Petr (36) is just waking up – with a hangover. He is slow to rise. When he picks up his trousers from the ground they shed leaves. He searches through his pockets until he finds a tuft of woman’s hair. He smells it. He smiles.

Petr: Hi. It’s Petr.
Fly: Why are you phoning me so early?
Petr: It’s about the hair.
Fly: What hair?
Petr: Jana’s hair. I’ve forgotten what I’m supposed to do with it.
Fly: Hang on a second. You’re telling me you cut off some of her hair? Have you got it?
Petr: It was pretty simple, really. I just took it off her brush. You know how women are always leaving all this hair in their brushes. Pretty disgusting, but this time it was just the thing.
Fly: And here’s me thinking you cut her hair.
Petr: Of course I didn’t. I’m not mad, you know.
Fly: What you need to do is boil it in milk, then let it dry, then burn it with the leaves of an apple tree, then let the wind scatter it around the places where you got to know each other.
Petr: I suppose so.
Fly: What’s the problem? You don’t think this method’ll work?
Petr: I do. But what’s gonna happen after that?
Fly: You do want her back?
Petr: Of course I do. Just not like this.
Fly: It’s a tried and tested method.
Petr: I do want her to come back to me, but not just because I cut some of her hair off.
Fly: You’ve got twenty-four hours. You’d better get cracking.
Petr: I suppose so.

(Fly hangs up. Petr fetches a carton of milk. He pours the milk into a saucepan, puts the tuft of hair in it and observes the strange substance which results.
The telephone rings. It is Jana, a pretty, energetic woman of around thirty. We see her speak into a telephone on another part of the stage. Aleš – her current partner – walks past her.)

Jana: Petr?
Petr: Jana! I’m just looking at your …
Jana: Petr! I really have no idea how you could have done something so awful!
Petr: What?
Jana: The kids saw you.
Petr: Which kids?
Jana: Aunty’s kids.
Petr: Aunty’s kids? Which aunty?
Jana: Aleš’s aunty. They were sleeping upstairs. They saw you go into her room with some scissors and cut her hair.

(Petr is lost for words. He keeps finding in his pockets more and more tufts of hair. He starts to toss these away as if Jana could see what he was doing.)

Petr: As if I would do something like that!
Jana: Oh, come on!
Petr: Why didn’t the bloody kids try and stop me? Why didn’t they scream or something? Kids are always screaming. Why didn’t anyone else wake up so they could stop me?
Jana: I don’t know why they didn’t scream, but that’s not the issue at the moment.
Petr: Why didn’t Aleš stop me?
Jana: You know Aleš … Listen, Petr, Aunty’s on the verge of a nervous breakdown. She can’t leave the house.
Petr: I didn’t go out for ages either.
Jana: This is hardly the same thing. Aunty wants to lodge an official complaint. You’re in pretty deep trouble. We’re expecting you back here today to put things right.

(Jana hangs up, Petr too. Then he starts to get dressed. Offstage the voices of a man and a woman are heard, exchanging abuse …)

Jiří: Your mother feeds on marinated cat’s farts!
Alice: Your brother couldn’t tell his own arse from a hole in the ground!

(Petr beats on the wall and the voices fall silent. Enter Fly, pushing a washbasin resting on an iron construction on wheels. He sets about washing and polishing the washbasin.)

Petr: I told you it was too complicated for me to manage. I got mixed up in the dark and confused her with an aunt …
Fly: How on earth could you confuse her with an aunt?!
Petr: I was drunk. I wouldn’t have managed it sober.
Fly: So you reckon you managed it, then?
Petr: It was your idea.
Fly: It was my idea that you should forget about women.
Petr: I don’t want to end up like you.
Fly: I haven’t ended up anyhow. I’m certainly further on than you.
Petr: Further on? You hardly even leave the flat.
Fly: Because I don’t want to run into a woman.
Petr: That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You’re in deep shit, mate, so don’t try telling me what to do. When was the last time you went out?
Fly: Not since Eliška left me. I imagine them; I think about them when I’m working on myself, but I haven’t spoken to any of them. I’m afraid to approach them. There’s some kind of smell or something they give off: if you get too close to them you fall in love in them. And once you’ve fallen in love with them, they leave you.
Petr: Where do you get your food from?
Fly: There’s this cleaning lady who comes. She shops, too. No problems with her, she’s a complete idiot.

