The Twelve Little Cakes Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  one - THE LITTLE DELIGHT

  two - THE ROOF

  three - THE LITTLE COFFIN

  four - THE SWAN

  five - THE LITTLE COGNAC PEAK

  six - THE PUNCHER

  seven - THE LITTLE INDIAN

  eight - THE LITTLE BANANA

  nine - THE LITTLE YOLK WREATH

  ten - THE CHOCOLATE HORSESHOE

  eleven - THE HEDGEHOG

  twelve - THE LITTLE TUBE

  ADDITIONAL

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Praise for Dominika Dery’s remembrance of her Prague childhood: The Twelve Little Cakes

  “The public world is rotten with lies and suspicion, but the sweet and feisty child who dances through this memoir is a truthteller—in Communist Czechoslovakia she’s always getting into trouble for it. Perfectly recapturing the detailed perspective of a small person looking up at adults, Dominika Dery shows us how one loved child made magic out of a society hostile to love.”—Nuala O’Faolain

  “[A] vivid and enchanting account of . . . early childhood in Communist Czechoslovakia. Dery has a real story to tell . . . Here, at last, is a Central-European writer who can be appreciated for her talent, not just her cultural exoticism or dissident politics. The Twelve Little Cakes is a time capsule, a faithful account of a lost world. Put aside the narrative, and what you get is a crisp documentary about everyday life in a one-party state. In this wise and disarmingly honest book, she also offers us glimpses of the humor and humanity that flourished in a world where all that people had—absent political rights or popular entertainment—was ‘each other, and plenty of love in our hearts’ . . . In Dery’s accounting, which rarely veers toward nostalgia, the joy of small things is what life under Communism was all about: the secret rebellion of baking a cake from a recipe handed down from one’s aristocratic grandmother; the triumph of making it to the front of the line at the market for live carp at Christmastime; the empowerment that comes from knowing that you have stolen a private moment that no spying neighbor could observe. . . . Dery may not have viewed Communism with adult eyes, but she has managed to say something about it that has eluded legions of historians.”—Newsday

  “This ramble through a childhood that remained full of pleasure and affection despite the efforts of the Communist regime is well worth taking.”—The Washington Post

  “True tales of growing up remain one of the most resonant strains of memoir and this recounting of a youth in Czechoslovakia after the failed promise of the ‘Prague Spring’ is another fine example of its resiliency. Dery, a Czech poet, grew up in difficult circumstances as the daughter of two dissidents, but her memoir, written in English, is a testament to the power of irrepressible childhood adventures, even amid a constraining atmosphere of fear and comrades.”

  —Seattle Post-Intelligencer

  “An unusual slice-of-life view of what it was like growing up in Communist Czechoslovakia in the 1970s. Even though the story is told through the eyes of Dery as a little girl, The Twelve Little Cakes gives readers a sophisticated glimpse of a happy, well-adjusted family loving each other and making the best of things while living under constant Communist oppression. [It] has much to say about attitudes. Is it better to forgive or not to forgive? Is it better to be an optimist or a pessimist? Is it worthwhile to stand up for one’s convictions even when it is dangerous? These are the themes that run throughout the course of this book, the questions that make this memoir a most unusual and interesting read.”—Rocky Mountain News

  “An accomplished poet, [Dery] extracts emotional beauty from near squalor.”—USA Today

  “In Ake: The Years of Childhood (1981), Wole Soyinka exposes the hypocrisies of colonialism in an intimate autobiography of his Nigerian youth. Czech poet and playwright Dery takes a similar approach in this spirited memoir of her childhood, beginning in 1975, on the outskirts of Prague. Demonstrating the ‘nonsense of the system’ from a child’s view, Dery recounts the cruelties of the Communist regime: her corrupt, wealthy grandparents disown her dissident parents; Dery’s father has difficulty finding work; informers are constant. But Dery portrays her exuberant young self and her devoted parents with enormous affection and a contagious, sly humor as she blends political and cultural observations into stories about universal awakenings: At four years old, she’s horrified when her parents kill a live carp for Christmas dinner. And as a preteen, she wonders if cleverness and talent matter less than a ‘nice pair of goats,’ Czech slang for breasts. The result is a warm, intelligent portrait of childhood and a smart, loving family who challenge a system that threatens ‘no money, no choice, and no chance.’”—Booklist

  “The world is an adventure for a little girl in this memoir of life in Communist Czechoslovakia. A tale that flows like good fiction.”

  —Fort Worth Star Telegram

  “This is no cynical memoir—it is a touching but clear-eyed testament to a family’s will to survive, and even thrive, through the final turbulent years of a terrible regime. . . . Be charmed by Dominika’s simple child’s love of life and her stubborn insistence on seeing the good.”

