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Accordion Dreams
by Terri Hinte

Excerpts:

       I’d been in Marienbad only a day or two, but I already understood the lay of the land: The wedding cake spa house adorned one end of Skalník Park, and the jewel-box Gogol Theater lay near the other, tucked away on a quiet street. I sat each night in the blue and gold theater, luxuriating in piano recitals given as part of the annual Chopin Festival. And by day I’d gaze from afar at the spa house, the temple of secret ablutions. Curiosity finally won out, and I made plans to remain in Marienbad after the festival to take a spa cure. My days would center around the town’s famed waters: imbibing a liter daily from the Forest Spring and immersing myself in marble pools and metal tubs while receiving the ministrations of women in white.
     In the wake of the Chopin Festival, Marienbad’s nightlife largely evaporated. A mere 15,000 people reside in the town, which is set in the mountainous forests of western Bohemia. Judging from the fliers and posters I saw during my afternoon walks, the Gogol Theater, located just a few steps from my hotel, was the only place to be in the evening hours. Its calendar promised a play by Václav Havel, an appearance by a touring opera company and a concert by an accordion duo named Milan Bláha and Vera Ublová . . . Where do I buy a ticket?!
     Bláha is my mother’s maiden name, and the previous year she and I had come to the Czech lands on a rambling genealogical quest. We found the house where my great-grandfather Václav was born; living in it was a Bláha cousin my mother’s age who’d inherited the house from his grandfather — my great-great uncle.
     In America, Bláha lost its accent on the “a” but never its foreignness — nor, for me, its fascination. Early on, I acquired the habit of looking it up in telephone directories, passing the numerous Adamses, Andersons and Bakers to see if I could unearth a small clump of Bláha people. In the New York City phone books, most of those listed are family to me; in San Francisco, there are none. When my mother and I, in our travels, consulted the Prague directory, we were astonished to discover 56 Václav Bláhas! A subtle shift occurred in us. A sense of at-homeness took root, even as we battled the language barrier . . .

. . .

. . . It so happens I have a sentimental thing for accordions — their bright, wheezing sound takes me right back to my grandparents’ Long Island living room, where together we’d watch the Lawrence Welk show every week. My German-speaking grandparents, our upstairs neighbors throughout my childhood, were loyal Welk fans; so were my maternal grandparents, the Bláhas. Myron Floren, television’s top accordionist, was a Welk star, and his performances on the show emphasized the ungainly instrument’s traditional oom-pah tendencies or its incipient hokeyness, rather than the sinuous melancholy of the smaller Argentine bandoneón, whose acquaintance I would make years later in San Francisco. Exuberant polkas, not sensuous, dangerous tangos, prevailed in Welk’s world. . . .


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