Love and Garbage (24 page)

We’d had to abandon the attic studio with its view of the palace opposite, and we now met in her basement workshop, where – long, long ago – I’d first set eyes on her. From outside the window came the continuous footsteps of strangers passing by and from the corners came a smell of mildew and mould. On the stone floor stood a storage heater. It was only seven years younger than me and just as stubborn, sometimes it worked and at others, for unfathomable reasons, it didn’t switch itself on at night at all. Fortunately the thick medieval walls stopped the place from freezing up completely.

She is waiting for me. She hasn’t even taken off her coat but her lips are hot. Again she presses herself to the tepid metal shell of the heater and I hurry to make some tea while she tells me her news. Listening to her I feel that the incidents I look for in vain are all homing in on her, all her encounters seem to have a special and higher meaning, something essential to tell her, to open, at least in part, a view into the infinite spaces of other people’s inner lives.

As she speaks I watch a little cloud of her living breath rising from her mouth. The room is in semi-darkness which obliterates even those little lines which I would probably not have seen anyway with my long-sighted eyes. She seems to me tenderly and soulfully beautiful. I know that I still love her and I suspect that she must love me too if she’s staying with me in this inhospitable and cold basement.

She notices my glance and presses herself against me – together we slip into the icy bed. But her body is warm, we cling to each other, ecstasy blots out the outside world, at this moment it doesn’t matter where we are, we are in the seclusion of our love and we know that there isn’t a palace in the world whose solitude we would exchange for this place of joint occupation.

Her slight body ceaseless rears against mine, she trembles with delight, her eyes grow misty. Devoutly she begs me not to leave her, again and again she wants me, she knows no respite in love-making any more than in her work, any more than in anything she undertakes, she sweeps me along like a vortex, she rouses in me a strength I never suspected I had. My head spins, I am in ecstasy, I am on earth solely for this moment, for this action.

Yet even so the moment must come when we are exhausted, when the chill that’s seeping from the floor and the walls gets between us, enters her eyes. I know that she’s asking herself how long I intend to make love to her without giving her any hope, without finding a solution which would bring her out of her icy loneliness. But she only asks what I’m going to do tonight.

I say that I will work, even though I know that my answer will seem unsatisfactory to her if I don’t decide to stay with her. I want to know what she’ll be doing.

Why should I care? I wasn’t going to stay with her anyway, after all, there was my wife waiting for me at home, I have to be with her, act the part of the faithful loving husband, create an atmosphere of home. Yes, of course, I also had to work, make money so I could keep the lady, my wife, in appropriate style. Also I mustn’t forget to buy something for dinner so she needn’t put herself out, and bring her a little present so she should know what a fine model husband she has. All she wants to know now is why she should plunge with me into this sacchariney sticky filthy mess of ours? She curses the moment when I crossed her path. Why didn’t I say something, why didn’t I at least speak up in my defence?

I reached out for my cold shirt and she screamed that I should push off, that I should get back as fast as possible to that sacred cow of mine who has ruined her life. She’ll still try to save herself, to dig herself out of the shit I have dragged her into.

Outside, darkness had fallen, and its icy maw swallowed us up instantly. The snow had turned grey and seemed to collapse under our feet. We got to the metro station and she asked: When shall I see you?

As always, Hope was looking down on us from her stone plinth with her invariably gentle, even warm, smile.

Tomorrow I have to take Dad to the doctor. How about the day after?

She took hold of both my hands: I really won’t see you all day tomorrow?

The youngster finished his part and handed the clarinet back to its owner. Somebody clapped, my wife clapped too, the youngster bowed awkwardly; when he jumped down from the stage his face was back to its usual pallor.

The concert was over. The people around us were pushing towards the exit. It had got cold outside, and a brilliant full moon stood in the cloudless sky.

To us, who’d stayed behind on earth, the astronaut Aldrin said then:

I’d like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours, and to give thanks in his or her way!

The producer in St Louis casually mentioned to me that eighteen years earlier, after he’d escaped, he’d been sentenced to death in his native country for some fictitious political crimes. Now they wanted to rehabilitate him. When on that memorable day we went to bed at three in the morning he said: A pity, back home they couldn’t even 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: Prévert poem:

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.

As we stepped into the cold and ill-lit room I tried to embrace her, the way I always embraced her when we found ourselves alone, but she stopped me. She didn’t even let me put our bags in the wardrobe until she had looked into it herself. Then she drew back the discoloured curtains, half-opened the window and sat down in an armchair which groaned even under her slight weight. Can’t you feel something strange here? she asked. But I felt nothing but fatigue.

She became even more restless. I could see that she was listening to something, that she was concentrating on something that was evidently hidden from me. I sat down in the other armchair. Through the open window came alien sounds, someone was starting up a motorbike and a dog was howling in the distance. A silent, sharp-edged patch of light moved across the wall and I realised that I was being gripped by dejection.