by Ivan Klíma
What tied me most firmly to life was my writing: anything I experienced would become images for me. At times they would surround me so completely that I felt I was in a different world, and my stay there filled me with happiness or at least with a sense of relief. Years ago, I persuaded myself that I would be able to communicate these images to someone, that there were even people about who were waiting for them in order to share my joys and sorrows. I did all I could to meet their supposed expectations: I was doing this not from pride or any sense of superiority but because I wanted someone to share my world with me.
Later I realised that in an age where so many were obediently and devotedly embracing the jerkish spirit, if only to avoid having to face the horsemen of the Apocalypse, very few people were interested in someone else’s images or someone else’s words.
I am still writing, putting words and sentences together to make incidents and visions. Often I labour for days over a single paragraph, I cover pages with writing, then throw them away, I keep trying to lend the most complete and the most precise expression to what I have on my mind, to avoid any misunderstanding, to make sure none of those I am addressing should feel cheated. Whenever I finish a book or a play my body rebels and punishes me with pains, and all the time I know that when I send my manuscript to the publishers I’ll get a one-sentence reply: We are returning your manuscript because it does not fit into our editorial plans. I then lend it to a few friends, and some who still refuse to submit to the jerkish spirit will probably copy it and lend it to some of their friends. I also send it abroad, provided it doesn’t get lost on the way, and it will be published there. So maybe after all – this is the thread I cling to – there may be a handful of people in the world with whom, despite all my irritations, I make contact.
I kept writing through all those years when not a single line bearing my name was allowed to be published in our country, when some of my recent friends would avoid me because they couldn’t be sure that meeting me might not cast a shadow on their respectability. I wrote stubbornly, although sometimes the weight of my loneliness lay heavily on me. I’d sit at my table and listen to the silence which was swallowing me up. I could hear nothing but a barely perceptible snapping sound as some of the individual threads broke, and I longed to discover some hope I could attach myself to. That was when she appeared. If we had met at some other time we’d probably have passed each other by, but at just that moment I raced after her like a man drugged, and it took years for me to come to again. At the same time I never stopped conducting a silent argument with her. Even when I longed for her most my words died in my throat the moment she looked at me, whenever the night separated me from her embracing and comforting glance I would compose answers to questions, reproaches, wishes and yearnings which until then I had left unanswered.
And now, as the night lazily stretched its back over me, I was continuing, by force of habit, with the silent letter in which I defended myself and tried to prove that I didn’t want to hurt her. Before throwing it into the big box full of unsent letters and wishes, full of promises, requests and half-whispered hopes I tried once more to visualise what she was doing just then, at least to visualise her room. Who knows if she was even there. I no longer knew how she spent her nights. Maybe she was just returning home, her swift footsteps were closing the circle. If I got up now and ran after her, maybe I could cut the circle open, clutch her to myself, within the confines of that circle forget everything outside it, everything that was, that is, and that would inevitably be. But I knew I wouldn’t do it. I’d only get up in the morning to set off for the streets I’d decided to sweep clean. It suddenly occurred to me that this was the reason why I’d found myself in the street with a handcart yesterday morning. I needed to go somewhere in the morning, at least I’d now have a natural objective for a while: set out somewhere, perform whatever kind of activity and listen to whatever kind of talk, just so I don’t have to sit amidst the silence listening to the snapping of the threads.
Perhaps, it occurred to me, I was in some new space. I’d entered the place where oblivion was born. Or despair. And also understanding. Or perhaps even love – not as a mirage but as a space for the soul to move in.
II
Four weeks later, again at nine in the morning, we were once more, the same team, sitting in the same tavern as on my first day.
When I’d put on my orange vest then I wasn’t sure how often I’d decide to repeat the experience, but to begin with I would come to work at least every other day. I was curious about what parts of Prague my work would take me to, what narrow little streets that otherwise I’d never venture into.
