My Own Revolution Read online

  I make my way to Danika. But I don’t stand too close. Not yet. “Remember how we used to play cowboys and Indians here?” I gesture toward the trees, the spotty shadows along the forest floor, the bushes in bloom.

  She smiles like old times, as if we’d never had the talk beside the fountain. “My favorite was playing Partisans against Nazi Germans.”

  “How about Janosik?”

  “All of you guys fought over who would get to be him,” she says. “Over who had to be just one of his men.”

  “Or worse, who had to be the one getting robbed. Remember how you were all three witches at once?”

  She laughs, then lowers her pretty face to gaze at the pine needles. As the witches, Danika bestowed upon us the magical staff — a tree branch — and the magical shirt and belt, both borrowed from her father’s closet. She handed these things to whoever was playing Janosik, announcing with big drama, “Now you have the power to escape all traps.”

  I head toward the stream, praying that she’ll follow me. She hesitates only a moment, looking into the treetops.

  We take the path that parallels the stream, where the water glides over the yellow shallows. The woods fill with shouts and the smoke of newly lit cigarettes. When we arrive at the place where the stream tumbles thickly, darkly over the boulders, I stop. Still keeping my distance, I look down onto her light hair, saying, “It wouldn’t be weird, Danika.”

  She wrinkles her forehead, as if confused. Then she shakes her head ever so slightly. Even before she speaks, the chill of the forest closes in. “It would,” she says firmly. “It would be very weird.”

  “Other kids used to be just friends and now they’re boyfriend and girlfriend. Just look at Erik and Libena.”

  She sits down on a square, mossy rock. “It’s something other than that, Patrik. There’s something bigger happening.”

  “What, then?” What could possibly be bigger? I lean against the trunk of a pine. The irregular, puzzle-piece bark imprints itself on my back.

  She takes a deep breath, then says, “A few days ago, my father was invited to join the party.”

  This knocks the wind out of me. “And?” Surely, Mr. Holub has said no. He’s always seemed like a decent, levelheaded guy.

  “He’s joining.”

  “That’s terrible news.” I look around at the tumbling stream, at the silly clumps of lilacs. “Joining the party means spying on others. Like your neighbors. Like your friends and family. If someone doesn’t spy, he goes to prison.”

  “I know all that.”

  “You know it, and yet . . . ?” Between the trees, the blue sky glares at us.

  “Sometimes things like that are necessary,” Danika says in a small voice.

  “Dr. Machovik has already sent a colleague of his, a friend of his, off to do roadwork.”

  “He probably had good reason,” she says primly.

  I stare at her, my childhood friend gone wrong.

  She rubs her hands together, as if trying to warm them. “My mother says we’ve been poor too long. By joining the party, Tati will get a higher-paying job.”

  “A fine motive.”

  “Stop it, Patrik. You don’t know how we eat day-old bread. And we hardly ever get butter or meat.”

  “What about people like Adam Uherco? What about him?”

  “Sometimes . . .”

  I kneel down beside her, my face close to hers. “So you’d betray people to eat better? Is that it?”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I’m right, though. Aren’t I?”

  She’s silent, her lower lip shoved out. She picks up a leaf and twirls it by the stem.

  “I get it. You’re now forbidden to associate with someone like me. Someone who doesn’t buy the party line.”

  “I can associate with you. I can be your friend.” Danika starts to tear the leaf along the veins, carefully, as if dissecting it for botany class. “But anything closer . . .”

  I snatch the leaf from her hand. “And what do you think about this party that would keep you from me? What do you feel?”

  “I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t.” She picks up another leaf.

  A new thought falls like a tree across my path. “You’d never betray me, would you? You’d never betray my family?”

  She looks at me with her clear blue eyes. “Of course not, Patrik. Of course not.”

  “But you don’t really know. Not yet, anyway.” Her red scarf flares against the green forest. It’s like a bullfighter’s cape. It makes me feel like a mad bull.

  At the shrill sound of Mr. Ninzik’s whistle crisscrossing the forest, Danika rises from her rock. Perhaps she’s relieved to be called back.

