Mr. Kafka: And Other Tales From the Time of the Cult

A Betrayal of Mirrors

The summer this year was a hot one. Young boys bounced soccer balls off the walls and the screen-covered basement windows, practicing the Czech Wall Pass. The super’s wife told Mr. Mit’ánek in strictest confidence that she thought Mr. Valerián had either taken up acting or dancing, or he’d taken leave of his senses. He’d been down there in the basement since early morning with another man, and they were cavorting about, crashing into each other, drinking cheap red wine straight from the bottle, and yelling: “Can’t stop now! Must keep at it!” A month ago, she added, Mr. Valerián had brought in vats of ceramic clay, and then the day before yesterday, it was a mortar trough. She had seen him wandering about the basement half naked with nothing more to cover his torso than a piece of dog pelt that he used as a floor mat by his bed, and that other fellow was there with him, with the very same floor mat covering his naked torso. And every day, two women came to visit, both wearing cloche hats decorated with artificial cherries. And these two reprobates in dog skins were threatening each other with axes — old stone axes like the kind Robinson Crusoe made.

Mr. Mit’ánek slipped off his Auxiliary Police armband. In his free time he liked to catch citizens in the act of alighting illegally from streetcars and slap them with fines. “Let me look into it,” he said.

He knocked on the basement door.

By the wall of the Church of the Most Holy Trinity, a stonemason stood on a scaffold, repairing the statue of St. Jude Thaddeus, who had lost a knee and an eye to the ravages of the weather. Further down, the wall of the church was covered with plaques, and a sexton was attempting to pry loose the rusty screws holding them in place.

“Dear Lord Jesus in heaven,” said the sexton. “I’m sick and tired of these cults.”

“It’s paganism,” nodded the stonemason, removing a sandstone knee and eye from his satchel.

“I almost ripped out a fingernail,” the sexton said, shaking his hand.

“Do titles still count for anything in your heaven?” asked the stonemason. He pointed to the plaque the sexton was holding. The inscription read: To Saint Jude Thaddeus, in gratitude for your timely intercession during the storm. Engineer K. H. and Dr. J. “Enamel thank-you notes, and metal missives,” he laughed. “Who actually delivers those things up there?”

“Lord Jesus in heaven,” complained the sexton, “two hundred and ten of these tablets, each with four screws, that makes a total of eight hundred and forty screws, and I’m expected to winkle every one of them out of the wall with my bare hands. I’m sick and tired of these cults!”

“All it needs is a little common sense,” said the stonemason, and he positioned the eye in the graceful sandstone statue.

“But that’s not the end of it,” sighed the sexton. “Once I unscrew all these enamel love letters, I’m going to have to remount them all on the other side of this wall, inside the church — with these freaking flippers,” he said, holding up his delicate little hands. “Another eight hundred and forty screws. Before that, I’ve got to pound eight hundred and forty holes into the wall with a star drill, and then hammer in eight hundred and forty wooden plugs. These walls are like concrete, for heaven’s sake, because didn’t the Church have to build everything to last to the end of bloody time?”

“Come in! I’m the artist’s aunt.”

A bony hand beckoned Mr. Mit’ánek inside.

“I’m an auxiliary policeman,” Mr. Mit’ánek said, bowing his head slightly.

He entered the basement studio. A fire was flickering in the stove. The artist, Mr. Valerián, was mixing plaster of Paris in a trough while the aunt, in a black dress, prodded the fire with an iron poker, then added some finely ground coal from a pile in the corner.

“Can’t stop now! Must keep at it!” Mr. Valerián called out and vomited into the trough.

“I’m glad to hear you say that,” said Mr. Mit’ánek, and he laughed when he saw a mirror with a second Mr. Valerián in it, mixing plaster of Paris.

“Valerián,” said the aunt, “would you like me to heat you up a nice barley sausage?”

“For the love of God, Auntie, I’m creating!” said Mr. Valerián, and he took a swig from a bottle of bitter red wine.

“We are all creators, because we are all one family,” added Mr. Mit’ánek, “but I’m truly impressed.” He stood in front of a life-sized portrait and clasped his hands. “What a splendid work of art! The nation will be thrilled!”

