Prague, 1938: Eva flies down the street and runs into a man wearing a hat. She hits the pavement hard. His hat is in the gutter. His anger slaps Eva, but his hate will change everything, as war forces so many lives into small, brown suitcases. Prague, 1980: No one sees Ludek under the heavy blanket of fear that covers this city. The fear cannot touch him. The world can go to hell for all he cares because Babi is waiting for him in the warm flat. His whole world. Melbourne, 1980: In their third floor flat, a home that smells of warm pipe tobacco and homemade cakes, Mana and Bill have made a life for themselves and their granddaughter. A life imbued with the spirit of Prague and the loved ones left behind. From the critically acclaimed author of PAST THE SHALLOWS comes a tender and beautifully told story of memory, family and love. Because there is still love. No matter what.
Release date:
September 24, 2019
Publisher:
Hachette Australia
Print pages:
320
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Our footsteps echo as we climb the stairs. My grandma holds my hand.
Shhhhh – be quiet! My grandpa is sleeping.
The third floor flat, the heavy wooden door, and, inside, the smell of warm pipe tobacco and homemade cakes. Home.
Take your coat off – hang it on the coat rack. Take your shoes off – put them in the shoe rack. Put on your slippers. Mine are red and my grandma’s are blue. My grandpa’s are brown, but they are in his room where he is sleeping.
Down the hall, past my grandma’s bedroom and past my grandpa’s bedroom, past the green-tiled bathroom, and into the small, light kitchen. My grandma puts the cloth shopping bag on the table. It has flowers on it and zips up into a small leather wallet when it’s not being used. It is a good bag and it holds a lot. It comes from Czechoslovakia.
I unpack the shopping. Three Kaiser rolls. A wrapped paper parcel with six slices of Swiss cheese inside. A paper parcel with six slices of Pariser sausage inside. A loaf of rye bread with caraway seeds. A jar of Nova gherkins. One round black and green tin – Dr Pat pipe tobacco for my grandpa.
My grandma fills up the kettle over the sink and sets it on the stove. She lights a match and the gas ring explodes blue – pooof. That sweet smell of gas. My grandma blows out the match, then breaks it in half with her fingers. She drops the broken match into a glass ashtray. It’s full of match halves – one half clean; the other blackened and burnt.
I hear the toilet flush. My grandpa is awake.
My grandma scoops loose tea into the shiny teapot. She smiles at me and then begins to sing.
‘One-two-three
Grandma caught a flea
Put it in the teapot
Made a cup of tea
The flea jumped out
Grandma gave a shout
Here comes grandpa with his shirt hanging out!’
I join in with the last line, and just like that – my grandpa opens the kitchen door. He’s wearing his white singlet and striped pyjama bottoms and his brown slippers – his face still puffy with sleep. I laugh at his crazy sticking-up hair, at the way he always looks so surprised to be alive. He sits down at the green table next to me. He pats my head.
My grandma makes the tea.
I’m sailing across space – far from Earth – and there is nothing but black and the distant light from stars that shine. But I can see her now, just in view – the little bright-blue planet. Neptune.
A flute plays. The keys of the celesta chime.
I fly faster, I move with speed and the planet gets bigger, brighter, until there is nothing else but blue.
High voices begin to sing, a dream calling me – pulling me in. I reach out my arms, my fingers. Closer, closer – I try so hard to touch the surface, but the celesta chimes again, and Neptune begins to fade. She becomes see-through, translucent, and my hand slips right through.
The singing becomes softer, quieter – softer, until there is no longer any difference between sound and silence.
Dappled light through the lace curtains. The ticking of the Smiths clock.
I’m sitting on the upside-down cream footstool – my spaceship. Three wooden legs stick up in a triangle around me, little metal feet on the end of each like antennae.
The tape in the stereo runs fast to its end and clicks off. Everything is still. The coffee table, the TV with the lace doily on top, the sofa underneath the double windows, the gas heater, the mantlepiece, the framed tapestry of a city far away – with bridges and a river and a castle and a dark sky. The third storey flat.
My whole world.
My grandpa’s heavy breaths. He is asleep in his armchair. I stand up and look at him. So peaceful, his face smoothed down with sleep, his arms crossed on his lap. I don’t want to wake him, but he opens his eyes.
‘Malá Liška,’ he says.
That’s me. Little Fox.
My grandpa sits up and taps his pipe out in the ashtray – the contents grey and long gone out.
‘Did the tape finish?’ he asks, and I nod.
