This extract is taken from the book “Hoří chemička, něco si přej”, which describes the author’s stay on the outskirts of the North Bohemian town Litvínov, concretelly in the Janov housing estate, which is considered the largest excluded marginalised neighbourhood in Czech. Janov is home to predominantly Romani families living in private or cooperative housing, for whom a way out of the “ghetto” is, due to long-term structural inequality, almost unimaginable. The book is written in the form of diary entries and offers a perspective on the cultural encounter between two realities that exist in proximity to one another, yet remain mutually alienated.
5 September 2021
The train journey between Ústí nad Labem and Litvínov was lined with a green jungle. My friend Vanda decided to travel with me back to Janov and brought along her flatmate Václav, who, despite holding a degree in education from Prague’s famous film-making university, works in Ústí nad Labem behind the bar. So we went together, taking in the jungle in the warm sunshine of Indian summer, and it made us feel so content that, rather than heading back to the Janov housing estate, I wanted to head off somewhere into the hills, to wander through the woods and meadows all the way to the nearby mountains. But I was afraid and my shoes weren’t up to it, so we cowardly got off the town bus at the Janov-škola stop. There was a car parked in front of the entrance to the block, and when we arrived and I started to open the gate, someone from inside the car asked me if we were looking for anything.
“We’re not looking for anything,” I said and carried on unlocking the gate. A white woman with long hair got out of the car; she introduced herself as Martina, along with a Romani man without long hair, who said his name was Pepa. They’d been waiting for someone to arrive because they didn’t want to sit in the garden on their own. We chatted for a while on the doorstep. Pepa and Martina worked in social services in Trmice (a separate district of Ústí nad Labem) and that was also where they’d met the owner of the community house Libuše, Petr. Pepa avoided my gaze and had his hands folded across his chest. I had the feeling he’d like to leave, but I wanted to get everything out of him that might help me in my thinking. He said that in Trmice they work with young people aged between 16 and 20, whom they had made contact with whilst they were still children, and that, thanks to their long-term collaboration, as many as 70 per cent of them go on to further education after finishing primary school. He spoke about how important it is to get to know one’s ‘clients’ first and only then to devise a plan for how to proceed, because otherwise one presents oneself to others far more than one offers them the opportunity for their own development. When I told him that I was in Litvínov on a month-long residency, he smirked a little and I felt awkward. When a call suddenly rang out from the window on the ground floor (“Pepo”), he disappeared with relief through the dilapidated door.
Meanwhile, Monika and Matěj arrived – they came across as community workers at Libuše – and through the open gate, a stream of children and mums with prams began pouring into the garden. I took out the papers and drawing materials, set up the tables, sat Vanda and Václav down at them, and went inside to look for the attendance forms, which Petr had asked me to have the adults sign. But no sooner had I stepped back out of the door than the mums with their prams started leaving the garden en masse. I looked at them in surprise, wondering why they hadn’t stayed a little longer.
“Don’t you have any yoghurts?” they said, “Or lemonade?” “Give us some water for the little one.”
I went back inside to fetch a couple of bottles of water, hoping that some of them might then stay a while longer, but it didn’t work. They wanted the yoghurts from the food bank that Monika had brought in last week, but as the yoghurts had run out, their motivation to stay practically vanished. They couldn’t see what else we could offer them; perhaps they weren’t even interested. We were not friends yet; we were outsiders, and it suddenly began to strike me that our (mine,my colleague`s, Tranzit’s) presence here in Libuše might, for the long-term work of Petr, Monika and the Libuše collective, disrupt their own process of integrating with the local community. The children, however, didn’t leave; on the contrary, their numbers kept growing in the garden, only for them to run off and then return with endless questions.
“Are you a lesbian?” “Do you smoke weed?” “Are you a rocker?” “What’s techno?” “Can I borrow a ball to play at home?” “Do you take drugs?” (Obviously meaning meth.)
