Intergenerational Translation: Remembering The Sisulak Family

Býk Slovak, noun, masculine

Bull, an uncastrated adult male bovine.

All I have left of him is his voice. Through a deep Slavic tone echoes, What beautiful daughter…what beautiful child…so cuuute…she so good too…I don’t hear her cry…not too often…not too long…she’s a beautiful kid…Hannah! Look, it’s Grandpa!

I replay the video time and again, my first birthday party after my grandpa Ludovit “Louie” Sisulak returned from Slovakia. He was sick, really sick, sicker than anyone knew, for he was strong like bull and no one could imagine him otherwise, not even himself. He still used that term, strong like bull, even though he was upset at the Saturday Night Live portrayal of his culture through “Two Wild and Crazy Guys.” My mom said she used to joke, “Was that you, Dad?” and he’d defend himself with a huff. I often wonder whether he danced like those guys? Did he do the Odzemok, considered by many to be the "national" or most typical dance of Slovakia? I imagine axes flying, boots kicking, and his acrobatic, lengthy features on display.

Before my grandfather escaped, he was going to veterinarian school, but then he was dismissed due to his father’s resistance to the government. He loved animals; there was never a time when he was without a dog. When he moved to Arkansas to retire and be closer to my mother who had moved there years prior, he and my grandmother, Barbara, were appalled by the various chicken farms in the area. Hailing from Chicago, my Grandma thought the chickens were raised in the tiny cages found on the trucks. One day, one of these chickens happened to escape onto the side of the road and my grandparents pulled over. Somehow, Grandpa managed to grab the chicken and took it to the nearest household. Here is your chicken, he said to them, clutching the chicken with his meaty hands. To our surprise, they took it and maybe they ate it for dinner, who knows. 

Grandpa at my parents’ wedding, 1992

Klavír Slovak, noun, masculine

A keyboard musical instrument, usually ranging over seven octaves, with white and black keys, played by pressing these keys, causing hammers to strike strings. 

Below my piano bench, inscribed in pencil lies, Barbara Senft ‘47. As a child, I would lay on my back and graze the indentations with my fingertips to find her there. If you sit on the bench, you will notice that the back left leg is a bit wobbly. Once, I asked my mother why this was and she said when Grandma was a child, she played tag with her brother and knocked the leg straight off. They both stealthily set it back in place without saying a word until my great-grandmother Anna began to play a passionate polka. Anna liked to move with the music, bouncing, and swaying to and fro. Grandma watched in horror and confessed before it was too late. The leg was reglued but is still loose, and the signature below is unfaded. 

Inside the bench lies annotated sheet music of waltzes, polkas, and popular music of her day. I unfold the delicate yellow pages and press the same ivory keys on which she played. The middle C key has been chipped for as long as I can remember, with wood fraying at the bottom of the instrument. How could I ever restore it to its former glory and let a hundred years of memories be hidden under a facade? 

When I play Grandma’s favorite song, “Somewhere My Love”, the theme from Dr. Zhivago, my mother cries. I still play it. Perhaps Grandma is dancing somewhere in a space between past and present.

Grandma with a monkey at a work party, 1990s

Kvetina Slovak, noun, feminine

Flower, the seed-bearing part of a plant, consisting of reproductive organs (stamens and carpels) that are typically surrounded by a brightly colored corolla (petals) and a green calyx (sepals)

My grandma didn’t particularly like Arkansas, although she moved from the South Side of Chicago and had beer bottles thrown through her windows and saw drug deals occur in the alley. Her parents were Czech and immigrated to Chicago in the early 1920s. They were relatively wealthy and lived in Pilsen, a historically Eastern European neighborhood. They owned a bakery and cooked all the delicious kolache, unlike the fake kind you find in the American South that consists of a dough-wrapped hot dog. These are kolache, delicious pastries topped with apricots, poppyseeds, plums, fillings that stick sweetly on the tongue. 

My grandparents were set up by my grandpa’s sister, Helena, who developed a friendship with my grandma while working in the accessories department at Marshall Fields. My grandparents' first date occurred in a fancy bar called Trader Vics. I imagine the dimmed lights, the fifties lounge music softly playing in the background, their hands lightly brushing across the table, the scent of their cigarette smoke rising in the air. They shared a fruity drink for two with a gardenia floating on top of it. They were in love. 

