This Translation Tuesday, we feature an excerpt from Simona Bohatá’s novel that offers the reader a kaleidoscopic perspective on a slice of the working class in 1980s Czechoslovakia. With prose reminiscent of Bohumil Hrabal, the novel was nominated for the Magnesia Litera Prize in the Czech Republic where the jury praised Bohatá’s characters as “so full-blooded that we can almost feel their pulse.” As you glimpse into this fascinating novel of the everyday, hear from translator Alžběta Belánová on the intricacies of representing the Prague slang.
“The novel offers an up-close-and-personal look at the grimy, crumbling world of workers’ settlements, pubs and salvage yards in 1980s Czechoslovakia, and the lively assortment of bizarre characters who inhabit it. Young Beny leaves home to escape a violent and abusive father to find refuge at a scrapyard run by someone they call the Fabrikant. Together with Hany who is handicapped, a drifter called Julča and Beny’s brother Vítek, they form a quirky new family. While the author certainly shows the dark and disturbing reality of this era—Beny and the others were certainly dealt a hard hand in life—the book doesn’t just serve up misery as the real time storyline moves in an almost optimistic direction. Beny is truly lucky, as he manages to find a better job and ends up having more time for his one passion, which is photography. As with other Simona Bohatá’s works, the biggest challenge for the translator is capturing the atmosphere of the novel, which the author achieves through the use of heavy working-class Prague slang, what is more, spoken by teenagers. Linguistically, I found a parallel with The Basketball Diaries memoir (and similar such works), which achieves the same effect through the use of heavy New York slang and a disarmingly familial tone of the various journal entries. I found this quite inspiring for my translation and was able to draw on that to find the right voice for Beny and the others.”
—Alžběta Belánová
Beny
He was mad as hell as he walked up the street, angry with himself for letting it get to him even after all these years. He ran into them stupidly on the corner right by the ice cream parlour. They were laughing but stopped when they caught sight of him. Two, maybe three of them said “hey,” while the others bent their heads down in embarrassment. Beny was ten times more embarrassed though because they split the embarrassment up among themselves but he had to go at it alone.
Classmates, he thought and smirked to himself. They were thick as thieves all of year eight including Jana and Bingo whose grades were just as shitty as Beny’s. But Bingo’s mom came down hard on him, forced him to start cramming and managed to get him through to ninth grade. No one came down hard on Beny though, so he had to go off to trade school right out of eighth grade while Bingo went on to ninth grade with all the others and then on to grammar school.
He was a leper to them ever since. It only took one time when he met up with them after summer vacation to figure that out. He was sitting with them outside the Bookworm restaurant and it was as though he was invisible to them. They wouldn’t look him in the eye. Jana was latched on to Bingo who was telling idiotic stories. The very same Jana who was telling him how much she loved him only half a year ago. They didn’t even notice when he left. He didn’t see them for more than four years after that and now he had to go and run into them all together like that.
He wanted to go home but felt all out of sorts so he headed to the scrapyard.
“Fuck them, dude . . . they’re just spoiled brats.” Fabri handed him an opened bottle and Beny took a big gulp to wash the anger down. Fabri went on with his philosophizing.
“Where the hell would they be without their filthy rich fathers? Bullshit, rich brats . . . with parents in high places . . .” He shot a side glance at Beny and was glad to see him smile.
“You’re gonna be a famous photographer . . . you’ve got an eye for it, you see ‘it,’ dude, they can’t teach you that at no school. Fuck them, one day they’re not gonna believe their eyes when you’ll be all over the pages of the magazines . . .”
Beny felt better.
“OK, Fabri. I gotta go. I’ll come in tomorrow to work . . . and thanks.” He waved him goodbye and headed straight up the grassy hill.
