Tomáš Zmeškal

Translated by Nathan Fields

Alice was born in the year 1950, a few months before her father was arrested, convicted and imprisoned. Alice didn’t remember any of it, she knew everything only from the stories and experiences of her relatives. Her mother went to see him every month. Sometimes alice went with her, but they wouldn’t let her inside anyway, and so she would stay with her aunt in a neighboring town. And then, after ten years, her father appeared at home. Alice knew him from stories and photographs. She had received letters from him, which her mother would read to her at first, and then, when she learned to read, she read them herself. She wasn’t happy that he would send them letters, and although her mother hid it, she would almost always cry, and Alice knew it even though her mother tried not to show it. And then, after her tenth birthday had passed, they let her father go. She looked forward to it, everyone was looking forward to it and everyone was nervous and happy. First her mother had begun visiting some offices, then there were more and more frequent visits from relatives and acquaintances and with her mother they would read through many papers which they then filled out and about which they would speak in a language Alice didn’t understand. And then her mother told her one day that she had a big surprise for her, and that the surprise was that her father should come home in exactly two weeks, that they were letting him go after ten years, not after thirteen as the original sentence had judged, and that he would be with them again. Alice didn’t understand her mother too well because, according to her, her father was supposed to return, but as far as Alice could remember, her father had never lived with them, so then it wasn’t a return for her because she had never seen him depart. Her father was supposed to return from prison on Thursday. It was impossible to endure those two weeks with her mother. Alice didn’t understand what was happening to her. She was glad that her father was returning to her, if only because he was in prison and she wasn’t allowed to speak about it too much.