A game of magical thinking leads to a teen’s traumatic coming-of-age in Lidmila Kábrtová’s short story “Glass Apples,” this week’s Translation Tuesday selection. Decay and growth surround our speaker as she pursues a crush, though her excitement and anticipation betray her as she discovers a sinister and predatory side to young love. Of note is the speaker’s voice, initially full of hyperbole and youthful naiveté. A first-person narrative of meandering thoughts segues into a moment of subtle disembodiment (CW: sexual assault) as the speaker refers to “the body” instead of “my body,” and all the while rotting “forbidden” fruit provides a literal background to our protagonist’s fear and disillusionment.
It’s pitch black. Even though I’m being very careful, I can still feel myself standing on apples. There are so many that it’s impossible to avoid them, so I don’t. They crunch underfoot, turning into a sticky, sour-smelling mush. They are summer apples, but Gran, who I’m staying with over the summer holidays, calls them glass apples because they have such fine white skins that they almost look like they’re made of glass. They bruise easily—in fact, all you have to do is handle them a bit roughly and almost at once horrid marks appear on their soft apple skin and quickly turn brown. These apples don’t even taste very nice: at first they’re hard, bitter and tart, and then almost instantly they become floury and not nearly as sweet as, say Holovousy or reinettes, so they’re no good for anything except strudel. Gran bakes strudel with them regularly, twice a week. Even with the bashed and rotten ones. Which is just about all of them. The two of us always have a lot of coring to do. Gran even knows how to core the really, really bad ones. But not even Gran could make anything out of these ones.
My skin is really delicate too. Like glass. Gran says it’s like those apples. She says it all the time. I liked her saying it to me when I was ten, but now that I’m sixteen it’s really annoying. It’s also annoying how she’s always checking up on where I’m going, who with, and what time I’ll be back. I’m sixteen and I don’t want my Gran on my back all the time!
Last year I could still talk to her about a lot of things. But now I don’t want to talk to her about anything. Not about apples and certainly not about Štěpán. Definitely not him. Or anything to do with tonight. I just want to get home quietly so Gran doesn’t hear me. I’ll have to wash my shoes too, as they’ll be filthy from all of the apple mush.
I know I promised Gran I wouldn’t go to the dance. And then I climbed out my bedroom window. It’s on the ground floor, so you don’t have to jump from very high up. I’ve never tricked Gran before—well, at least never this much. But I just had to. Going out was a matter of life and death. Gran wouldn’t have understood. She would have said: Tereza, there’ll be other dances. In a year or two when you’re older and more responsible . . .
But how could Gran know what it was like not to see Štěpán, when it was obvious he’d be at the party? How could I lie under the duvet and try to close my eyes when all I could see going round my head were all the girls around him squealing, just so he’d notice them?
I didn’t have to squeal. He whistled over to me this afternoon when I was in the garden: “Are you coming, Tereza? It’s just a stupid dance, but better than nothing . . .” And he had his head tilted to one side in a really cute way and was kicking a stone on the ground.
Štěpán, the best-looking boy in the village. All of the girls were after him. Of course I was aware of him too, but the past two years he had acted as if I meant less than nothing to him. As if he didn’t register me. As if I didn’t exist.
“Yeah, I’ll come.”
“See you at nine then,” he said and disappeared.
Nine was too late for Gran. There was nothing for it but to take off. Even so, I couldn’t get away at nine because today Gran just wouldn’t go to bed. And other days she’d be in bed by eight! It was as if she knew and was doing it on purpose. She kept going back and forward between the sitting room and the kitchen, putting the light on so she could find this or that, going for a glass of water and then a cake. On purpose!
So because of all that, I arrived late. I didn’t get there until half nine. And I’d run all the way—otherwise I’d have been even later. I stopped near the entrance and leant against the trunk of a huge walnut tree to catch my breath. At the same time I kept a careful eye on the entrance. Where would Štěpán be waiting? In front of the pub? Or inside at a table he’d picked out for us? Would he be looking around impatiently, checking the time on his watch?
