"SISTER" "We were the People of the Secret." "And we were waiting." "Then David lost his mind." "Maybe it cracked because it was the best, sending out the signals that moved the whole community forward." "That's what we told ourselves, that we were going forward, but we soon lost all concept of where we were headed." "Maybe some of us noticed we were turning in a circle." "It also often struck me that time was fading in the pale light, losing its color and taste again, and I was horrified by that." "Sleep you don't gotta, die you do, you say to yourself it says softly into your brain." "But even that isn't for sure." "Shadows shift slowly along the walls and the moon's been there for hours." "Like past lives." "If you went into the city you'd feel all its shards." "That can be managed." "A trash can creaks in the wind like a living thing." ""Now go in peace," the cassock man told the crowd of Christmas people." "I saw the words:" "Freedom or death." "I made them up." "They're sisters." "As the Ghost strode up the stairs toward me" "I got a cramp in the elevator down in my guts." "I'm thoroughly awed, brother:" "Life." "Hey" " I say And my life's like ABC." "I don't do a thing, I organize verbal matter just what my cells tell me." "Singed brain." "My mafia." "I said:" "Freedom or death." "I wanted and searched." "And now I know they're sisters." "I sleep with them." "In the same flat." "In this smallish sorta room." "On a sleepless night faces swim in the dark here and there one pops out, someone you used to know." "Then they disappear with the morning trams." "Every madman knows how it is." "Tonight again in this home full of Czechs, in our very own state." "I guess it's better than bombing." "I had a dream." "We were high in the air, like on a flying carpet." "David sat in front, watching out for clouds," "Micka stood at the helm, Bohler was meditating," "Sharky tried hooking up to some waves to find out where we were, and I tested the wind." "We knew we were safe, drifting in the stream of time, so we flew on in that friendly time, enjoying our heavenly journey," "and then in the distance we spotted a sign, so we made a beeline for it," "O my brothers and chiefs, and it said:" "OSVÌTIM, Auschwitz, and it was too late to turn back, and suddenly our heavenly mobile started to plunge, O my brothers." "And then we landed." "And we landed softly, brothers, the ground there was so soft we even bounced back up a little." "And when we dropped down from that bounce, dear buddies, we were in ashes up to our waists or ankles, depending on how we fell." "The ashes of the cremated, my brothers, of Jews." "Any last hope of a mixup, that at least we were in some slightly cosmopolitan, wicked old gulag, was lost." "And the ashes stuck to our shoes and made it hard for us to walk." "And where there weren't ashes, there was an endless ghastly sea of bones." "We were afraid cause the skulls were watching us, looking at us, and we asked ourselves:" "Why are we here?" "Why us?" "And the skulls seemed to answer:" "Why not?" "The skulls peered blankly at us, jaws twisted into a grimace of pain, cause they'd got it the hard way, brothers, and heavy-duty, alive." "We kept plunging into the bones so we tried to swim our way through, we tried to crawl and shove our way through." "But crawling didn't work either because the bones kept caving in and we were afraid we'd suffocate under the weight of all that death." "So then we started to jump, trying to boost each other's courage." "Who ever said Jews stink?" "There's no appetizing aroma of garlic, fuck!" "Yeah, a fuck, at least if we had one!" "Said one of us." "But David said:" "Nah, there's no way to get this wasted." "This is reality, a pretty dumb one if you ask me." "Right then, knights and gentlemen, we heavily detested David." "And one of us biffed him with a shinbone and said:" "Shut up!" "I felt the friction of the future, and in your face my own, love." "Fate, its weight." "Waves of life, true happiness, and so on." "B-O-G willing, before the year is out I'll be an averagely agile dealer of used cars fast as an eagle as a pig, as someone else." "A guy's gotta live off something if he wants to." "I'm also someone else." "My sister is Firewater" "I tell her:" "Honey she tells me:" "Tenderness and we tell each other:" "I love you." "And we drink Firewater." "Today the moon protects me from danger at my sister's head." "I'll swim in the water in the power of fire till I get up and split down the dark hallway, by memory down from the top floor." "My sister is Firewater" "she's got messy hair and in the morning she says:" "Go to work" "I think:" "I take what I want and give what I can and we tell each other:" "I love you." "The moon blazes and the two of us are here in Firewater night skin on skin." "And everything is important." "Sister." "Now, at night." "You're next to me in my dream and after." "Sound of breath and touch of a nail to the rhythm of blood in my brain." "You." "Be with me." "Closer still." "My Firewater." "Be with me." "Closer still." "My Firewater." "And in this dream, Bible in hand, Bohler prowled the city scrap heaps, blessing the runaway brats who came to lick out cans." "A few times they chased him off with bolts cast with fiendish accuracy from homemade slingshots." "Loitering around supermarkets," "Bohler observed the little thieves whose tricks he knew so well." "And they came to know him too." "Rabble, I bring you God's word," "Bohler would begin when he managed to grab a few." "Shuddup and fork over the dough, the grins, the jingle, you old vampire, Nosferatu!" "Hurling film lore in his face." "He gave them the cash every time." "But instead of buying soup, they'd get smokes, toyfils, or toluene." "I force charitable