In Search of the Essence of Place by Král Petr

Author:Král Petr [Petr, Král]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Autobiography, Biography, Czechoslovakia, Non-Fiction, Personal Memoirs, Philosophy
ISBN: 9781908968272
Google: MROFAAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 1906548870
Publisher: Pushkin Press
Published: 2012-07-25T23:00:00+00:00

10

PARIS

ON HIS FIRST TRIP TO PARIS he has two tasks to accomplish. A natural scout, he wastes no time in scouring the city for likely future landmarks; at a crossroads he is surprised to find that this new and unfamiliar metropolis allows him to put distance between himself and his family house, and rediscover his ill-defined refuges. The other reason for coming is as emissary of a secret society that he and some friends have been involved with for several years, and which is trying to revive its links with a similar organisation in Paris. But the man who arrives at the Gare de l’Est on this September morning is a spokesman with nothing to say, and not just because he doesn’t speak the local language.

Standing at the crossroads, the only breezes he feels—and hears—are the bearers of voices that don’t speak, while the awareness of being at a turning point in several senses makes him more than usually alert to the merest movements, those inaudible intakes of breath that come between two events or passing gestures. But since he too is transformed into a movement, he only recognises himself in his moments of absence, the waking blackouts and ‘blank spots’ that he experiences after the slightest thought or gesture before rising back to the surface, as if from the depths of a bottomless pit which seems to be the only reality he possesses, his worldly life looms up in front of him at the very moment his body and soul abandon him before being dragged into the void. A mischievous little voice inside him says that even if he were desperate enough to commit suicide, he would probably plunge the knife into an empty space … and somehow this idea finds its way into his consciousness, into the gaps between his thoughts, words and deeds.

It is this same emptiness, awash with sunlight streaming between the houses on a long, sloping street that seems to be the only one he can take, which greets him as he walks out of the station. But before the play of his new life can begin, the stage needs to be swept so he can start on a blank page. This becomes even more apparent when, after his first trip on the metro he surfaces in the middle of Pigalle, only to find it empty, and he wonders if he is actually here himself. Beneath the trees on the boulevard there is nothing but silence, the only light comes from lamps outside the entrance to one of the original metro stations, vivid orange flames atop two pale-green, elegantly curved posts; not a soul, just the occasional brusque sound of brooms—the people wielding them are mere silent shapes—which sweep the last few pieces of evidence into the gutter, unwanted. Everything dissolves, his past as well as any memory of the night, even the purplish-blue neon sign that traced a meaningless message in the sky above an unfamiliar railway station somewhere on his nocturnal wanderings. It

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