/ B A R A D L A C AV E

BARADLA CAVE
eva švankmajerová

translated from the Czech

by Gwendolyn Albert

illustrated by the author

and Jan ·vankmajer

twisted spoon press

prague • 2000
 Copyright © Eva ·vankmajerová, 2000
English translation copyright © Gwendolyn Albert, 2000
Illustrations copyright © Jan ·vankmajer; Eva ·vankmajerová, 2000
Copyright © Twisted Spoon Press, 2000

All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be

used or reproduced in any form, except in the context of reviews,
without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 80-902171-7-6
/2
MILADA

In Optimistic Cave there are nine such regions. The largest, mea-
sured by corridor length, is forty kilometers long, the smallest only
two. Each region represents one phase of discovery of subterranean
secrets, and in each the speleologists ran a camp, where they lived
during their explorations. They fixed it up for themselves and those
who followed so that one could sleep there, and they left behind
everything necessary for cooking.
Maybe it’s strange, but besides the kitchen there is no geo-
graphical room there; however, I have a big map. I came upon it
one day because they didn’t want it in the office. They probably
would have thrown it away, but I took precedence over the waste-
basket, and the map is now mine. It attracts the attention of everyone
who comes to visit me. “Hang on, let me look at it, where is . . .
here I was reading . . .” say the visitors, bringing their eyes closer
to the mixture of colors and forms, of lines and parallels, from which
I am created. They are surprised at what I have here and there, some
of them especially don’t understand why I dye my beautiful, wavy,
dark blonde hair black, a totally dark color. But I’ll explain that later.
Overall, they’re all willing to compare notes from their reading on
the phenomenon of girls and to supplement their reading topo-
graphically. I should be prepared to provide my own instruction.
But who wants to be instructed about something else? I am a world
they may gaze at daily. Once I enjoyed a building situated next to
a wall, a very icy wall, on which there might have been an actual
layer of ice. One leg covered with a real down comforter, stuffed to
bursting with the feathers of plucked birds, and the other on that ice.
All the continents and parallels flowed through my circulatory
system, all the seas and oceans flowed along the shipping lanes of my
(at that time) passionate heart. All I had to do was fall asleep with
closed eyes, and then to take a glance from each evening and engrave

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 on my memory the names and self-consciousness of those farthest
away. Human settlements and the flow of rivers brought me to a
gigantic desert and mountains. Much has been said about the sup-
posed beauty of the green lowlands around the Elbe, straight as a
ruler, and the real blueness somewhere in the hills. About the
impenetrable paths. The glow of the wrapped-up Orient.
But I didn’t stay like that too long; I needed to grow, and in
order to do this I had to protect myself from my mother. I had to
approach this strategically from the very beginning of my existence.
Getting up out of a warm sleeping bag is one of the most unpleasant
sensations there is. From warmth and dryness I change into my damp
clothes. All around is the impenetrable darkness, which usually gets
on the nerves of anyone who hasn’t had enough experience in caves.
The darkness, however, was soon pierced with the rays of light from
the lamps of those who raised me, or rather those who didn’t beat
me to death as I was growing. They let me grow with precision.
The lamps light up the clusters of plaster crystals decorating the
walls and the small nooks.
There is an infinite range of candidates for the most various
professions, but who would want to be a mere map? Even if there
is a shortage of maps in the world. Nature was the model for my
forms, in the very best sense of the word.
He walked ahead into the residential cave, which was decorated
with spectacular stones and the glittering fragments of a mess. He
was in a hurry.
“Do you have the papers with you?”
“They’re in my briefcase.”
“Good, we have to take care of it today, no matter what. There’s
no time to waste.”
“What happened?”
“I couldn’t say on the phone, The Map doesn’t know if she’s
been bugged, and by whom. But I tried to suggest something to

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her. I thought she would understand. The dance, by all the goats!”
Frau Ludmila was almost screeching. He was upset, it was hard for
him to control his voice. This new stepfather appeared a bit ner-
vous. Ludmila tried to squeeze through the door face forward, but
such an operation was better executed sideways. “Here’s your new
Daddy, Milada,” she roared. Rather, he grabbed Milada by the collar
of her nightgown and dragged her out into the great hall — Frau
Mother simply couldn’t fit into the children’s room. They sat the
girl down on the couch, for the time being not threatening her or
even demanding anything. There was an air of exhaustion between
them. This stepfather was very principled, he would never allow a
Czech woman to get a hold of liquor or cigarettes. In his opinion,
females should not work too much, nothing of the sort. Later he
asked Milada to call him “Daddy.” Dear Daddy, she thought. You
could have moved to the attic like any other poor old guy . . . the
peace and quiet of old age . . . leaving your work . . . not bothering
people . . . You will be our quiet companion. Mommy is not unrea-
sonably nice and can go into some of the corridors. Converse a little,
protect them from bad influences. The world from which she came.
This is not possible, thought the stepfather. This Map, Milada,
was now to be his daughter. This couldn’t be his task, to act as the
patron of such an accidented, obstinate, grown-up child. To punish
her. Pay for her driving lessons. Teach her about materialism. The
history of the corridors, some of them so dark as to be black, but
most of them white and translucent. They create bands, stars,
sparkling mosaics. The wide corridor full of white crystals is there-
fore called The Milky Way. It rises up at the border of another local
region, called Anaconda, at the maze of narrow, canal-like corri-
dors, inside of which there is only enough space for an explorer to
crawl. Only an exceptionally slim person can fit in many of the places
there . . .
Milada’s stepfather had been underweight his whole life. The

