Jáchym Topol - City, Sister, Silver

Great to have you back, Hadraba said in Jícha’s direction.

Yeah, haven’t seen you in ages … where you been? I inquired politely.

Faugh! went Spider, I hadn’t noticed him come in.

Guy had a grant! he added with envy.

Yep, Jícha nodded. Went out into the world a literat. And returned a literat and a globetrotter, he proclaimed in a deep voice.

Spider shuffled his feet.

Yep, my friends, dear pack, I returned because it dawned hard on me, Jícha continued. But that’s not what my story’s about.

Hadraba comfortably stretched his legs. Spider clambered over the sack with the corpse and nestled into a chair. Jícha stretched out his back, shut his eyes, and started swaying in place from side to side. I knew what was coming.

Every group in those days used a different storytelling technique to solidify the community. I guess due to my congenital diffidence, I failed to sufficiently highlight the fact that as the Grainy began to cast its flickering glances from the bowels of all sortsa dead eyes on a variety of talking heads, we, the believers and the epicures, were returning to three-dimensional storytellers and actors.

We preferred to let conversation take shape directly before our eyes and purely by means of the pertinent organs, totally like the old times, when life was lived in mud huts and lean-tos. That living speech made for less chill in our rooms. The chill on the inside remained, and if you weren’t satisfied you could deck the three-dimensional being in front of you. Shyness made one stingy with praise.

Jícha, perhaps due to his soul’s violent twistedness, employed the forest method of Kaa the Snake, who all of us knew from the Mowgli movies: Kaa swaying back and forth, his slick, powerful body looping through the sand, then sinking his poisonous fangs into the leaders of the Bandar-log, the Monkey People. But everyone knows that.

Personally, I prefer the rising-voice method.

Yep, yep, O my buddies, I struck out on a journey, said Jícha, eyes shut … swaying ever so slightly left and swaying to the right … set out into the world an I’m gonna tell you about it, friends, Jícha’s body tipped to the left, then to the other side and back … might be good as a brief introduction, boys … hm yeah … listen closely … you can hear me, right, buddies … this’ll be a little tale just for you, for your ears, for your soul … he said, and I noticed Hadraba’s eyelids drooping, Spider I couldn’t see, but he didn’t breathe a word … as for me, my sight went fuzzy … and Jícha let loose … and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if he’d had it planned in advance … the faker …

JÍCHA: “I GOT TANGLED UP. THE TRAP. CARNIVAL. LIVING TONGUE. HEAVY SNOW. SPRING OF NATIONS. DANGEROUS BUS.”

You all know that in the days of my bolshevik youth I occasionally suffered from existence, O my brothers, and I wasn’t ashamed to put it in my tongue, filling sheets of paper with it and drawing attention to myself. Some of you did it too. You scrawled on paper, brothers and pirates, don’t tell me you didn’t, and whatever words they were, they always said the same thing: Here I am. Do you like me? You all know, O wolves and sling shooters, that’s a trap for yawning readers, they don’t know beans. And just like you I walked the city, my turf, searching for objets d’art, objets d’esprit, those antigenocide tablets. You all know, you logrollers and dung beetles, how charged objects originate: through the art of surviving by self-destruction. They don’t win a single thing, but they’re here and you know it, O porters and carters. And as I so crassly and desperately drew attention to myself, O my brothers, little by little I got tangled up in my tongue. Because as I kneaded it for my own use, trampling, stroking, and twisting it, my tongue fought back. And that created tension. And then I got trapped. But before all that, I saw that woman, and here’s a tiny question for you, O archers and sharpshooters.

There’s various possibilities … many … but you’re walkin along … you just got up an you’re walkin along … the landscape’s hostile … on the horizon even a fire or two … walkin along, cold, you need to shit, an you’re hungry … an over in the bushes, lo and behold! a dead body … an you’re walkin along … feelin pretty bad … an not only that, you’re a woman! … but a bit of a floozy, I’d say … an not pretty, not young … pregnant … by someone … probly some soldier … there’s various possibilities, various stuff … you walk through a wisp of filthy air … nothin but scraped-out tin cans lyin all over … it’s somewhat of a junkyard … you hesitate … there’s possibilities … what lies beyond the horizon? doubts begin to sneak in … another horizon … an beyond it … you walk, hesitate, but when you turn around, O soldier’s delight and sutler, when you turn around and look back, dear sister … there’s Egypt! Slavery! And ahead of you and around you … freedom.

