Saturday, May 4, 2013

(16) Hard to explain (1/2).


1.
My aunt Rosie, my father’s sister, has died in February, 2010. She was the last member of my family’s previous generation; in a few months’ time she would be celebrating her 90th birthday. I saw her for the last time in February, 2007. A few months before her death she moved from a flat in Bratislava, where she lived for some 30 years, to a flat in Prague, in the same block of flats where my sister lives.
News of her death came to me second, nay, even third hand, for my sister is not on speaking terms with me.
I was fairly close with Rosie. She was 16 years my senior, and she was one of the first people to visit my mother in maternity hospital after I was born; she used to tell or read bedtime stories for me. We lived in the same house for most of my time in Czechoslovakia. After I with my wife and children moved far away we were the best of pen-pals, or lately, telephone pals. Last letter from her I received only a couple of weeks before her death.
Four days after her death I woke up unusually early: I dreamt that something knocked on the wall right behind my head. Part of a dream, I though in the half-sleep, when one is dreaming and at the same time one is conscious of it. Later, around 11 a. m., I was in the kitchen by myself, scribbling on a piece of paper. It was very quiet, when, suddenly, on the wall next to me, about level with my head, somebody knocked on the wooden wall: rap, rap, rap and rap, four times, loud and clear. I looked outside – there was nobody there; the sound was clearly that of somebody knocking, not of an animal trying to scramble out of a tight gap.
Sensing the strangeness of the moment, I stood up and said, loudly: “Welcome, Rosie, come for a guided tour of the house”, the house she had never seen. And I walked around the house, from room to room, pointing at various things, including a small pile of her last few letters, and sat down on my seat. For the rest of the day, and for a couple of following days, I felt strangely elevated, as if my head was floating high above the clouds, detached from the rest of my body.

2.
In 1985, on the day my father’s mother died 30 years previously, I sat at the table, with a sheet of blank paper and pen in hand. I was going to start a letter to her daughter, my aunt Rosie, to share some memories of her mum, my grandmother, who was, and is to me, the best person in the whole world.
Not living in Slovakia I had but few contact with people from there. Slovakia, part of Czechoslovakia at the time, was still a “socialist” country, firmly behind the Iron Curtain, and friends were afraid of being in contact with somebody from the “West”. In the country where I lived, the only source of information from Czechoslovakia was the local weekly broadcast in Czech or Slovakian language. Those programs we listened to only occasionally, chiefly because of the atrocious accents and dictions of the broadcasters.
I started my letter with the words “Dear Rosie, today it is 30 years since…”, when I was interrupted by my wife. She called from the kitchen “Listen, there are Slovakians on the radio”. She turned the volume up, and I heard the much familiar voice of an old crooner Frantisek Kristof Veselý, singing the Little village in the valley (Dedinka v údolí), the favourite song of my grandmother…

3.
In 1985 I was living some 16,000 kilometres from Prague, the city where my parents were living at the time. We exchanged maybe 3 or 4 letters per year, and were in telephone contact once or twice per year. My mother, about 72 at the time, was suffering from all sorts of ailments related to her obesity, of these ailments the diabetes being the most prominent.
At the time I was busy starting a new private company. One day I had a few visitors in our house to discuss some details of the new venture. In the middle of the meeting I excused myself, went to the kitchen and contacted my father on the ‘phone. International calls at the time were expensive and we spoke perhaps 2-3 times a year; this call was entirely out of "normal" order. We exchanged a few greetings, upon which my father remarked that my mother went to hospital in the morning (by herself) for some sort of check – nothing unusual at the time, and if she does not come home in time the father would go to hospital himself to see what is going on.
A few days later I received a letter from him in which he informed me that my mother has died on the day of our telephone conversation, and approximately at the same time. Copy of the letter is attached:

In the letter, addressed as "Dear boy", and signed "granpa Karol", he writes that having finished speaking to me on the 'phone he returned home from his daughter's flat (about 150 metres distant) and there was a man with telegram waiting for him. In it it was written that his wife - my mother - has died in Thomayer's hospital, etc., etc...


4.
In 1991-1992 I was working some 800 kilometres away from my family. I was renting house with a small garden, and my wife and children used to come to see me there every few weeks; I myself went home every 2-3 months.
One day we were discussing some matter with our oldest son, he at home, me 800 kilometres away. The discussion ended inconclusively – we both agreed that we needed to consult somebody more familiar with the matter. Having hung up I began to mull mentally whom from my friends or associates I should contact: “Alex? Hmmm, maybe not…” “Richard? Not so sure…”. Keith?....” Telephone next to me rang, and I answered: it was Keith, the same Keith whose name was on my mind at that very moment. What prompted him to ring me at this time, I enquired. “Nothing special, I just thought of you…”, was the answer. There were 800 kilometres between us. As it eventually turned out, he did not know the answer to the question I was after; that ‘phone call, however, was the only time he rang me during the time I was away.

