Coffee Grinder - Circus (2.)

I rode with my mare Korsika in the evening,

the air smelled of summer, the forests glowed with golden pearls.

I rode with my mare Korsika in the evening,

happiness danced with us in a tight embrace.

The heat of crazy joy, the pounding of young hooves,

we rode through the soft grass without a trace,

at dusk, weary from the beauty of long journeys

we silently marveled at the magic of the first stars.

She said goodbye to me with a quiet, gentle neigh.

“I'll be back, my Korsika, at dawn.”

The night came when they took Korsika away from me,

the sun was still sleeping in crimson pillows,

the night came when they took Korsika away from me,

a gray creature stroked her cheeks with a cold hand.

Alone, I walk through the countryside on rainy days,

hiding my troubled heart under a golden umbrella,

on clear nights I raise my eyes to the sky,

the constellations on the other side of the night dance with happiness,

with them the mare Korsika, there on the distant plains.

I will come again, my Korsika, at dawn...

 

 

Cirkus

 

I woke up alone in a vast meadow. It was cold and cloudy. Somewhere in the distance, I saw a procession, apparently a masquerade. The wild and perhaps unnaturally cheerful music played by the procession reached my ears. I remembered fragments of what had happened. The procession was getting closer.

The procession drew nearer, and I realized that it was not a masquerade but a circus. I saw a beautiful and flexible snake woman, a lion tamer, and a sad-eyed horsewoman who rode past me on a white horse. When the clowns and jugglers approached, they took off their white masks with broad smiles for a split second. The tormented faces hidden under the masks sent a chill down my spine. At the very end of the parade walked a huge black cat. Far behind the parade, the circus director walked with a steady and dignified gait. I later learned that he was Mr. Jsoucí.

The horse rider performed a short routine on the meadow and rode up to me. She jumped off her horse and gave me a warm hug.
“Welcome among us, Kačenka.”
“How do you know my name?” I asked, surprised that a girl I had never seen before in my life acted as if we had known each other forever. Something wasn't right.
“Oh, please,” she laughed with a pleasant, ringing laugh and waved her hand as if it didn't matter. 
“I'm Valérie, in case you didn't know, like you didn't know.”
One of the clowns came running up to us with feigned enthusiasm.
“And this is Mr. Tulipán. The best clown in our gang. He's good at comedy, isn't he?”
Tulipán laughed and immediately performed a few tricks.
“Tulipán is his stage name, of course,” Valérie revealed.

I looked at the girl and she seemed familiar. I wondered if we had met somewhere in the past—she treated me like an old friend. She seemed nice. Her raven hair was casually pinned back with a small clip, her clear, pure gaze came from crystal-blue eyes, her features were delicate, and her simple white dress emphasized her slender figure. She looked like a heroine from an old novel, with some of that sad charm that poets love to write about.
“Where do you know me from?” I asked again, confused by everything I had been allowed to experience in the last few minutes.

She didn't answer. She just smiled at me silently for a few seconds. Maybe she hadn't heard my question, maybe she didn't want to answer, maybe it didn't even matter. She was just happy that I was with her. Meanwhile, the circus performers were preparing for their grand performance in the meadow.

 

 

A performance called life

 

Suddenly, crowds of people poured into the meadow from all directions. Perhaps they knew that a performance was about to take place, or perhaps it was a regular ritual in this strange country where I found myself under unusual circumstances. People settled into a semicircle around a makeshift stage, above which a colorful tent was already rising. Valerie leaned toward me.

 

“I won't keep you any longer,” she said. “We'll talk later. You'd better find a place while there are still good ones available.” With a ringing laugh, she mounted her white horse and rode away.

A moment later, the circus director himself appeared on stage to welcome the audience with a warm speech and introduce the upcoming performances. The first act was a cheerful performance by two jugglers, which put the audience in a good mood. This was followed by a short skit and then a song performed by Tulipán the clown. The song, although cheerful, paradoxically made me think about my own life.

 

Tulipán sang about people who don't know how to enjoy themselves, take life too seriously, and worry unnecessarily about things that don't need to be addressed yet. I recognized myself a little in the lyrics, and perhaps this contributed to the fact that each subsequent act seemed more and more like an allegory of human life.

When the masked wild animal tamer entered the stage, he performed a spectacular act that was met with thunderous applause. As he took his bow, the circus director pulled the mask from his face. The tamer looked out at the audience with tear-filled eyes. There was an emptiness in his gaze that sent shivers down my spine.

 

The indescribable fear I felt when I looked at the tormented circus performer was overshadowed by the impressions from the other acts, most of which were very successful and entertaining. Finally, as the highlight of the evening, Mr. Jsoucí introduced the beautiful horsewoman Valérie with her mare Korsika. Several clowns, led by Mr. Tulipán, played a festive fanfare on their trumpets, and Valérie and Korsika elegantly entered the stage. Valérie smiled radiantly. It seemed to me that she recognized me among the audience and was looking directly at me. She turned to Korsika, who returned her gaze. Valérie became serious, swung herself lightly into the saddle, and began a breathtaking dance. I couldn't take my eyes off the beauty of it.

 

Valérie and Korsika knew every step, every slightest movement, and were perfectly in tune with each other. I had never seen such harmony between two beings before. When the ride ended, Valérie, sitting on Korsika, bowed deeply and with a gentle gesture signaled to the other circus performers to give their final thanks, and it flashed through my mind that this was exactly what true friendship should look like.

