Bohumil Hrabal - Mr. Kafka - And Other Tales From the Time of the Cult

They were standing by the fence around the barracks. The Prince yanked out two boards and they slipped into the compound, the girl bending forward, her hair over her face, yawning. He held out his arm to indicate she should go ahead, but as he did so he staggered backwards, hit the dormitory wall, and slumped to the ground.

Inside, Karel the fireman was looking into the mirror, baring his gleaming set of teeth and brandishing his axe. He had his helmet on and gazed at himself through half-closed eyes. He wore tight-fitting calf-high boots, and from the moment he’d first pulled them on, he felt utterly sure of himself, decisive, the same way he felt when he wore his big belt.

The door to the room swung open and he spun round, alarmed to see no one there. The volunteer workers were all asleep in their bunks, except for Jarda Jezula, who lay on his back, fiddling with a bunch of artificial roses wired to a slat in the bunk above him.

A drunken worker with deep circles under his eyes sat backward on a chair, toying with a glass of wine and watching its reflection flicker across the table top. “Concentrate,” he mumbled. “Think of it, say it at once, and you’ve got it. What am I afraid of, Marion?”

The fireman braced himself, walked over to the doorway and shouted into the dark corridor, “Don’t play games with me! You’d better watch out! My case officer’ll tell you what a dog I was in reform school!”

The Prince stepped through the doorway, turned around, and held out his hands to draw the girl in from the dark. She stumbled into the room, bent over at the waist, her hair dishevelled. She tossed her coat aside, and the fireman jumped up on a chair; the reflection from the wine glass on the table top came to rest. Her arms outstretched, the girl collapsed facedown on one of the bunks and her hair spread out like spilt milk.

“But there’s humanity here,” said the merchant. “There are ideas here.”

“Humanity, my friend? We saw that in the slammer; that’s where humanity is now. Nothing but rat finks, maniacs, bottom-feeders, and big mouths with raging paranoia! All we ever heard inside was, ‘I’ll show the fuckers the minute Zenkl shows up from Cheb on a white charger!’” The doctor of philosophy was shouting, his eyelids hooding his eyes. “Humanity will forgive you if you’re a horse’s ass, but if you speak five languages, they’ll never let you live it down, especially not in the slammer. There was one particular swine who was doing time for politics, like me, but he liked to play the coachman, get on his high horse, and he’d grill everyone who came in, even though it was none of his damned business. He pointed his whip at me and asked, ‘So what are you in for?’ and I said, ‘I’m ashamed to tell you,’ and he gave me a taste of his whip, so I said, ‘I fucked a goat,’ and he ate it up. ‘Out with the details,’ he said, and I said, ‘It was a goat, but she was pregnant, and I ripped her open, so they threw the book at me.’ After that the son of a bitch left me alone, but I had to stay sharp, because one day he was about to let a wagon roll over my foot, but luckily it stopped when the tongue got caught in a crack in the stairs. I was ready to punch him in the face, a real whopper, right on the nose, but then common sense got the better of me — you know how it is — all the ones doing real time were absolute masters of mayhem. But some day, I’m going to let someone have it, that’s for damned sure, and they won’t know what hit them.” And he went on, dragging the scrap out of the wagon with a bent pitchfork: rusty saws, bandsaws, chopsaws, crosscuts, Swede saws, rip saws, keyhole saws, cog-wheels, spindles, bobbins, needle holders, a set of rusty drills, some axes, hammers, grinding wheels, compasses, charred carpenters’ adzes.

“Boys,” said the Prince, struggling to get his boots off, “I brought you a sweet little piece of ass.”

“You’re the man,” said the fireman, climbing off the chair, “I’ll go first.”

“Jarda, are you having a go too?” asked the Prince.

Jarda merely smiled beatifically.

“Forget about him! Haven’t you heard?” asked the fireman, and he knelt beside the sleeping girl and flipped up her skirt. “Jarda’s fell hard for an ex-pavement pounder. Today was her name day and he carries a bouquet for her across the whole damn steel works… and she burst into tears.” In a single motion, the fireman ripped off the girl’s panties and tossed them at the wall.

The Prince walked unsteadily to the table, opened a drawer, took out a pair of scissors, then went to the bunk.

“Getting their clothes off is always a pain in the ass,” he said, then he cut through the hem of her skirt and with a sudden jerk, ripped it in two. “That’s hard work,” he said, stumbling back to the table. He sat down on a bunk. “Jarda,” he said, “you used to be a bit of a hound. Don’t you want a little taste?”

He pointed at the helmet, which appeared to be resting on the girl’s head, at the fireman’s uniform now blanketing her body, at the axe shaking rhythmically on the fireman’s back.

“Think your girl is any different?” the Prince asked.

“I’ll say she’s different,” said Jarda, and he went on fiddling with the plastic roses, “but she used to be like that… and anyway, do we know who that is under Karel? Maybe she’s somebody’s sister. Somebody’s daughter for sure. Maybe she’s your future old lady. Your wife, the woman you maybe have kids with.”

“You slimy scumbag!” the Prince shouted.

“But the intelligentsia’s still around, they’ll put an end to all this,” said the merchant.

“That’ll be the day,” said the doctor. “Yesterday, when I was getting a pedicure in Jas, I ran into a sculptor friend of mine, who happens to be an old classmate, and he says to me: ‘They just gave us a beautiful exhibition space in the old Riding School up at the Castle!’ And I say, ‘Well, la-de-fuckin’-da! The aristos used to hump their nags around that place, and now you’re going to use it to flaunt your art? Couldn’t you have put up something different? I’d leave it as a riding school, and if one of those minotaurs drop in to the Castle for a state visit, let him go riding. .. Or how about this? Once a week, put a sign up in the Riding School that says, Free Humping Today!’ That’s what I told my sculptor friend, and he just walked away. I’m telling you, you can smell the shit in the intelligentsia’s trousers from thirty feet away these days.”

The doctor stood up in the wagon, then jumped down. The two of them took the other door off its hinges and carried the scrap to the hoppers: a metal worker’s anvil, a bundle of wagon axles bound with wire, ball joints and sockets, metal-bending machines, blacksmiths’ hammers and tongs, a fireplace screen, lock-makers’ drills, portable spinning wheels, a base for portable gas-furnaces, polishing wheels, a set of pipe threaders, gun drills, hole-punching pliers, ratchet wrenches, cutters, belt pulleys, manual air pumps, a jack, and the remains of a gantry crane.

The two laborers woke up. First they stuck their bare feet out from under the covers; then they sat up and looked down at the bunk where the fireman was moving up and down, the girl’s bright hair surrounding his helmet like a aureola, while her two white arms and legs stuck out from underneath him like a cross.

“Marion, what is this gentleman making love to?” the old worker said, looking at the reflection from his wine glass as it flitted around the tabletop. He brought the glass down on the table with a bang, stood up, pointed to the girl, and said, “She’s contemptible!”

“And what about the armies of whores you had when you were younger, eh?” asked the Prince, still struggling to pull his boot off.