Robert McGill - Once We Had a Country

“I didn’t tell her—” Then Maggie remembers what she said to Gran on the phone. She can imagine Gran’s excitement at the thought of her attending Mass.

“Your grandmother writes nice letter,” says the priest. “She has great worry for you.”

“Well, you didn’t need to come. Gran and I talked on the phone last week.”

The priest nods as though he’s up to date regarding contact between her and Gran. “She says you do not tell her very much of yourself,” he explains.

“We’ve had other things to talk about.”

“Yes, she tells me that too. Your father. She writes me that they are finding out if he is in village upriver. You have had more word?”

She shakes her head. “You know as much as I do. Maybe I should be asking you for news.” For a moment she mulls what would happen if she told him that the nice man from the grocery store has gone to Laos.

“Is dangerous, the mission work,” says the priest. “Your father has great courage. He is like the Jesuits in this place many centuries ago.”

“I didn’t want him to go over there,” she replies. “I didn’t want to be worrying about him. If it’s okay, I’d rather not talk about it. Thanks for coming over, though. You can tell Gran I’m fine.”

The priest looks disappointed. Probably he thinks she’s a selfish, ungrateful child.

“Before I leave,” he says, “Lenka asks me to tell you that she wishes to see you again. But she is embarrassed from night of party.”

Maggie remembers Lenka kneeling at the toilet with her brother beside her. Suddenly the brown paper bag brought by the priest seems less like a demand and more like penance.

“She shouldn’t be embarrassed,” Maggie says. “It was something she ate, right?”

The priest looks at her as though to ascertain whether she’s being serious. “You must understand,” he says, a certain fatigue creeping into his voice, “before we come here, our parents are taken. They are dissidents, yes? Lenka, she is almost thirty, but she lived with them. Is difficult. She is not great lover of life here.” His face grows troubled awhile before it brightens. “She asks that I invite you for the Sunday dinner. Will you give us this honour?”

Maggie tries to picture herself alone in a dining room with the priest and his alcoholic sister. He appears to have forgotten that the first time he saw Maggie, he accused her of stealing from a poor box. No, it would never work. Still, standing before her with golf cap in hand, he looks hopeful, almost needy. And what else does she have going on?

Then she remembers George Ray. He’s acting as if busy with a length of twine, but from the tilt of his head she suspects that he’s been listening all this time, that he’s waiting with the priest for her response.

“I’ll come if I can bring him,” she says, nodding toward George Ray. She says it thinking George Ray will appreciate the gesture, but upon the words leaving her mouth, she worries he’ll consider it patronizing.

When the priest turns to look, George Ray waves at him. She takes it as a good sign.

“Our hired man,” she says. “George Ray.” Tentatively, the priest waves back. “He’s Jamaican,” she adds, not quite knowing why. The priest raises an eyebrow, whether at the fact or at the oddness of her mentioning it, she can’t tell.

“Of course,” he says. “Hired man is very welcome too.”

The rectory is a small bungalow clad in aluminum siding and sufficiently tucked away behind the church that all the times Maggie has driven past she’s never noticed it. Now, arriving at the front door, she stands with George Ray on the little concrete stoop, she in her nicest dress, he with a bottle of wine in hand. There’s only a moment of panic that the whole thing is a mistake before Lenka answers, carefully made up and wearing a necklace of thick wooden beads. She greets Maggie with a kiss on the cheek, and then, as she leans in to kiss George Ray, he chooses the same moment to thrust forward the wine. She hops back in surprise and laughs.

The priest acts pleased to see them too. The sweater he’s wearing seems meant to draw attention from his priestliness, but his collar serves as a reminder that he’s still not quite one of them. Behind him on the wall is an oleograph of Jesus prying open his chest to reveal his flaming heart.

While Lenka disappears into the kitchen, the priest leads them on a tour of the rooms. There are two bedrooms, a sitting room, and a small dining area, its table laid and waiting. As Maggie takes in the place, she realizes it’s the first dwelling other than the farmhouse she’s entered since the spring. She finds herself admiring the spotlessness of it all. Nowhere are there gouges on the wall or haphazard furniture with torn upholstery. The kitchen gleams as though nothing has ever been spilled or burnt. The effect is heightened by the priest’s obvious pride in the place. He explains that Lenka’s bedroom was a study when they arrived, and that the rectory is usually for one person but for them an exception was made. This is all the two of them need, he says. It’s bigger than their parents’ apartment in Prague.

At dinner, George Ray sits next to Maggie, and Lenka serves them all a noodle soup, which is consumed with obligatory compliments to the chef but without any conversation, only noisy slurping by the priest. Then, after Lenka has brought the sirloin and dumplings to the table, suddenly she begins to talk, as if it’s a Czech custom to withhold discussion until the appearance of the entree. While she speaks, the priest watches her as he might watch a child playing a violin piece he has taught her.

“We come four years ago, yes? Is not by choice. Josef and I are sheep, we keep opinions to ourselves, we hide in flock.” Her brother murmurs as though she has hit a wrong note, but Lenka shushes him. “After parents are arrested, is dangerous to stay. People say Canada is good for Czechs. We joke it is Siberia but colder.” George Ray gives a sympathetic laugh, and Lenka beams. “Now, in one more year, we are citizens. When we arrive, we talk no English. Today we are not too bad, yes?” Maggie and George Ray agree they are not too bad.

“What about your parents?” asks Maggie.

Lenka adjusts the napkin on her lap. “Some gulag,” she says. Maggie expects the priest to offer a word of commiseration, but he only sits gazing at his plate.

“You ever think of going back?” she asks.

“Back?” Lenka repeats it as if the possibility would never occur to any reasonable person. “No, there is no back. We come here, Josef puts heart into church. We pretend we are in paradise and not in exile.” The priest makes a face to suggest he’s familiar with this viewpoint but not approving. “Is hard on priest here—not many Catholics. There are Mennonites everywhere, you notice? Women in the black dresses, men with the buggies. People think they are nice. Josef hates them.” At this, the priest speaks sharply to Lenka in Czech, and she responds with equal severity before resuming in English. “He denies it, but I fear he is on path to becoming—jaded? Is that right? Yes, jaded. Once he has great hopes for life in America. Canada is always letting him down.”

“Is not true,” says the priest sulkily, but he offers no further rebuttal.

“What about for you?” Maggie asks Lenka. “What’s it like here?”

“In Czechoslovakia I train as legal secretary. Here, degree is worthless. Cousin in Toronto, she promises to find me a nice Czech man to marry, but I tell her I am old, I will settle for a Canadian. If I have too high standard, I will spend all my life cooking for Josef.” She smiles at the priest, who’s still sullen.

“Did you have a boyfriend in Czechoslovakia?” asks Maggie. As she does, she recognizes something too personal in the question, but it’s too late. The priest lowers his head, and Lenka gives him a glance that he doesn’t return.