Michal Ajvaz: The Festival

The following night I walked around the Old Town, hoping I would come upon the festival, about which the historian and the priest had quarreled on the television screens. I walked down Paris Avenue to the Old Town Square. There were no lamps alight and the windows of all the houses were dark. I walked across the square. In the silence all that could be heard was the crunch of the snow beneath my shoes. As I came nearer to the Tyn School, I caught sight of something huge and transparent slowly emerging in front of me from Celetna Street with a rattling sound. I jumped aside and hid myself in the impenetrable darkness of the colonnade. When the sliding thing moved forward a bit more I could see it was one of the big glass sculptural groups that had shone in the underground temple. The statue depicted the hero embracing a young girl by a slender pillar, to which was attached a turtle from whose shell there grew long spines, on the points of which was impaled the body of a man in a magnificent robe; there a crown set with gemstones that had rolled from his forehead and lay on the ground by the impassive snout of the turtle. The statue stood on an enormous sleigh; fluorescent fish, disturbed by the jolts, swam back and forth in confusion between the glass figures. Soon there ap¬peared a group of people who were pushing the sleigh: they all wore black masks with pointed, unusually elongated, upturned edges that stuck out either side and ended in silver prongs. The mummers had a red cord with tassels on each end wound several times round their waist and tied in a knot in front; thrust into each of the cords was a crossbow and a heavy hammer. Another statue appeared imme¬diately after the first. It depicted a man kneeling on one knee and gazing intently inside an enormous shining crystal. A third statue recorded a dramatic moment in a duel: one of the duelers had fallen on the ground and let go of his sword, the other's arm was raised to strike the final blow, but was prevented from doing so by a curious dog-headed angel swooping down headlong from above and in mid-flight sinking its teeth in the dueler's wrist. As the sleigh turned into the square the angels glass foot struck the building on the corner and cracked; a trickle of water started to run from the crack and quickly froze into an icicle. Each of the thirteen statues-cum-aquaria arrived on the square in succession and the mummers arranged them in a circle on the snow between the Tyn Church and the Town Hall. The luminous creatures swimming inside the statues shed a pale, restless light on the snow; the glow from the fish also flickered on the facades of the houses. The dark tower of the Town Hall rose above the circle of glass statues that radiated a ghostly glow.

The group of mummers started to perform a silent mystery play about the suffering, death and resurrection of some cruel, young god. I didn't fully grasp the meaning of the actors' exalted gestures, but it seemed to me that the play was about journeying through the jungle, wandering through bustling ports and lethargic palace courtyards in the blistering noonday sun, and despair in gardens at evening. At the moment when, on the hot marble of the quayside, where the chains of the galleys softly jingled, the pieces of the body torn by the tiger came together again and the confused soul, represented by a woman in a fox skin, returned from the underworld, the mummers all broke into a loud cheer and fell upon the statues, which they started to smash to pieces with hammers. Water squirted out in powerful jets and shards of glass fell onto the snow along with fish and sea crea¬tures. Filled with terror they flapped here and there in the snow try¬ing to escape. But the masked figures now pulled out their crossbows and fired at the floundering bodies with metal harpoons attached to strong, fine ropes. The air was filled with the merry shouting of the hunters, the rattle of the ropes flying in an arc, and the slapping sound of the fishes' bodies. A horrified tuna fish flopped up onto the monument to Jan Hus and hid among the stone figures, but even there it could not evade the sharp point of a harpoon. Near me some kind of mottled fish forced itself into a drainpipe and its fins could be heard rattling inside. Some of the creatures tried to save them¬selves by burrowing into the snow: the trembling tail fins of fish, writhing octopus tentacles and undulating wings of flying fish pro¬truded from the snow like bizarre plants. Here and there the snow glowed mysteriously: it was where fluorescent fish had managed to bury themselves in the snow with their fins. The festival participants shot at the glowing patches in the snow; after the shot the light went out and dark blood started to ooze up to the surface from below. An octopus was creeping over the facade of the Kinsky Palace, gripping onto protruding Rococo ornaments with its tentacles. It was already on the roof and climbing into a dormer window when a harpoon passed through its body; the creature rolled down the steep roof and fell into the square. For a long time, snow went on spilling onto it from the roof. Some of the fish did manage to escape, however. I caught sight of a big shark disappearing into Zelezna Street; it moved through the snow by alternately flexing and extending its body like a caterpillar. A little while later the bloody frolic abated. The masked individuals gathered the dead fish into nets and set off with them in the direction of Kaprova Street.

