My Own Revolution Page 9

  Tati drives to the parking lot, where he lines the boat up next to a pole. “Stay here,” he says. “I’ll be right back.”

  I get out and lean against the Fiat. In the dusky light, I make out Danika headed toward me. This is the first time we’ve been alone since she came to my darkroom looking for the photo of herself with Bozek.

  Her eyes grow round at the sight of the boat. “Is this yours?”

  I nod, my heart rolling loose.

  “What’s it for?”

  “A trip to Yugoslavia.”

  “Isn’t it early to go on vacation? School isn’t out for a long time.”

  I shrug. “My father wants to go before the summer crowds.”

  “The Fancy Free,” she says, tracing the script with her fingertip. “That’s a nice name.”

  A name that gives it all away.

  “My father let me drive,” I tell her.

  Her eyes widen again. “All by yourself?”

  “Of course. It was easy.”

  Her eyes brighten. Probably even Bozek hasn’t driven a car with a boat in tow.

  Tati returns with cables and two padlocks. We tie the boat to the pole, Danika threading a cable through the metal rings.

  When the boat is secured, Tati goes inside, leaving Danika and me behind. The lights in the parking lot come on, turning the air from gray to orange. The nighttime crickets begin to whir.

  “I have something to tell you,” Danika says. She edges close and I flinch at her familiar scent. She pauses, then says, “My father joined.”

  It’s like a padlock snapping shut. “Fantastic. That’s fantastic news.”

  “I know you don’t approve, Patrik. I know”— she drops her voice —“that your family isn’t pro-party. But just think what this will mean for my family.” Her gaze outlines our escape vessel. “I thought you should know.”

  “Okay. You’ve done your duty. Now I know.” I lean against the boat’s revealing name. “I ask just one thing, Danika. Leave us alone. Leave my family alone.”

  “Why, Patrik, I’d never . . .”

  “The damage is done. Just imagine me working deep under the dark ground.”

  She passes one hand over her forehead, saying, “My father had nothing to do with that.”

  “Save it,” I mutter, striding away.

  Upstairs, Tati has folded up the tan bill of sale and is tucking it into his wallet. Mami busily smoothes the doilies on the arms of the chairs. Bela plays with her doll, the miniature furniture made of boxes strewn across the floor.

  I approach Tati, pulling up a chair until it rests arm to arm with his. I place my hand over the doily. I feel the neat pattern against my palm, then whisper, “We have to be careful. Mr. Holub has joined the party.”

  Tati shuts his wallet, grips it with both hands. “How long have you known this, Patrik?”

  “I just learned.” Which is not technically a lie.

  Mami begins to straighten the doilies all over again.

  “What are we going to do?” I ask. Already shadows are crisscrossing the windows.

  Tati slaps the wallet against his open palm. “We’ll have to leave very soon,” he says. “We’ll begin preparations.”

  “Can’t we go right away?”

  “We’re not even packed, Patrik. There are matters to be attended to.”

  “Like the travel permission.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And what other matters?”

  “There are some patients I have to see.”

  “Patients?” How could any patient be in worse shape than we are?

  “And I have an important meeting the day after tomorrow.”

  On the day we leave for Italy, it will be way too late. The waves will be choppy, the wind stiff. Clouds will be bunched along the Italian horizon, purple and mean. Two patrol boats will circle the water, the wind slapping their flags.

  Suddenly, the wind will pick up. It’ll hurtle the storm toward us, the waves rearing higher. All the other boats will head for shore.

  But we’ll aim for Italy, storm or no storm.

  With rain falling in drops the size of coins, the patrol boats will gain on us. The guards will stand up, waving their arms, roaring a stream of threats and outrage through their megaphones.

  I go to my room and lie down on the bed that is right below Danika’s. The smell of developing fluids eases through the closet door. Outside, the men with the walkie-talkies are probably nosing around The Fancy Free, noting the giveaway name. Before they put two and two together, we have to get away. Only one small piece of paper keeps us here.

