Catapult

by Paral, VladimIr

  A flowering linden gazed into the window and around the wall the continuous strip of Impressionists, on a collarbone a hairy leg in a red sock, half-past six in the morning, Jacek extracted his black satchel from beneath the golden-haired admirer of the Great Poet Oldrich and kissed her half-open mouth, Mojmira evidently hadn’t made it home yet, into the courtyard onto the trashcan and skip over the fence, along the asphalt, and across the park opposite his house, the old folks were still asleep, in his bookcase Dad kept hidden behind The Count of Monte Cristo Ten Years Later a bag of chocolate-covered raisins, Jacek gulped it down and collapsed on his boyhood bed.

  A huge tree with reddish leaves gazed into the window, by the window a globe and on the wall the wooden saber, 11:16, and at 11:30 in white shorts on the Luzanky courts, an hour of practice hitting the ball against the wall, now the backhand and then into the shower, at one sharp Jacek, wearing his father’s gray English suit, entered the University cafeteria, a well-built girl in rimless glasses made room for him beside her, Jacek silently, carefully, and quickly ate his beef broth with Russian egg, his kipper with three pickled onions, and a pint of warm milk, nothing but protein.

  The large park was almost empty at the time, and it was quiet beneath the tops of the century-old trees, one after another they revealed themselves, and simply by walking past you could see a continuous live cyclorama Trees in the Grass, and Jacek took a turn through it across the lawn, ta-ta-tatatata, why not snap your fingers, ta-ta-tatatata and, dancing through the treetrunks as far as the playground, he looked at his watch and out of the park at a trot.

  At Under the Lookout three old fellows were nodding over their stale beer, evidently they didn’t want to go home from work so early, and the bargirl was lazily sucking her wine spritzer from a wineglass, Jacek held his cue and concentrated on the green cloth of a battered and cigarette-burned billiard table, a cushion shot for this one—no, go back to the starting position and again—no, try again, nothing, again and again nothing, at last, chalk up the cue and keep it up, twenty-three caroms is our longest series and now our exhibition game, with fine pecks keep three balls going close to the cushion, a carom is easy enough but the trick is to get the balls back into position again, that’s not it, once more— “Mister,” someone said from behind Jacek’s back, “let’s play to a hundred and fifty for coffee and rum, I’ll spot you thirty-five—” “Excuse me, please,” Jacek said without even turning around, “in five minutes I’ll finish and give up both tables—,” in five minutes he put the cue away, at home he lay on his bed and slept for ninety minutes.

  Penetrating into his room from a great distance were radio music, the rumble of motors, and the whiz of pneumatic drills on pavement, then from many sets the same TV program acoustically reinforced itself, the day was long in coming to an end and, as if uncertain, the city put off its decision to go to sleep, what was the day good for, an invigorating breeze of silence lifted the room from its chance surroundings, over the roofs of the houses and up above the night itself into the space beyond earth’s orbit, where it’s always light, the desk lamp’s halo awakens the old wood to a warm breathing and in an open red binder a white sheet of paper flares up, cigarettes and matches on the left, an ashtray on the right, an eraser and a pencil sharpener in front, Jacek sharpened a pencil and studied how to reckon with the elements all things are made from, physical chemistry is the backbone of the two principal sciences and a serpentine going upward, marked by constantly higher mathematics, heat content H, free energy G, entropy S is the measure of the chaos of order, with organization it approaches 0, freed from interference it rises to the number 1 of absolute chaos, where are we on this continuum (0-1) and where are we going through sheer inertia—

  Jacek walked quickly down the long corridor of the gray palace to the general director’s office and marched in through his door, “Did you get my proposal dated the fifth of July?”

  “Sit down, please…,” the chief said with an affable smile.

  “No. What did you think of it?”

  “Let’s have some coffee, at least…”

  “No. What do you plan to do with me?”

  “You’re a sly one, aren’t you!”

  “Sly?…”

  “You must be the first person in the world to propose the abolition of his own job—hahaha!”

  “But I really don’t want it anymore.”

  “So why not hand in your resignation? Hahaha!”

  “I’ve been there for ten years and understand, it isn’t easy… People I like…”

  “Don’t make me cry—hahahaha! Sit down and let’s have that coffee!”

  “No. I’m asking you to abolish my job—”

  “Hahaha—”

  “—or I’ll start making trouble for you!”

