the description fitted surprisingly well. ‘If you see a bloke like that . . . Get me?’
‘Sure,’ the foreman promised.
The foppish one then turned to the captain. ‘And what about your trousers,’ he joked, ‘when will you grow into long ones?’
‘In my coffin,’ the captain replied. ‘I’ve got them all ready at home.’
The foppish policeman gave a short chuckle, then raised his right hand in the direction of the peak of his service cap. ‘All clear then. More eyes we’ve got the more we see.’
‘We’ll just have to watch out we don’t sweep up your clues,’ Mrs Venus said when he’d turned away. ‘And for that they get more than a miner!’
By twenty past eleven we had finished cleaning up around the Culture Palace. This completed our assignment for the day. We took our equipment back to the former Sokol gym hall, and we now had only one task left: to wait three hours for the end of the working day and then collect our wages. My companions of course had already marked out the tavern they’d go to. I could have gone with them but I didn’t feel like it. Going to a tavern once in a while is enough for me.
The first story of Franz Kafka I ever read was one of the few longer prose pieces he’d finished. It told the story of a traveller to whom an officer on some island wants to demonstrate, with love and dedication, his own bizarre execution machine. During the demonstration, however, the machine breaks down and the officer feels so disgraced by this that he places himself on the execution block. The author coolly and matter-of-factly describes the details of that dreadful machine, as though by doing so he can shroud the mystery and the incomprehensible paradox of the recorded event.
I was thunderstruck and fascinated by the seemingly impenetrable mystery of an event which, at the same time, depressed me. But I was able only to comprehend it at its most superficial level. The officer – cruel, pedantic, enthusiastic about his executioner’s task – seemed to me like a prophetic vision of the officers I had encountered, a pre-image of Hoess at Auschwitz, and I was amazed that literature could not only bring back to life those who had died but also predict the features of those who were not yet born.
Suddenly I found myself back on Vyšehrad hill. I walked through the park to the cemetery and to the ancient round church, which was surrounded by scaffolding. I’d never been inside the church although I can see it in the distance from the bluff behind our block and I actually own an old engraving of it: Sacro-Sancta, Regia, et exempta Ecclesia Wissehradensis SS Apostolorum Petri et Pauli ad modum Vaticanae Romanae a Wratislao 1. Bohemiae Rege A.° 1068. aedificata, et prout ante disturbja Hussitica stetit, vere et genujne delineata, et effigiata. A.° 1420. 2. Novembris ab Hussitis destructa, ruinata et devastata .
The building on the print looked different from the one now before me, and not only because it had been destructa, ruinata et devastata by the Hussites, but because the church had been rebuilt several times since the days when my engraving was made, and each time a little for the worse. In our country everything is being forever remade: beliefs, buildings and street names. Sometimes the progress of time is concealed and at others feigned, so long as nothing remains as real and truthful testimony.
As I walked around the little church I noticed that the door was half open. I glanced inside – there was an untidy heap of builders’ requisites, scaffolding and buckets, and some of the pews were covered with a tarpaulin. On one side of the altar I caught sight of my companion of the morning, the one who reminded me of the specialist who took out my tonsils. Now without his orange vest he was evidently engaged in meditation.
I preferred not to enter. I didn’t want to disturb him, nor to start a conversation with him.
He caught up with me in the park. ‘Such nonsense,’ he
‘Sure,’ the foreman promised.
The foppish one then turned to the captain. ‘And what about your trousers,’ he joked, ‘when will you grow into long ones?’
‘In my coffin,’ the captain replied. ‘I’ve got them all ready at home.’
The foppish policeman gave a short chuckle, then raised his right hand in the direction of the peak of his service cap. ‘All clear then. More eyes we’ve got the more we see.’
‘We’ll just have to watch out we don’t sweep up your clues,’ Mrs Venus said when he’d turned away. ‘And for that they get more than a miner!’
By twenty past eleven we had finished cleaning up around the Culture Palace. This completed our assignment for the day. We took our equipment back to the former Sokol gym hall, and we now had only one task left: to wait three hours for the end of the working day and then collect our wages. My companions of course had already marked out the tavern they’d go to. I could have gone with them but I didn’t feel like it. Going to a tavern once in a while is enough for me.
The first story of Franz Kafka I ever read was one of the few longer prose pieces he’d finished. It told the story of a traveller to whom an officer on some island wants to demonstrate, with love and dedication, his own bizarre execution machine. During the demonstration, however, the machine breaks down and the officer feels so disgraced by this that he places himself on the execution block. The author coolly and matter-of-factly describes the details of that dreadful machine, as though by doing so he can shroud the mystery and the incomprehensible paradox of the recorded event.
I was thunderstruck and fascinated by the seemingly impenetrable mystery of an event which, at the same time, depressed me. But I was able only to comprehend it at its most superficial level. The officer – cruel, pedantic, enthusiastic about his executioner’s task – seemed to me like a prophetic vision of the officers I had encountered, a pre-image of Hoess at Auschwitz, and I was amazed that literature could not only bring back to life those who had died but also predict the features of those who were not yet born.
Suddenly I found myself back on Vyšehrad hill. I walked through the park to the cemetery and to the ancient round church, which was surrounded by scaffolding. I’d never been inside the church although I can see it in the distance from the bluff behind our block and I actually own an old engraving of it: Sacro-Sancta, Regia, et exempta Ecclesia Wissehradensis SS Apostolorum Petri et Pauli ad modum Vaticanae Romanae a Wratislao 1. Bohemiae Rege A.° 1068. aedificata, et prout ante disturbja Hussitica stetit, vere et genujne delineata, et effigiata. A.° 1420. 2. Novembris ab Hussitis destructa, ruinata et devastata .
The building on the print looked different from the one now before me, and not only because it had been destructa, ruinata et devastata by the Hussites, but because the church had been rebuilt several times since the days when my engraving was made, and each time a little for the worse. In our country everything is being forever remade: beliefs, buildings and street names. Sometimes the progress of time is concealed and at others feigned, so long as nothing remains as real and truthful testimony.
As I walked around the little church I noticed that the door was half open. I glanced inside – there was an untidy heap of builders’ requisites, scaffolding and buckets, and some of the pews were covered with a tarpaulin. On one side of the altar I caught sight of my companion of the morning, the one who reminded me of the specialist who took out my tonsils. Now without his orange vest he was evidently engaged in meditation.
I preferred not to enter. I didn’t want to disturb him, nor to start a conversation with him.
He caught up with me in the park. ‘Such nonsense,’ he
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