The whole situation thickened for a moment, as if you’d poured a roux into soup, and I felt I couldn’t stir fast enough to prevent lumps from forming. This was a particular risk because there were bonds between the different groups of children that were as yet unknown to me, and which created complex dynamics based on various clan affiliations and social status to which individual families were integrated. I wasn’t yet sure exactly how those dynamics worked, but at first glance I had the impression that the most marginalised were the least articulate children, probably from the poorest families (unlike from the others, they hadn’t brought their own drinks or anything else with them; they couldn’t write or speak very well; they were shy in front of others; they were worse at drawing and their clothes were dirty and had holes).
We had a discussion about their future. Some of the children (aged 10–12) envisaged themselves as part of mainstream society. One of the girls wanted to be a confectioner, another a nurse; one of the boys told me he wanted to be a graphic designer, which surprised me – I was struck by the level of abstraction involved and his ability to navigate it. I asked him if they had a computer at home, and he said no. I didn’t manage to find out where he’d learnt about this sort of profession.
At some point amidst the chaos of that afternoon, Denisa, one of the mothers, stopped to talk with me. She was too shy to go out into the garden, where it was all a bit too lively for her, but she sat with me on the doorstep. Her visit meant a lot to me; it was clear she hadn’t come for anything material, but purely so that we could have a chat and get to know one another. She’d come so she wouldn’t be at home alone with the children or with her perpetually silent neighbour. It seemed to me that she didn’t feel entirely at ease, but she stayed until I gave her my full attention. Unfortunately, that didn’t last long, because a moment later Monika, the community worker, arrived and needed to discuss something. I handed Denisa and her silent neighbour a bag of clothes that Vanda and I had found in a bin in Ústí (we’d washed, dried and folded all), and I asked her to come round sometime in the morning, when the children would be at school and it would be quiet at Libuše’s garden.
The conversation with Monika turned out to be more than just important. She told me that they are always ‘open’ on Sundays and Wednesdays at Libuše and that she tries to teach the neighbourhood children not just to come here to play (to take), but also to help out with the work in the garden or around the house (to give). That’s obviously a clever strategy, and I felt a bit silly that I’d just spent the day with the children folding origami and playing Scrabble.
When everyone had left the garden in the evening, my colleague Lenka arrived and we discussed how to incorporate our daily new insights into the framework of our work here in Janov. Although we’d known from the start that the short duration of our residency was problematic, we hadn’t quite managed to describe and explain all the reasons why this was the case. Now we were beginning to feel them almost tangibly. After just one afternoon spent together, we felt that if we focused solely on creating momentary pleasant experiences, we would be perpetuating the current problematic relationship between the voluntary sector and the Roma minority. A relationship in which one side gives and the other receives without any need to contribute to the shared outcome (which could be more equal relationships between people of different ethnicities, skin colours, social status), and the current inequality merely shifts into a different form. The relationships between the individual parties then become a sort of charity, the primary function of which is to assuage the historically rooted guilty conscience of those who give. Sharing one’s own privileges may be possible on a personal level – looking after a neighbour’s children so that she, too, can go out alone with her husband one day – but at an institutional level, this strategy becomes considerably more complicated and takes on further, undesirable dimensions.
Another reason why our work in Libuše proved problematic for us can be explained using the example of a patriarchal family structure, in which many of us grew up. Monika and Petr, or any of the entities still operating in Janov, represent, in this parable, the ever-present mother who sets the basic boundaries of how we interact, based partly on intuition and partly on her own experience. My colleague Lenka, myself and Tranzit (-the institution) are the absent father who returns from a business trip, takes the child in his arms and overwhelm them with an excessive amount of care, attention and love (based on a real, albeit momentary, feeling of insufficient involvement), before disappearing again shortly afterwards and leaving the crying, frustrated child in the care of a desperate mother, whose world is falling apart because of someone who is, in reality, not entirely available to either her or the child, and who acts primarily in the interests of fulfilling their own needs.
