Hana Read online

  HANA

  Alena Mornštajnová

  Translated from the Czech by

  Julia and Peter Sherwood

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  PART ONE: I, Mira 1954–1963

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  PART TWO: Those who came before me 1933–1945

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  PART THREE: I, Hana 1942–1963

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  About the Authors

  Copyright

  PART ONE

  I, Mira

  1954–1963

  Chapter One

  February 1954

  I’ve never understood why grown-ups tell children that it pays to be obedient. If I’d been a model daughter, my name would now be carved on a gravestone alongside those of my mother’s parents – Grandma Elsa and Grandpa Ervin who died long before I was born. Or of Grandma Ludmila and Grandpa Mojmír, at whose grave my mother and I used to light candles in brown tubs at the far end of the cemetery.

  On Sunday afternoons, if the weather was nice, my schoolfriends would go for a walk in the park or take a stroll around town with their families, while my mum would make Dagmar, Otto and me put on our Sunday best and push us out into the street outside the dark watchmaker’s shop which used to be ours but where my father was, by then, only allowed to work for a pitiful salary and my mother could only mop the floor for no pay at all.

  Every Sunday afternoon, after washing the dishes, Mum would put on her black hat, plonk Otto in his pram or, when he was a little older, grab him by the hand and head with us to the cemetery. It seemed miles away. First we had to pass the church, reach the river and cross the bridge, then walk through all of the lower town, which for some mysterious reason is known as Krásno, before trudging past the enormous castle park to where the houses ended, go through the cemetery gate and wait while Mum swept the gravestones clean, arranged the flowers in the vases and lit candles. As she worked, she talked to the dead, sharing with them the latest gossip from Meziříčí: who had been born, who had died, what rumours were going around, how the neighbours were doing and what mischief we, the children, had got up to again.

  I never dared say anything, just sighed deeply to make Mum realise how the waiting annoyed me but even that was enough to prompt a reproach: ‘Stop making that face. If it wasn’t for them, you wouldn’t be here today.’

  After further names were added to the gravestones, including my Mum’s, I often thought back on how she would stand by the graves every Sunday talking to her loved ones. It was comforting to know that she was now with those she had been missing so much.

  The only reason my name is not among those inscribed on the gravestone in gold lettering is because it sometimes pays to be cheeky and disobedient. If you don’t agree, you might as well stop reading right now. And don’t let your children get hold of this book either, just to be on the safe side.

  The winter of the year I turned nine and my entire life was turned upside down was frosty and fairy tale white but by February we had all had enough. Only in the last days of the month did it turn slightly warmer at last, with the snow starting to melt and the ice beginning to break up.

  There are stretches of the river separating Meziříčí from Krásno where the current seems to drag along modestly and sluggishly rather than rushing down to merge with bigger rivers, and since the snow on the nearby mountains was melting only very gradually, it didn’t make the river flow much faster and the water level barely rose. The conditions seemed perfect for a short ride on the ice floes that had come loose.

  That February of 1954, as evil was already lurking deep in the town’s underbelly, every day after school we ran straight to the river and impatiently checked if the ice was beginning to break up and if the current was strong enough for us to jump onto a passing floe, ride it for a few metres and enjoy the great adventure about which the sixth-formers, twins Eda and Marek Zedníček, raved to us in every school break. During a similarly freezing winter a few years ago they had first-hand experience of riding on a floe.

  Eventually, after a few days, the ice cracked, the middle of the river broke free and ice floes started slowly floating downstream. This was the moment we had prayed and meticulously planned for.

  I stood in the kitchen doorway, holding my bobbly red hat in one hand and gloves in the other.

  ‘What’s got into you?’ Mum asked in surprise when I asked if I could go sledding with Jarmilka. The kitchen was warm and cosy, filled with the lovely smell of the tartlets my mother was baking for her birthday party. ‘The snow has started to melt, you’ll get all soaked.’

  I reached for the baking sheet to take a tart but flinched as it was still hot. ‘Yes, exactly! This may be our last ride this winter.’

  Mum eyed me suspiciously. ‘Mira, don’t even think of going to the river.’

  The fact that Mum had guessed what I was up to with Jarmilka Stejskalová and the Zedníček boys made me wonder if, before she grew up to be so extremely cautious, she too might have enjoyed riding on ice floes. But she wouldn’t allow me to do so many things, just to keep me out of harm’s way.

  I wasn’t allowed to go up to the attic, because I might trip on some junk or fall out of the window. I wasn’t allowed to go down to the cellar, because I might slip and fall down the stairs. I wasn’t allowed to go out onto the balcony because I might fall through the dilapidated floor onto the paved courtyard. And when you hear the words ‘you mustn’t do this and mustn’t do that’ all the time, it’s no wonder that you stop taking them seriously.

  ‘Of course not, Jarmilka and I are just going to the hill behind the Zedníčeks’ garden,’ I said, sneaking a tart into my pocket, hot as it was.

  My mum was very pretty and when she hugged me, she gave off a warmth that was like a stove with the lovely smell of vanilla sugar. But at that moment her huge brown eyes, which always seemed so sad I was afraid to look into them, were fixed on me with such suspicion that they seemed to read my innermost thoughts.