He did feel a little better but not better enough to stop thinking about how everyone else was off at college and he’s ended up alone and without a girlfriend because of trade school. Once, when he was still in elementary school, Jana’s parents let her bring him to their cottage. They got there Friday when it was almost dark, her old man lit the fireplace and her mother kept sticking her nosy head into the room where he was playing cards with Jana and her little brother Vlasta. Then she called Jana into the kitchen and soon they summoned everyone to dinner. Beny would bet that the old witch filled Jana’s head with things like “I hope your relationship with this boy doesn’t go beyond friendship.” She didn’t like him, Beny was sure of that. The dad was alright but Beny didn’t enjoy his company. Dr. Vebr asked him stuff like: “What plans do you have for the future, young man?” and Beny didn’t know what to say. So he just shrugged his shoulders. The doctor raised his eyebrows and didn’t ask him anything else after that.
They made a bed for him at the other end of the cottage than where Jana and Vlasta slept, and when he went to the bathroom at night past the parents’ bedroom, he saw that the old witch let the door crack open. He thought it was hilarious. She was making sure that her precious little girl didn’t lose something that she already didn’t have for a good six months by then because Beny had slept with Jana already in the winter when the school was closed because of the cold. And not just once and right at the doctor’s house too. He couldn’t sleep at night and was hoping that he and Jana could take off to the woods in the morning and do it there but boy was he wrong. Mother dearest was more vigilant than a partisan on nightwatch.
They all ate breakfast together at the table and there was more food there than Beny had ever seen. And the butter wasn’t just tossed on the table but they had it in a little dish with a lid. Ham and salami all laid out on a plate in little rolls along with slices of cheese and veggies. And tea and coffee and juice squeezed from oranges. Beny only knew juice in cans. Vitek used them as pencil holders now. They got them from their aunt, one each, but this stuff tasted totally different. Dr. Vebr talked to Vlasta about school and Mrs. Doctor yammered on about how nice the weather was and that they were all gonna go mushroom picking later. Beny knew that everything was fucked and was so annoyed that he didn’t even bring his camera into the woods.
The whole weekend was a total bust. The witch didn’t let them out of her sight but still managed to overlook Beny like something that was ruining her pretty view. Old Vebr walked through the woods and lifted his walking stick: mushroom, mushroom while the others hopped like bunnies to where he pointed. Beny pretended not to see and felt like a clown. Jana didn’t dare talk to him and he felt like screaming: “I fucked your little Janicka when she wasn’t even fifteen yet, you assholes,” and imagined the witch falling flat into the blueberries as her doctor husband stood over her with his eyebrows raised clutching a basket full of boletes. And how nothing would happen anyway ‘cuz Mrs. Doctor wouldn’t have the balls to admit that her little fourteen-year-old daughter started sleeping with such a little loser who was barely fifteen himself.
“What are you laughing at?” Jana asked him and he realized he had been laughing out loud.
“Aaaah, I just thought of something funny,” he snapped at her.
As he thought about it now, he realized that it was already clear in the woods back then how things stood. They ate breakfast straight out of the paper wrappers at his house and no one ever thought about sitting down at the table together. And why would they. Vitek and him avoided their deadbeat father as much as they could and their mother tried to be invisible to everyone in the house. She was sick to death of their shithead father and let him take all his crap out on them, pretending not to hear or see anything.
Beny remembered how once the asshole came home plastered, dragged them out of bed and beat the shit out of them because they left stinky cheese out on the table in the kitchen.
“You fucking little bastards, you stank up the whole house,” he screamed as he beat them with his belt. The bad part was that the room was so small it was impossible to move out of the way of the lashes. Him and Vitek were black and blue all over and Vitek wasn’t even seven then.
So, thinking about it now, it was already clear as day that weekend at the doctor family cottage that Beny wasn’t exactly the right class of boy they imagined for their darling daughter. But who cares, he also thought about what Fabri told him. That he’d be famous one day. That would be awesome, to snap his way into really good magazines so that they wrote about him in Fotografie, for example.
He thought about his grandpop. How he was showing him pictures he took when he was young in the Tatra mountains and by the Baltic sea. Beny still had some of them. Even though his grandfather didn’t have a darkroom and had to have the photos printed somewhere else. Photography was a big passion of his.
