Photo: Agáta Bohatá
Doing Time on the Balcony
Stefan heard the creak of the balcony door from the apartment next door and leaned back against the wall.
Those runner beans were a great idea, the old witch can’t see in here anymore. Too bad she’s so loud, yelling like a fishwife on market day. Even though he knew it was coming, his neighbor’s falsetto always hit him like a jolt of electricity.
“Kadlik… hoooome…dinnnneeeeeer!” Then a click of the door handle and Stefan watched little Kadlik make his way home, dragging his feet. It was getting dark.
He lit a cigarette and looked towards the bus stop. He didn’t have to check his watch. He had an internal clock by now. Like a lifer, he smirked at how pathetic he was. Like a lifer who screwed his life up on his own. It seemed so long ago but only yesterday at the same time. What an old cliché. This was exactly what they all used to make fun of and he along with them. They had a great crew – or the Band, as Fred called them. He wanted to be just as cool as Fred, but he was always one step short. And that one step was why he was now sitting on his balcony, the only place where he could be by himself and say fuck it to everything and everyone. And even that wasn’t true. It was different then. It could have been different.
He never admitted it to himself but he envied Fred. He liked him, he enjoyed his stories, his sense of humor and he liked Ester. But he was also jealous of all of it. That’s why he lost it when Jana told him she’d dump Fred because he was “so much smarter and more fun and you’re just… you know… you’re different, better…” It was the first time a girl picked him over Fred so what did it matter that he wasn’t really interested in her. A few days later when he wanted to show off and let Fred know that he was dating Jana, Fred slapped him on the back and started laughing:
“Don’t worry about it, man, that’s totally fine. It was just a fling, a little flirt… I’m happy for ya’! Friends for life, dude!”
He felt a little cheated but wasn’t quite sure by whom. He was angry at Jana, at Fred and he felt like an idiot. And maybe it was out of spite that he ended up staying with Jana. She slowly reeled him in with her comfortable, easy availability, and whenever he felt like backing out, she was waiting around another corner shadowed by Daddy.
Even before Stefan met him, he imagined Daddy as a small fat guy with tiny pig eyes but the real Daddy blew him away. A small, skinny man with slow movements as if he was trying to conserve energy for only what was most important, with an obsessively protective love for his little girl and an office in city administration. A big shot. Stefan tried to look down on him but he was afraid of him. Of his frog-like smile and his fingers, which he always bore into Stefan’s shoulder when he talked to him.
“You know, Daddy’s real fair, he always stands up for everyone who’s being mistreated.”
“You know, Daddy’s amazing, he takes care of so many people and they don’t even know about it. You know – he actually never pulled any strings for me.”
Whenever Jana spoke about Daddy, she always started her sentences with “you know” as if she was ready to defend him against the world. Stefan didn’t argue and tried to avoid conversations about Daddy. It was temporary anyway, he always told himself, because he was sure he was gonna break up with Jana anyway. He didn’t know how, exactly, or when, but it would happen one way or another, that was for sure.
He started to get annoyed by how Jana was always lurking behind him like a shadow and he didn’t like going out with other people with her tagging along. He’d been neglecting the Band quite a bit, so he was surprised to find Fred waiting for him in front of his building. He said they should go get a beer. Just the two of them.
They slipped into a suburban dive bar and sat down in the empty hall. It was freezing cold. The bartender only had the heat on by the bar up front but Fred wanted them to have privacy. He was fiddling with a box of matches and kept tapping the table with a beer coaster. Stefan watched as their frosty breaths condensed and merged into one. Fred lit a cigarette, blew out a puff of smoke that scattered the frozen cloud, and said:
“Ester’s knocked up, dude…”
Stefan never saw Fred so terrified.
“I’m fucked. She won’t get rid of it but I can’t do it, man. I just can’t.”
He was staring at Stefan as if he was expecting him to have a trick up his sleeve that he would pull out to make this mess go away for good. Stefan babbled on about how great Ester was and that everything would turn out OK, and it all sounded so fake and stupid. Then they finished their beers in silence and headed outside. Behind the pub stretched a field blanketed in ashen snow, while a handful of December flakes drifted down lazily from the pale sky above. Fred nodded to Stefan without saying a word and took the shortcut through the field toward the city. Stefan watched him grow smaller and smaller as he walked away, feeling sorry for him. But he also felt a lightness in his chest. Fred, the untouchable, was scared shitless. He didn’t know then that it would be the last time he saw him.
