#2 Behind the Curtain

Yesterday I went shopping for a little dress and used the storekeeper’s kitchen as a dressing room. In Prague, there are quite a lot of Asian goods shops of the sort I learned to frequent when we lived in Brno. These shops take three forms: stalls a lot like American flea markets, stores with great plate glass windows completely populated by a selection of what’s on offer, or a single doorway, festooned along the sides with the items for sale and announced above with a sign. Inside a room about the size of your den, every available inch of space except for a narrow path is covered in goods. Most things have the prices on them, and though it is possible to ask for a discount, it isn’t usual to ask or to get it.
It is this last sort of shop, a crowded doorway across the street from our hotel, where I found my dress. I have wondered what was behind the curtain on the wire at the back of these stores, and what went on behind them. Now I know. Asian shopkeepers live there. When I asked to try on a few things, I was led behind the curtain through an ornate wooden door with peeling paint and into—a kitchen! While the shopkeeper cleared the green beans and dandelion leaves and dented colander he was sorting them in from the small, blue formica topped table, I looked around. Along one wall was a low bench: below it were seven pairs of shoes, including one pair of men’s backory (house shoes). Since street shoes aren’t worn inside homes here, I knew that this extra pair of house shoes meant that the shopkeeper shares his living quarters with one other person.

As he pushed the table aside to clear space in front of the mirror, I saw a washing machine, an electric kettle on the counter, and pot of potatoes boiling on the stove. Like nearly every other Czech home I’ve ever been in, I could see that there were two hot water heaters, one about the size of a high chair, for the bathroom and clothes washer, installed four feet off the floor, and a small, flat point-of-service one on the wall above the kitchen sink.
He closed the door behind him and left me alone. I slid the bolt to lock the door and slipped off my shoes. I distracted myself from my discomfort at undressing by focusing my attention on the rest of the room. The floor was concrete, covered by printed linoleum worn through in unlikely spots. On the walls were two posters, both of American cowboy types, advertisements for some clothing line. From the television reflected in the mirror behind me George Bush leaned over a podium, stood back, flashed one of his boyish grins. Yeah, Georgie, capitalism is a big hit here.
The Asian markets aren’t the only places to shop here, though they are great if you just want to grab something to get by with. And certainly there are other similar shops with a more usual arrangement for trying things on. There are of course also hundreds of wonderful stores and shops on Vaclavske Namesti (Wenceslas Square) along which you can stroll under the trees in perfect anonymity, your way scented by perfume and tobacco shops and adorned by both fresh and glass flowers for sale in kiosks on the cobble stoned sidewalks.