ղľáԾ
IN HONOUR OF ROBINSON JEFFERS
You lived in a holiday house on the Pacific shore
Robinson certainly
as a young man you bore the idea
in mind to abandon
people at least partly
eventually why shouldn’t
a healthy man do this
with a good woman
I live in a different
country and in another time but I did
the same living
in a holiday house if I can give the name to the walls
surrounding me
within and while inside sleep
my wife and children I
am sitting by an inside
window and watching how
there outside before the dawn the mighty
ocean
tosses and turns
a masculine soul
Translated byViera and James Sutherland-Smith
JAROSLAV
„Necítím se dobře.
ale mám radost.“*
said Seifert
when in the hospital
they told him solicitously
he’d got the Nobel prize.
In those few seconds
as an opalescent
television shovel
bore him to the grave,
he managed to conduct
afast course in poetry.
In six words
he explained to millions
where that dog was buried,
the one with the odd name
Beingapoet.
Translated byMartin SolotrukandJames Sutherland-Smith
IN MY FATHER’S PRAGUE / NOTES ON MEMOIRS
(extract)
HOW I FAILED MY STATE EXAMS
At about the time of my departure from the Mladé letá publishing house, Iwas to finish my studies at the Pedagogical Institute, though Icouldn’t sign in for my final exams as I was missing a required credit in political economy.
Nobody can be blamed for my failure to pass but myself.
I was then living in a leased apartment at no. 1, Gunduličova street, just a step away from the Štefánka café; I used to have quick breakfast there on my way to school. I usually got stuck there. It was our habitual hang-out with my friends, and was incredibly far from Kalinčiakova street. Predictably, my school attendance was increasingly suffering, which was why I wasn’t given the credit.
One of the absentee’s options to come clean was to pass an additional examination for the credit. So there I was hoping to be examined. Oddly enough, the same trouble was being addressed by Oktávia Müllerová, the most beautiful girl of our class. Together, we found ourselves in the office of our professor – his name was Pezlár. My question was to explain the meaning of monopolist’s rent. Ihappened to know – and as an example of goods that is no longer produced elsewhere but there where it is (and, consequently, its price can be increased by this monopoly’s rent) Ireferred to the Tokay wine. There was amap hanging on the wall in Pezlár’s office. He gave me a stick, prompting me to show this Tokay region. Cock-sure that the credit is mine and in an attempt to cheer up Oktávia, Ibegan to rummage about somewhere the Šumava region, on the obviously opposite end of the map. Oktávia giggled and Iwasn’t able to get any nearer with the stick. Pezlár, too, was clearly trying to impress the gorgeous student, and he was more to the point than me. My course record book hit me in the head and Iwas soon hitting the road, too, without the credit. Later, Isaw anotice posted in the school saying that those missing acredit still have the chance to get it done by September 30 – aweek before the state exams. Unfortunately, Ihad no juice left to make it – consoling myself at the thought of my favourite poet Vítězslav Nezval, who never finished university either.
In the afternoon of September, 30 my friends – Jano Stacho, Miro Válek and I – were sitting in the journalists club, penniless to the point of not being able to order a coffee. We were lucky to have there the waiter Filo, who served us on trust. I consulted my watch and said to my friends:
“Guys, I have just failed to finish university.”
“What is this nonsense?” Válek asked, agitated.
I explained that his agitation is useless – there was too late for venturing anything.
“It isn’t late,” Válek said. “Have you got your course record book on you?”
Idid.
“You’ll go and see Pezlár at his home.”
“I have no idea where he lives.”
“The police at Lermontová street will give you his address for three crowns.”
“I don’t have three crowns.”
Válek and Stacho emptied their pockets to find the last three crowns and chased me out to the streets. I wasn’t expected to return without the credit – they would wait there.
At Lermontová street, there was arather debonair member of the National Security Corps, and although there, too, they were about to call it aday, he was still willing to finger through his files.
“Which Pezlár do you want? We have two. One is Ľudovít and the other Otto.”
Another unexpected problem.
“I don’t remember his name,” I said.
“No problem,” the policeman said. “Take them both.”
Another problem.
“I only have three crowns.” I said. “I can take only one, but it may be the wrong person.”
The policeman had me explain my trouble, then exclaimed:
“Here are your two Pezlárs for three crowns – and out with you!”
