The Combinations, page 117
the local rowing team mascot; . (no end to the inventiveness here) Ježíš his
godchild-of-Golem-City-self, blah-de-blah, et-fucking-cetera. But comes a time in
every detachable divinity’s Down-the-Ages detour through the body corporeal
when the glamour of the thing starts getting a little threadbare, a bit worn in the
knees or out at the elbows, deciding it’s now or never, really — abandoning a
burgeoning career as a closet motherfucker in midstride for the uncountable
unknowns & perilous pitfalls of a life spent in endless regimes of depilation,
deodorisation, manicures & man-cures, stuffing gymsox down his D-cups &
wrapping his dick round his neck for a très chic featherless boa:
‘Oh what a swell scarf you’ve got, Shamala,’ says little crosseyed Katka, his
schoolgirl friend, ‘so lovely & smooth & lifelike almost. So svelt. Ooh! Ah!
What’s it doing?’
As poor Sammy gets a sudden uncontrollable hardon, his face turning
shades of Max Factor “Aquamarine,” “Vibrant Mauve,” “Dark Plum” & the
rest’s, well, history. No such luck with ladyboy Alex, here, unfortunately. Some
things’re just too good for his kind of people. Whoa! But what’s going on now?
Alex’s just popped into the toilettes for a quick switcheroo of his own, a quick
sniff of the men’s urinal perhaps, you wouldn’t put it past him, getting down on
those well-polished knees of his for a peekaboo through the gloryhole, hoho, &
what does he see? Well bugger me if it ain’t Klem Gottwald himself in there.
No? Wrong story? Okay folks, forget that, we’re on for the magic show instead.
Look, there’s Alex freshly pressed from the gents, third cubicle to the
right, in white Hugo Boss doctor’s gown, cap, booties & one of those
superdooper sexy surgicalmask thingywingies with a little teenyweeny drop of
ether to give super suave Dr Alex that special glow of confidence we all love to
see in a man about to wave a hacksaw at our particulars. They’ve cleared away all
the café tables to make a bit of theatre space out there, got the whole place
painted white, too, even the sky. Out strolls Dr Alex in the spotlight, looking
cool as a cucumber, slapping on the latex gloves.
‘Nurse! Where’s my stethoscope?’
Nurse Alice pops up through the trapdoor in a tastefully designed
willothewhisps set-piece courtesy of the lighting department aided by a Chauvet
Nimbus industry-standard dry ice machine.
‘Here you are, doctor! Would you like a cup of tea as well?’
761
‘No thank you. Let’s get straight on with the splenectomy. Scrubs!’
Nurse Alice immediately goes into a striptease routine, lights, music.
Bulbs flash. Cameras snapsnap. Under her nurse’s uniform she’s wearing
whatever you want her to wear. In the second version of this same performance
the arrangement is reversed & she’s wearing whatever you don’t want her to wear.
In this version, however, it’s Saturday. A couple of stagehands wheel on the
props. Basically a whole lot of high-voltage coils, insulated wires, a giant
transformer with switches & dials. Nurse Alice sits down on a chair beside the
transformer & takes out a stenographer’s pad & pencil. Where she takes these
items from is irrelevant, this is after all a magic show.
Um, is that Alex’s dick she’s wearing? Is some kind of weird switcheroo
going on here? Some sort of Nazi twin experiment in retrospect? Well I’ll be
fucked! Can it be? The two of ’em is both Mongo-the-Magnif’s spitting bloody
image!
‘Hey, anyone here remember Mongo-the-Magnif?’
‘Shhhh!’
‘It’s Mongo-the-fuckin’-Magnif!’
‘Quieten down over there.’
‘Hey, shut up, there’s people tryin’ to watch this…’
Okay, okay. Get on with the show. It’s late, we’re tired. And no, it isn’t,
it’s just a pencil. Koh-i-noor. B. Or not B, haha.
