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sga_flashficTitle: Naděje
By foggynite
Rating: Gen
Challenge: School
Character: Radek Zelenka
Words: 1990
Disclaimer: Definitely not mine. I make no profit, I intend no disrespect.
Note: Concrit welcome. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Primary.
The floorboards beneath his fingers are well worn and smooth. He watches as the blue marble catches the rays of light from the window, the twinkles against the wooden floor as it rolls unevenly. He traces its path, chasing the flashes of color with his smooth fingernails.
Babi is in the sitting room, humming along to the radio as she hunches her white head over her knitting. Papa will be home in an hour or so and Radek needs to have his schoolwork finished before then, but it’s all boring really. He already finished the math unit they’re working on, even if his teacher won’t believe him.
The sound of the front door opening is out of place, has him pushing himself off his elbows and running to hide at the archway of the sitting room.
Mama staggers in, supporting Papa with another man Radek doesn’t know. There are other people in the hall and they shift around nervously until they’re all inside the small apartment. Mrs. Wociehowski from two doors down is trying to peer into the room, but one of the group closes the door in her face.
“It’s all right, babi,” Mama says in her stressed voice, the one she always uses when she’s trying really hard not to yell at Radek for taking the radio apart again. “Could you make us some tea, yeah?”
Papa looks pale and sweaty, and Radek tries to shrink further back into his corner. He’s supposed to go to his room when this happens, but he wants to know. He needs to see. He doesn’t understand any of it, but he’s afraid—Like if he doesn’t stay, Papa won’t be here when he comes back.
“Jirka, here.”
Someone hands Papa a tattered handkerchief and Mama helps him press it to his bleeding cheek.
“Damn police,” someone mutters, and it makes Radek want to curl into himself, makes his heart start pounding in his ears, because you’re not supposed to say that, ever. If you say that, bad things happen. That’s what Mama says, “Radek, you watch what you say at school. Don’t ever repeat what goes on. Not even to your friends.”
But he doesn’t really have any friends. The teachers don’t like him much, and the other kids play stupid military games Radek has no interest in. He usually ends up in the library, but all the books there are full of errors, and it makes the teachers even angrier when he points them out.
“Here, here,” Babi comes back with the tea and starts fussing, passing around the resin drinking cups when she runs out of mugs.
“We shouldn’t stay,” someone with a deep voice says and people nod in concerned agreement.
Mama nods, too. “I’ll let you know what we’re going to do tomorrow.”
Her clipped tone makes Radek’s fingers uncurl from their tight grip on the archway. Mama knows what to do. She always makes things better.
The room clears after she’s spoken, and then it’s just her quiet murmurs to Papa, the radio in the background, and Babi making dinner in the kitchen.
Radek wants to say something, wants to let them know he’s there, but then they’d send him away.
After helping Papa lay down on the battered sofa, Mama stands and says something about ice. She walks right past Radek on her way to the kitchen, long delicate fingers ruffling his hair reassuringly.
“Your schoolwork better be finished, if you have time to stand around.”
Radek jumps at Papa’s tired voice and edges forward. His homework is on the floor next to the sofa, so he gathers it up and brings it to the edge, hovering next to Papa as he holds the papers out. Papa accepts them like they were one of his old books, cradling the scribbled pages carefully as he made interested noises over them.
He wants to say something again. Wants to make some sort of sound. But Papa shouldn’t look so broken, shouldn't have a swelling eye or be holding his ribs so tightly. And Radek feels a little ashamed, because he shouldn’t see his Papa like this.
“Good work, boy. Only one little mistake here…” A cracked and dirty nail points out where Radek mixed two variables, and he tries to remember. He doesn’t think he wants to see his father try to write right now.
He remembers when he was little, going along with Papa to the university. Sitting in a back corner of the room, letting the lectures pour around him in his father’s rumbling voice. The white walls, the worn desks, the feeling of history and time pressing in around him. He misses those quiet days. He so rarely gets to go anywhere with Papa anymore.
With a worn chuckle, Papa gives the papers back and lets his large hand rest on top of Radek’s head. He can feel his neck wanting to bow with the pressure, but he keeps his head up and smiles, hoping that Papa will smile back.
