Catapult

by Paral, VladimIr

  “To Brno!—” and Jacek bit his lips, we’re in Brno—but the girl was not the least bit surprised, and quite matter-of-factly she asked: “From where and on what day?”

  “From Usti, but no, there’s no airport there. From Prague. The first of October, in the morning.”

  The girl turned a circular ticket holder and from one of the compartments she took out a ticket and stamped it. “Ninety-two crowns,” she said, and Jacek paid, well, if you want to fly you have to buy a ticket, how magically simple it all is—

  On the street Jacek remembered Mojmira and shrugged his shoulders, we’ve got less than twenty-four hours and many matters need to be taken care of, R 7 leaves in eighteen minutes so let’s hurry and look for the white plush, Jacek bounded into the store across from the station, they didn’t have any white plush, next door our toy shop’s display window and Jacek bounded in, “No water pistols, no squirrels, something different—” and he bought a brand new novelty, Arf-Arf, a rubber dog that’s supposed to bark, there was no time to try it out because in eleven minutes R 7 pulled out, the last train in our direction.

  In Prague Jacek ran through the park from one station to the other and as usual he boarded the 4:45 to Berlin with time to spare, the white plush we can buy in Brno and send it back by mail, and the train pulled quietly out along the shallows and sands of the ebbing river.

  And on streetcar No. 5 to Vseborice, to the last stop, and past the playground, neighbor Tosnar was waddling out into the road with his six daughters, there are as many conceptions of paradise as there are people, the staircase up to the apartment has turned into a tall barrier, Jacek took out of his pocket the ring with its flock of keys, it’s this one with the letters FAB and the dog’s head, on the way out toss it into the mailbox downstairs, on the door ENGINEER JAROMIR JOST, we’ll have new business cards printed in Brno, day after tomorrow is the first of October and the flight—

  A diminutive ghost emerged from the darkness of the quiet apartment, “They left me here so the water the giblets are cooking in wouldn’t boil away…,” Tomas Roll whimpered.

  “Where are they all?”

  “With Trost… She didn’t even buy your milk…”

  Every decision destroys all doubts with retroactive effect, at least there’ll be quiet for packing, Jacek drew his suitcase out of the chest like a sword from its sheath, everything in it was long since packed and the space perfectly utilized to the last inch as with a cosmonaut’s luggage, Jacek took off his shoes and for the last time picked up the suede shoes he’d been married in, still the same as they’d been five years ago, a sense of horror, how awfully permanent the LEAVE things are, he trembled and cautiously put the shoes away.

  Outside the door a child’s voice, the little one’s here, and he fished out of the black traveling satchel—it’s served us now for the last time, and Jacek trembled—the box with the new toy, Arf-Arf, he tore it open and couldn’t wait to try it out, the white rubber dog had a label stuck to it—

  WARNING: The balloon installed in our product is made of low-grade rubber, which stiffens in freezing temperatures. In severe cold Arf-Arf will not bark. In winter or other cold a strong pressure on the front paws can tear Arf-Arf apart. Do not use our product in severe cold. Co-op Trendex

  A rattling in the doorlock and Trost was the first to enter the kitchen: “Ah—Mr. Jost!” “Ah—Mr. Trost!”

  “Did you catch the 4:45 to Berlin in Prague?”

  “Sure. Of course.”

  “You make the trip often, don’t you?”

  “Too often for my taste.”

  “The weather’s nice, isn’t it?”

  “It is now. Look, little one, what Daddy brought you—this is Arf-Arf, you see? You push it here—this way—and see how it barks!”

  “I’ll bark it—” said Lenicka, she snatched Arf-Arf up in her awkward paws, she pressed—crack! and that was the end of its barking. Now Arf-Arf was dismembered and Lenicka tossed aside the new toy from Brno with a great deal of contempt.

  “I asked for white plush in Brno, but they didn’t have any, but—”

  “You didn’t have to,” said Lenka. “Mr. Trost’s having dinner here this evening.”

  “I’m not hungry,” said Jacek, and with his chair and a pack of cigarettes he went out on the balcony.

  A minute later a scratching on the glass balcony door, Tomas Roll snuck out and whispered: “She bought him a side of pork and now she’s putting it in the oven…”

  “I wouldn’t mind having some,” sighed Jacek, “but I couldn’t stand sharing a table with that— Tom, bring me something to eat.”

