Chapter 17 Chapter Seven The Poet Is Dead

Only a true poet knows how lonely it is in the mirrored room of poetry.The sound of distant guns was faintly heard through the window, longing to run out into the wide world; Lermontov was buttoning up his military uniform; Byron was putting a revolver into the drawer of his bedside table ;Wolker in his poem is marching arm in arm with the crowd; Harras is impassionedly uttering rhyming curses; Mayakovsky is treading on his own throat; a glorious battle is Intensely going on. Be careful, I beg you!If a poet takes one wrong step, out of his mirror field, he is ruined, because he is not a good archer.If he fires a shot, he will kill himself.

Ah, did you hear them coming?A horse is galloping along a winding mountain road in the Caucasus, and in the saddle sits Lermontov with a pistol.Again there was the clatter of hooves and the rolling of wheels: it was Pushkin, pistol in hand, heading for a duel. What are we hearing now?It was a tram, a slow, rickety Prague tram.It was carrying Jaromil from one suburb to another; he was wearing a black coat, a tie, a winter coat and a hat. What poet has never imagined his death?What poet has never pictured it in his imagination?do i have to dieThen let me die by fire.Do you think it was just an accidental game of imagination that caused Jaromil to think of a burning death?totally not.Death is a revelation; it speaks; the act of dying has its own semantics, and how and under what circumstances one dies is not insignificant.

Jan Masaryk died in 1948, seeing his fate smashed to pieces by the hard keel of destiny, he fell in the courtyard of a palace in Prague; ended his life.Three years later, the poet Constantine Bibble — hunted by what he considered his comrades — jumped from a five-story building in the same city onto the pavement.Like Ikars, the environment that embraces him is the earth, and his death symbolizes the tragic conflict between space and surface, dream and awakening. Jan Hus and Gerdano Bruno could not have died by the sword.It is impossible to die by the hangman's noose, but only by the stake.Their lives thus became beacons, beacons, torches, shining for centuries.For the body is ephemeral and the mind is eternal, and the radiant entity is the image of the mind.

On the other hand, Ophelia can never die in fire, but must die in water, so the depth of water is closely related to the depth of people.For those who are drowning in their egos, in their loves, in their emotions, in their madness, in their introspection and chaos, water is their fatal condition.Folk songs describe girls who drowned themselves because their lovers did not return from battle; Harriet Shelley who threw herself into a river; Paul Celan who went to a party and died in the Seine. He got off the tram and walked towards the dark-haired girl's villa, which had seen him flee like a coward.

He was thinking about Xavier. Initially, only Jaromil. Jaromil then creates Xavier, his double; his second being, dreamlike and adventurous. Now is the time to clear the conflict between dream and reality, poetry and life, action and thought.In order to end the schism between Xavier and Jaromil, the two must become one.The man of fantasy must become the man of action, and the adventure of dreams must become the adventure of life. He is approaching the villa.I felt the agony of lack of self-confidence again.A sore throat added to his tension (because he had a cold, and Maman didn't want him that night). When he got to the door, he hesitated. He had to recall his recent accomplishments for courage. He thought of the red-haired girl , her trial, thought of the police and the series of events that he mobilized with just strength and will...

"I'm Xavier, I'm Xavier," he kept saying to himself before ringing the doorbell. Gathered in the room were young actors, actresses, painters, and students of the Prague art school: the owner of the villa was particularly notable, and he used all the rooms of the house as meeting places.The film girl introduced Jaromil to a few people, handed him a goblet, offered him a drink of his favorite drink, and left him. Jaromil was wearing a black coat, white shirt, and tie, and he felt very prim and stiff; everyone else was dressed casually, several men in sweaters and baggy trousers.He squirmed in the chair, finally took off his coat, threw it over the back of the chair, loosened his tie, and unbuttoned his shirt, which made him feel better.

The guests outdo each other in trying to get everyone's attention.The young actors behaved as if they were on stage, talking unnaturally; each trying to impress others with wit or originality.After drinking a few glasses of wine, Jaromil also wanted to show off at the party.A few times he managed to throw out a sarcasm that he thought was witty and held people's attention for a few seconds. Loud dance music thumped through the walls.A few days ago, the government allocated the third house on the second floor to a new tenant.The two houses left to Maman and Jaromil were like a quiet nest, surrounded by noise from all directions.