I, too, grew up in such a family constellation, and I am all too well aware that, regardless of the more than adequate material resources (provided by my absent father), I did not grow up to be a neurologically healthy person. Perhaps I am capable of studying, formulating my thoughts and growing intellectually. However, my emotional life is full of anxiety, a damaged sense of self-worth and feelings of inadequacy, caused, amongst other things, by my father’s often absence.
We have therefore agreed that, going forward, we will coordinate our work in line with Monika’s suggestions and what we agree upon together with her.
6 September 2021
“Baáá-roóóó” “Léén-koóóó”
Lenka and I were sitting on the second floor, where ‘our room’ was, planning the upcoming week, whilst downstairs by the gate stood several children who were tirelessly calling out our names. We pretended not to hear them, because one of Monica’s requests had been that we limit individual meetings to pre-arranged times. At some point, however, Lenka couldn’t take it any longer, went downstairs, and the calls stopped for a while.
Less than an hour had passed when the calls started up again. This time, we went downstairs, and Lila—one of Libuše’s most frequent visitors—handed me a piece of paper with a telephone number on it.
“Uncle Tomáš says he might be able to come with us to the ZOO on Saturday as a chaperone.”
I opened the metal gate, took the note, and whilst Lila ran off somewhere with her group of girls (Eliska and Anicka), I remained standing on the pavement in front of Libuše, basking in the warm sunshine. A moment later, Dušan appeared, along with a group of girls I hadn’t met before. One of them had thick black eyebrows, and her skin was extremely dark. Her black eyes, framed by thick, long lashes, shone in a way I’d never seen before, and above her upper lip grew a black tuft of soft hairs. She was beautiful and ugly at the same time, and I felt so spellbound by her appearance that I forgot all about our plans and sat down with the children on the road, right in the middle of the street. We chatted about what each of us wanted to do when we grew up, and Dušan insisted he wanted to be a thief. The girls laughed and said it was dangerous. That “they’d” catch him and then he’d end up in prison.
“I’ll have a car and I’ll drive off,” Dušan protested, but the girls wouldn’t have it.
“The coppers have a car too, and besides, they might not catch you straight away, but they’ll catch you eventually; they’ll know it was you, they’ll have you on CCTV.”
Dušan gave up and said he’d be a policeman instead. The girls laughed even more and started telling stories about how, where and what they’d stolen. How they stuffed biscuits down their sleeves and how they tried on everything they liked in the shops and then walked out wearing it. Then they talked about their families, and one of them – Nella – said that her dad lives in England and has a swimming pool in his garden, and that captivating girl (Gábina) said that there were lots of them living in their flat – not just her family of seven, but also another aunt and her children. We sat around on the sun-drenched road for a while longer before going our separate ways.
That evening, I found myself alone again at Libuše. I thought about Gabina and why I was so drawn to her appearance. I recalled how my mother and I once met my father’s distant cousin on the Underground; she had her hair styled into a punk star and her whole face was adorned with piercings of various sizes and colours. I was about three years old, but I still remember to this day (perhaps partly through second-hand recollection) my fascination with her unconventional appearance, my bated breath, and my struggle to decide whether what I was seeing struck me as beautiful or ugly. Perhaps it was precisely this contradiction that caught my attention; perhaps it was her distinctly different ethnicity, for which I felt a little ashamed even to myself.
Thoughts were swirling round in my head, and so, instead of resting, I spent most of the night listening to what the old walls had to tell me about those who were once people and are now ghosts.