Secondary.
The weather’s getting colder, so Radek stomps his feet in the hopes of returning some feeling to them. He’s already run his laps, and he would go for a few more, but the dirty looks he’s getting from the other teenagers in his premilitary class promise retribution and a few accidental trips if he does.
He’s not like his father, no matter what everyone says. He’s learned to keep his head down and knows when to shut up, but that doesn’t stop his classmates from targeting him, doesn’t keep his teachers from looking for faults in his increasingly flawless work.
He has the scores to get into university. He does. He spoke with a representative from Charles-Ferdinand before the woman found out who his father was, so he knows he could get in if it wasn’t for the—
He can refute it all, if he wants to. Prove to them that he isn’t a dissident, an enemy of the KSC. All he has to do is turn his back on all the values his parents ever taught him, everything they ever gave him, and pledge his unwavering loyalty to Husak, the state, the nation. He could get an educational deferment from the conscription then. He could get a high-paying job in the government and take Mama to Moscow for the doctors to look at her there, if she would agree to go. If he just recanted his father’s sins hard enough, fell at their feet in slavish loyalty, then his brains, his usefulness, might outweigh his family’s past.
But he can’t.
He won’t.
His father is wasting away in prison, his mother is working her fingers to the bone to put food on the table for Radek and his sister. So many sacrifices, all for what they believe in. For the freedom they want their children to have.
He feels like such a coward for standing silent. For taking the jeers and slurs against Charter 77, against his parents and their associates, against people who believed in a better place. It makes his skin crawl until some days he can’t look himself in the eye, some days he doesn’t shave so that he won’t have to face his mirror.
He’s a coward and his Babi would be so disappointed in him, but he likes to think that she would understand. Everyone needs to do what they must to survive. If it means swallowing his pride so that he might have a chance at getting a middle-income job, something his mother can’t get any more, then he’ll do it.
A shoulder clips him from behind, a reminder not to lose focus as he stumbles forward to his knees. Breathless laughter continues down the track, and the only reason Radek gets the lap times that he does is because he has a lot of practice running.
University.
He’s been at Charles for over a year when the man approaches him.
Radek is in all the advanced classes, but he still can’t study what he wants-- can’t look at anything outside the stringent core curriculum. His scores alone were enough to get him an offer from the university, in spite of his parents, and he had hoped it was a sign that he could find employment in something other than menial labor, but he hasn’t had any luck yet. So Nadezda is working full time, trying to cover the portion of the rent and utilities that Mama’s disabilities check doesn’t. It’s not right for a sixteen-year-old, but it was her choice to drop out of school. As she pointed out, she’s not the brains in the family. Even if he thinks she’s brilliant.
But apparently the man agrees with her, because Radek can’t believe the offer on the table. From someone that, as of yesterday, he would have said was one of the most loyal citizens to the KSC ever. He can’t help but stare.
“You want me to—“
The man waits for him to finish, but when it’s obvious Radek won’t, the man slides the envelope towards him.
“I meant what I said before. Did you not believe me?” The man’s amused when Radek flushes. “That’s a big risk to take on something you didn’t think was real. What if someone from the university had overheard us?”
“I—“
It’s all right there. Waiting.
“Radek,” spoken in gentle tones. “You are the most brilliant mind to come out of our country in your generation, and it pains me to see all your accomplishments being overlooked. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life here, stuck in a factory, or worse, working for a government you don’t believe in, watching every word you say?”
“I—I can’t leave without Mother and Nadezda.”
“I can get you a student’s visa for the UK, but they would be more difficult. I can’t afford to pay all three education repayment fees.”
“They have no one else left…”
“You could always send for them after you graduate. Believe me, you won’t have difficulty finding work outside of Soviet country. I’m surprised Moscow hasn’t come for you already, but you’re lucky in that.”
He is still at a loss for words, but he isn’t one to stand around stupefied. So many pathways are growing before him, like the reaching tendrils of a vine, spreading out from his feet.
