Catapult Read online

“Don’t tell lies, you’ve hardly known me two hours and you’ve slept away a hundred minutes of that—ch-ch-ch-ch—it’ll be wonderful—”

  “Ch-ch-ch-ch—with you on the warm green waves— ch-ch-chch—kissing you under a beach umbrella—”

  “It’ll be wonderful—”

  “Your moist hip lying on a raft ready for love-making—”

  “I want you, Jacek, so much—”

  “Stretched out in a glass-bottomed boat, a swollen red grape, well-smeared boys on the rocks, and the roar of the amphitheater—”

  “So much—Terribly much!—” Nada screamed, her arms around his neck, pick her up, she isn’t laughing anymore, and carry her the couple of steps.

  At the sound of a siren from the harbor, the sun on his face, Jacek slowly awoke and still half asleep he turned toward Nada, lightly placed her hand over his shoulder, and tenderly ran his hand over to the other one, that’s the way it’s done, and the tousled Nada wriggled, turned over, and finally sat up, she rubbed her eyes with her fists and then an enormous yawn, which is always contagious, Jacek too opened his mouth like a hippo.

  “But you’re still asleep,” laughed Nada, and she yawned again. “It doesn’t matter, I am too.” And she rapped Jacek across the knuckles.

  “Do you have anything against making love in the morning?” he quoted her with a grin.

  “OK, Jacek, I’ve already come to realize that you’re an athletic boy. But how about stretching a bit first? And then a cold shower!”

  She went to open the window, in the current of fresh air the two gymnasts stood opposite one another in front of the drafting table, “Follow my lead,” she commanded. Jacek made a few timid movements and stood with his arms modestly crossed on his chest.

  “I used to do exercises every day by the window, but then—”

  “Then they transferred the window on you!” Nada burst out as she did a remarkable toestand.

  “Lenka—she’s a girl I used to know, you see, she always made fun of me… And in my new apartment, a pre-fab, it would wake up the neighbors and their children…”

  “You, my boy, are so considerate, not to mention house-broken, and then there’s the way you put things—” Nada stated her opinions while doing push-ups, and Jacek, feverishly recalling his military exercises, stubbornly kept trying to keep up. Two people can get under a shower, Lenka is too modest, only cold water in the morning gives you that feeling of the world at your feet, and how many lost mornings have there been now without it…

  “What can I make for breakfast?” asked Jacek.

  “What do you eat for breakfast?” asked Nada.

  “Cookies and instant coffee.”

  “You like that?”

  “Not so much, but… There just isn’t any time.”

  “I always make time for breakfast.”

  “OK. So what have you got?”

  “Kippers, honey, bitter chocolate, pickled mushrooms, and—cookies!”

  “How about some of those pickled mushrooms.”

  “All right. But you know what I’d really like? Imagine hot tripe soup with lots of pepper, two crackling fresh poppyseed rolls…”

  “And herring with onions…”

  “So let’s go.”

  At Nada’s third-category they had everything, even the herring, Jacek’s favorite dish.

  “Then why didn’t you order it last night?” Nada said in surprise.

  “I didn’t consider it a suitable prelude to… You know, the onions…”

  “That’s just what I expected you to say. But at home you could have it every day.”

  “There’s no time in the morning…”

  “You could buy a big can.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that.”

  “And so for years you’ve been having cookies and instant coffee.”

  “Sometimes a person— But you’re right. I’ll buy a can.”

  Outside it was a magnificent morning. “It’s a magnificent morning,” said Jacek and: “How about an outing somewhere…,” he suggested timidly.

  “I’d go, but even Swedish girls have to work sometime. You know that drawing I have on the board, I’ve got to finish it by Friday.”

  “So go finish it, I’ll disappear…”

  “So disappear if you want to. Am I keeping you on a leash?”

  “No, I mean I wouldn’t bother you if I could only…”

  “Then don’t disappear if you don’t want to! It’s clear that you’ll bother me, but if you want to—or don’t want to—good God, who cantell, forchristssakegoodgoddamncarambahombrededioshimmelherrgott!”

  “You’re recht. I love you.”