(Anna the cleaning lady appears with her broom elsewhere on the stage.)

Petr: Have you got anything to drink?
Fly: Take what you want. You know where the bar is.
Petr: What’s wrong with your vacuum cleaner?
Fly: I was just trying something out.
Petr: What?
Fly: If you handle it right it’s a bit like being inside a woman.
Petr: Really?
Fly: Not really, no. A woman’s much better. But at least it’s better than nothing.
(Petr raises his glass.)
Petr: To Jana. That she’ll come back to me. I’m going over there tomorrow, I’m gonna have to think this one through …
Fly: There’s another proven method of getting a woman to come back to you.
Petr: And?
Fly: Box yourself up and get yourself posted to her address. There are certain risks to it, but it’s sort of clean. No magic involved.
Petr: In a box?
Fly: By post. Sign on receipt.
Petr: That’s stupid.
Fly: You write on the box the sender’s address, so she knows it’s from you. Two days in a box – it’s doable. You need to have a bottle of water with you, of course, and a bottle of …
Petr: Hang on a second. You mean to tell me that you once mailed yourself to a woman?
Fly: One of my friends tried it.
Petr: Bollocks. Which friend?
Fly: You don’t know him.
Petr: You haven’t got any friends.
Fly: Still, it’s a pretty good idea, isn’t it? No woman could resist. It goes straight to the heart. Here. The heart. Do you get me?
Petr: You really did get yourself mailed in a box, didn’t you? Who sent you?
Fly: This postman guy.
Petr: Why didn’t you get me to do it?
Fly: You were away at the time … Anyway, it worked.
Petr: You told me that all your girlfriends had left you.
Fly: This one was an exception: she left me after she’d come back to me.
Petr: I still think it’s a pretty stupid idea.

(Petr notices that the washbasin’s outlet pipe has been unscrewed.)

Petr: What’s wrong with your washbasin?
Fly: I was just trying something out.
Petr: What?
Fly: You can use it for all kinds of things.
Petr: A washbasin?

(Fly flips the washbasin up; it has been specially modified for the purpose. Petr is in shock.)

Petr: Hey, Fly, it’s full of crap!
Fly: Don’t call me Fly.
Petr: It’s disgusting.
Fly: That outlet pipe is clean. I clean it every day.
Petr: You’ve finally gone over, haven’t you? You and your aids …
Fly: And what aids have you got?
Petr: Me? You know … my hand and that.
Fly: That’s so old …
Petr: You know what, I’m starting to have serious concerns about you.
Fly: I’m cool. You get things back on track with Jana and then you can comment on my life.
Petr: That’s just what I’m going to do. You can be sure of that. I’m going there tomorrow. I just need to think out how I’m going to handle it. And you give a few thoughts to yourself.

(Exit Fly. Enter Mother with an apparatus for the measuring of blood pressure.)

Mother: I just can’t work out where we went wrong. We took you to the sea … We bought you all the best vitamins … Do you go to work at all these days?
Petr: Yeah, I do.
Mother: Did you get the cuttings?
Petr: Yeah.
Mother: So what do you think? Awful, isn’t it?
Petr: … well …
Mother: You don’t think it’s awful? An earthquake like that?
Petr: Yeah, yeah. Of course it’s awful …
Mother: Those poor people in Georgia, the things they have to suffer through! Doesn’t it interest you at all?
Petr: Of course it does. You’ve sent me so much stuff about it. I’ve got boxes full of it.
Mother: I send it to you so that you know what the real world is.
(…)

Translated from the Czech by Andrew Oakland