City, Sister, Silver, page 10
Slovak meanwhile got Bohler completely. Olovrant, yeah, how bout that, he said, stroking his rosary with the massive lead beads touched by the Papa himself after Bohler went on his knees all the way to Roma the great … founded by those two Gypsies that sucked at their she-hound, that She-Dog of theirs … but no one was interested in that except me.
Maybe the reason Bohler went was because of what happened to him in the slammer … because of what that gang did to him … Hey, how bout that, said Bohler, fingering the string, this is an olovrant too. It was a peaceful evening, one of the few when we weren’t either in the city or out at the Rock.
5
THE VOICE. AT THE ROCK AND AROUND THE COUNTRYSIDE. I’M RUN-DOWN. THE THINGS OF THE BOX.
You see … back in the Stone Age of the Organization we would drive out to the Rock to celebrate every m. earned, rustled up, or extorted, but not anymore … we would’ve celebrated ourselves to death … now we went out there to switch off. Prague was the place of byznys … this was before the thing with the mill, before what happened to David … the Rock was our mystical sanctuary, our castle. It was a house that belonged to Micka, the property we’d used as collateral for our first loan from Early Bird Megabank … back in the ’70s Micka had lived there with a bunch of hippies who attempted to stave off the miserable world around them by erecting a fortress out of their time, to bring it to a standstill. The cops dragged them out one by one, like rabbits from a hutch, and most of the boys and girls wound up emigrating. The first time we went, we had to empty the closets of old hippie bells and ponchos and sugar wafers and poems and headbands and records and flutes and lutes, moldy weed and moldy shrooms, and Micka grinned happily as he burned the things of the old time … the past, but suddenly Bohler leapt into the flames and plucked out a Yanis Yoplin album, and that was the first time he said: Thou shalt not blaspheme … unnecessarily … she knew Fiery Jack an all sortsa human tricks … till the dog from hell got her … she had a strong voice.
And as Bohler spoke, I heard a woman’s voice, a throaty song, like a green flash of light … coming to me from the distant mountains, and in spite of its power and energy it was twisted … and full of longing … maybe trying to show me the way, I thought. What is it? Who is it?
And then, oddly, my heart brimmed with She-Dog’s now quite old but not entirely forgotten words. They were soft and peaceful and filled my body’s nerves with tenderness. She said to wait. She said to be ready. And again she let me hear the voice.
Lemme see you! I cried, unfortunately aloud, and everyone looked at me funny, amid the general and joyful destruction of the dead packs’ cult relics I suppose I appeared somewhat sentimental … and the power I had felt from She-Dog’s hidden presence drained out of me so fast and, it seemed, irrevocably that I tried to chew my way down into the dirt and stay there.
Switching off out at the Rock meant … shrooms and weed and LSD and Firewater and liters of red wine and not talking much and trying to just be … now and then we’d bring along various pseudodrooginas, various close female friends … no conceited rant-and-ravers, no dumb yapping cunts … it was nice to be able to dream a while … that one of them was my sister … I took Cepková once … hoping, I guess, to see in her face a flicker of She-Dog’s … just one more time … but it didn’t come, not even when I stopped talking and concentrated hard … she was just another blonde … but at least she was from our old troupe, so we played around a little … put on a little makeup and put on a little show … around the barn, past the gate, and back again … in the wind … and at first we’d be a little uneasy without any bad new ads crowding our ears and eyes … instead of Barbie, just wicked old Slavic Polednice* occasionally appearing on the sunstruck hillside across the way … no toyfils flying around, just an occasional wicked old werewolf roaming the nearby forests, but they knew to stay away from the house or we’d’ve busted those bloody chops a theirs … just a good old Goblin or two calling out in the woods now and then, no copters circling overhead, like during the ancient gothic Orwelliad … Bohler brought the Gobs food … but I’m sure the old werewolves ate it all anyway … and when from time to time we got an uncontrollable craving for those disgusting rubber city burgers, we’d drown it out with red wine and Firewater and go to the pantry for more shrooms, and then it was enough to sit at the edge of the frozen lake throwing stones onto the ice … and in the crack of the ice you could hear life’s blows, like slow music … with the certainty that come summer the stones would make circles and that every plop they made would send a greeting to your power.
