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"Není nic horšího, než být neoblíbený. Když vás přestanou zvát na večeře a nikdo nechodí k vám. Když vás za zády pomlouvají a mají pocit, že je neslyšíte. Co na tom, že máte kvalitní a chutné jídlo? Krásný dům? Nezájem!
Ale já jim ukážu..."

Rázným krokem spěchal směrem k tržišti. V patách mu klusal věrný otrok. Tupě dusal po kamenné dlažbě, ale jeho majiteli ten zvuk připomínal sladké chrastění mincí. Prodá ho za dvanáct tisíc sesterciů!

O pár hodin později s téměř šílenou jiskrou v očích vnutil prodavači zálohu. A v rukách konečně třímal skleněný džbán s dvoukilovou červenou rybou.

Zavřít oči. Usmát se. Nadechnout se jarního vzduchu, voní po rose, sněženkách a tvých vlastních vlasech. Slyšíš? Když autobus stojí na zastávce, dolehne k tobě zpěv ptáků. Pak se rozezvoní dveře, a jede se dál. Jedna noha na zemi, druhá opřená o sedačku před tebou.
Dlouhý výdech. Sluneční paprsky ti hladí tvář. Za oknem je příjemně teplo.
Tvoje zastávka. Venku se zhluboka nadechneš. Tenisky obuté po dlouhé zimě - létáš?
Jednou jsi na sebe zapomněla. Teď už ale víš. Kdo je tvůj domov? Kde je tvůj domov?
Už jsem zase tady. Ještě jsem tady. A navždy tu budu. Sama v sobě.

Během dubna se mi zrodil seriál magicko-realistických drabblů o jednom cizinci v Praze během karantény 2020. Drabble na sebe navazují, ale zároveň lze každé drabble číst úplně samostatně bez znalosti předchozích.

První drabble je k dispozici zde: During the Night a v závěrečné poznámce je vždy odkaz na další díl.

Byla tu ještě osmá planeta, kterou Malý princ navštívil, a já se to nikdy nedozvěděl, protože mi to buď zatajil, nebo na ni přicestoval až poté, co jsme se viděli naposledy. Na osmé planetě bydlel ohleduplný sobec.
Nepočítal nedosažitelné hvězdy, nepoměřoval se s ostatními, nezapomínal se napít a pil příležitostně. Věděl, že nemůže dávat druhým nic, co sám nemá. S něžností i disciplínou milujícího rodiče se staral sám o sebe, aby byl připraven nezištně dávat druhým.
Malému princi tento dospělý nepřišel vůbec divný. Divně se ale začal cítit on sám, a tak se rozhodl pokračovat dál na své cestě, domů.

Ondra vzhlédl od opravy slohových prací a se zájmem pozoroval Dana, jak s pečlivostí i pomalostí malého dítěte vykresluje na papír slova. Nepřestávala ho fascinovat Danova posedlost: nejdřív latina, díky za ni, potom řečtina, hebrejština, jako poslední arabština.
"Hotovo. Dopsal jsem to. Můj první arabský sloh! Tímhle tempem ale taky poslední..."
"O čem to je?"
Dan se pokrčil rameny. "Pojď se učit se mnou a uvidíš."
"To víme, jak dopadá... Co znamená to první slovo?"
Daniel se zarazil.
"Já ti zakážu pracovat do noci. Napráskám tě studentům. Zabavím ti kafe... To je poslední slovo, moje pointa."
"A co teda znamená?"

"Věřil jen slovům, Valdemare?"
Sladkému vábení Jarmiliných rtů, když mu šeptala do ucha.
Oplzlé pomluvě o místním mlynáři, která ho přiměla k vraždě.
Sobě samému, když oslovil obláčky, co se ve své lhostejnosti rozplynuly dříve, než mu kat sťal hlavu.
Valdemar se zadíval Hynkovi do očí. Seděli sami pod popravčím kolem, bílá lebka chrastila ve větru.
"Kdysi věřil činům. Kdysi věřil tobě. Nikdy nepřestal křičet ze spaní. Ale nikdy neuvěřil, že jsi ho zkrvaveného opustil ze své vůle. Nikdy tě nepřestal milovat. A mě... nevymlouval jsem mu to, staral jsem se o něj... ale mě za to nikdy nepřestal nenávidět."

