Spaceman of Bohemia

by Jaroslav Kalfar

  Half the gate of my home had collapsed and rotted through, a spongy mess of black bugs and dirt. The other half stood tall, faded brown, a welcome memory of my grandfather coughing and cursing as he painted over the judgments cast upon us by our countrymen. I let the Ducati fall into the dirt and stepped over the ruins, into a field of tall grass covering every inch of the front yard, including the sandbox and a tub of green still water. The walls of the house were cloaked in vines and the front doormat was topped with a generous pile of dried cat shit.

  The backyard. Feathers and brittle, dull bones of chickens were scattered in the mud. No flesh, no skin, all eaten away by the elements and by felines. Inside the rabbit cages, bits of fur stuck to the ceiling. The coney skeletons recalled Sunday afternoon feasts, haunches and loins slowly roasted with bacon and paprika, with Grandma presiding over the crockpot and muttering to herself, Almost, almost there. Everywhere lay engorged worms, dead gluttons that had reached nirvana, having stuffed themselves with game until they burst and dried out. Mixed with the mud, the remains of the farm had become mush, a porridge that pulled on my shoes like quicksand. The strings on which my grandfather had suspended the rabbits after execution swung in the breeze. I looked closely, marveled at the resilience of the simple material through storms and scorching summers. It had wanted to remain as much as the vestiges of things that used to be alive. The outhouse smelled of nothing at all—the pounds of excrement underneath it had long ago become soil, and perhaps the outhouse could be taken down and the few square meters it occupied turned into a strawberry field. I wished for a cigarette. The piercing smell of my grandfather’s tobacco smoke hit me, as if he were right there puttering around, working and cutting, presiding over his own piece of the world.

  The garden. A mess of groundhog piles and dirt bike tracks—the local youth had found a good place to blow off some steam. The apple tree had been ripped out of the earth and was covering the potato patch, just as my grandmother had always predicted during storms—Someday that damned tree will ruin our entire harvest—the claw of its root menacingly curled toward the skies. Names and hearts were carved into the bark. I was not angry. The space was here. It existed without a claimant. It belonged to these vandals as much as to me.

  I stomped in this graveyard, crunched it underneath my boots. I’ll rent it to some nice Prague folks, Shoe Man had promised once. And then he’d left it all to die.

  I inserted the house key into the lock before realizing that the front door was open. Scratches around the handle suggested many attempts at picking the lock before the intruders had succeeded. I entered to a smell of mildew. Thick layers of mold had colonized sections of the carpet like hair on an old man’s back. It had seeped through the walls too—stains of it had metastasized wherever the rain had managed to circumvent the decrepit structure, wherever the drunken vandals had chosen to piss.

  I left the hall and stepped into the living room. With blood thumping into my fingertips, I stumbled toward the kitchen counter, my eyes open wide and searching for ghosts. The faint haze of leftover cigarette smoke thickened the room’s ozone; the smell of tobacco overpowered even the musk of fungi. Where was he, the shape of my grandfather, smoking cigarettes and reading the newspapers well into his death? Was his passing a lie too? But this doubt dissolved as soon as I spotted the Monument of the Vandals. Where the living room table had once rested now stood a pyramid, nearly as tall as I was, composed of beer bottles at the base, on top of which rested pounds upon pounds of cigarette butts, all burned to their very nubs, all Camels, the brand my grandfather despised. The squatters had left the monument as a reeking flag of their presence, much like the first men on the moon, a statement of ownership of this forgotten land, this house of no one.

  What did my arrival mean to their conquest? Did it erase their authority, or was I the squatter, my presence nothing but a haunting in need of exorcism?

  I kicked the pyramid. It fell apart, spilling forth like the gushing blood of a pig. The stink of stale tobacco and saliva put me on the verge of retching, and I retreated into the hall to embrace the much more pleasant aroma of withering. I chose to ignore the bathroom and pantry for now—no good things could await there.

