The Sudetenland
A landscape slightly open, like the mouth of an old woman. I wouldn’t want it to close up.
The Sudetenland.
Mišo and I were lying in the dense heat, the grass looped around our ankles. Above our heads a sky red-hot, like blood.
As Mišo lay next to me I was aware of his quiet breathing. He was asleep. Whenever he’d just had his way, Mišo slept. Like an animal. After he’d satisfied his hunger – finished a painting, read a book to the end, fired his shot into the world. Not long before he’d been running about among the remnants of houses, peeping into dust-filled cellars, inspecting the ground plans of non-existent buildings. Then like a lizard he’d curled up and fallen asleep in the sun without a word.
The sky here is motionless, just as the Germans left it. It gazes down on us as if it had nothing better to do.
We’ve been hammering about the region for a fortnight now. I have the feeling that I’m changing along with the landscape. I’m smooth as a snake, rich within and many-coloured on the surface. I leave tracks in the landscape and it leaves its tracks in me; we sniff each other up and down like two dogs who don’t know what to do with each other.
The veins of villages, paths, fields and boundaries that aren’t. Crosses smashed to pieces at crossroads, animal bones buried deep in the earth, quintals of unfinished coitus. The godforsaken urge, the evacuation of people, a purging. No one wants to live here any more. Why should we? they say to themselves. On the larger homesteads a few gypsies, their dogs with annealed sides, trees that were put here by the first occupants, sunk deep in the earth. It is by trees that Mišo and I answer the call of nature, by trees in the woods that we make love, fingers, mouths, a pine branch peeled smooth.
We often walk about the Sudetenland, crossing paths we’ve been down already, and we see that in the time since we were last here, new things have grown. Here things are knocked down no longer, they grow towards the resurrection of their bygone, original form – houses are changed into stone, beams return to the earth, boundaries crumble and merge with the woods.
Mišo loves this landscape, and he’s taught me to love it too, although I can be happy with any – I don’t mind smoking chimneys, nor do I mind the liverish country around the Holešovice ferry.
We are here together and again Mišo opens up like a sponge, sucks everything in before his brain sets to work on it; I see how he clasps his hands together and thinks only of painting.
[…]
The Romanies
This is country that will withstand anything. It has lived through so much that everything is as nothing to it. Mišo, too, realizes this, as he sits in silence on the edge of the woods and looks ahead.
My hands are joined in my lap, the fingers cold. My eyes work through Mišo’s face: he’s calm. I’ll never see him like this again, not even in the single second that will decide our transformation; Mišo is so calm that the reserves will last me till life’s end.
A silence in which even thought seems futile, suddenly cut through by a variegated whip-crack. The air is vibrant with the cries of children, you can hear the breaking of twigs, the pulling of grass, the shrieking of moss. We are separated from a steamroller of strangers by nothing but a few bushes. Then these, too, yield – and out surges a band of gypsies. When they catch sight of us they fall silent for a moment, giving Mišo a chance to wake up. Then they start up again. They’re speaking Romany, which sounds beautiful here; they are shouting all at once, laughing. I don’t understand a single word.
Mišo gets to his feet and turns his attention on them; I sit a short way off, waiting for what will happen. Mišo falls into conversation with them. Soon they are clinging to Mišo, shoving him forward, moving their hands about him; sometimes they shoot a glance at me, but they dare do no more. Mišo stands in their midst, they flow around him like a river, and in the end they invite us back to their place. Mišo picks up his rucksack and looks at me; the kids look at me, too, and I attach myself to the end of their procession, my step light. Just for a moment I turn back to look at the place where we were sitting.
We stride through the woods, Mišo surrounded by screaming kids, last of all me, astonished and curious to find out what’s awaiting us. As we go the kids gather wood; noticing this I bend and gather some brushwood myself. Perhaps this was just what they were waiting for; the gypsies run up to me, pull at my clothes, accept me into their midst.
We came out of the woods and into a clearing. A secluded place, where there was a tall house. The kids vanished inside and left us outside. First to emerge from the house were several big dogs, which made a dash for us. Quickly Mišo lifted his hands above his head. The dogs had a good sniff at us and ran round and round, until a man appeared at the front door and called them to him. They lay down at his feet, but they didn’t take their eyes off us.
There were many colours around us: the dark brown of the woods, the white of the house, the tongues of the dogs with their flow of saliva, and at the front door of the house a black man, who was smiling at us.
The Chickens Screamed
We ate with them in the yard. They roasted meat and baked potatoes in ash.
Because of us they killed chickens and rabbits.
There were many of them. Too many to count, and more and more of them kept coming out of the house. They sat down around the fire, and when we’d all eaten our fill they began to sing.