“If you look carefully and pick the shot with your eyes, then you have to find it again through the lens . . .” he guided him as they stood in the courtyard and Beny took a picture of him. Took his first picture ever then. It wasn’t good. He took it against the sun but you can still see his grandpop smiling.
I’ll never understand how my father can be your son, he told his grandfather in his head for about the hundredth time and for the first time he realized that his grandfather probably didn’t understand how either.
You’d be surprised what a darkroom I have now and how I can work in there. Too bad you’re not here anymore, grandpop, I’d love to show you everything.
He imagined his grandfather sitting in front of the scrapyard with Fabri and Hany, telling them about the Baltic sea, big ships and cranes and little boats that guided the giants into the docks. Then he’d go check out Beny’s new photos, maybe he’d try the enlarger and then they’d all have a beer.
His grandfather died when Beny was twelve and he cried so much then but he only really started missing him now, when grandma died too and his father left the house to his cousin. He rebuilt the whole thing and destroyed it. It wasn’t the same house where Beny used to go after grandpop died and where he and grandma dug through grandpop’s drawers. It’s a good thing he at least took his photos in time.
He was so lost in his memories that he didn’t even notice the crowd gathering in front of Loupak’s old house. He caught up with Vitek who was standing at the edge of the crowd.
“Yo, what’s going on here?”
“Beny . . . good thing you’re here. They took Roza. The ambulance took her away. She was all beat up . . . she wasn’t . . . you know . . . conscious.”
“She wasn’t conscious?”
“Yeah, conscious. She was, like, passed out.”
“What happened? Loupak?”
“Probably . . . look . . . the police are walkin’ out their house . . .”
Beny stretched his neck to see better over lanky Krocinek. Krocinek turned to a guy Beny didn’t know and said:
“They should have arrested the asshole. Always gets wasted, talks shit at the pub about how he touches the corpses at Olsany, the dirty cunt . . . I bet he fucks them too . . .”
“No shit . . .” The guy shook his head and asked: “He works there?”
“Well, he washes the bodies before the funerals . . .”
Beny didn’t hear the rest. He turned to look at Vitek who was pulling on his sleeve.
[. . .]
Roza
“So, Loupak? Ya’ didn’t see that comin’, did ya?” She didn’t even bat an eye at you, the social services comrade lady . . .” Roza leaned over to see better into her father’s face. It was getting dark. She didn’t used to like this time of day. He was either home by then and already drunk or it meant he’d be coming home later in the dark from the pub. Also drunk. Darkness used to be a problem for Roza. But not anymore. Now she saw that he’s afraid of the dark even more than she ever was. All she had to do was shove him into the corner in the hallway and turn off the light. All she had to say was: hey, I’ll take you out again, old man . . . if I feel like it. And she felt like it less and less often. Just like him when he used to lock her up in the basement, didn’t give mother the key and left for the pub. They both had to wait for him to come back and fall asleep. Only then did mother reach into his pocket and let Roza out.
Sometimes Roza had to wait a long time. That was when father would beat mother up before falling asleep or when he climbed on top of her right in the hallway. Then he’d usually be hungry. “Fucking you sucks so at least give me something to eat,” he yelled as he pulled up his pants and mother heated up his dinner.
Even though Roza hid a sweater and an old blanket in the basement, she was always freezing down there. The darkness was awful and what was even worse was when she turned the flashlight on. Cobwebs full of dead flies, a dried up frog in a jar—God knows how it got in there—centipedes and mold. She used to sit on a wooden box, feet underneath her, listening to the sounds above. When she heard the flush of the toilet and then the door slam in the bedroom, she knew she’d hear the double turn of the key in the lock soon after, first one creaky, the second soft, as if a wheel was turning in an old clock. Only when she saw a narrow strip of light on the stairs did she head up.
