Sophie Souslik passes by the lift on the ground floor, over her shoulder she is carrying a rug edged in a meander design. And as Sophie Souslik approaches the glass panel door to the courtyard, she suddenly hears an odd whistling sound. Sophie Souslik has already heard a similar sound many times, it resembles the rustling wings of a raptor flying overhead or the swish of a swiftly spinning lasso. That sound is connected with something from long ago in her life, and with this very courtyard, but just now Sophie can’t recall with what.
Sophie Souslik knows she must open the courtyard door as quickly as she can. If she were to open it just a trifle more slowly, she would see something quite different in the courtyard, she wouldn’t catch the past that is perpetually unspooling there, always up to the very moment she enters. Perhaps unspooling isn’t the right word, thinks Sophie Souslik, as she reaches for the door handle. The past in effect endures there, it approaches the present with barely perceptible steps, it almost stands still. Were Sophie to enter the courtyard too slowly, were she not to turn nimbly enough, as in the game Sugar, Coffee, Chocolate, Tea, Rum, Bum, which has been played in this courtyard for ages, she wouldn’t catch sight of anything. Even in that game the one who stands with his back to the others, reciting the formula, wins only if he turns quickly enough to catch the ones approaching him from behind while they’re still in motion.
Sophie Souslik opens the door to the courtyard abruptly. This is how it is. Wing is in the courtyard, skipping rope. Wing is skipping very fast, almost floating, and the skipping rope forms an ellipse around his pudgy body. How strange it is, thinks Sophie, that she only hears the swish of the skipping rope, but not Wing’s feet bouncing off the ground. Most likely it’s that Wing has shoes with foam rubber soles.
And then Sophie Souslik says: Wing, I’m coming into the courtyard. But Wing, who’s skipping with his back to her, doesn’t even turn around, he pretends he hasn’t heard Sophie, he keeps on skipping, almost floating, and the skipping rope keeps on forming an ellipse around his pudgy body. And then Sophie notices that as he skips, Wing is quietly counting: . . . three hundred sixty-three, three hundred sixty-four, three hundred sixty-five. And then he begins again from one.
Sophie Souslik is sitting on the rug-beating rack in the middle of the courtyard, where a shallow channel slopes like a funnel into the drain, and watching as Wing skips, almost floats, his feet not touching the ground. As Wing swirls the air with the skipping rope, the rug with a meander design, thrown over the rug-beating rack, flaps in gusts above her head. And while Sophie Souslik is sitting on the rug-beating rack under the rug with a meander design and watching as Wing skips rope with his back to her, in the courtyard it quickly begins to grow dark. Sophie says to Wing: Hey, Wing, you’ll wear yourself out. But Wing pays no attention, maybe he doesn’t even hear Sophie, maybe he hasn’t even noticed that she came into the courtyard, he’s concentrating so. And not even when Sophie gets up from the rug-beating rack (the corner of the rug with a meander design whips her face) and then goes up the four steps, well-worn in the middle, with the rug over her shoulder, not even then does Wing stop skipping.
And when Sophie Souslik looks back from the door one last time, it seems to her it’s no longer Wing who is skipping there in the courtyard, but only some kind of spindle-shaped cocoon encircled by the ellipse of the skipping rope. And even when Sophie Souslik quietly closes the door to the courtyard behind her, she hears, although faintly, that prolonged swishing sound. And she hears it again a little while later when she leaves the house on Comenius Square. And then again, when for a moment she stops at the corner of Rokycany Street and Sabina Street (the latter a short lane leading to Havlíček Square) and listens carefully, it seems to Sophie Souslik that this prolonged sound, similar to the rustling wings of a raptor flying overhead or the swish of a swiftly spinning lasso, reaches all the way here.
PICTURE TWO
Grandmother Miller is crocheting a doily. Grandfather Souslik watches her from the sofa, swaying slightly. That doily reminds Sophie Souslik of the sleeping veil the teachers used to place over the children’s faces at the nursery school in Bezovka, so they would fall asleep more easily. Sophie Souslik also used to have such a veil placed over her eyes in Bezovka, but even with it she didn’t fall asleep. Even now Sophie feels the touch of the Bezovka veil on her skin and she feels it almost every time she passes the nursery school in Bezovka.
Didn’t the mummers just cross Comenius Square? Grandmother Miller, who is crocheting a doily by the window, hears their cries and laughter dying away in the distance. And the aroma of angel wings also wafts from the kitchen. They used to bake angel wings in the villa in Prague’s Dejvice quarter, they literally melted in one’s mouth. But who would bake angel wings here in Žižkov? Surely not her daughter Helena, and even less likely the linguist Souslik.