5.
Whenever driving around sharp bends in my vicinity I think of the old saying that the “Devil never sleeps”.
Near our house there is a narrow winding road, some two kilometres long. There are not many house along it, and not many cars use it. There is one hairpin bend on a steep slope. It is quite regular occurrence to meet a vehicle in the opposite direction, whether I am driving up-, or downhills. Usually, it is the only vehicle for the entire length of the road. And what makes it even more interesting, the vehicle in opposite direction emerges from the bend when I am thinking of something else, when my concentration is momentarily distracted.

6.
A few years ago I happened to be in Bratislava, and took a walk along Pekná cesta towards a forest house where we spent a few days in April, 1945, sheltering from the passing WW2 front. Pekná cesta in 1945 used to be just a dirt track, with sparse vineyards on left side, and unkempt meadows on the right side. At the top, where the steep climb ends the road crossed a narrow-gauge railway that was used to haul timber down to the timber yard between Pekná cesta and the main railway line. Deep in thoughts I noticed a little squirrel, hopping across the road from my right to left, almost touching my boots. The squirrel was not the Carpathian kind, red, with tall curving tail: it was tiny, with horizontal tail, and with stripes along the sides. Having a camera in my hand I even managed to take a snapshot of it as it was disappearing in the shrubbery on my left. I was in that forest several times, and saw a variety animals there, from boars, a fox, to a hart with his lady, who, startled, sent a few loud barks in my direction; but this squirrel was the first of its kind; last time I saw a similar one was in the park of Schönbrunn Castle in Vienna. After a few steps I realised that it was coming to me from the site of an old grave.
I doubled back and looked at the grave. It was still there, with the edges made by old Mr. Csöglei, but the gravestone was missing: Antonín Kopal, 1945…
He was a young man, murdered in the nearby vineyards by Russian soldiers. I saw him a couple of times where he was hiding with us in the forester’s house, but his likeness has long evaporated from my memory, together with his grave. Thank you for reminding me, Mr. Squirrel (or a ghost?).

7.
I had a beautiful girlfriend in 1964. The affair was becoming serious, the word “marriage” has even been mentioned a few times – more seriously by her than by me, of course, for I had what I wanted in abundance (a bit of wisdom for wedding-ready girls: don’t be too generous before marriage!).
One lovely day we were sitting on a bit of grass above Raca, with views extending from Svätý Jur to Bratislava Castle, with the two airports in front of us. The girl remarked that “right here, at this spot, she feels at home, she would like to have a house here”. Yeah, right, one of your fata-morganas, I thought for myself, and that’s where it all ended. We kept dating, we parted ways for a while, then got together again, and, eventually, the situation was solved for us – the girl became pregnant… Today, after four children, good forty years of marriage, four-and-a-half grandchildren, I am still enjoying my lovely wife, and living in the happiest marriage in the world.
We were married in 1966, first son was born shortly afterward, and we were living in a two bedroom flat with my aunt Rosie. And we started thinking of finding a place of our own to live.
Until 1962 I lived with my parents and grandparents in a house that was demolished when citizens of nearby village of Rača decided that they needed a tramway line. Our family was re-located to two flats in the new housing estate called Experimental on the edge of Rača.
After our first son was born I remarked to my father that my wife and myself are thinking of finding a place to live for ourselves. He casually mentioned that we have a block of land somewhere in Rača! The block was given to us by way of compensation for the house that was demolished, but my father, and his father, deceased since, never even looked at it, for “we did not need it, it was allegedly somewhere uphill, it was just a bit of a nuisance…”
My God, what now???
With my wife we went to the Magistrate office, which was at the beginning of Vajnorská ulica. To my surprise, the relevant department was run by Mrs. Mičusíková, my class teacher from the school at Tehelné pole. I recognised her straight away, and she remembered me as well (I must have been a real nuisance at the time!). Anyway, on perusing the document, and with regrets, she informed us that my father and his father should have signed the acceptance documents for the block of land within four years – and it was six months too late: the land had been allocated to somebody else…
We went to take a look. The land was there, there were foundations of a new house there, a stack of bricks, heaps of sand and other material. The little piece of grass where we were sitting a few years ago, and where my girlfriend at the time said those now memorable words that “here she feels at home” – the little piece of grass was still there…

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