With the midnight came a Paranoia Gale blow. By stealth, Mrs Vukovic looked from the corner of the window. The pack of jackals was back again. This time on their way back from a high school dance, the jackals were preparing to rally under her window. It was their everynight custom.
The young thugs with shaved heads soon settled round. Pawing their girlfriends, they began yelling their never-changing slogans.
"Bloody bitch! Get outta here!"
"With whom are you sleeping tonight? For how much?"
"Listen everyone, I did it with her last night! Wanna hear the details?"
Mrs Vukovic plugged her ears with her fingers. The little jackals could have been her children. Her own daughter would have been their peer, had she been alive .
"Man, but she's ancient !" someone shouted.
"So what? Old whores are cheaper. Even a sixty-year-old will do, if she's willing enough."
Mrs Vukovic did not understand why the fat teenage jackals hated her so much. She did not know them; she did not know anyone in the town of Krysolaje; but all the time she encountered everyone's acute hatred.
When, as a refugee, she had ended up in this small and decent- looking country, at first she had been happy to have finally found a quiet, peaceful place to stay, after the horrors of the war. Her husband had been savagely slaughtered in front of her; her daughter had been raped and was now missing without trace. Mrs Vukovic herself had managed to escape only by chance, to be pursued with morbid memories ever since. She would often wake up screaming in the middle of the night.
The disasters she had been through made her locked and alien towards the outside world. A thin, exhausted-looking, dark- skinned woman she was, she irritated strongly the vain, empty minded city chatterboxes. She embodied the suffering of the world without, whose existence they denied , lest it disturb their smug complacency. Her tanned skin tone made it totally unbearable - she was thought to be a gypsy and treated as one, that is, detested and despised. So she no longer sought anyone's sympathy and compassion.
"Before the civil war I was a university professor, people respected me. Why are these folks in delusion about me? Or do they see what they want to see? But why think so bad of me, what harm have I done them? Oh, I see: they're annoyed because I exist."
Mrs Vukovic slowly grasped that the custom here was to poison with evil words. With dirty slander. For they had no other weapon against the invaders. Easy, almost willing givers-in, the poor lot saw themselves as the smart foxes, the bestial mockers. Some of them always vented their blunted resentment on those who would not hit back.
One founded it hard to take a deep, free breath - the air was poisoned with ancient vapours of everlasting hatred. Living by stealth. Cowering. Sly. Wicked.
She was renting a modest room from a mildly insane old woman, whose husband had hanged himself years ago. The old Mrs Jebava kept a Canofelis - a neurotic cat which she obstinately believed to be a dog. The poor creature lived in a kennel in the yard. Every morning the old woman taught it to bark and yap. After that she raided Mrs Vukovic's room, looking for Ukrainians and Vietnamese under the bed. Having not found any, she went to discuss her failure with the neighbours, "The gypsy must've warned him! I've seen him jump out of the window. But next time no Vietnamese shall escape me!" Jebava raged.
The town women with bleached hair curled up like lamb wool over and over went to visit one another and exchanged the latest gossip about the whore, that is Mrs Vukovic. Their children wordprocessed and printed their mothers' gossip, Then they stuck the "pamphlets" on stands and lamp posts. All the pamphlets ended with the words: "PEOPLE, BEWARE!!! HUNT, HUNT, HUNT!!!"
That night, the beerscouts from the nearby pub, At the Golden Skunk, were in a good mood, so they had come to join the teenage rally. The reason was an ingenious joke by the leader of the "skunks". He was known for his fabulous sense of humour. With the help of his fellows Kakoun managed to convince a stupid die-hard drinker, Knedlik, that his neighbour Nasralvhrnec had killed, fried and eaten Knedlik's pet, a lousy dog Kurvinek. Full of rage, Knedlik hurried off to kill his evil neighbour, while Kakoun went home to put down the new short story called 'THE DREADFUL REVENGE OF KNEDLIK' on his old typewriter covered with vomit.
A paranoid moon emerged on the cold sky. The Canofelis howled at it desperately, trying to break off its chain.
