by Pavel Mandys
Like, for example, on a construction site in the moment when a jackhammer killed Vasil, a foreman. When the police arrive, because doubtless somebody has called them already, and the ambulance as well, they will for sure ask Turková what in the world she was doing at the site of the tragedy. They’ll ask me too.
Both of us were here—we could say—on business. She wanted to create a scandal; I was supposed to uncover what had been going on at the construction site. My name is Peter Wagner, and it would be difficult to explain what it is I actually do. I write for various magazines and translate; I draw an additional income from tutoring annoying kids in German. But mostly I am a skeptical psychotronic—that’s how somebody once described it. I am interested in all paranormal phenomena. I’ve been tottering around them for the past twenty-five years. I know all the dousers, clairvoyants, telepaths, and telekinetics in half of Europe. I have tried to start believing that they really can see the future, and move objects long distances, and cure cancer. I have not been very successful, and that’s why I belong in the category of skeptics. On the other hand, I am unable to dismiss them because sometimes they do guess things correctly, move something, or cure something. I keep asking myself—What if? Also, these people are quite fun. Wackos, all of them. I use them for my small zoo of idiots.
This I am not telling anybody, naturally, so people know me as a psychotronic. And as such, the engineer Vavřinec—in charge of the reconstruction of the St. Wenceslaus Rotunda—turned to me some time ago. Apparently, strange things were going on at the reconstruction site, as if a poltergeist was raging there. Injuries. Unexplainable breakdowns of machinery. The cement mixer opens by itself and crushes a worker. The fuse board radiates a blue glow. The wooden stairs fastened by five-inch nails suddenly collapse like a house of cards. Injuries, but small. A jackhammer rammed into a chest, that’s a new one.
An interesting happenstance that I arrived to the place of the accident right at this moment. Vavřinec had asked me to come and his voice sounded very serious on the phone. But that was before he learned about the death on the construction site. Why, though, has this Turková materialized here?
No time for riddles. Paramedics ran in, led by a doctor, their reflective vests shining in the blaze of construction lamps, like glitter on Christmas ornaments. Even two policemen appeared; they took pictures of the accident and especially the chisel of the hammer rammed in the chest. A policeman has to have a strong stomach. The doctor confirmed death and the paramedics wanted to remove the hammer. It wasn’t easy to do, because the chisel was lodged so deeply that they had to turn on the hammer to dislodge it. The dead man started to shake and his head wobbled from side to side. That was a substantial spectacle; even Turková stopped shrieking for a while.
The paramedics removed the body, then other policemen came in. Somebody dragged Turková away and Vavřinec pulled me into his office for coffee. His hands were shaking, just about spilling the hot liquid.
“What was all that about?” I asked.
He offered me a shot. I didn’t say no.
“Why didn’t you tell me—”
“I did not know.”
“That there’s a corpse down there?”
“I called you because last night . . . there, inside . . . were those weird sounds again. Banging and also howling. But a corpse . . . that was there in the morning. The guys came in for their shift, it was open, and poor Vasil was lying there.”
“An accident?”
“How can somebody kill himself with a jackhammer? Bullshit. It’s impossible. Somebody had to do it. Somebody pinned him down like a bug onto a corkboard,” the construction manager said, with both gloom and fear in his voice.
We were sitting across from each other in an ugly room, more like a closet. Beaten-up table; on it, a computer with an outdated monitor. On one wall, there was a board with blueprints and pictures. The St. Wenceslaus Rotunda had been discovered when the palace was being reconstructed in 2003. It was well known that the remnants of a thousand-year-old church could be somewhere there. According to the old records, the rotunda was demolished down to its foundations in 1683. It had already been weakened, also thanks to the fact that in 1628 they began to erect a baroque church on the site, and into its brickwork they built a marl circle as the foundation for the altar. Everything was nicely documented in the pictures on the board. Architectural historians thought nothing had been left of the rotunda. It was not until 2003 that it became clear that something was, after all, preserved. Most of what was left were the remnants of the original Roman floor. They discovered seventy-four tiles—three shapes arranged in five rows. The tiles are either hexagonal, square, or triangle. The hexagonal ones have no glaze; the triangular ones have from brown-violet to almost black glaze. The hexagonal tiles depict lions and mythical creatures called griffins—half eagle and half lion.
Engineer Vavřinec led the reconstruction. Naturally, it is impossible to reconstruct the rotunda in its entirety—the palace, situated above it, would have to be taken down. Nevertheless, inside the palace there will be a room that will become a testimony to the Roman history of Prague. Its floor will be reconstructed too—specialists will make replicas of the original tiles and they will rebuild the entire floor as it looked a thousand years ago.
“What were the sounds?” I asked the manager.
He was shaking his head. “I myself did not hear them. The guy from security called me. He thought the cement mixer turned on by itself.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Of course it’s impossible. He woke me up at three in the morning. I told him to go turn it off. He said he was afraid. I have to say this all makes me nervous too. That’s why I called you in the morning.”
