Lao had landed back in the buildings a while ago. They didn’t have any bad vibes for her, just the opposite … though she was surprised to find the cellar filled in with concrete. With a diligence unique to her, she had set up a tailor and dressmaker workshop. She and her compatriots sewed for sale, I was awed … on flywheel Singers. Their husbands and brothers and cousins dropped them off in the morning and the ladies would sit there going all day, there was always lots of chatting involved and now and then a song or two. At first I was very cautious around the guys. But the copper, blue, and dark one patted me on my scar one day and said: You crasy … you safe he’e, no way fo’ Hun’er … you jus’ imagine!
I had my doubts. But me and the men would exchange greetings, solemnly, ceremoniously, sincerely, and with many smiles, slipping through the hallways.
The capitalists advanced. What they sewed went to the kiosks, where the other tribe members took over … they even set up a nursery and something like a school, I noticed Vojtěch was in charge there, and I glowed pretty bright … no no no, he stomped the sand, not baroon! he told a slant-eyed boy, balloon, but have i’ you’ way … the lessons bore fruit, we’d go for walks on the lawn, once we’d cleaned it up … the rest of the street was nearly deserted, a fire or two in the ruins at night, but Lao had taught me … safety first … I noticed two or three husbands or cousins were in the sewing room at all times, and they may’ve looked condescending and lordly … but they were looking out.
I lugged some books over from Černá’s place and settled into a flat on the second floor … me and Lao were together only occasionally, but more and more often. And if anyone honorable feverishly opposed it … I could only gently point out how extremely fortunate it is when all the cruelty that’s been, is, an always will be isn’t so visible cause you’re with someone you hold, an your palm’s just right to cover their heart, worn paper-thin with anxieties … to shield it from the barb of solitude that drives you mad, pounding, an you hold that someone so tight that you also cover yourself. Lao. Peeking across the bed at each other in our unwritten agreement. We got close.
And then one day the little boy said: I’m tired! I’m … so tired! He was startled to see my eyes bug, I interrupted our ball game, it reminded me … he watched me run off … I flew through the buildings in horror … but Granny Macešková wasn’t there. Not a trace. Not a trace of anything … that might remain of her. Even walked across the concrete in the cellar, examined the surface … maybe here. Maybe she’s here somewhere.
I combed through the buildings, checked around the flats, the remains, there weren’t any tenants left and Lao had hinted one of her friends would like to move in with her family … it was strange, sometimes she treated me as though it were still the old times and I was one of the owners, I guess it suited her, she was settling into our contract on her own terms.
And mornings, every morning on the days commonly considered working, I flew out the door to the tram to see Kasel, who’d tell me how he’d sent out grant applications, better look aroun for someone, I’ll be packin it in soon … he’d say confidently … headin out to an Art Colony, hey … an when I get there I’m gonna write about how we worked our balls off here, you’ll see … yeah, definitely, it’ll be a bestseller, I can’t wait, Kasim … and we’d flip the lardlings and chop up the rest, and the third possibility we’d fling into the sizzling fat, by now we were a pretty fine-tuned duo.
And now and then … I’d poke around the studios, since that was where the trail left off. And also go to the Press Center, putting together that short Bohler story …
Out at the Rock, you see … in the surrounding woods and villages, back in our times, there still lived Gobs.
Bohler had always maintained friendly contact with the creatures, and he didn’t have to twist our arms either … some of the Gobs were a lot of fun … it doesn’t make one bit a difference if folks out here say Gobs aren’t people, it’s no one’s business anyway … they’re here! Bohler thundered.
He would go on religious and reconnaissance missions among the Gobs, they let him instruct their young ones, after a brief moment of hesitation and self-searching he even baptized them, to be on the safe side, as he put it … it’s the one thing that can’t be neglected, he claimed … and the Gobs, when Bohler preached to them, may’ve wagged their furry heads, but they admitted: Yeah, could be somethin to it, leave the seedling in our hearts a while, we’ll play around with it, see what it does, we got the Black Daliah, you know …
Shy creatures, those Gobs … right at the onset of the Sewer period, the Communists smashed their wagons, adopting Gestapo-style edicts against “vagrant lifestyles” and “the Gob public nuisance,” by the end of the Third Reich there weren’t a lotta Gobs left either, whole tribes had disappeared, it was just like with the Gypsies … what was left of them the authorities ordered into the factories … well, the Gobs didn’t sweat it out there long, that sort of movement was foreign to them, they lived in a different time than mere machines … so to keep the Gobs from pickpocketing, the state instead gave them cash, stolen from somewhere else, and that’s what did them in, they spent most of it on the Fiery … and then, when time exploded, the Gobs no longer knew the old way of doing things and didn’t get the new one at all … some lived pretty miserably, stealing … picking pockets … the losses weren’t that heavy, but for the Karlovice town councillors it was enough … infertility, retardation, forty years of the Sewer, black comets, escaped convicts, floods, every scar the township ever suffered they threw at the Gobs, trashed a few of their hideouts … Bohler spoke out against it … and in the Karlovice Courier I found: “This decadent, un-Czech figure canvases his neighbors dressed in a faded cassock. Point your finger at him! He is a heretic, a Pragocentrist, and is urging Gobs to commit attacks. Again yesterday, two people were assaulted by individuals of Gob origin …” etc.
The citizens of Karlovice formed the Society of the White Hood for the Defense of the Purity of the Noble Czech Nation, and it began … some Gobs fought back, but it was the old ethnographic imbalance … the townspeople went out on raiding sprees, strong men with sticks and knives … and the stupid Gobs sat in their hovels scared out of their wits, old folks, children, all together … and then some Gobs said, not anymore, and also took things into their hands … at this point the accounts in the Karlovice Courier get pretty confused … Bohler and several others had begun digging tunnels so the Gobs could flee the township, but demonstrations against them began outside it too … and the Gobs had no country of their own they could flee to, they’d been born here after all … Lao couldn’t understand … the people encircled the Rock just as Bohler and the Gobs and the rest were crawling into the barn, and when the people sicced the dogs on the Gobs, they fought back, as did the others, the theologian skewered an attacker on a pitchfork … I remembered his perverted old smile and that olovrant of his … Evil must be countered with violence, immediate an brutal, remember, colleagues … the priest of the tribe had preached to us … they drowned the Gobs outside of town, cause Gobs donno how to swim, and Bohler went down with em …