Jáchym Topol: City, Sister, Silver

With death whizzing by on all sides, we had to duck down and send out feelers, picking up and transmitting the tribal signal. In our hole in the hillside, eyes shut: What do you see? Darkness. Is it far away? No, it’s right here. What do you see? You. Other people, small, they’ve all got the same face. My darkness is red now. Mine too.

Our petting, culminating in orgasm for me and then, much later, for her as well, was more than just the giving and receiving of bliss, it was the ritual of an encircled tribe. Like all my loves, Little White She-Dog was brunette, I called her white because of her skin. I still call her that in my thoughts, even now that everything I’m trying to capture here is gone and I found my sister and Little White She-Dog turned into a ghost, a good she-demon with inscrutable intentions.

He put a wafer on my tongue, the sign of God, she said, and I still had semen in there with your kids, they might not all’ve been dead yet, I ran the whole way.

Later she wiped off the taste, no longer needing that mosquito net in the jungle, that coating on the tongue we lied with so often, to our families, teachers, priests, to everyone outside the community, and instead she ate an apple, or took a sip of water, using other, more elaborate masks and disguises. Don’t move, she’d say, I’m not, I’d lie, reaching for her, the tip of her deceitful tongue vibrating in my ear, still ringing opidda opiddum, puera pulchrum, ghetto ghettum as excitement would transform me from a gimp in an engraving where time stood still into a hunk of live flesh gorged with blood, starving and prepared to devour. She was older and liked to toy with me, leaving me inside her, teaching me to sense the powers one eventually prefers to sharpen oneself so as not to burden psychiatrists: the little boy learned when and how to use girl power, the childlike power of the word no, and when to be a warrior. As the little boy got older, he didn’t just dance the way she wanted. And only then did she really begin to glow, becoming Beautiful She-Dog, with breasts. Until then they had the hole in the ground, curled up in there like embryos, sensing the earth’s motion. Afterwards they would go home to their families, living their lives in the wings.

We slept together and played together, actually we lived together, but there was such a flood of filth and futility to fight, the magic stayed somewhere down below, glowing inside her like coals, and in me too, only cooler, kind of like amber, and sometimes when we were alone a long time the magic would show itself, and the day we went to look at the Germans I saw the red darkness again.

Here I am handin out cookies like some pensioner when we oughta be flailin those guys over there, said Sinkule.

The cops were removing a haggard man in a suit from the wall above the embassy entrance, he wanted to take the shortcut, resisted, they pummeled him with their truncheons. He picked himself up off the ground and obediently joined the procession of Germans patiently marking time in front of the embassy. There were thousands of them. The rows wound down the crooked lanes all the way to the square, where traffic had been stopped for days now.

Hey, here they come again, Sinkule slugged my shoulder. A row of white helmets with long truncheons began setting up barricades in the crowd. The Germans who were cut off from the embassy got nervous, tensing up, horrified that this was the end, that after everything had gone so smoothly, like a miracle, like a dream, it was finished, now came the clampdown, the ones who’d gone in could leave, but for the ones they hadn’t gotten to yet, it was too late … this was the selection, you in, you out, you yes and you no, the crowd let out a howl and leaned into the cordon, mothers passing children over the cops’ helmets to the people on the other side, probly relatives, I figured.

Once the kid’s inside, I guess they let the mother in too. That must be why they’re doin it. Yeah, but it’s not like the kids’ve got ID. How do the mothers prove they’re theirs?

Let’s get lost, c’mon.

What if some other lady snatches the kid so she can get out. How do they decide? Like back in the days of King Sollie?

Let’s take off, c’mon.

Nah, said Sinkule, it’ll calm down again. The cops don’t care about the Germans. I been watchin. They’ll hassle folks a while an then pull out. They just wanna show us they’re here.

I’d rather not stick around. Wouldn’t wanna get nailed.

They won’t come down this far, take it easy.

Sinkule had been at the embassy every day, he was one of those people the exodus fascinated.

He glanced at me. Anyway, you look German, they won’t mess with you. Do you speak it?

Nah, just stuff like Hände hoch, Los schweine, Achtung minen, Arbeit macht frei, that crap from the movies. An Meine liebe kommen ficken, * never used that one though.

Sinkule was right, the cops pulled out, and an eerie silence settled back over the crowd.

How bout me, think I look German?

You? I almost cracked up. Sure, an Goebbels was German too.

I speak it though, my mom was German.

They’re back again.

The cops, surrounded by the crowd in the space between the West German and U.S. embassies with the cameras of every TV station on earth humming monotonously, were evidently uncomfortable. These four characters looked like reinforcements from the countryside. Normally the cops didn’t take the narrow passageway down from the Rychta beer hall. And if they did, then only in larger groups. The Germans in front moved slowly, working their way up the slope, the rest of them tread in place. Ordinarily a crowd murmurs, the individual utterances intertwining, it’s a little like water, you can lap up the words. But these people were silent, as if they’d decided not to talk until they made it through the gate. Suddenly someone in the crowd broke into loud laughter. Then a child burst into tears. Then another. All at once the square was full of weeping children, it struck me that maybe it was like dogs: once one starts, the rest join in. But these kids weren’t crying on account of a few silly Czech policemen. Some had been traveling for days now, on overcrowded trains, in Trabants and Wartburgs piled high with junk, on their way out of the cage, on the road to Paradise. Some of them must’ve been hungry, sleepy, and sensed the anxiety of their parents, wearily lugging them on their shoulders, tugging them by the hand uphill toward the embassy. The laughter didn’t let up, it was a high-pitched nervous female laugh, like the wailing of some faraway bird, in an interrupted dream, in the country, in the woods, at night.

Sluggishly the crowd shifted uphill, leaving the lower part of the square empty except for a group of young Germans sitting on the ground drinking tea. Some had spent the cold night on the square and didn’t look like they cared much about waiting another hour or two. One or two even looked like they didn’t have a care in the world. A pair of cops stopped next to them. The officer lost his patience, knocking the thermos out of the hand of an elderly Czech woman who was pouring tea for the Germans. Where’s your permit? he bellowed. A ripple went through the crowd again, and in a blink the old lady was standing alone. I admired her calm heroism in the face of the officer’s distasteful outburst.

That’s old Vohryzková from our building, said Sinkule. At least now she’ll give up that Mother Teresa act, stupid cunt.

Stick it to her, you savage! he roared at the cop, and we bolted.

Thank the Lord they always send those hicks to Prague, we never would’ve made it through the passageways otherwise.

Just to be safe, though, I crossed myself. We came out gasping for breath by the church with the Christ Child.*