“Back to Earth in style,” he said.
I asked Petr to put the bag of clothes in his trunk. We started our engines, destination Plzeň, where Petr would take me to Lenka’s apartment. I was not feeling the expected joy over our drive. Certainly I craved to see Lenka, so much that I could not bring myself to keep still. But our reunion would be tainted by the truths that her conversations with Ku?ák had made me aware of. The various ways in which I had hurt her, ending with the suffering of my death, which would now be nullified. Everything about my return, the good parts and the bad, was extreme, painful, unprecedented. I couldn’t possibly know what she would say to me, what I would say back, or even how to begin to speak across the ever-widening gap of the universe between us. She was right. I had changed too much to feel like an Earthman. The intricacies of human emotion seemed incomprehensible, a foreign language. I could explain nothing of my journey, and I could not explain who I was now. What to make of such a homecoming?
Out on the road, the Ducati’s recoil shook my bones and filled my blood with chemistry. I was subject to velocity, a violator of the speeds at which the human body was allowed to travel. In Space, the speed of my ascent was masked by my vessel, but here physics was felt without mercy. This was my habitat, a planet I ruled with an iron will, a planet on which I could build a combustion engine and a set of wheels to carry me at the speed of two hundred kilometers per hour as I felt every jolt and every disturbance of the air particles struggling to get out of my path. Why go anywhere else? We’ve already done so much to the place.
I snapped at Petr’s heels, my wheel millimeters away from his bumper. We needed to go faster. To Lenka. Back to home. Back to life.
EXCERPT FROM INTERVIEW of subject Lenka P., Session Five:
Lenka P: It keeps piling up.
Ku?ák: Go on.
Lenka P: I keep thinking about the miscarriage, years ago. I didn’t even want to be pregnant, not yet. And one day I’m just on the treadmill and suddenly there’s blood everywhere, on my legs, on the running belt. For weeks after, Jakub just stayed at his office. He snuck in to change his clothes every so often and he gave me this look, like he was doing me a favor by staying away, like it was all his fault. Things were never really the same after that. We did have good days still—there was this one time we went to the astronomical clock tower together, and it almost felt like we were those kids in love again. But really, we weren’t. Jakub thought everything was fine, but we had lost parts of ourselves.
Ku?ák: Do you think he chooses to be oblivious?
Lenka P: Jakub is smart. Brilliant. But he never understood the work it takes. He always thought, we fell in love, we had this story of us, and that would sustain us for the rest of our lives. It’s not that he didn’t put the work in. But he thought that just showing up, just being there, would be enough. He put his research first, poured himself into everything else. When it came to us, he thought the marriage could be fueled by nostalgia and physical presence. Sealed by having a child.
Ku?ák: You sound like you’ve made up your mind about some things.
Lenka P: Well, I’ve been asking the right questions. What would things have been like had Jakub not agreed to go? Would we be together for much longer? How do I welcome him when he returns home? I’d want to feel his body on mine, of course, because I love him, but I’d also want to beat him over the head, shout at him.
Ku?ák: Perhaps, if he hadn’t gone, you wouldn’t have the catalyst for these thoughts. You would have gone on, just living one day at a time, without tackling the things causing your unhappiness.
Lenka P: Well, the catalyst is here. Now I have to decide what to do with it.
Ku?ák: And?
Lenka P: I want to take long walks without anyone expecting anything from me. I want to be blank. Ithaca no longer expects Penelope to sit and wait. She gets on a boat and sails toward her own wars. Is it so terrible for her to want her own life?
Ku?ák: Not at all.
Lenka P: I love him. But I just don’t see the way ahead anymore. I’ve lost it.
Ku?ák: It’s okay for human beings to change their minds. You can love someone and leave them regardless.
Lenka P: I keep thinking about his sweet face. His voice. How it will sound if I tell him any of this.
Ku?ák: Waiting until he returns is an option.
Lenka P: I need to be away now. I need to leave Prague, leave these people who won’t stop calling, emailing, taking pictures of me without asking. Like I’ve done something special by getting left behind.
Ku?ák: What will you do?
Lenka P: I have a phone session with him this afternoon. I’m going to try to explain. Oh God, his voice, what this will do to it.
Ku?ák: It will distress him. But it seems that leaving all of this behind is what is necessary for you now.
Lenka P: I’m surprised you’re not talking me out of it. For the sake of the mission and all.
Ku?ák: The timing, admittedly, is not great. But such things cannot be avoided.
Lenka P: Such things?
Ku?ák: Unhappiness. Wanting to do something about it. And you are now my patient, just as Jakub is. The context doesn’t matter—my work is to bring you to realizations that are the best for your well-being.
Lenka P: And Jakub’s well-being?
Ku?ák: Our unique situation presents some conflicts of interest, of course. I’m doing my best to take care of Jakub, considering he will barely speak with me. To be honest, effects of your marriage worry me less than the memories he has buried. The old life he tries to outrun. I would like for him to liberate himself.
Lenka P: You are not a bad man. It is harder and harder for me to see why Jakub dislikes you so much.
Ku?ák: I have a theory. Perhaps I remind him of someone he does not like to be reminded of. Or perhaps it is because I made him speak of things he’d rather not have spoken about.
Lenka P: He keeps his secrets.
Ku?ák: Clutches them to his chest.
Lenka P: I tried. I am trying.
Ku?ák: I know that. So does he.
[END]
PLZEN?. The town that served as a frontier to many Bohemian wars and produced a beer that soon became a worldwide sensation, featuring ads with half-naked women holding the ale above their heads like an ancient artifact, as if the green glass bottles contained the Fountain of Youth. Plzeň is colorful, with magnificent architecture of the Old World, but modest about the culture and history pulsing within the veins of its streets. A challenger to Prague in many ways, and no Bohemian says such things lightly.
This was Lenka’s new home. We arrived as the town woke up with the sun. Petr parked his car in front of a cake shop in Plzeň’s downtown. As I slid off the Ducati, I felt as though gravity might once again give up on me. Even the heavy cube bricks lining the street could not force the numbness from my calves.