  I block her way. “Is this why you were upset at Emil’s a while back?”

  She brushes the back of her skirt. “Maybe. Well, yes. You were all saying such mean things about the party. And I was confused. . . . But I’m not anymore. I’ve accepted Tati’s decision.”

  She already sounds like a good Communist. “Danika . . .”

  But she’s gone past me, calling over her shoulder, “It’s no use, Patrik.”

  I call after her, “Wearing that red scarf, you’ll never be allowed into America. The Statue of Liberty doesn’t hold out her flame for Communists.”

  Danika doesn’t turn around.

  On the way up the path, I take pictures of everything, pressing the shutter over and over. I capture a bird’s fallen nest, tree trunks, lichen-covered rocks, the back of Danika’s retreating head. I use up almost a whole roll of film, but I can’t stop shooting.

  On the march back to school, I leap up, almost ripping the red flags down.

  A few days later, we come into botany to find Mr. Ninzik gone. Whiskery Mrs. Jakim, who taught us in grade school, stands in his place. She’s peering into the textbook, running her finger under the lines.

  “Someone turned Mr. Ninzik in,” the boy behind me whispers. “He’s not here anymore.”

  I look around, as if I might see Mr. Ninzik after all. The long fingers of the state have reached into our school. Who was the rat? Maybe Bozek, who so loves to wear his red scarf.

  Or was it Danika?

  The clomp of shoes again and Mr. Babicak enters. He picks up Mr. Ninzik’s pointer. He taps it on the desk. Then he waves it, saying, “Mr. Ninzik has always been a secret enemy. All along Mr. Ninzik has bucked the revolution. Instead of taking you to the Bazima Forest to identify trees, to advance your scientific knowledge, to make you strong and disciplined citizens of the state, he let you play around.”

  Taking kids to the forest can’t be it. Not the whole picture. Mr. Ninzik is gone because he’s done something more than meets the eye. He hates the Spartans and would piss on Lenin if the night was dark enough.

  Again, I glance toward the doorway, toward the windows.

  “And now, thankfully, Mr. Ninzik has left,” Mr. Babicak goes on, “and kind Mrs. Jakim is here to pull you back from the reactionary precipice.” He taps the pointer again.

  Kind Mrs. Jakim, my eyeball. When I was ten years old, the school had a campaign for Cuba, where Castro had pulled off a revolution. To stop America from attacking the new Communist nation, each of us had to put our allowance into the glass jar at the front of each classroom. Everyone could see how much you put in. How good a Communist you were. Mrs. Jakim watched extra hard to make sure we didn’t try to fool her with a bottle cap instead of a coin.

  I always dropped in just a few crowns, barely enough to look like a good Communist.

  Mr. Babicak lets loose of the pointer and strides over to Libena Kaspar’s desk. He gestures for her to lift her elbows off her black notebook.

  She does so, her eyes big with surprise.

  Mr. Babicak flips open the notebook. Grunting with satisfaction, he holds it up for all to see. Inside, Libena has glued clippings of pretty, dark-haired Sophia Loren and blond Brigitte Bardot with the big boobies.

  “Look, boys and girls,” he says with triumph. “Jus
t look at these decadent Western film stars.”

  Some of us look. Even Mrs. Jakim tears her gaze from her frantic study of the botany textbook. Others stare off, looking anywhere but where Babicak orders them to look.

  Mr. Babicak tucks the notebook under one arm, probably to put in Libena’s record. By now Libena is wiping at tears with the ends of her Young Pioneer scarf.

  Next, Mr. Babicak goes to Dalek’s satchel. When he jerks it, tipping out the contents, American postal stamps scatter across the floor. The little faces of the American presidents stare up at us. “Hah!” says Mr. Babicak, grinding the stamps underfoot. “Here you live in the greatest social experiment in the history of the world, and you hoard — shamelessly hoard — these worthless symbols of imperialism!”

  “Gone just like that,” Tati says about Mr. Ninzik, snapping his fingers. “You step over the line just the tiniest bit, and . . .” He snaps again.

  Poor Mr. Ninzik is probably hauling wheelbarrows of gravel. Or he’s just plain gone.