“Of course, if you go, given your history, they won’t let you come back again. You’ll essentially be in exile.”
“…I know.”
He would have to leave it all behind. The country his parents loved so dearly. His father dead and gone two years, his mother wasting away. He doesn’t know what it’s like to live someplace where they aren’t in constant fear of the police breaking down their door for crimes of years past.
If he went, maybe then Mama would get the care she needed. Nadezda would be able to go back to school, perhaps have some part of her young life given back before she becomes a ghost like their mother.
Real Life Twenty Years Later.
Radek stands quietly among the controlled chaos of the gate room, listening to Dr. Weir make the final preparations. An old song is stuck in his head, one he hasn’t heard for years, and it won’t be subdued. It reminds him of his Babi and his thumb rubs across the smooth ball of glass in his pocket.
Years pass. Things change. His mother and father gone, his own wife departed. His little sister now grown with a family of her own. Friends and mates and the endless wear of time. So much there, and yet not enough to make him stay. Besides, how often is it that a once in a lifetime opportunity comes twice? Surely there is a balance to it, a repaying of debts.
When the command comes, he steps forward into the shimmering blue light.
*
"Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good."
~ Vaclav Havel (Czech Playwright and President of Czechoslovakia(1989-92), b.1936)
By foggynite
Rating: Gen
Challenge: School
Character: Radek Zelenka
Words: 1990
Disclaimer: Definitely not mine. I make no profit, I intend no disrespect.
Note: Concrit welcome. Correct me if I’m wrong.
Primary.
The floorboards beneath his fingers are well worn and smooth. He watches as the blue marble catches the rays of light from the window, the twinkles against the wooden floor as it rolls unevenly. He traces its path, chasing the flashes of color with his smooth fingernails.
Babi is in the sitting room, humming along to the radio as she hunches her white head over her knitting. Papa will be home in an hour or so and Radek needs to have his schoolwork finished before then, but it’s all boring really. He already finished the math unit they’re working on, even if his teacher won’t believe him.
The sound of the front door opening is out of place, has him pushing himself off his elbows and running to hide at the archway of the sitting room.
Mama staggers in, supporting Papa with another man Radek doesn’t know. There are other people in the hall and they shift around nervously until they’re all inside the small apartment. Mrs. Wociehowski from two doors down is trying to peer into the room, but one of the group closes the door in her face.
“It’s all right, babi,” Mama says in her stressed voice, the one she always uses when she’s trying really hard not to yell at Radek for taking the radio apart again. “Could you make us some tea, yeah?”
Papa looks pale and sweaty, and Radek tries to shrink further back into his corner. He’s supposed to go to his room when this happens, but he wants to know. He needs to see. He doesn’t understand any of it, but he’s afraid—Like if he doesn’t stay, Papa won’t be here when he comes back.
“Jirka, here.”
Someone hands Papa a tattered handkerchief and Mama helps him press it to his bleeding cheek.
“Damn police,” someone mutters, and it makes Radek want to curl into himself, makes his heart start pounding in his ears, because you’re not supposed to say that, ever. If you say that, bad things happen. That’s what Mama says, “Radek, you watch what you say at school. Don’t ever repeat what goes on. Not even to your friends.”
But he doesn’t really have any friends. The teachers don’t like him much, and the other kids play stupid military games Radek has no interest in. He usually ends up in the library, but all the books there are full of errors, and it makes the teachers even angrier when he points them out.
“Here, here,” Babi comes back with the tea and starts fussing, passing around the resin drinking cups when she runs out of mugs.
“We shouldn’t stay,” someone with a deep voice says and people nod in concerned agreement.
Mama nods, too. “I’ll let you know what we’re going to do tomorrow.”
Her clipped tone makes Radek’s fingers uncurl from their tight grip on the archway. Mama knows what to do. She always makes things better.
The room clears after she’s spoken, and then it’s just her quiet murmurs to Papa, the radio in the background, and Babi making dinner in the kitchen.
Radek wants to say something, wants to let them know he’s there, but then they’d send him away.
After helping Papa lay down on the battered sofa, Mama stands and says something about ice. She walks right past Radek on her way to the kitchen, long delicate fingers ruffling his hair reassuringly.
