Returning from one of the races in France, we stopped on the way to Reims at the local cathedral. A breathtaking, breathtaking space, inspiring respect and humility. The girls each lit a candle at the altar of the Virgin Mary. If you light a candle and make a wish, it will come true within a year. I don't know what Maruška wished for that time. She didn't say it. I went back there recently. I lit a candle on the same candlestick, even though I knew full well that my wish could never come true.
Who smells of gasoline...? That strange mixture of heavenly and hellish odors at the same time? As a rule, we men are its devotees. It rarely happens that a woman is possessed by this demon. However, the relationship is all the more real then. My friend Maruška Zachovalová smelled both the gasoline and the chamomile that grew behind their building, in the wedge of hills between Šerák and Ramzovský sedlo in the Jeseníky Mountains.
The forge in Šléglov, where Maruška grew up, is located almost in isolation, on the edge of a small foothill village. Harsh region, severe winters. To school over the hill. On skis, on foot, or by bus. Shop and cinema – a bit out of reach, in a distant town. In the summer with my mother, for example, in a Norton, Willis, or old Ford. It was definitely not about a modern way of living. For a visit, a romantic idyll with a return to old times. For normal life, from today's perspective, a bit harsh. But there was always a very distinctive, pleasant, natural and immediate atmosphere there, for which everyone who had ever visited it was very happy to return to that place.
I knew her since she was a little girl. She was quite lively, even fidgety and mischievous. She was healthy and very agile, when you wanted to catch her and punish her for her bold behavior. It was no wonder. The environment in which she moved, as the youngest of four children, required a considerable dose of self-preservation instinct and courage in the fight with older, stronger siblings to survive. When the situation in the house reached its peak and the raging pack of youngsters ravaged the remnants of the nervous system of their rather pacifistic mother, she had no choice but to go to the blacksmith shop to get her father. The blacksmith father did not profess any exaggerated domestic democracy and never hesitated to investigate in detail which of the children he had just caught was responsible for the given atrocity. Putting down the hammer, he set off at a brisk pace around the house, and whoever fell into his hands became a victim of the classic re-education methods, which Ilja considered to be the only meaningful ones. On the other hand, it must be said that the children had a rather colorful childhood, when they traveled to countless motoring events and races in the back of the Avia truck. Dad rode a Jawa 500 2x OHC, mom a Walter 350 OHC. There were motorbikes everywhere at home. When dad managed to earn some money, it was clear that another motorbike gem would be added to the house.
So it is no wonder that under the influence of such an environment, little Maruška developed into a cute young lady, but also a properly morally and liberally hardened one. There was such a contradiction in her. It probably accompanied her throughout her life. She could be incredibly nice, almost giving the impression of being defenseless, but she could also assert her opinion very forcefully.
When she reached her final year of elementary school, all she had to do was decide which direction she would take in life. As she sat indecisively in the kitchen with two completed applications lying on the oak table in front of her – one for an economic school and the other for a secondary school of applied arts in the field of photography – it was at that moment that those two constantly warring natures were again at war within her. Her older sister Kateřina played an invaluable role in her fate at that moment, looking over her shoulder and deciding that being an accountant was definitely stupid for Maruška. She took and tore up Maruška's application for an economic school. It was certainly very far-sighted. Maruška had evidently inherited a certain genetic makeup from her father, who, in addition to being an artistic blacksmith, was also a trained academic painter. So she sailed through high school and it was clearer than ever that she would not end up in a photography studio producing portraits for ID cards and passports. So she was going to move to Prague, so that after the holidays she could enter the famous FAMU, where she eventually graduated with a degree in black and white photography. Every time I looked at her photos, they brought back the feeling and atmosphere of the Šléglov blacksmith shop, the house, the hills and corners of Jeseníky. She was constantly drawn home. Even though she worked in Prague during the week, she regularly rushed home every Friday.
I came to visit Šléglov once and was surprised to see that little Maruška wasn't so little anymore. She came home on the family's old Norton, probably from shopping somewhere. I watched her manage the heavy machine quite well. It's clear that the rule about the tree and the apple works, but it's amazing how it can hit such a romantic-looking young lady. And it obviously hit with full force.