Unless . . . Here Grandmother Miller (actually once again Eva Kukla, because when Grandmother reminisces and sees all sorts of living pictures and enters into them, she always enters into them under her maiden name) notices that on the sofa, where the one who feels entitled to throw away her Jáchymov crusts of bread usually sits, there now sits Fiala, the waiter from Josef Street, with his sweetheart Marie. Why, that’s where the aroma is wafting from—Fiala and his sweetheart Marie are on the sofa, eating angel wings, placing them on each other’s tongues and waiting, eyes closed, for them to melt in their mouths. They’re concentrating so hard on that pleasure, and on each other, they don’t even notice Eva Kukla, who is crocheting a doily by the window. In the afternoon they’ll be leading a bear around Bezovka again. A bear? The miller’s lad Kuba in a peastraw wrap. And then on the hill above Bezovka they’ll bury a keg or a mask of Bacchus. And then they’ll eat doughnuts and dumplings. And tomorrow, on Ash Wednesday, when all of Prague will fall silent and prepare for the fast (the priests in church will make an ashen sign of the cross on the foreheads of believers—but Fiala and Marie won’t be in church), it will still be lively in Bezovka. As always on the eve of the fast, at the pub in Bezovka there will be a beggars’ ball.
And now there’s a beggars’ ball in the Sousliks’ parlour. Fiala and Marie are at that beggars’ ball too. Marie dances mostly with Fiala, except for the Horymír hop galop (they have always danced a galop by that name in Bezovka), which she dances with the bear. With the bear? With the miller’s lad Kuba in a peastraw wrap. Eva Kukla doesn’t dance with anyone at the beggars’ ball in Bezovka. And how could she anyway, since for years she has suffered from an illness of the joints, very soon she’ll return to the peat spa—to Letiny by Blovic (where Doctor Hart had once longed to place his head in the lap of a virgin—the great-grandmother of Diviš Paskal), or to Jáchymov? No, Eva Kukla would rather not go to Jáchymov, Eva Kukla has terrible memories of Jáchymov.
Eva Kukla is eating an Ash Wednesday doughnut and watching Marie on the rug with a meander design as she dances the Horymír hop galop with the bear, really Kuba in a peastraw wrap. Wherever did Marie suddenly go? Could she have disappeared under that bear skin? Is she so naive to think she can hide from her jealous lover beneath that skin? And now Fiala pulls out a long knife (no, it is not the aeronautic knife Captain Hůlka will use to slice the ham in the hot-air balloon Prague, although it is similar). And now Fiala the waiter uses that knife to cut through the bear skin, from bottom to top and then crosswise, and after that he draws it apart like a little curtain. A bear skin? The skin of Marie who is carrying a child inside—Fiala’s, or the bear’s?
And now the Ash Wednesday morsel has caught in Eva Kukla’s throat (that’s because, she thinks, not even on her forehead had the Jáchymov priest made an ashen cross), now Eva Kukla is choking on that morsel of Ash Wednesday doughnut. And as Eva Kukla chokes, she sees a plump little bald-pated man standing near the wardrobe. The little bald-pated man rummages in the wardrobe. And now that little bald-pated man, whom Eva Kukla sees only from behind, pulls from the wardrobe a yellow pouch, and from that yellow pouch he pulls some kind of lacing. Only then does Eva Kukla notice that it’s not Grandfather Souslik sitting on the sofa, but her father. Her father attentively observes the doings of the bald-pated man. And then the bald-pated man tells her father it’s been a long time, not since Fiala, that he’s put the tailcoat on anyone, a very long time. At the same time he sadly sighs and runs his small plump pink hand along the tailcoat. It must be the hangman Wohlschlager. Or is it perhaps Pipperger? Eva Kukla can’t remember now which of those two—the goldsmith or the upholsterer—had hung Fiala during the Prussian occupation. (But he no longer put the executioner’s tailcoat on Pexa, no, not on Pexa.)
And now Eva Kukla is choking no longer, the morsel of Ash Wednesday doughnut has finally passed down her open throat. Tears are still streaming down Eva Kukla’s cheeks, she’s still quite breathless, as if she had just finished dancing the Horymír hop galop. And when Grandmother Miller looks around the room, she no longer sees her father on the sofa, once again it is Grandfather Souslik sitting on the sofa and swaying there slightly. Nor does she see Wohlschlager or Pipperger by the wardrobe. There’s just a forgotten piece of the executioner’s tailcoat lying on the rug with a meander design, unless it’s only a clothesline or Sophie’s old skipping rope.