“Your schoolwork better be finished, if you have time to stand around.”
Radek jumps at Papa’s tired voice and edges forward. His homework is on the floor next to the sofa, so he gathers it up and brings it to the edge, hovering next to Papa as he holds the papers out. Papa accepts them like they were one of his old books, cradling the scribbled pages carefully as he made interested noises over them.
He wants to say something again. Wants to make some sort of sound. But Papa shouldn’t look so broken, shouldn't have a swelling eye or be holding his ribs so tightly. And Radek feels a little ashamed, because he shouldn’t see his Papa like this.
“Good work, boy. Only one little mistake here…” A cracked and dirty nail points out where Radek mixed two variables, and he tries to remember. He doesn’t think he wants to see his father try to write right now.
He remembers when he was little, going along with Papa to the university. Sitting in a back corner of the room, letting the lectures pour around him in his father’s rumbling voice. The white walls, the worn desks, the feeling of history and time pressing in around him. He misses those quiet days. He so rarely gets to go anywhere with Papa anymore.
With a worn chuckle, Papa gives the papers back and lets his large hand rest on top of Radek’s head. He can feel his neck wanting to bow with the pressure, but he keeps his head up and smiles, hoping that Papa will smile back.
Secondary.
The weather’s getting colder, so Radek stomps his feet in the hopes of returning some feeling to them. He’s already run his laps, and he would go for a few more, but the dirty looks he’s getting from the other teenagers in his premilitary class promise retribution and a few accidental trips if he does.
He’s not like his father, no matter what everyone says. He’s learned to keep his head down and knows when to shut up, but that doesn’t stop his classmates from targeting him, doesn’t keep his teachers from looking for faults in his increasingly flawless work.
He has the scores to get into university. He does. He spoke with a representative from Charles-Ferdinand before the woman found out who his father was, so he knows he could get in if it wasn’t for the—
He can refute it all, if he wants to. Prove to them that he isn’t a dissident, an enemy of the KSC. All he has to do is turn his back on all the values his parents ever taught him, everything they ever gave him, and pledge his unwavering loyalty to Husak, the state, the nation. He could get an educational deferment from the conscription then. He could get a high-paying job in the government and take Mama to Moscow for the doctors to look at her there, if she would agree to go. If he just recanted his father’s sins hard enough, fell at their feet in slavish loyalty, then his brains, his usefulness, might outweigh his family’s past.
But he can’t.
He won’t.
His father is wasting away in prison, his mother is working her fingers to the bone to put food on the table for Radek and his sister. So many sacrifices, all for what they believe in. For the freedom they want their children to have.
He feels like such a coward for standing silent. For taking the jeers and slurs against Charter 77, against his parents and their associates, against people who believed in a better place. It makes his skin crawl until some days he can’t look himself in the eye, some days he doesn’t shave so that he won’t have to face his mirror.
He’s a coward and his Babi would be so disappointed in him, but he likes to think that she would understand. Everyone needs to do what they must to survive. If it means swallowing his pride so that he might have a chance at getting a middle-income job, something his mother can’t get any more, then he’ll do it.
A shoulder clips him from behind, a reminder not to lose focus as he stumbles forward to his knees. Breathless laughter continues down the track, and the only reason Radek gets the lap times that he does is because he has a lot of practice running.
University.
He’s been at Charles for over a year when the man approaches him.
Radek is in all the advanced classes, but he still can’t study what he wants-- can’t look at anything outside the stringent core curriculum. His scores alone were enough to get him an offer from the university, in spite of his parents, and he had hoped it was a sign that he could find employment in something other than menial labor, but he hasn’t had any luck yet. So Nadezda is working full time, trying to cover the portion of the rent and utilities that Mama’s disabilities check doesn’t. It’s not right for a sixteen-year-old, but it was her choice to drop out of school. As she pointed out, she’s not the brains in the family. Even if he thinks she’s brilliant.
But apparently the man agrees with her, because Radek can’t believe the offer on the table. From someone that, as of yesterday, he would have said was one of the most loyal citizens to the KSC ever. He can’t help but stare.
