English / Sample translations /

Translated by Stanley Dalby

1

Mother died at home. She fed me for the last time, wiped my mouth, then she sat beside me, as she usually did before she washed up. ‘Pepi’ she whispered and bent over me from her chair, sort of put her head on to my shoulder, which shifted me a bit. I could not see her face because her grey hair was in my eyes. Nothing happened for a while, I thought that maybe she had fallen asleep like that, but then I felt the coldness – it passed across my face, it was not the coldness of wind but of death. Death was touching me directly from my mother and I knew that she was not asleep but that she was dead. It is not easy to scare me, but I was scared then and I started to choke with fright. My choking was quite noisy but all in vain. Bietushka was not home and Dad always had a lie down after lunch. In summer he lay down in his workshop in the backyard, where he used to spend most of his time. In winter he stretched out on a sofa in the kitchen, but it was summer now. I started to perspire with fright and to choke on my tears while that cold death kept touching me and scaring my poor body with its persistent presence. I, who so often wished for death, was now fighting it and resisting it - no! no! My body was screaming, and as my heart was almost exploding with madness light started to appear. It came out of the corner of the kitchen, like a brilliant sun, so bright and intense that I had to close my eyes yet I could still see it. I could see a faint outline of a woman wearing a white gown and the image was getting sharper and sharper, till I saw a beautiful young woman resembling our Bietushka, but it wasn’t Bietushka, it was my mother, when she was young. She was smiling at me and whispering – ‘Pepi, don’t be afraid, it’s so beautiful here!’
Then a man appeared next to mother and was talking to her about me, I knew that, even though I did not understand them. He turned around to me and said: ‘You can stay here with us or you can go back, take your pick---’
‘With you!’ my insides were shouting, instead of which I said –‘What about Dad?’
Mother kind of blushed but you could not really see it in that bright light, she looked down a little and whispered – ‘This is your father…’
‘Who’s my father?’ I stammered, not even realizing that for the first time I was hearing my voice.
I looked at her companion, then, unbelievingly, back at my mother as she said quickly: ‘No, your Dad is not--- Pepi --- this is the father of all of us ---‘
At that moment I clenched my teeth like I used to when I was young, when my uselessness made me so angry and so stubborn. As soon as I did that, the light disappeared and I was again in the kitchen, alone. Totally alone, because what was lying across my chest was not my mother, only her dead body. It was heavy and it was hurting me, because I do have feeling in my chest, but I was not frightened any more. I felt quite at peace. There is no more beautiful feeling than to have lying over your chest the being that you love, even if it hurts. Maybe because it hurts. Something else dawned on me under that weight, something that is heavier than any wooden cross, something that Jesus must have felt when He was carrying his and I understood then that the greatest weight is the weight of responsibility. At that moment I thought, inwardly, I grew up. I felt free of the heavy irons of my incapacities, I saw that every one of us carries his own cross according to his circumstances, but only very few of us, the chosen ones, realise it. We can’t escape it. My mother carried her large burden, now I carried the burden of her body on my weak chest. It concerned me that she might somehow slip down in which case I would not be able to do anything for her. I tried to move my right arm but could not. The weight was too much. My left arm was free, but I had no feeling in that at all, nor can I move it. I only have it to make me into a complete body, like my legs. If someone was to cut off all the useless parts of my body there would be only the torso, the head and the right arm. And even that is far from perfect. I can raise my right hand, with difficulty, and I can control three fingers. When I say control I don’t mean with any accuracy, because whilst I can move them I cannot even write. My mother used to make me hold a spoon with my right hand so I could feed myself, to help her a bit. In the end she had to feed me so that the meals would not get cold and not be scattered all around me. I do have feeling in my mouth but I cannot speak. I make sounds, more like bleating and braying, but anyone who is not used to me cannot tell whether I mean yes or no. In short I am a cripple.
How it came about, my family is still trying to work out. The fact is I was born late in my parents’ life. I was the fifth son; when I was born the oldest one was already in high school. It was like having another family for my parents because a year later my sister was born. She is normal. She was named after my mother and so my father would not get them confused, he called mother Bieta and his daughter Bietushka. From the day I was born my mother was very concerned about me. ‘He’s not moving enough,’ she complained, ‘sometimes he just moves his arm a little.’ Everyone was calming her down, and telling her not to worry, that I would catch up later. At that time I was growing quite normally. Then my baby sister was born, mother had less time for me and my brothers had to look after me. Tony and Oldo got the brunt of it. Vlado and Jardo were the eldest, they didn’t do much. Once, after some argument about who was going to look after me in my basket, mother got angry and decided, since they could not agree, that all of them would. To show that she was serious about it she took all their shoes and locked them up in the pantry. Then she wrapped up Bietushka and went off shopping. Outside it was freezing, snow everywhere, kids from the village were having a great time sliding on the froze-over Botitche Creek and my brothers were sitting on their bums at home. I was lying in my basket waving my arms about. Well, nobody noticed before, that, in fact, I might have been waving only the right arm.
