City Sister Silver Read online

  Jáchym Topol was born in Prague on August 4, 1962, son of Josef Topol, a renowned playwright, poet, and Shakespeare translator. Topol’s writing began in the late 70s and early 80s with lyrics for the rock band Psí vojáci (Dog Soldiers), led by his younger brother, Filip (the relationship has continued: poems from this novel were set to music and released as the CD Sestra: Jáchym Topol &Psí Vojáci).

  In 1985 Topol cofounded Revolver Revue, a samizdat review specializing in new Czech writing. Topol played an active role in the 1989 Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, writing, editing, and publishing an independent newsletter that became the investigative weekly Respekt.

  Topol’s first collection of poetry, I Love You Madly (samizdat, 1988), received the Tom Stoppard Prize for Unofficial Literature. His second volume of poetry, The War Will Be On Tuesday, came out in 1993. City Sister Silver, Topol’s first novel, won the Egon Hostovský Prize as Czech book of the year in 1994. His story “A Trip to the Train Station” was published in a Czech-English edition (the English translation by Alex Zucker) in 1995. Topol has since published a novella and translations of American Indian myths.

  Topol lives in Prague with his wife and his daughter.

  Alex Zucker has translated More Than One Life by Miloslava Holubová (1999), A Trip to the Train Station by Jáchym Topol (1995), and a number of stories and poems published in literary magazines and anthologies in the U.S., U.K., and Czech Republic. For several years after the Velvet Revolution, he lived in Prague, translating and copy editing. He now lives in New York City.

  Also Translated by Alex Zucker

  More Than One Life by Miloslava Holubová

  Originally published in Czech as Sestra by Atlantis Czech original edition © 1994 Jáchym Topol English translation and translator’s preface © 2000 Alex Zucker All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner without written permission, except in the context of reviews.

  First English-language edition.

  CATBIRD PRESS

  16 Windsor Road, North Haven, CT 06473

  800-360-2391; [email protected]; www.catbirdpress.com

  Our books are distributed by Independent Publishers Group

  This translation has been partially subsidized by a grant from the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.

  This translation is dedicated to Mamou and Papou.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Topol, Jáchym, 1962-[Sestra. English]

  City, sister, silver / by Jáchym Topol ; translated from the Czech by Alex Zucker. -- 1st English-language ed.

  “Garrigue book.”

  ISBN 0-945774-45-1 (tradepaper : alk. paper). --

  ISBN 0-945774-43-5 (cloth : alk. paper)

  I. Zucker, Alex. II. Title

  PG5039.3.O648S4713 2000

  891.8’636--dc21 99-16410 CIP

  Contents

  Czech Pronunciation Guide

  Translators Preface

  City

  Sister

  Silver

  Notes

  Czech Pronunciation Guide

  b, d, f, m, n, s, t, v, z - like in English

  c - like ts in oats

  č - like ch in child

  ch - one letter; something like ch in loch

  d’ - soft, like d in duty (see ě below)

  g - always hard

  h - like h in have, but more open

  j - like y in you

  l - like l in leave

  ň - like n in new (see ě below)

  p - like our p, but without aspiration

  r - rolled

  ř - pronounce r with tip of tongue vibrating against upper teeth, usually approximated by English speakers by combining r with s in pleasure

  š - like sh in ship

  t’ - soft, like t in Tuesday (see ě below)

  ž - like s in pleasure

  a - like u in cup, but more open

  á - hold it longer

  e - like e in set, but more open

  é - hold it longer

  ě - after b, m, n, p: usually approximated by English speakers by saying the consonant plus yeah; after d and t, soften the consonant by placing tongue at tip of upper teeth

  i, y - like i in sit, but more closed

  í, ý - hold it longer, like ea in seat

  o - like o in not, but less open

  ó - hold it longer, like aw in lawn

  u - like oo in book

  ú, ů - hold it longer, like oo in stool

  ou, au, and eu are Czech dipthongs

  Rule No. 1 - Always place accent on the first syllable of a word.

  Rule No. 2 - Pronounce all letters.

  Translator’s Preface

  Set in the first years after “time exploded,” City Sister Silver is the story of a young man trying to find his way in the messy landscape of post-Communist Czechoslovakia. Beyond that, though, it is the author’s exploration of the way language changed in response to the new reality. In an effort to capture the dislocation of this period, Jáchym Topol flaunts the conventions of his native tongue at nearly every step. Indeed his Czech publisher felt it necessary to include a special editor’s note alerting readers to “the author’s intent to capture language in its unsystematicness and out-of-jointness,” pointing out his radical fluctuations in grammar, spelling, syntax, and style between the two poles of written (or literary) and spoken Czech not only from scene to scene, but within a single paragraph or sentence, sometimes even from one word to the next.

  Given the history of our own language, in particular the erosion of the border between spoken and literary usage by twentieth-century writers, this may strike English speakers as commonplace. But compared to English, the distinction between written and spoken language in Czech remains far more rigid, and the gap between them far greater. Bridging this gap, moreover, is a vast spectrum of “intermediate” levels for which English has no equivalent. In this novel, Topol works with all of them.

