The Combinations, page 125
game, look the future squarely in the eye, take the Revolution to the next life.
What d’you say?’
Klem mooches up to the microphone & starts singing off-key as the
balalaikas sound-up from the wings —
’Cos we could be heroes,
for ever and ever!
We could be heroes,
just for one day…
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Now the whole cast comes out onto the Terraces for an encore — balloons,
tinsel, banners hoisted for the TV cameras:
Long live the Communist Party
of Cheskoslovnikia!
Long live the Party General-Secretary,
Rudolf Slánský!
It’s all just a little warm-up act for the Big Show-Trial, starring all Klem’s old
buddies, Zhids mostly (oops, not supposed to mention that) — Slánský making
a farewell performance in the leading role, sacrificing himself for the good of the
nation — setting an example, so to speak, showing the world what a real
communist’s made of — Clementis, too (could never stand that mutt of his,
Brouček, crapping on the Presidential Office floor, The dog’s death to the dog! he’d
have to put the idea up to Moscow, anti-conspiracy dog, run a check on the rabid
little mongrel’s proletarian credentials) — who else? Those fakes — Frejka,
Reicin, Simone — Fischl, too, Frank, Geminder, Šling, Šváb…
Quite a Who’s-Who the Ruskies have managed to put together, even for
the supporting cast — a scapegoat for every occasion, the Five-Year-Plan gone to
shit thanks to the Politburo boys (not sounding his usual optimistic self today,
our Klem), understandable that the People are out for blood & better theirs than
his — oh & not to forget that non-entity, Margolius, ex-Auschwitz, What the
hell’s he on the list for? But it’s too late to be worrying about minor details like
that, they’ve been at rehearsals for weeks already, months, getting their lines
down pat, the whole production, a bigger-than-Busby-Berkeley spectacular, not
some bogus Triumph of the Will peroration, but men speaking from the heart,
getting to the truth of the matter, their own personal Calvary for the salvation of
all. Now that’s what I call selflessness. The real McCoy and not some one-eyed Joe
windbagging.
It’ll be the best press they’ve had in years, a box office sensation. So much
he hopes, at least, our Klem, aiming to please the Great Leader, Josef
Vissarionovich, love of his life & all that. He’d get down on his knees if that’d
help, but afraid he wouldn’t make it back up again — it’s the weather & he’s
under it, sweating like a pig, but no-one can see because the spotlights are all on
Slánský now, dark, swarthy, handsome in a sinister Rudolf Valentino way —
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reciting his curriculum vitae now to adoring fans with little HANG ME WITH
SLÁNSKÝ placards waving in the foreground.
‘The aim of the Communist Party,’ he’s saying, trying to save his own
bacon, barely audible, drowned-out by continuous cheers, ‘is to safeguard the
successful completion of the five-year economic plan!’
Oscar-winning stuff this. What a genius for bullshit, Klem congratulates
himself. He’d be after my job, if he could climb down from that scaffold and get a hold
of it. ’Cos that’s where Slimy Slánský’s headed once the judges get to work on
him, hehe, & those pre-taped confessions get aired on family-hour radio — but
why wait? Sometimes, Klem thinks, these production guys put too much store
by realism. Oh it’s a terrible thing to say, he knows, but couldn’t they just hang
the lot of ’em now & be done with it? But the show goes on, a mind of its own it
seems, & if there’s a train in the picture he’s not driving it anymore, just a
passenger now, can sit back & enjoy the view rushing by, the restaurant car’s
well-stocked liquor cabinet jangling its oriental windchime jangle as thoughts
waft a long way from solitary confinement cells, back to his childhood in
Dědice, born under a hayloft, so the story went, old granddad Bartholomew, a
drunk to beat the band, sending his poor matka on the road, pregnant & all,
slouching towards her Bethlehem, grist for a minor nation’s messiah complex.
But there’s Slánský, taking up the picture again, explaining to the faithful
& some interviewers from Pravda Daily his hand (irony of ironies — though
perhaps this hasn’t quite dawned on the imbecile yet) in the behind-the-scenes
preparation for the Big Show — architect of the torture state, builder of forced
labour camps & prime mover in bringing to Golem City those self-same
Bolshevik inquisitors who — Soon children, soon! — will see him (Slánský), &
Klem’s particularly proud of this detail, lynched unceremoniously in the
courtyard of Pankrác prison ( No Man’s Bigger than the State isn’t just a trippy
slogan & he’s about to prove it).
What was it that idiot Masaryk said? Justice is the mathematics of humanity.
