Spaceman of Bohemia

by Jaroslav Kalfar

  It was a railroad apartment, four rooms locked together in a single line without doors. I walked into an office in which bookshelves held books that were only hers, novels from all over the world, while my nonfiction tomes of theories were gone. Even our literature proved that I’d wanted to conquer everything outside Earth, while she wanted to know every inch of the planet I desired to leave. I put my hands upon these books, remembering those nights of silence when our forearms had touched and we had read until sleep took us, the pages mixed between limbs and sheets.

  The next room, her bedroom. The bed was not ours. It was hers, smaller, and a crater in the middle suggested that Lenka had slept comfortably without having to choose a side. The sheets were folded neatly, another morning ritual of hers. Above the bed was a painting I had never seen—cormorants rising over a river, a sunset with hues so orange the beams looked like napalm. Lenka’s signature in the corner.

  What would happen if Lenka were to come back home, capture the poltergeist lurking in her space? How to explain that I had passed through the core that had seen the beginning of the world? That I had fallen through the atmosphere and crashed into a Russian lake. That I had come for her.

  The third room was an undecided space. A yoga mat and weights lay in one corner, while the center was dominated by an easel supporting an unfinished painting on a large canvas. This new project was a night sky above Plzeň’s horizon. One star was particularly thick, glowing, with a tail behind it that suggested movement. This was how Lenka had seen me when I left, guessing at which of the moving reflections in the vast darkness could be her Jakub.

  There was also a closet. I opened the doors and leaped into her clothing, sniffing at the familiar detergent, the armpits of blouses still holding traces of sweat mixed with deodorant, notes of her apricot perfume. As I put my face in the clothes, they began to fall, and soon I too fell to the ground, burying myself under the pile until I couldn’t breathe.

  The final room was the kitchen, in which I could still smell all of Lenka’s favorites—fried eggs, bacon, the goddamn bacon, mushroom stew. There was a high bar table littered with a week’s worth of newspapers (was she still searching for articles about me, or embracing the new world without me in it?). Above the table stretched a framed photo of the sunset on a Croatian beach.

  I walked back to the office at the front of the apartment. There weren’t any photos of me, no photos of our wedding. I considered rummaging through the closets to see if these items still existed, or whether Lenka had scrubbed her life clean of the reminders. Their absence wouldn’t upset me. It would bring clarity.

  I exited the apartment and walked outside. If I kneeled down and put my ear to the sidewalk, would Plzeň speak to me, tell me where to search? I turned in all directions with my eyes closed and chose one at random, then embarked, knowing I would scour these streets day and night until I found Lenka.

  As I stepped forward, faint music drifted from the direction of the River Radbuza. It came into sight and I realized that Lenka’s cormorant painting had been conceived at its shore. The music grew louder as I walked into the city’s historic center, where the Cathedral of Saint Bartholomew dominated the skyline. A mass of tents, stages, and food stands opened before me, organized into neat rows for the winter festival. A group of Roma musicians unleashed their soothing folk, accentuated by the smacks of steaming grog spilled upon the ground, the sizzle of onion, and above all the cheers of voices unified in the pagan ecstasy of human celebration. I entered the masses, searching above their heads. Lenka had to be here, with her love for ritual and for life. I bought a cup of grog, proof that I too belonged here, that I could still run with my kin, my species. Hours passed, the afternoon sun began to retreat, and the air grew cooler as I circled the square. Then, at a table ahead, a hand picked up a slice of bread smeared with goat cheese. The body belonging to the hand was concealed by the crowd. I tore through the mass, now seeing that those hands which had memorized my own body so thoroughly were not a mirage.

  Lenka. Her sweet hands.

  She paid the vendor and turned her back, the green tunic over her shoulders flowing in the wind like a queen’s robe. For a moment, the tunic slid off her right shoulder, and the few inches of bare skin inspired a lust that made me dizzy. I stumbled, but kept following nonetheless. What was the best way to approach her? I couldn’t put my hand on her shoulder before she saw me. She needed to see me first, recognize me, recognize the man who had so selfishly gone away from her to chase his own ambitions, the man who had returned now that she had made this new life to ask that she drop her solitude and, once again, change everything for him.