But besides gardenias, my grandparents loved flowers. Although they lived with a postage-stamp-sized yard, it was kept immaculate with roses and trimmed bushes and grass. Grandpa even won an award from the mayor of Chicago for beautifying the city. But most importantly, there were lilies of the valleys, the flowers my grandpa sowed with his green thumb, flowers we have transplanted from house to house. The lilies smell like freshly washed sheets left out to dry in the wind, carrying their sweetness wherever the wind blows. 

Grandma and Grandpa at their wedding reception, 1959

Grandma in a field of sunflowers, Slovakia, 1990s 

Utiecť Slovak, verb

To escape, the act of leaving a dangerous situation

Each Christmas Eve, my mother recalls a scene depicting my grandparents, their parents, and family friends crying around the dinner table listening to a sad polka while sipping on Slivovic plum brandy and talking of the homeland. Christmas Eve marked the time my grandfather, at only eighteen, made secretive plans with his parents, sister, and niece to escape Czechoslovakia. Helena’s appendix burst in such imperfect timing, and the doctor wanted her to stay another day, but unbeknownst to him it was either stay in the rundown hospital or lose her chance to escape the country. 

They didn’t tell their grandmother about any of this, about the operation nor about the intricately planned escape she was too old and feeble for. Both would have caused unnecessary pain and it was often better to be unaware in case they were found and she would have been tortured and interrogated in their names. Leaving was unthinkable, undoable, but by morning she’d know they had gone, to Austria to Italy to Switzerland to Heaven, not knowing where or how, but they would be gone. 

I imagine this Christmas Eve, the snow falling lightly, the Nativity displayed, a polka spinning on the turntable, the radio missing, taken by the communists that took over the farm. I envision they must have been using that radio to play their drunken tunes, singing with their harsh voices in a crowded bar. The family must have felt torn apart like the leftover corn husks shucked the week prior, limply sprawled across the kitchen table. Helena was separated from her husband due to his position in the Communist party and his love affair with Slivovic brandy, among other things. They were scared he would report them the moment he found out they had left, afraid he’d release the vicious dogs on his own wife and daughter. Helena had another child, an infant boy named Lubos, whom she left with her husband's family, as he would have been too loud for the journey. She never saw him again. 

Leaving his beloved dog, Litka, and his grandmother with tears in his eyes, my grandfather rode off on his bike into the unknown distance. Never seeing either of them again, I hear him saying, “Dovidena, Babka. Ľúbim ťa. Goodbye, I love you.” After meeting his family at an undisclosed bus stop, they were questioned by a tall, cleanly cut guard.

“So, where are you off to? It’s Christmas Eve, shouldn’t you be with your family?”

“We’re just headed to Larshka Nova Ves on the next train to be with our grandmother.”

“It’s awfully late, isn’t it? Hand me your papers,” the guard demanded. 

Trying to steady their hands, they grabbed their false identifications, fabricated by some American man in Bratislava.

The guard looked at Helena, “Ah. Natalia Molnárová. Twenty-four years old. Green eyes. Tell me your address.”

She was prepared, having memorized the false details for weeks. 

“Obrancov Mieru 278, Spissky Stvrtok, 053 14.” She said confidently.

The man stoically stared at them, checking them from head to toes with his clear eyes.

“Alright. Veselé Vianoce. Merry Christmas.” He lifted his hat politely and went into the guard shack. I imagine an unheard sigh of relief was shared among Grandpa and Helena. When the steam of the train dispersed into the dark night, it revealed the door and they entered into the car. I imagine it appeared quite empty besides perhaps a middle-aged man with a slick comb-over grasping a newspaper copy of Rudé právo, “The Red Truth”, the official communist newspaper. The same newspaper that featured a sketch they did of my great-grandfather in a pig costume and devil ears to demonstrate the effects of “treason.” Keeping their heads down, Helena held Grandpa’s hand to appear married, with Viola, Helena’s daughter, as their “child”. The pain from her surgery must have been radiating down her leg as my grandpa handed her a pain pill, which she swallowed without water.

The communist man left at the same stop, and they walked briskly but unsuspectingly onto the platform and headed to the nearest bus stop. I imagine Helena felt as though her whole life had been a series of trusting men to lead the way and yet she had never felt so brave as she did at this moment.

As the bus headed towards the border near Austria, they began to drift asleep, exhausted by the mental and physical constraints. Viola scratched softly on the back of a flyer found crumpled on the dirty floor with an ink pen from Grandpa’s shirt pocket. Perhaps the flyer ironically stated the meeting time and date of the local Socialist Leninist Youth Union chapter, the illustrated children sporting white shirts and red bandanas tied tight around their necks. The children on the poster gazed forward with their eyes towards an invisible horizon, a perfect future. But the imagined future was filled with grey because since the Eastern Bloc began, all color was wiped away. The streets once filled with poppies became dirty with weeds, the stores were empty, and clothes were worn and dulled. 