  —Library Journal (Editor’s Pick)

  “A disarmingly sweet and savvy memoir . . . Life is hard, and then you laugh—if, like this author, you are wily enough, self-possessed enough, and love the ones you’re with as they love you back.”

  —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  Copyright © 2004 by Dominika Dery

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without

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  Dery, Dominika.

  The twelve little cakes / by Dominika Dery

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-594-48139-0

  I. Dery, Dominika—Childhood and youth.

  2. Authors, Czech—20th century—Biography. I. Title.

  PG5039.14.E78Z

  891.8’6354—dc22

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  For my mother, Jana, my father, Jarda, and Barry

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would especially like to thank my agent, Theresa Park, an
d my editor and publisher in one person, Julie Grau, for their humanity and professionalism. They were my guardian angels, who helped me to overcome the most difficult times of my life. Without them, this book would not have been the same.

  one

  THE LITTLE DELIGHT

  A YEAR BEFORE I WAS BORN, I started turning up in my mother’s dreams. She would go to sleep and I would appear before her: a happy little girl in a time of great unhappiness. It was the mid-seventies and Czechoslovakia was at the mercy of the Russians. The borders had been closed, the Soviet Union had taken control of our government, and the hope of the sixties had been crushed by the Cold War. Things were so bad, in fact, that my parents had resolved not to bring another child into the world.

  And then I turned up.

  My mother remembers the first time she dreamed me. She was standing in the middle of a blossoming garden and a little girl came running through the trees.

  “Ahoj!” the girl exclaimed, which is the informal way of greeting someone in Czech. She took my mother’s hand and smiled hopefully.

  “Will you come with me?” she asked.

  “Yes,” my mother replied, and the little girl led her to a swing that hung from the branch of an apple tree.

  “Push me!” she cried.

  She climbed onto the swing and my mother began to push it. “Higher!” the girl demanded, and my mother pushed her until her feet touched the sky. The sun broke through the morning clouds and my mother’s heart was filled with happiness. When she woke up, she could still hear the little girl’s laughter. She pressed her body against my father’s back and sighed. What a beautiful dream, she thought. And then the alarm clock went off and she had to get up and catch the 7:15 train into Prague.

  My mother worked as an analyst at the State Economic Institute. She wrote books that her Communist bosses took credit for, and had to support her family on a meager wage, as my father had difficulty keeping a job. He had worked for the Czech government during the sixties, and was blacklisted by the Russians after the 1968 invasion. An engineer by trade, he would occasionally find work shoveling coal into a furnace, driving a garbage truck, or mixing concrete on a construction site, but the second his political records reached his employers, he would be fired. There was also a real threat that he might be thrown in jail, as it was forbidden to be unemployed under communism, and my mother’s biggest fear was a late-night phone call from prison.

  The first time the little girl came running through the trees, my mother thought of her own happy childhood. It wasn’t until the third or fourth dream that she suddenly understood that the girl was her daughter. Night after night, the girl would appear in the garden and lead my mother to the swing, and she would squeal with delight as the sun broke through the clouds. It had been a long time since my mother had heard such innocent laughter, and she would wake up each morning with a strong feeling that things were going to get better. She hoped until she believed, and then she believed until she knew. She would have another child, and that child would be the little girl from her dream.

  She told my father about the girl on the swing, and he eventually agreed that they would have another child. My sister, Klara, was nine at the time, and excited to learn that she would have a baby sister. Neither she nor my dad were the slightest bit fazed by my mother’s decision to give birth as the result of a dream. My mother’s dreams had a habit of coming true. She came from a long line of people who had premonitions, and the way she remembers it, the little girl was not only demanding to be born but also insisting that my parents snap out of their depression and come to terms with what had happened to their country. Life under communism was difficult but not impossible. The system was unfair but the human spirit triumphed on a daily basis, and if there was one thing my parents knew for certain in a time of great social and political upheaval, it was this: they loved each other with all their hearts. It was spring in the garden of my mother’s dreams, and the girl’s laughter took her back to the days when she and my father were unafraid. Their love was still strong, so maybe the dream was telling them that the time had come to try and live without fear. In 1974, my mother went off the Pill and tried to become pregnant. And the moment she decided to do this, the little girl vanished from her dreams.

  “She was a messenger,” my mother tells me now. “But it was definitely you. Everything was the same, especially your voice. I had to wait all those years for you to start talking, but when you did, your voice was exactly the same as I remembered it.”