  Nimbly the imp ran off and in a while he returned with a bottle of Georgian cognac, “Lenka sent this, Mr. Jost, she says it’s your favorite food, and Trost was laughing.”

  “Get a glass for yourself, too,” said Jacek, the dwarf ran off and at once came back with a second goblet, “They’re making liver and bacon,” he whispered as he poured, “and roasted potatoes. I wanted to scrape them, but Trost took the scraper away and even shook his fist at me.”

  “So pour some more. And then bring me the sleeping bag from the cellar and a blanket from the bedroom, I’m going to sleep out here tonight.”

  Nine-by-twelve feet of squeaking planks, but the squeaking’s ours, and a roughed-up desk made of soft wood, but the Germans weren’t the ones who roughed it up like that, and on the plant stand the new blue-gray Zeta, to tell the truth it has a very hard action and this elite type is so unpleasant to read, besides that you could still read the seventh carbon from the Urania, Jacek sighed as he wrote up his final travel report, pulled it out of the roller, and inserted a blank resignation form

  Name of resignee: Jaromir Jost

  Born: Brno 1933

  Reason for resignation:

  and Jacek pushed down the space bar again and again with his finger, Good God, what can I write on the spur of the moment, failure is a perfectly adequate and valid reason—Petrik Hurt bounded into his office and straight to the phone, “Verka…,” he lisped into the receiver, “of course it’s Petrik, Verka, the sun just began to shine in the color room and I rushed here to tell you—” and already Petrik was lying again, minute after minute.

  Vitenka Balvin bounded into the office and straight up to Jacek, Jacek tore the resignation form out of the machine and threw it in the wastebasket, “You’re the light-fingered expert here,” Vitenka Balvin roared, “tell me where I can find some green paint.” “Polak’s got some in the workshop. Are you tired of that purple color in your room?” “It’s the most disgusting color imaginable,” Vitenka exulted, “I’m doing the entire apartment over in green, the entire apartment, both rooms and the entire bathroom and the entire kitchen and the entire WC as well, it’ll all be green as May—” “I’m amazed, Vitenka, won’t Mija miss her beautiful pure cerise?” “I found her out—” Vitenka whispered ecstatically, “I suspected it all along…” “Found her out?” “She had taken one tile off my isolation wall and she was putting her ear to it, it wasn’t really all the same to her what I was up to, nor was I really all that indifferent to her antics, and I caught her at it. She turned completely white, grabbed the scissors—” “That’s the second time, I believe—” “I’ve still got the scar from the first time, look—but this time she didn’t stab me. You say Polak’s got some,” and Vitenka ran off, “… and then let’s go boating,” Petrik Hurt was still on the phone, he glanced at his watch, “but first I’ll buy you some ice cream…”

  “Hooked up with that artificial limb again?” Jacek grinned when Petrik had finished the long conversation.

  “Don’t ever say that to me again!” Petrik Hurt said impetuously, “or to anybody else, understand?!”

  “But excuse me, I was just quoting you…”

  “You must have been imagining things, Jacek.”

  “Or you’ve been, no?”

  “Perhaps, why not? Everything’s relative, who knows where imagination ends and true… the true… Don’t y
ou ever imagine anything?”

  “Right now, in fact: I’ve bought an airplane ticket to Brno for tomorrow.”

  “But the firm can’t reimburse you for that,” Petrik Hurt said in a voice suddenly that of an office superior.

  “Just ninety-two crowns to get rid of a clown like you, it’s a real bargain,” Jacek felt like saying, but Petr Hurt’s got to sign our travel order for tomorrow, no, now he no longer has to, but he does have to sign our resignation—

  “They’re saying in the director’s office,” Petrik Hurt began slowly, “that you’re overdoing it a bit with those trips to Brno. I won’t ask you about anything yet, but watch out, Jacek…”

  Petr Hurt left and listlessly Jacek opened the drawer containing the resignation form, it wasn’t getting any easier to fill it out like this in a rush, under it lay six blue envelopes, six cancellation letters to six unsuspecting naiads, the seventh Tina by telephone, just then the phone rang and there was Tina’s familiar subdued voice, this really is telepathy or mysticism, “I can’t come today, I’m about to go off on a big trip,” Jacek said into the receiver, “I’ll write you.” We’ve already written letters to the others and all we have to do is throw them in the mailbox, the resignation can be mailed as well—Jacek filled it out, signed it, and put it in an envelope addressed to Cottex, seven letters in all, and he put them into his breast-pocket folder, in its soft black leather a white ticket:

  Date: 10/1/66

  Route: OK 035

  Sector: Prague-Brno

  Airport bus departs: 7:15 A.M.

