The Combinations, page 7
were more worthy of levity than Leviticus) by a rabble of university students [? :].
Between whiles, with the brawl in its early days, Mydlář experienced a minor revelation,
finding himself one day in all innocence tripping towards one of History’s precipices — father of
an executioner-dynasty, the great craftsman of the humanistic hatchetjob brought face-to-hooded-
face with the spectre of obsolescence, immanent as machine-death & more efficient than any
executioner’s nightmare, which one day would evolve into a hydra with six million heads —
Hollerith punch-carded & routing-sheeted from here to eternity. The vision made no sense to him
& he promptly forgot all about it, but somewhere the seed of an idea was sown.
After the Papist victory at the Debacle of Whitey Mountain, , it was Mydlář of course (by
now playing the stadium circuit under new management, Apoplectic Ferd & Partners) who was
tasked, like a human guillotine, with the serial execution of the twentysix vanquished Prod aristos
[half of them, the lesser worthies, had their necks stretched with a rope :] — & a twentyseventh:
Mydlář’s mentor-of-old, the presently unfashionable anatomist, disgraced University Rektor & vile
collaborationist, “J.J.” Jesensk ý — feet shackled, hands cuffed behind back, glopping in the solstice
glare of the five a.m. morning sun as he takes his turn at the foot of the Altstadtplatz clocktower.
29
One thing leading to another…
It was while waiting at the Klementinum for the dossier on Mydlář to be
delivered to the Reading Room, that Němec happened to wander out into one
of the courtyards, idly deciphering the sundials that ornamented its walls.
LAVDIBILE NOMEN DOMINE someone had painted on a white scroll
beneath the first of them. Beneath the second: A SOLIS ORTV…? On the
north wall, a date, in Roman numerals: MDCLXII. Before incorporation into
the University during the s, later becoming the National Library, the
Klementinum was a Jesuit college & bastion of the Counter-Reformation — so
J.J.’s particular treason? To’ve speechified at the pretender False Freddie’s coronation, for
which crime Jesenský’s tongue also to be cut out & nailed to his head (but why end there? why not
the fingers, also, which held the pen that wrote the oration? & the toes & feet on which he stood
to deliver it? the age-distended scrotum of his outlived manhood? the eyes with which he read? the
basal ganglia of his treasonable consciousness?). The traitor’s remains, thence quartered, to be cast
in a ditch along the road to Kutná Hora, his head displayed side-by-side with the other
unfortunates’ in a cage hung from the western tower of Charles Bridge, flyblown, baked red in the
July sun like Chinese lanterns (ah, but not Frederigo’s: he, playing the Winter King to encores
elsewhere, had fled the city at the first whiff of trouble — landless in unelected exile, agent of the
conniving Stuart, James I & VI, outwitted & outmanoeuvred — in a word, fallacious — yet, was it mere comedy of coincidence or more, that in blighted soup-foggish Londinium an unlucky seven
years hence, to honour Fred’s Falstaffian nuptials — with the catholic Stuart’s daughter no less,
lisping Lizbeth of behoved Bohemia, so-styled — the eminent Shagsbeard, costumed toady to
queenly kings, purviewed his once-witty though soon grown wearily witless Winterish Tale?).
A decade following Faltz’s fall at Rokycany & the routing of the Swedish regiment at
Breitenfeld, memory of the twentyseven martyrs of Whitey Mountain palled as Mydlář’s son & heir,
Jan Jnr., hacked & hanged his way through an entire regiment of defectors. It took two days, from
sun-up to sun-down, corpses dangling in the winter trees all the way to Litohlavy, snow crowning
them like the stone heads of the saints on Charles Bridge.
And as more years pass, picture old obsolete Mydlář, well past his come-back date, body
racked by the disease of his trade, enfeebled, incontinent, unable to dignify itself for that last climb
to the front stage — barred by unholy pact from taking the easy way out, not till the last pathetic
feeble stroke, down on his knees, puking into the proscenium, the last three-chord hoorah that’s
never any fun ’cause it just keeps on repeating itself — outliving, somehow, even the infamy, the
evasions in the street, the hex above the door — hunched back & walking cane, urchins laughing
at his heels now whenever he tries to sneak out for a quiet pint at U Kalicha — Going to the barbers
old man? — he’s so used to the line he even lipsyncs to it as he goes along, tossing them boiled
sweets in the vain hope they’ll still cheer him on, a sideways toothless grin, coming-over all
grandfatherly & wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly, but who’s kidding who? They’ll rig a gallows in the oak tree up on the hill, his little sidewalk acolytes, for a makeshift swing — chase cats with blunted meat-cleavers — roll metal hoops under horses hooves — invent games that never end well, but good for
a laugh at someone’s expense, those halfpint converts to the Church of Murder-in-Jest &
Latterday Švejks.