Mama heard the music; she was alone, and she was thinking of the film girl.Seeing her for the first time, she felt an inner danger between the pretty girl and Jaromil.She made an effort to befriend her in order to gain a strategic position for her son in the looming battle.All these tactics were futile, she realized now with shame.The girl didn't even think of inviting Maman to her party!They totally pushed her over-the-side. The filmmaker once confided to Maman that she only worked on the police film team because she came from a wealthy family and needed political protection to enable her to continue her studies.Maman understood that it was characteristic of this scheming girl to turn everything to serve her interests.She was just using Maman as a stepping stone to get her son.

The competition continued: someone played the piano, several couples were dancing, and loud conversation and laughter came from the crowd.Everyone wants to grab attention with a punchline: stand out from the crowd, even for a moment. Martynov was there too: tall, handsome, in his elegant military uniform, with a dagger, surrounded by women, a little operatic.Ah, how this man irritated Lermontov!God unfairly gave a fool a beautiful face, but gave Lermontov a pair of short legs.But if the poet lacks a pair of long legs, he has an excellent ironic wit, which can make him stand out from the crowd.

He approached the circle of Martynov's admiration and waited for his opportunity.Then he made a crude joke, watching the astonishment on people's faces. Finally (she was away for a long time), she appeared in the room. "Did you have a good time?" she asked, her big brown eyes fixed on him. Jaromil felt that the magical moment had come back again, that magical night when he sat in her room and they only looked at each other. "No, I didn't have a good time," he said, looking straight into her face. "Are you bored?" "I'm here because of you, and you always seem to be somewhere else. If you can't spend some time with me, why did you invite me?"

