MICHAEL AND I held our first showing of The Great Newt War at a small theater in Sarasota, a purple building surrounded by ceratiolas. We had rented out the whole building to screen the film for our cast and crew, using the last remnants of the budget to get everyone free soda refills as a final token of gratitude.
We had spent the previous eight months in a limbo of work and editing, driving at night to the postproduction facilities in Bradenton, where, on Derek’s dime, we imposed order on the chaos of our footage. Who needed sleep? There never seemed to be enough coverage to make up for scenes that had been ruined, whether by onlookers or the sun or Rostislav’s stiff expressions. Halfway through the process, I realized I didn’t have the stomach for this part, to see our great efforts in the physical world reduced to flawed images, beats and scenes on celluloid. The reality could never match the film I had already made in my head. I left Michael to finish editing the rest of the film, and thus our private premiere with the cast and crew would be my first time seeing the completed opus.
To offset the nerves, I had accidentally gotten champagne-drunk before the screening. Michael snuck another unopened bottle to our seats. I wore a mint-green dress I had gotten from Macy’s. Prom season was upon us, the discounts were deep, and I felt comfortable pulling a little more money from my savings. This was to be a momentous day in my life. We had made something. I had made a movie in America. I’d placed much of what I thought was important about myself in it. Michael wore a three-piece suit he’d obviously owned for too long, with yellow sweat stains showing on the fabric around his armpits and neck. But it was fine. He looked handsome because he looked happy.
My vision blurred as the film started. I was nauseated and desperately thirsty when Ava spoke her lines. I looked amazing, the screen suited me, but it was small consolation when every line spoken in my voice (a voice that seemed to belong to someone else entirely) made me leave permanent fingernail impressions on my velvet seat. I kept blinking to focus, breathed deeply to stop the trembling of my hands and lips, but by the time I was finally calm enough to enjoy myself, the film was over.
We all applauded, though I had no idea whether I had liked the film or hated every moment. We left the theater to indulge in cigarettes, smokers and nonsmokers alike. I held a Marlboro in my shaking hand as Michael kissed me and I kissed him back, if only to distract myself. Around us the voices of friends and extras hummed in semi-whispers, and people came up to us to tell us how impressive it all was, how proud they were to be a part of it. Anxiously we searched the crowd for Derek until he finally emerged from the theater lobby in sunglasses. He embraced Michael and me in an intimate hug. Reeking of whiskey, he told Michael he felt like a proud father. Like he was part of something bigger.
“If I know anything at all about art,” Derek said, “this movie is going to change the world as we know it.” He kissed my cheek and released me, then dragged Michael away and offered his flask. The two whispered like overeager boys.
I accepted this praise, infected by the enthusiasm of our friends. We had made a movie! Reagan’s America was alive. Our overnight Hollywood fame was inevitable and all it had taken was honest American labor. Already I was scheming for my next project. Some years earlier I had read an article about a couple of famous Czech artists planning to make a film about a small village that turns itself into a Kafka theme park. Chaos, tragicomedy, existential roller coasters. The men who had planned it were dead now and someone else needed to make their film. Why not me? I had no shortage of ambition and at my drunkest, I even believed that America would reward my artistic achievement with honorary legal status.
Hitchcock had once said that when he closed his eyes, he could project the entirety of his next film on the backs of his eyelids. Some applauded the master for another profound expression of egoism, while others questioned whether it made sense to make a film the auteur had already seen. What of the surprise of discovery, when the greatest moments in life and art occur? But I wanted to attempt the master’s method nonetheless. I closed my eyes and I projected the perfect future. Why not indulge? If a minor Hollywood actor could become president of a nuclear superpower, then a village girl and amateur dissident could become a Hollywood star. It was about movement, about biting off more than you could chew and then chewing until your jaw dropped off.
I drew up the plans in my mind. We would tour the festival circuit and agree to a multimillion-dollar acquisition of our film. Next, Michael and I would leave the Fairchilds without notice. We’d build our own house on the shore. I’d become a runner, sweat on the beach every morning, dip my sore feet in the sand that always stayed cool regardless of the heat, this crystal quartz powder that had traveled down great rivers from the Appalachian Mountains into the Gulf of Mexico and landed on these beaches over billions of years. We would buy Rostislav the puppet from Alphonse and keep him in our living room as a reminder of where we’d started, a conversation piece for the American parties we’d throw for our American friends.
Then, children. Not yet, but soon. We would become people our children could be proud of. We would give them everything money and kindness could buy. I’d bring my parents over for visits. I knew I could never convince them to move to America—they loved their village too much—but they would spend summers here, get to know their son-in-law, their grandchildren. The fresh sea air would relieve aches in their bones and extend their lives. I’d be happy at last in this country that didn’t require one to be political, in this country that rewarded generously those who dared to imagine good things for themselves.
My life had never been as clear to me as it was in this moment. I expected everything, riches and happiness, and I was truly convinced that I’d earned it. That I deserved it more than others. That it belonged to me. Because I was brave enough and tenacious enough to take it. If Reagan had been there, I would’ve kissed him on the mouth. I was with him, and the world was great and America was Great.
