Catapult

by Paral, VladimIr

  “Table and chairs out of the way—” Vitenka ordered and clapped his hands, “take apart the sofa, the mattress goes on the floor and from now on everyone onto the floor—” Lenka was for it and with the third bottle the party moved down to the floor, Jacek put his head on Mija’s breasts, but across the way Lenka and Mestek had just gotten onto the cementing of linoleum, “Vitenka—” Jacek addressed the master of the revels.

  “The light really gets in your eyes,” Vitenka said loudly and clapped his hands, “haven’t you got a candle—,” Jacek brought one at once and conscientiously loosened all the bulbs in their sockets, he sat down next to Mija and kissed her hair, Mija put her arm around his shoulders, she was cooperating marvelously, and Jacek strained his ears, “… on a hill the mornings are always the finest,” Mestek prattled on, “Yes, the air is clearer then,” Lenka babbled. “Vitenka—” Jacek almost burst into tears.

  “Everyone drink up his drink and the men change ladies clockwise—” Vitenka ordered and clapped his hands, “hop-ahoppity-hop,” movement and laughter, Vitenka sat down by Lenka and took things expertly in hand, in a while they were lying beside one another and out of the darkness Lenka’s quiet laugh could be heard, Mija lay on her back and drew Jacek toward her, she was really outdoing herself and Vitenka too was exerting himself, at first they hadn’t even wanted to come and now they were almost conquerors, the vessel was taking wind into her sails, Jacek emptied the third bottle from the burning slopes of Georgia and opened a fourth.

  “I’ll go make coffee,” said Lenka, and she got up, “I’ll go with Lenka and we’ll come back soon, in no more than half an hour—” Vitenka said loudly, and he jumped up, “If you don’t find Jacek and me when you come back, we’ll be behind this door and please don’t disturb us!” Mija called to him, and already she was pulling Jacek in that direction, one couple in the kitchen and the other in the bedroom, poor Mestek was the odd man out.

  “Let go—” Mija hissed from the other side of the door, and firmly she pushed Jacek away, “But Mija…” “Just sit down, I’ve had enough of this low comedy routine, we haven’t got an audience anymore—,” they sat on the bed in the darkness, a whole yard apart, minute after minute, Mija bent over until her forehead touched her knees and she wept quietly, “Mija, what’s happened—,” a quiet sob, “Mijenka, please—” Mija’s broken into tears, but don’t make noise, please, there’s no acoustic insulation here like you have in your white room at home.

  Both couples came back to the living room in silence, Mestek, sadly sipping his drink, was shaking his head in disapproval, “Vitenka…,” Jacek whispered in despair, “do you know anything else to do?”

  “Why are you so anxious to turn your place into a whorehouse?”

  “I like the way you keep yours.”

  “If I had a wife like Lenka…”

  “Come on then— And pour yourself some more—” and Jacek got up, clapped his hands, and ran around the room pouring diligently, he drank with each of them in turn and with all of them together, he was as pathetically assidu- ous as the owner of a tavern on the eve of bankruptcy, Lenka quickly cheered up again, she stroked the limp Vitenka as if he were Lenicka refusing to eat, and Vitenka revived and snapped at her stroking hand, Mija kicked her legs in the air and her shoes flew off into the darkness, Jacek rubbed his hands, he lit their cigarettes, freshened their drinks, asked what they wanted, drank with all of them, and smacked his guests on the back, he bent down to them and laughed officiously, keep the action up the way a hoop is kept going with a stick, up the stairs to the platform near the little pink house for strawberries and cream, “But certainly, Mr. Mestek, make yourself at home here—” and Mestek unfastened his shoelaces, kneel down and officiously remove those stinking shoes, for the Government Information Bureau and an apartment with another wife with a window overlooking the metropolis, “I’ve had one too many—” Vitenka sighed, intoxicated, lead him off to the bathroom, take especially good care of him, refresh his breath with our own toothbrush, and wash him with our own washcloth—the Balvins’ great improvement was somehow collapsing—if only his respect could be that of a rival, I want to be a feast for you the unsated under a yellow Parisian sky, meanwhile Mestek’s gone down, lead him off to the bathroom, a cold shower, give his back and belly a nice stimulating rub with the fine sponge reserved for Lenicka’s face, I have a girlfriend by Modigliani, but all of a sudden they’re tired out and want to go home, what’s so wonderful there, don’t run out on me yet, green waves from stairs to stairs and on each terrace another naiad waits, they’re all in the doorway all of a sudden, they tie up my boat and lock my plane in a hangar, they’re running down the stairs, they’ve stolen my sea and my air and in the sudden silence after the closing of the door Lenka is coming toward me with a smile.

