The Twelve Little Cakes (43 page)

“
The Smart Fox
by LeoÅ¡ Janáček,” she said quietly, “is a wonderful opera by one of our greatest composers. It's one thing to listens to Mozart or Tchaikovsky, but this is an opera written in our own language.” She threw me a sympathetic glance. “I think it's charming that you've been given this role,” she told me.

And then her face became serious.

“But on the subject of goats, many of you will have extra homework this evening,” she declared. “Your classwork leaves a lot to be desired.”

She quickly began to distribute the transcriptions, and most of the class groaned as they received their marks. When she was at the back of the room, Eugene nudged my arm.

“I held my thumbs for you,” he blushed. “Would you likes me to holds them again?”

“Yes, please,” I said. “That would be very nice.”

 

 

THE FOLLOWING WEDNESDAY, I walked alone through the backstage corridors of the theater. A group of deer were smoking cigarettes and watching TV in the men's dressing room, while a female squirrel, who looked suspiciously like the queen from
Rigoletto,
poured herself a cup of coffee from the communal urn. A huge mushroom was being rolled out onstage, and I hurried around it, darting into the dressing room, desperately hoping my costume would fit. I didn't need to worry. The hedgehog costume was a piece of cloth covered in foam-rubber needles, which was attached to my body by four elastic bands. A makeup lady blackened my nose and drew whiskers on my cheeks, and sent me out to join the other girls and boys.

There were twelve children in the junior chorus. Four mice, three hares, three squirrels, and two hedgehogs, played by Bara Fisherova and me. We ran around the giant mushroom, which took up most of the stage, and watched the set designers as they surrounded it with a forest of cardboard trees. I was surprised (and slightly frightened) to see Mrs. Saturday in the wings.

“What is she doing here?” I asked Bara.

“She's the assistant director,” Bara shrugged. “What are you doing here? I thought I was the only hedgehog.”

“I was supposed to be in
Rigoletto,
but it changed at the last minute,” I said. “So I get to be a hedgehog instead.”

“
Rigoletto
? That show just finished,” Bara frowned. “And aren't you a little late for
The Smart Fox
? It starts tomorrow and I've been rehearsing all week.”

“Is there much to do?” I asked nervously.

“Not really,” Bara sighed. “We stand around at a wedding, and then, in the last act, we get to dance a little bit and sing a song.”

“So, it's not difficult?”

“No. Mostly, we sit around and wait.”

There were many questions I wanted to ask, but right then, Mrs. Saturday clapped her hands.

“Can everybody hear me?” she asked. “As you know, this is a dress rehearsal for tomorrow's premiere, so we're going to do the whole opera from the beginning to the end. The junior chorus is here, so I want the baby animals to stand near their mothers and fathers. Take your positions on the stage according to the marks on the floor. And please remember, children”—she glared at us for emphasis—“the dress rehearsal is as important as the premiere. Whatever happens, there will be no stopping!”

The curtains closed, and the cast scurried backstage as Mr. Volleman, a tiny conductor with a famously bad temper, entered the orchestra pit. I watched from the wings as he raised his baton and tapped the musicians to silence. With his knees bent and his hands in the air, he looked like a cat about to pounce. He nodded at the director, made a brisk movement with his baton, and the orchestra surged to life. The curtains drew back and a spotlight appeared in the middle of the stage, illuminating the Smart Fox as she trotted out from behind the mushroom, sweeping the floor with her tail.

For the next hour, I sat in the wings and listened to
The Smart Fox.
I loved the opera and knew most of it by heart. Janáček was one of my mother's favorite composers, and I had grown up listening to his music. The wedding sequence went smoothly, and before I knew it, the final act had arrived. A lady dressed as a hedgehog grabbed my hand and led me out onto the stage. Squirrels and mice ran into the clearing and started to dance around the giant mushroom. Mr. Hedgehog put his arm around Mrs. Hedgehog's shoulders, and they started to sway to the music of the finale. Bara and I swayed along with them, and as the opera climaxed with the
Smart Fox
theme, I looked around for Mrs. Saturday to see if I was allowed to sing along with the chorus. No one had told me not to, and I knew the melody and all of the words. The other baby animals were pretending to sing, but it seemed silly to pretend when I actually could. So I started to sing, softly at first, but louder and louder as the music built in volume. It was nearly the end of the finale when Mr. Volleman silenced the orchestra by throwing his baton across the pit.

