Jáchym Topol - City, Sister, Silver

Put em in the buildings, David told Bohler.

C’mon, that’s crazy, everything’s taken, they’d hafta live with me!

One policy we adopted immediately so as not to please the Devil too much was no throwing out tenants. There was one thing, however … our sole infringement upon the domain of tenant rights … that we persuaded them to do … which was to take all their disgusting wall-size screens and various heathen TVs and lug them out to the lawn in back … where Bohler took an ax and chopped them up, one by one, because there’s no reasoning with Evil. Then we knocked their satellites off the roof, and of course we paid them back for it all, down to the last haler … it’s just that all sortsa Tides an Mr. Hydes come crawlin outta that satanic tube, the old ideological stupidifier, an they’re hungry for human heads …. especially children’s … an hell if we’re gonna share our home with a bunch a ghouls, Bohler argued, the rest of us nodded approvingly.

Only now he had a bunch of agnostics crashing right in his own flat. Aw c’mon, that bag on the third floor’s gonna kick the bucket any day now, Micka consoled the theologian, just stick it out, c’mon, you got the biggest place.

Bohler and his Laotian blossom had five rooms to themselves; true, in one he’d built a small altar, but it was our assessment he surely still had room to fit in a few Buddhas.

Hey, try to get along with em, Micka continued, they’re great, really, I’m tellin ya, an once we get asylum for em, he gave me a meaningful look, they’re gonna come in damn handy, David nodded. The yellow race is gonna dominate for the next century, minimum, plain as day, even says so in the Bible, doesn’t it, David? Yep, David said. Hah, hah, said Bohler.

If worst comes to worst we can make the Laotians passports, no big deal, I thought to myself, standing on the second floor of the imposing skyscraper of the Department of Foreigners, it seemed hostile from the second I walked in … but then in the hallway I ran into Lexa, hey there, nice a you to drop by, he said, c’mon into my office. I didn’t know I had a friend from the active era sitting in such an important seat. Guess I oughta update my lists, I made a mental note.

Once upon a time the two of us had packed books together in the same warehouse, actually brochures, mounds of brochures, Marx and Lenin and Krupskaya and Engelmord, it goaded us so much we started planning to build a balloon to fly us over the wires, I expressed concern about the firepower in the guard towers, but Lexa had a solution: We’ll just metal-plate the thing. That was the last of that. Maybe this time, though, he’d come up with something better.

Listen, Jituš, said Lexa, switch A over to C for me an keep it down, will ya, I got an old buddy in here. Miluš, get a move on with that two-o-five, the Boss’ll be comin in any minute! Irča, he called, and as the beauty walked in he said: Irča honey, I want you to meet Potok, he’s an artist, an actor. Wow! What were you in? Well, there was My Sweet Wittle Willage* … Wow! Who’d you play? Actually, I, uh … just Šafránová in that one. She walked out. Lexa didn’t laugh. Sorry, I snapped, I said … Nah, forget it, I just wanted to show the girls that I’m … you know, now that I’m a pencil pusher an all. Hey, how bout you guys, how bout you, how’s life? Still actin? Oh yeah, and how, I almost burst out laughing. Then I thought of something, hey Lexa, you know a Major Mrkvica, works in passports? Yeah, good guy, just got promoted. He’s that piece a shit that wouldn’t let my first wife see me, I said. I’d like to spit in his face, that’s the scumbag that advised me to emigrate … in the interests of the state, he told me, that Major Fuckface …

Hey, Lexa stood up. I know this stuff as well as you do, darn it. But he’s a pro, we need these people. I come up against it each an every day. But Christ, you’re out boozin it up, playin around in some theater, someone’s gotta do this stuff.

Father Bohler prays for you, I said, for alla you that’ve taken on the responsibility. If it helps any.

Prayers always help.

Hey Lexa, ever get the feelin that all you guys that went into politics feel guilty about not havin a normal life?

Hey Potok, ever think maybe you guys that aren’t involved in politics feel guilty about leavin it to somebody else?

Well now, that’s a serious argument.

So let’s drop it. What do you need? The only time old friends ever come around here is when they need a favor.

I need asylum for six Laotians.

Got any IDs?

I laid the six exotic passports featuring a picture of an elephant, hammer and sickle circling above its tall forehead, on his desk, near the paperweight.

Come by tomorrow. An wanna know when we’ll stop feelin guilty?

When?

When we all get used to it. Some to the fact that they got power, an some to the fact that they don’t.

But I mean it must take a heavy toll on you, it must be a problem, I mean power over people, that’s heavy stuff.

Power’s only a problem for those that don’t have it.

Aha.

Yep.

Aright, ciao, an thanks.

Bye now.

Hey Lexa, I turned around in the doorway.

Yeah?

She’s a real beauty.

Don’t I know it.

I went around babbling and acting, David sat in his leather armchair, pondering and combining and sending out signals and directing the tentacles, and Micka was everywhere, handling the paperwork.

We were the Organization, and Micka worked magic with so many papers at once that we were all things in all shapes, and if a black wind blew our way we could roll right up and cease to exist.

The occasional explanations he gave us went in one ear and out the other, so eventually he gave up. This was in years 1, 2, 3, etc., when he started to speak in the bewitching tongue of economics … and sometimes he would talk to himself: So you’ll sail through the new tax, we’re a cooperative, only bound by the old contract, which is registered with Rycký, but he’s okay, he’s one of ours … look, s.r.o.’s Czech for gMBh, but it’s the same as politics, right is left an left is wrong … take cartels, we’re talkin 19th century, man … as for the gadgets, anybody that’s not with us we persuade, an anybody we can’t persuade we flatten … What’s this? They got us hangin on the hangars still, so we deduct the rent, that gives us … movable debts at Commercial an Early Bird, hah hah … an invoice here, an invoice there, just keep it comin’s all I care … hey, Micka, I told him, I don’t like this, Community Organization, Manufacturing Cooperative, sounds like shit, how bout a Syndicate? Can the romance, you hack, wait’ll after the elections. If those half-assed eggheads from SOP pick up a decent percentage in the fourth an the sixth an good old Bfevnov, we’ll get it goin there, that’ll be Švejcar an Špála … hey how bout this Rybka guy, do we know him? … He was in the slammer with Křenek in ’79, David mumbled as if hypnotized. An Bohler knows Křenek from the Expressway, they worked on the chain gang there in ’82, he fished from his memory bank.

David carried the whole matrix around in his magical head, into which in regular sessions we deposited every thread: former classmates, pseudodroogs from the Sewer, coworkers from boiler rooms and warehouses, ugly mugs from loony bins, tennis courts, and prisons, two-bit artists from cellars, attics, and the Academy, ess-tee-bee agents, Charter 77* signatories, journalists and train engineers, officials, friends, enemies, men and mice, gals, guys, and dogs, civil servants and their secretaries, Poles, Ruthenians, Jews, and Kanaks, every face we ever glimpsed through the windows of our fast-moving vehicle, model 1, 2, 3, etc. … after the explosion … but also from long before … contacts, connections, situations … who did time with who, who slept with who, who hated who, all the gossip, facts, and information, when dusted off and combined by David, formed the silver net that was to snag the golden fish with platinum eyes and scales of precious stone, the financier’s dream, the Al Capone Cooperative’s nightmare.