"Pamatuješ na naše první... rande?"
Lahev vína se elegantně vznesla a dolila Dracovi sklenici.
"V astronomické věži? Jak jsme se... líbali a..." Harry jednou rukou objímal Draca kolem ramen, druhou si rozpačitě mnul kořen nosu.
"Dvě poznámky. Za prvé, je rok 2020, je ti 40 a-"
"39, pořád je duben-"
"Bude ti 40 a stále jsi v rozpacích. U Merlina, koho jsem si vzal! A za druhé - ano, pokud nepočítáš několik nultých rande předtím..."
"To jako kdy?"
"Třeba když jsem v hodině lektvarů zařídil, aby nám vybouchnul kotlík a my skončili po škole..."
Harry se usmál. "To nebylo tak zlý..."

Let's ask each other questions,
she said.
At random,
she added
and opened the book with a pencil
and read the question on page 21:
Category: relatonships
Do you change your marketing strategy according to the person you're speaking to?
My marketing strategy?
You're not off the market?
No. But I don't like the concept of marketing strategy.
She looked him in the eye, smiled behind her facemask.
Sounds like you want to sell yourself.
Nasty business, dating.
I don't like the question. It sounds insincere.
Like fitting into the mold of someone else.
Exactly.

Byla tu ještě osmá planeta, kterou Malý princ navštívil, a já se to nikdy nedozvěděl, protože mi to buď zatajil, nebo na ni přicestoval až poté, co jsme se viděli naposledy. Na osmé planetě bydlel ohleduplný sobec.
Nepočítal nedosažitelné hvězdy, nepoměřoval se s ostatními, nezapomínal se napít a pil příležitostně. Věděl, že nemůže dávat druhým nic, co sám nemá. S něžností i disciplínou milujícího rodiče se staral sám o sebe, aby byl připraven nezištně dávat druhým.
Malému princi tento dospělý nepřišel vůbec divný. Divně se ale začal cítit on sám, a tak se rozhodl pokračovat dál na své cestě, domů.

There was another one.

She had once asked him what sex meant to him.
"It's a pleasant activity that I like to do with you," he said.
She also remembered a question of his: "How can you tell there is a difference between having sex with someone you love and someone you only find attractive when you haven't tried?"

The question shattered everything she hoped the relationship was.
However, she found her answer now.
She had a story tell. But buried so deep nobody would ever know.
Especially not him.
He hadn't been in touch with her for eight months.

Oddly enough, there were wooden shutters on his bedroom window. Who knows who had installed them and why as there were no others to be seen close by. The wood was old, dry, and crooked. The planks, vertically nailed together, were painted blue. Or some of them, as the paint was probably as old as the shutters, peeling off in stripes that later decorated his floor.
But it worked magic.
No light pollution at night, no birds singing early in the morning, no children shouting in the afternoon.
And certainly no crying that his neigbours could hear in the evenings.

The first time she turned up at his doorstep was unexpected. The meeting had been set up, but he did not plan ending up in his flat afterwards. It was a mess all around, he hadn't tidied up for weeks. Some clothes here, some books there, a sculpture made of wine bottles in the corner, a small collection of dust bunnies to keep him company all over the place.
But she seemed not to notice as she moved gracefully through the flat, only in her underwear, a glass of wine in her hand and a half-smile on her lips.

He saw her on stage for the first time, dress rehearsing. She danced. She danced as if she fought with the world, then surrendered, did he hear a sigh escaping her lips?, later she leveled up with an imaginary partner, life itself. When she noticed him, she pierced him with her gaze that made him breathless. And horny, too.
Later he found her in a tracksuit moving heavy set pieces. Disheveled hair, a half-smile, the same eyes.
What he did not see was that having given him her number, she ended up kissing a girl hired to do the cleaning.

You can't teach an old dog new tricks.
Especially when he is lying low.
When he has dug himself in the middle of one of the world's most beautiful capitals.
But he can teach himself what he has always known.
The scenery changes. The days pass by. The windows hold. The horizon still stands. She answers the phone, hangs up some time after. The hinges creak. He takes out the garbage and gets his food delivered.
But he is here. Always has been.
For better, for worse. For richer, for poorer. To have and to hold.
Yourself.
Wherever.
For ever.

What was he?
A colleague. Bitchy sometimes, but ready to help.
A brother. You cannot choose your family.
A son. The same, only a bit more challenging.
A friend. Loyal, funny, supportive.
A pet owner. He used to have a rabbit. When he was 6.
A neighbour. Pretty quiet. Except for the times he was not.
An actor. Still at heart, out of work now.
A writer. His life's necessity.
A dreamer. His essence.
A cook. If he didn't want to die.
A cheat. How did that come here?
A lover. How did it happen now?
But it did.

He had never before noticed how many there were. He had known they existed, more than aware, but he had also managed to put some of them aside.
Thoughts.
Where do they come from?
And where is a teacher in his head to manage them, or a dustman to get rid of them?

