The Combinations, page 104
VOLTA:
We can’t… They won’t let us. They’ll keep us doing the same
old thing till they decide otherwise. (Pause.) Art has its
price, you know, even in a socialist utopia like ours…
Besides, there’s the others to think about. What would they
do? They’re actors. Without work, they’re nothing. You want
them to shovel coal?
ALICE:
You know that’s not what I meant. It’s the same for all of
us. But this… This isn’t theatre anymore, not even bad
theatre —- it’s just politics.
VOLTA:
(Smiling. Takes her in his arms.) My poor, innocent Alice!
(She is about to say something but is interrupted by a
knock on an outer door. They both look up expectantly.
More knocking. VOLTA glances towards the stairway. Waits.
Disengages himself.) Everyone must’ve gone home. I’ll go up
& see who that is. Will you be okay?
ALICE: So
soon?
VOLTA:
What do you mean?
ALICE:
(In the character of Hedda Gabler.) Doesn’t it feel like a
whole eternity since we last talked to each other?
VOLTA:
(Obliging, as Judge Brack.) Between ourselves? Alone
together, you mean?
ALICE:
(She looks at the ceiling, wistfully.) Always alone, & never
by ourselves. (To VOLTA.) Don’t leave me, Níko!
VOLTA:
(Soothingly.) Shhh! (Pause.) Won’t you be alright?
ALICE:
(Resigned.) Yes.
671
VOLTA: Sure?
ALICE:
I’m sure. (VOLTA goes out. ALICE walks over to the dressing
table, finds a cigarette among the mess, lights it, sits
staring at her reflection in the mirror. As she does this,
the lights dim to green. ALICE freezes. Several moments
pass. Lights up. JAN enters from stage left, looks around,
walks to divan & checks that the papers he has hidden
behind the cushion are still in place. ALICE, waking from
her reverie, sees him, is briefly startled, then feigns
indifference.) You again?
JAN:
Have they gone?
ALICE:
How… did you know?
JAN:
They’ve been after me since I crossed the border. I saw
them when I came in, they were staking the place out. I
didn’t think they’d seen me.
ALICE:
Oh that’s just terrific. Didn’t think! Didn’t think! (Stubs
her cigarette out violently.) Now do you know what’ll
happen? We’ll have those idiots all over us, day & night.
They’ll be everywhere. Everywhere! Under our bloody beds!
(She stands looking at JAN, as though she is about to hit
him, then tugs the kimono tighter around her & marches
past him towards the stairs, reaches for the door handle,
falters…)
JAN:
Do you always play for effects that bring down the house?
(She stares at him: if looks could kill. She is about to
speak when VOLTA enters, holding a letter. He looks past
ALICE & sees JAN.)
VOLTA: You?
JAN: Father!?
ALICE:
Marvellous! A family reunion. (She stalks back to her
dressing table.)
VOLTA:
What are you doing here?
ALICE:
Yes! What are you doing here, Jan, if we may be permitted
to ask?
JAN:
There’s no need to lose your head. The cops don’t know
anything. It’s just routine. If they’re looking for me, it’s
obvious they’d have come here sooner or later…
VOLTA:
Ah! An interesting coincidence… (The situation quickly
dawning on him.) But this time it appears to be me they’re
interested in. (Holding up the letter.)
ALICE:
What is it? (Crosses the room, takes it from him.)
VOLTA:
A personal invitation. The Minister for the Interior
requests the pleasure of my company… At the soonest
possible convenience, it would seem.
JAN:
That’s unusually efficient.
ALICE:
Now you see what you’ve gone & done!
VOLTA:
We must all remain calm, Alice.
ALICE:
You could at least have warned us.
VOLTA:
The boy didn’t know. Besides, it has nothing to do with
him. I’ve been expecting this for… some time. (To JAN.) You
came alone?
JAN: Yes.
VOLTA:
And you were followed, you say, by the police? But what do
672
they want from you?
JAN:
Oh nothing really. Only the small matter of a manuscript…
VOLTA:
(Perplexed.) You mean… A report, I suppose? About the
situation? For the opposition in exile?
JAN:
No. Not exactly… It’s… Well, it’s a play.
