The Communist Flat

Last week I was searching for a new flat, so the stories this week are each going to be set in one of the flats I saw. 

The room smelt like it hadn’t been aired since the fall of communism and the furniture looked like it dated back even further. It really was a site to behold, it could have been an exhibit in a museum along with the old woman who’d welcomed them in to the building from the her window overlooking the street. Welcome is probably the wrong word, watched suspiciously was more like it.

The flat had potential, it was spacious and light, in a quiet street, in a pretty good area and the old woman in the front window was a version of neighbourhood watch adding a sense of security. But the furniture!

The sofa’s were a shade of brown that Les could only describe as nicotine cream, he presumed they had been fawn when they had been made but years of wear and tear had created a colour yet to be found on the Dulux colour chart. He ran his hand along them, they had the texture of well worn carpet rather than soft upholstery. Then there was the sideboard that ran the length of the living room, a dark brown imposing edifice with gold lines and golden handles. It was a monster of a thing with a baffling number of doors and draws. Finally there were the fixtures and fittings; the pictures in old fashioned frames, the three ducks up the wall and the faux chandeliers.  

Les wandered into the bedroom and examined the wardrobe, a match for the sideboard in the other room, again running the length of the wall. The mirror was chipped and stained from thousands of reflections. Les sat on the bed; it had looked comfortable and welcoming but in fact it was a hard landing sending a shockwave up his spine. 
He laughed, what else could he do, this was his home for the next 6 weeks and all he could do was live with it.

Les woke early the next morning, he opened the window still trying to air the old place. The sound of a saxophone drifted in on the breeze. Les had a strange urge, an urge to write. He didn't know where it had come from, he'd never written anything before but he had words in his head he needed to get out. He got out a pen and paper and wrote two lines.  He suddenly felt scared, like the lines were subversive in some way, like someone was watching him. He tore the paper out of the notepad and looked for somewhere to hide it. He opened one of the draws in the sideboard and discovered it had a false bottom. He hid the paper and went out to explore his new city.

The next morning was the first day of his new job. Les was up early again, and again he had the urge to write, more words floated round his head eager to escape. He found his piece of paper, read what he had written the day before and added two more lines. Again the prose made him feel uneasy, nervous, paranoid. He hid the paper again before he did the three S’s and headed to work. Two weeks passed with the same routine, the urge to write, the strange feeling of paranoia and the ritual of hiding the paper.

Saturday morning, so far Prague had been good to Les. The flat was more comfortable than he’d first thought, the office was friendly and the beer was out of this world. The city was much more modern and happening than his old communist flat had led him to believe. What’s more Prague had giving him this mysterious urge to write. He sat at his ancient kitchen table drinking Turkish coffee from a chipped china mug. He read what he had written. It was good, wasn't it? He read it again he wasn’t sure where the words had come from but it was good. 
Les wanted to show it to someone but who? There was something about the words, the flat, the old lady that made him think showing it to someone could land him in trouble.

Eventually he decided to show it to Vicky from the office. He liked Vicky, she seemed down to earth, there was something about her that dissipated his paranoia. He invited her for a drink and once in the pub and explained his writing. He didn’t mention the subversiveness.  She smiled and said she wouldn’t mind reading it at all in fact she’d love to.

He made her sit with her back to the wall so no one could read over her shoulder and then watched her open the page and start reading, the first two lines.

"The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything occurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?"

As she was reading he realised it was a mistake, there was something in her eyes that told him she couldn’t be trusted. 

‘Is this some kind of joke?’ she said eventually.

‘No why?’

‘Wait a minute.’

Vicky got her Kindle out and started playing with it, then she turned it round and showed it to Les.

‘Look!’

It was the title page of The Unbearable Lightness of Being by  Milan Kundera

‘And’ said Les, not seeing the connection. He was too ashamed to say he’d never read it.

‘Keep reading.’ said Vicky impatiently. Les did as he was told. His mouth fell open as he read the first two lines.

"The idea of eternal return is a mysterious one, and Nietzsche has often perplexed other philosophers with it: to think that everything occurs as we once experienced it, and that the recurrence itself recurs ad infinitum! What does this mad myth signify?"

Thank you to the people who furnished me with the first two lines from TULB. You know who you are.