Catapult

by Paral, VladimIr

  The chauffeur opened the door of the stretch limousine for Jacek. “What do you think,” said Anna, sitting down on the back seat. “Fan-tas-tic—” sighed Jacek, and he sank back into the cushions.

  Jacek leaped out of his wicker chair and with a look of disbelief took in those nine-by-twelve feet of creaky boards, the roughed-up desk from the days of the Germans, the plant stand with its half-century-old Urania, and the five pine shelves behind a curtain of local manufacture… where was the mercury and the material that would put him in tuxes—

  “I stashed it all away when that inspection party was here from Brno,” said Vitenka Balvin, “you should be a bit more…” “Till next payday—” said Petrik Hurt, despite his eleven hundred in alimony, he pushed a fifty-crown note into Jacek’s hand. “Get lost—”

  In the empty office Jacek breathed in deeply and dialed the main office of Cottex, “Security Police, give me the director… Comrade Director? District Office of Public Security, Sergey Sniper speaking. Do you have a certain Jaromir Jost working there?… That must be him. Have you noticed anything suspicious about him lately?— no, I can’t tell you on the phone, we only want you to inform us immediately about everything involving this matter, goodbye.”

  Within five minutes the director came to see Jacek with a newspaper in his hand. “Have you seen the latest issue of Textile World? Just look here, at the top…”

  In the photo, from left to right, Cmrde. General Director Josef Novacek, the central secretary of UNICAG Prof. Erika Ursula Marie von Wittig-Hohenmauern, Eng. Jaromir Jost, and the general director of CHIAG and president of WIPAG Dr. of Phil. and Dr. of Sci. Siegfried Postolka, all engaged in hearty conversation.

  In the photo were the two general directors and the blonde in the center, all looking in the direction of a smiling Jacek, “I shouldn’t tell you this,” the director whispered, “but just a little while ago the security police were asking about you, so be careful… we’ll all stand up for you, but watch out… You know how in Brno they’re always trying to discredit us, we need you badly…,” and the old man put his hand on Jacek’s shoulder.

  On the porcelain tray five checks and three asterisks had arrived, Jacek gulped down his third rye and turned resolutely to the fifth beer, by the door neighbor Mestek pining in his green windbreaker with a hood, still drinking his first beer, and at each of Jacek’s successive drinks he shook his head, inside Jacek a cold, damp sense of revulsion suddenly rose up but he drank on heroically, it was necessary to drink up all twenty-five of those crowns stolen from Lenka’s rent envelope, in the twilight of the Vseborice tavern the gloomy drinkers looked up from their glasses each time the door opened, a boy came in with a jug for two quarts of beer and two packs of Partisans, as he left he took a deep drink from the jug, and again we look into the fragments of that little round mirror between the floating wisps of stale foam, just stir it and it’ll bubble up, the bubbles will float up to the surface, and that cruel mirror will disappear beneath the thin foam for a while, the door creaks and we all look up again quickly, the next guy comes in for beer and enjoys the thick foam, but just wait a while, and silence in the bar waiting for the next arrival even though the preceding ones have been so disappointing, mix it all up by stirring and when the door creaks we’ll all look up—

  The development blocks were all playing musical chairs and on the walk in front of his apartment house Jacek began to sing, how many more stairs there are now than before, and he scratched at the door like a dog, inside too there was scratching, and when the door opened Lenicka was down on all fours on the carpet, Jacek got down on all fours, too, and barked, “Woof-woof—” Lenicka answered in ecstasy, and the two puppies ran into the kitchen, “I’m drunk as a monkey—” Jacek announced triumphantly, “You took twenty-five crowns from my rent money,” Lenka accused him, “But how can you leave your husband without a single crown?!—” Grandma spoke sternly to her as she poured Jacek a glass of herb liquor to stop his burping, and when the barking puppies had crawled under the bed, Grandma stuck fifty crowns of her money into Jacek’s pocket, “So you don’t have to borrow anymore—” Lenka said, and she reached under the bed and stuck a hundred into Jacek’s pocket, “Get dwunk again soon, Daddy—” Lenicka whispered in her crib behind the netting, “and pway puppy again…”

