What Is Not Yours Is Not Yours(58)
Al?běta was more concerned about Klaudie’s fondness for the goose. “She might not let us kill it,” she said. “And you know I like my goose meat, Dorni?ka!”
“It’s all right, it’s all right,” Dorni?ka said. “Trust me, that goose’s days are numbered.”
She caught Klaudie in her bedroom again and almost fought with her.
“For the last time, Klaudie, what are you doing in here?”
Klaudie fluttered her eyelashes and murmured something about scraps. Any scraps for the goose, Dorni?ka . . . ?
That gave Dorni?ka an idea.
Again, let’s not dress anything up in finery, let’s speak of things as they are: While Klaudie and Al?běta were sleeping, Dorni?ka fed her lump to the goose. The flesh was gobbled up without hesitation and then the goose began to run around the garden in circles, around and around. This was dizzying to watch, so Dorni?ka didn’t watch. She dropped the key inside the empty chest and poured herself a celebratory shot of slivovice. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
—
THE NEXT DAY Klaudie was bold enough to bring the empty chest to Dorni?ka and ask what had been in it.
“Kids don’t need to know. Please feed the goose again, Klaudie.”
But Klaudie didn’t want to. She said the goose had changed. “She doesn’t honk at all anymore, and she seems aware,” she said.
“Aware?”
Dorni?ka went to see for herself; she took a bucket of waterfowl feed out to the back garden.
The goose appeared to have almost doubled in size overnight.
Her eyes were bigger too.
She looked at Dorni?ka as if she was about to call her by name.
Dorni?ka threw the bucket on the ground and walked back into the house very quickly.
“See what I mean?” Klaudie said.
—
IT WAS THE EVE of St. Martin’s Day, November 10th. The first snow of the winter was close by. Dorni?ka abandoned reason for a few moments, just the amount of time required to switch on her laptop and order another red cape. Child-sized this time. Express delivery. When it arrived she left it in the back garden with the waterfowl feed and said prayerfully: “What will be will be.”
—
SHE LEFT THE BACK door open that night, and when the St. Martin’s Day goose came up the stairs and into her bedroom, she wasn’t taken by surprise, not even when she saw that the goose was wearing the red cape and had Dorni?ka’s car keys in her beak.
“Thank you, goose,” she said. “I appreciate you.”
She drove the goose to the foot of Mount Radho?t’ and watched her waddle away up the mountain path, a bead of scarlet ascending into ash.
Thank you, goose. I appreciate you.
Al?běta the goose-meat lover didn’t even complain that much in the morning. She just glared at Klaudie and told her to forget about choosing the Christmas carp.
freddy barrandov checks . . . in?
As I was saying, I’m an inadequate son. I didn’t really notice this until I reached the age my father had been when he was imprisoned for repairing the broken faces of clock towers without authorization. He’d incurred the wrath of those who require certain things not to work at all. That’s what the broken clock towers had been designated as: remembrances of a civil war that stopped time at various locations scattered across my father’s country. Fixing the mechanisms seemed political, though it was impossible to agree on the exact meaning of the gesture. When my dad saw his first splintered clockface he just thought it was a proud and beautiful work that, if restored, would take the mortal sting out of being told how late you are, or how long you’ve been waiting, or how much longer you’ll have to wait.
—
MY MOTHER affirms life in her own way: She did some of her most thorough affirmation on behalf of a government-sponsored literary award that posed as a prize sponsored by a company that made typewriters. One year the writer chosen to win the award declined without giving a reason and asked that her name not be mentioned in connection with the award at all. Unfazed, my mother congratulated the next best writer on his win, but was almost laughed off the phone line: “It’s sweet of you to try this, but everybody knows my book isn’t that good,” he said. He named another writer and suggested the prize go to her, but the recommended writer didn’t fancy it either. There had to be a winner, so my mother went through all the shortlisted writers but it was “Thanks but no thanks” and “Oh but I couldn’t possibly” all round, so she went back to the originally selected winner and made some threats that caused the woman to reconsider and humbly accept her prize.
Even though all went on as before, Mum’s developed a sort of prejudice against writers; there are behaviors she now calls “writerly,” but I think she actually means uncooperative. Anyway, my mother agreed with my father about the clockfaces they saw; she wanted to organize the ruin away. So the newlyweds had worked at this project together, though he never allowed anybody to even suggest that she’d been involved, taking all the blame (and speculation, and, in some quarters, esteem) onto his own shoulders. In court my father pleaded that he’d thought he was demonstrating good citizenship by providing a public service free of charge, but was asked why he’d provided this public service anonymously and at dead of night . . . why work under those conditions if you believe that what you’re doing is above reproach? And then all he could say was, Right, I see. When you put it like that it looks bad.