“I didn’t sleep at all last night,” yawned the tousled Nada, rubbing her eyes with her fists, “all night long you kept shouting something in your sleep about Africa, and then you kicked me right here. I’ll sleep in the army cot when it comes… What’s wrong? No exercises today?”
“I don’t feel well, Nadezda.”
“Why not?”
“Not well at all. I can’t go on this way…”
“Lenka and Lenicka…”
“…and everything. I don’t know how to pull myself out of it.”
“Get a divorce.”
“If that were all there was to it.”
“Then go back to them, I told you already on the train that I wouldn’t chase you. I really won’t.”
“So much the worse.”
“You still don’t know what you want?”
“The trouble is, I do know—precisely.”
“And it’s—”
“Everything.”
“Then you’re not so bad off. The opposite would be worse. So let’s go, you can lead the exercises.”
Imperturbably, the sun glided down the wall and began to cross the floor, Jacek between the walls, the claws of the dock cranes unloaded from rail cars to barges and from barges to rail cars, to be everlastingly on a chain-rope-line-hook would drive one mad, use force to cut through and do it firmly, the barges sink almost to the cargo line, only death is the last possibility, the rising of the barges above the surface, but one does not wish to die so where should he aim, they raise anchor when completely full or completely empty, completely-completely-completely emptied, if both of them were to die at the same time they could sail out, Lenicka and Lenka—and without chains, ropes, or nylon fibers, without straps, lines, or hooks, free to enter the world’s splendor—in horror Jacek pressed his hand to his throat, by the window overlooking the harbor, in the windowglass the throttling fingers of my own, this my own right hand are buried almost to the point of vanishing.
II — nine
It’s Lenicka’s beddie-bye time already, but we’ve had so little fun, so let’s play just a tiny bit more, Jacek took apart the sofa and with its cushions he built her a play house on the carpet, with the coverlet as the roof and a little balcony out of pillows, Lenicka was ecstatic as she crawled through her hut, now she must go beddie-bye, and so quickly quickly once through the obstacle course, Jacek placed two cushions down flat on the floor and a third one perpendicular to them between, the little girl climbed over it, fell and again climbed up, shouted and cheered and had to be put to bed by force, “Daddy gwab me—”
“I’ll grab you—where it hurts!”
“Gwab me, Daddy! Gwab—”
And down again with the netting, nothing’s so sweet to kiss as our little one, but you really must go beddie-bye, “Daddy won’t go way—” Jacek bent over the brass pole, stroked his darling’s hair and cheeks, tucked the coverlet under her chin, out of the damp darkness my hand cries out on her little white throat—flee, go away without a word, or get divorced before something horrible happens… you’ll never make up your mind to say that first word.
It was raining for the third day in a row, a cold, prolonged rain, and Jacek dozed on the streetcar in the heavy odor of damp clothing, Lenka was carrying a muddy Lenicka along the broad concrete road, Lenicka had fallen down and was crying a great deal, she’s awfully heavy and Mommy can scarcely carry her, Jacek took the exhausted wet little girl into his arms and the family staggered home up the steps, Grandma had spent the whole day ironing and on all the chairs shirts were exhaling the warm odor of heated cotton, “I don’t feel like doing much today either…,” Lenka yawned, “I feel the flu coming on,” yawned Jacek, Lenicka had her mouth wide open too, and apologetically Grandma placed her wrinkled fist to her lips, “So let’s have a sleep day,” Jacek decided, “everyone lie down!” “But not in bed,” Lenka added, “I’d never get up again…”
So Daddy and Mommy on the sofa, Grandma in the armchair, but Lenicka screamed that she didn’t want to be by herself and so they had to bring in her crib, Lenka fell asleep first and her heavy body warmed his side, Grandma nodded off in the chair, and Lenicka snored lightly in her crib, with sticky eyes Jacek looked over that happily sleeping little flock and then soothing, stupefying sleepiness came to his eyelids.