Mr. Procházka
Václav lives in a semi-detached house with his parents. He is in his fifties, has been divorced three times and has four children. He is a successful doctor and a renowned lover. He used to be attractive, but lately he is losing his appeal. He drinks a lot of wine, smokes cigarettes and sometimes snorts cocaine, just as successful people do. He’s developed a potbelly – as hard as a pregnant woman’s tummy. When he climbs the stairs, he’s breathing heavily and has started talking to himself, even when there are people around him. He doesn’t know how to talk to them; he can only talk to them. Ever since he took his first acid with his mates around his fortieth birthday, he’s been listening to psychedelic rock. His flat is modernly furnished. On the windowsills, diverse cactuses are arranged, while medical books and subscriptions to neoliberal magazines covering current political affairs are scattered across all the other surfaces. Václav prides himself on having an opinion on everything – he is a doctor, after all, so he has to keep up to date. His friends don’t call him “Václav”, but “Doctor”, and he’s very proud of that. He never fails to mention this title when he recounts pub tales to his children, parents, sister or niece when they come to visit. In truth, he isn’t even that proud of it anymore, but he doesn’t know what else to refer to. He is getting on in years. His body feels as though it belongs to someone else, just like his flat, his private practice and his bed in the attic room, next to which lies a Bible; on a small white bedtable.
He gets up for work early in the morning and goes to bed late. To be able to fall asleep, he takes Geratam, Neurol, Xanax or Rivotril. To help him eat, he takes Aspenzyn. He takes Aulin so that his knee doesn’t hurt – a knee he should have had operated on, but he keeps refusing because then he wouldn’t be able to work. And what would he do if he weren’t working? He’d have to stay at home, on his own, tending his cactuses, reading all the ostensibly erudite periodicals and eating lunch with his parents’ who live downstairs. He doesn’t like going there. They’re old and remind him of his own mortality. But he goes there often because his mother is a good cook and makes the house feel like a home, and it’s warm there – warmer than in his flat with its new massive wooden furniture and expensive television.
It was Saturday morning and Václav got up with difficulty, shuffling painfully through his empty flat. He’d decided to cut down on his sleeping pills, so instead he’d drunk a litre of wine the previous evening to help him fall asleep, and when he got up in the morning, he was only half awake. He had two cups of black coffee from his modern coffee machine and a glass of water for breakfast; he never ate in the morning, as he felt that breakfast was the meal that held the most sadness. He got into his Škoda Superb and drove to work.
His private practice was about five hundred metres from his house, but it was raining outside and he didn’t fancy walking. In reality, he never walked there. There were already several cars in the car park in front of the practice; he struggled to get out of his seat and went inside through the back entrance. The nurse – Miss Alena – was already ready to open up; she looked young and lively.
“Good morning, Doctor,” she greeted him cheerfully, casting a flirtatious glance his way.
“Hello, Alena,” he said, scanning her up and down as if by habit. Her hair was neatly styled, her skin soft. Not that it was so obvious at first glance, but he knew because he’d had an affair with her when she first started working for him. But then she’d found a partner, a real partner and it seemed to him that lately she’d been looking at him rather with pity. That her flirtatious greetings were, in fact, a mockery of his fading charm.
He went to change into his doctor’s coat and sat down on the swivel chair in front of his desk, typed something into the computer for a moment, and then asked Alena to open the floodgates and let in the stream of impatient patients. The door was constantly opening and closing right up until lunchtime. He and Alena ordered a meal to be delivered, and after they’d eaten, they got back to work. A sprained ankle, delirium, an irritated pancreas, a girl from the pharmaceutical company… He’d been sleeping with her too, before he started talking to himself. She liked to be invited to dinner, and he invited her; he was a wealthy doctor and she was a young girl with a firm figure. They flirted with each other still because they didn’t know how else to talk to one another, and even in that he felt pity. Regret and emptiness, bathed in a greyish light, which consumed his days.
“Alena, we’re closing at five sharp today; I don’t fancy staying here any longer. How many people are still there?” “Just one man.”
“Do we know what he wants?”
“We don’t know; he’s a new patient.”
“Name?”
“Aleš Procházka.” “Well, go and fetch him...”
