Chapter 26: Štěpán, Lída, and Tomáš

They stood in a small circle on the windswept cliff above the riverbank. Štěpán between Ondřej and Tomáš. Lída between Ondřej and Nika. Tomáš between Nika and Štěpán. Nika recited a prayer from memory the way Štěpán recited Walt Whitman’s poems. At the end, he joined her and Lída as they said, “Amen.”

“I’ll go first.” Štěpán stepped away from the group and picked up a stone. “My grandfather, before he died, used to take me to the Labe River one day a year in early fall.” He paused, and the wind stilled as if the universe recognized an ancient religious ceremony that no one dared teach him. “He’d tell me to think about something that was bothering me, or something I was sorry for.”

Now he smiled at Tomáš.

“Even then, I was sorry for a lot of things. Like beating up other kids. He said I should transfer it to the stone, along with whatever it was that made me angry, because most of the time when I did something wrong, I did it out of anger.”

Štěpán tossed the stone into the air and caught it. His palm was damp and slimy.

“You changed the direction of my life, Pavol, but I’m sorry I wasn’t a better friend to you when you needed me. I didn’t try to stop you when I saw you hurting yourself with your drinking, and I didn’t try to talk to you sooner about what was eating you from the inside. I thought it was all one big party, and I wanted to have a good time.” His eyelids stung. So much more to the good time than he wanted to talk about here. This was about Pavol, not him. “I’m going to move forward with my life now, and it’s not the way you would’ve wanted because you wanted to change things here rather than leaving. Wherever you are, I hope you understand and forgive me.”

Štěpán hurled the stone over the riverbank to the center of the Dyje. The current would carry it downstream, west to east, until it reached the Danube and the Slovak lands that gave birth to the boy he loved.

Lída picked up her stone. Two weeks ago would’ve been Pavol’s eighteenth birthday. He would never celebrate becoming an adult. So many other things he’d never get to do.

The baby flipped somersaults inside her. Lída pressed her palm to her belly, feeling his tiny limbs growing bigger and stronger by the day. Michal. Michal Bartoš. She knew the barley seeds were right, it would be a boy, and over there, he would have his rightful name.

She gazed up at the sky, clear blue in this place without factory smoke or coal dust. Her mouth was so parched she could hardly speak.

“Pavol, if you hear me . . . know that I love you and I will always love you. I will raise your child to be as principled and kind as you were.”

“Yes,” Štěpán said.

“Your sister Nika is here with me. I’ll take care of her too. Together we’ll tell the world about you and how you gave your life for your country and for freedom.”

But Pavol was more than a freedom fighter. He was a real boy she’d held in her arms while they cried over their lost land. And she couldn’t shake the feeling that she hadn’t done enough to save him so they could live to fight another day.

What had Štěpán said? One thing you’re sorry for. One thing you’ll let go of when you throw the stone.

She tightened her fist around it.

“I fell in love with you, but I also fell in love with everything around you. Your family, your faith, the fact that you had a home. I wanted to comfort you in your despair.” She squeezed Nika’s shoulder. She didn’t want to remind the child that the brother she adored had strayed from his faith by having sex before marriage. But it was hard not to remind her with six months of pregnant belly.

Besides, Nika would become a woman soon. She needed to know her body didn’t exist to make men happy.

“Maybe I chose the wrong way to console you, with my body instead of my heart, and it only added to your guilt. I’m sorry. But I know I have to stop blaming myself. Like Štěpán, I’m going to move forward. I’ll go back to school like you encouraged me to do, even if it means learning a new language. I know I’m smart enough to do it. And I’m going to make my own home and my own life, for me and our child.”

The stone flashed in the sunlight before it disappeared beyond the cliff and into the water. She imagined the ripples, circles flowing outward, breaking the water’s smooth surface. A single person, like Pavol, changing the course of all their lives. Setting all of them free.

Tomáš tapped his nose and straightened his glasses. Unlike the others, he’d participated in self-criticism sessions before. Young Pioneer and Youth Union camps required them once a week for all campers and staff, but this was different. Not petty confession theater. The real thing.