  Sitting at the kitchen table, my geometry book spread open on the burgundy cloth, I concentrate harder on the proofs. It’s logical, one-answer work.

  “All the way gone,” whispers Mami, meaning the freezing tundra of Siberia. In Siberia, where it’s ice and snow and hard labor all year round.

  I should tell my parents that Mr. Holub is joining the party. That soon he’ll be a danger to all of us. But if I tell them, they’ll never let Danika come to this apartment again.

  The area of this triangle equals the area of that one. Even though they look so different.

  “We have to get out of here,” says Mami.

  I keep my eyes pinned on my book.

  The lines on Mami’s forehead deepen. “Maybe you should go lecture in another country and not come back.”

  Mami always suggests this.

  “But that would leave the rest of you stuck here in Trencin.”

  Tati always counters with this.

  I blacken the triangle, then the polyhedron, my pencil scritch-scratching. I draw a tree from the Bazima Forest. I draw a cylinder around the tree, trapping it.

  “It’s hard to know what to do.” Tati rubs his chin. He doesn’t want to pump gas in Pennsylvania. He doesn’t want to give up on being a psychiatrist.

  But if Tati doesn’t pump gas in America, he may end up doing something just as lowly here. He may collect garbage or drive a truck filled with bags of cement. In Pennsylvania he’d be pumping the gas for his own sake, not the state’s.

  I look at the walls, papered with a vague, off-white pattern. There could be hidden microphones in those walls. Sometimes the bugs are concealed under carpets, in furniture.

  “Every day at the clinic,” Mami says, also looking around, “people come in complaining of headaches and stomachaches. But really, they’re just high-strung.”

  “They’re all nervous,” Tati says. “They’re being watched.”

  I shut my geometry book, the half-finished proofs inside. Leaving Mami and Tati wandering in the maze of their escape plans, I retreat to the refuge of my darkroom. I develop the negative of LONG LIVE THE US ! I blow it up big.

  A knock comes on the darkroom door. Without thinking, I call out, “It’s okay. You can let in the light now.”

  The door opens, and there stands Danika. Over the years, she’s often visited me here. I’ve even taught her a bit about developing. But I’m surprised to see her now. Has she — my heart cartwheels — come to see me? Not just see me, but see me?

  Her face reflects in the red surface of the developing fluids. She looks past me to the photograph hanging by the clothespins. She studies the slogan with its two missing letters. Her eyes widen in the red light.

  “You probably hope no one finds out about that,” I say.

  “Oh, you mean . . . Well, yes. I wish you’d tear that photo up.”

  “You’re not in it. And I’ve already been punished.” Her flowery scent fills the darkroom, mixing with the acid smell of the chemicals.

  She sighs, then studies the other negatives — pictures of the Bazima Forest, the back of her own head. Her eyes flit here and there.

  “Do you still want this?” I hold up one of the prints I made of the Beatles’ faces.

  “Sure,” she says, but takes the print slowly, without enthusiasm.

  Suddenly, I realize what she’s really come for. The precious thing she’s risked seeing me to get. My jaw tightens. I take her image from where it’s pinned on the back of the door, the image with Bozek’s face cut away.

  She reaches for it, then draws her hand back.

  “You’re wondering where Bozek is.”

  “Well, yes . . .”

  “I cut his face off.”

  “You’re joking.”

  I shrug. “I’m the photographer.”

  Danika picks up a loose clothespin and snaps it open. Snaps it shut. “I didn’t know you were so petty, Patrik.”

  “It was an artistic decision.” I kick at the wastebasket. “He’s in there somewhere. You’re welcome to look.”

  She pinches her finger with the clothespin, then throws it down.

  With Karel off at his model-train club, Emil and I decide to ride the bus to the castle perched on the hill above town. When you want to escape everything, a castle is a good place.

  At the last bus stop, Emil and I get out at the ancient ruins. Castles are everywhere, left over from the times of the Roman Empire, and on this one the inscription reads: We Romans were here in the name of Pax Romana 200 AD. But now no one is supposed to be here because the walls could collapse. Following Emil, I wander in on a path overgrown with thistles. The prickly leaves graze my hands, lightly scratching them.

