Viliam Klimáček - Cosmonauts' Square • Generation Ю

Viliam Klimáček - Cosmonauts' Square • Generation Ю

There is a tendency, instilled by the media, to encourage the mindset that once a news item has completed in the telling – a war, say, or a natural disaster, or a revolution, or even just a sensationalist report concerning a shoddy mechanic – then it has completed in the being, as well. But of course this is incorrect, for life goes on for the people affected even if they are no longer the focus of newspapers and televisions. One thinks of Egypt as a current example, where already the Western media is turning its attention away to other matters and other places, while now, more than ever, matters are changing by the hour, and a whole people's lives have changed.

Or consider any one of the many nations affected by the collapse of the Soviet Union during the later part of the twentieth century. A great tyranny had been defeated, but what of the aftermath? What of its effect on the men, women and families who were simply living their lives, such as they were? Viliam Klimáček's short story, Cosmonauts' Square • Generation Ю presents a family from Veľké Roje, and in particular, two of the men, who have had their lives drastically shift since the Velvet Revolution. Maroš, the centre of the family, has been made redundant and now makes a living (such as it is) engaged in petty extortion. Šani, his father, builds rocket ships which succeed only in killing the small animals he is determined to place in the “cabin” of the rocket. Both men are rudderless, their sense of purpose lost now that the iron grip on their country has weakened and they are forced to engage with their lives on their own terms.

It is curious to note that Klimáček is not supportive of a return to Soviet-rule, but nor is he enamoured with Europe's sudden attraction to American values. His characters neither appreciate the time from which they have emerged and the fact that they have emerged, or the sudden “stitching together” of Europe through vast construction projects. They can't, and the answer is as simple as it is unsolvable – they no longer have a purpose.

Klimáček's story opens on “Wednesday, Early Morning” with Maroš sitting atop his Soviet-era bicycle, near the factory where he once worked, as he waits for a car to drive by. He has everything ready – the fake blood, the scuffed and torn pants, the hangdog expression. Now it's simply a matter of waiting to find a poor sap who can be convinced they have just hit him with their vehicle. But first, the factory:

the metal gate with its welded D*R*E*V*O*Č*A*S sign, whose letters had once been separated by red stars, now only rusty. Only last month the company had employed him, but the coffee tables of pale walnut that always looked as if water had been spilled on them, or the mini-bars with protruding doors were so hideous, that not even their Belorussian partner would take them any longer. Maroš had been one of the first to be made redundant.

As noted above, he has only recently lost his job, but his prospects are so dim he has been forced into a life of petty crime. Klimáček's Maroš accepts his fate, and though he grumbles, he makes little effort to change it. At one stage, Klimáček allows the city in which Maroš and his family lives the significance of a “grain of pollen” - how small, then, is Maroš? And he knows it.

Maroš added sadistically, "I've got a wife and child, but you obviously don't care, if you bloody well tear along at a hundred and ten!"
"We'll bandage it up…" the driver said in a shaky voice, pulling out an immaculate first-aid kit.
With trembling hands she unscrewed a bottle of tincture.
Maroš scornfully snatched the plastic box from her hands and hurriedly bandaged his knee. "The doctor will make me stay home for a week. I shall lose my job!"
"I'd pay you compensation," the woman reached into her handbag.
That was just what he had been waiting for. It was a moment worthy of organ music, when all the stops are pulled out and, to the thunder of pipes, from behind a cloud instead of God's son and the Holy Ghost the state's banknotes appear: Hlinka and Štefánik, with the signature of the governor of the national bank forming a filigree decoration around them.
Maroš blissfully half-closed his eyes.

And this is the man he has been reduced to. He would put himself in harm's way for the smallest of banknotes – what joy when they are larger! The woman, though uncertain, hands him the money and Maroš, untroubled by conscience, scurries away to prepare for the next car. Consider the danger of such a “day's work”, and then consider that this man feels he has to do this because he can't find anywhere else to work. He has been reduced, his life's potential leeched away by the forces of history.