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 corridors were not short; in some it was damp, wet, or there were
the actual sources of rivers, which we anxiously locate on The Map
as they ooze by somewhere overhead. But we’re very lucky, because
the border stones hold all of this bounty in their embrace, beyond
the scope of our responsibility.
Time no time, to exist for life, for anything. By now we have
heard all sorts of biased news, all of it certainly invented. About the
dances they smashed from underground in order to flood and drown
the subterranean camps. About evacuated villages. The broken-down
nuthouses, dilapidated housing estates, people drowning in the
middle of the night, and the countless times one could have gone
around the Chuchle racetrack against the flow. On the right musical
hammers are hidden, from the left the roofs of cars or construction
sites stick up. Lone trees braving the current, which dammed up
the roads, broke down fences and walls, buried fields and gardens
in a welter of sludge. We could show on The Map how the cloud
systems connected with the subterranean systems and contributed
tons of water to the damage. And a dirty line was left on more than
one house at window level. On the ground floor level the festivities
would carry away mud from the forest to the down comforters, and
the fences and columns on construction sites would buckle to the
ground. The production cooperative Elko has a machine shop right
on the grounds of the raj enterprise (the state-run restaurants and
canteens), which would have swamped it with lathes up to a height
of two meters. The grinders are covered with a layer of oily sediment,
which from all indications fell on the precisely honed surfaces of the
machines. I touch a lathe-bed, and instead of the smooth surface of
a sheet I feel a considerably damaged material. Even the locker for
the electrical equipment is now full of mud. For me, vacation usu-
ally meant carrying pails full of mud, and anxiously eyeing the Maps
of rust on the machines. The disaster came from the chasms between
the trees. On the other side the âapek Brothers Museum is sadly

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quiet; clearly, someone was afraid that his fish would swim away. In
Beroun the worst is over at the bus station. Vehicles are being used
for transportation again, instead of the rowboats from the devastated
gardens. The tennis courts were gathered together into one red
mound on the riverbank. We’ve gone more than one hundred kilo-
meters. The dance has not exactly defeated us.
“I would’ve been frightened to death,” said Mother, and coquet-
tishly hiked up her nightgown so as to show her shaking thighs and
beyond.
“You’ve been reading a lot today,” she added.
“But you haven’t read enough, otherwise we wouldn’t be sitting
in this hole right now,” yapped Milada, machine gun-style.
“Everyone here has enough to eat,” growled Ludmila and,
smoothing her skirt, tried to proudly walk through the doorway.
She knocked into the opening head-on and then, with a little more
composure, squeezed through sideways. The skinny stepfather
meekly followed her.
“Good night, Daddy,” squeaked Milada, just as unbearably as
any other brat.
Times change. Gone are the days when inside his own fortress a
fearless squire could grow herbs to ward off evil, to protect against
scenes or iron maidens, to burst open chains manacles and fetters . . .
Several years ago one could observe a definite rejuvenation, even
in the depths of Baradla, where winter lasts three-quarters of the
year and the earth is frozen through to a depth of several meters
and never thaws. This rejuvenation was due to the construction of
a transportation system. The orderly, free-flowing supply of mate-
rials, which is especially important in the burrows (as if it weren’t
important elsewhere!) was arranged for one hundred eighty drivers
at the so-called Mound of Love, not far from a highway development
with little houses set up, where apparently one could sometimes
even live with families. When the construction was completed the

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 drivers preferred to move most of their relatives to Yakutsk.
At first it seemed that a great and important city was soon likely
to expand; then they slacked off on the work. But the tracks were laid
shortly beforehand, with enormous effort, in a rush, and then torn
up and carted away. Yet nothing was forgotten, because new inhab-
itants turned up, geologists and geometers, and they had to learn
everything from someone and remember it. Thus the number of
inhabitants sharply increased — suddenly there were ten times as
many. It’s not surprising that the local populations all but call them-
selves the capital, after all, each is as big as Bohemia and Moravia
combined, but officially no such title as “capital” will ever be given
to anyone. As far as looks are concerned, they’ve got a long way to
go before it’s a city. The inhabitants must be content with more
modest conditions. The holes are overcrowded and stacked one on
top of another. They are called the “little towers” under the Mound
of Love. It couldn’t be helped; all the new people meant new work
for Frau Ludmila and a new stepfather for Milada, who stuck to her
like glue. The other female inhabitants, even though they had been
protected from the outside world for almost the whole of their exis-
tence, looked like worn-out peasant women, and almost all of them
were without teeth. They never went to the dentist, the city was too
far away, and actually there wasn’t any real city, that is, not any
properly completed city. And no dentist would set up practice in a
cave, anyone can guess that. Besides, there’s that law about dentists
now, where they’re not allowed to practice their profession inde-
pendently. And there are many of them. All of this causes one’s
appearance to suffer; it just makes for a breeding-ground of germs
poorly masticated food and spoiled digestion.
Frau Ludmila, of course, did not have such backward problems.
She was still a fine, rather well-built female. She too lacked a tooth
here and there, naturally, but everyone was always glad to admire
her smile.

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 The big restaurant area was cheerfully decorated with flowers
and ribbons, and when Frau Ludmila walked in it was actually over-
crowded. Everyone jumped up to congratulate her or call out “This
way, please,” leading her underneath a bell made out of flowers. The
dogs are at your heels and they’ll hunt you to death and if you don’t get rid
of them soon, you never will. She used to think, pouring herself.
Everything about her is overwhelming and overdone, her daughter
said to herself. Ludmila stood on her feet for hours and each shoe
pinched too tight for her, even her heart. Sometimes she ate some-
thing and didn’t even realize it. The first thing that bothered Milada
about her mother’s marriage was that the guy wasn’t worth much,
he was lazy: he either had schizophrenia or permanent leukemia.
He behaved like a former director. She was absolutely certain that
she must do everything in her power not to come into contact with
him; she realized that to protect her own mental health, her new
patron must not become the central problem of her life.
The rail line at the Nymburk train station is like a tree whose
trunk has been uprooted, but which branches out and extends to
God knows where. The first railway here was built when Egypt was
part of the Ottoman Empire and someone, they say, was ruling in
Nymburk. In later centuries some other people attained ever greater
influence there, and their enemies tried to foil their plan, when they
were precisely the ones who needed to shorten the lengthy journey
home. It was still possible to send goods by water, because the city
is intersected by the famous river Elbe; they were probably sent by
sailboat and then in caravans across the sandy plains populated by
Polabians, people of the Elbe. Transportation there is slow, tedious,
complicated, and therefore also expensive. This is the reason Milada’s
stepfather offered to repair the rail line to Nymburk. After long
negotiations, and despite the resistance of his enemies, he won the
agreement. He entrusted the management of the repairs to Robert
Stephenson, son of George Stephenson, the inventor of the steam

