Slovak Literature in English Translation

This year Victory Monday fell on a Tuesday, which is why Slavoslava ordered me to be in the shop by nine o’clock, saying the Custodians had given their permission. I wasn’t sure if the permission related to me as a person or to disturbing the peace on a state holiday, but how could I ask?

I arrived early and waited in front of the shop window. It displayed a large and ungainly wooden oval shape, presumably meant to resemble a pancake. A slogan baked into it declared:  A SLAV I AM AND WILL REMAIN! Next to the exclamation mark a picture of a huge dove carrying an olive branch in its beak was seared into the wood along with the word BLINCAKES with a crudely drawn pancake from which three wavy lines steamed upwards. Rather unfortunately, the designer had positioned it just below the dove’s tail.

There wasn’t a soul around, no cars, no cyclists, let alone pedestrians. Not even droppings left by the Custodians’ horses.

After being discharged from the sanatorium, I was assigned to the 104th Labour Squadron. My first job was clearing away the horse droppings. This is what all expiators are obliged to do. Every morning I would report for work in my grey uniform, with a wire broom, a shovel and a wheelie bin. Four months later I was reassigned to the 96th Labour Squadron, perhaps because I didn’t cause any trouble. I was only allowed to stop wearing the uniform once I joined the 50th Squadron, having been given the job of cleaner at a stall selling blincakes near the roadblock on the edge of town.

Blincakes were really pancakes, except that this word had been banned. If a cook happened to call them by their old name, she had to put a deng into the money-box, a transparent plastic bear, half a metre tall, standing by the door on its hind legs, its front paws in the pose of a boxer (or rather, of a bareknuckler’s pose, not boxer’s, bareknuckler’s. Sometimes I forget that all words not of Slavonic origin are banned). The bear stood on a plinth adorned with the slogan: We shall defend! and the money it collected was sent to the defenders of our borders. There was a similar bear in our room at the sanatorium, which was quite funny, because what could any of us have said anyway?

A silver Mercedes emerged from around the corner, a public taxi which the Venerables could use free of charge. For everyone else it was 50 deng a ride. My monthly wage in the 96th Labour Squadron was 320 deng.

Slavoslava, real name Klaudia Bóková, arrived laden with rolls of white, blue and red crepe paper which she waved at me. I curtsied before approaching her. Failure to greet a Venerable Matron could get you reassigned to a higher Labour Squadron.

She shouted grumpily:

“Stop dawdling and give me a hand!”

I grabbed the paper rolls from her while she opened a small knitted purse hanging on a chain from her bosom and found the keys. In her case, the bosom probably provided more effective security than a handbag.

She unlocked the door. We entered a small room reeking of stale oil used for mixing the dough and then frying and selling the blincakes.

The Venerable Matron Slavoslava K. Bóková was in her seventies, but still very fit and ramrod straight, if slightly overweight. She had short, bleached hair, a large masculine nose and double eyelids harmonically matching a heavy double chin. Her eyes were the colour of dried cement. She spoke loudly, swallowing vowels and the pauses between words. She was wearing a pink silk blouse with lilacs on it and a blue pleated skirt. Her vest, an obligatory part of everyone’s clothing, one that even I have to wear under my overalls, was showing through the silk. (Overalls are now called mendies – from mended uniforms. Jeans are called herders and hoodies are furry kirtles or furtles. We once thought this was hilarious: herders and furtles. Once…)

Slavoslava used to be a nurse but as she disliked patients, she opened a kebab stall. After Unification she transformed it into a blincake bakery complete with a fortochka. A fortochka is the hatch for selling things. I’m not sure what it means but it probably comes from Russian. As does everything.

“What a lovely May we’re having,” she exclaimed excitedly, but it came out like “Wtlvlymayw’hvn”.

I nodded.

“Let’s decorate the windows. Seeing as you’re supposed to be an artist.”

I nodded.

She washed her hands, and after checking that I had done a thorough enough job of scrubbing the washbasin and the floor underneath it the day before, she went over to a table.

“We’ll be making festive strips for the windows. Like this.”

She spread out the rolls of crepe paper, the white next to the blue and red, and started tying them together. At roughly twenty-centimetre intervals she tied them together with a piece of white string.

She gestured to me to pick up more rolls of crepe paper and some string and follow her lead. We got to work, churning out peculiar crepe sausages in national colours. Slavoslava was working with intense concentration and total dedication.

Many minutes, or perhaps dozens of endless minutes went by like this when she suddenly burst into song. Her singing was solemn, punchy and ardent:

“Hey, Slavs, our Slav language

Will keep on living and breathing,

And our loyal Slav carriage

Will forever keep on moving!

The spirit of the Slavs will ring forth

Forever like a clarion call!

No amount of hail and thunder,

Will ever tear our nations asunder!”

Our eyes met.

She repeated, with renewed ardour: “…No amount of hail and thunder will ever tear our nations asunder!”

I nodded.