I enjoyed the rest of the night, drank to excess, fucked Michael with a hunger I hadn’t felt since I had first explored sex with my boyfriend in Hluboká. America was mine. Here, I would live forever, made immortal by my art.
WE SPENT THE next few months submitting the film to festivals across the country. Our inquiries were met with a damning silence. In the end, we were accepted by a single student festival, mostly a showcase of the work made at the local art school Michael had attended. The Great Newt War hadn’t been made by students and thus didn’t fit the festival criteria, but Michael’s friendship with the organizers bought us an exception. We should’ve seen this as a bad sign and a reason to despair, but Michael and I blamed the competitiveness of the industry.
As we awaited the festival, I cleaned the Fairchild place once a week and avoided our landlords at all costs. I stole food from their fridge, cake leftovers and sodas. I was soon to part with my serfdom and felt justified in these small acts of revenge.
We were to attend the film festival premiere in October. I planned to dress down—a pair of jeans, a white shirt, and a leather jacket, the uniform of an actress going casually about her day. Michael was insisting on wearing his three-piece suit again. I thought this might bring bad luck, so the night before the screening, I poked a few small, jagged holes in the jacket and blamed moths for the destruction. The suit could be easily fixed, but there were no fixes for a jinx.
I saw our film for the second time. This time my vision wasn’t blurred. Something was off. The images on the screen didn’t quite match the effort and emotional investment we had deployed. I figured I was just being overly critical and nervous, but I watched through the film with my jaw clenched, attempting not to squirm and cringe at the occasional chuckles in the auditorium in response to the story’s most serious moments. A few of the audience members left the theater halfway through the film. At the end we received no applause.
I sought comfort in Michael, but he had none to offer. Despite his outward professions of confidence in the film, in truth, the many rejections from festivals had taken their toll. He hadn’t been his normal, talkative self for weeks. He’d stopped writing and begun to work longer and longer hours at the restaurant. I had attributed this to the stress of expectations about the upcoming screening and left him alone. He had always been the dreamer of our bunch, but now I seemed to carry our collective vision of grandeur on my own.
We walked outside the festival theater unrecognized, ignored. I went to the restroom to scream into my purse. Upon my return, I caught up with Michael speaking to the festival organizer. As soon as he saw me, he said we had to go; he was mute in answer to my questions as we hurried to the car. At home, he shut himself in the bedroom and asked for space.
The morning following the festival, I threw up. Nerves, I would soon learn, weren’t the cause.
The review of our film in the local newspaper came out two days later.
Ambition and passion cannot be denied in this strange film, based loosely on a literary work of the famous science-fiction writer and inventor of the word robot, Karel Čapek. But the inconsistency of its writing and the technical inadequacy of the filmmakers make it an uncomfortable, occasionally laughable, bloated disappointment. The film strives to be at once a thrilling period piece, a dark dystopia, and a philosophical soap opera about the nature of love, but the writing shows that its creators can barely handle a single subject, let alone three. Though there are a few moments that elevate the film, scenes that might even be unforgettable, it is hard to pass over the atrocious performance by the unconvincing, creepy salamander puppet, the uneven, overly theatrical performance by the lead actress, and the sloppy work of the director, who seems to have no natural feeling for the language of visual media. If this were a student film, we would foresee some hope for its makers. But as it has been revealed to us that the film wasn’t made by young students, we can only recommend it to those interested in studying absolute failure.
BY NOVEMBER, A month after our film premiered, a change was under way in my home country. On International Students’ Day, a week after the Berlin Wall fell, riot police attacked peaceful protesters in Prague, an act of violence that became the inciting incident for the Velvet Revolution. Following a mass uprising of citizens, the one-party Communist rule, which had brutalized Czechoslovakia for more than forty years, collapsed in less than two weeks.
Meanwhile in America, I found myself living in the back seat of our Buick. It occurred to me just how little attention I had paid to the car before it became our home. The seats were plush and reminded me of the underground jazz lounge in Prague where I had once been considered a dissident VIP guest. The ceiling of the Buick had three knife holes in it, courtesy of the previous owner. I slept in the back, and Michael took the reclined driver’s seat. When I woke up, the holes were the first thing I saw. I would sit up slowly and massage my neck, then crawl out of the back seat on all fours. As the Buick had only two doors, I had to lean the front seat forward and fall through the small space until my palms touched the concrete and I rolled fully onto the pavement. To avoid the cops, Michael and I squatted in beach parking lots and used the public bathrooms for our morning business. Inside a desolate toilet stall, I’d start my day throwing up, then brush my teeth, wash my armpits, and put on deodorant, half a swipe, to make it last.
How had this state of affairs come to be? Three weeks after our film premiered at the festival, Mrs. Fairchild invited Michael and me in for a talk. Curious about why her house didn’t seem quite so sterile and clean anymore, she had installed a few hidden cameras. She’d captured me standing around idly during cleaning hours, taking food from her fridge, and spending much of my time reading, watching television, or taking a dip in the pool. She fired me immediately, and we were given three days to vacate the premises. Without a lease or contract, we had no choice but to comply. Michael begged Mrs. Fairchild to let us leave our furniture behind until we found a new place, but she shrugged and said it wasn’t her problem.
