Chapter 19: Štěpán

To Štěpán, the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic was an octopus with eight arms and eight armpits, and the city of Most was the filthiest and smelliest armpit of them all. Several years earlier, a giant lignite deposit had been discovered underneath, and since then, bulldozers and dynamite had leveled the old city center block by block, replacing it with concrete paneláky several kilometers away where the ground contained no such value.

As an undesirable, Štěpán had been assigned to a closet-sized efficiency in the basement of a gray-and-white eight-story prefab building, surrounded by the larger apartments where families of police officers lived.

Every morning he took a smoke-spewing bus to the rail station for his job cleaning freight cars. Half of them carried coal to plants across the country, and he had to dislodge dust from the floors and walls to keep it from building up and exploding. It was hard work, and painful in the first weeks when he was still recovering from prison and from the beating his masked kidnappers gave him in Rozcestí. The relentless sun burned his skin, which peeled in long, translucent strips. His hair grew out, and his muscles hardened, making him the lean, mean unthinking machine that the Communists wanted him to be.

He worked alone, lest he contaminate the other workers with his counter-revolutionary ideology and his deviant sexual behavior. He’d pledged to stay out of trouble for his mother’s sake, though solitude ran against his nature. All his life, he’d played for teams and run in packs—with the exception of the Party. No different from the hockey team, his mother used to say.

But it was. Everyone on the hockey team worked together for the same goal—to win. Štěpán saw with his parents that Party members pretended to work together but looked out only for themselves. A bigger house, a better job, a car, and they’d turn against each other to get it. Their common opponent was fear, and fear won every time.

In sending the message to Lída, he’d reverted to his nature, his desire for one more chance to see friends who’d stood by him. And while he no longer had his book of Walt Whitman’s verses, he’d learned them by heart:

Failing to fetch me at first, keep encouraged;

Missing me one place, search another;

I stop somewhere, waiting for you.

When the midday whistle sounded on that last Tuesday in June, he ate his lunch as usual at the end of the platform with his feet dangling over a little-used spur. Farther up the platform where passengers awaited their trains, his minder stood, at times staring at his pocket watch or speaking into a hidden microphone.

The 12:35 train from Prague came and went behind him. After the last of the debarking passengers filed into the station, Štěpán tossed his empty lunch bag into the trash, jumped from the end of the platform onto the tracks, and crossed to the freight yard. As he passed an abandoned car, someone threw a burlap sack over his head.

He yelled. A shoulder in his ribcage sent him crashing into the railcar.

“Make noise, get hurt.” It was a man’s voice, muffled but familiar. A sharp blade pressed against his throat, which stung as if he’d cut himself shaving.

Rough hands taped his wrists together with alarming speed.

He knew from experience to submit.

The attackers dragged him across the tracks, bouncing him among them until his head spun. His heart pounded so hard he thought it would explode. He couldn’t breathe. The sack smelled like fertilizer, pure poison. His lunch roiled in his stomach. His knees turned to rubber.

“Help!” He could scarcely push the words out.

“Shhh, Štěpán, it’s us. Don’t fight.” He recognized Lída’s voice. Were she and Ondřej the kidnappers? What the . . . ?

Hands pushed him into the back of a car. He bumped his head on the doorframe, but the sack cushioned the impact—a relief. In the past few months he’d taken a lot of blows to the head that had left him with headaches and dizzy spells.

They covered him with a heavy blanket, and the car jerked forward with a screech of tires. His shoulder hit metal with a crack and a burst of pain. As the car bounced and weaved, someone tried to cut the tape around his wrists but pierced his skin instead. Warm liquid tickled the inside of his wrists and his palms.

“Got it.” The clumsy tape-cutter ripped the rest of the tape from his forearms.

“Yow!” Hair and skin went with it. Štěpán reached up and yanked off the hood and blanket.

“Sorry.” The speaker had glasses. Dark hair. A twitchy eyelid. Shirt buttoned to the top even though he wasn’t wearing a tie.

“Tomáš! What are you doing here?”

Štěpán blinked and glanced around. He lay next to a quilt behind the back seat of the station wagon where he’d taught Tomáš to drive. But Tomáš wasn’t driving. Ondřej was, and Lída sat beside him holding a map. In the back seat with Tomáš were boxes and knapsacks with his in the middle. On the other side of the boxes sat a girl with straw-colored braids—Pavol’s sister Nika.

Something hard pushed against his leg. A rifle with scope attached. He shrank back. The edge of a toolbox dug into his shoulder. Bolt cutters poked his thigh.

“We rescued you. It was Lída’s idea.” Tomáš twisted in the back seat. “You’re going to cross the border with her.”

“And then go to America, like you want to do,” Lída said without turning around.