30
those sundials were put there at least half-a-century after Kepler had
demonstrated his laws of planetary motion & almost two centuries after Šindel
built that mechanised astrolabe on the Altstadtplatz — stubbornly holding to a
more elemental technology.*
It brought to Němec’s mind, for one reason or another, the Jesuit
philosopher Descartes who famously said, and so something which I thought I was
seeing with my eyes is in fact grasped solely by the faculty of judgement which is in my
mind, & who, by no coincidence, served with the Catholic army at the Battle
Whitey Mountain. It wasn’t easy to envisage the somnolent philosopher among
the Duke of Bravuria’s private entourage, there under the clocktower, witness to
the beheadings: seeing tongueless Jesensk ý forced to kneel, on a horsehair
cushion before the high block — Mydlář, from behind his black mask, eyeing
the crowd with unperceived apprehensiveness — the scientist’s lopped head
(blood spurting ketchup-red from sliced vein & severed artery) held up by the hair
so it might survey the decapitated body, its prostrated former-self, proof most
material if proof were indeed required of the dire causalities lately befallen it. Like
clockwork. And Monsieur Descartes, methodically reasoning the weight &
velocity of the axehead, the torque at the locus of its downward arc, the aftershock
& delay, eight seconds approximately, before the final lapse of consciousness, the
pineal eye, into blind eternal night — unsuspecting that twentythree years hence,
he himself, his entire life’s labour, from the Compendium Musicæ to the Musicæ
Compendium, would be most gravely condemned by the Pope his former master to
the enfer of the Index of Prohibited Books.
It was midafternoon, towards four o’clock, but the shadows on the sundials
were inscrutable. After a little while Němec grew bored trying to decipher them &
let his attention wander to the Baroque fountain centring the courtyard. Three
Caryatids stood in a shallow pool with a stone basin on their heads: black water
trickled over them. The pool itself formed a gammadion of interlocking shadows.
Perched on its rim, partly obscured by potted shrubbery, a pair of elderly gents in
shirtsleeves were playing a game of chess on a tiny magnetic chessboard. There
was something precarious about the whole enterprise, not least because it
seemed that at any moment all the pieces might come unstuck. The two men
were playing a variation on the socalled King’s Indian & black had made grave
misjudgements about the timing of his adventure. Fingers hovered midair —
forehead creased, shoulders sagging beneath a grey woollen vest — black was the
* But what more perfected automaton than a sundial? [:]
31
very picture of that Eternal Apostate upon whom a very belated awareness of the
Inevitable has only begun to dawn, while still clinging to the idea of some
ingenious, impossible reprieve — like Scheherazade of the Thousand&One
Nights. Or Custer, facing his Last Stand.
By contrast, black’s opponent sat there with eyes lidded in Zenlike
detachment. Had black not chosen that moment to concede, Němec most likely
would’ve left the two men to their game & perhaps never’ve crossed paths with
either again. But Chance played one of her little tricks & black, in a flurry of
sudden gesticulations, lurched from his chair & rushed off as if reminded of an
urgent engagement. So it was quite natural, then, wasn’t it, that white’s gaze, as
he looked up, should fall squarely upon Němec, who just so happened to be at
hand? And, being at hand, it was quite natural that he should be invited, by a
vague yet efficient sign language, to take the now empty place at the board.
Having nothing better to do while he passed the time, Němec decided to
humour the old man. And so he sat down.
In the Children’s Home there’d always been a group of boys playing chess with
the Russian teacher in the study room — they called him Mr Express on account
of his taking so long over each move it was impossible to get him into checkmate
before the next period bell rang. It was a way to earn exemption from the daily
sports regimen, provided you could stomach the smell of the Belomorkanals M-
M-M-Mr Express chainsmoked morning-to-night. But it was only later, after
Němec’d run away from the Home, that he first learned how chess wasn’t just
about killing time.
His initiation, so to say, into the noble art occurred one morning on the
train to Brno. Back just after the Revolution it was possible to ride as far as
Jihlava before the ticket collector came around. Some days, when it was raining
& there was nothing better to do, Němec would ride back & forth on the same
hundred&twenty kilometres of track, reading some book he’d relieved the
Municipal Library of, giving himself an education. On one of these journeys he
found himself opposite an unusually tall baldheaded man in a green forester’s
uniform & wearing a skewed priest’s collar that peeked out from behind the
undone top button, like a tape getting the measure of his neck…
32
Baldy sat there smelling of week-old sweat, halfstooping like a camel in his seat
— knees turned-out on either side of the folddown tray-table — the fogged
window, the tiny metal ashtray overflowing with butts. Balanced on one of these
knees was a plastic chessboard the size of a matchbox with holes in it for the tiny
round-pegged pieces to stand in. The lanky giant caught Němec staring & asked
if he’d care to play a game. Němec put his face back in his book, but the queer
priest kept talking at him anyway, in a voice full of unbalanced intensity. The
man reminded Němec of Bobek, the idiot savant caretaker who lived in the
basement of the Home & talked to the trees &, like Baldy-the-Priest, wore a
forester’s uniform.
