Prague, May 17, 1994

Divin’ Ivan,once a few years (or a hundred years?) ago I wrote you a letter with the justification that, although we see each other often, it’s still good to write now and then, so that we’d write each other too.Now, when we only see each other at the Radio with our marvelous chatter, I’m writing you really for the first time out of some great need to communicate with you like this. “And for some reason they did not shake hands”, writes my cousin Dostoyevsky, he’s all but disappeared, but he was talented, really, you know, family is family and you can’t say? a bad word against family, so I’m taking him as an example, so all of a sudden (for some reason) I reread the three books you wrote that you gave me as gifts, even the first one with the beautiful cover by Jaša David with the umbrella and I remembered all the nights we chattered and drank through when we sat side by side in summer on the terrace and in winter in the apartment and my heart ached from the joy of it. At a funeral one keeps oneself from crying (I’ve heard that, because I don’t go to funerals), but when I get sad over the glory of life, there’s no reason to stop. (By the way, I remember my mother told us a joke when we were about a funeral , when the priest said: let us say goodbye to this body and then someone asked him who that This-Body fellow was. It had to have been a joke from Austria-Hungary, that blessed empire, and our mother had us when she was about forty, so she enjoyed her era, which we altogether didn’t laugh at.) But I don’t go to funerals, I won’t go to mine under any circumstances, precisely because I don’t want to say goodbye to this body, or so that it doesn’t make me crazy. I got confused with the parentheses there, but in your magnanimity and psychological education you will, I hope, forgive me.And as I’m reading, as I’m rejoicing, I got up the desire to write you – it’s lasted for several Sundays by now, so it’s not rashness, even though it otherwise seems strange to me to tell you that it’s the most brilliant literature that’s been published in the Czech Republic and I’m just afraid they’ll name a street after you and make you a monument – well, in two hundred years, once you’re modern. But your time will come. Once you’re modern. That’s not supposed to be a pokey jokey, it’s a simple statement. The way you look at things!!! And then someone should like you.Yeah – a director like Jiří Sequens, in this era he’s even broadcast on television and everything. You know, it’s a different capacity for thought, it’s no going in one direction and then suddenly in another – he’s a logical thinker and a master of plot narration, like the greengrocers by me on Zelená Liška Street say “it’s flawless”. And people who sell cars also say “it has no flaws”. No, it doesn’t.I’m going off on a lyric tangent, my trend, so that I can also be modern, so a trend: outside the window is again a new moon, a crescent, like a clipped nail and the sky is so pretty and clear that I’m desperate with desire to lick it a little. It must taste wonderful, the smooth, fine taste of that dark blue.So I’m sitting at my green lamp and writing you. The Jurst! The Tastapo! The pits, or pots! That Jordano Bruno !!! And so on Rosenthal .One time Lubor Dohnal and I were sitting at Ivan Balaďa’s, he decided to go to sleep and we were supposed to be writing a part of a script for Ivan by the morning, but we were somehow constantly taking detours from the center of our thought process and because at that time I had founded an imaginary Seniles Club (SC), I told Lubor what that club should look like and what its statutes should be. He was enthusiastic about it, he immediately joined the board of directors (the superior, called the reverend mother, was me and I was to have my bosom, by no means negligible, printed in three dimensions on official SC paper) and we wrote the statutes of the Seniles Club all night, one of the main articles read: “Defamation of the Young and Younger” and then we continued. The chamber pots were to be shared, collective as it were, so that things would be within the bounds of fairness, concord, and brotherhood, only the board of directors i.e. Lubor and I were to have chamber pots made out of porcelain and with a handle, perhaps painted. We issued a ban on carrying explosives and stink bombs on one’s person and throwing them out the window of the SC clubhouse onto the sidewalks. It was forbidden to continue speaking – or rather interrupt the speech of a club member who was remembering what he wanted to say. The delay, however, was not allowed to exceed two hours, otherwise the interfering member was expelled – no rebukes and warnings, once and for all. Dentures were placed into a common porcelain bowl, which was to be of the Rosenthal brand. To emphasize that this was