Mornstajnová Hana

1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-1-913640-00-2
Verlag: Parthian Books
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 350 Seiten

It's 1954 and nine-year-old Mira's life is about to change forever. After a typhoid outbreak rages through her town, robbing her of her parents and siblings, the orphaned child is forced to live with her mysterious, depressive Aunt Hana, a figure both frightening and fragile. Gradually, Mira uncovers the secrets of their troubled family history and begins to understand why her aunt is so incapable of trusting herself and the world around her. Deftly weaving two separate timelines, the harrowing reasons behind Hana's reclusive way of life, the guilt she wears as palpably as a cloak, and the tattoo on her wrist, are revealed to Mira.

Alena Morn?tajnová is a teacher of English and translator and author of five successful novels. Rights for her latest novel Hana have been sold to thirteen countries: United Kingdom, Austria, Italy, Poland, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Slovenia, Hungary, Croatia, Slovakia, Latvia, Syria and Greece.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Mornstajnová, Alena

Weitere Mitwirkende

Sherwood, Julia

Sherwood, Peter

Leseproben

Chapter One

February 1954

I’ve never understood why grown-ups tell children that it pays to be obedient. If I’d been a model daughter, my name would now be carved on a gravestone alongside those of my mother’s parents – Grandma Elsa and Grandpa Ervin who died long before I was born. Or of Grandma Ludmila and Grandpa Mojmír, at whose grave my mother and I used to light candles in brown tubs at the far end of the cemetery.

On Sunday afternoons, if the weather was nice, my schoolfriends would go for a walk in the park or take a stroll around town with their families, while my mum would make Dagmar, Otto and me put on our Sunday best and push us out into the street outside the dark watchmaker’s shop which used to be ours but where my father was, by then, only allowed to work for a pitiful salary and my mother could only mop the floor for no pay at all.

Every Sunday afternoon, after washing the dishes, Mum would put on her black hat, plonk Otto in his pram or, when he was a little older, grab him by the hand and head with us to the cemetery. It seemed miles away. First we had to pass the church, reach the river and cross the bridge, then walk through all of the lower town, which for some mysterious reason is known as Krásno, before trudging past the enormous castle park to where the houses ended, go through the cemetery gate and wait while Mum swept the gravestones clean, arranged the flowers in the vases and lit candles. As she worked, she talked to the dead, sharing with them the latest gossip from Mezirící: who had been born, who had died, what rumours were going around, how the neighbours were doing and what mischief we, the children, had got up to again.

I never dared say anything, just sighed deeply to make Mum realise how the waiting annoyed me but even that was enough to prompt a reproach: ‘Stop making that face. If it wasn’t for them, you wouldn’t be here today.’

After further names were added to the gravestones, including my Mum’s, I often thought back on how she would stand by the graves every Sunday talking to her loved ones. It was comforting to know that she was now with those she had been missing so much.

The only reason my name is not among those inscribed on the gravestone in gold lettering is because it sometimes pays to be cheeky and disobedient. If you don’t agree, you might as well stop reading right now. And don’t let your children get hold of this book either, just to be on the safe side.

The winter of the year I turned nine and my entire life was turned upside down was frosty and fairy tale white but by February we had all had enough. Only in the last days of the month did it turn slightly warmer at last, with the snow starting to melt and the ice beginning to break up.

There are stretches of the river separating Mezirící from Krásno where the current seems to drag along modestly and sluggishly rather than rushing down to merge with bigger rivers, and since the snow on the nearby mountains was melting only very gradually, it didn’t make the river flow much faster and the water level barely rose. The conditions seemed perfect for a short ride on the ice floes that had come loose.

That February of 1954, as evil was already lurking deep in the town’s underbelly, every day after school we ran straight to the river and impatiently checked if the ice was beginning to break up and if the current was strong enough for us to jump onto a passing floe, ride it for a few metres and enjoy the great adventure about which the sixth-formers, twins Eda and Marek Zednícek, raved to us in every school break. During a similarly freezing winter a few years ago they had first-hand experience of riding on a floe.

Eventually, after a few days, the ice cracked, the middle of the river broke free and ice floes started slowly floating downstream. This was the moment we had prayed and meticulously planned for.

I stood in the kitchen doorway, holding my bobbly red hat in one hand and gloves in the other.

