Vratislav Brabenec
Matěj Forman
The Center of the World
is Everywhere
The Center
of the World
is Everywhere
written by
Vratislav Brabenec
illustrated by
Matěj Forman
Blue Elephant Edition
Volume 8
This book was published with the kind contribution of the Ministry of Culture
of the Czech Republic
All rights reserved
© Meander, 2005
© Vratislav Brabenec, 2005
Illustrations © Matěj Forman, 2005
Preface © Vratislav Brabenec, 2005
Epilogue © Ivana Pecháčková, 2005
ISBN 80-86283-42-9
To Nikola
A Few Words
of Introduction
I don’t want to regale you with made-up stories or long fairytales. It’s more
enjoyable to me to dig into my pocket of memories and tell you about my
father, a raven and a dandelion; about a mare named Crow and our first goat;
about my chats with ravens and the courtship antics of woodpeckers. Listen,
and perhaps you’ll hear the clacking of that dreamy woodcutter’s windmill
or the clanging of alarm bells in Popovice; and come nightfall you’ll shiver,
wondering if it’s the bears there, right now, beneath the window, feasting on
your ripe apples. I want to write about stones, the smell of hay, the taste of
clay, the color of water and reflections of light; about apparitions and dreams,
and talks I’ve had with the spirits, the trees, animals and myself; about trap
doors and floodgates, joy and giddiness and nights filled with dancing; about
the miracles of life and death, friendship and sacrifice, understanding and
compassion and intangible beauty. And then I’ll start all over again, telling you
about stones, memories, trees, water…
We humans are made of flesh and bone and memories, of water and the
places we’ve been to and seen, of drops of blood and of stories. We’re made
of ideas and dreams; our own and those of all the people we’ve met along
the way.
8
In every creature there is a bit of a cliff and a mountain, a bit of the ocean’s tides
and its watery depths, a bit of the blind fish, the worm, the snake, and the bird flying
through the night, calling out in the darkness. We have the dreams of bears and
the anxiety of a mouse nesting in the field at plowing time, the incomprehension of
a chicken and the grin of an ape. The light of the stars and the reflection of the moon on
the surface of a pond can be found in each one of us.
We fall with every tree and mown field but we keep the strength to blossom anew
in the beauty of a rose or a daisy or a lotus. We can plot and weave a spider’s web but
we hide the knowledge somewhere deep inside ourselves.
These truly are the enchantments, the magic and miracles of this world!
Miracles can occur anywhere.
And the center of the world is everywhere: every place, in all times, in the measure
and rhythm of the seasons, in our songs and music and chatter, our moments of tears
and elation: all around us, incalculable. I wish I could fly through space and time in
a perfectly crafted machine. I’d be astonished at how many times I passed through the
center of the universe. Which is where I am now, dreaming, writing, laughing, leaping
about, sounding off and shouting into every corner of the world about all the injustices
and imperfections. The center of the world is everywhere…
9
Go Slow with
the Oxen
(every dad can tell a good story)
At the beginning of the First World War, my father was a small boy. He used
to spend every summer holiday with relatives in Popovice near Benesov. That
way, his parents had one less mouth to feed and besides, little Pepik, a city
boy, always looked forward to his great adventures in the countryside. My
father didn’t tell many stories but whenever he did finally start telling one, my
mom would stop him in time. She found his stories a bad influence on our
upbringing. That’s the way it went and probably still goes in many families.
But don’t let stern looks fool you. In every serious father, there’s a little boy
with a gleam in his eye and a head full of whimsy. With a bit of good-natured
cajoling, you can usually squeeze an interesting tale out of your dad. Just
promise him, you won’t tell a soul, especially not Mom!
Now back to Popovice.
It was a beautiful summer day and the harvest was almost over. Little
Pepik from Prague was on his best behavior; they were even going to let him
drive an ox-drawn cart. At harvest time, there is plenty of work and everyone’s
help is needed.
10
11
“Pepik, today you’ll go to Bystrice with the oxen!” yelled old man
Sochurek – or was his name Pohunek? I can’t remember anymore. It was one
of those two for sure.
“And Pepik, I am warning you, do not touch the whip, or the oxen will get
startled and bolt on you. They’ll be slow, but don’t you dare touch that whip,
do you understand boy?”
And with that, Pepik jumped into the cart pulled by the oxen and set off.
