He went to the Catholic church so that he might quietly reflect by himself. Perhaps he expected that some solution would present itself to him. It didn’t. So he headed off for beer and some cheap liquor. He bought a litre of Starorežná and went off to drink it in the nearby “little park”.
The “little park” was the name given to the nettles, burdocks and thorny bushes that grew in a vacant lot behind a house which, several years before, had burnt down for reasons that weren’t entirely clear… He sat on a charred chair and started to drink… He thought about how the shoelaces on his left shoe had come undone and whether he should tie them now or wait till he wanted to move on, or whether there was even any point in tying them at all when his home was all of 500 metres away and he’d have to untie them again there anyway. During all of this thinking he managed to get himself drunk rather quickly. So he didn’t notice as an old man approached him dressed in the fancy costume of an ancient philosopher with a thick white beard attached to knicker elastic hanging from his chin.
A few metres behind him there rose up to the sky, like an Eiffel Tower for the poor, the metal structure of an abandoned hoist tower. The masses of mined debris gave out enough dust for the surrounding area to be constantly covered in a coating of grey oblivion. In the wind its wheel drily creaked and squeaked.
The old man sat down as quiet as a mouse and didn’t make a sound. He just gave Josef a very careful looking over. He remembered him as a promising baby. He remembered them all in this way. He didn’t have a proper name because he had never had proper parents. All he had were several not entirely appropriate nicknames.
When Josef looked up at him from his untied shoelaces he said to him:
“My God, old man, you scared me!”
“Josef, Josef…” said the old man calmly, without any greeting, “and you scared me too.” However, it didn’t sound like a reproach.
“Are you meant to be God or something?”
The old man nodded.
“Aha. And is there going to be some kind of miracle?” Josef wasn’t in the mood to have someone poke fun at him. “So that I might believe in you?” He had a raspy, worn voice and he tried to speak to the stranger in as accentless a way as possible. Without even knowing why.
The old man calmly stood up. “And what did you have in mind? A burning bush? I’m good at that,” he offered.
“Shove that nonsense behind the elastic of your beard…” said Josef, refusing the offer of a pyrotechnic show. “I’d need something different. I’d want…” he thought hard, “I’d need to sober up in an instant, otherwise I’ll just waste my time here and at home I’ll get a punch in the face and in the morning my head will be aching. So could you make that happen?” He looked questioningly at the old man, who was airing his sweaty chin by fanning the beard which he had attached with elastic, exposing his strangely childlike, beardless face.
Josef’s wish seemed odd to him. Why is he drinking then? he said to himself. Throwing away money. That was how people were. They never knew what they wanted or what they should want. He looked Josef searchingly in the eye and then snapped his fingers in front of him.
At that moment sparks like angels danced in front of his eyes. In an instant his stomach turned over and back again. The cells released whatever water they contained, diluted the alcohol and, strengthened by a flood of the purest energy, they were freed from all their molecular and atomic bonds and then…Josef gave out a monumental belch. A bluish cloud of ethyl alcohol flew from his mouth. And suddenly he was quite sober.
He blinked in confusion. It took a short while before he was aware of his condition. In the meantime he gazed impassively at the half-empty bottle of Starorežná. “Oh, Jesus!” he said when it hit him that he had just witnessed a miracle, and one of which he was the subject. “My God…could you really have…? It’s not possible!” he mumbled.
“And why do you think it couldn’t be possible?” You’re a Catholic, aren’t you? You believe in the living God? You believe. So? So he’s here now and he’s sitting right beside you,” said the old man calmly and soothingly.
“I’ll give you that…” said Josef, recovering his wits, “I’ll give you that. But why do you look like you’ve been to a fancy dress party? And why did you appear to me of all people?”
God took off his padded beard and threw it onto a pile of scrap lying around the remains of the warped, charred walls. “I was only trying to be what you imagined,” sighed God, realising it would be better if he got straight to it. “I appeared to you because I know you have problems and so I’ve decided to help you. I like that you’re worried about the soul of your grandchild who you still haven’t seen to this day. And I also know that your daughter won’t find a husband just like that… And the last thing I’ll tell you – you’re the last real believer in the area, aren’t you?”
It took Josef a while to understand. With an open mouth, which after God’s intervention smelled of violets, he searched for the words and began connecting them together.
God had a weak spot for violets. He reckoned they were one of the most fragrant things that he had created. “Maybe you’re wondering why I’m offering you something when I know in advance that you will refuse me?” continued God, looking quickly at Josef.
He just kept his mouth shut, tucked a strand of hair behind his ear and shrugged.
“It’s like this…” said God, “Look, among other things I also gave you free will and you can use it now. I came to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage.”
“It’s not about my daughter, it’s about you recognising her child as your own. You’d dae that? God’d adopt an illegitimate bastit?” interrupted Josef, who was so awestruck that he began to use phrases from his mother tongue.
“So what? I already have one, so what!” said God calmly and continued, “I’ll marry her in a Catholic church, I’ll stay at yours until the christening and then I will quietly disappear.”
“But it will be deception, cheating,” blurted out Josef, “and in a church!”
“So what? Am I here because of the church or is the church here because of me?!” God rebuffed him.
Josef didn’t know. However, he pursued something else in his mind. Passing by alongside them was a luxury convertible full of rich youths. The young Mr Drhola was at the wheel. Everyone inside was drunk on happiness, expensive alcohol, the feeling of power, their own untouchability and the knowledge of their belonging to the governing elite, and one of the girls was waving her bra above her head.
God had to smile when he looked at them. He had done a good job with human females.