not a social auxiliary institution, but rather a CLUB.Otherwise every member of the Club had the chance to talk about whatever he wanted and not worry about the reaction. In fact, reactions were forbidden. Anyone could be accepted, regardless of age, provided he proved himself by saying, I wanted to tell you something important and then staring into space or saying that he met someone, what was his name and thinking. If this thinking lasted longer than 15 min, he was accepted as a candidate. Around dawn Lubor thought of the slogan that was to be printed like on a funeral notice on the top right corner of official SC paper (my bosom was on the left) and the slogan read: In the woods and so on how I love you Losenthal.In case someone couldn’t pronounce their Rs. That could happen quite easily in a Club like that, so Lubor’s thought was very humane. Only we considered with unease whether we weren’t putting on airs with our Rosenthal directors’ chamber pots, but then we rejected this idea with the reasonable justification that no true senile would remember the brand of our chamber pots. That they would be more of a promotional aid for prospective candidates to whom the brand means nothing anyway.Then Lubor escaped to Munich wrote me letters and I him with SC letterhead. Once Lubor wrote me: Dear Karolina (crossed out), dear Johnny (crossed out) Boy (crossed out) dearest (crossed out) and then there was the text that began: I saw you that time on or under a horse, you were a really old boyfriend or girlfriend and it rained yesterday or when was it, but it really rained. It was last year. Or something. The year before last I went on a trip with me. And we were joyful idiots like this, I’m amazed that the police didn’t think it was a code, but by then fate was heading in that direction.I’m writing you stupid things, but I’m enjoying it, so what can I do and also on the other hand name one person who you can write about a made-up SC? Ah, yeah – I got confused, the bowl for storing dentures, like our chamber pots, was supposed to be valuable just because of the Rosenthal brand.Let me tell you, one time I was riding with Mikeš the unthreatened, the schemer from New Zealand, across the Swiss countryside, and what do I see but an inscription, like you turn right and distinctly written there as a signal like for where you’re going when you go that way: Neanderthal. I was so relieved not to be Swiss!That’s probably the age-old Czech envy speaking for me.Divin’ Ivan, I’ve just lived through quite a strange period, in part thanks to the bronchitis (now let someone rant at me about illnesses, which deepen our spiritual qualities!!), with me it dragged out like the funk of a stinky cheese for almost four months and then it was almost like pneumonia and my doctor who’s always acting superior and telling me off about my liver and I’m all, yeah, I know, I know, I have a comprehending and distinctly intelligent expression (at least I hope so), so he told me off, saying that I’m not allowed to cough, I’m not allowed to smoke, I’m not allowed to drink, that I’m not allowed to have coffee, I’m only allowed to die with a relatively severe disease of the liver, so right then he was urging me to be careful, because he said while listening to my breath that it’s a weak pneumonia, he got drunk and smoked about a hundred cigarettes and calmly left. (Now I’m talking like that boor Cibulka, but blood is thicker than water). So anyway during that especially blessed period I read Our Man in Havana, Travels with My Aunt (why do Czechs make those diminutives, calling it Travels with Auntie , it’s always this baby talk, auntie, what auntie, aunt, no???) and then you and I was happy as a child. In addition to the joy I had serious worries about what I can even do on this earth, me, a cracked-up girl? They don’t make films. There aren’t any. They’ve disappeared. There won’t be any. After all, although my script based on Zdena Salivarová, “Honzlová”, is just in its first draft, which I spent a year writing and last summer I had the urge to tear the book up, give up my summer sitting at the typewriter, not think up anything that could help with my legs and give myself up retroactively, once and for all, exclusively to alcoholism. In short, to live a dissolute life. That’s the most precise way of putting it.Yeah, yeah, that’s how far a damned soul can go when it’s been banned for twenty years and erroneously supposes that “once they liberate us from the Nazissists” a horde of producers will run over, kneel at the door and beg with hands folded together, please write a script! Do design work for us! You unique Woman! Don’t damn us poor producers! Have mercy on Czech film and renew its glory!The opposite happened, one of the last directors of the one-time Boorandovtown Film Studios sent me a script