95
 locomotive, and the owner of a locomotive factory in Newcastle.
They worked on the line for five years as compulsory labor under
the supervision of foremen. The line was supposed to facilitate the
cheap transport of vegetables from the fields and also guarantee
connection with other holes. The flat valley of the Elbe is not unfa-
vorable for a rail line, since the route follows the mighty river’s
banks for kilometers, cutting across its twists and turns. But misery
loves company, and the transport takes as long as if a transition to
using horses has in fact occurred and just needs to be formally
enacted. Probably no one will ever get rid of the confusion; the goods
are transferred to a river boat or are misappropriated, or with the
assistance of unskilled laborers are sent either to other destinations
or directly to the square to be burned when spoiled. Every ten
meters, if you are a stranger to those parts, you think you must be
in a new station. Travelers often suffer from a lack of water even
though, or rather because, the completed parts of the line were
immediately liquidated. So it is temporarily possible to travel through
this landscape at a speed of 2 meters every two days — of course, it
was hastily repaired under exceptionally difficult conditions. At this
point one could be highly critical in evaluating petty musings on
the futility of our transient existence, yet here one truly Great Lady
was destroyed. There is such a dearth of truly Great Ladies, espe-
cially in regions such as this, that we cannot ignore this tragedy
without at least batting an eyelash. I will not describe this elderly girl
as a corpulent person of immoderate size, even though it would not
be far from the truths afflicting this balding, quiet, (actually mute)
person. Each of our dear readers has been to a party by now. The
reader knows that these usually take place in apartments that have
been purged of those who are less bearable, and usually for some
worthwhile occasion. The best ones are in states that have some
sort of tradition and anniversaries to consecrate. Because a brand-
new nation has practically no reason to stop working from time to

96
time and indulge in something, or allow the young people to let off
a little steam.
The train cars practically didn’t move at all on the track that
misty evening. It wasn’t entirely clear if they were in fact individual
units connected by iron buttons to the snaky tail of a train that was
leaving. It seemed that these individual cubbyholes were abandoned
and probably destined for the Great Lady, who would introduce the
tradition of celebration. A celebration proper.
For years this woman seemed to be sewn together out of several
others, dyed, tastelessly painted goggling eyes colossal nostrils fleshy
lips, a woman who constantly carried around a stuffed swan, with
which she drove away the Polabian gadflies, an enemy, or the pol-
luted air. Any young or mentally incapacitated person might imagine
that life’s only charm is to chase two abandoned, albeit intelligent,
well-fed, well-groomed, and on the whole healthy people, preferably
of different sexes, into some lonely spot and lock them up in either
an abandoned apiary or a storage shed for canoes, or a disused train
car.
The time I am going to describe has already passed us by. In
those days the Great Lady was still one of those whose tight, shiny
blouse set the place on fire or ennobled the minds of every officer
whom she rubbed up against. She would return from her walks com-
pletely refreshed, the slut, or at least I hope so. The greasy sweat of
each one of the visits she conducted during the ride through the
city of Nymburk probably lingers on in the red-hot oven of the train
car. Each of the one hundred twenty travelers who was alone with
her during a single evening in the fog of the lowlands, traveled
through paradise. At twilight, when she left her clean little room
and headed in the direction of the tracks, she looked like any other
daydreamer taking an evening walk to gather a few herbs for tea,
or some weeds for the rabbits.
She walked. In that worthy region of early mornings, leaves raked

97
 into piles and roosters crowing, it’s not safe to let the rancor of one’s
fellow-citizens go without a scare. To gush, like mineral water
springing forth. To let fall a word, or two! In that flat region of blue
skies one is not allowed to leave beautiful pieces of underwear on the
bushes. Still, she walked. Impudent, she dared to sigh somehow.
She was unbending. Not slavishly worn out, maybe she’ll just lie
down on the stuffed crimson seat of car no.1 and bring a little bull
along with her. The entire flatland desired her death, exactly as if
she were sauntering around the cobblestoned hills of a ÎiÏkov hamlet
with the same attitude of freedom. Oh, God. But the trains in these
regions saunter along so lackadaisically that it is no problem at all
to visit them in the evening.
It’s true that some of the guys did their best to conduct the whole
affair on correct terms, or at least to give it the correct form, as is
required around the Elbe. They jabbered something about their
savings, about joint property and living beings. They portrayed
their plans as a kind of assistance in times of need. They intended,
or rather pretended they intended, to form a cooperative. They
ponderously pronounced all this gobbledygook before sticking their
good, hard dicks where they belonged. The Great Lady had no
thought of making money during these balmy evenings, not to
mention letting herself be locked up for life in some Polabian pantry.
Simply put, the upholstered, nearly empty train slowly drove past
here and there, and only the last remaining vestiges of fear that
people would talk prevented the fat housewives from throwing
stones at it, stones collected from their fertile gardens. From beneath
the gooseberries and the fuchsias. They continued to speak just as
saccharinely as ever on their front porches, their arms crossed over
their aproned bellies, below their bosoms. They spoke with ill will,
watching the rattling, illuminated train car with bloodthirsty point-
edness. The car could just up and leave, and inside of it, they sus-
pected, others, and not the best ones, were getting joy out of life.