"But there are so many interesting people here!" "They're all but a ladder for me to climb up to get you!" He felt confident and satisfied with his eloquence. "Too many stairs here today!" she laughed. "Perhaps instead of a ladder, you can point me to a secret passage so I can get to you faster." She is still smiling. "Let's try it," she said, taking his hand and leading him out of the room.She led him upstairs to the door of her own room.Jaromil's heart began to pound. It doesn't need to jump.The room was full of other men and women. The lights in the next room had long gone out.It was already midnight.Mamen was waiting for Jaromil, she thought about her defeat, but then she told herself that after all, she only lost one battle and would keep fighting.Yes, she would go on fighting for him; no one could take him from her, no one could push her aside.She is determined to follow him forever.Although she was sitting in a chair, she felt that she was following Jaromil, that she was walking into the long night, following him, for him. The girl's room was full of voices and smoke.One of the guests (a man of about thirty) had been watching Jaromil attentively. "I think I've heard of you," he finally said to Jaromil. "Heard of me?" Jaromil asked back, flattered. The man asked Jaromil if he was the one who used to visit a painter from childhood. Jaromil was delighted that a mutual acquaintance had thus bound him even more firmly to the group, and he nodded hastily. The man said, "But you haven't seen him for a long time." "yes." "why are you not going?" Jaromil didn't know what to say, so he shrugged his shoulders. "I know why you're not going. You think it's going to hinder your career." "My future?" Jaromil forced a smile. "You're publishing poetry, you're getting ahead, and our mistress made a film about you to advance her political representation. But your friend, the painter, won't show his work. I'm sure you know them accuse him of being an enemy of the people." Jaromil was silent. "Hey, do you know about this or not?" "I think I've heard some." "His paintings were considered decadent bourgeois junk." Jaromil was silent. "Do you know what your painter friend is up to?" Jaromil shrugged his shoulders. "They took him out of his teaching job and he's working as a construction worker now. Because he didn't want to give up his beliefs. He was painting at night, under artificial light. But despite that, he was painting beautiful pictures .It's not like your poetry, it's disgusting bullshit." Another rude joke, and another, until the handsome Martynov finally felt insulted.He publicly warned Lermontov. What?Must the poet give up his right to say what he pleases?Must he beg forgiveness for using his intelligence?never! Lermontov's friends advised him.There's no point in risking a duel over nonsense.It's best to calm things down.Your life, Lermontov, is worth more than some elusive thing called honor. What?Is there anything more precious than honor? Yes, Lermontov.Your life, your writing. No, nothing beats honor! Honor is only your vain desire, Lermontov.Honor is but a fleeting reflection in the mirror, glimpsed by an insignificant spectator, and in the morning it is gone! But Lermontov was still very young, and every second he lived was as vast as an eternity.The group of women and gentlemen looking at him were human eyes.Either he strode past them with the firm stride of a man, or he wasn't worth living! He felt the mud of shame seeping into his face, and he knew he couldn't stay here for another minute with such a humiliated face.They tried in vain to calm him, in vain to comfort him. "It's no use," he said, "some conflicts are simply impossible to reconcile." He rose, tense with excitement, and turned toward the stranger. "Personally, I regret that the painter is now an ordinary laborer who does not have the right light. But objectively it makes no difference whether he is painting by candlelight or not painting at all. He paints The whole world depicted in the book has been dead for years. The real life is somewhere else! Somewhere else entirely! That's why I don't go to see the painter anymore. There's no point in arguing with him about issues that don't exist. I wish him well .I have no need to speak against the dead. May the earth cover them gently. I say the same to you," he pointed at the man. "May the earth cover you gently. You are dead and you don't even know it." The man stood up too, suggesting, "It might be fun to have a contest between a poet and a corpse." Jaromil's blood rushed to his head. "Come on, let's try," he said, shaking his fist at the man.However, his opponent grabbed Jaromil's arm, turned him sharply, and then grabbed his collar with one hand and the crotch of his trousers with the other. "Where do I deposit this comrade poet?" he asked. Those young guests who had just tried to calm the two opponents couldn't help laughing now.The man lifted Jaromil with outstretched arms and strode across the room, Jaromil flailing through the air like a desperate, caught fish.The man reached the balcony door, opened it, put Jaromil on the threshold, and kicked him hard. A shot rang out, Lermontov grabbed him by the chest, and Jaromil fell to the cold concrete floor of the balcony. Ah, Czech lands!Ah, the land where the glory of gunshots turns into kick-in-the-pants jokes! But is it right to laugh at Jaromil's parody of Lermontov?Is it right to laugh at our painters for imitating André Breton, even down to wearing a fur coat and keeping a German shepherd?Wasn't André Breton himself an imitation of something sublime?Isn't parody the eternal destiny of mankind? In any case, nothing