  “That was a wonderful evening, I want to thank you very much for thinking of it,” she whispered, and with her hair disheveled she looked inordinately pretty, “I had a nice talk with Mr. Mestek and Vitenka really courted me in the kitchen—,” she giggled and her eyes gleamed, that’s her hand stroking me again and petting me, her sensuality is aroused but, as if to spite me, in the wrong direction, but how newly beautiful Lenka looks today, newly aroused, “Jacinek, my darling—” she whispers the magic greeting and her arms are firmly around his body, “Lenunka—,” like milk and like that cognac, how sweetly it had failed this time, it’d never been like this before, “It’s never been like this before,” Lenka whispered, and she went to open the curtains, the aviation-blue sky was already bright and Jacek ran to catch his R 12 with cars direct to Brno, “… and don’t forget the white plush…”

  Like an airplane hangar, over each metal entrance laminated glass like an outstretched wing, excitedly Jacek climbed the stairs of his classmate Bena Smrcek’s institute in Brno, a hodgepodge of concrete, glass, and steel, up and down around him young men in white labcoats, the uniform here, physical chemistry is on the fifth floor, “I’ve just come to look since I’m one of the applicants for the fellowship…” “Our new fellow will have this desk—,” in streams of light a white-and-pale-blue laboratory desk with silver taps for water, gas, vacuum, and coolant, silver burners and, under a cover, a row of electrical outlets, inside, on black shelves, the gleam of laboratory glass, that almost forgotten glass with which one might still make a hole opening onto the world, at the next desk a hirsute young man looking fixedly into a golden brew as if it were a spinning roulette wheel, and by the large window in the corner a cheerful scholarly debate, presenting for your approval our new fellow, I’m not dead yet, Jacek walked out of the lab and back down as slowly as possible so that he could imprint as much as possible of that blue-and-white room where intellect still lives and where there’s still adventure, of that room prepared and waiting in this airport of a building.

  Outside the window in the mud-ridged Cottex courtyard the ancient mason was asleep under his crooked scaffold with his mouth wide open, and on the speckled desk from the days of the Germans work that had piled up for two days: a directive from the general director’s office, sent again in error.

  Jacek sat down at his Urania and, mentally counting up how much was available from the secret hoard, replied mechanically that we will proceed without delay, paragraph, As we have informed you many times before, we cannot proceed in the foreseeable future, five spaces and in the center the greeting, Peace on Earth, just then the telephone rang, this was it—some Carmen Pospisilova was calling angrily to ask where her daughter was, she hadn’t been home for two days and her name was Carmen too.

  Jacek banged down the phone, pulled out of his drawer the twenty-four spy shots of Cottex enlarged to map size, for two days he’d fiddled with them in the factory darkroom, he put them in a fiery red folder with the letter to the general director’s office, added a ten-mark note from Tina, and tossed it all on the director’s desk, a time bomb ready to go off—he went back to his office, lit a stolen Winston cigarette, and waited happily for his stage-call.r />
  At last a stomping outside the door, there were more than one of them—the dyer Patocka come with a suggestion for improvement: fire the color-room foreman and we’ll save twenty thousand a year, his explanations weren’t convincing, the dyer stood on his rights and so Jacek had to write it up in duplicate, record it in the log, write a confirmation, and thank the man for his initiative.