“Stop!” he screamed. “Will someone shut that little girl up!”

Mrs. Saturday hurried out from the wings to talk to Mr. Volleman, and the next thing I knew, I was back in the dressing room, listening to the chorus finishing the opera without me. I had no idea what was going to happen, but my heart grew heavier with every passing minute.

Finally, Mrs. Saturday reappeared.

“Take your costume off,” she ordered. “Mr. Volleman has banned you from the production.”

“But I won't sing next time!” I squealed. “I won't! I promise!”

Mrs. Saturday had an uncompromising look on her face. “There won't be a next time, my dear,” she said. “Mr. Volleman is like this whenever he has to work with children. He has insisted that we only go out with one hedgehog. There's nothing more I can do.”

“But nobody told me,” I pleaded. “I came in late!”

She shook her head. “There's nothing more I can do,” she repeated.

I looked at her with my mouth open but I couldn't even cry. As if in a dream, I removed the elastic bands and started to take off my costume. My hands were shaking so badly, Mrs. Saturday had to help me undress.

“Listen, Dominika,” I heard her say. “I'm opening a new production in a month. It's a children's ballet called
The Ant Ferda.
I could use someone very small to dance an ant.”

“An ant?” I came back to life.

“It would actually be a double role,” Mrs. Saturday added.

“A double role?”

“Yes, a very important role.” She widened her eyes to emphasize the point. “You start out as an egg and then you turn into a baby ant.” She pointed to a box in the corner of the dressing room. “See? These are the costumes.” The box contained a number of black bicycle helmets with fuzzy antennae glued on top.

“And since Professor Paskova believes that you have heaps of talent, and since I can see that you're trying very hard”—she paused dramatically—“I have decided to give you one more chance.”

“Thank you, comrade professor,” I stammered.

“Don't thank me,” she said gruffly. “Just make sure you're on time for the rehearsals. The premiere will take place in the National Theater in less than a month, and I can't afford to lose another minute with you.”

She thrust her hands into her pockets and strode out of the room without saying good-bye.

 

 

THE NEXT DAY AT SCHOOL, I watched Eugene play “the line” during snack break. The line was a popular gambling game played with
sedgeka.
A group of boys and girls would throw their plastic letters between two white lines on the basketball half-court, and whoever managed to land their letter the closest to the farthest line would win all the
sedgeka
the others had thrown. Seeing as I had only five
sedgeka,
I stayed out of the game, because I was afraid to lose them. I held my thumbs for Eugene instead, and it seemed to work, because he won several games in a row. By the time the bell rang, he had collected more than twenty plastic letters, some of which were rare and sought after.

“Gosh, you were lucky!” I said when we were back in class. “Maybe it's because I held my thumbs for you. See?” I showed him my hands.

“Thanks you,” Eugene blushed. “And I'm going to holds my thumbs for you tonight!”

“Oh, no.” I gestured that he should bring his head closer to mine. “There's been a change in plans,” I whispered. “I'm not going to play a hedgehog anymore. I'm going to play an egg and a baby ant instead. It's a double role, and the premiere will take place in the National Theater, which is much better than the Smetana Theater!”

“Wow,” Eugene whispered back. “How come you don't haves any
sedgeka
?” he asked suddenly.

“
Sedgeka
are okay. I'm just too busy to collect them,” I lied.

Eugene studied me with his wide-spaced eyes, and then he separated a dozen from his pile. “You can haves some of mine if you likes,” he said.

“Are you sure?” It was my turn to blush. “You don't want them?”

He shook his head. “I likes you!” he whispered.

“I likes you, too, Eugene,” I whispered back.

