THE TWENTY-FOURTH
You can’t drown when there’s kids around! Eva Topolská would frequently hear that saying, which is roughly the same thing as You can’t squeeze blood from a stone, on the lips of her grandmother in Český Těšín. The good woman would send them her mother’s way during those subdued kitchen conversations when her mother brought little Eva to Těšín for her grandmother to babysit. Eva’s grandfather, who taught at the local lyceum, was a great lover of Leo Tolstoy and Charles Dickens, and he subtly infected her with his enthusiasm for them by translating their tales into fairy stories for her, during walks along the River Olza. The Christmas Carol, David Copperfield, but also — because here Granddad’s heart was fully to be found, War and Peace and Resurrection. He traversed the
