The Vltava River, called the Moldau in German, is the longest river in the Czech Republic, running along the Bohemian forests and then meeting the Elbe at Melnik flowing toward Prague. It is called the Czech national river.
As I was growing up during the war, I started to believe that the river had a personality. When the river was smooth and placid and the sun was shining, I believed the river was happy. But when it was dark and choppy and the sky was overcast, I believed the river was angry. I’m not sure how I got that idea, but it might have come from listening to Bedrich Smetana’s symphonic poem Ma Vlast (My Country) with my favorite uncle, Richard Stein.
In several black-and-white photographs in a family album, my mother, Zdenka, is holding me as an infant as she points in the direction of the river. My parents lived in an apartment house about 20 minutes outside of Prague, the capital. Several rooms of our third-floor apartment faced our major attraction—the river.
In summers, I learned to swim in it, and in the winter, when it froze over, I learned to skate on it. My mother loved to swim, and though she preferred swimming in lakes, the river was much more convenient. My father also swam and introduced me to the river when I was quite young, before the German occupation. We had fun in the water, playing games and splashing around.
The pool area extended out into the river. It was made of long wooden planks that covered the floor and all the sides of the pool. The open spaces between the planks allowed the river’s water to enter and exit the pool. There was no chlorine to hurt my eyes, but unfortunately the temperature of the pool water was identical to that of the river.
During the occupation, my mother, who was Catholic, was assigned to a textile manufacturing firm and had little time to take me swimming, but she was able to find me a new swimming coach. We walked across the street and down the embankment to the local pool to meet Jiri, a university student. Jiri did not smile, was all business, and laid out his rules. He would teach me the right strokes, but there would be no fooling around. But I did not want to learn swimming from a stranger; I wanted my dad.
Some days my teeth chattered, but if Jiri said the lesson was on, I was expected to jump in. The water was still chilly in June; July and August were fine; by September, the water cooled off again.
Jiri put me through stretching drills before bringing out a vest and a long wooden pole. The vest looked like it could have been used to torture people—it was thick, wide, and made of a brown canvas. He placed the vest around my chest and tightened the straps in the back. He then pulled a thick rope through two rings on the back of the vest, made a strong knot and wound the other end of the rope around the pole. The vest felt tight and awkward, but I wanted to be a good student so I followed his orders.
In a loud voice, Jiri announced that it was time to swim. I climbed down the ladder into the cold water. He rested the pole on a railing that ran the length of one side of the pool. One end of the pole was attached to the rope holding my vest, and the other end of the pole was in the instructor’s hands. He reassured me that he would hold the pole while I swam.
I wanted to show him how well I swam, so I started with the breaststroke my dad had taught me. As I swam, Jiri slid the pole along the top of the rail. He explained that if I started to drown, he could fish me out without having to jump into the pool. When I reached the other end of the pool, Jiri told me that the strokes had looked alright, but that I was not breathing properly. He emphasized that it’s one, two, three, kick—that I should extend my arms and breathe.
I realized the pole had another function. At one point, Jiri let go of the rope, and I started to swallow water and was choking. He yelled that I had messed up a stroke, and I should do it again. When he loosened the rope, I went down like a stone. By the end of the half-hour lesson, I was glad to get out of the pool. It had become more torture than fun.
After several more weeks of lessons, Jiri tested my ability by telling me to swim up and down the pool a number of times without taking a break. As the day of the swim test approached, I worried more and more: Will the water be very cold? Will the waves bother me? Will the river be friendly or angry?
I was nervous that morning and ate little. My mother kept encouraging me to relax and do my best. At first, I felt fine, doing the breaststroke smoothly, repeating to myself, one, two, three, kick. But as I swam, the waves increased, and the water felt colder and colder. The waves were hitting my face, and every time I opened my mouth to breathe, I swallowed more water. I felt tired but kept going until Jiri finally said that I had passed. But by my fifth birthday, I could no longer swim with him because Jewish men, women, and children were not allowed to use public swimming pools.
The Vltava River was usually frozen solid by December. Ice covered the entire river for miles, from Braník, where we lived, all the way to the center of town, under the Charles Bridge. On some days, the river offered us smooth ice, but when it was angry, the ice became very bumpy and potentially dangerous.
Hockey took our minds off the war and the German occupation. We felt free out on the river, away from prying soldiers and prying parents. Before and after our games, we talked about how Czech hockey players were better than German ones.
The challenge faced by our group of seven- and eight-year-old hockey players was to find skateable ice. As soon as the river froze, we started to look for smooth areas of ice. We’d scout as far as we could, and when we found a spot, we put down book bags and shoes to mark off goals. Then we cleared off the snow with our feet and hands—as we had no shovels or brooms. We laced up skates, put on gloves, grabbed our hockey sticks, and threw out a puck.
On the weekends, we had enough players for two teams. We took turns playing goalie, the toughest position because the puck was made of hard black rubber and traveled fast. We learned how to flick our wrists when we shot and made the puck fly, sometimes out of control. The goalie’s job was to stop the puck with his gloved hands, his chest, his face, and sometimes with his mouth. We’d keep playing unless the goalie had his wind knocked out or started to bleed. Then we halted the action, stopped the bleeding, and tried to decide what to do with his bloody handkerchief. We all agreed that it was never a good idea to have one’s mother find a bloody handkerchief.
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