The Golden Age

The fog

I, too, would tell stories to while away the waiting, until the first red geyser spurted out of the swelling shell. I did not have to agonize over what I was going to say: the islanders were a grateful, attentive audience whether I was narrating the contents of The Three Musketeers, From Russia with Love or Night Cab by Souvestre and Allain, whether I was telling of the Greek myths, reminiscing about rambling in the Bohemian Forest in summer, or describing the dream I had had the previous night. I imagine they would have listened with interest if I had retold the listings of the Prague telephone directory, finding in the sounds of the names the germs of a gripping tale which they could develop in their minds; they would assess the individual telephone numbers by the nature and composition of their digits and consider them silently with the same pleasure as some people take from the study of minerals arranged in rows in the display-cases of museums. Mostly I would invent a tale of fantasy, as this was easier than piecing together the details of real sequences of events or recalling the contents of books as the intoxicating pink vapour was spreading itself throughout the room, insinuating itself into my words and releasing clusters of other words, images and story-lines from each word I spoke.

I remember in particular an afternoon in Karael’s room in the upper town. I was sitting over a whispering, gurgling, shuddering shell and telling a story. I could not think of a single book I had not spoken of already, and I was not in the mood to invent, so I returned in my thoughts to Prague, to a chilly and damp autumn day. I had myself walk the foggy streets. As I described myself following the winding paths up the Petřín Hill, its landscape dotted with bare trees, I was drawn into the greyish fabric of the scene. The blurred Laputa of the Strahov Monastery floated above my head, then disappeared. I made my way down Úvoz street, looking down on the bay in a white sea which became the Seminary Garden before the facades of the grand houses of Neruda street rose out of the mist and then sank back into it, like fairy-tale sketches drawn in a secret ink on a sheet of white paper. As I told my story I made the sad realization that I was forgetting Prague; my feeble memory confused the buildings, so that the stone Moors at the doorway of the Morzinský Palace appeared above the Jánský Vrch Castle, the Church of St Kajetan was on the other side of the street and the Golden Wheel Hotel moved down to take its place. And on top of all this my forgetting was littering the streets with empty plots bathed in the white fog. This was one of the moments I promised myself I would be leaving the island at my earliest opportunity.

By the time I reached the Malá Strana square the shell was getting taut, and as I approached the Kampa island cracks were forming from which the vapour was beginning to leak; the shell was transforming itself into the pink porcupine. Before long I could feel the intoxicating fumes working on me. I first suspected this to be the case because of the sudden concentration of close detail in the images that presented themselves to me; I knew that these images were only masquerading as memory. Above the entrance of a house on Kampa, for example, I saw a painted sign which depicted a knight ramming a lance into the jaws of a dragon with a girl in a white dress chained to a rock right next to this scene. I described to the islanders the oily, iridescent lustre of the dragon’s scales, the reflection of the setting sun on the knight’s armour, I took my time over the long golden waves of the princess’s hair. These were the kind of pictures the islanders liked best; I am sure they would have managed to listen to me all afternoon if I had spoken only of the way the pleats of the princess’s dress were drawn and of the tissue of fine cracks on the painting.

But I could sense in the fog — this mysterious egg — the germs of pictures wholly new, pictures that were about to fight their way out. I told the islanders how I turned towards the river; there I saw the floating jetty where the steamboats land and a group of about ten people standing on it. They were silent and motionless, looking at the mist hovering over the water. A moment later two lights appeared, one on top of the other in a vertical line, above which there was a point like the dot of an i. As the lights got bigger, around them greyish marks began to penetrate the fog; the marks soon joined up to form the outline of a boat. It looked like the service boat of the river authorities. Above the entrance to the under-deck a lamp was burning, and this was reflected in the water. As the boat came to a halt the jetty shook slightly. Several passengers disembarked, then the people on the jetty climbed aboard in orderly fashion.

