Viola Fischerová

Were Jakub to turn right out of the school gates and then walk further down the road, Father Nosek would ride past him on his bicycle already in the tree-lined avenue leading from the school. If he'd cut across the castle grounds, the priest would only catch up with him in the steep street to the church. The third option was to hide behind the petrol station. For that he had to wait until the black silhouette would appear in the gateway and then set out on the right-hand pavement toward the main square. The third tactic was the most inconspicuous but also the most risky; in the flow of traffic and cyclists Father Nosek could easily overlook him and Jakub would then have to wait until Sunday mass. Nevertheless he was convinced that only alternating all three ways would make their encounters seem coincidental, a matter to which for some reason Jakub attributed great importance.

Yet today - of this Jakub was certain - Father Nosek was anticipating their meeting just as he was. This too weighed on his mind during the two hours of class that were left until he could go home, and although it wasn't the main issue, he had to think about it anyway. Now, standing on the pavement, choosing which path to take, he realised the pretence of coincidence they were keeping, and was ashamed of it. He checked that Father Nosek's bicycle was standing in the rack, and ran across the avenue to the park, to the tall maple facing the school gates.

It was only the end of October, yet the trees were nearly bare. Four hollows filled to the brim with water from the incessant rain were all there was left of the bench that had stood here in summer. Uncle Johan had been under ground twenty days already. Saracen nine. Water probably didn't leak from the grave's walls into the heavy oak coffin, but Saracen's box was certainly full. He imagined Saracen, head on his paws, staring with unblinking eyes into the watery darkness.

Were it summer, he would have buried Saracen as is, straight into the earth. Last spring when they were uprooting the dead apple tree in the orchard, Father Nosek had said that there was only as much matter in the universe as God had created. It doesn't disappear, nor does it increase, it only changes. The black stump of the tree truly was no longer wood. The splinters Jakub collected in a pile were soft and fluffy and turned to dust under his touch.

In the summer, in the warm soil, Saracen would have transformed faster. He imagined the crumbly loam mixing with the shaggy fur, the hair close to the body white and coffee-coloured like rootlets and the closer to the surface the greener the hair, germinating until springtime when the dog would bask in the sun afresh, rather like a shadow in the grass: the green shadow of a dog.

Yet the box was sturdy and in a sudden need to protect Saracen from the mud and the cold, Jakub had decked it with an old blanket and nailed it shut. In the middle of the empty parkway he was overwhelmed by the feeling that he had walled Saracen up.

But was this all that was left of Saracen? When he had left for school that morning, Saracen had been lying stretched out in front of uncle's bedroom door, his eyes closed, looking as though he was dead. But he still recognised Jakub, and what's more, showed his recognition by taking the milk from Jakub's hand with his chapped tongue. Just a couple of drops, the only food he had accepted since uncle's death. By noon he had stopped moving. His eyes were open and his gaze fixed on the distance, somewhere behind the wall.

Mother had been preparing him for this all week. The animal will die of longing for Johan, you must come to terms with it. He had. He even let himself be convinced that Saracen could not be buried in uncle's grave, even though both of them would not have wished for anything else. With time he would have reconciled himself to that completely. In his mind, both had found their place in heaven, next to that tall man in swimming costume on the seaside, laughing on mother's night table, the man who was supposed to be his late father although he was so young.

When Jakub was little, he used to take the photograph out of its frame when his mother wasn't looking. He would hold lemon candy to the man's lips, half-believing that they could share the sharp taste through some mysterious connection. At least he thought such a thing wasn't completely out of the question. He observed with trepidation the expression in the laughing eyes, which he saw changing each time they rested on him. He felt such joy and supreme pride at such moments that he would usually burst into tears.

But that was before. Since he had been attending school these last three years, he has not been thinking about his father in such concrete terms. Daddy was in heaven, where Jakub and mummy would join him one day. His plea for that day, which he spoke every night to the Almighty, started with the invocation:

Lord, let me ascend to my father in the heavens,
So that I may not remain without him
(sometimes he added, And without his love),
Who sees me,
And who does not forsake me.
Amen.

To this fixed basis he would add extra verses composed on the spot in moments of particular piety. Lately the rogations had been for uncle Johan and his loyal servant Saracen, who loved him so much that he died of woe for him.

And yet, Saracen was not in heaven - that was as clear as it was certain that uncle Johan was. Father Nosek had said so one afternoon in religion class. Animals don't go to heaven because they do not have immortal souls. He tried to recall the kindly voice, pronouncing that sentence.

"That's not true!" He had cried out from the back of the classroom. Then, as if he had not heard anything Father Nosek had said about man's free will to choose God, he had whimpered, "None at all? Not even old horses or dogs... not even Saracen?"

