November 15, 1936
Tonda
That business about Tonda? It was like this. Some time back, our aunt — she’s like a sister to my wife — anyway, our aunt dropped by for a visit because, or so she said, she wanted me to give her some advice. I think it was about a horse. She wanted to buy a horse for her farm, and so she says to me, brother-in-law, you’re a railroad man, you know a whole bunch of people, including those horse-dealers who take the train to market, so maybe you could ask around for a good workhorse. We’re talking about this and that, mainly about farming, and I’m seeing that our aunt has a shopping bag crammed full of something or other. I’m figuring it’s a goose. Frantík, I tell myself, you’re going to have goose for Sunday dinner. She and I finish talking, but I’m still thinking about that goose; I’m guessing it could weigh close to eight pounds, roasted with drippings — — That aunt of ours, she’s quite a woman. And then she says, brother-in-law, I’ve brought something to thank you for your help. And she hauls it out of the bag. And let me tell you, when it starts screeching I’m so startled I jump like a jackrabbit. I’m looking at one lively piglet, and it’s squealing like hell. A very fine piggy, no question about it. Our aunt, I should explain, is a real down-to-earth kind of person; she’s a bus conductor, but a country woman like that sees the job as some kind of official office. A conductor can be pretty sharp-tongued with people and send them off to here, there, and wherever till their heads are spinning: well, what can I say, a bureaucrat. And so our aunt, that simple soul, thinks she’s got a God-given right to tell people what to do and how, but she’s always been considerate to me, that’s a fact, and she loves our kids like they were her own — Anyway, like I was telling you, she brings over this little porker. Here you are, Frantík, it’s from our sow.
You know, when it began to screech, the wife came running up at once, and the kids — well, pure joy. The boy grabbed hold of its tail and couldn’t get enough of how it squealed. Andula took it in her lap and held it like a baby. The piggy calmed down, began to grunt, contented as you please, and dozed off to sleep; and that girl, I’m telling you, she sat there like a statue, the piglet bundled up in her apron, and all at once she got this solemn, sympathetic look in her eyes — I have no idea where so much maternal feeling comes from in such a little pisser. So I say to the kids, that’s all there is to it, we have to clear out the woodshed and turn it into a pigsty for Toní ek. I don’t exactly know know why I called that porker Toní ek, but the name stuck as long as he lived with us. But it’s true that when his weight went over twenty pounds we began to call him Toník, and later it got to be Tonda. Our Tonda. You wouldn’t believe how fast a little pig like that can grow. But when he reaches his full forty pounds, I figured, there’ll be a pork feast; some good eating, some roasts with drippings, some nicely-smoked bacon for winter. So we fattened it and fostered it, and all summer long we looked forward to that pork feast; and Tonda, he followed us around, even inside the house, and let himself be scratched — believe me, he did everything but talk. Nobody can tell me that pigs are dumb animals.
And then one day, when it got to be close to Christmas, I say to the wife, it’s about time I call the butcher.
“Why?” says the wife.
“Well, so he can butcher Tonda for us.”
The wife gives me this look of total astonishment, and I myself think it sounds sort of odd. “So he can kill the pig,” I say straight out.
“Tonda?” asks the wife, and she keeps looking at me in this strange way.
“Well, that’s why we raised him, isn’t it?” says I to that.
“Then we shouldn’t have given him a Christian name!” shrieks the wife. “I couldn’t take a single bite! How can you think of making sausage out of Tonda? Or eating Tonda chops? Don’t expect me to do it, or the kids, either. We’d feel, if you’ll pardon the expression, like cannibals.”
You know, mister: silly females. I told her that, too, don’t even ask how, but when I got to thinking about it, well, it made me feel strange all over. Jeez, killing Tonda, quartering Tonda, smoking Tonda, you don’t do a thing like that; I’d hate to eat him myself. A man’s not an animal, right? If Tonda didn’t have a name, he’d be a pig like any other pig; but once he’s Tonda, you look at him in a whole different way. What I’ll tell you is this: I sold Tonda to the butcher, and I still felt like a slave-trader. Even the money didn’t make me feel any better.