“I’m pregnant,” I said.
Michael grabbed my wrist. His eyes were wide and instantly red-rimmed and he looked as if the worst tragedy possible had struck him.
“Please,” I added.
Faced with the vulnerability of my confession, Mrs. Fairchild agreed to let us leave our things behind for a few weeks. It wasn’t the best way to share the news with Michael, I knew. I still had no idea how I felt about it. The timing was devastating. Things were imploding and I felt my old apathy return. Perhaps it was unfair, but I was furious at Michael and his idol Ronald Reagan. Between the two of them, my lover and the president, they had convinced me that the world was ripe for the taking, that with some dreaming and some effort I could be anyone. I had become complicit in a lie. I had abandoned my practicality, my ability to see through kitsch, my refusal to simplify the act of living. And with this newfound idealism, I had once again become trapped and vulnerable to the whims of others.
As we packed our possessions into boxes that had once stored bananas, Michael spoke to me only to discuss the items we needed with us in the car. Some precious jewelry, a pocket radio, clothes and toiletries, and books, though we refused to take any of Čapek’s work. Our curse. When we were nearly done, Michael explained that he didn’t have the money for an apartment security deposit, and he couldn’t afford even a cheap motel until his next paycheck, which was eleven days away. Since he had become a shift manager and lost his daily cash tips, the paycheck was our only hope. Meanwhile, we weren’t close enough with our friends to ask for a room in any of their homes. Derek no longer took our calls following the failure of the film, a lost investment that meant nothing to his wealth but much to his ego. I still had the money in my hair-dye box, plenty enough to buy us a motel stay until we figured out the next step, but I no longer thought of Michael and me as partners. We had failed together. We had entered into a delusion together. I had bought into his Hollywood dream, and now my investment was lost. He’d made me believe, and when reality punished us, he had little to give but silence. I didn’t reveal my secret cash fund, as I wasn’t about to risk being robbed of my escape hatch. Most likely I’d soon have to purchase a plane ticket home.
Michael was angry, of course—I had gotten us kicked out of our guesthouse—but why did it fall on me to scrub shit and piss to keep a roof over us? He was angry because I’d told him about the pregnancy for the first time in front of Mrs. Fairchild, but I had every right to organize my thoughts before I told anyone else. And he was angry because I didn’t have much to say about our situation. The blame for our silence fell on both of us.
Four days into our car squatting, I spat toothpaste in the sink of a public restroom and washed my face. Despite the impending winter, the temperatures remained in the mid-eighties, and I found myself in a permanent state of fatigue and migraines after sleeping inside the hot car. Whatever appetite the pregnancy sparked was killed by heat sickness. This was fine, as we couldn’t afford much food anyway. We had seven days to go until his paycheck, Michael told me that morning before he walked to work. The Ritz was only half a mile from our squat in the beach lot, and Michael stopped at an air-conditioned Friendly’s nearby to wash his armpits and groin and put on his dress shirt and vest in the bathroom. He had to keep up the ruse of being middle class, since visible poverty was against the Ritz employee guidelines.
He left the car with me so I could go to the doctor in case of an emergency, look for jobs, and get the occasional relief of air-conditioning, though we were careful not to overuse it because our gas budget was a small step above nonexistent. But I didn’t spend my days looking for jobs; instead, I took this time to make a decision. I had begun this American mission with absolute devotion to myself and myself only. I had accrued money and learned English and lived a life that was enjoyable and my own. Now all of this was gone, save for the bit of money I had left. I parked at a Denny’s and drank coffee, and the visions of the future that I had imagined after the film premiere dissolved.
On the eighth day of our vagrancy, three days before Michael would get his paycheck to pay for a Motel 6 at the edge of town, he returned from work in a great mood. It was as if he’d simply decided he wasn’t angry with me anymore. He insisted we walk on the beach in the dark, and I went along. He held my hand and I let him.
For the first time since the premiere, Michael spoke about the film. He said that after the review he’d considered tying cinder blocks around his ankles and jumping into the sea. I flinched, ran my fingertips along his neck and kissed his cheek, all the while wondering whether the pondering of suicide was manufactured to blackmail me into some show of emotion. Michael told me that he’d learned a couple of new facts about the world. He realized that he was capable of complete, absolute failure. Few people accept this fact, he said—everyone knows failure to some degree, most of us learn to accept it early on as part of the natural order, but such a complete, massive, all-encompassing feeling of failure was beyond comprehension until experienced. Growing up immersed in films, studying screenplays when other kids were playing outside, Michael had thought that his dedication and passion must inevitably result in genius, which would reveal itself sooner or later. He had felt that success was owed to him simply for making a spirited effort. But clearly this wasn’t going to happen. He wasn’t strong enough for the devastation that came with thwarted ambition. If he made another film, put another extension of himself out into the world, and failed again, he couldn’t keep living. This was how he knew he wasn’t made for Hollywood greatness.