  The little girl’s disappearance upset my mother very much. It was as though a light had snapped off at the end of a tunnel, and her faith was tested every month as her early attempts to get pregnant were unsuccessful. She and my dad kept an eye on the calendar, changed their diets, and made love regularly, but nothing happened. They consulted the top specialists in Prague, but it was only when she sat down with an old and wise factory worker that the answer presented itself. The factory worker had been a respected gynecologist in the forties. He had lived through the German and Russian invasions and had been reeducated by the Communists in the time of Stalin. He had seen a lot of terrible things in his life but maintained a strong belief in the basic goodness of people, and when my mother told him about the little girl in her dreams, he took her hand and smiled.

  “You want your child too badly, Jana,” he told her. “The best things in life usually come along when you least expect them. If you really want to become pregnant, my advice would be to stop trying so hard and leave it in the hands of the little god.”

  In Czech fairy tales, the little god is a benign but powerful character who turns up in times of conflict. He is depicted as a kindly old man who watches from a distance and smiles approvingly when a problem resolves itself, or sighs and shakes his head when it doesn’t. Occasionally, he will turn people into bears (if they’re wicked), but most of the time he seems content to let his subjects sort their problems out themselves. One of the nicest things about the little god is that he really does seem genuinely happy when things turn out for the best.

  My mother considered the factory worker’s advice and decided to leave my birth in the hands of the little god. From that moment on, she and my father made love for the joy of making it instead of out of desperation to conceive, and of course the moment they did, my mother became pregnant. Things were difficult as a result of my father’s struggle to keep a job, and my parents really couldn’t afford another child, but their faith was rewarded by a sudden upswing of circumstance. My father managed to get hold of a license to drive taxis, and because of the independent nature of the taxi companies at the time, it would be many years before the secret police could take this job away from him. He worked at night most of the time, ferrying customers across Prague in the hours when the secret police had clocked off. The great irony about his taxi-driving years was that he earned a lot more money than he ever would have as an engineer. My dad was not only an excellent driver, he was also very chatty and charming. He made a point of taking the most direct routes to his customers’ destinations, and quickly built up a small but devoted clientele who not only trusted him but enjoyed listening to his stories. He told everyone he drove that he would soon be the father of a second child, which is how he met the obstetrician who delivered me.

  Unless you were a high-ranking member of the Communist Party, you didn’t get to choose which doctor or hospital you went to. Under the state health system, you had to go to the medical center that was closest to your place of residence. If the doctors there were ill-mannered or incompetent, there was nothing you could do about it. When my sister was born, my mother was sent to the Karlov Hospital, which was a cold and oppressive building in a desolate yard, with crows perching ominously in the trees outside her window. My mother was very unhappy giving birth there, and told my father that she would do anything to avoid delivering another baby in “The Crow Hospital.” Shortly afterward, as luck (or the little god) would have it, my dad struck up a conversation with a pretty
young doctor who had just been transferred to the nicest hospital in Prague. The woman’s name was Dr. Raclavska, and she was taken by my father’s story about the little girl his wife had seen in her dreams. The young doctor also needed driving lessons, so my dad quickly cut a deal. He taught her in exchange for her accepting my mother in the delivery room when she was due. It was against all the hospital regulations, of course, but communism was full of people making private arrangements, which is how I came to be born in the exclusive Podoli Hospital on March 7, 1975, the same month Dr. Raclavska passed her driving test with flying colors.

  The Podoli Hospital was a lovely, cream-colored building that stood beneath the Vysehrad Castle on the south bank of Prague’s Vltava River. It overlooked a place where the swans traditionally nested in winter, and was so nice it was almost impossible to get into. Prague was full of places that ordinary citizens weren’t allowed to visit, and one of the saddest things about the Soviet occupation was that it forced the formerly civilized Czech people to become very adept at cutting under-the-table deals.

  From 1948 to 1989, the people who profited most under communism were those with the moral flexibility to say one thing and do another. With the exception of a very small percentage of overly idealistic or stupid people, everyone in Czechoslovakia saw communism for what it was: a deeply flawed and corrupt system in which a wealthy elite were able to oppress their fellow countrymen in the name of equality. This moral flexibility dates back to the Russian liberation of Prague in 1945. One of the first things the Red Army did was use Gestapo archives to identify all the Czechs who had secretly collaborated with the Nazis. Instead of punishing these people, the Russians coerced them into joining the secret police, which played a major role in the 1948 putsch, in which the Czechoslovakian government was overthrown by the Communist Party. A reign of terror ensued until the death of Stalin in 1953, by which time the status quo was firmly in place. Party officials paid lip service to Marxism and the myth of the worker while systematically stealing the assets of the state; the result being a small elite of the superrich overseeing a country with serious economic problems.