The crowd that gathered outside of Marshall Field's for the annual unveiling of the window displays was smaller than in past years, perhaps due to the weather. Ten inches of snow had fallen on the downtown area overnight, which was unusual for so early in the season, and there was a furious gale from the lake which whipped their clothes about and threatened to bury them all in a blinding sheet of white. Or maybe it was the outrageous expenses involved with making the long trip downtown that had kept everyone away. It had cost Anna 75 cents—three quarters!—for a single, measly hour of parking at one of the nearby meters, and she didn’t even want to think about what lunch at the Walnut Room was going to run them. Then again, there was the general decline in respect for tradition and culture which she had always believed to be an essential element of the American character. (Being an American citizen, herself, now, she felt that she could get away with such generalizations. Not that it had stopped her much before.)

Their numbers may have been fewer, but those who came on this Christmas Eve of 1978 were no less enthusiastic than in past years. Anna and her son, Tomas, had been among the early birds who began gathering on the State Street side of the building at seven in the morning, hoping to snag one of the best spots in front of the biggest windows. Then, for the next hour they waited, shivering, staring up at the enormous wrought-iron clocks hanging above their heads, occasionally running inside for coffee or just for a bit of warmth, but always dashing back out again when their prominent position was threatened by a late-arriving straggler. Finally, just as they were beginning to feel as if they’d freeze to death if they had to wait another minute, the hour hand swung around and the loudspeakers sent out a loud, joyful tune, signaling the start of the show. Breathlessly, they turned to the windows and gaped as the life-like scenes there sprang to life.

Despite having been among the first to arrive, Anna and her son remained long after the tourists and suburbanites had had their fill of the displays and gone inside to shop. The Marshall Field’s puppet show had long been a holiday tradition of sorts, but for Anna, it had even greater significance, because it reminded her of home. In her native Czechoslovakia, puppetry was a kind of national art form, and standing there in the cold, watching the puppets jerk and sway in the windows, took her back some. The cold, too, reminded her of home; this piercing chill that could only be described as bitter, accentuated by frequent blasts from the lake. Ah, and when she closed her eyes, it was almost as if she were back there once again, at Staroměstské náměstí, the central square, in the dead of winter!

But however much she wished it could be so, it was all an illusion that dissipated the moment she opened her eyes. She wasn’t 13, but 30, and this wasn’t Prague, but Chicago, the adopted hometown that had never quite turned into a home for her … and that was her son pressing his nose against the window like some kind of idiot.

“Tomas, come away from there,” she snapped irritably.

“Yes, mama.” His face left an imprint on the glass, which faded quickly.

“Is Papa coming?” he wondered.

“Maybe.” She kept her eyes averted, but in the far edge of her peripheral vision, she saw her son’s lips turn downward in a tight little frown. Normally, when she said that word, it was just a euphemism for no. But this time, she actually meant it. She had no idea if her husband would show up today. He hadn’t bothered to do so last year, but he’d promised Tomas. Of course, Anna knew better than anyone the value of a Mark Hanson promise.

“Let’s go now,” she said.

Inside, they found the aisles packed and the crowds ravenous. Customers dashed every which way, arms loaded with merchandise, shouting, shoving, shopping. Above the din of voices and the bland holiday music, only the ringing of cash registers could be discerned. It was something Mark had always hated about going out during the holiday season: this relentless barrage of commercialism that made even the briefest excursion to the supermarket feel like a trial in patience. Having grown up in communist austerity, Anna did not mind the yearly spectacle so much. But thinking of how dismayed he would have been made her begin to feel a little uneasy, too. She took Tomas and fled upstairs to the relative calm of the Walnut Room, the famed dining hall on the seventh floor where generations of Chicagoans had been coming for lunch or dinner and a spectacular view of the city.

Even after so many years, this was one tradition that showed no sign of lagging. The wait for a table was at least an hour, even with a reservation, so they decided to kill some time—after refilling the meter—by browsing the enormous toy department on the fifth floor. Tomas discovered some oversized Legos and got to work, while Anna stood by uncomfortably, longing for a cigarette. The nostalgia she’d felt watching those puppets had long since faded, though her thoughts still lingered on home. There were no shopping malls in her native country, no festive holiday season to distract her people from the grim conformity of their everyday existence. Of course, she knew that that’s all it was for most Americans, too: a distraction from their self-absorbed, materialistic lives.

At least the latter did not have to endure the ignominy of foreign occupation. However much it might have pained her to do so, she had to admit that this frenzy of buying and selling was better than the alternative, what her people suffered under Russian occupation. But that didn’t mean she wanted it for them, either. Surely, there had to be a better way, between the two extremes of East and West. When the Czechs were finally ready to overthrow the yolk of oppression, she hoped that they would be able to find or invent one. Nothing terrified Anna more than the thought of a McDonald’s sharing space in central Prague with the historic castles and cathedrals.