‘Ladies & gentlemen,’ Dr Alex comes to the front of the stage, pulls a
bunch of chrysanthemums from his sleeve & tosses them into the front row, ‘for
our first performance this evening, we most humbly request a volunteer from our
fabulous audience. How about it peeps? Anyone dying to come up on stage &
get sawn in half? Or maybe drawn & quartered? Made to disappear through the
floor (oops!)? Anyone out there got an itch they can’t scratch? Yes? You sir? In
the hat? Well why don’t you just come on down! Give the jerk a warm round of
applause, everyone! Hehe. He’s sure gonna need it!’
Spotlight number zaps up the aisle to a couple of SA stormtroopers
frogmarching a gangly stickfigure in a black suit & hat up onto the stage. Yep,
we know who that is.
‘Hey!’ the guy from before shouts. ‘That’s me!’
But since he’s only dreaming, no-one hears him (this time). He flaps his
arms around trying to get some attention, till someone in Production uses that
nifty little marquee tool to delete him from the frame. The audience meanwhile
are beside themselves. A band strikes up somewhere. Dr Alex struts back &
762
forth working the crowd. Nurse Alice pouts, Nurse Alice winks, Nurse Alice
crosses her legs. Naked Nurse Alice drops the stenography pad. Leans down to
get it. Ooooh! Hoots & wolfwhistles. What the hell’s she taking notes for,
anyway?
A couple of those stagehands have wheeled out a slab that volunteer
Němec is now being strapped-down on, one of Nurse Alice’s choicest
undergarments snugly inserted into his mouth. Mmmmmmmm!?!
‘Everything nice & tight? Good!’
Dr Alex claps his hands. Spotlight number swings up to the flyloft. The
audience gasps! Way up there, dangling from a pair of conspicuously visible
angelwires, is the deadgirl Němec recognises from not-Dr Alex’s photo
exhibition. She looks just as dead now. Immobilised, like a dreamer caught
inside a nightmare, he stares up as the deadgirl descends slowly upon him. Oooh!
Ahhh! go the audience. Němec tries to scream but needless to say, with those
knickers gumming up the works, he just can’t. In no time at all, deadgirl’s
hovering inches over him. Dr Alex hushes the audience. Waves his arms. Inserts
a gloved hand into the gap between prostrate Němec & the deadgirl. Swishes
the air about. Look, no gimmicks! At his signal the stagehands attach a whole
complicated array of wires, plugs, alligator clips. The SA goons stand there
ogling Nurse Alice. Dr Alex hits a switch on the transformer & all the dials light
up, the coils hum. Nurse Alice drops her pencil, drools lustily at the tentpoles in
the stormtroopers’ pants. The audience lean forward collectively in their seats.
This’s the moment. Dr Alex leans down to whisper in Němec’s ear, lips
thickened with spittle, but before he does he reaches up & pulls his face off.
Němec almost chokes. It’s Volta, of course, just as you probably suspected.
‘Ta-da!’
But that’s not all, because the deadgirl isn’t the deadgirl either! No, she’s
really Alice Steinerová! Which begs the question, who’s that who’s just snuck off
behind the transformer with those crosseyed SA goons, tossing winks over her
shoulder?
‘Sweet dreams, Squillbrain!’
Volta flips the switch on the transformer & Zap! Sizzle! Zorp! Whirligigs
of blue light stream up out of the spastic, jerking bodies of Němec & deadgirl
Alice. Wow! goes the audience. Volta spins dials, punches buttons. The lights
zoom & squirl. Zwang! Wizz! Burp! Němec’s bonds won’t hold him anymore,
he’s dervish dancing in midair! They’re both flailing about like a couple of
puppets in a tornado. Wooooooooooo! The wires are winding them together!
763
They’re dervishing right up through the rafters!
‘Ladies & gentlemen!’ Volta cries out triumphant, hands raised
heavenward, face a mask of megalomaniac insanity. ‘I give you, Bride of the
Wind!!!’
