The Empty Spaces of Prague

Chapter 3

            A man got out; I think he was a lieutenant.  He and Zdenka started arguing, and from what I could tell he wanted her car to be moved.  She apparently said she couldn’t do it.  She pointed to me.  I heard the word “American”.  They went to the front of the car, popped the hood, and both looked under it onto the engine.  Considering I had heard better tractors running than this car, I wondered what kind of an engine it was.  It sounded like it belonged to a lawnmower.  The lieutenant yelled to the man driving the jeep, and he called in to someone on his walkie-talkie.

            While the spectacle in front of me was unfolding, a troop of young men ran out.  They didn’t appear to have guns, but passed me and stopped just short of the car.  The lieutenant gave them an order.  One of the men hopped in the car and the other ones began to push it.  It didn’t appear to take much effort; it looked like it was made out of paper.  Zdenka looked at me, shrugged as if nothing could be done, and said, “I must call my cousin so he can collect us.”  With that, she followed the young men into the compound, and I was apparently expected to follow.

We were led to a small guard building.  I was shown to a wooden seat, Zdenka to the phone.  A clock that looked like it was from World War II ticked on the wall, against the rhythm of the manual typewriter that a corporal was using to type the report about our arrival and car (I knew this because he went out to the car to get the license plate number.) I was apparently a curiosity; the soldiers brought me a cup of coffee and then basically watched me to see how I drank it.  They spoke to each other, laughed, jabbed at each other and then went back to staring at me.  It was hard not to think they were talking about me, and the only thing I could do was smile.  They smiled back in goofy, still young boy grins.

What seemed like hours later, a man in a pickup truck pulled into the compound.   It was already starting to get dark.  The pickup truck was like nothing I had seen before:  I honestly believe it was a 1943 Ford pickup with the wooden slat sides.  He looked at me, looked at my bags, and then called his cousin Zdenka to come outside.  After much debate, it was decided that Zdenka would ride in the front with her cousin and I would ride in the bed of the truck with my bags, so I could keep an eye on them. 

I tried to mentally get a handle on this.  Here I was, in a new country, a country that I didn’t speak the language, in a skirt and a pastel shirt, and I was expected to ride in the bed of a half-century old pickup truck with no seat belt and nothing between me and the road except wooden sides.  From what I could tell, it was a truck that was used to transport vegetables, some sort of beet; I think a sugar beet, because I saw one in the corner of the truck.

When I asked if this was right, Zdenka nodded, and I reluctantly, incredulously got in.  It seemed I had limited options.

We seemed to be riding further and further from the lights of Prague, and I wondered for the first time if I had made the right decision.  Doubt finally wrapped its cold fingers around my idealist heart.  I didn’t know these people, I didn’t know this culture, and they sure as hell weren’t going to treat me like family, or livestock, until I proved myself.  I thought that perhaps I was in for a very long year, 

It reminded me of a story that Mother used to tell me about the first year she and Daddy were married.  Daddy was from Maryland, Mother from Jersey City, but they met one summer in Rehoboth Beach, while Daddy was eating soft shell crabs.  It was, apparently, his favorite, or at least that’s what Mother thought.  So after they were married, for Daddy’s birthday, Mother decided to cook him soft shell crabs, but had no idea where to begin.  She asked a teacher at her school, who told Mother to go to a shop on the docks of Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, and they would give her beautiful, plump, soft shell Crabs. Then she needed to dip them in egg, then breadcrumbs, and fry them in melted butter.