“You want me to—“
The man waits for him to finish, but when it’s obvious Radek won’t, the man slides the envelope towards him.
“I meant what I said before. Did you not believe me?” The man’s amused when Radek flushes. “That’s a big risk to take on something you didn’t think was real. What if someone from the university had overheard us?”
“I—“
It’s all right there. Waiting.
“Radek,” spoken in gentle tones. “You are the most brilliant mind to come out of our country in your generation, and it pains me to see all your accomplishments being overlooked. Do you really want to spend the rest of your life here, stuck in a factory, or worse, working for a government you don’t believe in, watching every word you say?”
“I—I can’t leave without Mother and Nadezda.”
“I can get you a student’s visa for the UK, but they would be more difficult. I can’t afford to pay all three education repayment fees.”
“They have no one else left…”
“You could always send for them after you graduate. Believe me, you won’t have difficulty finding work outside of Soviet country. I’m surprised Moscow hasn’t come for you already, but you’re lucky in that.”
He is still at a loss for words, but he isn’t one to stand around stupefied. So many pathways are growing before him, like the reaching tendrils of a vine, spreading out from his feet.
“Of course, if you go, given your history, they won’t let you come back again. You’ll essentially be in exile.”
“…I know.”
He would have to leave it all behind. The country his parents loved so dearly. His father dead and gone two years, his mother wasting away. He doesn’t know what it’s like to live someplace where they aren’t in constant fear of the police breaking down their door for crimes of years past.
If he went, maybe then Mama would get the care she needed. Nadezda would be able to go back to school, perhaps have some part of her young life given back before she becomes a ghost like their mother.
Real Life Twenty Years Later.
Radek stands quietly among the controlled chaos of the gate room, listening to Dr. Weir make the final preparations. An old song is stuck in his head, one he hasn’t heard for years, and it won’t be subdued. It reminds him of his Babi and his thumb rubs across the smooth ball of glass in his pocket.
Years pass. Things change. His mother and father gone, his own wife departed. His little sister now grown with a family of her own. Friends and mates and the endless wear of time. So much there, and yet not enough to make him stay. Besides, how often is it that a once in a lifetime opportunity comes twice? Surely there is a balance to it, a repaying of debts.
When the command comes, he steps forward into the shimmering blue light.
*
"Hope is a state of mind, not of the world. Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good."
~ Vaclav Havel (Czech Playwright and President of Czechoslovakia(1989-92), b.1936)
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-22 08:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-22 09:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2005-11-22 09:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-22 03:08 pm (UTC)I hope you don't mind, I do have one tiny correction. Here: “You’re schoolwork better be finished, it should be "Your" not "You're." Other than that, it is perfect!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-22 09:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2005-11-22 04:58 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2005-11-22 05:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-22 09:44 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-22 06:03 pm (UTC)Thank you!
K.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-22 09:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-22 07:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2005-11-22 09:06 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-22 09:47 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-22 09:24 pm (UTC)Just a marginal note, Wociehowski is a Polish surname not Czech. But I guess she could be of Polish origin and it doesn´t matter anyway *g*
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-22 09:53 pm (UTC)Yes, it's Polish, but I figured with emigration and migration and whatnot, there's a fair mix, esp. in the NorthEast and I was thinking of this as set in Prague, so it might not be a far stretch. But it's actually a shout out to my grandmother, I couldn't resist-- I'm second-generation Polish American, which normally I think is silly to say-- We're Americans at this point-- But my early childhood was spent around family members whose first language was Polish, as well as their family traditions and mindsets, so I feel a little connection. Long explanation, I know ^.^
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Date: 2005-11-22 09:39 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2005-11-22 10:52 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-22 11:33 pm (UTC)I love the Radeck back story!!
(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-23 10:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-23 12:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-23 10:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-23 02:48 am (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2005-11-24 03:59 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-24 04:35 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-11-25 05:06 pm (UTC)wags, springwoof
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Date: 2005-11-26 04:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-02 05:37 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-12-07 01:55 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-08 10:57 pm (UTC)