“I’m so sorry,” Petr said. “I deserve the punishment, we failed you, we failed the mission, but I still have to ask that maybe you don’t bring the whole story to the media.”
“Petr,” I said, “don’t you understand? I don’t care. I just want my old life back.”
EXCERPT FROM INTERVIEW of subject Lenka P., Session One:
Ku?ák: So these concerns, they came to you only after the mission started? Or did you feel this contempt before Jakub left?
Lenka P: I tried not to think about it too much. He was getting sick all the time, you know? I could tell how happy and how horrified he was. I could tell how badly he wanted to leave a piece of himself with me. There was no room for me to feel contempt. But once he was gone… people become abstractions. And the things weighing on you become clear. That’s why people are so afraid to be away from each other, I think. The truth begins to creep in. And the truth is, I have been unhappy for a while now. Because of his expectation that we have a family, because of the guilt he carries around, because his life was always in focus more than mine. My struggles, my insecurities, they had always been mostly on the back burner. The project of our marriage has predominantly been to figure out Jakub. But I digress.
Ku?ák: Tell me more.
Lenka P: Aren’t your questions supposed to guide me better than that?
Ku?ák: Is this session irritating you?
Lenka P: I’m irritated about feeling these things. And I hate that I’ve agreed to these meetings. He would consider it a betrayal.
Ku?ák: His contract bars both of you from seeking unapproved psychological help. He would understand that this is your only option…
Lenka P: Can I tell you something? Maybe it will make sense to your analytical mind, somehow. Jakub and I, we used to have this hiding place. A small attic in a building where I lived as a kid. It looks so different now than it did the last time Jakub and I came there. It used to be an old, dusty, mice-infested dump, you know? It was our dump, covered in fake stars and condom wrappers. Now, it’s a room where the residents hang their laundry. The walls are painted mint green, there’s a plastic window. To see if there was anything left behind, something I could collect and hold on to, I tore through the wet towels and sheets of the room, tore my way to our corner, and then I saw them. The first girl, in a bomber cap and shorts and a leopard-print shirt, holding a Polaroid camera. Haven’t seen one of those in forever. A few feet away from her, leaning against the wall, was another girl, completely nude, her back against the wall, hips sticking out. At their feet were hundreds, maybe thousands of pictures, all of them of this nude girl in different positions. I had so many questions, but I asked none. What I knew right away was that the girls were lovers, and this was their contract. They had a hiding place, a place of their own, where they explored their rituals. Tell me, can’t you recognize these contracts as soon as you see them? A man pours more wine for his wife than for himself. A contract. Lovers watch Friday night movies in the nude with containers of Chinese food on their laps, General Tso’s sauce dripping on their pubic hair, they cool each other’s bodies with bottles of beer. A ritual, a contract. Jakub and I spoke of these contracts often, the importance of their preservation.
Ku?ák: You feel that there has been a violation.
Lenka P: It took me ten minutes after I left those girls to realize that the nude girl was Petra, the girl I used to play with in the attic as a child. And there she was, probably didn’t even recognize me, and yet she made me realize. Jakub and I, our contract declared that we were meant to knock around this world together, explore it, make it better or ruin it, live young for as long as we could. But then he left, and now every minute of my day I expect the call to let me know he is gone. Even if he returns, what kind of man will he be? The things he’s seeing, the loneliness, the sickness… you see, Jakub chose to become forever someone else. That is his right as a person, but it does not bode well for contracts. He’s the one flying away from me, but sometimes? Sometimes it feels like I’m in a spaceship too, and I’m soaring in the opposite direction. And there’s no chance we will ever collide again, not unless the universe is a loop, and that, Dr. Ku?ák, is why I wake up standing next to my bed, arms limp by my sides. Like some sleepwalker of grief.
Ku?ák: What would Jakub say of these contracts?
Lenka P: I don’t think Jakub has any idea. He thinks he’s going to come home to the same Lenka, the old Lenka, and he will be the same Jakub, and we’ll pick up where we left off, like those eight months aren’t very long. But it isn’t the time, it’s the distance, the likelihood of failure, the danger he’s put himself in. I’m no Penelope. I don’t want to wait around for a hero’s return. I don’t want the life of a woman in epic poetry, looking pretty as I stand on shore and scan the horizon for his ship once he’s finished conquering. Perhaps I sound awful. But what about my life, my hopes for myself? They can’t all be tied to Jakub. They just can’t.
Ku?ák: I don’t think you’re selfish.
Lenka P: I appreciate that.
Ku?ák: Do you consider Jakub an idealist?
Lenka P: Jesus Christ, what a question. He’s flying a spaceship to nowhere. What else would you call a man who does such a thing?
[END]
THAT EVENING, after I had listened to Lenka tell her truths to Dr. Ku?ák, I determined that I must stay dead, hidden from the shocked, warm embrace of a nation that had built me statues and would surely smother me with cries of miracles. I had died for the country. They had no right to ask me for a resurrection. I discussed this with Petr until I unwittingly slipped out of consciousness. The next morning, I woke up with a pillow underneath my head. Petr and his wife, Linda, stood over me with mugs of coffee and a plan. It was clear that Linda now understood the identity of her guest, and that the plan was a team effort born of their sleepless night.