watch this properly, by now they’re at work. And he showed me his watch. To my amazement it was still showing Central European Time.
‘That was a nice day,’ said my wife, my guide through sunny and nocturnal landscapes. She pressed herself close to me because she was shivering with cold, and I felt comforted by her closeness.
IV
Autumn is well advanced, the streets are full of dry leaves which add to our work, from the houses fly tired unenthusiastic flags, public buildings are displaying streamers with jerkish slogans which would undoubtedly please any chimpanzees that might happen along. Luckily we don’t have to pick up any of this colourful textile rubbish: flags and slogans are put up and taken down by special motorised squads.
A little way short of the beflagged Palace of Culture we met our now familiar uniformed pair. The foppish one looked a little wilted, he’d probably come on duty after a heavy night; his companion seemed unchanged.
‘Bloody mess, isn’t it?’ the fop addressed us, pointing vaguely ahead.
‘People are pigs,’ the foreman agreed. ‘Hey, what about the murderer?’ he remembered. ‘Got him yet?’
‘Signed, sealed and delivered,’ the fop said casually; ‘the lads did a good job.’
‘Name of George,’ his companion explained.
‘George who?’ the foreman asked curiously.
‘Would you believe it, he was a juvenile,’ the fop yawned. ‘Introduced himself to a girl he wanted to strangle as George from Kladno. But he made a mistake there; she got away from him.’
‘Told her he was a mining apprentice,’ the fair one added.
‘Yeah. Our lads chased up all the Georges who were mining apprentices, though they realised it might have been a trick.’
‘That’s right,’ our youngster sounded pleased. ‘And was it?’
‘Course it wasn’t. The man was simple! Know how many women he raped? Go on, you tell him,’ he encouraged his companion.
‘Sixteen!’
‘And they identified him beyond any doubt.’
‘And he was a mining apprentice?’ the foreman voiced his astonishment.
‘I’m telling you he was simple. Fellow like that commits one murder, and then has to go on. Things ain’t what they used to be – mining being an honourable job!’ The fop yawned broadly. ‘Still no pantaloons?’ he turned to the captain.
‘After my death!’ the captain snapped. But maybe I misheard him and he really said: ‘Save your breath!’
The fop didn’t even laugh this time. He nodded to his companion and the two continued down the road.
Mrs Venus pushed her shovel into my hand and grabbed the cart. With her free hand she immediately produced a cigarette and lit it. Her eyes were wet with tears. As we were tipping the rubbish into the cart I asked if anything had happened to her.
She looked at me as if deciding what lay hidden behind my inquiry: ‘Happened? Why should anything’ve happened to me? Only the old gent died.’
It took me a while to work out whom she was talking about. ‘The one on your passage?’
‘Well, he was eighty, so he died!’ She flicked her fag-end into the dustbin on the handcart and lit another. To change the subject away from death she pointed to the palace: ‘They say they found a gypsy buried in the concrete there!’
‘You’re telling me,’ the foreman was angry; ‘I’ve got a chum working in the garages there. Last month they came along with pneumatic drills and started to knock down the wall. And d’you know who they were looking for? That woman singer from the National Theatre, the one who went missing eight years ago.’
‘Did they find her?’ I ask.
‘They found bugger-all. Their drills all got screwed up!’
‘It’s a monstrosity,’ the captain gave the palace its proper description. ‘They can drive a million people inside, they switch the radiation on and they’ve turned them into a million sheep!’ At the thought of it he spat mightily. ‘One day someone will set fire to it,’ he added prophetically, ‘and good luck to him!’
At that moment a suspicion grew inside me about the direction of his latest dreams.
My wife went off to the mountains for a week’s skiing with our daughter and grand-daughter, but I didn’t want to leave Dad for so long and therefore stayed behind at home. Only on one day did I go out into the country with my lover. She led me to some sandstone rocks where an anonymous sculptor had over the decades carved out statues of saints, knights and the Czech kings, as well as a lion which towered massively on a rocky ledge. We climbed up narrow icy chimneys and descended on steeply-cut steps. Half-hidden by the fir trunks and raspberry thickets we discovered ever new sculptures. I could see that she was touched and also amazed by the intensity of the creative will of some unknown person who, either not caring for an audience or, on the contrary, full of confidence in his own work, had imposed his visions on these lonely rocks.
I was curious whether it would amuse her to create a similar gallery for herself.
She said she preferred gardens, parks, the sea; and wide open spaces. And she preferred ordinary people to saints.
And whom did she regard as ordinary people?
Everybody else. Saintliness had been invented by those who were afraid of life and real emotions. That’s why they elevated ecstatic rapture to something we should look up to, to something we should regard as a model.
And if she was given the kind of space she wanted, a garden by the seashore, what would she adorn it with?
She was taken aback by my question. She hadn’t thought about it. Certainly with nothing that might give a person a sense of his own poverty, inadequacy or sinfulness.
We found a room for the night in a small hotel; it was built before the war and its tall windows reached almost down to the floor.
Of course there’s something sacred in everyone, she added. She wasn’t thinking of that contrived ecstasy, that baroque gesture, but of something untouchable and unportrayable, the human soul. At moments of enlightenment a person could catch a glimpse of it within himself, he could see his own face as others couldn’t see it. If she were given a garden she’d like to fill it with such shapes that those who came to look at them might see themselves, the way they saw themselves at such an illuminated instant.
What shapes would they be?
The most natural ones. As in that: Prevert poem:
And it may happen to a sweeper
as he waves
his dirty broom
about without a hope
among the dusty ruins
of a wasteful colonial exhibition
that he halts amazed
before a remarkable statue
of dried leaves and blooms
representing we believe
dreams
crimes celebrations lightning
and laughter and again longing
trees and birds
also the moon and love and sun and death…
We spent a long time looking for accommodation for the night. The hotels were closed, or full up, or else taken over by children from ‘nature schools’. In the end we found an inn where, for a bribe, they took us in.
