The Combinations, page 132
arcades, newsstands, pole-dance clubs, massage parlours, beer & cigarette holes-
in-the-wall. Visions of a blindman outside a table-dancing joint, black glasses &
white cane, ear pressed to fogged window-glass, left wrist emptying his groin. A
selfrighteous drunk lecturing a pregnant kid in fake-fur jacket, spandex & vinyl
boots, about the evils of money & the flesh trade: her not understanding a word
of it, holding up two fingers in his face, zwo hundert. All the abjectness of streets
like melted polystyrene the colour of floors in public urinals. The City in
freezeframe after freezeframe — a type of mental stagger, thoughts always
somewhere further ahead, further behind.
860
Eventually, wandering through the square, gazing up between branches
into the swelling blackness: needlepricks of a million light-years ago & the
darkness of those yet to be. What rumour’d heavens are these? Vast, slumbering,
unmindful. As if thought-commands transmitted between synapses improbably
remote. Ancient neuron pathways flaring in redshift dopplereffect on the very
edge of the One True abyss: the universe & everything in it shrinking away even
as it expands, to fill the void, the uncreated invisible void, prolific & devourer —
and all we’re able to see, is but a haphazard constellation of fragments, the fading
shimmer of a departing dream? Little windows on eternity like hotel bedroom
scenes in the movies: the peroxide femme fatale Alice Steinerová on the pink
coverlet, naked with needle tracks up the back of her thighs. I’m a pain killer,
baby. Or pictures of things you once-upon-a-time tried to believe in, the way
perhaps she’d tried to believe.
Bits of overheard boozed-up talk in bars. The Bestiarium, The Black Bat,
The Karlák, The Apollo Lounge:
‘Don’t be shy about it, babe…’
‘Name’s Mo — Mo Town.’
‘Like the ocean to the rain.’
‘Sure you is, mistah, like I’m a monkey’s sistah…’
‘Well, Mr Town…’
‘I’m tellin’ you babe, this deal’s goin’ stratospheric — everyone wants in on
it — this’s the BIG one, the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, the you-be-crazy-if-
you-walk-away-from-this-motherfucker opportunity. You wanna be a one-night-
stand in this dump the rest of your life?’
‘Yo, I don’t care how you got here…’
‘You kiddin’ me?’
‘This’s the Big Time comin’ — headliners — MTV — gold — platinum
— rhine-fuckin’-stone — the whole eight inches babe. Who gives a damn about
the Ape-olio anyhow? This hole’s for junkies, two-time losers & stiffs. We’re
goin’ to the moon, babe. We’re goin’ to the MOON…!’
‘Can I have my drink now?’
e
A circus filled the lower end of Charles Square: a pandemonium of carousels &
market stalls — stalls flogging Bolshevik fur caps & papiermâché heads,
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wroughtiron lanterns & sacred hearts & stale cakes, pictures & plaster-cast
statuettes of saints, madonnas, Baby Jesus — bottles of Vodka with brandnames
like Yeltsin, Stalin, Lenin — three blue tubs in a row overflowing with sluggish
water, fishmouths gulping, a trestle-table with blood-slicked chopping block
guarded by a bowlheaded pagan with bloodied apron & chainmail glove
sharpening a long knife, left hand showing a pair of stumps where index &
middle finger used to be, while standing beside him, gloveless, a native of
Třeboň gripping a fish & beating its head with a wooden truncheon, slain
Polycarpus — a queue of babičkas clutching old shopping bags in front of the
weighing scales, feet sinking into mud & yellow-red-grey slush.
Untouched by this mouthwatering spectacle, children dressed as winged
angels & devils with red horns skipped past in the direction of the river. On a
pair of stilts, St Nicholas with his bishop’s mitre. A tiny devil dragging a sack of
coal, crying after its mother, oblivious, beak full of steaming wine…
In a pair of high-heeled Wellingtons, a tall black transvestite, somehow
familiar, appeared from nowhere, wading between the circus tents. Could it be…?
It was. The singer from the Green Fairy cabaret, Ruby Ray no less! Němec
blinked then waded straight in after her, across an obstacle-course of fairy-
flossed & ketchupped muck, vomit, Glühwein, mustard-smeared paper plates,
dog turds & hidden guy ropes waiting to snag the unwary & usher them to their
doom. Stumbling out the other end, he found himself in front of a puppet
theatre, no sign of Ruby Ray left, right or centre. A herd of tiny red-horned
devils rushed in circles, chasing each other’s tails. Just then a fanfare sounded &
the lights of the tiny theatre went on. The show! The show! cried the devils,
pushing towards the stage. The curtains parted. Two puppets appeared behind a
piece of scenery — one tall & one very short, both equally grotesque. Despite
this grotesqueness, the tall one wore angels’ wings & carried a big stick, with
which he beat the short one, who was naked & bore a hump on its back.
Booooo! the devils cried.
The hunchback wailed.
The angel cackled.
A timeless parable: the entire production was just the angel beating the
hunchback, that was all.