John Merriman, Professor of French and European history at Yale, often quotes Charles Tilly, who said that, “It is bitter hard to write the history of remainders.” Part of the reason stems from the fact that these, virtually by definition, slip through the cracks and are forgotten, first by their nation, then the outside world, and finally by history itself. There are more untold stories of groups, movements, peoples and events than there will ever be written.

Klimáček knows this, too, though he extends the concept to include the whole of Slovakia:

It is probable that few people believed there could be a repetition on the continent of Europe of the miracle of the melting pot, which centuries before had united the nations emigrating to the territory of North America into a compact formation of one body and one mind, thus creating the most maligned letters of the alphabet in history – the twenty-first, nineteenth and first – that is, the USA.
In spite of these doubts, it was, however, certain that nothing better could happen to little Slovakia than to be stitched onto another piece of Europe that had created such wonderful things as Saint Peter's Basilica, psychoanalysis and the film The Yellow Submarine.

The nation will only be able to make itself meaningful by attaching its economy and people's to the achievements of the “better” countries – the United Kingdom, Austria, Italy, and so on. “Little Slovakia” is small enough to be swept along in the currents of other nations, so where, then, does that leave a solitary man in Slovakia? Smaller again, and more apt to be swept up? Yes.

Standing out like motley patches on a velvet coat, the new countries of the Union tried to keep their dignity in the emerging alliance, whose only clearly visible ideal was the common market. Along with an unconvincingly declared solidarity of the more powerful with the weaker. The inhabitants of the patches were well aware that at first Old Europe would show the world only that side of the coat where their gaudy blotch could not be seen, and therefore did not get any more excited than usual.

No doubt the “gaudy blotch” includes the likes of Maroš and his ilk.

The final third of the story falls under the heading of, “Later Wednesday Morning”. In this section Maroš participates, but mostly as an observer. Instead, the focus is on his father, Šani, who spends his days building rockets that don't work for reasons that aren't provided. This section provides a multiplicative effect on the first, showing further the rudderless incoherency of the generation above Maroš, a group even less capable of coping with the tectonic shifts of the 1980s and 90s. Where Maroš was believable and sympathetic in his despicable acts,Šani is a caricature, written too strong and emphasised too greatly. He's a joke, to his family, to himself, to Slovakia, and as presented, to us:

That maniac in his fortified garden was no doubt testing another of his inventions. The last device, a pocket flame gun for liquidating wasps' nests, which worked on the basis of processed petrol, which Šani had distilled, unaware that he had produced something like napalm, had been confiscated by the police after he had set fire to a wooden fence, next to which the unfortunate wasps had built a temporary home.

The effect, however, is to refine our understanding of Maroš and of Slovakia itself. Klimáček returns often to the concept of Slovakia being “stitched” on to Europe in an effort to – what? He doesn't know, and neither do his characters. But it's happening nonetheless, this steady development of cities, roads and mines. The country is becoming integrated without actually taking the time to understand itself, with the result that the weaker people - Maroš, Šani, and who knows how many unnamed others – are nothing but pollen, caught up in winds coming from all different directions, unable to control their fate in any meaningful sense.

The split in Klimáček's story mirrors the split in its title, and it reinforces the author's thematic concerns regarding his nation. It's not a sad tale, though it's message is, and it is, perhaps, most fitting to end with a quote from the story itself, taken midway, which is to say, before Šani's story and after Maroš', when Klimáček extends his thinking from the two men to the town in which they live. He sums up the fate of his characters, the town, and Slovakia when he writes:
Veľké Roje was a town that history avoided.

Cosmonauts' Square • Generation Ю by Viliam Klimáček is a short story published in Blesok, an online Macedonian magazine which seeks to "present Macedonia to the world". You can read Cosmonauts' Square • Generation Ю here.

See Also

Index of titles published by Blesok under review

Index of short stories under review