Return My Ostrava
  OSTRAVA THE PLACE

Why did I agree to write about Ostrava as a city, as a sort of cultural phenomenon that affects us, that leaves its imprint on us, and so on and so forth – how can I know anything about that? Yvetta’s right, all I know about is books and pubs, there are more of the latter here, even though the Severka is now shut, U Hlubka and U haldy are still open – I could go for a couple there, if I hadn’t agreed to write this.
And not just that – Ostrava’s not a city, it’s just a place, pieces of places where our existence happens, pieces of places where we earn a living, linked up by trams and wandering buses, Hrabůvka, Bartovice, I don’t usually sit down, the seats are occupied by men with furrows in the backs of their necks, as if they were star-gazers or bird-watchers. I don’t stamp my ticket – I ride for free past the junk-piles of Vítkovice, at the back of the tram someone says something about life, and phlegmy coughs, pieces of something, whooping coughs, I say nothing, I’m riding for free, nobody knows that I sometimes use words like ‘whom’ and ‘nonetheless’ and ‘authenticity’. The panorama is as bold as a cigarette advert – all of us here have a problem with smoking, not just the gipsy women in the phantasmal underpass at the end of Stodolní street, full of animals and imagination and groundwater.
The city has its own laws, the elegant word for them is structure, and they bubble up from the deep reasons that gave rise to the city. The city gives its people the certainty of a cultural character, the elegant word for it is esprit, but above all joy, the joy of living, living with a view of a black locust tree, with neighbours and with a shop that stays open late at night. The city is clearly more than just a place to earn our living, more than a temporary stop, it’s an inner contract with the spirit of the place, entering the city and settling in it – no, it’s not just about spending time here, stepping onto the spinning merry-go-round of day shifts and night shifts, the odd blow-out in a pub, the odd bottle sat on your hard bunk, mining, extracting, sucking everything out of the place, and when everything is gone, staying on here. Just remembering your story, your stuttering fate and your medical records, your address and opening hours does not mean that you can remember where it all happened – that Ostrava where it’s so difficult to send a postcard.
So, all right – there is another side to it too, I’ve seen a cultural club opened, people in the theatre, people in the park, a tulip-tree, Yvetta’s not quite right, I know about trees as well, there are more trees than pubs here, and there’s a university too, and there’s a queue to get into it. Everything is changing – as the men from the city hall say – lots of things are no longer like they used to be, and Viktor Kolář, who’s been taking photos for years, should finally get used to it and put some colour into things. Shops and boulevards, casino, gambling club, hotel, bank, gambling-club, somebody asks how to get to the square, how to get to the church, go past McDonalds and Oskar’s Pub. All of that has arrived here now, you can get anything you like, but here, for a while, those new names will sound even dumber than elsewhere – Dolly, Vegas, Veronique bar. They’re pieces of places, Přívoz, Hrušov, Koblov linked up by pipelines and din and pieces of quiet in the meandering bends where the Odra meets the Ostravice, in September overgrown with ornamental jewelweed. I’d like to write that people smoke more in the autumn, but that would be lyrical insincerity, you see people here smoke all the time – they’d laugh at me, the men with furrows in the backs of their necks, they’d lower their eyes like when they’re drinking rum, like when they’re living, smashed glasses, who’s going to clean up after them, a moment ago they all looked dead beat, now they’re revived, don’t get too close, don’t say a word against them or against their football team, they trust no-one, they get timid and shy. Shyness! It flickers up in this strange place, just once in the evening, between the rums, between the shifts, between Muglinov and Mariánské Hory, then it’s gone – hard to believe it was there if it hadn’t been captured in Viktor’s wonderful photos, where he didn’t teach them to pose in colour. But that’s not what I should be writing about, about that shyness, and why should I anyway – it’s my fault for agreeing to write this, to write about Ostrava a phenomenon and so on and so forth, I’d have done better to go for a couple, actually I think I will – U Hlubka will still be open.
PUB SHORES

They brought the green soup out of the tiled deep of the pub U mostu. Looking out into straw-coloured smoke, the first beer in the pub by the bridge, once upon a time saved by the hero Sýkora. So Ostrava still had its bridge, so they opened a pub near it. Summon up courage, it’s morning, seven-eighty.

Long ago at U Rady I saw a naked large woman on pushed-together tables, on rumpled tablecloths. The rums shone in the men’s hands. It was the last night, they were closing in the morning. There was nowhere to go. Now it’s re-opened, and everybody there has a project in front of them. Nowadays everybody has a project in front of them.

The gypsies have gone from the Křižánek taproom, all gone. The furnace of yellow walls smeared with pictures of cafes and cypresses. Here in the Křižánek waiting room there is no more cutting, no more throwing, no more missing your tram because you decided to have just one more. No more, nobody, watched by an offended waiter.

U Hlubka, a man in the corner. U Hlubka in a weather window, morning in the ashtray, a man in the corner. Chairs like at Christmas, U Hlubka in October. I sit far away, pub phlegm, I can’t hear my own words.

I’m not going to the Karolinka, there’s a roof window in the john where spotted November gets in… it’s late, I’m sitting here and there’s no room. Outside there’s tons of room, like when a mine is demolished, outside it’s wormwood right up to the pub shore. Pint glass petroleum lamp, I lift the light. I try to guess who’s still a miner, they all paid a bit too much. Sometimes the wagons go by. Ivan Motýl never did.

The Spolek was a pub. Today it has beer, tables, people, staff. Several different types of each. But there’s no reason to, nobody’s forcing me.

At the end of the block, the Baník pub and the red church, all around is the city. I’ve seen miracles here, a table flying through the air. A man dragging a woman, pale as the drinks bill, just put an end to it, for fuck’s sake, just end it now. Dragging her past the church, fucking life, wiping off her hair, shouldering away the show.

At the Severka, the north star, the orange pub, someone was killed. A long time ago, you can’t tell any more, a gipsy woman shrieks a long fate from my palm. She knows about life, holding a glass, she doesn’t tell me how I will end up. The north star goes out at ten o’clock.

At U Dlouhých it’s as if you could still mine coal, waiting for Bezruč in a fiery inn. Morning, before the dust settles, a national newspaper and a bottle of Prague ale… but don’t tell them that here, here they feel different… or you’ll get your face smashed in by some returning poet, doing it for a miner.

At the Sokolovna, they give you small word-change at the bar, after closing time, drinking quickly. We’ve got children. I stack the chairs hedgehog-style, I see a woman with a cloth. I see a waltz.

The Nošovická is for sale. They used to have ribs here. Smoked ribs. Here the day ends, the street, the whole city. Just like everywhere.


AT ‘THE CLAW’

play ‘Dahlias’ for my wife here, it’s her birthday
her sitting over there, wearing that coat,
I can’t remember how it goes
‘Dahlias’, you’ll know it, you’re
here every day, you see it all from the pub,
all Vítkovice, life, and the gardens too



AT THE CENTRAL

paint-roller
as if the rain’s falling
as if oak leaves are falling
deer bottom of the waitress
disappears among the containers
they never close
above the counter Beskydy mountains
and Bulgarian pottery
like at home
like everywhere
as though Bulgaria and the Beskyds
ended nowhere
bag straps are tightening
in wait for a connection


HOME

A ship on a bottle.

After a careless stir it rolled out from under the table, an empty, cargo ship. With one like this the true faith had been delivered to the aborigines, with suchlike delicate rarities were brought. Calling could be heard from the rigging. But the ancient gold from the colonies is gone, only the brass of the Ostrava evening casts a man and a woman and a huge transatlantic ship.