Once you have been chosen as the prey, your fate is decided, like that of a bull in the corrida. People were clinging to Mrs Vukovic - making up still more and more incredible stories about her, watching her every move, gossipping, teasing.
It was late in the night when the jackals and beerfalcons retreated, sore-throated with yelling . Mrs Vukovic fell adoze, sometimes woken by a single exclamations, "Dirty Gypsy!".
Early in the morning came the workers on their way to the railway station. Oversize-bellied men had high, effeminate voices. Men's obscenities, not loud but deep, echoed in the frosty air.
Mrs Vukovic could not sleep any more. She tried to meditate, but her thoughts remained in Krysolaje. " For God's sake, they are all insane, like my good old landlady Jebava. Why? Could it be because they don't have a heroic past ? Their men are somewhat strange. Queer? Those artificial womanish voices? But that wild agitation at the sight of a newcome woman? 'Who's that new prostitute in town? Have you slept with her already?' - 'Surely, we all have.' _'Attention, here comes the whore. You have to snicker when you pass by her.'
Like bullets in the heart. She realised she was going mad. Leaving would be the only solution. But she could not. Her missing daughter was living in the capital - somebody had seen her in the street. Hence Mrs Vukovic travelled to the city of hundred towers every day, in a small toy-like train. On every station, people on the platform pointed their fingers at her and made obscene gestures. They all had already heard about her. On her search, she wandered to and fro along the city streets, often till late in the evening. Sex-mad local populatoin thought her to be a cheap street prostitute . The city was toy-like small. On seeing her, the males started to scratch their groins ostentatiously.
Worst of all was when the Paranoia Gale seized the town. On such a day it would be a torture merely to walk outside. "How awkward they are. Silly little dwarves - dull and empty eyes - and that terrible, terrible hatred."
She woke up to the shouting of the mad landlady, who was digging in the closet.
"That Vietnamese boyfriend of yours - I've just seen him hanging right there pretending he's a jacket! Thought I'm stupid enough to be bluffed in that kind of way!"
White foam on her lips.
Mrs Vukovic hurried out of the house. She walked the streets mindlessly, not looking at anything, unaware of the giggling teenagers who shouted insults at her.
Only to find you, Biljana. I would endure anything, only to be with you again.
The winter was a cold one. It was Christmas time - an orgy of repletion and excess. Beereagles at the Golden Skunk and other filthy pubs mumbled the new prayer, Our Beer in Heaven. In the illuminated shop-windows revolved sarcastic Santa Clauses and tasteless, obtuse dwarves. The streets were covered in blood.
Mrs Vukovic shuddered. What a disgusting pagan rite. Killing carps in the streets. Blood on melting ice reminded her yet again of her husband.
"They massacred you too, Marko. Along with tens of thousands of others."
She was talking aloud in her mother tongue, and the pedestrians laughed frantically at her.
Suddenly she winced. She caught a friendly, empathetic, human look. In the snow-bound town park, a thin old man was sitting on a bench, with a pair of crutches next to him.
"You are exhausted - sit down." His black eyes looked at Mrs Vukovic with compassion.
"Thank you. You're the first person in this town who talks to me without rallying."
"You have to leave this place. It all is a plot - they've arranged it between themselves. They are chasing you like a beast."
Three Santa Clauses passed near them, plugging their nostrils with their fingers.
"That's exactly the way they treated us Jews during the war. They also liked opening windows when a Jew entered the room, saying 'something stinks in here.' They washed the chairs we had been sitting on, the door handles we had touched. "Bloody Jew swines" was the only way we were referred to. All in order to please the Fascists who were ruling here. And if only that were where it ended! They stood queues in front of the GESTAPO with lists of all the Jews in the neighbourhood. All in order to fulfil Hitler's request to finish with the damned Jews. They received the property of those they had betrayed, as a reward . I lost my house in this way."
"My God, anti-Schindlers, anti-Vallenbergs! But how did they manage to get away with that, when the war was over?"
"Very simply. They changed colours when the time was drawing high. Went outside and welcomed the new masters - the next liberators, with bunches of faded graveyard lilac. These new masters rewrote their history in the conditional ."