“Doctor, couldn’t I bring him in and go home first? I’d still catch the train to my parents’ – the next one isn’t for another two hours,” Alena pleaded, feigning concern.
“Of course you can,” replied Václav.
He liked to take the opportunity to be condescending. Condescension created a bond and thus placed in his hands the invisible reins of seemingly insignificant power.
“So get changed first and let him go when you’re leaving; I’ll be here in the meantime, typing the reports.”
He didn’t like male patients; they were steeped in weakness. His father, the ageing head of the family, a great man with great deeds to his name and many unwelcome advances, would not tolerate weakness – not in men. Perhaps women could be weak. Women did not need to think things through or build the world; their duty was to look after men, nurture their genius, look presentable and bear a child. Men were supposed to be determined and tough, to achieve their goals and ensure the continuation of their family name. His father was, perhaps not so surprisingly, also a doctor. He wanted to be proud of his son, but even though Václav had fulfilled all his expectations – he had succeeded in his (their shared) profession and his first child was a son – he never regarded him as his equal. There was something soft about him, no matter how hard he tried to stifle it. Male patients reminded Václav of this softness of his, this cowardice – yes, that was the word: cowardice. Their petty injuries, their little aches and pains… Like walking disappointments. He despised them. Someone knocked on the door.
Mr Procházka entered the room. He was a thin, slightly stooped man. He was wearing a collared T-shirt, a cardigan, a black coat, brown trousers, had dark, greying hair and a chequered cap on his head, his eyes cast down towards the floor. He might have been just a little older than Václav. He looked around, then hung his cap and coat on the coat rack in the corner by the door.
“Good afternoon, Mr Procházka, so what’s troubling you?” Václav said.
“Good afternoon, Doctor; well, actually, I’m not entirely sure myself.” The patient raised his head cautiously and, as he sat down in the chair opposite Václav, he looked around the surgery as though the surroundings were quite unfamiliar to him.
“But surely you’ve come here about something.”
Mr Procházka shifted nervously in his chair, which creaked anxiously.
“Certainly, I just don’t know what it is; I’m not sure if I can describe it properly…”
“How old are you?” Václav was impatient, but something about this restless man intrigued him.
“Doctor, you see, it’s hard for me to talk about this… How old are you, if I may ask?”
“Of course you may ask, though I don’t know what good it’ll do you… I’m fifty-seven.”
That man was getting on his nerves. Why had he sent Alena home early? She could have been the one to have this conversation with him… But he is the Doctor, after all; he has to treat patients.
“So tell me, what is the nature of your problem?”
“I’d say it’s a serious one, Doctor,” the man said, glancing around the room again and then beginning to examine Václav with a long look, very carefully, bit by bit. Václav would have preferred to leave, he felt trapped. He was losing his patience.
“Well then, let’s take a pragmatic approach – does anything on your body hurt? On your body, inside your body – your knee, your stomach, your kidneys, are you having trouble breathing…? Do you see where I’m going with this?” Do you feel any physical pain?”
“On my body… Quite the opposite, Doctor; I actually have no connection with this body, if that makes any sense… You see, I’ve gone for a walk and haven’t come back yet, if you know what I mean.”
Václav didn’t understand; he didn’t look like a madman, but what he was saying simply didn’t make any sense.
“Are you feeling anxious? Mr Procházka, I’m not a psychologist or a psychiatrist, but if you’d like a referral, I have a colleague – I could put you in touch with him...”
The man remained silent, eyeing the doctor sidelong.
“Are you afraid of death, Doctor?”
“Pardon?”
“Well, are you?”
“I… I actually am… afraid… If I’m afraid… Well, of course, it’s hard for a person to come to terms with something they can’t imagine; they ponder what will remain of them, what they’ve achieved… What his legacy will be...” He didn’t even know why he was answering; the words just poured out of him almost of their own will.
“Do you have any children, Doctor?”