  “Hahaha, you needn’t do that anymore, you’ve already snared another two hundred crowns that way and praise from the general director for initiative, and they’ve put you on the Management Reorganization Committee, we’ll be sitting there playing tricks together—”

  “Ow,” said Jacek, and he sank down in his chair, instead of the abyss another lift, “so shoot that coffee over to me, Anton boy, let me get a grip on myself.”

  Jacek swayed along the long corridors of the gray palace, another couple of stunts like that and I’ll be boss of the whole building, on the stairs a girl in a white apron ahead of him, on a tray she carried six bottles of domestic Gold King whiskey wrapped in cellophane and ribbons, “Come, kitten, let’s drink it together in the boiler room.” “What’s left of it—” she giggled, and Jacek set out after her, she stopped in front of a pair of tall white doors and looked helpless, “Where are you taking that?” “To some West Germans—will you open the door for me?”

  Jacek grabbed the handle, but the door was locked, he knocked with his fist, nothing, and then a bit of kicking, both doors flew open and a petty official with a black tie and a stripe on his sleeve, evidently entrusted with watching the door, looked fearfully out, “Engineer Werther hasn’t gone yet?” Jacek shouted close to his face and walked in, the speech was evidently over and, at the head of the crowd, Franta Docekal was walking toward a table covered with a white cloth, his hand met Jacek’s over the Hungarian salami, people always go for the most expensive things first, for the last ones all that was left were some disgusting looking meatballs, Jacek clinked glasses with an athletic-looking blonde in white silk with diamonds on her neck, ears, breasts, and belt, why drink with the waitress in the boiler room, the party lined up to have its picture taken, “The lady in the center—” the photographer commanded, the blonde wanted a profile and, with a smile, Jacek looked over her shoulder at Franta Docekal, who had just eaten the last meatball, wiped his fingers on the napkin, and placed in his now healthy windpipe a log-like, gold-banded cigar.

  “But there’s no place to go here,” said Tanicka Rambouskova on the bench of the Svitavy station, propping her feet against Jacek’s traveling satchel and looking at the tracks, “there’s nothing here, it’s only for people who don’t want anything anymore, only to stuff themselves and sleep—should I hand in my resignation?”

  “What would Mom and Dad say about that?”

  “We haven’t lived together for a long time… It was a great romantic love affair, they addressed one another very formally, every day he kissed her hand and brought her flowers and when he left her a note in the kitchen to say, for instance, that he’d gone out to feed the rabbits, he addressed it to My Beloved…”

  “But then why—”

  “One day it all collapsed and we had to throw him out.”

  “But that’s awful, really terrible, what must have happened to—”

  “He was a thief and a degenerate.”

  “Really? Explain it to me in detail, I’m immensely—”

  “He stole candy from the store, pickles, rum, powdered coconut, and gave it to the boys in the dorm. When should I hand in that resignation?”

  “It’ll happen this year, I know
it—” she whispered up to Jacek at the window of the express, she was magnificently resolved to pick up and leave without a suitcase on that very train, it was already starting and Tanicka began to run beside it, “—I feel it already in my feet, something like a tingling—” and Jacek stroked her on her dark head, Tanicka couldn’t reach him, she stroked the train, it was already leaving and Tanicka was left behind, she grew suddenly smaller and with her hand above her head like a soldier’s salute she disappeared around the bend, Jacek was still returning her salute and now the express carried him off to the west, ta-ta-ta-dum, on green cushions through green meadows and forests, ta-ta-ta-dum, as on the green waves of the Mediterranean from stairs to stairs, the Belvedere, the Jeannette, the Palma, the Stefanie, the Kvarner, and on each tiny beach another naiad waits, Speranza has been realized and the Miramar is no longer just a dream, ta-ta-ta-dum is a hymn of freedom, only two more cliffs and in the sun beyond them the open strip gleaming toward Africa—

  “You forgot the white plush again, didn’t you…”

  They’ll call him a thief and a degenerate, still it’s better than inhaling hydrochloric acid, at lunchtime Jacek entered the tow-cloth storeroom, not a soul anywhere, and he pulled down from the shelf a parcel of tow-cloth, more than a sixth of a mile of it, material for white and purple tuxedos for the barons of jazz, and he dropped by the chemical storeroom, “You’ve got a visitor at the gate—” he told the old woman, who was hooking a curtain, “Could that be my old man I wonder—” she said, and she ran off. Jacek took a bottle of mercury under each arm and dripped a bit from one of them—that was how Alois Klecanda had got caught that time and how he’d become Candy, the silver drops ran their crazy course over the concrete, both of us await our triumphant return tour—