The square was once more deserted and silent. I stepped out of the colonnade and walked alone through the blood-soaked snow. I noticed that not far from me the snow was moving: a huge ray fish was wandering in confusion about the empty square, moving by un¬dulating its flat body and stirring up the snow in the process.

I followed in the path of the festival's participants. The bloody stains on the snow showed me the way. I caught up with the fisher people on Marian Square. They had already removed their masks and were unwinding the red cords. There was no longer any trace of their former glee. They stood calmly and in an orderly fashion in a long crooked line, holding nets of dead fish in their hands. I couldn't see what they were actually waiting for, but I joined the end of the line nevertheless. It turned out that we were waiting in line for a ski tow. There were dozens of pairs of skis leaning against the wall of the Clementinum; everyone in the line received a pair; when they had attached the skis, they caught hold of a T-bar coming down the narrow Seminary Lane, then leaned against the bar. I also attached my skis when my turn arrived and leaned against the bar; the rope drew tight and jolted; the skis started to move in the grooves already worn into the snow.

At the end of the short and winding Seminary Lane, the tow turned through the side gate into the Clementinum. I slowly glided through two courtyards (the ski tracks ran so close to the statue of the student defending Prague against the Swedes that its stone plinth grazed the side of my ski). I passed through the open gate into Crusaders' Square, where I was dazzled by the headlights of a late cab and heard the squeal of brakes. Then the T-bar drew me be¬neath the vaulting of the bridge tower onto Charles Bridge. I slowly moved along the line of snow-covered statues in the straight groove worn by those who preceded me. On the side of Petřin Hill snow shone through the dark trees. Silence reigned. Only when I passed the quickly erected, light-weight poles of the ski-tow structure did I hear a click above my head and the almost inaudible squeak of the swaying empty T-bars that emerged out of the darkness and re-turned in the opposite direction. The ski tow pulled me along Bridge Street and through the deserted Malá Strana Square where dark cars were parked. I ascended Neruda Street past the closed palace gate¬ways and then the ski tow turned into a passageway and I quietly slid through a labyrinth of narrow backyards, past trash cans and piles of plywood boxes. The T-bar dragged me up cold, dankly-reeking staircases of houses, lit by solitary light bulbs. I passed through dim hallways into a lobby. I shouted out when a figure suddenly appeared in front of me, but it was only my reflection in a big mirror above the shoe rack. I moved through the corners of bedrooms where people lay asleep. A man and a young woman were making love on a wide white bed; the girl heard the clatter and turned her head toward me, silently staring me in the eyes until I disappeared behind the closet. I was traveling through the interspace between the apartments whose existence is denied. I discovered that the apartments are mutually linked by secret trails and passes that run behind the furniture - an entire labyrinth of roads, tunnels and trade routes winding through the depths of the house, through the space that we have proved unable to subdue and annex to our world; so we have preferred to deny its existence. We will pay dearly for our stupid arrogance vis-a-vis those silent spaces one day when shining animals will drive us from our homes and we will be forced to wander these dark trails. I dis¬covered that apartments are much bigger than we imagine, that the dwelling areas and known spaces constitute only a small part, that the totality of the apartment includes dank stone halls whose walls are covered in dreary frescoes, paradise gardens overgrown with luxuriant vegetation, and atria, in whose midst the cold water of fountains gushes high into the air. The secret spaces are linked with the living areas of the apartment by camouflaged passages in nooks and crannies and behind wardrobes, but usually we never set foot in them in our lives - and yet we sense that the decisions whereby our lives are transformed and renewed ripen in the breath that wafts from these places whose existence we deny.