  Then there were the bedrooms. In the room that had been mine was a single bed littered with rags stained with semen and blood, and spent condoms dry and shriveled. I pulled the rags off. And there, on the mattress beneath, were the two small stains from my boyhood nosebleeds, along with a bigger, darker blotch from the feverish, salty sweat of my back. This was my bed. The small form of my child self was imprinted on the fabric like a postnuclear shadow. The bed had been gnawed on by mice and burned with lighters, but it was unmistakably mine, surrounded still by collapsed shelves holding my grandmother’s history books, also marked by rodents. I sat down on the mattress, not at all concerned whether the juices of teen carnage had seeped onto it through the rags.

  Above me, a giant hole in the ceiling and roof provided a direct view of the clouded heavens. The cave-in must have happened a long time ago, as there was no sign of rubble.

  From underneath the pile of half-eaten books emerged a daddy longlegs, its torso fat and dragging on the floor—so rich was the house with insects for it to feast on. It made its way toward me without any hesitance, then stopped a few feet away from the bed. I felt its eyes upon me. I felt at home.

  “Is it you?” I asked the spider.

  It didn’t move.

  “Lift a leg if it’s you.”

  Nothing. But it was there, its gaze upon me consistent. Interested.

  “Stick around,” I pleaded. “I’ll be back. You stay.”

  I walked outside, leaned the Ducati against the cracked wall of the house. I had no knowledge of what time it was—it seemed that it was still early in the day, a good time for the errands ahead, but with the village streets so empty, I couldn’t be sure. I followed the main road, no longer comforted by the hallucinogenic speed of an engine. Gravity reached from beneath the concrete and clawed at my ankles, keeping me slow but steady.

  An old woman whose face I didn’t recognize waved at me from a bench in front of her house. She puffed on a pipe, pulled her skirt up to expose legs colored with black-and-blue veins. How soothing the winds flowing from the east must be to the pain of aging. I waved back, asked after the time.

  “Haven’t owned a watch in thirteen years,” she responded, toothless.

  I made my way to the new market. In my basket, I collected potato chips, bacon, eggs, milk, brownie ice cream, deodorant, a loaf of fresh sourdough, smoked mackerel, two jelly doughnuts, lard, a cooking pan, and a jar of Nutella. The stuff of Earth. I held a newspaper in my hand before putting it back on the shelf. Too much.

  With my filled plastic bags, I circled around the market and down the gravel path next to the closed distillery. I reached what we the children of the village used to call the Riviera, a beach of rough sand and grass patches flanking the river. The currents ran wild and deep as they reached past the distillery, and there we used to hold on to the thick wooden poles hammered into the river’s mud that emerged above the surface. The water would wash over our shoulders, and we’d play to see who could hold on the longest before the current loosened their grip and took them away around the bend. I’d almost always won.

  It was obvious the Riviera hadn’t seen swimmers in a while. Half-buried newspapers and plastic bottles peeked from the sand. A black snake slithered from the bushes and vanished underneath the water’s surface. I considered taking my clothes off and following its example, but the water would be too cold for at least another couple of months. Setting the bags down, I rolled up my pants just below my knees and entered, shivering momentarily as my skin touched the ice-cold river. I stood there until the feeling of cold dissipated and the mud beneath my toes became warm. Everything had changed except for the water. Whenever I got in its way, it simply poured around me and continued on. It welcomed me for a swim and cared not when I left again. Even its attempt
on my childhood life had been without evil intent. So close I’d been to my life ending early, to perishing here and never knowing Lenka, or Hanuš, to never seeing the golden continents of Earth from above. But again and again I had come to the shore, clawed myself onto it, and lived.

  I left the Riviera’s desolation behind and walked to Boud’a’s house on the main road. The door was shuttered, the windows broken, the front garden that had formerly been so meticulously kept by Boud’a’s mother now filled in by concrete. Leaning against the side of the house were four planks of wood covered by plastic. I looked around the empty main road, then threw the planks over my shoulder. I studied the door a bit longer, hoping an old friend might still emerge, another human who might recognize my face.