  In his office Jacek propped the roll of tow-cloth against the shelf with the files, the bottles of mercury on the edge of the lower shelf with the curtain only half concealing them, and he sat down at his antiquated Urania:

  Dear Mrs. Jostova:

  You don’t know me, but I know you very well. We have windows across the way from you and it’s terrible to watch what your husband’s been up to, the degenerate, when he’s in the bedroom by himself and you, poor woman, are working in the kitchen till late at night. I can’t even tell it in a letter. Dad said if I didn’t write to you, he would inform the Security Police. There are children here, after all!

  Your outraged neighbor across the way

  On the envelope: Mrs. Jostova and seal it and when Mr. Stefacek comes back from lunch to his burgled tow-cloth storeroom, he’ll lend us some photos of nudes.

  The letter into our mailbox in the lobby, the pictures into the pocket of my bathrobe, the belt from Lenka’s sewing machine, fasten it with wire to the handle of the can opener, and a whip under the pillow.

  “It’s from that Dvorakova hag,” Lenka laughed as she read the letter, “she’s mad because Thursday at the cafeteria I grabbed the last milk out from under her nose,” and the letter became a paper steamboat for Lenicka and from the bedroom revels and shouting, Grandma was lying on her back, Lenicka sitting astride her and waving the whip, her “fishing wod,” the “fish” is Grandma, the poor old woman tried conscientiously to bite the line and so lost her last incisor, “Now you, Daddy—” “With a stomach like that I wouldn’t dare have my picture taken,” Lenka grinned and tossed aside Mr. Stefacek’s photos, “That’s Mommy—” Lenicka rejoiced over them and shuffled them like cards, “Here’s Mommy and here’s another one—” “Let’s go eat,” Lenka decided, through the closed kitchen ventilator one could see in spite of the curtain the eighty windows of the apartment house across the way, the perpendicular strips of shining kitchen windows, the whole development is eating dinner now and above the apartment house only a crack of sky turning pale, stabbed by antennas, crying from the cage of those antennas—

  Outside the open window a magnificently undivided blue hemisphere, the surging crests of the Krusne Mountains and a view as far as Germany, in the bar of the Mosquito Tower music from a tape recorder and weaving among the occupied tables the golden-orange Tina de Modigliani, tourists from four countries watch her go by, she’s something to stare at, but you stare in vain, she’s mine, in the aisles Tina raised her tray over her head, leaned over, thrust forth her chest and laughed, and no one looked at the beautiful view from the window (the chalet’s take was up forty percent from the preceding year).

  A bell sounded for the last funicular down, Tina pursed her lips, Jacek nodded imperceptibly, finished his unbilled Cinzano bitter, and chewing on a slice of lemon walked slowly out onto the terrace, the sun bled on the mountain chain and in the valley the reddened meadows flamed, beyond them a strip of fields and then a gray imitation mountain where a huge mine was murdering the soil, and beyond the spreading gray corpse of the strewn waste rose the gray-brown crepe of smog beneath which the city of Usti was suffocating, and Jacek turned around, the last tourists were hurrying to catch the funicular, the terrace was empty, buses and cars were going down the serpentine to the valley, and on the gravel parking lot only the couple’s Renault, the family’s Wartburg, and that Opel Admiral.

  Jacek slowly lit a Kent and gaped at the increasingly washed-out sky, Tina’s window in the tower was open, when he lit another one the family rushed out the door and into the Wartburg and started down the mountain, the couple with the Renault was evidently going to stay the night, Jacek leaned on the railing and smoked slowly, Tina’s window was still open and night was coming up from the valley, Jacek approached the glass doors to the bar, the couple were kissing in the corner and the Opel Admiral in the cafeteria was whispering with Tina.

  The blue woods began to turn gray, in the valley the first lights and the first stars in the sky, Jacek glanced at Tina’s window and relished a pleasant feeling of tension, his fingers played with another Kent but he didn’t light it, it was as if the silence grew stronger and with a bang the window in the tower suddenly slammed shut.