“Hurry up,” her mother shoved her every time, “go to sleep, I’ve had just about enough . . .” Mother always had just about enough. She sometimes told Roza: “If it weren’t for you, I’d be long gone . . .” Roza knew that was bullshit. The house was hers and if she wanted to, she could have packed up the asshole’s shit and he’d hit the ground so hard, wouldn’t even know what hit him. If she divorced him, he couldn’t get to them anymore. But mother wouldn’t do that, instead, she let herself get beat up and sometimes when she had bruises, she beat Roza over the head.
The scratching of her father’s hand made her turn her head. She only saw the outlines of his body, sitting on the other side of the table. She reached behind her, grabbed the string connected to the light and lit the lamp on the table by the window.
There were papers on the table confirming that Roza was now a guardian. She tapped the papers with her pointer finger and the eyes in the rigid face before her twitched.
“Looky here, little Loupak, I am now your slow relentless end. Surprised, huh? All you can do is stare at me now, that’s all you can do anyhow, you disgusting cripple . . .” Roza laughed. Just for the sake of it. It made her happy that her father was afraid of her laughter. Sometimes a flash of hate twinkled in his eyes when Roza reminded him of the old days. Yesterday she told him: “Remember old Kostelka, how he always asked you if he could pay you to have me, you old bastard? And how you always told him, yeah yeah, tomorrow, maybe tomorrow . . .” She watched her father’s face wrinkle, his eyes narrowed and the ends of his fingers dug into the chair until his knuckles turned white. She paused, taking in the sight, and then let out the rest of what she wanted to say:
“Maybe I’m gonna . . . let’s say tomorrow . . . start beating the crap outta you. Or I was thinkin’ that I’ll leave you wet with your piss for even longer and then I’ll pour boiling hot water on you, huh? Or maybe not . . . but hey, ya’ never know, right? I might do something to you, maybe tomorrow . . .” Roza zeroed in on her father’s eyes and stared into them for a moment until he closed them. His eyelids twitched and his good hand ran around like a spider tied to its own spider web.
She got up from the table slowly and stood behind him. She just stood still for a bit and then rattled the wheelchair. She knew it scared him and she was right. He pissed himself in fear right away. If the broad from social services weren’t coming, she wouldn’t have changed him but she had to today. She let him be for a few hours but then she stuffed him in the bathtub. It’s a good thing he was skinny as a rail.
“You’re like a string bean but that’s good, I ain’t gonna feed you cuz who the heck would lift you up then, you cripple . . .” She told him as she showered him with freezing water. He was shivering from the cold and fear and Roza reminded him: “This is how you doused me with water, remember? When I had those tantrums . . . ‘Shut up you little shit,’ you used to yell at me, but you’re nice aren’t you, you don’t yell . . .”
Roza huffed as she dragged him out of the bath. She pushed him over the edge, pulling him on to the foam mat. She dried him off and put him in clean underwear. She finally got him back into his wheelchair. She used an old sheet, which she pulled through under his arms from the front and then using a jerking motion from side to side, she managed to pull him up. His head and arms swung back and forth like a puppet as she did it.
She finally cleaned up the kitchen and put a vase with branches from the garden on the table since the lady from social services was coming today.
“Bull’s eye, huh? she looked around with satisfaction around the tidy kitchen. “Picture fucking perfect. You and the kitchen. She ain’t gonna believe her eyes what a good caretaker you have . . .”
“. . . but if you were to change your mind, Miss Loupakova, we are here for you . . .” The social worker patted Roza’s hand gently. Roza bowed her head down and gave a small smile.
“Thank you, Ms. Korandova, but I don’t want to just hand him over like that . . . he’s used to me and I wouldn’t feel right about it . . . I take care of him myself . . .” She said the last words almost in a whisper.
“Hats off to you Roza, really. We hardly ever see that these days, especially in my line of work, you know? Such a selfless act. I’ll give the confirmation that your father requires 24/7 care and that you are handling it . . .” Korandova looked around the kitchen and stopped when she saw the vase. “You create such a pleasant atmosphere here . . . at your age . . . truly, Roza . . . oh I’m so sorry, excuse me.” Korandova blushed a little. “I’m sorry, may I call you that?” she asked Roza almost bashfully.
