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

her.
    â€œCome back in a week. I’ll sniff around and see what I can come up with,” he told my parents.
    Dr. Safranek had no illusions about Communist justice. He knew that the only way to win the case would be to play the same kind of game my grandmother was playing. The Red Countess was a big fish, and the best way to get rid of a big fish was to find an even bigger fish to eat her. Through his private information network, he discovered that Comrade Pastorek, the judge who had thrown my parents’ appeal out of the city court, was a man with a lot of powerful enemies, and he came up with a cunning strategy that had nothing to do with the legal merits of the case.
    Comrade Pastorek had been a judge in the time of Stalin, and had sent thousands of people to Communist “reeducation” camps in the late forties and fifties. Back in those days, it was not only dissidents and intellectuals who were sent to these camps, but also important Communist officials who were routinely purged to destabilize their power. Many of these officials were rehabilitated after Stalin’s death, and a few of them even regained their political status. The most famous rehabilitated politician at the time (and who happened to have been sent to prison by Comrade Pastorek) was none other than Comrade Gustav Husak, the president of Czechoslovakia.
    When my mother returned to Dr. Safranek’s office the following week, the White Fox suggested that she write a letter to the president explaining the situation and pointing out that the judge who had ruled in the Red Countess’s favor was the same judge who had sent him to prison twenty years earlier.
    â€œBut will the president read my letter?” my mother asked doubtfully.
    â€œOh, yes. I think so.” The White Fox smiled.
    As well as being a successful litigator, Dr. Safranek had also been a successful ladies’ man. He had maintained good relationships with his ex-lovers, and the information network he built up over the years was largely made up of the women he had slept with. It was no coincidence then that one of his old lovers now worked as the president’s personal secretary. Dr. Safranek had already contacted this woman and told her to look out for my mother’s letter. The plan was for the secretary to give the letter to the president when he was in a particularly bad mood.
    My mother wrote the letter and delivered it personally to the secretary, and, as Dr. Safranek hoped, Comrade Husak was enraged. He ordered the general prosecutor to investigate the case, and then forwarded it to the Supreme Court, where it was discovered that Comrade Pastorek had overlooked eight paragraphs of Socialist law when he overturned my parents’ appeal. His judgment was not only overruled by the Supreme Court, but Comrade Husak made sure that he was forced to retire in disgrace. The case was then returned to the district court, which cheerfully authorized my parents to buy out the remaining two thirds of the house and saddled my grandmother with a massive legal bill.
    The Red Countess was shocked and furious, but she was also very frightened. She had always been afraid of my father, and the fact that he had been able to get the president to intercede on his behalf made her suspect that he still had powerful friends from the old days. She knew nothing about the White Fox or his ex-lover, but she was sufficiently intimidated by the outcome of the case to never bother my parents again.
    We had won, but the victory broke my mother’s heart. Deep down, she had always hoped to reconcile with her parents, but the court case was too big and too public, and the humiliation the Red Countess suffered was too great. It was almost ten years since the Soviet invasion, and Comrade Pastorek’s dismissal was seen as a major crack in the old guard’s armor. Many important party members were angry at my grandmother for allowing a private dispute to resolve itself so badly,