The Twelve Little Cakes by Dominika Dery Read Free Book Online Page A

on my plate, along with a scoop of potato salad. Savory ham rolls and soup with liver dumplings were the traditional Christmas appetizers, and after that we would devour the fried carp. My mother’s Christmas dinners were always delicious, but my favorite part was dessert, when we ate the biscuits we had baked. We had made enough biscuits to keep us going through the New Year, and I sat in front of the tree with a little basket of biscuits and felt very happy in my little yellow skis. After that, my mother played Christmas carols on the piano and we all sang.
    â€œHurry up to Bethlehem, doodleai, doodleai, doodleai day,” my father growled in his deep voice, while my sister and I tried to harmonize above him. Klara had a good ear for melody, but she always sang quietly, whereas I always sang as loudly as possible, making the words and melody up as I went along. My mother didn’t sing at all, because she wasn’t very good at it, but she was an excellent pianist and could sight-read all the carols in the book. I took off my skis and stood on the piano stool and turned the pages for her. She smiled at me to let me know when she was ready. We sang with gusto, ignoring the Nedbals as they banged on the ceiling with a broom.
    â€œShut up!” they yelled. “We can’t hear the television!”
    My father smiled like a wolf and began to sing even louder, and soon I was singing at the top of my lungs. My mother signaled me to turn another page, and then she looked at me with tears in her eyes. The little girl who had demanded to be born. I stood on the stool and sang along with my family, unaware of how much hope I had brought into their lives.

two
    THE ROOF

    MRS. NEDBAL’S SLY REMARKS in the bathroom were more serious than I ever could have known. The following April, my parents went to the Supreme Court to try to stop the Red Countess from throwing us out. Even though one-third of the house legally belonged to my mother, the Red Countess had used her political connections to scare a number of judges into ruling in her favor.
    She hired two expensive attorneys to build a case against my parents, and employed the Nedbals to eavesdrop on their conversations, both on the phone and through the walls.
    The Red Countess maintained that my parents were conspiring against the Socialist state, and wanted to disinherit my mother from the property her Communist grandfather had left her. It was a long and ugly battle. My parents had already lost in the district, regional, and city courts of Prague, and knew that if their appeal to the Supreme Court was unsuccessful, not only would they be evicted but they would also be ruined by their obligation to pay my grandmother’s legal expenses. Realistically, my parents had no chance, and everyone knew it. Mrs. Nedbal’s smile was even sharper than usual, and my parents took to whispering in the house and sending me outside to practice my skiing. I became very good on my little yellow skis, but my parents were too distracted to watch me.
    We needed a miracle, and a miracle appeared out of the blue one evening as my father was driving his regular taxi route through Prague. He was hailed by an old man outside Charles University. The man turned out to be the legendary attorney Dr. Safranek, who was known as the “White Fox” in legal circles, due to the fact that he hardly ever lost a case. He was very old and didn’t accept clients anymore, but he listened to my dad’s story and gave my father his card. The following day, my parents went to his office in a desperate attempt to persuade him to represent them. After their last appeal, their lawyers had resigned and told them that their attempt to keep the house was hopeless. Dr. Safranek knew exactly who the Red Countess was, and he wasn’t very optimistic. But he took another look at my mother and saw her lovely Mona Lisa smile and, against his better judgment, he decided to defend