The Combinations, page 71
who stuffed it down like biftek.*
A swelling cackle in amongst the chiaroscuro. Whose? Clown-self ascending by
graded incline to the street & brightness of streetlights, from dark profundia to
pellucid proprium — slowly now, or you’ll get the bends. Further on, the lights-
fantastic flickered & dimmed beneath the viaduct. Steps. Iron rungs. Clown-self
ascending one higher plane at a time, handrail gripped, by degrees rising above
the traffic in a maze of slanted girders — giant rivets like dead carp eyes staring
* A prime fillet. [:]
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out. Between the girders, the coloured lights of the yachts moored below
Vyšehrad made a golden weft through the green silk of the water.
The Magic Carp
A huddled shape on the bridge coughed, hand out for change. Pocket. Fumble.
Silver falling out, ringing on the girders. Silent splash. Fish eyes & dark fish
mouth. Gulp. The royal carp with a lion, rampant, double-queued, Regnum
Bohemiae, lodged in its muddy gullet. The bum spat out a curse. Get what you
paid for. Stagger. Down there, river-belching, whiskered, scales of tarnished
lamplight, sixty miles long & six miles wide, the giant carp of yore that burst the
banks, hooked on a magician’s mock moon — hoist up up up into the sky — &
old Babajugs muttering her spells, getting astride it, hagface pointing into the
wind, as fins aflap the carp with the silver mooncoin in its mouth in the
twinkling of an eye swims airily east to Damascus, west to the Pillars of
Hercules, wherever the crone witch willeth — be that place near at hand or
distant many a day’s journey & difficult to reach, beyond thrice-nine lands, in
the thrice-ten kingdom — verily as if it’d leapt from the pages of some book of
wonders, the Qala'id-al-Jawahir of Shaikh Muhammad ibn Yahya al-Tadifi al-
Hanbali, or the Book of Solomon, greatest & wisest. Celestial fisheyed Pisces of
the constellated heavens. Not all the carp ponds of Třeboň! Foolish thought. Let
me climb up on your back there. Witch, move over! Straddling the handrail,
clutching for dear life, feet grown heavy, intimations of vertigo. The bum’s dry
cackle. ‘Jump! Jump! What’re you waiting for, idiot?’ A coin, gobbed-up out of
nowhere, magic carp my eye. ‘Jump you cheap bastard, I don’t got all night! Get on
with it! Yer stinking up the scenery! This here’s my bleedin’ bridge. Bugger off
or get off! Come on, come on!’ Up from his beggar’s box swinging with a
walkingstick now. Where’d I put it? Let it slip climbing up. Beaten with my own
third leg! ‘Jump you lousy rotten shit!’ Fall down flat and you’ll be right on top of
him, taste of his own medicine. Get hold of that stick and don’t let go — dog at a bone
— eh? Where’d he get to? Poof! Vanished! Babajugs’ mangy cur. Fooled yerself again!
Nobody watching? Straighten yer hat fer chrissakes, brush yer coat, no point hanging
about making any more of a spectacle of yerself. Onward Pagan Footsloggers! And
what if you fell in? Food for fishes. Carp sucking out your eyes, worms in your ears, a
mouth full of eels. Full fathom five and all that. Cold down there, the proverbial chill
up the spine, the prenominal pain in the arse. Magic swordstick magically back in
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his hand, weaving the gloom. How the warm night air shivered! Heave of bridge
toward further shore, shadow-filled — blackhole in the underside — mawmouth
mouthing itself mawishly, fishlipped, slimescaled, the gaping one-eyed golem
fish, the fishheaded alchemical anus, chrysostomos…*
Like Shootin’ Fish in a Suitcase
The streetlights one by one were going out, but it wasn’t morning yet when
Němec returned along Jánský Vršek. A gibbous eye floated in the gloom,
spelling the betweentime of neither night nor day: clockface with hands
swimming backwards in slow melancholic strokes. Faint plash. Lethe… Lethe…
Oh Lethe… Beating of the oars, the counterpoint, the silent interval — long,
too-long, the swimmer against Time, plash, the invisible wake, the eye blinking,
plash, & right there, in that non-instant, between all the other instants, a gap
Time itself risked falling through, like the cracks in pavements children avoid for
fear of the flesheating hag waiting down there to boil them in her stewingpot…
No light in the caretaker’s apartment, shadows hanging from the scaffolds
like bats asleep. Němec’s staggered footfall alone disturbed the peace, slouching
up the stairwell to heaven. At the top landing, a brown suitcase was waiting just
outside the door of the Prof’s apartment.* Maybe someone planned to visit? One
of those Irving Berlin moments that demands a song:
* FROM SHINOLA?