So what I think, mister, is that people can kill each other only if they don’t know each other by name. If they knew that the man they’re aiming their gun at was named František Novák or whatever, maybe Franz Huber or something like Tonda or Vasil, I think something inside their souls would say to them: Jeez, don’t shoot, that’s František Novák, for God’s sake! If all the people in the world could call each other by their Christian names, I think things would change for all of us, and a hell of a lot for the better. But these days, people and countries can’t see the advantage somehow of knowing each other by name. And that, mister, is a crying shame.
April 11, 1937
The Man Who Knew How To Fly
Mr. Tomšík was walking along a path near the Vinohrady hospital; it was his constitutional, for Mr. Tomšík was very particular about matters of health, and an enthusiastic sportsman in general, by way of being a zealous spectator at soccer matches. He walked swiftly and nimbly in the spring twilight, encountering at most, here and there, a pair of lovers or someone from the Strašnice quarter. I ought to buy myself a pedometer, he thought, so I can see how far I cover each day.
And suddenly he recalled that, for the past three nights, he had had the same dream: he was walking along a street, but in his path was a woman with a baby-buggy; he pushed off gently with his left leg, and in a flash he was airborne, perhaps ten feet high, flying over the woman with the buggy and landing smoothly, glidingly, back on the ground. At no time had he questioned this in his dream. It had struck him as entirely logical and extremely pleasant; it had merely seemed somewhat ludicrous to him that no one had tried it till now. After all, it was so easy: all he’d done was kick off a bit with his leg, just as he did when riding a bicycle, and Mr. Tomšík was floating upwards once more, drifting to the height of a two-story building and descending gently to the ground. All he had to do was push off with his leg, and once again he was flying effortlessly, as if sailing through the air on a gymnast’s rope ladder; it hadn’t even been necessary to touch the ground, only to move his leg and fly on. In his dream Mr. Tomšík had had to laugh aloud at the fact that, till now, no one had thought of this trick. Merely thrust off gently from the ground with your leg, and you can fly. Definitely easier and more natural than walking, Mr. Tomšík had realized in his dream; I must try it tomorrow, he thought, until I’m airborne.
The dream had come to him three nights in succession, Mr. Tomšík remembered. Such a pleasant dream; it would be so easy — Well, it would be beautiful if you could take flight straightaway like that, just by pushing off a bit with your leg — Mr. Tomšík looked around. No one was coming along behind him. Mr. Tomšík casually, just for the fun of it, began to run a bit and pushed off with his left leg, as if he were jumping over a mud puddle. In a second he had risen to a height of ten feet and was flying, flying in a flat arc. He wasn’t in the least surprised; it was entirely natural, except that it was as blissfully exciting as a ride on a merry-go-round. Mr. Tomšík could have shouted aloud in boyish delight, and nearly did; but after a flight of perhaps a hundred feet, he was now approaching the ground and could see that it was marshy. He gave a slight kick, as in the dream, and indeed soared higher at once, after which he came down gently and without a jolt some fifty feet or so farther on, behind a man who was making his doleful way towards Strašnice. The man looked around suspiciously; it was clear that he didn’t in the least like having someone behind him whose footsteps he hadn’t heard beforehand. Mr. Tomšík ran past him as inconspicuously as possible, all the time fearing that too energetic a stride might propel
him off the ground and send him flying again.
I’ve got to test this out properly, Mr. Tomšík told himself, and he returned to his usually solitary route home. But as luck would have it, he kept encountering lovers, and a railroad man. He therefore pulled into a deserted spot off to one side, where fill dirt had been dumped over the years; it was already dark, but Mr. Tomšík was afraid that by morning he might have forgotten how to do it. This time he pushed off more slowly, flying only something over three feet and landing a bit roughly. He tried it again, this time helping himself along with his arms, as if he were swimming, and now he flew a good eighty-five yards, in a half-circle actually, and touched down as gently as a dragonfly. He wanted to try it a third time, but just then a shaft of light fell on him and a gruff voice asked: “What’s going on here?” It was a patrol officer.
