In the Shadow of the Red Star: Cancelled Czech Files, #4

By Kate Pavelle

Cold War Prague. As Katka learns to navigate her way through the world, resolved to barge ahead in a series of crazy-kid adventures, she only echoes the wild, discordant, and often hilarious vibe of her family. Existential issues fight for their spotlight with everyday realities of a dysfunctional socialist regime.

Out of sight, the adults in her life commit clandestine adventures of their own. Their life vibrates with explosive energy next to the double-speak of work and school, where synthetic rum lubricate the wheels of society, and where banned books change hands on the sly.

 

If you're up for a story of resilience and hope that, despite all odds, echoes through time from the 1970's Czechoslovakia, settle down for an unexpected and often hilarious read that tugs on the heartstrings.

 

This collection precedes the already-published stories of escape and immigration in the "Cancelled Czech Files: On The Run" volume.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mugen Press
• Release date: Sep 29, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393149569

Kate Pavelle

A prolific writer under another name, Kate Pavelle is an award-winning author and an Amazon best-seller. Her works span many genres, but her Kate Pavelle pen name focuses on works of suspense, adventure, and the occasonal dead body. Born in the Czech Republic, Kate enjoys her rich family and professional life in Pittsburgh, PA.

Book preview

COPYRIGHT NOTICE

2020© Kate Pavelle

Published by Mugen Press, Inc.

The stories contained herein are written by Kate Pavelle over the period of last three years.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted for any reason or by any means, electronic or mechanical, whether currently in use or not invented yet. Such examples include photocopying, recording, ripping or streaming via pirate sharing sites, or by any information storage and retrieval system not authorized by the publisher.

Editorial excerpts may be used without the written permission of the Publisher as provided by law. To request permission for the creation of derivative works, contact the publisher.

These stories are works of fiction. All characters and places are a product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to real persons, organizations, corporations, or locations is strictly coincidental. Any persons appearing on the covers are models, or digitally created.

Covers are designed by Mugen Press. Images licensed from DepositPhotos. Any character that may appear on the cover is a model.

www.mugenpress.com

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INTRODUCTION

Welcome to another addition to Cancelled Czech Files!

After I wrote the original Cancelled Czech Files: On The Run collection of short stories which documents my family’s escape from behind the Iron Curtain and our immigrant journey in general, I was surprised by the positive reaction it garnered.

I was flattered, actually.

And I came to realize that I had a treasure trove of material sitting between my ears, because the world I grew up in was as alien to us now as the world of Count Monte Christo was to me when I was in elementary school.

So I kept writing. Some stories appeared in magazines or anthologies, others I published as stand-alones. Many reference the youthful misdeeds my family members, but as they are now deceased, I think it’s safe to share their stories for both edification and entertainment. All of them are based on (mis)adventures I have heard told on long winter nights, when trusted adults sat together and traded old war tales. What had been a dreadful situation long time ago became, through frequent retelling, a hilarious tale of high adventure.

We didn’t have mental health counselors back then.

We had to make do through storytelling, often lubricated by rum.

This collection is set in the period after the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948, and for the purposes of my narrative, it ends in 1979, when the On The Run collection begins.

With the exception of a state of constant hypervigilance as we all waited for the next war to begin, please know that my childhood was happy. Just like here in America, most people were good most of the time.

It was only the extremists and the power-grabbers we had to watch out for, a trend which has persisted throughout human history.

Enjoy the journey,

Kate Pavelle

CHICKEN  BOOM

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The little pub where Vlada and his chemical plant co-workers met after work was an oasis of civilization in a small village in the middle of nowhere, just like the new plant was in an unlikely, out-of-the-way corner of otherwise pastoral, Czech countryside. The village, and the pub, were typical of 1963 socialist Czechoslovakia, but despite the new, post-war regime, not much has changed in these small provincial backwaters. At least not for guys like Vlada and his friends, who finished technical school, completed their compulsory military service, and were told to report for work at a chemical factory in the middle of nowhere.

Vlada liked the work. Chemistry was his passion, and a family trade besides. He liked to think of himself as an easy-going guy, who had enjoyed his military service, unlike some others. The transition from military to civilian life wasn't terribly harsh, because just like in the military, the work teams were, by and large, a bunch of young punks responsible for their own livelihood, and for getting the job done.

Only the job was different now.