At two in the morning Jacek suddenly awoke and could not get up, in her sleep Lenka had embraced him and he was a long time freeing himself from her, there was a terrible sensation of hunger in his stomach, quietly he crept into the kitchen but he found nothing edible there, only kohlrabi and cookies, they’d even forgotten to buy bread, a ravenous Jacek greedily guzzled cold chlorinated water and he quivered with disgust, now we won’t get back to sleep again, a pain seemed to be developing in his throat, we used to have some Swiss chocolate in the bookcase, but someone’s eaten it, the triple snoring in the living room and the sleepy but angry Jacek shuffled through the nighttime apartment coughing experimentally, it could be the flu, in the refrigerator he found some frozen yogurt and vengefully swallowed it in the largest pieces he could get down, then water “on the rocks,” an inflammation of the lungs, fine to neglect it, with a pack of cigarettes and a chair he went out on the balcony and sat down, a blanket thrown lightly over his shoulders and so till morning…
Although his temperature was only 99° the whole apartment was turned upside down, a struggling Jacek was quickly stripped, on the kitchen range Grandma’s teas and decoctions were boiling, “Daddy is ticky and you must be quiet,” Lenka whispered to Lenicka, to be “ticky” was one of our favorite childhood games, the pleasure of being manipulated—fingered, measured, picked up, carried from place to place, put to bed, covered up all the way to the eyes, and left to follow all the bustle and excitement, already Mommy was bringing a pint of cranberry jam, there weren’t any seeds and you didn’t have to cut it or even chew it very much, just the first bittersweet taste, and already Lenka was bringing a good two pounds of cranberry jam, and spoon in hand she sat on the edge of the bed.
“You faker,” Lenka threatened him with her finger when for two days now Jacek’s temperature had failed to go above 97.9°, “you’re just pretending, right?”
“But I kept saying there was nothing wrong with me…”
“It’s OK, as long as you get to spend some time at home…”
“You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble…”
“That’s all right, I’m glad to do what I can…”
My wife has the sincerest blue eyes in the world, and Jacek quickly drew her to him.
“Lenunka…”
“Wait a moment, I’ll just close the door—”
Like milk, my love, there is no peace except existence within an order, “Jacinek…,” my wife whispers, and she presses her delirious lips against the ridge of my stroking hand: “Jacinek… I’d like one more little one…” On her white throat my black hand roared, and a bitter, salty hunger.
“This is the first time I’ve been here for two years,” Pepik Tosnar said absentmindedly as he sat down at Jacek’s table, he was the creator of the six-tiered pipe organ, daddy of six girls, and their neighbor from the apartment house, “I’ll start with two beers, bartender!”
“You’ve only been to a bar once in the last two years?”
“No-o, I’d be telling a fib, last Easter I went to The Five Arches.”
“Then you’re my guest, let’s make it worthwhile—” impressed, Jacek looked at this balding man who spent most of his time in the playground below their window and who earned extra money fixing blinds delivered in a state beyond repair, “—two more, let there be six in all, like your daughters, and I’ll get the check!” A good man, but beyond daughters and blinds he didn’t know too much.
Not taking no for an answer he dragged Jacek to his own place for “slivovitz twice distilled and three times passed through charcoal,” well, let’s have a look at that apartment underneath which we’ve been living for two years, where there’s so much tra
mpling every morning—right in the doorway an acrid mixture of odors hits the nose like a blow from frozen reins, the same apartment as ours but what have they done with it, six little beds like coffins in stacks, on the floor a foot-deep pop-art layer of a thou- sand unnameable things dragged in by the children, the wild romping of six filthy little devils, “I’ve made them all with clefts down below, nothing but rejects so far,” roared the circus manager to outshout the wild beasts climbing all over him the way the chimpanzees at the zoo climb their tree, and into mustard glasses he poured out more lethal doses of wood alcohol incompletely distilled, which this innocent fool had evidently spiced with brown coal rather than filtering it through absorbent charcoal, “But the seventh time’s in the bag, it’ll be a boy,” roared his cannonball of a wife while the slobbering monkeys clambered over Jacek’s limbs as over tropical vines.
If Lenka were to have triplets, there’d be seven of us, including Grandma—the frightful alcohol flamed up inside Jacek and Lenicka rapped her head against the bathtub, terrible screams, if she rapped it harder she wouldn’t scream anymore and from your slippery hands a child could easily slip and fall, “What are you up to in the bathroom—,” Lenka with gas, “We’re almost done…,” take them both up to Maria’s Rock and push them out between the wires, the little one tore away from me and my wife leaped after her, “Hey you two, march to dinner—,” from her ten containers of sleeping pills somehow procure the right substance and then throw the ten empty containers on her night table, wear gloves, perhaps she’d find out about my girlfriend N. Houskova and solve it all that way: Lenicka to Grandma’s with two hundred a month, everything immensely simple all of a sudden, exchange the apartment for a room or a one-bedroom co-op, also first-category, and take as much as ten thousand under the table, sell the furniture, rugs, curtains, and then with his savings he could manage a Hillman Minx, “—we’re working on it!”