  Lenka. Her sweet hands, the skin of her shoulders. Was I worthy of her still? I quickened my pace, pushed through the herd to get ahead of Lenka, and turned back into the lane in which she strolled. She was now walking toward me, thirty meters, twenty-five. But there were too many bodies obstructing us. My eyes sought hers, ten meters. For the first time since I had left Earth, I saw Lenka’s face clearly. Peaceful. Adoring every sight and every breath. As if the world had been her creation and she a carefree supervisor walking the floor on the seventh day of rest.

  She was changed, happier than I’d ever seen her. Happier even than in our best days, our orgasmic slumber in the Orloj tower, the peak of our love. Five meters.

  I froze in my steps. Lenka looked directly at me. No. She looked past me, with no sign of recognition, no acknowledgment of my material form. She walked past me. As though I were just another stranger in too large a crowd.

  Could I be anything else, in the new world she had built for herself? She had to see me. There was no other way to begin anew. I cursed the enveloping masses.

  I shadowed her, searching for a better opportunity as she ate boiled peanuts, purchased a few canvases, and made her way home with the setting sun. I was drunk by then, mostly on samples of liquors flowing across the border from the rest of Europe, belching menthol, caraway, and coffee from the earthy shots I had picked up as I stalked. My mind a warren of confusion, uncertain whether I belonged to Earth anymore at all. But my body ran on autopilot—where Lenka went, I went.

  She retreated into her apartment and I sat on the pavement outside, down the block. The ground was cool to the touch, and the distant voices of people coming home from the festival, drunk on simple pleasures, encouraged me. The street lamps came on with their low buzz of static. A beautiful night. I imagined walking up to Lenka’s door and ringing the bell. She would have to see me then. The possibilities of her reaction terrified me, each of them bringing their own special sense of horror. If she touched me, put her arms around me, would my bones hold together? Or perhaps she would run, thinking me a corpse come to haunt her. This endless loop of thought kept me confined to the sidewalk. Her words to Kuřák replayed over and over. She wanted a life of her own, one that wasn’t overshadowed by my obsessions, my needs. And then I had seen her face in the crowd, serene and impassioned, and the lightness in her step.

  Was she her happiest like this? I needed to leave Earth, pick at the particles of Space. What did Lenka need?

  She walked back out of her building holding a large canvas bag, and I took cover behind a building at the end of the street. Lenka stepped toward the river. I followed her down the path, but still I kept my distance, still I could not bring myself to reenter her world. It was so easy, I had only to shout out her name, to run the short distance separating us and touch her. But with each passing moment I felt more and more like an intruder.

  She set up an easel and began work on the unfinished painting of the night sky.

  Her voice from Kuřák’s recording, counting up all the things I had done. Yes, the winter of 1989 was the Big Bang of my life. The guilt of my father’s servitude had followed me everywhere, leading us here.

  She took a sip of something from a thermos. Coffee? Wine? All I had to do was ask.

  The paint upon the easel, grains of powder and oil staining the cotton fibers, the solvent evapo
rating to leave a pigmented, dry oil to oxidize. This resinous film was now the new dimension of reality, confined within a rectangular cloth. A new world. A perspective. Lenka had painted the edges purple to allow for Chopra’s influence. She raised her hand to her head, and though I couldn’t see I was sure the purple on her fingers colored a streak of her hair. What if this reminder of a phenomenon so distant, yet one that uprooted our lives, remained there forever? Within the painting existed the sum of our lives. My decision to leave. My decision to put something else above Lenka. I chose the dust, I chose Space, I chose the trip to nowhere, I chose to live above humanity, I chose higher missions, I chose symbols, I chose to claw at redemption.

  I didn’t choose Lenka. I failed our contract. Now she had made a life for herself. Of course, I could merge into this life. Rid myself of any ambition left, drop any designs for my future and simply live alongside Lenka in any way she wanted me to, do as she would tell me, cause no further disruptions. But such life didn’t seem worth consideration, not only because I would never be able to truly embrace it, but because Lenka would reject it as an insult to what life is supposed to stand for.

