This is just a quickie based on Bohumil Hrabal's book 'Too loud a solitude' (A very good book in my opinion). This is entirely from Hanta's point of view. Enjoy.
I can't believe it. In all my years, I never would have thought they'd get rid of me. After everything I've done. How am I supposed to live now?! Am I to become a pauper! It's not fair on me for them to just replace me with two younger men who happen to be quicker and can get the work done faster. 'Out with the old and in with the new'. That's all they care about, the bastards! 'Keep things going and don't worry about any dead weights'.
So that was it earlier today and here I am now, sitting on my apartment's bed with a bottle of whiskey, drinking away my sorrows. Another swig and I cough disgustedly for the umpteenth time. I deserve better than this! I've done so much for the wider intellectual community; I've saved countless books from that infernal machine that chewed up paper as if they were biscuits for breakfast. Thousands upon thousands of words; the works of three millennia plus turned to dust in the blink of an eye. But I saved many of them, if not physically then within the confines of my brain. Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophical works; the writings of Aristotle, Plato and Demosthenes; Hegel's philosophy; the Bible, the Talmud, even the bloody Quran, I saved all of it!
And what do I get in return? I look at the whiskey bottle and down another load of it, uncaring that a bit of it spills onto my top, filling the air with a bad smell of alcohol.
I get nothing! Another gulp of whiskey to sooth the throat, but really it just frustrates me even more. The empty bottle of Jack Daniels on the floor next to the bed is depressingly mocking too. What use am I?
Oh great, now I'm starting to have self-doubt. Wonderful.
But I suppose … Really, was I just being naïve? Was I being myopic in the face of imminent change considering the type of government we lived under? Was I simply a fox caring for its cub and ignorant that its time could come any day?
Probably. After all, it is Czechoslovakia I am in and it's been a tough fifty five odd years since we became out own country. I wasn't born at the time, not until the late twenties. Or was it the early thirties? Bah, now the drink is making me forget things about myself! Brilliant, what a drunkard I have become! But it does make me think about what we've had to go through. We have a tough first twenty years after the First World War; then lose everything to Hitler and the Nazis for another six and just when it looks as though we are about to be free and have our own state back again, we are lumbered with the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union. Hard line communism. I was a lot younger back then and knew, as did many others, that not everyone was going to be happy about that, whether here or abroad across Eastern Europe.
And wasn't I right. Hungary kicks off in '56 to establish a western style democracy, and the Pact goes in, Czechoslovakia included, though really we were all doing so under orders from Moscow, and end up showing the world we won't stand for any different form of government in the Eastern Bloc. Part of me thought, and still does think: What were they hoping to gain?! Was it the luck Poland had before them? Or were they just literally playing the madmen's game and hoping for the best? Who knows.
All I knew then was that it would not be the last, and twelve years later history repeated itself. Well, mostly. We had tried to build a more relaxed form of communism; still be part of the Eastern Bloc but just doing it the way we wanted to do it. And what happens? If, dear readers, you guessed the Soviets step in to sort us out, you're right. I myself never took part in any demonstration or anything like that but I wished those who did luck and was so crushed to see what they worked for be torn apart by the new bureaucracy set up to keep us under an iron fisted rule. Their philosophy was: Out with the new and in with the old.
That may sound hypocritical with what I said earlier, but if you understand that the 'new' had to be appraised and liked by the Soviets and their puppets then it's not so much contradictory as it is eye-opening and truthful.
One more mouthful of whiskey and, oh no, I've emptied the entire bottle. It'll go on the floor where it belongs but it does make me think where I'm going now. What use am I? Would anyone want me? A drunk who's spent years destroying some of the most prized works written by man and countless more unknown? I'd be surprised if even primary education would want someone like me, let alone anyone in higher education or even in blue collar work.
As I said when you first started reading this, 'Out with the old; in with the new.' How ironic that was played out with me. I'm the Dubcek in this case and my boss was the Soviet Union with the two new 'apprentices' (I'd rather call them harsher words but such things I will keep to myself) being his stooges to keep things going and even increase the rate at which the words of the past are destroyed.
So where does that leave me? What use am I now?
Y'know, I think I'm beginning to further understand why people like Seneca and Piso opened their veins when faced with such overwhelming odds of opposition and a lack of confidence or face on their part. I thought I did know this through and through before but now … Now that I really look on it, digest it and process it. I really do understand why they did it.
Maybe … Maybe that's what I should do. I'm of no use anymore.
My in depth knowledge of the Talmud; Schopenhauer; the Bible; Quran, Kant and everything else is going to be useless to me and not what anyone else is looking for, especially in a drunkard like me. My age doesn't help either. As far as employers are concerned, I'm just a drunk old fart waiting to be put away in some home. (If Stalin were here, he'd be offering me a permanent 'holiday' in Siberia free of charge!) Personally, not my cup of tea.
The whiskey bottle looks as inviting as ever now, not because of what it contains as there is nothing left but of the potential it could have in me doing a Seneca. Huh, at least I would go out honourably. Too bad he's not here with me; someone to sympathise and end it all is really something I want right about now.
Shame. I never would get to finish that copy of H.G Wells' War of the Worlds I found the other day hidden in a pile of used office papers. I could really use Martian assistance now to get rid of Manca right about now. Or at least vaporise me surrounded by what I've been saving for so long. At least then I would have a use as target practice for invaders.
How amazing that would be. Not.
How did it all come to this?