Micka got the idea for us to exercise now and again, on some of those freezing mornings. Sharky wanted to see if he could stay on his feet in the air, David was almost in favor, and it was all the same to Bohler, I was the only one that refused … mornings I’m usually useless after a long hard night of dancing, I get plenty of motion as is, so I watched from indoors, basking in the cheery morning glow of my half-naked pseudodrooginas, including Lady Laos, while those madmen, my pals and partners, hopped around, doing push-ups and sit-ups and sparring with each other …
That’s what makes the un-Christian computer samurai so cool, Micka lectured us, they go by a contract too, Bushido’s what they call it, they travel in clans an teach their scamps to fight at an early age, the coolest way’s with bamboo swords, alias kendo, Micka the lawyer explained. Damn straight: healthy body, healthy mind.
Yeah, Micka, I said, only they’re in it for the long haul. I mean we’re just testin it out here an there, seein how far it’ll go, right?
Hm, oh yeah, right, maybe, I guess, said Micka, and David turned a little red. What’s up? I said.
Well, now that we got the treadmill goin, said Micka, it’d be kina hard for you to get off.
It was only afterwards I realized that maybe that word mill was the unlucky charm that eventually played into the mill in Sudan.
Yeah, and? I said.
Look, David said a little too slowly. Look, Potok, this is all I know how to do anyway.
Are you crazy, man, I said, you can do anything in the world. What’s up, Priest, tell me what’s goin on, right here, right now, an you too, Sharky, am I dancin the wrong way, is my timin off or somethin?
No, you’re dancin just right, said Micka. Only you seem a tad pissed off lately. Maybe you ran outta gas towin all those BMWs, maybe it’s all your language research, maybe you’re pregnant, or it’s time for your more or less regular monthly circles, but we’d like to see you back to your cheerful dancin self again.
Forget it, pals, I said, nobody’s gonna squelch me with that cheerful crap. This isn’t some bolshevik summer camp here. You just have to accept that I’ve got my monthly circles an they’re draggin on slightly longer than usual.
We accept it, dear pal an knight, we know you take holy communion on a by an large regular basis, Bohler frowned a pinch at that. We just want you to know that we’re your essentially devoted personal friends, an if ever a dark cloud comes your way … you can count on us … you know that as well as the rest of us.
Thanks, chief strategist, thanks, chief lawyer, thanks, chief priest, thanks, chief minister, thanks an likewise an same to you too.
Only … we knew each other well, we could measure each other’s breathing by the clearing of our own throats, so it didn’t escape the pseudodroogs of my tribe and war community that from time to time I was a little run-down. My longing for She-Dog was driving me crazy, and all my speculating about the sister she had promised me as my future, my power, was eating me up … cause, as I’ve shyly noted a few times already, my power was dying, and I couldn’t picture myself powerless in the cruel and insane world around me … this was years 1, 2, 3 … etc., and I knew the community was a gift direct from Starry Bog and that lots of other human beings were living on their own or in the wrong tribes, bad tribes, tribes without contracts … but I longed for Little White She-Dog and her complicated displays of love, if I’m to use an old term.
But I didn’t want to tell my buddies about her or her disappearance. I had a secret, which meant I wasn’t totally and entirely just a Knight of the Secret, unlike my pseudodroogs, as far as I knew. In a moment of wholly unnecessary blasphemy it even crossed my mind that compared to Little White She-Dog some little Messiach didn’t mean … but I put a stop to it and, just to be safe, had a nice long talk with my good old rosary … even through the whizzing of the lead beads over my fingers, though, I could hear the sound of She-Dog breathing as we made love … and the beads started to burn me, an unmistakable sign. I wasn’t doing too well in the love department.