“Won’t it now!” said the aunt, and she lifted the uncooked barley sausage by its little wooden stick. “But just look at the artist. Look how he’s let himself go to seed for the sake of the nation. He never eats a thing, he just drinks, and then there’s the damp. See how wrinkled his feet are?”

“Auntie!” roared Mr. Valerián. “Do not piss me off, for the love of God, do not piss me off… but…” he vomited again into the trough and went on mixing, “… can’t stop now! Must keep at it!”

The sexton, perched on a rickety stepladder, pushed hard on his screwdriver. A truck pulled up beside the church, then turned into the scrap depot in the courtyard. From his platform on the scaffolding, the stonemason watched as the truck dumped hundreds of red enameled panels into a scrap-metal container. In white lettering, each panel displayed the appellation of a square or a street or a park that had once borne the Generalissimo’s name. After the truck left, another truck from the national meat processing works arrived. Onto a pile of scrap paper, it unloaded blood-soaked boxes and wrapping paper with the remnants of tendons, sinews, chunks of flesh, and animal membrane still clinging to them.

As the stonemason held the sandstone eye in place under the statue’s graceful eyelid, he noticed his hand was shaking. He looked around at the high scaffolding enveloping the entire Church of the Most Holy Trinity. It was there so that proletarian hands could restore the building to its former glory.

“It’s not easy being a decent communist these days,” the stonemason said.

“That’s what I like to hear — fighting words,” said Mr. Mit’ánek. “But this is quite the surprise. What’s it supposed to mean?”

“It’s for a competition in honor of Alois Jirásek,” said the aunt, as she put the sausage in a frying pan, “and the subject we’ve chosen is from Jirásek’s Old Czech Legends. It’s Durynk hanging himself from an alder tree because he murdered that little boy. .. But here’s a surprise,” the aunt said, wagging her finger, then tapping a mold that stood on a revolving base. “Inside this is a statue of a Lučan warrior,” she said in a quiet, singsong voice.

“I’ll be a stuffed carp!” said Mr. Mit’ánek, his eyes sparkling. “Is that what you folks have been up to down in this cellar, working to edify the nation?”

Mr. Mit’ánek looked into the eyes of Durynk, who had a noose around his neck, and then he looked over at Mr. Valerián, and saw the same noose hanging from the ceiling above him. He looked at the tunic Mr. Valerián was wearing. “You were your own model for the statue!” Mr. Mit’ánek said, clasping his hands in delight.

Mr. Valerián spat bile into the trough.

“Don’t you think I ought to scramble him an egg?” asked the aunt. “Just look at him, how he prostrates himself on the altar of art. That scrawny little butt of his — like an old lady wringing her hands, like two caraway seeds stuck together.”

“Will you kindly just shut up, Auntie!” wailed Mr. Valerián, and tears ran down his cheeks.

A pair of men’s trousers strode past the window, then someone in a bathing suit, then an entire dog appeared, then some boys ran up, kicked a ball at the wire screen, then flailed away at each other’s legs as they clung to the mesh with their fingers.

Mr. Mit’ánek ran into the street. “Snotty-nosed little buggers!” he shouted. “The Master is down there creating something for the sake of your future and what are you doing? You’re disturbing him, that’s what! I’d love to sic Durynk on you! Or the Lučan warrior!”

But the boys kicked the ball with a thundering blow against the window screen and then volleyed it straight into Mr. Mit’ánek’s face. The auxiliary policeman put his hands over his eyes and groped for the door while the aunt hurried out and led him back down into the studio.

“They’ll end up juvenile delinquents is what they’ll be,” said Mr. Mit’ánek, blowing his nose.

“But what’s to become of Valerián?” asked the aunt. “Just look at what a wreck his art has made of him! He’s shorter by at least four inches. All that creativity has turned him into a hunchback. I know what I’m talking about. I work nights at the National Museum, guarding the stuffed monkeys and apes and those curled up skeletons and all that.”

“The best minds in the country are sacrificing themselves for the nation,” said Mr. Mit’ánek, blinking a grain of sand out of his eye. “So am I. I’m educating the nation not to jump off moving streetcars.”

