Jáchym Topol - City, Sister, Silver

I had a dream, I said. It was a long dream, O brothers and blood brothers, so please be patient. And don’t forget that I’m only a humble messenger, the bearer of the dream.

There was a little buzz among my friends, because in the history of the community those opening words had only been spoken two or three times, and never by me, and they indicated the person in question had something urgent in his heart that concerned not only him but the entire community, and though it came from him he believed that it had been sent down to him to pass along to the others.

I’d been stifling the dream inside me for a long time now, it had been given to me by my spirit, my power, and I was glad at last to be able to share it, but also despondent because the dream was dark and I had only a vague idea what it meant. A community dream has its rules, though, so I still had to field the opening questions to fill my associates in on the picture.

Bohler: Take any stuff?

Me: Shrooms, weed, wheelies, but just a few, really. An red wine, lots of it. Also jumbo shrooms, Green Power, I think, I specified.

Sharky: When an where?

Me: Three, maybe five weeks back, in the time we’re in now. An for a long time goin in I didn’t take anything at all, to make sure it wouldn’t throw me. My place on Gasworks.

Micka: Anyone else around?

Me: Nope. I was solo.

Bohler: How long’d it last?

Me: Two days, I think. I spent all morning drinkin an druggin myself up, an then it started sometime after noon.

Micka: D’you eat?

Me: I tried some chevabchichi or somethin, but then I spit it out. The only thing I could keep down was spinach. An lotsa Water. When the wine ran out.

David: Did ja lie down the whole time?

The boys grinned knowingly.

Me: No, David, mostly I walked around, shakin an dancin a little.

Seeing David blush, though, I quickly added: Yeah, an I did lie down a little, towards the end.

What kina carpet? Bohler was curious.

Me: None. I tried beer, but it was still a rough landing. Got a headache an I was scared. I wanted to be alone an think it over, but I was afraid to stay there. But I did.

Micka: Right, now I remember! You sent me that fax from your place that you were takin four days off. You shoulda said you were havin a dream! I wouldna taken it outta your bonus.

Me: Whatever, I forgot.

Sharky: So go ahead an mark it down for him, why doncha.

Micka: Yeah, in a sec. C’mon, spill it, Potok. Any more questions, anyone?

No.

I’m sorry, O brothers and buddies, but right at the start I oughta mention … I recited the formula … a few basic blasphemic doubts. Don’t forget, I’m just the bearer of the dream, so this doesn’t necessarily represent any of my own worthless opinions: namely, is our Teaching, the teaching of the Knights of the Secret, truly correct? Because this dream, O buddies an knights, led me into dark lands, an I donno if they’re only mine. It’s got two traps, as far as I can tell. The first one right at the start, the second one at the end, an they’re both traps of the old time.

As I spoke, it occurred to me that the whole dream was one big trap … but when it comes to important dreams, interpretation and commentary are forbidden, we’re no eurojournalists, as Sharky once quipped. I was about to say it anyway, but then I felt the voice entering me, speaking through me, so instead I just said the words:

In my dream we were high in the air, on a flying carpet like. David sat in front, watching out for clouds, Micka stood at the helm, Bohler was meditating, Sharky was trying to hook up to some telegraphic waves so he could figure out where we were, an I was stompin around, testin the strength of the wind. We didn’t have any Water, but we were havin fun. There was kind of a casual feelin about it, like we knew that we were safe, driftin along in the stream of time, like we’d saddled it or somethin. An then all at once, hey: some sign with a blinkin arrow. So we go blastin over there an the sign says: OS 5 km. What could that be doin here, way up high above the earth in the middle of flowin time? we wondered. Aha! I’ve got it, the clever Sharky shouted, it’s the old abbreviation for OSADA, settlement! So we paddled on over in that direction, lookin forward to seein our pals the Black Crows an the whole Apache band, old Ludvík Crow Feather an the blood brothers Kopcem an Veverčák,* those guys all hunt together nowadays! Yeah, we’ll build a big fire, an if it turns out to be some hobo camp, that’s aright too, we’ll give em some of our songs, yeah, do a little drinkin. So we went on driftin along in time, feelin safe an comfortable. An after a while, another sign! What a cool machine, friends, it’s a heavenly timemobile! Micka hollered, an then we came to the sign, an this one said OSVĚ 2, an it was a bit on the dingy side, probly from all the campfire smoke, so we whooped for joy, because it was obvious it was OSVĚŽOVNA, a refreshment stand, as the ingenious Bohler realized, an so we flew on in that friendly time, enjoyin our heavenly journey, an then in the distance we spotted another sign, so we made a beeline for it, an when we got there, O my brothers an chiefs, we saw that it said: OSVĚTIM, Auschwitz, an it was too late for us to turn back, no matter how badly we wanted to, an our heavenly mobile all of a sudden started to plunge, O my brothers, because we’d come to the place where all the time from every world in human heaven collides … suddenly there was a vertical wall with time suckin us down into a black hole like a whirlpool, a huge maelstrom straight outta that paranoid Poe. An then we landed.

An we landed softly, brothers, the ground there was so soft we even bounced back up a little. An when we dropped down from that bounce, dear buddies, some of us found ourselves in ashes up to our waists, others just to their ankles, depending on how we fell. It was the ashes of cremated people, my brothers, the ashes of cremated Jews. Any last hope we had that maybe there’d been a mixup, an that at least we were in some slightly cosmopolitan wicked old gulag, was lost. An the ashes stirred up by our landing stuck to our shoes an clothes, an made it hard for us to walk. An where there weren’t ashes, brothers, there were bones, human bones, an endless ghastly sea of bones. Then we saw towers in the distance an so we started walkin … usin one of the taller towers as our point of orientation … an we were afraid cause the skulls were watchin us, lookin at us, an we asked ourselves: Why are we here? Why us? Why did it happen to me? An some of the skulls seemed to answer: Why not? Some of them lay there softly, jaws set in a knowing smile, but more, far more, just peered out blankly at us, what was left of the jaws twisted into a grimace of pain, cause these’d got it the hard way, brothers, an heavy-duty, alive. There was a sea of them, an ocean. An this comparison occurred to us when we couldn’t walk anymore because we kept plunging into the bones an so we tried to swim our way through, we tried to move an crawl an shove our way through with our arms. But it was too gruesome. An the worst thing about our fear, O sea wolves an blood brothers, was it kept growing. Our horror, my brothers, spread, expanding inside our brains to truly vast dimensions. An as our horror grew, it was obvious its borders were shifting an we could only look forward to more.

Crawling didn’t work either, because the bones kept caving in an we were afraid that we would suffocate under the weight of all that death. So then we started to jump. An because we were a tribe, we tried to boost each other’s courage. Who ever said Jews stink? This place doesn’t smell like anything, let alone the appetizin aroma of garlic, shit! Yeah, shit, at least if it smelled like that! said one of us. Hey, what if we’re tanked? Why don’t we just pretend that we all drank some kina snake oil, one of us suggested. But David said: Nah, there’s no way to get this wasted. This is reality, an a pretty dumb one if you ask me. An at that moment, knights an gentlemen, we heavily an seriously detested David. An one of us biffed him with a shinbone an said harshly: Shut up! An we inched along toward the towers, trying not to catch the skulls’ empty glances so we wouldn’t go insane.