Pavel Brycz - I, City

Only this strange man is here, the hero of a story without a plot, and so how can he push the story along to a resolution? I’m keeping my eye on him. He’s just decided to show himself, once again, the film with Pierre Brice and Lex Barker. He goes and pries open the door to the projection booth.

“How does this machine work?” he thinks looking at the projector. He feels he’s pried open the door for nothing. He’s forced his way into a place where he doesn’t know what to do next; a million other stories about men and women come to mind. How many times have they conquered themselves with love, and then they don’t know what to do next.

He sits with his head deep in his palms and thinks. He has a friend who served in the army as a projectionist; he’ll call him to come, not realizing that it’s a strange request, certainly crazy, illogical and altogether impractical, because for the sake of this request he’d then have to break into the cinema’s office.

He picks up the receiver. He’s here. In the office of the cinema behind the pried-open door. Chaplin and Kid, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando and James Dean — they all watch him from their posters. The phone rings.

A long ring… where are you, my friend?

You wouldn’t believe it! Such a strange thing’s happened to me, I want to show myself a movie, come to… right now, because I’m depressed, but if you can’t, could you please tell me how to work a projector?

Rrinng, Rrrinnng!

Nothing. Just long ringing.

And then the man dials another number, but not at random. And on the other end a somnolent yet surprised voice replies.

“Hi, Dad!

“I’m here.

“In the cinema.

“I’m waiting for you.

“I’m here again.”

I, city, can do nothing other than wait.

I sit in the front row. Who comes to the confined man first? His father, or the usherettes who ring with their keys and call the police?

If there is something to envy me, then it’s my appearance, intercity, because my appearance, intercity, is a road. And not just any road, but the road of an iron horse, who for the needs of civilization converted itself into a tram that rushes between me and Litvínov, passing that most strange of human creations — a chemical plant that, because it was established by Hitler, for a long time after bore Stalin’s name.

Thousands of people head daily from Most to Litvínov, to harness our incredible inheritance from Hitler and Stalin; they return home unaware of being heroes, because this nation never fought against Hitler nor Stalin, and so only the Poles, Ukrainians and Southern Slavs who come today know what it means to harness energy that is an inheritance of war.

But the intercity road isn’t only traveled by heroes: hockey fanatics speed along this road, too; they have yellow-black scarves and sing victory songs: “If we aren’t relegated from the league, we win the league,” and their scarves, two meters long, are a premiere’s red carpet for the winners of the hockey league, which once again this year will be the team sponsored by the chemical plant: hockey players in the most yellow-black colors of the world, in colors loved by the Spaniard Joan Miró, a great painter and the greatest poet of colors, the most famous fan ever of Team Chemopetrol. Boys also take this road to Canada. You don’t believe me? Every morning at five, woken from their children’s dreams, they chase their dream.

It’s not a paradox. They have skates sharp as knives and jockstraps fit for grown men. These boys don’t have time for childhood, but they know their slapshooters from the hat-trickers, and what it means to fly to fortune in Canada. Let’s cross our fingers for them — maybe Wayne Gretzky will smile at them, and give a onetime wave from the retirees’ bench.

On the intercity road rockers ride, too, to the Quite Small Theater to listen to the quite big second coming of Janis Joplinka, who tells them that a Mercedes Benz is for all the queens of flowers, and that ever since the beginning of the world Blues Bouillon has been given out not at the rallies before elections, but at the reunions, where heroes are heroes, children children, flowers flowers and blues are always to be found in blue.

Sky blue.

I’m a city with a radio. Of which I’m very proud. It’s good to be a city and to have a radio.

And it’s even better to sound into the ether in the voice of a beautiful girl. A broadcaster working at night.

Then, the whole atmosphere of the sleeping city is charged… you know with what.

One day, a voice calls on the appeal of the beautiful broadcaster: “Yes, my friends, how very much would I like to be with you on this June night. What are you doing right now, what are you dreaming of? Do you dream in color?

“Or, you know what? Call me, and tell me what you’re doing right now on this balmy night.”

And a voice, which will join the voice of the charming broadcaster at 90.6, will state:

“You asked me what I’m doing right now, Ms. Navrátilová? I’m sleeping. With you…”

Is it the voice of a pervert? you ask, if you, too, listen to the radio at night. Or maybe a young man in love?

But you know what?

I’m not answering any questions.

I’m a city, and I can telephone to the ether whatever I want.

Spanish flies. The beautiful urge to pleasure. Hymenoptera. Female hymenopteran. Male hymenopteran.

They halved them, too. After a divorce everything gets halved, doesn’t it? But they were reasonable. They didn’t need an army of lawyers; they didn’t need a court, or Justice with her scales. Justice with her scales is blind. They had sight; they knew how to halve Spanish flies.

They stood before the courthouse. It drizzled a bit when they hugged for the last time, then they went their separate ways. They didn’t look back once. God knows how smart they were, they thought. How they turned out all right in the end. Men and women in their situation do terrible things in court.

Luckily for them capital punishment had been abolished here.

O, my dear Marquis de Sade.

Luckily for them the punishment of slavery had been abolished here, too. But the heroes of my story were street-smart. World-wise. They were civilized like the courtesans of Rome.

“It’s just a job,” said a wench to the Empress Messalina, “not my joy. Above all I love flowers, because they are Platonic!”

They were platonic, too. Above all, they were in love with their style.

Flagellating with divorce was as alien to them as flagellating with sex. O, dear Marquis de Sade. They simply split as men and women split before the public toilets.

He would go to the Boys’ and she to the Girls’.

Only a deviant would confuse them.

To pay heed to the call of nature, they righteously divided everything they had acquired in the six years of their marriage. How smart they were. And how foolish. Halved Spanish flies will no longer fly to pleasure.

And the shells picked up in that bay in Yugoslavia, they halved them, too. Then they went home and listened.

But the halved ocean doesn’t murmur.

Could be that war in the bay…

I love coffee. It’s the vice of the cities. They make it from the night. I make it, too. Sometimes for breakfast I take it light. I sweeten it at other times, when my people kiss in their bedrooms at night — because those nights are sweet. Believe me.

I like all people who drink coffee. Such people I gladly smell, and listen to their pulse, and I believe them when they tell the future from the grinds.