98
When it happened from time to time that someone would step out
of the train, carrying luggage, either alone or in a crowd, he would
march in the direction of one of the housewives. They were regu-
larly informed in advance if such a person were arriving, and they
could all see in what direction his dealings would take and what it
would lead to. But the evening trips of the Great Lady were some-
thing completely different! Something aggressive, aimed directly at
the peacefully dozing factories and those parceled-out pieces of land,
sometimes full of labor, sometimes full of crops. It is difficult to
convince an envious, unfulfilled heart not to care. It doesn’t work.
Haven’t housewives been wasted at their stoves for all these cen-
turies? Haven’t they been robbed through the ages of everything
that even remotely resembles a truly lived life, didn’t they have every
right to feel the pangs of the cheated in those moments when they
saw the Great Lady start walking towards that passing snake, the
train with all its gleaming, glittering, golden windows?
And the men? They pretended to know very little about her. But
something twinkled in the corner of their eyes, as if no river flowed
through here at all. And anyone who ever saw the locomotive and
understood the meaning of change — and the strange thing is, it
was best understood only by certain people on this earth — felt his
heart beat faster. As soon as the Great Lady, proceeding on her
way, listened a while to those dusky moments; as soon as the young,
captive girls heard her clear footsteps; as soon as the bell tolled for
those who felt nothing; as soon as those who were indentured
stopped weaving their horrible tapestries; while the lady school-
teachers corrected gross errors; while the male schoolteachers packed
the coal into the cellars; while the rabbit got dandelions and it
became time to dry the poppy seeds: in such a hot age the clattering
of shoes, no matter how quiet, was a crime, a shameful audacity,
and a direct attack on the floodgates. The dangerous days all flowed
into this volcanic moment, as did the nights. Those who are capable

99
 of saying just about anything in order to steal some moments of
existence in this quiet horror we silently regard as they are just about
to mutilate the Lady, while pretending to be just hunting down a
trophy. At first she cried, she was already at the end. Then she got
used to it. What else? She had to. Whether she wanted to or not.
She had to.
They still talk about it in the Nymburk area to this day. They also
celebrate it, and in honor of the celebration the trains run slowly.
Everyone looks forward to this holiday.

At the very start of living together with his new family, com-
posed of Frau Ludmila and her, or Jóstaf’s daughter, Milada,
Stepfather made a big mistake. He went to great lengths to satisfy
all of their frivolous, conflicting wishes and needs. His family grew
used to his being an office of sorts where they were to apply for the
fulfillment of all their needs and aspirations, an office that was
required to dedicate itself entirely to their fulfillment, and to like it
no matter what. Sometimes he hid under the bed or in some other
crevice, maybe between boards, and listened, barely breathing, to
what both ladies said about him. In general he was usually scared
completely out of his wits. It was true that the whole affair of
repairing the Nymburk rail line had become somewhat complicated
and protracted, but otherwise what both of the women had to say
about him was simply not true. And how they threatened him! At
times it seemed that their talk had nothing to do with him; reason
alone could not explain why they devised such horrifying schemes
for him, he who always did his best to help them, or at least somehow
please them. But one must either adapt or die, so Stepfather grew
to like it under the bed. He liked all of the stories the ladies told
about him, now in a whisper, now out loud, which somehow moti-
vated them to perpetrate even greater, more horrible torments upon
him. Stepfather lay there, quiet as a mouse, and realized that he

100
wasn’t all that afraid of them; he didn’t even believe them capable
of really carrying out their threats, even though by now it was
completely clear to him that starting up a life with these two furies
signaled his approaching demise. Living on that stony ground,
without enough air in the cave and no view, was already too much.
He was protected from above by the mattresses, but the frightening
molecules of both ladies were all over these as well. Stepfather began
to waste away. It didn’t get him anywhere. The truth is, the ladies
gave him very little food in his bowl and awful things to drink. Focal
points of tension are found today throughout the world, and the
bed under which Stepfather hid remained a corner of danger. From
a quantitative perspective he felt overpowered whenever he looked
out from under the bed. But we should realize that if Stepfather
stayed in the same situation for several months, if not years, then
what a difficult test it was for him. If it was a test at all, if it was not
simply a horrible punishment. And what for? Because of a railway
station that doesn’t work? Or the destruction of the Great Lady?
Stepfather had not seen his friends for a long time, he hadn’t
gone to visit them even though he always had a good time with
some of them. He would rather sit in a comfortable chair or climb
over the picket fence. When he was young he had conversed with
the neighbors and also with one married architect. He even remem-
bered how he had fumbled for their doorbell once. Looking in vain
for a button to push. He had seen a shiny brass rounded thing, but
that couldn’t have been the bell. Was he even in the right place?
After all, instead of a concrete wall as a fence there were sheets of
smoke, with old bars in between them for decoration. But then —
his friends were there. They stood before him, a little heavier than
before, but in brand-new jeans. The lawn was a carpet of perfect
green. There were two cars in the garage, and marble in the foyer
through which I walked, now in house slippers, to a room with
armchairs stately as ships marshaled around a fireplace in which

101
 birch logs were neatly stacked. There were enchanting bottles of
alcohol along two walls and three lonely books in expensive bind-
ings. They jabbered on about tv programs, dropping words here and
there about what to acquire where, what was in fashion, who this or
that singer was going out with, someone whose name I had never
even heard before. They had subordinated their life to objects; a
concrete wall divided them from their neighbors. They were com-
pletely closed up in their own world.
At other times, he felt completely different, such as when
climbing a gradual slope full of modern little villas in Moravian
Slovakia. He noticed that each one had a vineyard and the people
who worked on it then went to relax in the wine cellar, calling to
their neighbors for help across the fence so they would come for
at least one glass. He observed how modernity is connected with
tradition and everyday life there, which makes it easier and more
pleasant, and only every so often did a rodent wink at him. How
big rats are today! Frail and delicate, Stepfather was always afraid,
as if he thought something might suddenly happen to him there.
Sometimes his childhood girlfriends invited him over too, hoping
that he would so fall in love with at least one of them that he would
pamper her. But he was interested in all girls. They all reminded
him of some sort of plant, moist, full of holes, dependent on insects
for its existence. Only the calm, swollen Frau Ludmila seemed like
a safe harbor into which he could sail and be sweetly cradled. Only
she seemed secure and warm to him, like a heavy duvet beneath
which he rested, well-tended and safe from the world. This lady
seemed not to have any warlike tendencies, nor any tendencies to
catty craftiness like those snaky foreign girls did. And in a way he
wasn’t incorrect. He was now cut off from the world by the pow-
erful body sitting or lying above him, insulating him against
inclement weather. A problem developed when the lady tried to get
at him, or grabbed at him; of course she couldn’t fit under her own