  Jacek broke the cigarette and tossed it away on the run, through the side entrance and up the winding stairs, one more landing and he rushed through the peeling door, “Was machst du hier, du Saukerl—” he hissed, Tina grabbed her head and took refuge behind the wardrobe, the Opel Admiral began to protest, Jacek pulled out a camera, Tina screamed, and the fellow dressed quickly, shook his fist at them, and rushed out, the start of his engine, the lovers’ Renault was left alone in the parking lot, and the lights of the Opel Admiral traced a zigzag down the serpentine.

  “Superb,” said Tina, she detached a ten-mark note for Jacek and went downstairs to give the couple their check, out of the green box on the wicker chair Jacek took a cigarette (Yenidze No. 6 Mild Virginia) and a silver lighter (Hasenlaufer und Sohn), Jacek’s new lighter worked marvelously, from deep inside Jacek exhaled the blue smoke out into the night air and waited for Tina.

  His whole paycheck transferred to the secret hoard, Jacek walked nervously through the empty apartment and waited for Lenka, nothing at all was happening, LEAVE and TAKE, the various objects unanimously mocked him in the darkness of the drawn blinds, dust was gathering on the cosmonaut’s luggage so that he could write on it with his finger BECAUSE OF DAMAGE TO FIRING APPARATUS FLIGHT WILL NOT TAKE PLACE—

  “Did you bring the money?” the launching pad asks.

  “No—” the apparatus begins its countdown.

  “How’s that?”

  “You know, I had a few drinks in Brno with some friends… I had to send them some money.”

  “Nine hundred crowns’ worth?”

  “Twelve. I’ll send three hundred more next payday.”

  “As you like,” Lenka shrugged her shoulders. “I’ll take it out of the savings account and you’ll have to put off buying that dark suit another year. Are you coming along to the garden?”

  “No!” and again Jacek roamed through the empty apartment, the rocket was to be held on the launching pad a while yet, the dark suit would have been of use for the first t
ime in his life, again the Lenkas’ fortress had repelled the attack, but the besieged can be starved out, like a tornado Jacek burst into the pantry and went through it shelf by shelf, try bacon with cheese and put condensed milk on the sardines, chocolate’ll do the trick, but it didn’t, and white as a sheet Jacek opened the door for the Lenkas, “You must have been hungry—” Lenka made a wry face, “well, Lenicka, Daddy ate up our supper—” “He just stuffed himself a bit, like a man—” Grandma called, “wouldn’t you like some garlic soup now?” Lenicka rejoiced that she didn’t have to have any din-din, while Lenka and Grandma deliberated whether to cook macaroni, lentils, potato pancakes, canned goulash, toast, braised beef, bilberry dumplings, or dried peas with bacon bits and onion.

  “Tomorrow I’m going to Brno,” Jacek whispered, “please put two white shirts in the satchel, and no lunch…”

  Jacek strode along quickly behind Dr. Janzurova’s copper headdress, over the magnificently maintained parquet floor from hall to hall of the Government Information Bureau, Anna’s gift to him, enormous ceramic vases under the windows and through the panes a forest of tropical foliage, the walls were covered up to the ceilings with books bound in black and the ladders to reach them were made of stained wood and ringed in brass, at polished, statesmanlike tables people leafed through illustrated magazines and drank coffee from glass cups, the telephone rang in the hall and no one bothered with it, “Nobody breaks his back here, does he—” said Jacek. “It’s quieter at the beginning of the month,” Dr. Janzurova smiled charmingly, “now we’ll take the elevator down to the ninth floor, where we keep the encyclopedias, dictionaries, and manuals, on the eighth there’s only a card-punch machine, the photo lab, and the bindery—” “That’s enough for now,” said Jacek, “I’m sure I’ll like it here…” “Comrade Deputy Bromova gave us the best report imaginable concerning you and we’re all looking forward to having you here…” “You too?” “Me… especially, I left that for last, but if you should need anything from the start I’d be most happy to help you…” “I could see at first glance that you were friendly…” “Thank you, I felt the same way and I’m really looking forward…,” “My God, they have forced air, real leather everywhere, chrome knobs, even an aquarium,” “And here’s your desk—” a desk like a steamboat, on the first, glassed-in deck a regular library, on the upper deck two telephones, a metal vase for a smokestack, and as a mast towering above it all a magnificent Palma areca.