A FEMINIST AND POSTMODERNITY (cont''d from previous page)

The story started in fact when we were at the military camp: myself,

Zaichik, Zombi and Boss, and they decided to go afterwards to the youth camp in Russia and paid the money, while I was left out, even though I could join them if I wanted, but I didn�t because of some reason, and then immediately after that I learned that Zaichik learned that Dasha was going to arrive.

Zaichik hated his father, Zombi hated his mother, and I knew they were from unsuccessful families: that is how I explained their cruelty and strangeness. I will tell the story of each one of them at some point, because I live with them all my life. For a while we lost touch but now we live all together and work all together. That is funny and strange.

Our military service was mild. Between the 4th and the 5th grade in the university we would go to a camp for 1.5 months to become lieutenants. Here I drank serious fruit home-made vodka for the first time and became ill. Here I played pocker and lost 15 rubles. Here the tanks were broken and wouldn�t run, and we relised that the Soviet army was over. Here I had to run from one garrison to the other, to stand in a range when the control officers arrived, because some of my friends had run away to the city and I was needed to make up for the numbers. I would stand in one range in one garrison and then run through the backyard to the other one�while the official delegation walked slowly. I would take off my glasses and stand again in a range of other soldiers for the official delegation to count me in the second time rather than only once. Here a retired general�my father�s friend�the guy who took over Prague in the Second World War�arrived to ask if everything was OK with me, and my commander�a mere colonel, became agitated and upset with me and told me afterwards that I could have told him in advance that a general was expected to arrive. But I couldn�t because I didn�t know myself that my father would bring him over. He was a nice little guy who was then the director of the War Museum, situated in the piedestal of the big statue of Mother Pafnutia, the so-called Monument. Next to the Monument, a few broken tanks and a Katiusha were placed, on which children would play and I was playing when I was little. The Monument, another high point in the city in addition to the �night genocide�, surrounded by the main amusement park, was itself a big tall woman with a sword, and she was put there in 1959 after the previous monument�that of the Moustached Cat, was taken off. The previous monument lied in an empty place behind the city, it was big and after the Soviet Union collapsed, people cut it to pieces and sold to the country of Uran, because Uran needed scrap metal and would pay money for it.

Some funny things happened during our �as if� military service there and some sad things, but that is another story. By the end of the service, a keygeebee guy arrived and asked for an interview every other student in my class�offering them to go and work at keygeebee�everybody except for me. Perhaps my file already said that I couldn�t keep a secret, or I was from a wrong family. They didn�t even bother to interview me, and I didn�t know if I should be proud or upset.

If I wouldn�t connect Helena�s story to Dasha�s story, perhaps I would connect our military service with Dasha�s story. At least that was my old plan.

Later on, the story was going to be slightly different. After I met Helena, the story was going to be about Prague and the way people get connected via that royal city of love. I told many different versions of that story to many women, and now you are reading this, as well. I told it to Helena, and I told it to Natali, and I told it to the Belliqueuse, and I told it to Magdalena. Belliqueuse looked slightly like Dasha, that is why I told her that story. Their breasts were similar, and I took her out to Pafnutia and we went to some of those places we went with Dasha. That was 17 years after our meeting with Dasha. I was still the same little boy, just having no problem whatsoever with ambivalenting anybody ever anymore.

I told this story to Magdalena, because once I said angrily: �Jezhish Maria!�, and she asked me: �How do you know that expression?� I told her that I learned it from Dasha, who was a Morav leaving in Bratislava, studying to be a nurse, Dagmar Prokeshova, who knew perfect English even then. I also learned some Latin from Dasha, like the expression Mea Culpa, because she was also Catholic, just like Magdalena. I told Magdalena I learned from Dasha to make a phone call and to say �Hello, this is Pafnut speaking! May I talk to �?� I did so when I would call Dasha�s aunt. I always do so while calling a woman if the phone picks up somebody else. But I never had a chance to say these simple words to Magdalena�s aunt, granma, mother, father or sister. Perhaps because mobile phones were plenty when our story with Magdalena happened, and everybody had a phone. Or perhaps for another reason.

So I didn�t know what to do with the story of Helena and Jack. I wrote it down in America when I found a girl I coveted and decided to catch her with that story, but she only half-yielded (kisses and nothing else). Then I kept it for those girls whom I would catch and make love to and macdonalds in English�that would happen if they didn�t know Russian or Pafnutian or didn�t know them enough to enjoy reading my stuff and making love to me in those languages. But one story seemed to be enough for English language girls, particularly because it was complemented with tonnes of emails back and forth.

So no opportunity would present itself to write down the story of Dasha and me. I was too lazy to write it down for no reason at all, with no English-reading girls around to be hit at with my writing. I was postponing it all the time, and finally today I sat down and did it, and I hope the two stories go together and do become something, perhaps they speak with each other, like the stories of a woman and a man, stories of the 1000 and 1 night, stories about Pechorin, and some of the interwoven stories of Nabokov and even Kundera, the way he writes about all these lovers and vystupanastuping and stuff.

So if you are that English-reading girl for whom I should have written this please give me a call. Or if you are Dagmar Prokeshova�not a girl, of course, a mature woman in your mid-40s, or Helena, full name Yelena Cherniavskaya, same age as Dasha, or Jack from the other world, or the driver who tried to kill him, or the girl in Ohio who was teaching me English and whom I gave this story to read first in 1993, or the girl from Barcelona who was writing a dissertation about Marquez in Ohio and whom I gave it to read second, or Malcolm Bradbury�please give me a call. It does not make a sense to mention Magdalena here as well, because she knows that she can call me anyway, I don�t change my darn mobile phone number for three years for her to call me if she feels like that, but of course she wont. Maybe then her sister, Katerinka can call me, the one who sleeps with airplanes? I will say to her Ahoy and after we have a chat, I will say to her Nashledano. I am a nice guy, I know what to say to whom.

END