Catapult

by Paral, VladimIr

  To kill time, Jacek stopped in at the barber shop, let’s wait till Kamilka is free, he picked up the only newspaper on the table, the day before yesterday’s Prace, and ran through the already familiar news, under different headlines and less of it, we’re used to Rude pravo—but look, they even publish personals here, nearly two full columns, and it’s more tasteful than a spectacle in the main square, it’s a real horror how many people there are dying to switch—

  “Next, please—”

  “The usual?” Kamilka smiled at Jacek.

  “No clippers,” he nodded.

  “You have such thick hair…”

  “And yours is as lovely as Egyptian cotton… It must be a pleasure to comb it…”

  She giggled and stroked him, perhaps she pressed a bit harder than she need have, but we’ve known one another for two years now, only so far we never dared try anything, and he kissed her on the elbow.

  “That isn’t done here,” she was pleasantly angry.

  “Because I don’t get to meet you anywhere else.”

  “Because you don’t go out.”

  “Because no one ever invites me anywhere…”

  “Shall I trim your hairs?”

  “I’ll do the same to you… and it’ll scratch.”

  She tore the towel away from under his chin and pressed it over his mouth.

  “Kamila!—” said the manager into the mirror.

  “Check for No. 5!” Kamilka called out, and she began digging in a drawer. “Come here tonight at ten…,” she whispered.

  “But the last train leaves at half-past nine,” Jacek whispered, “and then in the morning…”

  Kamilka’s neck reddened.

  “…at five-thirty…,” Jacek lied, grinning meanwhile at the manager in the mirror, “That’s why I never go anywhere…”

  “Come here tonight at ten,” she whispered.

  How awfully easy it would be, Jacek inhaled the scent of his cologne and stopped in front of the travel agency window, the smiles of two pretty girls were inviting us to visit the Czech Paradise and a white ship was sailing to Tunisia across the vast green expanse of the Mediterranean, Nadezda was Speranza, should he trust the rest of his life to a chance meeting on a train, the Miramar was already a dream and the open road of green waves shone toward Africa, a superannuated cratemaker’s apprentice spending the night in a stretcher for corpses—

  As if catapulted, Jacek rushed back to the barber shop and picked up the old newspaper from the table—it would contain the address for notices—and he carried it off in his pocket, the manager called out something, a crowd of people flowed out of a streetcar and dragged Jacek along in the direction of the main post office, quickly past the shop windows of the notice agency, the newspaper sends replies by mail, Petrik Hurt only succeeded the third time around, people said his neighbor Mr. Mestek had gotten as many as thirty offers and had cured his inferiority complex that way, we can have them mailed to the office—

  At a speckled counter in the huge hall of the main post office Jacek stood in a sweat over the writing paper and envelope he had purchased, a stamp was already printed on the envelope and Jacek glanced under his elbow into the purloined newspaper, 36-YEAR-OLD divor. with child seeks wife if poss. with own apart., 42-YEAR-OLD divor. eng. seeks young intellect., what nonsense, 58-YEAR-OLD man with artif. leg seeks— and Jacek was already writing:

  33-year-old eng., divor., seeks partner

  But what sort of partner, they all write something or other, but then this is only an attempt to relieve your mind, after all before making a permanent appointment you have to announce a competition, that way no one can be blamed for anything, they all include a key word, it has to be there, some sort of key word—

  Live!

  it’s short, and at least it won’t cost too much.

  Jacek threw the letter into the slot, the newspaper into a wastebasket, and then he went out and back to the square, now sufficiently amused.

  From the enormous poster a sun-bronzed Candy in a purple tux rolled his eyes at him FOLLOWING OUR SUCCESSFUL GERMAN TOUR, while five fabulously pretty heads gazed up at him ecstatically, you old swindler you, at Cottex years ago Candy had been called Alois Klecanda, a miserable lab-assistant who spent his nights playing in a jazz band and came to the lab only to sleep, if he came at all, at Cottex they put up with a great deal, but for the theft of some tow-cloth and mercury Alois Klecanda got a year in prison and ever since he’s been out he’s done nothing but play in that band, he makes more in a month than the director of Cottex and his two deputies put together, and in his green sports car he carts around the most beautiful girls in the area.

