‘What are they doing?’ Pupa roused herself from her slumber.
‘Dancing,’ said Beba.
‘Aahaaa,’ said Pupa, nodding off again.
That was why Beba came suddenly to life when she saw an older man, far better-looking than Kukla’s dancing partner, approaching their table.
‘Allow me to introduce myself. Doctor Topolanek,’ said the man, squeezing Beba’s hand vigorously. ‘Would you have any objection to my joining you?’
‘No indeed, by all means sit down,’ said Beba cordially.
Pupa roused herself again and squinted in their visitor’s direction.
‘Allow me to introduce myself, Doctor Topolanek,’ the man repeated.
Pupa simply smiled. She did not offer him her hand. She knew that she was already so old that no one expected anything of her any longer, and that everything was forgiven her in advance, like a child. So she relaxed into her role, not even saying ‘pleased to meet you’ and – drifted off again.
Of course going through life was not the same as walking across a field – in the words of the Doctor’s favourite poet Boris Pasternak, with whose hero, Doctor Zhivago, Topolanek had identified in his early youth. Of course going through life was not the same as walking across a field, but since the tale always pleases itself, we shall, to please the tale, say a word about Dr Topolanek.
When the velvet Czech revolution took place, Dr Topolanek felt that his moment had come. In fact, the revolution was more than a little late, but nevertheless it happened in time, at least as far as Topolanek was concerned. He was exasperated with the communists, but communists were the only people he knew, and then he quickly became exasperated with anti-communists when anti-communists were the only people he knew. Both sides just talked hot air, there was nothing to choose between them. The revolution had dawned like a peacock, or that was how it seemed to Topolanek. Now it was all an unholy mess of wounded revolutionary vanity and the first things to rise to the surface were greed and stupidity. In the general transitional turmoil, Topolanek made a firm decision to grab a little of what was going for himself. His colleagues, outstanding practitioners, were all languishing in hospitals on miserable salaries, while he, who had begun his career without ambition, as a GP in a spa, had made it to the position of manager of the best-known Wellness Centre in the country and beyond. Yes, he could be called an amateur surfer, skating over the waves. Some people are helped by their genes – you can clobber them as much as you like, but you’ll never do them in – and others by their character. Topolanek was not burdened with a surfeit of character, and this little handicap saved his life. Mild as grass, he bent whichever way the wind blew. Only oaks are destroyed by storms, thought Dr Topolanek poetically, while grass just keeps on growing.
Topolanek knew something about that, about flora and survival – his parents had been intellectuals and dissidents, and some of that had rubbed off on him. And then came the moment of freedom, and, what do you know, freedom behaved like a capricious Santa Claus, bringing his parents nothing. More exactly, they had possessed nothing that could be restored to them, so they gained nothing. What bothered them most was that they had been bypassed even by moral acknowledgment. No one so much as mentioned the underground struggle they had waged for years. All that was left for them was to confront every day the results of the freedom for which they had sacrificed their youth. Their surroundings changed, while they themselves stayed the same: living in a small flat, on a small pension, with two or three remaining friends, losers like themselves. They had struggled and beaten Big Brother, and now they watched it on television every day. The Russians embarked softly on a new kind of occupation, not with tanks as before, but with crinkly banknotes. But in fact the Russians were unimportant in the whole story, money has no nationality, only people do, and generally speaking those are people who have nothing else. All that was left for Topolanek’s parents was senile grumbling and they sank into that grumbling as into quicksand. They grumbled at their former co-fighters, dissidents, who had, allegedly, got everything, while they got nothing; they grumbled at their friends who had made it, at emigrés who had returned, at foreigners who were overrunning the Czech Republic, at Slovaks, for whom things were, allegedly, going quite well, at everyone and everything. The freedom for which they had fought turned out to be fatal. It destroyed them the way oxygen destroys buried frescoes when they are suddenly brought into the light.
In the first capitalist commotion, Topolanek realised that the easiest way to make money was out of human vanity, without harming a hair on anyone’s head. His clients were satisfied, and his Wellness Centre brought in far more than the hotel itself. They were in competition; they sold the radiance of Central-European Europeanness, which, against the background of former communism, had looked more attractive than the West-European version. The medical institution, a communist leftover, stood on firm foundations: the prices of minor medical services were lower than in Western Europe, and those same services were here, on the spot and within reach.
Dr Topolanek was not one of your transitional cynics. He had his own revolutionary dream, only his revolution, unlike that of his parents, was played out in a more profitable, more beautiful and softer place – in the human body. Dr Topolanek was concerned with the theory and practice of longevity. That was why he had approached the table where the ancient lady was sitting in her wheelchair, beside her agreeable companion. Topolanek considered it his duty to greet them, to invite them to make use of the services of his Wellness Centre and to attend, if they wished, a series of his lectures on the theory and practice of longevity.
Beba listened to Dr Topolanek with great interest, while Pupa dozed.
‘Why don’t you dream up a way of dispatching old people comfortably, instead of tormenting them by dragging out their old age?’ Pupa emerged from her slumber.
‘Forgive me, I don’t understand…’
‘Crap! Prolonging old age indeed! It’s youth you want to prolong, not old age!’
Dr Topolanek could not believe that these resolute words should have issued from such a tiny, frail body. But, just as he opened his mouth to say something in defence of his theory and practice, an elderly lady came up to the table with her companion.
Mr Shaker was pleased to meet Dr Topolanek. He promised that he would be sure to visit the Wellness Centre the following day and attend the lecture. Pupa and Beba learned that Kukla’s dancing partner was called Mr Shaker, that he was American, that he was staying in the same hotel and, like them, had arrived that day. However, by then it was quite late, so Kukla suggested that they go their separate ways.
‘Goodbye!’ said Beba and Kukla to Dr Topolanek.
Beba shook hands with Mr Shaker.
‘See you, die!’ she said.
The American took a step backwards. There was an uncomfortable silence.
But here we should explain that Beba had some unusual traits and one of them was a tendency to linguistic lapses. So she did not understand why Kukla was apologising to the American, when she had simply bid him farewell with the usuaclass="underline" ‘See you, bye!’