“Well,” said the artist, and he waded into the pile of coal and vomited, then shook his arms and yelled, “can’t stop now! Must keep at it!… A clear goal…” and he vomited again, then added, through tears: “… is a cure for fatigue!”

An elderly lady wearing a beret with a little stem on top emerged from Lazarská Street carrying a parcel. She threaded her way through the maze of scaffolding, oblivious to a handcart standing there, and when she stepped through some rungs and onto the cart, it tipped, sending her to her knees. She got to her feet again and gazed into the face of St. Jude, while the stonemason, sitting on the statue’s lap, was trying to fit it with the new eye. The lady clasped her hands and prayed, her grey curls spilling from under her beret as she looked at the saint’s face. The stonemason moved the sandstone eye around until it lined up with the eyebrow but the old lady, in her prayers, was already at one with the superstructure of heaven.

A truck loaded with statues and busts and plaques pulled up in front of the church and turned into the collection depot. The man in charge hurried out through the gate and shouted, “Where d’you think you’re going with that? That stuff goes straight to the foundry.”

He vaulted into the back of the truck, took out a piece of chalk, and wrote a number on the head of each bust. When all the Generalissimo’s heads were thus inscribed, he turned, jumped off the truck, and laughed. “Don’t even think of trying to sell this stuff off as non-ferrous metal.”

The truck drove off.

Mr. Valerián filled a stonemason’s scoop with white liquid from the mixing trough and ladled it into a hole in the Lučan warrior’s head. His aunt anxiously ran her fingers through his hair. “D’you see?” she said. “He’s losing his hair, a lot of it!”

“Auntie, for the love of God, do not piss me off!” shouted the artist. “Can’t stop now! Must keep going!”

But the Lučan warrior had sprung a leak at the crotch, and white gobs of milky plaster of Paris were dripping onto the concrete floor.

“Auntie,” yelled Mr. Valerián, “quick, stick your paws between the warrior’s legs!”

“I’ve just been to church!” she said.

“Shut up! You gave me the last of your money for this plaster of Paris. Quick, or the warrior’s going to end up on the floor!”

The aunt wiped her hands on her skirt and then stuck her fingers into the hole in the warrior’s crotch.

Mr. Mit’ánek looked into the mirror and was astonished. There were two of everything in the cellar.

“Quick, the warrior’s butt has split!” Mr. Valerián shouted, and he went on ladling the plaster of Paris from the trough into the mold.

Mr. Mit’ánek placed his palm between the folds of the warrior’s buttocks and felt his hands sealing the leak.

“It’s not easy being a decent communist these days,” the stonemason said. He sat on the scaffolding beside the mortar trough, swinging his boots close to the old woman’s hat as she prayed. He brought his boot to a halt just above her head, and one of his laces grazed her blue beret, but the old lady was still utterly absorbed in the hierarchy of heaven.

The mirrors in the cellar studio stretched from the floor to the ceiling, and Mr. Mit’ánek now understood why the super’s wife had given him such a confused report — always two people in the basement, but only one ever left. In the corner, Mr. Mit’ánek saw what first looked like an industrial ironing machine, but on closer inspection it turned out to be an enormous silk-screen press, with rollers almost two yards wide and a frame constructed of solid oak beams and boards.

“Quite the contraption, isn’t it?” asked the aunt. “But worse luck, all the jobs we got to do on it were tiny. Valerián had a breakdown over the Christmas and New Year’s cards. He was hired to do a card with a photo of a seven-month-old baby boy and they wanted it to look like the baby was sitting on a horse, holding up a sign that said The Kocourek family wish you a Merry Christmas. He went through three cases of cheap wine before he was done. Every half hour he’d toss out everything he’d done so far, but when we worked it out that we’d be getting two thousand crowns for the job, I rescued the photo of the seven-month-old from the garbage, along with the picture of the horse, Valerián stuck his watchmaker’s loupe in his eye and copied the boy onto the horse, because it was supposed to look like the real thing.”

“And are those things on the wall postage stamps, or are they meant to be matchbox labels?” asked Mr. Mit’ánek.

