Tomáš Zmeškal - A Love Letter in Cuneiform

It was a Wednesday morning, still hot. The year: 1945. The place: somewhere southeast of Plzeň.

Josef ran, fleeing, stumbling. Leaping over stumps without even trying to dodge the branches. He was a man in flight. But his strength hadn’t abandoned him. He didn’t know how long it would hold out, and he was afraid to look back. Animals, wild animals, in the middle of Bohemia. He would have smiled if he’d had the energy: southeast of Plzeň wasn’t the middle of Bohemia. The sweat poured off of him, he knew he couldn’t keep running for long. The forest floor was starting to slope slightly downward; he had already fallen several times, somersaulting downhill, but he suddenly stopped to listen. First he heard the stream, then saw it. Sprinting over, he knelt down and splashed water on his face. Then he plunged his whole head in and drank. Every so often he lifted his head to take another look around, but he kept on drinking. Once he had drunk his fill, he stood up and listened carefully, scanning the area, but there was no sign of the animals. If they were chasing him, or even if they just happened to be coming his way, they would be here in a couple of minutes. He waited to see whether they appeared at the top of the slope. He was being careful now not to step on anything. Nothing but silence, sunlight falling down between the trees, and stirred-up dust. All of a sudden he realized he had been holding his breath the whole time. He leaned against a tree and took a deep breath. Arched his back and raised his head to look into the treetops. For a moment he didn’t realize what he was seeing, what he was looking at. By the time he did he was back on the run. A tiny little monkey with disproportionately large eyes and long fingers stared back at him from the tree. I’ve never seen such a thing, Josef thought. Once again he was a man in flight.

After a while running, he began to detect the slightest trace of a path. He sensed it more with his legs than with his relentlessly darting eyes. There were fewer and fewer sticks, dry pine needles, and broken branches. His legs were getting more agile despite the trembles of fatigue running through them. Now his head, too, began to sense the gentleness of a trail unfolding before him. He huddled close to the ground. Pressed his head into the dust of needles and rusty bark. Scanned for shapes with his frightened eyes. Trying to bring them into focus and burn them into his brain. Gradually, a path appeared. His eye caught it as it measured the angles, drawing the scale and discerning the shapes. A small, nearly invisible trail tracing a route through the hot dust. The only thing that had made seeing it possible, though, was the fact that his head was pressed firmly against the needles, the temporal bone of his skull providing a solid base for his eye, allowing the ants it crushed to death to deliver one final bite to the large animal that went by a human name. Josef stood up. His body, driven like a pointer dog by fatigue, had lost its coordination. He shot off like a spring energized by joy. Joy! Joy! With a strength not so long ago forgotten and scared to death. He leaped up somewhat higher than necessary, his legs starting to run before they touched the ground. Taking hold while he was still in the air. Digging in now as his body landed, swaying on impact, recalibrating. Now fully synchronized, the camshaft took off in the direction of the path. After a few more minutes, the path became visible to the naked eye. After a few more breaths, the end of the forest was also in view. After a few more blinks of the eye, a dirt road spread out before him. Josef set out along it. Running at first, till fatigue declared itself, then downshifting to a trot. Next, alternating between a walk and a trot, scanning the surroundings, then finally just walking as fast as he could. As fast as his strength would permit, though it had left him a long time ago. He went on like that for at least an hour. It was impossible to say how long. Amid the exhaustion, and with weakness in reach, even Josef couldn’t tell whether time was passing faster or slower. He tried to estimate how much distance he had covered. To no avail. He realized with some unease that it couldn’t have been more than an hour since his encounter with the two giraffes, the rhino, and the anteaters. And then, as was bound to happen sooner or later, he saw the half-demolished building. A farmstead. Josef reckoned there had to be a village close by, but couldn’t see it. The road ran alongside the building and continued on. It suddenly struck him how quiet it was. He wasn’t in the woods anymore, but out in the open. Not a soul around, with the forest back in the distance behind him, an occasional gust of wind rustling the pines. He entered the farmyard, or what was left of it. An elongated structure. Stables on one side, barn on the other, well right nearby. The last side of the rectangle was formed by the sticks of what had once been a fence. Probably whitewashed with lime. No sound of animals. He walked into the yard. He had an urge to call out. Actually, he just had an urge to let someone know he was there. But he didn’t even want that, actually. He just had the urge to wash up, have something to drink, think about what had happened to him, and also, pee in peace. He walked a few times across the farmyard, back and forth. Peeked into the barn and the stable. Listened, didn’t hear any people or animals, nothing. He leaned against the well and realized how hard he was breathing, no, not breathing, puffing like a freight train. He looked into the well, took the bucket and threw it down. Noticed the rope on the bucket had snapped and been retied. But just then someone or something grabbed him by the legs, and before he knew what was happening, he was flying down headfirst. Without realizing it he screamed. Screamed with whatever air was still left in his lungs in spite of the shock. Screamed, roared, shrieked, squawked, squealed. He flew a long time, hundreds of thousands of years, until his whole body jerked to a stop and he was left hanging. In total darkness. His left foot was tangled in the rope from the bucket. His hands were scraped bloody from trying to grab the walls of the well. A twitch ran through his body as he hung, head down. Again and again he tried to haul himself up with his two bloodied hands, and once he’d roared the last remains of air from his lungs, he gasped for breath and tried to look up toward the light. He did, and up above, where just a few breaths in and out ago the cerulean canvas of the sun-bewitched sky had stretched, there was now … space. The small black circle of the mouth of the well filled with stars. Where there should have been sky-blue heaven, now there was a night sky. As his muddled brain ceaselessly arranged and rearranged the stars into constellations, he wondered which spectrum of visible light the well was screening out and just how deep he actually was. Even the skin from his hands he had left behind on the rocks lining the well was starting to hurt now. He had just about had enough.

