City, Sister, Silver, page 39
Hey, boss, said the blond, sorry, we were just in the middle of a gig … an she knows, we got a contract with her. So you have a contract … with my sister, I raised my voice. Yeah, I swear, the blond one yelped in falsetto. I just came by to check it out, I said … I’m goin now. And I went. Didn’t bother with any goodbyes.
My mind raced, what could Černá have … with juvies, maybe from the bar … drugs or whatever, gambling … gladiators, no way. I walked past the odd tile, now the rays clung more weakly to it, the sun had shifted … and I pulled up suddenly, hearing … Černá! … and she was saying: Hurry, go on. He’ll be back any second, dammit, scram.
She was … whispering, I broke into a run … the guy went down the stairs, disappeared, Černá caught hold of me, and when I saw her smile I hit her, her eyes bulged in disbelief, she sank to the ground but still held on, hugging my knees, I tried to shake her off, but she held tight … No! No, you can’t … not yet! You bitch, but I couldn’t slug her again, I’d just lost my head, I picked her up, heard that sound … Černá, I’m sorry, that wasn’t me … with all my might I gripped her shoulders, spun her round, but she wasn’t sobbin, she was laughin … in my face.
I walked into the flat and started packin … tossin around my things … she planted herself in the doorway and said … Don’t do it, it’s not worth it. Who was that? Hey … my business. Yeah, I don’t even care … but how come you wouldn’t let me … It’s old stuff, real old stuff. We’ve got time. Černá, I don’t trust you. And I love you.
She knew what that would do to me. Actually I didn’t get why she wanted me. Bed … I wasn’t that conceited … the only possibility was that she wasn’t lying, that she … really likes me, maybe. Or she doesn’t know if she does, but she wants to. Or else there’s somethin here I don’t know about … okay, I’ll wait. I stayed. Gladly. And didn’t ask questions.
Again that night we sat over the chessboard examining possibilities, moving pieces. The mirrors were set up on opposite walls, you could look and see from one into the other, and there was another infinity, casual and matter-of-fact, like stringy meat on a cutting board.
Sometimes I’d like hunch myself down over the board and the drinks and succeed in getting the solemn, often passionate face of my love in the picture, sinking and reemerging in the shiny surfaces, farther and farther away, and then here.
Sometimes I had to touch her, sometimes she purred and liked it. Now I gotta hold you, she said, and she did, and now I gotta kiss you, she quick slid under the table and touched it, sometimes she got me so excited, touching her lips to it through the fabric, dancing over it with her tongue, I had to grab her neck … unbuckle myself … a couple times we had to go down the hallway to the restrooms, the walls there were strewn with classics … I’d study the obscenities, or better yet close my eyes, standing up, holding her on top of me, behind the curtain, her hitched around my hips, my arms underneath like bars, like branches … the penguins suspected but left us alone … Černá drank more in a night than all the random walk-ins … see, this coffeehouse didn’t have any TV or video shit or pseudogames, it didn’t even get the daily papers … there was nothing there but mirrors … and a permanently shut Stein piano … ladies with cakes around us, some we started exchanging nods with … some of the old ladies used to be actresses and talked about it … constantly … their only audience here was the cakes and the eggnog, the mirrors, it was a relatively high-society slice of old Prague … I was wary … I didn’t want any more contact … and many no doubt were well aware what Černá was doing under the table, that she wasn’t tying her shoelace, we got accustomed to one another … all guests at the same place, and one time I got up the nerve, we ordered a bottle of cognac for them and JD for us, they twittered, but then we got drunk … I didn’t recognize Černá, she was attentive and polite, I didn’t know the girl knew how to talk to old ladies. I know … when they get together, to chat … sit a young woman down with them, one like Černá, and it can get sadistic, because sometimes, and especially at night, and in these kinds of cafés, the night opens farther, right through the heart … it goes into the grate, into the shit.
Outside, I babbled, a touch sentimental and blinking back tears, she shoved me away and said: Moron! They’re dead! They’re already goners! Shoved me again. What’s got into you, I said pointlessly. Besides, you’re gonna be like that too! Not me, what do you know, you don’t understand. She waited for me at her building and gave me a hug: Sorry. I was talkin crap. No, you weren’t at all.
We didn’t miss it … the Dóm, Galactic, Černá’s, friends. Friends of friends. People. Quite often we’d just go out strollin at night. That was enough. It would’ve been pretty hard for us to deal with anyone else.
Sometimes I’d tell her where I got my cash and what I did. I’d drop hints. She didn’t seem interested. Even though we both lived off of it. Maybe it’s a certain kinda person, the ones that’re used to livin alone … they’re more on the lookout, don’t like idle talk, too many questions, they guard their freedom and the other’s too. Even when maybe they’d just as soon be rid of it.
Sometimes we’d tell each other sagas from our past lives … I sometimes talked about myself in the third person, my former life seemed so unbelievable. But it was complicated to say anything about my last crew. She also had a lot to tell … I listened. And that guy on the stairs … I only got a glance from behind, he was older. Probly an ex.