  The phone rang, I’m coming and I’ll take all the responsibility—Lenka was calling to say that Grandma had gone off to Brvany for unknown reasons and Lenicka had run through a closed door, buy some glass, twenty-seven by forty-four-and-a-half inches, beige enamel paint, crepe paper, and especially the white plush, the telephone rang and informed him that the boys had pulled out lab assistant Palanova’s chair as a prank and that she’d suffered a light concussion, the telephone rang and officially informed him that tomorrow Dr. Bruno Deleschall would arrive from the Basel firm of Ciba, he had nowhere to stay and tactfully take away his camera right at the entrance, so that’s how you want to frame me, OK, I accept your game and out of all the stalemates up till now I’ll somehow manage a checkmate—

  Heavy steps outside the door, there are at least two of them coming—three arrived, first the director with the fiery red folder and, now liberated, Jacek stood up, I’m ready—the director placed the folder on his desk, “The letter to Brno is marvelous—” he said and then whispered, “Those shots of our grounds are handsome, but for the sake of security I locked them in the vault—,” behind him an aged secretary and the firm’s legal expert made sour faces as they carried off the fifty-year-old Urania and left in its place on the plant stand a brand new blue-gray Zeta, the director winked archly, the doors banged shut, and Jacek was left alone with his new typewriter, for another fifty years there would be peace between Cottex and his department, blue-gray is the color of aviation, CAPTAIN, I DON’T UNDERSTAND YOUR CODE—

  Outside the window a mass of spruces pierced the blue blue sky like Asiatic towers and behind the glass with the black ribbon the portrait of the dead thirty-three-year-old Adalsky, how delightful sheets bleached in the sun feel against the body, how young it is to be only thirty-three—

  Jacek dashed through the blossoming meadow from the forest ranger’s to the mountain, through the woods, and by bus to the station, on the platform deserts loudspeakers summoned passengers to board trains for the west and the east, Jacek with his black satchel going up and down the stairs, the greatest torment is not to be able to decide, but if deciding fetters one so isn’t that torment one’s last remaining liberty, depart by the first train that stops here to pick us up, Jacek laughed into the faces of the hurrying throngs and snapped his fingers, so quick, quick, children, off to school, the bell’s rung and the teacher’s already raging on the podium, she’ll put a black mark in her record book, Jacek set his satchel down at his feet and raised his finger like a preacher, they had to go round him and Jacek guffawed in their faces, life is such a wonderful game of chance and so terribly one and the same for all time, everything that passes you by, you who never venture anything, and where do you get your firm belief that you couldn’t live MAGNIFICENTLY SOMEWHERE ELSE than where you live according to a concatenation of chances, you maggots and roundworms, MY FAITH IS IN FLIGHT, ta-ta-tadum, on the green cushions into the green waves of the sea which never ends, ta-ta-ta-dum, I TEAR UP MY SEAT TICKET and sit wherever I like, ta-ta-ta-dum, what, we’re in Usti? Train, ride on—the train stopped.

  And the crowd had already surged from the cars, all by the shortest routes to their Lenickas and Lenkas, ride on, train, I beg you, my Poseidon, from your compartment I pray to you, ride on, I must go to the end of the line, Speranza is there waiting for me on the first terrace beyond the Residence, where we used to go swimming, we’ll sit on chairs facing one another and call on you, chch-ch-ch—I wasn’t asleep then, ch-ch-ch-ch—I can’t fall asleep anymore, ch-ch-ch-ch—I don’t just want to sleep until I die, I’ve already torn up my seat ticket, ride on, train, ride on, ch-ch-ch-ch—

  IV — fifteen

  The stream of passengers leaving the Decin station poured quickly onto buses and streetcars, we’ve only got a short walk from the station, Jacek hurried down the street past our third-category, on the staircase that stinks of sauerkraut he pulled out of his pocket a metal ring with a mass of keys, the Decin key is the gold one and this tiny beach is the Naiad’s, in the foyer he kicked off his shoes and slipped into waiting leather slippers, Nada was reading Páral’s novel The Trade Fair of Wishes Come True, and already she was tossing it aside, “Jacek, you’ve come—”

  “I’m here now, my love—”

  “Wouldn’t you like something to eat? I have a big can of herring in oil—”

  “Later, now all I want is to look at you and listen to you talk. Sit here on this chair and I’ll bring the other one from the foyer… chch-ch-ch—I love you so ch-ch—repeat after me: ch-ch-ch-ch—” The overturned chairs laughed with their legs in the air while the lovers lay on mattresses as if on waves.

