The City

von Marcus Krug

She is not just a city but an entity of some kind. And yes, she is like a magical carbuncle growing on the back of an ancient reptile. In a gentle pace, though. She is not one of those fast-growing megacities with their repulsive stretch marks. On the contrary, she is a beauty even when I refer to her as a boil. She is a benign growth. The lump of lanes, streets and alleyways has something organic about it. Nothing is forced, everything is where it belongs. And all this casts a spell over you. As Kafka once said about her, “She never lets you go … this old crone has sharp claws.”

It was July back then and it is the same month this time. We have picked the date in accordance with our first trip here almost a decade ago. It was around Tereza’s birthday, which is also our anniversary; and so it is this time.

She is sitting next to me here in the big square in the centre of the old town. We are just across from the old town hall with the astronomical clock everyone flocks to and takes pictures of every full hour. This time we are well able to afford lunch at the restaurant, back then we weren’t. Time has passed, and so many things have changed but not the city – thank heavens. She is still as captivating as she ever was.

If European cities were necklaces, she would be a diamond among pearls. I am trying to get away from the precarious situation we are in. Earlier this morning, Tereza found the expensive beads on a string that I put around her neck awfully pretentious and called them a misplaced attempt to fix a thing that needed shattering, not mending.

In my thoughts, I cross the river by way of the old iconic bridge and walk the narrow lanes up to the castle and the palace. Up here, my eyesight suddenly has improved significantly. From here I can clearly see her staring at me, while I am still having my eyes pinned on the medieval clock on the town hall wall – trying to figure out what time really is about.

There is nothing I possibly could say to her, nothing I actually want to. Just going back to a place from a happy past won’t rewind the clock, turn back time. It was a stupid idea. But it was our idea.

The night we arrived here, we briefly returned to our passion from our first visit in the same hotel and even lived up to it – for a short while. Only to fall into a deep hole the next morning. There was no foundation left. Not anymore.

Before we left the hotel, the pearl necklace discarded on the bedside table, Tereza was lying on the bed, naked, staring at me. “Tomáš,” she said, “would you please come over here.” But I kept staring out of the window, brushing my teeth. I knew what she wanted, and even though I wanted it too, I could not do it. Strange, isn’t it?! But she kept talking.

In the distance, now I am a scary gargoyle on the castle church’s roof, I see a three-legged television tower on which black plastic babies climb up and down on the outside. This futuristic mark of shame is defiling the city’s charming suburbs.

I wonder if she can smell the chimney cake just around the corner from here. The first time we came here, she loved it. The roll covered in sugar and cinnamon and filled with chocolate cream. For her, it was the icing on the cake, as the expression goes. I am more into savoury stuff, the local version of goulash and dumplings made it for me. I can still remember the taste and I even passed the restaurant, where we had them back then, on my way up to the castle.

She has now started to talk to me, even though I am not listening, I just can’t. But when I eventually turn to her and ask her in an irritated voice to stop, since this is distracting me from enjoying the city, which I actually do not dare to verbalise, Tereza says “For you it might be a disturbance, but I am trying very hard to make conversation.”

That probably is the fundamental difference between women and men, I suppose. “Men marry because they are tired; women, because they are curious. Both are disappointed.” says Lord Illingworth in the third act of A Woman of No Importance.