by Carsten ten Brink
A Cold War Fable
I was five years old that spring.
The clacks and scratches of twigs landing on and then sliding down the roof tiles woke me, as they did every day, and I listened as the pre-dawn winds flew their last sorties. Light gradually appeared in the cracks in the shutters. As the wind quieted, I heard the resentful sound of the Skvorecky cockerel, finally able to make itself heard after its futile battle with the wind. It was an ugly bird and I always fled from its pecking beak, but in the last weeks it had looked bedraggled and defeated, its angry tomato-red comb somehow paler.
Traces of woodsmoke remained in the air but the best thing I smelled as I lay there was breakfast’s warm, fresh porridge, which Mother always served with her sweet blackberry compote. I stretched out my fingers for the woollen jerkin on the chair next to my bed and, as I pulled it towards me, the book Mother had read from the night before fell to the floor. She had promised me the tale of Clever Manka next, with its drawing that Mother always said looked like me all grown up. I shivered until I had cocooned myself in the wool. Next was my skirt and then the leather-soled knee-socks that I wore inside. Only then did I pick up the book. Its shiny cover was cold to the touch and I slid it under my pillow where it, Clever Manka, and all the others could be warm.
All I knew was the cold and grey of winter mornings. If there had been a summer before, it was nothing like the summers in the storybooks, with children dancing in fields, and bunting and birds and bunnies. Outside it was white every morning, with the frost only retreating when the rains attacked the land. Sometimes I watched patches of resisting frost sheltered by our roof, until the rains and the wind became allies, and water droplet bombs achieved their heroic victory.
The recent years had been cold and hard, Mother had told me, because of constant brutal winds coming from the east but, she said, there had been lovely times before that, and there would be again. In those years spring had arrived, with its hope of summer to follow. She sometimes looked sad then, when she talked of the summers, and when I asked why, she simply said, ‘The winds came.’
The winds were cold, but they were not bad, Mrs Husak in kindergarten often said, because they cleaned away the weak and the cobwebs of the past and instead made people strong. We should respect the eastern winds.
I wanted people to be strong. They could then harvest more tomatoes or potatoes, or if they were strong enough and heroic, they could protect the country in their airplanes and fly missions and sorties with the winds, like in the pictures in Mrs Husak’s classroom of pilots saluting by their shiny planes. But I also liked spiders and their webs. One lived in the corner of the pig stall and, no matter how much damage the sow made to the web during the day, the spider repaired it during the night. That was heroic too, but I knew that I should not say that to Mrs Husak, who always stood as straight-backed as one of those pilots. Mother had warned me never to make Mrs Husak angry. Sometimes when Mrs Husak was angry, a villager had to leave, like my father had, and work in the east, far from home. I imagined her angry, her stiff hair shaking, her heavy boots stomping on the wooden floor. I did not want to see that.
I pulled open the wooden door and entered the kitchen. Mother was sitting at the table, holding her cup of tea in both hands, and she was not wearing her jacket, just the apron that already had flour sprinkles on its front.
‘Good morning, Magda!’ Mother said and pointed at the window. ‘Can you see? No?’
I shook my head.
Mother came to me. ‘Let me lift you.’ She picked me up, with a loud, cheerful ‘Oof’, and carried me toward the window. ‘Goodness, you are becoming heavy. Look, darling, look outside!’
Outside, along the path to the pig stall, tufts of green grass had appeared, and among them stood handfuls of stalks with white blossoms.
‘Flowers!’
‘That’s right, darling. Spring has started.’
I begged to be put down so that I could go outside and look.
‘Eat your breakfast first. And finish getting dressed,’ Mother told me. ‘When you’re ready, today we can wait outside for Mr Sudek’s wagon and you can look at the flowers then.’
I ate more quickly than I ever had before. Usually I waited inside, near the stove, until I heard the clops of Mr Sudek’s horse and then I’d run out, my porridge sometimes unfinished, climb onto the back of the wagon and crawl under the blankets with the other children.
Mother allowed me to pick one flower, whose petals reminded me of the parachutes in another of Mrs Husak’s posters, and to take it to kindergarten.
‘You can show it to all the children,’ Mother told me. ‘And Mrs Husak can tell you the name of the flower.’
During the next week, every day was warmer than the day before and the wind gentler. One day I was comfortable enough to ride the wagon home from school sitting on, and not under, the blankets and as I passed the Skvorecky farmyard I saw two amazing things. Their cockerel was standing on the very top of a fencepost, his wings spread and his head raised, proud like a heroic worker, and his comb was once again bright red.
But I’d seen the cockerel before, even if not like that. What I had never seen before was the horse in their field.
It was brown, long-maned and heavy-bellied and it never looked up from the grass it was eating.