Nika knelt on the seat and faced Štěpán, her face as pale and earnest as Pavol’s. “I’m going with you!”

The burning spread up Štěpán’s neck to the tips of his ears. “Did you ask me if this was what I wanted?”

Tomáš’s face fell. He lowered his gaze. “We just thought . . .”

Štěpán rubbed his throbbing shoulder. “Did you think about what would happen if they caught me? I’ve been to prison. Once, for five weeks, and look what they did to me. It’s not going to be five weeks if I’m arrested for abandoning the country. More like five years.”

“Maybe they won’t care. Maybe they’ll just let you go,” Nika said. “I was watching that strange man when Tomáš and Lída and Mr. Pekár grabbed you. He just smiled and did this.” She held up her hand, making a circle with her thumb and index finger. She inserted and withdrew the index finger of her other hand, then drew that finger across her throat.

Štěpán shuddered. Lída whipped around and grabbed Nika’s hand. “Don’t you ever do that!”

“Why not? What is it?”

“It’s very rude,” Lída said.

“It means homosexual,” Ondřej said. “Men who sleep with men. And his minder thinks we plan to kill him because he did the deed.”

Lída flopped in her seat. “Pa, that’s enough. She’s a little girl.”

Ondřej waved his right hand in the air. “Welcome to the world, little girl! Did anyone invite you here?”

Trembling, Nika reached into her backpack and pulled out a worn brown stuffed bear.

Ondřej slapped the side of his face. “Oh, no. She needs her toy.”

Nika sniffled and hugged the bear.

Štěpán pressed his toothless gum with his tongue, wondering how they’d all ended up in the Party boss’s car and whether Tomáš possessed the balls to have stolen it.

Tomáš now untied the string at the top of his own pack and took out a dark red train car, which he rolled on top of the boxes. “I also brought a toy, Nika. It’s from my old train set.”

Nika ran her finger along the metal side of the train and smiled wanly.

Štěpán leaned back and pulled his knees to his chest. No way Tomáš could’ve done this on his own. All through school, kids used him. He’d give them candy, toys, the answers to tests if they said they’d be his friend. Could Ondřej and Lída have done the same?

Štěpán took a deep breath and released it, trying to release his tension along with it. “Tomáš, you’re not crossing over, are you?”

“No. I’m driving to Youth Union camp with Ondřej.”

Of course. Whatever his father the Party leader ordered. “Are you aware that if we’re caught, they’re going to torture us and make us say you knew about this?”

Tomáš looked up from his fingernails but didn’t face Štěpán. “I’m supposed to drive Lída to her aunt and uncle’s in Znojmo. After that, it’s her decision what she does.” He twisted around and their gaze connected before he looked away. “And you. You didn’t snitch last time.”

Beginner’s luck, Štěpán thought. He wouldn’t give the authorities an excuse to test his willpower again.

Bypassing Prague, they took the motorway heading east. Ondřej pulled into a rest area to switch drivers and for Lída to use the bathroom. “She always has to pee,” he said after she went inside. Nika giggled. Tomáš’s face flushed.

Do you have any special reason to embarrass your daughter? Štěpán wanted to ask, but he suspected a wicked hangover as Ondřej’s only reason.

As soon as Tomáš climbed over Lída’s seat and out the passenger side door to switch with Ondřej, Štěpán leapt over both seats and bolted outside—colliding with Lída on her way back to the car.

“Where are you going?” She stood with both hands on her hips blocking him, a brick wall with fire-shooting eyes. A lot wider around the middle than she was two months ago. She’s pregnant, and that’s Pavol’s kid in there.

“I’m t-taking a piss. Like you.”

“Use a bottle.” She shoved him into the car with all her weight, then knelt on the seat and glared at him.

Sprawled on the dirty rubber mat behind the back seat, he blurted out, “My mother. If I get in trouble, they won’t let her teach again.”

“They already won’t let her teach next fall. Your brother could’ve gotten her job back, but he didn’t. The only person you can hurt now by leaving is him.”

In front, Tomáš turned around and folded his arms across the top of the seat. “Your brother was jealous. You had more trophies.”

Despite his general cluelessness, Tomáš had a point. With those trophies came love. After his arrest, that love went away, if it ever existed in the first place. His family threw him out of the pack to save themselves.

Lída shook her head, as if she understood. “Your family, Štěpán . . . the government destroyed it. We’re your family now.”

No you’re not. But the words stuck in his throat. Lída and Ondřej had taken him in when no one else would. And maybe this plan Lída had concocted would give him another chance for a future. He rubbed his sweaty, sunburned forearm smeared with coal dust like a clumsy tattoo. Did she know what it was like on the other side? Would it be any different for him in a place where everything revolved around money and nobody knew or cared about their neighbors?