But I nodded off my pseudodroogs’ worries, and seeing as we were out at the Rock we sent a few of our dear female pals and occasional partners out to the pantries and iceboxes to fetch the shiny bottles, and Bohler made his delicious mushroom turnovers, and another amazing evening flew by, like so many times before, in pleasant conversation about the magical world of byznys.
Every now and then, though, we still got slightly bored, especially toward the end of our stay … bodies tingling, fingers twitching, itching to start taking again … no one blasphemed unnecessarily by speaking his thoughts aloud, thoughts of faxes and phone calls and appointments and conferences and lists and consultations and contacts … but I think all of us were eager to be back cranking the mill, creeping along the tentacles, feeding the Organization … since we still had three days left, or however many Doctor Hradil prescribed, it was obvious we had to squeeze out another drop of enjoyment to keep our work in Prague from giving us all a nervous breakdown.
At moments like these, the thing to do was climb or hop into Micka’s mobile and take a trip round the Czech countryside. While Micka revved the engine, warming it up, we roared; Hey, coyote mama, let er rip an let it ride! … step on it, old dog, so what if we kill ourselves! … put the pedal to the metal, lawyer, so what if we kill somebody! … give it the gun, old skinflint, so what if we kill a cop! and Micka peeled out, and then it was time for pranks on the driver … which Bohler’s Laotian lady excelled in … maybe because she could count the number of times she’d been in a car, the only thing she’d ever ridden in her native Laos was boofalos … covering Micka’s eyes on the curves, dropping a sack over his head … strangling him savagely all of a sudden as he took a hairpin turn … firing a gun off next to his head … imitating police sirens … but Micka just laughed and glowed, he knew how to handle it … from the days of his rickety old motorcycle … and being fast and alert for him was part of the code of Bushido … and Lady Laos got wilder and crazier … shrieking into his ear … popping champagne out of nowhere … and as we bore down on some poor old dog she took a broken lollipop stick and rammed it into Micka’s ears, piercing both his eardrums, the lawyer started screaming as blood gushed down his neck, but he couldn’t hear himself so he started screaming louder, and even if unlike us he didn’t hear the crunch of that kind old stray dog’s spine, he saw him … what was left of him.
Micka stopped the mobile, and while we searched through the tangle of bodies, rags, bottles, and other junk for bandages and Doctor Hradil’s Miracle Elixir, Bohler took Lady Laos into the shadows behind the car and smacked her up a little. Seeing the grim look on the now bandaged and recovering Micka’s face, he spluttered something about the unique Asian sense of humor … an if anyone tries to make a little fun an games into some kina racial issue … he said … set off any pogroms … or stir up ethnik conflicts … I’m here on the side a Good, said Bohler, an anyone that does’d best prepare to get his ass kicked … but Micka couldn’t hear him. And the storm blew over, and the sun poured down on the scenic mountainside of fragrant evergreens, and we drove in peace the rest of the way.
The mobile hummed and sang, weaving through the narrow lanes of Řepákovs and Vidlákovs … braking for ducks … picking its way through chicken droppings … singing its old engine tunes to its amazed and miraculously silent passengers … taking in the small towns and villages … I enjoyed the motion … watching the way they’d changed since time had exploded.
