The Drowning Of A Goldfish Read Online Free PDF Page B

but the nightmares of his anguish.
    I do not know if I could ever again become as miserable and despondent as I was when further studies were refused me, for a higher education represented everything I had striven for. And not just any studies. From the very start, my choice has been literature.
    Prisoner of words, I impose upon them my sovereignty. Bound by a knot of vital interdependence, we blossom radiantly. They dig their empire inside the nervous mass of my brain, metamorphosing the gray caterpillars to silky chrysolites, which, in turn, burst into butterflies of spectacular colors, directing their chaotic flight towards my suave regions.
    Nothing is left of the University that Charles IV founded in 1344 “so that his faithful sons were not obliged to go and seek the treasures of knowledge in foreign countries.”
    The edifice on the quay of the Vltava is gray, squat, hostile.
    At least, this is how I see it, since that day, when a tribunal of usurper’s henchmen, this time in blue shirts, tightened their grip on my life and reduced me to a gelatinous substance.
    Like brown fascism, red fascism draws its vigor from the same contempt of human beings.
    I remember my aching, numb feet, my sweaty hands. The flypaper, saturated with glue, is spiraling dangerously close to me.
    My nostrils fill with a putrid sweetness. The absurdity of my resistance is coated by dignity, and the notion that I have nothing more to lose makes me insensitive.
    Gritting my teeth, I drag crates at a warehouse for chemical goods. Until now, I have not yet recovered from the absence of light and warmth. The weight of crates still crushes my loins.
    I am stretching out on the burning sand, the sun is piercing me, but a dark shiver will run forever along my spine.
    One day, I collapse, just skin and bones. Worn out by overwork, I am sent to the hospital. I have pleuropneumonia.
    To be at work at six a.m., I have to get up before dawn. After returning home, I study until falling asleep, dead with fatigue. During the night, hunger wakes me up; my stomach, wrenching with pain, refuses to be appeased by the mirage of a delicious can of sardines that I keep promising it.
    I still keep under my tongue the flavor of butter, bananas, meat, remembered from my childhood. I voluptuously savor them; the pleasure is torture.
    I swallow stale bread, shaking with disgust. The dull sweetness of the apples from our garden makes me sick. My belly swells with acid bitterness; I am starving.
    There are thirty of us: women, adolescents, and even one child in a barren hospital ward. The beds, shaped like pale coffins, are aligned against the four walls, soiled by hideous stains and the smell of decay.
    I am lowered into one of the beds like a dead weight, eyes closed, body inert. If they only would stop pestering me; my death does not affect me any more.
    You, aristocrats of phtisis, wizards of Mann’s Magic Mountain , what do you know about the putrid stink of the human body, unwashed for several weeks; about itching hair, rotting in its own grease, about the sticky mugginess of crumpled sheets, clinging to a slimy skin?
    The head doctor was once my father’s physician. In order to help me, he pretends that I am a complete stranger to him. He treats me with medication, reserved for the cherished of the regime. He prescribes a fortifying diet.
    I let myself go. Obediently, I roll over on my side for injections; diligently, I chew up all the food that is presented to me.
    I sleep, I doze, I live from hand to mouth. The ward around me rolls in a turmoil of life and death. To die, one is entitled to a private performance behind a plasticized screen; life is a public affair.
    The foul odor of feces and of decomposing bodies fills my nostrils. My own putrid miasmas buzz in search of it. My puffy face is covered with pimples and little red dots mark the place where my eyelashes used to be. When I touch my hair, it flows away like a fluffy dandelion in the