When mother came back from the shopping the house was empty and quiet. All gone. Mother left Bietushka with the neighbours, picked up a stick and went down to the creek. Naturally, they were all there, happily sliding about with the other kids, Vlado in Dad’s boots, Jardo in Dad’s dancing shoes and Oldo and Tony in mother’s shoes; Tony’s shoes even had ladies’ heels. Only I was not sliding. I was lying in my basket as blue as the winter sky, blankets kicked off, wearing only a singlet and a damp nappy. My legs were all crooked and stiff as cardboard, there was no trace of any steam coming out of my mouth. Mother threw away the stick, wrapped me up in her coat and ran home with me. She put me into warm whey up to my neck and massaged my tiny body under the surface. After a long time I finally rewarded her with with a sound. That was my first bleat. Since then I have never waved my arms. Not the right one, not the left one.
Since I have no recollection of any of this I have never felt any resentment towards my brothers. I did not blame them for anything even when Bietushka first told me about it, and now nobody is allowed to talk about it. I would, if I could, even if it was only to tell my brothers not to worry about it, things like that happen and in a way it is a lovely story, maybe even amusing.
Bietushka is very nice to me, she comes to me almost every evening, sits down and tells me what she has been up to all day, where she was, who is after her, because she is a very good looking girl and the fellows from the university are mad about her but she turns up her nose at them.
‘Don’t you worry about me, Pepi,’ she says, ‘I know how to handle them. I know very well what they’re after. Every female that’s born knows, believe me, as soon as a man looks at her, no matter what he says and how he says it, she knows! Hands off! No touching! I’m going to die a virgin!’ she says.
‘And so will I,’ I would answer, if I could, so I just blink my eyes, she wipes my mouth with a paper napkin and gives me a kiss.
‘You’re lucky,’ she says ‘no other fellow ever got that from me, and never will! Well, I’m off to bed, good night.’
I watch her as she leaves, I watch her beautiful, young and healthy body, and for quite a while after she is gone I can still see the outline of her slim figure, and I think about it, even though she turns out the light on her way out. Ah, women have such mystery about them, they are not even aware of it. It is a mystery of being, of creation, even a cripple such as myself feels it. Then all kinds of beautiful thoughts come to me, like that every woman starts out as a Mary of Magdalene, but then when she gives birth she becomes a Virgin Mary … that is the mystery! Even God who created everything, even He had to go through a woman … then I fall asleep.
Mother used to turn me over during the night, so I would not get bedsores. Three times a night, automatically, no alarm clock. She washed me, she bathed me and everything else, I was her infant forever. Who is going to be turning me over now? And who is going to wash me and get me dressed? I broke into a sweat when I thought about it all. True, Bietushka helped, sometimes, but I do not recall that Dad ever did anything like that. My Dad never had the time, he worked in the metal workshop and provided for all of us. He is very clever, even now, when they’ve retired him, he never stops and keeps making all sorts of things in his workshop in the backyard. He made a wheelchair for me with a special rest for my right arm so that my hand would not slip out, the arm that now is in my lap under the weight of the dead body. At the end of the armrest are four buttons with which I can control the chair. Forward, back, left and right and when I stop pressing any of the four buttons the chair automatically stops. It gives me quite a bit of freedom and as there are no steps in our house I can drive out into the backyard even out to the workshop. I drive into the doorway and watch my Dad making wonderful things out of simple materials and he explains to me what he is making and for whom. I think of what I would make, if I was healthy, because when you see him doing it so easily you get an impression that it must be easy and anyone could do it. Till Mr Kralicek came, asked Dad to make a table and benches for his garden and insisted that he helped with it because he was the only person who knew exactly what he wanted. That was when I found out that not everyone was clever with their hands, even among the healthy ones. Maybe I too would be clumsy and Dad would tell me to piss off, like he told Mr Kralicek. Maybe it is a good thing that I am in a wheelchair, at least no one can tell --- a better justification for my condition has never occurred to me before. Besides, being handy is not necessarily hereditary.
Tony is a window cleaner and Oldo used to be a manager of a sugar refinery and now, after the velvet revolution and privatisation he owns it! Vlado has always worked for the Ministry of The Interior and Jardo fled to Australia in 1968. Since 1989 he has visited us twice and now, I suppose, he will have to visit a third time. I really love listening to him. Of all my brothers he is the happiest one and tells us terrific stories about Australia. He mixes a lot of English words into them that I, even though I know English, do not understand. Probably because I learned English from books, I can read it, but not speak it. Reading is my greatest passion. In my room, where the door opens either way so nobody needs to open it for me, I have a lot of bookshelves. Dad made me a special stand for holding the books at whichever angle suits me, even if I am lying down, and I can even turn the pages. It is not hard even if it takes me a little while to do it. Dad made a couple of rollers that catch the page that I want to turn.
