My dear,Much admired, Much remembered friend, Honza,

…a heading as big as the dome of the St. Nicholas Church, but what can you do, it is so. Moments ago I patched together a letter to Mr. Hartl, to whom for lack of time I failed to send the texts he wanted, this naïve, venerably naïve man, with the consequence of evoking frequent thoughts of you and our meeting at the movies. You were such an extraordinarily handsome boy, a sight for sore eyes – and sure enough, pretty boys inevitably catch my roving eye – that is the law of nature, or whatever else. No use talking, the two of us, we have no excuse. Your melodious voice over the telephone gave me the brilliant idea to meet sometime for a little chat, like Boccaccio conversing with Boccaccio – so I am writing you instead, rather than being so rash as to call you and say, hey, do you have a minute? Unladylike. Ladies first feel the ground, which is usually hot – but some like it hot – to get an idea of the situation regarding the gentleman, and would the gentleman happen to have time to spare a few indecent glances in our direction…

So, when you have a moment, give me a ring, or do you know what? Drop me a line and say – I just thought of you, what about a glass of bubbly in a cozy little pub along the river, or some other place. I have some interesting new stamps for you and a butterfly collection (à la Daisies), so give us a call when it is a good time. After that you do not even have to do anything. I will call you and say, how about tomorrow at seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven to twelve? I’m starting to amuse myself, because it is pouring down rain and I’m getting silly.

It isn’t that I miss people. I literally can’t stand them, but I do miss some. It would be nice to spend some time with you, to talk about our Parisian secrets, I have a whole treasury of those, and laugh at them with all my heart, but I can’t share that stuff with just anyone, or I would get a bad reputation, which would follow me wherever I go, age notwithstanding. To you I could recount my personal Decameron with great relish, which would be a pleasure, and having caught the briefest glimpse of you, I think you also don’t have a friend or brother that you could please any more than you would please me.

I have always thought that it would pass in the end, but pass it did not. Besides, I work so much – although the word work itself is beginning to bore me mightily. But why call it work? It is a pleasure, a delight, an agreeable torture – all on a voluntary basis. By comparison, growing cacti is like a form of retired sex.

I wrote my idea for Mr. Hartl in two versions: Nobody has yet drowned in the River Lethe. Or: the River Lethe, suitable even for non-swimmers. Hahaha. Running into people of my vintage, one would just go and end it all, to see what they made of themselves. That’s what they deserve for being so upright and moral. For always knowing in advance what is allowed and what is not, always abiding by some antiquated rules and laws, just to avoid the shadow of a bad reputation, so their mama wouldn’t hear, even the dear late one, so that all those people, none of whose business it is, wouldn’t know. They blew it. Unlike us, who are not responsible for what others think about us. 

Well, I am full of sage words today, Mr. Hartl would be pleased. He addressed me as “my gracious lady.” I asked him to call me by my name, and the old aristocrat stuttered the revelation that ladies from the National Theatre deserve this particular form of address. So I explained to him politely, and not in so many words, that the National Theatre can go fuck itself as far as I’m concerned. And so he wrote to me: “my dearest lady.” Fair enough. At least somebody respects me. Like him. Otherwise the world is rife with bad-mannered people like me, and foulmouthed people also like me. But, as says – mind you – Ostap Bender:* we don’t need any vulgarians here, we are vulgar enough ourselves.

Just so we don’t waste time in the future – you are surely of a similar frame of mind as I am – I never fit into totalitarianism, and do not fit in this current democracy, the whole Czech nation can go take a running jump. Except St. Wenceslas – I do respect legends – those idiots don’t even deserve such noble legends. To put it differently, one chimera exchanged for another. It makes me laugh. 

With the conflicted and naive erotomaniac Jan Němec I get on better and better, we have such cynical conversations – when we do have conversations, that is. I am also better writing this, so we don’t have to talk about him and thus remain free to talk about our respective interiors. By the way, I get the word interior all mixed up with the Ministry of the Interior; a deformation from totalitarianism, as the popular psychologist Dr. Pondělíček would say, and he would be right, fool that he is.