Of course, who knew whether such things would ever come to pass? It seemed just as likely that one would see Armageddon before an independent Czechoslovakia.

“Papa! Mama, it’s him!”

At the sound of Tomas’ happy cries, she was instantly brought back to the present. She looked to where he was pointing, and, sure enough, there he was, coming up the escalator: Mark Hanson, husband, father, and erstwhile savior. He was grinning sheepishly, bearing gifts. Like a remorseful sinner he came to them, and they were both so relieved, so eager to forgive all of the past mistakes, that they welcomed him with open arms. As Tomas danced about with the new toys he’d been given, Anna pulled her husband close and offered him her cheek to kiss.

“Hi baby.” He spoke to her with a warmth in his voice that she felt she hadn’t felt in ages. Even Tomas was momentarily distracted enough to look up and beam at them.

“You made it. Thank you for coming.” She wanted to kiss him then, on the lips, but he abruptly bent over to help Tomas with something. Then he took her around the waist and started leading them back towards the escalators. But even as they walked along, she knew that there was something off about him. A knot formed in her stomach: what had he done this time?

“Mark, look at me.” And from the guilty look on his face, she knew right away that it was something stupid. “Mark, please.” He finally gave in, shaking his head, as if he couldn't believe how silly she was being. Looking closely, she recognized the tell-tales signs of a recent binge: the sallow, sunken eyes and the yellow-tinted skin.

“You’ve been drinking.” She said it flatly, without betraying any of the anger she felt welling up inside of her, like water building until it was ready to overflow the banks.

“No, babe. I swear.”

“Don’t lie to me.” She leaned in and took a deep breath. “I smell it off you! How recently did it happen?”

He turned away, too defensive and ashamed to deny it again. After walking along for awhile, he realized she wasn’t following. “I just had a few sips of beer before leaving the house. What’s the big deal?” he asked petulantly.

“That wasn’t beer I smelled, Mark. And the ‘big deal’ is, you promised me that you would stop. That was one of the things you agreed to do in order to call off … well, you know.”

They were trying to keep their voices low, but Tomas had seen them argue too many times about the same things not to know when they were fighting. He did his best to ignore them, anyway.

“Would you rather I not have come at all?” he said.

“That’s not the point.”

“Well, what is the point?”

“I told you before, I wanted you to stop drinking. Not drink less, not drink less often—no more liquor, period. You don’t know what you’re like when you get drunk.”

“I’m trying, baby. Believe me, I am.” He was giving her his most practiced, puppy-dog expression, though it had long lost the ability to have any kind of positive effect on her. She’d heard it all before, too many times.

“No more trying, Mark. You’ve been trying now for too many years.”

The ominous finality of those words seemed to scare him for a moment, but he quickly shook it off. He’d screwed up before, and she’d always said these kinds of things before taking him back. Looking into his eyes, she knew exactly what he was thinking: it would all blow over, eventually.

 

#

 

The story of Mark and Anna ended (more or less) on that cold Chicago day. But to see how it all began, we have to go back over a decade and halfway around the world, to Prague, 1969. Under the hulking mansion of a building that stood just a stone’s throw from the main square, there once was an old cellar restaurant named U Pinsaku. Since 1843, before even the existence of an independent Czechoslovakia, it served some of the city’s finest local fare, and was the very first establishment in the world to offer Pilsner Urquell on tap. Locals used to say that it was one of the best restaurants in Eastern Europe, and certainly the best in their gorgeous gem of a city, which may explain how it managed to survive the Austrian monarchy, the change to a republic, two world wars, the Nazis, yet another failed republic, and finally, perhaps most impressively, communism. Even after the formation of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic, it continued to offer excellent fare at reasonable prices, and remained a popular choice for the city’s well-to-do, Party officials, and the odd visiting Soviet dignitary.

Though the quality of the food and service were long known to be beyond reproach, grumblings were often heard in the back alleyways and kitchens of its rivals that much of the restaurant’s fame was due to the bevy of attractive girls who waited tables there. Whether this was true or not, one thing was certain: from the moment Anna Jelinek joined the staff at the tender age of twenty, she put all of the other waitresses to shame.

She was a country girl from a dying ghost town outside of Prague, and, like so many other youths, had come to the big city, not in search of fame or fortune, but a job, any job, which was all the Soviets allowed her people to hope for. With her golden-brown hair and chrysolite green eyes, she might have been a model in the West, or an actress, something glamorous; but behind the Iron Curtain, there was nothing for her: only the job as a waitress. On her very first shift, she was given a role serving the prominent tables near the front, where the most important guests were seated. For ten hours, she carried platters piled high with knedlíky, svíčková, and liters of beer from the steaming kitchen downstairs out to the tables, then back, then up again, and so on through the night. All the while, she struggled to fend off the advances of party bosses two or three times her age who, she knew, could easily have made life infinitely harder for her if she resisted too much.