No I failed socialist praxis by faking a headache and not covering my latrine shift. Or I deviated from Marxist principles by thinking about new sneakers during political theory class. Or I was greedy and took two cookies for dessert, so my comrade at the end of the table didn’t get any.

He grimaced, stamped his feet, shook out his hands.

“The stone,” Štěpán said. “You forgot the stone.” He picked one up and held it out to Tomáš.

Tomáš wrapped both hands around the rough gray object, and without taking his eyes from it, he said, “Pavol, I deserted you that morning. You and Štěpán counted on me, and I didn’t show up because of my father. I was a coward.” He lifted his gaze to the four people standing around him. “I’m still a coward.”

He waited for someone to agree with him, but the only sound he heard was the wind whistling through the collapsed walls of the church. A few seconds later, Lída said softly, “You have a lot more to lose than we do.”

In the corner of Tomáš’s eye, he saw Štěpán nod. Tomáš smiled weakly, not sure he deserved their kindness and understanding. Especially not Lída’s.

“All my life, Pavol, I wanted to have friends and belong to something. I used to believe communism meant everybody belongs, shares, and does their share. But then I saw things, like why did my family live in a huge house and I had nice clothes and enough to eat and a big train set while you were going hungry? Maybe my parents didn’t think I noticed when Mama wrapped up food for you to bring to your family, but I did. I made a list in my mind of ways real life didn’t match what it was supposed to be. When you talked about the reforms, and socialism with a human face, I began to understand.”

It had taken him so long. Štěpán and Lída spoke of failing Pavol, but he bore the most responsibility of all.

He scraped the stone with his fingernail. How much had it really mattered when he failed to appear at the train station that morning? Štěpán said Pavol’s drinking had gotten out of control. Lída said he’d lost his faith. And what had his father said?

Sometimes we don’t know people as well as we think. They have secret lives. Problems they don’t share with us.

He hadn’t known Pavol the same way Štěpán and Lída had. Pavol had taught Tomáš about the world but he’d left some things out.

He hadn’t taught Tomáš about hopelessness, about having dreams snatched away on the whim of cruel and heartless people. He’d kept it a secret until the end, only telling Štěpán when it was already too late.

He hadn’t taught Tomáš about despair, the kind of despair that would lead someone to set himself on fire on the remote chance it would help those he left behind.

Why? If they shared everything under socialism, why couldn’t they share their sadness? Would it show that the revolution hadn’t brought happiness or peace or a perfect world—and that people weren’t machines with no feelings?

Tomáš touched his throat, willing his voice to rise. “There were so many things I didn’t understand. I grew up with my life mapped out for me. If I followed the rules, good things came to me. I didn’t know what it was like to have nothing and no hope that things would get better.”

The final lyrics of “The End” came back to him. No choices left in a place where there’d been only two choices to begin with: obey or have everything taken away.

On this journey Tomáš had become a part of the world—a wild, confusing world where anything could happen. Not his walled-off home, bound by bricks and barbed-wire fences and rules. A world where people could get into a car or board an airplane and travel anywhere. Where they could study and read and hear and say anything they wanted.

Where they could be anything they chose.

I want to choose.

He stepped toward the river with his rock, away from the others. “Pavol, you didn’t think you had any choices except to give up your life. We’re your friends, and we’re making a different choice. We’ve decided to give up our home. Me . . . I’m giving up the home you called a walled garden . . . to live in the world.”

He ground the toe of his sneaker into the dirt, hard and dry as the stone in his hands.

“I may not make it over the border, and I may not belong in the new world any more than the place I’m leaving. But I’m going to take that chance. Watch over me, Pavol. Watch over all of us.”

With both hands, he flung the stone toward the river. It splashed into the Dyje and sank quickly, taking his fear with it.

Lída’s voice came from behind him. “So you’re coming with us?”

“I’m coming with you.” Tomáš filled his lungs to bursting with the fresh air of forest and water, steeling himself for what would come next. He returned to the circle. His friends squeezed his fingers. He hadn’t abandoned them. His decision made him one of them. For real.

Ondřej held out his hand. “Give me the car keys, kid. You’re about to take the ride of your life.”