  On my way back, I asked the old woman without a watch about the fate of Boud’a’s family. They had fled to the city, she said, as most people had, fled to the city for jobs and for supermarkets the size of circus tents, where you could choose between tomatoes from Italy and tomatoes from Spain. I stopped myself from asking if she knew what Boud’a was now doing with his life, fearing the answer could be something like banking. I imagined instead that Boud’a had stuck to his desire to own a restaurant that served mussel pizza. He’d eaten mussel pizza in Greece once, and after that, all he wanted was to grow up and make the best mussel pizza on Earth. The old woman asked if I needed anything else, and I waved good-bye.

  I returned to the house and carried the planks inside, in case of rain, then went to the bedroom to check on the spider. It was gone. In the kitchen, I chopped up one of the planks and filled the stove. As the fire grew, I spread lard along the new pan and laid out eight slices of bacon. Within ten minutes, the odor of cigarette butts had been dominated by pure animal. Saliva dripped from the corners of my mouth—I could not contain it. The plan was to cook up some eggs too, but I couldn’t wait to eat as I cleaned the small pan for another round. I ripped a hunk of bread from the loaf and separated the soft middle from the crust. Over the middle, I cracked a raw egg. I stuffed the bacon inside the crust. I fell upon the improvised sandwich like a beast, tasting blood from my gums as it seeped into the food, but I chewed with greed, without a concern for dignity, with the carnal pleasure of an unsupervised animal. I lost track of time. As I finished, the sun, concealed by clouds to begin with, crept somewhere behind the horizon.

  The shed still held all of its tools—rusty, sure, with some of the wooden handles having rotted, but in the fading light I found a hammer and nails, some of which still seemed factory fresh. I dragged the ladder from the shed, checked each step for damage. So much of my grandfather’s kingdom had been preserved here—with some additional tools, I could again convert the shed into a powerhouse factory. Make a new table, new bookshelves, encase the single bed with a fresh wooden frame. I could rip out the molding carpets and bathroom tile, smash the piss-soaked walls, replace electrical cables, install indoor plumbing. I did not lack time. I did not lack patience. I would remove every organ, haul it to the garbage dump by the ton. I would be an artist restoring his own painting—rejuvenating colors I had once known to be radiant. I would be the plastic surgeon of history. Retain the ghosts and refresh their facade.

  Yes, I could do it. It could be my life. Jan Hus had died for country and lived for himself. If only he could live in our age, become my phantom brother. We would attend Dr. Bivoj’s village festivals of small pleasures, drink the tainted hooch. We would visit Petr and learn to play the guitar. Hus would tell me of his widow and I would tell him of my Lenka, what used to be.

  I walked out of the shed, tools in hand, and looked over the reclaimed backyard. Here again, animals would roam. I could raise a Louda, scout the Internet for a flintlock pistol to employ in executions. I could scythe the fields of grass behind the village every morning, carry piles of it on my back, allow it to dry beneath noon sunshine, and feed it to rabbits. I could obtain chickens for the harvest of yolk and the carnal sincerity of their nature. Small dinosaurs. I could keep a few guinea pigs, perhaps a ferret. Creatures of routine to look after.

  And the garden beyond? I would resow every crop. I would grow my grandfather’s carrots, potatoes, peas. My grandmother’s strawberries, tomatoes, celery. After caring for the animals, I would pull on my galoshes and get ahold of the shovel. Whistle songs of the past as I tended my earth.

  Yes. This life awaited. I saw children’s feet marking the fall mud in the backyard. My daughters and sons picking their first tomatoes off the vine. The children of my children digging for potatoes when my knees were too old for bending. And there was Lenka, silver-haired, watching the bursting life grow around us. Somehow I’d gotten her back. Somehow we’d found each other again.

  For a moment, Lenka’s face transformed into the face of Klara. Her hair so thick I couldn’t stop running my hands through it. She had never died, she’d run away with me and we’d become phantom lovers.

  In this future, we were free of systems. Other humans went on to become symbols, sacrificed their lives to serve. Other humans handled the torture, the coups, the healing. We simply sowed, harvested, and drank a bit before dinner. No one tried to take what was ours. We had too little. We were invisible, and in this slower life we were our own gods.

