Tolstoy, just as I failed to notice that a short distance from my home new camps were being set up, where people again had that final opportunity of seeking freedom in the midst of suffering. I only knew the camps of my childhood.
We walked down the street called V dolinách, which was perfectly clean; we had been preceded by the automatic cleaning machine driven today by Mr Kromholz. It had evidently worked so painstakingly that it hardly seemed to belong to our age at all, and so we approached the monstrous building they’d set up on the Pankrác plateau. Originally they’d wanted to call it the Palace of Congresses, for that was its proper purpose: to create an appropriately grandiose setting for congresses of all kinds of useful and useless organisations, especially the one which ruled over everything and over everybody, but then they called it, rather absurdly, the Palace of Culture.
‘Yeah, they have a different kind of mechanisation here,’ said the foreman, having noticed what I was looking at. ‘They have tiny little automatic refuse machines running along the corridors, parquet cleaners and floor-polishers – all imported stuff. Only for their use. D’you know how many people they have in there?’
‘It’s a monstrosity!’ the captain spoke up. ‘Eats us all out of house and home!’
‘Last week,’ Mrs Venus cut in, ‘some little kid got inside. They thought he’d got lost on Vy š ehrad but all the time he was inside there, he’d walked into one of their smaller reception rooms and fell asleep. And when he woke up he kept running round and round the corridors and in the end he got into the boiler-house and by then he was completely lost, wandering around between those coloured pipes and turbines. When they found him in the morning he’d gone completely round the bend.’
Coming up to meet us, in a manner combining clodlike indifference and self-importance, were two policemen. One of them was well-built with a foppish little moustache adorning his pleasant face, while the other seemed to me like a rather tall but sickly fair-haired child with sky-blue eyes. At the sight of them something in me stiffened. Although I hadn’t done anything, my experience as an innocent person with members of the police, whether in uniform or not, had not been happy. It didn’t occur to me that thanks to my orange vest I was now myself on the borderline of being in uniform.
‘Well then, you sweepers,’ the more foppish of the two addressed us, ‘a bloody mess?’
‘Not too bad,’ replied the foreman; ‘we didn’t do the housing estate today – that’s where they live like pigs.’
‘Ah, but we had some fun and games around here, believe me,’ the foppish one put a friendly hand on his shoulder. ‘Right next door,’ he pointed towards Vyšehrad. ‘What with that pervert about, the one who strangles women, some old hag thought he was after her and yelled for help. Some fuss, I can tell you! We combed the whole park, we had five flying squad cars there, all the way from Vršovice HQ, and all we got was one bloke. I could see at once that it wasn’t him, because that pervert is no more than twenty and stands 190 tall, and this fellow was getting on for fifty and the size of a garden gnome, but he didn’t have as much as a tram ticket on him, so why did we bother?’
‘He was some sort of editor,’ his colleague added, ‘kind of taking exercise after a heart attack.’
‘Is it true he’s strangled seven women already?’ asked Mrs Venus.
‘And who told you such rubbish, Missus?’ the foppish one said angrily. ‘We have two murders reported and four attempted rapes, and that’s the lot!’
‘And when are you going to catch him?’ asked Mrs Venus.
‘Don’t you worry.’ The foppish one stroked his pistol holster. ‘We know what to do. We’ve already established that he’s fair and nearly two metres tall, thin, and with blue eyes. So there!’ And he looked at his colleague, whom
We walked down the street called V dolinách, which was perfectly clean; we had been preceded by the automatic cleaning machine driven today by Mr Kromholz. It had evidently worked so painstakingly that it hardly seemed to belong to our age at all, and so we approached the monstrous building they’d set up on the Pankrác plateau. Originally they’d wanted to call it the Palace of Congresses, for that was its proper purpose: to create an appropriately grandiose setting for congresses of all kinds of useful and useless organisations, especially the one which ruled over everything and over everybody, but then they called it, rather absurdly, the Palace of Culture.
‘Yeah, they have a different kind of mechanisation here,’ said the foreman, having noticed what I was looking at. ‘They have tiny little automatic refuse machines running along the corridors, parquet cleaners and floor-polishers – all imported stuff. Only for their use. D’you know how many people they have in there?’
‘It’s a monstrosity!’ the captain spoke up. ‘Eats us all out of house and home!’
‘Last week,’ Mrs Venus cut in, ‘some little kid got inside. They thought he’d got lost on Vy š ehrad but all the time he was inside there, he’d walked into one of their smaller reception rooms and fell asleep. And when he woke up he kept running round and round the corridors and in the end he got into the boiler-house and by then he was completely lost, wandering around between those coloured pipes and turbines. When they found him in the morning he’d gone completely round the bend.’
Coming up to meet us, in a manner combining clodlike indifference and self-importance, were two policemen. One of them was well-built with a foppish little moustache adorning his pleasant face, while the other seemed to me like a rather tall but sickly fair-haired child with sky-blue eyes. At the sight of them something in me stiffened. Although I hadn’t done anything, my experience as an innocent person with members of the police, whether in uniform or not, had not been happy. It didn’t occur to me that thanks to my orange vest I was now myself on the borderline of being in uniform.
‘Well then, you sweepers,’ the more foppish of the two addressed us, ‘a bloody mess?’
‘Not too bad,’ replied the foreman; ‘we didn’t do the housing estate today – that’s where they live like pigs.’
‘Ah, but we had some fun and games around here, believe me,’ the foppish one put a friendly hand on his shoulder. ‘Right next door,’ he pointed towards Vyšehrad. ‘What with that pervert about, the one who strangles women, some old hag thought he was after her and yelled for help. Some fuss, I can tell you! We combed the whole park, we had five flying squad cars there, all the way from Vršovice HQ, and all we got was one bloke. I could see at once that it wasn’t him, because that pervert is no more than twenty and stands 190 tall, and this fellow was getting on for fifty and the size of a garden gnome, but he didn’t have as much as a tram ticket on him, so why did we bother?’
‘He was some sort of editor,’ his colleague added, ‘kind of taking exercise after a heart attack.’
‘Is it true he’s strangled seven women already?’ asked Mrs Venus.
‘And who told you such rubbish, Missus?’ the foppish one said angrily. ‘We have two murders reported and four attempted rapes, and that’s the lot!’
‘And when are you going to catch him?’ asked Mrs Venus.
‘Don’t you worry.’ The foppish one stroked his pistol holster. ‘We know what to do. We’ve already established that he’s fair and nearly two metres tall, thin, and with blue eyes. So there!’ And he looked at his colleague, whom
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