Side two – the best side. Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age; Uranus, The Magician; Neptune, The Mystic – my favourite planet, and our favourite piece. My grandpa thinks that the celesta is a magical instrument and I always listen out for it in each different track. Holst: The Planets.
My grandma calls out from the kitchen. Lunch is ready, and my grandpa stands up, stretches his back. He takes my hand. We walk together to the kitchen for our lunch – a Kaiser roll with a slice of cheese and a slice of Pariser, a whole dill gherkin on the side. One gherkin for me, one for my grandma and one for my grandpa.
Silver coins in a jar. An old Nova gherkin jar.
Nova gherkins were the best ones. After The Curtain came down, we couldn’t seem to get them anymore. I never found a gherkin that was as good as those Czechoslovakian Nova gherkins – not even close. I used to eat one every day with my lunch and I would always save it until last, until I had finished my roll, because then the taste of the gherkin lasted longer. Sometimes when my grandma was asleep in her chair, my grandpa would sneak one out of the jar and crunch it down quickly with the fridge door open. He really loved those gherkins.
But every gherkin was rationed. And every fifty-cent piece counted.
My grandpa would sort through his coins in the late afternoon before he had to get ready for his night shift at the factory where he was a night watchman. He’d take his dinner with him – two tin plates together like a clamshell. My grandma’s cooking, rich with butter and salt and fried, golden goodness.
My grandparents saved their fifty-cent coins to buy aeroplane tickets. They managed to do this every four years, sometimes every three years if they were very careful. If they saved hard.
They bought the cheapest tickets.
They took the longest route.
In that small, dark travel agent on Elizabeth Street, near the old market stinking with meat and cheese and fish, a Greek man held out the book of tickets for my grandpa to study. My grandma held my hand.
‘Melbourne – Sing-a-pore-re.
‘Sing-a-pore-re – Athens.
‘Athens – Frank-a-furt.
‘Frank-a-furt – Praa-g.’
Forty-two hours.
My grandpa hated flying. He got claustrophobic and paced and sweated and tried to calm himself by smoking his pipe. Then smoking was banned. Things were worse for him after smoking was banned. He had to fight the urge to smash the window or open the emergency door and jump out. It was a battle to hold on. Sometimes he thought he might start screaming. But he never did. He made it – every time. He wanted so badly to go home.
Pigeons – there are five hundred million pigeons in this city. They shit on everything. They shit on the sculptures, on the heads of all those stone saints. The famous people from history are covered in shit. Once a pigeon shat on Babi’s head, but it never happens to him. He is too quick, he runs too fast and the shit never gets him.
He is invisible. It is his super power.
He can fly through the streets, move past eyes, unnoticed.
He can slip right under the heavy blanket that covers this city – the fear cannot touch him.
Luděk is free.
And he sees everything.
A teenage girl in a tight yellow skirt is blowing bubbles in the square – little rainbow spheres of light. Two girls with the same long hair are trying to clap the bubbles dead in their hands. They are screeching, laughing – smashing the bubbles between their red, sticky palms. But some of the bubbles get away, rise up high and fly above the city. They fly with the birds that look down. Maybe some even make it all the way across the river. Luděk does not know. He cannot see that far.
The tower clangs – once, twice – Luděk feels each strike of the clock right in his guts. It shakes him into action. Three times, four. Clang! It’s 5 pm. The day is falling away right in front of him. He is not meant to be over this side – not so far away from home. And there is only one hour left before he has to be flying up those stairs to the flat. One golden hour.
He runs through the tower and onto the bridge. It is already busy with workers – men moving in their dark suits, women in skirts, spring coats, handbags, satchels, shoes, boots. Two old-timers are already drunk, tripping and slipping over their own feet. What jokers. Go home and get out of my way!
Luděk weaves his way through the crowd with stealth. He knows the statues on the bridge by heart. He has names for them all and he yells at each one as he runs.
The only statue he likes is the lady with the pointy crown, and he never yells insults at her. He calls her by her name, Bar-ba-ra. Barbara, my Barbara! He likes the way that name makes his mouth move.
Bar – ba – rah!
A woman stops in front of him and looks around. He must have yelled that last Barbara a bit too loudly. He moves faster. Babi would kill him if she found out he was yelling at saints. He would get the wooden spoon for sure AND no dinner. She would tell him that the statues would get their revenge on him. But he does not believe any of those old stories, the ones about the statues coming to life in the night. He is not a baby. The statues are just old, dead stone. They are not going anywhere in a hurry.
‘Up yours, Pointy!’ he yells at St Augustine, then he. . .
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