My Own Revolution Read online

  I never get mail. I drop my book satchel onto the floor and take the letter. Sure enough, here’s my name in black-and-white across the front: Patrik Chrobak. The return address is that of the Trencin police station. “Did you open this?” I ask Mami, examining the seal, which has obviously been broken and glued back together. She needs Mr. Babicak’s sharp letter opener.

  “I did, Patrik. I’m so sorry. But I couldn’t stand the suspense. It’s an order to appear.”

  I rip open the envelope. The letter contains just one line. As Mami said, I’m to go at ten o’clock the next morning to room 129 of the downtown police station. It doesn’t say what about.

  That evening, while Mami is putting Bela to bed, I wash my plate, then my silverware and drinking glass. I take my time, sudsing up, rinsing, even drying. At last, with nothing possible left to do, I go to the living room.

  Tati is reading the newspaper. Beside my ripped-open summons, his pipe lies idle in the ashtray, with his little pouch of tobacco nearby.

  Putting my hands on my hips, I get the announcement over with: “I know why I’ve been called in.”

  Tati looks up from the newspaper.

  “During the May Day parade, I set fire to a flag.” And there, I’ve said it. The words fall like tiny grenades into the lemony light.

  Tati blinks, then says, “You can’t be serious, Patrik. Please tell me this is a joke.”

  “It’s not.”

  His face grows as red as the Communist flag. “I thought . . . I thought I cautioned you about that damn parade.”

  “You did. I couldn’t help myself.”

  “Couldn’t help yourself! What is that supposed to mean?” Tati stands up, the newspaper falling to the floor, the pages skittering loose.

  “I was upset.”

  He kicks the newspaper into a pile. “What kind of upset would make you do such an idiotic thing?”

  “A girl.”

  “A girl? You’d do something like that over a girl?” He paces to the window, then back, saying, “This comes at a terrible time for me. I’m being pressured on all sides. And now this . . . this terrible news.”

  A silence falls between us. I melt into my shame. In the other room, Mami is singing lullabies to Bela.

  When Mami’s lullaby comes to an end, Tati says, “You’ll wish you hadn’t done that. Now there will be hell to pay. Pure hell.”

  With the back of my hand, I wipe my forehead.

  Tati sits back down. He lights his pipe and turns the radio to the Voice of America. The language of the evening is perhaps Russian. But that’s okay. What matters is that these broadcasters are on our side and against the Trencin police.

  The broadcast ends, and music begins to play. I always hope for rock ’n’ roll — the Beatles, or maybe the Rolling Stones — but it’s jazz.

  I sit down in the chair across from Tati’s. The broadcast turns back to talk, this time in Slovakian. Tati twists the dial a teeny bit, making the words louder. But as usual, a loud wowoowowoo sound blocks the broadcaster’s voice.

  I lean close but can’t make out a thing.

  Suddenly I say, “Don’t talk in front of Danika. Don’t say political things in front of her.”

  Tati raises his eyebrows.

  “She wears her red scarf when she doesn’t have to. She even wears it on weekends.”

  “I’ve never noticed her doing that,” Tati says.

  “It’s only lately.”

  “We hardly see Danika anymore,” Tati goes on. “Is she busy with school?”

  “Very,” I answer. I want to tell him about Mr. Holub. I really do.

  In the morning, with the usual sour-faced driver at the wheel, Tati and I ride the bus downtown. We sit right up front, stiff in our good suits. As if nice clothes will do the trick. My hands sweat all over the letter.

  Dirty washcloths of rain clouds heap together.

  The police station is located in a big squarish building with flags flying. Eyeing the police vans packed together, I follow Tati. We mount the slick marble steps.

  Inside, the building isn’t so stately. Our footsteps echo under high ceilings with peeling, flag-size strips of paint. I wipe my hand along walls grubby with the handprints of others who’ve wiped along them. As we pass a janitor pushing a wide broom, I wonder if the man has always been a janitor, or whether he used to be a doctor or lawyer who spoke his mind. I hope Tati doesn’t become a janitor.

  Or — the thought suddenly strikes me like a bolt of lightning — I hope I don’t become a janitor.