A few months later, Jana hooked her arm through his and started waving enthusiastically in the middle of the street. They ran into Ester. She was pale with a huge belly and it was obvious she was uncomfortable having run into them. Stefan also felt embarrassed but Jana chirped and chattered and told Ester how they were getting married in the spring. And that it’s too bad that Fred emigrated but that Ester’s actually super lucky because at least now she knows what kind of person he really is, right…. She jostled Stefan to knock an agreement out of him. Stefan saw Ester a few more times since then and always thought that he was better than Fred, because he wouldn’t run away. Even though he was afraid. It was perfectly normal for men to have pre-wedding jitters, wasn’t it?
He married Jana in the spring. They only invited close family. Sweeping up the shards from the broken plate for good luck, a sappy speech from Daddy overcome with emotion and a decree for an apartment in an envelope. Even then, Stefan was sure he’d leave Jana one day. Especially since she couldn’t get pregnant. No one could blame me, he told himself often. He was bored and so fed up with her keeping tabs on him all the time. She called him at the publishing house, forced him to pick her up in front of the theater. And then came Magda.
If the bus hadn’t broken down and the driver hadn’t made them get out and wait in the field, they’d have never even met because he was standing right behind the bus driver and she was all the way in the back. It was summer and it felt nice to escape the stuffiness of the bus into the open air and know that he didn’t have to do anything because there was nothing he could do. It was beyond his control. The first thing to come to his mind was that he had an alibi for Jana. Look at how pathetic you’ve become, you idiot, he cursed himself, and once again he promised himself to end it with her. He was filled with anger and determination, and then he saw her.
She was sitting on the grassy knoll, leaning against a stone post with her face turned toward the sun, eyes closed, as if she didn’t care how long she stayed there or whether the farmer driving by in his tractor would call for help. If it weren’t for the anger inside of him he might not have even approached her.
He told her he was married right on their first date and she didn’t care. Magda and their secret morning meet-ups that had him leave the office, calling them a problem with the printers or a book cover photo. Magda, uncomplicated, living day to day, fueled by enjoyment and without a desire to own him. Naked Magda in the ferns by the stream, Magda and he huddled in a barn when it rained and they both smelled like goats after. Jana on the other side of the street and the fright that bolted his feet to the pavement and then when she didn’t notice them, relief that made his heart sway as if it were hanging in a hurricane. That day, he dared to go over to Magda’s little room and made love to her like never before.
He felt free again, as if he had stepped out of dark isolation into the sunlight after an endlessly long time. He longed for his friends again, for weekends spent drinking until dawn. For discussions about books copied ten times over, for Fred’s stories, for his old sweater that smelled like the pub. He was looking forward to removing Jana along with Daddy like a dumb costume while the others would laugh at him like they used to laugh when one of them did something stupid drunk. But everything turned out differently and he couldn’t do anything to prevent it.
“I’m pregnant, Einstein…” Magda told him at the end of the summer. “You need to come with me and appeal to the commission…” She sat calmly in front of him as if this was something she did every other day. He told her so.
“Well, yeah… I’ve been there twice already but they don’t just hand the approvals out…” Stefan heard Jana’s voice in his head: Every slut, every fucking bitch keeps getting an abortion and me… Jana’s voice always broke at that point. Stefan was glad that Jana couldn’t get pregnant, as if it left a backdoor open for him, as if the timing of his departure depended solely on him.
And now look. He finally felt that his life had taken a new direction. Magda and their child. He had reason to start over. He started to convince Magda but she wouldn’t hear of it. Day after day he painted their future together but she just laughed and wouldn’t let him tell Jana.
“This is insane, it’s supposed to be the other way around. You’re supposed to be talking me into telling my wife and I’m supposed to be dragging my feet…” he told her when she forbade him to break their news to the world. He finally managed to convince her. It was actually the doctor who convinced her as she refused to write her another recommendation for the abortion commission.
“I’m screwed without it…” she said angrily full of disappointment and Stefan had the urge to run and kiss the good soul’s hands as well as her stethoscope.
They finally came to an agreement. He’d come clean once the baby was born and then they’d try being together. He was elated. His backdoor flew off its hinges, and only a few months separated him from a brand new life. Magda wasn’t as excited as he was. Her thoughts were simple but they often cut right to the core. Once, she replied to his I-love-you:
“Bullshit, Stef. We were just messing around and having fun. And now you’re just trying to find an excuse to dump your ball and chain.”
Stefan was taken aback at first but then he thought to himself: pregnancy has a weird effect on women and thought about how to get his life back on track. Although on a different track of course.
Magda’s belly was growing, her mood was getting worse and Stefan kept his promise of being careful in front of Jana. It wasn’t so hard because Magda wanted to see him less and less. When they did see each other, sex was replaced by complaints about the pregnancy but he took it in stride and was counting down the days like a soldier before discharge. It was as though the unborn cluster inside of her belly was a new license on his life.
