Two outings

Two outings

Before leaving this paradise we all took a trip to a small place called Holásky, just outside the city of Brno. A city which, by no means is comparable with Prague is, nevertheless, quite beautiful and steeped in history.  Here my uncle Gustav had bought a strip of land and built a delightful, albeit small, flat-roofed little house after the style of the Tugendhat villa.  His wife, my auntie Mary, was a big shopper and fancied herself as a fashion icon and with this in mind Gustav killed two birds with one stone so to speak.  The small house was a mere fifteen-minute bus ride into the centre of town which boasted many shops and an air of the Bauhaus movement in full swing. Mary could shop the fashion of the time, buy her clothes and jewelry and furnish her new little home in the latest style.  It was an easy place to meet up with friends and take in the cafe society.  It was a popular destination with family and colleagues alike and always filled with gaiety.  The plot was exceedingly long and Dedecek [my grandfather] dug and built a little swimming pool for summer dips.  They didn’t need this place of course and especially since Adamov gave them almost everything they needed, but I believe Gustav saw it as some sort of future investment and he knew Mary would love it. This utterly charming little house was reached via a small flight of steps.  It had a wide curved balcony of concrete, very fashionable at the time, and the corner windows typical of the Deco movement. Many of the new homes built in an around Brno at this time boasted this style and it became known for its modernity.  However, at the time of our post-war visit, it had already been confiscated and was the home of another family.  They were reluctant and suspicious of use and refused to allow us in.  Understandably so, but auntie Mary was enraged and sobbed all the way back to Adamov and her big hunting lodge.  She knew her days there were numbered too.  The writing was on the wall for the likes of her. Later, on one of my many returns back I did get to stay there and it became part of the holiday routine but that’s another story,

It was time to say goodbye. Jana and I sobbed and clung to our cousins Mařenka and Květa.  We bid farewell to the gushing river, the rabbits, the huge chair swings, the salon where we would skate in our socks on polished floors, the breakfast veranda with the jewel-like conserves, the air, the smell, the love.  We knew, oh yes we knew for sure that our life on the horrid estate where we had just moved, would be ghastly and could never compare, for this place was home to us.  If only my parents had stayed.  Why, oh why, hadn’t they stayed?  Our childish minds couldn’t fathom it.  “Daddy” we implored “Why can’t we live here again?”  We had no idea what his reply meant.  Two words said it all for him. “The regime” he answered.

Back in Touškov and ever so slightly mollified by our gang of friends who had gathered outside the house to say hello, we began to get ready to leave Czechoslovakia.  However, not before dad had afforded us one more trip.

Josef Edourd Novotný my father, was born in Vienna and baptized in St Stephens Cathedral on the RingaStrasse; his mother, my grandmother was one of six daughters living in that city at this time. Dad’s father also called Josef, and of course, my grandfather, had noticed particularly pretty girls in the Prater gardens.  A Strauss waltz was Playing under a colonnaded building and the air was awash with the scent of blossom.  Folklore has it that he fell immediately in love with the one called Maria and immediately set about his courtship of her.  Maria, however, was not impressed and kept him hanging around for five years at least.  Eventually, they married, and their daughter Mary was soon born followed by Josef.  He proved to be an impossibly difficult child.  Continually on the go, seeking new stimulation.  He was walking well before a year and although talking soon after, continued to be breastfed.  It was, of course, customary for babies to continue thus, especially on the continent.   Even so, the tale of him being offered a glass of milk and him replying “Oh no, not that one, this one” and unbuttoning his mother’s blouse, we found hysterically funny but also quite nauseating.  He ruled the roost and his temper tantrums were something to behold.  Exasperated and at the end of their tether my grandparents took him to the top psychiatric doctor in Vienna.  Apparently, he, after instructing the parents to remain outside, took the little Josef into his consulting room. After an hour-long wait, he emerged with the four-year-old. “Do you have any idea what is the matter with your child?” he questioned.  The poor couple looked back bemused and muttered something about him being a right old handful. “Of course, he is,” came the answer. “That’s because your son is a genius.”  Apparently, this was the case and my parents took him home resolving to handle him in an entirely different way.  But what ‘way’ was that to be?  They never did work it out and he continued to be a problem to them forevermore.  Jana and I in adulthood, have come up with the theory that the doctor must have been Sigmund Freud: the dates tie in exactly, and he was spot on with his analysis.

Josef was clever at school, sailing through and putting in little effort.  He was a master of foreign languages and later, would do work as a translator.  He had a deep thinking, clever mind but was, at the same time, generous, kind and loving by nature.  Very handsome he strutted around Touškov like a peacock.  Always called on to join a group for a drink or a gang up to no good.  His sharp mind and impossibly deep sense of humour made his peers adore him.  Exasperated by his behaviour and in an effort to curb him, his parents had sent him to work at the Skoda factory in Pilzn where he learnt precision toolmaking along with putting cars together.  To be sure this cramped his style somewhat. but at the same time, it soon enabled him to buy a motorbike.   This he would race, full pelt, on the road to Kozolupy. More often than not, a girl would be sitting behind him on the pillion seat with her arms wrapped around him... head on his shoulder.  Friends of his parents would complain that they would have to literally jump out of the way when he zoomed past.  His poor parents adored their son, but told him that he had brought shame on them.  He was full of remorse.  He would curtail his activities, he promised, but very soon reverted back to his old ways. It was not long before one girl, in particular, caught his eye and very soon she was pregnant. At this point, he was young and obviously terrified of the consequences, but even so he cannot be forgiven for what he did next.  Upping sticks, he left Touškov, forwarding address unknown.  He went to Carcassonne in France where he literally knocked on the door of the French Foreign Legion and ask to join. Apparently, they were accepting young Czech men for training. A surprising fact but absolutely true.  He trained there for three years where he said he enjoyed the happiest time of his life.  Meanwhile back at home, his parents ended up taking the baby from the poor girl who of course found herself in dire circumstances, without a job or money.  She was forced, like many a young woman before or since, to hand the baby over and he was brought up by my grandparents like their second son.  This was apparently an arrangement agreed by all the parties involved but I feel a sense of shame about it on behalf of my dad. Nevertheless.  The girl had no option.  The baby turned out to be a joyous child, temperate of nature and easy to rear, but even so it must have been hard for a couple getting on in years to take on the total responsibility of rearing their own grandchild.

Josef returned three years later from the land of wine and cheeses; the best he had ever tasted, he would say, to find his mother bathing a toddler in a tin bath.  The little lad looked up and smiled his beaming smile.  “Mary’s?” Dad questioned. Since he had left his sister a newly married woman, it seemed obvious to him. “No, YOURS,” returned his mother.