The Combinations, page 51
some piece of furniture or other had been. The rooms stood bare, were barely
even rooms. Without furniture, they had an almost religious austerity. Stripped
of the privacies of habitation, they were mere spaces, yet still Němec felt a sense
of trespass — encroaching upon the ghost of something that’d remained even
when no other trace remained.
Most of the Prof’s books, it turned out, had been sold to an antique dealer
from Schnitzelstadt, to pay the death duties & funeral costs. There were no close
relatives as far as the caretaker knew & there’d rarely been any visitors other than
Němec. This surprised him, having imagined the Prof to’ve been some sort of
operator among the local cognoscenti. But then, he reminded himself, the Prof
had been in exile & the City wasn’t often forgiving of those who’d left. And even
if it had been, who would he’ve known who wasn’t simply a casual acquaintance?
He was an old man, after all. As for the two women, they hardly went out &
towards the end neither had been in particularly good health.
The property, Mrs Severínová seemed to think, was being held in trust by
the State, who’d appointed an executor, but she’d forgotten his name. Boroš,
maybe. She speculated about her own future, once the house was put up for
auction / tender / sale, whatever it was the State had in mind for it. She
harboured, she said, no illusions. As for the rest, a secondhand dealer from
Libeňský Island somehow got wind of the deal & come for the furniture. The
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old woman had probably got herself a tidy sum for it, the piano alone must’ve
been worth a bit. The only tenants remaining in the house were an architect who
was abroad most of the time & an Amerikan who spent eight months of every
year in Karlsbad (where the bottled mineral water came from) because Marx &
Freud had once visited there & Kafka too, incidentally, the latter in a sanatorium
with a view of the colonnade thanks to a misdiagnosis in early childhood.
As the caretaker guided him around the apartment, Němec couldn’t help
thinking about those letters which the Prof’s very uxorious wife had supposedly
burned after he died & before she killed herself. What was so important about
them? What did they contain? What type of intimacies? Glancing through a
doorway into one of the garçonnières, Němec’s gaze was automatically drawn
towards the gas radiator fixed to the wall beneath the window. A sickliness
emanated from within the room which caused him to recoil & be glad once the
door was locked again. He made a point of checking the mains, but there was
nothing unusual. The caretaker, meanwhile, was busy pointing things out to
herself — the place where Hájek used to take his breakfast in the winter garden,
the corner where his wife kept magnolias in a vase, & so on. Němec tried to
imagine the Prof & the two women seated together at the breakfast table &
what they might’ve spoken about. No children, either. But that was probably the
point. As he pondered this, the caretaker came into the Prof’s bureau & stood by
the window, a distant look in her eyes.
‘It’s funny,’ she said after a while, ‘I knew Bětka when she was just a girl.
We went to school together, in Markt Eisenstein, in the Böhmewald. There was
a scullery maid at one of the hotels who the children used to make fun of,
because she was a Kozar & people thought she was simple. Every fourth of
December she had a vision of Saint Bára standing on Špičák mountain. It
became a village tradition. Bětuška would get all in a rage because she couldn’t
accept that Saint Bára had appeared to a witless scullery maid, but never once
appeared to her.’
She laughed, but the laugh trailed off almost immediately into silence. It
was an uncomfortable silence. Němec looked around the room to see what’d
changed. The walls seemed closer somehow. Finally he tried to prompt Mrs
Severínová with her story, afraid she might be unwell.
‘How’d she meet Professor Hájek? His wife, I mean.’
The old woman pursed her lips in thought & fidgeted with a window latch.
‘I couldn’t tell you,’ she said abruptly. ‘I don’t know.’
‘But she was here in the City, during the War, wasn’t she?’
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‘These windows need cleaning. Houses suffer if they’re not lived in.’
‘Mrs Severínová?’
‘Don’t interrogate me, young man.’
She looked at Němec sternly & wiped her hand on her skirt —
‘Of course, you’re curious. Young people are always curious. I was young
myself, once.’
Her face softened somewhat. She signalled that it was time to leave &
Němec held her arm as they walked back down the stairs to the courtyard.
