City, Sister, Silver, page 6
If worst comes to worst we can make the Laotians passports, no big deal, I thought to myself, standing on the second floor of the imposing skyscraper of the Department of Foreigners, it seemed hostile from the second I walked in … but then in the hallway I ran into Lexa, hey there, nice a you to drop by, he said, c’mon into my office. I didn’t know I had a friend from the active era sitting in such an important seat. Guess I oughta update my lists, I made a mental note.
Once upon a time the two of us had packed books together in the same warehouse, actually brochures, mounds of brochures, Marx and Lenin and Krupskaya and Engelmord, it goaded us so much we started planning to build a balloon to fly us over the wires, I expressed concern about the firepower in the guard towers, but Lexa had a solution: We’ll just metal-plate the thing. That was the last of that. Maybe this time, though, he’d come up with something better.
Listen, Jituš, said Lexa, switch A over to C for me an keep it down, will ya, I got an old buddy in here. Miluš, get a move on with that two-o-five, the Boss’ll be comin in any minute! Irča, he called, and as the beauty walked in he said: Irča honey, I want you to meet Potok, he’s an artist, an actor. Wow! What were you in? Well, there was My Sweet Wittle Willage* … Wow! Who’d you play? Actually, I, uh … just Šafránová in that one. She walked out. Lexa didn’t laugh. Sorry, I snapped, I said … Nah, forget it, I just wanted to show the girls that I’m … you know, now that I’m a pencil pusher an all. Hey, how bout you guys, how bout you, how’s life? Still actin? Oh yeah, and how, I almost burst out laughing. Then I thought of something, hey Lexa, you know a Major Mrkvica, works in passports? Yeah, good guy, just got promoted. He’s that piece a shit that wouldn’t let my first wife see me, I said. I’d like to spit in his face, that’s the scumbag that advised me to emigrate … in the interests of the state, he told me, that Major Fuckface …
Hey, Lexa stood up. I know this stuff as well as you do, darn it. But he’s a pro, we need these people. I come up against it each an every day. But Christ, you’re out boozin it up, playin around in some theater, someone’s gotta do this stuff.
Father Bohler prays for you, I said, for alla you that’ve taken on the responsibility. If it helps any.
Prayers always help.
Hey Lexa, ever get the feelin that all you guys that went into politics feel guilty about not havin a normal life?
Hey Potok, ever think maybe you guys that aren’t involved in politics feel guilty about leavin it to somebody else?
Well now, that’s a serious argument.
So let’s drop it. What do you need? The only time old friends ever come around here is when they need a favor.
I need asylum for six Laotians.
Got any IDs?
I laid the six exotic passports featuring a picture of an elephant, hammer and sickle circling above its tall forehead, on his desk, near the paperweight.
Come by tomorrow. An wanna know when we’ll stop feelin guilty?
When?
When we all get used to it. Some to the fact that they got power, an some to the fact that they don’t.
But I mean it must take a heavy toll on you, it must be a problem, I mean power over people, that’s heavy stuff.
Power’s only a problem for those that don’t have it.
Aha.
Yep.
Aright, ciao, an thanks.
Bye now.
Hey Lexa, I turned around in the doorway.
Yeah?
She’s a real beauty.
Don’t I know it.
I went around babbling and acting, David sat in his leather armchair, pondering and combining and sending out signals and directing the tentacles, and Micka was everywhere, handling the paperwork.
We were the Organization, and Micka worked magic with so many papers at once that we were all things in all shapes, and if a black wind blew our way we could roll right up and cease to exist.
The occasional explanations he gave us went in one ear and out the other, so eventually he gave up. This was in years 1, 2, 3, etc., when he started to speak in the bewitching tongue of economics … and sometimes he would talk to himself: So you’ll sail through the new tax, we’re a cooperative, only bound by the old contract, which is registered with Rycký, but he’s okay, he’s one of ours … look, s.r.o.’s Czech for gMBh, but it’s the same as politics, right is left an left is wrong … take cartels, we’re talkin 19th century, man … as for the gadgets, anybody that’s not with us we persuade, an anybody we can’t persuade we flatten … What’s this? They got us hangin on the hangars still, so we deduct the rent, that gives us … movable debts at Commercial an Early Bird, hah hah … an invoice here, an invoice there, just keep it comin’s all I care … hey, Micka, I told him, I don’t like this, Community Organization, Manufacturing Cooperative, sounds like shit, how bout a Syndicate? Can the romance, you hack, wait’ll after the elections. If those half-assed eggheads from SOP pick up a decent percentage in the fourth an the sixth an good old Bfevnov, we’ll get it goin there, that’ll be Švejcar an Špála … hey how bout this Rybka guy, do we know him? … He was in the slammer with Křenek in ’79, David mumbled as if hypnotized. An Bohler knows Křenek from the Expressway, they worked on the chain gang there in ’82, he fished from his memory bank.
