Jáchym Topol - City, Sister, Silver

Jícha dumped some photos out of an envelope onto the table.

Look here, you got Olda, this here’s Svoboda, then Nutcracker, Side Pocket, Duchač, an who have we here? Jícha was plainly on cozy terms with the collection.

So they’re spooks, ess-tee-bee, what’s the big whoop? The poet astounded me. I wanted to know more.

Doesn’t it strike you as interesting where our old enemies’re turnin up now? I arrange the private settling of scores. These pricks here just go right on playin detective, pokin around the embassies, an even, get this, our friend Side Pocket happens to be an occasional guest at a certain Asian embassy you’re no doubt familiar with.

I’m not interested in embassies, what’s your point?

You guys’re the ones that started this, you an that Organization a yours, an you don’t even know who you got in your own backyard.

You’re crazy, what do our Laotians gotta do with the ess-tee-bee?

Well first of all, said Jícha, they aren’t Laotians, at least not some of em. They’re Hmongs, he said triumphantly.

I don’t get any a this, but if Hadraba here thinks he can take over their shops, well I’d say it’s gone far enough already …

No, that’s not it, it’s the spooks I’m after, said Hadraba. Side Pocket an this bunch here. They’re the ones interested in those Lotions a yours.

You tailin these guys or somethin? I asked.

We tail em, Jícha said proudly. Dostoyevsky, our private persecution agency.

Why Dostoyevsky?

Crime and Punishment, never heard of it? Powerful prose …

You’re through with lyricism, I see.

Won’t fill my belly. If you don’t want the spooks interested in you, get interested in them, Jícha recited. I can’t let you keep the photos, but take a good look at em. Remember these guys’ handles. Some of em you know. I don’t like tellin you this, but there’s certain … indications … that they’re in on a few things with the Laotians, that is the Hmongs.

So what’s this really about, Jícha? I don’t trust you.

Could be anything, ideology’s down the crapper, that leaves cash, he livened up. Christ, I mean we did amazing trade with these countries, an the KGB an our idiots were in on it. Look, Semtex, weapons, drugs … we’re talkin billions … in dollars, an you think those scumbags’re gonna give it up? Debts, liabilities, secret couriers, under-the-table expenses, established channels, Jícha was delirious.

Get a good look at these mugs, an if any of em start buzzin around, get word to me or Rudy. Or drop by here. Those Hmongs a yours draw em in like bugs to a lamp. We’ll let the mosquitoes get a little suck, an then bam! the hero thumped his fist on the table.

A little suck, an whose blood, Jícha?

I don’t remember now what his answer was, but whatever he said it came true. In a different way, in a different place, and by then he wasn’t around anymore.

Hey, I don’t wanna see those ugly mugs anymore … ever again.

That’s the whole thing, Jícha slammed his fist down. Christ, no one wants to, but I mean we gotta put these guys to the wall!

Hadraba nodded solemnly. Member the Šistecký case? he asked.

Yeah.

Recently, briefly and over breakfast, the Šistecký case had been a nationwide source of amusement. The papers were full of it. Unidentified perpetrators had given a certain sadistic ess-tee-bee scumbag from the fifties the classic forty-eight treatment from the eighties. Kidnapped him, locked him up in a cellar for two days, and then let him go. It was a just demonstration and provocation. The Communist Party declared him a victim of terrorism, which he was. The martyr’s hair turned gray, he didn’t know how long they’d leave him there. Rightfully he’d expected to have a few of his own interrogations performed for him on a new stage with a revised cast. No one beat him up though, no one even spoke to him.

Yep, that was us, said Hadraba. An that’s just the beginning. You read about Major Razseda?

That’d been in Poland. They’d killed him. And his wife.

Yep, jailer bitch, just like the rest. An Honecker! We don’t give a damn what deals the new governments made with the old ones. This is about concrete individuals … these guys ruined … lotsa lives … they gotta pay. The folks that were in the camps’re old, lots of em’re dead, it’s up to us. Sooner or later. I mean a lot of us’ve got active experience. You too, Potok.

Aright, aright, I said. But I got my own life.

You’re a racketeer! Jícha sputtered.

My business, I said. I’m not goin in with you guys.

If you’re not with us … Hadraba said with a laugh.

I’ve heard that one somewhere before.

Yeah an you’ll hear it again, it’s the leitmotif of every community, said Jícha.

What about Čáp?

He’s a nut, said the poet. Ravin on about earthworms.

An you about people!

Worms don’t have souls!

You donno beans, porter!

Degenerate sectarian!

Don’t argue! Hadraba barked, and we stopped.

You still got a chance to play ball with us. Know this guy? Jícha tossed another photo on the table. It was the Shark Hunter. Only he had glasses and a European suit on, and no tattoos on his face.

No. I refuse to testify.

Závorová.

That got me, now he was talking about the light of my life, my one miserable hope, and he was smiling.

I’ll keep an eye out, ask around, I said. Laotians, Mongs, Kanaks, what do I care.

Lemme explain, that repulsive person said, drumming his fingers on the tabletop.

The Hmongs live on the border between Vietnam and Laos. The ess-tee-bee’s interested in this guy. Someone hired em, maybe the KGB. The factories here were fulla Vietnamese, an their agents. Some worked for the Sovs. But this guy, Jícha tapped the photo, he must be somethin special, he just came now.

Seems kinda wild to me. I find it hard to believe.

Never let anything surprise you.

I’ve heard that one too.

Well here’s somethin you haven’t heard: this guy speaks Czech.

Aw baloney, now I started laughing.

See, you do know him! shouted Jícha. That’s proof!

Learned that one in the spookhouse, huh.

I picked up a few things.

Bowdlair, “Carrion,” know it? I asked.

Sure, how could I not? You had that moron too? The one with the forehead? We don’t have a handle on him yet.

No doubt you’ll track him down, I said sarcastically.

Spare the sarcasm. It might come in handy later.

We went on sparring like that till we’d had enough. Said some sort of goodbyes to each other.

Though it was still pretty early, I didn’t feel like sticking around the bar, Padre Booze had already left. Maybe I’ll look him up sometime an talk him outta livin at the Dump, persuade him to move in with us, no doubt that’d be a worthy deed. The street was empty, dark. I felt a twinge of anxiety, I didn’t like what Jícha had pulled on me back there. Why go diggin around in old stuff when time’s flyin like a mad horse … but there was somethin strange about Hunter, that photo with the glasses, it was definitely him … gone were the days when we mixed up the Laotians … he stood out as the only one with a powerful build, plus he was the chief, had authority … gotta peek at a map, see where it was he hunted those sharks, I made a note to myself, striding along a street lighted only by windows, the streetlamps were broken … my city, me, I talk with this city. An I got nowhere to run to. So I look.

I picked up the pace through Prague 5, with its dilapidated old gardens, the bushes’ slender arms reached out for me, beckoning me inside the bars, into the heavy stench of soil and rotten leaves … yeah right, I thought, I also felt bad I couldn’t tell my buddies … this was my business, but what if Hunter … then we’ll get rid of him somehow, I’ll see.