Free The Twelve Little Cakes by Dominika Dery Page A

Noskova.” I would wave. “We’re going for a walk.”
    â€œI wish I could come with you,” she would smile.
    â€œHow’s your dog?” I would ask. “Is Corina feeling better?”
    â€œShe’s just old,” Mrs. Noskova would reply. “There’s no cure for old age, I’m afraid.”
    Oma would shiver at the thought and bustle me down the road to the next lady’s villa, which was a gray cube with a small balcony on the first floor. This was Mrs. Sokolova’s house. She was the nicest of the three, and she would sometimes even wait for me in her garden. My mother told me that Mrs. Sokolova had lived a very difficult life. Her husband had been the director of a bank but had committed suicide after the 1948 putsch, because he knew that the secret police were coming for him and that by killing himself he would spare his wife and children from persecution. Like so many women whose husbands had been killed or imprisoned by the Communists, Mrs. Sokolova had to support her family by working a physically demanding job in her later years. Twenty years as a railway porter had destroyed the circulation in her legs, but she wasn’t angry or bitter about her life. She would wait for me near her front gate whenever it was sunny, and would sometimes give me biscuits she had baked for me herself.
    â€œHello, Mrs. Sokolova!” I would cry, shaking Oma loose and running through the gate.
    â€œCareful, you’ll knock me off my feet!” Mrs. Sokolova would laugh. “I made these biscuits from an old recipe my mother taught me when I was your age.”
    She would pull a paper bag filled with biscuits out of her apron and press it into my hand.
    â€œSay thank you to Mrs. Sokolova,” Oma would prompt.
    â€œThank you very much. The last ones were delicious!”
    â€œYou’re very welcome.” Mrs. Sokolova would smile.
    Oma and I would continue down the road, and after I had eaten a couple of biscuits, she would confiscate the rest of the packet, telling me that they would ruin my appetite for lunch.
    â€œBut I’m hungry!” I would protest. “All I’ve had to eat is a runny egg.”
    â€œHunger is the best cook in the world,” Oma would say wisely. “Wenn du nichts zu essen hast, alles schmeckt gut!” (“When you have nothing to eat, everything tastes good.”)
    â€œYes, Oma,” I would sigh. “Jawohl.”
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    AS THE MIDSUMMER WEEKEND APPROACHED, I found myself looking forward to having my mother take care of me instead of Oma, and I was disappointed to discover that my dad had hired a crew of tradesmen to work melouch on our house instead. Working melouch, or “on the side,” was the Czech equivalent of moonlighting, except the moonlighting took place in broad daylight when the people concerned were supposed to be at work. The practice of taking off from work (for weeks at a time) and earning cash on the side was so commonplace, a sophisticated system of bribes had evolved where workers would routinely cover for each other in exchange for reciprocal favors further down the line. The problem, of course, was that this was illegal, so the people doing the work were able to hold their employers to ransom. My father not only had to pay his crew handsomely to repair our house, he also had to indulge their whims, which invariably consisted of a never-ending supply of beer until they were too drunk to keep working, usually by mid-afternoon.
    As a result, the early part of our summer consisted of my mother cooking sausages in the kitchen all day, while my sister ran up and down the hill to the Under the Forest pub, ferrying beer to the workers as they stood around and watched my dad demolish the Nedbals’ apartment. The men would arrive early and make an impressive show of rattling their tools. It was like an army of termites was eating its way through our house. Under my father’s