...I am the Dancinh House!

I‘m a bit like a woman in nature. When I‘m not experiencing any stress, emotions or love, I need at least some exterior change. And when I am experiencing something, I need the change all the more. Thus I‘m continually changing. However, compared with women
I have a tremendous advantage. I can grow a moustache, beard and hair difficult to manage (with age, this problem has decreased). As soon as some of it has grown, my face changes. My relatives cannot recognise me, nor can the neighbours and I easily escape creditors, of both financial and moral kinds, and start a new life. I moved to Prague. At that time I invented a new face. No moustache or beard, without the romantic wavy hairstyle. Closely shaven and slightly tired antique face and a crewcut – something like a low-mown English lawn. Not only had I invented that, I also took scissors and cut the hair and all myself. My friend Milada saw me and said it rather reminded her of a Czech lawn, if anything. So now I‘m wandering around Prague, with the Czech lawn on top and the rest of me of ancient mould.
In Prague, Milada is my guide and she always has a nice sandwich in her handbag. At least her son Honza thinks so. Honza is not actually hungry, he is just ironical in dealing with his mother. And ironically enough, he easily swallows the sandwich. We now compete with Honza, who will see the sandwich first. Milada, what‘s there in your handbag? You need a whole table to spread the contents: keys, magazines, visiting cards, letters, and of course, a sandwich or some sweets, a small bottle of whisky, shampoo samples, an invitation card to an exhibition opening, to a book or CD launch, invitation to a first night at the theatre, to a concert, to come and drink green Irish beer... invitations, invitations, invitations. I mostly leave the sweets to Honza and sample the invitations. Milada is my guide to Prague. She doesn‘ t take me to the Prague of the tourists or honoured visitors. She gets me acquainted with the Prague pubs, miniature galleries, little theatres seating twenty-five viewers... She doesn‘ t drag me to multistorey mirror-equipped shopping malls, but takes me to little shops selling nostalgic goods from the times of our grandmothers‘ childhood, second-hand or even third-hand shops. We don‘t in fact buy anything, this is just travelling in time. This is the pub our dramatist used to drink beer in, now he‘s sitting at the Castle, no longer writing plays… maybe when he‘s retired. And this is the very man who used to drink beer with the dramatist. He came from Austria for only a short visit. This one does write plays. The third of the mates is in America. He also comes back home from time to time. Into this cuckoo‘s nest. Milada presents me to her friends, some of them famous people – once, or now, or perhaps would-be famous! I listen to them, savouring their jokes, hints, ideas. Sometimes I‘m not up to it and I‘m not ashamed to ask what they mean, troubling Milada with those questions.
I got a letter from Boris in Jerusalem. In Russian. I‘m reading: „Milada mozhet stat tebe viernym i khoroshim tovaryshchem.“ Automatically I „translate“ into Czech:
    tovaryshch
        comrade
            competition
                compassion
                    harmony
                        sympathy
                            coitus
                                common bed
                                    common jokes
                                        again coitus
                                            common slippers
                                                common fatigue
                                                    common dream
Common dream... In the morning I dread waking up lest I should open my eyes and Prague was gone! But I can already hear the first cars. I‘m cautiously opening my eyes. Everything is O. K. – I can see the Vltava River, Petřín Hill, golden fleecy clouds. On the seventh floor, my hair is wind-combed and my concrete feet at the bottom strangely intertwined. I‘m in Prague, on the Embankment, I‘m the Dancing House.                                                                                                                               Prague, May 1998