Sister
~ ~ ~
Shards, they have the time of those days in them too, it was she, my dark star, who took me by the hand and stood me in this room. In outer space. There’s a mirror. She turns me toward it, I’m in it alone, just my face. That woman left me in it. At the bottom of solitude. At the bottom of a solitude more deep and awful than I ever imagined. Until I felt the chill that blows from the stars, I knew nothing about life. Perhaps the noose of my path had at last drawn tight and this was the despair of the trap. No, her hand turned over the mirror, and written on the back was: “Only dogs have a destiny.” I read on:
8
THE NORTH. ČERNÁ’S. I FIND OUT WHAT THE WELL IS. THE SHADOWS. I FIND OUT WHY THEY DON’T RING. HADRABA’S OFFER.
I went in, slightly dazed an proudly blood-spattered, first. I still harbored some hope that as the first one in I’d grab the morning mail an then, brushing aside Micka’s invoice reports an sundry promotions an ads for poisons, bury myself, at least a short while, in The Fool World, Clokwork Pomegranate, The Anchor and the Cross an find out the details, a new classic work came in the mail almost every day.
But then through the open door, where the fire was meekly breathing its last, I saw the two Laosters’ dead bodies, an David, streaming blood, came downstairs, having chewed through his ropes. That was hard-core, Bohler said, standing nearby. He looked awful, lips gushing, but that was from Lady Laos’s biting kiss, the first one after the victory, back on life’s track, which any old iron bar can easily knock you off of.
I’ll call Hradil, said David, an I noticed he had blood on his hands. The tips of his thumbs had been sliced away, or chopped off. He went back an forth between nervously twirling the little bones an holding them stiffly up in the air, I guess waiting for them to dry. As Bohler stood over the Laosters’ dead bodies, into the room walked the shark hunter. One of those I’d fought alongside. He clutched my shoulder, spun me around, an touched my wound. Then went to the dead ones lying on the floor, I noticed they weren’t even that bloody, except for the gaping wounds of ruptured flesh around their stomachs. They weren’t beaten to death. Bohler stood at their dead feet praying, the shark hunter kneeled down an spread his arms. Knelt there like some hesitant bird. Helena! cried David, an rushed back upstairs. I dragged along after him. I was astounded to fall twice along the way. Get up! I told myself, an probably thanks to my whipped-up emotions assumed the feet-down position each time, in stride, precisely as prescribed by Stanislavsky. Lady Slovak lay by the smashed altar. They were gonna give her a ride, David turned to me, but then they dragged me off … there were too many of em … They found out I wasn’t … Czech, so they didn’t … Helena’s face was cruelly aged with two bloody slashes an sprinkled all over with some kind of powder. I hope it’s powder, I thought.
I went downstairs. An then fell again. I woke up to some stalingo stabbing my rear with a boofalo spear. But no, it was the M.D. with a needed injection. David’s thumb tips were sewn back on now, he sniffed at them. Don’t worry, the M.D. told him, the guy was clean. Lady Laos an the bandaged Helena were soaking rags in dirty water … you wan’ pay someone e’se clean up you’ own bloo’! she raged. Fo’get! She decided for us. She was right, who knew what some hired phony might conjure up with the blood. Are you guys nuts! Screamed Micka, who’d just driven back from some trade negotiations. They’re not nuts, helmsman, they’re bleedin, the M.D. explained, momentarily interrupting the melody of the air whistling in between the sewing an the washing, full of bad post-battle feebleness. No elixir, Micka ordered, quickly finding his bearings. What, do I look like a murderer, the Doctor mumbled. The Laotians withdrew to the cellar with their dead … bodies in the building an an empty street, said Sharky. Where were you? whispered David, eyes glued to Helena, who squatted, back to us, scrubbing the bloody stairs … In the box, said Sharky, turning red. An then this string got knotted up … I got stuck in a shoe actually … I shrank … explained Sharky, embarrassed … Bring in the Water! the freshly stitched Bohler thundered, an Sharky, for once obediently an without any back talk, went for the booze. The thumbs, it’s obvious, I shouted, an told the story of our encounter in the subway. He said even thumb contracts don’t get broken … that was that time with the Laosters, when Fab Rocker a.s. tried to swallow em up. I told the story of our encounter, perhaps slightly exaggerating my role … Lady Laos nodded fervently … the lone witness, apart from the random and apathetic passengers … to my heroism. Once I had colorfully described how the Martian and his armed horde took flight, she went back to her rag, furiously scrubbing bloodstains that were already washed away … maybe my exaggeration set off her fury, those graceful staccato movements as she rinsed out the rag, dribbling water, I watched the lady carefully … an decided to cut off my story. You’re sposta be at Černá’s tonight, yeah? asked one of my blood brothers. There’s no way though, Hadraba’s an old pseudodroog from the Sewer, there’s just no way he’d hire stalingos! On us, Bohler cried. Times may be changin, added Micka, but that’s too hard-core. Not to mention commercially futile an totally perverted. He’s a Northerner, don’t forget! But … this isn’t his style, I admitted. An if it is, Micka said, I see Usti an Teplice an fuckin Chomutov* in flames, an they’re outta the little mother, those hicks, back to their Sudeten graves.
Northerners: Many slender threads and cables connected us with our cohorts born in the north of Bohemia, in nooks and crannies whose shapes on the map remind the more susceptible of nothing so much as a demon’s head. The North was full of evil spirits, in the air, on the ground, and especially underneath it. In the days of the Sewer, while we, the Prague city slickers, were constructing the complex clauses and short punchy sentences of petitions demanding the immediate release of now long since forgotten political prisoners … the northern longhairs were taking it hard in the teeth, because their interrogators knew the most effective thing was a beating … In the days of the Sewer, when reports of beatings of Prague burghers carried over the global airwaves … and photographs of city dwellers with scruffy hairdos filled the free world’s glossy weeklies … the beating and torture of northern longhairs was usually done to nothing but the more or less approving howls of the smog-choked wolves in the nearest deep forest, where the coppers pulled over their Zhigulik with the victim inside … When in view of my frequent involvement in the drama demimonde my interrogators were changed, in place of the dwarf sadist Duchač and a pair of backwater thrashers appearing under the almost chauvinistically Czech names Dvořák and Svoboda, suddenly into the gloomy room leapt a handsome man with an evidently artificially high forehead, brimming with a knowledge of French poetry … That idiot, that slimy bolshevik pig, that mutant so totally blatantly in the service of the Devil, took the liberty of placing his hand on my thigh: Just sign it, Mr. Potok, Charlz Bowdlair was also insane an dwelled on thoughts of death, “Carrion”! know that one, don’t cha? he said as if it were a joke … well you’re gonna be dwellin on those thoughts here, too … In the days when I graduated from interrogators concerned with hooligans to interrogators concerned with artists, the northern cops had long since realized that the two concepts often merge, and treated the artsy Northerners accordingly. In the days when we were being thrown out of schools and kulchur, the northern longhairs were killing off their hangovers in the nastiest toxic factories, where the only way to get thrown out was over the cemetery wall. It’s a cursed land those wretched hicks live in, Bohler assessed their situation one gloomy bolshevik day in the preliminary holding cell where by the grace of God we met. That’s what they get for their granddads’ gold digging,* he went on cruelly. They kicked out the Germans, battered em in concentration camps, an now they got what they asked for.