Damn, I’ve already covered a second page and it didn’t even feel like I was writing that long and so much. I should end this now, but feel it’s a shame – this new sheet of paper, just like Czechs feel it’s a shame to waste the dumplings they brought home from the canteen at work, so they keep them in their fridge and munch them down with dill sauce, with eggs, or just like that, plain and dry, for breakfast – and if Czechs were capable of eccentricity, which they are not, they might spread some jam on them. But that’s just a fanciful culinary vision. With a pickled gherkin on top.

Alright, then: in consideration of dumplings and the empty sheet, I will furnish you with a few more observations, just so we don’t stray into things beyond the recounting of delightful and charming tales, as Boccaccio puts it – I keep quoting him. How tedious it is to quote people, but I honor the man for his epicureanism, for his wisdom in understanding that it is better to laugh than to weep, and it is better to live well and beautifully for five minutes than to live for five years miserably and without beauty. Since I’ve seen both, that young man with a taste for immorality has duly grown dear to my heart. And not only because I’ve experienced both, that’s bullshit. You can live to see all kinds of things and still remain as dumb as ever (suffice to remember the survivors of concentration camps and the resistance movement, and a quote for reference: he who has ears, let him hear, and he who has eyes let him see), but because sorrow has always found a home within me, and the deep instincts and passions that live just next door must surely constitute some of the impulses that make me believe what I am writing you now, and are the cause why I suddenly felt such a longing to meet you.

And now for an observation: less than four years ago I was dying. I talked to my mother, in a manner of speaking, and didn’t want to return to this world. But there was an uncompromising hand and something like an injunction: you will go back. And so here I am.

It may have been with you, when we talked about all kinds of things, that I might have quoted a line from the Upanishads to you: God is a house without borders.

I am neither a Yogi nor a Buddhist nor anything of that sort in the very least – all of that is just a trinket of fake gold, a passing fad, there is no real quest, no risk or danger in all that – nothing. Your situation is different as a Catholic – but these are secrets of the mind, not worth talking about and occupying oneself with. I realized a long time ago that in love you learn more than you expected. It is without a home. It has no name. It moves of its own will, without being driven, as Socrates defines the human soul.

When I was around sixteen or seventeen, under the influence of Baruch Spinoza, I went through a period of adolescent anguish (no, it wasn’t adolescent in nature, only in age) about the meaning of my existence, and at one point I woke up at daybreak and heard a highly appropriate articulation: the body is as sacred as the soul. Incredible or absurd? True or not – either way it doesn’t matter. What I think is that in response to the intensity of my desire to figure things out, my innermost essence spoke to me. No miracle can happen without that. Only much later did I understand that the most indifferent body is consecrated in the realm of love – like that sweet whore in Pigalle in her little sailor suit or schoolgirl dress, the one who wouldn’t take off that ribbon and let her hair down – remember our conversation about that?

And I foolishly thought – but I am not even sure, Honza, if I even thought that, or just assumed, after intercourse with old men, that one forgets all that, but certain people never forget that, and not only that, but one simply cannot live without this kind of adventure, exploration, the longing for sin which is sweet. Well, the dumplings have found their purpose and the empty sheet is filled with writing. For the need to talk to you, because when I saw you I knew instantly that the long time (though of course a thousand years is a longer time than twenty) has changed nothing, and above all, you haven’t changed – reading your expression and your eyes, I think you haven’t changed one bit. And neither have I. Do drop me a line, then, will you? If it’s not that line about butterflies, feed me another, I’ll be only too happy to fall for it. We’ll be conspiratorial like Freemasons and we’ll decipher each other’s messages to make it more exciting and delightful, so as to avoid tedium, that dumb whore that resides all around as far as the eye can see. And I mean an ugly whore who has turned religious all of a sudden. And hardly surprising, her tits are no good, to say nothing of her belly.

I’ll be looking forward to your letter. You know what? How about writing me something profoundly meditative, that would just confuse everything, but no, that would take too much of your time. A telegram is another option: I agree. When? Yours, Radek.

Bye then, Honza, good night.

Ester alias Rattlesnake Ess-ther

*The conman hero of a highly popular series of satirical novels by Soviet authors Ilya Ilf and Yevgeny Petrov, the first of which was The Twelve Chairs.