Like a beast at your back the rails hissed, the sleepers rumbled, the whole
bridge rocked under the approaching nighttrain. Turning into the bright
headlights, the wind, jolted back against the railing, stick jammed between
girders to keep aloft -— faces staring out of celluloid moviereel so close you
could’ve touched them. And then the darkness, again, grown darker. The
rattling. Fainter. Diminishing. Rumble of departed thunder. And all around,
out of the restored silence, that enormity of night welling up, becoming full
as the ear grows anguished, of insects buzzing, the hum & snore of humanity,
the backwash of distant traffic like a sea into which everything is
inexorably tending —- waves & particles of entropy, the lights gradually
growing out across the sky —- bearings all wrong, each step a contradiction
of the one before. And that voice in the ear coming back, You look like shit,
pal. Who’re you tryin’ to con? Wasn’t even drunk anymore, the illusion was
over, only a cloying sickness as familiar as an old friend —- You and me, kid,
fellow travellers —- hic! —- to the last… Lurching railing-wards, Hurrghuh!
The wind blew back a fine spray. Something splashed in the river, yellow-
finned, red-tailed. The waters swirled & drew off that thin spattering of
bile into their tireless, irrevocable course.
* Eee-ooo-eee-ooo! Sehr spooky. (Here we go again, kids…) [:]
459
Someone’s coming to my house —
someone’s coming to stay…
Predawn glowed like a blank television through the windows. Time to lie down in
yer coffin ’n’ die the death, old fang. Not wishing to disturb the suitcase lest it
wake up & maybe start shouting… Was there something he’d forgotten about?
Door-to-door delivery? Had he been expecting anyone? The proverbial
unexpected guest, perhaps? The sweetheart he left down in New Orleans? Some
Petrushka from St Petersburg? The redheaded Rusalka of childhood wet
dreams? The Mamitati who’d found their posthumous way back to yourstruly
their longlostlittleloveoftheirlives, bundled-up in a carryall? Or, what if the
place’d been auctioned-off while he was out getting pillocked & the rightful
owner at that very minute, wrapped up asleep inside, etc.? And what if…?
Taking the matter in hand, Němec knocked tentatively on the door. Ear
pressed. Nothing. Knocked louder. Keys, dug out from pocket with an effort of
endearment that brought a blush to his own cheeks, working them (the keys)
one at a time till the right one, teeth clenched, fumbling the lock, easing the
hinges &, stepping forward into the dark kbosht! Tripped legless on stubbornly
unyielding doorstep. Shhhhh! Getting his stick back under him to grope sidelong
down the hall, this room, that room. No-one here, you idiot! Weaving back to
rehitch the door, suitcase still sitting out there by the doormat like it was Moses
in a basket expecting the royal treatment. Not tonight, thanks love. A swift
ineffectual boot to send it packing. Plonk. Hoiked after it in fond farewell,
getting the better part of the slithery gob all down his stubbled chin, mouth
brimming still with putrid bile-stink. Doorslam, two turns (to the right this
time), locked. If ya think I’m fallin’ for that one again… Fuckers. Go bother someone
else for a change. Wanting it, whatever it was, rid of. Not there. Gone. Wanting
everything rid of, if truth be told (& who else was there to tell it to?), but the
strength of will, ah yes, the strength of will. A bit lacking in that department.
