Stories from the Six Directions by Ivan Rehorek

The Old City

I was born in Prague, on an island called Stvanice, meaning the King’s Hunting-ground. It later became a fairground, and they built a maternity hospital there as well. Now there’s a tennis court where people like Lendl once trained. 

I miss the old city. One day I’ll go back and visit her. 

It’s always about love, one way or another.

Yesterday and Today

From the old days of the Hussite wars down to Prague Spring — and it’s not over yet — my family was one of troublemakers and heretics. I went to art school for a while, for all the good that did them. But I still love making the stuff.

Writing is something I owe to my mother, and, more importantly, reading. At Tauondi Aboriginal college, I was in a theatre-in-education (TIA) team, then became an art teacher. These days I write, play and pull weeds.

My life today includes a beautiful wife, two grown-up children, a small dog and a collection of saxophones, mostly house-trained. 

These are some of my stories – mostly true, some not. You decide. 

True Story: A Segment from the Crazy Quilt of My Life 

I was only ten when the tanks came. I recall skipping downstairs to the main entrance one morning and seeing the big gate blocked off. The house we lived in was one of those old 19th-century places, typical for Europe, with the carriageway serving as the main entrance.

The horses and buggies had long gone, and I turned the corner to see the open gates, with a large red star on a dull, grey background. There was a Russian tank stuck halfway down our cul-de-sac, the soldiers climbing about shouting. I sneaked past and ran up the street to school. People were pointing and waving, with helicopters blibbing about. The school was closed, so I went back home.

The tank was still there, like a beached whale, and someone was tinkering with the engine, cursing and carrying on a conversation with God. ‘Why do you punish me so, Almighty? Why is this piece of junk still standing? Why is our officer strutting about like a rooster? As if the girls are interested in a peasant like him? Why is this wrench bending – and now LOOK at this mess.’

The officer in question was indeed strutting his stuff, roundly ignored by all. The real performance was in the back, and it had escalated to the banging and yelling stage. ‘So, you won’t work, after all, I have done for you! BAAANG!! Ungrateful wretch, how often have I oiled your gears and greased your pistons? BAAAANG!! Well? Nothing to say? BAAANG!! You heap of scrap metal!! Your mother was a broken-down tractor, and your father belonged in the Agricultural Museum!!!’ 

The Red Army 

The glorious Red army had come to deliver us from the perils of capitalism, but they were not going to have an easy time of it. This same army in a previous generation had been greeted as saviours after they’d swept back the Nazis like a tide of sewage. Here in Pilsen though, it was General Patton who’d disobeyed orders and rolled in – so the Russians weren’t as popular as they’d have liked. The helicopter was still stammering about out there and appeared to be dropping leaflets.

My mother came out, and we went down to the park. Our glorious allies had moved in with their big toys, planning to stay awhile, and none of us had any say in it. A bit later, we wandered to the main square, the main attraction of the day. It was an angry ocean of shouts and screams, people surging and banging fists on a couple of stranded tanks. Some tactical genius had decreed the cathedral was a hotbed of capitalist insurgents, with the cannons of the tanks pointed that way. The crowd grew ugly, pounding on the hatches and turrets. Someone had even climbed up and, stuffed toilet paper in the cannons, the soldiers cowering inside, not daring to show their faces.

I saw the old photographs again recently, shouting faces and clenched fists, and the tank-commander sticking out of the turret, his arms in a helpless shrug. He is holding out a crumpled map as if beseeching the crowd to help him find his way. They’d been lied to collectively, you see, told they were on tactical manoeuvres in Hungary. 

We are all lost, and the strings get pulled every which way. 

I Had A Dream or Two 

This whole business of writing a poem, it’s just a lot of work – not unlike taking a large rock and hitting it with a sledge-hammer. 

One time out of a hundred, you will get a clear, beautiful ringing tone, that only you can hear. Mostly, it just shatters into smaller rocks. 

The point is to persist. And then you get gravel, then coarse sand, and then you learn to melt the sand into glass – and you make a tiny teardrop that captures the whole world and more —and then you drop this on the hard ground. 

The note you will hear is familiar. It’s the second time you’ve heard it so far. And if you’re lucky, the teardrop will not shatter, but only crack, with a strangely delicate spiderweb pattern. And that’s your poem. 

Now pick up that sledge-hammer again, there are plenty more rocks to bust. 

No Other Feet 

It was the music that drew me in – a liquid, swinging, sparkling freshet that comes and goes, teasing and playful, sometimes close, other times further away. Past the Leviathan then, over the next little rise and…, there’s a vast building of some sort to be explored, storied and full of courtyards, leaning over a hill in some fresh, breathing morning – so I go at it, staggering. 

Looking down, I see my shoes are not just on the wrong feet but mismatched as well. So I sit in a grey corridor, swapping them over…uncovering odd socks underneath – one a rainbow with sparkling stars, the other a well-darned old army sock, both only similar in their scruffy state – but changing the shoes over has only made things worse. Back to abnormal, then, and I adjust my motley apparel and green headscarf and shuffle off the same as before, up a dingy staircase, looking over a cluttered stairwell full of false limbs, campaign slogans and other such prostheses. 

The music comes and goes again, bubbling away to the right, then left. The stairs end in a landing, and a classroom door bursts open, flooding with giggling children, running past me, all wearing paper-sack costumes of bees and butterflies, a snatch of a mighty symphony, and they’re off, down the next corridor and leaping away someplace, capering and whinnying.

I come out next into a workshop of some kind – it’s a crowded cobbler’s shop, all banging away furiously and then, they stop one by one as they spot me, ogling my odd footwear greedily. I notice the wicked gleam in their eyes and pick up speed, finally bolting out the door and outside. 

Oh, how they all crowd in the doorway, yowling unhappily, waving their stumps and flashing their mad eyes and gnashing their pointy little teeth! 

I run towards a nearby hill, and see a crouching couple of figures, looks like the Usual Gang, pointing their cameras at something out of sight.’ Nukkin here!’ and one of them shows me a camera – and in there are vast dancing animals, galumphing and braying joyously in the sun….’ Brontotheriums, no rats here, dude’ says the voice of Turbid, and the crazy music tinkles again nearby, off to the left.

I look at where the cameras are pointing, and see only an ant’s nest…..but then; it’s the music again – back inside the building again, this time up the top somewhere, looking down at the giddying heights – and opening the nearby door, I finally find what I’m after. 

There they all are, banging that familiar molten glass joy of BEMBEMBEMBEMBOMBOMBOMBOMBOMBEMBEMBEM and clattering excitedly RANKLRANKLRANKL with flutes coming in to admonish them to calm down TWOOOEEEUUHAAATWOOOOEEEUUUHAA and I know I’m home at last because they are all wearing odd shoes. 

On the wrong feet! 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:

Photos, poems and text by Ivan Rehorek except as otherwise indicated.