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Czech writing
See the illustrations here
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excerpt from BARADLA CAVE
by Eva Svankmajerova
translated from the Czech by Gwendolyn Albert
the twins
The most fantastic things in us lose and acquire meaning so easily it's frightening. The Twins were born without
changing much in Baradla's life at all. What Baradla effected with her being was just as obvious, or as futile, as
the pale dawn of morning, or the noontime slaughter of an old goat in the country. Baradla long ago spliced her
moments by mixing something, like the slave who is a rich man seeking painful boredom. Or was she looking for
something in the mud? Nobody knows.
Into the circle of her life beings fell in order that they might more or less successfully start existing they were
named The Twins. Just like Marie, nobody much looked after these two children of Jóstaf's. The only thing missing
from this affair was that heart-rending ludicrousness which would have meant that, one day in the future, Baradla
could reproach herself for not doing everything possible to find a way to make life more bearable. There was no
such way. No way whatsoever. The Twins, however, were malicious slow inactive cantankerous covetous and insatiable.
No one should ever call children innocent. They possess so much human misery that it can't all fit inside them, and
it stinks all around them, obstructing the way and poisoning the air. These tiny, horrible monsters are, on top of
everything else, the clutches of a fate which torments the parents to such extent it's shameful (if there is a
modicum of decency in them), not just with the trifles that erupt the moment the babe sticks its bloody little head
out of the hole, but with problems of a more fundamental nature. It's not just that a grown child will simply
announce some rather basic resolutions to its dear ones, such as, perhaps, that it is going to cart them away so
that, in their place, there will be room available for some different purpose. But let's also notice that,
basically, the child is constantly making an attempt on the mental health of the mother. Now and then the child
even unbalances the father. But, in an odd way, fathers are psychologically better equipped in many cases. There is
nothing better in a person than courage, but it's not courageous to let other people into your belly, this is a
different, protracted kind of guile, which rarely ends otherwise than in bitter disappointment. All that talk of
sublime nobility is nothing but bullshit. It's not really about the horrible expenditures connected with the whole
affair, only with the vanity of the whole activity. It's not really about the slavery of these stupid years, when
one has to vomit forth goodness with the persistence of a machine gun; it's just that I think it's all for nothing,
Baradla often told herself, sinking deeper and deeper into the mud so her fastidious young wouldn't come after her.
Of course it would be easier to get rid of them, which would in no way be original, unwarranted or strange. What
was strange was that Baradla suffered them even though she knew that she wouldn't be free of them until the
decrepitude of old age, if she even made it that far.
She didn't have bad memories of Jóstaf, she was actually glad that he hadn't changed anything in the children's
care, on which she had already expended so much effort. Although afterwards, in moments of desperation over her
dim activity, she sincerely wished he would take the children with him. Of course she could have just abandoned
them, like some women do. She wasn't afraid of the opinions against her that this would have provoked. In any
event, even the prevailing opinions weren't worth much. Nor was she stopped by fears of solitude. It caused her
neither inner emptiness nor tired sorrow. Their stupid defenselessness was probably the reason she kept them —
strange, dangerous, half-friendly and completely in need. Maybe she wasn't capable of abandoning someone as long
as they hadn't completely pissed her off, or maybe there was some other, possibly biological, reason.
Strangely, the presence of The Twins in Baradla's life was acknowledged by others with a sort of malicious joy,
as if it were one of her episodes of insanity or some other lapse. Perhaps it had been expected of a girl, formerly
so beautiful, that she would screw her way around the globe. The general impression was that she had been deprived
of such a brilliant possibility by these little idiots. As the moments passed, she kept herself from disclosing,
especially to the young, her intention to discover whether anything made sense, and if so, what. Every so often she
took a slow walk to prove to herself that there are moments of existence that, although we are living through them,
to remember would not destroy us. She used to look at one particular swamp, so old and withered that everyone fled
it in a panic. They fled as if the plague had broken out. Maybe they knew where they were rushing off to. Maybe.