Everywhere people were constructing local byznysses, pubs buzzed with fast talk full of loopholes and taxes on declared and undeclared income, licenses and contracts flew left and right … and we had to smile, cause that old familiar tingling was running through our fingers, and now and then, just for the pleasure of it, I’d sit down with the old buggers dabbling in real estate, and I had to roll my eyes cause it was all the same game … gangs crushing lone warriors … people working magic with rubber stamps … friends of friends of friends of someone else who fit the bill for your paracousin’s son-in-law’s new little racket … we all come from the same chimpanzee after all … and the guys that had voted DOA wouldn’t vote COD anymore, even though they were all good family men too, carpenters … they lived only in and for their own tribe … and only bigwigs changed tribes at will, feeding the papers some bull about “chemistry” or “necessity” … and they dug up the old aqueducts, hidden from the bolsheviks … and dusted off the monstrances full of Christ in all his glory, and paraded them through the villages, blessing the new old irrigation system … while hired goons were poisoning the carp pond behind the neighbor’s barn, or blowing up his cow, or planting the red rooster on his roof … and the mischievous Maryša* was dumping dead ashes in Vávra’s beer again, and the silos were filling with golden Czech grain, and the cost of animal flesh rose and fell and rose, cause now instead of some shitty old bolshevik fiddling around with prices, there was some new Community … indexing them … and the old flimflams flew through the air, embracing the new tricks or in conflict with them … and some saw it and some didn’t, and there were those who took advantage and those who were afraid … and the first shy touches and fleeting kisses and smoked cigarettes … in a haystack behind old Bárta’s barn, not in some city tunnel full of rats … and Mrs. Schoolteacher smiled … skirt fluttering in the cool breeze, embroidered blouse swelling with virgin breasts … and Mr. Pharmacist shyly smiled back as meanwhile he mixed his poisons … and the only place you saw the word comrade anymore was on a few tombstones and a monument or two … beloved freedom was everywhere … waiting for its Lada to immortalize it in pictures* … a crock of milk … and a fattened pig … and the wall where that bloody old drunkard Švejch once hung was bare now except for maybe a damp stain, till the innkeeper scrapes up the moola, the lint, the bobs, the lootage, and whips his new old establishment into shape … nothing at all hung on the wall, and the mystery of it made me feel good, the empty space charged with expectation … the motion … even the most deserted ghost towns were coming alive, sprayed with time’s explosive colors … and proud old ladies stole through the backstreets peeking into garbage cans in case of any bread … and crazy drunken dope-smokers begged right out in public … and the local villon robbed to pay for his booze, and then in the clink the old bailiff illegally bashed his face in … just like under the lamebrain bolshevik, only this wasn’t some shitty bolshevik summer work camp anymore … it was nobody’s business but yours … you might spin m.’s, you might spin zeros … you might have an ace up your velvet sleeve, or just your own lousy tattooed pickpocket’s arm in a dingy T-shirt … cause God knows why, cause some just yep and some just nope, and you okay and you uh-uh, and some’ve got what it takes and some don’t, and why that’s the way it is back in the days of today’s world of ours, well, that’s a mystery too.
I was cruel and I was tender, and I liked it. But I was run-down. I even caught myself thinking that maybe instead of taking, a trip I should spend some time at home on Gasworks, and I had to ask Bohler to kindly clout me a few times with his rosary, see if that’d clear my mind. He was more than happy to oblige, but added, listen, Potok, dear friend, that sparkling nugget over there in the creek, the one deaf Micka’s drivin by in his singin mobile at this very moment, informed me that my pseudodroog, the gallant actor Potok, would prefer to hole up in his place an fear life with great dread.
My dearest buddy Bohler, despite all your time behind bars, I said, turning a wee bit red and uncertain, I swear, you speak the absolute truth, an I can see you’ve got the great gift of seein into the human soul.
Bohler nodded. I understand, pal, sometimes I too lock myself in a momentarily free room, never the one with the altar, an emphatically ask my Lady Laos for peace an quiet, an sit by myself, an indulge my thoughts an emotions.
You’re right, my clever theologian, our pals’re in byznys an they’re doin a brilliant job of keepin the treadmill runnin, but maybe the two of us’re a little cracked … you’re a scholar of Scripture, an in the course of your daily an nightly wanderings you’ve gotten a glimpse into the endlessness of human suffering … through the open gate into the place where souls howl in various degrees of terror an confusion … an me, I’m just an outstanding actor who also knows how to act an dance off the boards of the cruel old crazy real world, I can move inside people an with people, an create an act out characters to the point of total exhaustion an eclipse … in other words, we know it, an all this byznys stuff is just another form of motion.
Yeh, yeh, you put that pretty elegant, brother … said Bohler … for an actor.