102
bed, so the complication usually was reduced to a stick that she used
to ferret him out, poking and prodding him. Luckily that little frog
map Milada was afraid to go under the bed because of sewer-rats,
so she couldn’t use her glibness against him. Now and then he smiled
at them, as if he were immeasurably amused by his situation, even
though an unpleasant feeling, bordering on anxiety, never left him.
He basically lacked nothing, maybe just a little light, which was truly
sporadic under the bed, or a more varied diet. Sometimes he
regretted his inclination to trust his wife, who had driven him into
this position; sometimes he was moved to remember all of the dif-
ferent possibilities of being which had passed him by, never to return,
and which he could not master, because nothing came his way under
the bed. He didn’t want to run away from Ludmila or otherwise
betray her. He just mumbled something to himself about how he
had imagined married life to be a little more lively than this. He was
always touched to realize that the bed above his head was occupied,
that the way it moved and squeaked meant that they were guarding
him, protecting him somehow. But then again, he told himself that
he wasn’t an ass and he didn’t have to put up with this, if he could
just quickly creep out, slip away and run off like an athlete. The
lady was especially occupied in certain situations, at least by the
movements of her buttocks he judged her to be so busy with her
visitors that she wouldn’t be able to jump after him. But the only
problem was that beyond the doors of her room there was always a
line of petitioners, solicitors, people who wanted something, and it
was always a long one. It seemed improbable to him that he could
explain to all those bored, waiting people that he had to get into a
hole which would be too narrow for her. It didn’t seem logical that
those people would grasp such a concept right away. They all looked
slightly red-faced, stupid, and they usually held a shiny, transparent
little balloon or some other sheath in their hands; if they were to toss
those beneath his feet he would certainly slip and fall.

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 This is how Stepfather’s character was actually ruined. Against
his own wishes he had become a hypocrite, smiling from under the
bed. Sometimes he tried to imagine what would happen if he were
to crawl out and call “Sweetheart?” Would they understand that
they could talk about the ordinary things that had happened during
the day, about the abundance of their better traits? He reflected on
whether it could happen: a new, more worthwhile style of family
life that would be enriched by what one knows, by what a family
really is, intrinsically. But he could already hear the lady yelling at
him about how he doesn’t even know how to repair the Nymburk
train station and that she ruined her life when she tied herself to
such an inimitably undesirable individual, that he is a husband who’s
no longer a human being, that he’s merely a consumer and user of
her things, that he’s surrounded himself with the hoe, the chair, the
beer jug, the television, the drinking glass and shoe.
They brought him tea and cookies. He drank and ate ravenously,
at the same time sorry that one of them had not yet been run over
by a tram. Maybe, he told himself, if he fled right at this moment,
they would say that they had been living with a mere criminal who
was only interested in their cookies. Women are illogical, they have
to be overwhelmed from time to time with an act of generosity.
When they took the dishes away, they told one another how odd
his gluttony was when he hardly ever moved and did no work at all.
One evening the unbelievable happened. Someone called him
on the phone. They bent down under the bed to give him the news.
He was so confused that he actually crawled out from his lair and
took the receiver in order to carry on a conversation with another
person. Stepfather was visibly frightened, because he was told that
the ten hectare stony meadow, where just yesterday there had been
a colorful palette of tents, was now turned into a deserted space.
The buses were driving off. The inhabitants of Baradla walked
through the spaces where the tents had stood, observing with joy

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that not even a scrap of paper had been left behind. Stepfather was
then requested by telephone to surrender those papers.

THE TWINS

The most fantastic things in us lose and acquire meaning so easily

it’s frightening. The Twins were born without changing much in
Baradla’s life at all. What Baradla effected with her being was just
as obvious, or as futile, as the pale dawn of morning, or the noon-
time slaughter of an old goat in the country. Baradla long ago spliced
her moments by mixing something, like the slave who is a rich man
seeking painful boredom. Or was she looking for something in the
mud? Nobody knows.
Into the circle of her life beings fell in order that they might
more or less successfully start existing they were named The Twins.
Just like Marie, nobody much looked after these two children of
Jóstaf’s. The only thing missing from this affair was that heart-
rending ludicrousness which would have meant that, one day in
the future, Baradla could reproach herself for not doing everything
possible to find a way to make life more bearable. There was no
such way. No way whatsoever. The Twins, however, were malicious
slow inactive cantankerous covetous and insatiable. No one should
ever call children innocent. They possess so much human misery
that it can’t all fit inside them, and it stinks all around them,
obstructing the way and poisoning the air. These tiny, horrible
monsters are, on top of everything else, the clutches of a fate which
torments the parents to such extent it’s shameful (if there is a mod-
icum of decency in them), not just with the trifles that erupt the
moment the babe sticks its bloody little head out of the hole, but with
problems of a more fundamental nature. It’s not just that a grown
child will simply announce some rather basic resolutions to its dear