that was as awful as the two authors who wrote it. It was the story of a Gothic girl who appears in the Budvar brewery (she later transforms into a modern emancipated and proper young woman inclined towards TRUTH) and there were mocking comments about Lenin. There was one guy in a pub and two guys were taking pleasure in how when the Russian delegation came, the guy knew how to do such a good Lenin that the Russians bowed to him and drank Budvar — and so forth.So I told the young fellow that I would never do such shit in my life, the line went dead silent, I also said that Lenin, as the Phantom of the Opera of those days, had personally strangled me with a rusty wire, but that I personally wouldn’t be able to write something like that and that the two boys who wrote it had made a living off Lenin, and a rather abundant one at that, without problems.That’s how I burned that bridge, as they say, like the guy wanted to invite me to the modern dance and, seeing my stubborn idiocy, said fuck it, which is natural and I hold nothing against him. A few other offers weren’t so terrible, but had a similar tone to them, and I just can’t do that, Ivan. Otherwise I’d already have a villa and be on a first-name basis with Miler or Müler or whatever his name was from the Party Central Committee, who they called Mireček like they called Toman from Barrandov Ludvíček (Jireš). Well, it’s nothing interesting.But I, adding depth to my inner life, pneumonia and the doctor who smokes at my bedside, I gave it so much depth that, let me tell you, I had maybe three or four little old books (the diminutive, so inveighed against, is here now, here you see the fickleness of human nature) and I have no idea who I should turn to. In 1990 MF Publishing asked me to give them something, they were interested. I brought them some of my short apocrypha and the editor told me he wanted fiction and not some drivel about this person or that. Descartes, Napo-lee-on, Spinoza, and so on Lozenthal (and I told myself, screw that ) .Now, picking my still-clogged nosed, I’m looking over all the sorts of things I’ve done and I see that there’s one thing that would lift me up, maybe if I made unsent letters in this and this year, stuck something small in here and there, but I’d especially like to tell and cite the dialogues from four scripts written during the forty-year war that’s kind of gone away for now, but as you can see, not entirely. And I’d add to that some fake photographs, where for example a photograph of Prince Charles could be a significant figure for the role of the head of the Camp for Foreigners , which I wrote for those idiots from Zealand (I worked on it for over a year), and I think it’s pretty solid work, something like The Party and the Guests. And I’d put in other famous and non-famous people too like prototypes, even OPPOSITE types, of the figures represented, because next to Charles would be maybe Ustinov or Lojza Mottl from my building. In these photographs I could prove and speculate aloud what each face would mean, how the film would develop as such thanks to this or that person, I could explain the rules of the film game, which you know I have just enough of a grasp on (I’m worse at ironing) and I could do it, I think, quite well. The plan is, at first glance, eccentric, but I don’t think it actually is. It would be an educational thing, that what goes around comes around , that roles can be occupied at once in one way and other times in other ways and that the final impression will be like this in case A) and other in case B). I would be really interested in it, I could enter the conversation a bit thanks to my futile hunger for film. Of course there would also be personal indecision in it and such, certainly you understand that I don’t intend to found Mrs. Krumbachová’s Academy of Film Arts, but it would really be interesting.I have a photographer who’d be able to do up a situations as I’d like (it’s the one who photographed you as Jost Buergi), I’d make these done-up scenes with gusto, I know how to steal expressions and compositions from famous films, it’d even be good fun. You could even do collage.But otherwise, for a long time now I’ve wanted to write a cookbook, for sad people when it’s pouring outside, when a person is happy and poor and when he’s sad and poor or when he has money and wants to honor his guests, in short something like a philosophical guide to hosting and friendship. I’ve also wanted that for a long time already.Savarin’s book “The Physiology of Taste” was once, long ago, the stimulus for me wanting to write the Cookbook. It’s a book with the pleasant philosophy of an Epicurean – sure, that time has passed, but it gave me the idea, you see, Ivan: maybe you’re pissed off all day and the world is unkind to you and you go to somebody’s house and he