The flat was vast.
The flat was almost empty.
His mind was vast, too.
But never empty.

No coronavirus. Thoughts were the pathogens multiplying at full speed.
The lockdown protected him from any danger outside.
But it did not protect him from the danger inside his head.

They were always life-changing. And what a role they played in his love life!
Under quarantine again, he was sitting on the floor, crumpling up concert tickets he had found in a box. The first kiss; the first hangover; the last kiss; falling in love; falling out of love...
He put them aside and found others saved online. A memory here, a memory there.
Until he found that one.
The one when he almost got ran over.
The one when he scarred his leg.
The one when his heart broke to pieces he was still trying to retrieve until today.

A deep breath. No birdsong, the windows shut. The couch. Again. A sheet of paper. And a pen. No water. No food. Eyes red. The wrist stiff. Inhale. Exhale. The chest hurts, the stomach uneasy, the bladder - ignore the bladder!
The dill's gone.
There's space.
Finally space.
For him to write. And write he does.
It is possible. It is a fluid. Like blood. Only lighter and all around him, like air, but contained within these walls.
The paper turned black.
He reread it - and locked it in a wardrobe because he cannot give this piece of himself to anyone.

He stood there, in front of the house, the garden, the fence, and tried to take it in. At some point the house woke up, the windows blinked with their curtains and looked at him firmly. The door pouted and shouted something he didn't understand - except for the word "police" which is quite international.

They were supposed to be there. Forever and ever. Immortal, changeless. Like vampires.
He laughed at the thought and headed back home.

He needed a change, too. A drastic one. Right now.
He took his dill from the windowsill and threw it into the dustbin.

It was on the day when he fell and hit his head when he met death.
The people with their frame waited in line for their lives being taken and given back. He wasn't one of them. Doomed, or privileged.
It wasn't blood they were after. It was the cherries. Always the cherries.

He put a scarf around his face and left his apartment after 5 weeks. He walked to where the hole in the fence used to be, the house, the cherrytree. But the house was rebuilt, the fence new, the tree cut, and no cherries to be found.

Their reality had three layers.
One: the personal meeting. A month ago he touched her arm by accident, or on purpose - or did she? He wasn't sure. Nothing happpened. He was painfully sure of that.
Two: the text messages. He tried, she responded. He was rereading the virtual sex that happened. Twice.
Three: the phone calls. They read to each other literature, discussed their lives in quarantine, never even brushed the other layers of the world.
Until one day when he opened a bottle of red wine, she opened a white one, and they drank rose wine together until dawn.

"What is human connection?"
He lied on the couch, his head rested on a pillow, and took a sip of rose wine. He studied the glass closely as he listened to her voice.
"It is the touch? You cannot touch me. Is it the smell? You can only imagine my perfume. Is it the sight? What exactly can you see... in me? Is it the taste? What does the wine taste like - and what do you think I taste like when you can only hear me?"
He sighed.
"What is human in its essence?"
"The energy. The energy is real."

"I don't know."
I moan, look at the parquet floor way too close, the one that these bohemian Prague flats usually have.
What was the question?
What was the last time you had a healthy meal, dear?
My mother asked.
I sighed.
My body hurt.
I write. I create. I draw.
I call you. Not her. You.
Now she is calling me.
The evening sun slowly disappered; or was it always the steetlamp, watching over me? It's all in the shadows.
How can I tell her I don't even know the last time I actually ate something.

"We talk every day."
"That's great, man. You've never told me anything."
"I don't know. It may be the lockdown... You just... meet them. Or you don't, actually, but you can still talk to them, see them online, and somehow... it's been much easier now."
"What a witch, she'll turn you into a sociable person. I don't even know you! What did she say?"
"Ah... stuff. She's... persuasive."
"How did you get to know her actually?"
"I found her by accident, to be honest."
"Where?"
"On the bottom of my wine glass."

It was nothing. They were so small they did not mean anything. Or that was what he told himself at that time. Thinking about the past might have brought up regrets, thinking about the future would dig deep into his chest with anxiety. The present was all that mattered.
The butterflies were small but they were there. He did not want to scare them away - or get scared by them in case they were moths.
He didn't care about the pandemic outside.
He locked himself in his flat, and curled on the couch, small butterflies fluttering in his stomach.

He dreamed about the cherry tree, the hole in the fence he climed into the garden through, the taste of the summer fruit. It was a shame nobody took care of the garden anymore, the empty house nearby falling into pieces. Two windows were looking at him in the same way as sockets in a skull may look at you - they were not.

