Ivan Klíma - Love and Garbage

‘Well, you were shooting downhill,’ the foreman turned to Mrs Venus; ‘but what would you say if you were whizzing straight up into the air at the same lick?’ And he pointed to the ceiling with such a commanding gesture that everybody looked up towards it.

Thirty-five years ago the following had happened to him. He’d been stationed at an airfield near Stříbro in Western Bohemia, and there, as well as the splendid S-199s, they’d inherited a training balloon from the Germans. Anyway, his sergeant had ordered him to get the balloon ready, which meant loading a parachute and ballast bags. The sergeant was giving him a hand himself. But just as they were getting the first sand-filled bag on board the anchor cable got loose and they shot up at such a pace that within a few seconds they were above the clouds. ‘I can tell you it was faster than a rocket. We were in shirt-sleeves,’ the foreman was getting carried away by his experience, ‘because down there it was mid-summer, and suddenly we were at the bloody North Pole. “Comrade sergeant,” I said, “Private Marek reporting we’re flying, destination unknown, but most probably we’ll find ourselves in the shit.” He was a fair sort of bloke so he said: “Marek, that was a damn silly order I gave you, to get inside without a parachute. See if you can get out of it alive. I’ll manage somehow.” And he held out his parachute to me, the only one on board. So I said: “Sergeant, you’ve got a wife and kids, if we’re in the shit you’ll jump.” And he said: “You’re a good bloke, Marek, we’ll either be in the shit together or we’ll both be bloody heroes.” By then he had frost on his face!’

‘But why didn’t you try to let out the gas?’ the youngster wondered.

‘Imagine we didn’t think of that? The bloody valve was frozen up, so we couldn’t do nothing.’ The foreman went on for a while to describe the terrible conditions at those freezing altitudes before, three hours later, they came down at Lysá.

‘Thirty-five years ago,’ the man who reminded me of my ear-nose-and-throat specialist joined in, ‘I was in a penal camp near Marianská, a short way from the frontier. At that time the Americans were beginning to send over little balloons with leaflets. Some of them came down near us, but anyone picking them up risked being put inside.’

‘What did they say?’ the youngster wanted to know.

‘Nothing worth a stretch inside. Anyway, what do you expect from a piece of paper?’

‘Balloons and ships may both have a future, but I wouldn’t get into one of your balloons,’ the captain brought the conversation back to appropriate bounds. ‘Or into a plane. If a ship goes down you’ve got a chance, but when a plane comes down…’

‘You don’t have to tell me!’ the foreman said, offended. ‘They were goners all right, there wasn’t as much as this left of them.’ He flicked a cigarette stub with his finger. ‘And if by some miracle one of them got out — well, obviously he was no use for anything, ever again.’

With Daria I was moving above the ground and above the waters; day after day, month after month. Even at night, when distance intervened between us, our dreams or visions were often similar to each other’s.

That, she explained to me, was because at night our souls would meet.

You think that the soul can leave a body while it is alive?

She then told me the story of the hundred-year-old sorcerer who disguised his real appearance by means of charms. He lived in a stone house in the middle of the forests which extended all the way to the northern ocean, and he spent his time in solitude. When he got tired of living alone he bewitched a beautiful young girl with his magic charms and tried to make her his wife. But she saw through him and realised his real nature. She was frightened and begged him to let her go: he was an old man, near the end of his days, while she had her whole life before her. The sorcerer replied: I may look old but I shan’t die because my soul does not reside in my body. When she wanted to know where his soul resided he explained to her that it was a long way away. Over the mountains, beyond the rivers, there was a lake, and in the middle of it an island, and on the island a temple, a temple without windows and with just one door, and that door could not be opened. Inside a bird was flying around, and unless someone killed it it would never die, and in it was the sorcerer’s soul. While the bird was alive he too would live.

The girl had a lover, to whom she sent word of her fate. The young man set out to find the island and the temple. With the help of good spirits he opened the door which couldn’t be opened, and caught the bird which could not, of its own, die, and with it he returned to his beloved. She hid them both under the sorcerer’s bed and told the young man to squeeze the bird hard. The young man obeyed and the sorcerer immediately felt sick, and as the young man squeezed harder the old man got worse. That was when he began to suspect something, and looked around the room. ‘Kill it, kill it!’ called the girl. Her lover crushed the bird in his hand and at that moment the sorcerer breathed his last.

I understood that she was telling me this story so I should never forget that her soul was a bird which I held in my fist.

The soul leaves the body after death and enters a different body, an animal or even a tree. That was why she preferred to work with stone or with clay rather than with wood. She could hear a tree groaning when it was cut down. On its journey to a new body the soul could overcome any distance whatever. So why shouldn’t it be able to do so during life? After all, it was not corporeal, so there was no force on earth that could fetter or imprison it when a soul wished to escape, rise up or join someone else.

Another time she told me that once in plain daylight she saw a golden ball moving among rosebeds, the blooms were mirrored in the ball and everything was in motion, free and exalted. A little while later, as she was returning home in the evening, or rather at night, she caught sight of me on the other side of the street, leaning against a lamp post; she’d run over to me but I had dissolved before her eyes. Was that a delusion sent her by some evil power or a sign of love?

Everything that happened had to have some superior cause, and she therefore sought for an explanation in the position of the planets. She established that my strongest and lucky star was the sun, which I had in Virgo and in the tenth house, and it was thanks to my sun that I had survived what I had, and thanks to it I would lead my life happily to the point when I had to leave it. I would not step out of my body until I had accomplished my task and performed the work I had to perform. What fate could be happier?

On Twelfth Night we poured melted lead together, and my figure was a woman covering her face and a beast of prey or perhaps a winged Hermes. In the woman she recognised herself, and in the winged creature, me. I was descending to her to carry her off or to bring her a message from heaven.

And why is the woman covering her face?

Probably because she is afraid of me.

She had a pack of fortune-telling cards of the famous Mademoiselle Lenormand and several times told her own and my past, present and future, the immediate as well as the distant future, and surprisingly the cards foretold an encouraging or even a splendid future for me.

I regarded this fortune-telling as a kind of lovers’ game, but I said to her that everything was bound to turn out right because I had a charmed life like that man who alone survived the crash of the aircraft which some years ago hit a church tower in Munich, or like that girl who survived an air crash in the Andes and then alone, for several days and nights, tore her way through the jungle until with her last strength she reached some human habitation. It so happens that I met that man not long ago and we got on well together; and although I’ve never seen that girl we would surely also agree that what crushes others is for us no more than an unimportant trifle, and the other way about.