Chess … I told her where I’d learned to play, patched a few ballads together for her, rambling on …
Occasionally we’d interrupt our game and go for a stroll, look at the people … nothing struck fear into me, we held hands, sometimes. After walking around the block, we’d come back to our coats, tossed over the chairs, to our never-ending match and whatever else we happened to get the urge for.
So what kina contract you got with those little thugs from the attic … what was that boss a theirs goin on about?
If you mean those little darlings, before I started at Cerná’s I used to be the super … those youngsters had a rehearsal space there.
You’re always gettin tangled up in your lies … check!
Those’re my truths, and not anymore, your move!
Sometimes though … sometimes Smoothy and his bandits gave me heavy-duty circles. It was too much. We’d just picked up a fella who’d spent a couple years in Cambodia, tank driver, and Smoothy says: Not only is our faith in you unshakable but, as you may have noticed, despite your admirable modesty, duly acknowledged financially, my dear and esteemed friend … I’d gnash my teeth, by this point I was just about as fed up with his politeness as I was with his horror stories, and he knew it, he would torture me until we … burst out laughin, usually … modesty, I say, for I must add that you have returned faith in Czech man to some of our boys, yes, through your flawless work, there it is, Mr. Potok, and that is no small thing … the tank driver jumped in: Toi da tung song voi puli pozikan tyaap! … our friend here, said Smoothy, wishes to inform you that he met a compatriot of yours in the United States, some Paulina Porizkova … Chek gurl, gut gurl! the tank driver smacked his lips. I pulled over and ran off into the woods. My nerves’re startin to go, I told Smoothy, both a you shut up or I’m gonna wreck this thing.
He could only hold back for a while. Just imagine, Mr. Potok, take a left here, we will be driving day and night this time and … Huh? Are you afraid your girlfriend will be worried about you? You can call her of course. You see, our tank driver here is truthfully the next-to-last, we need to bring back one more … relative and then we can say our goodbyes … of course it is my hope that we may soon welcome you as a guest of honor in our liberated homeland … turn! … General Vang would like to express his gratitude to you in person.
Well, I said to myself soberly, now I’m gonna find out where the place is. How does he know about Černá?
What’s that you said about my girl?
Just that you can call her so she needn’t be concerned.
How do you know I’m … with somebody?
I was only assuming.
Yeah right, bullshit, all of a sudden I started to wonder if maybe this character was Vohřecký’s contact, he’d make noodles outta Side Pocket, though you never can tell who’ll cook who till the banquet’s on the table. Till afterwards.
For me Jícha was joined with … what he’d done to Černá … and I didn’t give him another thought otherwise …
What are you thinking about, Mr. Potok, my master’s voice said from behind me. Perhaps it would be more reasonable to drive straight, it is not wise to elect the left-hand lane. We might be faced with oncoming traffic!
I pictured how much I would earn off this trip … if it turned out all right, and I was fast … and how I’d pool the envelopes from Rudolf with the chuckles from Hunter and the two of us’d take off … at least for a while … we drove on down the highway … come night I remembered that guy was a tank driver … woke him up and got in back with Smoothy, for once he was quiet … but it was impossible to sleep, I guess drivin a tank in some Cambodian jungle, tryin to make stiffs out of every livin thing in sight, is a little different than haulin down some fucked-up white man’s highway … I was pretty rough on Paulina’s lover … then Smoothy woke up and started tellin me what Pol Pot and Saloth Sar were like, and what the Khmers Rouges used to do when they ran out of lime for graves … got it firsthand from the tank driver … Smoothy, don’t you have a driver’s license?
But of course!
Then take over, I can’t see anymore.
Excuse me, Mr. Potok, but that’s your job.
The jerk at the motel wouldn’t take us: said they could’ve tolerated Smoothy, would’ve put a cot for him in my room, but the tank driver had a jumpsuit on … even though Smoothy’s Czech was better than mine, the guy at the reception desk talked right through him: This is a private establishment, he told me, as if anyone but the Devil cared what kinda pact they’d signed with him.
I kicked at the gravel. Smoothy, amazingly, spoke briefly and to the point. He explained what was at stake. It was all the same to the tank driver … he was used to the factory, being on the road was like paradise for him. Even if he wasn’t allowed to drive anymore. The two of us had a beer, Smoothy made do with a cognac, and we spent the night in the car.
Above all, Smoothy told me, you have no idea what it’s like for our men when those youngsters attack them … the colonel here could dispatch four of them in eight seconds, just between us, that’s the only thing he really knows how to do, but he can’t … he has a mission … it’s very frustrating for him that he is not able to act correctly in this regard, and the youngsters are very unreasonable and very careless.
He stuck a photo under my nose, cut out of some newspaper … I shouldn’t’ve looked … it was the faces of four girls, Asians, they’d been thrashed, bloodied and battered, noses broken, I figured each of those plucked blossoms for about seventeen … Smoothy talked …
There were times the wheel’s motion got me so carried away that I woke Černá up and: Let’s roll! Not to give any orders, Sister, but hurry, let’s roll!
