My Own Revolution Read Free

statue, I whisper to Danika, “I got caught.”
    Her eyes widen. Eyes as blue as the sky behind them. “Now what?”
    “Imprisonment. The Gulag.”
    “No . . .”
    “Almost. Forced labor. Copying Karl Marx for five days.”
    “Oh, you poor thing.”
    The
S
and the
R
have both been painted back on, the wet paint shining, the oily smell stinking up the air. Hand drawn, the letters look clumsy.
    “The slogan is so stupid now,” Danika says, gazing away as if she has no interest.
    In my bedroom, I slit open Mr. Babicak’s letter to Tati. It explains that I vandalized a Communist Party slogan at school. That I am to be punished.
    I want to hold a flame to this note. I want to burn it into just a black smudge. Instead, I uncap my fountain pen and forge my father’s signature.

After school the next day, Mr. Babicak leads me to a small, dusty room off his office. On the desk lies
The Communist Manifesto.
He hands me a stack of lined newsprint and a fountain pen, then leaves, banging the door shut.
    I pull out the wooden chair, clattering the legs loudly. Then I rock back and forth on the uneven legs. Outside, I can hear the shouts of kids playing soccer.
    I uncap the fountain pen and draw a caricature of Mr. Babicak — beady eyes behind the thick glasses. The ink bleeds into the newsprint.
    Opening
The Communist Manifesto,
I begin to copy:
    The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another . . .
    When Janosik died, they say that all nature went into mourning. The babbling brooks became silent, and the animals of the forest stilled in a sudden hush.
    Out the window, I see the statue of Lenin. Underneath, a plaque reads:
Vladimir Lenin, 1870–1924, Leader of the October 1917 Revolution.
Every now and then, I look up and think of how Lenin symbolizes all that pins us down. How it’s because of him that the heavy boots of the Communist Party trod upon us. Because of him that people like Mrs. Zeman can keep kids from having fun. Because of him that I’m copying this crap.
    I daydream about pissing on him.
    “Why are you so late?” Mami asks me. Her blond hair — with little strips of gray — is wound back in a bun. She’s hung her nurse’s cap on the peg but still wears the white uniform, the clunky white shoes. “You should have been home hours ago.”
    “I’m working on a project. With Mr. Noll. Doing a special report. I’m studying the ancient Greeks.”
    “Really?” She lifts her eyebrows.
    I nod, then ask, “How was the clinic?”
    Immediately, her eyes glow. “A baby came in very sick. But it was a simple matter of dehydration. With some proper fluids, that little thing was as good as new.”
    I match her smile. I feel bad about lying to her, but if I tell the truth about my punishment, she’ll tell Tati. The two of them will start up the talk about getting out of here, of finding a way to escape Czechoslovakia.
    I kind of like that talk. It sets me daydreaming about living in the West. Tati has an aunt in Pennsylvania who owns a gas station. When I was little, I thought Pennsylvania was
Transylvania,
home of Dracula. But it’s a place in America. Whenever my parents daydream about escaping, it’s always this aunt’s gas station they talk about.
    I daydream about wearing blue jeans and drinking Coca-Cola. If I were in America, I could play Beatles music all day long.
    But my parents’ escape talk is only frustrating. It never goes anywhere.
    Each afternoon, I copy the
Manifesto.
    At the end of the day, I stand up and give the finger to Lenin.
    Copying this crap makes me yearn to go to America. I’ll even pump gas if I have to. In America people say whatever they want. They even talk bad about President Lyndon B. Johnson, and no one knocks them down for it.
    On the last day, I come to the final words:
    Let