‘It was Alžbětka,’ she said as they neared the foot of the Tower, ‘who
arranged for me to come to the City. My father worked for Old Seifert. We
weren’t so well off, so when my father died & Bětka offered for me to come with
her… By the time I arrived, they were already living here together with Miss
N____, who was the eldest of the three, much more worldly than Bětuška &
even Tomáš. She was handsome, in that masculine way that was fashionable
then. People often paid her compliments. Her grandfather was supposed to’ve
been an aristocrat, who collected dolls, wind-up dolls, he had an entire château
filled with them. But then Heydrich was killed & everything changed. Well, as
you know, after the War they all emigrated. They left me here, in fact. Of
course, I would have chosen to stay in any case. I had my reasons. But it was an
awful time. For everyone, I mean. It was like going through the War all over
again. The first years especially were the hardest. Then when the purges began,
ach! Sometimes I’d receive postcards, from different places here & there, always in
Alzinka’s handwriting, but never a return address. They were afraid, you know, for
my sake. I always wrote to them poste restante. Well, time has its own way of
passing, they were busy years. Once, in ’, I thought I saw her, Alžbětka,
standing in the street, like St Bára, on Nerudova. I thought they’d secretly come
back. But it wasn’t her. Later, they did return. She’d changed, of course, they all
had, but I still recognised them immediately. I never felt bad about it. I knew why
they’d had to leave. And why I’d waited for them. You see, I’ve never stopped
living here. No matter what happened, I always found a way. Deep in my heart I
knew the time would come when we’d all be together again. And I was right,’ she
smiled. ‘But then that terrible thing happened…’
Němec led her across the courtyard to her spot at the table outside her
door. The parrot eyeballed him from the kitchen. The old woman slumped into
her chair, pulled her shawl around her & groped for her knitting. Němec stood
there unsure of what to do now. The knitting needles clacked. The caretaker’s
attention seemed entirely fixed on their simple yet elaborate mechanics. Then a
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fit of coughing brought her back out of herself. Němec handed her the glass of
rum sitting beside the tea pot. She sipped from it, it seemed to relax her. Němec
was still thinking of the story about the Prof’s wife when she reached into her
dress pocket & held the keyring out to him.
‘Take these, you’ll need them if you’re to stay with us.’
Němec took the keys & was about to say something when she cut him off.
‘It isn’t for others to judge,’ she said. ‘It required courage to live as they
chose to live. And to die, Lord have mercy on them.’
With that, Mrs Severínová ceased paying him any attention & resumed
the looping of yarn between her fingers & around the ends of the long grey
knitting needles.
He could hear the parrot whistling from the shadows of the caretaker’s
kitchen as he left the house through the archway that opened onto the street.
The whole episode struck him as slightly unreal. He thought of the two women
who’d committed suicide there, in that house. And what the caretaker had said
about the Prof, that he’d been a lonely man. Němec wondered what exactly she
meant by that, or if it wasn’t just the doting of an old disappointed woman. He
drew a picture in his head of the Prof hunched in the gloom of his bureau with
the lights dimmed, the room’s queerly vaulted ceilings making lopsided shadows
around him.
Had Němec been more prone to romantic imaginings, he might’ve said
the room possessed the air of a parlour after a séance. But it was only a room
that’d been stripped of what it’d been. The yellowed plaster on walls marked
from where the bookshelves had been removed — the exposed wiring where
light fixtures had been taken down — the parquet, scratched & stained. Yet still
there were unanswered questions that hung in the air like spirits, hesitant,
unable yet to depart, wishing only to materialise. What his reasons had been for
going there, he couldn’t say. Nor the reasons for why he’d return — except that,
now he’d been given the key, the matter seemed already to’ve been decided.
Blecha just nodded when Němec told him he was moving into the Prof’s old
apartment, for a while at least, to clear something up. His own words struck him
as faintly absurd, if only because he himself didn’t really understand why he was
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going at all.
‘Room’ll still be here for whenever you decide to come back,’ the Bugman
said, helping himself to a second grilled knedlík from his primus stove.
A couple of chickens pecked idly around the old guy’s feet.
‘Don’t worry about it, kiddo, do whatever you’ve gotta do. Never did
much care for unfinished business myself…’
Němec gazed out at the rooftops then back at Blecha’s pumpkin vines. I’ll
miss it here, he thought.
Late that same afternoon they drove what little Němec possessed across to
Jánský Vršek in an old yellow open-top Felicia the Bugman’d somehow conjured
for the purpose, his silver hair billowing in the wind beside Němec’s hairless
pate, bowler clenched atop a duffle bag that took up the space between his
knees. A box of vinyls lay wedged under his feet, the recordplayer perched
behind the gear stick.
They took the most direct route, down Žitná to Resslova Street, then
along Gottwald Embankment to the National Theatre, turning left onto Legion
Bridge. There were people out on the island, sitting along the shore, watching
the peddleboats, a folk band playing roundels. A van passed them, swerving onto
the tramtracks on the wrong side of the road & a tram clanged its bell at it.
Blecha gesticulated Latin-style at the driver as the van cut-in ahead of them.
‘What’s the use?’ he shrugged his old-man’s shoulders. ‘See that?’ he
gestured ahead with his chin. ‘Warsaw number plates. In Warsaw they drive like
pigs. No rules. Poles don’t know what a rule is. They fix toilets, they wash floors.
