English / Sample translations /

/Translated by Tatiana Firkušný and Veronique Firkušný-Callegari/

Chapter 8

The Pohořelec Bistro

          Is it possible that we live in close proximity to a world teeming with strange life, a world which perhaps has been here since before our city existed and yet which we know nothing about? The more I have thought about it, the more I have been inclined to admit that it is very well possible, that it goes with our way of life, with how we live within demarcated circles we're afraid to leave. The dark music from the other side of the frontier corrodes our order and fills us with anxiety; we fear the outlines of forms we discern in dusky corners, we do not know whether they are the broken, decomposing forms of our world or the embryos of a new fauna that will one day turn cities into its hunting grounds, the spearhead of an army of monsters that will advance with stealthy deliberation on our homes. So we prefer not to see the forms that originate on the other side and not to hear the sounds that, at night, come from behind our walls; for us, reality is only what has become rooted in our world, what interacts with the other things and events of the few games we keep monotonously repeating, whose interconnections we refer to as cause, reason, sense. These games, which constitute the tissue of our world, are no less strange or alarming than the night time festivals of glass statues; and should someone be watching from the other side, for example, through the gaps between the books in our library, he would probably experience the same disquieting amazement at the fascinating and oppressive ritualism that I experienced while watching the fish festival from the darkness of the arcade. "What amazing monsters!" he would whisper, peering at us anxiously and with dark admiration.
          Yet the world into which we have locked ourselves is actually most confining; even within the space we consider our own, there are places beyond our power, dens settled by animals whose home is in the darkness beyond the frontier. We know the strange uneasiness that overcomes us when we encounter the hidden side of things and their inner hollows, which refuse to join in our games: when, while house-cleaning, we pull out an armoire and are suddenly looking at the ironically indifferent face of its back, which stares off down a dark hall reflected in its surface; when we unscrew the cover of a TV set and run our fingers along the tangle of wires; when we crawl under a bed to retrieve a pencil and suddenly find ourselves in a mysterious cave, its walls covered with magical, quivering balls of dust, a cave where something evil is slowly ripening, something which one quiet afternoon will crawl out into the daylight. What exists for us is only what has a part to play in our games: no wonder we know nothing about the world that extends beyond the edge of these games. We probably wouldn't even notice it if it were celebrating its festivals right in the midst of our daily bustle.
          I was remembering how the linguist at the University Library insisted that what lives beyond the frontier is invisible to us, because the beings from those regions sate themselves at a different fountain of reason and thus elude our gaze. But I grew more and more convinced that this invisibility was more likely the result of how perfectly we have succeeded in mastering our gaze and keeping it on a short tether. The severity with which we restrict the roving of our eyes seems rather to indicate that we are aware of the fact that our gaze vaguely recognizes the monsters on the margins and that we fear it might encounter some familiar beasts and strike up a conversation that would recall an old friendship and a forgotten common language.
          The next morning I set out for Pohořelec to see what the night time activities had left behind, but I encountered nothing to indicate that, mere hours ago, a chapel, a tent, and a ski lift had been standing there; I did not discover a single thing that would not be firmly planted in the conjoint daytime world. The small square was almost completely abandoned at this time of day; the tourists that would inundate it before long were still at breakfast in their hotels down in the center of the city. There blew a sharp, icy wind typical of elevated open spaces, abandoned cars with snow-encrusted roofs stood in frozen snowdrifts. The bistro with the large window was already open. I felt like having a cup of hot coffee and went in.
          I found myself in a long, narrow room. Its front section was flooded with the gentle light that came through the window, which overlooked the snow-covered square; in the back, above the bar, dewy glasses and travel posters of beaches shone in the semidarkness. Two old ladies were seated facing each other across a small table; they obviously lived nearby and came here to drink their morning coffee. I sat down where I always do in cafes and bistros: by the glass windowpane, which offered up cold pictures, at a table across which an empty chair stared at me like a silent, understanding animal. I was looking out the window at the square when suddenly I heard above me a pleasant male voice asking me what I would have: the waiter had approached my table so silently that I had never even heard his footsteps. I turned my head and looked up into the inclined face of the waiter, who had positioned himself right next to my chair. I could see that this was the same man who had celebrated mass in the subterranean temple, the man who, in the TV van, had railed at the history professor, and the one before whom the guards had brought me last night because I didn't have a fish. So my flight on skis through the night time parks had been for naught, the pursuer could just wait for me in the comfort of the bistro sipping sweet, bright-colored liqueurs, and still I could not escape him. But the waiter-priest did not pounce on me, his polite expression never changed, his body, inclined forward in a servile stoop, never straightened. With some discomposure, I ordered coffee, and the waiter went off to the bar.
          My coffee was brought by a slight lady in a dark dress; as she was placing her nickel-plated tray down on the table, the way her hands emerged from their long sleeves reminded me of little animals who have cautiously come out of their dens into daylight, ready to scurry back with lightning speed at the first suspicious rustle. I couldn't help asking her: "Does the waiter happen to like night time festivals?"