prevents us from changing the situation with a few strokes. A shot rang out, Jaromil grabbed him by the chest, and Lermontov fell to the cold concrete of the balcony. He stood up in the festive uniform of a Tsarist officer.He was alone in a catastrophe.He cannot resort to the consolation of literary sources to give grandiose meaning to his blows.Not a pistol to mercifully end the shame of his cowardice.Only the mocking laughter came from the window, a sound that humiliated him forever. He leaned over the railing and looked down.Hey, the balcony wasn't high enough, and he wasn't sure if he would fall to his death if he jumped off it.It was freezing cold, his ears were burning, his feet were cold, and he kept changing his feet, completely bewildered.He was terrified at the thought that the door might suddenly open, revealing a smiling face.He was caught.Got caught in a farce. Lermontov was not afraid of death, but he was afraid of ridicule.He wanted to jump off the balcony, but he didn't dare, because he knew that although suicide was tragic, attempted suicide was ridiculous. (Wait a minute! What a strange aphorism! After all, successful or unsuccessful suicide is the same act, from the same motive, and requires the same courage! How, then, to distinguish the tragic from the ridiculous? A mere accidental success? What the hell? What is the difference between smallness and greatness? Tell us, Lermontov! Is it mere stage props? A pistol or a kick in the trousers? Is it mere history that pushes the set onto the stage?) enough.On the balcony was Jaromil, in a white shirt and loose tie, shivering from the cold. All revolutionaries love flames.Percy Shelley also fantasized about a burning death.The lovers he imagined always died together at the stake. Shelley envisions him and his wife in this fantasy.However, he still died of drowning.As if wishing to correct this semantic error of fate, his friends piled a great pyre on the shore and threw his fish-eaten body into the flames. Does death also want to taunt Jaromil, giving him cold instead of fire? Because Jaromil wanted to die.The thought of suicide seized him like the song of a nightingale.He knew his cold was bad, he knew he was going to be seriously ill, but he was determined not to go back to his room.He could not bear to be humiliated again.He knew that only the embrace of death could comfort him, to which he would give his whole being, and in which he would achieve greatness.He knew that only death could avenge him and turn those who mocked him into murderers. He suddenly thought that lying down outside the door and letting the cold cement freeze him from below would hasten the coming of death.He sat down.The concrete floor was pretty cold, and his ass was numb after a few minutes.He wanted to lie down, but didn't have the courage to press his back against the cold floor, so he stood up again. The cold enveloped him completely, it was in his shoes, it was under his trousers and shorts, it got its hands inside his shirt.His teeth were chattering, his throat was sore, he couldn't swallow, and he was sneezing.He felt an urge to pee.With numb, clumsy fingers he undid the buttons and pissed into the yard below.He noticed that the hand holding the penis was shaking violently. He stamped his aching feet on the concrete floor, but nothing in the world could tempt him to open the door to his tormentors.What happened to them?Why didn't they come out and persuade him?Are they that drunk?Or are they that cruel?How long had he been in the cold? The lights in the room suddenly dimmed. Jaromil went to the window and saw only a small lamp with a pink shade still on, by the sofa.He continued to look in, and finally saw two naked bodies tightly hugging each other. Trembling all over, his teeth chattering, he continued to look in through the window.The half-drawn curtain made it difficult for him to see whether the woman's body being held down by the man was the film girl.Everything seemed to indicate that it was her, her hair was black and long. But who is that man?Jaromil knew who it was!He had seen the whole scene before!winter!mountains!The snow-covered plain, a woman and Xavier in the window!But today, Jaromil and Xavier should be one!How could Xavier betray him like this?How could Xavier make love to Jaromil's girl right under his nose? The room was dark now.See nothing, hear nothing.His mind, too, was empty: no anger, no sorrow, no shame.Only terribly cold. He couldn't take it anymore, he opened the glass door and walked in.He wanted to see nothing, neither to the left nor to the right.He moved quickly across the room. The lights in the corridor were on.He ran down the stairs and pushed open the door of the room where he kept his coat.It was very dark inside, and a faint light from the corridor illuminated the outlines of a few sleepers, breathing heavily.He was still shivering as he fumbled around for the chair where he had put his coat.But he couldn't find it.He sneezes.One of the sound sleepers turned over and muttered a curse. He went into the aisle, took his overcoat from the hanger, and put it on over his shirt.hurried out of the house. The funeral procession has already started.In the front, a horse-drawn carriage with a coffin, and Ishi Walker's mother walking behind the carriage.A corner of a white mattress protruded from under the black coffin lid.It stuck out as if to reproach her child (he was only twenty-four) with a poorly made final resting place.She felt a strong urge to put the cushion under his head back on again. The coffin is parked in the center of the church, surrounded by wreaths.The grandmother was still recovering from a stroke