Jáchym Topol - City, Sister, Silver

We didn’t have time. An it was all so fabulous! Foreigners out, oh definitely. We were like pigs in clover. Meals practically free, drinks too. All kindsa interesting stuff. Sometimes we’d test it out, bump into some cop on the street, stumble, like accidentally, drunk, an the cop’d go: entschuldigen sie bitte, toss a dirty look, an that’s it … I’d clean the looks up, toss on a stamp, an send em home to my mom as postcards.

We were a kingdom of Kanaks. I didn’t work, never had an hour free. Kopic did, he was restless and had a family to support. Took odd jobs, sweeping and cleaning. That brought in plenty for everyone. At work he stole rags and nice plastic ashtrays.

We also went to the huge bazaars where folks from our neck of the woods learned to market economize. Kopic demonstrated his genius. Got on first-name terms with a roulette wheel. Found it on a dimly lit side street. It was a Kanak wheel and he spoke its language. Greeks, Eyetals, and Assyrians spun there. Gypsies, in short. Just don’t gimme that small works spiel, said Kopic: it’s better to live large. If there’s any surplus, we can always destroy it or donate it to the needy. He was right. I sat and gawked, watching the ashtrays, while Kopic hunted among the market people. We hustled to the Moroccans, who hustled to the Poles, who hustled to the Turks, and then we’d buy the ashtrays back and send em on down the line. Often we’d net as much as 600 percent. We also stole bikes. As a favor to the natives, so they’d know what to expect.

On my wanderings along the way to Europe, I met lots of outcasts. The penitentiaries were interesting. That was nothin for alla those craggy Siberians, heavy-duty mobsters from Katowice an Gdansk, Ceauçescu’s children, or any Albanian! Hah! The Crimea! With rest homes like that, the mayors and city councils might as well’ve put up a sign: Interhotel Paradajs. The Russian gangster said: I won’t talk. And he didn’t. You see, dear children, torture was forbidden in the desirable states. Not that they didn’t … occasionally strike someone down … some nigger, Ayrab, yellow bandit, slow Polak … oh sure, but it didn’t compare to the hellishness these people had in their cells. Hungry vacationing Kurdish peshmerga, Turkish gray wolves, Ukrainian rabid dogs, Volga ship pullers, Romany crooks from every which where, galley-scarred Chechens, Bucharest mafiosi, all kinds of Angolans, mercenaries … some had spent years in the mines, in slammers where the groundwater flows onto the night concrete straight from … we know where … and just when the guy is such a wreck that even Satan feels sorry for him and sucks the water out … the jailer takes the hose … just in case the fucker was thinkin he might actually survive, and a lot of them did … and they were amazed … You’re serious, all I gotta do is say I’ll never do it again? And this is soap? A whole bar, for me? Well … I feel like ataman Ralfo Valentino Belmondovich himself, finally! But they didn’t wash anyway, they stole it to sell at market, or to give to their Lenochka or Stazichka, their Agla, Vanda, Latka, Varga, or Monka. And what’s this … three blankets, three blankets for one night, Mother of God! And this? Those are pajamas, said the kindhearted old sergeant. And which meal will you be having, mister convict sir? Corned beef, sirloin steak, or tofu? All of em. Splendid, splendid, we apologize, but we have only five kinds of tobacco today … an the ones that’d already been in the desirable countries’ slammers before knew what to answer … Oh yeah? Then get cher ass in gear, you old reformatory, how bout my human rights! And next thing you know there was a minor insurgency … and the only ones happy were the local eurojournalists, because their light-fingered packs’re joined with humanity’s outcasts like a communicating vessel. Finally they had something to do. If it bleeds, it leads, we know the old slogans.

I’m just talkin about the underworld now. The most amazing thing was the papers. After all those entry forms an exit forms an hassles an archivalia, finally you could run around the desirable states on your own. Pleading in the slammer, yes I’m goin home, right away, to my family. Only … I can’t afford a ticket, never mind a kennkarte. I don’t suppose there’d be any cash? Yes? Most grateful. Just a ticket? Great. And will the Railway Armed Forces be accompanying me? Are you nuts, you’re a grown man. Yes, sir, pardon me, boss boss, of course, herr commander. Hawk the ticket in the station restaurant and you had yourself a party. The next desirable state was across the border, true, but only wackos bothered with customs. To this day I could make it through with my eyes closed. I walked around like that sometimes anyway, just to see where I’d be the next time I rolled up my eyelids.

Refugees! City councillors met with economists and physicians and Ph.D.’s. Phones at army headquarters rang off the hook. Those riffraff, said the councillor, they’re buyin up all the cat an dog chow an feedin the stuff to their kids, what about my poor little Dagmar. An there’s more of em on the way. And the city councillors said to themselves, Stalin, Pol Pot, Hoxha, Hussein … maybe those guys were onto somethin. But they couldn’t send in the machine guns or they would’ve shattered their time. They were on the spot where two worlds crossed, two different times. All those flawless Swiss-Japanese timepieces of theirs were useless. Come winter they’re gonna tear down all our colorful ads an stuff their shoes an shirts with em. Let’s just give em cash. And they got a couple affirmative actions rolling. But the eastern outcasts only went and bought more canned food and juice and a better gun or two and higher-quality smack, none of it went for self-education.

And then one of the councillors trapped by time said, Leave it be, just string up the wires, leave it be, it’ll rot away … in time. Maybe he’s right, for now, but … especially around the penitentiaries, here and there a jailer or two lightly fingers the gun on his hip, a breeze ruffling his locks as he tilts his ear to the outcasts’ uproar … they’ve just refused the spinach an they want an extra blanket … an then he touches the one in his underarm, an when he sees some free protest goin by, doesn’t seem that bad to him … an when an absurd Kurdish nest or two, an irrational Angolan dormitory, goes up in flames … the telegraph’s not workin, the dispatches don’t get through, the wheels grind to a halt … an the dead bodies roast in the blaze … let’s wait, we’ll see, the councillor said. Yes, wait and see what happens.

As I knocked around, tryin to see an hear as much as possible for myself, I managed: Berlun: disturbing the peace and riding the subway without holding on; Dormut: hooliganism and provoking an officer (it was the first time in my life I’d ever eaten an artichoke, which I only knew from books before, an I got carried away); Milan: I donno; Paree: I don’t remember; Gibraltar: I’m not tellin; Munchen: sleeping in a private doghouse, an that was the only one that pissed me off, cause the dog couldn’t’ve cared less; we had four guys snoozin in there at the time.

After my successful sightseeing tour filled with Kanak studies, I came back to the lair and gave all my soap and blankets to Kopic. I kept one fragrant box for myself, just in case … and off to market we went.

And as I stood around, picking up all sorts of words and expressions as the tribes mixed together in byznys to survive … stealin cash an words from each other … experiences an words … it struck me maybe somethin was happenin here, maybe the mixing was givin rise to a new tongue … a Kanak one … an maybe it was a tongue of peace, a pre-Babylonian one … I mean they’re poor, they gotta communicate … till everything’s tremendous again an we all look like the billboards an pitch in to rebuild … they need each other … only most of the folks at the markets looked pretty bad, shabby, emaciated or bloated, all kinds of deprivation peering out of their eyes, and hunger … for safety and things … they would’ve had to mix with the handsome natives too … to put an end to tribes … but they’re not wanted, that’s obvious … the rags the Romanian Gypsy ladies bundled their lousy young in … weren’t fit for a dog, I know, I saw em. I was there. Maybe unfortunately what it’ll take, I thought … truly unfortunately, is another couple Auschwitzes, a Wall or two, a Gulag … an even longer path … till it dawns on everyone.