  Then, in the distance of the long hallway, I see Dr. Machovik. The back of his curly head, the barely visible goatee. His slightly uneven gait. He turns down another hallway and is gone.

  “Wasn’t that Dr. Machovik?” I ask Tati.

  “I didn’t notice.”

  “Does he work in this building?”

  “I believe he does.”

  We arrive at room 129, the number glaring blackly from the frosted-glass door. Tati turns the knob, and I push the door open. Secretaries sit at desks behind the counter, their typewriters click-clattering away, each out of rhythm with the others. A woman stands behind a counter, her hair in two coiled braids. When I show her the letter, she says nothing but points to two metal chairs.

  As I sit in that cold-backed chair, I fold and unfold my hands. The clock says one minute to ten. Then ten. Then past ten. Like Janosik, I’m about to be racked and tortured.

  I wonder what Adam Uherco does all day. I wonder if he’s now slobbering and screaming along with the others.

  Just as I’m thinking that we must have come on the wrong day, a policeman in a blue uniform enters. Epaulets on the shoulders, stripes on the pockets. Tati and I both stand, but the policeman gestures for Tati to sit back down. I’m to go in alone.

  In the inner office, the Russian flag hangs limp in a corner. A second policeman with more stripes, and even a few pins, sits behind a wooden desk. The first officer goes to stand next to him, hands clasped behind his back.

  For me, they’ve provided another metal chair. There’s the tick of the clock in here, the rattling crowd of typewriters out there.

  The policeman with the pins and extra stripes opens a file. I glimpse my name. The papers flutter as he sorts through them — have they really written so much about me? Babicak must have been true to his word. The policeman holds up a photograph.

  I tilt forward to see that it’s of the parade. But not just the parade — it’s of me, too. My heart churns faster. There I am, holding a lighter to the flag.

  “Is this you?” the policeman asks. His voice is surprisingly high, almost like a girl’s.

  “It is, sir.”

  “You don’t deny the charges, then?”

  “No, sir.” Though I don’t know what the charges are, I won’t be a smart aleck. Not here.

  “You are charged with treachery against the regime.”

  I suck in my breath. All I did was touch a flame to a piece of cloth. The typewriters rack a jangle of noise.

  “If you were not a schoolboy, such a serious offense would result in years of hard labor. Since you are but a student, we will be more lenient.”

  Out the high window, a bird begins to sing. I hear smaller birds. There must be a nest. Adam Uherco was also a student.

  The policeman writes something, then shuts my file. He picks a bit of lint off his sleeve before saying in his high, thin voice, “Since this year of school is almost over, you will finish it. But in the fall, you will go to a different kind of school.”

  “I beg your pardon, sir?” I cannot have heard him right. The birds. The typewriter. The ticking of the clock have all interfered with my hearing.

  “You will apprentice to be a miner, Mr. Chrobak.”

  A miner. But that’s crazy. I grip the arms of my metal chair. It’s not the insane asylum, but the mines are almost as bad. “I want to be a doctor. Maybe even a psychiatrist, like my father.” Becoming a doctor is a new idea. But suddenly it seems perf
ectly logical.

  The standing policeman shifts from one foot to the other.

  The seated one clears his throat. “That’s no longer in the cards for you, Mr. Chrobak.”

  A miner. Karel and I once visited a cave called the Wicked Hole. As a joke, we blew out our lanterns. Darkness swallowed us. The mountain swallowed us. There was no way out. Suffocating on blackness, I scrambled and fell. Scrambled and fell.

  I think of how miners emerge from deep within the earth, covered in black dust, headlamps tied to their foreheads.

  I could never be a miner.

  I’d rather be a janitor.

  I’d rather pump gas.

  “That’s it,” the policeman says. “You are dismissed.”

  I go out, and they call in my father. Sitting in the chair again, I try to be courageous and undaunted like Janosik.

  And then I think of Dr. Machovik, our own doctor and friend, he who’s invited us year after year to his vacation house in the pines. I think of how our friendly Dr. Machovik works just down the hall.

