Pavel Brycz - I, City

“Never mind, Mr. President, cough into it all you want, it was choking me anyway,” Till said and waved his hand.

“Ach, yes, such a smart boy,” observed Gustáv Husák, the president, in the direction of the teacher.

“You know what, boy, I’ll give you a chocolate bar for your scarf.”

“Thank you, sir, but I’m not allowed to take chocolate from strangers!” Till objected politely.

“Tee hee, well, we have ourselves a little genius here, don’t we?” Gustáv Husák said and again turned to the teacher.

“And what was his grade for morals?”

“Mr. President is no stranger,” the teacher hastily explained to Till, “Mr. President belongs to us. To me, you, all the people. In our country, Till, everything belongs to everyone…”

“All right, I’ll take hazelnut!” Till agreed.

“Hazelnut,” President Husák promised, then went on with his six-hundred-and-thirteen-page speech.

But Till never got the promised chocolate.

Some adults simply talk too much.

Especially when they get to the microphone.

Then, they’re called Windbags.

Especially when they talk in Windy Square.

On the site where the lignite mining pits are today, the old city of Brüx once stood. A poet once lived there, too. He was an erotic poet; he couldn’t be otherwise. He once lived in Ústí, then in Prague. In Old Most, he searched for peace.

It was the women who drove him from place to place like the fluff of a dandelion.

But here, too, they ran him down like the elements.

And so he had to sit down at the typewriter and write…

When the Labe will be

above Ústí

When the water begins rising

I would like to fall in love

With a girl from Hamburg

She knows of love

She knows of water

Sitting at the rudder

Turning and so sad

I know that sadness well

When the fire will be above Prague

When Prague catches fire

I would like to fall in love

With a girl from Arc

She knows of love

She knows of fire

Gazing into the flames

Silent and so sad

I know that sadness well

When here, where I am, nothing will be

I want you to be here, at least

Mine, the most beautiful element…

“I hid myself in a stone, never to melt, until you, my lioness, come. You won’t find me alive, merely eternal, for living is too mortal, even if, my lioness, you refuse to believe it. Stop your weeping, for your tears are nothing, if I am a lion and further, of stone.

“You won’t move me… find another animal from the horoscope. Or Libra; Libra is just; Libra will judge which one of us is right. Whether it is I, of stone, or you, white Leo, and your dreams.

“You quivered with winter, when it was winter, and looked forward to seeing the Sun. I remember it well.

“You believed that on the Sun live small Sun People — particularly because it contradicted the astronomical theories, and all the scientific authorities conspired against you, declaring that the Sun People would burn to death.

“And you said, but what about love? Don’t people burn in love? And all the scientific authorities bristled up against you, declaring that all burn up in love.

“And then you said, what about life? People don’t live in life? And all the scientific authorities stood against you and said that everything living must die, but you cried.

“You were so tender-hearted, and so desperate. You believed me and hoped I would do something with this life, with love and also with the Sun People, that I would tell the scientific authorities to get lost, somewhere very far away, and to spite them all and their theories I myself would fly for the Sun People and they would be possible, just like it’s possible to live, like love is possible…”

I, city, listened to the heartless things my stone lion said and I looked everywhere for his lioness that I might alleviate her pain from death.

But I have yet to find her.

“Here there be lions,” it says on the maps of the world, but “here there be lionesses” nowhere. Where to look for her, then?

Fate gave me, city, only two lions.

One on the city’s seal and the other on the coat of arms at city hall.

Both are male.

And one of them is also stone.

You will find the Liars’ Bench below the large mirror opposite another large mirror on the walls of The Partisan pub.

The flower of the fibbers sits there. And there they tell tall tales, prattle, hornswoggle, narrate and spin yarns about women, and about themselves, in doing so reproducing themselves, through some sort of parthenogenesis, so that they can be with more women in many places and all at the same time, as if they’d stepped out of an infinite picture of themselves reflected in mirrors set opposite each other. I like the stories about women that come from the Liars’ Bench. They never do any harm, and they all end like fairy tales.

“What’s new, partners?” asks Franta Psoria, a former miner from the depths who later ran off to the carousels, lived with a Gypsy woman and got a tattoo on his left shoulder.

Those listening from the Liars’ Bench know that whether it’s from the pit, from the fair or from the funeral of a Gypsy baron, it will in all cases be huge, as Franta Psoria is King — King of the Liars’ Bench, chosen by all.

The King smiles, takes a sip of beer, makes himself good in the mouth and talks. The men don’t make a sound.

In comparison with the fables of Franta, their own lives shrink as if for microscopic observation. Franta’s aware of this; he knows where his only wealth lies. He talks about the times he went down the hole as a pit foreman, and how there they had such a beautiful and full-figured bookkeeper that once, as she stood in the yard with her hands behind her back, he didn’t approach her from behind to cover her eyes and ask “guess who?” like some Gymnasium student, but rather thrust his penis right into her hand. And in front of everyone she dragged him just like he was to the director, who deducted his bonuses and delivered the appropriate reprimand.

“But, gentlemen, one easily accepts the deduction of bonuses, and the reprimand along with it,” Franta Psoria shouts with laughter, “when a goddess forgets to let go!”

The men laugh and slap Franta on the back. Well, some people have all the luck in the adventure of life.

“A beer for the King,” they order for Franta.

This is what he had: a mineshaft, youth, women, carousel, Gypsy, freedom, and a tattoo. The tattoo stayed the longest. But even this eventually left him, as had the shaft, youth, women, carousel, Gypsy, and freedom.

He got such an idiotic disease: psoriasis it’s called, and it peels the skin the way it flayed his tattoo.

“Naturally,” Franta Psoria turns to me, “I’m not going to tell the whole city about it!”

And he shouldn’t!

He is a king only when he’s a Liar.

“A love holds me like the Jewish faith,” a man with blue eyes begins his story from the Liars’ Bench. “You don’t believe me? Listen, then, to the story of Ráchel Šmidtová, a lawyer from the firm of Golem & Partner, of Maiselova Street in Prague. It’s been many years since I studied law in Prague. More accurately, in the sixties. Well, in ’68 I had to finish my studies prematurely… but that’s another story; it has nothing to do with love.