Lovers for a Day Read online

  Her companion was openly delighted at the sight of them and talked about ‘those carnivores’ ceaselessly – maybe for her benefit, but no doubt also to show off to the other man. And so they wended their way through the maze of solitary cells from which the inmates had no escape, destined to live for just nine months, until they were at their most magnificent, and she felt pity well up within her as it did whenever she saw a captive animal.

  They reached a row of cages, each containing a pair of the creatures darting to and fro. This is where we keep the sick ones, her companion explained. They recover quicker in company than on their own. And the two men continued their rounds. Perhaps they had forgotten about her and so she stayed by the couples that illness had redeemed from solitary confinement. It is often only solitude that drives people into love, and in fact people waver between freedom and solitude – except that most of the time they lose their freedom without escaping solitude. I must have read that somewhere, but now I know it, now I actually feel it.

  The two men were now lost in the maze and she retraced her steps to the previous row of stinking animal cages and was suddenly seized by a very powerful feeling – an intuition almost – that this wasn’t going to be any ordinary day: it was a day when even love might come her way. She was so convinced of it that if the lanky man in the suede jacket whose name she didn’t even know were to approach her at that moment and say, I love you, she would most likely fall in love with him, totally and absolutely – until she came out at the spot where they had entered and she caught sight of the grey horse in front of her.

  It stood there, head hanging. And as she approached it – she had never been afraid of large animals, only of spiders, caterpillars and frogs – she noticed that one of its eyes was covered in an opaque film and it struck her that it must be an old horse and that the layer of hoar frost was in fact no more than a sign of age. It was attached by the shortest of ropes, really a long rope but mostly tied round the stake, and its forelegs were bound together with thick twine. It too was a prisoner, but she felt greater pity for it than for the paltry creatures in the cages. There was something human about its remaining eye – though it couldn’t be wisdom. Maybe it was sorrow or anxiety; maybe just pain or exhaustion. Exhaustion most likely.

  Rummaging in her handbag she found some sweets and the horse nuzzled them wearily from her palm with its grey lips while gazing at her motionlessly with its one eye. She placed her hand on its mane and stayed at its side, feeling now the pulse of the large creature and hearing its breath, while its scent enveloped her. She suddenly felt something akin to tenderness or even love, or at least warm, comforting friendship. ‘You lovely beast,’ she murmured, ‘my little brother, you silly old horse,’ and the horse’s breathing seemed to slow down and a tremor ran through its enormous body.

  Then the doors of the strange hangar opened in front of her and out stepped two men in blue-and-white striped overalls.

  ‘He’s been getting friendly, the old so-and-so,’ said one of them.

  She had to step back several paces and she observed how the men unwound the rope from the raw timber post and dragged the horse towards the open doorway.

  She wanted to shout something after them but at that moment the horse stopped, braced itself and began to neigh.

  ‘Come on, you stubborn old bastard,’ they yelled and the horse stood, nailed to the spot, tossing its old silvery head and neighing. One of the fellows turned towards her and said in a friendly voice, ‘The beast has caught the scent of blood. That’s put it off!’

  And then suddenly she realized what the two men were and that she ought to do something to save the horse, though she knew she could do nothing.

  All she could do was leave and that’s what she ought to do. At least she wouldn’t witness what was going to happen. But she couldn’t budge from the raw timber post and she stared numbly as the men lowered a pulley from the roof of the hangar, threw a rope over the pulley wheel, made a noose with the other end and put it round the horse’s neck. And she watched rigidly as the men started to pull with all their might, while the horse also strained its every muscle, all its veins standing out. And then she saw the horse gradually rear on its hind legs – in ghastly human fashion, pulled by the terrible rope, she saw its hooves first pound the earth in terror and then just thrash the air, heard the roar of the creature, the despairing roar of a horse, its cry of anguish, its vain entreaties, a roar not of foreboding but of certainty. And she watched the horse as with strange, unnatural leaps it drew nearer to the hangar’s gaping maw. Have pity! Oh, God! At least let them close the doors. And indeed at that very moment the doors closed behind the two men and the condemned beast and she waited, although she didn’t know what for, and then it came: not a cry, not a roar, but a thud, the dull, resounding thud of a heavy body falling on to a stone floor. So that was the end. Suddenly she could no longer feel her own body. She drifted in the air, before sinking on to the soft, sandy soil. But she still held on limply to the wooden post, her hands above her head, and pressed her lips to the rough, hard bark. She dug her teeth into the bark until she tasted the bitterness of the wood beneath.

