Before (19 page)

III

ELEVEN

Who:
Mother

What:
the day after Heydrich died—coming home with birthday material from
a
kova's

Where:
Lidice, home

When:
June 1942

Jana is grateful this morning to bump into Lidice with Petr
Jaro
,
her brother-in-law, to wake in his
koda
car, her canvas satchel on the seat beside her. Petr nods and smiles a little as she comes out of an anxious sleep. She was shopping for fabric in Prague yesterday with her sister, Sophie (the blue print material for Helena's birthday dress is in the satchel now, from
a
kova's
on Bethlehem Square, and Jana can finally go to work on it), then visiting the relatives, delivering the small paintings by Helena and Jiri. At the old homestead in
Plze
last night, where Sophie and Petr now live, there was the news on the radio of Heydrich's death. A terror had run quickly through Jana; she'd said,
I must get to my family.
But, of course, travel in darkness—with headlights—was completely out of the question.
All will be well,
Petr had said, trying to reassure her,
if we make no motion to attract the beasts.
So Jana lay awake much of the night, in her childhood room, full of worry for her family.

Here are the familiar walls and tight buildings, the hardware store where Helena is working, the post office. St. Martin's Church glances by beneath the arc of sun. Atop the roof is Emile Hojda, a silhouette against the sky, crouched to his shingles. He has volunteered to make the repairs to the roof; the church is paying only for his materials. His three sons, Jana can see, are higher up, swinging hammers. Jana imagines what Emile Hodja sees: He is very high, for St. Martin's Church is built onto a hill. There will be a patchwork of the many red-tiled roofs and stove-top chimneys, small gardens behind each house just emerging from shadows, fields of green and gold where workers are already bundling hay, and the distant tree line and
epka
fields. Emile Hodja's vision is the dream of a home she had with
Rí
a,
so many years ago in Prague; they were students at Charles University, full of plans (he would be a science teacher, and she would have a small business doing upholstery to help their income, as she'd done with her mother). On and on Jana and
Rí
a
had talked, their shadows slipping before them over Prague cobblestones.

They drive by the bus station—two Nazi soldiers sit in the shade there, crutches on the bench beside them; one is missing a leg. The other has the Lidice paper in his hands: Jana makes out the name
Heydrich
in the headline, a brief image of the SS general's thin, strange face. It took him seven days to die after the Resistance threw a grenade at his car, suffering he certainly deserved after the thousands he murdered in Czechoslovakia. But now the Nazis will be even more vicious, and there will be no more visiting of relatives, no going to Prague, for a long time to come. A fear is in her for her relatives, for her sister and happy, unshaven Petr—here he is, physically, beside her, talking and shifting gears, and with only a slight turn of events he might be gone; such is life now with these rulers.

The
koda
motors up Andĕlu and Petr drops Jana at her front door, apologizing that he cannot come in: He will be late for his shift at the
koda
factory and it is too dangerous now to raise any alarms. She says of course, kisses his rough cheeks, hugs him, takes her satchel. She waves as her brother-in-law swings in a circle and goes back down the hill.