visiting.
You know what I thought, says Lunatic, when I was behind you on the bike. You look for a signpost, don’t you, when you’re driving somewhere, you look for the signpostof the place you’re going to, and as soon as you pick one up, everywhere the road happens to lead you, through forests, along rivers, past schools and gardens and hospitals, across suburbs, through tunnels, everywhere it leads you is given a sense by that name you’ve read on the signpost. And it’s the same with us on our travels, when once we’re in through a backdoor, we know what we’re looking for. In life I think it can be the name of a person, not a place, which can give a sense to everything you find. A person you desire or a person you admire. This is what I think at this moment, Frenchman.
We hack to stay on the planet, repeats John the Baptist.
A vehicle swaying, a sizzling of wheels that are not running on rails but asphalt, an engine purr, a sensation of being cushioned like a child dozing on a sofa, voices in Slovak telling long stories, on the backseat a honeymoon couple, the bride still wearing her roses, near the front a group of shopkeepers who specialise in glassware and are on their way to look at Venetian glassblowers, a Bohemian dance coming over the loudspeaker, a faint smell of beer, and Zdena is in the coach she caught outside the railway station in Bratislava.
She is seated next to a bald man, wearing a dark suit with a pinstripe which is twenty years out of fashion. They have been sitting beside one another for two hours and have not said a word. Not even arriving in Viennamade them talk. He removed his hat and she kicked off her shoes. After that each of them settled back into their personal limbo. She looked out of the window and he read a newspaper.
Now he opens his dispatch case and takes out a brown-paper package. Unwrapping it he finds some meat sandwiches. Lifting up the whole package, he offers one to her. She shakes her head. He shrugs and bites into his own sandwich.
Have you noticed, he says with his mouth full, how gherkins, the
kysléuhorky
, are getting more and more sour?
She says nothing.
Is it your first visit to Venice?
Yes, it is.
She has a voice which doesn’t fit her reticent appearance. The voice of a born singer which doesn’t have to search for expression, since expression is the gift of that voice. The three words—yes, it is—sounded as though they were an entire life story. He must be at least fifteen years older than her.
She turns again to the window. Soon it will be dark. The last sunshine lights the distant mountains, a church hidden between hills, leaves, countless millions of them, the nearest along the edge of the road made to flutter by the draught of the passing coach, village houses of three storeys, apple trees, many wooden fences, a solitary horse.
I’m sure you’ll like Venice, he says.
I just change there, she says.
It is the moment in the farmsteads out there when the chickens are locked up for the night, and old women crumple newspapers and push them, with kindling wood, into the stove and look for their box of matches.
Why not take an orange? In Venice we’ll already find cherries. Where do you go afterwards?
To my daughter’s wedding.
A happy occasion, then.
Scarcely. My daughter is HIV-positive.
Without an instant’s reflection Zdena has told the man who is a stranger what she has hesitated to tell to her intimate friends. She stares at him as though he, not she, has said something shocking. The skin of his bald scalp is as smooth as a silk scarf, moistened with a spray for ironing.
I’m so sorry, he murmurs.
I think you should be!
The driver turns down the volume on the music and announces over the loudspeaker that in five minutes the coach will be stopping at a Gasthaus for toilets and refreshments.
It takes a long time, the bald man says, and meanwhile it’s possible …
Are you a doctor?
No, I drive a taxi.
You expect me to believe
You know what I thought, says Lunatic, when I was behind you on the bike. You look for a signpost, don’t you, when you’re driving somewhere, you look for the signpostof the place you’re going to, and as soon as you pick one up, everywhere the road happens to lead you, through forests, along rivers, past schools and gardens and hospitals, across suburbs, through tunnels, everywhere it leads you is given a sense by that name you’ve read on the signpost. And it’s the same with us on our travels, when once we’re in through a backdoor, we know what we’re looking for. In life I think it can be the name of a person, not a place, which can give a sense to everything you find. A person you desire or a person you admire. This is what I think at this moment, Frenchman.
We hack to stay on the planet, repeats John the Baptist.
A vehicle swaying, a sizzling of wheels that are not running on rails but asphalt, an engine purr, a sensation of being cushioned like a child dozing on a sofa, voices in Slovak telling long stories, on the backseat a honeymoon couple, the bride still wearing her roses, near the front a group of shopkeepers who specialise in glassware and are on their way to look at Venetian glassblowers, a Bohemian dance coming over the loudspeaker, a faint smell of beer, and Zdena is in the coach she caught outside the railway station in Bratislava.
She is seated next to a bald man, wearing a dark suit with a pinstripe which is twenty years out of fashion. They have been sitting beside one another for two hours and have not said a word. Not even arriving in Viennamade them talk. He removed his hat and she kicked off her shoes. After that each of them settled back into their personal limbo. She looked out of the window and he read a newspaper.
Now he opens his dispatch case and takes out a brown-paper package. Unwrapping it he finds some meat sandwiches. Lifting up the whole package, he offers one to her. She shakes her head. He shrugs and bites into his own sandwich.
Have you noticed, he says with his mouth full, how gherkins, the
kysléuhorky
, are getting more and more sour?
She says nothing.
Is it your first visit to Venice?
Yes, it is.
She has a voice which doesn’t fit her reticent appearance. The voice of a born singer which doesn’t have to search for expression, since expression is the gift of that voice. The three words—yes, it is—sounded as though they were an entire life story. He must be at least fifteen years older than her.
She turns again to the window. Soon it will be dark. The last sunshine lights the distant mountains, a church hidden between hills, leaves, countless millions of them, the nearest along the edge of the road made to flutter by the draught of the passing coach, village houses of three storeys, apple trees, many wooden fences, a solitary horse.
I’m sure you’ll like Venice, he says.
I just change there, she says.
It is the moment in the farmsteads out there when the chickens are locked up for the night, and old women crumple newspapers and push them, with kindling wood, into the stove and look for their box of matches.
Why not take an orange? In Venice we’ll already find cherries. Where do you go afterwards?
To my daughter’s wedding.
A happy occasion, then.
Scarcely. My daughter is HIV-positive.
Without an instant’s reflection Zdena has told the man who is a stranger what she has hesitated to tell to her intimate friends. She stares at him as though he, not she, has said something shocking. The skin of his bald scalp is as smooth as a silk scarf, moistened with a spray for ironing.
I’m so sorry, he murmurs.
I think you should be!
The driver turns down the volume on the music and announces over the loudspeaker that in five minutes the coach will be stopping at a Gasthaus for toilets and refreshments.
It takes a long time, the bald man says, and meanwhile it’s possible …
Are you a doctor?
No, I drive a taxi.
You expect me to believe
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