He wondered what he had done to deserve this, until it dawned on him that merit had nothing to do with the situation he was in. His left leg was falling asleep and the blood was rolling in and out of his head like surf. His heart was pounding so hard he thought the sound must be carrying up to the mouth of the well. It felt as if his veins were going to burst they were stretched so tight, and the blood was going to start squirting out of his body, filling the well and drowning him. He would choke to death, croak, perish in his own blood. No, easy now. Easy. Whoever or whatever it was, he said to himself, he had to get himself out of there. Slowly he attempted to lift the upper part of his torso. It was hard going. He had a feeling there was someone or something up there watching, so he tried to be quiet. Quiet as a mouse, so whatever it was up there would forget about him and not come and drown him. He kept trying to pull himself up again, then falling down again, hanging. And again. Slowly. Another try. No go. Again. Slowly. One more time. Almost. No. Again. And … quiet. Grab hold. Try again. One more time … Got it. No, yes. Slowly, don’t breathe. Just a little more. A little bit. A little bit more. Careful. Careful. Almost there. A little more. Made it. I made it. Yes, yes, yes … I’m there. Got it, holding on. Josef slowly pulled himself up. First he grabbed hold with the middle finger of his left hand. Pulled himself up. Grabbed hold of the rope and swung. Virgin Mary Mother of God and the Seven Mercies, no! He wanted to scream, but kept quiet. He waited for the rope to stop swinging, then grabbed hold with the other hand. Little by little he pulled himself up. Didn’t even breathe. Tried not to breathe. Tried not to be. The rope started to sway again. No! He wanted to yell, but didn’t dare. Now he had his head up to the level of his ankles, he could prop himself up with his hands. He could feel the blood pulsing in his hands and his rope-choked leg. He swallowed hard, breathing softly. It worked. His leg was back where it belonged. Feet below, head above. Josef held the rope a while, thinking, not in words, but in screams inside the walls of his skull: It wants to kill me! It wants to kill me! Something wants to kill me. Something or someone. It threw me down the well. Careful now. It wants to kill me. Gotta get up. Caaareful, Josef, caaareful. He was climbing higher and higher, but just to make sure, he let go of the rope and wedged himself in between the walls. Feet and hands. Slowly, yes, very slowly, clawing his way up. At first all he could see was stars in the black circle of the well’s mouth. But the higher he climbed, the brighter the sky became. Until at last the stars melted away and the blackness dissolved into a desolate powder-blue sky. He was halfway up the well when suddenly it went black again. He looked up and saw an outline. Nothing more than an outline. Nothing more, nothing less. Then he heard a roar roaring at him: “Not enough for you, you bastard? Wanna crawl outta there, huh? You piece of shit, you just wait!” “Jesus Christ,” Josef said out loud now. “They really want to kill me,” and he began clawing and scraping his way up even harder. Before it went black again, he could feel pebbles dropping into his hair. He tried to squeeze as close as he could to the wall as a boulder went flying past. “Nooooo!” shouted Josef. “Please, nooo. I didn’t do anything to you, leave me alone. Let me climb out. I didn’t do anything. Please just let me climb out!” Josef screamed. Now he could clearly make out the outlines of a human shadow. The shadow stopped moving and a voice called down, “Who the hell are you?” “I can explain everything,” Josef shouted. “I didn’t do anything, I’ve done nothing!” After a while the voice called down again, “Say thrushes.” Josef didn’t understand, but he shouted up anyway, “Thrushes!”