“Take it easy, Květuš. When Josef comes home, he can repaint. You can do it together if you want.” At which her mother, as usual, broke down in tears. Why her mother was crying over painting the apartment, Alice truly could not conceive.
Her uncle Antonín also brought pills that her mother sometimes took, which made her calmer, but still, every now and then, for instance when they were standing in line at the bakery, all of a sudden tears would start rolling down her mother’s face, and when Alice tugged on her sleeve either her mother refused to talk or she would just say the bakery didn’t have such and such a dessert, like Sacher torte, which her daddy loved. Everything connected with her father was sad, so slowly but surely Alice stopped loving him, because every time she remembered him her mother cried and it wasn’t really clear at all why. The apartment was tidied, the windows washed, flowers replanted, her mother even checked Alice’s toys at least four times. It had gotten to be too much to take, so Alice spent as much time as she could at her friend Tereza’s. Her mother left her over there sometimes, since Tereza’s grandfather was also in prison, though a different one than her dad. There was a picture of him in their living room: a big powerful man with a big belly, a large mustache, and a gaze that pierced to the bone. He had one hand tucked in the pocket of his waistcoat with a watch chain hanging out of it, and Tereza’s grandmother always said he was a good man and didn’t deserve it. Alice didn’t believe her, though, since in the photograph he looked really strict and unfriendly. And besides, his belly was so big and looked just as strict as his mustache and his implacable gaze.
On Tuesday, Tereza went over to Alice’s in the afternoon so they could do homework together. The past few weeks Alice’s mother had been buying all sorts of things they’d never had at home before: lipsticks, combs, compacts, even a few little bottles of perfume. Alice and Tereza tried them all. They had permission from Alice’s mother, though they were instructed to be very careful with everything, as it cost a lot of money. When the doorbell rang, they were sure it was going to be their neighbor Mrs. Poláčková, either asking to borrow flour, eggs, milk, yeast, or something else, or asking for the flour, eggs, milk, yeast, or something else to be returned. The two girls looked at each other and grinned.
“Poláčková?” Tereza said.
Alice grinned again. “I don’t suppose you have any yeast, sweetie?” she said, then went to answer the door. She looked out the peephole but didn’t see anyone. It wasn’t Poláčková then. Poláčková always stood so you could see her through the peephole. Alice turned and went back to Tereza.
“Who was it?” asked Tereza.
“Nobody,” said Alice. “There’s nobody there, and if there’s nobody there, we can’t open the door for them.”
After a moment, the doorbell rang again. The two girls got up and went to the door to look.
“Somebody’s there,” said Tereza. “Take a look.” Alice looked and saw a man standing with his back to the door, holding a bag in his hand. The girls looked at each other again and Alice opened the door to find her father standing there. She recognized it was him right away because there were photos of him all over their apartment, most of all in her mother’s room. But he was much, much skinnier than in the photographs.
“Hello, Alice,” he said.
Alice stood holding the door handle. “Hello, sir.”
“I’m your daddy, Alice,” the man said.
“I know, sir,” said Alice.
“May I come in?” her father asked.
“Yes, Mr. Daddy,” Alice said, glancing uncertainly at Tereza. Tereza stood in the corner of the entryway, silently taking it all in. Alice’s father stepped into the entryway and saw her. “You must be Tereza, right?”
“Yes, sir,” answered Tereza. Then after a moment’s hesitation she asked: “Are you Alice’s daddy?”
“Yes, I am,” he said.
“OK,” said Tereza. The man closed the door behind him, bent over, picked Alice up in his arms, and lifted her to the ceiling. Alice didn’t know what to do, but whenever Uncle Antonín, Aunt Šárka, or Uncle Bedřich picked her up like that, she would wrap her arms around their neck. So now she did the same. The man began to laugh, which Alice liked, but he was also making her face wet, which she didn’t like so much, since she and Tereza had just been trying on a new, glorious-smelling pink face powder. She pulled away, trying to sneak a look at him as he held her high above the ground. After a while he set her back down, pulled a large handkerchief from his pocket, and blew his nose. That got Alice’s attention, since neither she nor her mother ever used a handkerchief that big. She knew there were others like it ironed, folded, and stacked in her mother’s closet, with the rest of her father’s things. Those handkerchiefs were reserved for use on scraped knees or fingers cut while chopping onions or carrots; you didn’t blow your nose in them. Afterward they went in with the dirty laundry, to be boiled, ironed, and folded in stacks in the closet in her mother’s room. Alice turned and ran off to her mother’s room. She opened the closet, took two huge, freshly ironed handkerchiefs from the stack, still smelling of detergent, returned with them to her father in the entryway, and deposited them in his hand. Her father gave them a quick glance, no longer smiling, then all of a sudden he stared Alice straight in the eye so hard it made her shudder. If she had been eating, she was sure she would have choked. The look in his eyes was so stern, she didn’t even dare breathe. She decided later she’d have to talk it over with Tereza. After all, he shouldn’t look at her like that, such an odd, stern look, when she hadn’t done anything. Then the man raised his eyes from her, looked around the entryway, and ran his hands through her hair. Alice knew grown-ups did that when they wanted to be nice to a child and didn’t know what to say. Meanwhile Tereza put on her shoes, bowed to her father, told Alice good-bye, and went home. She didn’t know exactly why but she felt superfluous.
Alice’s father went into the kitchen, opened the cupboard, took out a large earthenware mug from the second row that nobody else ever used, and unerringly reached for the shelf where the big can of coffee was stored. He knows his way around, Alice thought. My dad. He knows his way around here. At home, here in my kitchen.
She had been so excited, so scared, so angry at him, and now she had no idea what to do with this big, tall man. So she just stood there, looking up at him, him looking down at her — he was a lot taller than her mom — until it got a little uncomfortable and started to make her dizzy.