  Yes, there were things left in this world. I had traveled through Space, I had seen truths unparalleled, but still, in this Earthly life, I had barely seen anything at all. Something rests in the mortal soul, hungry to feel anything and everything in its own boundless depths. As boundless and ever-expanding as the universe itself.

  Back inside the house, I pushed the bed to the wall, where it used to rest when I was a child, and leaned the ladder against the interior wooden frame of the roof. I climbed, and I set each plank against the frame, nailing them in until I had finished the first layer. As I worked, the night map of the universe above was startlingly clear, as if once again trying to lure me. It looked exactly the same as it had on the day my grandfather and I sat by a fire and spoke of revolutions. The purple glow of Chopra still remained, though it was weakening, collapsing in on itself and saying its last good-bye to the Earthlings dying to know its secrets. I appreciated this gesture, yet I could not bring myself to leave even the smallest gap between the planks to stargaze. I needed the intimacy of an enclosed house. A structure to trap me.

  The patch created a nearly perfect darkness. I slowly made my way down the ladder, lit a match, and held it over a candlewick. The silence infiltrated my muscles and spread their fibers apart, inducing soreness and serene warmth. The only force present was a small flame. I had built a dam to deter the murmur of the cosmos.

  From the kitchen pantry, I retrieved the jar of Nutella. I lay on the bed, opened it, and scooped some out with my fingers. Spread it along my tongue.

  The darkness overtook me. I woke up sometime later to the faintest tapping on my skin. On my forearm rested the daddy longlegs.

  “Is it you?” I asked.

  I smeared some Nutella on my wrist, right next to the arachnid. Taste. You loved it.

  No movement. Its fat belly remained lodged on my forearm hairs.

  “Are you still afraid?” I said.

  The weight is nice. What would the world be without it. Nothing but fear and air. Yes, the weight is nice.

  Is it you?

  Because it is me. I can promise you, I am here.

  It is me. The spaceman.

  Acknowledgments

  I’d like to thank:

  My country and my people. For their resilience, wisdom, art, food—and their humor in the face of great adversity.

  The magnificent women of my family—my mamka, Marie, and my babička, Marie, my teta Jitka and sestřenka Andrejka. My little synovec Kryštůufek.

  Ben George, an incredible editor and friend, who’s given this book more than I could ever ask for. Everyone at Little, Brown for giving Spaceman such a welcoming home, especially Sabrina Callahan, Reagan Arthur, Sarah Haugen, Nicole Dewey, Alyssa Persons, Ben Allen, and Tracy Willi
ams.

  Drummond Moir, for his brilliant editorial insight and for bringing Spaceman to the UK. Everyone at Sceptre, especially Carolyn Mays, Francine Toon, and Caitriona Horne.

  Marya Spence, agent superhero with endless powers, remarkable human and friend, fellow appreciator of strange foods. Everyone at Janklow & Nesbit, superhero central.

  All of the brilliant writers and mentors I have had the pleasure of encountering through the years, especially Darin Strauss, JSF, Rick Moody, and Dr. Darlin’ Neal.

  Everyone at the NYU Lillian Vernon Writers House—what you do to foster future literary voices is imperative. We owe you so much. The Goldwater Writing Project for making the writing of this book possible and for enabling me to meet the talented, extraordinary residents of the Goldwater Hospital. I think of them and their writing every day.

  The friends and colleagues who have kept me sane, provided wise notes, shared in alcohol and food and anxiety—especially Christy and Scott, Adam, Emily, Bryn, Peng, Tess. All of my friends in the Czech Republic, the United States, and in between who make this Earth a magnificent place.

  Most importantly, I’d like to thank all readers of books, for keeping the conversation alive across centuries.

  About the Author

  Grace Ann Leadbeater

  Jaroslav Kalfař was born and raised in Prague, Czech Republic, and immigrated to the United States at the age of fifteen. He earned an MFA at New York University, where he was a Goldwater Fellow and a nominee for the inaugural E. L. Doctorow Fellowship. He lives in Brooklyn. This is his first novel.