  The sun was drawing golden trapezoids in the room overlooking the harbor, Jacek looked over Nada’s shoulder, she stuck out her tongue and waved her hand back and forth, she rolled up her tracing paper and sat down to her calculations. “What are you up to, fella?”

  “I could figure it out for you on a slide rule…”

  “No, you’re too good at that. Wait—” and Nada spread a clean sheet of tracing paper out on the board, explained what he had to do, and sat down with her papers again. “Now not a peep out of you for an hour.”

  Jacek took off his coat, rolled up his sleeves, and took his position at the board, he lit a cigarette, crushed it, and went to wash his hands, he lit a cigarette and took his position at the board, he crushed it and went to the john, he took his position at the board, went to wash his hands, took his position at the board, and excitedly began his assignment, my God, fifteen years, fifteen years vanished like a cloud, Jacek executed Nada’s simple assignment, we’re eighteen again, the September heat beats down on the asphalt roof and outside there’s the buzz of a bench saw, underneath the draft of a sewage project the secret sketch of a new opera house for Brno, on the back of a motorcycle to a chalet set in a bend of our “Forest Freeway,” the strong scent of felled pines in the noontime heat and the wild whirling of a brook tumbling down “Jost Falls,” on the warm grass tanned, half-naked men and the barefoot Libunka carrying a jug of goat’s milk over the warm grass, guitars by the fire, songs reaching up to the dark treetops, Libunka in the grass that warms one far into the night, and in the morning diamonds on the grass sparkling beside the sparkling river, what had happened then and why had what he’d wanted so much not come to pass, was there anything—

  “When are you going home?” asked Nada, standing behind him. “For God’s sake don’t ask me if I want you to stay or I don’t want you not to stay, I mean, whether I don’t want you to stay or I want you not to stay…”

  —and was it only an oppressive fiction, the erosion and the landslides of the last few years, here, all of a sudden, he felt himself again, happy, why should he ever leave here, was it the last day that was the dream or was it the last fifteen years—

  I — three

  How do you get long distance here? And what’s your phone number?” said Jacek, lifting the receiver off its cradle with his right hand and reading the time off the wrist of his left: 9:14.

  “Long distance is ten, my number is four-two-one-eight. But what…”

  “Four-two-one-eight,” Jacek said into the receiver, “I’m calling Brno three-nine-two-oh-three, urgent, snap to it, pronto!— Thanks, I’ll wait.”

  “I’ve got a brother in Brno, he’s a great guy,” he explained to Nada before the call came through. “Brother? Hi! Yep, it’s me. Look, let’s keep this brief, it’s costing me a bundle. Send two telegrams right away, both express—instead of wasting talk, let me dictate—Cottex, Usti. Ethyl acetate still uncertain, stop. Will make unofficial efforts. Jost. And the other to Lenka at home: Arrive Friday usual train, no later—no, that’s not necessary. Arrive Friday usual train. Jacek. What’s that? No… Who knows… Maybe we’ll be spending more time together and maybe… Seriously, send them off right away and some time we’ll celebrate with a few Egyptians… It’s a kind of brandy, you yokel. So long.”

  “You seem awfully concerned about that L
enka you used to know,” Nada said softly. “Not that I give a damn about her. But perhaps you didn’t realize in your sudden rush that today’s only Thursday?”

  “I’ve decided to stay one more day.”

  “Oh, he’s decided. My lord grants me twenty-four hours.”

  “It’s for me, too. One more day.”

  “OK. So let’s start out with a good dinner. I’ll let this work go for now, darling Jacek, and—”

  “I don’t like to see you do that, Nadenka.”

  “But it’s already two o’clock.”

  “Why couldn’t we dine at five, at nine in the morning, or just after midnight?”

  “Whew!” Nada exclaimed, she shook her head and went back to her calculations. Not for long, however; Jacek picked her up along with her chair, carried her off, and just dumped her, “Wow!” she cried, “your technique’s sure improving!”

