They came all the time, and I got to thinking … actually, what if I … it could be a message for Sister, she’d be able to tell from the words who wrote it, some of them were hers … Kasel got mad though … my idea! All right … I get the veal, you get the lardlings, half and half on the scrag ends, I stood my ground … we grudgingly sized each other up, but he had to give in, of course I wouldn’t allow him to read my verse, or whatever it was, anyway he wasn’t interested … he was dreaming of a new way, the possibilities … a crimson robe and the prince of poetry’s lyre … it started to mess with me too, and then … up to the stand walks a man of about fifty, solid build, graying temples, pipe clenched in strong teeth, pure silk sweater on, parts his red lips … Kasel’s gaspin for breath, an the guy says: Beer! We nearly got in a fight, two cups stood before him in the blink of an eye, a dark and a light … ach, this is almost surrealism, he said, studying the cups … duality, Manichaeanism, he took a sip, smacked his lips, if not … schizophrenia, alcoholism … he staggered, clasped his head, and walked over to his car … the Maestro doesn’t have it easy, said Kasel, but I barely heard him, there, by the car, a flash of white, she was shaking a pebble, some sand, from her shoe … her back was to me, but the curve of her neck … and her calves, as she leaned a heel into the dirt … I dashed out … the writer started the engine … NO! I screamed … the woman climbed in, and they drove off … I leaned against a tree, panting … saw the stand, it brought me back … Kasel went insane, ran out there hollerin, pourin stuff all over em, throwin clumps of lard, the crew, shrieking, beat a retreat, I leaned my forehead against the tree, shut my eyes, and stayed that way.
24
WHO I MEET. AND WHO I’M WITH. KARLOVICE. CRYSTAL S.R.O. AND WHAT IT’S FOR. OLD WORDS, THAT SOUND. I LIFTED MY HANDS.
And one day, one smiley city day when the sun again showed its experienced face through the dust, I saw in the distance, by one of the kiosks … a distinctive gait, her hair, she was walking … leading a small child by the hand, my eyes popped and I … ran over … spotted her again in the crowd of daytrippers, elbowing through, I did too … shoving them out of my way, faster, again the crowd closed around her, but it was her, my friend … and at the end of the road there was nothing again but a whirl of dust from a bus.
I hastened back to the kiosk where I’d spotted her … Viets or whoever … shirt, pant, digital, casset, one let loose with a wide smile … no, quick, that girl that was here, he reshuffled a stack of jeans … she’s a friend of mine … she was here with a child … where do they live? His face shut down, looking like an Aztec from a stone frieze in a temple in the festering jungle, the silent face of the full moon itself … aright, I picked up a pair of jeans, he snatched them back … I no know nobody, turned away … wouldn’t get anything outta him, that was obvious … made the rounds of a few spots in town where she might’ve been, in vain.
There were lots of Asians at the markets, but among the Vietnamese I didn’t have any friends. It had all been too fast with Smoothy. I waited, even set up a rearview mirror over the flock of sizzling lardlings so I could see, Kasel was puzzled. And absent. Getting more vexed and restless every day … uh-huh, it’s everywhere now, he mumbled to himself … they print it all over, there’s even a book, an nothin … nothin’s goin on … so maybe, just maybe, yeah, it isn’t just for its own sake, I knew it, there’s no destination, there’s only the way, the path … you’re burnin the scrags, I alerted him … he was lost in reverie.
And then … Hi there! I said, she looked at me, the little one in tow, sizing me up like a rapscallion … but there was a twinkle in her eyes … we were reunited. Tempestuously. I admit, I was taken when she spoke.
I’s you … tha’s goo’. This is Son!
He hid behind her … yelped when we hugged. The poet was on his own with the meat that day. It was too much. What she told me. It was horrible. From then on, she came to see me often.
We’d sit on a bench in the park. The boy eyeing the squirrels with interest … well, he wasn’t exactly a looker … Bohleresque features … but maybe later, his mom’s beauty, all that cat and gazelle, then again in a boy I donno, I donno … she told me stories … dea’, she said of my buddy … and then, when we were living together, in the one building where we could, I began to visit the Press Center and piece it together from old newspapers, because there were times I didn’t understand, and also, she didn’t like going back much … but some of it she told me the very first day, through tears.
I didn’t want to go back to the buildings at all, but with her and Son it was different. Besides, the attic … when I thought of Černá I still … I still trembled.
And that was the first thing I had to share with Lady Laos. After all the things she’d told me as I held her in my arms … taking the weight off her … maybe it was cruel … but I considered it essential to say: Don’t get mad, honey, but there’s a woman, she’s traveling … an when she gets back I’m gonna be with her. Or we’re gonna be together somehow. That’s the way it is. How about it?
We all gonna be together? inquired Lady Laos.
We lived together, side by side, helping each other. Protecting each other.
The little boy enjoyed prowling around the old farm equipment just in back of the sheds, seemed the technical type, into levers and chrome stuff … took apart the watch I’d bought, seeing as I had a job now … but … the boy couldn’t speak much, his Czech was like his mom’s, Bohler hadn’t had much time, I took him on as my student … but he sti’ need schoo’, Lao decided, I didn’t take that away from her. She herself called him Son, sounded to her like a proper name. He also had a Laotian one, that one I couldn’t pronounce, plus the one Bohler had baptized him with … at times the youngster had trouble in the sandbox with the locals. Because of how he looked. How he spoke. He soon stopped being afraid of me. Asked questions himself. Bohler had wanted his name to be Vojtěch.*