“I do, two sons,” said Václav proudly. He loved his children; after all, he had shaped them to be a reflection of himself. “And their mothers… Their mothers…” He felt a lump in his throat.
“And aren’t they what you’ve left behind?”
“Of course, but shouldn’t a man… I mean, it’s not that their existence doesn’t fulfill me… But the expectations…”
“Expectations?” Mr Procházka sat up straight in his chair and leaned against the backrest. Suddenly, he didn’t look so small. Václav stood up from his chair and began pacing around the room, as if looking for somewhere to hide. But from what? Why?
“Yes, expectations… You see, my father… He achieved great things… I mean, he was a very successful man, he had enormous charisma… A great man… I…” Václav stammered, the words slipping away from his throat; he swallowed them before he could even utter them. The thought of his father overwhelmed him like an avalanche; he felt inadequate, weak, overwhelmed.
“Aren’t you successful?”
Mr Procházka also rose from his chair. His shoulders were straightened, and it now became apparent that he was almost the same height as Václav. He walked over to the window and gazed out into the garden.
“You have a private practice, you own a house, you’ve fathered two sons...”
“...I don’t have a wife...” Václav slumped and lowered his head between his shoulders.
“You don’t? Really?”
“Well… I’ve got plenty of women… I mean, I’ve had… I suppose I could…”
Václav felt as though there was no air in the room. He walked over to the washbasin and turned on the tap, filling a glass with water, but instead of drinking it, he set it back down beside the washbasin.
Mr Procházka turned away from the window towards the surgery and leaned against the windowsill from behind. He remained silent, watching Václav, whose eyes were darting around the room.
“Can I help you in any way?” asked Mr Procházka in a slightly impatient voice.
“Well, you see… Please, what’s going on… I’m not sure...”
Václav looked at the man opposite him and broke out in a cold sweat. He turned round, took the coat and the cap from the coat rack, and disappeared out the door.
Mr Procházka stood for a moment facing the open door, his hands in his pockets, then closed the door, sat down at the desk where the doctor usually sat, and began filling in some paperwork. A moment later, Alena appeared in the doorway.
“Doctor, phew, I’m so glad you’re still here; I tried calling you but you didn’t seem to be answering… Sorry, I left my keys here… Can you believe it? I’m such an idiot – I was already at the station when it dawned on me; now I’ll have to wait until after seven… What about that last man who wanted to see you?”
“Nothing really, he just seemed a bit out of sorts.”
Mr Procházka replied and snapped his folder shut. He went to the back to fetch his jacket, rummaged in his pocket and pulled out his car keys.
“I can give you a lift,” he offered Alena, and she accepted – why not? He was, after all, a wealthy doctor.
A Funeral Ceremony (published in A2 magazine, 2025
A Funeral Ceremony
It’s freezing outside. The grass is covered in hoarfrost, and the warm breath exhaled at regular intervals by people waiting at the tram stop instantly condenses into a cloud of steam. I’m sitting in the second trolley; rays of sunlight are flickering through the window. It seems to me that we’re not quite in the city anymore; apart from me, there are only three or four other passangers sitting here. I turn my face towards the sun outside the window and survey the surroundings of the railway line: a petrol station, a golf course, a hotel that looks like cheap staff accommodation. I’ve been here once before. I came here, to this very same place, for the same reason – it must have been about fifteen years ago. My colleague hanged himself in a psychiatric hospital using a shoelace. We didn’t know each other very well; he was a little older than me, but we grew up in similar social circles. One evening we got drunk – it must have been about two weeks before his death – and ended up kissing at the bar. It didn’t go any further than that; hardly anything happened, and apart from that drunken encounter, I only knew him in passing. I don’t know why I went there back then – probably just because everyone else was going. My memory of that day is captured in a single photograph – we’re standing in front of the ceremonial hall; it’s warm, and there’s some awful music playing. Maybe it wasn’t a shoelace, but a trouser belt – I can’t remember anymore. ‘Motol Crematorium’ stop is up next, announces the tram’s public address system. I’m standing by the door, dressed all in black, pressing the button to get off, while the other passengers watch me. It strikes me as cynical and somehow comical, that they made this stop only on demand.