I’ll take it!

We nodded fervently, exchanging smiles and whispering, heh-heh, Jícha won’t fool us with that one … nope, uh-uh.

I took it too, O sculptors and stone cutters, but I still wasn’t rid of my passion for tinkering, for the simultaneous cultivation and degeneration of text, I longed for the workshop, O my brothers, and so I set out for Europe. With the Druzhba. Surely you remember years 1, 2, 3, etc., when we came crawlin outta the Sewer, slowly and cautiously, so the air wouldn’t get us right away. But, O my brothers, before I struck out on my path I got tangled up in Kulchur … and maybe I ceased to be a slave, but instead I became a servant … to Kulchur sections … I had to deal with young authors and old texts, and go begging to ministers and banks and tomato importers, nothing against them! and wait in the wings and talk and be quiet and go psst! and toot! toot! in my mad dash to get … somewhere, but it made me lose my savagery, and if slavery kills and servitude tames, what’s heavier? A kilo of fish? Or a kilo of flesh? And I saw what the others in Kulchur did, and it was appalling! Utterly useless! And that’s what I was racing towards. Boredom of boredoms! Boredom of speech! A pond where the fish don’t even fight anymore cause there’s nothin left to fight over! They thought I was deranged … many didn’t even know the basic rules of Schiller’s robbers: Between you and your readership the only possibility is war … dear reader! Blitzkrieg is best. It’s the only way. They messed with my articles so they’d be readable. The stupidity! These were the people who got the robber and put him on the wheel. I knew I had to get out before it turned nasty. Be careful! Watch your tongue. And that was all I had in those days. My editors greeted me thumbs down, I didn’t have it easy there. Whispers and searches and speeches and slanders. First a meeting, then a meeting, and after that a conference. And paranoia. Kulchur sections, when I see you I keep my finger on the trigger! It’s pulp and grit, and the Kulchur section servant’s a flunky to the dwarf called Advertising. I’d get these visions: You know what you’re gonna be when you die? Not yet, Boss … an earthworm? … a shoe rack? … or maybe … a Czech studies major, a queer? Nope, you’re gonna be an aesthetics professor! Beggin your pardon, but that’s harsh. An if you don’t watch it, you know what you’ll be even longer? No, Boss, what? A reporter in the Kulchur section of a mass-market weekly! Ai-yi-yi, oy vey. Jesus Christ! A health food bar and an ambulance. On the double! That was about the size of it. You know how it is, you canons and Čápuchins, there was nothin anyone in Kulchur could tell me that I didn’t already know … an you either, O collectors of charged objects, you know no chicken farm’s gettin me. I longed to get away, turn my back on the carnival, I lurked by the side of the stagecoach routes … waiting for an opportunity. And then, O my brothers, I found out, the usual way, through the grapevine, about the Druzhba Homes for Artists. I’d been making my living as a young author, collecting heaps of prizes and hundreds of titles and a dochtorate or two in morality … totally pissed off everyone else … I knew I hadda get lost for a while … outside town they were building me an Arch of Triumph … I was eatin bay leaves … shootin gingerbread* … flyin on Pegasus, hangin from his tail … upside down … went all the way to Brno once to be on TV* an nod my head … other young authors an writers were hangin themselves, it gave me alleys … I was livin the life of a young author, livin like an animal … an my mangy drivel was published in Pekingese an Malaysian cantons, an in Paraguay too, cause I had lotsa pals, maintained various friendships … intertribal blood brotherhoods, bribery an flattery … an as my TV an radio plays started airin in Kitai, Slovac, Moravanian, Mordvinian, an Comedian, in tongues beyond an tongues apart, certain ink-spillers’ jealousy membranes were so agitated that all sorts of anonymous an homonymous threats an fiendish contraptions came pouring in, my wife hadda open em up in the kitchen, I threatened to take her computer away … yep, so just to be safe I split, took off to the Druzhba Homes for Artists … an when we arrived, all of us from the bad lands, in that nameless desirable country, my brothers, we were amazed … the Druzhba Cottages … an the stores! The stores in that rather isolated