Jáchym Topol: City, Sister, Silver

In Czech the expression was mně se to v hlavě mihalo jak v koňský jámě — literally “it flashed through my head like in a horse pit.” In the author’s own words: “I still remember this as a little Central European boy: By the river (in Pořící nad Sázavou) there were these pits, just a deep hole basically, where the horses would go swimming to wash off after work. I remember how suddenly all this sludge and mud and horse shit and rotten branches and grass would start rising up to the surface … when that huge horse body sank in there, into the pit, the depths. Since we didn’t know how to swim yet, we were scared to death of the horse pits — that we’d fall in there and drown. So if something flashes through my head like in a horse pit, it means chaos and danger.”

Because of the way it falls in the text — “but the old woman intervened again, shooing them off … my head churned like a horse pit, Černá … out there in the woods, she’d better have strong protection …” — it would have been impossible to keep the original construction without sounding awkward (insert it for yourself and you’ll see what I mean). Respecting the fact that it wasn’t meant to be clear even in the original, my solution preserves the personal content while tailoring it to the context and maintaining the uneasiness the author meant to evoke.

Lastly I’d like to explain how the text was edited and notated. While the first two drafts of my translation followed the first edition, on the final go-round my editor and I decided to incorporate some of the cuts Topol himself made for the novel’s second edition, which weighed in at 455 pages versus the original 481. Given that the Czech text was edited with a light hand, we also took the bolder but, I believe, beneficial step of trimming it at points, especially in the case of obvious oversights (e.g., Potok being handed the same piece of paper twice in a single paragraph), phrases or sentences that made no sense (even to the author, in retrospect), and material that would have meant nothing to English speakers without a labored explanation, thereby ruining the effect. I should add that Topol never hesitated to suggest I use my delete button. (Interested readers can find most of the longer cuts on the Catbird Press website, at www.catbirdpress.com/bookpages/sister.htm.)

Naturally the translation still includes a number of words and references that few non-Czechs would recognize. To provide an experience as close as possible to that of a Czech reading the original, these items are marked with an asterisk and briefly identified in a Notes section at the back of this book.

Catching and tracking down these references, along with the various foreign words and phrases found throughout, was a major part of my work on this translation. When possible, I did my research on the Web or in the library, but often I was forced to turn to the source to explain or elaborate. And it is to Jáchym himself that I owe the most thanks, as author and collaborator, but above all as my friend. I know it wasn’t always pleasant for him to revisit a work that he considered over and done with, and to respond to the barrage of nit-picking questions I rained down on him.

Beyond my consultations with the author, many others aided me along the way. I cannot name them all here, but there are several individuals I turned to repeatedly, and they deserve to be acknowledged. In Prague, Lucie Váchová and Vladimír Michálek both helped me out by receiving my e-mailed missives to Jáchym, passing them on to him, and sending his replies back to me. Here in New York, Irena Kovářová and Jiří Zavadil fielded questions from me, at all hours, on everything from language to history to geography to pop culture. Karin Beck, who wrote her master’s thesis on the novel, aided me in translating the German and Russian portions; apart from that, it was always a treat to discuss the book with someone else who knew it in such detail. Special thanks to Czesław Miłosz for granting permission to use a previously untranslated poem of his, and to Magda Samborska for checking my translation against the Polish original. Czech history wizard Brad Abrams of Columbia University offered valuable input on some of the trickier historical notes. To Peter Kussi, who taught me Czech for two years in graduate school before I lived in Prague, belong my heartfelt thanks for steering me through a tough metaphor or two, but mainly for inspiring me to translate in the first place. I’d also like to thank Robert Wechsler of Catbird Press for taking on the exhausting task of wading through the manuscript, and for bearing with my constant revisions right up to the end. And last but not least Clare Manias, who not only designed the eyecatching cover but supported me throughout with grace, love, and patience.

Alex Zucker

Brooklyn

December 1999

THE ENGRAVING AND IN THE HOLE. THE WAY IT WAS WITH SHE-DOG. WE SEE THEM GO. SHE HELD ME.

We were the People of the Secret. And we were waiting. Then David lost his mind. Maybe the reason his head cracked was because it was the best, sending out the signals that propelled the whole crew, the whole community, forward. That’s what we told ourselves, that we were going forward, getting somewhere, but we soon lost all concept which way we were headed.

Some of us might have noticed we had stopped going in a straight line and were turning in a circle. It also struck me several times that time was fading in the pale light, turning more translucent, losing its color and taste again, and I was horrified by that. Probably Sharky was the only one who had a tangible goal: to rid himself of the box and its phantoms. Me, I went like a bear on a treadmill, the whole thing was scary, but it was fun and charged me up. Micka couldn’t afford to stop glowing, and he never glowed more than when the metal flowed.

The thing with David happened after the Ministry cleaned out our well. Not only did he constantly sniff at his thumbs. But I also noticed a change in his face, his eyes starting to bulge while his chin seemed to be caving in. His lips hung open loosely, you look like a gourd, I kidded, he didn’t respond.

I found him down in the storeroom, sitting under the fabrics like he was in some Bedouin tent, one hand in brocade, it all feels the same, he said, it’s exactly the same, it’s all the same to me.

What’re you talkin about, I asked.

There’s no difference. It’s all the same. You did the cars, right?

Yeah.

See, he said, you or Novák. You’re both the same to me. That’s the way it feels to me, physically an mentally. An that’s all I’m gonna say.

I gave up and went back upstairs where we sat around and talked the way we always did after work.

So how did it all begin? If I’m going to retrace my footsteps … back then … in the Stone Age … I have to talk about the time me and Bára walked through the square full of Germans, and I will, because that was the place where I began to feel the motion, where time took on taste and color, where the carnival started for me.

We walked through the square full of refugees. Now Prague, the hemmed-in city, the Pearl, a dot on the map behind the wires, had its very own refugees. I’m going to write about how it began, and I have to grab the table with one hand and gouge my fingernail into my thumb, I will, and I have to do the same with the other hand too, and feel the pain so I feel something real. If I want to know how it was. Because the main part of the story, the end, is vanishing into the void where the future and all the dead dwindle into nothing.

It started with the sweeping away of walls and the exchanging of souvenirs, I’ll trade you a piece of the wall for a bullet shell from the square, a lump of candle wax, a piece of phone-tap wire, as time went by I lost my collection, it only made sense at first, amid the joy and exhilaration, what use is there in saving splinters, iron scales, an besides: obvious symbols only work for things closed by time. Yet you haven’t left that reality. You’re still walkin the boards in the same performance, on the same familiar set, your rankled nerves detect the presence of the board of directors, the ones that’re runnin the show, and is it? or is it not? part of a plan? is it by design? You still sense the nasty looks on the other side of the curtain, the sneering, the rat, the wicked uncle’s grin. The Face.