‘Hey! It’s Bela Lugosi!’
‘Nah. Watcha talkin’ about? Bela Lugosi’s dead.’
At which point, the uplift music wafted triumphal, the credits rolled, the
curtains fell. Lights-up on the emptying chairs.
‘Whew!’ the other Němec said to himself. ‘That was a close call!’
The usherette smiled. She looked kind of familiar. Well, he thought,
pushing himself up from his seat, time to go out and celebrate another narrow escape
from the clutches of untold evil! But there was something wrong with his legs. In
fact there was something wrong with things in general. The floor, for example,
which was suddenly all mushy & gooey! And the seat, too, which was, argh!
sucking him down. And why was everyone looking at him like that? And what
was that voice he could hear, saying his name? It was his name, wasn’t it? But
then Němec remembered he was still inside the other dream & it didn’t seem so
bad any more. He let himself be sucked further down. He smiled back at the
usherette. Was it? It was. So she made it out, too, eh? He was about to call out to
her, but the gooey stuff got all inside his mouth & then his ears & finally his
eyes. It was warm, sweat-smelling, with a reddish glow. As he slipped deeper
into it, down to wherever it was taking him, he wondered what the other him was
doing at that moment, back where he’d left him in the Prof’s bureau. He hoped
the other him would be okay there, not like the ones in the “film,” at least until
he got back from wherever he had to go to. He could hear the voice getting
further away, now. Barely even a voice any more, just a kind of gurgling,
moaning, echo-down-a-drainpipe. Then he felt himself rising & the voice
became almost palpable, but not quite. Then sinking again. All the while, the
voice, swelling & diminishing, just as space & time also. And his body, no
longer his body. And his mind. Well…
The dream pulled him down further & further, then pushed him up to
the surface again, pulled & pushed, like a piece of dross floating in the sea, &
that voice, speaking just to him,
764
54
___________
I WANT TO BE FREE
FRANK
HONZA
The dogs were helpless beneath the onslaught. Höllenhunde! cried the ringleader,
aiming a slingshot. The black Labrador bitch made huge pleading eyes, the
Great Dane lolled its tongue. Clods & sticks rained remorseless. Teufelshunde!
they howled. The dogs’ plight only spurred the little Švejks on. Behind them a
black cross stood on a plinth. And behind that, a snowbank with a wall rising
out of it. The dogs howled & finally broke free. The children rallied behind their
fortifications. Emerging from an underpass & coming towards them they
spotted a black-suited devilman with crookstick & funny hat. Their leader aimed
his slingshot. Thwack. A piece of gravel caught Němec in the ear. He glanced up
in surprise. The children bolted for the towerblocks that ringed the old killing
fields, hooting with laughter. Němec watched them go. The dogs barked from a
distance. A crow swooped down on the snowbank & pecked. Němec stamped
the slush from his boots & surveyed what once had been the Kobylisy execution
grounds, a field of trodden muck surrounded by skeleton bushes in the lee of the
Projects. While he was standing there it began to rain. He had to squint through
it to read the names on the memorial inscription on the wall, in memory of all
those who’d been lined up there & shot —
Hanosek
Horák
Houdek
Hruška
Horáková
Hrubá
Hašek
Hroník
Hejplíková
Hrubý
Hejnalová
Hejplík
Helebrand
Hovorka
Hodys
Hilgertová
Hrubý
Horyna
Hauner
Holeček
Hykl
Havránek
Holečková
Heřmanský
Hofmann
Hála
Hynek
Houžvička
Haken
Hrabě
Hříbal
Hanuš
Hrdlička
Hejduk
Heyrink
765
— but no “Hájek.” The records for once were anything but clear: if the junior
archivist of the National Literary Museum had been done to death here, or in
the guillotine at Pankrác Prison, or in a camp maybe. Erschossen or Enthauptet or
Gehängt or something else. . By personal order of Heydrich, supposedly.