It didn't consist of patrols, or of cleaning their weapons, or jumping out of airplanes. Their responsibilities were devoid of that fun, adrenaline rush that used to come with air blowing past his face as he plunged into the abyss, ready to pull the rip chord. Having to have to wake up for their shift on time was considered a big deal. Making sure that all the pressure gauges read the right numbers was an even bigger deal, because the whole idea was preventing a big boom instead of causing one.

The danger of caustic chemicals and pressurized gases that rushed through the pipes by the steel walkways gave him a different kind of a rush, and it was a pretty decent rush, but when Vlada took a moment to be honest with himself, it didn’t begin to compare with the heady danger and narrow avoidance of consequences when he, and his comrades, pulled all kinds of illegal hijinks in the Army.

Vlada was bored.

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ANOTHER FRIDAY night had rolled around, marking another week of success at work, and another week without a devastating industrial accident. This was all good, Vlada reflected as he ran his fingers up and down the dewy surface of his glass half-liter mug. His beer was halfway gone. He nursed it slowly, debating whether to join in a game of cards, when a group of guys from the Slovak part of the country provided him with much-needed entertainment.

The whitewashed, stone walls of the old pub reflected the dim yellow of the incandescent light bulbs. The bar took up the whole wall by the door, presiding over the tavern room in its antiquated, shined-wood splendor. The porcelain beer-pulls were as aged as the ancient, shined-up brasswork that brought the beer from the kegs into the patron’s glasses. Had it not been for the framed photo of the president Svoboda on the wall, all the centuries-old wood and old smells, and old lighting wouldn’t have been out of place in the imperial Austria-Hungary.

Which is because this used to be part of Austria-Hungary, and close to the southern border, too.

The scene before him was livened up by the five guys, who looked like they just popped out of the old Austria-Hungary as well. They were swarthy-skinned, dark-haired and with the high cheekbones and almost-Asian eyes that bore evidence of the ancient Hun invaders from eight hundred years ago.

The fellows were good chemists, but like Vlada, they were bored. Bored and hungry. Unlike Vlada, their boredom would not be allayed by either cards, or chess. Their cultural heritage borrowed heavily from the transient Roma populations, and popular knowledge had it that the Roma stole chickens.

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VLADA BRIGHTENED considerably as he listened to some of the more ridiculous stories. Some were just close calls, others led to outright arrests. The local police already had a dossier on several of the young Slovaks, but they also had an understanding that underpaid, bored, hungry young punks from the mountains out east had a natural predilections toward counting coup in their ongoing effort to steal chickens from the local State Cooperative.

Which is what the farm was now called. Before the war, all these farms were in private ownership, and if somebody tried to steal a chicken, the farmer was the one responsible for running out and scaring the thief away with a pitch fork. Now, however, all the farms have been nationalized. The production of eggs, and chicken meat, was centralized facilities similar to this one, a trailer-like unit which closely resembled chicken barracks. It was one huge industrial chicken coop, where the chickens lived and laid their eggs in accordance with Marxist-Leninist principles.

The farmers were now called collective farm workers, and the quotas they had to meet were well outside their control. Some city-educated bean-counter up in the government issued an edict as a part of the nation’s five-year economic plan, and now the workers were supposed to raise so many chickens, who were supposed to lay so many eggs, and so on and so forth.

Nobody consulted the chickens.

Likewise, nobody had counted on the young, bored, and hungry Slovaks.

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JANOSH STALKED over to Vlada's table, pulled out a chair, and plopped down. Years of practice allowed him to do so without spilling a single drop of beer. He set his full mug on the paper coaster with the pub’s name on it, and began to spin the mug with his nervous fingers. We’ve got to figure something out. They can’t be awake all the time!

By they he meant the common enemy of all chicken thieves, the cooperative farm workers.

Vlada was familiar with the anti-authoritarian sentiments, and he also yearned for just a bit more food. They had been hungry as kids during the war, they were even hungrier as older kids during the fifties, and quite recently, they had gone hungry in the military as growing young men.

Vlada slid a curious look in Janosh’s direction. So what do you propose to do about it?

Janosh ran his fingers through his thick, dark hair and crinkled his prominent eyebrows in a focused frown. The problem is, every time we tried to sneak up on the chickens, the farmers always run out of their houses. It's so pathetic, they even have the pitchfork ready by the door. The suckers even started calling the police!

Vlada was bored, and the lure of a properly roasted chicken seemed like a worthwhile entertainment. He thought back to his mother's cooking in Prague. Meat was hard to come by, and a small roast chicken used to be enough for their family of seven. And that was only every other week, and only as a special Sunday treat.

