Darkness. Creaking. Cracking. Ice. Snow.

I am small, tiny, the tiniest of all. I live here, among the ice crystals, with vague memories of the bright, hot and motionless world of my distant ancestors.

My world is moving. Slowly and in one direction. As if it were being drawn by something.

 

 

Part One

 

Glaciology for Beginners

 

The Greenhouse Effect

 

The greenhouse effect takes hold subtly: you glance around at a hazy figure walking past with a mysterious expression on their face, you reach for your unfinished drink, you consider the pointlessness of all human endeavours, and there it is. The walls of the greenhouse let in the sun’s rays – you have to screw up your eyes, trying to ward them off, but it’s no use. You start to get hot and sweat runs down your forehead, but you can’t wipe it away: you’re holding a glass in one hand and you slowly raise the other above your head in a gesture of futility.

 

Encyclopaedia of Bad News

 

1

 

I’m basically a well-adjusted, happy person. But I hate it when someone tries to manipulate me.

And I hate it even more when I fall for it.

I’m an easy target for our time.

Take today, for example.

 

Today, seven years behind schedule and therefore with the obligatory and tiresome fanfare, a magnificent new – and fantastically expensive – greenhouse is finally opening in the botanic gardens in Troja. A sculpture of glass, steel, plants and butterflies from every corner of the tropical world. A battle between scientists and architects trying to bite off as big a piece of the limited media attention as they can. An evening of long-winded, boring and meaningless talk, glib references to sponsors, and speeches about the wider world which barely conceal the provincial cronyism. And I’ll be there with my pencil and notebook.

Of course, it would be a thousand times more useful to wait a few days for the hullaballoo to die down and then go and have a look as an ordinary visitor. Take in the sultry, humid atmosphere of a tropical rainforest and the undoubtedly bold lines of the greenhouse filtering the light in such a way as to allow you to experience the authentic gloom of the lower levels of a primeval forest. Take it all in slowly, quietly and alone. And then write the truth about it, my own little subjective truth.

In other words, the exact opposite of what is going to happen today: a Grand Opening. Our greenhouse, ladies and gentlemen, is the best. The most modern. With the most species. The most humid. The hottest. The most.

However, this argument cut no ice in the newsroom. You want to write about science? Of course you do. Well, here’s your opportunity! Show us that science is interesting!

On top of that, the merging of science and architecture! Money! The virtual reality of the media is reality! Nobody cares about the actual reality! So many exclamation marks in a single paragraph!

Actually, they did have a point. As a journalist who writes about science, I really should be shouting from the rooftops: science is amazing! Let’s be amazed!

The fact is that scientific journalism in this country is virtually non-existent. It’s a vicious circle – science hardly ever appears in the media, so most people know nothing about it. They probably view it as a pastime for a few harmless crackpots. Mad professors with dishevelled white hair like something out of a sci-fi film. Elderly women in white coats who have taken refuge in the depths of scientific institutes because nobody wanted them when they were in their prime. Shy, bespectacled youths speaking a mysterious language and living with their mothers. Not that these are total fallacies: all of these types exist in their bubbles made up of tables, graphs and academic papers. But that’s not the whole truth, nor even a major part of it.

Science is a world of its own, a little enclosed and perhaps boring at first sight. But you don’t have to be a genius to see that science is essential as a method, as a way of thinking about the world and discovering its essence, going below the surface, sometimes quite deep down. To understand that nothing comes from nothing and nothing disappears without a trace. Or does it? Perhaps it’s too deep down, in a place most newspaper readers and television viewers can’t and – what’s worse – don’t want to reach. And that’s why science hardly ever appears in the media. The circle closes.

Scientists should get their act together and start drinking, taking drugs, having sex, scheming, lying and cheating. Except they have been doing that for a long time – they do absolutely everything other human beings do, it’s just that no-one’s interested.

And so today I’m heading to Troja to resuscitate Czech scientific journalism. I leave the newsroom on Poříčí before four o’clock and cycle home to Palmovka to get showered and changed. Today I need an outfit that will tell a subtle but convincing lie: I am a successful young man, an urbanite with a glamorous job, and – just for the record – I am off to a party in a greenhouse.

That’s how I want to look in a little while when I meet up with Anna.