David carried the whole matrix around in his magical head, into which in regular sessions we deposited every thread: former classmates, pseudodroogs from the Sewer, coworkers from boiler rooms and warehouses, ugly mugs from loony bins, tennis courts, and prisons, two-bit artists from cellars, attics, and the Academy, ess-tee-bee agents, Charter 77* signatories, journalists and train engineers, officials, friends, enemies, men and mice, gals, guys, and dogs, civil servants and their secretaries, Poles, Ruthenians, Jews, and Kanaks, every face we ever glimpsed through the windows of our fast-moving vehicle, model 1, 2, 3, etc. … after the explosion … but also from long before … contacts, connections, situations … who did time with who, who slept with who, who hated who, all the gossip, facts, and information, when dusted off and combined by David, formed the silver net that was to snag the golden fish with platinum eyes and scales of precious stone, the financier’s dream, the Al Capone Cooperative’s nightmare.
No shit? They did? Micka said gleefully. Go an find me that priest, Potok!
Most of Bohler’s friends in those days were heathens. He’d kept his old racket from the era prior to the Organization, before we had David. He would drive around the countryside in a big black beat-up delivery truck, then head back to the city with hundreds of liters of stupefying red wine. He called his truck Maria. He li’e tha’ truck li’e coffin an’ wi’e li’e bloo’, like blood, I corrected Lady Laos on the subway home from an office where she’d played the role of Madame Hoi-Tsu, a big-shot Japaneez industrialist.
I was the interpreter and they swallowed it, hook, line, and sinker. We didn’t actually want to buy anything; we just wanted to keep the firm in question out of the hands of another outfit that we needed to squelch. Before the officials could think to call the embassy and check on us, we were gone at the speed of the setting sun.
Bohler’s wine shops turned a pretty good profit, though he didn’t need the cash now that he’d become helper. He taught the Laosters to love the red stuff. It was a pleasure to see that crew coming home in the evening from one of their trips. Bohler enthroned at the wheel, all in black, with that happy, perverted smile of his. In the back, six sloshed Laotians, sitting or reclining in various states of bliss, eyes shining joyfully. Through the glass of the old funeral wagon they looked like life-size statues of Buddha … except for the belly … they were agile, nimble fellows … sometimes, when drunk, they sang songs … dark, wild songs, about their dark, wild women, I guess … or the water boofalos … no longer waiting … out in the jungle, there were times it sounded like two bamboo stalks scraping against each other, and the only one who could stand it then was Bohler, with the divine patience he’d learned in seminary … but occasionally it got on his nerves too, so he taught them a few Czech tunes … the one they liked best was “Re’ ke’chief, re’ ke’chief, roun’ an’ roun’ you whi’l, my swee’hear’ is angry, I don’ un’erstan’ the gir’.”
The Laotians managed to sell off all the junk that came in on the lost-and-found-again airplane, we gave it back to them in return for a percentage. Through the Organization they hooked up with Hadraba, a Northerner with a company called Fab Rocker a.s., and soon those bizarre caps and hats and fans and pipes and stimulants were all the rage at the clubs, which Hadraba had his dirty paws all over. Teenage boys flocked to his stores, buying heavy leather jackets and T-shirts with skulls, some even went for the boofalo spears. And girls began carrying fans around, to refresh themselves and their pet lab rats.
Sacred Buddhist incense burned on every dance floor, it was hip and the metal flowed and Bohler just grinned pervertedly. It dawned on me that the reason why he was unleashing those heavy fragrances into the face of his Katholik Bog was in order to spite Him, he had a beef with Him, he’d betrayed Him, or been betrayed by Him, when as a boy in the slammer he’d been raped and kicked, or the other way round, and now Bohler had hardened, waging war on Bog from the doomed position of the lone warrior, like all of us in fact.
