Ivan Klima - My Golden Trades

The boxes with the labels in them had piled up in the little entrance hall. I stuffed them into my bag, and into the rucksack I brought with me. Altogether, they must have weighed about thirty kilos.

As I finished, the numbers on Kosinová's screen began to

move again. 'Hurrah!' she cried, and ran to her little chair to continue working at a task whose outcome no one was waiting for.

In the porter's lodge, the violinist was on duty today. He stood, legs apart, behind his counter, his violin under his chin and played from memory the solo from the finale of Dvorak's Concerto in A Minor.

I would have loved to listen to him for a while, but I still wanted to get out to Komořan before I began cooking, so I didn't have much time left.

I put the box with the labels down in the hall. Mr Bauer emerged from his cubicle, and when he saw me, he remarked dryly: 'Well, I've worked it out for you.'

'What have you worked out?'

'Don't you remember? Wait, I'll bring it to you. You'll only be interested in the results anyway.'

I went into the kitchen once more to make sure nothing was missing.' The spices stood neatly on the shelf — I'd prepared the curry myself. There weren't many utensils here — two frying pans and two pots, one large and one small. Not a single lid.

'Here it is,' said Engineer Bauer, handing me a sheaf of paper.

I skimmed a column of figures and symbols. At the bottom, the computer had remarked:

LIFE IMPROBABLE IN 2069

LIFE COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE FROM 2084 ON

'That leaves us ninety-seven years,' said Mr Klíma, who was looking over his shoulder. 'I'll be exactly a hundred and thirty years old. I'd never have thought it — just think of all the things I won't live to see.'

Mr Vandas, who had come out as well, still had rings of sadness under his eyes. You'll be lucky to live to thirty,' he said darkly. 'If by any chance you should prove too disease-resistant, our health system will make good and sure you won't go on haunting us here for too much longer.'

Many people had come to the crematorium for the funeral ceremony last week. Both the little girls were dressed in coloured dresses and they stood out among the mourners like bright flowers on a black meadow. Vandas did not want a eulogy. It's too late to say what we haven't already said, he explained. So they just played music the whole time. When the curtain was drawn and the coffin began to move towards the fire, the elder of the girls jumped up, leaped over that long fence and ran into the dead area behind it to hold her mother back, since they had all told her she'd only gone out there for a while.

They pulled the girl back, — whispering something in her ear, most probably to be brave.

'I did what I could,' Bauer explained. 'I calculated that by 2025, more than half the budget would be spent on saving the environment. In actual fact, people will never be that determined. Also, I didn't factor in a single nuclear catastrophe, not to mention war, although when you take the number of nuclear generating plants in operation today, and their probable number in 2025, there should be at least three more Chernobyls.'

'Well, thank you very much,' I said.

'Don't mention it,' said Bauer. 'I was interested in this myself.'

'So, are you going to write something for us by way of farewell?' asked Klíma.

'I wanted to nip out to Komořan first. And I have to cook that lunch.'

'As you wish,' said Klíma, somewhat miffed. 'But it's not even half past ten.'

I sat down at the computer. I should have written a few words of farewell. But all I could think of was a quatrain:

All around the city's towers Fall the wildest little showers; But now we're in the mood We'll surely stop a flood!

Still moved by the fresh prognosis of Mr Bauer, I put another quatrain together. Klíma, though he normally did not do so, read the fruits of my labour. 'Did you just write this now?'

'I told you, I was in a hurry,' I said apologetically.

'It's not bad,' he said, delighted. 'Do you want me to print it out?'

He printed both my poems, I stuck the page into my rucksack (I no longer needed my bag) and hurried out of the hall.

Dvořák was still emanating from the porter's lodge, and could be heard from outside the building. In the flower shop they had a single, wilting orchid. I looked around to see if I could see my blind man, but it was too early. Several days ago we'd come back on the same bus. I heard him explaining loudly to someone that in Arobidzhan— which lies on the ninety-first meridian and the fifty-sixth parallel — blind people don't go to school.

'What did you do, then?' a fat man sitting beside him had asked.

'I played the violin,' said the blind man. He lifted his

white cane, put it under his chin and pretended to coax a few plaintive tones out of it. 'I used to play in bars on winter evenings,' he said later. 'While I played, the guests talked, drank vodka and took bites of bread. Sometimes there'd be a blizzard, or the temperature would drop so low that no one could go outside. Then we drank a lot of vodka, and ate a lot of bread.'

'Did you have any bacon to go with the bread?'

'You think too much about bacon!' shouted the blind man. 'Are you a cook, by any chance?'

'What would be wrong with that?'

People around them burst into laughter.

'You haven't got an ear for music, or for people, only for something to fill your face. When there was bacon,' replied the blind man, 'people ate. When there was no bacon, there was salt, and when the salt ran out, there were tears.'

In the corridor of the wooden building I knocked on the familiar door and then entered without waiting for an answer. An unfamiliar woman sat behind one of the desks.

'Are you looking for someone?'

'For Natasha,' I said, someone thrown off balance.

'That's me.'

'Excuse me… I mean, I was thinking the woman who sits at the other desk,' I said, pointing.

'Unfortunately, Anička has the day off today. She had to go to Ostrava.'

'Ah.' I felt strangely put out. 'Can I leave something here for her?' I took out the flower. 'You'll probably have to put this in some water.'

'I'll look after it.'

I gave her the flower. I felt I should write her a message to go with it. Something like: I'm sending you a smile and I

wish you. . Or: Thanks for the trust. Or simply: Goodbye. And my signature. I took out the piece of paper with the print-out of my quatrain. The second one went this way:

In far-off Dubai you do or you die, In the Yukon you ken what you can, In Wooloomooloo there's no one but you— Oh, the end of the world is at hand!

There was no point in signing it; we'd talked but never introduced ourselves.

I folded the paper into a small square and handed it to the real Natasha. 'And would you be kind enough to give her this too, please?' My message was probably bad news, but it could also be understood as good news, if only because it existed at all.

She took the paper from me and promised to pass it on. I thanked her and hurried back to catch the bus so I could get back in time to prepare the Chicken à la Rawalpindi to celebrate my parting with the kind-hearted programmers, and my own career as a courier.

The House

I KNEW ONLY the name of the street and the number; that was all my friend the surveyor, who got me the job, could tell me, since he'd never been there. I'd have no trouble finding the house, he said, because it was right next to the town square. But I wasn't to expect any luxury. Surveyors tend to be frugal; much of their income comes in expenses — living allowances, remuneration for being separated from spouses and children and so on, and if they actually had to spend it on room and board, the work would quickly lose its appeal. So they try to find cheap accommodation.