The Squirrel Cage

By Agnes Pellier-Galdi

This novel was written about communism during the years of the Stalin era in former Czechoslovakia from 1948 to 1956.
It is a romantic story, having the main focus on how young people reacted to dictatorship in their everyday existence while trying to live a normal life, with love affairs or just enjoying the beauty of the city and all that life has to offer when you are twenty years old.
It is the story of a young lady trying to work in offices or taking part in the politics of the moment without being a party member, and her partner, a leading musician in the Czech Philharmonic, for whom acceptance of the regime is easier, as he can escape through his involvement in art.
The discussion between her and her lover reveal the differences between individuals accepting or not the demands of that period.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Apr 30, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481791434

Agnes Pellier-Galdi

The author herself lived in Czechoslovakia during the period described and went through the fight to keep her ideas free from the political pressure demanded to ensure a possible existence between her aims as a young girl and not giving in to the political pressure. She has to live in the constant fear that if she reveals too much of her inner need for freedom, her existence will be jeopardized. But finally, through some ruse and a bit of luck, she manages to finally come out of this cage and reach the Western World. This novel was published in November 2012 in French under the title La Cage d’Ecureuil and was highly acclaimed. The author was interviewed on Swiss Radio.

Book preview

PART I

1

The hall of the ski lodge was almost empty. The vacationers were either still at dinner, or in the bar. A piano and drum played dance music. No-one sat at the bar, almost all the tables were taken and three couples—one cheek to cheek—moved around the dance floor. Two girls at a table beneath a chandelier talked in a low voice, then drew apart glancing sideways at a neighboring table where a young man alone sipped a fizzy drink.

He, too, looked at them with obvious interest. The girl in a blue dress grew fidgety.

—I hope he won’t come to ask me for a dance. The only dance I know is the tango.

—Come on, Vera—said the other—I saw you the day before yesterday with that little old man, and he could hardly keep up with you.

The two girls giggled softly.

The music stopped and the dancers went back to their seats.

Vera sighed with relief. She sat upright in her chair, chin tossed in the air. Despite her high severe forehead, she gave an impression of youth and innocence. Perhaps this was because she wore her hair loosely falling on to her neck and almost touching her shoulders. Only when rays of the artificial light illuminated it could its auburn colour be seen. Her hands played restlessly with either the glass of orange juice in front of her, or the ring which she twisted around her finger. When her hands were still, they seemed amazingly small and fragile. It was hard to imagine her as a skier, but the tan on her face proved it. The other girl, a rather masculine tomboyish type, looked much more like a skier.

The music started again and the young man almost instantly stepped over to their table, bowing to Vera.

She looked questioningly at her girl friend as if seeking help, and after seconds passed, she got up, hesitatingly following him through the tables.

The music was slow but his lead was sure. After a few steps she followed him with assurance.

—My name is Karl… he had mumbled his surname as usual in introductions of this kind.

—Mine is Vera… I’m sorry, I missed that last step, I don’t dance very well.

—But you do, you are graceful and follow well he said kindly, and it made her feel at ease.

—How long are you staying here?—and in the same breath he continued—the snow is superb! Don’t you find that the February snow is the best?

—Oh yes, and the sun—but I will have to leave in a week. I’m starting work in Prague—she said.

—Is that your first job?

—Yes, and how difficult it was to convince my mother to let me go.

—Mothers are always the same—he said knowingly. But you will love Prague. This year it is almost like before the war, balls, concerts and everything…

—I will go to a ball every other day—she cut in laughingly. Mother always used to say how often she went to balls when she was my age, even before, and I have never yet been to one. When I should have started, at sixteen, the war was on… balls and dance schools were replaced by fallout shelters and whistling bombs… .

The music stopped and they had to interrupt their conversation.

—Would you like to join us at the table? This is Eva, she pointed to her friend.

They exchanged a few polite words.

He turned to her again.

—Where did you spend the war years?

—In Hungary, in Budapest—she said—and her voice grew grey and listless.

—That was one of the worst places during the war, or so I understand. How did you ever come here?

—My grandfather had a business here so my mother and I came to join him. My father went to live in Vienna. My parents were divorced when I was quite small.

—And you learned to speak Slovak so well in three years?