  The official limousine of the director of VUGMT stopped at the Ministry of Heavy Industry, Jacek followed Anna through the vestibule and the passageway to the courtyard, between stacks of old papers out of the building and onto a bus, out of the excavated earth towered ten-story apartment blocks with curtains, twelve-story ones with whitewash crosses on the windows, and fourteen-story ones still only crudely assembled from sections, Anna’s high heels disappeared into the masons’ rubble of the boxed-in staircase, and here on the sixth floor we’re home, I’d like to have this room with the view of Prague, “This room with the view of Prague is yours,” said Anna, “and the first time it rains we’ll sit and look at it together…” “And at night Prague will shine in here on the ceiling…” “You know, all my life I’ve wanted this city so much…” “Take this room, I’d be glad for you to…” “No, I’ll come here to see you…”

  Outside the frameless window, the hills of the capital spread out at their feet, the head of the Government Information Bureau with his second wife in their Prague apartment— “Come here, let me show you where we’ll put the dinette,” said Anna, happily leading Jacek by the hand, “… and wouldn’t you like a wall-hanging with a large abstract design? I like to cook in general, but not every day… although here it will be something entirely different, I don’t know how much I’d give just to peel potatoes and listen to you singing in the bathtub—I still can’t believe it…” “Nonsense, I only have a couple of trifles to take care of—”

  “—first you must break off with that Cottex, the pay there is shameful. At first I thought we could rent a lodge in the mountains, but I’ve found something better,” Tina raved, sitting on the bedspread with her knees tucked under her chin and her dark hair, let down, quivering on her calves, “a gas station, you know… Instead of starting at zero you start at five, at night ten, but you get ten crowns for just one gallon, maybe five hundred a day and in three years half a million…”

  “Great,” Jacek whispered, “but first I have to break away and you’ve got to help me… Throw something over yourself and let’s go down to where there’s a telephone…”

  Tina led Jacek by the hand down through the sleeping chalet, from behind a thin door the snoring of a couple from Krakow resounded along the corridor as if they were choking to death, and that West German sedan from Hanover was snoozing pronouncedly after spending eighteen crowns on his wife and then a hundred marks on Tina, with the key to the bathroom Tina had no trouble opening the office door.

  “So what will it be?”

  “I’ll dial the number and as soon as you hear a woman’s voice, say right off, `Jacinek…,’ and then maybe how wonderful it was yesterday and how next time I should stay all night…”

  “OK, but I’d never call you Jacinek…”

  “That’s just the point, that’s what she calls me at the moment of climax,” and trembling Jacek dialed his apartment, “You’re a real snake,” Tina sighed, “well, at night it’ll come in handy at the station—Jacinek…,” she whispered passionately, theatrically, into the receiver, “Oh, Jacinek, it was so wonderful yesterday and next time I know you’ll stay all night… Jacinek, do you hear me… Jacinek…,” and she banged the receiver onto the hook, “She’s bawling or something… I can handle a lot, but I don’t have the stomach for this…”

  “Lenka’s crying…”

  “But so strangely, as if she were choking or…”

  Jacek rushed through the nighttime meadows down to the black forest, on the black sky the brutal stars burned white, the millionfold Milky Way like the road to hell, he rushed over the silvery grass and the heavy traveling satchel struck his legs, thorns like fetters of barbed wire and p
ersistent twigs struck his arms and face, into the evil, tense, lurking forest of the enemy, where from dark damp beds moss-covered boulders roll out their worm-ridden bellies, concealed in daytime, and the dry crackle of dead twigs like shots that missed, how hard on the soles that road from the forest can be and through grain up to his chest along the field roads, through the sleeping village where all the dogs go crazy on their chains, and along the concrete of the coal-conveyor under those phantasma- goric mountains of uprooted earth and thus murdered soil from which now only strange sparse pale weeds can grow, and around the moonlike craters and dunes from which nothing will ever grow again, through the labyrinth of undermined cave-ins, how ghastly far off home is, the lights of the development have long since gone out and like steamboats the apartment houses are lying in their winter anchorage, the silent pavement between the buildings is still warm with the tramp of children’s shoes and once again the stairs to our apartment have multiplied, “Lenka, I have to tell—”

  “Please don’t say anything…,” she whispered, sobbing softly, and passionately he kissed her hands, “… and get up, please get up… my Jacinek.”

