Ivan Klíma - Love and Garbage

Perhaps, it occurred to me, I was in some new space. I’d entered the place where oblivion was born. Or despair. And also understanding. Or perhaps even love — not as a mirage but as a space for the soul to move in.

Four weeks later, again at nine in the morning, we were once more, the same team, sitting in the same tavern as on my first day.

When I’d put on my orange vest then I wasn’t sure how often I’d decide to repeat the experience, but to begin with I would come to work at least every other day. I was curious about what parts of Prague my work would take me to, what narrow little streets that otherwise I’d never venture into.

I am fond of my native city, not only of the part through which the tourist crowds stroll, but also of the outskirts, where, among blocks of flats from the Secession period, a few little rural houses have remained standing, either forgotten or, more probably, already sentenced to death in some development plans, where unexpectedly an avenue of ancient poplars has survived or a little wooded hill, or fences bearing appeals and announcements whose bright colours I was aware of but whose texts as a rule I didn’t read. More than once, as I pushed my cart with the dustbin I discovered a faded plaque on some familiar and usually dingy wall, a bust, or even a memorial huddling in some recess. These were meant to remind us that here, years ago, was born, lived or died some artist, thinker, scientist or national figure, in other words a spirit of whom it might be presumed that he rose above the rest of us. But more often, in one of those little streets or among the fading gardens, I remembered that here lived someone I knew, an artist, a thinker, a scientist or a national figure, someone who was here no more, someone beyond the hills and beyond the rivers, though mostly not over the river Styx, which would be sad but the common human lot, but someone now a refugee, someone driven out to our common shame. The walls of these houses, needless to say, did not bear plaques or a bust or even a visiting card to remind us that here lived a human spirit that had endeavoured to rise to higher things. I would glance at my companions at those moments, but they suspected nothing, except possibly Mr Rada, if he was one of our party, who might nod his head.

Thus I moved in my orange vest through the little streets and lanes of my native city which was slowly giving up its spirit, my companions at my side as witnesses. We were cleaning the town on which refuse had fallen and soot and ashes and poisoned rain and oblivion. We strode along in our vests like flamingoes, like angels of the dying day, sweeping away all rubbish and refuse, angels beyond life, beyond death, beyond our time, beyond all time, scarcely touched by the jerkish. Our speech resembled our age-old brooms, it came from a long way back and it moved along age-old paths. But behind us others are moving up: already the jerkish sweepers are arriving on their beflagged vehicles, pretending that they are completing the great purge, sweeping away all memories of the past, of anything that was great in the past. And when, with delight, they halt in the space which appears to them to be cleaned up, they’ll summon one of their jerkish artists and he’ll erect here a monument to oblivion, an effigy of shaft-boots, an overcoat, trousers and a briefcase, and above these an unforgettable face behind which we feel neither spirit nor soul but which, by official decree, will be proclaimed to be the face of an artist, a thinker, a scientist or a national figure.

There has been a slight drizzle since early morning, maybe it isn’t even real rain but just condensation of the fog which covers the city with grime and helps to submerge it in oblivion.

On days like this Daria would positively choke and life would seem unbearable to her, her stone or wood incapable of being worked on, and as the droplets fell inexhaustibly from the clouds so the tears began to drip from her eyes, no matter how I tried to console her.

My companions aren’t in a good mood either. I hardly recognised Mrs Venus this morning. Her right eye was swollen and below it was a purplish bruise. The captain’s face had lost its tan over the past few days and had gone grey. Even the foreman in his freshly laundered and pressed overalls walked along in silence.

I ordered some hot tea and the captain, instead of his usual beer, ordered a grog. ‘Tell me, who gave you that monocle?’ he turned to Mrs Venus.

‘A better man than you,’ she snapped. ‘One like you I’d have torn apart before he even raised his hand!’

Mrs Venus liked to make out how tough she was, but I believe she was good-natured, and she’d paid the price for it all her life. There were clearly many men she’d loved, or at least lived with, but they’d all left her, or else she’d run away from them. She’d raised three sons, even though she probably hadn’t had much time for raising them. When we were young, the order of the day was that women must devote themselves to more important duties than looking after their children. Now she lived on her own. Her flat, as I understood it, was reached by an open upstairs passage; the term flat meant a single room with a cooker. Her eldest son, who was a steelworker in Vítkovice, had given her a television set on which she could follow our jerkish programmes in colour. So for those evenings when she preferred home to the company at the bar, she had a reliable companion. Besides, at the far end of the passage lived, or rather slowly died, a lonely widower who’d been incapacitated by a stroke some years back, and now and then she’d go and clean up for him and bake him a cake — so he shouldn’t be left alone like an abandoned dog.

‘Yeah, maybe if two other blokes were holding me down,’ the captain growled.

Normally there was nothing eccentric about his speech. Mostly he’d conceal the oddity of his thoughts. He wasn’t a real captain, he’d merely worked in the shipyards before he lost his hand. But his real interest was not ships but inventions. That’s what he softly told me on the second day we were sweeping alongside each other: he’d think up machines which would improve people’s lives. Unfortunately, he’d so far not met with any understanding. Wherever he turned with his inventions, there were blinkered people behind desks, instructed to block real progress and prosperity. He offered to demonstrate some of his inventions to me.

I hadn’t been mistaken when I’d felt his face seemed familiar to me.

It was when I was still working in newspapers. One day the editor received a letter from an inventor who’d had his idea turned down. He had devised a way of utilising waste materials, especially soot, for the removal of the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps. The editor passed the letter on to me for answering. I wrote that in this matter we were unable to help him. A few days later, however, the writer turned up at the editorial office. He was quite a pleasant and amusing fellow. I couldn’t see anything odd in his appearance, anything that might make me doubt his sincerity. He merely had a deeper tan than would be usual for that time of the year, but he told me he’d just returned from the shores of Africa. Out there, even at night-time when he couldn’t sleep because of the heat, he had reflected on the curious and dangerous imbalance of the planet. In some places it would offer warmth and in others humidity, and elsewhere nothing but sand or ice. During those nights he’d thought a lot about abolishing that imbalance, but his head buzzed with more crazy ideas than were found in the Academy. In the end, however, he’d discovered the fundamental mistake which nature and mankind had committed. They’d come to dislike black! Was there anything in nature that was truly black? And mankind, with the possible exception of the Chinese, regarded black as the colour of mourning. Yet black was in fact the colour which combined most completely with the basic life force, that is with warmth, whereas white, allegedly the colour of innocence, the colour of wedding dresses, repulsed heat; it was the colour of snow and of most of the poisons. Those immense white areas had to be removed from the surface of the earth, and life would then establish itself where deserts had been before, and warmth would invade the areas which until now had been frosty. It had taken him a long time to discover the right means and the right method. The means was a mixture he’d invented, a solution of soot in seven solvents and three catalysts, and the method was the melting of the polar ice. As soon as the ice caps were sprayed with his mixture they’d lose their deadly whiteness, they’d begin to soak up heat and to melt.