  Flight departure: 8:15 A.M.

  Check all data at time of purchase.

  No subsequent adjustments.

  CZECHOSLOVAK AIRLINES

  Seven blue envelopes are seven possible lives, seven freedoms taken together are no more than one aggravated solitary confinement with a crazy dream for every day of the week, but in the morning you’ve got to wake up and get to your feet—

  “Express call to Prague, Czechoslovak Airlines,” Jacek placed the call and before it came he shuffled the seven blue envelopes like cards, why not this one, that one, or these two, what a frightful risk it would be to waste another fifteen years of one’s life, the last ones, then we’ll be fifty already, why just these two, that one, this one, or this one here, and quite different ones would reply if an ad were placed on a different day and, perhaps, in a different paper, must DIFFERENT always be BETTER—

  “Czechoslovak Airlines? Jost. I have a reservation for Brno tomorrow. Can I still get a refund?”

  “If the passenger notifies us less than three hours and at least fifteen minutes before departure, he can claim a refund with a twenty-five-percent penalty. Does that answer your question?”

  “Completely.”

  When a siren sounded, Jacek walked out slowly through the ridged mud toward the gate and toward the corner with the orange mailbox, he took the seven blue envelopes out of his folder and raised the first one up to the slot,

  Miss Nadezda Houskova

  on his last visit Nada had dragged her new vacuum cleaner out of the box under the daybed and for the first time she’d turned it on, its nozzle had rattled over the old planks of the floor and Nada had started to sing to its rattle, our first carpet, BUT I’VE ALREADY GOT ONE, AT HOME—

  Jacek took a deep breath and dropped envelope after envelope into the slot, Miss Nadezda Houskova, Dr. Anna Bromova, Miss Hanicka Kohoutkova, Mrs. Lida Adalska, Miss Tanicka Rambouskova, Dr. Mojmira Stratilova, Cottex, Usti nad Labem—wait on the last one, that one we have to keep for a while and if we still make the flight, just for the fun of it, we won’t come back from Brno until we find that white plush, hell, we’ve been in cotton for ten years, and when we can scare up three carloads of ethyl acetate from West Germany— and the seventh one, Tina by phone. Now only the white plush, a trifle, it’s nothing actually—

  It glows softly on our kitchen table, soft as the fleece of the most highly bred Australian merino lamb, how supple and delicate the cloth is, in fascination Lenka takes it in her hands and strokes it, Lenicka insists on stroking it, and Grandma strokes it too—in his blue-gray denim shirt Trost grins triumphantly over the entire scene.

  “It was nothing at all,” he blared, “by chance I was passing by and I said, Hey, they’ve got it here—where but in that new store right down the street—”

  “Don’t touch that with your dirty hands!” Lenka told Jacek, it would be a coat for Lenicka and because of it Lenicka “woves Uncle Twost!” and how unwilling she is to come and play with Daddy in the living room, she no longer wants to go through the obstacle course, “So wet’s pway house, OK?” Jacek lisped ingratiatingly, “wet’s put up our pway house—”

  And right away, so that Lenicka wouldn’t run off after Trost, pull the mattresses from the sofa onto the floor, Tomas Roll is an irreplaceable helper in all this, and Lenicka doesn’t run off because Trost and Lenka have now come into the living room for her, the mattresses turn into the walls of our cottage, the coverlet into the roof, and the cushions into a balcony, “I’ll build you a finer one, out of wood, a real one—” Trost wooed and pursued Lenicka.

  “We’ve got our pway house all weady, cwawl into it, wittle one—,” but Lenicka suddenly preferred “a weal one out of wood,” “Just cwawl into ours, wook, Daddy’s cwawling in and he’s waiting for you there—” “Your feet stick out, Daddy—” the little one laughed. “And it’s a bit flimsy, look here—” Trost brayed, and he smacked into the house with his knee, a mattress collapsed on Jacek’s back, the second one fell under the weight of the coverlet, and Jacek was entangled in the blanket like a gladiator in a retiarius’s net, above him guffaws and horselaughter, and with difficulty he crawled out into the light, “Let’s do the obstacle course now, little one—” and with the dwarf’s devoted assistance the two mattresses were laid flat on the floor and the third one perpendicular between them, quick, on the double, but Lenicka had already turned her back on the two frenzied builders and behind her Lenka and Trost brought up the rear of the procession, Jacek was left beside his obstacle course face to face with his pygmy. The dwarf croaked and walked over it on his hands, a somersault and he lay on his back like an overturned beetle.

