Tomáš Zmeškal - A Love Letter in Cuneiform

“Hello, Alice,” he said.

Alice stood holding the door handle. “Hello, sir.”

“I’m your daddy, Alice,” the man said.

“I know, sir,” said Alice.

“May I come in?” her father asked.

“Yes, Mr. Daddy,” Alice said, glancing uncertainly at Tereza. Tereza stood in the corner of the entryway, silently taking it all in. Alice’s father stepped into the entryway and saw her. “You must be Tereza, right?”

“Yes, sir,” answered Tereza. Then after a moment’s hesitation she asked: “Are you Alice’s daddy?”

“Yes, I am,” he said.

“OK,” said Tereza. The man closed the door behind him, bent over, picked Alice up in his arms, and lifted her to the ceiling. Alice didn’t know what to do, but whenever Uncle Antonín, Aunt Šárka, or Uncle Bedřich picked her up like that, she would wrap her arms around their neck. So now she did the same. The man began to laugh, which Alice liked, but he was also making her face wet, which she didn’t like so much, since she and Tereza had just been trying on a new, glorious-smelling pink face powder. She pulled away, trying to sneak a look at him as he held her high above the ground. After a while he set her back down, pulled a large handkerchief from his pocket, and blew his nose. That got Alice’s attention, since neither she nor her mother ever used a handkerchief that big. She knew there were others like it ironed, folded, and stacked in her mother’s closet, with the rest of her father’s things. Those handkerchiefs were reserved for use on scraped knees or fingers cut while chopping onions or carrots; you didn’t blow your nose in them. Afterward they went in with the dirty laundry, to be boiled, ironed, and folded in stacks in the closet in her mother’s room. Alice turned and ran off to her mother’s room. She opened the closet, took two huge, freshly ironed handkerchiefs from the stack, still smelling of detergent, returned with them to her father in the entryway, and deposited them in his hand. Her father gave them a quick glance, no longer smiling, then all of a sudden he stared Alice straight in the eye so hard it made her shudder. If she had been eating, she was sure she would have choked. The look in his eyes was so stern, she didn’t even dare breathe. She decided later she’d have to talk it over with Tereza. After all, he shouldn’t look at her like that, such an odd, stern look, when she hadn’t done anything. Then the man raised his eyes from her, looked around the entryway, and ran his hands through her hair. Alice knew grown-ups did that when they wanted to be nice to a child and didn’t know what to say. Meanwhile Tereza put on her shoes, bowed to her father, told Alice good-bye, and went home. She didn’t know exactly why but she felt superfluous.

Alice’s father went into the kitchen, opened the cupboard, took out a large earthenware mug from the second row that nobody else ever used, and unerringly reached for the shelf where the big can of coffee was stored. He knows his way around, Alice thought. My dad. He knows his way around here. At home, here in my kitchen.

She had been so excited, so scared, so angry at him, and now she had no idea what to do with this big, tall man. So she just stood there, looking up at him, him looking down at her — he was a lot taller than her mom — until it got a little uncomfortable and started to make her dizzy.

“Where’s Mommy?” he asked once he’d made himself coffee. He sat down at the table and looked at his daughter.