That night, I told my mother I was in love with Eugene German. I wrote his name in red wax pencil on the wall above my bed, and wrapped the
sedgeka
he had given me around my wrist like a bracelet. The girls in ballet school wore their
sedgeka
around their hips, and laughed at my bracelet until I convinced them it was a new fashion in the West. After that, they took to wearing
sedgeka
around their wrists as well. My status at school was finally improving after four years of struggle. I had my first role, and Mrs. Paskova had told the teaching staff to keep an eye out for me.

A week before the
Ant Ferda
premiere, Mrs. Saturday took the whole class to the National Theater to watch the dress rehearsal. The famous Golden Chapel had been under reconstruction for the best part of a decade, and its completion was the source of great excitement in Prague. The scaffolding had been removed, and the front of the building looked like a huge ship anchored at the Vltava quay. Its roof was surrounded with golden railings, and sculptures of winged horses jutted out from its prow. There were so many incredible buildings in Prague, but it was as if the Communists had trained us not to see them. As I walked around the National Theater that day, I couldn't help thinking that the building really glowed, as though someone had taken a huge cloth and wiped it clean for the first time in forty years.

We followed Mrs. Saturday through the huge stage door, and found the cast and crew of
The Ant Ferda
getting ready for rehearsal. Bees and grasshoppers swarmed through the lobby, and beetles sat in the cafeteria's plush leather armchairs. Mrs. Saturday stopped a ladybird and asked her to take the girls and boys playing ants up to the dressing room. I felt very proud as I hopped in the elevator and went to the third floor with the rest of the junior cast. The National Theater dressing rooms were much nicer than those at the Smetana Theater. There were floor-to-ceiling mirrors, and the clothing racks were made of polished chrome. I searched quickly through the children's racks and was incredibly relieved to find my name written inside one of the eggs. The egg was blue and made of foam rubber. There were no holes for my arms, but my legs poked out through two holes in the bottom and I could look out through a small hole at face level. I climbed into it with difficulty, and a wardrobe lady zipped me up. Then I joined the rest of the eggs onstage, where we stood around the giant anthill that was the set for the first act.

I had assumed we would be running the play from beginning to end, but instead we worked out the choreography. The choreographer was a tall, cheerful man called Mr. Blazek, who wore a turtleneck sweater. He stood in the middle of the orchestra seats, chewing on a pen, and called out instructions to Mrs. Saturday on the stage.

“Put the blue egg in front of the bottle fly!” he would suggest, and Mrs. Saturday would push us into position. “No, no, no!” he would shout. “Swap the pink egg with the blue egg in front of her!”

When he was finally satisfied, he got Mrs. Saturday to mark our positions on the floor with tape. Then we had to do it all over again for the next scene. We didn't get to dance. We just baked in the glow of the reflectors. By the end of the afternoon, I was drenched with sweat. It was really hot inside that foam-rubber egg.

After the rehearsal, Mrs. Saturday sent the class home and told the junior cast to meet her in the orchestra seats. She was in a good mood and had a stack of envelopes in front of her.

“Here are your tickets to the premiere,” she said, handing us the envelopes. When she gave me mine, she smiled unexpectedly. “You're a good kid,” she said. “If you promise not to sing, I might be able to give you a few more roles. Luisa Podarilova is moving on to the conservatory, which means I'm going to have to find a replacement dancer.”

“What?” I cried out. “Do you really mean it?”

Luisa Podarilova was a tiny girl who performed children's lead roles in many of the big productions. In
The Smart Fox,
she had played the Smart Fox as a baby. She was a good dancer from a well-connected family, and her sister had been a huge star at the ballet school. It was inevitable that Luisa would join her sister at the State Conservatory sooner rather than later, and I had secretly prayed that this would happen. I was just the right size to replace her.

I leaped over the table and sent Mrs. Saturday's envelopes flying.

“Thank you, comrade professor!” I exclaimed.

“Jezis Marja,
girl!” she snapped. “You're going to destroy the tickets! I don't need to tell you how precious these tickets are! They're impossible to get, because they've all been reserved for party members and their families!”