CLOSER TO YOU, DEAR GOD, CLOSER
Carola Biedermannová

When God appeared to her,Caroline was washing the window.She gave a yell and let go of the wash-cloth.The cloth slapped against the floor.
      She couldn’t fall to her knees.She was standing on a chair.The chair was standing on a table.The table and the chair were wobbling pre- cariously.They were the last table and the last chair in the appartment, perhaps in the whole building.Caroline would not allow them to be split and burnt.She had saved them even from the *Anheads when they were handing them out as a supply of firewood for the winter.
      The sum of the heights of the table,the chair and Caroline,including the length of Caroline’s arm,did not come to the same as the height of the window.The window was higher.Caroline was washing it in the position gymnasts call {vypon/??}.In short,she was standing on her toes.
      The Eye,embedded in a triangle,winked at her encouragingly.She stared at it.Some day,it had to come.People now lived cleanly healthily and naturally,like Eve and Adam in paradise.Only the weather wasn’t paradisiacal.
      That was why God had to come,elect a Saviour and that Saviour was then supposed to return paradise to the people.But why me,exactly? Caroline wondered.She didn’t have any idea how to bring about the return to paradise in practice.
      The Eye winked at her again and vanished,perhaps because Caroline’s husband had woken up.
      A little earlier her husband had returned from the hunt.He had caught a swan.He had submerged himself in the water of one of the inlets of the Vltava.He had covered his head with leaves and twigs.He had looked like a tangle of plants,a lot of which float down the Vltava.At least the swan must have thought so.When he had drawn close to it and pulled it underwater by its legs,it had probably changed its mind.But by then it {was}too late.Her husband had broken its neck and pulled it up onto the bank.There he had bitten through its throat.By the time he brought it home,the swan had drained of blood.
      “What are you screaming and banging your cloth on the floor for?”he asked roughly.That sort of thing is becoming in a man,the hunter and protector,the warrior.“You’re only doing the cleaning so as to wake me up anyway.Eve never did any cleaning in paradise.”
      “Maybe not,in paradise,”Caroline tried to object.“We,however,have to live cleanly as God wills.And how can you live cleanly when you don’t keep a clean house?”
      “One day I’ll knock those windows out!”Her husband was evidently irritated that {she}was contradicting him.A woman is supposed to hold her tongue and listen.
      The construction on which Caroline was standing grew even shakier as {she}climbed down to fetch her cloth.My God,she {muttered under her breath},but the Eye did not return.
      She lifted the cloth and went to rinse it out.The water in the bucket was {untreated},from the Vltava,but cleaner than the cloth.
      With a long-practiced movement,she reached into her secret hiding- place.The weather wasn’t warm.Her body was blue to the core,covered in goose bumps.Her muscles were getting stiff.She had to fall back on her remedy.
She took a deep gulp.
“Careful not to drink too much,”said a memory.
“Dear God,”Caroline took fright.
“You’ll start to have hallucinations,”continued the memory inexorably “and that’s the beginning of the end.”
      Caroline took another drink.She wasn’t attached to life,she had no reason to be.She swallowed again,sat down to plucking the swan,and left her memories to do whatever they wanted with her mind.

      The witch’s house looked exactly like a witch’s house.Lots of peculiar objects everywhere,not a hint of tidiness,dark walls.On the forbidden stove,a stupefyingly pungent liquid was bubbling in some peculiar apparatus.The hag was —Dear God!—dressed and old.Caroline had never seen an old person.She had heard,of course,that certain sects knew the secret of longevity,but she did not know what it was good for.The longer a person lived,the later they entered paradise.
      “{Squawking,yawping,caterwauling,who wakes me before the dawning?}”the hag began some sort of ritual ditty.Caroline drew back with fright.The old woman stopped her singing.
      “I know,I know ”she said.“You’re run off your feet,exhausted,you’re always cold,your powers are abandoning you,you long to kill yourself but you don’t want to commit a mortal sin and so end up in hell.”She started to sing again.“{That I know,that I know,they bring me lots of girls like those!}”She broke into a fit of coughing.“In my young days we’d have a snifter.Or two.”
      “A snifter?”Caroline {was puzzled}.
      “A small measure of something alcoholic.Come now don’t look so appalled.In those days,people slept in beds,{with blankets on},houses..........

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