          The cup on the tray, which the woman was still holding in her hands, rattled slightly. "He is my husband," she said, distressed. Glancing back to the bar and seeing the waiter disappear through the door into the kitchen, she said in a voice that betrayed a long-ripening anxiety: "Please tell me where you met my husband in the night." I asked her to sit down on the empty chair at my table, and I told her about the temple inside Petřín Hill, about the fish festival, and about the television sets on Kaprová Street. She turned her face toward the window and looked at the white square, where two tan poodles were chasing each other.
          "I don't know what to do," she finally said. "My husband is a citizen of some unknown city. He has never told me about it, though we've been living together for twenty-six years. He has never admitted it to me, not even in the most intimate moments, and I myself have never asked. But I keep finding traces of the other city in the corners of our apartment and in the depths of the furniture: statuettes of gods with willful expressions, gadgets shaped like birds and turtles which buzz from time to time and flash the red bulbs set in their eyes; books printed in an unknown alphabet, with luminous, iridescent illustrations depicting temples in a virgin forest and tigers. When my husband goes out at night, I know he is going to some dark festival. I know nothing about his city. Is it a labyrinth of gold-panelled burrows, an endless palace spreading through the hidden spaces between apartments, a circle of yurts springing up in the plain at night, or a collective hallucination? I don't even know whether my husband is a king or a servant in his city, but I think he probably has an important position, because several times I've found copies of the other city's newspaper with his photograph in it. I have never been to the other city, although I feel it's nearby, within arm's reach, behind the wall. Sometimes, in the quiet of the night, I hear its voices, the distant murmur of its boulevards, the ringing of its bells, its promenade concerts. I think that somewhere behind the wall, in the unrecognized spaces of the building, there is some kind of concealed sea, sometimes one can hear the ships sounding their horns and the surf breaking against the rocks."
          I sipped my coffee and listened to the sad tale. The first clusters of tourists appeared on the snow-covered sidewalk, several black cars with diplomatic license plates crossed the square and turned toward the Foreign Office. "All my life I longed to have a real home and, instead, I'm living in the vestibule of an incomprehensible temple, whose odors seep through the cracks in the furniture and permeate everything. There are moments when I loathe to touch even the most ordinary object; it seems to me that someone has just lent it to us for a while and that we use it for a completely different purpose than what it was intended for. I was hoping, especially after our daughter was born, that my husband would forget the other city, that in time his life would become rooted in our family life, that his place in the family would cease to be a role he acts out until he returns to his home behind the walls… But then I realized that the other city holds him with a pull that is stronger than any family cohesion. At last, I reconciled myself to loneliness and found consolation in having a daughter who, fortunately, has nothing to do with the other city. I know all about her life and I don't think it holds any dark corners. She's a good girl, she is studying Czech and physical education at the teacher's college and, when she has a minute, she comes here and helps us out... But lately I've been growing more anxious again: I feel that some strange conspiracy is brewing between my husband and my daughter, they are together almost all the time these days, always telling each other things. One day I caught my daughter looking at a book printed in the unknown alphabet. She might have just found it somewhere and opened it by chance. Maybe it's not possible for someone who was born into our world and has lived in it for twenty years to simply cross the border and become an inhabitant of a different space, but still, these days I can't sleep at night for fear..."
          The kitchen door opened, and the waiter appeared in it carrying a tray with two dishes of omelets garnished with whipped cream. He headed straight for the old ladies, but I felt that in the doorway he had squinted for a split second in my direction. His wife immediately stopped talking and got up, turning her attention to a cheerful, noisy group of customers who were just entering the place. I sat in the bistro for a while longer, but she never addressed me again nor paid me any attention, not even when her husband was in the kitchen. The waiter kept passing by my table and apologizing for the bistro being so cold, because the central heating couldn't keep the place warm in such freezing weather. He made me have some sticky french horns, which he extolled as the house specialty. What faces are we going to make at each other when next we meet in the night? Down which roads, along which walls will he pursue me? What punishment will he sentence me to the next time the guards bring me before him?
          I waved my check toward the far end of the room; that very moment the door opened and in burst a tanned girl with black, wavy hair, wearing a sporty, brightly colored snowsuit. Seeing a check in my hand, she called out: "I'll get it, Mom, you don't have to come." "Thanks, Klárka," answered a voice from the back. The girl took the check, spent a long time adding up my coffees and french horns, made a mistake and laughed at it, then finally managed to sort it out and place the check on my table. Beneath the column of figures on the sheet was a message written in big, slightly childish script: "If you want to learn something about the other city and see something unusual, come at 3 o'clock in the morning to the outer gallery on the bell tower of St. Nicholas in Malá Strana. The church will be open." I paid my check with an impassive expression, the girl thanked me cheerfully for the tip and ran off to her parents in the back. I went out and set off downhill toward the center of the city.
         