  She rested the brush upon the ground and sat by the edge of the river. She rolled up her pant legs and dipped her feet into the water. Frogs dispersed with protesting croaks. The air grew chalky with smoke from a nearby bonfire. Lenka hummed and leaned back into the grass. Peaceful, alone. Looking out over the calm surface.

  There was no space for me here. I took a step back. And another.

  Lenka returned to her easel and began to disassemble it. The cup used to rinse the brush tipped over, the water marked by all colors of the palette spilling on the grass. Lenka leaned over and began to draw something into the stain with her finger. I had never been as curious about anything as I was at this moment about what Lenka was creating out of view. She was an unmatched engineer of these small moments. Embracing accidents and curiosities. She judged the work below and laughed to herself.

  I couldn’t exist here. In the world that had come into being due to my absence.

  Within me now lay the mystery of Hanuš, the violent rejection of Chopra, the bodies of the three humans whose deaths I was responsible for. Klara’s eyes wild with betrayal, her effort to murder me with a single arm, her teeth sinking into the meat of my thumb like fangs.

  I had nothing to give anyone else. Not here.

  I turned and ran back up the pathway. I jumped onto the Ducati and started it, throwing my helmet to the ground.

  She had loved me so well. I could never have asked for a better life as an Earthman.

  Now I was a specter. Fragments of pasts, futures, gates through time and space. I was the series of particles released by Chopra’s core. My only destiny: motion. I rode at the highest speed. Away from Plzeň. Lenka had freed herself of the things haunting me. She was to remain free.

  Thus we never see the true State of our Condition, till it is illustrated to us by its Contraries; nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it.

  EXCERPT FROM FINAL PHONE CALL with Lenka P., approximately one day after Jakub P.’s projected death:

  Lenka P: He didn’t suffer? You’re telling me the truth?

  Kuřák: Yes. It’s reported that he took the cyanide pill. His passing was without pain.

  Lenka P: And you gave my message to him?

  Kuřák: I was assured he was told.

  Lenka P: I let him die thinking he’d lost me. I should’ve pretended it was all right until he returned.

  Kuřák: Again, a certain role imposed upon you.

  Lenka P: That’s what loving someone is.

  Kuřák: I’m not sure I agree.

  Lenka P: Jakub did what he needed to. He was fulfilling his destiny.

  Kuřák: His, not yours.

  Lenka P: Why are you so adamant about making me feel better?

  Kuřák: Nature of the job.

  Lenka P: I’m terrified by my reaction. I can’t feel anything. It’s like it didn’t happen. It’s like I’m going to come home and the Jakub I first met, so cleanly shaven, will be there waiting. What if time really works that way—we can manipulate it like that, we just haven’t wanted it hard enough.

  Kuřák: This is how you grieve. Don’t be afraid of it.

  Lenka P: I married a sweet boy who walked around the city like he was lost. And then, he goes to Space. What a life. Amazing. Wonderful. Terrible. All at the same time.

  Kuřák: Do you feel free?

  Lenka P: I feel like I’ve lost too much.

  Kuřák: Freedom can feel that way.

  Lenka P: You promise me?

  Kuřák: What?

  Lenka P: You swear he was told? That I loved him. That our life together was not a forgery—that everything we did in those years came from the best parts of ourselves? That we’d have that, at least.

  Kuřák: He was told. I swear it.

  Lenka P: I keep having this image of Jakub, like a thick star highlighted in the darkness, with a line of movement behind it. I see it every night, as if he’s leaving all over again. How can things get so far away from us? What use are the physics of Earth, these layers of atmosphere? They keep things from reaching us. But I wish they could’ve also trapped him here.

  A Child of the Revolution

  WITHOUT THE PURPOSE of finding Lenka, my time became an endless orbit on Earth’s concrete. Days ceased to have beginnings or endings as I rode my Ducati in circles on the highways surrounding Prague, teasing out ever higher speeds, much like the Goromped that had lived in my Carlsbad room. The singular purpose of motion. No schemes to it. No plans.

  At a gas station, I purchased a clearance hooded sweatshirt sporting the colors of the national football team. I pulled it over my head, still nervous whenever a person stared at me for too long, afraid that in the correct light I might be recognized, despite the forever-altered facial structure, despite the sunken eyes, despite being severely underweight. I did not look strangers in the eyes, I turned my head so no one could ever see me fully in daylight. Now the hood made me feel slightly more invincible.