town, isolated so we could create in comfort without getting in the way, were filled with delight, with incredible packages … we feasted on vitamins … it was wonderful and beautiful … Bene! … the Romanians said internationally … Very bene! I replied happily … there in France … and in our cottages we were free to write poems and chisel titanic busts and sing arias … the Hungarian men and the Bulgarian women swapping hot peppers for sweet peppers … the Polish poets briskly bustling about … the Ossies measuring out gardens … the Kanaks tearing up floorboards and grilling boofalo … the Lithuanians, Estonians, and Latvians circling the Russian, eyeing his vodka … the old Chinese man practicing calligraphy … I looked out the window and laughed at the Slovaks, I was the smartest of all, the Czech! Yes, friends, I was there on behalf of the Czechs, somehow it had fallen to me … I wrote nothing but nonsense there … often it was so egregious I had to air out my room … and that desirable Belgian land told us: You’re free an you have time … it was a gift from an organization of theirs called Kulchur, yes, just like home. And when I didn’t feel like writing I would climb on my horse and ride, barking at German shepherds and cawing at ravens and vice versa, and then by the woods I saw wolves! I called out in greeting, but they were munching grass, and said: Was? There in that desirable country they hadn’t killed off their wolves, they’d tamed them, O my brothers! I rode home an had feverish dreams an my tongue got tangled an mean. The next morning I called the caretaker, but he wouldn’t talk to me … so I took a plane to the mountains, O my brothers, and climbed, you know where to, bosses and chiefs, to find a place of my own … an the first anthill was fenced in with wire mesh over it … to protect them, I laughed wickedly … and kept on climbing, and then I saw him! He circled overhead and came gliding down … but! The sun glinted off his talons, he had a ring on, O my brothers … and around his neck … a collar! He didn’t speak … git, I shooed him off … and kept climbing and there was a wolf, and I cried, Brother, here’s where you live! An he rolled over an begged … I fled down the mountain an went back to my cottage an subjected it to a thorough inspection … the floor was cracked … I didn’t go down to the cellar … that was a little too scary … and I took a look around for the others … not as many as before … the nearest town was a long way … some couldn’t stand to drink solitude, sang out their arias and went back home, or ran off to explore their possibilities in other parts of that desirable state … I stayed, my tongue a little wounded … and the days went by … the Ossies scattered throughout the country … their tongue was in the neighborhood … some of the others got lost among the supermarket shelves … the Russian’s liver was in sick bay … the Balts went off to fight … the Bosnians were being drafted too … the Chinese man disappeared into Chinatown … the Kanaks hunted skinheads in the subway … the Vietnamese disappeared into Viettown … the only man left was the Hungarian, because no one understood him … the Bulgarians went on singing in those cracked voices of theirs, they were afraid to go into town … it was their first time outside their borders and they had no idea where they were … and then something happened … winter set in, and my cottage had no heat … and I, the young bard and writer, was reduced to warming myself with hard liquor … I drank a lot … truly considerably, you know me, you burglars and blackmailers … and I got scared to go to the supermarkets, because the pesky sales clerks kept forcing unfamiliar items on me, and how could I refuse as a guest and an author … and I forgot to wash and it showed on my tongue … which I began to neglect, I didn’t know how long I’d been there anymore … and it started to snow … I ran out into the yard and screamed: Get back in your hole, I’m cold! But it didn’t give a damn, it fell anyway. I felt myself getting stiff, and I knew a kilo of snow was heavier than a kilo of iron … one of the Bulgarian women comes up and says: Akva? Yest u tiebya sum akva? Akva minerala? Vasser, you mean? I ask stupidly. Nein, akva normal dlya drink ent … evrisink. For two days there’d been no water, O pardners and blood brothers … and I couldn’t understand her too well, I think her voice had frozen over, ice fell from her mouth when she spoke. I crawled