Jáchym Topol - City, Sister, Silver

Beat it! Beat it! Quit gawkin, move! Kopic oftentimes interrupted my daydreams and meditations as the noose drew tight yet again, a raid … we grabbed the ashtrays and hopped on our steeds, if ours’d been stolen we stole someone else’s … and the prairie stretched out endlessly under our ponies’ hoofs as we rode, deftly hunched down in our saddles, zigzagging to safety from the Haida and Mandan bullets.

We didn’t steal much … just here and there … like sparrows, I guess, we were fed up with organizing and didn’t have the time for heavy-duty crookery. We weren’t in the mood either. There were huge quantities of colorful stuff to see. Look at that yellow, zaps me in the eyes, I donno that one, said Kopic. I get it, I said. We swung off our saddles, hitched up our bikes, walked into the department store, and came back out with beautiful sunglasses on our noses. At the next ad, I panicked. I donno that beige, my old WWI wounds’re gettin itchy an openin up inside, it’s definitely gonna rain. We stopped and went in a department store, came out with raincoats and umbrellas. Kopic had a radio, too. Switched it on. Oy, some unfamiliar, ponderous, industrial, fanatic music! Kopic blanched. But it played. We’d made a good purchase. Now and then we’d get off the bikes and dawdle around on the sidewalk. Then off we’d ride again, each with a packhorse tied to our saddle. How’s Iltschi? Kopic called out. On her last legs, I replied honestly. Hatatitla’s* barely swingin his hoofs too, grumbled Kopic. We switched to fresh bikes to confuse our pursuers. Sometimes we had to save ourselves … by sacrificing one of the bikes and riding the rest of the way on the better one, each of us standing on one side, holding on to the seat, pedaling in turn … they never did get us. Ah, Berlun, a true sanatorium!

Then I got a job in a brothel. Washin spitoons, takin out trash, sweepin up, I was the spitboy. It’s perfect, the spitboy sees everything, goes everywhere, an he’s lower than the sawdust on the floor of a pub, no one’s gonna usurp him. His rag an bucket make him invisible.

I soon made friends with the whores. There were dumb ones of course, blabbers an screamers an whiners, but some of the girls were great. Fistfuls of Czechs, wagonloads of Romanians, armies of Ukrainians, pastures of Poles, heaps of Hungarians, one gorgeous Jewess, and others. I noticed the movement of nations began in the brothels. One of the great human urges it’s got on its mute conscience: the desire for fresh meat. The Italians an Greeks an Turks bemoaned the loss of their position. They organized an underground. No petitions, just vitriol. It got intense at times. Whores’re a tribe, I guess, like toy makers or gladiators, clans’re a byznys thing. My heart burned for a sister of my tribe. Howdy, whores, I’d say. Howdy, wage slave, they’d reply. Peace and quiet prevailed. I often eavesdropped on their fabled phlegmaticism: You don’t watch out, there it is, turn to the left, there it is, lean to the right, there it is still. Cocks, knives, toyfils, crabs, whatever, it’s all the same.

I taught them the saying: Singelosh, bangelosh, split right through, quality work’s what we aim to do. It had a good rhythm, the girls said it helped em deal with alla those sickening pigs. From time to time they’d express their gratitude, but for real, briskly, in the prenoon hours, before the wheel spun up to full speed. So they weren’t totally wiped out yet. They told me about things I didn’t know. Permutations, combinations, variations, uriny, greasy, moist, an bloody. Some of the girls, the foolish ones, began to get nostalgic here, dreamin about the petroleum ponds and tractor-filled fields of home. They’d come in search of treasure, but it didn’t take em long to rack up a debt the very same size as that chest of sparkling ducats. Housing, heat, meals, makeup, clothes. Protection! The door out of the cage to the golden West slammed shut in their faces. They were under the wheel now. Pieces of meat, not much to look at. Others were smart an strong an didn’t let any drool near their bodies, even if that body was as broken and plowed over as Mother Earth herself. They knew their way around. They knew how to get the cash outta the wild pigs, an what to do with it afterwards … they were the ones the students an the killers fell for. One yep, another nope, you in, you out … same old story. I raced around with a mop, tampons, a broom … set up a little hairpin-and-condom byznys, plus lipstick, least they didn’t have to cross the street. For some of em that street was the only thing they saw on their way to Europe.

Litka was Slovak, or Slovenian, I donno anymore, I took her to the fair. They’re lookin at us, she said in the pastry shop. When it came to sweets, she was like a little girl. No, they’re not, I lied. You could tell. What she was. It was as plain as Mars on fire. Wow, she lit up, look at the swings. She gave em a whirl. The bumper cars too. Another coffee. And then it hit her: we gotta go back. C’mon. Let’s get outta here. Los! Bitte! Wait, I wanna go to the shooting gallery, squeeze off a shot or two first. I’ll shoot your heart out! The way she looked at me, it dawns on me in retrospect, she must’ve been Slovenian. We stood in the amusement park arguing, in Kanak of course. People all around. Bumping into us. They came to have fun. And we were in their way. It was embarrassing. She wheeled around on a high heel and ran off, she thought toward the exit. Ran all the way to the back of the park, I almost couldn’t keep up. Ran right into the fence, stupid whore. Collapsed and began to sob. Her purse spilled out on the ground, she tossed all her doohickeys back in with the mud. C’mon now … Litka! Get up! Finally I got her into a cab. Some date, I thought glumly, all that cash! I looked out of the car at all the people, buildings, machines, phantoms. What else was I sposta do. Didn’t wanna look at her. We rode in silence the whole way back to the brothel, the place where she lived. The place she couldn’t get away from.

But next day she greeted me as merrily as the earlybird. Howdy, wage slave! Howdy, whore! I appropriated that word, I think, in every post-Babylonian tongue. And I was gettin fed up too. It was better flyin around on bikes with Kopic. All the combinations and permutations and multiplications and alphabets were startin to make me sick. Light and heavy private odors. Too many moist things. Sheets, shits. Too many stains. Pubes and hairs. Every dirty line of work’s got its sad or brutal consequences. Their business. But most of those whores were slaves. And a lot of em weren’t there voluntarily, that’s bullshit, and anyone who says so deserves to get his face bashed. Some were obvious victims that would’ve gotten under the wheel anytime anywhere. Some liked it. Some were chasing the golden dream and refused to give it up. They went right on dreaming, eyes shut, taking wheelies for the nightmares. And many were forced into it by slaps, poverty, fear. They’d run away from wars, scary streets, factories. Idiotic dads and dangerous lovers. A couple girls there couldn’t’ve been a day over fourteen. They got old fast. Coke and booze and bed. They didn’t know anything else. And what else’s a slave? The pimps’ mugs were as bad as the spooks’, if not worse. The girls got beatings. Whenever they acted up, and sometimes just for the hell of it. So they’d know where they were and what they were worth. The romantic, picturesque life of the whore was probably dreamed up by some delirious writer as a reward for an unreal amount of pumping, licking, pinching, blowing, and stroking … his nerves must’ve been trembling pretty good … by the time he got it up. Maybe there’s other brothels. But if this is one …

There was one strange thing there that no one ever talked about. And that’s what did me in. I couldn’t even pry anything outta Litka, who’d worked her way up to the bar, and that’s up there in the hierarchy.