I am fond of my native city, not only of the part through which the tourist crowds stroll, but also of the outskirts, where, among blocks of flats from the Secession period, a few little rural houses have remained standing, either forgotten or, more probably, already sentenced to death in some development plans, where unexpectedly an avenue of ancient poplars has survived or a little wooded hill, or fences bearing appeals and announcements whose bright colours I was aware of but whose texts as a rule I didn’t read. More than once, as I pushed my cart with the dustbin I discovered a faded plaque on some familiar and usually dingy wall, a bust, or even a memorial huddling in some recess. These were meant to remind us that here, years ago, was born, lived or died some artist, thinker, scientist or national figure, in other words a spirit of whom it might be presumed that he rose above the rest of us. But more often, in one of those little streets or among the fading gardens, I remembered that here lived someone I knew, an artist, a thinker, a scientist or a national figure, someone who was here no more, someone beyond the hills and beyond the rivers, though mostly not over the river Styx, which would be sad but the common human lot, but someone now a refugee, someone driven out to our common shame. The walls of these houses, needless to say, did not bear plaques or a bust or even a visiting card to remind us that here lived a human spirit that had endeavoured to rise to higher things. I would glance at my companions at those moments, but they suspected nothing, except possibly Mr Rada, if he was one of our party, who might nod his head.
Thus I moved in my orange vest through the little streets and lanes of my native city which was slowly giving up its spirit, my companions at my side as witnesses. We were cleaning the town on which refuse had fallen and soot and ashes and poisoned rain and oblivion. We strode along in our vests like flamingoes, like angels of the dying day, sweeping away all rubbish and refuse, angels beyond life, beyond death, beyond our time, beyond all time, scarcely touched by the jerkish. Our speech resembled our age-old brooms, it came from a long way back and it moved along age-old paths. But behind us others are moving up: already the jerkish sweepers are arriving on their beflagged vehicles, pretending that they are completing the great purge, sweeping away all memories of the past, of anything that was great in the past. And when, with delight, they halt in the space which appears to them to be cleaned up, they’ll summon one of their jerkish artists and he’ll erect here a monument to oblivion, an effigy of shaft-boots, an overcoat, trousers and a briefcase, and above these an unforgettable face behind which we feel neither spirit nor soul but which, by official decree, will be proclaimed to be the face of an artist, a thinker, a scientist or a national figure.
There has been a slight drizzle since early morning, maybe it isn’t even real rain but just condensation of the fog which covers the city with grime and helps to submerge it in oblivion.
On days like this Daria would positively choke and life would seem unbearable to her, her stone or wood incapable of being worked on, and as the droplets fell inexhaustibly from the clouds so the tears began to drip from her eyes, no matter how I tried to console her.
My companions aren’t in a good mood either. I hardly recognised Mrs Venus this morning. Her right eye was swollen and below it was a purplish bruise. The captain’s face had lost its tan over the past few days and had gone grey. Even the foreman in his freshly laundered and pressed ov
eralls walked along in silence.
I ordered some hot tea and the captain, instead of his usual beer, ordered a grog. ‘Tell me, who gave you that monocle?’ he turned to Mrs Venus.
‘A better man than you,’ she snapped. ‘One like you I’d have torn apart before he even raised his hand!’
Mrs Venus liked to make out how tough she was, but I believe she was good-natured, and she’d paid the price for it all her life. There were clearly many men she’d loved, or at least lived with, but they’d all left her, or else she’d run away from them. She’d raised three sons, even though she probably hadn’t had much time for raising them. When we were young, the order of the day was that women must devote themselves to more important duties than looking after their children. Now she lived on her own. Her flat, as I understood it, was reached by an open upstairs passage; the term flat meant a single room with a cooker. Her eldest son, who was a steelworker in Vítkovice, had given her a television set on which she could follow our jerkish programmes in colour. So for those evenings when she preferred home to the company at the bar, she had a reliable companion. Besides, at the far end of the passage lived, or rather slowly died, a lonely widower who’d been incapacitated by a stroke some years back, and now and then she’d go and clean up for him and bake him a cake – so he shouldn’t be left alone like an abandoned dog.
