That’s all for today, sis. Ahoj, George.
18. LOVE LETTER IN CUNEIFORM
Jiří came home from work to find the old, restored display case in the living room, the window wide open, and several official forms on the sideboard in the kitchen. It wasn’t until he went to his room and took off one of his shoes that he heard Alice sobbing on the other side of the wall. He put his shoe back on and went out into the entryway. But Alice knew the sounds of her nest better than her thoughtful relative, and before he had made up his mind whether to knock or not, she opened the door to her room, her face dried, swollen, and makeup-free, in a black skirt with her hair pulled tightly back from her forehead. Jiří learned from her that Josef had died. But before she closed the door to her room behind her again, so she could devote herself to her grief in peace, she told him his dinner was on the stove, all he had to do was strike a match and reheat it. The Slavic insistence on regular meals surprised Jiří. There were times he even found it moving. Not that he always liked the food placed in front of him, but there was something touching about the emphasis on maintaining regular eating habits.
Earlier, when Květa came home with Alice, the sound of the door slamming had woken Aunt Anna. She opened her eyes. A slight quiver ran through her as she sat in the chair, and as Alice and Květa entered the room, she looked them over alertly, and said in a weary voice, edged with anger: “All right, girls, tell me who died.” Instead of answering, Květa just swallowed her tears, and Alice nodded a few times, then said:
“Daddy, Aunt Anna. My daddy.”
“Good God,” said Aunt Anna. “But you’re all so young compared to me.” She sighed and slowly began unrolling the blankets she was wrapped in, then even more slowly rose from her chair. Alice and Květa rushed toward her as they realized she was planning to stand.
“Sit, auntie, please,” said Květa, choking slightly on her words. “Just sit right there and don’t try to go anywhere.”
“But, girls,” Aunt Anna said, “today it’s my turn to wait on you.”
“Please, you’ll fall,” said Alice.
“All right,” said her aunt. “Then I’ll just sit down at the table and you two can tell me all about how it happened.”
Instead of describing the final moments of Josef’s life, their tenderhearted recollections blasted off like a rocket of overlapping and unfolding memories, then soared across the expanse of years and watershed moments like a light biplane. Květa sobbing, Alice swallowing her tears, each of them with both hands clutching one of Aunt Anna’s wrinkled, shriveled, mottled hands.
The next day the two women left for Lhotka, where Kryštof and Libuše had begun preparations for the funeral. After a few awkward moments, they agreed that Josef would have his funeral in Prague but be buried in Lhotka. Libuše stayed out of the nerve-racking debate, interrupted every other minute by a loud swallowing of tears. Květa and Alice wanted Josef in a cemetery in Prague, whereas Kryštof favored Lhotka. Eventually they reached an agreement, although she couldn’t fail to notice Kryštof quietly repeating to himself: “Compromise, dirty compromise.” The reason for the visit to Lhotka was that Květa wanted to pick out some nice clothes for Josef to wear in the coffin. It wasn’t until they got to Lhotka that she realized he was wearing his best clothes in Prague. Before they left, Alice and Květa took a few trinkets from Josef’s room to remember him by. The next morning Kryštof went up to the attic, where the wrapping paper and boxes for Christmas gifts were stored. He picked out the nicest box, brushed off the dust, and carried it down to Josef’s room. There he took a few phonograph records that he remembered from their covers as being his grandfather’s favorites, put them in the box, closed it up, and took it back to his room. That evening, when Libuše came home from work, she lifted the lid off the festive box, looked inside, and saw it was full of old records. She asked Kryštof about it, and he said they were his grandfather’s favorites.
“He always used to look through them, even when he couldn’t hear them with his ears anymore,” he said.
“Are you going to listen to them?” she asked.
“No, I’m not into music, but this way at least I’ll have a piece of Grandpa nearby,” he said.
In Lhotka, Kryštof gave his grandfather’s address book to his mother, and Alice began the preparations for the funeral. Květa helped her out here and there, and for the first time in her life she was forced to realize that her strength was diminishing. It was all she could do to have the obituary printed. The printer’s was located on a street in the hospital district, near Karlovo Náměstí, that was home to several health care facilities. As Květa entered the office, a man in a beige sweater came out of the next room to greet her, introducing himself and inviting her to have a seat. Květa sat down and the man placed two huge folders on the table in front of her stuffed with quotations and sample layouts of funeral announcements. Palm leaves, ferns, roses, hyacinths, several crowns of thorns and more or less stylized crosses, the variety of symbols seemed endless. It made Květa’s head spin.