Bohdan
Bohdan
Vladimír Rudolf
It feels good to finally speak the names we never knew …
Feel them on the tongue, hear their sound in the room about our ears.
Dědeček
I’ve always liked your face.
You look good in a suit.
Skilled at figures, and languages …
A mesmerising orange peeler, I hear …
Always kind our mother said.
We’ve collected all we can, so far …
Your father …
A tall house, with many apartments.
A town square.
Your mother, your aunts, their children, a lodger.
Grandpa Theodor.
A yellow document.
Pages in tomes, handwriting in script font containing secrets we’ve yet to unlock.
You've been gone from us a long time.
Your absence filled a space.
For generations.
The subject of a good tale.
Cause for speculation and misunderstanding.
You make our hearts ache
With thoughts of what should have been.
In another time, a better world.
That complete and happy family in the photograph.
We like to live in it with you, spend our time there.
Other pictures emerge too
From the pages of history books
Altogether too small, grainy, and out of focus, causing the eyes to squint.
Dotted amongst a sea of overwhelming data, sign-posting the human cost.
Of dispossession, and displacement,
The destruction of families.
A damning legacy.
An imprint of where you were perhaps, or might have been, a fleeting glimpse seen through another’s eyes.
Supposing you were there, suspended in time, right there in front of the lens but just out of shot,
You could not know that in the future we would be looking, searching, hoping …
You could not know that we keep what scant images and impressions we have, every piece of you, close to us.
A section of fence, the forest behind
A wilderness ahead of you…
The unknowable future beyond the boundary,
You dared to cross a threshold between worlds.
We digest your suffering.
Your undeniable sacrifice.
We imagine …
We leave room for all that cannot be imagined.
All that is beyond our comprehension.
We acknowledge the presence of a darker place still, reserved for all that we have failed to contemplate.
Your choices,
Were contentious,
Foolish for some, heroic for others …
Perhaps worse or better than they knew.
- Certainly brave,
- Always worthy of respect.
All this chatter back and forth, sadly, cannot change a thing.
We comfort ourselves, drive ourselves mad
With what we wish, what we suppose, what we would like to think.
The form of your absence strengthens, it grows in opacity in the corner of the room …
I see the line of your head and shoulder,
Dědeček
Děda
You are there …
I see you …
You are older now, you have that same smiling shining face as in the photograph, but your hair is grey, as it should be ….
You are here … with us …
- Where you have always been.
By Robyn Hunt (c) 2023
In Honour of a Beloved Father and Grandfather
- IF YOU ENJOYED THE POEM, HAVE A LISTEN TO A READING OF IT, JUST CLICK ON THE LITTLE ARROW.
POSTSCRIPT
Since writing the above, we have managed to accumulate a substantial cache of documents on my grandfather from various archives throughout Czech. This has taken a considerable amount of time and effort to collate, organise, translate, read, digest and discuss. We could not have dreamt of undertaking such a herculean task ourselves without the valued assistance of Czech Lands Researcher, Richard D’Amelio, to whom we are indebted.
In light of the things we now know however, this little tribute I wrote, is now based on out-of-date information, the sentiments and basic facts still stand, but now the work feels insufficient, there’s nothing wrong with a poem based on emotions and imaginings but nonetheless I know now that it is missing its rightful context, and the sort of concrete details that helped me to root some of my other biographical poems, and while it holds true that the real story is always greater than the fiction, I must take care; I feel a sense of duty to honour my grandfather’s memory fairly, respectfully and correctly, and I have a duty of care to Bohdan’s children, my mother and uncle, who have been through such a great deal, not least in being asked to relive and reevaluate painful events from their childhood as a result of our research and discoveries.
Here’s where the dilemma for me as a writer, and someone who wants to tell her Grandfather’s story as truthfully as possible, comes in, firstly, some of the details are very sensitive and private in nature, and secondly, even after reading literally hundreds of pages of documents, it is difficult to know what the exact truth is … we now know it isn’t exactly as we thought it was, - but we don’t know exactly that it wasn’t somewhat, at least in part, like we believed either - though it seems less likely … still the fact remains, these specific papers in themselves couldn’t really confirm or deny certain things we thought we knew. One thing is clear, the image we now have of my grandfather is more human, and not one based upon false ideals or ill-informed assumptions.
The files, comprised of gathered intelligence from military and police organisations, the recorded proceedings from two Communist Era trials, and the newspaper articles pertaining to one of the trials from the day, come loaded with an agenda and/or represent a certain ideological standpoint and such as they must always be viewed through that prism.
- It is difficult seeing the relative, whom you have dreamed about knowing, either through their worst actions or having the worst things said about them.
At the same time, there were certain truths about my grandfather that emerged anecdotally through repeated behaviours. My grandfather naturally appeared to be a man of secrets. He showed different people different sides to himself. It could be difficult for others to determine what he really thought about things. While being both lovable and someone who liked the idea of family, he was also a man who had trouble committing, trouble sticking around, he liked to make friends of people, but was insecure, and by some, considered prone to boasting. He had an apparent need to be seen as important in the eyes of others. Fundamentally he appeared troubled and lost, sometimes desperate, … sometimes nervous, sometimes selfish, … and something of an opportunist, ready to play both sides (- to my mind, not always unreasonably given the climate in which he was living). He comes across as a capable man with much to offer who became disillusioned and directionless, as someone who never got to live up to his promise, … but again here , and with regards to all this … I speak with due caution, we could only make certain educated deductions based on the specific things we read, not upon all the things we cannot possibly know.
Believe me, for all the times I found myself baffled, bewildered or despairing at my grandfather’s choices, the compulsion to reach out and hold him from beyond the grave and tell him he was loved despite all his faults and frailties was far greater than any frustration or anger I ever felt towards him.
So, what did the documents contain? Truthfully, it would take so much more than a memorial poem to fully explain, nor do I feel that verse is correct medium to do so, so that potential for a more extensive project will have to be decided upon at a later date, and for the reasons outlined above, I wish to be careful and respectful of what I say online and how I say it, but I am aware there is a whole other discussion to be had here about to just what degree my grandfather was a victim of his circumstances and the political machinations of the times, one has to take into account the psychological toll upon a population under the control of a regime, equally one should also consider to what degree did my grandfather’s own personality, his own personal demons, and state of mind, became affected by, or indeed help to create the ensuing situation that was to eventually play out - and there is further discussion and research needed still, upon the subject of Corruption within the Czech Judicial System during the Communist Era. What I can say is, for whatever reason, my grandfather wanted to leave the Republic, and he involved others in that dangerous want, and for that particular want - for simply thinking and talking about that particular want, he paid a hefty price. Ultimately, we all did. Mistakes were made … but then the system was rigged to begin with, it is not right, it is not fair on any of us, but it is what happened.