—So well?—she looked at Eva—Eva always teases me whenever I make a mistake or mispronounce a word.

—Oh I don’t—she said defensively—Karl will think I am a terrible nag.

The music started to play again and out of the nowhere of life a man came to ask Eva to dance.

—Tell me how did you find it here after Hungary?

She told him about the first months in the new country.

Her mother and she had to learn the language quickly. Bratislava—now the capital of Slovakia, and at one time the coronation city of the Austro-Hungarian Emperors—didn’t tolerate on her streets anyone who spoke German or Hungarian. People who couldn’t speak Slovak dared not raise their voices above a whisper.

Vera made friends quickly with girls of her own age and through them learned the language the hard way. They laughed at her odd expressions in the typical way of teenagers whose innocent cruelty towards each other is without bounds. She lost her temper easily when they did not understand her hand-signs. To be fourteen years old in a new country with mocking companions wasn’t easy.

Now, three years after the war, life was just beginning for her. Before the war there had been trips with her mother to different countries every summer, but those she remembered only faintly as childhood memories; there were dinner-parties with servants rushing about in the dazzlingly lit dining room. She was allowed to come and say goodnight and then went back to her room, to dream about the day when she would not have to go back to her room.

Now she was old enough to enjoy life. But the only way was to start from the beginning. War had wiped out the luxury and glamour from everybody’s life. After this vacation, she would start earning her own living and make herself independent of her family.

When her grandfather heard about her plans, he had simply said:—You stay right where you are. If you want to work, you can do it as well here in Bratislava. But Vera wouldn’t give in. Her decision to go to the capital grew stronger day after day as her relationship with her mother grew more tense. After one unpleasant scene between mother and daughter, Grandfather called her to his office.

—Have you already applied for that job you saw in the paper?

—I haven’t, Grandfather, but I am going to, this week.

—One of the directors of the company is an old schoolmate of mine: Josef Sermentovy. You can put his name down as a reference and I’ll write him a letter today,—he said. Only a little twinkle in his eyes, when Vera threw her arms around his neck, revealed how much he enjoyed making her happy.

The reply from the company came very soon—Vera was engaged as a foreign-language secretary to start in a few weeks’ time, on the first of March.

She looked forward to this change, although it filled her with a strange and anxious feeling, having to leave home and security to start life on her own in a big city. But she was used to city life. She had been brought up in Budapest—a city of over a million inhabitants—and only when Hungary, a loser in the war, became a place of hunger and misery, had her mother decided to join the grandfather in Czechoslovakia, to start life anew without the ever-present memories of war surrounding them.

2

A lone ski slid down the steep hill followed by a spiraling cloud of snow. It swayed back and forth, almost in rhythm with the music filling the air from a nearby loudspeaker. Once it seemed as though the ski would stop near a bush, but it slid on enjoying its freedom and disappeared in the woods below. One or two skiers had made an attempt to catch it, but seeing its speed, gave up. Hypnotized by the sunbeams on the the glittering snow, they blinked once again under the blue of the February sky, leaving the ski to its fate.

Vera was standing on the top of the hill overlooking a long range of snowy mountains, one foot in her ski, the other balancing in the air.

—Better send your other one after it—said Karl mockingly. But, seeing anger light her clear green eyes, he added—Wait here, I’ll get it.

Everybody stopped to watch the rescuer swiftly turn from one side to another as if dancing to the music with well-trained christies and then disappear from sight.

After a while, far below where the trees closed in, a small black figure emerged, dragging something. Vera was prepared for the worst—probably her entire holiday would now be ruined. She knew that to repair a ski took about three days and she had only a week left before she changed from a carefree student into a career-girl. As he approached, she tried to make out the damage to her ski now balanced on his shoulder, thinking—Oh God, I can’t afford new skis!

But when he arrived she found only a bad chip on the nose of the ski.

—I think I can fix that for you—he said, and she studied his sunburnt face.

Suddenly both raised their heads sensing something strange in the air. The music had been turned off and the empty buzz of the amplifier now was more overwhelming than the earlier blaring. The silence was strange at this noon hour because the loudspeaker on the hotel wall usually played from ten in the morning until late afternoon, so that the skiers in the deep snow on the hills could feel the security of a comfortable luxurious hotel nearby.