  Jacek stood beneath the clock and observed his own reflection in the black glass, 33-year-old divorced engineer of pleasant appearance—the simplest possibility was divorce.

  Lenka and Lenicka were already coming down Revolution Avenue, we can see each other from a distance, but Lenka doesn’t run to meet me the way Verka does with Petrik, perhaps she’s never run, this is only my first, every fifth Czech is divorced and there are twenty thousand divorces a year, why on earth do we remember the statistics anyway, Lenka’s caught sight of us, but she’s more interested in that display of knitted goods, but then we might have gone to see it together, the little darling sees her Daddy but runs away, she’s more inclined to go for Russian ice cream, Daddy would be more likely to buy her some than Mommy would, of course, but you like Mommy better, “We had a wonderful time—” Lenka says when I come back from Brno, well so did we—

  Lenka looks old for her twenty-eight years, soon she’ll have as many wrinkles as her mother, she no longer likes to talk in bed, she’d rather sleep, how frightened she was yesterday—watching TV she suddenly jumped up and ran to the bathroom, it happens more and more often, she locks herself in for three-quarters of an hour and then that thief-like crawling into the next bed, as if begging for mercy—please don’t—

  “Did you bring the money?”

  Let’s concede that’s all that matters to you and the court will determine precisely how much, it will take your side and I’ll be glad to send it to you, for three hundred crowns a month a new life, twenty-four hours of freedom for ten crowns, pass by this indifferent wife and child who, in a year, won’t even recognize us, and go back along Revolution Avenue in the opposite direction, toward the railroad station and the docks, under the burgeoning chestnut trees, free to take off—

  “Daddy swing me like an angel—” Lenicka called, Lenka took her by one arm and Jacek by the other, they raised her up and, swinging her feet, the little girl soared into the sky.

  II — eight

  The general director leaned back from the oval ebony table and laughed quietly. Rien ne va plus—Jacek, his lips in position to pronounce the word “cheese,” observed the boss of a hundred and ten thousand employees and an annual turnover of nine billion, here direct attack alone promised any chance of success and already now the little ball was rolling around the roulette wheel, the big boss began to turn red in the face and to wheeze asthmatically, his fingers dark brown with nicotine and too much coffee, it’s all too much for you, and a nice big desk would just fit into your anteroom. Let’s say “cheese” and look into each other’s eyes.

  “This isn’t badly thought out, I must admit,” the general director said at last. “And of course you’d want to be in charge of it all. But there isn’t such a position on the chart.”

  “Let’s put it down as a special deputy, Comrade Director. A good gardener needs a ferocious dog.”

  “The next few months will give us some indication…”

  “There’s no hurry…”

  “But for the time being I haven’t promised anything.”

  “For the time being I haven’t asked for anything.”

  The general director grinned knowingly and shook Jacek’s hand just perceptibly harder than was customary, it was boringly simple, one more glance at those three tables, the oval one for conferences, the eno
rmous executive desk, and the long table with its twenty-four leather-upholstered seats of knighthood, of course there were twenty-six factory directors, but you could squeeze in a pair of stools, or three if need be, and out through the padded door into the anteroom, under the palm tree Trachycarpus excelsa there’s a free corner with good lighting.

  “You’re to order a car for me—” Jacek said to the secretary, and “To the offices of the Regional Committee—” to the chauffeur. Through the springtime streets of the Brno of his sweet days as a student, since they’ve held the trade fair here things have been going up and up, “Have you got any children?” he asked the chauffeur and then: “That’s fine. Stop here and I’ll get out.”

  Through the long corridors of the gray palace the word had spread that Jacek Jost from Usti had lasted fifty minutes with the general director. Only at dinner upstairs at the Avion was it possible to find all the higher-ups together, and they all came to greet Jacek at his table.