Der Schlächter. No record of that, either. No burial recorded. In fact, no record of
a Hájek ever having been arrested, let alone the accorded pleasantries. Had the
caretaker got some part of the story mixed up? Had the Prof’s namesake died
under someone else’s name? Had he died at all? Well everyone does, kiddo. It
wasn’t the sort of thing the Prof talked much about, but then you wouldn’t,
would you? Němec pictured somewhere on the edge of a dark wood, women in
headscarves hewing the frozen ground — a toothless crone hauling an arm out
of the soil, a coatsleeve, a skull with the scalp still attached to it. Tossing them
into a pot to boil down for headcheese, glue, candlewax. Madame Lafarge’s Home
Brew. And the Prof at Barrandov four years later, having his picture taken? The
interim was full of questions that begged.
Němec scratched his ear. The rain made holes in the snow. What’d the
Old Man’s old man done to deserve The Treatment, anyway? He trudged back
along the path, thinking if he could only get the Prof‘s ghost to stop being so coy
& actually give him a straight answer, he might fill him in on that. Who knew, it
just might be the key he’d been looking for, the thread to tie it all together. Well,
kiddo, y’know he’s been places most the rest of us can’t see. Gotta make some
allowances. Němec came out from the underpass just in time not to get knocked
flat by a black Mercedes taking it a bit wider on the corner than the manual
usually advised.
‘Wanna get them shocks looked at, Klaus.’
‘Damn it, I just took it down the garage last week! Shit mechanics in this
town, they probably stole the originals & stuck a couple of rusty bedsprings in
there instead.’
‘Should only ever get your repairs done certified, Klaus. Fucks your
warranty otherwise. And these Chesk jokers wouldn’t know a screw from a
handjob if you printed instructions on it.’
‘Ja wohl.’
‘Sheez, you nearly clocked that Zhid in the hat back there. Few inches to
the left & you woulda had him.’
‘I didn’t see him! I didn’t see him!’
‘Try that one up there, the gypo on the stolen bike…’
Zoom! Awesome! Bombed right over the top of that shithead
766
Krautmobile. Suck that, Nazi motherfuckers! Splash! Dig that endo right down
the guardrail. Way out! Kid ain’t no showercap! Bunnyhop clear across that
causeway. Watch him book that bitch. Tabletop off the exit ramp. Totally rad!
Double cross-up out the halfpipe. Man! Check them stairs! Yeehaa! Layin’ rubber
on a full three-sixty. And is that or is that not a goddamn double-decker bus
parked there at the end of that alleyway he’s cruising down with his feet up on
the pegs? Sure looks that way.
The Three Monkeys was through a gate along a switchback path in a
narrow yard overhung by skeleton trees. And behind that, a baked-clay volleyball
court ringed with weeds & a stripped-down red double-decker parked in the
middle of it. Clapham Junction last stop. A tumbled umpire’s chair stuck up
from the undergrowth, glistening under rain & strung-up carnival lights, red-
blue-green. The bus listed to port on deflated tyres. In a tired complaining voice,
Willie Nelson was singing about the railways — how back in the day, a man
could be free. A couple of Project kids bounced an orange pingpong ball on a
concrete pingpong table. Splatsplat. Splatsplat.