  Jacek took a pack of cigarettes onto the balcony, he lit them one after another and blew the smoke out toward the sky, at least there’s the advantage that Trost won’t be gawking at us from his window across the way now that he’s safely within our own walls and behind our back, at least there’s an unimpeded view of the eighty windows, let’s have a look, but who’s that on the fourth floor of section two in the fourth window from the left—some fellow our age is sitting there on his balcony, smoking and gaping straight this way, “Cognac!” Jacek roared into the apartment, and the imp brought some quickly, this time with two glasses, “It’s the last bottle,” he whispered, “they’re carving the side of pork for him now and Grandma’s opening some beer for him, they wouldn’t give me any.”

  Jacek was drinking the last bottle from the warm slopes of Georgia and lit one cigarette after another, the dwarf kept running out onto the balcony with new reports, “He’s taken your chair, Jacek, you shouldn’t stand for it!” “So pull it out here!” and the pygmy ran back to the kitchen but soon he returned without the chair, “He didn’t want to give it to me, he’s already sitting on it,” he announced, “and he’s eating that side of pork with his fingers and Lenka’s laughing at him, but not maliciously, and Grandma said: that’s right, a man eats meat with his hands, and Lenicka’s laughing and Trost is feeding her like you do an animal, with his fingers…”

  “Go tell her that I don’t think children should eat fatty pork. She’ll get sick on it! And have them send out that ham in the pantry!”

  The dwarf ran off and came right back, “They say the ham’s for Lenicka’s lunch and Trost says that you can easily buy your own when you have so much left over from your travel budget, he says the child needs it more than you do and Grandma says that’s God�
�s sacred truth and Lenka nods and Lenicka says we won’t give Daddy any ham.”

  “Bring her here!”

  The dwarf ran off and came right back, “She’s eating now and they won’t let her go and they said we shouldn’t nag them anymore.”

  “This is my home—” Jacek stormed gloomily, and he took a swig straight from the bottle, “go back, Tom, and tell them…”

  The faithful imp went on carrying messages and he kept bringing back worse and worse reports from occupied territory, Trost in the kitchen was like the Vandals in Rome and Jacek on the balcony resembled the last Byzantine emperor, “Bring me my daughter!—” he roared when he’d finished the bottle.

  The dwarf finally succeeded in bringing Lenicka all the way through the living room and up to the glass door, throughout the journey she’d resisted with a fearful screeching and now Trost appeared, behind him Grandma and Lenka, without getting up Jacek opened the door from the balcony to the living room.

  “Let the kid go, OK?!” Trost roared at Tomas Roll, but the dwarf went on trying to bring the child to its father, he seized it in his gorilla-like arms, but Trost stormed out in open battle and began to shake the dwarf violently and Lenicka fled, “We’re fed up with you, up to the neck!” Trost thundered at the imp, “Uncle Woll go way!” Lenicka shouted, “It’s high time now,” Grandma said, and Lenka nodded, “Do you hear?!” Trost roared, “Clear out—” and he grabbed the pygmy by the shoulder, the imp jerked loose but Trost snagged him around the waist, the dwarf had powerful arms but his body was skinny and his legs were like a child’s, laughing Trost picked him up and carried him out.

  Jacek followed them slowly down the stairs, already Trost was coming up the stairs and Jacek was forced to make way for him, out on the road Tomas Roll was dusting off his black sweater and his black jeans, “Forgive me, Tom,” Jacek said sympathetically, “I’m terribly sorry but…”

  “Go to hell, Mr. Jost!” Tomas Roll said firmly, he jumped into his red Fiat and this time without any honk-honk he drove quickly through the development, Jacek dragged himself toward the main highway, the Fiat was now no more than a red period at the end of a fairy tale, our let it happen is gone, what’s next, right in front of Jacek a bus stopped and the door opened automatically, listlessly Jacek glanced at the tin stairs and mechanically climbed them up to the metal platform, “Last stop,” he told the driver, and he paid three crowns.