Jáchym Topol - City, Sister, Silver

I found out what Stick’d been getting at about the Dump changing after a rain … after a real downpour the surface changed, at least where I was … paper mountains flattened under its weight, in other spots the surface swelled … where there used to be pieces of orange stuff now there was slimy muck, even the trails changed, but I didn’t go out much. At least the rain drove off the bugs.

But there tended to be a lotta mud on those trails.

Occasionally I stopped by Vulture’s, sat around the fire. Listened. Same stories here as at the station, even met a guy who’d hung out with Gramps for a time … but these people weren’t as frenzied … there wasn’t so much movement, there were even families here. From what I could get, the mysterious Mr. Jasuda had something like a police force … people with kids weren’t scared anymore … Vulture told me he’d been one of the first to come to the Dump, back when people used to get jumped.

But there were still plenty of wild people here, a guy could never be sure. And I didn’t have anything to take in hand, I’d thrown it away. Lost it. Not anymore, I’d told myself.

Oughta lay down a rope at least … so ya can always find yer spot, Vulture suggested. But I kina hang out all over, I said. Sometimes on my way back from the fire I’d take a detour on purpose, there was no need for anyone to know where I was. If there was a string they could find me. Mr. Jasuda. Or someone. No, thank you very much. Not anymore.

I kept playing around with magazines. Tearing out pictures of stuff and people, along with their names. In the head of lettuce I’d pulled from the pit were slugs, repulsive little things. I wondered if I threw them into one of those gurgling orange pools whether they’d grow into mutants. That’s the kind of crazy stuff I thought about. But I kept quiet.

Food. I hadn’t eaten so much since the days of the Organization. I fed myself even when I didn’t have an appetite. I used to be a dancer, knew how to leap high. But now I dragged. The green of my jacket merged with the colors of the Dump. Here the mountain patrol in all likelihood would’ve been at a total loss. It was a colorful world. In that, it resembled the world in the magazines. I lounged around the barrels stuffing myself. No longer tortured myself with thoughts of Černá. Sometimes I’d see us making love. Sometimes I’d call up the silkiness of her skin. It didn’t matter that two of my toenails had fallen off and the skin on my palms was peeling. I lay there sated, and on those increasingly rare truly warm days I’d strip naked and lie in the sun. It fed me too.

Sometimes I went for walks. Even when I didn’t have to go anywhere, I did it for the movement. My head had stopped hurting. I only drank by the fire sometimes. It was the only way I could stand the lamentations and braggadocio. Some people have the unique ability to curse and beg for help all at once. Here almost everyone spoke that way.

Lying behind the barrels, I saw: the wind wafting pieces of paper, a trickle of water sparkling between the old train tracks, pulp oozing out of a burst plastic bag, two pigeons pecking a hunk of salami, then a dense black cloud spread over the scene, and when it floated off again the birds were gone and the paper had settled to the ground. All of it at once. I sensed a miracle. I was awestruck, filled with awe. This is happening? This exists? And I’m here to witness it? On the inside I was all curled up, but my body was taut. I didn’t take anything for granted. It’s here. It is what it is. And I’m part of it. It’s … sometimes it’s even beautiful and I enjoy it. That’s enough.

Maybe it was the food, or maybe it was not talking so much, but I grew stronger and more peaceful. I’d put it aside. The idea that I’d kill myself if somebody else didn’t kill me first was still in me. I’d betrayed a lot. I’d lost my tribe, my people, there was nothing tying me down.

Around the fire the tramps and drunkards spoke into the flames, conversations intertwining and crisscrossing like the trails of the Dump. It was the speech of the train station, a barebones tongue. Not trash. Always someone yammering: So I slug im, right, he’s shittin his pants, right, an so’s the other one, right, relating the wreckage of his odyssey in leftover language, a warrior without a war … yeah an I’m on her an she farts so I says, hey cow, are you shittin or fuckin, bitch … I says to him, I go, an I walk out, I tell ya …

And sometimes they fought. I surprised myself. The night Hippo kept goading me on. Why ya by yerself … you a homo? Yeah. Yer a disgustin moron! Hippo told me, obviously proud of his putdown, beaming around at the others. Cut it out, Vulture said, you know Mr. Jasuda doesn’t like scuffles … he ain’t here, said Hippo, slamming a branch into the fire. Then he yanked it out. Reminded me of the sheepherder. I whimpered, I’d almost forgot. Listen to him, whinin like a dog … are you a dog, you stinky-ass hobo? … Hippo gave me a shove. I fell into the fire on my knees, but then, getting up, the words tumbled out of me … shut your fuckin face or I’ll kill you, I’ll chop alla you into little bits, an as for you, you piece a shit, I’ll skin you alive an carve you like a goose … I kicked him, he wasn’t expecting it … Vulture stood up … suddenly I saw it all, the fire and the shadows, said: People, forgive me, I was asleep, he woke me up … yeah, he provoked cha, I saw it, said Vulture … shake hands, you’re buddies now … we shook.

To Vulture, Jasuda was a god … and one day when I made a few disrespectful remarks, Stick … he was a little younger than me and one of his legs was shorter from some botched operation, so he walked with a cane, ergo the nickname … turned to me and said: Better watch what cha say, the old man works for Jasuda. Never know what might happen to ya! An … he took me aside, the old man’s got a flintstick under a board out in the shack, Jasuda gave the okay, so watch it. I took what he said seriously, I’d met a pretty wide variety of bosses and their methods of enforcing obedience were all the same, the only difference was context, the most dangerous fucks’re the ones who get off on their power … only the next day Vulture said the same thing about Stick … I decided to believe them both and kept my trap shut. After all, they’d probably saved my life, and did it like it was nothing, didn’t feel the need to talk about it. If they hadn’t taken me in, as a matter of course, without any bullshit or questions, I most likely would’ve gone down the first few days I was there. And not the way I wanted to, either.

Stick showed me where not to step. Stay away from the brown stuff, sticks to your soles, an don’t ever step in those pools. Saw this one old bag fall in … Stick shuddered … glad it wasn’t my granny … there were a lot of old people there at the Dump.

Among the machines, among their skeletons, I found a heavy iron lever, dragged it back to the barrels … lifted it every day. As the sun warmed up, I established a sort of daily routine. The only thing I wouldn’t interrupt was my dreams, when images, words, and sentences emerged. I didn’t move much then. Other times, though, the rhythm of the images forced me to walk around. I even went without water one day.

The Spinach Bar was still in my brain, that was where I’d spoken to her, that was where my love was, let her be a whore, let her be a single slit in the body of a whore, but let her be, let her be mine, I realized if I picked up and left it would only be to find her, because there was still hope … the images were also of all the trips I’d made by train, wherever, luggage swaying in the nets overhead, someone else’s … and I supplemented my dreams. The magazines took up a lot of my time. I took my world from their pages too. Sometimes I had to peel all kinds of sticky stuff off of them.