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 ones, such as, perhaps, that it is going to cart them away so that, in
their place, there will be room available for some different purpose.
But let’s also notice that, basically, the child is constantly making
an attempt on the mental health of the mother. Now and then the
child even unbalances the father. But, in an odd way, fathers are
psychologically better equipped in many cases. There is nothing
better in a person than courage, but it’s not courageous to let other
people into your belly, this is a different, protracted kind of guile,
which rarely ends otherwise than in bitter disappointment. All that
talk of sublime nobility is nothing but bullshit. It’s not really about
the horrible expenditures connected with the whole affair, only with
the vanity of the whole activity. It’s not really about the slavery of
these stupid years, when one has to vomit forth goodness with the
persistence of a machine gun; it’s just that I think it’s all for nothing,
Baradla often told herself, sinking deeper and deeper into the mud
so her fastidious young wouldn’t come after her. Of course it would
be easier to get rid of them, which would in no way be original,
unwarranted or strange. What was strange was that Baradla suffered
them even though she knew that she wouldn’t be free of them until
the decrepitude of old age, if she even made it that far.
She didn’t have bad memories of Jóstaf, she was actually glad
that he hadn’t changed anything in the children’s care, on which
she had already expended so much effort. Although afterwards, in
moments of desperation over her dim activity, she sincerely wished
he would take the children with him. Of course she could have just
abandoned them, like some women do. She wasn’t afraid of the
opinions against her that this would have provoked. In any event,
even the prevailing opinions weren’t worth much. Nor was she
stopped by fears of solitude. It caused her neither inner emptiness
nor tired sorrow. Their stupid defenselessness was probably the
reason she kept them — strange, dangerous, half-friendly and com-
pletely in need. Maybe she wasn’t capable of abandoning someone

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as long as they hadn’t completely pissed her off, or maybe there was
some other, possibly biological, reason.
Strangely, the presence of The Twins in Baradla’s life was
acknowledged by others with a sort of malicious joy, as if it were
one of her episodes of insanity or some other lapse. Perhaps it had
been expected of a girl, formerly so beautiful, that she would screw
her way around the globe. The general impression was that she had
been deprived of such a brilliant possibility by these little idiots. As
the moments passed, she kept herself from disclosing, especially to
the young, her intention to discover whether anything made sense,
and if so, what. Every so often she took a slow walk to prove to her-
self that there are moments of existence that, although we are living
through them, to remember would not destroy us. She used to look
at one particular swamp, so old and withered that everyone fled it
in a panic. They fled as if the plague had broken out. Maybe they
knew where they were rushing off to. Maybe. Some of them. The
swamp exhaled a fog of shame and hopelessness all the way down to
the exit road. A panic which Baradla could sense. As if almost
everyone had become a boat waiting near the floodgate, ready to
sail. At such moments she usually felt as if she had been painted
green, yellow, blue and red. The truth was that Baradla eternally
never had anything to wear, she had no shoes and no real profession
— all she did was swear that everyone stole from her and similar
nonsense. She grew fat, her voice coarsened, she was under the con-
stant impression that she was going to die soon. Not that she was
definitely ill with some specific disease, she wasn’t even tortured by
pangs of conscience over something she hadn’t done well. It was
just that her head was foggy from the swamp vapor. It filled her
lungs and bedewed her lashes with mold. At times she seemed on the
verge of asking The Twins for advice on how to be an enthusiastic
admirer of something or someone. But The Two didn’t know enthu-
siasm. It wasn’t in their nature — or had they been tinged with her

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 blues, her distrust? Maybe the children should have been taken away
from her, but because this would have suited her, considering that
she was quite sly, they preferred to leave the little darlings with her
— let her do what she liked with them. It occurred to her, on top
of everything else which was adventurous for her nature, to get them
a suitable little house where they could grow up in an uninhibited,
natural way. From that time forward, Baradla wore on her spine a
magical little house at the very center of the idyll. Such houses give
free rein to fantasy, and in one it is possible to mend or show out a
guest, and it would be a lie not to mention that one could also wake
up. He tore up the boards over the course of ten years so he could
put in a bathtub, and to this end he wanted to tear down the tree,
but then his heart took pity on it. One day, if he’s crawling, the
building cannot be dragged along anymore, but on other days he
sleeps there in his shell. She discussed the matter with her boyfriend,
and so she became a well-off relative with plenty of obligations. The
truth is that throughout her whole life she made less money than she
had to spend, and only thanks to the conscientious Polabian school-
teachers. Who wouldn’t have wanted? To be served courteously and
discreetly by women in a hotel room. But the business with her
aunts had been closed for almost thirty years, so that a bevy of
neglected brats were running around in Baradla. Children need to
have something to keep their hands busy all the time, because of
the other children. Objects calm them down and make them feel
important. But this approach is expensive, because the children
abandon their objects, they lose them and throw them away.
Sometimes she trembles all over and doesn’t feel well. Next door
to her in the hole lives a small family just starting out. They swal-
lowed the bait of their relatives’ promises, so they don’t work; their
relatives promised to take them on the farm as seasonal workers.
They will pull up the stones, because they miss a bit of greenery.
Two handsome sons sit on the body of a car. We’re on our way to

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school. But their mother’s eyes gleam, and because she is terribly
embarrassed, she doesn’t invite her visitors in. A little further on
there is a small house with a Slovak family, recognizable by the
Bratislava Castle. A man in a plastic bag came in right after me. The
search party works three meters apart from one another, but despite
this they keep an eye on one another their entire lives, they always
know exactly who finds what and when. They stop and the men
crawl into the hole to pick and choose. What’s interesting is that
they try to suppress their excitement. They don’t know if they have
found just rocks or a couple of million. They sit down. By now they
have gone very deep, having displaced thousands of tons of earth.
Therefore, Baradla stands over them on the slag heap. A little fur-
ther on, a group of Greeks is using a vacuum cleaner. The motor
which powers the whole monstrosity is acting up a little. He couldn’t
even get married!
They say the price of water has gone up again; over the past few
days the most rain fell at ChuráÀov (172 mm), in Prague and in
Liberec. In Hostivafi there are landslides. I’m not kidding; some-
times the Little House seemed like an Apparition to her. I don’t
know what went on there, maybe it just weighed on her. Don’t read
those fables! But other people don’t think it’s so foolish to read fairy
tales.
So. Baradla had The Twins and a house attached to her back.
But she also had her hobby; it wasn’t exactly photography, which is
why she couldn’t produce a camera. Apart from this she had a hobby,
and that’s the main thing, right? You wouldn’t call someone’s home
a grave, even if a dead person is lying in nearly every one of them.
So it wouldn’t be fair to insist that Baradla had a grave on her spine.
Even if you could see flowers. How can we tell when someone is
approaching their goal? Was Baradla appropriate for The Twins
with her attached house? Living beings will affirm to me how it was.
Is inconstancy really a bad quality? Are we really obligated to share