Right. Well, you wring enough necks, see — that’s socialist democracy — justice
for everyone! Cut back now to Vera Lynn, the Golden Days, the victory in ’
( Can’t believe it’s only four years ago — just like yesterday…), the TV boys doing a
general round-up of Where it all Began — the Best of Slánský — How far the
mighty have fallen! Something in this for everyone to get their teeth into! See the
bushy-browed kid from Plzeň, local Commercial Academy graduate, smoking
cigarettes in the backroom of the Golem City Marxist Club — then Moscow
during the winters of ’, ’ — the dutiful wife working at Radio Big Red —
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the daughter’s kidnapping — life lessons at the School for Torture — after the
War, leading the way in the Slovnik National Uprising — receiving for his pains
the exalted Order of Socialism (a real coup thinking up that one)…
Then — it’s the Greek Tragedy moment they’ve all been waiting for —
The Downfall: Šling & Reicin — the Tito Conspiracy — the suicide attempt.
All the pathos of mixed emotions. It’ll top the ratings come the day, every
worker’s committee in the country, supplied already with a juicy selection of
prescribed resolutions, hectoring for the number two guy to get it in the neck,
boxes ticked, stamps stamped, just waiting to be cabled-in. STRING UP
SLÁNSKÝ! What a life! Meanwhile the girls in the Workers’ Wives Club are
knocking back Gin Šlings like it’s Singapore in ’ & not a worry in the whole
wide world — lots of backslapping & the odd below-the-belt tickle, letting their
hair down from their headscarves, saying Slip me a Slánský there love, & She’s
peaches, old chum, like it’s the ladies lounge at Raffles — & all the while the
barmaid lecturing the black&white idiot box, Don’t make the rope too long, we run
a family establishment here! Just good healthy entertainment for the up&coming
proles of the thousand-year Socialist Reich, oh Glorious Tomorrow, oh Brave
New Void:
Though we’d sell our sisters to Stalin
faster than you can say Sieg Heil
and peddle our arses in Astrakhan
to the boys going round on the Politburo turnstile,
you can’t say the future’s not rosy my comrades,
not rosy, oh rosy, oh rosy today!
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58
___________
ONE FOR THE LITTLE GUY
Faktor’s dwarf was leaning against the doorframe — dirty raincoat, mouth
creased by a faintly satirical smirk beneath curled mustachios, eyelids puckered,
expectant — watching Němec as he lay on the floor blinking up into the light.
The sight of the dwarf, coming into focus only gradually, but not too gradually
to deprive Němec of what could only be described as a rude awakening, caused
him to experience a sudden rush of agoraphobia. For one terrible hallucinatory
moment, he was five years old again, looking up at an StB man in a brown
overcoat towering over him in the doorway, the moment his little world came
apart. In that moment the dwarf might as well’ve been a colossus.
The moment passed & with an effort Němec sat up. His head felt like it
was splitting open. He wasn’t sure where he was, or who he was, or even when
he was. Blood had stained all down the front of his shirt, his mouth thick with
the taste of it. Somebody or something had worked him over pretty good. As to
where he was, a glance around the room confirmed he hadn’t really gone
anywhere: he was still in the Old Man’s bureau, hat dented on one side lying
next to him on the floor, muddied trousers & boots, parquet strewn with torn &
crumpled paper. Němec blinked at the dwarf in the doorway & then back at the
paper, wondering if whoever had gone through the place found what they were
looking for. Well, can’t say you didn’t know it was coming, sooner or later. He heard
the dwarf clear his throat.
‘Mr Němec?’
‘Says who?’
‘You think you can forget who you are?’
‘Nah, I know who I am. I’m the monkey talking to an imaginary midget.’
‘No need to get personal.’
‘Personal smershonal.’
Němec pressed his knuckles into his eyes, stared at the runic lines on the
back of his hands. Faint echoes of breaking glass, cold wind, weightlessness.
Somewhere, a voice inside him said, a journey begins, you set out unmindfully,
seeking a point from which you’ve already departed — all the wisdom of ages
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could be distilled to this. Blah.
‘It’s a comforting thought,’ said the dwarf.
Němec turned his head & glared —
‘You don’t exist.’
After some effort he managed to get on his feet. He could hear the
workmen in the yard, hammering & sawing.
‘How the hell’d you get in here anyway?’
‘Door was open.’
‘Goes without saying, door’s always open. That’s our motto, didn’t you
know? Very friendly people, we are. Sure you weren’t here when all the
excitement happened?’
‘If only you’d sent out invitations.’
‘So kind.’
Němec staggered out to the kitchen & searched for Volta’s pills — found
some lying on the counter & forced a handful into his mouth. His teeth felt
wrong, like they’d been caved in, but they were still there, only the gums were
bleeding. He tried to cauterise the pain with a half-dozen rapid gulps of
slivovice. There were bright lights, shapes dissolving in fog. It was hard work not
to throw up, wasting all that drink. His eyes felt like they were perspiring, like
beads of yellow fluid were sweating out of them. He tried washing the blood
from his face but couldn’t see what he was doing without a mirror. When was
the last time he’d shaved? He groped in the pantry for a spare shirt. Did one
exist? Apparently not. Steal a new one later. He unbuttoned the bloody one, ribs
a continuous welt, a real quality piece of work. He gulped more slivovice, getting
himself good & numb, trying to remember what’d happened, unable to. Tossed
the ruined shirt into the wastebasket — a vague smell of mouldy coffee grounds
wafted out of it. Slipped his jacket back on. When he coughed, a clot of phlegm
came up with blood in it. Something in his lungs. Burning. The burning fading.