The devils looked on avidly.
e
862
Bored, Němec let himself drift, past
The Carp Eaters
the sideshows, the knife-thrower, the
bearded lady, the strongman, the
sharpshooters & gaping clowns, trying
to lose himself, become just another
face in the crowd — any face, any
crowd — camouflaged among the Old Bohemian Breaded Fried Carp
spiralling carnival lights, the wheels-
1 carp (uncleaned), salt, flour, eggs,
within-wheels of the mass ego, milk, breadcrumbs, vegetable oil.
turning in the great night in which Debone, remove skin and clean fish, pat
Man unmindfully dwelled. Hey,
dry. Dip cleaned fish filets in salt/flour
master! Warped carrousel music, mixture, then egg/milk mixture, and
Missa solemnis, some pop-up effigy of
finally breadcrumbs. Fry slowly in hot
J.J. Ryba late of Purgatorio, Peace be to
oil till golden brown.
your soul, brother! Little skeletons on
strings doing a jig. Step right up! the
Old Zhiddish Gefilte Fish
tout grinned, beckoned, a sly wink, a
1 carp (cleaned), brown cooking onions,
snickering honeyed whisper-in-the-
salt, pepper, eggs, bread crumbs or
ear, Something in here for everyone, matza meal, sunflower oil.
friend. Even you… Hustled inside, the
Debone and mix flesh with ingredients,
maze of tawdry peepshow cubicles, including bread crumbs or matza meal,
periscopes & spyholes, the flagrante
and fried onion. Shape into balls. Bake
delicto of naked, gaudy, fantastic, or fry slowly.
banal, horrific Nothingness, porno-
* The picking of bones on the Sabbath is
graphies of Hope & Despair, the Life
prohibited by religious edict. [:]
Before & the Life to Come, visions of
gross numeric improbability, particles & vapours strewn through untold
vastnesses. Midget-in-a-Funhouse stuff. Splinter in the Eye of Creation, & all
that. A bug squidged between the pages of the Eternal Codex, bits of
yellow&green marbled with capillary which, scrutinised through some remote
Martian telescope might indeed resembles an involuted freak of untold nature, a
coiled extra-dimension perhaps, perturbations in the thanatosphere, intagliated
like a Siamese embryo, translucent, blackholes for eyes, milky brainstem &
cortex, synaptic novae of uterus-within-uterus, swollen, distended, pre-aborted,
forever about to swallow itself… Kill it! Before it escapes and we’re all doooomed!
863
e
Without knowing how, Němec found himself back at the southwest corner of
the square, where once pagan Sklavs offered hecatombs to the goddess Morana,
Morena, Mara, Marmora, Marzanna, Mother of Death, Winter, Nightmares,
her drownèd carp-pond effigy on that there very spot, right across from the old
Mladotovský joint. That gulping mouth in the puddles! Don’t look! He picked his
way past Death’s door onto the sidewalk. Woofwoof! A scruffy Mephistofleas,
lineal descendent of Hoffman’s speaking poodle, stopped & ogled him with eyes
full of uncommunicated meaninglessness. It sniffed & cocked its leg at his boots,
yawning, then padded off behind its master. Upon such tawdry little dramas
were the great unyielding narratives of gods & men construed. Walking with the
Corpse, walking with the Black Queen.
Němec sighed, crossed the road & entered the open coachway, through
into the palace courtyard. At first, when he looked up, it seemed as though there
were lights in Volta’s window, but it was only the reflection of Christmas
decorations. He pictured the psychiatrist in his office, sitting at his desk, mouth
contorted behind his cigar —
‘For verily Death alone shares in the allure of saviours, redeemers, miracle
cures, inexhaustible energy supplies, cosmic designs & final solutions. To rectify
the world by any means necessary. The interred world & the world merely
dreamt.’ Between is nothing, mene mene. ‘A word. A word in place of the nothing
of the world.’
For the sake of posterity’s posterity. Like a hairy god pissing against the
eternal lamppost. And he, Němec, unburdening himself like a deliberate,
compliant idiot yet again. I hear things and I don’t hear things. Voices. Footsteps.
Music. I see things that don’t exist. Ghosts. Dead people… Had he come to confess?
Absolve himself once & for all, before the inevitable dénouement? Because deep
down he still wanted to doubt all of it, the whole mad journey just a wild-goose
chase? Telling himself there was no journey, merely the aftermath of having
tried & failed to stuff himself into the blank space between an image & its anti-
image. And the Engineer of Human Souls’ predictable ironic retort —
‘Man’s sense of failing is only an extension of his narcissism.’