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 the pain of others? Is every cottager really a gardener tending a
grave? Is every person who leaves an irresponsible individual? Are
empty places dismal? What about the fact that you wring out of
yourself to force your Twins to play the piano?
Baradla stopped and crossed the street so she could look at the
shadow of her hump. The upper balconies. The facade. The dark,
narrow door. Many doors and lattices. When someone rang the bell,
she would rush to the door, with hope or without it. She welcomed
a Twin. She remembered The Other, who stayed either very close
or very far away. Coincidences are capable of causing confusion.
She turned around so that fate could surprise her to her face; she
hated it behind her back. Therefore she walked backwards for hours.
Sometimes she felt that something supernatural was driving her.
Turning over the clover. Marie ambition superego aggressiveness
fear.
Then she quietly jabbered away to herself. Fine then. Asshole.
Both sandstone and silicic acid were combined in her at a given
pressure. Geologic knowledge will help no one. She scrimped and
saved. The opal is either in the earth or it isn’t. Is existence like
roulette? Do they want it or not? Six pubs, two self-service super-
markets, two gas stations, a hospital and a prosperous café on the
main avenue. It was called Slavia. Did she have her own mailbox for
letters, or long hair? I think that even though she was no longer
twenty she was so ravishing that he fell in love with her at first sight.
He thought their relationship was awfully nice. They went out
together for about a year and experienced some beautiful moments.
Then winter started and we went skiing a lot. At the end of
November I found out that she had cheated on me at the end of the
summer vacation. I could have had as many girls as I wanted, but over
Christmas vacation I went off to sulk and she went hunting in one
hotel. On the fateful day I didn’t feel well, so I left early to go lie
down. Young people are always running around, that’s ok, it’s not

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always a matter of life and death. Thousands of them must be
thinking the same thing, it’s better that way. What is left uncom-
pleted, or is stopped, still remains an action. As if it were possible
to increase the discontent of the population! Luckily, the old pop-
ulation is being discreetly replaced with a new one. If the voices of
the heart or reason are heard, they are cruelly suppressed.
The hardworking, the greedy, and the starving carried away
windows, bricks, the roofing material — they took apart absolutely
everything. The coal supplies, everything disappeared. The electric
generators, transformers, and thirty brick-walled worker’s hostels
also disappeared. The remains of the modern ruins kept turning up.
The café was first thoroughly plundered and then dismantled, but
before that it was closed for half a year. Farmers from the outskirts
descended on the building like locusts and for half a year carried
off hundreds of thousands of bricks and everything else in their carts.
There were customers of the café among them, many unhappy at
being shut out. They used their very own shirts to carry off their
loot. Even the authorities wanted their share; they promptly sold
the blast furnaces for scrap. Each had originally cost $735,000. For
the both of them the thrifty authorities got — the amount has been
converted, so we can judge the profitability of the sale — $5,385. The
café was like a noisy bazaar. Some were selling, others were stealing,
many were digging up the pipes laid in the ground to cut them into
scrap. The café was not too lucrative, considering that the techni-
cians had not adopted the proper technology, but its facilities had
a value of several million. It’s not necessary to discuss the absurdity
of anything. But the local institutions must be criticized for not
even saving the inventory from the office!!! The looted café might
seem to have set a ransacking record, but other cafés have disap-
peared in a similar fashion — this all started at the end of the last
century. Where is the euphoria over the claim that if we were to
sell each customer one toothbrush, we would achieve returns? Years

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 ago operations had been kept above water by the salvaging of cus-
tomers. But every action has this characteristic: it will come to an
end, and often for the better.
One fine morning Frau Director canceled the contract for the
delivery of the consumers. And that was that. The Japanese were
the most affected. Twenty-six companies lost the total value of the
customers on whom they had already been working. Frau Ludmila’s
last marriage led to a wave of confusion and the disruption of the
institute. It caused her mood to change so that projects fell to Lurgi
at a value of 900 million marks and to Mannesmann at a value of 440
million marks. If only she hadn’t found this latest Stepfather, who
had ruined the city of Nymburk, which he had deprived of the Great
Lady! It was a shame that Jóstaf had waved his hand and carefully
closed the door behind him — otherwise the position of the lady
and her workplace would probably have turned out very differently!
The documents by now are vague and crumpled, they say there is
a danger of war and that the army must be further modernized. And
she has such a widespread clientele . . . But Stepfather dangerously
provokes her and through his treachery gradually moves even fur-
ther away from his hiding place. The situation is heating up. For
example, at the end of last year, in the context of the national trend
of raiding cafés, the waiters were inundated with lathes, from coal
mines to printing shops. The factory was dismantled according to
Stepfather’s plan, as if he feared the bed over his head would starve,
well, only that brat Milada could look after her there, since he was
supporting her now! The café could be preserved for future ser-
vice. One of the responsible employees — the accountant — wrote
73 letters to the highest authorities, but his efforts were only
rewarded by the arrival of cranes which took everything apart, even
the theater standing nearby. When would this crazy game end? The
adventurous housewife’s witnessing of the crash is certainly a small
bandaid! Her fierce desire for modernization has led to the creation