  ‘Jarmilka is waiting for me outside,’ I said, buttoning up my coat, tying the laces of my warm ankle boots and pushing my hat deep down my forehead.

  Mum handed me another tart. ‘Take one for Jarmilka as well.’

  I dashed out of the door, grabbed Jarmilka’s sled by its strap and headed for the Square. I could feel Mum’s eyes burning my back.

  ‘Bye-bye, Mrs Karásková,’ Jarmilka shouted, ‘and thanks.’ Tossing her long blonde plait, which I had always been jealous of because all the boys in our form used to tug at it with admiration, she shot my mum an innocent smile and bit into the tart.

  At the end of the street I turned left.

  ‘Where are you going?’ asked Jarmilka, yanking the strap to stop me. ‘We don’t want to go around the whole town.’

  ‘But I don’t want my mum to see me heading for the river.’

  ‘Oh, come on, she can’t see around corners!’

  I looked around. A curtain moved in the first-floor window of a house with peeling paint. Maybe I
was just imagining it but perhaps it was old Mrs Benešová keeping watch so she did not miss anything that went on in the Square. I quickened my pace. ‘You never know. We might run into someone and then we’ll be in trouble.’

  ‘And you’ll have to have peas for your supper,’ laughed Jarmilka, scurrying after me in resignation.

  She was right. I hated peas and Mum knew it too, so whenever I talked back or had been up to some mischief, she made me eat peas for lunch and supper. I would sit at the table with the rest of the family watching them enjoy potato pancakes with home-made jam or some other treat, while I forced down my peas. I pulled a face and said: ‘That’s not as bad as when my dad unbuckles his belt.’ Something I also had to put up with every now and then, certainly more often than my younger sister and brother. And today’s exploits would definitely qualify for the belt, I had no doubt about that.

  My brown boots were soaked through even before we reached the river, and my gloves weren’t thick enough to stop the cold from creeping under my fingernails. The Zedníček boys were already waiting for us on the riverbank under the whitewashed church with its wood-tiled roof. They scurried up and down in the mushy snow with long sticks trying to separate the floes that had drifted towards the bank. As soon as a floe slid into the river, the current would catch it and carry it, slowly at first but gradually faster and faster, towards a low weir some fifty metres away where an accumulation of broken-up ice would block it from going any further.

  Courage suddenly deserted me. Jarmilka must have felt the same because she sat down on the sled and said: ‘I’ll just sit here and watch.’

  ‘Scaredy-cat,’ Eda Zedníček shouted contemptuously. I realised that courage, if not beauty, might be a way for me to get the better of Jarmilka. The boys might pull at her plait but I was the one who they would point to for years to come, telling their younger schoolfriends: ‘That’s the girl who rode down the river on an ice floe.’

  I watched Eda skilfully free another chunk of ice, as large as the woven rug in my parents’ bedroom, step right into the middle of it, push off the ground with a pole and start slowly drifting on the current towards the weir. We ran along the riverbank while Eda stood on the ice floe with his legs wide apart, using a pole to steer his impromptu vehicle into the slower current, sticking it into the ground and heading for the weir at a safe distance from the bank. After softening the impact with the pole, he walked back to the shore on the pile of ice.

  How simple, I thought. Except for the bit where you have to cross from one floe to the other.

  As we walked back to the sled the boys dispensed some well-meant advice that took my courage away again. ‘The main thing is to step right into the middle of the floe so that you don’t slip into the water. And to keep close to the shore, the water is shallower there. The current is really strong in the middle, it could sweep you along, even I couldn’t handle that. And you have to push off with the pole on the side, don’t hold it in front of you or you might fall off.’

  Now my feet were shaking not just with the cold but also fear. Eda and Mirek helped me free a floe. ‘Jump on,’ Eda shouted and I jumped, except that in the meantime the ice had floated slightly further downstream. I landed on the edge; the ice swayed and I slipped.

  I spread my arms in mid-flight and could feel my body hit the river and sink into the water. At first it didn’t seem all that cold, but then it squeezed me like a pair of gigantic pliers, flooding my ears, eyes and nose, pressing me down into the shallows and pushing me to some dark place. Before I had time to get scared, someone’s hand grabbed the lapels of my coat and lifted me out of the water.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you not to step on the edge?’ Eda said, turning to Mirek and adding with a sneer: ‘It was your stupid idea to bring the girls. We’ll be in real trouble now.’

  Jarmilka stood on the shore, whimpering. I scrambled out of my sodden coat as quickly as I could and tried to wring it out. I couldn’t go home in that state, but I was terribly cold. It occurred to me that it might be an idea to make a fire so that I could dry my clothes and warm up a little. I was going to ask the boys for matches but my teeth were chattering so badly I couldn’t say a word.

  ‘Stop bawling, give her your coat and take her home,’ Eda shouted at Jarmilka. Reluctantly, she unbuttoned her winter coat and threw it over my shoulders. It wasn’t much help. Now both of us were shivering.