  And the thud swelled and spread out, resounding within her until it drowned out everything that was and everything that would be; she was sure the sound would never cease, because it was not the sort of sound made by things but a sound that came out of the void, from between slightly closed doors: it was the voice of the darkness into which all defenceless creatures are dragged.

  Then she heard the creak of the hangar doors again and looked up in a sort of vain and macabre hope, but all she saw were the two men in the blue-and-white overalls, each pulling a small cart on which lay a metal washtub covered by a bloody canvas. So she stood up and even though she still could not feel her own body she set off with strange, unnatural leaps into the void in front of her.

  3

  Towards evening it started to cloud over again and the sun disappeared behind a smoky screen. The soldiers dropped her off as soon as they reached the city limits and shouted something at her in parting. That morning she had never suspected she would be back so early, while it was still fully light, or in such a frame of mind. Where shall I go now? I must go and find someone. I could go to a film – but go to the cinema on my own? Anyway I have to eat something. I’ll have something to eat and then I’ll call Markéta, but what will I talk to her about? A squalid eating place in a side street. Sit at a table on my own? But I’m hardly going to go home and sit looking at the pair of them.

  She sits at a bare table. The grubby waiter arrives carrying mugs of beer, and a bowl of tripe soup for her. Her fingers tremble slightly. I’m really hungry. At least I’m eating and I’m able to eat, even if it’s vile, disgusting meat.

  She wants to think about something, about some book or film at least, instead of about the man in the suede jacket, the township of little wooden cages, the stench … And here it is standing in front of her with its grey coat and lank mane. It’s no longer tied up but grazing freely, tossing its one-eyed head, and the meadow stretches from horizon to horizon and the horizon is dark, like a line run through the night. A corpse-faced man stares at her from the next table.

  ‘Are you a student?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Come and sit over here, then.’

  ‘I’ve got a bowl of soup here.’ And she doesn’t feel like sitting next to the man, even though it makes no difference in the end. He looks a bit like Mum’s old slob. I expect that’s the way they lounge about. Poor Mum, when he touches her afterwards with those yellow talons of his.

  ‘It looks as though you’re a student after all.’ His voice is high-pitched, almost effeminate. ‘You don’t want to sit with a man.’ But I expect Mum is miserable about being left on her own. She needs more than just me. She misses love. So that’s what that love is, the divine love they croon about. She took her soup and moved to the man’s table.

  ‘Are you a sales girl?’

  ‘No!’<
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  ‘I thought so. You’re a student.’

  ‘And what business is it of yours?’ she snaps. If she were a student … but what difference does it make. What difference does it make what I am, what we happen to be at this moment – and she hears the echoing thud; it comes out of nowhere and no one seems to hear it – when we know what we will be one day.

  ‘I could have gone to college too. Only they didn’t send me there. I had to become a carter. And I can’t stand those smart alecs,’ he trilled. ‘They’re always showing off. What would they be without us? You’re a secretary, then?’

  ‘I’m nothing,’ she says and it was true: nothing sipping tripe soup. But what will I be? Or will I stay being nothing until the moment when … no, I won’t think about it.

  ‘But we had some fun with them last year on Petříin Hill. We lit them up with rockets and pulled them out of the bushes.’

  ‘What were they doing?’