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34
___________
THE RAT AWAKENS TO THE
MYSTERIOUS OBJECT IN ITS CAGE
Now some things look different in the full light of day & some things look
exactly the same. That suitcase, for example. Nothing you’d call distinctive about
it, except it was old, brown, with metal clasps & dented on one side. And it was
there. The sort of thing you’d expect to find gathering dust atop a wardrobe in a
basement bazaar, among the plastic shoehorns & engineers’ tie-pins, the train
conductors’ caps, satchel bags, fake crystal decanter sets, horn-rimmed glasses,
capped Beijing-manufacture leather shoes, carpet beaters of intricately woven
cane, brown polyester suit jackets, beaver hats, faded watercolours in gilt frames,
ceramic urns, eggcups, cut-glass candlesticks, grotty chandeliers, rococo sugar
bowls, dumpling slicers, portable Russian TVs, aluminium cutlery, rusty potato
peelers, melted drillbits, embroidered tablecloths, vinyl pencil cases, stainless
steel toothpick holders, asbestos-backed radiators, clothes baskets, chipped soup
pots, ratchet can-openers, once-upon-a-time beige girdles, hair nets, goulash
pressure-cookers, rubber douche bags with nozzle attached, colostomy bags,
wheelie-bags in brown&red plaid, plastic shopping bags replete with naked
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ladies printed in mismatched colour registration, oversized drawstring binbags,
hessian bushel bags & bags woven from remnants of varying type, hair-pieces,
table-clamp meat grinders, assorted antlers mounted on trophy-boards, buffalo
horns, animal skins, cracked mirrors in plastic frames, fold-out stepladders, wire
coathangers, shoe cupboards, headboards, sideboards, dartboards & chessboards,
glasseyes, zimmerframes, wristwatches, bifocals, trifocals, signet rings, keychains,
defunct coins, ribbons with service medals attached…
As a bit of detective work, it didn’t seem too promising from the outside.
Item: one standard issue travel case of vulcanised reddish-brown vinyl, paint-
stained with black vinyl band edging it, dark brown plastic handle, two
nominally stainless steel clasps. Heavier than it looked. Well, once he’d dusted
himself off, what else was Němec to do but drag the damn thing inside & out of
harm’s way, get a proper look at it, what any reasonable person would, wasn’t it?
After all, it wasn’t like a bunch of Trojans had wheeled up to the Tower in the
middle of the night & left it there like a gifthorse or anything, eh? What if, he
thought, getting wise to where that particular line of thinking was headed,
hoisting the case up onto the kitchen sink (too heavy for the caretaker to’ve
dragged all the way up the stairs, mmm)… What if the fucker’s boobytrapped? Open
sesame and BOOM! No more Němec. *
He stood there catching his breath, head ringing, little worms of light
boring into his eyes, blotting the suitcase out as surely as if it’d…
A wave of peristalsis interrupted this pleasant thought & in a sudden
involuntary reflex Němec doubled over the kitchen sink & gagged down the
plughole. He gagged repeatedly, but all that came up was the stale taste of last
night’s vomit. The tap whistled & the pipes thumped. Gulping water, he
managed to throw-up finally, a cold translucent bile all in a single gush. Well, if
they thought he’d be a pushover, they had another thing coming alright.
Panting, Němec wiped his mouth with his sleeve, gave the suitcase one hard-ass
sideways beady-eyed stare. What you need for a job like this, he decided, once he’d
gotten his breath back, flexing a pair of bony shoulders inside his crumpled suit,
is a goddamn drink. He groped around the counter & came up with a package of
the Chink’s coffee beans instead. Was that what he’d been looking for? He
couldn’t remember already, but why not, clear the head, get the old intestines
working. He went through the motions of brewing a pot. It gave him time to
ponder, which mightn’t’ve been such a good idea.