“No, no,” said the aunt. “We’ve got a commission to do engravings of butterflies and tiny little beetles. This machine runs on an electric motor and makes an awful racket — it weighs eleven hundred kilos — and it’s cute to see those huge rollers spitting out a tiny little portrait of a beetle, no bigger than a matchbox label, as you said.”

“Shut up, Auntie,” shouted Valerián, and he went on ladling the plaster of Paris into the mold.

“The sausage is burning!” yelled the aunt.

“Auntie — don’t budge an inch!” he bellowed. At that very moment, the mold split open at the neck, and he quickly poured in the last ladleful and grabbed the warrior by the throat with both hands.

A flatbed truck pulled up in front of the church carrying a huge golden cross wrapped in silk pillowcases and blankets. A crane lowered a sling and tackle over the truck, and two workers carefully wrapped a duvet around the sling. Then the employees of Safina — the company that had gilded the cross — raised it carefully, lifting it by the arms like an invalid, then slipped the sling under it while another worker went to the opposite sidewalk to guide the crane operator with hand signals. The cross was soon suspended in air, about a meter from the stonemason, who sat up and inched backward until he was sitting in the statue’s lap with his arms around St. Thaddeus’s neck, looking up in alarm at the golden cross, then at the scrap depot with its thousands of unread books, their pages still uncut, then into the scrap-metal container filled with signs that had once indicated all those Prague squares and streets and parks named after the Generalissimo.

“It’s enough to make you puke,” he said quietly.

The boys kicked the ball down the cul de sac.

“Marty!” called Mr. Valerián. “Marty, come down here a minute.”

One of the boys knelt down and peered into the basement window. “What is it, Mr. Valerián?” he said, out of breath.

“Come down here, Marty. I’m dying for a smoke. My cigarettes are on the table. Take one and stick it in my mouth. As you can see, we’re all a bit immobilized,” he said, indicating the strange tableau with his chin.

The door opened and a breathless boy hurried into the cellar, his socks down around his ankles.

“Over there on the table. .. Not there? Then they’re probably in my pants pocket,” said Mr. Valerián, pointing with his chin.

The boy moved under the bright lightbulb and slipped his hand into the artist’s pocket.

“Marty!” shrieked a woman’s voice. Mrs. Karásková was squatting down at the window and peering in, her eyes crazed with worry at the sight of her beloved little boy groping about in Mr. Valerián’s pants.

“God knows I’d just as soon blow this church to smithereens,” said the sexton. He removed the first plaque, placed it in a laundry hamper, and shook his hands to get the circulation going again in his fingers. “I’m sick and tired of these cults.”

The stonemason now barely paid any attention when another truck drove into the depot. He watched idly as they tossed basketfuls of letters onto the pile of scrap paper, covering the bloodstained paper and boxes from the meat-processing plant. Nor was he surprised to learn that there were seven hundred kilos of letters, all written by Prague school children in response to an essay contest, sponsored by the radio, on the theme: How can we make our country ever more beautiful? Then the old lady in the beret walked into the depot, put her little bundle on the scales, the manager weighed it, then tossed it onto the pile, and said: “That’s five kilos. Here’s one crown.”

“One crown?” complained the old lady. “There were letters in that bundle from my lovers!”

“Lady, I’m sorry, but this ain’t no auction house. I don’t care if Rudolph Valentino wrote you those letters, you get exactly the same: twenty hellers a kilo, one crown for five kilos. Eine krone!” he shouted, but the old lady was already up to her waist in scrap paper, ploughing her way through the bloody papers and animal membranes, whimpering in pain, until at last she waded out of the pile with her bundle, her hands smeared with blood. She untied it and held something up.

“These, I’ll have you know, are letters written to me by a lieutenant in the lancers, and this is one from someone who robbed a cash box just for my sake and ended up in Spandau Prison. And here…”

“Look, lady,” the manager said, “this here’s a scrap-paper depot, but you’ve made your point. Here’s five crowns, from my own pocket. Now clear out!” He took a step forward, kicked the air, then wiped his forehead.

“The mirrors don’t lie,” said Mr. Mit’ánek.

“You’ve seen It Happened in Broad Daylight, haven’t you?” the mother shrieked. “If that isn’t enough for you, what is?” She shook the wire mesh, unaware that as she crouched down, the better to see into the cellar, she had spread her legs wide apart. Her son, Marty, ran out of the basement.