back to my cottage and into bed, under my comforters, and wrote, O bossmen and day laborers, using that ice. The windows wouldn’t shut, I didn’t get it … I drank liquor, O my brothers, and my liver grew heavy … I knew that erstwhile eagle wouldn’t help me … bad! and when I tried to write at the desk, my kidneys got heavy too … there was a draft, now it was gettin nasty … the young author and writer there in that desirable country took ill … forced to warm body and soul by the flames of booze, because winter’s an element too … it’s everywhere … there’s no escaping it, it gets everyone in the end … there was water at the Hungarian’s … and the Chinese man had left behind a sack of rice … the Vietnamese their chopsticks … we stole it all … and at the Ossies’ we found a stove! But it didn’t even heat the Bulgarian’s cottage … we’d drawn straws, she got the trick faster than us … that little stove wasn’t for beans … the hot plate! shouted the Hungarian … we glanced at each other, amazed … that’s right, O my brothers, we’d begun to communicate via extrasensory perception. What chou writin bout? said the Hungarian … oh, this an that, dynamite an pigs an bones, tongue stuff, you know, language … tumbled out of me … yeah, sure, that’s my thing too, said the Hungarian, a young author and writer … the Bulgarian stretched out between the stove and the hot plate and rasped out a song: Hey hey dynamite, hoola hoola pig, hey hey boney-woney … we gave her some help with the chorus, we were authors after all … how bout we poke our noses inta the other cottages, see what they got, said the Bulgarian … we found all kinds of poems and translations and plagiarizations … the Poles had fat tragicomic novels, the Romanians shepherd’s pipes, the Ossies documentation, the Russians icons, we chopped up a couple pianos too and built a fire in the yard, I pulled what Wojaczek* had out of the flames and put it into my tongue … the Kanaks had lard, we fixed it up with liquor … I mixed it in with my tongue … the next day we strapped on snowshoes and headed into town … but it was Carnival! An that means shops an cathedrals’re closed! The people in that nameless, desirable country lived in a sort of coexistence with the state, so there were always a few days of reckless, intoxicated merrymaking … all over Sweden! … merry allegorical floats in the streets, bottle rockets and firecrackers, I got a nervous seizure … my eyes started tearing, but I wasn’t crying, it was from writing, from sitting in bed in the cold for so long, staring straight ahead … we were puffy-eyed from lack of sleep, and dirty … but the people in masks walking past … I guess thought we were in costume too … disguised as some East bloc dogs … the vitamin people laughed at us … made a circle around us and started to dance … the Hungarian roared at them in Hungarian … they thought it was some folklore gag … the Bulgarian woman cursed … furiously … her face covered with scrapes from falling down drunk in her cottage … she looked the worst of us … some duded-up fellas an ladies walked up an started to talk in the local tongue … we didn’t understand a whit … but then we realized they wanted the Bulgarian to be Carnival Queen, our masks were the best, they said … authentisch and pintlich and super … cowboys and draculas and sailors and devils swarmed around us in store-bought masks … we turned and fled … back to the cold … the Hungarian was thinking the same thing as me … we kicked in the door of the last villa … the singer stood lookout … we found an electric stove in the kitchen … grabbed all the food … the singer made sure we didn’t wolf it down right away … the trip through the woods was awful, that stove weighed a ton … leave me here, the singer said, I don’t live, so what, big fuckin deal … there’s eight million of us … we carried the stove and then went back for her … chafing with chilblains … panting like dogs … at least we got some food in our stomachs … we dragged that stove home, step by step … not even talkin anymore … an there’s no outlet! … just these weird, suspicious thingamajigs … so we crawled off into our cottages to create again … leaving that one little stove for the Bulgarian … she was a woman after all … some elementary chivalry remained within us … why didn’t we all just climb into one bed? They were short and narrow … plus the one time we tried it, the bed collapsed … at least the wreckage was good for a fire.