  After school, I ride the bus to the square building that houses the Trencin police. Men peer at me from the blackened windows of the vans. Yet in spite of that, I mount the slick white stairs and pull open the heavy door.

  I go down the tall-ceilinged hallways where the paint is still peeling, the janitor still sweeping. I head right to the dreaded 129, where the counter woman still wears her hair in two coiled braids.

  “Excuse me, madam,” I say, hoisting my book satchel from one shoulder to the other. “I’m looking for Dr. Jakub Machovik.”

  She eyes me as if she recognizes my face but can’t remember from where.

  “He’s my doctor. For years and years. At least he used to be.”

  She opens a binder, runs her finger down a typewritten list of names, shakes her head.

  “He’s new. He just came here recently.”

  With a sigh, she reaches for a thinner binder. The list is shorter, and her finger stops right away. “Room 151,” she says.

  Out in the hallway, I take the turn I saw Machovik take. From there I come to 151.

  Staring at the door, I try to comfort myself by thinking of the basket of newborn bunnies. I try to remember if Dr. Machovik himself acted kindly toward them or whether that was just his wife.

  But thinking of small, helpless bunnies is a bad idea. I raise my fist and knock.

  No one answers. Maybe the doctor has seen me through the frosted glass and is lying low.

  I sit down on the floor and pull my schoolbooks from the satchel. First I do some geometry, completing five proofs. Then I read a little of Franz Kafka, who wrote about dead ends like this one. When the janitor comes by, I have to stand so he can sweep beneath me. When he’s gone, I sit back down.

  Hours pass. But if I don’t wait here, we’ll get turned back at the first border and I’ll become a miner, inching my way through black caves. Up and down the hallway, I hear keys turning in locks.

  At last Dr. Machovik comes around the corner. Seeing me there on the floor, he stops. Then he approaches, stroking his goatee. “Why, Patrik,” he says. “What a surprise.” He strokes his goatee some more. “To what do I owe this visit?”

  “I have a sore throat.”

  “A sore throat, eh? You don’t have a new doctor?”

  “No one I trust,” I say, then lay it on thick. “No one like you.”

  He reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a key, and opens the door. He gestures me into this lair, where there’s a desk, a red flag stretched across the wall, a picture of Mrs. Machovik in a silver frame.

  “I have none of my instruments here, of course.” He waves toward a stack of papers. “But I might as well take a quick look. Come over to the window.”

  I go to where the late-afternoon light falls.

  “You’ve gotten too tall for me.” Dr. Machovik scoots a chair into the light. After I’ve obediently sat, he pulls down my lower jaw and peers in. “Please say ahh for me.”

  Just like olden times, I open wide.

  After a moment, he says, “I don’t see any redness.”

  “Hmm, that’s strange. It still hurts.” I swallow hard for emphasis.

  “Drink lots of water. Take an aspirin.”

  So that’s that. I have no further reason to be here. But I didn’t wait hours to have my throat looked at. Folding my arms across my chest, I say, “My father is working hard lately, Doctor. I�
�m worried about him. He needs a vacation.”

  Dr. Machovik leans back against his desk. “He could go to my house by the river.”

  “He needs to go somewhere for longer than a weekend,” I say, proceeding as though through high grass. “We’ve bought a boat, in fact. We want to go to Yugoslavia.”

  “A lovely place indeed.”

  I go through a landscape of prickles and thorns. “It’s the travel permission, Dr. Machovik. I thought I could save my father some trouble by getting it myself. From you. I know you have a different job now, you see. . . .”

  He shakes his head ever so slightly, traces the outline of a floor tile with the tip of his shoe. “That’s not my job.”

  In the silence I hear another key turning in a lock.

  I have come for nothing. Waited for nothing. Exposed us for nothing.

  I must step into even deeper peril. “How is your vegetable garden?” I ask.

  “Very well. Things are ripening nicely.”

  “Are your neighbors still enjoying their share?”

  Dr. Machovik narrows his eyes. “I don’t . . . don’t share with them.”

  “Oh?” I act surprised. “Not anymore?”