Where to, what’s up?
We gotta get to Paree right now, I gotta measure this classroom there where Pol Pot learned to build a fence, take a string an some chalk, I wanna see it … maybe then I’ll understand.
No you won’t, an I wanna sleep!
Usually, once we were up strugglin with our night demons anyway, we’d dive all over each other, I used to keep track of who was on top and who was on bottom, now sometimes it got mixed up … who soothed who, who crushed who, depending on our urge, and that was shared. Nothing stood in the way of our desire to hold each other, ourselves. Černá … didn’t talk about it like me, but … there was something we had in common. Those little scars. Hers definitely didn’t come from a bicycle, or from scoopin out crayfish from under rocks, back in the days of some sweet helpless childhood. She had her own stuff. That’s how come the fingers in fists, that’s how come sometimes at night … she lay in bed with her eyes open. Sobbin … only when she thought I was asleep. It’s pretty disgusting listenin to a girl try to cry so she won’t wake the guy next to her. One time I grabbed her hair and yanked her outta bed, I couldn’t stand that quiet grief … but she kneed me so hard I saw sparks … afterwards she attended to the spot, which she’d aimed for out of habit, she sobbingly explained, with breath and hair damp with tears … and we began anew.
What did I know. I must’ve been a pain in the ass sometimes, once the bliss had run its course and our bodies were gathering strength for the next round: Let’s roll! Černá, c’mon. Outta here, anywhere!
Number one I don’t wanna, number two I don’t wanna, number three I don’t wanna, an number four it’s always what you want an never what I want!
Thanks, I don’t wanna anymore.
The night before that last trip we talked a long time. Tell me, Černá, when was the first time you thought you … how come I didn’t know you back then … where’re you from?
I’m with you, aren’t I? The questions you ask in bed … an I’ll tell you when I feel like it … but there was one I liked, he had a car.
Hah, I shoulda known … some dumb car …
What do you know, you donno … it was so fast all of a sudden … I’d wait somewhere, by the side of the road, so they couldn’t see me … an suddenly we’d be gone, far away, get it? I didn’t know anything around there … he showed me churches, graveyards, I never knew before about castles an all that. We also went to a lake together, he wanted some fisherman to take our picture, to remember it by, but I told him: No! It’s stupid, you can’t take a picture of that, no way. An the castle was huge, I was real young. I never knew knights were that short before, shorter than us, they had shorter doorways, shorter beds … I was too young.
Knights, I know! They went through doors too, right! What didn’t you know about castles though, in school they taught us …
I didn’t listen to that crap a theirs.
Now I get it … he was older. I’m not jealous!
Yeah you are … an you oughta be! Cause I gave it to him. Well, it wasn’t the first time, not by far … but I wanted to, he was nice. We had to go someplace without people … the cemetery. No one bothered us there. People only go on certain dates. We picked up on that. It smelled of flowers. Just on those dates, the rest a the time they put fake ones out, idiots. Doesn’t help the dead, I think. So that’s where we did it, that was the safest place. But it didn’t do much for me. Not like with you, I swear, how come you’re not talkin … what’s wrong?
I was sniffin around her ear, checkin it out. It reminded me of a clam, a mussel, it was amazing. I listened, heard something … but it was just her stomach growling, stuck the tip of my tongue in … she began to get carried away, but it made me think of … the sea.
Černá, get up, right now, let’s go. To the sea! Why didn’t I think of that, I’ve never seen the sea … I’ll see it with you, that’s what we’re together for. Definitely! We’ll rent a boat, cruise around … hey, you can ski, I’ll steer, my bronze chest glittering with drops of water … you’ll wave to everyone … afterwards we’ll head in for campari an roulette … we’ll be incognito, mysterious foreigners! … coconuts an palm trees … we’ll scrape up the cash … you can sing along to the surf, listen, the water’s silver foam on your lips along with the words to some song, how’s that? Then I’ll bury you in the sand so just your breasts an head stick out … an then you’ll bury me!
I sat on the bed and gripped the steering wheel, Černá rode the skis like a queen, vrrrr, vrrrr, I wheeled it around, she caught hold and lay down on top of me.
An there’ll be clean air. Beaches, sand. An after you bury me … ha-hah.
She squealed, I cackled … only then … Aw no, Černá, honey, what is it … she pressed her face to the sheet, didn’t want me to see her, I guess to see her eyes … wet.
Oh no, what’d I do now? What’s wrong? What got into her? I didn’t get it. The highway. We couldn’t sleep. I watched each piece of asphalt go by, remembering every one. So … tomorrow I’ll find out where that bungalow a theirs is. An then I guess the spooks’ll turn up.
All right, Smoothy, I made up my mind to give it a shot, when we get to the next stop I’ll say … So you’re working for Vohřecký and them, all I want to know is where’s your hideout, and I can guarantee …
Herro, a voice from behind us said, and there stood Hunter.
Ça va? I said with a kind smile. How much Czech does he know by now, I wondered …
