Jáchym Topol - City, Sister, Silver

One of the lesser Ludvigs’ wives was sleeping with the second-division Ludvig. They were fond enough of each other but too pressed chasing cash and the social limelight to plan a common path. The superior Ludvig sank a claw into the two officials, failing to realize the inferior Ludvig knew about his sweet secret. Jarmilka herself wanted her lesser husband to know that she knew that he knew. It was never spoken aloud, so as to preserve some sort of dignity. This way they all got something out of it: the greater Ludvig in bed, the lesser Ludvig in the office, and Jarmilka got both. The claw was sunk in over a few skillfully chosen sentences during lunch with the avant-garde actor Potok … following a small sample of a certain irregularity in the two officials’ files, and in one of them in particular … Potok, as if by a miracle, and it’s no longer any secret … above all through persistent nosiness, and last but not least with the luster of metal, had obtained the file from the other crushed official and, being an upstanding citizen, saw to its rectification.

These, to put it gentlemanly, irregularities could’ve meant surefire easy cash … all you had to do was bend forward, casually … with a smile … as meanwhile a breeze wafts, schoolgirls sing, the day grows sweet. It was purely by accident that the starving artist Potok happened on the 24-carat irregularities, and he has no intention of making a fuss, writing the newspapers, raking the muck … of course not! … he’s merely a poor bohemian, kind of a fool in fact … BUT. Let her leave me! I’ll walk out! confided the earnest fifth-division Ludvig over their next lunch, and the slippery Potok knew that the official tucking into the delicate strips of gleaming meat in je-ne-sais-quoi sauce à la Mouchon on the other side of the table … the shrewd Potok was treating … could just as easily walk right into the slammer. My Jarmilka’s got a thing for him … but he’s harassing me! You got a cousin, right? asked the patient Potok, that sly psychopath … Yeah, what’s that got to do with it? A lot, pal, a lot, Potok the good guy in a pinch leaned across the table … Shortly after that, the suffering fifth-division Ludvig decided to leave his Jarmilka to bang the second-division Ludvig, and went to see his cousin the MP, who in turn arrived for his appropriately high-level meeting with the troublesome superior Ludvig equipped with documentation of a scandal worthy of a first-class tabloid … the teeth-gnashing second-string ministerial official felt his glands wilt … upset, and with his high-ranking seat suddenly irretrievably slipping out from under him, he unconsciously and ever so casually and furtively dropped his left hand under the table and touched his quick-as-a-wink miniature member … no, not that, smiled the genial MP … and a few seconds shy of a heart attack the high official learned that he could keep his high seat, along with his bedmate and devoted coworker, and that the irregularities in the files … the date of a certain ruthless audit probing for those same 24-carat irregularities was conveyed with a whisper … and the old ticker kicked back in at the usual gallop … BUT.

And not long after, a danced-to-death Potok, trembling with emotion, was accepting congratulations from his elated pseudodroogs, and Jarmilka turned up for her percentage flushed with happiness and full of sex, which was her ABC … in addition to chuckles, the Organization gave her a bouquet and of course a couple slugs of the Fiery, and then she got acquainted with our buildings, putting in a word or two with lowered eyes about the things we could do together … I mean business-wise though, boys. And the metal flowed.

Just for thoroughness’ sake … Potok was sick to his stomach, but well, might as well, he said to himself … and the next day set out in a spotless byznys suit with Bohler’s beautiful Laotian lady, alias Madame Hoi-Tsu, a Japanese industrialist with a fragrant jasmine blossom tucked behind her dainty ear … and sporting the perfect ensemble, a subtle gray discreetly fading into dark green … my friend Cepková, the actress, had been teaching her how to walk in it. Ha, check me ou’! No bi’ deal! You look like a duck! Toes out! Cepková commanded. Don’t swing your ass, twist it. Give it a little toss. She doesn’t know what twist is! No, you nanny goa’! An’ since whe’ you know how Japane’e lady walk! You don’ know bean. We had to give her that. And from then on Bohler’s Laotian lady could move however she wanted. It was better like that anyway.

I’ve already referred to the misfortune that met one of the doctor’s sons, put to death at the hands of bandits. It was back in that old familiar ferment of the new unexplored era that the troubles with the hitlers began. And I saw Bohler the Great swing his olovrant.

The hitlers and stalingos came along right after time exploded, the blast having unplugged even the crummiest pipes of the Sewers, however worm-eaten they were and wherever the hell they went to, whatever disgusting Devil’s butt they went up … and the hitlers started slithering out … into the light straight from the eggs of the poisonous old serpent … they’d never heard of persuasion, the only thing they respected was violence … they were whores to power, the kind that makes problems for everyone else except the one who wields it … the stalingos crushed only those weaker and smaller than themselves, which there was no shortage of … they lived on the opposite side of the coin, the only power they had was dark … even Bohler miscalculated when he claimed it was under control, that their days were already numbered … because until that holy time comes, they and they alone will be counting the wounds and knocked-out teeth and shattered skulls of the others … those stalingos and gotwaalds* … and it takes the Lord an eternity to do the arithmetic … so defend yourself, Starry Bog tells you again and again … in all sorts of ways, by various means and methods … and all our pals that had any dealings with the hitlerite stalingos said it was worse than back in the Sewer … since after all you knew the spooks and they knew you and everyone knew the old time was spent … and some of our battered pals from friendly outfits sadly nodded their heads and spat tobacco … but now and then in the morning, since they were getting up early anyway … they’d polish up their bayonets … the good old warpath leads into the new time too … and there were new hitlers born every day, and they were acclimatized to the new time, to time in motion … and some weren’t even human … I myself caught one and kept him out in the yard … he’d never read a single sentence by Foglor or Landon or Kcharal ben May,* never heard of the human tribe or compassion, didn’t know how a person should treat the weak, especially widows and orphans, never heard of deference toward each and every woman … all potential sisters, or of great respect for them, stronger than any flamethrower, his dark heart was filled with nothing but complexes … which in order to survive he had to get out of his system … and he was eager to, all right … I ended up feeling so sorry for him I wanted to let him go, but David and Micka said no.

The attack came early, unexpectedly, and on several fronts at once.

Lady Laos and I were riding the subway back from an office where we’d pulled the old Japaneez bluff … we always arrived in a car with a driver, and he was Bohler’s man, a former parishioner of his, but I kept his palm greased so I could drag Lady Laos off, at least for a little while, to a hotel or my place on Gasworks … she wasn’t opposed to the idea of an occasional escape from the altar, the endless rackets with Buddhas, the blood-red wine … we’d always cuddle a little, but mainly we would talk, because I was fascinated by her tongue, now that I knew that Czech had exploded together with time, her tongue actually fascinated me more than all the rest of her beautiful golden-brown body.