He would notice me as soon as I walked into the hall, I was pretty sure about that, even though I had just come in an ordinary T-shirt and jeans with a sweatshirt tied round my waist. I’d have liked to have been wearing a white chiffon dress with a circle skirt, the kind that showed off your thighs and even your knickers when you spun round. I’d seen that in a film and I thought it was romantic. And sexy too. But I don’t have a dress like that and, anyway, everyone here wears jeans.
You could hear the music from the pub through the open windows all the way over by the walnut tree. A local band were playing all the cheesy hits from the radio. But it actually wasn’t too bad for a backwater like this.
I peeled myself away from the tree and sauntered ever so slowly towards the door so that Štěpán wouldn’t think I was mad for him. But Štěpán wasn’t by the door. I peered into the pub. Apart from a few older couples and some guys on their own with a beer, the place was deserted. The dance floor then. Dajána was drifting from the speakers. Nearly all of the people there were locals—I knew them by sight. Most of them were just a little older than me. A disco ball hanging in the middle of the hall flashed glittering reflections into the semi-darkness. Shadows and light. The dancers’ faces disappeared and then appeared again. Arms disappeared and reappeared. Placed around waists, on bottoms and hips.
Štěpán was pressed up against a short-haired blonde with big breasts and a low-cut top that exposed a pink bra. In fact, not so much pressed against her as stuck like a fly to flypaper.
“Hi!” I said loudly as I reached them through the dancing couples.
“Hi,” answered Štěpán. The girl didn’t say a word.
“Are you dancing?” I asked, then realized what a stupid question it was.
“Yeah, a bit,” replied Štěpán, pushing the girl away from him by about a millimetre. But he was still holding her around the waist.
“Tereza, this is Jola. I mean Jolana. She’s here for the holidays too, at her aunt’s . . .” said Štěpán, finally introducing her.
The girl shuffled from one foot to the other: “Jola. Hi.”
I acted as if I hadn’t heard anything. The girl stared wide-eyed. She was probably about the same age as me. Maybe even a bit younger. She looked quite normal, ordinary, apart from her hair. It was blonde, but such a strange shade, so light it was almost white.
There was an awkward silence. Štěpán looked first at the girl and then at me. “We’ll take a break, OK?” he said and Jolana went to sit down.
“Is that how you are with all of them?”
“Don’t be daft, Tereza, it’s just Jola. She’s here on holiday as well . . . I didn’t know if you were coming, you were so late getting here.”
“Ah-ha . . .”
“There was nothing going on, honest. One slow dance,” he said, gently touching my hair. “I’ve never seen you like this before, it suits you.”
“What now then?” I asked, softening a little.
He nodded towards the outside door of the hall.
“Are we not going to dance?” I asked, a little surprised.
“Afterwards. I want to show you something first, OK?”
He took my hand and I let him lead me outside, even though I knew that the next day the local girls would tear me to shreds: that townie who only comes here for the holidays has the cheek to get off with the best-looking guy in the village.
Štěpán pushed his way across the busy dance floor. He was holding me tightly. Then we were outside in the light drizzle. The ground was still soggy from yesterday’s downpour. The heels of my grey court shoes with the bows on them sank into the ground.
“Come on,” he whispered in my ear as he sensed my hesitation. First we went around the pub and then across the yard to the back where there was a garden. The light from the windows of the hall barely reached here—in fact, there was more darkness than light.
“Where are we going?” I plucked up the courage to ask.
“Just a bit further, so we’ll have some privacy.”
I let him lead me further on.
He walked as if he knew every square inch of the place. Even in the darkness he knew where to avoid a branch, a ditch or a waterlogged patch. He walked quickly in spite of the darkness. And even though we were surrounded by tall grass that was wet from the rain, my trousers were still more or less dry, as if it hadn’t been a random stroll through an overgrown garden, but a well-worn path.
It was a big garden. In fact, I’d never known a pub with a garden like that. Gran said that it used to be a farmhouse, a large homestead. It was confiscated from the Germans after the war and then it kept changing hands. The last lot had turned it into a pub. A bar, a couple of tables and a dance hall. They saved the building but let the apple orchard go wild. Grass and thistles grew around the tree trunks, while moss and lichen covered the branches. The trees were gradually dying and yet they continued to produce fruit. Even now the branches were buckling under the weight of the fruit which no one had harvested. The apples fell to the ground, attracting wasps, ants and slugs. They lay on the ground beside one another until they rotted and were swallowed up by the grass.
