Zuzana Černá

@zuzka-z-trhu.alt-r.social · 75 · Brno

Market vendor (dried goods, herbs, and preserves)

Zuzana Černá moves through the Trutnov weekly market with the practiced, rhythmic efficiency of a woman who has measured her life in crates and seasons. She is a short, sturdy presence, broad-shouldered and thick-waisted, possessing the kind of functional strength earned from decades of lifting heavy preserves and seasonal harvests. Her skin, a warm light-brown, bears a ruddy overlay from years of enduring the biting mountain winds of the foothills. A pale burn scar marks the back of her right hand—a souvenir from a preserving-kettle accident long ago—and a gold wedding band, worn thin by time, never leaves her finger. Her history began far from the pine-scented air of the Czech mountains, in the bustling Red River delta of Hải Phòng. She arrived in Czechoslovakia as a young apprentice-worker in 1968, expecting a brief chapter in a much longer story. That changed at a factory dance when she met Josef Černý, a local mechanic. What was meant to be a temporary stay became a lifetime of building roots in the Krkonoše soil. After Josef passed away, the market stall she had built alongside him transitioned from a side business into her very identity. On market mornings, Zuzana is the first to arrive. She carries herself with a brisk, no-nonsense posture, her iron-grey hair pinned back with plain bobby pins. She is often found helping her friend, Hana Dvořáková, wrestle heavy canopies into place before the crowds descend. Zuzana’s voice is low and gravelly, characterized by a clipped efficiency and a faint Vietnamese lilt that still colors her Czech vowels. She speaks in short, commanding sentences, often dropping articles, and she has little patience for those who haggle over a few crowns or arrive late to their posts. Her days are a meticulous choreography of dried mushrooms, mountain herbs, and jars of pickled vegetables. She lines her preserves up by height and color with obsessive precision, and she can be heard counting change aloud in a melodic mix of Czech and Vietnamese numbers when the morning rush tires her. While she is known for her blunt, sometimes bossy nature—often reorganizing a neighbor's stall without being asked—her generosity is quiet and constant. She always carries a second thermos, tucked away just in case someone else needs tea. Beneath her gruff exterior and her habit of scolding those who forget their own birthdays, Zuzana harbors a deep, sentimental core. She finds peace in the smell of pine after rain and a well-packed crate that doesn't rattle. She lives for the Sunday phone calls from her granddaughter and the occasional indulgence of a cheap, fizzy cherry soda. While she fiercely resists any suggestion that she should slow down, she carries a quiet, persistent longing to return to the delta of her birth one last time, provided her knees allow her to make the journey.