  When I grew too tired to hold myself up on the motorcycle, I stopped at a trucker motel and ate vending machine chips on a rough bedspread. The TV set in my room would not turn on. I had almost convinced myself that it didn’t matter, that I didn’t need it, but I knew it’d be hours before I could sleep, and complete silence worsened my headaches. I asked the attendant downstairs for help, and with an abundance of loud sighs, he gave me a television set from another room. Victorious, I opened a beer and switched to a news station.

  Milk prices rising. (I snickered, recalling my conversation with Tůma.) France, another country to leave the crumbling European Union. Then, suddenly, the faces of men I knew. Their hands cuffed.

  Prime Minister Tůma himself, clothed in sweatpants, his hair unkempt, was being led out of his Barrandov villa by policemen. These images were from two days ago—history happening as I had been riding in circles.

  Then, different footage from a different place appeared. This was downtown Prague, an office building modeled after a New York skyscraper. From within its depths the police led a man whose face I would have recognized in a lineup of millions. It was Him.

  I felt my foot dampen and glanced down at the beer bottle I had dropped without knowing it.

  According to the newscaster, the two men had been arrested, along with two other politicians and another businessman, for siphoning cash from phony government contracts. The media called them ringleaders of the scheme who, in the span of three years, had managed to steal seven hundred million crowns of taxpayer cash. Prime Minister Tůma, the self-professed savior of his nation, and the other man, supposedly a close childhood friend of Tůma’s and his phantom adviser throughout the years. The man, Shoe Man, whose Christian name was introduced to me for the first time through this cracked, dirty television screen—Radislav Zajíc.

  I set the television on my knees as if I could reason with it to give
me more detail. After their arrest two days earlier, the men had immediately posted bail and retreated to an undisclosed location. The image of their arrest flashed by again, and although there were signs of gray in the sleeked hair I had last seen as a child, it was him, inescapably. With all the cruelty of the modern news cycle, the story melted away and into a report on a new red panda born in Prague Zoo.

  I ran downstairs and tossed the room key and cash for the spilled beer stain at the clerk. I rode back into the center of Prague, to the streets near my former university, a village of pubs and Internet cafés filled with intellectuals blowing off steam. How I used to fit in here—but now, as I entered one of their Wi-Fi lairs, the young minds of the future looked upon me with distrust, perhaps even with wrinkled noses. Did I smell? No time. Something was afoot, pieces of my life suddenly did not form a whole, or perhaps they fit together too tightly. I paid for two hours of computer time and sat down with a cup of coffee that cooled as I ignored it and stretched my fingers over the keys. A few taps, the humming of a processor, an instant name, social networking profiles, emails. Radislav Zajíc, his life laid out before me. A light breeze traveled through the café, scented with car exhaust and blooming trees.

  Finally, I drank down half of the cold coffee. I wasn’t sure what to do with the name now. Perhaps I wanted to spend the rest of my life as an avenger, haunting Him, displacing Him. What else was there to do? Perhaps he was the only person who knew me anymore, who knew my life before the headlines, before my ascent and before death. Maybe I wanted to do nothing at all.

  Business tycoon Radislav Zajíc and Prime Minister Jaromír Tůma: childhood friends, victims of communist persecution, post-revolution opportunists. Their focus had gone in different directions but they had remained close, Zajíc being Tůma’s number-one adviser and largest fund-raiser. Within one search, again I had a purpose on this Earth, a purpose contained inside a small white rectangle and its blinking cursor. The two men had built a lifelong coalition, with Zajíc working in his preferred shadow, raising capital through his investments in energy, real estate, and the importation of Western brands, while Tůma became the political apostle of the boundless market, his haircuts, silk ties, and influence paid for by Zajíc and his brethren. Now the shadows had been lifted by the ministry of interior, and the Internet was once again proving a court of the people, the Arena of Rome in which the crowds declared Thumbs down. The entire affair had already been summarized on Wikipedia, the apparatus of justice rushing ahead to imprison the men as people of the republic protested these high-level crooks in the streets of Old Town. I glanced outside. No protests at the moment, not currently revolutionary.