“Mrs. Karásková, please. I’m a volunteer police officer,” Mr. Mit’ánek said. “Don’t make a public issue out of this.”

But Mrs. Karásková whacked the child, and the sound of his wailing faded in the distance. The boys resumed their game, kicking the ball against the screen and practicing the Wall Pass.

“Don’t you think all this art has made Valerián’s ears stick out?” asked the aunt. “They’re kind of like parchment, like he was at death’s door. Even his nose is looking a little blue…”

“For the love of God, Auntie!” shouted Mr. Valerián. “I could strangle you, just like this,” and he cocked his chin toward the mold containing the Slavic warrior.

“I might be able to persuade the local council to send you to a holiday camp, free of charge,” said Mr. Mit’ánek. “I have a lot of clout with them,” and he laughed at the thought that one day, perhaps, when they wrote about the artist who had once worked in a cellar on a cul de sac, his own name might figure in the story, too.

“I’m fine, but if you could just…” Mr. Valerián said, and he turned to vomit over his shoulder, “… if you could just help me carry that painting to the competition.”

The old lady left the depot bent over like a broken bush, carrying her letters. She walked over to St. Thaddeus and held up a set of photos for the saint to see, utterly unconcerned that the stonemason sitting on the scaffolding beside his mortar trough could see them as well.

“My dear, sweet Thaddeus, d’you see this? This one was me, Cleo, the dancer, and here’s a picture from Leipzig, when our tigers escaped. I danced with them in a cage. They got out and posed in front of this monument, all eight of them, making a tableau because they thought it was part of the act. And here’s one of them chasing after a streetcar, and people were passing out. And here’s where they turned a hose on them, and the tigers gamboled about in the water because they thought it was part of the act, too, and they had to shoot them in the end. Here’s a picture of the police posing with the dead tigers, and here’s one when their trainer showed up, and when she saw her darling animals lying there dead, she shot herself too. .. My dear, sweet Thaddeus, can you still see Cleo the dancer locked up inside me?”

Mr. Valerián, the artist, and Mr. Mit’ánek, the auxiliary policeman, stood in front of a large wrought-iron gate decorated with gilded lilies. A footpath of golden sand wound its way under some elm trees and through a pleasure garden with a palace at the end of it. They walked up the path and came to a porter’s lodge in front of the palace. Straddling a chair was a porter, staring intently at the red carpet that emerged like a giant tongue from the palace entrance. A man walked out onto the carpet, his arms spread wide, his face ashen, making gagging noises. The porter stood up, grabbed a bucket from under a box hedge, held it under the gentleman’s chin, dropped the handle over his neck, and, while the man was throwing up, the porter wiped flecks of vomit from his chest. When the man finished vomiting, he walked away, hiccupping and whimpering softly to himself, his eyes wet with tears. He wobbled along the pathway, past Mr. Mit’ánek and Mr. Valerián, barely able to navigate his way out through the ornate gateway.

“The jury must be having some kind of banquet,” said Mr. Mit’ánek, rubbing his hands.

“So, what have you got for us?” asked the porter, as he put the bucket and the rag back behind the box hedge.

“It’s for the Jirásek competition,” Mr. Mit’ánek said, pointing to the large framed picture covered with a sheet.

“You’ll want the second floor then. The ground floor is already filled up — can you guess with what?” asked the porter, then he turned away and shouted, “Vašek! Don’t make me take my belt off!”

“Portraits of Jan Kozina at the gallows?” asked Mr. Valerián.

“Is that what you’re bringing us? A Kozina?” asked the porter. He turned and made as though he were getting ready to undo his belt. “Vašek, stop throwing sand in Ferda’s eyes or I’ll give you a thrashing.”

“A Kozina,” said Mr. Valerián.

“Good thinking,” said the porter. “Every painter thought the others would do Kozina, so we only have twenty-five of those, but hang onto your hat,” the porter laughed. “Durynk, the traitor and murderer Durynk? As of today, they’ve brought in — and I don’t want to lie to you,” he said, leaning into the porter’s booth, “they’ve brought in ninety-six Durynks.”