  The grotesquely fat Franta Docekal had grown even fatter and was now serving as deputy, his classmate Libor was in charge of exports and was now living, after his third divorce, with a circus acrobat named Manuela, Venca had brought a Mercedes back from Germany and Kikin was stationed in Cairo, they were all on top of things and none of them one bit smarter than we are, maybe less so, but now they’re all bigwigs and they look very serious when they fly back from France or Belgium and take off for Argentina or Zanzibar.

  “Is Kindl still working in Moscow at COMECON?”

  “He’s at the embassy now.”

  “And Valasek… the shrimp who was so frightened all the time, the one who peed in his bed in the army…”

  “Oh, he’s in Addis Ababa, he sent us his picture taken with the emperor.”

  On the floor upstairs his classmate, the deputy Verosta, was at the billiard table looking for a weak opponent, Jacek made an effort to scale his game progressively down from fair to poor, “You’ve got real class,” he said, inclining his cue like a knight his lance before his liege-lord, “Oh yes, just so I don’t forget it, the general director asked me today what kind of impression you made on people as a student. I covered you with silver and gold…”

  “What can that old fart be trying to smell out,” said Deputy Verosta, obviously pleased, “it must be on account of the ministry. Many thanks, Jacek, and drop in to see me this evening, here’s the address.”

  “I’d like to, but I’m in a real bind. Our director’s raking me over the coals for not coming up with that ethyl acetate.”

  “How much do you need?”

  “A carload?…”

  “You’ve got it, and give me a call the next time you’re in Brno.”

  Another floor up, the great Benedikt Smrcek, the future first member of the Academy from the field of textiles, was playing chess alone.

  “You really clouted him, Bena…,” Jacek whispered piously, and Benedikt the Great smiled just a bit, “What are you going to ask me for?”

  “What does one ask from the head of a research institute?”

  “If you’re really interested, sign up for a graduate fellowship starting October 1, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to have a factory man for a change.”

  “Bena, do you remember how we once played chess all night in the guardhouse at the Jaromer barracks and we promised one another—”

  “I remember that you were black that night, you opened eleven times with a double fianchetto, and you lost twenty-two times,” Bena said as he set up the pieces, “that’s what I call persistence. The secretary’s office will send you the application forms.”

  His father (66) was just getting ready to go out and play cards, his mother (61) to see some friends, but they could stay and talk to Jacek for a while, what was new in Usti, not a thing, Mom, just as there hasn’t been anything for ten years now, Dad, but here there were lots of new things, Mom was working in an apiary co-op and Dad was teaching languages to earn money to go to the seashore, then they’d cut out and make the rounds of the relatives—no, not to Usti, what would we do there—to Prague and Carlsbad, in autumn Dad will take foreigners on hunting trips and live with them in Castle Mikulov, Mom and her friends will take temporary jobs sorting apples, and at Christmas time we’ll both work for a month at the chocolate factory, “And when are you planning to move back to Brno?”

  “I’m working on it…”

  “Why didn’t you stay here—” his mother sighed again, “all your schoolmates…”

  “A young man has to go out into the world,” said Dad. “When I was your age, let’s see, that would be in thirty-two…”

  “…you were in Morocco.”

  “That’s right, it was great there. Sure, a young man has to…”

  “I’ve spent ten years now in Usti.”

  “So many?” Mom was frightened. “That’s terrible!”

  “I’m working on it. The general director will have something for me, and Bena Smrcek’s promised me something at his institute.”

  “Of course, you could always come and live with us, but what would you do with Lenka and Lenicka?”

  “I’m working on it.”

  Jacek’s room seemed noticeably larger than the one in the Usti pre-fab, the window on the magnificent old park, the wooden saber on the wall, and in the corner the globe Dad had given him, oh Lord, nothing ever seems to die—

  We used to go to school every day along this street, between the rows of trees below the stadium, as a freshman in high school we hadn’t the least doubt that the first Czechoslovak field marshal would be named Jost (“J.J. the Great”) and he had already planned the reorganization of the army, up the hill along the wall of the seminary garden, as a sophomore the brilliant director of a revolutionary film: the camera looking through the hero’s eyes so that his face wouldn’t be visible, but it would show his hands when he drinks, as they pick up the glass it would come up in full detail across the entire width of the screen, when he walks the whole picture would sway rhythmically with his step, the whole audience would kiss with him and look down the rangefinder of his gun, along the asphalt of quietly elegant Masova Street, as a junior the famous spy, Flying Jacek—the terror of governments, with a wristwatch that shoots bullets, through the kiosk at the base of the steps of the University Library, where not even a high-school senior ventured, until, thrilled, he was a freshman at the University, the winner of the first Czech Nobel Prize (that was before Heyrovsky) had come to look for a girl to serve as his assistant.