In a previous incarnation perhaps, sirens through the blackout, airraid
shelter, Clapham tube station, the eerie silence of the tracks (not even a rat),
stairways funnelled into the Underworld — One at a time! One at a time! —
agents of order keeping the mass hysteria at bay, This oughta be routine by now, so
what’re you afraid of? The constant dripping, seepage down through rubble of
smashed foundations, substrata of Celt, Roman, Viking, Norman, angry
Godheads booming through the abyss — Haahaa! Heehee! Hoohoo? And
something else, a vagueness creeping in, the echo of an aftershock, a warping of
the air, the fingers of a hidden malevolence feeling you out, reading your
godchild-of-Golem-City-self, blah-de-blah, et-fucking-cetera. But comes a time in
every detachable divinity’s Down-the-Ages detour through the body corporeal
when the glamour of the thing starts getting a little threadbare, a bit worn in the
knees or out at the elbows, deciding it’s now or never, really — abandoning a
burgeoning career as a closet motherfucker in midstride for the uncountable
unknowns & perilous pitfalls of a life spent in endless regimes of depilation,
deodorisation, manicures & man-cures, stuffing gymsox down his D-cups &
wrapping his dick round his neck for a très chic featherless boa:
‘Oh what a swell scarf you’ve got, Shamala,’ says little crosseyed Katka, his
schoolgirl friend, ‘so lovely & smooth & lifelike almost. So svelt. Ooh! Ah!
What’s it doing?’
As poor Sammy gets a sudden uncontrollable hardon, his face turning
shades of Max Factor “Aquamarine,” “Vibrant Mauve,” “Dark Plum” & the
rest’s, well, history. No such luck with ladyboy Alex, here, unfortunately. Some
things’re just too good for his kind of people. Whoa! But what’s going on now?
Alex’s just popped into the toilettes for a quick switcheroo of his own, a quick
sniff of the men’s urinal perhaps, you wouldn’t put it past him, getting down on
those well-polished knees of his for a peekaboo through the gloryhole, hoho, &
what does he see? Well bugger me if it ain’t Klem Gottwald himself in there.
No? Wrong story? Okay folks, forget that, we’re on for the magic show instead.
Look, there’s Alex freshly pressed from the gents, third cubicle to the
right, in white Hugo Boss doctor’s gown, cap, booties & one of those
superdooper sexy surgicalmask thingywingies with a little teenyweeny drop of
ether to give super suave Dr Alex that special glow of confidence we all love to
see in a man about to wave a hacksaw at our particulars. They’ve cleared away all
the café tables to make a bit of theatre space out there, got the whole place
painted white, too, even the sky. Out strolls Dr Alex in the spotlight, looking
cool as a cucumber, slapping on the latex gloves.
‘Nurse! Where’s my stethoscope?’
Nurse Alice pops up through the trapdoor in a tastefully designed
willothewhisps set-piece courtesy of the lighting department aided by a Chauvet
Nimbus industry-standard dry ice machine.
‘Here you are, doctor! Would you like a cup of tea as well?’
761
‘No thank you. Let’s get straight on with the splenectomy. Scrubs!’
Nurse Alice immediately goes into a striptease routine, lights, music.
Bulbs flash. Cameras snapsnap. Under her nurse’s uniform she’s wearing
whatever you want her to wear. In the second version of this same performance
the arrangement is reversed & she’s wearing whatever you don’t want her to wear.
In this version, however, it’s Saturday. A couple of stagehands wheel on the
props. Basically a whole lot of high-voltage coils, insulated wires, a giant
transformer with switches & dials. Nurse Alice sits down on a chair beside the
transformer & takes out a stenographer’s pad & pencil. Where she takes these
items from is irrelevant, this is after all a magic show.
Um, is that Alex’s dick she’s wearing? Is some kind of weird switcheroo
going on here? Some sort of Nazi twin experiment in retrospect? Well I’ll be
fucked! Can it be? The two of ’em is both Mongo-the-Magnif’s spitting bloody
image!
‘Hey, anyone here remember Mongo-the-Magnif?’
‘Shhhh!’
‘It’s Mongo-the-fuckin’-Magnif!’
‘Quieten down over there.’
‘Hey, shut up, there’s people tryin’ to watch this…’
Okay, okay. Get on with the show. It’s late, we’re tired. And no, it isn’t,
it’s just a pencil. Koh-i-noor. B. Or not B, haha.