"No horses, no dogs, not even Saracen!" He now answered himself out loud, stunned by the boldness of that statement. And yet it must be true. Father Nosek did not lie. He could not. Neither did he have any reason to. One could look into his face for hours and no shadow of danger or evil would cross it.

He stared intently at the gates. Once in a while they would open, but only a few straggling pupils would slip out. Four had not struck, but the light was already on in the staff room. None of the teachers came out. Jakub pulled the sleeves of his sweater down over his fingers. It occurred to him that he could wait in the cloakroom by the stairs, but he rejected that option and immediately forgot it.

All right - he reflected - people have immortal souls and when that soul leaves the body, the person dies. But animals too must have a soul, otherwise how would they live? What if they have just a tiny soul, a mortal one, do they die when their soul dies? In that case when Saracen refused to eat after uncle's death, he decimated his soul by starvation. That was a ridiculous idea, that a sausage could keep Saracen's soul alive. Or even a string of sausages! Jakub laughed briefly. For an instant he caught a faint glimmer of hope that everything might be otherwise, somehow, but the flicker vanished and he tried in vain to bring it back.

Geese and chicken died when their necks were wrung, he had seen it with his own eyes. Blood came out of the cut and then life escaped from it too. What else could life be but the soul? The only difference is that the human soul knows where it should go: to God. But what do rabbits and lambs know? He imagined their little white fluffy souls wandering helplessly around the yard, chased from one corner to the other and eventually torn apart by the wind and blown away.

Saracen died because he wanted to die. Because he had to go after uncle Johan. If he refused to eat and drink, it was because his soul had ordered him to do so. His tiny soul had at last exterminated the big dog's body, so that it could escape and follow its master. Besides, Saracen's body was hungry and thirsty; one could tell by the way Saracen, at least for the first few days, would look at his bowl. Also, Saracen cried. Silently, he always had two wet sticky trickles of tears under his eyes.

Is it possible for a soul like that to be dispersed like fluff, like nothing? Wasn't it much easier to imagine it setting sail, finding its wind and dashing off like a rocket, over hills and dales, to join its master?

And what about uncle Johan, did he not turn around to see what Saracen was doing without him? Had he not seen how he was lying in front of the door, how he was languishing in his absence, and how he would die? Would he not wait a little so that they could go together, as they had done all those long months when uncle had spent all his time walking to and fro between the rooms, never deserted by his one and only Saracen? This could not be so!

Uncle Johan did not ever speak to them about Saracen, to mother and him, nor to Father Nosek. In the end he spoke very little in general and when he did it was only to Saracen. Jakub could hear them at night through the wall when he was falling asleep. What could they have been talking about, if not about it? No, uncle John would never have abandoned Saracen!

But what if he had to? Jakub inhaled deeply. What if he could wait no longer? Uncle's soul needed to get out and Saracen was dying too slowly, the soul had to leave, to go to heaven, to hell, or to purgatory. What happened then, when uncle's soul couldn't breathe on earth any more? First it held its breath, trying to hold on to pillows and blankets until it went red in the face and had to let go and soar. The day after the funeral Father Nosek had said that uncle Johan was in heaven rejoicing with the angels, because he saw God and Jesus Christ and was blessed.

Then what happened to Saracen, if dogs are banned from paradise? Did they just leave him outside, running back and forth, sniffing around in front of the gates? Did they leave him to languish and starve once again?

What does God have against dogs, when he loves all people, even the ingrate and the evil ones, since He sacrificed His son Jesus Christ for them, whom they took and nailed to the cross? What grudge does He hold against dogs and colts and old horses who pulled their loads every day and never could gallop in the field because there are no fields in the city?

Does it mean that the Lord doesn't like animals?

He stopped himself short. He was overcome by a sudden wave of shame and fear, like when Viktor talks on purpose about angels in the toilets while he's peeing. Yet wasn't what he had just thought an even greater heresy? He blushed.

Nevertheless here were these dumb creatures, God's creatures all of them, sacrificed for no good reason, ignited in burnt offerings on the holocaust altar. And the lambs that God ordered to be slaughtered on the fourteenth day toward the evening. He imagined it: men kneeling on the top of a cliff; laying the bleating lambs on the stone with their legs tied, and slashing their necks. In the whole town, in every house, they wrenched the youngest lamb from its mother. When they killed it, they wiped their bloodied fingers on the doorframe.

Even Christ had had a lamb slaughtered. And when his disciples had nothing to eat, he ordered Peter to cast his net into the sea, and Peter pulled out 153 fish, which they grilled on red-hot coals.

He had seen it on holiday by the sea. A man in a white apron picked out fish thrashing about in a bucket and threw them straight into a pan of boiling oil. He had cried out in horror and mummy had carried him away whispering in his ear that the fish was half dead anyway and couldn't feel anything. But he had seen all too well how the fish was struggling under the counter, floundering against the stones covered with blood.