  At exactly a quarter to five Jacek decided that a quarter to five was the ideal time for dinner, Nada repeated that it would be a bore to go three times in twenty-four hours to the same restaurant, even if it was wonderful and so close to home, in bed in unison they gulped down kippers, honey, and bitter chocolate, and for dessert Nada ate cookies while Jacek had pickled mushrooms, without a word of discussion they both got up at almost the same moment and met by the window, they both dressed quickly and went out into the springtime streets of Decin, walking along the harbor and seeing a boat they boarded it and, for four crowns, sailed all the way to the last stop on the excursion steamer Moravia, to Hrensko.

  From the harbor jetty, on a concrete ramp, they climbed up to the highway, “I won’t check the return time,” Jacek said as he passed the timetable for boats and buses.

  “The last bus leaves at nine-thirty,” Nada informed him.

  To the left, below the railing, the Elbe rolled on toward the rum and banana docks of the Hanseatic city of Hamburg and on, now salty, past the dunes and sands of Cuxhaven and under the piles of Alte Liebe out to the sea toward Helgoland and Sylt, all that from his school reader, and to the right, over the highway, twigs and bushes still dark-brown and bare, but snow-strewn with tips, kernels, tendrils, and wicks of bursting green.

  At the border station a red-and-white barrier reached across the highway, and Jacek went right up to it. “Don’t go over there,” Lenka had said once, “Why not?” “They’ll want to see our IDs.” “Well, haven’t we got them?” “But what do you want to see there?” “I just want to…” “Let’s go back to the bus!” Jacek shoved his foot as far as he could under the barrier, its tip out into the wide world, of course that other country was actually still some distance away, but even so… “Got a cramp in your leg?” asked Nada.

  Alone in the twilight they walked through the canyon of the Kamenice River to the caves, galleries, and tunnels of the fanciful Duke Leopold Valley, in summer an endless procession made its way there, “Resorts are always better out of season,” said Nada. “That’s just what I expected you to say,” Jacek parroted her, and they had a tussle on the little bridge over the rapids.

  “I’d like—” said Nada, looking at the menu of the Elbe Chalet.

  “Today I’m doing the ordering,” said Jacek, and the champagne dinner suited him just fine. “Well, I suppose,” Nada remarked, “you haven’t spent very much on me.”

  “But,” she warned him ten minutes before nine-thirty, as Jacek came back to the table, “that bus at half-past nine is really our last chance, to call a taxi from Decin would already probably…”

  The bus was already waiting on the embankment, Jacek lit a cigarette and smoked with relish, “Put it out!” “No hurry.” “But the door’s closing—” “I don’t feel like putting it out!” Jacek took Nada by the shoulders and, as if uncertain, the bus started off.

  “OK, so what now?”

  “Leave it to me,” he parroted. “Look how the water sparkles…”

  “There’s ten miles of that sparkle back to Decin.”

  “No more than eight.”

  “They might have a vacant room at the Chalet…”

  “Resorts are always better out of season.”

  “But they close at ten.”

  “So we’ll knock.”

  “They’ll sure be glad to see us!”

  Shortly after ten, Jacek knocked at the door of the Elbe Chalet, “Good evening,” the manager said politely, and he went away without another word. Jacek went straight upstairs, on the stairway he took a key out of his pocket, unlocked the door, and walked through the room to the balcony.

  “Hmmm…,” said Nada, she sat down in a huge old-fashioned easy chair and when, after a long time, Jacek returned, she said amiably, “So what game are we going to play tonight?”

  “We’ve had nothing but games lately.”

  “OK,” she said, and she took hold of the carved lion heads on the easy chair and locked her legs around its machine-lathed legs. “This old antique is a good deal heavier than my kitchen chair, so you’d better try to remember your simple machines: pulley, lever, screw, inclined plane… I’ve taken your breath away, huh?”

  “I no longer want to ask what you care for most. Not in words, at least.”

  Nada was silent, she gradually relaxed her comedian’s grip on the shedding easy chair as hands slowly slid along her arms and up to her shoulders, “Jacek darling…,” she whispered.

  “Let’s start again from the beginning. Come here.”

  He reached for her and slowly clasped her hands, she slowly slowly rose toward him from her jester’s throne until she was standing beside him, “Jacek—” she said, and her voice broke into sobbing.