  Some features of spoken Czech translate into English more easily than others. Dropped letters, for instance, are common to both languages (e.g., du = “I’m goin”). But Czech expresses “spokenness” in a host of other ways — shortening long vowels, for one, or adding a v before words that begin in 0 — that cannot be directly reproduced in translation. What makes Topol’s writing such a challenge to bring into English, though, is the way he combines and alternates forms, and the extremes he goes to in doing so.

  Where Topol mixes spoken and written style, I usually dealt with it by dropping letters or using contractions, but inconsistently, to mimic the jumbled effect. In Chapter 8, for instance, Potok asks a downtrodden priest: “Do you know Padre Konrád, father, my good pastor … kina short and cross-eyed …” In the original text the sentence reads: “Znáte pátera Konráda od nás, otče, mýho dobrého pastýře … je takovej malý a šilhá …” Whereas the rules of written Czech would call for the last eight words to read, “mého dobrého pastýře … je takový malý a šilhá …” a fully spoken rendering would be “mýho dobrýho pastýře … je takovej malej a šilhá …” Here my translation approximates the clash of written and spoken forms by contracting kind of to kina, a common feature of spoken English, while retaining the d on and, which I would otherwise drop in the case of “pure” spoken Czech.

  Despite the Czech edition’s assertion that “valid rules are present in the background of the text,” often it was hard to discern a pattern to the constant shifting and mixing, and in my exchanges with the author he repeatedly described his choices as a pocitová věc — “a matter of feeling.” Inevitably then, my translation too is less about mechanically reproducing the thousands of individual twists on and departures from conventional Czech than
about capturing the feeling, the jarring, the dislocation they were meant to convey.

  Grammatical and stylistic quirks apart, City Sister Silver contains a daunting variety of Czech idioms, dialects, and slang, plus assorted words and phrases from several other languages, and a multilingual tongue spoken by non-Germans in Berlin. Even more challenging — and more fun — for the translator, though, are the words, turns of phrase, and metaphors that Topol invented himself, a private language of sorts.

  To choose just one example, from Chapter 17: As Potok and Černá hike through the woods, they nibble on something called “lanceroot.” Here I devised a neologism to match the author’s own. The Czech word, kopišník, to me suggested kopí meaning spear or lance. Then it was just a question of deciding what sort of nibblable plant it might be, fruit, root, or vegetable; root, I thought, sounded more likely than berry.

  Probably the single most personal invention that I caught in the novel, though, was a metaphor in Chapter 16. (I deliberately say “that I caught,” since no doubt there are other references of an equally private nature that I failed to pick up on.) While neither the Czech original nor my translation give any hint as to where it comes from, the story behind this metaphor intrigues me too much not to share it.

  In Czech the expression was mně se to v hlavě mihalo jak v koňský jámě — literally “it flashed through my head like in a horse pit.” In the author’s own words: “I still remember this as a little Central European boy: By the river (in Pořící nad Sázavou) there were these pits, just a deep hole basically, where the horses would go swimming to wash off after work. I remember how suddenly all this sludge and mud and horse shit and rotten branches and grass would start rising up to the surface … when that huge horse body sank in there, into the pit, the depths. Since we didn’t know how to swim yet, we were scared to death of the horse pits — that we’d fall in there and drown. So if something flashes through my head like in a horse pit, it means chaos and danger.”

  Because of the way it falls in the text — “but the old woman intervened again, shooing them off … my head churned like a horse pit, Černá … out there in the woods, she’d better have strong protection …” — it would have been impossible to keep the original construction without sounding awkward (insert it for yourself and you’ll see what I mean). Respecting the fact that it wasn’t meant to be clear even in the original, my solution preserves the personal content while tailoring it to the context and maintaining the uneasiness the author meant to evoke.

  Lastly I’d like to explain how the text was edited and notated. While the first two drafts of my translation followed the first edition, on the final go-round my editor and I decided to incorporate some of the cuts Topol himself made for the novel’s second edition, which weighed in at 455 pages versus the original 481. Given that the Czech text was edited with a light hand, we also took the bolder but, I believe, beneficial step of trimming it at points, especially in the case of obvious oversights (e.g., Potok being handed the same piece of paper twice in a single paragraph), phrases or sentences that made no sense (even to the author, in retrospect), and material that would have meant nothing to English speakers without a labored explanation, thereby ruining the effect. I should add that Topol never hesitated to suggest I use my delete button. (Interested readers can find most of the longer cuts on the Catbird Press website, at www.catbirdpress.com/bookpages/sister.htm.)

  Naturally the translation still includes a number of words and references that few non-Czechs would recognize. To provide an experience as close as possible to that of a Czech reading the original, these items are marked with an asterisk and briefly identified in a Notes section at the back of this book.