And when the Laosters opened the last few boxes, which we’d overlooked, there were masks inside … magnificent, terrifying masks … and Czechs were stunned when they saw those ghastly masks from Laos, yellow and green and red and wooden, boarding the trams in years 1, 2, and 3 … after the explosion of time. They were slaving masks, Bohler’s Laotian lady told me. Not too long ago in her country, she said, warlike tribes had come down from the mountains, slaughtering the French and hunting for slaves, and the cruel demons of the mountains and forests must’ve been laughing now … to know that people in the Pearl were wearing the masks of mountain jungle killers. Even the skillful Javanese who ran the tattoo parlors in Hadraba’s clubs got a little unnerved, and there was nothing for them to do except burn the new, mystical tattoos off the masks and prick them into the skin of people’s arms and thighs and backs … our Laotians rode and sold and piled up the metal, which came to life in their nimble hands, changing into other metal, more metal.
Hadraba tried to take them away from us, and despite their having already put their thumbprints on a contract with him, we persuaded them to stay with us and spun them off a percentage, and when the lady from the third floor finally passed on … we persuaded the ground-floor tenants from another of our buildings that they would be better off in the smaller space upstairs, and we did it in such a way that they were quite willing and happy to squeeze themselves in. The Laotians opened a shop downstairs, we gave them the cash for another plane, this time with Micka and David keeping a sharp eye on the percentage, and the commerce in Asian junk started up anew.
To tell the truth, the tenancy of our buildings did drop off a little, Bohler gave a bit of a dressing-down to the ones that occasionally complained about the noise from his flat … and there were other problems too, for instance when he told them they were forbidden to walk across our lawn … that lawn is sacred, people, the theologian said, and he who does not hold good housing in high regard deserves tough treatment that he may discover and open up the sources of humility within himself … another few relatives and pals of our Laotians arrived unexpectedly on the next plane … and on the next plane … and the next … securing passports for the stowaways took up a lot of my time, Lexa started to bridle, and violated the law of the community, so Micka and I dug up a few minor allegations, some staler, some fresher, and shot him down, because to aid fugitives is an especially righteous deed, particularly when they turn out to be so good at taking care of themselves … and at bringing in proceeds … and the Laosters just kept selling and selling, and some of them lived in our buildings too … and our slightly disgustingly racist tenants claimed they were scared of them when they went to fetch water from the well … it’s true that around that time a few of our tenants’ children went missing, but we just assumed they’d taken up with the scamp packs … Bohler shuttled back and forth settling disputes between the tenants and the Laotians, a few of whom he’d already persuaded to be baptized. Things came to a head when the Laosters converted the drying room into a pub and the baby carriage room into a Buddhist temple, which Bohler oddly enough permitted … he was getting a little worried though, and one day at our briefing he said the well had begun to lose water again and there was something weird about it. None of us cared, since we preferred the Fiery stuff anyway, but we gave Bohler approval to make Vasil the superintendent. Vasil was a young Ukrainian he’d brought in from South Station to our greasy pots and cruel freedom.