“Good thing I’m submitting a Kozina,” Mr. Valerián said, shuddering.

The stonemason hopped down from his perch, the sexton looked at his watch, then both entered the bell tower and started up the winding staircase.

“Are they going to use dynamite?” asked the stonemason.

“No, and they’re not even using ekrasite,” the sexton said, “they’re using donorite.” Then he turned and hurried up the corkscrew stairway. Through the tower windows, they could see that they were now higher than the surrounding rooftops. When they reached the level where the bell hung, they looked through the gothic window frames and out over the city. Across the river stood a gigantic statue crosshatched with scaffolding.

“A German company offered to dismantle it with a special cutting tool, but they didn’t want cash for it, they wanted a supply of Carlsbad clay to make fine china. Instead, we offered to buy their saw outright, but the Germans said the saw was special and not for sale. So the job went to a Swiss company,” the sexton said, sitting down on the gothic windowsill and placing a telescope in his lap. The breeze made waves in his hair. “They drilled sixteen hundred holes altogether. When the engineer gives the signal, they’ll throw the switch and the whole statue will come apart, piece by piece.”

“Right,” said the stonemason, his voice failing him. He stood with his legs braced, his white trouser legs and jacket flapping in the breeze. He leaned forward, propped his arms against the sandstone window frame, and stared across the city at the opposite river bank. The palms of his hands were dry.

“Seven people all told were killed in the building of it,” the sexton went on. “The first to die was the sculptor who designed it, and the last was a worker’s mate who came to work one Monday morning three sheets to the breeze and he put his foot through a board six levels up and fell head first off the scaffolding and smashed his skull on the Generalissimo’s little finger.”

Mr. Valerián and Mr. Mit’ánek entered the palace and followed the red carpet up the staircase, each carrying one end of the picture, so, from the side, they looked like the rectangular pig little children draw on walls. At the top of the stairs, they propped the painting up against the gilded wainscoting. “Maybe the porter was bullshitting,” said Mr. Mit’ánek.

Mr. Valerián entered the large salon on the second floor and, as if in a trance, walked past the paintings leaning against the wall. It was as though he were walking in and out of one mirror after another, one painting after another, as if he himself were Durynk. Ninety-six times he walked in and out of the same picture, until he reemerged into the hall under golden chandeliers and golden balustrades.

“He wasn’t bullshitting,” said Mr. Mit’ánek.

Mr. Valerián took hold of his painting and carried it roughly down the corridor and into the washroom, where he locked himself inside one of the cubicles. As Mr Mit’ánek stood at a urinal, pretending to relieve himself in case anyone walked in, he heard a strange sound. At first he thought Mr. Valerián must be having an attack of diarrhea, but then he recognized it as the sound of ripping canvas. The cubicle door opened, and Mr. Valerián emerged without the picture. He handed a small piece of canvas to Mr. Mit’ánek.

“A souvenir, from me,” he said with a forced laugh.

The strip showed the eyes of the wretched Durynk cut from the canvas with a knife, like eyes seen through a peephole in a door. Mr. Mit’ánek realized that the look in Mr. Valerián’s eyes was exactly the same, a look he hadn’t had back in the studio, but did now.

Mr. Valerián began to gag and turn pale. He ran down the red carpet, his arms wide, and staggered out into the sunlight. He saw the porter’s dark silhouette and then the large bucket looming in front of him and he threw up into it, feeling the metallic handle slip over his head and press against the nape of his neck. He felt like a dray horse, when the driver slips on a feedbag filled with oats.

“So you tried to bluff me,” the porter said sympathetically, wiping Mr. Valerián’s chest with a rag. “You submitted a Durynk, too, didn’t you?”

Mr. Valerián nodded, and tears rolled down his cheeks. Along the sand-strewn path two workers from a delivery service approached; in a strap sling, they carried a sandstone statue of a warrior dressed in animal skins brandishing a stone axe. They hurried up the stairs with the statue, their legs scissoring as they went, and when Mr. Valerián looked at them, his stomach began to heave again but he had nothing left to bring up, so he bellowed into the bucket as though he were blowing on a French horn. The porter watched the statue disappear up the stairs and then gave a whistle.