ALICE: A
play? That’s ridiculous.
JAN: Why?
ALICE:
You said yourself, the theatre’s finished! Or have you
forgotten already?
JAN: The
old theatre’s finished. What’s needed now is something
new, radical, something that takes a risk, that can set
people free of… of all this!
ALICE:
(She backs away from him.) You’re mad.
VOLTA:
Wait. (Confused.) You mean to say… What exactly is this…
play?
JAN:
You’ll see… (The sound of knocking again. Louder.)
VOLTA:
Impatient as ever. (Adopting a faintly paternal tone.) I
suppose it’ll have to wait. I would’ve liked to hear about
this idea of yours, but my time’s already up. If only the
world wasn’t in such a rush to come to an end, eh?
ALICE:
Did the Minister send his personal chauffer?
JAN:
Personal undertaker, you mean. (VOLTA gives him a weary
look.) At least you’ll get to go in style…
VOLTA:
With a bang, not with a whimper, eh? (He glances at his
watch.) Well, I’d better not keep myself in suspense. The
hour of truth, as they say, is always such a
disappointment.
ALICE: Don’t
go!
VOLTA:
And put you at risk as well? (Softer.) Forget about me,
Alice. I can look after myself. (VOLTA kisses her lightly
on the top of the head. He’s about to go when he remembers
the gun in his pocket. Takes it out, looks at it
thoughtfully, then puts it on the dressing table. He gives
JAN a significant look.) Take care of her. (JAN returns his
look blankly. ALICE moves to hold onto VOLTA but JAN
holds her back. VOLTA leaves. We hear his voice from the
stairway.) The show must go on! (ALICE stares hopelessly
after him. Crumples the letter in her hand, crosses back to
dressing table, slumps into chair. Tosses letter at the
mirror. Freeze. Lights fade, green spot up on ALICE.
Footlights, as previously. The two IVANS enter from stage
left: brief pantomime. They exit. Lights dim. Beat. Lights
up. JAN & ALICE as before.)
JAN:
(With a certain bravado.) Well now, how about a drink? (She
doesn’t respond. He searches among the shelves, etc. Finds a
bottle of Slivovice, some glasses.) Ah, old faithful! (To
ALICE.) Don’t fret, he can look after himself. They’re
probably just testing the water, so to speak. (She shudders.
He pours two glasses, holds one out for ALICE. She looks at
it blankly, then finally takes it from him.)
ALICE:
(Tonelessly.) That’s easy for you to say… God knows what
they’ll do to him… Don’t you even care?
JAN:
It’s because I care that I came here, you know that. (ALICE
673
glares at him. JAN ignores it, raises his glass in a toast.
Ironically.) Here’s to the beautiful heroine!
ALICE:
How dreary. Why not… to a glorious future?
JAN:
Ah, yes, the good old future, long may it prosper! (Drinks.
ALICE sets hers down on the dressing table without
drinking any. His tone suddenly becomes earnest.) I love
you, Alice.
ALICE:
Is that the best you can manage?
JAN:
(Confiding, but with increasing ardour.) Something’s about
to happen. Something big. I can’t say what. But… The truth
is I mightn’t have the chance to see you for a long time.
That’s why I came…
ALICE:
Still concocting your little melodramas, Honzíku?
Gestures, gestures. You think gestures can change the
world?
JAN:
(Pompously.) Soon the time will come, Alice, when it’ll be
necessary even for you to make a choice.
ALICE:
That almost sounds like a… haha… a threat!
JAN:
Not a threat…
ALICE:
Besides… I made my choice long ago. I’ve loved Níko as much
as I could love any man. It’s too late for me. As you so
aptly put it, my time’s past, we’ve already lost, but Níko &
I still have each other. What else is there to believe in?
(Pause.) Belief’s such a sinister word. There’ll always be
ideas to suffer for. Abstractions. An insurrection of
words, words, words. Your… manuscript! You’d risk people’s
lives, for some cheap little manuscript?
JAN:
How sentimental. The world isn’t a nice little drama by
Ibsen, you know. Words have consequences. In the theatre
of life there’re real bullets. People die.
ALICE:
How strange of you to say so.