Josef noticed his smile and interpreted it wrongly. “No, not that!” he shouted, standing up, “Not that! Now I can see through you! God, I don’t want you as a groom! You have double standards! One for us and one for the others!” He pointed at the high-spirited youths in the car which it would have taken him his whole life to pay for. “Enough! That is my last word. I hope I don’t have to explain any more to you!” and he sat back down. Very decisively.
“No, you don’t have to explain anything. I was expecting it,” sighed an annoyed God, “but I have to tell you one thing. Do you know what I have longed for the most after all of these ages? The one thing I would most like to experience?” he asked Josef.
Josef shook his head.
“A surprise,” said God, getting up to leave. “Farewell.”
Josef was suddenly paralysed with fear from what had just happened. “Will I go to hell because I didn’t want you in my family?” he asked anxiously.
God turned to him with infinite kindness. “I will still allow you to choose. You will choose for yourself. For death is the one instance when your will operates entirely freely and you decide alone. The one moment when I have no power over you,” he explained as he was disappearing, “Oh, and tie your shoelaces, otherwise you’ll fall on your head on your way home.”
Then he evaporated into the burning bush. That was his favourite trick.
Josef stared at it for a while and then started drinking again. “I’d rather give my darling daughter to Lucifer,” he thought and then spat, “He is fairer.”
Suddenly there was a terrible stench beside him. From the trapdoor to the cellar of the burned-down house appeared a young black-haired hunter. “Good evening, your Excellency. Is there by any chance room to sit here?” he asked extremely politely.
It was all the same to Josef. The bottle was almost empty. “I couldn’t care less,” he hiccupped, “I’m not from here…”
The hunter sat down, bowed to Josef, interlaced his fingers, made a wheel with his thumbs and said, “This is a good place,” settling down, “And what about this daughter? She wouldn’t be for marrying?”
That took Josef unawares.
“I apologise for coming straight to the point, but you know that I have a lot of work in the world, as I’m sure you can imagine,” said the hunter apologetically.
“I can’t,” said Josef. “I’ve been a retired invalid for a long time now. And I don’t even know who you are.”
“Excuse my impoliteness, squire,” said the hunter, removing his hat, and Josef saw that underneath it he had small horns like a lamb. “Allow me, therefore, to introduce myself,” the newcomer bowed. “My name is Lucifer and I am…”
“I know,“ interrupted Josef, “A short while ago, God himself was here, so it doesn’t come as such a surprise to me, and so I’ll tell you straight that although I did curse before it was only just…words. Or do you really think I’d give my daughter to the personification of evil? Well, you’ve screwed up there.”
“Excuse me?” said the devil, failing to comprehend the metaphor.
Josef was in a rage. “Bullshit,” he said succinctly.
“Aha, that I understand,” said Lucifer, calming down, “Swearing is also a sin, albeit a minor one, so just keep going, squire. I would like to steer you away from an error, I am not evil, I am a clerk who only punishes evil, I am your idea of good – led through to its conclusion. Hell isn’t other people and it isn’t me. Hell is your perception of others. Hell is in everyone. I would make so bold as to say that your doubts concerning me do not constitute the absolute truth.” He pulled apart his finger wheel and stroked his upper lip with its elegantly twisted moustaches and the pointed beard below.
Josef thought for a while, searching for words. “Fuck your truth. Neither your nor his…” he pointed above, “truth interests me. You can both sod off with your truths! I am only interested in how I am. Right now, at this moment. That is all. So to hell with you!” he ended somewhat impertinently.
At that Lucifer took umbrage. You couldn’t even expect gratitude from a Catholic! And after all that he had done for that church! And so he disappeared.
The stench and smoke which lingered after him dispersed only very gradually. That was his favourite trick. And so Josef stood between the smoke of hell and God’s smouldering bush, watching as the two merged into one another.
When the smoke had cleared he spotted another figure. It didn’t have the spiteful ego of God nor the vanity and self-centredness of the Devil. It looked like a tired, rickety postman.
“Good evening,” he greeted Josef, sitting down opposite him. “I am Mr Banshee. And I have to come according to his plan…” he pointed to the sky, “immediately after those two, and so here I am. I have to ask for your daughter’s hand in marriage. I realise she is a whorebut that doesn’t matter to me. Over time I come for everyone anyway.“ He spoke slowly, quietly and uncomplainingly.
“Mr Banshee…?” repeated Josef after him. “Is that like the Grim Reaper?”
Mr Banshee nodded.
“And where’s yer scythe?” asked the drunken Josef.
“Well, that’s really just a fairy-tale prop, my work method is far simpler, but I’m not allowed to go into that with you.”
Josef thought hard. “OK,” he said. “I’ll happily give you my daughter. You’re the only one who doesn’t have double standards. Come on, we’ll go to our place. Let’s get it over with. My daughter’s a bonny lass. You’ll like her…”
“I wouldn’t really wish that on her,” said the groom sadly and stood up from the charred armchair.
They squabbled along the way.
In all the excitement he had forgotten to tie his shoelaces and fell on his head on the way home.
Translated by Graeme Dibble
New book by the winner of the 2009 Magnesia Litera Discovery of the Year award.
Penis pravdy (Penis of Wisdom) is a story about a woman and two men, each earning their living by doing odd jobs – something that can be only endured over a course of one life. Our heroes are struck by bad luck, as the story of the novella is inspired by the fairy tale Dařbuján a Pandrhola (Dařbuján and Pandrhola)set in present day. Thus, as we all know, they confront imminent immortality. And that’s the last thing they’d wish for. “ The life we lead can only be endured until death, definitely no longer than that!,”one of the characters utters.
They set out on a quest in search of death in an effort to redeem the good old temporary times. During this odyssey, they don’t experience any remarkable adventures, apart from the politically incorrect trip to Fairytale Land, where they encounter various enchanting artifacts that eventually help them.