When I got home, I ran into the kitchen. Both doors were open and Mother was on the back stoop, peeling potatoes.
‘Mother! The Skvoreckys have a horse! Can I go see?’
‘A horse!’ Mother clapped her hands and a segment of peel fell to the ground from her sleeve. ‘I have almost finished. Help me collect the peels for the pigs and then we can go together. I would like to see the horse too.’
Mother carried me piggyback until we reached the entrance to the Skvorecky farm and together we knocked on the door. Mr Skvorecky emerged, a pipe in his hand and a friendly smile visible in his bushy grey beard. He always smiled when Mother visited, and gave us eggs, but sometimes he and Mother drank tea and talked, for a very long time. And Mr Skvorecky had no children, so there were no toys and no books for me to look at.
‘Can I see the horse?’ I said, before he could say anything about tea. ‘Please?’
He laughed. ‘Of course you can, Magda. Come around the back and we will walk to her together.’
‘It’s a her, Mother, did you hear?’ I said and I pulled at my mother’s hand.
‘The word for a girl horse is a “mare”, Magda,’ my mother said as we walked to the wooden fence at the border of the field.
The mare was far away but had good eyes or a good nose because she ambled towards us, her heavy middle swinging from side to side, after Mr Skvorecky waved with a carrot.
Mother lifted me onto the fence and I was able to stroke the mare’s mane. She was calm and chewed the carrot slowly, as if the vegetable were new to her and something to be cherished.
Mr Skvorecky whispered into Mother’s ear.
She smiled at me and said, ‘Do you know why she has such a big belly?’
I shook my head and looked.
‘She is pregnant and in a few weeks she will foal.’
I had never seen a foal.
It soon became my daily routine: kindergarten with Mrs Husak, who no longer stood so straight and who let us play outside a little longer, home on Mr Sudek’s wagon, climb down, greet Mother, maybe help her with the potatoes and then run – all by myself – to the Skvorecky farm. I had a special brush and a step and could climb onto the fence by myself and tidy the mare’s hair and mane. At the beginning she came only when Mr Skvorecky had a carrot but after the first week, the mare walked to the fence when she saw me. She grew larger and ate more.
I loved her and wanted to ride her. Mr Skvorecky promised that he would teach me after the mare had foaled. ‘When would that be?’ I asked, probably every day. We had no veterinarian in the village and Mr Skvorecky’s response was always the same, ‘Be patient and be nice to the mare.’
Usually I returned home alone, but if it was windy, Mr Skvorecky would take me. On Fridays Mother came with food prepared, and we all ate together. They would talk and talk. Sometimes I would visit the mare and sometimes I would listen. Mr Skvorecky knew good stories, Mother told me, but like when he talked of a wind with a human face, I did not understand them. I was no Clever Manka, but if I wanted to be, and help the village with wisdom like she did, then I would have to learn to read. Mr Skvorecky made another promise, that he would buy me a book for my birthday and teach me to read it.
In those weeks the sun shone through the clouds and there was little wind. When wind did come it was from the west and it was warm and somehow soothing. The Skvorecky cockerel woke me every morning, its crows ever more exuberant, as if it too was impatient for the arrival of the foal. The fields also had new flowers. Daisies were my favourite and the mare loved them too.
One afternoon the mare was different, excitable, and Mr Skvorecky thought she might foal in the night. I wanted to stay and watch but they said I was too young.
I cried but they promised that if this was the night, then they would wake me early so that I could see the foal first.
At home Mother read me Clever Manka again after supper. She told me that I was clever too and she called me her Little Manka. In bed, I held the brush I used on the mare in my hand and breathed in her smell. I tried to sleep but couldn’t. Mother came with warm milk that tasted strange, like she had not washed the glass very well, but soon after I did feel sleepy.
The clacks and scratches of twigs landing on, then sliding down the roof tiles woke me, as they had done weeks before, and I listened as the pre-dawn winds flew their last, loud sorties. Light gradually appeared in the cracks in the shutters. As the wind quieted, I heard the Skvorecky cockerel, but its crow was weaker again, now that its battle with the wind had recommenced.
Mother did not come in to wake me.
I had not worn the woollen jerkin the evening before and it was not on the chair. I shivered as I hurried to my cupboard to search for it. I dressed under my blankets. Was it really that cold, colder than it had been before the first day of spring? It felt like it.
Mother was in the kitchen, feeding the fire. She was crying.
I had not seen her cry since Father went east.
I wanted to see the mare.
‘Did it come, Mother? Is there a foal? Can I see it?’ My words tumbled out.
‘Sit down, child,’ she said. Her face was red and I was afraid.
‘It was the wind, Magda,’ she said. ‘The birth was difficult for the foal and she was weakened. And the wind came in the night.’
