Читать книгу Sketches from Childhood - Milan Svanderlik - Страница 6

CHAPTER 2

AN AGE OF INNOCENCE ?

My very first childhood memory dates from when I was still in the pram: I remember experiencing great pleasure as my mother drew on to my tiny foot a newly-knitted sock, trying it for size. The warmth and softness of the new wool generated such an intense feeling that it has stayed with me for all these years. I was later told that I protested vociferously when the sock was slipped off my foot, in order to be finished. I just never wanted that exquisite pleasure to end and, apparently, I kept poking my foot out of the pram for days afterwards, no doubt in the hope that such a delightful, comforting experience might be repeated. It is surely strange how such small, almost insignificant experiences can stay lodged at the back of our minds for a lifetime, when memories of much greater importance seem almost carelessly discarded.

I also remember quite distinctly my first Christmas - a roaring fire, a beautifully decorated tree, lit with real candles, and dressed with glinting pendants and chocolates wrapped in colourful tinfoil. For many years afterwards, I associated the magic of Christmas with the excitement of presents, a warm, comfortable home, and the smell of cinnamon, vanilla and oranges. This wonderful, cosy interior contrasted markedly with the inhospitable world outside, where the air was biting cold and the garden was thickly blanketed with snow.

While Winters in that part of Czechoslovakia were bitterly cold, usually with large amounts of snow, Spring and Summer were generally warm and beautiful. I have a lucid memory of being taken to a nearby pine forest, to collect the blueberries that grew there in profusion. To me, the trees looked gigantic, and the smell of resin and pine needles was almost overpowering. I simply ate most of the blueberries that I managed to collect, and I still have a distinct recollection of how delicious they were and how dramatically they stained my lips and tongue a ghoulish purple hue. They tasted so good to me that to this very day, whenever I eat blueberries, which is quite often, I find myself transported back to sunny days spent in Bohemian woods. Sadly, today’s blueberries never seem to taste quite so good as they did then; doubtless the newly-experienced tastes and smells of childhood are registered with an intensity that can never be surpassed.

Once I’d graduated from crawling and was up and about on my own two legs, I remember exploring our cavernous house - for that’s how it seemed to me - with its wide, unforgiving, marble staircase that proved such a cruel obstacle to my little legs and knees. I have a clear picture of the grandeur of my father’s library, with its dark, heavy, leather furniture and the books that lined the walls. I also recall sunny days in our garden, a safe space filled with trees and shrubs; it was almost our very own miniature arboretum. I well remember playing inside the garden’s gazebo, in the shade of large trees, and that life there felt secure and good - there were high walls all around, with an impressive, wrought iron gate to keep us safe from the world. Little did I know that these walls, gates and fences would soon acquire a quite different function, to keep us all locked in.

Amongst my happy, garden memories, I can still picture the large, fenced plot where my mother grew most of our fruit and vegetables, and where she also cultivated flowers for the house. Summers were quite short, so strawberries, gooseberries and redcurrants were all grown to ripen rapidly. Needless to say, having acquired an early passion for blueberries, I had to be restrained from eating all the garden fruit myself! The beds of poppies I remember particularly, with their bright, fragile blooms, waving gently in the breeze. Their fragrance was stunning and, to me, they looked very beautiful too, though my mother grew them primarily for the seeds that are such an important ingredient in traditional Czech cuisine. Since that time, and throughout all my years, I have always retained a love of poppies.

The less romantic amongst the readers of this memoir might dismiss the above descriptions as mere trivial sketches from a privileged, over-indulged, almost fairy-tale childhood and they would, at least in part, be right. But sadly, as we grown-ups all know, where there is light, there are shadows too, and the brighter that light, the deeper and darker the shadows become. And during those years, there were shadows growing all around us.

I was much too young at the time to understand the struggles my parents were grappling with, but I did have a definite sense that not all was well, that they were fending off some kind of storm, coping every day with circumstances that worried them both and made them unhappy. Clearly, good parents will always seek to protect their children from anything that is dangerous, unpleasant or distasteful and, with painstaking care, my parents endeavoured to shield me from their fears and give me as normal a childhood as possible. But I shall not forget the people in uniform who used to make regular visits to our house and, almost without exception, the loud exchanges that ensued between them and my father, exchanges that would reverberate frighteningly from the library throughout the entire house. After such visits, my father was nearly always in a rage and my mother’s disconsolate expression would betray her own deep concerns. I had not the least idea about what was happening, of course, but even I could discern that these visitors were never the bearers of glad tidings. Oddly, what has stuck in my mind particularly is that I never recall a single one of them smiling, ever, at anybody, not even at cute little me, so, in my childish imaginings, I associated people in uniform with Bad Things.

Apart from weekend visits by my grown-up brother and sister - they were both much older than me and no longer lived at home - mine was a rather solitary existence; hardly anyone ever visited our house, apart from the nasty folk in uniform. Some years later, I discovered to my surprise that most children normally played with other children, but no children ever came to play with me. What I didn’t quite realise at the time was that no-one could; no other child was permitted to come. But during those early years, I suppose that I could not have missed what I had never experienced and so, to be entirely frank, I confess I have retained only happy memories from that period of my life.