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 of a little plateau and a statue of the Vltava on the embankment!
Would such a rusty building be something extraordinary? Could
those affairless exhibitions of unfucked fatsos have any claim to a
real solution whatsoever? Just a year ago, as a result of the muddled
interpretations and the even more confused priorities of that madam,
there had still been the hope that the café would be preserved for
the usual dilapidation. But now we shouldn’t even be surprised!
It’s true that during the so-called salvage young people quickly
escaped into the city; some of them tried to relocate, to leave the
building. The authorities, on the other hand, transferred goods from
Chinese cities to the farmers. A mobile social group was created
from these outcasts. Now that the café has been torn apart, not even
the café-sitters have work, not to mention the staff. It’s all a sham-
bles. Everyone knows there are not enough aunts in Baradla, and
the mothers are all at work! Those who were mothers previously
cannot resume their duties, since they have forgotten them, and
since they are often bursting at the seams with the new generation
waiting for a position — as one’s start in life is officially termed —
in factories, educational institutions, nursery schools and, last but
not least, cafés. Although Ludmila allegedly provided 19 million
young people with redeployment in her boxes, in my view tens of
millions of citizens are now on record as being outlaws. According
to official statistics, and also according to my personal estimate,
there will be an increase of about 20 million new guys, while there
are only three girls here, the sisters — The Specter, Milada, and
The Twins. The rest of them have to make a living the best they can.
They can sell boiling water somewhere in the provinces. Elsewhere
they can steal or work on the black market. It’s fashionable to start
a gang of young people whom poverty has forced into desperation
and vice. They buy goods in one city and sell them for a higher
price someplace where they are in short supply. Distributors. They
offer old coins, hats, and of course also girls. Last year alone there

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were twenty-two thousand cases . . . At the same time, a number of
people were tried for economic theft and an undetermined number
for smuggling. Among the confiscated goods there were rare scarves,
shawls, shoes, buttons, nails, shoe polish, and crockery.
Since the multimillion-strong army of idlers has continued to
grow, it will be necessary to relocate millions of young people from
the cafés and eventually tear them down. I will not hide the fact that
the destruction of the buildings became an unbearable weight on
Ludmila’s shoulders and worsened the already poor situation with
Stepfather. But 40- and 50-year olds usually have no taste for work,
and the irony of fate is that they must, or they should, be lounging
around in restaurants. It is also tragic that hundreds of thousands of
them don’t want to maintain a dwelling and would like to spend the
night there, maybe just covered up with some newspapers and that
symbol of industrial progress, the plastic bag. They have become
foreigners in their own country, and it was all Stepfather’s fault!
And he said to himself:
“So I sit down on the couch and start conversing with the
grownups. After a moment I sense that little Rita has sat down next
to me. She presses herself to me rather conspicuously. I pretend not
to notice. Her little hand strokes my clothes. Then I feel that same
little hand affectionately stroking the colored feather in my cap.
Then it becomes more daring and fingers my dick. What do I have
it for? asks the Owner of the little hands. She leans over and whis-
pers I love you in my ear, and puts her little arms around my neck.
Something silky as the wing of a butterfly touches my face. A long-
suppressed desire tightens my throat and thrusts out my snaky head:
Why shouldn’t I fuck this sweet little creature? On the outside I am
laughing, since there are houses in front of us watching our tender
scene like the very personification of reproach: Why are you two
kissing? The tiny little fingers curl around the rabbit’s tail. Everyone
knows that children with Slavic and Nordic blood mingling in their

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 veins only know a few words of Czech, like ‘Grampa,’ and stuff like
that. As a childless person I didn’t know how to get close to children,
I wasn’t used to the sounds of Czech speech. But I soon got used to
cookies and that behavior of treating me like an adult and gaining
my trust. It was easy with me. I’m like an old-fashioned girl who
loves colored rags from which it is possible to manufacture loves. I
put together all of the unoccupied chairs and then, unnoticed, I lost
myself in a recess where I conducted an invisible orchestra with a
scrap of wood. Since that time (besides visiting the gym) they have
taken me only once a month for the obligatory two-hour walk
through the hospital garden. It’s not really a walking exercise or
running, I just hurry along when I see the natural fashion show.
Short and long skirts, with or without slits. Pants so tight they burst
at the seams, dyed T-shirts, musty woolen turtlenecks.”
Many people really do manage to dress well. But the young amaze
me. I hope youth will leave soon. I try to hate them less, to show
some forbearance for what they get up to. After that I hung my head
and Stepfather wanted to look at shoes. He would have done better
to look at the clouds. Two-thirds of the passers-by had dusty, dirty,
muddy shoes that hadn’t been repaired in a long time. People walk
with dirty feet. I have always said, thinks Stepfather, that people
who devote so much care to fine clothing should get themselves
some clean shoes. Above all, one can tell if one is wearing today’s
mud or yesterday’s. As everyone rushes for the bus. All it takes is
to go back to the washroom and use the shower. Shortly the shift
manager will fortunately find us and arrange immediate transport to
the ward, where after administering to us they will clean our boots
until we partially regain consciousness. The diagnosis will not be
difficult.
Disappointment in life can also be the result of overestimating
your own abilities. Only after having been cured do we realize that
it doesn’t matter. That I’ve been tormenting myself for nothing. I

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always worry that something is wrong with me, that I suffer, waste
away, and my élan for life, this went down the drain a long time
ago. I also don’t have any desire to take charge of a future in which
everything will fall apart, and that has led me to eccentricity, pes-
simism, and other negative qualities.

T H E H O S P I TA L

The Hospital is an old pilgrim who eats away approximately one

piece of every member’s body. She pays a high price for her mag-
nificent looks. She can’t survive more than 100 to 150 rounds.
Extracting poison apparently releases a firm material, upon which
my theory is based. We know it — it has disintegrated so many
times already right before the patients’ eyes.
The Twins accompanied her to the hospital. One waved her on
her way. “I don’t have a present for you,” it suddenly said, upset.
Then in a burst of inspiration it took off its tie and gave it to Baradla.
“For hanging yourself,” said the youngest Twin, a younger boy by
thirteen years. The whole way there the older Twin was enthusias-
tically telling her about the beauty of the Nuthouse. He explained
that it was the cleanest river in Europe, and he proudly pointed out
the streams of water rolling across the entryway. Later he suggested
that they sing “Dance, Dance, Twist and Turn.” And he himself
started up. Then Baradla signed a paper that she was undergoing
treatment voluntarily. She gave up her nail files, cuticle scissors and
pills. Then she went to the ward. In the common room a television
was flickering and at that moment they were showing “The Doll,”
which for some people is world-class stuff. Just like “The Accident”
or “The Little Soldier.” In summer the patients watched whatever
— sports, swimming, boxing, cycling — but for some of them the
greatest experience was the final of the soccer tournament. They

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