JIRI KLOBOUK
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nearby, and this was what always kept my head above water . Just a
sound, a sweet tone , and I would feel better right away. The
wrinklies, all rumpled up in trench coats with torn pockets, with hats
pulled all the way down to their ears and with scarves wrapped
around their necks and over their mouths, rotated on their chairs.
The one whose last tooth had come loose and gotten stuck in his up–
per gum spat into his handkerchief and almost fell over onto the
March sidewalk. The butcher's cat, Micka , had carelessly crawled
into an ashcan, which was now clattering up and down, and I cross–
ed myself, hoping the cat would get out soon so I wouldn't have to
make a mO'Ve myself to see that the poor animal hadn't gone crazy.
Earlier, before the sun disappeared behind the horizon, it splashed
us in a fiery color. We looked to each other like Holesovice slaugh–
terhouse workers in the last minutes of a fratricidal shift.
Just after the return from my last Christmas visit in Derfle, I
started to transcribe Schumann's "Butterflies" for two instruments,
and there is someone I can't thank enough for that happy inspira–
tion . Whenever we feel like it, while I play violin, Milena Waleska
accompanies me on the piano. She is my most talented student. At
the beginning we were just groping around and bumping senselessly
into each other, but after countless hours, days and weeks of re–
lentless self-destruction, physical rending apart and merging to-
:.~
gether, nothing remained concealed any more, and now we are able
to give ourselves body and soul to these flights into the unattainable,
and in this current of listening to each other our bodies and souls in–
tertwine , groan and make confession together, as in the fashion of a
ritual or sacrifice to a god of absolute forbearance, or of bathing in
the distant River Ganges . Finally , we stand in front of each other
naked and inseparable , without having touched each other except
through the medium of our resounding instruments . That's how it is
between us . We are consecrated in thorns and clawed by them , but
we are healable. I may be accused of petty secretiveness if I don't
confess that I was wishing fervently that down on the Lower Square
a streetcar would stop and M.W. would get out and wave her ker–
chief from a corner in greeting to a celebrant leaning out of a win–
dow in a somewhat crazy mood. I recalled now how she had once
made a pen and ink drawing of me. She sketched me sitting at the
window, with a few strokes showing how I would look at myself from
outside, where I was sitting at the window and watching myself. It
was like some kind of tunnel made up only of views out the window