  ‘What were they doing? What were they doing …’ and suddenly she remembers the little room almost up in the sky with the rocking chair and the window that starts at neck level and ends at the height of your forehead, and the enormous ball of blue twine whose free end is always swaying to and fro. She tries to remember when she was last up there and finds it impossible to believe that moment in the distant past had been that very morning.

  ‘They’d already elected a prime minister,’ the man piped up.

  ‘They had it all worked out, the whole government and the central committee.’

  ‘Did you beat them up?’

  ‘Hold on, hold on,’ he rebuked her. ‘I’m asking the questions here.’ Then he said, ‘If my son went to college, he wouldn’t bugger about like that lot. You ought to see what they get up to in those student halls. They take some tart or other …’

  She had finished her soup at last. I must leave, get up and go somewhere, but where? I’ll go home, but where … Or I’ll go to his place. He fancies me a bit, or he used to. Except we’ve split up. I can’t go and see him …

  ‘You’re a hairdresser, that’s what you are! If you fancy making a bit on the side,’ the man suddenly said in his high effeminate voice; his eyes were almost popping out of his head and he spoke rapidly. ‘I don’t live far from here and it wouldn’t be anything – you’d only have to take off your skirt … Just watch,’ he burst out, ‘just you watch, Miss!’ He went over to the cracked counter and put a five-crown coin down on the sheet of glass covering the wafers and chocolate biscuits.

  ‘Don’t worry about him,’ the barman said to her. ‘He’s a bit of a, you know, cripple. He can’t, whatsnames you see,’ and he dashed here and there between the tables.

  Afterwards, as she climbs the steps to the student residence and passes the scarred corner of the building and the badly-painted railing, that familiar sense of hope starts to come back. He might still love her, even if she doesn’t know what it means any more, love. But maybe he is expecting me and when I arrive he’ll say, What have you been doing the whole week? I’m glad you’re here. I’m not even sure why I’m here. It’s just that I was lying there with my head in the sand and it just occurred to me that you will be kind to me, for a little while at least, even though you don’t love me, and that you’ll pay attention to me even when I don’t say anything. In the passage there are two lit gas burners and a black student in white plimsolls and purple boxer shorts, and from behind a closed door the sound of a jazz trumpet.

  ‘So you’ve come, then? You’ve seen sense, after all!’ The cocksure star of the parallel bars in a tracksuit that had shrunk slightly in the shoulders. ‘It was daft to sulk like that. You know how things are nowadays. You mustn’t take it that way …’

  The bottom half of the windows pasted over with photos, a jumble of discarded textbooks and study materials, sporting trophies all over the walls, a carved ox horn, and on a shelf a glass box painted with flowers and birds that’s used as an ashtray.

  ‘You’re such a little girl still, Katka. You’re always thinking about things you shouldn’t, even when they’re nothing to do with you.’

  ‘But it is do with me when you’re going out with someone else.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. All that matters is what there is between the two of us. Nothing else.’

  And silence. The jazz trumpet from the passage. On the other side of the door the black student whistles a monotonous melody, outside the window it is evening. They chased them all over Petřín Hill, but I’m not a student, I won’t build bridges, I won’t reel off the names of kings or dynasties or study nine symphonies and it makes no difference, no difference at all. My kingdoms are white and pink cards in a hall with pale blue light and brushing off my skirt every single day at four-thirty. I’ll brush off my skirt tomorrow and live in hope of a glimmer of merciful consideration if he happens to turn up. I’ll wait outside the gate looking here and there and just go on waiting patiently, assenting now and then to clumsy minor indignities and to major deceptions like your current one, and go on waiting and waiting and waiting until the day when the two men in blue-and-white stripes arrive and toss a rope over and start to pull … No, I don’t want to think about it, about what is going to come, what has to come, I just don’t want to think about it.

  ‘This is the third day here on my own already,’ he said. ‘After we’ve waited so long for it you had to go and sulk. Have you had something to eat?’

  He’s got some wine in the cupboard – the cheapest kind, naturally – and yesterday he came second in the rings in the assessment competition.

  ‘It’s time I was going.’

