Jaroslav Kalfař - Spaceman of Bohemia

The ship crashed into the water and the window glass exploded, its particles biting into my exposed face before the onrush of water washed them away. My body was at the mercy of Earth’s elements now, much more savage than the calculating hostility of Space. The stream threw me against the cabin door, and Vasily landed on me, grasping at my arms as the entire cabin flooded and the water separated us. I swam toward the window, toward life, then gestured at Vasily to follow. I gave Yuraj, pale and unconscious and possibly dead, a final acknowledging look, and grabbed Klara’s arm to haul her up. She clawed at me and bit my hand, bubbles escaping her nostrils, and I noticed that her arm was trapped underneath the seat, which had been slammed against the wall by the pressure of the water. Her elbow was oddly twisted, surely dislocated, perhaps broken, but Klara gave no sign of pain. Her eyes—deadly, determined—were focused on mine. She was doing her best to kill me with her one free hand and her teeth. I could not last much longer. I let go of her and searched for Vasily, who floated above Yuraj’s corpse, grinning from ear to ear, his apostle mission fulfilled. No, he was not coming, and perhaps it was better. A broken man had a right to leave this world. I too had made that decision once.

Again I tugged at Klara’s arm, and she sank her teeth so deeply into my thumb I thought she would rip it off. I could feel her teeth breaking. I pulled back, freed my bleeding flesh, and swam out of the observation window, swam upwards along the capsizing body of a ship that had saved me. NashaSlava1, the pride of the Russian people, though the Russian people weren’t aware of its existence—a phantom looming above their heads, protecting them from enemies, delivering scientific glory and advanced warfare. A cumbrous blend of metals designed to enhance humanity with an inflated sense of importance, wisdom, and progress, but now subject to Earth’s judgment, as we all were, and drowning like a bag of unwanted felines.

When I emerged, I threw my arms about, swam so quickly I thought my veins were going to pop open and bleed dry. I reached land, dragged myself onto the shore, spit and coughed, grabbed at the cold moist dirt under me, and I remembered—Earth. I licked the mud. I kissed it, cackled, emitted sounds that terrified me, sounds of pleasure that went beyond my comprehension, the pleasure of insanity. At last the pain of the winter around me overcame the initial adrenaline, and Russia’s frost bit into the skin underneath my soaked clothes. I rubbed my body in the dirt, now fully understanding why Louda the pig considered mud digging the highest form of living. The friction warmed me and I bit at the chunks of mud as if it were cake. It tasted of roots, compost, vegetable skins. I spit it back out. Behind me the lake that had welcomed me home expanded across a wide plain until it met a brown forest covering the horizon.

The broken surface of the icy lake gargled as the ship was digested along with the bodies and the samples of cloud Chopra, which now seemed a banal prize of the mission. I wished to sit and wait for Klara, Vasily, and Yuraj to emerge, healthy and well, before running around the frozen grassland and making my way through the woods. But the response team would swarm the lake any minute now, and I could no longer be subject to larger schemes, concepts, countries. I ran and I spit out leftovers of mud and I wept, wept for Klara, my savior, for her thirst to claw the life out of me. I expected at any moment the sound of helicopters, German shepherds, sirens speeding along the plains, chasing me down to throw me into a Saint Petersburg catacomb for torture and starvation. But there were no rotors, no barks. I reached the forest to the sinister silence of nature.

By nightfall, I had reached a village. I could not understand anyone’s words, but they took me in, bathed me with water heated over a fire, clothed me, and put me into a reasonably soft bed. Spasibo, I kept saying, spasibo, calmly and generously, hoping this would prevent the villagers from thinking I was insane.

Outside, the night sky glowed with purple. Chopra was still alive, still tantalizing, but I would never again reach it. I longed for the black skies of old.

I woke in the middle of the night, held down by strong hands, with the taste of rusty metal in my mouth. I could not close it, or bite down. A pair of pliers shimmered in the dark. The pincer clamped firmly on my tooth and out it came, the blood pouring into my throat as this kind, crude dentistry was completed. The brown, puss-filled bastard was set next to my face like a trophy. I screamed, choking on the mixture of blood and liquor applied to my wound.

The next morning, I found a couple of men who spoke English. They were traveling to Estonia with sensitive cargo, they said. They could take me along if I promised to help guard their livelihood. I agreed.

The journey was rigidly scheduled, allowing for no breaks. We pissed into a bucket nailed down in a corner of the truck’s cargo space. When Russian soldiers stopped us looking for a “dangerous fugitive,” I hid under blankets and behind a mountain of Spam and bean cans containing twenty kilos of heroin. The driver gave the Russian lieutenant half a kilo of heroin for his trouble and oversight. We continued on.

Across the border, in Estonia, I shook hands with my accomplices. We were brothers now.

“I owe you,” I said.

“No need,” they said, “no need.”

In Estonia, I jumped a freight train and rode to the coastal city of Pärnu. When night watchmen discovered me, I ran from the dogs snapping at my heels. With a painful bite on my unscarred calf, I entered the port and roamed from ship to ship, asking the sailors for a job, any job, which would take me closer to home. On my sixth attempt, a gangly Pole laughed wheezily and advised me that the captain was looking for someone to clean the bathrooms. The captain was a very clean man, he said. He couldn’t stand the crew’s crimes upon the ship’s facilities, and would accept anyone willing to keep them presentable.

For weeks, I spent my days running among the three bathrooms, scrubbing each seat, each bowl. I bleached them and scrubbed them with such dedication I sometimes wished to lick them to prove my diligence, my commitment to the cause. I replaced soap and I provided oversized rolls of rough toilet paper. Some nights, the sailors got too drunk during their card games and their liquids and solids missed the bowls by miles. These were my emergency calls, apologetic voices waking me from uneasy sleep. I welcomed them. I had a purpose here. A simple one.

When we arrived in Poland, the gangly Pole offered to pay for my train ticket if I would keep him company until we reached Kraków. He spoke of his mother, who would welcome him with homemade smoked pork and garlic potatoes. He in turn would greet her with a surprise belated birthday gift he had saved up for with his wages—a new mattress and a certificate for weekly massages for her bad back. That’s all he’d ever wanted to do, he said. Make enough money to ease his mother’s life.

When he asked about my family, I asked if we could play some cards. He understood.

That night in Kraków, I flagged down a man with a pox-scarred face. He smelled of smoke and cheese puffs, but he was fond of reading philosophy and had published some poetry.

“It inspires you, the road,” he said. “In life, you should travel as far as you possibly can, get away from everything you were ever taught. What do you think?” And he coughed, the same smoker’s roar as my grandfather.

“What if everything you love is right where you are?” I asked.

“Then you find new things to love. A happy person must be a nomad.”

“You haven’t loved, then,” I countered. “If what you love gets away from you, in the end you are only walking in a labyrinth with no exits.”