A glance through the rear window made him realize how futile it would be to return to Most from here, an isolated rest stop with a Soviet tank parked at one end and a police car at the other. He shouldn’t have emerged from the cover of the quilt, much less the car. He’d already risked his life and theirs.

He crawled under the quilt. When he peeked through the window again, the police car and tank hadn’t moved.

Next time, he’d be more careful.

“Don’t go all the way to Jihlava, Tomáš.” In the front passenger seat, Ondřej took a long pull from a bottle of vodka. “We’ll camp near Humpolec where no one will see us.”

Humpolec. From there he could catch a bus to Most. It was still midafternoon. He’d be back in time to work the next morning. Some hoodlums jumped me, he’d tell his boss. I got away from them. Came back to do my part for world socialism.

They left the car at the end of a narrow dirt path and hiked through the forest carrying their tent and supplies. Ten minutes later they came upon a lake. The water was brackish around the edges, the lake bed visible. Štěpán inhaled the verdant air, so different from Rozcestí and Most with their coal mines and factories.

“I’m going to clean the car. Anyone want me to bring back something?” Tomáš asked after he and Ondřej set up the tent in the woods nearby.

“The quilt.” Lída kicked the dirt. “Be more comfortable to sleep on tonight.”

“I’ll walk with you,” Štěpán said.

At the car he dug Yevgeny Yevtushenko’s Babi Yar from his knapsack and stretched out on the back seat, keeping the door open for ventilation. The bright sunlight made it hard to read outside, and he needed quiet to figure out how he’d get into town and back to Most. Tomáš stood at the open tailgate, folding the quilt.

Try to get rid of him, or find out more?

“Do you have a plan”—Štěpán paused, swallowed—“for how to get over the border?”

“You see this toolbox?” Tomáš tapped the metal box that had banged Štěpán’s shoulder multiple times. “Ondřej is leaving it with Lída.”

“Doesn’t he need it? For when he’s at Youth Union camp with you?” Štěpán wondered which of his ex-friends’ parents had complained about Ondřej getting their kid drunk and had him run out of town. Moučka for sure.

Tomáš hesitated. Cleared his throat a bunch of times and did that weird ritual that ended with straightening his glasses. “We’re going to Olomouc together, but he’s not going to camp. He’s going to a sanitarium to die. He has liver cancer.”

You’re kidding me. Štěpán pressed his head between his knees. He locked his fingers over the back of his head and focused on his itching scar to banish the memory of that morning Tomáš told him Pavol was dead—then as now bearing bad news.

He squeezed harder. Poor Lída. She’d said her father had only gone to the hospital for tests and to dry out. He raised his head. “And Lída’s pregnant, isn’t she?”

Tomáš nodded.

“Ondřej’s never going to see his grandchild.”

“No.” Tomáš’s eyes were dry, not like when Pavol had died.

Štěpán shut his eyes against the sudden pressure. He’d had a grandfather he loved, who told him stories of hiding from the Nazis. At least he had ten years with him. Lída’s child would have zero.

“I have a question,” Tomáš said after a few moments.

“What?”

“Are you really a homosexual?”

Štěpán rubbed his eyes and blinked. “The word is gay.” He said it in English and repeated it for Tomáš. “You should always call people what they want to be called.”

“Gay,” Tomáš said. “You’re right.” He pushed his glasses back on his nose. “I don’t like people calling me slow or antisocial. But I don’t know what I am. Except different.”

“Maybe there’s a test you can take. It would be good to find out.”

“Since you like guys . . . do you like me? In that way?”

Štěpán forced a laugh. “Hell no.” Tomáš flinched. “I mean, you’re not gay, are you?”

Tomáš shook his head, so hard he had to grab his glasses to keep them from flying off. “No. And I get this funny feeling inside when I stand next to Lída or touch her. I don’t like touching people normally, so it’s weird. But she was Pavol’s girlfriend, and she’s having his kid, so I don’t think it’s right for me to—I don’t know. Ask her out? I mean, that wouldn’t work anyway because she wants to leave the country.”

Štěpán took a deep breath to pull himself together. To avoid hurting Tomáš, the only one from school who recognized his existence. “I’ve never gone out with a girl—or a boy, for that matter—but here’s what I think. Lída’s going through a lot right now, with losing Pavol and being pregnant and her father dying. She needs you to be a friend. That’s all. Just a friend.”

“Thank you.” Tomáš lifted the neatly-folded quilt. “I’m going to take this to Lída now. I’ll leave you alone to read.”

“Better yet . . .” Štěpán checked his watch. Twenty minutes to five. “Could you give me a ride into town?”