It didn't take long before my mother's racing Walter, which had been driven by her older brother František for some time, finally stood "abandoned" in the hallway in front of the blacksmith shop. Maruška didn't go around it for long. She didn't have to convince her dad to help her with it. I have to say that getting on a 1954 racing Walter 350 OHC is a man's job. It really takes a lot of determination, moral strength and even physical endurance to ride it in a race. Squeezing the clutch is a man's job. Squeezing it for the whole race - I don't understand that. Anyone who has ever ridden a Walter will agree with me how hard it is! And that the 350 is quite fast...! She took it very seriously and with all her heart. Sometimes she would make a bed, sometimes Walter would go on strike, she would work on it in the evenings in the workshop, of course her dad Ilja would help her, but she could do a lot of things and she could even deal with technical problems on the track herself. She rode hard, she rode well and it was clear that she enjoyed it. And I don't have to tell anyone that it sometimes hurt a lot. When we set off on a motorcycle trip to the TT races on the Isle of Man, the ends of surgical threads were still sticking out of Maruška's chin, from how she had made a bed a week before in Hořice. We performed the operation to remove the threads at a campsite on the island with the help of a Francovka and nail clippers. She held on bravely.
One winter, Ilja brought the basic components for a JAWA 500 2x OHC racing sidecar from the basement. It was clear. In the spring it was roaring. Ilja behind the handlebars and Maruška in the sidecar. As they both knew how, to the fullest. If it doesn't work out today, it doesn't matter, in a fortnight they'll go again. They radiated joy and well-being. They did together what they both loved most.
I really didn't understand it at first. Being a bit suspicious by nature, I was looking for why the girl was doing it? Years later, the answer was clear to me. She did it out of joy, out of love for those old machines, for the feeling of enthusiasm and excitement from riding, the satisfaction of a well-run race, she simply really lived for it, but most of all she did it honestly and didn't play around with it, because such a... As we were returning from Manu, we met a biker friend on a night cruise to the French mainland, also returning from the races. He was Belgian and his name was Damián. Apart from the sense of belonging that always somehow connects bikers on the road, Damián joined us mainly because he had caught his eye on our Maruška, or more precisely, he was completely fascinated by her. He immediately planned that we had to go with him, that he lived a short distance from the ferry and that we would put on some night program and so on. Of course, we had already spent the previous night on the boat from Man, bivouaced under the stars on the edge of a pasture in the county of Camelot, a day-long journey through England, varied by wandering around London, then this night ferry to Calais. We looked like that too. We simply did not share Damian's enthusiasm for the social program. He understood this when we got off the boat and stopped at a gas station a few kilometers later. There, he looked at us more carefully in a better light and reconsidered the original plan. However, he did not want to give up Maruščina's company. So he took us to his native Bruges and at one in the morning he smuggled us into a luxurious, noble hotel right next to the square where he had acquaintances because he did something for them. He was an artistic stonemason. So he and Ilja, also from the arts, had something to talk about. He picked up our Maruška right in the morning and showed her around that beautiful old Hanseatic city and tried very hard to win her over. But it was clear that Maruška wouldn't stay there with him. He was sad about it. So we were getting ready to leave and tried to comfort him a little, exchanged addresses and so on. That time, when we said goodbye, he said to us: „"I saw an angel in her eyes"“. The boy who knew her for a few hours said it all in one sentence. This sentence often comes back to me. she just was.
We got used to seeing Maruška at almost every race. That's how we knew her. But who among us knew that she worked for charitable foundations during the week, visiting seriously ill children in the hospital? I guess none of us had any idea that she was a deeply religious Catholic.
We drive down the road, just like every year before the races, behind the chapel in Hořice. It's our favorite place. We kind of look out for the old, panting blacksmith's car, Avia, to appear behind the cherry tree alley, just like we have for years. It stops with a sigh of relief, and Ilja gets out of the cab, lights a pipe, and a smiling Maruška jumps out from the other side, unwraps an incredibly good gingerbread from her mother, and asks us, who are flocking to it like wasps to honey, with a mischievous smile, if we think she'll ever get married...? But once I had to get behind the wheel of that Avia alone. On the way home from Hořice, I drove it for the last time, empty and deserted.
They and their dad went on that boat somewhere a little further away, from where they couldn't find their way back.
I'm coming back. The mountains and valleys are still as peaceful and beautiful, just a little empty, impoverished. Then, on the way down from the Jeseníky hills, I stop at the Kralice monastery picture gallery. There, I look for her face in the old paintings. I look for her everywhere. I know I'm not alone.
Mirek Tuma