acts of baptism on them, said Bohler, like with the Apaches." "But another thing about the scamps disturbed me, and that was their toys." "I mean those weird toys of today." "Abominable toyfils, space spiders and all those goddam mutants." "Time flew by so fast that suddenly there were totally different toys..." "I shook my head in disbelief and we reminisced about childhood." "Once Bohler and I broke into Toy Central for a look around." "We found the last Cheyennes there." "And of course we also roughed up a toyfil or two along the way." "Then Bohler rigged up something, and by the time he lit the fuse we were moving pretty fast." "Our took off before we heard the soul-soothing blasts as the sources of toyfils' evil power crackled in the blaze, or so, dear Lord, I firmly hope." "We took the Cheyennes out back and set them free." "Two little birds perched on branches like in prehistoric times." "Even the blood looks the same maybe thicker." "Luggage jiggled in a threaded cage by the lightbulb over our heads." "Up under the spider's web." "It was in my brain." "In the concourse were newspapers, fliers, flowers, rags, a whore and I recognized the devil a man who wants to kill, who's going he doesn't know where." "And I couldn't hide among the trash cans or even in the elder bushes." "I slowly began to love the spider." "I knew:" "He's got something going." "That time in the bar over spinach pizza" "I told the most beautiful woman my innards, my everything and the vein in my brain, that link to the universe nearly burst." "She smiled because she knew what life does:" "That's the way it is." "On the walls were faces of singers, actors and boxers, some we knew." "We smiled, the shine threw light on our faces." "Had I turned my palms up they'd have been full of light but there was no need." "I touched her hips and was gentle." "We groped each other." "I said the worst in me and grinned toward where we'd been standing." "It was all behind glass." "And it was secret." "With a movement BOG could cancel theater and actors." "Or leave them in their colors writhing, crawling, pacing;" "let them speak." "At home." "With the others." "In a room with walls." "Where there's air." "Where there's love like a plant." "MASSAGE PARLOR" "With a movement BOG could cancel theater and actors." "Or leave them in their colors writhing, crawling, pacing;" "let them speak." "At home." "With the others." "In a room with walls." "Where there's air." "Where there's love like a plant." "I sang it and I said it." "The sun shone in a winter of war." "I had my own religion." "People were fodder for death," "I held it in my hands and stroked it." "And I was afraid." "Monsters were born in blood." "Blotches grew in the soil." "Water washed over the dirt and the bones." "Two black birds, licked by a whore, hissed as she drooled on the ground." "I came to a city and found the place, my love was there with a white dress on, laughing and she was dead." "Shards hold the time of those days too, she, my dark star, took me and stood me in this room." "In outer space." "There's a mirror." "She turns me toward it, I'm in it alone, just my face." "That woman left me in it." "At the bottom of solitude." "A solitude more deep and awful than I ever imagined." "Until I felt the chill blowing from stars," "I knew nothing about life." "Sharky said: "I had a dream about what the earth is." "Hold out till the end, O fibbers and squealers, then I'll give you a Possibility..." Sharky lectured us... part of my bastard Prague being comes from the People of the Book... they tiptoed out of G-night through the holes between the hinges" "it was nothing short of a miracle... but these People of the Book have an old and amazing alphabet, and they compiled what happened, and so it exists today, so it's real and isn't forgotten." "But there's another people here trained in the art of survival, whose only chronicles are scars, sometimes on other peoples' skins... no one can name its dead, like they never existed... they're not written on the walls of any bloodstained house of prayer," "cause this people's blood gushed without anywhere to pray... this people lives in rough coexistence with the state, and for them the state's a killer, they're the People of the Pack, a family who don't mind a bit of lice from time to time... and none of them was ever so fatuous as to invent a mobile wheel" "so people could scrape away at the lie of progress nonstop... or the unnatural telephone, which shorterns life and distances... this people wages its miniature war with pockets and shivs, and what is that next to genocide... a very unusual people they are, never marched into the field" "or destroyed another tribe, cause they lack organization... never dug a pit for another tribe, cause shovels don't interest them... quicklime gives them the hiccups, makes them fling up their arms... they well know how important it is to daydream and slack off," "that it's true art when a dream and a color fill in the spots where once the menacing lions of the subconscious roared... and Goliath said:" "Who is not with us is against us and will be killed or reeducated... and David said:" "Live and let live..." "gimme a break aready, why doncha!" "And he let his slingshot fly." "You rec-room dwellers know not only the state has rules with its markets advertising duper-super cookie-cutter freaks of the near-distant homogenized future... and Gs don't look like ads, not even from far away... even the pseudopit of the Meediya can't help but spit up the Gs... they're too often drunk and noisy, and don't look good on the Grainy..." "lock up the beast with the rest... the earth couldn't take being a pit for another tribe... you know what comes next... it's starting again, literally