But Štěpán wasn’t interested in the trees or the apples. He stopped in a dark corner: “Tereza, look at the stars,” he said, coming up behind me, putting his arms around my waist and pulling me towards him.
His embrace felt nice, kind of strangely gentle. So I leaned against him, resting my head on his chest, and looked up. But the sky was like burnt porridge.
“There aren’t any stars, just clouds.”
“That’s not true. There are loads of them. You just can’t see them because you don’t know how to scatter the clouds with your eyes.”
“Scatter the clouds? You’ve got to be kidding!” I said.
“You don’t believe me?” He was pretending to be serious.
“Rubbish, rubbish, rubbish.”
“So it’s rubbish, is it?” said Štěpán, undeterred.
“The biggest I’ve ever heard! Fairy tales for little girls.”
“Fairy tales, is it? For your information, you have to concentrate really hard. Then it works. And if it doesn’t work by the power of thought, then there are other ways,” said Štěpán.
“Like what?”
“Magic ones. Dark ones. Ones you use stones for. Or apples.” he said, bending down and groping for an apple, which he threw up at the sky. “Disappear, clouds, disappear!” And then he picked up another apple and threw it, and then another one.
I couldn’t hear the apples falling anywhere in the distance. The apples scattering the clouds . . . it was such a nice idea and at that moment he was so nice too, with that image of the apples heading towards the sky or even all the way to the moon. It was all so beautiful, even though I knew that a little further on the apples were splattering as they landed in the grass.
I didn’t want to spoil the game: “Great! So it really works?”
“It did the last time.”
“Really?”
“In three days all the clouds were gone,” said Štěpán, grinning.
I didn’t let him finish his sentence. “You pig!” I laughed, and I began hitting him with my fists.
“Hey, little girl, no violence,” laughed Štěpán. “But just so you know, it works for anything. Anything you want to get rid of. Not only clouds. Just like that—abracadabra!”
Then he grabbed both my wrists with his left hand. So hard it hurt. With the other hand, he pulled me towards him.
“But I don’t want to get rid of you. You’re beautiful.”
He moved his hand over my bottom, then my hips, and stopped at the edge of my belt.
“Beautiful . . . you’re the prettiest one here . . .”
I had so longed to feel his caress. But his hands just wandered wildly across my body. They frantically prodded, pressed, squeezed and crushed it. Strongly, harshly, so that even through the material, no curve of the body or contour of the breasts escaped them. I was unable to move, rooted to the spot by his touch, like a rag doll. But beneath my feet I could feel the crushed, mushy apples, slippery and trampled into a pulp. Their juice had mingled with the rain and was now seeping into my shoes.
Štěpán’s hands were still on my belt, fumbling around it. Then I felt him touch my bare skin as he pulled up my T-shirt.
I guess I must have gulped loudly. From nervousness, fear, I’m not sure.
He acted as though he hadn’t heard. But suddenly his hands didn’t seem so nice to me. They were damp, cold and strangely soft and shapeless, like a carp taken out of a vat at Christmas time before being whacked by the stallholder.
He moved them higher and higher until they were just below the bra. First one hand and then the other until his fingers came to a halt on my nipples.
I had always thought that it would feel good. That it would feel really good, even the first time. But this was just cold and clammy. And also strangely detached. Nothing more.
Then his hands slid down again, towards the belt of my trousers, which he began to undo.
I finally managed to jerk back.
“What do you think you’re doing?! Stop it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Not that.”
“What did you think we were going to do—stare at the stars?”
I looked up. It had stopped drizzling and the sky had suddenly cleared up.
“I don’t want it like this.”
“You really are an idiot, Tereza. Are you really that stupid? Why else would I have trailed through all this gunge?” he said, angrily kicking a rotten apple. It flew into the air and fell noiselessly to the ground.
Then the rain started again. In fact, it got heavier and drops of water ran down my face all the way to my lips. I licked them. They were salty. And more drops followed.
