Republic Of Whores

by Josef Skvorecky

  The colonel stopped nodding his head and said, “I think I speak for everyone present when I say that your praise has deeply touched and warmed us all. But now, perhaps Comrade Bobr would like to give our soldier-poets some more detailed pointers —”

  “Why of course, naturally, comrades,” said Bobr quickly. “That’s what I’m here for.” He cleared his throat. “It goes without saying that your work has its weak points as well as its strong ones.” And with that, he plunged into a list of the negative aspects of the poetry submitted. For a long time he spoke without being specific. Then he focused his remarks on the work of a corporal who, so far, had managed to be inconspicuous. “Take these lines, for instance, comrades,” he said. “You footlockers, beacons of Hope! Soldiers adorn you with the faces of women. This is not a good line. You footlockers — yes, it broaches an interesting subject, a novel subject. But — beacons of Hope? Hope? What hope? And hope for what? Can you feel, comrade, how vague, unoriginal, and unrealistic that expression is? It completely spoils the line. Learn from our classical writers like Jan Neruda, or from foreign comrades such as Pablo Neruda, comrade.”

  He fell silent and the Song and Dance major seized his opportunity. Poetry fell within his area of competence, after all. “Would you allow me, comrade?”

  “By all means,” said Bobr scornfully.

  “I only want to add to what the Comrade National Artist here has said. This matter has to be looked at politically, too. We must realize, Comrade Corporal,” and the major turned to the non-com, whose hollow face radiated undisguised terror, “we must realize that such a poem will fall into the hands of many comrades, right? And that poem will have an influence on them. Words too are weapons, comrade, and we who work with the masses must make sure they are good weapons, useful weapons, well-oiled weapons. And this is what you write: You footlockers, beacons of Hope. As the Comrade National Artist pointed out, it is a non-concrete, naturalist image. And I would add to what the comrade here said, comrade: from the political and ideological point of view it is a very suspect line.” The major glared at the corporal so disapprovingly that the young man’s head sank and his hollow cheeks flushed crimson with shame. “It is not at all a politically correct line!”

  * * *

  Danny was still waiting for Lizetka at twelve-thirty, long after her parents had gone to bed. Her boudoir, with its intimate lighting, reminded him of the disarray of a soldier’s bedroom just before reveille. A large icon of the Virgin Mary and a period etching of Henry the Eighth stared down with dead eyes on the messy pile of books, dresses, underwear, fruit, and cigarettes strewn on the round, glass-topped table, and on the rumpled couch under the window, where she slept. There was an open clothes closet in the corner of the room, and a summer dress and a crumpled petticoat lay casually across a chair. Several nylon stockings and a sluttish blue satin bra hung on the armrest of another chair. Various other items were scattered on the floor. Everything was exactly as it had been since her husband was called up.

  The tank commander opened the door to the next room. There, everything was stiffly tidy. The corner couch was reflected coldly in the glass doors of the bookshelves. If Lizetka’s nature was reflected in the shambles of her den, here was a picture of the soul of her poor sod of a husband.

  He went back to her room, emptied one of the chairs onto the floor, and pulled a few letters from the pile of things on her bedside table. He took one and began to read it:

  My darling,

  I keep wanting to write you but I can’t. You have to understand that, surrounded by all this emptiness, one simply doesn’t have the courage; one fears everything. I’ve composed so many letters to you in my head since you left, but so far not a single one have I written down. I have often thought — not without understanding — of your special saintliness and decency.

  Yes — a saintliness called frigidity, a decency called narcissism. He didn’t bother to look at the signature; his experienced eye judged the letter to be the work of the first of his successors, Kurisu, a student of Japanese. So she didn’t put out for him either, he thought with satisfaction. At least I have dubious precedence in that, as a primus inter pares, I was the first to demonstrate to her that a Catholic marriage need not exclude platonic infidelity, in the hope, of course, that with a little help from a Catholic devil, her platonic infidelity would one day become actual, physical infidelity. I haven’t managed to bring her to that point, he sighed, but on the other hand I have been able to turn her into a perfect little platonic whore.

  He began reading the next letter:

  Lizette, it is rather awful. I write you, and my worst problem is a chronic illness of the soul called boredom. There is no escape, there is no way out except the one along which we walk, but that, perhaps, has neither beginning nor end.

  The quasi-existential sentiments betrayed the writer as Maurice, another of his colleagues in platonism, who had grown up in Vichy France during the Second World War.

  Do you think we may have met sometime in another life, my wise queen? I write you, Karina, and I don’t know if you are alive.

  Well. He reached for another. This one wasn’t a letter, just a crumpled piece of paper. On one side, drawn in an artless hand, was a crude red heart with a red arrow pointing at it, and beside it, in shaky English: It is your heart and beats only for me?

  Beneath that, in Lizetka’s hand: Yes!!

  And the response: It is not difficult to love you — you most charming girl!

  And below that, from Lizetka: Attention! My man see you!