JAN:
Yes, Alice, people do die for what they believe in.
ALICE:
People die anyway. It doesn’t matter what they believe in.
(He is about to respond when they are interrupted by the
sound of breaking glass. Both look up.) My God! (She rushes
to the stairs, goes out, comes back in quickly.) It’s them.
They’re smashing the place up! (She looks around
frantically.) Shouldn’t you hide somewhere?
JAN:
I refuse to hide.
ALICE:
This is no time for stupidity…
JAN:
On the contrary. (He pulls a revolver from his coat &
heads towards the stairs. Stops, turns back to ALICE.) You
know, I really do love you. (Exits.)
ALICE:
(Stands there confused, staggers, slumps onto the divan.
Suddenly she straightens up, eyes wide. She reaches behind
her & pulls out the sheaf of papers JAN has hidden behind
the cushion. Stares at it. The lights fade to green. She
stands, slowly walks to the middle of the room her eyes
glued to the manuscript. Something dawning on her. Freeze.
Enter: the two IVANS from behind, stairs & left, crossing
the room on tiptoes. As they do so, carrousel music fades
up: a green spot follows them as they begin a slow,
somewhat satirical pas de deux… They are halfway across
674
the stage when something crashes loudly upstairs: music &
spotlight off. Startled, ALICE drops the manuscript on the
floor. They all stare at it. Brief tableau; ALICE again
freezes. The IVANS exit on opposite sides. Fade, & then…
Lights up as JAN staggers in to stage-front, stops, stares
blankly out at the audience.) What is it?
JAN:
He’s up there. (Pause. ALICE looks at him expectantly.) Up
there. In the rafters. He’s hung himself. (Mockingly.) He’s
dead! (Pause. He shouts at her.) Didn’t you hear me? He’s
DEAD!
675
g. The Poisoned Pawn
49
___________
Volta paced the room, matched by his shadow along the wall. Němec decided
the Doc didn’t look happy to see him. It’d been a while. There was something
ridiculous about the entire situation, like he was a child all over again about to be
given the third degree. Perhaps the Engineer of Human Souls felt neglected.
Perhaps he’d come to the conclusion Němec’s head was no less full of putrid
slime than everyone else’s. My oh my, you really ARE a stupid filthy little turd after
all. As if to prove the point, somewhere in that dubious squillhead of his one of
the Bugman’s limericks was going round in circles:
There once was a young nurse from Zlín,
who kept her snatch very clean —
she’d scrub twice an hour,
with a brush and a scour,
but at night she preferred a good ream, duh-dum…
The official phrenologists who visited the Home on a monthly basis used to like
holding Němec up as an example of the counter-revolutionary bourgeois parasite
in utero, so to speak, the diabolic egg waiting to hatch, programmed in its very
genome by . a wilful subversion of the People & the State, . a congenital
exceptionalism, . an ingrained unnatural attachment to the first-person
pronoun singular, . a characteristic refusal to muck in with all the other proles
to get the collective dirty work done of building the Great Socialist Utopia. Well
it was flattering nonetheless to be regarded as the brains of the family, hehe. He
679
was stood in the corner every other day to commemorate the crimes of his
parents and of his parents’ parents, ad absurdum, till he forgot why they’d made
him stand there in the first place (History after all being % tedium) & hatched
stories in his head, about some squill-afflicted kid not unlike himself who comes
up with a brilliant escape plan & breaks out of the Home by climbing inside a
toilet bowl where he discovers the real Workers Paradise they’d been hiding
there all along:
Bluegrass on the Sázava River, butterflies on swaying dendronites, deep
down where sunrays never penetrate, but other sources of incandescence, more
illuminating than light, so to speak ( radium green, diddlediddle, potassium blue…)
— like a cloister in an octopus’ garden, a bower of lost illusions, dead letters,
feigned affections, chastity belts, stethoscopes, scythes & sledgehammers,
periscopes, spycameras, thumbscrews, babies’ bottles, handcuffs, mislaid
housekeys, keys to the kingdom, backdoorkeys, keys for closets, wire
coathangers, doorknobs, combination locks & aluminium spoons, forks, knives,
tangled vines & bright mantillas of mottled fungus, beetles swimming
backstroke, jackdaws in ermine, serenading fish & urchins & crabs weaving in &
out among the fluted columns & polished fruit of this aquatic arcadia, this
cornucopia of immaculate blobs, beloved turds, joyful tears & seraphic
secretions: the opposite, in fact, of everything miserable & unavailing, ill-
favoured, violent, antipathetic, of that hated home-sweet-home where every
private thought was a threat or source of shame, & selfknowledge was a game
you played to lose that never depended on the rules but only on their exploitable
implications…
Down there in the shit it was easy to imagine a Better Place — where all
the little unredeemed selves turned to gold like they did in fairytales, before the
Great Collectivised Venture turned the fairytale world upsidedown by sheer
force of Realism’s Five Year Plan, a genuine fucking masterstroke — the New
Ordure with its New Myth — coprolitic fruit abundant upon the forbidden tree
— God’s doppelgänger sticking his prick in your ear, in loco parentis, so to speak,
whispering of untold pleasures, Eat it, my lovelies! Pluck it, my pretty little
fuckwits! And they’d all sing happily in their debollocked falsettos:
Who’s that in the showerblock fumblin’ the soap?
