“I love science. I have never truly loved anything else. Why pretend otherwise? Václav Havel lost his typewriter; I won’t let them take my microscope.”
“I want to do big things,” I say, “things that are tangible, like the big discoverers. Tesla, Niels Bohr, Salk. No one cares for the names of the people shaping things anymore. The people who found out that the expansion of the universe is accelerating? You could walk out on the street and ask strangers all day long, but no one could tell you their names.”
“But one has to ask: why do the big things at such a high cost? I chose the quiet life. I like the idea of being recognized by my field and no one else. This way I have a purpose, one I believe in, but I’m not burdened by the constant idea of putting on a public image, a view of myself the masses can accept. Nobody cares whether I am fat or cheat on my taxes. It is not the only right kind of life, of course, but it is the honest life for me. What I’m saying is, I make the right choices for myself. Being of use to the world doesn’t always mean having your name in the papers. Politicians, movie stars… You know, I keep waiting for someone to say, ‘Those Czechs, impressive people! Only ten million of them and look at how they shape the world.’ Not because we have beautiful models or talented football players, but because we have advanced the civilization in a real way, a way that doesn’t interest the paparazzi. My plea to you is, think beyond celebrity. Do you think Tesla cared if he had his picture taken? Think of whether you’re any good to anyone, truly.”
His voice is gruff but quiet, uncharacteristic for this usually boisterous man. I figure it must be the brandy, and thanks to the brandy, I almost tell him about my father, about the curse of my family, about my desire to become the very definition of good to everyone, and to carry my family name back to the favorable side. One week ago, three uniformed men carried my grandfather’s body out of the apartment and my grandmother took a glass full of water out of my hand. She asked if potatoes with sour cream were okay for lunch. I have to be a person. These words accompany me to bed and wake me from pleasant dreams. I don’t know the difference between coming up short or becoming too much of a person and ruining my life with the ambition Dr. Bivoj warns about. Was Havel truly unhappy at the end of his life? He’d changed so many destinies. Some hated him but most adored him. There had to be happiness in that, somewhere.
“Tesla,” Dr. Bivoj murmurs, “never got laid and never got a good night’s sleep. A man to aspire to.” He stares at his glass and soon his eyes begin to close.
I take my place at my desk and I study the latest journals, distracting myself with thoughts of how I might differentiate myself from Dr. Bivoj. Is he, after all, of any good to anyone? A lecturer with a toxic addiction to food. Is his commitment to his own satisfaction wise, or selfish, or simply impossible to categorize? I think of the photographs I’ve seen from those dissident days. Rebels with long hair, penning revolutionary essays and changing the course of a nation by day, drinking and fucking and dancing by night. Beaten, interrogated, imprisoned, alive, so goddamn alive every day, though they would probably scoff at me for glorifying the struggle. And now here is Bivoj, in the chair that will surrender to his growing mass any day. Breathing frantically through his mouth, working up a snore. The choice between remaining a person from those photos or becoming the modern Dr. Bivoj seems clear. Does he doubt his choices, does he weep over them in the shower? He could’ve been president by now. Or maybe he did exactly what he should have. Kept to small pleasures and daily routines of work.
At four in the afternoon he staggers out of the office as he whispers that he has to take a piss and go home to nap. He turns the light off on his way out as though he’s already forgotten that I am there. I take another swig from his bottle and the burn brings on an idea. In the booze drawer I find two full bottles of slivovitz along with the dirty moonshine. I open the office minifridge, a territory extremely off-limits to anyone but Dr. Bivoj. There rest three schnitzel and pickle sandwiches wrapped in foil, an entire roll of salami, and a brick of blue cheese—to Bivoj, about two lunches’ worth of provisions. I take all of it, and stuff the bottles and food inside my bag. No more potatoes and sour cream. Grandma will eat like a queen tonight.
I walk outside. I feel an unbidden impulse to know my city, to put my ear to its chest. To be with its people in a place they are all forced to congregate in against their will, a fallout of all great human cities. In a place where the city’s contradictions meet and create an entire new biosphere in which one must acquire previously unknown survival skills. I take the metro to Wenceslas Square.
Burnt sausage, air-conditioned linen stench of clothing stores, police car exhaust, the rancid diapers of toddlers in designer strollers, street waffles with salmonella whipped cream, whiskey spilled between the cracks of ancient brick roads, coffee, newspapers just unpacked at tobacco stands, stray marijuana smoke seeping from one of the windows above a Gap, the sneakily abandoned waste from dogs, grease sizzling off the exposed bicycle chains, Windex dripping down the freshly washed office windows, a faint spring breeze barely penetrating the connected buildings lining the square—this chemical anarchy of scents placed in the cradle of every Prague child early on welcomes us home every time, and in this native knowledge we all simply refer to it as “Wenceslas.”
It has been almost a year since I last visited, I realize, while the antibodies inside my olfactory system fight off the invasion of smog. I hold my breath. All around me lives the assurance of our sprint toward capitalism. Few things remain from the old days of the Soviet reign—the only significant remainder being the nineteenth-century statue of Saint Wenceslas, the postcard hero trudging above the masses, green and stone-faced on his trusty horse, the animal’s majestic thighs and ass generously caked with pigeon shit. French teenage tourists, unaware of any history around them, thumb through their phones and catcall women as they surround the statue’s base. Food vendors offer hot dogs and burgers and alcohol illegally sold at significant markup, making a fortune on underage tourists eager for the true alcoholic Prague experience. Alcohol sales keep the vendors in competition with the McDonald’s, the KFC, the Subway, those invaders seducing the populace with the sweet breath of air-conditioning, restrooms free of the toilet paper charge, hot food injected with chemical pleasure. Both tourists and natives face the daily struggle of giving in to the addictive delights of sizzling fats and the Western unity offered by those neon sign giants, or handing themselves over to the old-school exoticism of a slightly burnt sausage served by a man who doesn’t waste words or offer a customer comment card.