‘Were you aware,’ the man grimaced, ‘that the Ancients who devised the
rules of chess did so in the belief they were calculating the future? It’s true. In
India, long ago, their holymen considered the warring of opposite forces to be
the source of all creation — black&white — good&evil — time, space, matter,
energy! The game of chess, held by the Ancients of Days to be sacred, was really
an infinity machine computing all the variables, all the possible outcomes, all the
paths of evolution & extinction, as the very Mind of God!’
Němec was in no doubt the man was cracked.
‘Are you a believer, my son?’ the priest asked.
His breath, Němec couldn’t help but notice, stank of pickled herring — it
mingled with the smell of perspiration like Dead Sea brine. Němec glanced
apprehensively as the priest tipped forward, leaning ever-closer. Yes, Němec
thought. Exactly like Bobek. The man grinned with a row of blackened teeth.
‘Pythagoras, the Greek,’ his face barely inches away by now, ‘speculated
that the will of God is communicated in the form of geometry. There’re patterns
in the universe which appear with unerring consistency — from these, the outward
forms of all things may be derived. The value of π, for instance — from “p” for
periphereia — being the ratio of the circumference (K) of a circle to its diameter
33
(D).* Or the — whatsitcalled — cosmological constant. Chess reveals that this is
what intelligent men have always really meant when speaking of a Creator.
Chess, my young friend, is the blueprint of all the possible worlds from which
Creation itself flows forth!’
Blueprint? Creator? Pseudo-Bobek tapped an index finger on the tiny
chessboard balanced on his knee. His mouth exhaled rancid fishinesss —
‘Every one of the squares on this board has its own unique existence in
time & space. Like you & or me it has a name & a face. It has its own individual
personality.’
The priest grimaced again & leant even closer, one hand touching
Němec’s left knee. His touch made Němec shudder, but you react, he thought,
& these weirdos’ll just take it as an invitation.
‘Each square,’ the priest spoke now in hushed but urgent tones, ‘is singular
in its essence, yet in its outward aspect appears identical to every other square.
Thirtytwo black, thirtytwo white. Each bounded on two sides, on three sides, or
on four — but never on one side alone. Never un bounded. Each open to its
other, its double, its counterpart — the one to the two, the two to the three —
the duality to the dialectic, the trinity — & from the trinity to the hidden
tetragram. Just as each piece is not merely a part, but a multiplicity — without
doing anything it already represents an array of potentialities, a visible dimension
bound to other unfathomed dimensions, in space and in time…’
Němec stifled a yawn. After a while the priest let his hand slip away & re-
arranged the pieces on the board, a wistful smile unbalancing his face even more.
‘Having mastered the elements,’ Baldy murmured so only Němec could
hear, ‘a correct method will enable the initiate to trace the connections &
interactions between them, so that the whole may be perceived according to that
controlling principle of unity-in-diversity…’
The priest advanced a pawn towards the centre of the board.
‘It is now,’ he purred, ‘your move…’
Ten years further down the line, facing the old man in the Klementinum
courtyard while the plash of the fountain hypnotised the air, Němec reached
* Approx. . [:]
34
across the board to make the exact same move as the priest had made. The old
man advanced his opposing pawn. Němec continued with the set play, but
something peculiar seemed to be happening. For each of Němec’s moves, the old
man made an identical, mirroring one: pawn / pawn, knight / knight, knight /
knight, bishop / bishop, pawn / pawn. Gradually the mockery of it began to
unnerve him. Every advance, every exchange of pieces, produced an identical
result, like the symmetrical dance of a pair of signifying monkeys.
Němec felt compelled to break the pattern, to introduce an element of
disharmony. Wild gambits & dubious sacrifices followed. The old man’s
composure seemed to waver. He hesitated. He scrutinised the arrangement of
the pieces on the board. His moves became more tentative the more reckless
Němec’s own became. And then, without his knowing how it happened, the
game came abruptly to an end. Graciously the old man proposed a rematch &
then another. Němec, unsure why, accepted & together they rehearsed several
more desultory setpiece openings, thwarted middle games & debauched
endgames, always to the advantage of Němec’s opponent.
While they played, the old man reminisced about this & that — the world
as it once was, people he’d known ( Did you ever see that film, with soandso?) —
memorable games he’d played (once, many moons past, forcing a draw from the
illustrious chess master & communist spy, Luděk Pachman*) — the present state
of the philharmonic (unbearable!) — Thomas Mann (ditto) — quaternions &
differential calculus (!!) — the ancient science of numerology (?!?). Then
abruptly he broke off & gave Němec a long appraising look from beneath a pair
of owlish grey eyebrows. Němec returned the old man’s look expectantly.
‘Hájek,’ he finally said, proffering his hand.