Did your mama wear her knees out on the floor before she croaked?
Don’t tell your baby sister what they’ll do to her tonight!
When Uncle Joe comes cruising by, he likes it sweet and tight.
680
Slip another slimy little himey on a rope,
don’t you know the Devil even comes disguised as the Pope?
When Holy Joe’s confessin’, better get yourself in line
and don’t forget to kiss his ring before he bleeds you dry.
Oh tell me little brother, what was the lesson for today?
Did they crucify your granny in the bed where she lay?
There’s daddy on the TV tellin’ all about his crimes.
When Hangman Joe comes callin’, you can suck it up or die.
Pretty virgin with her hair on fire.
The Old Man pokin’ at the funeral pyre.
‘ How’d you like to do the dirty on your daughter one last time?’
When Resurrection Joe’s in town, all the children smile!
Did Volta have the slightest suspicion of what Němec was thinking?
We can’t… They won’t let us. They’ll keep us doing the same
old thing till they decide otherwise. (Pause.) Art has its
price, you know, even in a socialist utopia like ours…
Besides, there’s the others to think about. What would they
do? They’re actors. Without work, they’re nothing. You want
them to shovel coal?
ALICE:
You know that’s not what I meant. It’s the same for all of
us. But this… This isn’t theatre anymore, not even bad
theatre —- it’s just politics.
VOLTA:
(Smiling. Takes her in his arms.) My poor, innocent Alice!
(She is about to say something but is interrupted by a
knock on an outer door. They both look up expectantly.
More knocking. VOLTA glances towards the stairway. Waits.
Disengages himself.) Everyone must’ve gone home. I’ll go up
& see who that is. Will you be okay?
ALICE: So
soon?
VOLTA:
What do you mean?
ALICE:
(In the character of Hedda Gabler.) Doesn’t it feel like a
whole eternity since we last talked to each other?
VOLTA:
(Obliging, as Judge Brack.) Between ourselves? Alone
together, you mean?
ALICE:
(She looks at the ceiling, wistfully.) Always alone, & never
by ourselves. (To VOLTA.) Don’t leave me, Níko!
VOLTA:
(Soothingly.) Shhh! (Pause.) Won’t you be alright?
ALICE:
(Resigned.) Yes.
671
VOLTA: Sure?
ALICE:
I’m sure. (VOLTA goes out. ALICE walks over to the dressing
table, finds a cigarette among the mess, lights it, sits
staring at her reflection in the mirror. As she does this,
the lights dim to green. ALICE freezes. Several moments
pass. Lights up. JAN enters from stage left, looks around,
walks to divan & checks that the papers he has hidden
behind the cushion are still in place. ALICE, waking from
her reverie, sees him, is briefly startled, then feigns
indifference.) You again?
JAN:
Have they gone?
ALICE:
How… did you know?
JAN:
They’ve been after me since I crossed the border. I saw
them when I came in, they were staking the place out. I
didn’t think they’d seen me.