When Němec got back to the bureau, the dwarf was standing in the
middle of the room, surveying the damage. The coat he was wearing reached to
the floor, which made him look even shorter than he already was, & he had a
brown pork pie hat on his head. Something about his face wouldn’t stay in focus,
it was very grey, but Němec could hardly blame the dwarf for that — one man’s
aberration being another man’s, you know. Like the one about the old lush who
needed two mirrors to get her make-up on, if it was before midday — ’cos after
midday, it was the blind leading the blind. Could always go over and put my
thumbs in his eyes, Němec thought, just to feel if he’s all there, Braille-like, only
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backwards, concave rather than convex. And what if there was only one eye? Some
unholy hole, a dwarf with a golem’s head. And did they feel everything double, the
way we see double? The blind, he meant . Eye at the end of the finger. How would
it look? A bit shaky maybe, like tripping over a pair of shoes in the dark you
don’t remember having left there. You think a blind person would know what a
mirror is, kiddo? Depends, I suppose. Things you can know without ever seeing them,
things you can see without ever knowing what they are…
‘Don’t it make you sick…’
‘It sure does.’
‘I mean, is this the best you could do? And after everything that’s been
done for you? This? This is nothing, don’t you understand? If the Boss didn’t
know better, I’d say I’m wasting my time here. Am I wasting my time?’
Němec didn’t have anything to say to that. But something had happened
— he searched his mind for some sort of clue as to what it was. Secret chambers?
Ladders through the ceiling? Tunnels under the ground? Nonsense. How could
any of that have actually happened? And how’d he gotten back there? The
dwarf, meanwhile, was busy studying the bits & pieces of torn paper that lay all
over the floor, stirred hither & thither by the breeze. They were the shadows the
Prof had left behind. At that moment something caught the dwarf’s attention &
he stooped down to pick up a rough sheet of folio paper — Němec recognised at
once the frontispiece from the Black Book.
‘Get your hands off that!’
The dwarf smirked, the hair on his upper lip drooping as the smirk
broadened.
‘Touchy about this one, eh? But if I don’t exist, what’s it matter?’
‘Well do you exist or don’t you?’
The question, the instant it’d passed his lips, startled Němec by its
absurdity. The dwarf merely sighed & continued eyeing the frontispiece. He
held it up to the light —
‘Mmm. Not a bad likeness, eh?’
Likeness of what? Němec watched the dwarf turn the paper around & peer
at it from different angles, like it was more interesting that way, not knowing
what else he should do. Was there supposed to be a clue hidden in the etching?
Something he’d missed? Blah. They were welcome to it. Maybe. He wasn’t sure.
‘What do you want?’ he said finally.
The dwarf straightened up & seemed to consider the question for several
moments, before folding the paper he was holding & tucking it inside his coat.
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‘I only want what belongs to Mr Faktor.’
‘What could I have that belongs to Mistah Faktah?’
‘That’s what I ask myself. Why would this complete nobody have something
that belongs to the Boss? Couldn’t’ve put it better myself…’
‘Give me a clue.’
‘The key, of course.’
‘What key?’
‘The one that belongs to Mr Faktor.’
One of them, it seemed, was definitely nuts. But then, if the dwarf didn’t
exist, that just left Němec. Well, nice morning for it, eh, kiddo? He went closer to
the dwarf, bent down, & looked him square in the eye. If this creature was a
figment of his imagination, it was a very cunning figment.
‘Something wrong, Bo?’
‘Why should anything be wrong?’
But something was always wrong, not adding up, escaping him like the
proverbial needle in the eye, or splinter, or beam — like that Polyphemus,
blinded by something as crucial yet infinitesimally evasive as a pivotal truth.*
The elephant in the room — or, let us say, the dwarf in the room — the gnome,
even. Mr Gnomebody. Gnomebody slays me with cunning, hehe. The problem
wasn’t just the dwarf, however, but the space he was standing in: the walls
seemed off-kilter, the doorway skewed to one side, like a body with its skeleton
poking through the skin where you least expect it — a thighbone, for example,
or the lower reaches of the pelvis — exhibiting all the obscenity of something
starved, which has been deprived of some essential nutrient & is in the process
of a nervous collapse. The room, hung with shadows, was more cave than
bureau. The black plastic in the windows billowed, cold grey air swept in.
Němec had the ludicrous idea that somehow the fabric of the place
mirrored his own derangement, a parody now of what it was, a shambles. As if
Caliban had been assigned the task of restoring Prospero’s library from its watery
mass grave, Dewey-Decimalising the drowned books — giving the whole