“Uh oh, you did a warrior statue too. Go on, admit it. You did, didn’t you?” The porter slapped Mr. Valerián on the back.

“How many warriors have you delivered so far today?” the porter shouted into the foyer.

“This is the eleventh,” one of the men shouted back.

“That’s quite a helping,” said the porter, and he carefully removed the bucket from Mr. Valerián’s neck, wiped his shirt front, and set the bucket down by the box hedge. .. “Vašek! My belt’s coming off! Stop throwing sand in Ferda’s eyes.”

“Out of curiosity, how many of those warriors have they brought in… I mean in total?” asked Mr. Mit’ánek.

“A hundred and ten,” said the porter. “Which is why I say, enough with the art already. This here’s the thing,” and he held up a little book, shaking it at them. “Nobody can trump Einstein! A great read, this, like a whodunit. So enough with the art already. Einstein predicted everything. He exposed all the old fantasies, completely trashed them. He said there was dark matter in the universe and sure enough, there was… Vašek! I’m taking my belt off!” The porter made to remove his belt, but then went on excitedly: “Einstein figured the earth wasn’t perfectly round, and sure enough, it wasn’t. He figured that the speed of light in a vacuum is independent of the speed of the light source. .. Vašek!… It’s like when a swallow dips down and touches the surface of the water with its wing. Einstein established the outer limits of speed, saying that no signal can travel faster than light, but… Vašek, that’s the goddamned limit!”… and in a sudden rage, the porter yanked off his belt and plunged into the bushes, bent a little boy across his knee, and thrashed him, while a second little boy sat sobbing his eyes out.

The stonemason cringed.

“Inside, the entire statue is made of solid concrete, reinforced with special underground buttresses that reach all the way across to the Sparta football stadium,” the sexton said. “They reckon the demolition will take thirty days.”

“Right,” the stonemason said, coughing nervously.

“I wonder why they don’t just leave all those Prague statues standing,” said the sexton, extending his telescope, then looking at his watch. “Think of all the statuary there’d be in Prague now, almost a thousand years’ worth! If they didn’t keep tearing them down, there’d be so many statues in Prague, you’d never have to fall on your face walking home drunk — there’d always be an arm of marble or sandstone to lean on.”

The porter did up his belt and took a deep breath. “So let’s say the swallow touches the water with its wingtips,” he continued, “and the ripples start to spread out across the water, but the speed of the ripples has nothing to do with how fast the swallow is flying. See what I’m saying?” he said to Mr. Mit’ánek.

“I see,” said Mr. Mit’ánek, and he looked at the boy, who was just standing there awkwardly. “You should tell that to Mr. Valerián here. He’s the artist. I’m just an auxiliary cop. What’s wrong with the lad’s shoulder?”

“Oh that? It’s nothing,” the porter said dismissively. “He was in his mother’s body longer than he should have been, so they had to break a bone or two to get him out. They broke his shoulder. When he’s seven, they’ll break it again and fix it for good. But back to this Einstein, d’you see what I’m getting at? Compared to this Jirásek competition?”

“I see,” said Mr. Valerián. “Can’t stop now, though. Must keep at it.”

“Right,” said the porter. He looked toward the bright red carpet, then picked up the bucket and the rag from beside the box hedge. “Another Lučan warrior!” he shouted, and hurried to meet the new arrival, holding out the bucket.

Mr. Valerián threw up briefly onto the lawn, then he and Mr. Mit’ánek walked quickly down the pathway, through the pleasure garden, past two artists who were just arriving, each carrying a canvas wrapped in sheets.

A flash of light, and a dark cloud of smoke erupted from the construction enveloping the statue, followed by an enormous thud. A kind of force ripped through it, the first level lifted slightly off the ground and the pipes whirled into the air like lances, spinning higher and higher, and when the force began to dissipate, they hung suspended for an instant, then rained down on the ground around the statue, creating a thicket of lance-like branches. Half the scaffolding was completely blown away, the other half separated from the statue but remained upright, tottering unsteadily like a ski jump on the verge of collapse. The statue now stood exposed, apparently stronger, more massive than ever, but tilted forward as though it were about to go crashing down on the city below. The wall of air the explosion had set in motion rushed across the city rooftops, causing the church bell to resonate faintly and the stonemason’s coveralls to flap like a flag in the wind.