ALICE:
Oh that’s just terrific. Didn’t think! Didn’t think! (Stubs
her cigarette out violently.) Now do you know what’ll
happen? We’ll have those idiots all over us, day & night.
They’ll be everywhere. Everywhere! Under our bloody beds!
(She stands looking at JAN, as though she is about to hit
him, then tugs the kimono tighter around her & marches
past him towards the stairs, reaches for the door handle,
falters…)
JAN:
Do you always play for effects that bring down the house?
(She stares at him: if looks could kill. She is about to
speak when VOLTA enters, holding a letter. He looks past
ALICE & sees JAN.)
VOLTA: You?
JAN: Father!?
ALICE:
Marvellous! A family reunion. (She stalks back to her
dressing table.)
VOLTA:
What are you doing here?
ALICE:
Yes! What are you doing here, Jan, if we may be permitted
to ask?
JAN:
There’s no need to lose your head. The cops don’t know
anything. It’s just routine. If they’re looking for me, it’s
obvious they’d have come here sooner or later…
VOLTA:
Ah! An interesting coincidence… (The situation quickly
dawning on him.) But this time it appears to be me they’re
interested in. (Holding up the letter.)
ALICE:
What is it? (Crosses the room, takes it from him.)
VOLTA:
A personal invitation. The Minister for the Interior
requests the pleasure of my company… At the soonest
possible convenience, it would seem.
JAN:
That’s unusually efficient.
ALICE:
Now you see what you’ve gone & done!
VOLTA:
We must all remain calm, Alice.
ALICE:
You could at least have warned us.
VOLTA:
The boy didn’t know. Besides, it has nothing to do with
him. I’ve been expecting this for… some time. (To JAN.) You
came alone?
JAN: Yes.
VOLTA:
And you were followed, you say, by the police? But what do
672
they want from you?
JAN:
Oh nothing really. Only the small matter of a manuscript…
VOLTA:
(Perplexed.) You mean… A report, I suppose? About the
situation? For the opposition in exile?
JAN:
No. Not exactly… It’s… Well, it’s a play.
ALICE: A
play? That’s ridiculous.
JAN: Why?
ALICE:
You said yourself, the theatre’s finished! Or have you
forgotten already?
JAN: The
old theatre’s finished. What’s needed now is something
new, radical, something that takes a risk, that can set
people free of… of all this!
ALICE:
(She backs away from him.) You’re mad.
VOLTA:
Wait. (Confused.) You mean to say… What exactly is this…
play?
JAN:
You’ll see… (The sound of knocking again. Louder.)
VOLTA:
Impatient as ever. (Adopting a faintly paternal tone.) I
suppose it’ll have to wait. I would’ve liked to hear about
this idea of yours, but my time’s already up. If only the
world wasn’t in such a rush to come to an end, eh?
ALICE:
Did the Minister send his personal chauffer?
JAN:
Personal undertaker, you mean. (VOLTA gives him a weary
look.) At least you’ll get to go in style…
VOLTA:
With a bang, not with a whimper, eh? (He glances at his
watch.) Well, I’d better not keep myself in suspense. The
hour of truth, as they say, is always such a
disappointment.
ALICE: Don’t
go!
VOLTA:
And put you at risk as well? (Softer.) Forget about me,
Alice. I can look after myself. (VOLTA kisses her lightly
on the top of the head. He’s about to go when he remembers
the gun in his pocket. Takes it out, looks at it
thoughtfully, then puts it on the dressing table. He gives
JAN a significant look.) Take care of her. (JAN returns his
look blankly. ALICE moves to hold onto VOLTA but JAN
holds her back. VOLTA leaves. We hear his voice from the
stairway.) The show must go on! (ALICE stares hopelessly
after him. Crumples the letter in her hand, crosses back to
dressing table, slumps into chair. Tosses letter at the
mirror. Freeze. Lights fade, green spot up on ALICE.
Footlights, as previously. The two IVANS enter from stage
left: brief pantomime. They exit. Lights dim. Beat. Lights
up. JAN & ALICE as before.)