every day." "Every G-day was yesterday and goes on smoldering... but there's various things here, many paths, dear brothers' sisters, and dear sisters' brothers, and it's not a pretty sight." "The earth is entirely overburdened, but there's one more possibility, said the mythomaniac Sharky... then Dolphin the brujo storyteller darted off into the heavy tide, plowing through the surf and surfacing near the sandy beach," "he fixed us with emerald eyes and said... you know... there's possibilities here, and one of them is hope." "My hero, that fella l-Killed-a-Rat, killed a man, yeah right, another time another place lying in the sand of an island beach with naked woman." "The fella laughs and then someone forgives him maybe we've lost more and is B. Here at all?" "Anymore?" "He wondered that morning and thought of the court." "The one that sits nonstop from the very first second from the very first cell from the dawn of the Earth." "Today he sleeps under his dream, can't bear it anymore, truck wheels, gravel, animals, knives, sickness." "But he's in her, he's with her they're together they'll protect each other." "Strong feelings." "And he's battling in the arena for his grandpas in the crematorium too." "It was B. That dragged them out on the ramp." "How did it happen?" "Were they too weak?" "Let me be a Hun, be a Devil-killer he says to himself." "Sometime later Sister gets up on her elbows and says:" "Hey it's light out!" "And it is." "It's day, night is done." "That's the thing anyone can see." "A day with people like any other and if it's summer something's growing." "It's January and still the same old dirty street of whores." "Business." "That's all there is now." "Maybe the city'll change tonight like a brain written off by a dose." "Just to be safe, he's quickly relearning the old words of love." "And I had my... wolf dream." "We ran off, Raksha squealing with joy... me too, we knocked the lock off the cage and it rattled through the zoo, the chain fell, and then we ran over hard snow, through woods, over stones, claws clicking," "and we didn't worry about our tracks because we were running... away." "Her eyes glowed like coals..." "she nipped me, licked me... on the scar from my collar, the bald patch on my nape where the fur hadn't grown back... she touched her snout to my ribs where the barbwire once cut me," "where pieces of wire had grown into me..." "I nipped at her too, her scars were inside... the drill where they'd taught her to beg and hold out her paw and pout her lips, where they'd dressed her in ribbons so she'd grow into a good girl," "a well-mannered little woman... always at attention, like a snowman, but sexy... where they showed my little sister to wiggle her ass for the bosses... to live with idiots in exchange for makeup and food and a flat... consuming energy to learn how to ooh and aah" "whenever the fucking bosses lay down the gospel... but now we were running... and the only trail we left was the fast frozen breath that fell from our fangs... and the earth turned beneath us, running, leaping across graves" "avoiding the glassy stares and empty eyesockets... of wolf skulls... and avoiding snares, falling stakes and poisoned meat... we made it through the red pack's territory... and met the last white wolves;" "they were wracked with disease... and the big black wolves chased us, but we escaped... we gray wolves of the Carpathians, had an age-old war with them, they were surprised we fled, their jaws snapping at empty air," "they sensed it was their turn next, the helicopters were on the way... we ran side by side, bodies touching... running over the turning earth with the wind whistling in our ears like a lament for every dead pack... and the clicking of our claws made the earth's motion accelerate... we ran over the earth, a mass grave, running away... then we stood on the final cliff, and nothing was left but to jump off" "and plunge into the surface where it all began... and Raksha, my sister, shrank back..." "Akela nudged his snout in her flank but she snapped at him... come on, Sister, we can't go back now... come on let's jump..." "let's fly, we can be together forever..." "I slash my back so I'll know that it's me." "If it hurts he's not an actor, his walk altered by band-aids." "On the riverbank were trees, dampness settling into their tops now there's just a hole." "Is this still the same city, the walls and streets, my turf?" "Would I tell the child myself Hi, Take care, Good night, pass him by, key around his neck in a raggedy sweater with a puppy?" "Would I bring him home?" "Or is that brat still there?" "And are pedestrians passing him by?" "Nasty faces?" "Yes." "He's still standing there and he's alone." "He's lost." "For me he's changed into B." "I call him BOG and think of hearts and of skin." "Someone was casually kissing, caressing, thinking of nothing and someone was walking alone into a tunnel of corpses" "B. Is all I've got now and some words aren't at all pretty." "Dreams can be horrible, someone screams and he's in a bayonet dream and some live life and it's totally theirs." "Some thing you watch, find out from others some things are already written down." "It's obvious." "You gotta believe a bit in it all." "So you don't get lost so the big dogs don't catch you, the wheel doesn't run you down the black widow bastard doesn't get you at home at the end of the world in the dark." "Back at the outset of it all, he bent down over me sleeping, parting my ribs, took one, removed my heart from its cage and gave part of it to her." "She left me in the room with the mirror, every path was in there too." "And when I looked, bending over the shiny surface," "I saw her face." "Translated by Alex Zucker Subtitles edited by John Brent"