  Jacek ascended those same steps, in the reading room beneath fluorescent lamps a fountain murmured, and at the tables a hundred girls of twenty-five nationalities, near the Chemistry Department a blonde girl stood with a thick copy of Gajdos’s Chromatography in her hand.

  “A truly awful book,” said Jacek, and he grinned.

  “I wouldn’t say so,” the girl answered icily.

  “You’re not going to praise me!”

  “Why should I praise… you? You’re…”

  “Dr. Gajdos,” Jacek smiled, “and thanks for the tribute.”

  “Doctor— I’m Libuse Cveklova. And I’m really—”

  “When you register for my course, I’ll take you out to dinner.”

  Majestically Jacek walked out and then skipped down the stairs, on the door a notice to the effect that Dr. Benedikt Smrcek, CSc, National Awardwinner, would lecture in the Great Hall—Bena had had persistence and so things had worked out for him. In the streets of the big city, which were just lighting up for the evening, Jacek, the unattached research worker, was looking for his fellows.

  And at the White Crocodile, the Bellevue, the Slavie, and the Hotel International they beckoned and waved from tables in the back, with new wives, girlfriends, and mistresses, this is Marcela, Kamila, Jana, Yvette, the girls smiled and shook hands, fresh-looking, sun-tanned, well-cared-for, with pointy breasts, flat stomachs—tennis instead of breast-feeding, sailing instead of pushing baby carriages—dazzling with make-up, perfect, they returned Jacek’
s prolonged handshakes. Pavel Vrbka had been working freelance for years, writing scenarios about Mendel, proteins, and the Battle of Austerlitz, and at the Black Bear our old Professor Muzikar (58) drinking wine with a marvelous girl from the Brno-at-Night Cabaret.

  In the enormous park outside his window strings of lights, laughter, and music from the dance floor, from below the black treetops up to the quivering halo of the city of three hundred thousand, and Jacek fell asleep in his childhood bed, out of the night starlets, sports stars, and upper-class co-eds, today Marcela, Kamila, Jana, Yvette, and we’ll stay with them again as we did before.

  Jacek woke up before the sun entered the room, he exercised and took an ice-cold shower, at the lunch counter he had a roll and two glasses of warm milk, two crowns forty in all and that can be cut, a graduate fellow in science gets fifteen hundred, and of that three hundred gets sent to Usti, that leaves forty crowns a day, heh heh, four times as much as you had when you were a student, on the way back through Luzanky Park he met a girl with a violin, a music student, you’ll never know your whole life long what a timeclock is.

  In his room he twirled the globe Dad had given him, Dad had gone to Morocco at thirty-three and without a tourgroup, by himself, and with his finger Jacek traveled over the blue sea, from Rijeka on the Yugoslav coast down between Charybdis and Scylla, past Malta and Majorca through Gibraltar out to the open sea and to Africa, to the white city of Casablanca… nothing has died in us yet!

  Excitedly Jacek waved his wooden saber and piously he hung it up again, from the bookshelf he took down his old Physical Chemistry by Brdicka, it would be best to start with that, greedily he began to read, and the forgotten pages came to life again.

  And Express No. 7 conscientiously tore along Line No. 1, the main artery from east to west, from Bucharest, Budapest, Bratislava, and Brno to Ceska Trebova, Pardubice, and Prague, in Prague you change for Paris with connections for Le Havre, Calais, Marseille, or to Usti and Decin, our line, on which we’ve been riding now for ten years, we were leaving home then to go out into the world, but the emptiness of the passing years has maliciously tipped the scales, the world is always at the other end of the line—