Love and Garbage Read Free Page A

gentle and calm in lovemaking, slow as a lowland river in summer, I heard that voice again and suddenly realised the right word for it: it was passionate. I tried to dispel it – at such an inappropriate moment – but I failed.
    We had turned a corner and were now moving away from Vyšehrad. I was still using my coalman’s shovel to load scraps of paper, plastic cups and squashed matchboxes onto the cart, also the head of a doll, a torn tennis shoe, an empty tube, a smudged letter, as well as – the most numerous items all over the ground – cigarette butts. All that rubbish I shovelled into the dustbin on the cart, and when that was filled to the brim the captain and I got hold of it and together we tipped it out onto the pavement, where the wind, which was stiffening all the time, scattered the rubbish about again, but it didn’t really matter: rubbish is indestructible anyway.
    Rubbish is like death. What else is there that is so indestructible?
    Our innkeeper neighbours had five children, the youngest boy had the same name as me and was about my age. We would play together, and his friendship enabled me to penetrate into the hidden parts of the tavern, such as the cellar where, even at the height of summer, huge shimmering blocks of ice were stored, as well as gigantic beer barrels – at least they seemed gigantic to me then – or into the stables, whose walls, even though the horses had been replaced by a black Praga car, still reeked of horse urine and where a large number of cats of varied ages and colours had made their home.
    The boy fell ill with diphtheria and within a week he died. At the age of five I did not understand the meaning of death. My parents did not take me along to his funeral. I only saw the innkeeper dressed in black and his weeping wife, and the funeral guests, and I heard the brass band playing incredibly slow march music.
    When I asked when my namesake would come back, my mother, after a moment’s hesitation, told me he would never come back, he had gone away. I wanted to know where he had gone but my mother did not reply. But the old serving woman at the tavern, once I had summoned up the courage to ask her, told me that of course he had gone to paradise. His innocent little soul was now dwelling in that delightful garden amidst the flowers, playing with the angels, and if I was a good boy I’d meet him there one day.
    I grew up in an environment where no prayer was ever heard, and the only garden I knew was the one outside our windows, and that had no angels in it, although the trains would noisily roar past immediately beyond the fence.
    I wanted to find out more about that garden of paradise and about the souls dwelling in it, but my mother dodged my questions and told me to ask Dad.
    My sensible father, who I knew had thought up the engines for the fastest trains roaring past under our windows, as well as those of the planes thundering above our heads, and therefore was held in high esteem by people, was astonished at my question. He took me by the hand, led me outside, and there talked to me for a long time: about the origin of the world, about hot gases and cooling matter, about tiny and indeed invisible atoms which were ceaselessly revolving everywhere and in everything. They in fact made up the piles of earth, the stones on the path along which we were walking, and also our legs which were carrying us. We were walking along the railway line, through the sparse suburban wood, climbing up towards the airfield. The trains were now thundering along below us, while military biplanes were roaring overhead. My father also told me that people had always suffered from being tied to the ground, from not being able to detach themselves from it. But they had dreamed of leaving it, and so they had invented the garden of paradise, which had in it everything they yearned for but lacked in their lives, and they had dreamed up creatures similar to themselves but equipped with wings. But what in