The complications seemed endless. The addresses of both Pezlárs weren’t exactly handy, it was getting dark and I had no money for the tram. I was though a fortunate stowaway and got to the first address clean. It turned out to be the wrong one, Otto. I was then another lucky stowaway to the other address. Ľudovít Pezlár let me into his living room, where he was consuming a water melon. He was in a good mood and gave me his credit without examining me.
I returned with my course record book signed to the journalists club. My friends got terribly excited about my success – theirs too, in the end. Even the local chef got so excited as to treat us, royally, on credit. In fact, my friends got a bit too excited, and ended up wrestling, Greek-Roman style, in the men’s room. Válek was the one who slipped and broke his arm. The rest of the night was spent at the emergency department in a hospital.
In a week’s time, then, I was able to have my university studies completed. Although now with a proper course record, I still didn’t even try to make it – the time was too short for me to come prepared.
MY CAREER AS A MANUAL WORKER
And so, in 1959, I embarked on my next career as auxiliary worker in the Pravda printing works.
My job there was to serve one of the simplest machines in the world – the pulling press, which the typesetters called just “press”. The typesetter was to give me a column of metal type, which I was to transport to the press. The next part was to hit the pedal and make the colour cylinder move. When the colour was set on the type, I would ease my leg off the pedal and put some wet paper on the type. Then the leg hit the pedal again and another cylinder came pressing the paper against the type. When that cylinder finished pressing, and the letters appeared imprinted on the paper, the galley proof was ready to be delivered by me to the office room. An easy job – but, as any work, this, too, had the devil of competitiveness in it.
On that press, I was changing shifts with yet another auxiliary worker by the nickname of Puki, the epitome of manual dexterity. He would skip one pedal-hitting, doing it only once, and would place the proof on the type on constantly running cylinders in the only second he had left for that between the intervals of the two exchanging cylinders. For some time, I had been studying every single movement of his to conclude that I should be able to do it myself. That proved to be the end of my pulling press episode. Today I still have this quite physical remembrance of it imprinted on my fingers, which got stuck between the type and the pressing cylinder – don’t ask me how they managed to fit there.
I was barely recovered when bad news came from Žilina – my father had been arrested by the State Security on April, 30.
Due to these two events – the injury in the printing works and my father’s arrest – Iwas begining to see the light.
When my disability was over and Iwas ready to work, Iquit my job in the printing works and set out home to Žilina, to help relieve my mom in this discomforting situation. There Ifound the notice from the Pedagogical Institute concerning the state examinations deadlines Iwas invited to attend. Unable to make up my mind, I left the notice sitting on the table. It was still there when the State Security rang our bell and searched our apartment. One of the secret eyes laid his hands on that notice. Istartled – he seemed to have been studying it forever. Iwas only able to breathe again when he had put it back where it was –apparently he didn’t find anything important. Me, for one, suddenly found itveryimportant that the Pedagogical Institute Ihad been so disgracefully ignoring was apocket of decency in the ocean of indecency around. They could have easily expelled me, had they wanted to do so! Ifirmly decided to sign in for the next date of examinations while Istill had the chance and before that change would have been gone.
When Ihad signed in for the fall examinations, the Dean Mikuláš Gašparík had me for atalk in his office. When encountered by us as students, he seemed inaccessible, even fearful. Luckily, that proved but amask concealing aman of good heart. This time again, his face was seemingly cross:
“The school knows everything about you. We have received everything. There was a suggestion that you should be expelled. I said no. I hope you will be well prepared for the examinations. If anyone asks you anything, say nothing.”
“Please, don’t worry. I’ll be well prepared,” I assured him.
“Unfortunately, there is one thing I cannot assure you about,” Dean Gašparík said finally. Your opponents believe that a person like you cannot be an educator of young generation. Even if you pass the examination, you’re unlikely to receive placement.”
I smiled, surreptitiously. At that time, a student graduating from university had no choice but to start work at a place where he had been sent to, which was then referred to as “receive placement”. A lot of friends of mine were desperate about their placements, trying hard ways to escape this. And here I was without any imminent threat of being placed. Punished, I was free.
“There is nothing I could be more pleased to hear,” I said, but soon got embarrassed.
Dean Gašparík was suddenly giving me that cross look again.
I thought Mikuláš Gašparík would find these lines a welcome little amusement at his age now, and was ready to send him my book once it had appeared. Unfortunately, the late Mr. Gašparík will no longer be amused – I recently read the announcement of his death in the newspapers. At least, I will “play” himHomesick Blueson his way heavenwards. This translation of mine of the famous poem by Langston Hughes is at home in those times – it was published in our collective issue.
Translated byĽuben Urbánek
