—
KLAUDIE had nineteen years behind her and who knew how many ahead; her eyes sparkled and did not see. Sometimes she used a cane, sometimes not, depending on her own confidence and the pace of the crowd around her. In Ostrava she didn’t use her cane at all. That autumn she went around Dorni?ka’s pantry lifting lids and opening cupboard doors: “What is that delicious smell? I want a slice right now!” Al?běta and Dorni?ka served up portions of everything that was available, tasting as they went along, but Klaudie sniffed each plate and dismissed its contents. Then she went and stood under Dorni?ka’s ash tree and drew such deep and voluptuous breaths that Dorni?ka began to have the kind of misgivings one doesn’t put into words.
“Come, Klaudie,” she called. “I need your help with something.”
The project Dorni?ka invented wasn’t especially time-consuming, but it was better than nothing. Klaudie took up a power drill and Dorni?ka a handsaw and ruler and they made a small, simple but sturdy wooden chest, and when they had finished Al?běta fetched out her own bag of tools and fitted the wooden chest with a lock—“Free of charge, free of charge, and I hope it holds your treasures for you for years to come, dear Dorni?ka,” she said, giving her godmother a big kiss before turning in for the night. Even though the locked chest was empty Dorni?ka slept with her fingers wrapped around the key that fit its lock; that hand made a fist over her stomach.
—
DORNI?KA was one of twelve caterers who made meals for the town’s coal miners. Al?běta and Klaudie helped her deliver her carloads of appetizing nutrition; they were well-beloved at the mine and there was much laughter and chatter as they stacked lunchboxes on the break room counter for later. Several fathers had Klaudie in mind for a daughter-in-law and sang their sons’ praises, but most of the others warned her against chaining herself to a local: “Travel the world if you can, Klaudie—go over and under and in between, and if there happens to be a man or three on the way, that’s well and good, but afterward just leave him where you found him!”
Klaudie listened to both sides; these were people who felt the movement of the earth far better than she, and when she visited Dorni?ka she thought of them often as they moved miles beneath her feet. Tremors that merely rumbled through her soles broke the miners’ bodies. They knew risk, and when they encouraged her in one direction or another they had already looked ahead and taken many of her possible losses into account. There was one among them who kept his mouth shut around her, as he was a coarse young man who didn’t want to say the wrong thing. When Klaudie spoke to him he answered “Eh,” and “Mmm,” with unmistakable nervousness, and she liked him the best. Dorni?ka favored candlelight over electric light, and as Klaudie went about Dorni?ka’s living room lighting candles in the evening the wavering passage of light across her eyelids felt just like the silence of that boy at the coal mine. Dorni?ka invited the boy to dinner but the invitation agitated him and he refused it. Al?běta, whose snobbery was actually outrageous, said that the boy knew some things just aren’t meant to be.
“. . . . OR these things just happen in their own time,” Dorni?ka told her, partly to annoy her and partly because it was true.
—
ALL SOULS’ DAY came and the three women went to the churchyard where so many who shared their family names were buried. They tidied the autumn leaves into garland-like arrangements around the graves, had friendly little chats with each family member, focusing on each one’s known areas of interest, and all in all it was a comfortable afternoon. There was a little sadness, but no feelings of desolation on either side, as far as the women could tell, anyway. In a private moment with Tadeá?, Dorni?ka told him about the “wolf” that had punched her and the lump that had grown and been buried, and she told him about Klaudie going on and on about a delicious smell and then suddenly shutting up about the smell, and she told him she’d found telltale signs of interrupted digging beneath her ash tree.
Tadeá?’s disapproval came through to her quite clearly: You shouldn’t have promised that creature anything.
But she couldn’t regret her promise when it had been a choice between that or the “wolf” waiting for the next one.
But how are you going to keep this promise, my Dorni?ka?