  Silence again.

  Now I am certainly done for. Dr. Machovik will have me arrested.

  He pulls hard on his goatee. He looks at the ceiling, where a long strip of paint is about to drift loose.

  Yet I don’t budge from my spot in the light from the window. “How are the bunnies?” I ask.

  Dr. Machovik frowns at first, as if he doesn’t remember the bunnies, then says, “Ah, yes. They’re all grown up. Already released to the wild.”

  He looks to the ceiling again, one corner of his mouth twitching.

  I don’t move. I don’t give up.

  At last Dr. Machovik clears this throat and says, “I suppose I could arrange travel papers. Just this once.” Turning his back to me, he lifts the receiver of the black phone and dials. I hear the ring ring on the other end. A voice answers, and Dr. Machovik says something very softly.

  Facing me again, he says, “Go to 129 and the secretary will have your papers for you. I think”— he looks up from under his eyebrows —“you already know where room 129 is.”

  As I go past the walkie-talkie men on our corner, I wonder if they’re aware of what I carry tucked deep in my satchel. I wonder how wide the net is cast.

  When I climb the stairs to the apartment, Mami calls down, “Patrik! Is that you?” I recognize the high-strung voice she uses whenever Tati keeps her waiting.

  I come in to find both my parents on their feet, as if they’ve been pacing. The empty dinner plates sit on the table, reflecting the glow of the swinging lamp above.

  “Where have you been?” Mami asks. She’s still wearing her nurse’s cap.

  I rummage in my satchel until I slip the envelope from between the pages of my history book. I hold up the prize, saying, “Guess what I have!”

  “Not more bad news,” Tati says. “I hope. . . .”

  “Not at all.” I toss the envelope onto the table.

  Tati opens it, pulls out the document. Mami leans close and they both study what’s written. “How?” Tati manages.

  “I got it from Dr. Machovik. Remember when we saw him at the police station?”

  “You got this from him?” Tati sits down under the swinging lamp of the dining table, bumping a plate with his elbow.

  “Aren’t you happy? I expected you to be happy.”

  “Everything is now much more complicated — that’s all,” says Tati.

  I know what he means, but I push on. “Complicated? What’s complicated? We have travel papers, and we can go.”

  “But now Dr. Machovik knows. . . .” Tati says gloomily.

  “Do you think he’ll turn us in?” Mami asks.

  “He can’t,” I say, bragging. “I brought up how he doesn’t report all his vegetables.”

  Tati plunges his head into his hands.

  “But the papers are legitimate, aren’t they?” Mami asks. “They have the right seal, don’t they?”

  “Of course they’re legitimate.” I turn to her. “I went there all by myself and got them. And now no one even thanks me. You”— I twist back to Tati —“weren’t going to do anything about travel papers. Nothing at all.”

  Tati drops his hands and looks up at me. He runs his eyes from my face down to my shoes, and back up again. At last he says, “I’m sorry, Patrik. Come here.” He jerks a chair close.

  I sit. Across the table, Mami is tucking the travel papers neatly into the envelope. From the bedroom, I hear Bela’s tiny voice call out, “I can’t sleep, Mami!”

  Mami gets up and puts the envelope on a shelf in the china cabinet. When she’s gone out and the soft sound of a lullaby emerges from the other room, Tati says, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me lately. I feel like my feet are stuck in cement.”

  “Are you afraid to leave?”

  “Of course I am. I have no idea what I’ll do in America,” he says. “I won’t be able to work as a doctor. I don’t know how I’ll make money.”

  I study Tati. It seems that his hair is grayer than just a few days ago. For the first time, I notice his small chin, a sign, they say, of weakness. But he has a good point. What would he do in America? Suddenly I wonder if he’d become a miner.

  “I can help. I can work.”

  Tati smiles. He pats my hand. “That may be fine eventually, Patrik. But we have no money to travel with. We have nothing to live on once I abandon my job.”

  “Your aunt . . .” I say, but then remember that the gas station is shut down. We can’t even pump gas.