JAN:
(With a certain bravado.) Well now, how about a drink? (She
doesn’t respond. He searches among the shelves, etc. Finds a
bottle of Slivovice, some glasses.) Ah, old faithful! (To
ALICE.) Don’t fret, he can look after himself. They’re
probably just testing the water, so to speak. (She shudders.
He pours two glasses, holds one out for ALICE. She looks at
it blankly, then finally takes it from him.)
ALICE:
(Tonelessly.) That’s easy for you to say… God knows what
they’ll do to him… Don’t you even care?
JAN:
It’s because I care that I came here, you know that. (ALICE
673
glares at him. JAN ignores it, raises his glass in a toast.
Ironically.) Here’s to the beautiful heroine!
ALICE:
How dreary. Why not… to a glorious future?
JAN:
Ah, yes, the good old future, long may it prosper! (Drinks.
ALICE sets hers down on the dressing table without
drinking any. His tone suddenly becomes earnest.) I love
you, Alice.
ALICE:
Is that the best you can manage?
JAN:
(Confiding, but with increasing ardour.) Something’s about
to happen. Something big. I can’t say what. But… The truth
is I mightn’t have the chance to see you for a long time.
That’s why I came…
ALICE:
Still concocting your little melodramas, Honzíku?
Gestures, gestures. You think gestures can change the
world?
JAN:
(Pompously.) Soon the time will come, Alice, when it’ll be
necessary even for you to make a choice.
ALICE:
That almost sounds like a… haha… a threat!
JAN:
Not a threat…
ALICE:
Besides… I made my choice long ago. I’ve loved Níko as much
as I could love any man. It’s too late for me. As you so
aptly put it, my time’s past, we’ve already lost, but Níko &
I still have each other. What else is there to believe in?
(Pause.) Belief’s such a sinister word. There’ll always be
ideas to suffer for. Abstractions. An insurrection of
words, words, words. Your… manuscript! You’d risk people’s
lives, for some cheap little manuscript?
JAN:
How sentimental. The world isn’t a nice little drama by
Ibsen, you know. Words have consequences. In the theatre
of life there’re real bullets. People die.
ALICE:
How strange of you to say so.
JAN:
Yes, Alice, people do die for what they believe in.
ALICE:
People die anyway. It doesn’t matter what they believe in.
(He is about to respond when they are interrupted by the
sound of breaking glass. Both look up.) My God! (She rushes
to the stairs, goes out, comes back in quickly.) It’s them.
They’re smashing the place up! (She looks around
frantically.) Shouldn’t you hide somewhere?
JAN:
I refuse to hide.
ALICE:
This is no time for stupidity…
JAN:
On the contrary. (He pulls a revolver from his coat &
heads towards the stairs. Stops, turns back to ALICE.) You
know, I really do love you. (Exits.)
ALICE:
(Stands there confused, staggers, slumps onto the divan.
Suddenly she straightens up, eyes wide. She reaches behind
her & pulls out the sheaf of papers JAN has hidden behind
the cushion. Stares at it. The lights fade to green. She
stands, slowly walks to the middle of the room her eyes
glued to the manuscript. Something dawning on her. Freeze.
Enter: the two IVANS from behind, stairs & left, crossing
the room on tiptoes. As they do so, carrousel music fades
up: a green spot follows them as they begin a slow,
somewhat satirical pas de deux… They are halfway across
674
the stage when something crashes loudly upstairs: music &
spotlight off. Startled, ALICE drops the manuscript on the
floor. They all stare at it. Brief tableau; ALICE again
freezes. The IVANS exit on opposite sides. Fade, & then…
Lights up as JAN staggers in to stage-front, stops, stares
blankly out at the audience.) What is it?
JAN:
He’s up there. (Pause. ALICE looks at him expectantly.) Up
there. In the rafters. He’s hung himself. (Mockingly.) He’s
dead! (Pause. He shouts at her.) Didn’t you hear me? He’s
DEAD!
675
g. The Poisoned Pawn
49
___________
Volta paced the room, matched by his shadow along the wall. Němec decided
the Doc didn’t look happy to see him. It’d been a while. There was something
ridiculous about the entire situation, like he was a child all over again about to be
given the third degree. Perhaps the Engineer of Human Souls felt neglected.