Those oxen really were incredibly slow. After a few kilometers, Pepik began
to lose his patience with them. He urged them on, he raised his voice but it
was no good, they were so slow! He glanced at the whip and gently, ever so
gently, he brushed it. His touch was so light that he could almost swear that
he hadn’t even touched the whip or even thought of the whip… But…
It was as if the devil himself had jumped into the bodies of those dull,
slow beasts. The oxen bolted just like old Pohunek – or Sochurek – warned
him they would. Those massive demons tore down the dusty road above
Popovice, and the cart with Pepik swung out behind them. They missed the
bend in the road and went flying off the edge. The oxen and the cart ended
up hanging in a tree. The folks working the fields had seen the whole calamity
unfolding. They ran to sound the alarm bell so that help would come. Pepik
received quite a good lesson from that experience, but he didn’t tell us much
about that. And he was not allowed to go to Popovice ever again.
My mother looked at me to see what lesson I had learned from dad’s
“instructive” story. Just this: Go slow with the oxen and whatever you do,
don’t touch that whip!
12
13
So now, he had his granddaughter Lucie, dandelions, the grapevine and
the raven.
By fall, the raven was hopping from branch to branch and even managed
to fly a little. When the ravens migrated over Horni Pocernice, our raven
disappeared. To this day, I am not sure if he left with the ravens that migrate
from south to north or from north to south.
So now, my father had only his granddaughter Lucie left. The dandelions
had blown away and the leaves had fallen off the grapevine. He never said
much and never answered questions. Sometimes he would sigh, “If only I had
three tigers, I could relate to them better.” But he had three sons.
He would stand under the walnut tree, smoking and waiting.
The next year, in the fall, the raven returned. The ravens were migrating
across Horni Pocernice again. Ours separated from the flock, lit on the walnut
tree, spoke to my father and then flew off. I saw it with my own eyes. This
happened three years in a row. Then my father died and the raven never came
by again. In the spring, the dandelions did not grow and the grapevine had lost
its zest. I guess my father really loved them.
16
17
Boy,
homework and tests
thick and thin
backbreaking work
dust and ashes
honeyed words
...
...
nothing like running and laying here and now
that’s the life
and the mills on the stream
clack away
18
You’ll
Never
Get Anywhere
(an instructive tale based on a real incident)
In a small village called Slamozery (or whatever it was really called – it means
“Straw-eater” in English) lived a small boy, barely ten years old. He was not
so very different from the other boys in the village. There was nothing unusual
about his shirt or his hat. A completely ordinary boy.
But in fact, there was something different about the boy. You couldn’t tell
by looking at him but he was the biggest daydreamer in all the land.
“Boy, you’ll never get anywhere” is what our hero had to listen to day in
and day out. One day, for his own sake, he quietly replied, “Of course, I am not
getting anything anywhere, and I won’t get anything anywhere. The only thing
I can get anywhere is a big beet, or a branch to put on the fire, or a log from the
forest...” And at that moment he got lost in his own daydreams, and began to
19
life, others were like fairy tale creatures and creatures right out of a fantasy
world. The boss thought that if he looked close enough, he might even find
himself there. Further in were tiny carved cottages and churches, a stable for
horses, a totem pole, saints, a look-out perch, a bridge, a ranch straight out of
the wild west…
The boy’s boss could not get over his astonishment. Or was he
daydreaming?
Time has a strange quality in Slamozery – and who knows what the Lord
did with the clock. There was always plenty of time for daydreamers here
and so, it has never been clear how long those ten days to select through the
saplings really took.
Dealing with his boss wasn’t all that dramatic. In the end, everyone came
to wonder at the windmills and the figurines, and forgave the boy for his
unfinished tasks.
Since that happened, about thirty years ago, the boy has become a father.
He continues to work in the forest. He selects through the trees; sometimes
he plants new trees or cuts trees down. He does whatever is needed. Still, he
always finds a moment to pick up a stray branch and make something of it.
He never got rich or married a princess like the characters in storybooks. Being
a little lazy is part of being a daydreamer.
22
Crowand
crow by crow
goat by goat
in the autumn
they’ll settle on a wire
a frog with a frog
a grandmother with
a grandmother
go searching
whether it’s the pilgrimage
to Matejska
or Mecca
you’ll never step
in the same river
twice
Goat
“Crow” as we called her, was our first mare in the 1970s. We got her as
a gift. It was said that her mother cantered into the country in 1954 with
the Russian liberation army. Crow was certainly one stubborn, determined,
feisty and cheeky creature! She had a kind of Russian grace about her,
or perhaps it could be called elegance combined with an unpredictable
intelligence. However, we never drank vodka together or danced and so,
that side of her remained a mystery.