He woke up late, still on the couch. His neck stiff, one foot freezing as it stuck out from beneath the blanket, his phone still in his hand. And, the most pressing reminder of yesterday, still naked.

Breathing heavily, his legs couldn't move, as if there was a lead ball inside of him, making him feel the sternness and inevitability of the situation. He felt as if he was watching a movie he once knew but forgot all about.
He observed as people he didn't recognize entered the room happily, each carrying a frame as big as themselves. They came in different shapes - a square, a closed circle, an open circle, an oval, a triangle. They stood in a line, buried the frames in the sand on the floor and looked expectantly on their host.

Three years ago, he slipped and met them for the first time. It wasn't even dark outside yet. An early summer evening, the end of June, the golden hour which makes everything mellow, including your heart and memories. He smiled, half closed his eyes, feeling the last warmth of the sun on his eyelids. He breathed in - for a split second - and fell on the ground.
He had never cut his head before, never mixed the gravel and blood on his temples. The warmth blended with cold terror. The bland taste of dirt with the sweetness of ripe cherries.

He stared at the first sentence of his story, and yawned. He reached out for a blanket and wrapped himself up. He checked his DMs.

He wanted to write about her. About now in an alternative universe. To make up (im)probable scenarios of what would happen should they see each other after all this.
But he couldn't. All he could think about was the smell of the herb and his own experiences on this very couch which he would like to forget.

He can't write about his past. Can he?
He cannot sell himself. Not like that. Not anymore.

Prague, 1 a.m., and I find myself on a couch, naked.

He thought it would make a fine beginning to a story. It had all the three components of a good rhetorical proposition.
A magical place. A fine hour at which the built up layers of reality start to peel off. And an erotic touch to it that would catch anyone who hasn't been intrigued yet.

The only thing that disturbed his senses, though, was a sweet smell coming from the windowsill. He looked at the flowerpot. This is going to be important. But he hasn't yet known how.

People lie about not wanting the cheap.

Glitters.
Differet kinds of polish.
A coquettish smile that does not reach the eyes.
Alcohol intoxication that strips down the built up layers of civilized behaviour, whatever that is supposed to be.
Golden counterfeits concealing the gross rust beneath.
Playing games.
White lies.

She knew that and laughed at its very face. They want cheap? Let's go to the very cheapest.
It took her a few minutes to seduce a carny. But it took her the rest of her live to get to know the depths of his personality, their relationship, their marriage.

Mám ji já, máš ji ty.
Tuhle tkáň máme v těle úplně všichni. Jen teda u mě lékařům trvalo až do 16. století, než si jí všimli.
Většina z ní u mě není vidět. Její velikost si poprvé Západ přiznal až roce 1998.
Ale samozřejmě: staří Řekové ji znali. Říkali jí klíč. Bez klíče dveře neotevřeš a do Říše divů nevstoupíš.

Mám ho já, ale nemáš ho ty.
Kvůli testosteronu jsi skončil s penisem. Prakticky ho potřebuješ pro přežití.
Ale můj klitoris je stejně tak velký, má dvakrát tolik nervových buněk - a mám ho jen pro svoje potěšení.

Trumfni to.

Put on some make-up. Don't forget the mascara; the camera needs it. Forget the lipstick. Tie up your hair nicely. And then put on your facemask and grab your headphones.
The countryside is deserted, but you are not alone.

Make yourself a cup of tea. Put on your comfortable pyjamas and turn on the speaker. Choose a book to read aloud tonight.
There is no fireplace to sit at, but you still have company.

Turn off the news. Work from home. Charge your phone. Again. There may be a world pandemic outside, but you still connect, laugh, and date.

I met her and thought she was cute. Big eyes, long lashes, she looked like a kitten. Not tall, quite the opposite; high heels that made her look sexy and naive at the same time. And brains; she had plenty of it. More than she could handle. Or she did everything on purpose.
She certainly wasn't a kitten. A spider more likely.
Realization came late. My body tied down, my heart run over, my personality shattered, my mind being sucked out.
But I managed to pick up the phone and call the emergency. Got out. Broke free.
For a while.

It is a calm afternoon, a calm neighbourhood, a calm me. I close my eyes, bathing in the sun on my balcony. My feet hold me in my realm; my breath gives me the wings to fly high; my soul dances with the sound of birds, whatever form, alive or metal, singing overhead. Only my heart plays the role of a Gemini perfectly; each beat reaching in a different direction. It leaps with joy, it sighs with melancholy.
The past - the future. Breathe in - breathe out. Keep calm - and panic!
Then a cat purrs.
Keep the present.
Excitement.
Of now.