They haven’t even changed him. He still wears his worn jeans and there’s not a ring on any of his fingers.
He despises the boredom of the balls, parties, and happenings; and fortunately the comely debutantes, VIPs, and the intrusive paparazzi of the tabloids don’t go to church.
The only ones there are the tired old people, who protect him from pride, and God, his silent and only companion, who doesn’t disclose anything of the man’s audacious plans to the competition, even though He could, for He knows everything.
AN APPEARANCE, WINDY
I’ve already told you about Till and his walks. Didn’t I? So listen to what happened when Till was nine and met Gustáv Husák, the president of Czechoslovakia.
The president arrived in six hundred and thirteen Tatra 613s, with six-hundred-and-thirteen bigwigs and then commenced a reading of six-hundred-and-thirteen pages of a speech, which was about what six-hundred-and-thirteen comrades had achieved and what fifteen million more would soon achieve. Till was also up on the platform at Windy Square. He was a Young Pioneer with a scarf. The scarf was red and annoying, and Till fidgeted and choked throughout the whole speech until he couldn’t bear it anymore. He untied the scarf with the tips that formed a number one, and because he didn’t know where to put it he hung it up on the microphone of Gustáv Husák, the president. And because President Husák was, after the six hundredth page of his speech, already hoarse, and needed to clear his throat, he inadvertently reached for the red scarf and spit his sputum into it.
“Ah, where did I stop? Yes…” said Gustáv Husák, the president, smiling, as he draped the scarf back over the microphone.
At that moment, Comrade Teacher Tomešová noticed that Till didn’t have a scarf and admonished him.
“Mind your scarf, Till,” she hissed.
But as soon as Till went to reach for the scarf, Gustáv Husák was again seized by breathlessness, and beat the boy to it. When he relieved himself into the scarf again and noticed the confused Till standing between the two authorities — himself and Comrade Teacher — he apologized to the boy, in Slovak: “Sorry, kid, I didn’t notice it was your Pioneer scarf.”
“Never mind, Mr. President, cough into it all you want, it was choking me anyway,” Till said and waved his hand.
“Ach, yes, such a smart boy,” observed Gustáv Husák, the president, in the direction of the teacher.
“You know what, boy, I’ll give you a chocolate bar for your scarf.”
“Thank you, sir, but I’m not allowed to take chocolate from strangers!” Till objected politely.
“Tee hee, well, we have ourselves a little genius here, don’t we?” Gustáv Husák said and again turned to the teacher.
“And what was his grade for morals?”
“Mr. President is no stranger,” the teacher hastily explained to Till, “Mr. President belongs to us. To me, you, all the people. In our country, Till, everything belongs to everyone…”
“All right, I’ll take hazelnut!” Till agreed.
“Hazelnut,” President Husák promised, then went on with his six-hundred-and-thirteen-page speech.
But Till never got the promised chocolate.
Some adults simply talk too much.
Especially when they get to the microphone.
Then, they’re called Windbags.
Especially when they talk in Windy Square.
AN APPEARANCE, ELEMENTAL
On the site where the lignite mining pits are today, the old city of Brüx once stood. A poet once lived there, too. He was an erotic poet; he couldn’t be otherwise. He once lived in Ústí, then in Prague. In Old Most, he searched for peace.
It was the women who drove him from place to place like the fluff of a dandelion.
But here, too, they ran him down like the elements.
And so he had to sit down at the typewriter and write…
When the Labe will be
above Ústí
When the water begins rising
I would like to fall in love
With a girl from Hamburg
She knows of love
She knows of water
Sitting at the rudder
Turning and so sad
I know that sadness well
When the fire will be above Prague
When Prague catches fire
I would like to fall in love
With a girl from Arc
She knows of love
She knows of fire
Gazing into the flames
Silent and so sad
I know that sadness well
When here, where I am, nothing will be
I want you to be here, at least
Mine, the most beautiful element…
AN APPEARANCE, STONY
“I hid myself in a stone, never to melt, until you, my lioness, come. You won’t find me alive, merely eternal, for living is too mortal, even if, my lioness, you refuse to believe it. Stop your weeping, for your tears are nothing, if I am a lion and further, of stone.
“You won’t move me… find another animal from the horoscope. Or Libra; Libra is just; Libra will judge which one of us is right. Whether it is I, of stone, or you, white Leo, and your dreams.
“You quivered with winter, when it was winter, and looked forward to seeing the Sun. I remember it well.
“You believed that on the Sun live small Sun People — particularly because it contradicted the astronomical theories, and all the scientific authorities conspired against you, declaring that the Sun People would burn to death.
“And you said, but what about love? Don’t people burn in love? And all the scientific authorities bristled up against you, declaring that all burn up in love.
“And then you said, what about life? People don’t live in life? And all the scientific authorities stood against you and said that everything living must die, but you cried.
“You were so tender-hearted, and so desperate. You believed me and hoped I would do something with this life, with love and also with the Sun People, that I would tell the scientific authorities to get lost, somewhere very far away, and to spite them all and their theories I myself would fly for the Sun People and they would be possible, just like it’s possible to live, like love is possible…”
I, city, listened to the heartless things my stone lion said and I looked everywhere for his lioness that I might alleviate her pain from death.
But I have yet to find her.
“Here there be lions,” it says on the maps of the world, but “here there be lionesses” nowhere. Where to look for her, then?
Fate gave me, city, only two lions.
One on the city’s seal and the other on the coat of arms at city hall.
Both are male.
And one of them is also stone.
AN APPEARANCE, FOOLISH
You will find the Liars’ Bench below the large mirror opposite another large mirror on the walls of The Partisan pub.
The flower of the fibbers sits there. And there they tell tall tales, prattle, hornswoggle, narrate and spin yarns about women, and about themselves, in doing so reproducing themselves, through some sort of parthenogenesis, so that they can be with more women in many places and all at the same time, as if they’d stepped out of an infinite picture of themselves reflected in mirrors set opposite each other. I like the stories about women that come from the Liars’ Bench. They never do any harm, and they all end like fairy tales.