“But of course, Ms. Kovandova. Thank you so much for coming by to visit us and that you’ll help us with all those papers . . . I mean documents . . .” Roza smiled at Korandova and she really was grateful because she ain’t gonna have it half bad if the broad arranges it all through her father’s disability and permanent care allowances.
“Good thing you don’t have stairs here . . . it would be hard to carry him around but this way . . . without stairs . . . I think you can consider it approved . . .” Korandova added and Roza smiled at her. Yeah, stairs, ya’ hit the nail right on the head, you old broad. Just those into the basement and the bastard is scared to death of them. She sometimes perched him up on the top and let him stare down for hours on end. In the cold and in the dark, while Roza watched TV, walked around the house, touched the furniture and rummaged through the drawers. She liked sitting by the window the best, watching the bustle on the street and looking through old photos. She recognized her mother in some of them, and him too, when he was young but she didn’t know most of the people in the photos. There was a weird fat guy in pants with suspenders in rain boots and someone wrote HANZI on the back of the photo. Roza often wondered who it was and meanwhile dad was stuck in the cold and dark shivering with fear.
Korandova slapped the table making the coffee cups jump, which made Roza snap out of her happy thoughts about father’s terrors.
“Well, who is more deserving to get that money than you, I would see to that . . .”
Roza smiled meekly at her while she laughed like the mad hatter in her head because she noticed that Korandova hitting the table totally threw the old man off. A little jumpy, ey? And that’s only the beginning, you asshole, she thought and offered Korandova a piece of pie but she looked at her watch and started to pack up her things.
No wonder, it was almost three. I bet you’ll get your ass straight to the tram and go home, snickered Roza in her head while out loud she said:
“Well thank you for the visit and I’m going to call you at the end of the week so I can come by and sign everything . . .”
“That’s right, Roza, we’re all set . . .”
Korandova stood up and put on her coat. Roza noticed that she was standing with her back to her father and that she only looked at him as she walked into the kitchen. She gave him a quick look and shuddered slightly as if a shiver ran up her spine. As if your foot slipped on a piece of shit, thought Roza. She couldn’t have dreamed up a better social service check.
She pushed father out of the house, checking that his tied hand wasn’t sticking out as they reached the street. Like last time when she ran into Beny. That was awkward. She noticed how Beny stared weirdly. Luckily, she quickly changed the subject. Beny acted strange lately anyway. She didn’t like him anymore. She used to think about him in that special way a bit but not anymore, not when he acted like that. Roza could tell when someone didn’t have good intentions with her and Beny was definitely against her now. Once she even saw him talking to Kostelka. Even though Kostelka constantly used to touch her and whenever he brought father home he’d say a bunch of gross shit. When she saw Beny yesterday he didn’t even stop, just said “hey” and then quickly turned his head before she even managed to answer him. And kept staring at father again.
That’s why Roza had to check everything now before taking the cripple out of the house. She had to be careful so that no big mouth got the word to Korandova, she definitely didn’t need that now. Sometimes she’d prefer beating him black and blue but she couldn’t because someone could see so she would only scare him for now. She was hoping that he’d feel at least as scared as she used to feel when he beat the crap out of her or when the other kids chased her up against the wall in the park.
Roza remembered it well: You dirty thief, give it back now!!! Roza was up against the wall and was more angry than scared. She held the rainbow pen, which had fallen out of Janakova’s bag in the changing room behind her back. When they caught up with her, Janakova stood in front of her and held out her hand. She said: Give it back, you thieving bitch! Roza threw the pen down against the ground and stomped on it. It cracked and she used the moment of shock that ensued. She pushed Janakova and yelled: stick it up your ass, you cow! and bolted. She saw out of the corner of her eye that Vitek was sitting on the bench and managed to start wondering whether he saw or not. She didn’t finish her thought though because they caught up with her right away. Rubes ran up from the side, tripped her with his leg and she fell into the mud. All of them stopped and doubled over with laughter, Janakova the most: Look at her, filthy as a pig. And Korab cackled: no change there, assholes, she was already a pig.
