Jáchym Topol - City, Sister, Silver

The heroes (of which the versifying Jícha was one) occasionally found themselves coming to in a shattered store window at the point between plastered and hungover, right at that point where there’s no turning back, waking up to the pain of a body cut by broken glass, stirred to life by police sirens. One even managed to cut his ears off in his cell.

But these heroes, destroying their bodies by jumping through windows with frenzy’s proud feeling of self-satisfaction, were complicated personalities. Neurotics. Artists. Criminals. Masochists. With serious Promethean liver problems. And no eagle around to soar up from the horizon, ready to rend. No one gave a damn about them. They accepted the responsibility and paid their own way. I’d rather pay than say thank you, as Timpo put it. He went Buddhist. Shaved his head and got new teeth. Munches grains with em. Lives somewhere.

Yeah yeah, me and my colleagues would sit around at those gloomy conferences of ours. We guys had it somewhat easier, at least we had to show off for the girls … of our tribe … which made their lives less rich, since any woman with half a brain is naturally kind, gentle, and beautiful, they don’t have to try that hard. Yeah, if we look back at our history, said Čáp one day in conference … it’s no disgrace … to survive, is it? All that massacring … it never stops … the Picardians, the Waldensians, Hus, White Mountain, exterminations, imprisonments, a few executions here an there … censorship an exile … German camps, Soviet camps, Czechoslovak camps, some folks even managed all three … Kulakistan … light bombin, heavy bombin … buzz bombs every which way … nothin but wires all over … an German shepherds … the best people slaughtered, driven out, locked up nonstop … always someone gettin their ass kicked … an you wonder why folks on the street look so bad! There’s no spark, no flair … it’s a flop … Yeah yeah, we nodded our heads, spitting tobacco … an wait’ll the bolshevik goes down an they open up the archives an we get a look at how many spooks there really were … they won’t open em, don’t worry … they’ll just draw up a new social contract an everyone’ll button their lip, better to just forget, close your eyes an move on … Where to? … No way! I can’t forget anymore, I’m not lettin anyone rob me of myself, or my time, ever again … one of us shouted hysterically … come off it, the bolshevik’s not goin down in our lifetime, don’t worry … we won’t go, this is no Tobruk, or even Warsaw, we’ll just keep gettin beaten down over an over an over … here in the Sewer … history? What about the Hussites? Ick, pitooey! Those pigs killed priests. All right … the Battle of Britain!* Cool … but with a foreign army! Milan, King Vladislav!* Cool, cool, that’s ancient stuff … People might remember somethin or somebody … if they hadn’t all gone stupid … Absolutely, there was that one courageous old teacher that that actor played in that movie, one of those high-powered gothic bloodbaths they were always takin us to … Russians killing Germans and everyone else … and each other … me and my classmates sinking down into the darkness while some bestial red bolshevik blabfest or necrofilm unfolded up on screen, the only trick was taking out Bajza, outwitting Hála, and not tipping Glaser off … as I deftly and discreetly occupied the seat next to Věruška … often it worked and then I’d regret there weren’t two of me … to protect her from the other side … and as the body count grew … at first some kids got sick to their stomachs … girls puked … but then we got used to the bazookas and shredded bodies and crumbling buildings and flamethrowers … in retrospect I’d say it had the emotional charge of fireworks … they didn’t take the older kids, since it only provoked ridicule … and ridicule in the relative safety of a dark theater full of screams, giggles, and shouted advice: Kill im! Rat-tat-tat-tat! Fire, Russian scum! Shoot im, stupid! and so on and so forth, and our cowardly teachers, the ones that stopped being Mrs. and turned into Comrade, couldn’t handle us, and then bottles started passing around … we felt up the girls, just the ones that wanted us to, and kissed them too … Bajza handed out pills one time … he’d been on drugs since he was thirteen, picked it up from his bros … and the screening was heavily disrupted by visions, at least for me, Věruška squirmed and tossed uneasily … I didn’t move … but there was also a Moral principle to the whole whacked-out spectacle, and that was the fictitious courageous teacher played by the old actor … A higher moral principle, he told his assembled students after a few of their classmates had been coincidentally killed by Germans: Dear children, to murder a tyrant is not a crime! It was a movie about the Heydrichiad,* which some streets still dream about to this day, a few people killed a tyrant before themselves being killed for treason … in a church! … and we had good reason to wink, cough, and shuffle our feet guardedly, and blow our noses conspiratorially, because that was a good slogan … and the movie ended there, but we went on shuffling our feet and grinning, because we knew very well how it continues in reality, after the movie ends … that teacher said it in front of the whole class, no doubt afterwards someone told on him and they killed him too, it was obvious … but it didn’t matter, that’s the way it goes, and there were approximately as many brats in the class in the movie as there were of us … and I kept waiting for one of my teachers to stand up and say … something … but they all just said the invasion was great, a happy event all in all, and the Russians’re our Big Brothers … yep, that’s how it was back then … we nodded our heads and spat tobacco … someone here and there battled injustice … got high … and Hála learned Chinese and Glaser did time.