I paused for a moment, considering whether to join the people on the boat or let it sail off into the fog without me so I could continue my exploration of Kampa. I told myself that if the shell stirred in the next three seconds, I would get onto the boat. The islanders sat there motionless and attentive; Karael was lost in her thoughts, writing something into the wall of water with her forefinger. The shell heaved a sigh and then shook. “I hesitated for a moment before tagging along behind the people climbing aboard.” I resumed the story without knowing what was expecting me on the boat. One after another new passengers were passing through the doorway beneath the lamp; most of them had to bend in order to do so. I followed them below deck, down the metal staircase which began immediately beyond the door. I found myself in a smallish room which was rather dark and where — in front of the illuminated stage of a puppet theatre — there were armchairs in rows. Most of these armchairs were unoccupied, their seats up. The newcomers sat down in the empty seats, producing the creaking of stiff joints as the armchairs opened out unwillingly and the whisper of faded plush; there remained many unoccupied seats. I sat down at the end of a row, where a strong perfume wafted towards me; I was put off by this, but I did not wish to move to another seat and in so doing appear foolish. Out of the corner of my eye I studied the profile of the young woman next to me; she was wearing heavy make-up and around her bare neck a pearl necklace shone pale in the semi-darkness.

I turned my attention away from my neighbour and towards the stage. It was about a metre long and three-quarters of a metre deep, and it depicted realistically a very normal-looking living room with upholstered armchairs and a glass-fronted cabinet filled with vases, cups and photographs. The window showed the dark sky of evening and beneath this a row of tower blocks whose windows were lit and then blanked thanks to some special equipment. Moving about continuously beyond the window, and making a light rustle, was a transparent plastic sheet on which were painted little white dots meant to represent snowflakes. In the middle of the room there was a table, and on this I could see two cups, a porcelain coffeepot and a nickel-silver tray with half a marble cake on it. Sitting at the table were two wooden puppets, one depicting a man, the other a woman. Judging by their facial features (which were not particularly well carved), both were about fifty years old. The man was dressed in shapeless blue sweatpants and a white undershirt and the woman had on a light-coloured nylon slip. The puppets’ hands and feet were attached to strings which disappeared high above the stage, from where one heard the voices of the actors who were speaking for them.

The man-puppet heaved a sigh and said, “When I went to buy a newspaper this morning I found that they’d printed it in a foreign language again…But at least I was able to listen again to the rustling of the paper, to read words, even if those words were meaningless to me and their sounds were dark and threatening. Recently instead of a newspaper they’ve been giving me rabbit skins, crudely stitched together to make a single sheet. I always look hard at the newsagent to see if she’s going to mention it, if she’s going to give me an explanation, but as she never says a word, perhaps it’s as it should be, perhaps there’s a new law which says rabbit skin is to replace newspaper, and we haven’t heard about it, that’s all. Maybe everyone else knows how to manage a rabbit-skin newspaper, but I don’t, I scan the skins desperately in search of news, at least once; I turn them upside down, I run my fingers along the smooth little rabbit hairs, but still I don’t know what I’m supposed to be reading, no one gives me any advice, even those who find in the rabbit skins wonderful, informative stories and laugh while they’re reading them or else weep with emotion. How I envy them! Once when I asked for a newspaper the newsagent gave me a live rabbit. Actually it was more dead than alive, but it was still breathing, just about…”

What sort of performance have I ended up watching? I asked myself in irritation. I had no interest in the problems the characters of the play would be addressing; the unhappiness of a man who is given rabbit skins in place of a newspaper had nothing to say to me. But I couldn’t just leave because I was on a boat. God knows how long it will be before the boat pulls up at the next stop! What am I going to have to sit through? How many more wooden figures will be coming on stage? The only mild comfort I took from this involuntary artistic adventure came from the fact the actors were puppets, which meant that I did not have to look into the faces of the actors, which were bound to be dull and disagreeable. Looking at live actors would certainly have upset me. In resignation I sank into the plush of the seat.