If they had a chicken, or even a few chickens, he knew exactly how he’d roast them. Or boil them, or made a stew out of them. He had watched his mother and sisters work in the kitchen often enough.

Roasting a chicken would fill both his time, and his stomach, better than a game of cards. He took a swig of his beer, set it down with a thunk, and leaned over to Janosh. So tell me exactly what happens when you go get those chickens.

As Janosh launched into a lengthy description of failed missions and aborted tries, more and more guys began to crowd around their table. In not too long, their voices reverberated through the small space.

At least in the Army there were girls who’d feed us, Musso said grumpily.

Nobody fed me, I had to catch my own, somebody grumbled from across the table.

So tell me about the police, Vlada steered the narrative back on track. When the farmers called the police, what does usually happen? Is it just to report, do they insist on keeping you overnight, or what?

The long and short of the situation, Vlada surmised after half an hour of eager testimony, turned out to be a combination of the local police department’s understanding that the young punks are going through a stage, were bored, and were merely engaged in a pissing contest with the overprotective collective farm workers.

The police sided with the farm workers, naturally, because many of them were their family members and friends. On the other hand, several of the local cops were still young, and they well remembered their two years of compulsory military service, and how amazingly dull it was to be assigned to a workplace away from home.

The young punks might’ve thought that they were done with their compulsory service, but nobody was ever done with their compulsory service.

Everyone served the state.

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VLADA FOUND situation both entertaining and intriguing. The way he began to see it,  there had to be away to keep the farmers from noticing the squawking of the chickens.

Sneaking inside the farmer’s houses and somehow eliminating their ability to hear the chickens was... oh... a very bad idea.

But, there was the squawking of the chickens.

The squawking...

The squawking of the chickens!

In a flash of brilliance and outside -the-box thinking, Vlada came upon an idea that he simply had to try.

I'll tell you what, he said in a voice that was slightly more intense than before, but not raised. There was no use getting overheard by the innkeeper. I’ll bet you 10 crowns that I can fill a sack with dead chickens, and get away with it without getting caught. And I can do it tonight!

Bullshit!

No way!

I'd like to see you try, you just end up buying us all beer!

The guys all broke into a cacophony of exclamations, speculations, and incredulous statements of dismay. There was just simply no way Vlada could do what he said he would do.

There was no way he could go and fill a bag with dead chickens which they could prepare and eat, and do so without getting caught.

They knew. They had already tried everything.

You're on, somebody said, and others began to join.

The news of the wager spread like wildfire, and soon even those guys who had not gone out that Friday, and who had stayed in the barracks for the night either reading or playing cards, ended up coming to the pub. The Slovak’s contingent failed missions were, by now, a thing of legend, and Vlada’s bet promised to stave off boredom.

Beer flowed like a river that night as all the young employees of the chemical plant waited for Vlada to pull his magic trick.

Vlada pushed away from the table, got up, and said, I'll see you around midnight, or shortly after.

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NOT MANY young men between the ages of 18 and 20, who had to serve in the Czechoslovak Army, were excused due to health reasons. Even though there was a lot of moaning and groaning about having to serve, lots of the guys took to their first experience away from home like fish to water.

They got away from their parents.

They got to go on leave with pocket money.

In many cases, they got to show off the skills they already had. Where else could a construction apprentice apply his bulldozer driving skill while expertly maneuvering a tank through the training grounds?

Plus there was the matter of things that went boom. Guns, stun grenades, grenade launchers, improvised devices. The implements of destruction were numerous and endlessly interesting, and very few self respecting, red-blooded young men would leave the Army without stealing at least one souvenir.

Vlada had such a souvenir.

He jogged over to the barracks and pulled the pillowcase off of his pillow. The pillow case would make a handy bag, which he would fill. Then, after a bit of digging, he extracted his special army souvenir from its little hidey hole.

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UNDER THE cover of darkness, Vlada made his way over to the cooperative farm. He pressed against the rough bark of an old apple tree, quietly observing the scene from where the surrounding, overgrown currant bushes gave him plenty of cover.

He heard a dog bark, but that was over in the village. The stink of manure, which occasionally drifted to the barracks, was riding strong on the breeze.

He eyed the structure of the barn that loomed in front of him. Its walls seemed black and almost featureless against the bright, moonlit sky. Vlada shielded his eyes and waited a while. Once his sight had adjusted, he was able to discern a door.

A breath of relief slowly escaped him. Just like he’d been told, there really seemed