  A cigarette by the window, the barges on the Elbe sailed out from the docks and formed into a convoy, the afternoon sun with its golden trapezoids moved through the room and the room was full of light, “Jacek,” Nada whispered from behind him, “I’ve already signed up for the new co-op they’re building, in your name… In three years we’ll have our own apartment, two rooms, a bathroom with hot water, central heating, a telephone…”

  Jacek jumped out of the bus and hurried across the excavated plain up the hill past the ten-story buildings with curtains and now with antennas as well, the twelve-story buildings have curtains already, and in our fourteen-story the windows are in with whitewash crosses on the glass, on the spattered staircase he pulled out the metal ring with its mass of keys, the Prague key is this silver one with the notch and this lofty beach is the Palma’s, Anna was kneeling on an old coat, varnishing the wood floors with a brush, and already she was tossing it aside, “Jacek, darling—”

  “I’m here now, my love—”

  “Wouldn’t you like to take a bath? They’re trying out the hot water system today—”

  “Later, first let me help you. What should I do?”

  “First change your shoes, darling. The blue ones in the foyer are for you…”

  “Anci, you know, it would be great if we had a phone here—”

  “I’ve already applied for one… in your name.”

  On air mattresses Jacek and Anna lay side by side on the floor and their shoulders touched, “As if we were floating on the sea…,” said Jacek, “Farther and farther away from the shore…,” said Anna, and they lay on compressed air as if on waves.

  A cigarette by the window, out of the night the metropolis shone from its invisible hills, the lights blended with the noises of the enormous development and in thus permeated waves they shrilly broke on our ceiling like the tide, “Jacek,” Anna whispered from behind him, “I’d like to have a cottage somewhere in the country, you know, where it’s dark at night and quiet and where even the open air goes to sleep…”

  On the path through the fields Jacek hurried across an endless expanse stretching from horizon to horizon, huge red farm machines drove into the yellow sea and sacks of harvested grain lined their incursions, on the steps between the wild rose bushes Jacek pulled out the ring of harvested keys, the Pardubice key is this homemade one, already Hanicka is running full tilt onto the platform with the circle of flowers, “Jacek, this is so wonderful—”

  “I’m here now, my love—”

  “Wouldn’t you like to go see the rabbits?”

  “Later, first I’ll go say hello to your parents.”

  In the corridor Jacek tossed off his shoes and put on a checkered slipper with a tassle, “Don’t take off your shoes—” Mrs. Kohoutkova said, “we’ve been holding supper for you, you can go straight to the tavern for some beer—,” the clean scent of roast meat and the glass jug with the ten-crown note on the bottom.

  On all the benches in front of al
l the houses couples in the twilight, “The goose for Comrade Dr. Mach will be remarkable,” said Hanicka, “Mama thinks fifteen pounds is big enough. I’ve been arguing that it ought to weigh at least eighteen pounds… Why don’t you say anything?”

  “I’m listening to the magnificent quiet here…”

  “I’ll be quiet too. It is magnificent…”

  A cigarette and blow the smoke into the prism of light coming from the window, the couples got up from their benches and entered their houses, downstairs the lights went out, in a short time they went on upstairs, and then one light after another went out into the majestic quiet. “Jacek,” Hanicka whispered, “we must wait a while yet, but I’m so looking forward to having children… First a boy, he’ll look like you and go out into the world, and then a girl, she’ll stay home with me…”