‘Yeah, maybe if two other blokes were holding me down,’ the captain growled.
Normally there was nothing eccentric about his speech. Mostly he’d conceal the oddity of his thoughts. He wasn’t a real captain, he’d merely worked in the shipyards before he lost his hand. But his real interest was not ships but inventions. That’s what he softly told me on the second day we were sweeping alongside each other: he’d think up machines which would improve people’s lives. Unfortunately, he’d so far not met with any understanding. Wherever he turned with his inventions, there were blinkered people behind desks, instructed to block real progress and prosperity. He offered to demonstrate some of his inventions to me.
I hadn’t been mistaken when I’d felt his face seemed familiar to me.
It was when I was still working in newspapers. One day the editor received a letter from an inventor who’d had his idea turned down. He had devised a way of utilising waste materials, especially soot, for the removal of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps. The editor passed the letter on to me for answering. I wrote that in this matter we were unable to help him. A few days later, however, the writer turned up at the editorial office. He was quite a pleasant and amusing fellow. I couldn’t see anything odd in his appearance, anything that might make me doubt his sincerity. He merely had a deeper tan than would be usual for that time of the year, but he told me he’d just returned from the shores of Africa. Out there, even at night-time when he couldn’t sleep because of the heat, he had reflected on the curious and dangerous imbalance of the planet. In some places it would offer warmth and in others humidity, and elsewhere nothing but sand or ice. During those nights he’d thought a lot about abolishing that imbalance, but his head buzzed with more crazy ideas than were found in the Academy. In the end, however, he’d discovered the fundamental mistake which nature and mankind had committed. They’d come to dislike black! Was there anything in nature that was truly black? And mankind, with the possible exception of the Chinese, regarded black as the colour of mourning. Yet black was in fact the colour which combined most completely with the basic life force, that is with warmth, whereas white, allegedly the colour of innocence, the colour of wedding dresses, repulsed heat; it was the colour of snow and of most of the poisons. Those immense white areas had to be removed from the surface of the earth, and life would then establish itself where deserts had been before, and warmth would invade the areas which until now had been frosty. It had taken him a long time to discover the right means and the right method. The means was a mixture he’d invented, a solution of soot in seven solvents and three catalysts, and the method was the melting of the polar ice. As soon as the ice caps were sprayed with his mixture they’d lose their deadly whiteness, they’d begin to soak up heat and to melt.
I realised of course that I was talking either to a madman or to a joker with a magnificent, elaborate joke. Or he might be both. A crazy inventor pulling his own leg. But I found his exposition so entertaining that I continued to listen to his vision of the world of the future, when oranges and rice would be cultivated beyond the Arctic and Antarctic circles, while in our country there would be two harvests, and breadfruit trees and date palms would thrive.
I heard him out to the end but I told him I didn’t have the time to go along with him then to see how his machine for the spraying of the mixture worked. He shrugged and left, and as a farewell gift handed me a few colour photographs which showed an array of strangely shaped objects arranged on the grass. I have no technical memory, so I’m unable after all these years to recall their shapes, and the photographs were lost when I was forced to leave the paper.
A few days later he turned up again. Had I noticed that there’d been a fresh fall of snow? He’d borrowed his neighbour’s car solely for the purpose of convincingly demonstrating his equipment to me. Once I’d seen it I’d realise its revolutionary significance and would maybe write an article about it after all.
The elderly Tatra car took us all the way to Kralupy. There, on the outskirts, immediately behind the railway crossing, we stopped. It was a small house, and evidently a bachelor establishment. On the wall facing the front door hung a framed photograph of a white-haired man: unless I was mistaken it was a picture of Edison, and below it in large letters the inventor’s statement: ‘My work is the work of peace!’ A desk below the window was covered with cartridge paper with drawings on it and with some rolled-up plans; on the shelves stood several skilfully-made model ships. I hurriedly drank a cup of coffee and then we went out by the back door into his yard.