When Roza picked herself up from the mud she saw that Vitek on the bench was still laughing. Just you wait, I’ll laugh at you next time too, you traitor. And she did. She really did laugh when Vitek’s father almost had it out with hers over the dead dog. All he had to do was stick rat poison in a hot dog and stand by the fence—Asta, come here girl, good girl, and that would be that. Dogs are dumb and gullible. Vitek cried like a baby when Beny had to dig a grave for Asta under the chestnut tree. Everyone gets what’s coming to them.
Roza walked high above the Ohrada and lost in her thoughts, she didn’t notice how out of breath she was. She looked around to make sure no one was around and bent down to her father:
“You’re as heavy as a bag of cement you jerk . . . just wait ’til we get home!”
Two more crossroads and we’ll be there, she thought. The side entrance into the Olsany cemetery was their usual destination. Then just along the straight path between the graves, with her whispering behind his back: “See that, asshole? This is where you worked, huh. But today everyone pretends they don’t recognize you, no more. Even Kostelka and even the security guy . . . No one gives two fucks about you and that’s how it will be from now on.” She whispered that or something along those lines behind his back the entire way and sometimes when she heard someone say: look how nicely she’s talking to that man, she laughed until her stomach hurt.
Roza would get even with anyone who didn’t treat her right. She came up with something for everyone. Too bad Beny didn’t live next door anymore but at least Vitek did so Roza can get even with him even for Beny. Like that time when she told father that Vitek came to steal their cherries. He hadn’t noticed at all ‘cuz he was plastered all the time. But he was pissed as hell when he found out and taped those glass shards to the fence. If Roza hadn’t told him that the green ones were too visible, he would have taped colorful ones on there. You were always an idiot, old man. She sighed. So what, now no one could tell her what to do anymore and she actually had to pamper the old cripple a little to make sure he lasted long, even though it turned out a little differently than she’d planned.
They took a few more loops around the main path and then Roza parked the wheelchair at the edge of the alley of urns and sat down on the bench. She had mother’s urn right in front of her eyes now. The other cases had flowers and photographs in them, just theirs was empty.
Translated from the Czech by Alžběta Belánová
Simona Bohatá is an author with three published novels. She spent her adolescence in Žižkov. This working-class Prague neighborhood had a great influence on her, as did the city’s music and theater scene of the 1980s. She graduated from a high school of economics. Just as she was starting her first job, she got accepted into the Song Lyrics and Scriptwriting program at the Jaroslav Ježek Conservatory. She has an eclectic work history, including a job at the National Library and has also worked for several private companies. She wrote merely for her own enjoyment for many years (song lyrics among other things). Máňa and the Rest of Us / Máňa a my druzí (2017), Simona Bohatá’s first work, is a gently ironic description of her childhood and adolescence in 1980s Žižkov. In 2019, she published her second book Everybody Sucks / Všichni sou trapný, which was very well received. Her latest novel Lucky Beny / Klikař Beny (2021) is a loose continuation of this book and was nominated for the Magnesia Litera prize.
Alžběta Belánová left her native Prague at the age of twelve and lived in the UK and Canada before settling in the United States. She received her English Degree with High Honors (Phi Beta Kappa) from Rutgers University and was a recipient of the Schaeffer Fellowship in Literary Translation from University of California at Irvine in 2004. She has been living back in Prague since 2005 where she has built a career as a professional translator. She has had her work published in literary journals (Project Plume), in books published by Academia publishing house (Chittussi, Od práce k zábavě), Motto press (Řeka v Troji, Jižanská kuchařka), several essays published under the auspices of the Institute of World History at Charles University and many others.
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