* And there ends our narrative, kids. Meanwhile, in other news… [:]
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You think he should’ve had any scruples about opening that proffered
Pandora’s junkbox? A more palpable sense of foreboding? The coffee bubbled in
the pot. Maybe, he thought. There were a lot of maybes. Like, maybe the
rightful owner was going to turn up at any minute & it’d get Němec into
trouble, tut-tut, opening someone else’s suitcase like that, like a common thief.
Ooh, that was a good one. Or, maybe someone really was moving in — come to
take over the Prof’s apartment, a long-lost relation maybe — gone off to the
advocate’s office to get a key, ’cos the caretaker must’ve misplaced hers, eh —
nothing doing till the a.m., start of business hours & all that — could be on their
way back right this very minute, about to walk in & find Němec stinking the
place up — give him the boot — call in the Law, have him up for trespass, break
& enter, daylight robbery, false pretences, mistaken identity, violation of the
health code, malapropism & unauthorised possession of disoccupied premises.
Not like he had much of a leg to stand on, hehe, was it?*
Němec entertained the idea of such a concerned party: medium height
possibly, hair on the darkish side, thinning. Toupee perhaps. Or a wig. Woman
of a certain age, knee-length skirt, sunglasses, looking just a little put-out by the
appearance of this interloping oddity in undertaker’s black polyester. But, well,
since the opportunity’s arisen, so to speak, & it being terribly warm outside &
hot under the collar… Don’t get too fancy now, kiddo.
Dum-dum-dum.
How about, just to throw some flesh on it, give the above stated party
some presence, you know, elaborate a bit while pondering the next obvious step,
etc., & thereby passing the time till his (Němec’s) brain settled back into its
usual torpor, for shits & giggles so to speak:
() male Caucasian, tall, slightly stooped, wearing a beaver on his head
even in mid-summer-pushing-on-thirty-degrees, anorak, tan shoes & dark grey
woolblend trousers, part-time employment as a concierge, shared apartment in
Braník maybe, type who rides the bus to work every day. Could just picture him
waiting at a busstop, beaver, suitcase, smoker’s cough, slightly stooped. Yes. No.
Or, conversely:
() female Caucasian, blow-dry, former-secretary type, a mite on the short
side, carrying a little extra weight around the hips thighs ankles, cardigan, flat
shoes, found the suitcase clearing out the Prof’s cubicle at the university (now
there’s a capital idea: papers locked in a desk, a cupboard that hadn’t been
* Christ, can’t he just get on with it? [:]
463
opened in donkey’s years, a box of books with the Prof’s name scribbled on the
flyleaf, ex libris, old course-notes, bits & pieces of stationery, chess scorecards,
expired tram tickets, letters stuffed inside envelopes, several unread, unopened,
clotted fountain pens, rubber stamps & desiccated ink pads, elastic bands,
thumbtacks, paperclips, clutch pencils, magnifying glass, scotch tape, whiteout,
typewriter ribbons, staples, twine, a pocket calculator, small change, things once
deemed of value, hoarded, forgotten about — maybe a change of undershirts, a
spare tie for occasions — after all, what would you expect a man like the Prof to
leave behind in an office drawer, filing cabinet, desk, that a secretary would only
bother about well after the Old Josser was already dead?) & brought it all the
way over here, hauled it up the stairs ( O dear, no-one home!) & left it outside the
door forgetting to leave a note, but very well-meaning nonetheless. Or who
knows maybe there was a note, like a regular suicide, only a magpie got to
foraging for nest-trinkets & flew in through the stairwell window &, well,
absconded with it, eh? Or the rats. Yes, not to forget the rats. Always busy, those
little chaps, never know, when you next turn around, just quite what, etc. Hell,
maybe it was the rats who delivered the suitcase, kind of offering, to one of their
own, so to speak — did you even blink to consider that possibility, eh?*
