Coming Closer
(Translated by Jan Čulík and Lesley Keen)
Our concierge suffered an affliction which usually strikes those who overeat to excess or who suffer some kind of distasteful hormonal disorder. In his old age he became enormously fat, filling the whole concierge’s flat (it was necessary to knock down all partitions) as a snail fills his shell. He became a prisoner in his own home. At the same time he was lucky. Several of us living in the block remembered the old man from our childhood days. He was a kind caretaker, prepared to defend the corner of all small boys. In this he differed greatly from all the other concierges in the neighbourhood. Since then, we had all grown up. Many of us had wives and children and yet we still felt duty-bound to do our best for him. We took turns in doing the caretaker’s work for him. We also did his shopping. My task was the most exacting. Unlike many others I had remained single, and my evenings were free. I therefore spent them with the caretaker. To be precise, I stood in the stairwell in front of his-open concierge’s window and related to him every night what was new in the world. The outside world had become inaccessible to the man. He could not even watch television since as his body had spread throughout his flat, one of his eyes was cruelly pressed against a wall, while the other gazed permanently through the desolate concierge’s window into the corridor.
My stories fulfilled three basic functions: they provided content for the concierge’s barren evenings, they informed him about what was going on outside, but, first and foremost, they confirmed him in his belief that he was better off where he was.
When telling the news I elected to speak of catastrophes, disasters, misfortunes. Hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, conflicts of war, AIDS, air crashes, famines – all these were my favourite topics.
I soon realised that misfortunes, catastrophes, and afflictions are the commonest currency in the world. They occur so frequently and in so many guises that it is impossible to invent a story of a disaster which would not fit a real event. This I realised. In the course of time I began inventing catastrophes.
Later, I also discovered that the daily accounts of misfortunes, catastrophes and afflictions (which continuously attack mankind like a pack of wolves) gradually lose their horror. I saw that the only way to make my stories effective was to start bringing the misfortunes, catastrophes and afflictions nearer to home. I began to move them (slowly and carefully at first) closer from the far away places – from the Nevada deserts, from Afghan villages – until one day, I realised that I was telling the concierge about afflictions hitting our own city, at that point actually about a huge hairy spider which had already run across our square and was now approaching, like a stroke, the city centre. Oh, my God, moaned the concierge, who was caught in his house like a fox in a trap.
I told him of the huge murderous spider bursting into our own street. Then, behind my back, I heard the main door slam shut and then there were ominous noises in the corridor. The concierge’s eye opened wide with fear. Frightened, I turned round, but behind me was only the empty stairwell. There was no-one there.
Have you ever watched two droplets of water, running down a window pane? When they approach each other, they first freeze on the spot for a moment, resisting each other, and then they quickly merge into one. I approached my ghastly fabrication so closely (or rather, I allowed it to approach me) that the unthinkable has happened.
I hear my hasty steps along the stairwell. The main door clicks shut. I have run out into the street. People are running scared away from me in all directions. Cars (imagine, vehicles!) try in horror to hide by crashing into shop windows. They climb house fronts. I move swiftly on my long, hairy legs, my poisonous mandibles blessing my native town. Static electricity from my thick spider’s fur crackles like a series of slaps given to people to the right and to the left of me. Behind me flows an aroma reminiscent of the smell of fried popcorn during one early evening in the distant past, my love.
All good deeds should be justly rewarded like this. I served the poor concierge and in return I have become an ugly monster feared by every living creature. Enough – fall silent, my lips, prepare, mandibles. A new victim is coming closer. I will attack him from the rear by jumping down from my nest situated on the roof of the town hall.