‘Ladies & gentlemen,’ Dr Alex comes to the front of the stage, pulls a
bunch of chrysanthemums from his sleeve & tosses them into the front row, ‘for
our first performance this evening, we most humbly request a volunteer from our
fabulous audience. How about it peeps? Anyone dying to come up on stage &
get sawn in half? Or maybe drawn & quartered? Made to disappear through the
floor (oops!)? Anyone out there got an itch they can’t scratch? Yes? You sir? In
the hat? Well why don’t you just come on down! Give the jerk a warm round of
applause, everyone! Hehe. He’s sure gonna need it!’
Spotlight number zaps up the aisle to a couple of SA stormtroopers
frogmarching a gangly stickfigure in a black suit & hat up onto the stage. Yep,
we know who that is.
‘Hey!’ the guy from before shouts. ‘That’s me!’
But since he’s only dreaming, no-one hears him (this time). He flaps his
arms around trying to get some attention, till someone in Production uses that
nifty little marquee tool to delete him from the frame. The audience meanwhile
are beside themselves. A band strikes up somewhere. Dr Alex struts back &
762
forth working the crowd. Nurse Alice pouts, Nurse Alice winks, Nurse Alice
crosses her legs. Naked Nurse Alice drops the stenography pad. Leans down to
get it. Ooooh! Hoots & wolfwhistles. What the hell’s she taking notes for,
anyway?
A couple of those stagehands have wheeled out a slab that volunteer
Němec is now being strapped-down on, one of Nurse Alice’s choicest
undergarments snugly inserted into his mouth. Mmmmmmmm!?!
‘Everything nice & tight? Good!’
Dr Alex claps his hands. Spotlight number swings up to the flyloft. The
audience gasps! Way up there, dangling from a pair of conspicuously visible
angelwires, is the deadgirl Němec recognises from not-Dr Alex’s photo
exhibition. She looks just as dead now. Immobilised, like a dreamer caught
inside a nightmare, he stares up as the deadgirl descends slowly upon him. Oooh!
Ahhh! go the audience. Němec tries to scream but needless to say, with those
knickers gumming up the works, he just can’t. In no time at all, deadgirl’s
hovering inches over him. Dr Alex hushes the audience. Waves his arms. Inserts
a gloved hand into the gap between prostrate Němec & the deadgirl. Swishes
the air about. Look, no gimmicks! At his signal the stagehands attach a whole
complicated array of wires, plugs, alligator clips. The SA goons stand there
ogling Nurse Alice. Dr Alex hits a switch on the transformer & all the dials light
up, the coils hum. Nurse Alice drops her pencil, drools lustily at the tentpoles in
the stormtroopers’ pants. The audience lean forward collectively in their seats.
This’s the moment. Dr Alex leans down to whisper in Němec’s ear, lips
thickened with spittle, but before he does he reaches up & pulls his face off.
Němec almost chokes. It’s Volta, of course, just as you probably suspected.
‘Ta-da!’
But that’s not all, because the deadgirl isn’t the deadgirl either! No, she’s
really Alice Steinerová! Which begs the question, who’s that who’s just snuck off
behind the transformer with those crosseyed SA goons, tossing winks over her
shoulder?
‘Sweet dreams, Squillbrain!’
Volta flips the switch on the transformer & Zap! Sizzle! Zorp! Whirligigs
of blue light stream up out of the spastic, jerking bodies of Němec & deadgirl
Alice. Wow! goes the audience. Volta spins dials, punches buttons. The lights
zoom & squirl. Zwang! Wizz! Burp! Němec’s bonds won’t hold him anymore,
he’s dervish dancing in midair! They’re both flailing about like a couple of
puppets in a tornado. Wooooooooooo! The wires are winding them together!
763
They’re dervishing right up through the rafters!
‘Ladies & gentlemen!’ Volta cries out triumphant, hands raised
heavenward, face a mask of megalomaniac insanity. ‘I give you, Bride of the
Wind!!!’