I thought of what Mrs Husak had said about the wind and the weak, but I asked Mother anyway. ‘Is the foal all right now?’
She shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Magda. The wind has taken her.’
I said nothing for a while. Once a piglet had died but our sow had three others that survived. This mare only had one foal. I imagined how the mare felt and I cried. Then I thought of how I combed her, and the adults’ promise that I could learn to ride when the foal had come.
‘And the mare, Mother?’ I asked. ‘What happened to the mare?’
‘She too was injured and is very weak. Alone now, without her foal, she might not recover and cannot stay here. The Skvoreckys have taken her to a better place, where she has a chance to recover. It is for the best.’
The Skvoreckys did not come back from wherever they had taken the mare. They asked us to look after their chickens and I helped Mother with that until one cold, windy day, Mr Skvorecky’s friends Mr Havel and Mr Kundera arrived on the back of Mr Sudek’s wagon and together they dismantled the hen house and rebuilt it behind our kitchen. They then boarded up the Skvorecky windows and locked the door.
I think our pigs liked the company of the chickens but the cockerel was unhappy. He sometimes chased me into the house, pecking, or he ignored everything, even the hens, and his comb drooped. He never climbed onto any of our fence posts and the chickens stopped laying eggs. After two weeks Mother spoke to Mr Sudek and the men all came back and dismantled the henhouse and took the birds away.
‘The cockerel misses the mare, misses Mr Skvorecky and hates the wind,’ Mother said. ‘The bird is sad.’
I think she was sad too, about Mr Skvorecky, and I too missed the mare.
I think the spider had been afraid of the chickens because for the two weeks the birds were with us it did not repair its web, which was in a terrible state, and could not possibly catch anything. But on the very first morning after Mr Sudek’s visit, the web was repaired and I was proud of our spider and its secret night’s work.
Mrs Husak was stiff-backed again and told us to line up and stand straight. She once said that our village was not the place for a mare to have a foal and that Mr Skvorecky had been reckless to try. I decided that she was mean, so I never told her about our heroic spider.
The eastern winds stayed and once again the fields were white with frost and the mornings were cold, all year round.
I understood eventually that a mare could not safely foal in those conditions, which then continued, with only rare short days of sun, for the next twenty-one years.
Mr Skvorecky had left before fulfilling his promise of giving me my first book with words to learn to read, but I studied hard through my childhood, wanting to become the Clever Manka that helped the village. My schoolteachers encouraged me to train as a teacher, perhaps taking over one day from Mrs Husak, not that she showed any willingness to retire. I, however, did not want to be like her. I treasured mares, pigs, chickens and even spiders, liked them more than the stiff-backed pilots and soldiers she championed, and I never forgot the foal’s death we had been unable to prevent. I applied, at first secretly, to study as a veterinarian. When I informed my teachers, they were disappointed but in exchange for my promise to return and help everyone’s animals as our village’s first trained vet, they provided me with the positive references I needed.
While I was completing my education in the capital, things were changing. The winds from the east were erratic, losing energy through turbulence at their source, and the village temperatures hinted that a spring might come. Father returned from the east, grey-haired and angular, with a dry cough that he could not defeat, and he and Mother raised chickens next to the pigs that my mother had always kept. They even had a cockerel, not as boisterous as Mr Skvorecky’s had been in the spring of the mare, but neither was it as bedraggled and mean spirited as his cockerel had been after.
Mrs Husak had been encouraged by the new school headmaster to prepare for retirement, only the date to be agreed. I would not be replacing her because my appointment was confirmed as our village’s first trained veterinarian. And all I dreamed of was being by the side of a mare when it foaled.
I chose to live with my parents, assisting them when no animals needed me, and one day the telephone rang. It had been installed when I had returned from the capital. Our household was given priority in the village because everyone recognised that a veterinarian was someone that must have a telephone. I picked up, thinking it might be the Sudeks, who had been worried about one of their cows.
It was Mr Skvorecky.
He had heard that I’d fought to become a vet and that our village was a safer home now for animals, so he and his family were coming back. With them was their mare, old but still alive, and three of its foals, the youngest of which they had called Velvet. She was a gift for me and, as he had promised so many years before, if I wanted to, I could now ride the spring mare.
In memory of the Prague Spring, the years of Normalization, and the Velvet Revolution
Carsten ten Brink is a London writer, artist and photographer. Born in Germany, he was educated in Australian, American and British schools. He was born during the Cold War, which inspired this story. He has published photobooks, CNF and fiction. Carsten is currently editing a political novel and working toward a collection of short stories.
For further information, check out:
www.CarstentenBrink.com/writing.html
Twitter/X – @carstentenbrink
Instagram – @Carsten10b
Bluesky: @carstentenbrink.bsky.social
Facebook: www.facebook.com/CarstentenBrinkWordsandImages