Jacek stuffed himself to the point of numbness, pass the roast, with his fingers he tore crisp meat off the bones and standing over the refrigerator he drank his fill straight from the bottle—an imaginary line to the window right across the way, Trost with a piece of meat in one hand and a bottle of beer in the other, that unbearable alter ego, and Jacek ran off to the bedroom, Grandma and Lenka had already tuned the TV to their favorite Dietl soap opera, you bet Trost and his Mrs. were also watching Dietl.
On Sunday morning Jacek and Lenka took Lenicka into their bed, the little darling crawled along Daddy’s leg and up to get a great great great big kiss and then a second one, still sweeter, and with his knee under the coverlet he once again played polar bear, Lenicka was frightened and ecstatic, “Daddy don’t go way—”
On a bus up into the hills Jacek fled under the windows of the Tosnars and the Trosts as from a prison cell, at the summit, on the vibrating metal floor, two pairs of lovers—the two Hurts and Vitenka Balvin with his guitar and Milena Cerna, off on the most secret of the secret paths to the very top, at the base of Mt. Kneziste the white spot of Mija’s two-seater and the smaller white spot of Mija in her beach chair, he turned and fled through the waves of gleaming emerald grass with a million gold dandelions like medals on green velvet waiting to be awarded, now only to kill on a Maytime meadow with so many women and horses, Lenkas for the world or the world for Lenkas, now only killing was left—
After a Sunday cutlet with potato salad and a slice of crumbling cheesecake we, the Josts, and Grandma go to the zoo, and Lenicka in ecstasy in front of the monkey cage. “Come, darling, Daddy will hold you up—”
At the office his fists were now constantly pressed to his temples and his face looked tormented, “Jacek’s got neurosis,” he was depressed for the fifth day in a row, alles ist schon egal, “It’s Jacek again, Mija, write me a prescription for three containers of those pills—I said three!” “And today will be another sleeping day! What’s that—OK then, I’ll do it myself.”
On Sunday morning he and Lenka took Lenicka into their bed and before dinner out to the high Maytime meadows, the gleaming grass gleaming straight up to the gleaming sky calls like the shore to the sea, we will swim out, something will happen, SOMETHING WILL COME, the humble expect to be exalted and the masters are afraid of loss, all count on change and so it must come, SOMETHING WILL HAPPEN, faith is needed and an amused interest in how we’ll be violated this time, SOMEONE WILL COME AND SHOW US WHERE TO GO, all that’s left for us is to prepare for that coming, IT WILL BE RESOLVED AND IN GRATITUDE WE WILL SUBMIT, already the bolts of the catapult are being tightened and the flight path adjusted, LET’S TAKE OFF SOON—we pray and we prepare.
Part III — Preparations — ten
A flat green ceramic ashtray, two plain wineglasses made of leaded glass, a pot, a saucepan, and a guitar pick, only three hundred from the secret hoard and we’re all set—carefully, on his stomach, the way a woman might carry her child, Jacek carried his black traveling satchel onto the bus to Telnice, “Let’s have that, Mr. Jost, I can hold it on my lap—” “Good day, Mrs. Klusakova, that’s very kind, but I’ll manage—” “Just hand it over!”
The bus left the square at 3:55 sharp, Mrs. Klusakova is our new neighbor, her husband works for the police and she wants to sell us strawberries, he must not make very much, it’s useful to seek out support from the local authorities and strawberries too in the bargain, you can eat them just as they are, with sugar or with cream, you have to try them with condensed milk, “You’re so very kind, really—,” the bus drove through the canyon of familiar facades infinitely faster than the streetcar on its way to the last stop at Vseborice, outside the window the model T 03 cinder-block buildings flashed by and then, as if demolished, they disappeared to the rear, right after them the garden colony unrolled, made up it seemed more of wire mesh than of commonplace young radishes and carrots sown from packets for a crown apiece, and we’re on our way—
Between rows of old chestnuts covered with pontifical candle-blossoms, through unending fields of spring grain, a sharp turn around the chemical plant, and the enormous shallow crater of the strip mine with ramparts of transported bare earth, towards the monument with the green bronze lion and along a granite road straight into the mountains, through waves of meadows, tiny houses buried in the tops of trees, and now that linden tree with the sign, and we’re home, “So don’t forget, Mr. Jost, they’ll be ripe in a month and I’ll let you have them for eight crowns a box.”
