Tomáš Zmeškal - A Love Letter in Cuneiform

The district hospital wasn’t able to save Alice’s child. The doctor held Josef’s hand when he broke the news to him. Josef swore. The doctor took a closer look at him and said, “He did a pretty good job on you too. Why don’t you come with me for some X-rays.” “I can’t go anywhere. I’ve got someone with me,” Josef said, pointing to his grandson. “He can come with you,” the doctor said. “Either way you need an X-ray.” Kryštof walked through the hospital with his grandfather, who was found to have a bruised jaw, a broken left forearm, and two fractured ribs. As they applied the bandages and set Josef’s arm in a cast, Kryštof began to cry. He wouldn’t even play checkers with the pocket set that Josef found in the neighbor’s car, and meanwhile his daughter had just miscarried a child he didn’t even know was on the way. Josef asked if he could make a call to his wife in Prague. When Květa picked up the phone he said: “I think you’d better come. Alice had a miscarriage, I’m all beat up, and the little one’s bawling. I hate to say it, but I think you’re needed here.”

(1)

I never could get used to that bed at my aunt Anna’s. Even after all the years I slept in it, I still considered selling it or throwing it away. I tried to get it repaired when I moved in with my aunt, but the upholsterer I found through a classified ad was more interested in paying me compliments than in upholstering. He was several years younger than me, so naturally I was flattered. I thinned down some after Josef moved out, so I was finally at the right weight. Not that I was delusional, but at the time I was still hoping Josef might come back to me. Anyway, the bed was only halfway a bed. Originally it had been built as a daybed sofa, with a tall, cushioned backrest that curved around the right from behind, so it could support your head and part of your back. I felt comfortable and safe in it. When I didn’t want to sleep, I could just load it up with pillows and burrow into them. I set up an old floor lamp behind it that Aunt Anna kept in the storeroom. There were just a few tears in the lampshade I needed to repair, and it hung over the chair like a miniature canopy. I tried a few bulbs of different voltage before I found one I could read to without being blinded.

Everything in the apartment was old. The furniture, the carpets, the lamps, the stove, but the oldest of all was my aunt. Before I moved in with her, this tall lady from health services with a funny hairdo was going to have her put into a retirement home. Aunt Anna had no children, so she was on her own, and I thought there was something odd about the authorities deciding to move her just when the neighbors started to take an interest in her apartment. I talked to her on the phone once or twice a month. I’d always ask if she needed anything and arrange for whatever she wanted, but the last few months, after Josef moved out, I spent most of my time sobbing and forgot all about her. It wasn’t until I went to see her again, a while later, that I realized how far downhill she’d gone. Her neighbor Mrs. Martincová, who helped me take care of her, had broken her hip and had to go to the hospital, so my aunt was all alone. It had been nearly six months since the last time I saw her, and she was her usual gregarious self, so I didn’t notice at first, but then she started calling me Libuše, Hanička, Karolína — everything but Květa. It was obvious the poor thing was confused. So instead of taking care of Josef, I took care of her. The first thing I did was spend two weeks doing laundry, wiping dust, and throwing away old, useless things. Then I washed the windows and doors. My aunt sat watching, calling me a different name depending on what I was doing. Once, covered in dust and dirt, I was dragging a rug out to the courtyard to beat it, and she looked up at me from her little table in the kitchen as I stood straddling the doorway with the rug over my shoulder, dressed in old clothes, dripping sweat, with a wicker swatter under my arm. She took off her glasses and shook her head, saying, “Now you must be Zorka.” Then she shook her head again. “Shame the way you turned out. You ought to take better care of yourself.” From then on, I noticed that she talked to me based on the way I was dressed — there was a method to it.

I came across several photo albums while I was cleaning, and in fact just that morning, when the phone rang, I had been lying on one of those big old leather albums in my sleep, with it digging into my ribs. It was still dark, and when I picked up the phone I heard Josef. His voice sounded like autumn. He told me what had happened to Alice and him and little Kryštof. I threw on the bare essentials and called a taxi from a phone booth to take me to the train station, since it didn’t occur to me till I was already on my way. When I got there it finally hit me and I started shaking all over. As the whole thing dawned on me, I made a quick call to Toník, seeing as he was a doctor. Luckily he was just getting off his shift, so he came to pick me up in his car and we drove to the hospital together. On the way I told him one more time in detail what Josef had said over the phone. He handed me a thermos of coffee he hadn’t finished while he was at work, told me to drink some, and stopped at a newsstand along the way for cigarettes.

As Toník parked the car at the hospital and we got out, I saw our neighbor Vašek smoking on the steps. He looked sad. That frightened me more than anything else. I still remembered him as a little boy. He was maybe three or four years older than Alice and had always been a jokester, so it was shocking to see how downhearted he looked. When we entered Alice’s room, she was looking out the window while the two other patients ate breakfast in bed. There were two chairs by Alice’s bed, one on either side, with Kryštof asleep in one of them. I sat down in the other one. Toník just stroked Alice’s hair and went to look for the doctor on duty.

We got there late, I got there late, far too terribly late. I gave my little girl a hug and held Kryštof’s hand, trying as hard as I could not to cry. It wasn’t easy. We tried to be quiet when we came in, but Kryštof woke up anyway. “Hi, Grandma,” he said. He noticed Josef wasn’t there and added, “Grandpa must’ve gone to pee,” then curled up under Alice’s arm. Josef walked back into the room with Toník, said hello, and for a while I had the feeling he was actually happy to see me. We sat there until the nurse shooed us all out to the hallway, since the other two patients couldn’t walk and it was time for pee-pee and poo-poo and general morning hygiene, and out in the hall Toník told us that the examining doctor said they had written up everything so it could be used as the basis for a police investigation. Meanwhile, Vašek had come in from outside to join us, and when he heard he said, “Lock him up, the piece of shit!” I was happy somebody said it. But at the same time I was baffled how things between them had gotten so out of hand. Then Vašek said he was sorry, he had to go to work, but he would be glad to give me a lift to the cottage. I said I would go there to pack some things for Kryštof and Josef and Alice, since they couldn’t stay in the hospital and would have to come back to Prague with us. When Toník nodded, I knew it was all right for Josef to come and there wouldn’t be any problems. Toník just thanked Vašek and said he would take me himself. So we left Josef and Kryštof in the hospital with Alice and drove out to the cottage. I took only the bare necessities of clothing for them, and for Kryštof some crayons, jigsaw puzzles, and two construction sets, plus two matchbox cars and a little orange plastic tractor. For Josef I took a coat, dress shoes, trousers, an umbrella, and his briefcase. Afterwards I thought better of it and gave the briefcase to Toník, since Josef always grumbled whenever I so much as touched his briefcase. If I remembered correctly, it was his fourth one in thirty years, and if I knew him, he had all the old ones stored away in the attic at the cottage. So I had Toník give it to him. Josef used to make fun of me whenever he saw me with his briefcase, saying a briefcase in a woman’s hands was like a gun with the safety off. Not that it bothered me, but if Josef joked about something that meant it also irritated him, and I didn’t need any problems right now, since I needed to get everyone back to Prague, where I could take care of them, because I knew I couldn’t leave Aunt Anna out of my sight for more than three days before the poor thing started to waste away. All I really wanted to do was cry. And I couldn’t even do that. When I told Toník, he said he had put something in the thermos of coffee I drank to calm my nerves, to help me make it through, he said, and when I asked how come he drank it too, he said it was awful what Maximilian had done to them, especially getting the little one involved. When he said that, coffee or no coffee, pills or no pills, I burst into tears like an ordinary helpless woman, which at that moment was exactly what I was.