Michael also understood that society abhorred those who failed. It was the most natural thing in the world, to fail, and yet seeing people do so disgusted us. It sparked the most extreme reaction possible. We worshipped the statistical minority, those who bit off more than they could chew and succeeded, while we passionately hated those who tried to fulfill their wildest ambitions and failed, which was the far likelier version of life, the truth unembellished. Michael knew this about others because he felt it within himself. His own failure disgusted him. For weeks he had felt he had no right to exist in the world.
He told me he had been dying to know what I’d been thinking, how I was affected, but he wasn’t quite sure how to ask.
I remained silent.
Michael was happy to keep talking. He had no idea how much I would have preferred silence, just to enjoy the sound of crashing waves and contemplate whether to stay or run.
He told me that he knew what to do now. We would rent an affordable apartment and have our child. He’d get a second job, start saving up, request a loan from the bank. By the time our child went to preschool, we’d be the owners of a new family restaurant. Tourism in Florida would never dissipate; if anything it would only grow, and tourists had to eat. Betting on the lowest common denominator made humble men rich. His words.
I became angry again. Disappointed. It was the same mantra repackaged, that old story of rebirth. You must wish hard and work harder. He’d abandoned the vision of endless wealth as a Hollywood magnate to settle for the aspiration of the comfortable middle-class family running a safe business. He’d probably gotten the idea inside the Friendly’s bathroom. It was so wholesome and so reasonable that behind Michael’s voice, there in the darkness of the beach, I imagined Reagan’s floating head delivering the decision. In my situation, living out of a car, knocked up, I wasn’t in the mood for more bootstrap slogans designed to artificially uphold the mood of the desperate. And desperate we were, albeit in different ways.
I told Michael it sounded wonderful. A family restaurant to pass on to our children, to give them a good start in life. I pushed him onto the sand and straddled him and took his clothes off, saying my goodbyes, though he didn’t know it. Afterward, we washed the sand off our bodies in the ocean and returned to the car, and I waited for him to fall asleep, for those peaceful exhales, and I lay with my eyes open, planning my escape for the next day. Michael made no attempt to touch me as he usually did, whispered no sweet nonsense as he fell asleep. Perhaps he felt he’d talked his way out of his failures, and he no longer needed to beg for forgiveness. I know I should’ve told him there was nothing to forgive. Our failures were shared.
When Michael left for work the next morning, I kissed him and held him for a long time. After he left, I vomited, though not because of my pregnancy. The guilt of freeing myself had made me sick. In a way I could finally understand my old boyfriend Ondráš and how his desire for liberty had trumped his decency. In each person’s life, there came a time to cut one’s losses and run. The ache of it was like a fever, a flu, the sore limbs and the lethargy. I drove to buy a new suitcase and went to the Fairchilds’ guesthouse to pack the clothes I’d left behind. I made a phone call to Jirka, the plumber who had helped bring me to America and with whom I had kept up a periodic correspondence. In the chaos already being wrought by the coming Velvet Winter, he was turning his thieving and smuggling into a lucrative full-time job. It was strange to hear his voice across this time and distance after so much had happened.
Jirka recognized me right away. “There’s a goddamn revolution going on here, if you aren’t aware,” he said. I could hear the tram bells in the background. The sounds of home.
I acknowledged that I knew and was happy our people were breaking the totalitarian stalemate. I had a few personal problems, I admitted, that prevented me from thinking as deeply about politics as I once had. I’d dedicated my youth to the very ideas that had sparked this revolution and now I felt it had nothing to do with me.
“No, sure, come back,” Jirka said. “We’ll take care of you. I’m making a fortune selling cigarettes. Revolution is a great time for business.”
“You were born for the open market,” I said.
“Write down this address,” he said.
I drove to a tailor’s shop in downtown Tampa and walked to the back room. An old woman with a shaved head was already waiting for me in a den that smelled strongly of mint. I handed her an envelope with fifteen hundred dollars. She sucked on a lozenge as she got to work on my new passport. I was no longer the sister of Leszek the convict but a Czech journalist émigré in Chicago returning to her motherland to observe and record its resurrection. The bald-headed counterfeiter put the proof of my new identity inside a crisp white envelope, and my years in the States were erased. As soon as I crossed the Czechoslovakian border, I could finally resume my official identity of Adéla.
With the fake passport, I drove to a travel agency, where I booked a flight home. I brought Michael’s Buick back to the beach parking lot, where he would expect to find it after his shift. On the driver’s seat I left a note describing the ways in which I had decided to break his heart. Letting him know I wasn’t fit for the capriciousness of American life. How lonely it was to hope for so much and never get it. I assured him that I had loved him, but I had long ago learned to leave things behind. Moreover, it was okay to leave things behind. I didn’t know if I would keep the child or not, but I knew I didn’t want to give birth and forever bind my daughter or son to a land of strangers. I didn’t want to have a family with him, I confessed. I needed to escape from the life I’d lived here.
