The Drowning Of A Goldfish Read Online Free PDF

circle of a perpetual dance on the Persian rug .
    This coat of yellow light, tamed with utmost care, is my happiness. I wrap myself in it; deeply, totally, to the bottom of my soul. I weave a luminous nest, gleaming in a mellow candor which will never end .
    In the valley, the factory sirens spit their hate against the lofty whiteness of the mountains. Suddenly, they stop. Menace pervades the air and is clotted by anguish. A grayish cloud is clinging to the sun; the view is tarnished, the landscape stretches into lunar space. A pale shiver pierces my body and I freeze, shivering in a cold fever.
    We return to Prague, city in a stage of siege. The deserted streets resonate with the footsteps of the workers’ militia, marching, shaking the world in their tightly clenched fists, while the February wind shuffles the debris of leaflets with all the frenzy of an angry brawl.
    The approach of a horrifying doom grips the city into a strangled muteness.
    Who dares speak when the people says: “Silence!”
    At school, the darlings make themselves up in red. To survive, the bourgeoisie has a never failing family recipe, which has proved its efficiency through the centuries. Their mimicry comes close to perfection.
    I and my friend, the concierge’s daughter, are the outcasts again. From “dirty commies” we are promoted to “sodden reactionaries.” I do not even try to protest; it is quite certain that I am not one of them and my disgust is much too profound. I should never dream of compromising.
    I even refuse the helping hand of my teachers who, being more aware than I of the risks I run, ask me to found the cultural section of the Union of Youth at our school, a task which, under normal circumstances, would have given me great satisfaction. My gesture is not a proof of courage. I do not yet realize my absolute insignificance in a society that, without flinching, can crush me under its sturdy boot.
    The world around me writhes in violent convulsions. The taste of something vile rises in me and makes me sick.
    Father lives on tranquilizers.
    Mother works night shifts in a factory.
    I return to an empty, cold home.
    I shiver. I am hungry. I am alone in the world which shakes me in an angry upheaval like a rag doll.
    Father is moved to a psychiatric hospital and given electroshock therapy. Yet, he has not spent more than two weeks in a communist prison.
    During the Nazi occupation, Father helped, while risking our lives, Mrs. RoÅ¡ická the sister of Zdeněk Fierlinger, a left-wing politician, who was living in Moscow. Mrs. RoÅ¡ická’s son Evžen was murdered by the Nazis.
    After the putsch of 1948, Fierlinger became one of the leaders of the new regime, and Mrs. RoÅ¡ická remembered Father’s brave help. She arranged his release from prison and saw to it that we were not removed from our flat in Prague, as was the case with many of our friends. The villa in Senokosy was not confiscated and I was not forced to leave school, where I had become a black sheep.
    My friend the concierge’s daughter detached herself from me, joined the herd, and became one of my staunchest enemies. She knew quite a lot about me and my parents. She had been our guest not only for the weekends, but also for the school vacations. She erased “the errors of her past” by becoming an informer. Thus, she started off her career as a young communist. And without any doubt, she could have gone very far, if only her proletarian origins did not render her a dangerous competitor to the darlings. They knew how to show off as a red much more facilely. So they neutralized her by labeling her as a “petit-bourgeois reactionary pig.”
    I was allowed to pass my final exams. This time, Father could have been proud of me as I finished best in my class. But all this effort was to no avail. To enter the university, I would have to pay some sort of moral concession. Father could not conceive of anything else