The bus stopped and its jolt awakened them.

“It’s our stop, girls,” Grandpa whispered with an aura of calmness that surrounded his body.

After the bus drove away, kicking dirt and snow into their faces, Grandpa checked left and right and they headed into the black forest. 

I imagine Viola whimpered, “Mommy, I’m scared.”

“It’s just a game of hide and seek, Viola-ka, my dearest. We are searching for our friends.” Helena responded.

Grandpa had remembered each step of the way in such confidence just as he was told by the unnamed men who fabricated the papers. Meeting the other family members at an undisclosed location, they ventured into the dark thick forest covered in glistening snow, to begin their journey. They met people they were surprised to know and didn’t know at this location, people they were both friends with and strangers, and they all held onto a rope so no one would get lost.

After their secret journey through the forest, it was time to cross the Morava River that borders Austria. There was a raft-pulley system that had been previously set up, and as the searchlights grew nearer like ominous lightning bugs, it was time to cross the icy river. As the men began to pull the raft, those inside ducked, dodging the flashing ever-present searchlights. Water began to splash into the raft, but Helena and her mother remained afloat, holding onto the rope with their hands. But after hitting a chunk of ice, the raft capsized, and the cold water rushed up Helena’s feeble body until she was completely submerged. I imagine her trying to swim to safety, paddling her arms back and forth until her sight began to fade into blackness, and she became unable to move or hear. 

She woke up on the Austrian side to Grandpa giving her mouth-to-mouth respiration, his hands pumping on her chest. She coughed up water until she could breathe freely again. I’m sure she noticed Grandpa’s complexion had turned a pale blue. They both cried softly as he held her in his frozen arms. When I close my eyes, I can hear the dogs barking on the Czechoslovakian side of the river as they begin to run further into the safety of Austria. 

From left to right: Grandpa Louie, Great-Grandmother Helena, Second Cousin Viola, Great-Aunt Helena, Great-Grandfather Stefan in Austria c. 1952

Pes Slovak, noun, masculine

An animal, member of the genus Canis (probably descended from the common wolf) that has been domesticated for thousands of years; occurs in many breeds. Scientific name: Canis lupus familiaris.

Great-grandmother Helena named all her dogs Penny. She didn’t speak English and it was one of the few words she knew. After her death, the last Penny she had was entrusted to my grandparents. She was a stray dog, a straggly, ugly dog, but they cherished her nonetheless. Penny was so beloved that when Grandma passed away, they asked the funeral director if they could put the ashes in with her. He said yes, but, “Don’t tell the priest.” Some may say, “Je mi to platné ako mŕtvemu kabát, this is as useful to me as a coat is to the dead,” but I can see Penny with Grandma frolicking through fields of poppies in Heaven. The same field of poppies my mother saw the day after she died, a reminder that she is still with us. 

When Grandpa and Grandma moved to Arkansas to retire near my mother, Grandma had a massive heart attack soon thereafter. When finding out she had one year left to live, my parents gave them a dog from the pound which they once again named Litka. After Grandma passed and Grandpa moved to Slovakia, he brought Litka with him. I imagine she brought him a sense of normalcy in his home country. I can hear him say, “My little Litka, veľmi pekná holka. A very pretty girl.” When he became sick with cancer, my family bought him a ticket back to Arkansas for Christmas. He thought it was just a short vacation, so he left his dear Litka once again. 

Throughout my whole life, I have also had a dog. Poco, a Laso Apso, taught me about the effects of death when I was eight. She was adopted a few years prior to my birth when my mom saw her litter in a grocery store parking lot. I guess adopting stray dogs runs in the family. I remember burying Poco and writing her name with a stick in the concrete slab my dad laid over her makeshift grave. I’d leave fake sunflowers and even hung a windchime in the tree above. Hudba, ɦud-ba, music, forever ringing in my ears. 

Grandpa with Penny, 1990s

Litka, late 1990s

Hannah Samuel holds a BA in English with a Creative Writing emphasis from Hendrix College in Arkansas. She writes poetry and creative non-fiction essays surrounding her personal identity and heritage. Her work has appeared in the student-run magazine The Aonian volumes 62, 63, and 64. She currently resides in Bentonville, Arkansas.