“Running errands,” Alice said. “Also, she told me you weren’t coming till Thursday.” They sat in the kitchen a while. Then she showed him around the apartment. Not much had changed in ten years. He was surprised at how formal she was with him compared to the way she’d been in their letters, and he marveled at what a big girl he had for a daughter. In the last photo he’d seen of her, she was barely six months old. Alice, on the other hand, marveled at the fact that in spite of his height he didn’t run into anything, deftly steering clear of the lamps in the kitchen and the living room, and at the way sometimes when he ran his hand through her hair, his palm was so dry the calluses caught on her hair. She also noticed his skin caught on the fabric of her blouse when he stroked her arms and shoulders, and she was a little worried he might tear it. His hands were so hard they were like a grater, and they definitely needed a manicure, or at least a proper greasing with some really oily cream, the kind her mom and Aunt Šárka used, but she didn’t dare say so out loud. She would have told anyone else, but he was her father, and that was totally different. Neither of them afterward would remember how long she spent showing him the living room, kitchen, and entryway, or how many times she repeated the names of her three dolls, which evaporated from his head as quickly as she said them. Alice noticed that he did some strange things, like sitting down on the ground a few times, on the floor in the bedroom, for instance, and leaning against the bed, which everyone knew you shouldn’t do. The ground isn’t for sitting on, even if there’s a carpet on it. You sit in a chair or an armchair. You can play on the ground, but only when you’re little, not like her. Alice didn’t know how to tell him, though, since he was so big and she was still a little afraid of him. And then, all of a sudden, the next thing she knew it was evening and he was sitting in the dark on the ground, where you never sit, leaning against the bed and she was sitting on his knees, and it was nice, and even though she was always a little bit scared in a room that was dark, she wasn’t afraid here now, though on the other hand she was a little bit scared of the tall skinny man, so it also wasn’t nice. Then all of a sudden she heard keys jangling at the door, and all of a sudden she felt his heart pounding loudly, right through his shirt and his jacket, and all of a sudden he squeezed her so hard it hurt, gripping her by both wrists, and he got that odd look again, looking toward the door that led to the kitchen, left slightly ajar. Abruptly he stood up and without saying a word took her into his arms, still clutching her a little more tightly than he needed to, and Alice began to thrash a bit, feeling like a trout caught in a net. He cracked open the door to the kitchen another inch and Alice could hear her mother in the entryway, taking off her shoes and changing into her slippers, wondering out loud where Alice was and whether Tereza had already left. Then she turned and saw the two of them standing in the doorway. Him, her husband, holding her daughter, and she bent down one more time, out of habit, to adjust the straps on her house shoes, and then went to him, saying only, “Josef, Josef …” not finishing the sentence the way you’re supposed to, the way she always did when she was admonishing her daughter. And she came to them and stroked Alice’s hair and put her face next to his, and Alice had a feeling her mom was going to start crying again, which made her uncomfortable, but surprisingly she didn’t cry, she just held her husband by the shoulders and hugged her, and Alice noticed that her father’s heart, which just a few moments ago had been beating as fast as a herd of gazelles, which she once saw in a zoo, was beating slowly now, almost deliberately, but then again she could feel the warm thin little trickle pulsing in her mother’s hand, driving the blood to her fingers, which clutched her and stroked her, and the trickle kept changing, growing stronger, then settling down, then roaring like a storm. And then her dad stood her on the ground, and somehow it became clear it was dinnertime now, so she went to sit in her chair and he sat down across from her and her mom started making a cheese spread, and he looked at her, devoting as much time to his wife as to his daughter, and her mom just came over every now and then and stroked her hair, and his too, the way you do to little kids, but sometimes — almost as if she didn’t want anyone to see — she would also quick as a wink, inconspicuously stroke his hands, which were resting on the table and were much bigger than her mom’s. So they had something to eat, and since her mom hadn’t been counting on her dad to arrive until two days later, she didn’t have any food prepared, she’d reserved it all in the shops for the next day so it would be fresh, and so they had cheese spread with chives, and even though Alice normally didn’t like the way it tasted, today it didn’t matter because, frankly, she barely even realized what she was eating. She was too busy looking at her dad and at her mom, who looked totally different than Alice had ever seen her before. When they were done, they went to sit in the living room and her mom showed her dad two LPs that it was obvious he really liked because he got a wrinkle slanting across his forehead, and it looked a little bit like a frown, but later she found out that was just the way it looked, but actually it meant he was extremely happy. On the cover of one of the records there were some men in suits that made them look like penguins dressed up for a dinner party, as her dad later said, looking very serious but giving her a quick wink on the side so no one noticed except her, which made her smile, and on the cover of the other record was the head of a man with really curly hair and funny little glasses, and also a piano all painted in gold. Then her dad asked her mom to put on the record with the man in the funny glasses.