"So your crutches -"
"Yes, I was crippled at the Terezin camp."
Grey dusk was falling on the toy town. The air smelt of smoke. Three girls dressed as angels and three boys in demon costumes surrounded the bench. The children were jumping about, grimacing and shouting, in their unnatural, squeaky voices, "Hello, Auntie Bitch! Hello, Uncle Swine! Merdy Christmas! Happy New Year in a comfortable grave!" They ran away quickly.
"Their mothers have taught them that. And their grandmothers had taught their mothers. Leave this country, that's my advice to you leave!" The old man reached for his crutches.
"But I - I can't!"
The matter was that the old Zaprdenec and his fellows, tempted irresistably by the million rouble reward promised for the Admiral's head, with little hesitation betrayed Kolchak to the Bolsheviks. It was nobody but Zaprdenec who was on guard in front of the train compartment, in which the captured Admiral awaited the Bolsheviks. Kolchak was executed shortly afterwards.
The happy Zaprdenec made his way back to his own town of Krysolaje across the Far East, taking along the gold treasure of the Russian Tzar on the order of general Gajda.
Each time Grandfather Zaprdenec got drunk at the Golden Skunk, he started weeping for the gold the evil general had taken away. The silver and the fur robbed off of Russian villages, were nothing compared to the gold. The Russian peasants Zaprdenec had crucified on the gates of their houses haunted him in his nightmares.
"I can still see the bowels of those Russians!" he complained to the beerlions. No wonder that he had become famous as a civil war hero and had been honoured with the order of the lion for fighting the hydra of Bolshevism. Everyone envied him. Many women in town scolded their husbands: "You idiot, you should have fled from the Austrian army, joined the Russians and then betrayed some admiral or other, then we would be as rich as the Zaprdenecs!"
His other favourite story was about him standing on the bank of the Siberian river, watching the corpse of the glorious Admiral floating downstream, uglified and swollen. The amateur writer Kakoun was always sitting near, asking greedily for details of the appearance of the corpse. Then, with a hiccup of sheer aesthetic pleasure, he made notes on napkins. In fact, he never fulfilled his idea of a short story intitled HE ALMOST SAVED RUSSIA, as the napkins with the notes fell victims to Kakoun's habit of saving on toilet paper.The golden roubles, old Zaprdenec had received for Kolchak's head, he invested in a large house, and a candle factory which he bought. In 1949, however, the factory was confiscated by the Communists who had come to power in the country. "This is the dreadful revenge of Admiral Kolchak! So far as I can remember, he was always against nationalisation! Why did I only go for those God damn roubles in the God damn 1919!" cried the bankrupted legionary. His penance was but soon aborted as he found a way out - he joined the Communist Party, pronouncing himself a fighter with the enemies of Communists, namely Admiral Kolchak. For this he was made mayor of Krysolaje. And his glory was retrieved.
Forty years later there was another revolution. All the property nationalised by the Communists was now being given back to the owner. In spite of all his strivings, the young Zaprdenec did not managed to get back the candle factory. It had happened to stand in the way of an oilpipeline from the neighbouring country in the east. The compensatoin paid to Zaprdenec seemed tiny compared to the old golden rouble reward.
Even thogh Drandpa Zaprdenec was decorated with an order of the Silver Hoof for his struggle against Communism, it was clear that things would never be the same. Once, in a grip of hopeless rage, Zaprdenec junior killed his famous grandfather with a candlestick.Then he decorated himself with grandpa's order.
The betrayed Russian Admiral smiled sarcasticalyy from a pale old photo on the wall.
The murderer hid the body so well that it was never found. Inside the town Zaprdenec junior inherited his drandfather's glory. He succeeded the latter as a storyteller at the Golden Skunk, and Kakoun kept making notes on his napkins.Gradually Zaprdenec started describing his dead grandpa drifting down the wide Siberian river right behind Admiral Kolchak's body in 1919. The story had enormous success. The hardened beerscouts wept like children. Everyone felt sorry for the poor orphan.