Mr. Tomšík was terribly taken aback and stammered that he was practicing something. “Look, do your practicing somewhere else, if you have to,” scolded the policeman, “but not here.” Admittedly, Mr. Tomšík didn’t quite understand why he could practice elsewhere but not here; however, inasmuch as he was a dutiful citizen, he wished the policeman good night and quickly walked away, fearful lest he suddenly take off. Perhaps the officer would find it suspect. Not until he was near the public health clinic did Mr. Tomšík vault into the air, soar gently over a wire fence and, helping himself along with his arms, fly all the way across the clinic’s grounds to Korunní Street, where he landed right in front of a housemaid carrying a pitcher of beer. The housemaid shrieked and fled. Mr. Tomšík estimated his most recent flight at a good two-hundred-twenty yards; this struck him as a brilliant beginning.
In the following days he practiced his flying with diligence, but only at night and only in secluded places, mainly in the vicinity of the Jewish cemetery on the other side of Olšanska. He tried different techniques, such as takeoffs from a running start and vertical ascents. Playfully, waving just his legs, he reached a height of well over a hundred yards, but he didn’t have the nerve to go higher. In addition, he worked out various kinds of descent, as if he were splash-landing or dropping perpendicularly at reduced speed, which depended on arm-work. He also learned to control his speed, to change direction in midair, to fly against the wind, to fly with weights, to rise and dip as need be, and similar sorts of things. It was enormously easy. Mr. Tomšík was increasingly astonished that people had not thought of it till now; perhaps no one before him had tried it: simply pushing off with your legs and flying. Once he managed to stay up in the air for an entire seventeen minutes, but then he got entangled in some telephone wires and thought it best to come back down. One night he tried flying on Ruská Street. He had flown to a height of perhaps fourteen feet when he sighted two policemen down below, and he swerved at once over a nearby house, while the policemen’s whistles shrilled piercingly in the night. A minute later he returned to the spot on foot and saw six policemen with flashlights searching the garden, looking, so they said, for the thief whom they’d seen climbing over the fence.
Only then did Mr. Tomšík realize that flying afforded him unprecedented opportunities, but nothing particularly suitable came to mind. One night, he was tempted by an open, fourth-floor window on Jií z Lobkovic Square; with a gentle bound Mr. Tom-šík flew up, perched on the windowsill, and wondered what to do next. He listened to someone inside sleeping soundly and noisily, and then he snuck into the room; but because he had no intention of stealing, he just hovered and had the rather uneasy, awkward sensation that being in someone else’s apartment rouses in us. Mr. Tomšík sighed and snuck back to the window, but as a token of his visit, something to serve as documentation of his athletic prowess, he fished a piece of paper from his pocket and wrote on it with his pencil: “I was here!! Avenger X.” He placed the paper on the sleeper’s nightstand and quietly descended from the fourth floor. Not until he he was home again did he realize that the paper was an envelope containing his address, but he didn’t have the courage to return for it. He was horribly afraid for several days afterwards that the police would make inquiries, but, oddly enough, nothing happened.
After a while, Mr. Tomšík felt that he could no longer bear to indulge in flying as a secret and solitary pastime; the problem was, he didn’t know how to go about revealing his discovery to the public. But it was so easy: all you had to do was push off with your leg and wave your arms a bit, and you could fly like a bird. Maybe it would become a brand new sport; or, who knows, maybe it would ease congestion in the streets, since people could go walking about in the air. And they’d no longer have to build elevators. It could have tremendous implications indeed; true, Mr. Tomšík didn’t know what kinds of implications exactly, but that would take care of itself. Every great discovery appears at first to be a useless plaything.
Mr. Tomšík had a neighbor, a rather pudgy young man, Mr. Vojta by name, who was something or other at a newspaper. Yes, he edited the sports section or something like that. So Mr.Tomšík set off one day to see Mr. Vojta and, after the various proprieties, burst out that he could show Mr. Vojta something interesting. He made such a prodigious secret of whatever it was, that he had Mr. Vojta thinking “good gracious” or something along those lines. Mr. Vojta nonetheless consented, and around nine o’clock that evening he went with Mr. Tomšík to the Jewish cemetery.