Sometimes someone would ride Crow, but she spent most of her days
relaxing in the woods. The first time she ever had horseshoes put on was
probably with us. She gave the blacksmith from Radonice, Mr. Moudry (which
means ‘Mr. Wise’ in English), a hard time. He almost gave up. In the end,
he admitted that shoeing our mare was worse than trying to shoe the zebras
that were part of the circus in Pocernice. In Crow’s opinion, there was nothing
more humiliating than having iron booties put on. I was often the one who
had to hold her while she got her new booties, and let me tell you, it would be
difficult to forget that elegant, Russian beast.
My wife, Marie, decided that a horse, being a herd animal, needed the
company of another creature who also grazed and ate hay.
Around Easter time, I went to the market in Brandys and bought a kid, who
was likely meant to end up as the centerpiece of an Easter feast. We let the
little kid, later named “Goat”, into the courtyard for her first introduction to
Crow. The kid Goat took one look at Crow and ran up the wall in fright. As the
days went on, they slowly became friends. The kid would butt Crow’s legs and
Crow did not seem to mind one bit. Evidently, she had fallen in love.
24
25
Mice
Wars
with all our things
with all our geese
we lived through our youth
under one roof
How nice. With mice?
With mice or meese?
As in goose and geese?
Certainly not with meese!
Although it could be said like that at times
Try asking someone, sometime, why
It’s not meese when we say geese?
On a farm not far from Prague, on the way to Brandys nad Labem, I lived with
my wife, Marie, a mare called “Crow” and a goat named “Goat”. Three cats
28
and three dogs rounded out the animal kingdom. Two dogs were permanent
and one was a visitor. In addition to the animals, a number of people lived
there as well. One of the most interesting was a mathematician named
Plechanov. Usually, he lazed around reading mystery novels, that is, until
he fell asleep. Before falling asleep, he would sigh, “Ahhh, champagne and
caviar.” His colleague, Borek, a computer genius, was his polar opposite.
Borek once spent a whole week digging a hole in which he hoped to build
a wine cellar. He never did accomplish his goal. Yoga master, Charlie, spent
his time collecting grains, which he then stored in pots as supplies for the
winter. The mice were grateful. I could go on about the people, but I promised
to write about the mice wars.˝
My wife Marie loves animals, she defends them and doesn’t eat them, but
she doesn’t make the carnivorous animals eat porridge. On the farm, her cats
were allowed to kill mice.
Following the harvest, the number of mice in the house increased. They
preferred to be in the kitchen. During breakfast, they ran across the table and
into the sink, and peeked out at us from the shelves and cupboards. In short,
they were everywhere. But Marie said, “No traps.” And I suffered.
In the evenings, I fed the dog gang. I poured food in front of the doghouses
and disappeared into the house to rest. I like to rest. Especially during the day.
I learned that from animals. A dog can easily sleep twenty hours a day and
29
be happy like crazy the other four hours. That’s certainly better than sleeping
four hours and spending twenty hours damaging the world with that strange
activity called work.
So, I fed the dogs.
Soon after, I had to go back to the dogs for some silly reason, and I could
not believe my eyes. Our two dogs, a German Shepherd and a Schnauzer,
were sitting in front of their doghouses watching, with the utmost respect, an
army of mice devour their dinner.
“Marie”! I yelled towards the house. “Come look at this!”
Marie was touched by how our peaceful attitude towards the mice had
carried over to the dogs. Her tenderness ended, however, when the mice
began to eat Crow’s supply of oats. That was the straw that broke the camel’s
back. Suddenly, mousetraps were permitted. That is when we declared war
on the mice!
30
31
Aunt
Angel and
Our Aunt Angel had a colorful life. From time to time, she and my uncle Karel,
a shoemaker from Smichov, would drop by for a visit. She would barely get
seated and already, she was telling a story. And these weren’t just any kind of
stories. You see, my Aunt Angel had seen water sprites, men of fire, the White
Lady, headless horsemen, and even a witch on a broomstick.
