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All My Cats Page 8


  I mulled over that story again and again. The tomcats were sound asleep and I went outside while it was still dark and took the little ladder, just like a chimney sweep, my ribs were no longer hurting, there was no time for that, or maybe they did hurt, because even the bruises were painful, but I felt nothing because I was driven by guilt, by a feeling that once again I had not done everything I should have. I went outside, praying that my swan was still in the world. I wanted nothing more than for her to remain alive for at least an hour after I rescued her. Once again, I walked in the footprints I had made going to the swan and back, and it felt as though I were going to pick up my advance for the story the lady at the Golden Tiger gave me, and I fell down several times, with the ladder, and so I, king of comedians, a writer to whom people often tell crazy, off-color stories, which they deliver with much laughter: how about this one, the time we pissed all over their staircase and afterward one of the young women vomited into the electric typewriter, and when you tell them that story in the publishing house, they’ll give you an advance on the spot.

  So I, the king of comedians, stood on the riverbank, and overnight the wind had blown in fresh snow and I stood in my old footprints that were partially filled in with snow, daylight was breaking in the east and the countryside was awash in chlorine light and pink arpeggios against the flow of the brook. When I looked at where the swan had been yesterday, I had the impression that she was already gone, and I laughed, lifted my head and trumpeted to the frozen heavens my delight that this beautiful bird, which in England belongs to the Queen, and anyone who harms a swan can be prosecuted by the Queen herself, now this bird had rescued itself and removed from me that terrible feeling of guilt.

  But when the sun came up over the frozen water, there, three yards from the bank, was a gentle mound of snow, and when I took a closer look, I saw that my swan lay under it and that before her heart had frozen, she’d been able to position her neck in a graceful arc and tuck her head under her wing. And now, covered with drifting snow, she lay there like a beautiful sculpture, and my heart felt shame at the sight, her neck and head covered by her airy wing so that they made an arch, a mystical unity, as human hands do when they come together in prayer. The entire bird was contained within a circle, like the eternal return of the selfsame, the swan who yesterday had refused to let me save her, free her from the ice of which she and her frozen feathers had become a part . . . I set the ladder down on the ice and slid it forward till it touched her, as though the ladder had been tailor-made for this moment, and very slowly, facedown, I elbowed my way to the swan.

  I have a habit, before leaving my flat in Prague, of checking three times to make sure I’ve shut off the gas stove, that I’ve turned off the lights in the bathroom and the water closet, and that I’ve locked the door, and then I go back once more to check on everything a fourth time, and so now, though I knew that nothing but my swan could possibly be lying there under the snow, I still brushed the snow away with trembling hands and saw the curve of her wing, and I went on brushing the snow away and yes, there was her neck, then I elbowed my way back like a sloth, and now nothing ached anymore but my heart, and so I crawled back from the riverbank to the swan again, and then again, trying to brush away more and more snow from that beautiful snowbound creature who, perhaps for my sake alone, had arranged herself in my sight so that I cried out into the dark morning and realized, bitterly, that the king of Czech comedians could go to claim his advance for this story, not to the Writers’ Publishing House, but to the very center, not of death, but of hell itself, where I will suffer pangs of guilt and remorse and shame that will pursue me into eternity, into the very heart of incalculable consequences.

  Acknowledgments

  Translators spend a lot of time alone with their author’s books, but the final result is never just the work of a solitary individual. This is especially true of Bohumil Hrabal, whose writing presents his translators with a daunting array of challenges.

  For invaluable help in decoding some of the more difficult passages in this book, my thanks go to Jakub Chrobák, who teaches literature at the Silesian University in Opava; to Tomáš Mazal, who was a friend of Hrabal’s and is the author of several books on him, including an extensive biography and a guide to the many places and pubs mentioned in Hrabal’s work and frequented by him; and to my old friend Zbyšek Sion, a great painter and one of Hrabal’s most devoted readers. I thank them especially for their guided tour of Kersko and its environs, the setting for most of this book.

  On this side of the Atlantic, my thanks to the team at New Directions, including Declan Spring, for their championing of Hrabal and their unfailing editorial support. Moreover, through New Directions, it has been my privilege to be reunited with the brilliant editor Drenka Willen, who some years ago guided my first Hrabal translation, I Served the King of England, to publication. Drenka is also a distinguished translator, and the fact that we share a similar approach to the craft has been an inspiration.

  Finally, but not least, my thanks and love to my wife, Patricia Grant, who, among many other things, is the first responder to the work I do.

  — paul wilson, august 2019