Into the transparent air, intensity fifty thousand candlepower, and a blindingly lit dirt path leading upwards, down the slope a flock of butter-fat goslings rocked to and fro, and by the trunk of a pink apple tree a snow-blue kid goat, as if posing for an Agfacolor, but the kid had three dimensions and could be petted in the bargain, “Good afternoon, Mr. Svitacek, I’m just…” “But we play with him too, he likes it best when you scratch him on the horns…,” Mr. Svitacek delivered the mail in Ritin and his wife was chairwoman of the local town committee, he’d brought her the box of detergent that had stood around too long, a token tribute to their power, so that they would leave him in peace, “Here’s some of that American laundry detergent for your wife, you pour it into a little hot water and then shake it up till the tub is full of foam, then pour all the water in at once…” “But how can we thank you, Mr. Jost, really we can’t take it for nothing…” “But I’ve had a good time playing with your kid.” “Then we’re very grateful to you… and you must stop by sometime…”
Our main street here is a curved pasture with a little stream and marsh-marigolds, ours is the last yellow house, Mrs. Heymerova would come back from her daughter’s in the fall, Jacek unlocked the door with a key that seemed made for a church and then impatiently up the wooden stairs to his “retreat.”
The room measured a little over 200 sq. ft., on the brass bed an orange blanket made of merino wool, a dark oaken wardrobe big as a closet, and four heavy chairs around an oval table, on its cover a scene of stags rutting and more deer hanging on the wall above the bed, made from the same antique wove
n material, an unbelievable sofa in the shape of a sitting bathtub, and outside the window a strip of shiny green grass all the way out to the horizon—all for fifty crowns a month.
Cautiously Jacek unpacked his satchel, an ashtray between the horns of the rutting stag, two glasses onto the shelf in the cupboard next to the bottle of Beaujolais, the pot and saucepan onto the shelf by the cooking stove, and the guitar pick behind the strings of the instrument, all the wrapping paper into the fireplace, in a sudden inspiration he brought an armful of fir brush in from the courtyard, lit a match, and a fire roared in the fireplace, the crackle of dried wood and the sweet, pure scent of a real fire, what was time—
“You’ve practically moved into that `retreat’ of yours…,” Lenka mumbled, but she had no time for conversation, for outside there was laundry to take down, and Lenicka decisively preferred to go with her, it seemed that three times a week with Daddy was enough, “And do you really have to study so much for your work?” Grandma asked again, “Technology is moving forward with seven-league boots—” Jacek said firmly, “and what I learned ten years ago—” “I know, they were saying the same thing on TV the other day…” and she followed the two Lenkas out to get the wash.
It had gone easier than he had at first supposed, everyone was out so let’s start getting ready, Jacek strolled through the apartment as if he were taking inventory, or more like a future heir through the apartment of someone who has not yet passed away, leave all the pictures here, we’ll swipe a thermometer from Cottex, take the desk lamp to the retreat with him, leave the glazed plastic red hippopotamus at home, don’t take any junk, as with cattle out on the range so on all his things Jacek saw one of two brands: TAKE or LEAVE—the polyester shirts, the good shirts, the black leather tie, the suede sports jacket, the black sweater, the dagger, all glowed in the dusk of the vacated apartment like a neon sign TAKE, the undershirts, the worn-out shorts, the knitted vests, ten Christmas ties from Grandma, all the glass and porcelain, the slippers worn till they shone, and the gardening jacket labeled LEAVE, a bottle of Yugoslav Badel brandy TAKE, the ficus LEAVE, in the kitchen there are perhaps hundreds of things which we learn about only in a closing inventory, for what in God’s name are these funnels, mashers, glass spoons, sieves, jugs, saucers, and slicers, the technological furnishings of industry that have gradually pushed us out onto a corner of the balcony, allotting us just a slot for depositing paychecks, a slot without a bottom.
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