  At last the policeman shoos Tati out and smacks the door shut behind him. Tati’s eyes are dark sockets. Without a word, he beckons to me.

  Going down the hall, past the sweeping janitor, we say nothing. Nor do we speak on the walk to the bus stop, rain showering over us. Nor do we utter a word on the bus. On the street beside us, a Gypsy wagon passes, the horse’s head bent down in the rain. Maybe I could become a Gypsy. I could dye my hair black and run away. I could get myself stolen.

  We silently pass the men with the walkie-talkies. As we walk to our building and up inside it, my lips are sealed.

  Only when we’re back in our apartment, the door firmly bolted, do I turn to Tati and say, “We have to get out.”

  He nods. “I know.”

  I look out the window to see the rain falling hard, pummeling the tulips along the path. I’ve already gotten soaked this morning. So I ask Tati if I can stay home from school.

  “You might as well.”

  Then he gathers his briefcase and his umbrella with the curved bone handle. He reties his dark-blue tie and is out the door.

  Standing at my window, I watch him go down the path between the wet tulips, holding the black umbrella, a shield against all bad things falling from the sky.

  When he turns the corner, we’re both alone.

  That evening, Bela and I spoon down cabbage soup flavored with smoked sausage. Mami paces. She’s so upset about my becoming a miner that she doesn’t say a thing about my reading a Janosik comic at the table.

  When the soup grows cold and there’s still no sign of Tati, Mami sets the pot on the stove and covers it with a lid.

  The three of us go to the couch, but none of us flicks on the television.

  “Why is Tati so late?” Bela wants to know.

  “Shhh,” Mami says, urging Bela’s head onto her lap. “Sleep now, dear heart.” Stroking Bela’s yellow hair, she sings a lullaby about little birds going to a nest. When Bela falls asleep, Mami carries her to bed.

  I turn off the lights and go to the window, scanning the blackness outside. I’m looking for the two policemen. For the man with the beige hair in his VW Beetle. For the men with the walkie-talkies. For who knows who.

  Maybe everyone will go away now that my punishment has been assigned.

  I think again of being locked inside of black caves.

  When Mami comes back, I switch the lights on and see that her cheeks are streaked with tears. She sinks down beside me. “What’s going to happen to us, Patrik? What, what, what?” She shoves back the hair along her temples.

  “Don’t get so upset. His bus is just running behind.” What does Mami expect me to do? I can’t bring Tati home.

  “I don’t mean just your father. I mean you, too.”

  At that, I shut my mouth.

  The clock ticks on, as if the world were still nicely ordered. The cuckoo bird slides in and out, pecking the hour. But my heart pecks unevenly, like the real pigeons on the window ledge. What if something really has happened this time?

  At the sound of footsteps on the stairs, Mami dries her eyes on her sleeve. She jumps up and swings the door open wide. “Rumer?” She calls down.

  “Klaudia,” he replies.

  When Tati comes in, his face is as white as a sheet of paper. He isn’t carrying his briefcase. His hair is grayer than in the morning. “They planted anti-Communist literature in my desk,” he says. “They claim my office radio was tuned to Voice of America.”

  He flops down on the couch. “They interviewed me all day.”

  “We have to get out of here,” Mami whispers, looking at the window.

  I look, too.

  “They ransacked my files. They’ve even forbidden me to carry my briefcase, saying I might steal state secrets.”

  “What will they do to you?”

  He takes one of Mami’s carefully ironed doilies and crumples it in his fist, saying, “If they sent me to do roadwork up at Prikra, that would be a light sentence. Now I may end up in prison. Stitching Soviet flags all day.”

  Mami starts to cry again.

  “What will we do?” I ask.

  “We have to get out. For Patrik’s sake. For mine.” Tati gets up, crosses the room, and tugs the curtains closed. “The whole time they grilled me, I was planning.”

  “And?” Mami asks.

  “We will pretend to go to Yugoslavia on vacation,” Tati says, sitting back down.

  I pull up a chair. “And from there?” I ask. Yugoslavia is still a Communist country. It’s still in the Soviet Bloc.