‘What’s got into you?’ Mum asked in surprise when I asked if I could go sledding with Jarmilka. The kitchen was warm and cosy, filled with the lovely smell of the tartlets my mother was baking for her birthday party. ‘The snow has started to melt, you’ll get all soaked.’

I reached for the baking sheet to take a tart but flinched as it was still hot. ‘Yes, exactly! This may be our last ride this winter.’

Mum eyed me suspiciously. ‘Mira, don’t even think of going to the river.’

The fact that Mum had guessed what I was up to with Jarmilka Stejskalová and the Zednícek boys made me wonder if, before she grew up to be so extremely cautious, she too might have enjoyed riding on ice floes. But she wouldn’t allow me to do so many things, just to keep me out of harm’s way.

I wasn’t allowed to go up to the attic, because I might trip on some junk or fall out of the window. I wasn’t allowed to go down to the cellar, because I might slip and fall down the stairs. I wasn’t allowed to go out onto the balcony because I might fall through the dilapidated floor onto the paved courtyard. And when you hear the words ‘you mustn’t do this and mustn’t do that’ all the time, it’s no wonder that you stop taking them seriously.

‘Of course not, Jarmilka and I are just going to the hill behind the Zedníceks’ garden,’ I said, sneaking a tart into my pocket, hot as it was.

My mum was very pretty and when she hugged me, she gave off a warmth that was like a stove with the lovely smell of vanilla sugar. But at that moment her huge brown eyes, which always seemed so sad I was afraid to look into them, were fixed on me with such suspicion that they seemed to read my innermost thoughts.

‘Jarmilka is waiting for me outside,’ I said, buttoning up my coat, tying the laces of my warm ankle boots and pushing my hat deep down my forehead.

Mum handed me another tart. ‘Take one for Jarmilka as well.’

I dashed out of the door, grabbed Jarmilka’s sled by its strap and headed for the Square. I could feel Mum’s eyes burning my back.

‘Bye-bye, Mrs Karásková,’ Jarmilka shouted, ‘and thanks.’ Tossing her long blonde plait, which I had always been jealous of because all the boys in our form used to tug at it with admiration, she shot my mum an innocent smile and bit into the tart.

At the end of the street I turned left.

‘Where are you going?’ asked Jarmilka, yanking the strap to stop me. ‘We don’t want to go around the whole town.’

‘But I don’t want my mum to see me heading for the river.’

‘Oh, come on, she can’t see around corners!’

I looked around. A curtain moved in the first-floor window of a house with peeling paint. Maybe I was just imagining it but perhaps it was old Mrs Benešová keeping watch so she did not miss anything that went on in the Square. I quickened my pace. ‘You never know. We might run into someone and then we’ll be in trouble.’

‘And you’ll have to have peas for your supper,’ laughed Jarmilka, scurrying after me in resignation.

She was right. I hated peas and Mum knew it too, so whenever I talked back or had been up to some mischief, she made me eat peas for lunch and supper. I would sit at the table with the rest of the family watching them enjoy potato pancakes with home-made jam or some other treat, while I forced down my peas. I pulled a face and said: ‘That’s not as bad as when my dad unbuckles his belt.’ Something I also had to put up with every now and then, certainly more often than my younger sister and brother. And today’s exploits would definitely qualify for the belt, I had no doubt about that.

My brown boots were soaked through even before we reached the river, and my gloves weren’t thick enough to stop the cold from creeping under my fingernails. The Zednícek boys were already waiting for us on the riverbank under the whitewashed church with its wood-tiled roof. They scurried up and down in the mushy snow with long sticks trying to separate the floes that had drifted towards the bank. As soon as a floe slid into the river, the current would catch it and carry it, slowly at first but gradually faster and faster, towards a low weir some fifty metres away where an accumulation of broken-up ice would block it from going any further.

Courage suddenly deserted me. Jarmilka must have felt the same because she sat down on the sled and said: ‘I’ll just sit here and watch.’

‘Scaredy-cat,’ Eda Zednícek shouted contemptuously. I realised that courage, if not beauty, might be a way for me to get the better of Jarmilka. The boys might pull at her plait but I was the one who they would point to for years to come, telling their younger schoolfriends: ‘That’s the girl who rode down the river on an ice floe.’

I watched...