And now orphan Zaprdenec stood before Mrs Vukovic. His wide red face expanded in a mean smile.
"Your landlady, says you hide your lovers in the closet. Mrs Jebava is a decent old woman and won't tell lies. the whole town knows about it. And I've said you're good in bed. Lots of fun - hint hint -I've said I've tried you out. Maybe you'll get some extra clients. At your age, ha ha! You gotta be grateful to me -"
"Liar! You bastard, how dare you!?" Mrs Vukovic tried to slap the offender but he was quicker to do the same.
"There's one for you, you gypsy whore!"
"Help! Police! Somebody, call the police, please! Please!"
All windows around were immidiately shut. But Zaprdenec seemed somewhat frightened.
"What police? Now, get a life, a bitch must know her place. Hang on, I've got something here for you."
He threw off the canvas covering of his car trailer. The trailer was stuffed to the top with all sorts of odd objects: ironers, lighters, broken table-lamps, curtains, tights, underwear and other junk . Once a week Zaprdenec went to the nearby western country. He specialised on stealing children's bikes, which the town dwellers ordered in advance. In the meantime he grabbed whatever he came across, tore clothes off ropes, slipped lamps from window-sills. He had got beaten up a couple of times, but escaped the police smartly.
"That's me Christmas presents," generously offered Zaprdenec. "Anything you like - feel free, just get a bit kinda easier."
The woman recoiled with disgust. A burst of laughter came from behind - it was the beerfalcons going to the Golden Skunk.
"Leave this old bitch, man, everybody's so bloody bored of her already. Would be nice of her to get lost from here."
"Listen up, Zaprdenec, what if you brought us some new whores from abroad?"
Zaprdenec took on a conceited appearance.
"No problem. Thousand crowns an hour - plus extras for the risk."
"Fine, deal! And that old one - suppose it's time we've thrown'er bloody out of the town.
Mrs Vukovic hurried home, followed by a roar of nagging laughter of the beereagles.
At midnight, the Paranoia Gale came again, randy like hardly ever before, blowing down roofs, breaking the window-shutters, howling in the chimneys. Oversize-bellied beerlions under Mrs Vukovic's window echoed at one another, going numb. Kakoun was also there, vomitting on the Canofelis, which growled on him, trying to bite him in the leg. Then, suddenly recalling its identity, it jumped at the crouching amateur writer and scratched his face. Kakoun was touched; he stopped vomitting and gave the Canofelis a caress.
"Kitty, my sweet little puss. Did you know I've got two cats at home - Propane and Butane... I also had Methane but he's escaped . I miss him so much. He had no right to do this to me."
A blow of the Gale brought the sound of an old, sneezing car motor. Cheers, whistling, "He's coming! Wow! Haw-haw!!!"
Zaprdenec's shabby old Skoda was rolling down the road. Instead of the trailer, it pulled a tiny, accurate white house with coloured window-shutters.
"A bitch-house on wheels! Wow! Hurrah! Wicked!! DO TOHO! DO TOHO!!"
Happy, red-faced Zaprdenec stepped out of the car and leaned his thick hand for the money. Kakoun handed him a plastic bag full of motley bank-notes. It was the entire royalty he had received for his short story, METHANE ESCAPES.
The beerscouts started gathering round the house, yelping, "Come here, SPACEPUSSIES, let us have a look at you!" The beerfalkon's yelping was heard by the jackals in a nearby disco 'America.' Abandoning their obedient girls in underwear, they encircled the little house.
In the window appeared three tiny, accurate grey-haired old ladies.
"WIEDA WOS!" uttered one of them astonishedly.
"Oh, look, they're even more ancient than our old gypsy whore! Zaprdenec, where the hell did you get them!?"
"WIEDER WAS!?" said the second old woman suspiciously.
"Kurvastellung!" yelled the teenagers.
"HALT! HŽNDE HOCH!" the third old woman shouted angrily, took a flower-pot and threw it at the beereagles. They fled panically.
"POLIZEI!" shouted all three old women.