  Catching and tracking down these references, along with the various foreign words and phrases found throughout, was a major part of my work on this translation. When possible, I did my research on the Web or in the library, but often I was forced to turn to the source to explain or elaborate. And it is to Jáchym himself that I owe the most thanks, as author and collaborator, but above all as my friend. I know it wasn’t always pleasant for him to revisit a work that he considered over and done with, and to respond to the barrage of nit-picking questions I rained down on him.

  Beyond my consultations with the author, many others aided me along the way. I cannot name them all here, but there are several individuals I turned to repeatedly, and they deserve to be acknowledged. In Prague, Lucie Váchová and Vladimír Michálek both helped me out by receiving my e-mailed missives to Jáchym, passing them on to him, and sending his replies back to me. Here in New York, Irena Kovářová and Jiří Zavadil fielded questions from me, at all hours, on everything from language to history to geography to pop culture. Karin Beck, who wrote her master’s thesis on the novel, aided me in translating the German and Russian portions; apart from that, it was always a treat to discuss the book with someone else who knew it in such detail. Special thanks to Czesław Miłosz for granting permission to use a previously untranslated poem of his, and to Magda Samborska for checking my translation against the Polish original. Czech history wizard Brad Abrams of Columbia University offered valuable input on some of the trickier historical notes. To Peter Kussi, who taught me Czech for two years in graduate school before I lived in Prague, belong my heartfelt thanks for steering me through a tough metaphor or two, but mainly for inspiring me to translate in the first place. I’d also like to thank Robert Wechsler of Catbird Press for taking on the exhausting task of wading through the manuscript, and for bearing with my constant revisions right up to the end. And last but not least Clare Manias, who not only designed the eyecatching cover but supported me throughout with grace, love, and patience.

  Alex Zucker

  Brooklyn

  December 1999

  City

  1

  THE ENGRAVING AND IN THE HOLE. THE WAY IT WAS WITH SHE-DOG. WE SEE THEM GO. SHE HELD ME.

  We were the People of the Secret. And we were waiting. Then David lost his mind. Maybe the reason his head cracked was because it was the best, sending out the signals that propelled the whole crew, the whole community, forward. That’s what we told ourselves, that we were going forward, getting somewhere, but we soon lost all concept which way we were headed.

  Some of us might have noticed we had stopped going in a straight line and were turning in a circle. It also struck me several times that time was fading in the pale light, turning more translucent, losing its color and taste again, and I was horrified by that. Probably Sharky was the only one who had a tangible goal: to rid himself of the box and its phantoms. Me, I went like a bear on a treadmill, the whole thing was scary, but it was fun and charged me up. Micka couldn’t afford to stop glowing, and he never glowed more than when the metal flowed.

  The thing with David happened after the Ministry cleaned out our well. Not only did he constantly sniff at his thumbs. But I also noticed a change in his face, his eyes starting to bulge while his chin seemed to be caving in. His lips hung open loosely, you look like a gourd, I kidded, he didn’t respond.

  I found him down in the storeroom, sitting under the fabrics like he was in some Bedouin tent, one hand in brocade, it all feels the same, he said, it’s exactly the same, it’s all the same to me.

  What’re you talkin about, I asked.

  There’s no difference. It’s all the same. You did the cars, right?

  Yeah.

  See, he said, you or Novák. You’re both the same to me. That’s the way it feels to me, physically an mentally. An that’s all I’m gonna say.

  I gave up and went back upstairs where we sat around and talked the way we always did after work.

  So how did it all begin? If I’m going to retrace my footsteps … back then … in the Stone Age … I have to talk about the time me and Bára walked through the square full of Germans, and I will, because that was the place where I began to feel the motion, where time took on taste and color, where the carnival started for me.

  We walked thro
ugh the square full of refugees. Now Prague, the hemmed-in city, the Pearl, a dot on the map behind the wires, had its very own refugees. I’m going to write about how it began, and I have to grab the table with one hand and gouge my fingernail into my thumb, I will, and I have to do the same with the other hand too, and feel the pain so I feel something real. If I want to know how it was. Because the main part of the story, the end, is vanishing into the void where the future and all the dead dwindle into nothing.

  It started with the sweeping away of walls and the exchanging of souvenirs, I’ll trade you a piece of the wall for a bullet shell from the square, a lump of candle wax, a piece of phone-tap wire, as time went by I lost my collection, it only made sense at first, amid the joy and exhilaration, what use is there in saving splinters, iron scales, an besides: obvious symbols only work for things closed by time. Yet you haven’t left that reality. You’re still walkin the boards in the same performance, on the same familiar set, your rankled nerves detect the presence of the board of directors, the ones that’re runnin the show, and is it? or is it not? part of a plan? is it by design? You still sense the nasty looks on the other side of the curtain, the sneering, the rat, the wicked uncle’s grin. The Face.

  You still feel the pain in your chewed-up fist, the one you stuff in your mouth to keep from talking, to keep from telling yourself what it really is, what’s going on: with you. And you’d just as soon take your share and bury it.