and had to lift her eyelids with her fingers.She's examining the coffin, she's examining the wreath.Martynov's name is written on the ribbon of one of the wreaths. "Throw it out," she ordered.Her old eyes, under the immobile eyelids, faithfully watched over Lermontov's last journey.He is only twenty-six years old. Jaromil (not yet twenty years old) was lying in his room.He has a high fever.The doctor diagnosed pneumonia. The sound of violent quarrels shook the walls, but the two rooms where the widow and her son lived formed an island of tranquility.Maman did not hear the noise of the neighbors.Her mind is full of medicine, hot tea, and cold compresses.Once upon a time, when he was very small, she had guarded him for many days, excitedly trying to win him back from death.Now, she is determined to guard him passionately and faithfully again. Jaromil fell asleep, babbled incoherently, woke up, babbled again; the fever flames licked his body. flame?Will he become a fire after all? A man stood in front of Maman.He wanted to talk to Jaromil.Maman refused.The man mentioned the red-haired girl's name. "Your son turned on her brother. Now they're both under arrest. I have to talk to him." They stood facing each other in Maman's room, but to Maman, the room was now just an extension of his son's room.She guards it as armed angels guard the gates of heaven.The harsh voice of the visitor annoyed her.She opened the door and pointed to Jaromil's bed. "Very well, then, there he is, talk to him." The man saw the flushed, delirium face.Maman said in a calm firm tone, "I don't know what you're going to say, but I can assure you that my son knows what he's doing. Everything he's doing is for the benefit of the working class." She felt a great power when she said out loud those words that Jaromil had used so often before and which she found out of place.Those words brought her and her son closer than ever.They are now united as one soul, one mind.She and her son formed a universe made of the same matter. Xavier is carrying a school bag containing a Czech notebook and a biology textbook. "Where are you going?" Xavier smiled and pointed out the window.The windows are open.The sun is shining outside, and from afar the noise of the city promises adventure. "You promised to take me all the way..." "That was before," Xavier said. "You want to turn your back on me?" "Yes, I will betray you." Jaromil gasped in anger.He developed a great hatred for Xavier.Until recently, he believed that he and Xavier were just two sides of one whole, but now he realizes that Xavier is a very different person, his enemy! Xavier stroked his face: "You are lovely, honey, you are so beautiful..." "Why are you treating me like a woman? Are you crazy?" But Xavier will not give up: "You are beautiful, but I must turn my back on you." Xavier turned and walked toward the open window. "I'm not a woman! Don't you understand? I'm not a woman!" Jaromil kept shouting from behind him. The heat subsided a little, and Jaromil looked around the room.The walls were bare; the photograph of the man in the officer's uniform was gone. "where's daddy?" "Daddy is gone." Maman said softly. "How? Who took him off the wall?" "It's me, honey. I don't want him looking down on us. I don't want anyone between us. There's no point in lying to each other anymore. There's one thing you should know. Your father never wanted you to be born." He didn't want you to live. Do you understand? He asked me to make sure you wouldn't be born." Exhausted by the fever, Jaromil did not have the strength to ask questions or argue. "My beautiful child," said Maman, her voice trembling. Jaromil realized that the woman who was speaking to him had always loved him, had never shied away from him, had never frightened or envied him. "I'm not pretty, mother. You are! You look so young!" When Maman heard her son's words, she was so happy that she wanted to cry. "Do you really think I'm pretty? But you look so much like me! You never want to hear that. But you do look like me, and I'm glad." She stroked his hair, which was thin and yellow.She kisses it. "My dear! You have angel hair!" Jaromil was weary.He has no strength to seek any other woman.They are all far away, and the road leading to them is so long and boundless. "Actually, I've never really loved any woman," he said, "except you. You are the most beautiful of all women." Maman cried and kissed him. "Do you remember that spa? What a wonderful time we had together there." "Yes, mother. I have always loved you the most." Maman saw the world through one big tear of happiness.Everything around her dissolves; everything jumps out of form, everything dances and celebrates. "Is it true, my dearest?" "Yes." Jaromil said.He pressed Maman's hand into his hot palm, and he was tired, so tired. The mound had risen over Volker's coffin, and Volker's mother was already walking back from the cemetery.Stones had been laid on Rimbaud's coffin, but his mother, according to legend, let them open the family crypt.did you see herThat stern old woman in black?She was inspecting the dark, dank chamber, making sure the coffin was in place and fully shut.Yes, everything is fine.Arthur is there, he won't jump.Arthur would never run away again.Everything is fine. What will be the water?Not fire? He opened his eyes to see a face leaning over him, with a slightly receding chin and wispy yellow hair.The face was so close to him that he seemed to be looking at his own portrait over a calm pond. No.Not flames.He will die of water. He looked at his own face in the water.Suddenly, he saw great terror passing over that face.This was the last thing he saw. June 1969