On hearing the apocalyptic word, Zaprdenec jumped out of his house. He had nothing on himself except a pair of blue panties. He had his passport in one hand - and a large candlestick in the other. A minute later Zaprdenec's car and the little house vanished in the dark of the night. Mrs Vukovic, who had been watching the scene from her window, involuntary burst out laughing. "HALT! HŽNDE HOCH!" she repeated to herself. With her thin, weak hand, she drepped a pack of crackers out of the window. "WIEDA WOS!" The permanently hungry Canofelis caught it in the mid-air and swallowed it.
The morning found the little town quiet, humiliated and terrified, Zaprdenec did not return. Kakoun pronounced in the pub that the orphan had been kidnapped and was being tortured by the Russian mafia who sought to avenge the Admiral that he had killed. The people of the town withdrew to their toylike houses, closed the window-shutters and talked in low, anxious voices. Some hid under their beds.
But nothing happened. And so by nightfall, the Paranoia Gale hit again. All the people went outside, waving flags and congratulating each other on yet another victory over foreign invaders.
The special issue of the evening newspaper Hromoprd flaunted the headline:
TEARS ARE NO SHAME FOR REAL HEROS
The editorial proclaimed, "Our immediate task is to drive out the remaining aliens from our town!"
Without delay, the entire population of Krysolaje gathered in front of Mrs Vukovic's house. The rally went on all night and the day after. Speakers succeeded one another on an improvised tribune made of beer carts. A fair-haired girl in a short grey coat and a checked red bag on her back was shouting:
"We all know she practises perverted sex with underage schoolchildren . She therefore belongs to a high risk group. She must hence be expelled from our revived community! Down with the gypsies!" - she concluded unexpectedly, and threw a stone into Mrs Vukovic's window. Enraged, the teenage mob rampaged about, breaking windows of the nearby houses. When there were none left, they set on fire three cars parked in the street and a little gypsy girl who happened to be going by.
Mrs Vukovic avoided coming close to the window. Frosty air and snow flakes flew in through the hole in the glass. Mrs Vukovic put on her coat, turned on the television and put the volume all the way up. The mad landlady Jebava had locked herself in the cellar and was barking at the ghost of her husband.
There was a special program on the TV, sponsored by the Nevestka Servis company, which ran several erotic parlours. The newsreel showed a clash between two rivalling dominatrixes, which resulted in an armed conflict between their slaves. Landscape after the battle: broken vibrators, small whips, chains, handcuffs, and a large candlestick.
New frame. Ceremonial opening of Progressive Initial Sexual Instruction Academy (P.I.S.I.A.). Attending high guest Polly Duster cuts ribbon. Three youths wearing only fig leaves play a fanfare on obscene-shaped trumpets. Three charming young girls in bikinis present flowers to Polly Duster, who places them on top of her massive bust and starts reading a solemn speech.
Mrs Vukovic admierd the girls' youthful beauty.
A curly blonde shook her buttocks provocatively, blowing up her thick lips and rounding her big blue eyes.
A red-haired little witch with a mysterious smile was moving her weird emerald eyes from side to side.
A brunette, shy but doubtlessly the most attractive of all three, swayed her enormous black eyes up and down. Her chalk- white face expressed deep-seated suffering.
"It's me!" shouted Mrs Vukovic. "Your mummy! I'm coming to you! Stay right there!"
New frame. Indiscrete interview with a highway prostitute.
Mrs Vukovic jerked to her feet. As she appeared at the threshold of the house, the mob stepped back instinctively. A witch was standing before them. Wild spark in her black eyes. Grey shags. Abrupt speech. Out of my way or you're dead.
The Canofelis made one last effort and broke off its chain. Barking and miaowing alternately, it scratched and bit Mrs Vukovic's way to the railway station.
The station had been deserted. The semaphores and railway points switched chaotically every second. In the distance, a steam engine emerged, hooting without pause. As it reached the platform, Mrs Vukovic jumped into it, holding the Canofelis tight in her arms.
A violent gust of the Gale stabbed her in the back like a thin,
sharp knife.
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