  ‘If you dare blurt out that we were here with you, you’ll get a proper hiding, even though you’re girls,’ Eda went on. ‘And now clear off home,’ he said, and with a nod to Mirek the two off them dashed up the hill.

  I tossed the soaked coat onto the sled and we headed home, this time taking the shortest route. The cold was biting into my skin, forcing me to walk faster and faster. Two streets before our house I gave Jarmilka her damp coat back. She put it on, visibly relieved, gave me a sympathetic look and left me to it. I was still hoping that with a bit of luck I might be able to skulk up the stairs, slip past the kitchen, run up to the second floor to the room I shared with my brother and sister and secretly change into dry clothes without being spotted.

  Never before had I noticed how badly our heavy front door needed oiling, how much the stairs creaked and how, unless you turned the light on, which was of course out of the question just now, you couldn’t see as far as the next step.

  ‘Is the light not working?’ came a voice from above, then the lightbulb flickered and I stopped in my tracks halfway up the stairs. When I turned around, I realised I couldn’t have avoided being found out anyway. I had left a small puddle behind on each step.

  ‘I can’t believe it!’ Mum yelled, pouncing on me and dragging me up the stairs where she started to tear the wet clothes off me. ‘What mischief have you been up to now? Didn’t I tell you not to go to the river?’

  She pulled my drenched tights off with one hand and thrashed my icy bottom with the other. I was shocked. This was the first time Mum had laid a hand on me. The blows weren’t painful, just dreadfully humiliating.

  ‘No,’ I shouted. ‘That’s not true! I haven’t been to the river. I went sledding with Jarmilka. It’s the snow, it’s really wet, that’s why I’m all drenched.’

  I started to cry with shame, from the cold and the shock of it all. My brother and sister appeared in the kitchen doorway but, seeing me getting a drubbing, beat a quick retreat. The front door opened, as the rumpus had now reached the watchmaker’s shop, and my dad shouted out to ask what was happening.

  ‘You liar, you,’ Mum said angrily, rubbing my body with a towel so that it hurt, and pushing me into bed. ‘Go and make some tea, quickly,’ she called to Dad and threw an eiderdown over me. ‘Do you want to catch pneumonia and die?’

  What kind of question was that? Why should I want to die? ‘I haven’t been to the river, I fell into a puddle,’ I sobbed. ‘It’s not my fault, it really isn’t.’

  Mum put a mug of tea on the bedside table, jammed a woolly hat on my head, tucked a hot water bottle under my feet and closed the door. I nestled into the bedding and pressed the soles of my frozen feet into the hot water bottle, whimpering quietly. I was cold and unhappy that Mummy and Daddy were cross with me. Perhaps I shouldn’t have lied, perhaps I should have said that someone had pushed me into the river, perhaps…

  Soon a pleasant warmth started to spread through my body and in half-sleep I heard the door open every now and then, felt a hand on my forehead and thought to myself that maybe Mummy wasn’t all that angry with me after all, that instead of getting the belt it would only be mushy peas for dinner.

  My dad had an uncanny ability of treading so softly that it sometimes seemed that he’d passed through walls and floors like a ghost rather than coming in through the door. He spent his days in the watchmaking workshop on the ground floor repairing clocks. His back was stooped from sitting all the time and when he walked, he bent slightly forward. With his thick but almost completely grey hair he looked more like my mum’s father than her husband.

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; When I was very young, before I even went to school and my little brother Otto was still hiding under Mum’s skirts, I wondered sometimes why my beautiful mum had married someone so old. One day I asked them about it.

  ‘She had to marry me,’ said Dad, ‘after all, she’s the reason my hair turned grey.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Mum replied, patting him on his stooped back. ‘But you’re quite happy you did, aren’t you? Who would bring you gallons of tea down to the workshop? You know how many steps it is?’

  Eighteen. The narrow staircase had eighteen steps, and ever since the government had nationalised the family watchmaker’s shop and had the connecting doors between the shop and the staircase bricked up, Mum had to go out into the street with every cup of tea and enter the little shop by the main door, which wasn’t much fun, especially in winter or when it rained.

  My dad would spend long hours down there with his clocks and watches, not just on weekdays when the shop was open, but even on Sundays. He would only go up to our first-floor flat to eat and sleep. At lunch and supper he would talk to Mum about the clocks he was working on and she would listen to him as if he were recounting some amazing adventures. He never said much to us children, and when Mum had to go away leaving Dad to look after us, he was rather put out. I’m sure it wasn’t because he didn’t love us. He just wasn’t good with children and was waiting for us to grow up and find his clock stories as fascinating as Mum did.

  On the Sunday when the world started turning in the wrong direction, Dad had been grumpy all day although he did his best not to show it. At first, I thought he was still angry with me because of my ice bath but in fact this time it had nothing to do with me. It was Mum’s thirtieth birthday and Dad was ill at ease because his regular routine was disrupted by the celebrations. He couldn’t go down to his workshop, sit at his bench and fix whatever needed fixing. He had to sit in the living room at the festively laid table alongside his wife, three children and sister-in-law Hana, with whom he simply couldn’t get on even if he’d wanted to.