By the time my face had dried, Štěpán was no longer there. The music was still coming from the pub. I thought, I should go back there and act as if nothing had happened, and maybe even dance for a bit as if everything was OK, or else go back home to Gran. That was probably the best idea.
But instead I sat down on the ground. I couldn’t care less that it was wet and the grass was cold from the rain and my trousers would be covered in dirt and squashed, rotten apples that smelled sweetly of fermentation and decay. I sat on the apples and the mud and the grass while rock music boomed out of the pub. I bent my knees slightly and put my head between them. It was exactly the position you’re supposed to adopt during an emergency landing on a plane. The one the flight attendant demonstrates before take-off in case something goes wrong and instead of a soft landing at the airport there’s a chance that you’re in for a hard, horrible impact. The position that might save your life. But then again it might not.
This position had another advantage—with my knees pressing against my ears, I couldn’t hear anything. The music disappeared, as did the babbles of voices from the pub. I don’t know how long I kept my head there. The sounds disappeared.
That’s why the footsteps took me by surprise. The fact that I heard them, and that someone was coming this way. It must have been really late, even though the music was still playing. I was shivering with cold. I didn’t want anyone to see me like this—dirty and red-eyed. So I quietly crawled to the nearest apple tree and pressed myself against the trunk. I leaned against it and felt the roughness of the cracked bark against my back.
The footsteps were close now. One set was loud, the other quieter. A long shadow, a shorter one behind it. I pressed myself closer to the tree. Then the footsteps stopped.
“No way. Scatter the clouds, yeah? What a load of rubbish. I don’t believe you.” said a girl, giggling.
“So, don’t believe me then. As a punishment I won’t tell you how it’s done.”
“Don’t then. I’m not interested anyway. Hey, is there much further to go? These apples on the ground are totally disgusting.”
“Not far now.”.
“And what’s there, anyway?”
“A surprise. You’ll see . . .”
Then the voices fell silent, the tall grass stirred. I cautiously peeked out from the tree as their silhouettes grew more distant. The clouds suddenly parted for the briefest of moments and in the soft moonlight the fair hair of the shorter figure gleamed.
It was just for an instant. I might have imagined it. I don’t know. Anyway, it doesn’t even matter whether the hair was blonde or some other colour.
The night suddenly seemed different to me. Even the sky was different. It was still as dark as before, but at the same time different. As though everything Štěpán had said was true and it was possible to scatter the clouds with your eyes. And if you couldn’t do it with your eyes, then there were other ways.
And so I picked up some apples from the ground, those delicate glass apples that bruise at the slightest touch, and began throwing them at the sky. I threw them one after another in every direction, but mainly where the two silhouettes had disappeared to, because that’s where the clouds were thickest and darkest. I threw them as high and as far as I could, all of those apples that were lying around on the ground, because that’s exactly what they were for. I parted the clouds with them, because they couldn’t have ended up anywhere else, you couldn’t hear them hitting the ground. And that scream that came out of nowhere? That was probably just an echo of the music from the pub. Definitely. Anyone could see that.
And then I didn’t have to throw any more apples because I knew the clouds had scattered for a while. The magic had worked.
It’s still nighttime and I’m walking. I’m walking through the orchard back home to Gran. It’s pitch black. Even though I’m being very careful, I can still feel myself standing on apples. There are so many that it’s impossible to avoid them, so I don’t. They crunch underfoot, turning into a sticky, sour-smelling mush.
Translated from the Czech by Graeme Dibble
Lidmila Kábrtová is the author of several radio plays in the One‑minute Plays series by Czech Radio 3 (Vltava). Her first work of fiction was the experimental Whom Foxes Drink Up / Koho vypijou lišky (2013), which comprises chapters of exactly fifty words. Her second book, the collection of short stories Places in the Dark / Místa ve tmě (2018) received the Czech Literary Fund Award.
Graeme Dibble was born in Glasgow, Scotland, where he graduated in history from Strathclyde University. His interest in Czech culture and history led him to Brno in 1992, where he taught at the State Language School and the Pedagogical Faculty until 1997. After ten years working at BBC Scotland, he and his wife, Suzanne, returned to the Czech Republic. They are both now full-time freelance translators based in Letovice, Moravia.
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