  “We have to pack,” I tell Mami the next morning. “We have to get ready.”

  “But your father hasn’t . . .” she says, turning from the sink, which is full of dishes.

  I cut in. “Tati is still busy with his patients. It’s up to us.”

  “Patrik,” Mami says, laying a soapy hand on my arm, “I, too, feel bad about leaving my patients. I, too, don’t know what I’ll do in America.”

  “You’ll find something. I’ll help you find something. . . .”

  “You’re a sweet boy, Patrik.” Mami draws me into her arms, the way she hasn’t done since I was little. Her hands are damp on the back of my shirt. I look down at the top of her head, then lay my cheek against it.

  Abruptly, she releases me and runs her hands down the front of her apron. “You’re right, Patrik. We’d better pack.”

  I sit down on the sofa. I hadn’t thought of Mami’s life, her work at the clinic. The way she might not have nursing work in America. The way she might not be able to do what she loves. She might have to become an American janitor. Staring at the dust motes, at the windows where the tiny spy microphones may be hidden, I suddenly feel as paralyzed as Tati.

  After a while, I make myself get up. I go to the hall closet and pull out the suitcases, then carry two into Mami and Tati’s bedroom, the smallest into Bela’s room, and the last one to mine. I pack a few clothes, using the shirts and shorts as padding for my camera. I slip my photos — including those of Danika — between pieces of cardboard. I open the door to my darkroom and gaze inside. In America there won’t be money for all these chemicals.

  I hear Mami saying to Bela, “Just the summer clothes, darling. Just the camping clothes.”

  It may get cold in Scranton, Pennsylvania. Without money, how will we buy winter clothes? Shivering, we may long for these coats and scarves and mittens we’re leaving behind.

  I listen for the phone to ring. Or for a knock on the door. How do arrests happen? Would they send one man to get us? Or two or three? Would they send the men with the walkie-talkies, or the beige man in his VW?

  Has Dr. Machovik alerted someone?

  When I lift Tati’s framed medical diploma off the wall, Mami objects. “If we’re caught with that,” she says, “they’ll know we’re planning to go for good. The game will be up.”

 
; I hang the diploma back on the nail. I take a step away and stare at the glass rectangle, then move forward to straighten the frame. “And you’ll have to leave behind those silver candlesticks,” I tell Mami.

  Looking as if she’ll cry, she puts the candlesticks back in the cupboard. She shuts the glass door with a tiny thunk.

  Soon we’ll disappear, never to return. Then people like the men on the corner will stroll through our apartment with their polished shoes, helping themselves to things that cannot be bought even on the black market.

  After a while, I wonder why we’re packing anything at all. We’ve got the boat. We’ve got the travel permission. We should just head out. Right now. If only Tati would agree.

  When Tati comes home, Mami brings down the china teapot from the top shelf. She pulls out a roll of green American money. It’s all in ones and fives, left here by the Pennsylvania relatives during a visit. When I was little, I studied the faces of President Washington and President Lincoln, the symbols of the eagle, and the weird eye on top of the pyramid.

  I’d forgotten about this money. Seeing it, something deep in me relaxes. One less thing now holds us back.

  Mami stands and counts the money, her back straight. “Eighty-four dollars,” she says. “I knew it was eighty-four.”

  Tati lays the money flat, then rolls it tightly and puts a rubber band around it. He puts it in his jacket pocket.

  “You said we have no money,” I say. “But we have this eighty-four dollars.”

  Tati sighs, saying, “That won’t even get us out of Italy. Come with me to the car, Patrik.”

  We go down and out to the Fiat, now unhooked from the boat. Tati drives out of Trencin, past the spa. Lines of cars are parked outside. Inside, people are steaming themselves in the big pools, drinking water from the springs of active volcanoes, lolling in the hot water.

  “Can’t we just leave tonight?” I ask Tati.

  “We’re not going to run like scared rabbits, Patrik.”

  “When will we leave?”

  “Soon.”

  “But Tati!”

  “No more, Patrik. I’m doing the best I can.”