 

Anna and I met when we were at university. I was in my third year studying journalism and she was a second-year law student. A normal girl – jeans, T-shirt with rebellious print, nose ring, drank pints in pubs. The first time we met – I still remember it perfectly, and I don’t know if that’s a good thing – was in a queue for the toilets at a student club that fortunately no longer exists. She was pretty drunk, smiling at everyone and no-one. When she got to the front, she slowly turned to me and, with a serious expression on her face, invited me to go into the cubicle with her so she could show me her new tattoo. Apparently it was itching like crazy. I said no with mixed feelings, which pleased her – the mixed feelings especially. Sometimes life is simple.

Incidentally, the tattoo was nothing special, as I later found out. We split up five years ago – we called it a divorce of convenience, because the emotion had already gone out of our relationship by then – and Anna started to make a career for herself. She removed her nose ring, took off her T-shirt, covered her tattoo with fancy lingerie, put on a staid suit and went off to Brussels to become a modern, rich European woman. My mother, who by some strange coincidence knows her family, said to me: ‘Good for her. Just look at you! I’d have run away as well.’ There’s nothing like support from your family… Now Anna has colleagues and friends from all over the civilized world and a fiancé who looks like someone from an advert for watches and she’s hooked on caffeine consumed on the move from a recyclable cup. She has also developed the annoying habit of smiling at me as if I’m a child every time we see each other – which is roughly once a year, and that’s getting to be another annoying habit. But I can’t say no to her. For some reason I have the feeling that it would be far worse if I refused. That it would look as if I was afraid of her and was trying to avoid her. In short, that she would recognize the truth. And that’s the last thing I want.

So now I’m walking across Libeň Bridge, freshly shaved and smelling of aftershave, in a clean but rather crumpled shirt with a strange pattern, and through my half-closed eyelids I’m trying to transform the Vltava into the Thames and Holešovice Harbour into Canary Wharf so that I can feel cosmopolitan too.

“You haven’t been waiting long, have you?” she asks as she walks into the café twenty minutes late. This is followed by a series of incomplete movements of a welcoming nature: I don’t know exactly how we should greet each other. A kiss is probably no longer appropriate, but a handshake seems awfully cold; for the most part we somehow subtly gloss over it. “I’ve got so much on today. I have to go to London on Sunday,” she continues. I’m tempted to tell her I was there a moment ago, albeit only in my imagination.

“Actually I’m just here because of a letter that was supposed to be delivered to my old Prague address,” she goes on with her monologue, oblivious to whether I am listening or not. “But it never arrived. It probably got lost. Sometimes I have the feeling that all the important post ends up in some parallel world.” Perhaps the one where she is still living in Podolí and wearing jeans and a T-shirt.

Does she even drink anymore? Does she even pee anymore? Or is it all just play-acting? Well, today I have prepared a little performance of my own: “Actually, I have to go soon as well… I’m off to the grand opening of a new greenhouse in Troja, kind of a big deal…” I try to make out I’m not bothered about it, which is actually true but for a completely different reason than I’m trying to make out. I feel like an idiot.

Her slightly clouded gaze, not unlike that first time long ago in front of the toilet cubicle, reveals that she has no idea what I’m talking about.

“I thought you looked weird.”

Like an idiot.

Whereas you look better and better – and you weren’t at all bad to start with. When we were together I took that for granted and now it’s a bit like sci-fi. The conversation falters; in general it seems to me that every time we meet it’s worse and worse. I finish my second beer within half an hour, picturing how I’ll soon start looking nervous and glancing at my wrist and then I’ll apologize that time is pressing and unfortunately I have to go.

“Can I have the bill, please? Yes, for both of us,” she says, beating me to it by raising her hand and then letting it fall like a small slap in the form of an indulgently paid check. She holds out her hand for me to shake (for the first time), smiles at me quickly as if I’m a child and leaves the café in a dignified manner, like a lady.

Like an idiot.

 

It’s a beautiful May afternoon. The streets are full of beautiful May people in beautiful May clothes, hands intertwined, hands around waists, around shoulders, around necks. Empty trams grind their way around the corners and rumble along the straights.

I walk across Holešovice towards the Exhibition Centre and then through Stromovka to the river and to Troja. I grind my teeth on the straights and there’s a rumbling in my head as I turn the corners. Two full pints of beer slosh about in my empty stomach. All of the traffic lights are red, so I have plenty of opportunity to examine the billboards overflowing with more beautiful two-dimensional people. As I reach the planetarium, I realize I’m not going to make it on time and pick up the pace. I arrive at the greenhouse late, out of breath, my shirt stained with sweat marks. If I were a cartoon character, there would be a heavy black cloud hanging over me.

 

Translated by Graeme Dibble