Suddenly a harsh voice sounded from the loudspeaker:

—Attention, attention…

The young man put the broken ski down and Vera turned an ear towards the sound. It was hard to distinguish the words from that distance, but it sounded like a political speech.

—I’ll try and fix it this afternoon, O.K.? said he, lifting the ski from the snow again.

—That is very nice of you, I only hope it won’t be too much trouble. It would be horrible not to be able to ski in this weather—she said emphasizing the ‘horrible’ so that there would be no doubt about how she felt.

—Oh, no trouble at all, and you will come out to ski again this afternoon, won’t you?

She didn’t have time to answer. Her friend, a girl of about eighteen, had glided to her side.

—Did you hear the speech, Vera?

—No, we could hardly hear anything from this distance. What was it about?

—The Communists have taken over—said the girl excitedly. A new, communist government has been formed. I heard it quite clearly. They said Czechoslovakia has become a people’s democracy and something about the victory of the working class…

Vera slowly took off her other ski and wrinkled her forehead:

—Do you think we ought to go home?

—Oh no! Our holiday has just started and I really don’t feel like leaving now. Anyway, it doesn’t make much difference as far as our ski-ing is concerned.

—I don’t know—said Vera slowly—I just feel I’d rather be home…

The three of them walked back to the Sport Hotel.

In her room Vera slipped out of her ski boots. This brought her the usual relief after the few hours spent in the snow but now she felt weighed down with a foreboding which would not so readily be cast aside.

—I wonder how far Communism will endanger my family—she thought as she rested in her hotel room. She knew more or less that they would be considered bourgeois, the enemy of Communism.

A knock on the door interrupted her thoughts and a tall blonde girl with hair circling her face walked in without waiting for an answer. It was Maria.

—I see you don’t want lunch today—she said impatiently—You aren’t even dressed yet.

—Sit down for a minute, I won’t be long—Vera said, reaching for her blouse,—Do you think it is going to be like Russia? The dictatorship of the proletariat and all that?

—I don’t think so—answered Maria playing with the ashtray marked SPORT HOTEL.—That would mean that I could take this ashtray because what is yours is mine and what is mine is—yours.

Vera smiled for a moment—Come on now, what will it mean, really?

But she didn’t expect an answer. When Maria was in one of her playful moods, it was no use trying to discuss anything serious with her. Just now she was more intent on admiring her reflection in the mirror.

Let’s go—she said and the two girls walked down the stairs towards the dining room.

During the last two days of their stay the hotel was rather gloomy. It was impossible to go out skiing because the snow fell almost continuously. The lounge was empty and the usual 10 o’clock American jazz hour had been replaced by a programme of Russian and Czech marches. Also, Karl disappeared from sight.

Vera tried to meet the eyes of the waiters serving at her table to read their thoughts. She thought she read almost an expression of victory in the face of the young, blond waiter who served her at dinner. Others were less sure, some of them seemed confused.

—The victory of the working class—it echoed in her ears as she had heard it so many times lately on the radio, in speeches and in the news. It echoed in her head at night when she lay awake at the hotel.

She got up and went down to the reception desk. She asked for a telegraph form and wrote in block letters: ARRIVING TOMORROW MORNING 7.30, VERA.

—Could you please prepare my bill, she said to the receptionist,—I am checking out today. And would you get me a taxi to take me and my friend, Miss Fanti, to the station?.

—I am sorry Miss, we have no taxis any more. It wasn’t worthwhile to run the service for the few remaining guests. The man’s voice was dry and disinterested as if the usual courtesy accorded to guests had been discontinued along with the taxi-service.

—But how are we going to get to the station in all this snow?

—I guess you will have to walk or ski down but we can send your luggage after you, so you won’t have to carry it. With this remark the receptionist sounded a bit more human again.

Vera took a breath deep enough to pass for a sigh.

—But don’t you see, I must have my things in three days at the latest because I am moving to Prague in a week. I am going to work there—she added with a little pride in her voice, though the thought scared her every time she mentioned it, as if it were something daring and dangerous.

—It won’t take more than three days,—said the man sharply and put the bill in front of her as if to put an end to the conversation.

—All right then, I will leave the luggage in my room and now I had better get ready if I want to