Who was he trying to kid? Digging among the ashes of a deadman, with
all the doggedness of a child with a broken stick, as morbid & futile as it was
inexplicable. For what? A nugget of pure truth? Some morsel of the countless
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mastications & digestions from occipital cortex to pancreas to duodenum? Some
miraculated excretion from the Lord Almighty’s private arsehole? Something
already deceased & yet (incredible! astonishing!) capable, after a generous
application of massage ointment & the proverbial Kiss of Life, of once again
walking & speaking & thinking? That lost little amputated Homunculus
Himself you’ve been searching for all these years, He who operates the projector,
twitches the strings, waits patiently in the prompter’s box in that miniature
Cocktesian Puppet Theatre at the Rear Entrance of the Mind — peepholes to the
infinite — glad-handing you now that He’s not nailed up on that cross anymore
& can kick back & enjoy the afterlife. How it was meant to be. Returning to
that happy swaddled humidity of Himself like a baby golem in its goulash of
bottled swamp & mud in jam jars. That putrid fishy thing ready to take your
place in the seedy round, among all those other little lurid death-motes, re-
accruing — the End driven back upon the Beginning, Möbius of the First
Coming & the Last, the Becoming of the Unbecoming of the Coming-To-End-
All-Comings come what may.
865
62
___________
SHOT / REVERSE-SHOT
You walk through the night long enough in this rat-toothed city, you arrive at an
understanding — that despite everything known by daylight, there’s nothing
else, no other reality than these half-lit canyons, with their cave mouths blacked-
out, the beasts howling in the wilderness, that gothic silhouette on the hill like
an unsleeping eye that sees everything: all the maladjusted memories, little bits
of History play-acting at being that neutral object of contemplation only Time
makes palatable — evoking the idea of a film in which the scenery & figures
barely move, a voiceover strangely disconnected from what’s seen…
You’d have to forgive the audience for being disappointed, wanting the
price of their ticket back, though maybe in hindsight, a different perspective,
suspending judgement, the benefit of the doubt — Here, take a seat at the bar,
think it over — knowing just about anything at all looks better after you’ve had a
few, ready to be persuaded white’s black if black’s wearing those stilettos, that
people’s souls are more beautiful than past experience has proved, that situations
don’t uniformly conspire against you, that not every wall is equivalent to every
other wall & other rooms also exist outside the one you’re in & aren’t necessarily
prisons for the mind, that if you slant your eye right the light really does dance
& the greyness glisten, diamantine. All very nice in theory — & as the old poet
says, all theory’s grey, mate — Grau, teurer Freund, ist alle Theorie…
Well, he’d look the part at least.
With the river at his back, Němec followed the streets in whatever order
they came, wherever they went. The night could’ve gone on for ever & he
wouldn’t care: he wasn’t going anywhere, there wasn’t anywhere to go. Whoever
was playing the big game had him by the balls, so tight any minute they’d start
bleeding. Like the rest of him was bleeding, coming unstuck, splitting at the
seams. He’d walked too long to feel anything, so much drink in him he was
beyond being drunk. There was only the expectancy, that it all had to end soon
— the time for this stale little melodrama was running out — he’d seen enough
of it already, from every angle. He could take it apart & put it back together
piece-by-piece & it still wouldn’t have any rhyme or reason. He could walk the
866
streets in his sleep. He’d been doing it for months.
Němec seemed to remember the snow falling. An orange streetlight & the
snow falling, very slowly, as if it were only falling in his head, the way in dreams
everything moves with excruciating slowness — the footfall along the corridor,
the bounding steps, the object you want desperately to get hold of just out of
reach, hanging there, like a child’s balloon. Then change scenes: from snow to
faintly drifting nuclear winter fallout — ambient doomsday montage of
disintegrated cityscapes, Dresden, Pompeii, Nagasaki — duck & cover TV
mantras — schoolkids pissing themselves under classroom desks, giggling,
farting, scratching graffiti ( Jan woz here — For god head call Alička ),
groping, crying, falling asleep — knowing the rest of their lives must inexorably
tend to that assured mutual desolation.
Yeah, they programmed you well, you’re a real survivor, kiddo…
And was he ever that child with the balloon? In a park, the music of a
carousel, snow falling through naked tree branches, a red balloon floating in the
air tied to a string. And there’s me! The kid in the black suit, a midget
homunculus of himself, running after the balloon with slow heavy steps, never
quite able to reach it, till it rises on a gust & drifts over the treetops, the river,
the spires, a red dot grown smaller & smaller, gone forever. Whatever that child
version of him felt watching it go was only a fleeting emotion, because already
are standing behind him — & behind them, where their footprints lead back
across the snow, a black Mercedes with another man sitting in it — a man with
a beard whose eyes glitter like a pair of golden keys…
Got a smoke, love?
Some doxy in the shadows, purring, alleycat eyes, was busy feeling for his
pockets. Němec jerked away. Wake up! It was still snowing. Feet wet, shoe soles
worn through. It’s cold, it’ll grow colder. He could feel the steel pins in his knee —
a creaking of the joints like a rusty gate — bits of metal in his head tuning into
the frequencies, numbers on the ether. Achtung! Neun neun fünf neun zwo. Neun
neun fünf neun zwo. Achtung! He turned the corner, it was darker but there was a
streetlamp at the end of the block. Always hope, eh? Past it & he’d be home safe.
