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..........