I’d forgotten to buy a flower; it had seemed pointless at first, but now I feel it wouldn’t be right to turn up empty-handed. There’s a florist’s at the entrance to the cemetery, just like at all large cemeteries, especially those where funeral ceremonies are held. People buy gerberas or carnations here and then place them on the grave or beside the coffin. The shop is reminiscent of a foyer; everything here is disproportionately far apart and quiet, with a marble-like chill in the air. Behind the counter stand three women; they aren’t talking to one another, but there isn’t even a radio playing. The one serving me looks as though she’s from a roadside café, isolated somewhere in the middle of the Nevada desert. Bleached hair, high heels, lipstick – everything about her seems cheap and hollow, just like this whole shop selling funeral flowers. “One rose, please,” I say. “One hundred and twenty,” she says. Behind me, other mourners are already standing; the awkward silence of this incongruous business swallows up any further words, as well as the scent of all those cut flowers – there’s nothing to be smelled here. Not even grief. It seems a bit pricey to me, but I pay and leave.
Outside, small groups are forming – a black cloud of mourners. I take a look at the first one: about ten people in their sixties, laughing; looks like they’re leaving. A little further on, a trio of women with bouquets are standing uncertainly; they’re smoking, or perhaps it’s just smoke coming from their mouths – I don’t want to stare at them too much. They’re speaking Bulgarian and, unlike the people in the first group, you can sense a tension in them associated with the anticipation of a ceremony or an exam.
I watch them from a distance and, when they disperse, I follow them. The cemetery is vast and merges almost seamlessly into the woods, on the path, a huge sheepdog crossed with a Czechoslovakian wolf comes bounding down from somewhere above, energetic and full of life, without a collar. Behind him walks a boy in a hoodie; they are both young, and their energy is captivating in contrast to the stiff faces and gestures of the mourners. He strides briskly past, catches the dog by the eye with a rope, and disappears amongst the graves. For a moment, we stand uncertainly in front of the ceremonial hall, until finally someone opens the door and gestures for us to come in.
Flowers are laid in front of the stage, which is draped with a black curtain; on the right-hand side, a black-and-white photograph of Strahil stands on a stand. He looks to be in his thirties in the photograph; he has a black moustache and prominent cheekbones, thick hair and a mesmerising gaze. Above the photograph hangs a screen displaying the full name of the deceased. The hall is slowly filling up; I go over to my friend’s mum, who is gesturing at me and pointing to the seat where I’m supposed to sit. They’re both wearing dark glasses and crying. On the steps below the stage, overpriced flowers from the cemetery florist are piled high; one woman places a rose amongst the others, then she approaches the photograph and runs the fingers of her right hand back and forth over the moustache. Almost all the chairs are taken; the daughters-in-law are sitting at the front; apart from me, they are the only Czech women in the hall. Finally, the immediate family arrives. Spaska, the wife of the deceased, stands between her two sons. She is petite, perhaps a hundred and fifty centimetres tall; she sits down and is now at the centre of the whole gathering; she must feel the sympathetic glances of her friends, as well as their support. She has tears in her eyes, but she isn’t sobbing; as she stands up, I can see she is holding her younger son’s hand. Background music plays from the speaker, and on the screen, where his name had previously been displayed, photographs from Strahil’s life now flash by. In many of them I don’t recognise him; he looks like an old man with grey hair, so very different from the image I’ve kept of him. He was never old to me; I only noticed his grey hairs during our last meeting about a month ago, and perhaps I wouldn’t even have seen them then had it not been for the fear in his otherwise cheerful eyes. After the photographs have been projected, the curtain parts and, behind it, in the centre of the stage, lies a simple wooden coffin, adorned with large wreaths. Green fir branches, white and red roses. An elegant, white-haired man in a well-tailored suit takes the floor. He steps up to the lectern and bows deeply and solemnly; it makes a strong impression on me. Then he begins to speak in Bulgarian; I understand only a little. I understand just enough to see he is not a priest, but a friend, he obviously knows everyone, or at least most of the people in the hall; or perhaps he doesn’t know them, but he speaks to them very personally, sometimes addressing Spaska directly, looking her in the eye. Then he recites poems; I don’t understand what they’re about, but his delivery is heartfelt, compassionate and gentle. At the end of his speech, he bows once more, once to the bereaved and once to the coffin. Then we all stand up; an unfamiliar French chanson plays over the loudspeakers and the coffin is wheeled offstage. Whilst the coffin is being wheeled away, one of the funeral guests begins to clap loudly, but the others do not join in, so he soon gives up.