It just occurred to me that if Jarda is to come it will be two or three weeks before the funeral can be held, to give him time to get here. Mother will have to be put into a morgue and be frozen so that the body will last. The thought of it gave me a fright again. I felt her cold body on top of me and I thought that I was losing the battle with her weight. My breathing was becoming more difficult and if someone did not come soon there would be two of us dead. There was only Bietushka or Dad, and it was too early for Bietushka. The kitchen clock was behind me, quiet, electrical and anyway, I had no idea what time it was and how long mother and I had been lying there in our deathly embrace. I would just have to last until Dad waked up in his workshop. Have to think of something else, I thought, or I would faint.
None of us have inherited Dad’s cleverness. Not even Bietushka, but I think she inherited his brains because she went off to study law and was in fact the only one from the whole family who made it to university. That’s not counting Oldo who did chemical engineering in Moscow. There are other factors involved. More likely my brothers did not get to university because our class background was not so good. Our grandpa, through his cleverness and hard work managed to start a factory making roller bearings. Dad probably picked it up from him, but grandpa’s success had some pretty disastrous consequences for us. He became successful at the wrong time. Like I was born into the wrong body. His factory was at its peak during the war, when the Nazis were occupying us and they could not get enough roller bearings. They were demanding more and more production. Our workers were getting an extra kilo of meat and a bottle of rum every week so they worked like demons to achieve their targets. The Nazis paid well, they were not dumb, and our family was doing very well, too. Of course it was possible to knock back the orders, but that would probably cost the supplier and his family their lives. And anyway, nothing would be achieved by it. The factory would go on producing. Grandpa gave that a lot of thought, even set up a special research section with the people whom he could trust to figure out how to trick the Nazis, how to make faulty ball bearings. The problem was that the bearings were randomly checked and had to conform to very strict specifications. You could not get around it. Grandpa needed a bearing that would pass the test, work reliably for a month or two, before something would go wrong. What was needed was a perfect reject and any expert will tell you that that is harder to make than a perfect product. They just simply could not work it out, till one day Grandpa talked about it to Dad, who was at that time courting my mother. Dad was always good at figuring out problems, he studied mechanical engineering till the Nazis closed the universities so he did not finish, but he must have learned something, because he sat down and worked it out. The actual changes in the product were imperceptible, could not be measured and the bearings worked perfectly. The secret was in the order of the changes with the result that within six months every bearing seized up. Grandpa was so elated he took the whole research section for a slap up dinner and siegheiled all the way to the hotel. Which, after the war, would be counted against him even though he could defend himself by saying that it was not the Russian winter that stopped the Germans outside Stalingrad but his ball bearings. Sadly, the Nazis were not stupid either. Germans were very clever at organising and figuring out things and before the end of the war they worked out from the statistics that there was something wrong with our ball bearings and arrested Grandpa. He was never seen or heard of again, but I imagine that he told them all kinds of stories to confuse them for quite a while even though he knew that it would not help him much. But thanks to that, the rest of the family survived until the liberation, or the Nazis just simply ran out of time. Immediately after the war, on the strength of President Benes’s decrees about collaborators and because our family was so well off during the war, they wanted to nationalise our factory, but there was a hitch, Grandpa suddenly became a national martyr. Had the Nazis thought about it would they have let him go? Of course at that time nobody could foretell the future, not that come 1948, after Dad was running the factory for three years, the communists would take the factory away from us anyway. Not only the factory; we lost our villa and Dad finished up working in a metals factory as a labourer. They were not easy times because by that time Vlado and Jardo were born and mother could not work. Grandma saved us, we moved in with her, they could not touch her because she was a widow of a Czech martyr. Grandma was our trump card, she continued living as long as we needed her. She had survived everything – Hapsburgs, Czechoslovak Republic, German occupation, post-war Republic even part of the Socialist Republic – and died just before I was born, when the matter of her house was not so contentious any more.
Mother was really heavy on my chest, I could barely breathe when I heard steps. ‘Dad!’ I thought, but they were not his steps, I could not recognise whose. With the last bit of energy I lifted my head a little to look into the doorframe. The steps were getting closer, finally a figure appeared there. Brother Jardo. He stood there with a suitcase in his hand and a big smile on his face. He did a double take and forgot that he wasn’t in Australia.
‘Oh, me Gawd!’ he yelled out and for the first time I understood the spoken English. ‘Pepi will do, Jardo’ I would’ve said, if I could. But I fainted.