible, so foreboding and threatening that I will never forget it. A terror. A fear so strong that it renders its victim paralyzed, speechless and of no value.  The statue of the saint was minus his halo and long, grassy weeds entangled him. His stance had been one of blessing – hands outstretched with love; but now he looked frozen, dirty, more like a bent old man.  Beaten and humbled.  “Why has it changed, Dad?” The words tripped off my tongue.  He looked around coolly, surveying the scene of his carefree childhood and his selfish young manhood. He could almost see himself sitting there, his blonde head thrown back in laughter… his legs casually crossed sockless and brown in opened sandals, surrounded by friends, open fag packets and Schnapps. “Take a good look Maria,” came the reply. “This is called Communism. Never tell a soul I said this to you.” Sensing the gravitas of his words I promised and added “When will it end?”

“Not in my lifetime,” came the reply.

The big municipal building, which was once the town hall, was now the police station. The red star and hammer and sickle flag hung outside. No shops appeared to be open except a poor-looking shop displaying some wilted vegetables. The wonderful bakery was barred with a notice giving the times when queuing was allowed to take place. We went inside this building to go through the now-familiar mandatory procedure of “checking in” to the new location, which involved surrendering visas, passports and a stern-faced rummage through dad’s whopping case. A kind of barter would then take place which invariably consisted of surrendering some of one’s goods to placate the authorities. This always infuriated dad, but he didn’t dare show it.

Then the door thrown wide and into the arms, at last, of babushka. Tears, hugs, the smell of roasting meat, soup heavy with noodles and glistening with goose fat, caraway roasted pork with dumplings, curd cheese and cherry tartlets with lashings of cream. Beer, coffee.  More cake. Huge slabs of golden, honeyed cake with what looked like massive blood clots but which were in fact the seeping juice of huge black cherries, were all laid before us.

The conversation would always begin with the lament of how many fags and what liquor had to be surrendered during case searches, and here Jana and I would slip away to reacquaint ourselves with the past. She was soon pulling my hand and introducing me to our new nemeses, the toilet. We stared down into what looked like some kind of pie dish about four inches deep. Standing well back we discussed what we might have to do when this pie dish had been filled. Jana suggested wrapping anything that needed to be wrapped up in Pravda, the Soviet Union newspaper, which was nearby, cut into squares and hanging on string. She certainly had a point here, for where else could it “go”? We mutually concurred to giving the chain a trial run and pulling it. A tremendous cascade dropped down at the back of the pie dish, swirled around like a tornado and disappeared.  We leant forward and for the first time and made out first ever acquaintance with the front-bend toilet.  Another one to be added to our ever-growing list; a list which would forever be mapped onto a time and a place, and which would prove invaluable to our recollective powers. This is why I can bring these stories out as I have them so close to mind.