  I walk over the broken glass of smashed liquor bottles, over crushed beer cans. “Careful,” says Emil, peering through the massive entry. “There could be police.”

  Instead of looking into the castle, I glance behind. A man pulls up in a dirty white Volkswagen Beetle. The car has a large patch of rust on the fender.

  There aren’t any police inside, but I still go cautiously, half expecting to find Danika and Bozek kissing here. Mushing up against each other. Under the spreading tree, with its dark-purple shade, would be a perfect spot.

  But only a few boys are playing a game in the open courtyard. Heat waves rise off the paving stones. The game is part soccer, part handball, as the boys kick the ball against the castle wall. The ball wallops the wall of slogans: Down with all Fascist dogs! and Invaders out!

  The walls are also covered with love hearts. I scan the ruined surfaces for two sets of initials. But they’re not here. Which means nothing.

  “Want to join in?” Emil asks, nodding toward the game.

  Part of me wants to. It would feel good to hurl and slam a ball. But part of me feels as fragile as the castle itself. “Go ahead.”

  Emil shakes his head.

  The driver of the VW strolls into the castle courtyard. He wears a beige Windbreaker and has beige hair to match.

  I lead the way to the edge of the precipice. The pale buildings and red roofs of Trencin lie tiny before us. From here the city looks peaceful, not at all like a nest of traitors and spies. There’s the river, my school, even our gray apartment building along with all the others.

  Somewhere down there lives the tiny figure of Danika, smaller than Bela’s doll.

  “It looks like a bunch of toys,” says Emil.

  “Or like a dream. As a kid, I had flying dreams. I used to fly like this.” I hold my arms straight out. With my eyes closed, I imagine myself soaring over Trencin.

  Emil pulls out a cigarette and lights it. Then, blowing smoke rings, he says slowly, “I think a lot of people want to fly. Fly away, I mean.”

  Emil’s words, along with the smoke, come to me as though in a dream. I open my eyes and cast him a glance. Is he saying that he wants to fly away? Are his steel-mill parents making plans? Maybe all of us are poised for flight.

  There’s now a hitch
in our own plan. Tati got a letter from his aunt. With the big new highway, not enough cars stop at their gas station. Our Slovakian family in America will have to close the station down.

  So there will be no jobs pumping gas for us.

  The man in beige moves closer. He adjusts his lapel, maybe turning on a tiny tape recorder.

  “How about you?” Emil asks, dislodging a rock with his shoe.

  “I’m fine. Except for Danika.”

  “Hmm,” Emil muses, blowing three perfect gray halos. He pushes the rock, and it clatters all the way down.

  He wants to talk more. I can tell. I also want to talk. I want to tell him how Danika’s father is joining the party. But then Emil wouldn’t like her anymore. I want to tell him that my parents are feeling their way through a labyrinth, looking for a way out, bumping against dead ends.

  But even Emil could change in the blink of an eye. I think of Dr. Machovik. Even Emil could turn against me.

  Bela and Mami sit at the kitchen table, a pile of paper flowers stacked in front of them. Bela wears one of the flowers behind her ear. All morning they’ve been cutting and twisting the paper, preparing the decorations. On the day before May Day, a person like Bozek will walk the streets with a clipboard, marking down which windows are bare.

  Someone knocks on our front door, and I open up to see Bozek, a pile of flags draped over one arm, a bag slung over the other. Bozek of all people. He puts a foot in the doorway, as if I might close him out.

  “Is your family ready?” he asks.

  “We’re working on it.” I move closer, using my beanpole height against him. I reach down for a flag of each country, thinking that later Mami can clean the furniture with the Russian one.

  “Make sure you hang the Russian flag,” Bozek says. “It doesn’t matter so much about the Czechoslovakian, but do hang the Russian flag.”

  “I know.” He thinks I’m a moron.

  Bozek lifts the paper bag, and I hear the clank of metal. “Do you have flag holders?”

  “Of course we do. From last year and the year before and before . . .” He thinks we’re all morons.