Divadlo
by David Fromm
In Prague, in winter, the sky hangs low and smells of coal. Older people walk downtown with kerchiefs across their mouths like bandits. Younger people make out heavily on subway escalators, hands under skirts as they descend.
I am invisible. It is great and harrowing to be invisible.
The streets are made of cobblestones. Car tires sound like rain on a tent. Some days I don’t speak to anyone, just walk around, taking pictures of things. Ride the subway out to Andel, where the walls are covered with Soviet-era murals. Big men with scythes and women in wheat fields. Skulk across Kampa Island, tell the snapping black-billed swans I’ll be back after I learn the Czech word for bread.
It’s chleb. Don't tell the swans.
There’s a girl, but she’s gone home to Gulfport, to its sticky heat and rising rivers. We won’t meet again, because I am invisible. I have a heavy coat, and it has a hood.
Stare Mesto is the old town, full of old people. They’re invisible, too. Invisible people can see each other. At the theatre, I get off the tram and spot one. A babushka. She’s got her back to me. She’s peering around the corner of a building, looking down the sidewalk for some unseen hand. I have learned the Czech word for theatre: it is divadlo.
This is a picture I will send to my girl back in Gulfport, the picture of the old woman peeking around a corner. It will make her smile, maybe.
I walk down the street, passing the old woman. She is clucking softly to herself. At the corner, I duck behind and affix the telephoto lens to my camera. In it, the street condenses. Things move fast, washing across the lens. I find the old woman in the viewfinder. Half her face around the corner, eyes cloudy with dementia. Searching the careless street for ghosts. Then she looks right at me, and smiles, and sees one.
Dave Fromm lives and writes in Southern California. He is a native of Western Massachusetts and spent one great season in the mid-1990s playing basketball for a Czech club in Prague. He can be reached here.