I didn’t have to be so honest with Michael, of course. But I wanted to ensure I wouldn’t be followed. This way, I could count on his pain and rage to blind him. He’d never want to see me again. I needed to be sure I could disappear successfully, without him launching some misguided search.
From a beach pay phone, I called a cab. The sadness over leaving Michael was overpowered by the prospect of reuniting with my parents in that same living room where I had grown up running laps around my father sitting and reading the newspapers. I hoped desperately it might still smell of my mother’s beloved Turkish coffee. I was even willing to eat a thick slice of bread slathered in lard, a peace offering to my father.
I waited inside the Buick, slumped low in the passenger’s seat. Since I had left, seven years earlier, my father had gone blind in one eye and fought through surgeries to save his other one. My mother hobbled on a cane while she recovered from a knee replacement. I had sent money to help, but my mother assured me they were saving the cash underneath the mattress in my room to help me reacclimate when I finally wandered back home. I’d always gotten mad at her for saying this, but now I had to be grateful. Had my parents’ hair turned white? Had they started to shrink, to lose some of their strength? Did they quietly resent me for not being around to lend a hand?
Here I was, coming back not to help them but to ask for their help, again. To help me return to normalcy, overcome a tragedy of my own making. Comfort. There comes a point when a person must stop drawing it from nostalgia and the desire to return to some simpler time. There are no simple times. I was a backward runner, sprinting away from troubled futures and retreating into reassuring pasts. I began to second-guess my decision. The note to Michael lay on the driver’s seat like a ticking bomb. The air-freshener tree trembled below the rearview mirror even though there was no movement to cause it. It used to be green but had turned piss yellow, it used to smell of pine but now smelled of the stink it had soaked up inside the car: cigarette smoke and hamburger grease and cologne.
My taxi arrived. In the few brief seconds it took to leave Michael’s car, I changed my mind a thousand times, stay and go, stay and go. I knew I would never again inhale his scent, feel him close. Every lovers’ parting brings its own unique taste of agony.
I would think of the Buick’s scent while reading Michael’s letter in the winter of 2021, more than thirty years later. Somehow, he had found my address in Hluboká. From his quarantined hospital bed, ravaged by the virus, he said he had finally forgiven me. My vanishing had led him to leave Florida for Boston, where he married the daughter of a McDonald’s franchise owner and became its manager. Eventually he had taken over the franchise, lived a prosperous life, had two sons who’d grown up to be lawyers.
Reagan’s dream, just less sexy, he quipped. I am near death, and I write to you because we share grief. Grief over the life we could’ve had. I have stayed angry with you for decades, out of reflex, though I can barely remember what you look like, and I have no photographs left to reference. It makes no sense. Whoever you are now, I love you, just as I loved the woman with whom I shared an impossible adventure. My sons are trying to track down our film through archives and dealers of old reels, and I hope that it can be the last thing I watch before the time comes…
I kept the letter hidden under my mattress. I could never read it again, but I needed to know it was still there. The last, the only piece I had left of Michael. The proof of his forgiveness. The kindest thing anyone had ever done for me.
THE RED-EYE FLIGHT to Prague was filled with tourists and journalists curious to see how the Continent was faring through its world-altering political changes. At one point, we could see the sunrise on the right side of the plane, and many passengers from the left side got up and leaned over the seats on the right side to look out the window. I imagined the plane becoming unbalanced because of the vacated left side, spiraling out of control and crashing into the ocean, ending once and for all my efforts to find a place and a life. But I arrived safely in Prague, so exhausted and so unsure of what had transpired in the past twenty-four hours that I just stood outside the terminal, waiting. I felt strange at hearing my birth language all around me.
I decided I didn’t want to get in touch with my parents yet. Instead, I left the airport in a taxi called for me by the airline clerk (“Where are you visiting from?” she had asked me in English after hearing my Czech) to meet with Jirka, who was operating from a newly opened pawnshop. All was taken care of, he assured me.
I exchanged my dollars for crowns and rented a studio in Háje, on the outskirts of Prague. I bought a pullout couch and a TV. For the first two months I immersed myself in Czech movies and books, old favorites and many of the new works I’d missed. Hearing my native language come out of the magic box felt strange at first, as I’d gotten used to English, with its rolled r’s and sharp s’s and the w’s sounding like the beginning of a wolf’s howl. We Czechs seemed to speak with such propriety and grace, it was almost comical.
In the streets, I expected to see the remnants of a revolution—the evidence of battle, battalions of civilian warriors singing of their victories, the facade of the city changing right in front of my eyes. Something. But around Háje, this settlement housing mostly working families, not much seemed to have changed. Old men and women strolled with their webbed bags to buy fresh rolls and milk for lunch; children climbed on the barren trees; the statues of two spacemen, the Czech Vladimír Remek and the Russian Aleksei Gubarev, smiled jubilantly with proper Soviet pride, watching over the citizenry and the subway station named in their honor: Kosmonautů. Uncertain about what the fall of Communism meant, people settled for following their routines until the nation could collectively reach some clarity.