The interesting thing was that she met most of them by the village pond
on her way home from dances. I vaguely remember this being somewhere in
Southern Slovakia. My aunt told her stories with such conviction that I still
believe them. Her descriptions of the spirits and creatures that leaped across
her path were so detailed and lively that I could paint you a picture even now.
My favorite was the one about the water sprite who, in a croaking voice, tried
to lure my Aunt Angel into the pond for a midnight swim. But my aunt was
not a woman of loose morals and she never partook in inappropriate activities
32
the Bears
with such dubious characters. Over time, my brothers and I got to know her
adventures from the pond by heart.
There is only one story that we did not believe. It wasn’t about spirits and
creatures but about greedy hedgehogs that stole apples in the night. My aunt
said she watched them up close in the moonlight. The hedgehogs shook the
tree and, when the apples fell, rolled about on the ground to get the apples
stuck to their quills. Then they carried them out of the garden and stored them
away for wintertime. Although my aunt swore it was true, we didn’t believe
her. We knew that hedgehogs don’t eat apples, don’t carry off apples on their
backs and don’t store apples for the winter.
When I was ten times older than I was when my aunt was telling us her
stories, I saw even more charming apple thieves. They were good-looking
fellows, strong and muscular, with perfect poker faces and thick dark coats
from head to toe, finished off with handsome white chests. I am sure you
already know who I mean – they were those big bears that we in the Czech
Lands call “Baribal.”
At that time, we lived on Vancouver Island. Even today, you can still find
places there where you are more likely to run into a bear than into a fellow
human being. Especially if you find a good place where the berries are
ripening. In the rainforests and mountains of British Columbia, there are not
many apple trees. To be exact, there are none except, perhaps, here and there
at the side of a trail, where a young tree sprouted when an apple core was
thrown away. As you know, apples are not berries, but the bears don’t mind.
34
They aren’t sticklers for botanical classifications, they simply let themselves
be guided by their taste buds!
In the valley where we lived, people coddled their gardens just like
grandpas, fathers and aunts coddled theirs back in Moravia and Bohemia. As
it wasn’t the most hospitable land for apple trees, the gardeners who grew
them took that much more care, and looked forward to harvest that much
more, too. But… no sooner had the juicy apples begun to ripen than those
good looking fellows appeared and began their own harvest.
In the small town where we lived, there was a local paper. I never clipped
and saved its articles but I would bet my life that the bear stories that came
out each autumn were the same every year.
One lady described the cheekiness of the bears in an especially
memorable way. The bears had eaten practically all of her apples, and after
the furry gang of five finished their feast, they collapsed under the trees and
began to snore. The lady, a proper bank worker, was terrified to find the
five robbers conked out on her lawn when she came home from work. She
shone the headlights on them and honked her horn to no avail. The bears
knew they were kings in this land, cars with people were just part of the
daily routine.
The lady then called the authorities at the Department for the Protection
of Wildlife, the ones in charge of dealing with such situations. The authorities
promised to come and somehow chase away the bears but, as they were
already busy dealing with other robbers in the area, they would not be able to
come until later in the evening.
35
In the meantime, the lady took a shower in an attempt to wash away her
worries about the bank and the bears in her yard, and settled down to watch
the news in the living room. She simply could not forgive those bears. They
just hang around in the forest all year until fall, then they show up and harvest
the apples, what nerve!
When someone is watching you closely, you can feel it, even if your back is
turned. It’s as if an intense gaze pokes you in the back – and your head turns
round before you know it. It was probably the glare of the lights from the living
room that woke the bear robbers. They tromped over to the glass doors to
have a look in and find out what exactly a banker lady does at night.
A bear can take a lot but the scream of a woman is something special.
They were gone like a shot, but so were the apples.
Bears can really be barbaric; sometimes they even break the branches of
apple trees as they harvest. Still, when you compare that to the harm people
do, it doesn’t really seem so bad. At the end of the day, the bears sort of
deserve the apples. They were living here way before our lady the banker. And
let’s be honest, it’s pleasant to watch a gang of bear robbers at work.
Easy for me to say, since I had no apple trees. On the farm where we lived,
we occasionally got a visit from an old mama bear. We would be sitting on the
porch in the evening and hear the snapping of branches, and we knew who
was watching us from the forest. And just between you and me, I believe that
the crows and the ravens are the ones spreading the word about ripe apples
in the Comox Valley.
36
37