In those rare moments between business and pleasure, we would lounge around our private domains, take naps in Bohler’s flat, play backgammon with the Laosters in their dive … and the new time, in the years 1, 2, 3 … etc., kept us warm and cozy, and a few times, spinning around abruptly, I glimpsed it, even touched it … and several of the Laotian women gave birth … we threw enormous parties, which as a precaution against openly racist sentiments we required all our tenants to attend and bring lavish gifts for the happy mothers … and as time went by, it was sweet to see some of the children growing beautiful flaxen hair, genuine manes … some of the men congratulated me … I just smiled … maybe I forgot to mention that my buddies … well, most of them were Balkan-Ugro-Finnish-backwoods Romany types, Bohler had a few traits that were positively negroid … Micka was missing a few teeth from birth, and the dark-skinned David, like most mountain men, had some difficulty walking on floors … all of us were a little damaged from various acid storms and accidents, but I think I had a few genes that were actually European … as the M.D. eventually confirmed … from the olden days of the Lučan Wars,* the genes of my foreforemother, who stuck by foreforefather Čech* when he chose to settle down here … I’ve got fair hair, totally typically Slavic … and it came as no surprise when my friends Cepková and Elsa the Lion said they had a hunch a few of the Laotian men would happily return the favor, I wasn’t at all opposed, but I left it up to the girls, after all it was freedom …
We held frequent byznys meetings and sociable briefings, sitting around telling stories and fables and mythical parables … mixing narrative techniques and shaking our heads in amazement, spitting tobacco … jingling our silver ornaments … trading experiences … various silver things were worn in those days … talismans, charms, each crew had its stars and crosses and menorahs and labyrinths … animals … dogs, snakes, and dragons are good … my dragon was green, but I hid him in my skin, I’d had him tattooed on … by putting him on my chest I thought he’d help me find my sister … various tribes, most of them actually pseudotribes, but they had protective colors too … the Vonts’ color was yellow … that struck me as unsafe … clans, groups, defensive alliances … the Cellar People, spider worshipers, they put on plays … BKS, also believers … the Ginga Disciples, they took their power from trees … the Machines … the Window People, devotees of cyberspace … the Northerners … the People of the Tower and the People of the Castle … various clubs, gangs, and bands … it wasn’t too wise, back in those days of today, to be on your own … the other reason for wearing silver was that in those fast times it was best to know right away who you were dealing with and who belonged to who, there were multitudes of muddled sects from all over the place … I myself wore one important silver thing that helped me out a lot later on at the Dump … my mom hung it around my neck one day as I was going out … said something like: Hope to see you soon. Dear son! And it hasn’t happened yet, and due to certain circumstances, whether favorable or unfavorable I hesitate to judge, now it never will … my most powerful piece of silver was a medallion of the Black Madonna, the Blessed Virgin of Czestochowa, the one with the spear slash on her cheek, the one that weeps eternal … it was a real old thing, some great-great-great of mine’d hiked all the way to Czestochowa from his home in Lithuania for her, made a pilgrimage … I was real fond of that Black Madonna, she had great power, I wore her under my byznys suits and all of my disguises, even slept with her on … some people cleaned and polished their silver, but I let mine live its own life, and that ancient artifact, that piece of jewelry, turned black …
Various stuff was worn … Bohler for instance had an eagle, eagles see a lot … yep, he’s a seer, said Bohler … tends to be seen up high, an besides he’s fast, an admit it! he looks good too … he’s medieval Indian an isn’t afraid, an besides, there’s not many eagles left, are there? Yeah, cool, Cassock, your eagle’s cool, seriously, way, we all jingled our silver … and maybe that was also the reason we got along with the Laosters so well, they had all kinds of wild pig tusks and shark teeth … they were also believers … being accustomed to the relatively homogeneous population of Bohemia, we confused them with each other at first, this is Tino, said Bohler, well that’s not his real name, but we wouldn’t know how to pronounce it, it’s too tough for us, an that one with the shark tooth’s a great hunter, Lady Laos told me …
It didn’t take long for the Laosters to spread all over the city, all over the country in fact, because the planes just kept on flying … Micka began to forge plans for a small private airport, a definite potential was shaping up to dump Asian junk on a few other countries that had shed the yoke of communism and were in dire need of fresh goods for their nonfunctional markets … our ground floors and cellars turned into a Laotian initiation camp … and bastard Bohemia’s hardened arteries got hit with a fresh dose of Asia.
With their immaculately forged papers, the Laotians were just getting going, the only ones that still lived with us were the original six-member crew, plus a few wives and kids now as well. And then Vasil showed his stuff, teaching the Laosters how to make samurai swords … he’d picked it up in Kiev from the Vietnamese … with the help of various tricks in the metal shop, tricks with the temperature of air and metal, soaking them in water and burying them in sand at the right point in an appropriate place, soon Vasil and the Laotians were making antique samurai swords. Production soared as Japanese, American, German, and other tourists began bringing home not only imitation Czech glass, rubbery Czech dumplings, and shooting-gallery-prize Czech Švejks but gleaming Ukrainian-Vietnamese-Laotian-Czech samurai swords … Bohler authorized the construction of a forge in one of the courtyards, and Micka went shopping for a few thousand dull rusty surplus bolshevik officers’ sabers to use as raw material. Vasil’s value climbed, and if not for his howling Chernobyl nightmares we probably could’ve arranged for him to move in normally instead of sleeping on a shaggy cloth down in the cellar.
