And what would I say about the state we find ourselves in now?
We find ourselves up in the air, lifted high above the head of an invisible hero, on whom we bestow our favours. Intoxicated by the altitude, we think we are approaching the stars; we are conquering the heavens. We
don't even try to disengage ourselves and touch the earth to renew our strength. In any case, the earth is, by our own hand, radioactive.
The dogs run away with swimming leaps and I bend down to pick up a handful of dirt, knead it with my fingers, and feel relief.
The Shop Girl
WHEN I RETURNED to Meštec one Monday morning, I found the door of our residence locked and a note stuck in a crack in the door jamb. The note was from my boss. He'd left the ownership papers for his car at home and had gone to fetch them-. He apologized, and said he'd be back in the afternoon. The keys were in the stationer's shop.
It was exactly eleven o'clock, and the shop was already closed. Recalling what the former owner of the building had told me, I went through the dark passageway to the inner courtyard and knocked on the door of the stockroom. When no one answered, I turned the handle. The door opened and the smell of paper, mould and mustiness greeted me. Looking around, all I could see were a lot of shelves. Through an arched opening in the wall where a door had probably been came the dim glow of artificial light. I waited, and when no one appeared I walked through the opening.
In the next room, sitting on a couch made of empty crates and two or three rugs, was the familiar long-haired, bespectacled creature wearing a white sweater and a denim skirt. A kettle of water was boiling on an electric hot-plate next to the couch.
I said hello.
She looked up in alarm and jumped to her feet. 'Oh, it's you,' she said, obviously relieved. She reached into her pocket and rummaged around in it for a moment before finding the key. 'Will you have a coffee with me?'
I sat down in the only chair in the room.
'He was really steamed up about forgetting his papers,' she said, referring to my boss. Her voice sounded veiled. She took a cup from a shelf containing kitchen utensils. 'This is probably not such a hot place to live,' she said, putting a little ground coffee into the cup, 'but I'd enjoy driving around like you do. I'm stuck inside here all day long.'
I took a piece of cake out of my bag, unwrapped it, and placed it on the small table.
'I won't have to go for lunch,' she said, delighted. 'Actually, it's not so bad here,' she admitted. 'When I was working in the Tesla plant, I was soldering all day long like an idiot, and when I came home at night I was seeing double.'
She took out a lighter and a pack of cigarettes and offered me one. I refused, but lit hers for her. Her face was impassive; I had trouble guessing her age. If her features had anything quirky or individual about them, she'd wiped it out with make-up.
'But it can be a drag here sometimes too,' she remarked.
'What would you rather do?'
'Oh, well,' she said, frowning at my simplistic question. 'I'd travel, wouldn't I? Isn't that what everyone wants to do?'
'Where would you go?'
'Who cares? Just get out. But I'd steer clear of the south; they say the men down there are a pain. I'd go north. I hear
they still have nice forests up there, and lakes and rare birds. They showed it on TV a while ago. Did you see it?'
'Do you ever go travelling?'
'Oh, sure! Happen to know where I could get a currency voucher?' She frowned again. 'And even if I did manage to get one, do you think a woman can go anywhere alone? And who'd look after the kid? Granny's only willing to do it during the day; she likes the evening to herself.'
'Are you from Meštec?'
She shook her head. 'Can I have some?' She reached for a piece of cake. Little paper chimney-sweeps, the kind they sold at Christmas for good luck, looked down at us from the opposite shelf. There were also new year's pigs for the same purpose.
'My family's in Pardubice, I mean my mother and brother,' she said. 'Mom's in the hospital now, been there two months already.'
'What's wrong with her?'
'She was working with aniline, right?' she said, as though that explained it. 'I ran away from home the minute I turned fifteen. I married a guy from Usti and now I'm living with my grandma out in the country, two stops away by train. They've built a cement plant right bang on the other side of her fence. It's fabulous. If you leave your coffee on the table, it'll turn white by evening without adding cream.' She gathered up the cups and went to rinse them out.
Her figure was boyish, and she had dark hair on her legs. She didn't seem like the type of woman men go crazy over, and even less did she seem the type to go crazy over men.
'I'm probably quitting my job here soon,' she announced when she came back.
'What then?'
'If I'm going to sell things, I want to get something out of it.' She frowned. 'The father sends four hundred a month for the kid, and the rest is down to me. You know how long I had to save up for this stupid skirt?' She took another piece of cake, remarking on how good it was. 'They'd take me on in the canteen at the cement plant, but I'm through with places where you have to punch a clock. They're also not going to get me working anywhere I have to be with guys. And I shouldn't be having to stand up a lot. My hip joints are a mess and sometimes they hurt so much at night I cry. But maybe I'll find something,' she said with sudden hopefulness. 'Or maybe something will happen.'
'What could happen?' I said, not understanding her remark.
'Oh, I don't know. Maybe some U.F.O.s will land, or something. Like E.T. Did you see that?'
'Yes, I did.' The film hadn't appealed to me much, but I had a faithful representation of the loveable little monster at home. Someone brought it into the country as a present for my children, not realizing that they were too old for dolls.
'I saw it nine times. When they showed it in Prague, I took time off work to go and see it even though it was always sold out. I slipped the woman taking tickets forty crowns and she let me sit on an extra chair for all the showings that day.'
'Would you like to have an E.T. at home?'
My question was so obviously foolish that she decided not to answer it. 'He was kind of — you know, like really from another world.'
'Would you like to go there?'
She sighed, frowned, and then said, 'Even if you could go somewhere like that, they wouldn't take me.'
The Attic
WE RETURNED FROM work earlier than usual today, while it was still light. The surveyor had to deal with damages incurred by the company when several of our stone markers were knocked over by tractors. Before I went into my room, I noticed that the door to the attic was ajar. I couldn't resist and went up the creaking, dusty stairs.
The attic was large and full of old junk. Everything was still except for some flies buzzing under the dormer. The beams were huge and ancient, though the tiles covering the roof seemed almost new. Old dresses were draped among the swallows' nests on the beams. In some doorless cupboards there were stacks of battered shoes, and between a mound of straw and a pile of old handbags I found some rusty stove pipes and several empty boxes and fruit crates.
Clearly nothing of value was left, but I wasn't looking for gold candlesticks. I was always more interested in printed paper — and sure enough, in one of the boxes I found a century-old book, a 'Reader for Schools of Farming and Winter Economies'. Just then I heard something creak behind me. I looked round and saw Mrs Pokorná's head emerging from the stairwell.
Aware that I had been caught trespassing, I greeted her with a guilty look. But she seemed glad to have found me. She started right in by telling me that many interesting things had once been stored up here, before people had carried them all away. The museum had even expressed an interest in the cavalry officer's uniform worn by her greatgrandfather, and her grandfather's drum had been here too, though the skin was broken. Her grandfather had served with Count Haugwitz's infantry regiment. It wasn't nearly as bad in those days: they only had tallow candles for light, of course, but on the other hand there was less lying and no stealing. When her grandfather was transferred to the cavalry, he played on a harp so big they had to transport it on a cart pulled by ponies. In 1866 he had fought in the battle near Hradec, and he had proud memories of it, even though he'd been on the losing end.