I had missed out on the revolution I was once ready to sacrifice my life for. I never saw the armed policemen lining up against the protesters, never witnessed the violence of the front lines and the chain resignations of party functionaries. When I left the country, any hopes for a revolution seemed misplaced. The state had broken me, made me believe that the world would always be divided by this struggle between capitalist West and Communist East, that the nuclear standoff would forever guarantee the stability of the Russian and American empires and that no one else would come to the aid of republics caught in the middle of the cockfight. By the time I died, I would come to know that empires can vanish as quickly as they are built; they can also be recycled, like crumpled plastic bottles.
But it was easy to forget about my remorse over missing the revolution when a new life pushed against my insides. I gladly submitted to cravings and invested my dwindling funds in pickled eggs, mashed potatoes, sauerkraut (which I ate directly from the jar), and, my favorite, French fries smothered in a combination of ketchup and mayonnaise.
The fate of the fetus, I soon learned, would be my decision. The abortion commissions (wherein a group of male functionaries interrogated the mother and pressed her for “legitimate” reasons to abort her pregnancy—humiliation by bureaucracy) had been disbanded. I could abort my pregnancy without judgment from strangers. But faced with the choice, I decided that the option Jirka had proposed seemed the best one. A Danish couple was prepared to take the child as their own in exchange for money, which I needed to survive. The Danes were eager to help our people, the “other” Europeans attempting to free themselves and join the West, and though they initially wanted a child from our orphanages, they felt even more drawn to helping a newborn and her struggling mother. I had no doubt that I wanted to give the child away. Had Jirka not suggested this method of handling things, I would’ve gotten the abortion soon after I landed. But this way, everyone involved would get what they needed. I wouldn’t have to return to my parents penniless.
During those final months before Tereza arrived, I stayed around Háje, going outside only on short walks for groceries and books. I avoided Čapek, but I read everything else I could find from Czech writers, especially poets, their brief vignettes of time and sensation, something I craved. The farthest I ventured outside my apartment was to the hospital for my prenatal appointments.
Occasionally a well-meaning but nosy passerby asked me how many months I had left or whether I was excited to bring a child into the new republic. Once, an old man asked if I realized my duty to the country was to raise a moral, anti-Communist child.
“Were you with the secret police?” I asked him.
The man took a step back, let out a shocked exhale. “I’m no traitor,” he said.
“You interrogate women on the street,” I said.
He never spoke to me again.
I stayed hidden in my neighborhood on the outskirts of the city because I dreaded running into old Prague friends, especially those who knew my parents. To make Jirka’s plan work, I had to stay anonymous until the end. I resolved not to talk to Babi for the remainder of the pregnancy, as I was afraid I might break and reveal that I was back in the country. She would worry, perhaps tell my father, who would mobilize the entire village to find me. For now, I could trust only Jirka and lie low until our plan had come to its conclusion and I’d been paid.
My water broke in the middle of the night. I walked outside the apartment building to call a cab from the pay phone, but the night bus was just passing through. I got on and rode two stations to the hospital. There I declared Jirka the father and asked the nurse to call him. After eight hours—excruciating, searing, exhausting hours—Tereza was born. I held her but refused to look her in the eye, as this seemed to be cruel to both of us. When the doctors and nurses left, Jirka told me that the Holms, the Danish couple adopting her, had already arrived in Prague. They could be at the hospital within the hour. I agreed.
The woman who would become Tereza’s mother smelled of lotion and powder. The man had thick hairy forearms, the kind I always associated with fathers. The couple took turns holding Tereza, introducing themselves as if she could understand them, and I was reassured. She could be theirs. As if I had never been here.
They asked how I was feeling, and I told them I was in pain and happy to know them. I asked if they’d mind calling the baby Tereza, my favorite name.
“It’s perfect,” the mother said.
We left the hospital a couple of days later, and Tereza’s new parents put her in a carrier and strapped her into the back seat of their rented car. They were headed to their hotel, accompanied by Jirka, to carry out the rest of the plan and take Tereza out of the country. I didn’t say goodbye to any of them. I waved and started walking in the direction of the bus station, but the pain was so severe I had to sit down and let Jirka call me a taxi.
To fill the silence, he assured me that he would take care of the bureaucrats, pay off the right people, get the proper documents so that Tereza could travel back to Copenhagen with her parents and become a Dane. The child would be happy, he promised, and I needed to let myself heal and see my parents.
I didn’t want to know how much the Danes had paid Jirka. I took my cut and let him keep the rest. For a moment, I wanted to beg him to come back to the apartment with me, keep me company. I was terrified of being alone. But the baby needed his help, so I waved at him from the cab, mouthed the words Thank you a few times.
Decades later, Jirka would go on trial for racketeering and eventually die from testicular cancer while in custody. I would outlast him. Such is fate. As the cab pulled away from the hospital, I suspected that I would never see Jirka again. Within a year of Tereza’s adoption, her new mother wrote to tell me that the Holm family had moved from Denmark to the United States for work—it was as if my daughter couldn’t avoid the destiny of becoming American.