But they know there’s no-one on Earth who fixes toilets or washes floors half as
good as they do. Proud people the Poles. Especially well-loved in Silesia. Ever
hear the story of Chesk & Lesk? The two brothers? Remind me to tell you
sometime.’ *
Blecha rapped on the steering wheel as the van stalled ahead of them at
the next traffic lights. POLSKÉ OKURKY was written across the back doors in
bold green serif. A metre-tall pickled cucumber with arms, legs, saucer-eyes &
idiot grin, pointed at a cartoon thought bubble floating above it:
Why get yrself in a pickle?
Munch a Gherkin instead!
* � Chapter . [:]
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The tram clattered past & once again the van pulled out onto the wrong side of
the road. The Bugman just shook his head.
‘Here’s some trivia for you,’ he said, checking the rearview. ‘Did you
know, before the Krauts invaded in ’, people here drove on the left side of the
road? Now, though, it’s the same all over Europe. Everyone drives like the
Krauts do. On the right. Rechts! Rechts! Rechts! Where’s the justice in that, I’d
like to know.’
They’d made their way up Újezd as far as Hellichova, before the traffic
came to a standstill, this time on account of a tram that’d somehow got derailed.
Men in green uniforms were waving cars back around towards the river & they
found themselves stuck in a detour for the next quarter hour for the sake of a
couple of blocks. At Jánský Vršek, finally, they unloaded & Blecha sat out in the
courtyard while Němec carted his gear upstairs. Ten minutes later Němec joined
him & with the caretaker’s parrot keeping its beady eye on them Blecha broke
open a fresh bottle of Slivovice. La Severínová was pottering about, wrapped in a
shawl, watering plants & such like. Blecha invited her to join them, but the old
woman smilingly demurred & shuffled inside.
‘Not bad for her age,’ Blecha grinned, gazing after her. ‘Some women, you
know, only get better. Not that I’d know, hehe. Was married once, did I ever tell
you? But the girl left me, hehe, for an older man. So now I’m a bachelor. Been a
bachelor for thirtynine years, hehe.’
‘What’d you get hitched for in the firstplace?’
The Bugman shook his head as he poured out two large glasses.
‘Got to get old & stupid before you get old & wise.’
He held up his glass & they toasted —
‘Here’s to something.’
‘Aye & all that.’
Blecha tipped his head back & swallowed his drink in one, then poured
another. He gave Němec a slightly glassy look, his mouth gone crooked. Blinked.
‘The very thing.’
Němec drank his & nodded in agreement. The Bugman refilled their
glasses & left the bottle between them on the caretaker’s table.
They’d done this sort of thing together dozens of time before up on the
Bugman’s terrace, watching the City, like a pair of gargoyles, but the change of
surrounds did something to the occasion, though Němec couldn’t say what
exactly. Kelley’s Tower white against the sky, the Prof’s ghost somewhere
invisible on the periphery, watching over the whole proceedings. Němec
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wondered what Blecha really thought about him moving into the Old Man’s
apartment. If he thought anything, he didn’t say. Instead he leant forward with
his elbows resting slightly unsteady —
‘D’you know where you were born?’
‘Where I was born?’
‘Where you were born.’
‘I suppose in a hospital.’
‘Mmm. In my day, you popped out wherever you happened to be. My
own mother, she worked in the Ultrafon factory, making insulation for copper
telegraph wires. Never took a day off, even when she was pregnant. One
morning went to the bathroom with a cramp, waters broke, out I came, right
there on the floor. Swaddled me up & kept me in a cot beside the machines. No
father you see. Thought I came off a production line, hehe. You behold before
you an immaculate example of the modern man, circa nineteentwenty.’
‘The New Man! When did you discover you weren’t a robot?’
‘The Ides of March, nineteenthirtynine.’
He raised his glass for another toast.
‘Death to all robots!’
They both drank & then sat for a while in silence while the parrot sat
there & watched them, making a sound with its beak like dry grass rustling.
Blecha poured another round of drinks & put the cork in the bottle. He grinned
at Němec sheepishly —
‘Did I ever tell you about Geldzahler, who used to live in the apartment
next to yours?’
Němec shook his head.
‘He was a Slovník, from Bratrislova. But on New Year’s Day in ’ he was
visiting his old mother-in-law at Bohnice. She must’ve been a hundred nearly &
fell down some stairs & broke her hip. You know what they say, at that age, you
break your hip, well… Of course, there was no way poor Geldzahler could leave
her like that, with no-one to look after her. I mean, no family. So he missed the
deadline. Midnight, New Year’s Eve, when everyone in what up till then was
still Cheskoslovnikia had to make up their minds which side of the border they
wanted to be on, the Chesk side or the Slovnik side, & that’s what passport
they’d give you because we became two different countries then, right? Idiots! So
thanks to his mother-in-law breaking her hip Geldzahler wasn’t a Slovnik
anymore, just because he couldn’t take a train back to Bratrislova! And that was
