Monday, school and Prague; every one of these items was as grey as the others. Josef, known to all by his childhood Czech pet name Pepík, lay very still so as not to make even the slightest sound. Maybe if he was a statue, mama would forget all about him and she would not wake him up for school. He could shut his eyes on the grey city, his grey life and even his grey room, and go to his multi-colour world. This world contained every colour in his paint box plus the new ones he created by experimenting with the paints. In this world, the buildings were shades of blue, the streets were paved emerald green and every person was full of colour and life. He loved this world and the escape from the real world and its monochromatic fog that smothered everyone in its grasp.
“Pepík, get up and get ready for school.” Even his mother’s voice sounded dull and grey. She must have been born black and white like all the older people on television. They were trapped in that grey drizzly world; he would not be if he could help it. He longed to go to the parts of the world that were modern and colourful and leave this forlorn city behind.
Pepík washed himself with grey soap, put on his grey school clothes and slowly walked the grey gauntlet-like hallway to the kitchen. He sat under the glare of a grey light bulb; it was the interrogation model like all the bulbs made at the local factory. Dejectedly he looked at the greyish lumps of some sort of breakfast cereal. If only he could eat something colourful, then maybe the colour could radiate from within and shoot out colour rays in all directions.
“Pepík, it’s time to go.” Tata, the affectionate Czech form for dad called out. His father must have been colourful at some point Pepík decided before the grey cloud descended with a dull thud and sucked every last drop of colour out of Prague. Tata still had a gentle touch in his voice that could only mean a smidge of colour must have existed at one time, unlike his mother who was born grey in her black and white world. Tata was his ever so slight link to life because tata understood life needed colour even if he was trapped.
They left the grey flat and turned down the grey street under a grey sun. The sun was likely a bright yellow-red-orange call way up there, but the city’s prism (or was that prison) bent the rays into a sickening grey pall. Even here the sun was suspect, keeping itself hidden under a façade that passed for loyalty so as not to be reported. He was contemplating what they could to the sun while tata purchased his daily cigarettes and something caught is eye; an unmistakable ray of light at the tram stop.
Pepík had never seen such a woman in all of Prague in his whole life and he decided she had to have landed from somewhere else. Her long shiny red hair hung in soft curls, framing her pretty rose-petal pink face and a pair of shimmering emerald green eyes. She radiated colour – she was colour! Pepík was transfixed, drawn to the radiating warmth that only colours produced. He was far too young to feel anything but a gentle admiration for such an extraordinary sight that contrasted with the dull grey blobs that even with the reddest of lipstick hardly passed for women. Blonde or brunette it was all the same to Pepík. These locals were interchangable and meaningless although he was a few years removed from a stunning observation that underneath it all, blondes and brunettes were really the same dark forest. Each tree was covered in the same dull leaves.
But today Pepík could simply behold such a dazzling radiance that captivated him and threatened and promised to annihilate his own greyness. As he continued to stare he felt his cheeks grow hotter and hotter even if not so visibly redder he deduced as she smiled at him in response to his trance.
“Pepík, come along.” Tata nudged him gently but awkwardly as they walked to the school. Tata attempted to reprimand his son for staring but that wasn’t the real problem. Stares led to smiles, smiles led to conversations, and conversations led to suspicious gatherings and insurrections. Pepík was too young to understand why contacts with foreigners were dangerous as his father explained the unwritten rules of surviving Prague. Still, there was a little part of tata that understood the power of colour even if he was afraid of it. The bright colours were not supposed to mix with the dull greys.
For the next few weeks Pepík could hardly wait to get up and was ready for school in record time. Mama was suspicious and that’s because she is grey and doesn’t understand like tata. Each day Pepík received his reward of a beautiful smile while tata hovered cautiously in the background. By not Pepík was courageous enough to smile at her – he even did it first one day – and cared not a bit what those of the cement set thought. He dreamed up exotic places where she came from, picturing her surrounded by deep purple shadows under golden sunsets. It was a world where there was no fog and the sun shone brightly every day even when it rained.
One morning he counted out the crowns he still had left that he was given each week to by some Pedro chewing gum or a bottle of Kofola communist cola to be guzzled in anticipation of the daily contest of who could drink the fastest. Instead Josef, yes Josef he decided, was too old for such childish and backwards localized nonsense. He purchased a red flower, the reddest of the bunch from the old grey hag on the corner near the tram stop. Half-trembling, he strode up to the lady that had been his reason for daring to hope in colour. Words failed him in his shyness but he beamed as he lifted his flower to his beautiful princess. Yes, he would with all of his boyishness turned new manliness in his heart make her his princess and treat her to red flowers every day in a blue castle far away from Prague.
“Oh, it is so beautiful! Thank you so very much! What a beautiful gift for me on my last day here!” She had spoken Czech with a foreign awkwardness but it sounded better than the colourless grousings of his mother. She was leaving! He could do nothing but keep smiling while she took a bold step and kissed his cheek. She transferred some of her colour to him! He didn’t hear her tell tata what a wonderful son he had, he only heard his heart pound as he watched his princess board the tram and the drawbridge doors closed with a peculiar sadness.
All the way to school, the tears in his eyes broke out like so many restless prisoners. It was no use; tata would have to have him excused from school for the day which worked out well anyway since it was tata’s day off too. Tata suggested they go for some ice-cream and said how very sorry he was for Pepík and this lesson in heartbreak for tata had experienced it as well in a time so long ago he could barely see it but for the fuzzy mauve outlines of his dreams.
“Tata, I want to be called Josef from now on. I don’t feel like a little boy anymore” His heart had certainly grown older and wiser from the sorrow of that morning.
“Josef, love and hope are forms of colour and they will make you a man; hang on to them tightly, even the tiniest amounts, for colour is in very short supply here.”
Josef vowed he would hang onto that colour she had transferred to him with all his might until he could finally have his own red-haired princess and wander through the red forest to that blue castle far from Prague.
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