I noticed that the snow which had fallen that morning had none of the usual deathly whiteness about it, but was dirty grey. My guide didn’t even look about him but hurried to a shed behind the house, opened its wide double door, and wheeled out his machinery. Unlike the house itself this was an object of impressive appearance. It reminded me of an ancient fire engine: all brass and gleaming metal parts. It might equally well have been a perfect artefact for some exhibition of op art. The long hose was fitted with a nozzle.
He wheeled the assembly into the garden, uncoiled the hose and began to pump some handles. A smelly mist issued from the nozzle. I watched the mist settling on the snow, but that dirty snow, instead of getting blacker, seemed to be getting lighter. No doubt there was some chemical reaction between the artificial mist and that chemical mess that had dropped from the sky. Thus we found ourselves in the middle of a near-white island while all around lay black clods of snow. I didn’t say anything, and he too was silent. In his eyes I saw neither disappointment nor the joy of a perfectly played practical joke. After a while he stopped pumping, coiled up the hose, and wheeled his shining equipment back into the shed. I seized oh the moment when he was inside and quickly walked along the railway line to the station. As I walked through the black snow I thought to myself that even if that man was crazy, he was no crazier than the rest of humanity which, in its eagerness for comfort, was spraying the world with a black mist in the belief that this was the direct road to the Garden of Eden.
It would have been embarrassing if he’d recognised me too, but he didn’t seem to remember me. He had been too obsessed with his own mission at the time to take note of the face of someone who served him, at best, as an intermediary.
I promised him I’d come and look at his inventions as soon as I had some time, and he did not press me any further.
‘For all you know your Harry may have been with me,’ Mrs Venus said. Her face seemed even more swollen than in the morning and she was gazing at us with her right eye like an owl. ‘He’s not like you, he doesn’t only go in for machines!’
‘He can do better than you,
you old hag!’ The captain took a swig of grog, pulled out his pipe and filled it with his good hand.
Last Monday it rained even harder than today. We had to stop work before time was up, and as we were only a short distance from where the captain lived this seemed a suitable moment for a visit.
He led me to a house which looked even more dilapidated than the one where, years ago, he had demonstrated his equipment to me. He unlocked the door and hung up his captain’s cap on a rusty nail behind it. The walls of the hall were damp and hadn’t been painted for a long time; everywhere lay heaps of dusty objects and scattered pieces of clothing. The room’s appearance and dimensions suggested a ship’s cabin. Over his bunk hung various drawings, mostly of windmills. Nowhere did I see anything that suggested our first encounter. Perhaps I was the victim of some fixed idea and the captain had nothing in common with that young man years ago. No doubt the number of unsuccessful inventors in the world was increasing like that of unsuccessful poets.
He opened the bottom drawer and took out some folders of plans. He’d lately concerned himself with the most effective way of using wind power. He unrolled the first sheet and I saw a dreamlike ship whose deck was taken up by turrets carrying windmill sails, five turrets in all. He showed me further drawings, among them a windmill bus and a flying windmill, all these craft driven by wind. The drawings were meticulously done, the individual parts all bearing letters and numbers: I recognised the drive assembly, the transmission gears and the blades of the propellers as I knew them from childhood from my father’s drawings. Other drawings had landscapes dotted with wooden turrets towering picturesquely above the tops of the trees.
It struck me that the captain was not so much a madman, not so much a joker, as a poet at heart. What else could a real poet do when he realised that crowds of jerkish wordmongers and image-mongers had already flooded the world with their rubbish? What else could he do in the face of the monstrous palatial blocks choking the earth but build his windmills which rise up silently and leave behind neither noise nor smell?