  “We’ll go to Trieste, Italy. It’s across the water. We’ll need a boat.”

  “How will we get money for something like that?” Mami straightens a lamp shade. The shade rocks off balance, and she straightens it again.

  “When I published that paper in West Germany,” Tati says, “I was paid in Western currency. The hospital still has the money in my account.”

  “So the boat can be bought,” says Mami, sitting down beside Tati, the couch dipping with her weight. “But we still need permission to go to Yugoslavia. Will they give us that? Will they permit us to leave for vacation?”

  Leaning his forearms across his knees, Tati clasps his hands tightly and sighs. He jiggles his folded hands up and down.

  A few years ago, we went camping in Yugoslavia. I remember the border with its brown-uniformed guards. I remember driving down by the giant mirror of Lake Balaton, the little hotel that smelled like old rain and had a portrait of the Hungarian president hung too high. Then we crossed the next border and came to a town on the cliff, with donkey carts and bougainvillea and a bust of Lenin in the square. We finally arrived at the campground of towering trees, tents under the trees, and a half-moon of beach.

  As I’m about to change into my pajamas, I notice something white hanging outside my open window. Could it be? Yes, it’s a note from Danika, the first since Bozek came along. Maybe she’s changed her mind about me. With my heart beating like Ringo Starr’s drums, I reel in the scrap of paper.

  Unfolding the square, my fingers tremble. My vision trembles across the words. But the note reads: I heard you got called to the police station.

  How did Danika learn this? Who spread the news? I smash up the paper and throw it on the floor.

  But then I pick up the note and smooth it out. Maybe she doesn’t really care about the stupid police. Maybe she’s trying to be friendly. Maybe things aren’t working out with Bozek.

  But this is obviously no love note. Danika is just being nosy. I consider writing something rude back, like None of your business.

  A small voice tells me to be careful. In the end, Janosik was betrayed by his sweetheart. When she fell in love with another, she craftily destroyed his three gifts. First she destroyed his magical staff. Then she destroyed his magical shirt and his magical belt. She left him defenseless.

  Danika’s violin music begins to wander into my bedroom. Vivaldi winds through the
air like vines.

  I take a box of matches from my drawer. Lighting one, I hold the tiny flame to the edge of Danika’s note.

  In history class, Mr. Noll surveys me over the top of his glasses. What does he know? Maybe he’s a spy for Babicak, on a mission to get me to miner school right away. I imagine the news spreading from the police station in all directions, like the ripples from a rock thrown into a pond.

  As Libena reads aloud, I gaze at the page, the words a blur. It no longer matters if I memorize dates or battles. Come fall, there will be no more Peloponnesian Wars for me. Instead I’ll be learning to sling a pickax alongside other boys who torched the flag.

  In botany class, Mrs. Jakim now suspects me of sending bottle caps instead of coins to the poor Cubans. Come fall, there will be no more Bazima Forest for me, no more identifying trees. I’ll be on field trips under the earth, identifying veins of ore.

  As a miner, I may not be allowed to have a camera. I might not even want one. Working so hard, I might not care about taking pictures.

  During marching drill in the gymnasium, I watch out for knowing looks. Patrik Chrobak, the future miner. Ha, ha.

  As Danika passes me, going the other way with knees lifted high, she raises her eyebrows at me inquiringly.

  I meet her bright-blue eyes, then turn away. Her father must have told her about me. Who has she told? By now surely Bozek knows.

  After school, I invite Karel and Emil to join me in the shade of the nearby clump of trees.

  “I have something to tell you,” I say, picking up a stick. “Something you probably already know.”

  They glance at each other, then both shrug. Karel holds out his hands, palms up.

  “Spit it out,” says Emil.

  So, doodling in the dirt with my stick, pushing aside bits of trash, I tell all about my summons, the interrogation, and how I’m to become a miner.

  They listen, Karel with an open mouth, both giving astonished grunts.

  At the end, I draw a big X in the dirt, saying, “So that’s that. That’s the story.”

  Emil puts his foot squarely on the X. “They say the workers of the world should throw off their chains,” he says. “But now they’ll put you in chains.”