“Someone’s going to be in deep trouble,” said the sexton. “Everything just kind of held together. As far as I can see,” he added, putting down his telescope, “all that came off the old man was an eye, the epaulets, and a knee, the same as what’s missing from the statue you’re working on.”

The stonemason leaned out the window and looked down at the gilded cross being gradually hauled upward, suspended in a sling from the Safina National Enterprise crane. He knew that scaffolders’ hands had put up the seven-story structure around the Generalissimo’s statue, that he and other workers had drilled those holes with pneumatic drills at sixteen hundred different points, each marked with a cross, and, as the work had proceeded, that he had personally drilled holes, first in both the Generalissimo’s eyes, and then in a spot in the stone where the Generalissimo’s heart would have been: it felt as if he were drilling a hole into his own heart because he, the stonemason, loved the Generalissimo, had invested his hopes in him, had lived his life through him, and now he’d not only had to participate in the destruction of his enormous monument, but he’d also had to listen to exhortations to wipe the Generalissimo’s picture from his heart, a picture so dear to him he felt he couldn’t go on living without it.

He thought about the other picture that was eating away at him at night, for he now realized that those same scaffolders were today standing on each others’ shoulders like a troupe of acrobats, passing pipes and planks from hand to hand until they’d enveloped the entire Church of the Most Holy Trinity, where he was cementing, to a Catholic statue eroded by weather and time, a new sandstone knee and an eye he’d brought with him in his satchel that morning, along with some salami and a bun. It was all so that, through the restoration of this particular Catholic church, the Church itself could resound once more in its original pomp and splendor.

The summer this year was a hot one. Mr. Valerián and Mr. Mit’ánek felt cooler as soon as they descended into the studio.

“It’s like going to the patent office and claiming I’d invented the bicycle,” said Mr. Valerián, standing in front of the white-plaster statue of the warrior brandishing his plaster-of-Paris stone axe.

“Still,” said Mr. Mit’ánek, “it’s a thing of beauty.”

Mr. Valerián took a swig from the bottle of cheap red wine, then picked up a hatchet and with a single blow lopped off the warrior’s hand, stone axe and all, then he smashed the head and sliced the statue in half at the waist. He stared into the mirrors for a long time, drinking the bitter red wine and talking, throwing up a little at the end of every sentence.

“The mirrors betrayed me,” he said, and he smashed them with his axe, shattering himself, shattering his own image.

“I can see you don’t believe in cheap imitations,” shouted Mr. Mit’ánek. “And you probably don’t believe that as an auxiliary policeman, I can sit down this evening and write all this up, do you?”

Mr. Mit’ánek shook his finger and followed Mr. Valerián around as Mr. Valerián carried the warrior, piece by piece, to the trash bin. The last to go in were the legs, but the lid wouldn’t shut and the warrior’s ankles and feet protruded from the bin. The aunt came around the corner of the alley, carrying soup in an aluminum pot and a casserole tied up in a bundle. “Don’t you think Mr. Valerián might have water on the brain?” she said.

“Oh, shut up, Auntie,” said Mr. Valerián. He went back into the cellar, curling up in a ball on the pile of coal dust, muttering to himself: “Can’t stop now! Must keep going…,” and he began to sob like a little child.

“Working men,” said the stonemason quietly. “It’s all been a terrible con.”

He leaned out the window and looked down into the scrap depot, thinking that if he had any backbone at all, he would jump out of this bell tower as if from a high diving board, taking a good run at it, with his head up so the workers on the scaffolding down below would see that it was deliberate, that it wasn’t an accident, and he’d spread his arms in a swan dive, plummet into the courtyard, and smash himself to pieces on the pile of scrap metal, on the plaques that had marked all those streets and avenues and squares and parks named after the Generalissimo, and if he were lucky, he’d plunge all the way through to the pile of scrap paper and die surrounded by seven hundred kilograms of letters sent by the children of Prague with suggestions about how to make the country an ever more beautiful place.

The summer this year was a hot one. Boys bounced soccer balls off the walls, practicing the Czech Wall Pass.