April came. Beautiful, warm, bright. Magda gave birth to a son and Stefan promised to tell Jana everything only once Magda left the hospital.
“I’m not interested in having her barging in here and causing a scene…” she told Stefan and it seemed reasonable enough. He agreed, and the thought of freedom within reach made his head spin.
Jana called him at work two days later and told him to come home straight away. She sounded different and at first Stefan gleefully thought that Daddy finally kicked the bucket. Then he realized that she’d be hysterical if that were true and the hammer of fear started pounding in his head.
“… I’m gonna adopt him or he’ll end up in an orphanage…” Jana ended her monologue. The first thing that crossed Stefan’s mind was that if she acted like this on stage, she’d be a big star. So much hate, such a well-prepared scene. She didn’t tell him how she found out and Stefan didn’t understand why she wanted to adopt his son but he was in too much shock to ask anything.
It was supposed to turn out differently. It was he who was supposed to come home and announce that he was leaving. Instead, she told him that Magda took off across the border and left the kid in the hospital. His get-out-of-jail card was gone. Only he, his son, and Jana were left. She was filled with so much contempt when she told him that she would adopt his child, as if she was slicing his throat open with that noble gesture. Him and Magda named their son Ondra but Jana had him renamed after her to bind him to herself forever.
“I didn’t… I didn’t…” The noise from the apartment next door cut into Stefan’s stream of thought. Kadlik’s wailing was supplemented with double-handed slaps in staccato. Stefan felt as though Kvasilova was hitting him instead. He realized Jana never beat Jan. Instead, she held his son pointed at him like a machine gun, a hostage to her hatred and a constant reminder of his infidelity. Yet, her resentment was invisible to outsiders. She was cold and indifferent to both of them, like a guard before retirement, and Stefan returned her attitude with mock politeness. He performed their obligatory Saturday love-making ritual with the same politeness. Otherwise, they had a quiet household. Even the neighbors had fallen silent now; only the scent of the cigarette smoke that Kvasilová lit, drained from beating Kadlik, hanging in the air.
Stefan sometimes thought about what his life would be like with Magda. He felt sorry for himself and embarrassed at the same time. Especially in front of Jan. That even after the November revolution toppled the old Bolshevik order, he still couldn’t muster the courage to untangle the knot of fear and failure. In the first few years after, he was even afraid of Magda coming back. He was afraid of everything.
Kvasilova went out to the balcony and Stefan squeezed himself into the corner. He quickly put the cigarette out so that the smoke wouldn’t give him away and Kvasilova wouldn’t stick her head in like she did many times before. Ever since Jana got involved in women’s groups and started talking about him wherever she could, he had become a juicy topic for all the old crones in the neighborhood. It occurred to him once again that it was actually good that the old Band is no longer together. Fred, who emigrated, came back to get Ester after the revolution. And what do you know, she packed up and left with him and their daughter to go to Vienna. The others scattered, and those who stayed just kept returning from their trips, only to leave again to go somewhere else. Chained to the balcony by his own misery, he was green with envy.
It was already dark when two yellow beams appeared at the edge of the hill and began to feel their way along the road toward the bus stop. Kvasilova closed the balcony door and Stefan lit another cigarette. The bus opened its doors like a yawn before sleep, exhaling a few passengers into the frosty evening.
The two of them were there too, and Stefan was hit by a long-familiar wave of nausea. Shame mixed with disgust and cowardice, his daily dose of poison. As always, she held Jan by the wrist as if carrying a map of all her troubles. Jana and Jan. His wife and a tiny, timid figure with her name. His and Magda’s son. He threw the cigarette butt into the can and stayed on the balcony even when he heard Jana’s voice in the hallway:
“Go wash your hands. You’ll show me your notebook after dinner…”
SIMONA BOHATÁ spent her adolescence in the working-class Prague neighbourhood of Žižkov, which became the backdrop of her first novel Máňa a my druzí (Máňa and the Rest of Us, 2017). Her third novel Klikař Beny (Lucky Beny, 2021) was nominated for the 2022 Magnesia Litera Award. Her short story “Everyone Has Their Reasons,” translated by Alžběta Belánová, is featured in The Book of Prague (Comma Press, 2023).
About the translator:
ALŽBĚTA BELÁNOVÁ left her native Prague at the age of 12 and lived in the UK and Canada before settling in the US, where she received her English Degree from Rutgers University and the Schaeffer Fellowship in Literary Translation from University of California at Irvine in 2004. Her translations have been featured in literary journals, including Asymptote. She has translated a short story collection and a novel for Seagull Books, both set for release in 2025, and has also contributed translations for Comma Press, the Czech publishing house Motto, as well as other publishers.