“Before you discovered the horror?”
“Of course.” He looked me in the eyes. This coffee cup banged the small plate when he tried to lift it by its handle. “Do you think something can be done?”
“Stop the construction.”
“That’s not possible. I was thinking of other things. Perhaps you know some people who know the ropes . . .”
“Magicians?”
“You think I am nuts. But this is not normal!”
“Why don’t you let it be? Why don’t you get a different job?”
“I don’t know. I have other offers, but somehow I have come to like it here. You understand—the fifth rotunda in Prague. And before that, there was even something else. We found a fragment from the circle made of marl. A very odd discovery, there’s nothing else anywhere like it. The stones are very peculiarly carved; toward their center, they are smooth, the outside is natural. Scientists are at a loss. They say they’re older than the foundations of the rotunda, perhaps dating back to pagan times.”
“Okay, but because of that you want to be accused of work-safety negligence? They can blame the death on you!”
His eyes were haunted. “Mr. Wagner, I thought you’d be able to help me . . .”
* * *
Four days later, Orlík called me. He’s the captain at the CSI and it doesn’t matter what his real name is. We’re friends and sometimes go on motorcycle trips together. A few times I’ve sent a clairvoyant his way, always with plenty of caveats that clairvoyance is fraud. He was never upset with me, and it seemed that he was satisfied. We met up there at Hradčany, in the At the Black Ox pub. He asked me about Adéla Turková. I told him I didn’t know her that well. An activist from the Trace. Very nutty.
“An aggressive type?” he asked.
“Just a girl.”
“I heard she slapped you.”
How did they hear that? It’s been two months; she waited for me when I was returning home. I live in Žižkov, Dalimil Street. It was almost dark and there are not many lights in front of our house. She was pressed in the corner and she lunged out at me with that shriek of hers. I didn’t tell many people, perhaps two or three, one of them Vavřinec. At him, she hurled a flowerpot.
“Slapped me? She only yelled at
me.”
“Could you tell me more?”
“Is this an interrogation?” He was starting to get on my nerves, which may have been a bit frayed already.
“I simply think you could help us out.”
“With what?”
“It was murder, Peter. You have an alibi, we know that. But you do belong to the circle of people connected to the construction. Are you absolutely in the clear?”
“And why shouldn’t I be?” I replied.
“There’s a lot of stealing going on at the construction site. The Renova Company. Special construction works. There’s stealing going on at every construction site, but these historical reconstructions of old objects . . . It’s difficult to stick to the budget. They scratch the brick wall and there’s a fresco from the thirteenth century. And in a snap, the construction costs half a million more.”
“But there’s nothing you can do about that, right?” I was very curious what he was trying to imply. He’s turned out nicely, hasn’t he? My good buddy Orlík! So why would you believe a policeman?
“Do you know that the Renova Company is one of the major sponsors of the nonprofit organization Trace?”
“I did not know that.”
“Every complication means the construction becomes more expensive, and it’s in the interest of construction companies to make the budget grow.”
“That makes sense.”
“The Trace will make sure there are complications and the company makes more money.”
“What do I have to do with that?”
“Maybe you know something about those complications.”
“Yes—machinery defects, fuses, weird sounds.”
Orlík raised his eyebrows. He sat there in his motorcycle jacket, the froth in the beer in front of him slowly thinning. “A poltergeist tale.”
“You think Vavřinec and Turková killed Vasil so that Renova can make more money?”
“You’d be surprised what people do for money.”
“Turková is extremely light. She couldn’t handle the jackhammer,” I said. Orlík watched me carefully. “You think that Vavřinec brought me in so that he could use me as a pawn?”
“We call it a white horse,” he said. “An outsider on whom they then pin everything.”
“I have nothing to do with Renova or Turková, unless you count the slaps.”
“So she did slap you after all! Is she up to attacking a man?”
“Do not misinterpret what I say.”
“Look,” he leaned toward me, “it is not officially murder. I, however, believe that it was.”
“Why don’t you call it a murder?”
“We don’t want to end up being idiots,” he growled. “Three specialists wrote a report that it was an unfortunate accident with negligent manipulation of the equipment.”
“But—”
“No but applies. The only thing that applies is what’s in the report with a signature and stamp.” It was obvious that it all really bothered him.
“So after all, the poltergeist did it,” I responded sarcastically.
“That’s much more plausible than him impaling himself.”
* * *
A few weeks passed and I slowly started letting it go.