AFTER GIVING UP Tereza, I needed to celebrate my ability to drink again. Back in my apartment, I began a days-long binge, killing one bottle of gin after another, soaking the couch with it, watching television with the shades drawn, never quite knowing whether it was night or day. Unable to sleep, I entered a state of panicked, immobile stupor. I could hear the neighbors shouting in the apartment above mine, smell the stink of my own unwashed body sticking to the couch cushions, and see the trails of ants making their way to the layers of crumbs on the coffee table, but I possessed no will to participate in my own life.
As I tried to kill myself bit by bit with alcohol, the rest of my body nevertheless continued to improve. My postpartum bladder infection and swollen, clogged milk ducts began to heal, though not as quickly as I’d hoped. My recovery made me guilty about my refusal to engage with the world. I could hear the words of my mother: You are too young to be sad. As if anyone in her right mind could believe youth was a deterrent to tragedy.
Wanting to break through the haze, I got up and packed my clothes and a bottle of gin in the same suitcase that had accompanied me to America and back again. I walked outside, surprised to find myself in the middle of a sunny afternoon, and took the subway to the bus station, where I stumbled to the ticket window and asked for a ticket to Hluboká. The man behind the window hesitated, surveilling the state of my being—hair and face unwashed for days, a coat pulled over the sweatpants I’d been sleeping in, eyes red and swollen—but as soon as I produced the wad of cash, he printed my ticket and wished me safe travels.
My hands trembled as I waited at the station. In the bathroom, I drank more gin. I had to keep myself steady for just a while longer. The shakes worsened on the bus, and I drank more, making no attempt to hide it. I felt the direct stares of elderly men, guardians of old-world morals. My seatmate buried her nose in her shoulder and slept leaning against the window, as far away from me as possible.
The same girl woke me up later. I didn’t know how or when I had blacked out. One moment I was looking out the window as we left Prague’s city limits behind and the next my seatmate was shaking my arm and telling me I had screamed in my sleep. We were driving past the Hluboká cemetery, past the pub, past the house chimneys releasing soot into the sky. I was home.
I kept blacking out for microseconds as I walked down the main street. Then, without knowing how, I found myself on my knees, my suitcase flat on the ground. I got up, walked a few more steps, fell again. By the time I reached the house, my knees were rubbed bloody and there was no more gin and the shakes had returned. I thought this was it, delirium tremens would be the end of me. I wasn’t an alcoholic, the hex didn’t live in the blood of my kin, and yet I was going to die from the poison right at my family’s doorstep. I knocked and knocked again, collapsed against the door. Nobody came; only the cats responded with their muffled meows, and I was sure they were singing me to sleep, the final sleep, until I heard familiar voices speaking my language.
I looked up to see my mother and father standing at the open door, clad in their Sunday best, and I thought, Have they started going to church? Found religion? Or maybe a wedding? Or is today the anniversary of the founding of the village? Such mystery, that my parents would be so finely dressed just as I arrived. I considered that perhaps they had the gift of premonition and had dressed up for my funeral, anticipating that their only daughter would return from America in a box. They held me and brought me inside, and the last thing I felt before I blacked out again for the entire day and night was warm water running over my skin.
My mother caressed my hair in the bath as the cats rubbed against her legs and purred. “You’re home now,” she said. “You’re home now and you are never leaving again.”
WITHIN A FEW months of returning home, I had healed from my infections and regained my color and, with it, some appetite for living. Every Saturday night I put on a red dress and the perfume my mother had given me and took the bus to a pub dance in the neighboring county. I kept to three drinks, never four, and with closed eyes, I danced and imagined I was back at the beach drinking alcohol bought by rich men I would never have to see again. The village bachelors and widowers watched from their benches, their faces masked by smoke, their eyes swollen and red, engaged in a creepy gaze I never returned. The men waited until they were so drunk that spiderwebs of blue and green veins formed on their noses and only then did they join in on the dance floor. By the time they gathered the courage to add words to their glances, I was heading for the cab that always idled by the pub.
But on a late-fall night that marked the last dance of the season—no one would come out here during winter—the devil emerged, sober, from a cloud of sulfur and interrupted the men’s game of quiet stalking. He was lean, meaning he hadn’t gotten into the habit of nightly beer drinking, and his face was clean-shaven, suspicious in the village. He had city-boy mannerisms. Yet for a man so obviously out of place, he moved with confidence.
He asked if he could join me in dancing.
I said I danced alone.
That was a relief, he replied, because he didn’t know how to dance anyway, and I had spared him the humiliation.
He disappeared back into the cigarette smoke as the other men laughed at him, a pretty boy striking out like the rest of them.
“The devil himself is putting down roots in the county,” my mother had once said. In our myths and legends, the devil often chose a pub to solicit his victims. This always made sense to me—if the devil was out hunting for souls, why not first approach the institution for drunkards, where he could easily find at least a few men who would gladly trade their souls for wealth, a younger liver, or a plate of sausages? I watched the newcomer to see if he was whispering in the ears of men, making his offers. But he sipped his whiskey from a shot glass and quietly observed me, the other women who preferred to dance alone, and the few swaying couples in the midst of a mating ritual.