  Well, here was someone new. He sounded like a real jerk. Why didn’t he learn decent English? On the other side of the paper, however, they reverted to their mother tongue. Didn’t I put that rather cleverly? And my husband didn’t suspect a thing. Beneath that: You’re the Beauty and he’s the Beast. And then: That’s why I have to sweet-talk him all the time, otherwise he’d leap out and eat you, Budulín. And with that the dialogue ended. Perhaps Budulín had, in fact, been eaten at that point. If he had, a willing replacement would certainly have jumped in.

  Danny rummaged around in the pile of papers and came up with a small notebook. He opened it at random and read:

  This afternoon, went into town and arrived at the Adria an hour late. Maurice was there, annoyed. A long walk to Barrandov. Maurice teed off at first, then pleasant. Tells me about his problems. Wonderful supper, then we dance. Maurice talks about divorce. Walk down the hill to the trolley-stop. I’m awfully sleepy. Maurice sticks with me all the way to Radlice. In bed by about two.

  Tuesday: Rise at 7:45. Terrible rush. Mother has words again. Half-hour late for work, but the Queen wasn’t there yet, just Lexina. We gab a bit, talk about Pecka. The Queen arrives about ten, carrying some cakes. We all indulge, feel sick. Then to lunch, and a gentleman starts talking to me, tell him I went to school in Switzerland and he starts talking French to me. I get embarrassed and tell him it was a German school. Says he desperately wants to see me again, he’s from the Min. of For. Trade. So we make a date for next week. Then in the Church of the Little Jesus of Prague I pray for Robert and for myself, and for the strength to stop being this way. Back to work about two and I go straight for a bath. I lie in the tub and downstairs they’re playing records with a Jewish cantor singing. They’re wonderful. I try reading a book called The Egg and I in the bath, but I get it wet and stop. Out of the bath at four. The Queen didn’t show up at all this afternoon. Milan calls, Lexina brings me the telephone in the tub. Then Budulín calls and I go to his place and we drink absinthe.

  So Budulín didn’t get eaten after all, Danny thought glumly. He put the notebook aside and wondered what he was doing waiting there. I suppose it’s because I love her. Well — more likely because she never came across. So it’s either vanity or it’s love. And what about Janinka? Ah, Janinka.… I guess it must be because Lizetka didn’t come across.

  In which case it’s probably love, too.

  Pleased with this reasoning, he succumbed to
military weariness and fell asleep.

  * * *

  The disgraced corporal’s name was Josef Brynych. In civilian life he had been a clerk in a tobacco warehouse, and he had never written poetry before. The poem about the footlockers had occurred to him one night when he was on guard duty. The guard post was a wooden shack with a single bench of rotting planks, and the corporal couldn’t sleep. Bored to savagery with the four-hour pause between rounds, he read the only material allowed in the guard post — a two-week-old copy of the tank division daily, Armoured Fist. He ploughed through everything, from an editorial entitled “How to Continue Mass Cultural Work while Fulfilling the Summer Plan for Target Practice with Heavy Machine-Guns” to the masthead — everything, including the phone numbers. As he scanned those four printed pages again, in the final stages of terminal desperation and believing that he had read every single letter, something caught his eye, something he would normally have ignored altogether because it promised even less amusement than he dared to expect from the people’s democratic press. It was a brief text arranged in short lines of unequal length — in other words, a poem. Exhausted by insomnia, irritated by the snoring of the other guards on the bench, tired of trying to lure an over-experienced mouse out of its lair with a piece of bacon, and crushed by the sight of the guard commander, who was going against regulations by sleeping on the table, Corporal Brynych was driven to read the item, titled “Poem Written on a March” and signed with the name Lt. Jan Vrchcoláb. He read:

  The merry song flies up like a raptor

  and falls, strumming the heavens.

  What could be apter?

  Our platoon

  marches, singing a tune.

  I sing and think of you,

  My heart’s captor.

  His tired brain stopped for a moment to consider the line and falls, strumming the heavens. He involuntarily tried to imagine what the merry song of an infantry platoon would sound like strumming the heavens. He imagined something soaring, then rubbing against a firm but yielding substance, then tumbling down to earth again. Then he tried to remember the last time his platoon had sung at all, let alone merrily. He reconsidered the poem and discovered that along with the rhyme platoon and tune he could add saloon. The possibilities began to interest him. He cast about for an appropriate line until he found one. The poem, written by Jan Vrchcoláb and improved by Corporal Brynych, now went like this:

  The merry song flies up like a raptor

  And falls, strumming the heavens.

  What could be apter?

  Our platoon

  Marches, singing a tune.

  I sing and think of you,

  And of our favourite saloon,

  My heart’s captor.

  The corporal’s imagination was stimulated. After some thought, he transformed the poem yet again, so that it now read:

  Grey boredom flies up to the heavens

  And falls directly on you.

  Our platoon

  Couldn’t give a sweet fuck.

  I yawn, think of you,

  And curse my luck.

  Somewhere, in a warm saloon,

  Some young buck

  Is making you swoon.