Feeling jilted was a lot of it, both boys and girls got a slap in the face from the world too soon, and too soon they saw that the map was blacked out … and only the stupidest humor worked anymore … it was part of their development and they lived in bugged flats … and our conferences were gloomy till Čáp came up with his teaching on ants, but I already said that … and the sun came up in the morning, pretty much every day, and from time to time history gave somebody an idea or a seizure. And out came the Fiery and the day survived on its own.

Good old tribalism … only … I mentioned circling in the cage, frenzy and victims. Anyone who leaps through windows pays for himself, for his demons. It’s easier, though, to catch yourself a cat, a stray dog, a baby swallow, someone quiet and mute, a slave without any rights. Someone who it hurts and who isn’t gonna talk.

Every little kid knows all this, steal his scooter so he gets his bearings early on, so it’s obvious right away; it’s a war of good versus evil, went the word among us.

The gastarbeiters came like manna from heaven in the last years of the old time.

Even the simplest citizens found something to relish in their massive influx.

Hatred threw open its discharge valves and went far into the new time. And Jícha had a job and remained on the scene along with the hatred.

And I tell myself: Everything’s obvious and always has been. I get it all, understand it all, listen with sympathy. Look at myself. I’d do some kicking too. It’s best to get the devil down on the ground and finish him off with your boots.

Jícha also had a knack for recounting his dubious experiences and occasional wheelings and dealings in a pretty entertaining way. Even squeezed some cash out of it now and then. But the old horrors paled with time, the new stories lacked strength and listeners, and his stock plunged irreversibly. Most of the gastarbeiters either left Bohemia or fled to desirable states. What’s more, killing was an everyday thing in the new time and people got tired of Jícha’s reports. He grew glummer and glummer. Just when he realized he could finally write whatever he wanted but nobody cared, the paper dumped him. He got bored with traveling, so he’d put a bomb in the office to give himself something to write about. It went downhill from there. I’d heard he even began writing poems again. But meanwhile the high-school girls had turned old and gruff and lived their own poetry now. The new high-school girls didn’t even read. And Jícha wasn’t interested in teachers. Now and then and more out of habit than anything else, some pal of his in the press still put in a word of praise for him. After all Jícha could get pretty hostile, and the Pearl’s a small place. And the culture section addresses are listed in the front of every dream book. So at least the scrawnier critics were careful. Through some error Jícha even scooped up a few literary prizes. No one knew what for, least of all him. He hung around editorial offices, living off crumbs. Invented dead poets for radio shows. Word got out, and had he been at the zenith of his underground glory they would’ve let it go, but as it was they booted him down the stairs. I’d heard he vanished from the Pearl for a time. Didn’t matter to me, I didn’t exactly miss having him around.