Apart from that surprising gesture, the atmosphere of dignity is disrupted by the sharp and discordant voice of the funeral hall manager, who urges us to offer our condolences fast, not to hold up the next funeral. I imagine the touch of cold hands, glassy, absent-minded gazes cast down to the ground. But this is different. Everyone is hugging one another, weeping, weeping in each other’s arms, looking into one another’s tear-stained eyes. They move slowly, much to the irritation of the institutional attendant, who would like us to clear off already. As we stand on the pavement in front of that impersonal, unsightly space intended for profound shared experience, the tension amongst those present is melting away. The tears dry up, and life seeps into the sombre atmosphere.
The funeral reception is taking place at Spaska’s home; in their modest Bulgarian flat, which is warm and full of carpets. There are so many of us here at the beginning, that we can barely fit in. A fairly large group of people remain on the sun-drenched terrace, with the once-beautiful ancient city spreading out below them. We drink rakija, chat about our lives, and reminisce about Strahil; we’ve all drunk rakija with him. The tables are laden with homemade delicacies. Banica, baklava, savoury cakes, aubergine salad and tzatziki. Bulgarian leavened bread, fruit and vegetables magnificently arranged in multiple bowls, meat, biscuits and chocolate, everything beautifully decorated, so Spaska has to encourage her guests to eat as nobody wants to be the first to dip into this loving feast creation. Soft light filters through the room; fresh air streams in through the doors onto the terrace, and the mourners mingle with one another, sipping drinks, laughing, eating, washing the crockery and then making a mess of it all again. At the edge of one of the tables stands a bottle of red wine, with a glass and an empty plate beside it; whoever takes food from the table is supposed to set a piece aside on the plate and pour some into the glass. My friend, the younger son of Strahil, explains to me that it’s an Orthodox tradition; they don’t know of any others – they are not religious. It was only his father who had himself baptised. Why they don’t really know. He was fifty at the time.
When the company thins out, we chat in the doorway to the room. My friend talks about how Strahil died. He died at home. All three of them were with him for a long time; then it was just him and Spaska, who held his hand. In a strange state of rapture, he recounts to me, in minute detail, beautiful story of his father’s last journey. Everything he says is important and suddenly he seems so grown-up to me. He is grown-up. The head of the family.
I leave after dark; it isn’t late, but I’m drunk. Only the family and a handful of the closest friends remain. ‘Are you leaving already?’ they ask me as if five minutes had passed from our arrival rather than five hours. Spaska hands me some funeral reception favors. Sweet barley, a couple of slices of roulade, a schnitzel and some yeast bread. She’s run out of boxes; so she must have given them all away over Christmas along with the potato salad, so now, with her last remaining strength, she’s packing the food for those leaving into empty bin bags. We hug, shake hands. We hug again. It occurs to me how many similar goodbyes she must have give through that day. It’s sad, but then again, it isn’t.
It’s like watching a river on a winter’s evening, that merges peacefully into the sea.