According to the official version, the construction worker Vasil Hrymalskij died as a result of negligent manipulation of a demolition hammer. Another group of workers started working on the construction site, and a multidisciplinary team of historians and art scientists were examining the tiles. Maybe because for a while there was press coverage of the accident, people started becoming interested in the St. Wenceslaus Rotunda. So the legend about its origin, linked to the story about the murder of St. Wenceslaus, was unearthed. According to legend, the funeral procession carried the body of the murdered saint on a carriage from Boleslav—where the prince had been killed by his brother—to the Prague Castle. Nearing the castle, the procession passed a prison where the inmates were freed from their chains by God’s power and led to their freedom. Later, right there, they built a chapel with a circle platform—the St. Wenceslaus Chapel.
I did not originally know the legend, and the person who acquainted me with it was Adéla Turková, the activist from Trace.
One evening, I returned to my apartment in Dalimil Street—one room and a small kitchen on the fourth floor in a house with no elevator, permeated with the smells of sauerkraut and stale laundry. When I opened the door, I immediately stopped in my tracks. I smelled something strange in the air. I smelled fresh coffee! I didn’t even close the door behind me.
Adéla Turková was sitting in the dark kitchen in an armchair, a cup of coffee on the table next to her. “How’s it going?” she greeted me.
I returned to the hall to close the door. Then I stopped—shouldn’t I kick her out?
“Will there be slaps again?” I asked. I walked to the sink to get water.
“I was stupid—they saw you with a policeman and so I thought you were a cop. But you were just snooping.”
“Maybe I’m a secret agent,” I said, and sat down across from her. The dusk was becoming thicker. Outside, the lights came on, illuminating the whole of Dalimil Street, except for the lamp in front of our house; that one remained dark. I sat down at the dining table.
“Bullshit. I now know very well who you are and what you do. I found your articles and I read your blog about paranormal phenomena.”
“Hmm.”
“You’re not a fool at all,” she went on. “You could understand more of what we are about.”
“We?”
“The Trace.”
“Ah, the thread.”
“Clearly, the thread,” she shot back, annoyed. “You do know the history of the St. Wenceslaus Rotunda?”
“I’m not sure.” I shrugged and then she rattled off the story of the miraculous halt of the carriage with the remains of the murdered saint. How the carriage stopped, and they brought in a couple of oxen but the carriage still didn’t budge an inch. The murderer of Wenceslaus, Boleslaus himself had come to repent, and only then did the carriage with the body of the murdered saint start again.
“And what’s the point?” I asked when she was finished.
“The thread.”
“I don’t get it.”
“On that exact place, there used to be a pagan sacrificial site. A source of psychoenergetic power, do you get it? That’s why they built the chapel there. Back then, people were much more sensitive and every church was something of a generator of psychic energy. Churches in medieval Prague are located in the key points of a magic polygon.”
I nodded.
“Their position was important for channeling psychoenergetic waves. They planned it smartly; but otherwise, they were idiots,” she explained.
“But of course,” I retorted. The speed and clarity of conclusions made by these kids always touched me. “Caesar Charles IV was a huge idiot when he founded the New Town of Prague on a magic platform.”
She didn’t get the irony.
“You’re right! Total idiot. He built Prague on the platform of a cross. He didn’t get it at all that the strongest layer of energy is down there. It’s hidden in the pagan underworld of Prague. What could Charles IV have known about that? An outsider from Luxembourg brought up in Paris. The Přemysl dynasty were so much more clever. Přemysl and Libuše were pagans! Their residence, Vyšehrad, is totally magic. Then they moved the royal residence to the other side of the river. Where to? The Prague Castle is built on the place of a pagan sacrificial site. Its axis is the Brusnice brook. Do you know where the brook starts?”
“No,” I mumbled. How did this girl get into my kitchen?
“At the spot where the Břevnov Monastery is located. It sits like a Christian lid on a pagan pressure cooker. The Monastery of Premonstratensians on Strahov is also such a lid. During the Kosmas times they were still having pagan rituals. But let’s go further down: under the Cathedral of St. Nicolas is a boiler of magic powers. That’s why t
he Prague Bambino holds such a power. The Jesuits knew the source of that power very well. That’s why they built their palace on it and attached it to the Cathedral of St. Nicolas!”
This girl could be either hysterical or boring. She was getting on my nerves being either.
“How did you sneak into my apartment?”
“Through the door,” she answered dryly. “I know how to open doors. Your dumb builder friend discovered the same.”
I got up and turned on the light.
She squinted. “That was really unnecessary.”
“What’s unnecessary is breaking into somebody’s apartment.”
“So call your buddy the policeman,” she grinned. “Listen, it is serious and I came to you because you are not as stupid as the others. You have an idea of what’s going on here.”
“Of course. It’s all about the thread.”
She waved her hands as a sign for me to stop joking around. “They discovered the Circle. Listen to me. If it’s at all possible, tell them not to touch it—”
“Not to touch it?” I interrupted. At that moment, I did not realize yet what circle she was talking about.
“Oh, well, they have gone quite far already. Let them glue those tiles of theirs, they won’t figure out the original structure of the magic pattern anyway. But the Circle—they must leave it be.”