  On the banks of the Elbe, on Sunday before noon, three thousand people, there would be more room in back by the wire fence under the poplars, Lenka spreads the checkered blanket out on the grass and Lenicka is already bare, “Cawwy me piggyback, Daddy—,” Jacek crawled on all fours and on his back Lenicka exulted, her little legs clasped his ribs and on his shoulders that tender little body, they tumbled onto the ground, “Mommy, look, I’m wessling wif Daddy—” and Daddy and his daughter were like lovers in the grass.

  Daddy stood in line for a boat, he seated the two Lenkas and pulled on the oars, the heavy rowboat flew with the current, a tanned brunette flashed by in a red canoe and behind her four girls were laughing in a white motorboat, Jacek pulled on the oars and the rowboat made its way heavily through the wake, Lenicka had fallen asleep lying in the prow and Lenka was carefully surveying the banks, the oars creaked in their metal locks and from his soaked brows salty sweat trickled into his mouth, “Look, pears already—” Lenka whispered excitedly, and Jacek turned the boat toward some stairs on the bank.

  Up the hill to the railway embankment, through the dark, narrow underpass to a forgotten paradise of silence and warm, free grass, Lenka and Lenicka jumped to reach the hard, green pears and Jacek set out to find some hazelnuts for his little girl, he entered the hazel jungle and the springy, sap-filled twigs pressed stiffly against his body, beyond the bushes a small glade with a hut six-by-six feet and in front of it a dark, heavy woman was sunbathing, she sat up slowly and looked Jacek straight in the eye, “I only wanted to pick a few nuts…,” he whispered uncertainly, and she got up and gestured—her finger in the hole—toward the door to the hut, Jacek followed her through the high grass and entered with his head bent, the ground inside was spread with sacks except in one corner where there were pots, saucepans, cigarettes, linen with black lace, cold cream, and lipstick in a straw hat along with baby oil and a yellow sandal turned upside down, the woman fished out a bar of cheap chocolate with peanuts and broke Jacek off a piece like a slice of bread, “I meant hazelnuts, from the tree…,” he stammered, he tripped over a red parasol and sank on his knees into the sacks in front of her, “Daddy—” they heard from outside, “Daddy, wherre arre you—” “I’m coming—” he shouted, and he tore his hand free from the woman’s, crossed the lawn, and leaped into the hazel thicket without any idea where he was going, until whipped and scourged he found the Lenkas among the pear trees, they took him each by a hand and together they ran down to the boat, Jacek leaped to the oars and pulled at them with all his might, the heavy rowboat turned its snout against the current and Jacek labored conscientiously, the grating of wood against metal and streams of sweat uniting in a hot salty veil over his face like a burst of tears, the old crate crawled against the current and playfully the current pushed its prow now to the right, now to the left, around the bend came a steamboat, aroused waves rocked the rowboat like wind on the sea and the now wet daddy hauled his family back to their dinner.

  Lenka carried two large bags for her hungry family under the poplars, “And now let’s give our faces a good feed—” she laughed, and Lenicka helped her unpack a thermos, bottles, packages, sacks, and a perforated tin box.

  In the afternoon heat, yachts sailed out from the jetty on the other side of the wire fence, their keels, polished like jewels, whizzed over the surface and, nearly naked, their tanned crews of both sexes hung over the sides and from the rigging, handsome and free as the gulls above their masts, the whole river to the south was full of white sails—

  “Hello,” Lenka was smiling in some direction, from the boat-rental stand Trost was coming with his family, his wife was unpacking from two bags a perforated tin box, sacks, packages, bottles, and a thermos, Trost played with little Trost on the same checkered blanket that we have, “Daddy cawwy me piggyback—” Lenicka cried, she climbed up on Jacek’s back and kicked with her heels painfully into his groin, Jacek the Horse snorted on his knees in the warm grass near the wire fence and across the way Trost the Horse was snorting with his screeching jockey on his back urging him on.