Some of them. The swamp exhaled a fog of shame and hopelessness all the way down to the exit road. A panic which
Baradla could sense. As if almost everyone had become a boat waiting near the floodgate, ready to sail. At such
moments she usually felt as if she had been painted green, yellow, blue and red. The truth was that Baradla
eternally never had anything to wear, she had no shoes and no real profession — all she did was swear that
everyone stole from her and similar nonsense. She grew fat, her voice coarsened, she was under the constant
impression that she was going to die soon. Not that she was definitely ill with some specific disease, she wasn't
even tortured by pangs of conscience over something she hadn't done well. It was just that her head was foggy
from the swamp vapor. It filled her lungs and bedewed her lashes with mold. At times she seemed on the verge of
asking The Twins for advice on how to be an enthusiastic admirer of something or someone. But The Two didn't know
enthusiasm. It wasn't in their nature — or had they been tinged with her blues, her distrust? Maybe the
children should have been taken away from her, but because this would have suited her, considering that she was
quite sly, they preferred to leave the little darlings with her — let her do what she liked with them. It
occurred to her, on top of everything else which was adventurous for her nature, to get them a suitable little
house where they could grow up in an uninhibited, natural way. From that time forward, Baradla wore on her spine
a magical little house at the very center of the idyll. Such houses give free rein to fantasy, and in one it is
possible to mend or show out a guest, and it would be a lie not to mention that one could also wake up. He tore up
the boards over the course of ten years so he could put in a bathtub, and to this end he wanted to tear down the
tree, but then his heart took pity on it. One day, if he's crawling, the building cannot be dragged along anymore,
but on other days he sleeps there in his shell. She discussed the matter with her boyfriend, and so she became a
well-off relative with plenty of obligations. The truth is that throughout her whole life she made less money than
she had to spend, and only thanks to the conscientious Polabian schoolteachers. Who wouldn't have wanted? To be
served courteously and discreetly by women in a hotel room. But the business with her aunts had been closed for
almost thirty years, so that a bevy of neglected brats were running around in Baradla. Children need to have
something to keep their hands busy all the time, because of the other children. Objects calm them down and make
them feel important. But this approach is expensive, because the children abandon their objects, they lose them and
throw them away.
Sometimes she trembles all over and doesn't feel well. Next door to her in the hole lives a small family just
starting out. They swallowed the bait of their relatives' promises, so they don't work; their relatives promised
to take them on the farm as seasonal workers. They will pull up the stones, because they miss a bit of greenery.
Two handsome sons sit on the body of a car. We're on our way to school. But their mother's eyes gleam, and because
she is terribly embarrassed, she doesn't invite her visitors in. A little further on there is a small house with a
Slovak family, recognizable by the Bratislava Castle. A man in a plastic bag came in right after me. The search
party works three meters apart from one another, but despite this they keep an eye on one another their entire lives,
they always know exactly who finds what and when. They stop and the men crawl into the hole to pick and choose.
What's interesting is that they try to suppress their excitement. They don't know if they have found just rocks or
a couple of million. They sit down. By now they have gone very deep, having displaced thousands of tons of earth.
Therefore, Baradla stands over them on the slag heap. A little further on, a group of Greeks is using a vacuum
cleaner. The motor which powers the whole monstrosity is acting up a little. He couldn't even get married!
They say the price of water has gone up again; over the past few days the most rain fell at Churanov (172 mm), in
Prague and in Liberec. In Hostivar there are landslides. I'm not kidding; sometimes the Little House seemed like
an Apparition to her. I don't know what went on there, maybe it just weighed on her. Don't read those fables!
But other people don't think it's so foolish to read fairy tales.
© Twisted Spoon Press
© Eva Svankmajerova
Translation © Gwendolyn Albert
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ISBN 978 80 902171 7 1
140 pp.
145 x 205 mm
softcover with flaps
smythe-sewn
5 full-color illustrations
fiction: novel
Price of €15.00 includes airmail worldwide
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