He had never told Father Nosek about it. Only once on the dam he had asked him whether killing fish was a different kind of killing. It was a different killing, because killing for a useful purpose is not a sin. There, above the outfall, he had explained it to himself in terms of a sacrifice, insofar as God had provided the animals for humans to eat so that they may not suffer from hunger, and in recompense for their sacrifice all the animals, even predators and snakes, would go to paradise.

"Paradise," Father Nosek had said at the end of the lesson, "is God." Then, after the bell had rung, just for Jakub, in the midst of the bedlam that was breaking out: "Only humans agonise in their desire for God. All their lives."

It was possible that animals know nothing of God. But does that mean that they do not long for a green field, where they can gambol and graze, in reward for all the suffering, for their hunger and cold, for the whipping and the hunting and the killing? For sure animals have an idea of paradise. And Saracen? Saracen had not cared so much for God as he had for uncle Johan. Had Saracen not loved uncle Johan with all his heart, with all his soul and mind, and had he not followed him wherever he had gone?

If God will not hear Saracen out, someone at least will hear his howl in front of the gates. Jesus will, or the angels.
"Someone must take care of him!" He screamed. "You can't just leave him there like that!"

A tractor with an empty trailer clattered down the road. Two more windows shone into the dusk from the ground floor. Behind one of them the janitor's wife was hanging up curtains. For a moment, when she was resting her arms, it looked as though she was looking straight at Jakub. But she was only observing her own reflection, and after she rearranged her kerchief and tucked in her blouse, she resumed her work easily and naturally, as if there were nothing outside the window, as if no one could see her.

Jakub detached himself from the trunk and started pacing between the trees, around and across, treading an indiscernible web in the grass.
It was dark when Father Nosek appeared in the doorway. Teachers were now emerging in pairs and threes. Father Nosek came out last and alone. Below the steps he halted and lit a cigarette. Jakub didn't move. Only when the last cluster of teachers disappeared around the corner did he pick up his satchel, swing the straps over his elbow and step out into the streetlight. His knee hit the bag with every pace as he walked with his eyes fixed on his feet. His mind was blank. The happiness he had denied himself all afternoon, the wayward bliss of having easy answers at hand, which he nevertheless suspected to be in every thing, even in the water that flooded Saracen, this happiness now surrounded him, light and effortless, and there was no reason to resist it. Jakub dragged his shoes through a long puddle and then skipped onto the pavement.

Father Nosek was not looking at him. He stood with his head turned away toward the street and when he faced Jakub his expression was different.
"I cannot make it easier for you, Jakub. I cannot tell you what you would like to hear. Even if it might seem incomprehensible to you," Father Nosek sighed, "there are no ... I have no evidence for the existence of souls in animals. Perhaps I would have ..." Father Nosek spoke sharply and agitatedly, as though he were angry. Once in first grade, when Reiner had thrown Jakub's satchel out the window, Father Nosek had taken him into his arms. In front of the whole class. On Sunday there would be a daytrip to the hills. It began to rain; it was late. Father Nosek put on a raincoat, straddled his bicycle and rode off. With his head against the corner of a wall, Jakub wept.

There is a place that God doesn't know about, that he doesn't think about, that he didn't even tell the prophets about. Behind the back wall of paradise there is a meadow full of mist. Animals who have no one to go to come to this meadow after they die. All of them are there, horses and dogs, mice and lambs. But no one knows about them and no one looks for them there. So they are all waiting there for nothing.

Until now Jakub had gone to great lengths in order to get into heaven. He did not take God's name in vain, he did not indulge in sinful thoughts and he almost never stole anything. Suddenly that seemed easy, or at least a lot easier than what was ahead of him. For from this day on he must live in sin. Not completely, so that he wouldn't descend to hell and eternal damnation, but enough not to deserve paradise. The soul grows in communion with God, he recited quickly to himself, to stifle his growing anxiety. Loss of faith brings damnation. Somewhere in between is midway sinning. He must pray, but God mustn't hear him. He must believe, but only in paradise. He must gain a tiny soul. And he must never tell anyone about it.

He shook with cold and distress. The face of the young man, smiling at him from the seaside, appeared before him for an instant, and he felt such an intense pain that he had to shut his eyes.
Someone has to be there with them, to stroke them and talk to them.
He started to run. When he opened the front door, it occurred to him that he would be but a poor consolation for Saracen, but he told himself, better than nothing. Before he entered the bathroom, he took some glue and a brush out of the tool closet, and chose a sharp pencil from his case. Under the corner of the linoleum floor that had come unstuck he wrote in delicate lettering: God is not the father. After a pause for thought he added the signature: Jakub. Afterward he glued the flooring back and locked the door. He prayed for a long time, carefully choosing the right words. In his new prayer the word father did not appear once.

Translated by Nancy Hawker.

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Last modified on October 19, 2005  | © Telegram 2005