On hearing the sound of horses’ hooves in the street, she exclaimed:

“Long Live our All-Slav Russia! Long Live the fifth Victory Monday! We are stronger than ever!” She banged her fist on the table with such force that the paper snake gave a jump.  She continued defiantly:

“This is where we belong, our tiny statelet, this tiny dot that the high and mighty used to toss around like a ping-pong ball. We are more than Slovaks, we are Slavs!”

She went back to tying strips of paper.

“People like you don’t appreciate that, but there’s one thing you’ve got to admit.” She raised her index finger with a scrap of red paper stuck to it: “We are now the biggest empire in the whole world.”

I nodded.

“I am so happy I have lived to see this day. Everything is nice and orderly now. There are no hooligans, no beggars, no homeless people or prostitutes. No drugs or debauchery.”

She almost spat out the last word.

“Let me tell you something, just so you know. Before they assigned you to me, the boss of the Custodians… She stopped short, covered her mouth and rolled her eyes. “Whoops, I said boss! I must feed the bear!

She took a coin out of the purse on her bosom and tossed it into the money-box. She corrected herself:

“When the Supreme Custodian of the City asked me if I wasn’t afraid to take you on, I said: ‘What should I be afraid of? She will never again brainwash anyone with that propaganda of hers.’” She cackled her coarse, evil laugh and poked me with her finger.

“Now you have the registered partnership you were hankering after! You’ve had your throats registered once and for all.”

She went back to work, snorting from time to time as if she’d heard a good joke. “You’ve all been registered. I’ve always said I don’t care what people get up to in the privacy of their bedrooms, but the way you used to flaunt yourselves under the liberals was disgusting. As, indeed, were you.“

I nodded.

“You threw your weight around as long as you were protected by the rotten West. But it was no use. No one gives a toss about you anymore. And if you hadn’t been shooting your mouth off, you wouldn’t have had to have…”

She made a swiping gesture with her right index finger across her neck.

I nodded.

“Everyone says you’ll get your voice back once you’ve admitted the error of your ways.”

Everyone says that. People say that. Allegedly. This was all the talk at the sanatorium where they took us after our operations. Actually, that’s not the right way to put it, as the sanatorium staff were the only people who could speak. We just emitted ugly, grunting noises that sounded like belching as we strained to make ourselves understood. Some of us persevered and managed to make sounds that were almost articulate, but others never did. I myself have given up on speech but I did acquire a skill. My own tiny source of pleasure.

“You were nothing but puppets in the hands of oligarchs, and the wiser ones among you understood that. But you just couldn’t help showing off, could you? We could have locked you up the way you did to us.”

I looked up.

“Don’t give me that look! Of course you locked people up just because they loved Russia and supported the unification of all the Slavs. You used to laugh at us! When Facebook still existed, you should have seen the kinds of comments posted by the likes of you.”

As all the crepe paper was now tightly bound into tricolour strips, she started to weave the strips together into a single endless snake.

“But then the First Elder of All Russia said: ‘We won’t be like them, we shall just take their voices away. Those who repent will lose their voice in elections while the more hardened individuals will lose their actual voice.’”

I nodded.

“And order has been imposed.”

She gave another laugh. “Why on earth should we keep you locked up? You’d only be amongst your own. But this way we’ve put you to useful work.”

She patted herself on the bosom.

“We are not like you, we have some shared ideals, we are hard-working and we honour our traditions. Our soil is our mother, our nation is our father.”

I nodded.

“I once saw an exhibition at the National Gallery. The filth! It nearly made me throw up. And that was supposed to be art! You weren’t artists, perverts is what you were!“

She repeated: “Pervwrs”

I nodded.

Having tied the last knot, Slavoslava breathed a proud, contented sigh. She broke into a smile.   

“OK, that’s it. Let’s get down to arranging them.”

As she said that, she covered her mouth in a theatrical gesture but either she couldn’t think of a proper Slovak word or she had no more dengs left, so she just gave a dismissive wave.  That sort of trifle shouldn’t spoil a great job done. She went over to the shop window and began to wind the garlands of crepe paper around the wooden pancake. When she was done, she dashed into the street to admire the fruits of her labour from outside.

I stood next to her. Seeing the national sausages wound around the dove that looked like a hen with a worm in its beak, below it a pancake resembling a…

That’s when I burst out laughing.

It wasn’t perfect but I had been practising for months and it sounded just as it should. The Venerable Matron Slavoslava K. Bóková froze. She stood there mouth agape but incapable of uttering a word, her face turning redder by the minute until it was the same colour as the red crepe paper in the shop window.

The clatter of horses’ hooves could be heard again: another Custodian was approaching. With a nimbleness that belied her age and weight, Slavoslava ran up to him and stopped him in his tracks.

I couldn’t hear what she said but I knew what would follow.

A report, followed by having to spend the anniversary of Victory Monday under house arrest, then being punished for vilifying national symbols.

On Wednesday I was reassigned to the 104th Labour Squadron, issued with a wire broom, and sent out to collect horse droppings.

But by Thursday morning the first expiator had found me. He wanted me to show him how to laugh without vocal cords.