  The next morning, now almost with expertise, Jacek led the exercise drill, more military in character than Nada’s had been, then a cold shower, two quarts of milk, and the commuter bus back to Decin.

  “And what if I handed it in on Saturday,” said Nada as slap-dash she finished her calculations. “Though last time the boss was hinting…”

  “So do you want to hand it in today or don’t you?”

  “And if it were up to you?”

  “I’ve screwed up a lot, but I’ve always handed my work in on time.”

  “So long,” said Nada, thrusting her papers into her bag. “I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

  Slowly Jacek walked back and forth through the room and involuntarily he began to pace it off, about 175 sq. ft., the tiny foyer with a WC and an improvised shower in the corner, in the room itself a daybed with a small chest for bed linen, a two-section wardrobe, a table, the drafting table, a bookcase, a little radio, and two kitchen chairs, no more than 5,000 crowns’ worth in all, but everything that’s needed to live, just what we had then, it seemed so little, but how much of it was left after all the growth, today we’ve got over 500 sq. ft., pile carpets, a refrigerator, a TV set, the sequence would further dictate a car, then a cottage—all of it well-furnished with cares and more crowded than this poor 175 sq. ft., with Nadezda we could have lived here all along, and we feel like living here with her forever—

  Jacek walked back and forth through the room, the morning sun lowered its golden trapezoids from the wall into the room itself, he shook his head and grinned grotesquely, it was a tragicomedy to contemplate one’s own life-story, one’s curriculum vitae, as a gradual growth of the fiction from which the vita had evaporated with time and all that was left was the curriculum and its transcription, was it a horrible delusion or simply a pile of facts, the sun had reached the floor and Jacek looked out the window toward the harbor, on their ramps cranes were reloading from rail cars to barges and from barges to rail cars, the sinking of the loaded boats to the cargo line and the rising of the unloaded ones above the water’s surface, until, completely full or completely empty, they are untied and given permission to sail off, and so on again from the beginning.

  “You gave me the right advice,” Nada said in the doorway, “Things very nearly went bust. Do you advise that we go to dinner now or later?”

  “Lat
er. If we do it this way,” said Jacek, kissing her and unbuttoning his shirt, “we can save ourselves a trip back here after dinner.”

  “After dinner you plan to go— When’s the very latest we can eat?” and Jacek and Nada, wildly and tenderly, out loud and in silence, while the sun made its trip across the floor to the opposite wall, cruelly and with laughter, almost to the point of fainting.

  “I couldn’t make it to the station,” Nada whispered, not getting up, “hardly even to the restaurant across the street… You’ve matured immensely here with me, but you must have had some talent… Buried for years…”

  “Thursday, April 2, just after nine,” said Jacek, tying his tie at the window, “is when my re-excavation began.”

  “Come back soon—”

  Cross the ends, he could move here, make a loop, and make a fresh start with Nada, pull the other end through the loop, have a second family and a second life, tighten it, or a second fiction, and pull it tight around his neck. That was how it had been with Lenka at the beginning, that’s the way things always begin…

  “I love you, Nadezda…”

  The sun had already climbed the wall and left the room, but it was making its way through other rooms, a single human life and a single fiction are definitely too few… perhaps even two… Nadezda is Speranza, of course, but the Miramar is just a dream, and beyond it the call of the strip leading to the south, the open road of green waves shining toward Africa, into the darkness of other rooms, for thirty-three plus fifteen is only forty-eight—

  “It’s almost terrifying to look at you when you grin in the mirror like that…,” said Nada, but there was no more time, Jacek received one more kiss on the forehead, she crammed some tattered architecture textbooks into his black satchel, and the train pulled out of Decin at precisely 5:29, right on schedule.

  On the bank of the Elbe, back upstream along the springtime river, on the green waves of the warm imitation leather, how curiously those two girls looked us over when we came into the compartment, and with what meaningful affability the one on the left returned our greeting, but how elegantly too we made our entrance, how fluently we put our satchel into the baggage net, trains are full of women and how many more times will we set out, and we won’t sleep now either, an electron fired out of orbit has so many chances, so many possibilities—hell, the satchel!