Ivan Klima - My Golden Trades

'He didn't really say, "strictly speaking" and "hempen twine"?' asked Vítek.

'"Strictly speaking, hempen twine",' Petra repeated. 'You don't think I'd make something like that up, do you? I couldn't if I tried.'

Lida stood up in her grave and wiped the sweat and dust from her forehead. 'I guess it's time to photograph this now,' she said, pointing to the grave that she and Petra had carefully swept clean. She pulled a camera out of a bucket and looked around for the best spot from which to immortalize the grave-site. 'You know who called me at five o'clock this morning?' she said, suddenly remembering. 'The professor. She said our discovery wouldn't let her sleep. And then, when she finally dropped off, she dreamt about the thing.' Lida turned the wheelbarrow over and stood on it. The grave in front of her was as clean as a

table ready to be set, but at the same time it was bare, empty, and as hot as a patch of earth after a fire.

'So, what was it?' asked Petra.

'She claims it was a handle.'

'A handle? Who's she kidding!' said Vítek. 'What did they need a handle for?'

'Maybe for a chisel,' explained Lida. 'Or for some special kind of knife.'

'Do you think it could have been a sacrificial knife?' Masha set down the brush she was using to clean the cracks between the rocks.

'A sacrificial knife would probably have been bigger.' Lida jumped down, turned the wheelbarrow upright, pushed it over to the other side, and then got up on it again. 'Anyway, it's difficult for anyone to say with any certainty now.'

'That's awful,' Masha whispered to me. 'I touched that handle yesterday, too. And they might have used it to kill people with.'

'The blood would have dried up long ago,' I reassured her.

'But what if there was a curse on the thing?'

'Do you believe in curses?'

She shrugged her shoulders. 'Don't you?'

'Not really.'

'Do you think they. . aren't they watching what we're doing here?'

'Who, the dead?'

'The ones buried here.'

'Are you afraid they might take revenge on us?'

'When they dug that Tollund man out of the peat bog, one of the excavators suddenly dropped dead on the spot.

I read about it. It couldn't just have been a coincidence. The man who had written the story was there — he said that the old gods demanded a life in exchange for that ancient man.'

'That sounds like a pretty human notion of what the gods expect.'

'So you think there's nothing, then?'

I didn't understand her.

'I mean, you die and then — nothing?' she explained.

'There's no answer to that.'

'Why not?'

'There's no answer that you can put into words.'

'I know — I ask a lot of dumb questions. It drives my parents mad.'

'Words come from experience, that's what I meant to say. When we talk about something that no one has ever experienced, words can only be misleading.'

'That's interesting, what you say. Does that mean you can't even write about it?' Masha filled the wheelbarrow right to the brim with earth. 'I'd still like to see him — the Tollund man, I mean. They say he has a beautiful head.'

I trundled the wheelbarrow off to a nearby pile.

We are all waiting for some message of hope, hope for our life here, and perhaps even more, for eternity. We want assurances that we will be saved from the laws of nature, where everything is subject to extinction; assurances that the life in us has strived for something new, and thus that death has no dominion over us. From ancient times, people have offered bloody sacrifices, even human sacrifices, to the gods, expecting hope in return. Finally they, or some of them anyway, found consolation in a God who accepted the sacrifice of his own Son, and in return gave them hope

once and for all. At the same time other people, who had never heard of this God worshipped by the Israelites — nor of his Son who said: 'Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall never pass away'—sacrificed one of their own people and threw his body into the Tollund bog.

The man on the cross looks down upon us in countless forms. The man from the Tollund Fen, the noose removed from around his beautiful head, with that magnificent high-bridged nose, was put on display in a provincial museum. The meaning of sacrifice has been lost today; we continue to wait for some more persuasive, more logical and more understandable prophesy. We await this news from priests, from astrologers, from political leaders, from philosophers and from writers. And many, longing to win the favour of those who wait, say: 'May you be saved!' And others cry, 'There is no heaven except on this earth, except in this life.' Still others skilfully divert attention and seek a substitute hope. Very few have the courage to stand up and say, 'Beloved, there is no answer. Insofar as death can be conquered, insofar as man is truly endowed with something denied to other forms of life, it can only exist in a dimension for which we lack words.' But such answers, no matter how true, would interest or satisfy no one.

'What do you want to be, anyway, Masha?' I asked when I came back.

'I wanted to study archaeology. But they're probably not going to open the faculty this year, or next year either.'

'Of course they won't,' said Lida from the next grave-site. 'They say archaeology has no practical use. It is uneconomic.'

'And what draws you to archaeology, if it makes you think such thoughts?' I asked Masha.

'I like the idea of finding gifts in graves. Each of those things must have been rare and special for those people, and yet they put them into the grave along with their dead. I like the idea that people used to be so fond of each other.' She continued piling the earth into the wheelbarrow. 'When Mum and Dad got divorced,' she said quietly, 'they sued each other for possession of the TV and the cutlery. They couldn't have done that if they'd known how people used to… Archaeologists have to be kinder than that; at least I can't imagine a bad archaeologist.' Masha dropped her shovel and quickly covered her ears as the squadron of unidentifiable jet fighters screamed over our heads again.

'When you tell it, it's a fantastic joke,' said Petra, returning to her nuclear war story. 'A mask and a coat! I saw on German television what would happen if the rockets started flying. It was such fun I didn't have the heart to send the kids to bed. What if the whole thing just blew up that night? I'm not kidding, I had this stupid idea: let them live a little. I let them eat a whole ice-cream cake for a snack.'

'Do you think it could start suddenly, just like that?' said Masha. She was clearly alarmed.

'Why not?' said the foreman. 'It could start by accident.'

'I've already talked things over with Joe,' Petra continued. 'We're going to apply to emigrate to New Zealand.'

'Oh, sure, the whole country's just waiting for you to show up down there,' said Vítek. He sounded as though he'd taken the idea as a personal insult, as though she'd decided to move away from him.

'If not New Zealand, somewhere else. It could scarcely be worse than it is here.'

'It wouldn't be any more use than a fart in a hurricane,

Petra,' said Vítek vengefully. 'When those bombs start exploding, where'll you hide? Radiation will be everywhere, it'll be winter all over the world, because the sun will never make it through that cloud of ash.'

'Well, what of it?' insisted Petra. 'So I'll freeze somewhere. Is it better to stay here like a calf waiting to be slaughtered? Look at those fools, always putting on such a show.' She pointed at the squadron of jets flying straight towards us. So far, they were completely silent.

Masha was furiously sweeping the grave-site with a straw whisk. 'What will you do if you don't get to study archaeology?' I asked.