  However she sits on the very dirty bed, the other bed is made and as level as a coffin. I’ll go over and sit on it and just watch you. I don’t feel like staying here, but where am I to go? And so she drinks some wine, cheap and sharp, that she doesn’t like at all and doesn’t even bring much relief, just a slight drowsiness and a gradual blurring of the day and the days. Now you can talk about what you like now you can touch me and kiss me.

  ‘Why did you do it? Why did you run away?’

  ‘You know why.’

  ‘You’re like a little kid, Katka. What is it you’re after?’

  He goes and switches off the light. We’re trapped in the dark like the mink, outside the window the lights from other windows. Now I see why they pasted over the bottom of the windowpanes. And a jazz trumpet from the other side of the wall.

  ‘I’ll switch on the radio so they won’t hear …’

  ‘Won’t hear what?’

  ‘You are daft, Katka. Or do you just put it on?’

  He carries her easily and now they lie side by side, the radio is playing, someone is walking along the passage; it’s bound to be the black guy in the purple boxer shorts. The jazz trumpet has fallen silent. If only it were quiet I would hear your breathing. God, I’m here next to you, what am I doing here? But I had to go somewhere, I didn’t want to stay on my own. That’s why I’m here, for one night at least. What choice did I have for tonight? And you’ll indulge me for a little while, for this evening and this night. We’ve been lovers for one night. Say something at least. Don’t stay silent – I feel uneasy with this strange music in a strange bed. And they lie here side by side. He kisses her, You’re really pretty, little girl, come closer to me. – I’d like to see your face. – Come closer to me, okay? -Say you love me. – You’re daft to ask me like that.- I’m daft to have come. – No, just daft to ask me like that.

  But I do really love you and I’d tell you if you were to say it, but you don’t say anything, just let your hands wander all over my body and nothing, nothing – why don’t you take off your skirt? – but I’m glad, you lift me out of this day, you lift me up to you, maybe that feeling of happiness will come after all, so kiss me: I want to so much, I want to, my darling.

  And so now they lie side by side half naked. It is stifling with such a low ceiling and the windows closed. He explores her body, pleased that she came by. The music has given way to a
voice that intones gloomily … qui est aux deux! Que ton nom soit sanctifié … her eyes are half closed and she is waiting for that moment, intent on it, and her eyes staring inwards watch every movement of her heart and pulse and suddenly from out of the depths of the night there comes the sound of a hollow thud and the deafening roar of doors opening, and the two of them are already waiting, arms open, smiling; the ropes rise upwards, the nooses swaying delightfully; how beautiful you are, your body’s like silk, what for, for loving, what for, and the two of them are already swaggering over to her, show me your head, your throat is all white even in the dark, what for, for loving, silence, the priest has finished his prayers – silence and the sound of an organ.

  ‘You’re crying, Katka. What for?’

  They are gone. Outside the window lighted windows. You lie at my side wearily the way all lovers lie, that’s the way it is, and they leave and are lost, and they will return, the two stripy guys, and they’ll hang around and one day they’ll get to me too and the rope will start to chafe against my throat, and I’m rising upwards, for ever and for good, and you do nothing to hold me back, nobody holds me back, no one and nothing, and so the doors will close for ever, I know now, now I’ve realized it. Everything is clear to me.

  ‘You’re daft, Kateřina, you’ll like it next time.’

  4

  There is total darkness and silence. The two of them are at home asleep – if Mum were to wake up, I expect we’d both have a cry, but what’s the point, she’s got her own … The same old homecoming, how many homecomings like this. So she doesn’t even open the door but climbs the narrow winding staircase. The roof slopes down and the window is small and high and there is nothing here but childhood junk and a tin washbasin to bring water from the passage, and a cupboard, an ironing board with a hole burnt in the cover, a rocking chair and a great big ball of blue twine, not of hemp, let alone paper, but of some synthetic material that is much stronger than the strongest natural material, twine for tying up parcels of old rags and battered suitcases, as well as for hanging washing and those in despair.