‘Hey! It’s Bela Lugosi!’
‘Nah. Watcha talkin’ about? Bela Lugosi’s dead.’
At which point, the uplift music wafted triumphal, the credits rolled, the
curtains fell. Lights-up on the emptying chairs.
‘Whew!’ the other Němec said to himself. ‘That was a close call!’
The usherette smiled. She looked kind of familiar. Well, he thought,
pushing himself up from his seat, time to go out and celebrate another narrow escape
from the clutches of untold evil! But there was something wrong with his legs. In
fact there was something wrong with things in general. The floor, for example,
which was suddenly all mushy & gooey! And the seat, too, which was, argh!
sucking him down. And why was everyone looking at him like that? And what
was that voice he could hear, saying his name? It was his name, wasn’t it? But
then Němec remembered he was still inside the other dream & it didn’t seem so
bad any more. He let himself be sucked further down. He smiled back at the
usherette. Was it? It was. So she made it out, too, eh? He was about to call out to
her, but the gooey stuff got all inside his mouth & then his ears & finally his
eyes. It was warm, sweat-smelling, with a reddish glow. As he slipped deeper
into it, down to wherever it was taking him, he wondered what the other him was
doing at that moment, back where he’d left him in the Prof’s bureau. He hoped
the other him would be okay there, not like the ones in the “film,” at least until
he got back from wherever he had to go to. He could hear the voice getting
further away, now. Barely even a voice any more, just a kind of gurgling,
moaning, echo-down-a-drainpipe. Then he felt himself rising & the voice
became almost palpable, but not quite. Then sinking again. All the while, the
voice, swelling & diminishing, just as space & time also. And his body, no
longer his body. And his mind. Well…
The dream pulled him down further & further, then pushed him up to
the surface again, pulled & pushed, like a piece of dross floating in the sea, &
that voice, speaking just to him,
764
54
___________
I WANT TO BE FREE
FRANK
HONZA
The dogs were helpless beneath the onslaught. Höllenhunde! cried the ringleader,
aiming a slingshot. The black Labrador bitch made huge pleading eyes, the
Great Dane lolled its tongue. Clods & sticks rained remorseless. Teufelshunde!
they howled. The dogs’ plight only spurred the little Švejks on. Behind them a
black cross stood on a plinth. And behind that, a snowbank with a wall rising
out of it. The dogs howled & finally broke free. The children rallied behind their
fortifications. Emerging from an underpass & coming towards them they
spotted a black-suited devilman with crookstick & funny hat. Their leader aimed
his slingshot. Thwack. A piece of gravel caught Němec in the ear. He glanced up
in surprise. The children bolted for the towerblocks that ringed the old killing
fields, hooting with laughter. Němec watched them go. The dogs barked from a
distance. A crow swooped down on the snowbank & pecked. Němec stamped
the slush from his boots & surveyed what once had been the Kobylisy execution
grounds, a field of trodden muck surrounded by skeleton bushes in the lee of the
Projects. While he was standing there it began to rain. He had to squint through
it to read the names on the memorial inscription on the wall, in memory of all
those who’d been lined up there & shot —
Hanosek
Horák
Houdek
Hruška
Horáková
Hrubá
Hašek
Hroník
Hejplíková
Hrubý
Hejnalová
Hejplík
Helebrand
Hovorka
Hodys
Hilgertová
Hrubý
Horyna
Hauner
Holeček
Hykl
Havránek
Holečková
Heřmanský
Hofmann
Hála
Hynek
Houžvička
Haken
Hrabě
Hříbal
Hanuš
Hrdlička
Hejduk
Heyrink
765
— but no “Hájek.” The records for once were anything but clear: if the junior
archivist of the National Literary Museum had been done to death here, or in
the guillotine at Pankrác Prison, or in a camp maybe. Erschossen or Enthauptet or
Gehängt or something else. . By personal order of Heydrich, supposedly.