Chapter 9

In the Tower

          Prior to three o'clock in the morning, I opened the door of St. Nicholas Church, walked through the dark nave, and climbed up a spiral staircase to the outer gallery of the belfry. The wind had swept the snow into high drifts along the wall, and on the stone balustrade there was also pristine snow. The Castle towered above me, the steep roofs of St. Vitus Cathedral shone pallidly and dreamily in the light of a blinding full moon. The sky was full of bright stars. Far below lay Malostranské Square, the dirty yellow light of fluorescent lamps spilling down its gentle slope. A taxi drove through the square and disappeared down Tomas Street, then nothing else stirred.
          After a while, the little gate to the staircase opened and the girl from the bistro appeared, wearing a bulky down jacket; her jacket was open, and a pearl necklace glinted on the black sweater she was wearing underneath. She leaned against the stone balustrade, the red lights of the Petřín Hill radio towers shone above her dark hair. "Is there going to be another festival down there?" I asked. The girl didn't answer, from the deep shadows under her eyebrows and her cheekbones I couldn't discern any expression.
          "It was not for you that Darguz's holy body was torn apart by the tiger," she said, abruptly breaking the night's stillness with her hard voice full of scorn. "It was not for you that he wandered, feverish, through abandoned parks and stood on the glittering mosaic floor of the temple in long disputations with cunning priests, who tried to triumph over him by using syllogisms, their main premise being the burrows of blind subterranean horses, and by systematically distracting him when everyone was pointing at the troops of ten thousand brown mummies in shining golden armor that were marching past the open temple doors, stirring up dust from the road. Why are you sticking your nose into our affairs? Remember: he who crosses the frontier will become entangled in twisted wires protruding from objects you consider broken, but that have actually reverted to their true form, just as was engraved on the glass star that wanders among the constellations. Whoever wants to intrude on our city will never return, his features will disappear amidst the intertwining netting of cracks in old walls, his gestures will dissolve into the motions of bushes swaying in the wind. Don't think that your boldness could cause us any harm. But the fact that you have dared to penetrate into the border regions of our city is a desecration to the memory of those who, five thousand years ago, in the clearing of a primeval forest, with a cold flame in their eyes, knocked over the statue of the winged dog and then, as often happens, turned into something of winged dogs themselves. What do you hope to find here? Even if you did succeed in penetrating to the fountains in the inner courtyard of the royal palace and hearing their murmur, to which our philosophers listen so attentively, even if you were to walk through the halls of the palace library and heavy folio volumes, their dark pages blazing with fiery letters, were to open before you, you wouldn't understand anything anyway. Clumsy and dull as you in that city of yours are, you have forgotten your primal tongue, and you think that what is spoken softly in this tongue is mute; all you see beyond the boundaries of your space is chaos, ruin, and decay. You are so busy and diligent, always building something, yet all your activity is but a frenzied search for a lost beginning, your buildings desperate attempts to recreate the golden temples and palaces, forms that remain darkly and persistently embedded in the depths of your memory – yet full of anxiety and revulsion, you avoid the only space in which you could encounter the living and authentic legacy of what you seek: the scorned margins. You don't sense that the terror which grips you on the fringes of your world is the beginning of the bliss of return, that finding your doom in the primeval forest on the margins is a glowing rebirth. If you were to sit down in the middle of a rubbish pile or in a dump outside the city and meditate on the shapes that bare themselves beneath the rotting, decomposing masks, it would bring you much closer to the secret goal of your journey than the confusingly revolving circle of all your plans and achievements."
          I laughed. "Why do you keep saying 'you' and 'your city'? I know that you grew up in our world, just a year ago you probably didn't even know that the other city existed."
