“My great-grandfather built the house with his factory wages before the industrial revolution,” Grandpa says. “This is a lie with a bureaucrat’s stamp on it.” He restlessly taps his finger on the pistol handle. A tic I have never seen, as my grandfather is not a nervous man. He wipes his sweaty palms on his shirt.
“And doesn’t that get us right to the heart of the problem, Mr. Procházka? It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that your great-grandfather dug the basement with his own bare hands, that the sun burned his forehead as he coated the roof. The document in your hand states that the house was stolen from me and given to you as reward for your son’s work. So the state declares. You have two weeks to leave and hand the property over to its legal owner.”
Grandpa reaches into his front pocket and pulls out a pack of cigarettes. As he lights one up, Shoe Man reaches for the thermos in front of him and pours a tall glass of milk.
“Sure, you can smoke in here,” Shoe Man says. “No problem. Would you care for some milk? Jakub? It is still warm, fresh out of the udder.”
For the first time in two weeks, I do not feel the pain of my wound. I feel no physical sensation whatsoever aside from the difficulty of breathing. How can we do it so effortlessly all day and all night? Five short breaths, one long. Three long, a dozen short. I count, tap my finger on my knee, and try to synchronize with Grandpa’s tapping, focus all my brainpower on easing myself back into the classic inhale, exhale, one, two, but I am no longer the master of my own lungs.
“Don’t talk to him,” Grandpa whispers through clenched teeth, and I’m not sure whether he’s telling me or Shoe Man. He rises and steps forward, and Shoe Man holds his snarling dog back by the neck skin.
“I’ve thought of this moment for years,” Shoe Man says. “First, of course, when I did my time, four years in political prison. The food was salt and mush out of a can, Spam on Sundays, with hard rye bread and bleached water. My cellmate jacked off while he watched me sleep. He said that in the dark my jawline reminded him of his wife. He was some artist who’d painted genitalia into Brezhnev’s eyebrows. This is where I decided I would come looking for your son someday. The Party moved my mother and father out of the apartment where they’d spent most of their lives, put them into one of those cramped studios with the other exiled families of political prisoners. When they found out we were of Hungarian heritage, they even considered putting them on a train to Budapest. They took most of our furniture and cut my parents’ retirement. I can only be thankful I didn’t have children—imagine what the Party would have done to them. Or to a wife. My life was taken from me by electrical currents and a signature on a statement of condemnation, Mr. Procházka. My family was banished so that yours could flourish. Now, I am the one with friends. I’m on the winning side.”
The struggle to breathe leaves my throat hoarse. I crave Shoe Man’s milk, but I can’t accept it. Not ever. Grandpa lights a second cigarette while Shoe Man finishes his glass. I admire his resistance to lactose.
“You sent them to hurt Jakub,” Grandpa says. “Is that part of settling accounts? Hurting little boys?”
“I’m not little.”
“I deeply regret what happened to Jakub,” Shoe Man says. “I’ve never been a proponent of using violence to achieve my goals, and I certainly never encouraged anyone to act against you. I’ve heard that the culprits were captured and punished?”
“Captured and let go,” my grandfather sneers. “Jakub’s word against theirs, they said. He must have tripped and fallen on the burning stick himself, they said. I wonder how Mládek’s tractor-driving father managed to afford a fancy Prague lawyer.”
“The other boy was from Prague, was he not? Listen, Mr. Procházka, I haven’t been sleeping much. I don’t want you to think I take it lightly—my being here, posing a threat for you. The reason I haven’t been sleeping is that I’ve wanted so badly to know what it is I want from you. What kind of reparations you can offer. It was after the attack on Jakub that I finally figured it out. Do you believe in fate? I don’t. But sometimes my education and my books and my sense of chaos are overthrown by the pure force of coincidences we are handed. My punishment for you will also be your salvation. Banishment. You sell off some furniture, move somewhere far from here, where you can be anonymous, let Jakub grow up without the weight of your son’s achievements. No one can hurt him anymore, he will not be a victim to the anger that has caused him harm. For now, it’s the safest option. And your only one.”
I wonder if the dog will bite me if I try to pet it. What is its name? In silence, Grandpa smokes a third cigarette, then crushes the empty packet under his foot. Finger upon the trigger.
The anger burning in my chest is not directed at Shoe Man, but at my father. My father should be the one sitting here, chain-smoking and losing his birth house. I want to apologize to the stranger. Kick him. Beg for the house my grandfather has held together for a lifetime, attacking the summer mouse infestations with cats and poison, filling the cracks in the walls with concrete so that ice won’t fill them and bust them apart. How many pigs have soaked the dirt with their blood, how many flowers have bloomed and withered in the garden under our watch?
“This is the acceptable reparation,” Shoe Man says. “I want the house. I want you out. I can’t get my justice from your son, but I will get something. Give it to me peacefully. Be dignified in your defeat.”
Grandpa weighs the pistol in his hand. The dog raises its head to its master. There are no clocks in the room, I notice, no ticking, no rhythm—a perfect stillness.
“You will leave us alone if we go?” Grandpa says.
“Sure.”
“Not good enough. I can fight this in court.”
“On your retirement? Don’t you realize I can get a judge to say no before you even file? You will be carried out of that house if you don’t vacate.”
“I could shoot you through the lungs.” Grandpa grips the pistol handle. I remember the pistol’s lead ball crushing through the pig’s insides, that instant flow of blood mixing with the soil. Would a human shot with an old pistol bleed the same?
“You could. You will lose the home all the same. Jakub here can visit you in prison on Sundays.”
Grandpa sits back down and rubs the root of his nose.
“What will happen to the house if I give it to you?”
“I’ll renovate it. Rent it to some nice Prague folks. A museum of our relationship, a gravestone to mutual injustices. Tell you what. I’ll even send you a cut of the rent, so you don’t fall on hard times. A peace offering. This is not about money.”
Grandpa stands up again. The dog lets out a baritone growl, and Shoe Man puts a hand on its head to calm it. The dog would kill me without hesitation, I realize, rip out my throat and chew it like a tennis ball. So be it. I will die by my grandfather’s side.
“Let’s go,” Grandpa tells me.
I reach out a hand, and he takes it, pulls me to my feet. I lean on his shoulder to stop myself from falling.
“I trust you will vacate within the time specified in the letter.”