gives you a potato pancake, but so kindly and full of love that it warms up your icy heart and you start to be happy, because it’s just such a nice evening. And into the little vase on the table he places a single blade of grass, which stands in for a ceremonial flower. Because I myself lived through a period of hunger like that, I understand that it’s not just idiots faking it to seem interesting, but a stupid period like that can be survived. And it’d have recipes like: When we don’t have money and then again: When we have money. So that it wouldn’t be just FOOD, but communication mediated for both sides. So and then I have the Black Tales. I wrote that when our Airplanist died and I was still banned and I was getting sicker all the time. And so I wrote a great many stories, some are totally made up and cynical, others follow famous models like Little Red Riding Hood and are turned upside-down and are also cynical. But I think that, beyond the awful callousness, there’s enough real fun there that kept me alive at the time.Oh and a couple more stories that Irena Zítková once read, you so lovingly sent me to her and she wanted more stories at once and yes, they’d publish everything, but, with the rattle of a tigress pressing her beloved child to her breast, I ran away, because I didn’t want the film management from back then to pay attention to me. Under the assumption that there would be scripts from it. There weren’t, as you have certainly noticed. But those stories are here too, just, to be honest, when I die and I request in my last will for you to give a speech over my body, what would you label me? I have a feeling that I should think about a bright future and finally label myself as a representative of some profession. You spoke at the opening of an exhibition of my paintings. Are they paintings? Of course they are. But without a standard for me to call myself a painter. After all I’ve just been doing strange somersaults, all my life. I could, starting tomorrow, start singing chansons. But I’m not a chansonnière. I’m Ester from 3A.Am I an author? Of course not. Those things are primitive to the point of horror, in short they’re something like me. Perhaps – probably – I understand film a little. Last year I lectured at the university in Brussels, the film department, it wasn’t bad, but that I’d get up and demand more lectures, that I can’t do. It’s a kind of integrity that I know how to speak when I have something to talk about and it’s mine and theirs together. Last year I was invited to Salzburg. I won’t go there, it’s all just sniffling and boredom there. I have no interest in it. Last year I also gave speeches at the International Film Symposium in Graz. I’m supposed to go there in November. But Ivan, I won’t go. It was a huge pain, a waste of mental energy, a waste of my own – forgive me – secrecy. I was supposed to give one of the introductory presentations, luckily on the day I arrived I went to the pub with the attendees, altogether quite important people in the symposium, and after getting back to the hotel I found out that I couldn’t give my prepared presentation in the way I had supposed. So I sat until the morning turning what I’d prepared in Prague into a storyboard , I discovered that there were idiots from the newspapers, cinema owners, and a few learned theorists who know absolutely everything about film there and I relied on God, sudden inspiration, and the atmosphere that would be there and spoke jokingly, apologized for my bad German, asked them to indulge me, and then began in a totally simple way to describe working on films as a scriptwriter and designer. They all clapped and the chair of the commission (an Austrian type like a lifeguard with a mustache, an idiot) told the audience that my contribution, the presentation, he meant, was: sehr erfrischend”, which was confirmed to me by a half-wit Bulgarian who agreed with this designation. That evening, in the hotel lobby, I entertained the ladies and gentlemen with humorous anecdotes and the room came to life: otherwise, the people there talked like Bolsheviks: especially, and it would certainly be necessary if we consider the value of these and others, very necessary, yes, desirable and such. I was beat when I arrived, I wrote more Honzlová and cursed the moment when I agreed to come. Other than Mr. Toeplitz, who is a film theorist of paramount intelligence, there wasn’t a soul there who could inspire me, interest me, who I could talk to. Who would want to listen to me. Oh, Thomas Rotschild too, he’s a fine fellow. Well, and since I know what “When we wandered in foreign lands” means, I don’t want to go anywhere. You know, I’m not really the type to do it like those who are sure of themselves and are always travelling, they do film and they’re constantly coming back to the New