More silence. Its grip loosened. The belly was warm, spread over me like a water bed mattress.
“Perhaps this was a mistake,” the creature said. “Yes, I am certain of it.” It let go of my torso and swiftly made its way through the corridors.
“It wasn’t,” I said. “Stay here.”
I pulled myself forward on the railings, but I could not match the creature’s speed. Soon it vanished out of sight. I looked inside the lab, my bunk, the kitchen, the bathroom, every corner of the Lounge. I shouted, pleaded for it to return. I promised to give it whatever it needed. I promised I would never consider violating it again. I promised it was simply too important.
There was no response.
Hours later, when I finally crawled inside the Womb and dimmed the lights, dripping twice the recommended dose of Sladké Sny onto my tongue, I again felt the pressure around my temples, witnessed an array of colored stains in my vision. My jaw ached from the infected molar. The creature probed on then, despite its absence. It was looking for a specific day. The day a stranger appeared in my life carrying an artifact belonging to my father. An iron shoe.
The Iron Shoe
TWO DAYS AFTER my thirteenth birthday, I am bedridden with fever and stomachaches. Grandma checks on me every few hours as I read Robinson Crusoe and puke into the bucket usually used for pig blood. It is a rainy summer, and through the window I can see Grandpa, cursing the sky and squishing his boots in the mud as he stuffs hay inside the rabbit cages. Water captured by the gutters travels to a small tub from which Grandma draws to hydrate the houseplants. The chickens are sleeping inside the coop, their claws grasping at the wooden poles that serve as their beds. From the rooftop of the house, two black cats fall into the mud, hissing and screaming. I am not sure whether they are killing each other or mating, and I’m not sure whether the difference matters.
In my sweat I have lost track of days, unsure whether it is Sunday or Thursday, when a blue Nissan pulls up to our gate. A suited man exits the car, straightens out the creases in his jacket, and takes a purple backpack out of his trunk. His knock carries through the cold hallway. Grandma talks to him by the front door. I walk out of my room and try to hear their whispers.
“Go to sleep,” Grandma says to me.
“So this is the boy,” the stranger says. He speaks from the corner of his mouth, and despite the deep pox scars on his cheeks, he has the look of a movie actor—a defined jaw covered in stubble, his eyes cold, his hair slicked but not greasy.
Grandpa walks in from the yard, a cigarette between his teeth, a chunk of bulgur in his hand. He listens to the man.
“Jakub, bed,” Grandpa says. He gestures for the stranger to follow him into the living room and shuts the door behind him. I count to sixty and walk over to the door. I slowly take the key out of its hole and peep through. Grandpa sits with a beer, while the stranger puts his wet backpack on the table and pulls out a rusty metal shoe, so large it could only fit a proper giant. Grandma waters her plants, her back turned to the men.
“Like I said, I was once, in a very specific way, closely tied to your son,” the man says. “When we first met, he introduced me to the shoe you see on your table. He took me to an interrogation room in the secret police headquarters and he asked if I liked poetry.”
“I will offer you a beer if you take your wet belongings off of my wife’s table,” Grandpa says.
“I apologize,” the stranger says but keeps the shoe where it is. “I told him that I dabbled. I enjoyed the classics, like any other university student. William Blake, is what I told your son. He asked whether I wrote poetry too.”
“Your time is wasted here,” Grandpa says.
“I don’t write poetry, Mr. Procházka. I like the stuff, but I’m no good at seeing the world in pictures. But your son was certain about my editorship of some international newsletter. A call to action. He was certain I wrote verse calling for a violent revolution, a tsarian slaughter of Party leadership and their families, opening the gates of our country to capitalists and once again enslaving the working class. He was so certain he put my feet inside these shoes. This is one of them, right here.”
The man pats the shoe.
“You do know my son has passed,” Grandpa says.