  He found this highly entertaining. He looked through the other verses of Vrchcoláb’s poem, and his eye fell on a notice printed underneath it announcing that the deadline for the divisional round of the Army Creativity Contest was July 15. He decided to enter something. He pulled a filthy diary out of his pocket and began to think about a subject. The first thing that came into his head, God knows why, was his footlocker with the picture of Blaženka and the village square in his hometown inside the lid. Then he thought that this awful boredom would soon be over, and he imagined himself sitting again in the aroma-filled kitchen in Blaženka’s house, grinding coffee in the antique coffee mill while Blaženka, in a blue apron, made supper, and her mother, Mrs. Jarošová, called him Mr. Pepa, and Mr. Jaroš winked at him and said, “Some gal, eh? Sugar and spice, she is!” And Blaženka would blush and glance at him, her blue eyes dancing with the promise of pleasures to come after the wedding, and the wedding would be right after Christmas. Thus filled with poetic thoughts, Corporal Brynych produced the first four lines of his poem:

  You footlockers,

  Beacons of Hope!

  Soldiers adorn you

  With the faces of women.

  He sent off two copies, one to Armoured Fist, the other to Miss Blaženka Jarošová, Sales Clerk, c/o Pramen Grocery Enterprises, Modřanky, p.o. Rakovník. From Blaženka he got an enthusiastic letter, and after some time a notice appeared in Armoured Fist. Among the poems given an honourable mention in the divisional round of the Army Creativity Contest was one by Corporal Brynych, Josef. And now he was sitting here while the officers tore his poem apart.

  * * *

  The rattling of a key in the main door woke Danny, and a few moments later Lizetka was standing in the light from the table lamp. She was wearing a nylon jacket and a slightly rumpled checked skirt. She smiled, but it wasn’t a warm smile. “Ahoj, Lízinka,” he said.

  “Well, company,” she replied. “Greetings, Comrade Tank Commander. You haven’t come to see us for some time. What’s up?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “Isn’t it more like there’s something new here?”

  But she’d already put him out of her mind. She went to her writing table and began leafing through some papers. He felt as useless as a wax statue.

  “So tell me, my friend,” she said absently. “What’s been going on at the base?”

  “I got into some trouble before I came,” he said mechanically, looking intently at her bottom in its checked skirt. Was it vanity or was it love? Sex appeal, most likely. He started telling her the story of Lieutenant Malina and Sergeant Babinčáková. Lizetka went on leafing through her file.

  “Are you listening, Lizetka?” he asked, irritated.

  “I’m listening.”

  “It’s a strange kind of listening.”

  “I’m paying attention.”

  “I’ll bet you don’t even know what I’m talking about.”

  “There was this Sergeant Babinčáková in the guardhouse and you had guard duty — no, prisoner escort duty — and Second Lieutenant Malina went to bed with her in her cell.”

  “Well, all right,” he said grudgingly, and continued the story. But he had no taste for it. Lizetka began writing something in the file.

  “Líza, couldn’t you at least pay attention to me?”

  “I told you, I’m listening.”

  “Then couldn’t you look at me while you listen?”

  She turned to him. “You want me to come and sit in your lap? For God’s sake, Daniel, you sound just like Robert.”

  The tank commander felt anger rising in him. Coming from Lizetka, there was no greater insult.

  “If this is how you make him feel, I’m not surprised.”

  “Not surprised?” she said, raising her eyebrows. “There was a time when you were surprised.”

  “There was indeed,” he said harshly.

  “And those times are gone?”

  He said nothing. As always, harshness had no effect on her. As always, Danny was the first to soften.

  “In that case,” she said, “thank God I didn’t marry you.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I repeat: thank God. I only regret I married anyone at all.”

  “Last time, you said that if Robert got killed while he was in the army, you’d marry me.”

  “That was last time. Not now.”

  * * *

  “Hope, Comrade Corporal? Hope for what?” the major was asking. “And on top of that, you gave it a capital ‘H’. Now, when a young comrade reads a line like that, what is the first thing that occurs to him? We know soldiers miss their loved ones and those close to them. But we mustn’t reinforce these tendencies at all. In fact, Comrade Corporal, these tendencies must be wiped out. We don’t want soldiers to spend their evenings s
itting on their footlockers and mooning over photographs of their girlfriends and sighing. We want them in the mass cultural activity room, singing our mass songs and dancing our mass dances, right? This poem of yours, comrade, does not make our task any easier. No indeed, comrade. In fact, comrade, this poem of yours defeats our purpose.” The major’s head was tilted threateningly towards Corporal Brynych, and every “comrade” sounded like the salvo of a firing squad. The tobacco-warehouse clerk felt cold sweat dampening his back. Jesus, he hadn’t asked for this.

  “But otherwise, comrade,” said the National Artist, who obviously felt sorry for the young poet, “your poem isn’t bad. You know it’s not because it got honourable mention, after all.”

  But the tobacco-warehouse clerk didn’t care about the poem; what he was worried about was the report he’d take home from the army. So he just nodded mechanically at the novelist, while glancing anxiously at the major, his heart gripped with fear that mostly had to do with whether Blaženka would still want him if he had to leave the tobacco warehouse and work in the mines.