Wave. Personally, the whole New Wave can kiss my ass, there was so much half-shit that it’s not worth talking about. But at that time I helped all that get going with the design, I was really the architect of the film images – but now it doesn’t work like that thanks to the people who are making film these days.Imagine: the guy a.k.a. “lifeguard ” invited me once more to Graz in the fall. And do you know what topic he’s offered me? For Israel I wrote about the Golem. It’s purely mine. It’s my personal testimony on man and God. There in Graz I imprudently mentioned that I have some material about the Golem. (It never materialized in Israel because they subjected my script on Franz Kafka to so many procedures that the renowned president of Isr. film himself, Peter Freistadt, who directed my Essay on Franz Kafka, fucked it up so much that I simply refused to continue working with him. My Golem had already been accepted into the film’s dramatic plan, it’s true, but I knew ahead of time that inter arma silent Musae – so anyway, I said that I just wouldn’t do it. I’m crazy, no?) And the “deck hand” chair wrote me – I got it a couple of days ago – that Mr. Toeplitz and I would be the decoration for another piece of shit called a symposium and that he’d give me the topic: talk about the Golem!!!!!!!!! What is this??? What am I going to talk about? I’ll probably be erfrischend again – refreshing Krumbachová spoke with real talent and interest on this renowned topic. Yeah. It’s really miserable. It’s not going anywhere.Divin’ Ivan: fulfill just one wish of mine, my goldfish. Do you know any halfway decent publisher, editor, who wouldn’t judge my stuff from the perspective of “author”, “fiction”, etc., but would simply accept me outside of film as I am? I’ll give someone like that excerpts from something that could look altogether quite decent, I think you’d laugh with joy at my Black Tales, but how many Vyskočils are there in the world? And, let me tell you, I’m a little afraid – even though I’m painting, it’s also funny that I’m painting, but I really am – of getting rusty. Like how when someone doesn’t have a goal, when she has nothing to fight and worry about and always take care of, she gets weak. I have quite a bit of strength, it’s true, but I don’t intend to be consumed by monologues.So this is the longest letter of my life. It’s awful that I’m sending it to you, but our age-old friendship gives me the sense that, even though you’ll be horrified when you first set your eyes on it, you’ll help me. I am, essentially, shy, the armor I wear in public is made of cardboard. Coated in silver on a bust of Lenin. I’m afraid of those people, they don’t understand me, nor I them. You’ve always given me good advice, when Artia published my stories, that was your care for me too. So forgive me this time that there’s so many words. Well. Yesterday I turned on the TV, which I rarely do, and there was a show about the Nuremberg trial and shots of the concentration camps and a man who survived the Warsaw Ghetto. And the Holy Ghost got it into my head so I was able to put it into words: all of the models and singers of the uniquely modern wear EVIL MASKS and are MADE UP to be evil. A consequence of Hitlerism, its philosophical effect in the second half of the century. Against which Bergier’s co-author Pauwels justifiably warns and knows what I knew at the age of twenty-three. At that time I knew that once the gates of darkness are opened, they won’t be so easy to close. In Europe and America those idiots are playing with it, they’re godless and don’t know that as soon as you put on even just the mask of evil, you start to serve it. Göring at the trial looks like a heroin merchant who’s gone bankrupt. Really, everyone should remember the faces of those people, they’re unique, overpowering, they have energy, dominance, good and common sense, they’re intelligent and ambitious. Highly factual. (And they too “didn’t know about anything”, that’s just normal.) I don’t know, maybe a film like that should be accompanied by an alphabetical handbook for the illiterate. What Mikhail Romm did in “Triumph Over Violence” . Hitler walks over to his chair at the Olympics somewhere or wherever it was and Romm himself gives the commentary and says e.g.: notice that everyone is standing, he alone sits down. And he slowly plays the image, the document backwards and again, in slow motion, shows the rule of Hitler the individual, which most idiots obviously yearn for. What was worse, Ivan, was that when I wanted to stop living in 1945, it was as much because people stood fascinated by the first photographs of the naked and the shot and they wanted to SEE it!!!! Not to KNOW it!!!!Yeah, it’s a tough thing, the sort of person who, as they say, is like God.Kisses and thanks for reading the whole thing.