I stayed late that night rather than making my typical escape to the taxi. The drunken men stood up and approached the single women. An old man with sausage breath asked the name of my village. I slipped around him and headed to the bar to join the intriguing stranger.
“Hello again,” we said to each other. He asked what I was drinking. I called him the devil, and he told me he was on holiday from signing people up for eternal damnation. His real job, it turned out, was quite the opposite—he worked in insurance. If people were headed for hellfire, at least their families would be provided for.
He knew when to speak and when to be quiet and let the moment carry itself. He smelled of aftershave, which I imagined him rubbing along his jawline before he came here.
I had spent the past few months of my life guarded by my parents, who had policed my drinking and forced me to eat and constantly asked me to sleep more, to relax, to watch some television. Always they had some idea of how I could feel better even though they didn’t know what caused my pain. Eventually, I told my mother about Tereza’s birth, because I knew she could understand and forgive. But my father could never handle the idea of a granddaughter raised by strangers. To him, family was the only thing worth committing to. An otherwise agnostic man, he considered betraying blood to be the only unforgivable sin.
Living again under my father’s oppressive code, I was susceptible to temptation outside the house. I was bound to make a mistake. Indeed, I gave in to the lure of this devilish stranger. We climbed into his car and drove just outside the village, into the pitch-black woods, and I showed him where to put his hands on me as if I were a teenager, sneaking away. It was exhilarating.
For one last time, I entrusted my life to a man. Six months later, I moved into Šimon’s house, thirty kilometers south of Hluboká. The sex was the best we’d both had, to the point of becoming toxic. We needed to fuck everywhere, all the time, regardless of whether we liked each other at the moment. I mistook passion for trust. After I told him where to touch me once, he needed no further advice, and those nights before the pregnancy I felt like we were really animals. There was nothing but blood and skin and taste. We stayed wrapped in each other for five, six hours at a time. It’s difficult not to mistake such chemistry for a sign that you’ve found something unbreakable.
I was pregnant again within three months of moving in. Then Šimon’s sober cruelty began. He was angry with me for everything. The house was never clean enough, so I handed Šimon a broom and he broke it in half. Daily he complained that I didn’t cook his meals, a gift plenty of lesser men received from their girlfriends and wives. I bought a week’s worth of canned pork and beans and posted reheating instructions above the stove. Šimon put the cans in a plastic bag and threw them into a lake. He made sarcastic remarks about my pregnancy weight and often stayed out drinking until the morning. I had done it again, trusted someone without proper cause. Despite all my denials, my mother said that I was grieving my lost daughter and that having another child was a way to cope. The father, she insisted, was only an afterthought.
Our child was born—six pounds, three ounces—and during the first few months of Roman’s life, things were better at home. Šimon and I ignored each other and focused on the child’s needs. Roman didn’t cling to his father, though; he was agitated by Šimon’s touch.
One night—I can see in retrospect that Šimon was orchestrating the whole thing to smooth his exit—he told me that I was the devil. He claimed I was heartless, that I had never felt anything for him, that relationships were a matter of procedure for me. He had been lashing out, he said, because he felt this coldness from me. And from the child, he added. His own son seemed to hate him because he had learned it from his mother. The she-devil and the son-devil, Šimon repeated as he lit a cigarette.
I put Roman in his crib. Then, with punches and kicks, I chased Šimon and his cigarette out of the house. Locked the doors and windows. “No devils here,” I told little Roman as I took him with me into the bed and cooed him to sleep. “There are no devils, but there is your father, and I will not let him ruin you.”
The next morning, I packed a few things for myself and my son (I had become an expert at emergency packing by then) and took the train back to my parents, convinced this time that the last remnants of trust in romance had been exorcised from my body. I felt good about it. I had put faith in things outside myself and lost my way. Now I would trust only in the things that came from within me—my son, my family, the achievements ahead. There was still so much life ahead of me, so much to see and know.
BUT THAT’S ENOUGH of longing for the naïveté of the past. I will return now to the final voyage of my body, its transatlantic crossing to reach home. I had come alive in a time of despair and rebellion. I had lived well, loved well, betrayed well, failed well. In all my triumphs and in all my faults, no one—not a cosmic force, not a god, not my children saving my remains—could ever accuse me of letting life pass me by, of capitulating, of giving in once I’d been broken. Perhaps America and I had this in common, and for this reason we couldn’t resist each other. There is something to be admired about a person or a country of endless beginnings.
Or perhaps what I had in common with America was really the susceptibility to believe in my own exceptionalism. Perhaps we enabled each other. Perhaps my retelling of this story enables us even more. The difference is, I’m dead. My actions no longer have any bearing on the world. I am unable to face consequences, and I do not have to worry about survival. America does not share this good fortune. At least for a little while longer, America will remain alive, victim to every one of its carefully crafted stories and delusions. It will continue to spread its influence in the world, along with the other countries still playing at empire, and bring us to the edge of extinction.
It is a fool’s errand, to feel an indestructible kinship with a country that doesn’t want you. But as it turns out, even well into my death, I remain a fool.