Der Schlächter. No record of that, either. No burial recorded. In fact, no record of
a Hájek ever having been arrested, let alone the accorded pleasantries. Had the
caretaker got some part of the story mixed up? Had the Prof’s namesake died
under someone else’s name? Had he died at all? Well everyone does, kiddo. It
wasn’t the sort of thing the Prof talked much about, but then you wouldn’t,
would you? Němec pictured somewhere on the edge of a dark wood, women in
headscarves hewing the frozen ground — a toothless crone hauling an arm out
of the soil, a coatsleeve, a skull with the scalp still attached to it. Tossing them
into a pot to boil down for headcheese, glue, candlewax. Madame Lafarge’s Home
Brew. And the Prof at Barrandov four years later, having his picture taken? The
interim was full of questions that begged.
Němec scratched his ear. The rain made holes in the snow. What’d the
Old Man’s old man done to deserve The Treatment, anyway? He trudged back
along the path, thinking if he could only get the Prof‘s ghost to stop being so coy
& actually give him a straight answer, he might fill him in on that. Who knew, it
just might be the key he’d been looking for, the thread to tie it all together. Well,
kiddo, y’know he’s been places most the rest of us can’t see. Gotta make some
allowances. Němec came out from the underpass just in time not to get knocked
flat by a black Mercedes taking it a bit wider on the corner than the manual
usually advised.
‘Wanna get them shocks looked at, Klaus.’
‘Damn it, I just took it down the garage last week! Shit mechanics in this
town, they probably stole the originals & stuck a couple of rusty bedsprings in
there instead.’
‘Should only ever get your repairs done certified, Klaus. Fucks your
warranty otherwise. And these Chesk jokers wouldn’t know a screw from a
handjob if you printed instructions on it.’
‘Ja wohl.’
‘Sheez, you nearly clocked that Zhid in the hat back there. Few inches to
the left & you woulda had him.’
‘I didn’t see him! I didn’t see him!’
‘Try that one up there, the gypo on the stolen bike…’
Zoom! Awesome! Bombed right over the top of that shithead
766
Krautmobile. Suck that, Nazi motherfuckers! Splash! Dig that endo right down
the guardrail. Way out! Kid ain’t no showercap! Bunnyhop clear across that
causeway. Watch him book that bitch. Tabletop off the exit ramp. Totally rad!
Double cross-up out the halfpipe. Man! Check them stairs! Yeehaa! Layin’ rubber
on a full three-sixty. And is that or is that not a goddamn double-decker bus
parked there at the end of that alleyway he’s cruising down with his feet up on
the pegs? Sure looks that way.
The Three Monkeys was through a gate along a switchback path in a
narrow yard overhung by skeleton trees. And behind that, a baked-clay volleyball
court ringed with weeds & a stripped-down red double-decker parked in the
middle of it. Clapham Junction last stop. A tumbled umpire’s chair stuck up
from the undergrowth, glistening under rain & strung-up carnival lights, red-
blue-green. The bus listed to port on deflated tyres. In a tired complaining voice,
Willie Nelson was singing about the railways — how back in the day, a man
could be free. A couple of Project kids bounced an orange pingpong ball on a
concrete pingpong table. Splatsplat. Splatsplat.
In a previous incarnation perhaps, sirens through the blackout, airraid
shelter, Clapham tube station, the eerie silence of the tracks (not even a rat),
stairways funnelled into the Underworld — One at a time! One at a time! —
agents of order keeping the mass hysteria at bay, This oughta be routine by now, so
what’re you afraid of? The constant dripping, seepage down through rubble of
smashed foundations, substrata of Celt, Roman, Viking, Norman, angry
Godheads booming through the abyss — Haahaa! Heehee! Hoohoo? And
something else, a vagueness creeping in, the echo of an aftershock, a warping of
the air, the fingers of a hidden malevolence feeling you out, reading your