But Anna was a smart and ambitious girl, who had not cultivated such an alluring figure only to end up the mistress of some petty Czech bureaucrat. This was 1969, the height of the Prague Spring, and for the first time in her life, she was beginning to think that there might be life outside the dreary constraints of socialism. It was a heady and dangerous time, such as one who has not lived through them can hardly imagine. There was poetry in the streets and secret gatherings after dark, spontaneous and unintelligible and magical in their daring. The papers were ablaze with news of how the Czech president had spit in the face of the Russians, who now threatened to gather all the nations of the Warsaw Pact for an invasion.

Not even the threat of war could dampen the Czech people’s delirium. This was their first real taste of freedom since the Nazi invasion, and they were determined to make the most of it. More importantly for Anna, there was even talk of Westerners visiting Prague once again, English and French and Italians, capitalists and industrialists eager to explore the opportunities for investment in the long-isolated country. She even saw one of these for herself: a white South African journalist who’d visited the restaurant a few nights ago as a guest of the city’s mayor.

But Anna, sweet, Anna, had her heart set on the holy grail of foreign conquests: an American. She resolved to do everything in her power to seduce the first one she encountered, and make him hers, and force him to take her back with him to the land of milk and honey. So you see then that from the very moment Mark Hanson walked through the doors of that restaurant as a 23 year old Sales Rep for Deerfield Cola, Incorporated, he really stood no chance of escaping her …

 

#

 

Many years later, Anna Hanson, née Jelinek, descended the steps of the Cook County courthouse, holding her son’s clammy hand in one of her own, and a freshly-minted set of divorce papers in the other. It wasn’t the fear of being alone again that made her feel like crying, but the memory of the happy times she’d shared with Mark, the long years in which it had seemed as if things might work out for them despite impossible odds. She hadn’t spoken a word of English when they met, and, for a long time, she’d harbored the secret conviction that they were destined to meet and fall in love in the way they did. The odds of everything happening by chance were just too great. He just happened to be in Prague on business during an unprecedented and never-to-be-repeated experiment in Western-style economics. She just happened to be working as a waitress at one of the city’s fanciest restaurants, where the Party bosses took foreign guests they wanted to impress. But that was all before his drinking problem got out of hand, before he turned into a gin-soaked monster. 

"Mama? Is everything okay?"

She felt a tug on her sleeve and looked down to see Tomas staring up at her. They were standing outside of the car, but she’d been too lost in reverie to notice.

“Yes. Get inside now, quickly.”

Once tucked away in the back seat, Tomas promptly fell asleep. Anna crept out into the slushy streets—then swerved to avoid being sideswiped by a careening taxi. She muttered a string of Czech expletives. The way these people drove! She could never get used to it. The worst part about it was that you had to learn to be equally reckless and aggressive, or you’d never get anywhere. Then you found that kind of behavior creeping into other aspects of your life. Was it any wonder that American cities were so dangerous?

She remembered reading once about a Czech philosopher who claimed that every person is, at heart, a reflection of his or her homeland. He’d used this argument to explain the Czech people’s unwillingness to forcibly resist occupation throughout their history—it was “written in their blood” to be passive. It made Anna wonder now: after all this time, what kind of blood ran through her veins? Was she more American than Czech? Though she’d long struggled to resist the loss of her heritage, lately, she’d begun to feel as if it was a hopeless endeavor. The more time she spent in this country, the more she felt like an American. She was even starting to drive like one.

In her heart of hearts, there was always the desire to return to Czechoslovakia. But she knew that it was impossible. For an ordinary Czech who had been caught overseas when the Iron Curtain fell, maybe. But for a citizen who’d not only left, but become nationalized in another country? The day she’d agreed to marry Mark, from the very second he’d stepped into her life, in fact, she’d sealed her fate as persona non grata. Besides, she had Tomas to look after now, and knew that it would be better for him to grow up in America.

Nonetheless, throughout the rest of that long drive, her thoughts continually drifted back to the cobblestone streets of home … to youthful memories of riding her bike through the Old Town Square, the tantalizing smell of smažený sýr wafting all around her. Or peering into the dark waters of the Vlatva with Mark on the first night they spent together. Her mistake then had been in believing that somebody had to come along and save her. A white knight on a stallion, or, rather, an American with a green card. If Anna had stayed in Prague, her life might have been much harder, but at least it would have been her own. From now on, she vowed to rely on no one but herself.

Pulling into the driveway an hour later, Anna was starting to feel much better. The sun was shining, and it struck her as confirmation that, in spite of everything, there was still a chance for her to be happy. In the mirror, she could see that Tomas was smiling in his sleep, as if he, too, wanted to assure her that everything would be okay.

She turned off the ignition and leaned her head against the wheel. And that was when the tears came raining down.