It’s clear that all this is for us.
We fall asleep underneath the walnut tree like toddlers, full to the brim.
I Touch Death
It was like a stone skimming over the surface of water. In the house several families lived together – brothers, sisters, in-laws, parents. The oldest gypsy, known as Baro Dad, was a hundred years old. He lay in bed and looked into himself, shrinking and crumbling into ever smaller pieces, until – just before he died – we carried him in his bed to the spot beneath the walnut tree and left him outside all night. The whole family gathered, the dogs curled up next to the bed, and we listened to what Baro Dad said.
After he fell quiet he just looked at us, from one to another, smiling. Then he closed his eyes, and when he opened them again he pointed at me and said something. A murmur passed around the family, and a gypsy woman who was one of his many daughters took me by the arm and said: Baro Dad has chosen you.
I didn’t understand what this meant, but by that time the gypsies had me surrounded and were pushing me towards the dying man’s bed. His daughter threw back the eiderdown, and I understood that I was supposed to climb in next to him.
Baro Dad has chosen you to guide him on his journey, his daughter said to me.
I got into the bed. It had soft white sheets adorned with lace and a fragrant pillow. I closed my eyes and wished for the night to be over.
Dew fell with the coming of the dawn. It washed through the thick leafage of the walnut and trickled down to me in strings. I’d kept myself pressed to the edge of the bed, and now I was numb. I propped myself up on one elbow and looked around. Mišo was close by, sitting with his arms hugging his knees, watching me. I lay down again and carefully turned my head towards the old man next to me. He fixed his eyes on the heavens and moved his lips. His hands he held clasped over his chest.
When death passed around me, I was sweating to my fingertips. I looked at the gypsy’s ear, perfect and delicate, fine-formed and wrinkleless, like the ear of a child. Then Baro Dad died. His eyes closed, his body relaxed, his chin dropped. His brow was clear and flat as a field. His hands disengaged themselves and fell to rest alongside his body. One of them touched me. It was warm and light as a feather.
I felt a shadow over me. Mišo turned and walked away. I closed my eyes and fell asleep.
The sky opened up to the dawn.
Nothing Will Happen To Me
I was woken by wailing. The bed was surrounded by all those who lived in the house. They were dressed in black and their shoes were shiny. They lamented loudly, rocked themselves on their knees, wept.
I pulled back the eiderdown and stood up. Straight away one of the women took hold of me and led me away to the house. In the kitchen it was warm; it smelled of sugar and bread. On the table there was a clean white cloth and many plates and dishes of food: loaves of bread, buns, cakes, puff pastries, baked potatoes, quark with vegetable garnish, stuffed peppers, chickens, sauces. They must have spent the whole night getting it ready.
The woman poured some warm milk into a mug and gave it to me. She offered me food. The bread had a soft, warm inside and a crunchy crust that bore three crosses.
The woman sat down opposite me and gave a heavy sigh. She poured out a mug of milk for herself and drank from it deeply. The milk streamed down her throat like a waterfall and filled her belly. Into the room came a woman with a child on her hip. She sat down in a chair, unbuttoned her blouse, drew out a breast and proceeded to suckle the child.
The woman opposite me finished drinking. Baro Dad chose you, she said. That’ll bring you luck.
Nothing bad will happen to you, said the nursing mother. She used a hand to keep her breast pressed to the baby’s mouth. Death will pass you by. There’s nothing for you to fear.
The child slipped off the nipple and burst into a wail. The milk continued to dribble out.
Translated from the Czech by Andrew Oakland
Jakuba Katalpa: Is Soil to be Eaten? / Je hlína k snědku?
Against the background of today’s Czech literature, this work of prose about searching for one’s own wilderness in our rather polished world is very unusual. The main character Nina tells a story of matters encoded in ourselves since time immemorial, of the process of finding them and then losing them again, of changes they undergo. In this work the author plays with past and present and creates colourful textual visions, a mosaic through which the light is never quite the same.
(annotation by the author´s husband)
This work of prose by a young woman writer is written with exceptional strength of expression. The narration of the main hero Nina cursorily depicts the history of her family, yet its focus is on a present populated with a husband, lovers and a female lover. It is a story about searching for a way to the self, and it is told with uncompromising openness. The sequence of short, dense episodes allows random change in time and plot, creating contrasts, indicating parallels, evoking atmosphere by suggestion. This short novella surprises by its range and depth and captivates by its unusual subject matter and composition.
(publisher´s annotation)
Publisher: Paseka 2006
ISBN: 80-7185-816-1
112 pp.
Awards
nominated for the prestigious Magnesia Litera Award for Czech literature in the Newcomer of the Year category, 2007