          The girl moved closer to me and smiled. "I promised that you would see something unusual." Suddenly she pressed her body against my side, wrapped one arm around my neck from behind, placed the other on my shoulder, and turned me toward a bend behind which the gallery lay hidden in black shadow; through muffled laughter she whispered into my ear: "It's there, back there in the shadows. You have to go a little further, just a little." Leaning against me, she prodded me toward the dark side of the gallery, softly laughing to herself the whole time. Her chin propped on my shoulder, she said merrily: "Come on, don't tell me you're afraid? I thought you wanted to explore our city. It can't be helped, the tour begins in the tower."
          Her soft laughter, the thick darkness beyond the bend in the gallery, and the feeling that something horrifying was lurking nearby, were making me truly anxious. Nevertheless, I disentangled myself from her embrace, pushed her away, and proceeded alone to the edge of the dark shadow. After all, she was right: I had set out on an expedition to explore the other city. Behind me I heard her soft laughter. I reached the line dividing the moonlit area from the impenetrable darkness. Something in the darkness rose up out of the snow and landed on me. A cold, heavy body without arms or legs pushed me down into the snow and lay on top of me, crushing me with its weight. Above me I saw the head of a shark with beady golden eyes, the moonlight on its gaping jaws revealing glinting white teeth. In vain did I try to get the shark off of me. He snapped at my shoulder, but I managed to jerk away from his teeth, so all he tore off was a piece of my collar. We grappled silently in the snow, the blinding moon shining into my eyes. The garret window in one of the houses below me lit up, and I could see some insomniac in his pyjamas go to the kitchen and come back. I cried out for help, but no one except the shark and the evil girl could hear me. In a moment the light went out again.
          The girl tiptoed closer to me, leaned over until her necklace lightly touched my forehead, and in a quiet, almost soothing voice told me: "All your life you've looked out at the world through cold glass panes, you loved the windows of cafes and trains, the glassed-in terraces of houses in the mountains. We know a lot about you. Behind glass you felt safe, so why did you leave your shelter, why did you set out on a journey into the jungle? Only rarely does a shark attack a customer in the Slavia Café. Why did you set out alone into an alien city where no one cares about you? The shark will now roll your bitten-off head around the tower gallery, and small children in our schools will learn about you in limericks and nursery rhymes."
          The small gate opened and the waiter appeared; the girl slowly straightened herself up and moved aside so he could see the status of the contest. The waiter smiled and nodded with satisfaction. The girl left me and walked over to her father who embraced her and kissed her on the cheek. I looked up and saw the silhouettes of their bodies huddled together against the starry sky. I swore that, should I by some miracle manage to get down from the tower, never again would I let the waiter talk me into buying his french horns. Then the waiter took his daughter by the hand and they both disappeared through the dark opening of the gateway. I remained alone with the shark on the gallery of the tower above the sleeping city.
          We went on wrestling in the snow for a rather long time. I couldn't get the shark off of me, so I tried to at least prevent him from getting into a position from which he could take a bite. But my strength was gradually ebbing. The beast sensed it and reared up to make its final strike; the moment the shark raised its massive body and opened its jaws wide so that my head would fit, I gathered the last bits of my strength, jumped up, and pushed against it, whereupon the shark, in its precarious position, lost its balance and fell over the balustrade. Its body dropped through the darkness and was impaled on a tall metal cross held by one of the stone figures on the attic of St. Nicholas Church. I watched it thrashing about in its death throes, the contortions forcing its body further and further down onto the metal cross. After a while the movements stopped and the shark's limp body hung from the cross like a flag of the night. I staggered down the steps into the church, collapsed onto the cold floor at the foot of a column, and instantly fell asleep.