  One mountain slope on the left, another on the right, above the point of intersection the crest of a third, dark green needles of two shades: muted and bright, light green foliage of a thousand shades: muted, bright, reflecting, translucent, absorbent, half-, quarter-to-½, packed into a complete progression of gradients from 0-360° times the third dimension, all in motion on a conjectured poly- structure of spatial branching drawings and a proportionally motionless static eruption of inelastic explosions in a Niagara of light—

  “This is our forest,” Lida Adalska smiled, “come—”

  Inside, twilight and bright spots strikingly focused now on the roots and now on the crowns, here in a plain of dead needles sad telephone-pole spruces aren’t making it, here the floor of the woods is like a bombarded city square, behind the trunks of the larch trees rise the ruins of forgotten castles and below you the tips of young spruces growing up out of the ravine, gray stumps, lustful as Turks, roll their huge deformed members into the tender bilberries and from the spruces’ armor trickle stalactites made of rock candy, the spider’s diamond lace closes off the dragon’s cave, an art gallery of wood sculpture and the path to it spread with pinecones off a grandfather’s clock, a forest of fairy tales and happenings—

  “… I used to come and meet him here,” Lida whispered, “and the children ran here with me. He was so fond of us…”

  “… and then there was the time he brought us a fawn on his back,” Lida laughed, “Arnostek polished its hooves with boot polish and Janicka made him little silver antlers from the paint we’d used on our stove…”

  “… and once when the snow was up to your waist, I put a kerosene lamp in the window and the children kept waking up all night long to see whether their Daddy had gotten home…”

  “… ‘grrr-grrr,’ he growled from his hiding place in the hayloft, and Janicka looked out the window and said, `Go way, bear, Daddy’s coming and he might be fwightened of you—’”

  “… he lies under that young fir tree, like you he was thirty-three when he died…”

  Up to their calves in flowering grass, they walked down the mountain together to the ranger’s lodge, and a boy and a girl ran out of the white house, they were afraid of the stranger with the black satchel, Lida stooped down in front of them and there were three faces peeping out from under her brown hair, Jacek tossed his satchel into the grass and stooped down with them, he made a rabbit face, he made Janicka laugh, we’ve got a way with kids, he barked at her and she barked timidly back, he didn’t have to ask her twice to climb on his back, and Arnostek looked on jealously as he observed how his little sister was playing with her new uncle, “Now me, Uncle—” “But you’re a boy, we should box a bit together—,” but Arnostek didn’t know what that was, “My husband didn’t do that with
him…,” Lida laughed while Jacek explained to her son what’s a jab and what’s a hook, inside five minutes Arnostek was a passionate boxer and now it was Janicka’s turn to be jealous, Jacek picked them both up, “One more time—” Janicka called. “You’re as strong as Daddy, Uncle—” Arnostek whispered.

  Daddy’s workroom was to be Jacek’s temporary bedroom, outside the window a mass of spruces pierced the sky like Asiatic towers, and from a wide frame of dark wood with a black ribbon over the glass the forest ranger, the late Mr. Adalsky, looked down, a thirty-three-year-old with an oval face, eyes and hair apparently brown, no special markings, no feature betraying any special quality, an easily exchangeable anybody in the best years of his life and dead at thirty-three, you came to an end right at the time I’m getting started—

  The strong scent of felled pines in the afternoon heat, the wild swirl of the brook, and in the warm grass a half-naked man was eating, like that time eighteen years ago, my God, nothing ever dies, the summer heat beat on the asphalt roof of Forest Building No. 06, the buzz of a circular saw outside, Jacek played with the jointed weight of the drafting board, tried out the T square, and attempted a couple of drafting techniques, “We’d be very happy and don’t worry, I’ll break you in myself. I like you—” said a magnificent man with white hair above a deeply furrowed, copper-colored face and the chest of a Laocoon in an unbuttoned Canadian shirt. “Well?” Lida asked out on the highway, “I’ve been accepted—” Jacek sighed happily.