“Take a look at this, Mr. Vojta,” Mr. Tomšík said, and he pushed off with his leg and rose to a height of perhaps five yards. There he performed different kinds of acrobatics, came back to the ground, shot up again waving his arms, and even remained poised in the air, without moving, for a good eight seconds. Mr. Vojta grew extremely serious and began trying to figure out how Mr. Tomšík did it. Patiently, Mr. Tomšík showed him: just push off with your leg, and that’s all there is to it. No, it has nothing to do with spiritualism; no, it doesn’t take any great strength, not even strength of will, nor any muscular effort. All you have to do is jump up and fly. “Go on, try it yourself, Mr. Vojta,” he urged, but Mr. Vojta shook his head. There’s got to be some kind of special trick to it, he was thinking. And I’ll find out what it is. In the meantime, Mr. Tomšík mustn’t show this to anyone else.
The next time, Mr. Tomšík had to fly in front of Mr. Vojta with a twelve-pound barbell in his hands; this didn’t work as well, and he reached a height of only ten feet, but Mr. Vojta was satisfied. After the third flight, Mr. Vojta said: “Now listen, Mr. Tomšík, I don’t want to alarm you, but this is very serious business. This self-propelled flying could have major significance. National defense, for instance, if you see what I mean. It ought to be put in professional hands. You know what, Mr. Tomšík? You should do a demonstration in front of experts. I’ll set something up.”
Thus it happened that one day, Mr. Tomšík found himself standing in his gym shorts before a cluster of four gentlemen in the courtyard of the National Institute for Physical Education. He was horribly embarrassed by his near-nakedness, he was nervous and jittery, and he was shivering with cold, but Mr. Vojta had been adamant: without gym shorts it was no go, apparently so they would be able to see how it was done. One of the gentlemen, the powerfully built, bald-headed one, was a professor of physical education. His attitude seemed thoroughly negative; you could tell by the expression on his face that, from the standpoint of science, he considered the whole thing to be utter nonsense. He was looking impatiently at his watch and grumbling.
“All right, Mr. Tomšík,” Mr. Vojta said excitedly, “show us your running start first.”
Mr. Tomšík, scared out of his wits, managed to run a couple of steps.
“Hold it!” the expert stopped him. “Your start-up’s all wrong. You must transfer your body’s center of gravity onto the left leg, understand? Once again!”
Mr. Tomšík turned back and tried to transfer his body’s center of gravity onto his left leg.
“And your arms, sir,” the expert informed him. “You don’t know what to do with your arms. You need to keep your arms in this positio
n, so they stay clear of your chest. And that first time, you held your breath when you ran. You mustn’t do that. You must breathe freely and deeply. Now, once again!”
Mr. Tomšík was confused; now he truly didn’t know what to do with his arms or how to breathe. He shifted uncertainly from one leg to the other and looked around for his body’s center of gravity.
“All right, now!” shouted Mr. Vojta.
Mr. Tomšík tottered in bewilderment and then began to run; he was just at the point of shoving off to fly when the expert said: “Wrong! Hold it right there!”
Mr. Tomšík meant to stop, but he couldn’t. He feebly pushed off with his left leg and rose to a height of perhaps three feet, but because he wanted to comply with the order, he cut short his flight and came back to a standing position on the ground.
“Completely wrong!” yelled the expert. “You must drop to a squat! You must land on the tips of your toes and spring up with your knees bent! And you’ve got to let your arms swing forward, understand? Your arms, of course, are reacting to the force of momentum, sir; it’s a natural motion. Hold it!” said the expert, “I’ll show you how to jump. Now watch closely how I do it.” Whereupon he threw off his coat and positioned himself for takeoff. “Pay attention, sir: the center of gravity rests squarely on the left leg; the leg is bent and the body is tilted forward; I keep my elbows back, so the chest is expanded. Now do it with me!”