I emerged from the labyrinth of apartments and passageways via an open gateway at the bottom end of Pohořelec Square. I once more caught sight of the festival participants. They had already unfastened their skis and were standing around in clusters holding steaming paper cups in their hands. The ski-tow cable ran into the door of a chapel standing at the top end of the square. Alongside the chapel the white canvas walls of a large tent billowed in the wind. The T-bar pulled me into the chapel through its open doors. The chapel was dark inside and was more reminiscent of a freight car than a sacred building; in the gloom at the end of the building an altar came into view. In front of it the ski-tow winch rotated with a regular creaking. The altar shone palely; as I came closer I could see it was smothered with fish bodies. There were so many fish that they fell from the sides onto the floor, where some of the bodies would flounder for a moment before stiffening. As I approached the winch I threw aside my T-bar and skied out of the tent.

Someone immediately tapped me on the back. I turned round and saw in front of me a bearded man in a long gray coat. I recognized him as one of the two men who had carried my table companion from the Mála Strana Café on a stretcher into the marble streetcar. He must be one of the stewards, because pinned to his sleeve was an arm-band with a grinning piranha fish painted on it.

"How come you arrived without a fish?" he asked gloomily. Why are they always wanting me to carry some animal with me? "I'm afraid a dog jumped on me in the front hall, tore the fish out of my hands and ran off with it," I said.

"You'll have to come with me for a moment," the man said in icy tones. He gripped me firmly under the armpit and dragged me through the huddles of people toward the white tent. I slid awk¬wardly up the slope alongside him on my slippery skis.

A lamp shone in the middle of the tent and projected the profiles of two figures onto the front canvas wall of the tent. One of them was seated calmly at a desk and writing something, the other, who had a prominently pointed chin, stood in front of the desk, bowing, wriggling and nodding. Their conversation could be heard through the thin canvas. The wriggling and bowing figure groaned: "Please forgive me, Eminence. My behavior was terrible, irresponsible, un¬forgivable. I answered you back and impertinently asserted that I had saved your life. Of course I know everything I have to thank you for: when I first made your acquaintance I was a mere sea creature and knew nothing about life on dry land. I thought more with my branchia than my head and associated with the drowned and similar riffraff and was not a jot better than any of them. Where would I be now but for you, who pulled me out of the moral mire and extricated me from the seaweed..."

"All right, all right, we'll talk about it later," the seated shadow re¬plied, sullenly cutting him short. The sinister steward continued to grip me firmly with one hand while unbuttoning the canvas entrance vent (the buttons were sewn round with the white cotton twine, like the buttons used on duvet or pillow cases) and dragging me into the tent. I could now see that the figure wriggling in front of the desk was the nocturnal lecturer from the Arts Faculty and the seated figure was the man who had preached in the underground temple about the return of the monsters and had berated the lecturer from the television screen shining in the snow in the darkness of Kaprova Street.

"What's the problem?" the seated man asked wearily, when he caught sight of us in the tent entrance. "Someone using banned ver¬bal tenses again? Give me a break, you know they're planning to au¬thorize all the other tenses soon, or at least the white monster tense and the jungle tense. The ban was utterly nonsensical anyway. It's been obvious to everyone for a long time now that all verbal endings are totally harmless and have nothing to do with the evil music that destroys shiny machines."

It looked as if my companion was suddenly too shy to tell why he'd brought me. "He ... he didn't have a fish," he finally blurted out quietly with downcast eyes. Then he blushed.

The historian staggered and had to prop himself up with the desk. I expect he recognized me because he whispered disconsolately to himself, "No weasel, no fish, nothing. Nothing at all." His whisper turned into quiet sobbing. The features of the sea creature he once was seemed to return to his pain-distorted face: his eyes bulged and the eyelids stiffened. His mouth became round and I soon had the impression that a big fish was gazing at me.

The accusation seemed to have little effect on the seated priest, however. He simply put down his pen and stared at me in silence with an expression of evil amusement. I started to regret not hav¬ing left the book in the purple binding standing on the shelf in the antiquarian bookshop. The steward became more and more embar¬rassed, trembling and staring at the toes of his boots. I felt his grip slacken; I tore myself away and skied out of the tent, slaloming be-tween the groups of fishers. Soon I was at the top of Úvoz Street and zoomed down it, bent double. In order to confuse the pursuers I turned off into the darkness of the Strahov Gardens and descended the snowy slope. I stopped among the trees and looked upward, but there was no movement anywhere and no sound broke the silence.

The Other City, Chapter 7
Translated from the Czech by Gerald Turner