Page 29 - WTP Vol. X #2

from the beatings, his own filth. Everything was
wet, freezing. They turned you into an animal, Vik- tor told Rafe and his father, on that night when he’d spoken of all this. You must imagine the hatred one must have—the disconnection from God—to do this to other human beings. After the nineteen days, he’d said, chuckling a little sadly at the absurdity of his captivity, I couldn’t do anything with my arms and my bones were cracking.
“How did this go again?” Isa asked now. “How did he get out of here? Somebody realized he was telling the truth?”
Rafe explained: it was complicated. There was a de- fense lawyer who didn’t do much good, but some authority finally thought Viktor was innocent. “Your fate depended on the political mood of the moment,” Rafe told her. “It could change from day to day. By the time they let him go he’d lost sixty pounds.”
“He escaped right away then? Went to America?”
“To Germany first,” Rafe said. “In 1950. Then Korea. Viktor fought in the Battle of Samichon River in 1953. It was anything he could do, he used to tell us, to beat the communists. When he came to the US
he had some Czech friends who lived in Chicago. He worked as a draftsman at the engineering firm in Dockett. He made a family.”
Afterward they walked back to the metro. In a subway car again, as they slipped beneath the city, Isa held Rafe’s right hand in both of her own. When she noticed the slight tremor there, she squeezed more tightly.
~
Rafe and Zdenek are driving, Christmas Eve, winter dusk falling. The sun is a last bright line on the hori- zon. A pink moon is high above the plains, snow still coming through the air. Zdenek has showered and changed: he wears a sport coat, a blue turtleneck, clean khakis. He is talking about the night of the stroke, the hospital. He wrote to us on a pad of paper in the ER. He asked if the doctors and technicians were
interrogators. Dad and I realized the terror he was in, how brave he was being about all of it. After that we made sure we went with him into every test, and we always let the doctors know what was going on. We kept talking to him, so he would constantly hear our voices near him.
Rafe switches on the lights of the Jetta. They turn down the old road and the trees are so close it is like an early midnight. He’s a brave guy, our Viktor, Rafe says.
Blue spruce and oak, Christmas lights, house-win- dows flickering through those boughs. The branches grow wildly over the road, making a cave for the cousins to drive through. The Jetta’s headlights stab over the street. Rafe thinks of nurses moving about Viktor efficiently in the intensive care unit, doc- tors’ faces surrounding him; Viktor’s face behind
an oxygen mask. Then he can’t think of the hospital anymore and he conjures up an image of his grand- father, younger, walking at the edge of the forest, pointing out the different birds—late summer, some wind blowing. And he imagines his Isa, meeting his family for the first time: she will arrive at O’Hare in two days. Rafe will see her through the crowd at the gate—he will go forward and embrace her in the chaos, the bustle, of the American holidays.
Rafe and Zdenek are quiet now. At the end of this road, at the end of this tunnel of trees, the family is gathering: Rafe’s father and mother and his sister will already be there. Cars will be parked on the side of the street and in the blue stone drive. Inside Viktor and Tereza’s home there will be the smells of wine and roast beef and ham and carrots and potatoes, people telling Tereza what a beautiful table, the white linen, so many candles. Viktor will insist on standing, greeting everyone in the foyer as they come in. Ahoj, taking their coats. His blue eyes will be warm and welcoming. Tereza will ask Rafe and Zdenek what took them so long, where have they been? They will admit to running out of gas—this will bring on hearty laughter; Viktor will be clapping their shoulders, say- ing My boys. At the start of dinner, at the head of the table, Viktor will fold his hands tightly and bow his head and say Heavenly Father we thank you—and the voices of the family will join in, Amen. There will be no need, during the dinner conversation to follow— or ever—for Rafe and Zdenek to tell the rest of what happened today, this story of the Christmas thieves.
Hurka attended the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and has published his fiction in numerous literary quarterlies. His memoir, Fields of Light:
A Son Remembers His Heroic Father, was a winner of the Pushcart Editors’ Book Award. He teaches writing at Tufts University, and lives in southern New Hampshire.
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