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

“I used to study medicine,” she babbled.

“A douchebag is what you are,” said the Prince, opening the window. Stars were twinkling overhead. The sky had reached the point where the night was beginning to wane but the morning hadn’t yet come.

“Now be a good girl and get lost,” said the Prince, pointing to the window.

“I used to work for an information service,” said the girl. Her hair was wrapped around her head.

The Prince lifted her up, and then fell down. When he found his matchbox, he took a bunch at once and held them against the striking surface.

“If you don’t get out, I’ll light your hair on fire,” he said.

She sat down, then struggled to her feet, supporting herself on the bunk with her hands, then she tottered to the window and said, pointing innocently, “Through here?”

“Through there,” said the Prince. He remained on all fours a moment longer, then slowly rose to his feet.

“Fourteen months in Pankrac prison,” the girl said, lifting one leg over the sill and into the cool air. She leaned back into the room and added, “I was supposed to start my sentence yesterday.”

The Prince stumbled to the window and pushed her through it with his elbow. Her fall was odd, as though she had been skewered by the windowsill. Her hair flew loose and, as if turning on a spit, she rolled on her own axis: first her head, then her torso, then her legs flew up in the air like a pair of white weasels… and when her hair and torso had disappeared, her legs followed them into the darkness the way a high diver is swallowed up by water, and the window frame was left empty except for the tense and tingling stars.

“It’s all going to work out,” said Bárta, the merchant, hopefully. “Just as soon as we get our property back.”

“You’ll get shit back,” said the doctor of philosophy. “Don’t you get it yet?” He pointed at the yard engine pulling the hoppers heaped with scrap metal off to the blast furnaces. “Don’t you understand that you’ve been loading all that stuff, the very tools of your trade, into those furnaces, and the ingots that pour out of those furnaces are meant for a different era? A year from now, where will all those small businesses, those crappy little companies, and their machinery be? Gone! And what’ll become of you? The same as all this scrap, the tools of your trade… you’ll be ingots too. This new age is melting you all down, because it’s not the measles you’ve come down with, it’s the epoch. And what about me? I hope I live to see the rentiers in Paris sweeping the streets, and the communists booting them in the ass. I hope I live to see the blacks in America fucking millionaires’ daughters! My only regret is I won’t be able to take part in that fuckfest myself, because I’m already advertising a house I no longer want to live in. Farewell, old world!”

The Prince picked up the girl’s panties and tossed them out the window, and for an instant the undergarment spread its wings like a purple bat. Then he threw her coat and her torn skirt out as well.

“When I was a little girl, I had a pony…” she wailed.

Karel, the fireman, adjusted his helmet at a jaunty angle, shut the medicine cabinet with the mirror inside, locked it with a padlock, tested it several times to see if it held, and then, still holding the key, he turned around.

“I was quite a dog in my day, and my case officer can tell you a thing or two, but Prince, you are a dog among dogs.”

The Prince took a shiny, handworn whip from the corner and cracked it in the air. Then he picked up a small purse that had fallen out of the girl’s coat pocket. He opened it and removed a piece of paper, unfolded it, and suddenly he became sober.

“Well, I guess it’s true,” said the Prince. “Karel, stop by the police station and tell them you and me and Jarda want to report a girl who was supposed to sign in at Pankrac yesterday to start doing her time. Tell them we’re turning her in, because we’re all on probation. Everyone’ll see we’re just covering our butts.”

The fireman set off to work, full of the vanity that radiated from his narrow boots, his tightly cinched belt, and the helmet tilted rakishly over his eyes.

The doctor nodded toward the departing yard engine and saw the other workers leaving the scrap metal yard, heading toward the little shack they had erected with advertising panels taken from closed businesses. “Fafejta’s Condoms, Guaranteed To Save You From A Life of Need.” “Give Your Tastebuds A Boost With An Ego Chocolate Bar.” “We’ll Buy Your Gold. Best Prices!” “Famira Bras Give Shape To Your Secret Charms.” “Suzi The Seer Sees It All In Her Magic Crystal Ball!” “A Housecoat From Eusner’s Will Win Her Heart. Silk, Padded, Double-Stitched. Jindřišská 20.” “Kosetek’s Permanent Wave: You Look Good, You Also Save!” “Massages, 8 Nekázanka Street: Expertise, Elegance, Discretion.” “Please Don’t Pick Or Step On The Flowers. They Have Feelings Too.” “Get Potential! Sensational Relief For Men Who Need A Pick-Me-Up To Do The Deed!” “Romany Rose Will Read Your Future. Palms, Tea-Leaves, Tarots.”

The fire truck roared past the scrap metal division. Firemen in drenched uniforms were sitting on jump seats; some stood on the running boards, their black helmets glistening with water. The fireman with the gleaming white teeth, his boot propped on the mudguard, hung on with one hand and saluted with the other, acknowledging accolades that no one was sending his way and shouting out to the workers: “Know what was blocking the cooling tubes? A little boy, cooked to death! A bunch of brats went swimming in the cistern up there, and the kid got sucked into the intake! They promised us bonuses, and now they’re dragging their feet! Can you believe it? An extra crown per hour they promised us and they reneged!”

The doctor of philosophy ducked his head and entered the low structure cobbled together from old billboards and plate-metal signs, with the slogans and ads from nationalized and closed businesses. He sat down among the workers, all of them former businessmen, craftsmen, and professionals. “Greetings, Ingots!” he said.

A former miller, a former owner of a carpentry shop, a former butcher and a former locksmith nudged and winked at each other, and the miller said: “Sit down, old man, and tell us some of your dirty stories.”

At that moment, a load of molten slag was dumped onto the slag heap and the sky glowed pink. In the distance, the sleeping town lay steeped in its pre-dawn atmosphere, with its green roofs and bare slate spires. The blast-furnace chimneys loomed in the background, and atop the middle chimney, a gentle blue flame flickered with an amber glow around the edges. The slopes of the slag heap darkened, leaving only a meandering scar of red-hot slag, the landscape’s gaping sex.

The stars faded, the tiny ones already gone out, leaving only a few large dying stars shimmering in the firmament.

A voice below the window whispered, “Let me live, let me live!”

The summer this year was a hot one. Young boys bounced soccer balls off the walls and the screen-covered basement windows, practicing the Czech Wall Pass. The super’s wife told Mr. Mit’ánek in strictest confidence that she thought Mr. Valerián had either taken up acting or dancing, or he’d taken leave of his senses. He’d been down there in the basement since early morning with another man, and they were cavorting about, crashing into each other, drinking cheap red wine straight from the bottle, and yelling: “Can’t stop now! Must keep at it!” A month ago, she added, Mr. Valerián had brought in vats of ceramic clay, and then the day before yesterday, it was a mortar trough. She had seen him wandering about the basement half naked with nothing more to cover his torso than a piece of dog pelt that he used as a floor mat by his bed, and that other fellow was there with him, with the very same floor mat covering his naked torso. And every day, two women came to visit, both wearing cloche hats decorated with artificial cherries. And these two reprobates in dog skins were threatening each other with axes — old stone axes like the kind Robinson Crusoe made.