Perhaps he’d come to the conclusion Němec’s head was no less full of putrid
slime than everyone else’s. My oh my, you really ARE a stupid filthy little turd after
all. As if to prove the point, somewhere in that dubious squillhead of his one of
the Bugman’s limericks was going round in circles:
There once was a young nurse from Zlín,
who kept her snatch very clean —
she’d scrub twice an hour,
with a brush and a scour,
but at night she preferred a good ream, duh-dum…
The official phrenologists who visited the Home on a monthly basis used to like
holding Němec up as an example of the counter-revolutionary bourgeois parasite
in utero, so to speak, the diabolic egg waiting to hatch, programmed in its very
genome by . a wilful subversion of the People & the State, . a congenital
exceptionalism, . an ingrained unnatural attachment to the first-person
pronoun singular, . a characteristic refusal to muck in with all the other proles
to get the collective dirty work done of building the Great Socialist Utopia. Well
it was flattering nonetheless to be regarded as the brains of the family, hehe. He
679
was stood in the corner every other day to commemorate the crimes of his
parents and of his parents’ parents, ad absurdum, till he forgot why they’d made
him stand there in the first place (History after all being % tedium) & hatched
stories in his head, about some squill-afflicted kid not unlike himself who comes
up with a brilliant escape plan & breaks out of the Home by climbing inside a
toilet bowl where he discovers the real Workers Paradise they’d been hiding
there all along:
Bluegrass on the Sázava River, butterflies on swaying dendronites, deep
down where sunrays never penetrate, but other sources of incandescence, more
illuminating than light, so to speak ( radium green, diddlediddle, potassium blue…)
— like a cloister in an octopus’ garden, a bower of lost illusions, dead letters,
feigned affections, chastity belts, stethoscopes, scythes & sledgehammers,
periscopes, spycameras, thumbscrews, babies’ bottles, handcuffs, mislaid
housekeys, keys to the kingdom, backdoorkeys, keys for closets, wire
coathangers, doorknobs, combination locks & aluminium spoons, forks, knives,
tangled vines & bright mantillas of mottled fungus, beetles swimming
backstroke, jackdaws in ermine, serenading fish & urchins & crabs weaving in &
out among the fluted columns & polished fruit of this aquatic arcadia, this
cornucopia of immaculate blobs, beloved turds, joyful tears & seraphic
secretions: the opposite, in fact, of everything miserable & unavailing, ill-
favoured, violent, antipathetic, of that hated home-sweet-home where every
private thought was a threat or source of shame, & selfknowledge was a game
you played to lose that never depended on the rules but only on their exploitable
implications…
Down there in the shit it was easy to imagine a Better Place — where all
the little unredeemed selves turned to gold like they did in fairytales, before the
Great Collectivised Venture turned the fairytale world upsidedown by sheer
force of Realism’s Five Year Plan, a genuine fucking masterstroke — the New
Ordure with its New Myth — coprolitic fruit abundant upon the forbidden tree
— God’s doppelgänger sticking his prick in your ear, in loco parentis, so to speak,
whispering of untold pleasures, Eat it, my lovelies! Pluck it, my pretty little
fuckwits! And they’d all sing happily in their debollocked falsettos:
Who’s that in the showerblock fumblin’ the soap?
Did your mama wear her knees out on the floor before she croaked?
Don’t tell your baby sister what they’ll do to her tonight!
When Uncle Joe comes cruising by, he likes it sweet and tight.
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Slip another slimy little himey on a rope,
don’t you know the Devil even comes disguised as the Pope?
When Holy Joe’s confessin’, better get yourself in line
and don’t forget to kiss his ring before he bleeds you dry.
Oh tell me little brother, what was the lesson for today?
Did they crucify your granny in the bed where she lay?
There’s daddy on the TV tellin’ all about his crimes.
When Hangman Joe comes callin’, you can suck it up or die.
Pretty virgin with her hair on fire.
The Old Man pokin’ at the funeral pyre.
‘ How’d you like to do the dirty on your daughter one last time?’
When Resurrection Joe’s in town, all the children smile!
Did Volta have the slightest suspicion of what Němec was thinking?