 

 

Valérie

 

The performance ended and the artists received long applause. They were called back to the stage several times to thank the audience. Finally, they decided to give one more small encore – a clown show and a performance by a horse rider. I watched Valérie's every move again; she and her mare Korsika were a truly well-coordinated pair. I admired them both silently.

After thunderous applause, the performance was finally over. Valerie ran backstage with Corsica, only to reappear a few minutes later, beaming, and standing next to me.

 

“You were amazing,” I gasped.

I was still amazed at how much beauty a person (and indeed an animal) can convey with enough diligence, patience, and above all enthusiasm. Valérie had all of that.

“Thanks,” she replied and smiled even more. “I've always wanted to be an actress or a cabaret artist.” Her eyes sparkled with enthusiasm.

But then she became sad.

 

“But I wasn't allowed to.” There was a short pause, and the girl stood there for a moment, looking at me with her big, sad eyes. Then she ran outside and started dancing across the meadow. The clouds had disappeared, and the evening sun was pleasantly warm. If I had to guess the season, I would have said it was early summer.

“But now I'm here!” she cried happily. “And here I can do anything I want!”

I watched her, beautiful, light-footed, dancing, and I envied her silently. She must have understood my thoughts, because she ran over and took my hand with a cheerful giggle.

 

“You can, too! Come on, I have an idea!”

I ran with her through the soft summer grass and felt unusually happy. She led me behind the big top, where Korsika stood in a small stable. It seemed to me that she was smiling at me. Valérie untied her, patted her neck, and saddled her.

“Let's give Kačenka a ride, shall we?” she said kindly. “Be careful of her.”

Then she turned to me.

“Have you ever ridden a horse?”

“Yes. At my grandmother's, of course. There's been a riding school in the next village for a long time. Milena and I used to go there to look at the horses. Sometimes they let us ride them."

“You'll have to tell me about it,” Valérie urged me as she helped me into the saddle. “But now let's go!”

She sat down in front of me and told me to hold on tight. Korsika broke into a trot.

 

I don't know how long we rode, I don't know how far we rode, but when we jumped down in a secluded spot, pleasantly tired, into the soft tall grass and looked up at the sky, we noticed the first stars. Korsika ran off. Valérie watched her silently for a moment, then lay down calmly on the green carpet.

“Don't worry, she'll find her way,” she added by way of explanation when she saw my unease at Valeria's departure. “She knows this place by heart.”

“Here you are in a place where there are no more obligations,” Valérie continued after a short pause. "Here you don't have to, here you just want to. And what you want, you do. And there is no pain, sadness or anger here. People love each other here.“

I didn't understand. Her words confused me more and more.

”So where am I?“ I asked. She waved her hand.

”Does it matter? Call it a meadow, call it paradise, hell, a circus..." She started laughing. “In any case, this is where people usually go after death.”

That last sentence stopped me in my tracks.

“So you're saying that I'm... that I'm dead?!”

 

Then I thought that if I really was dead, it wasn't as bad as I had always imagined.

Valérie, lying in the grass, shrugged her shoulders several times in quick succession. Her slender arms comically swayed the blades of grass surrounding her.

“How should I know? Maybe you're dead, maybe you're not... I don't know how you got here. Anyway, I'm glad we met.”

So I told her everything that had happened before my journey to this strange place where time didn't exist. About Easter in our village, about the coffee grinder, and about Milena, whom I had left behind in our world.

“Don't worry about her,” Valérie said reassuringly. " Time passes differently here than it does in your world. Milena won't even know you were here unless you tell her yourself."

 

Valerie was far more interested in the coffee grinder. She wanted to know everything about it—where it came from, who it belonged to, and above all, why it didn't work. My incomplete answers disappointed her. She looked like a little child who had been deprived of her favorite toy.

“That's a shame,” she replied briefly. “I'd be interested in a grinder like that.”

“But why?” I asked. “It doesn't work!”

“You know, Katka, if it fell into the hands of the person it was originally intended for, maybe it would start working again!”

I didn't understand.

“You mean it was supposed to be a gift for someone...?”

She nodded.

“For someone... who, perhaps, circumstances prevented from ever receiving the gift?” She must have seen that she was confusing me. So she just laughed and said, “You know, that's how life is sometimes.”

 

She didn't mention the grinder for the rest of the evening. On the contrary, she was very interested in my parents and my grandmother. I told her about my early childhood experiences, describing in detail the happy moments I had spent with my parents and grandmother. Valérie didn't seem bored. She listened with interest and enthusiasm to the funny stories from my life.

“They must be wonderful people,” she said afterwards, and there was that strange, charming sadness in her voice again. “It's a shame I never got to know them.”

That night, Valérie and I talked about everything. I even confided in her a secret that only Milena knew. At that time, I had a crush on an older classmate, Milan. I loved him with a platonic love, as pure and devoted as only a fourteen-year-old child can love.

 

He knew nothing about my feelings; in fact, he barely even said hello to me. But at that time, I lived only for him and already considered him my life partner. At the moment, however, Milan was on a month-long language scholarship in England. I already missed him. Every day without him was incredibly long for me at that time.

When I revealed my secret weakness to an older and certainly more experienced beauty queen, she accepted it with great tolerance. She didn't laugh at my naive dreams or dash my vain hopes. She listened to me and seemed to understand. Perhaps she had experienced something similar long ago.

 

“You can't even imagine how painful longing can be sometimes,” she said after a moment. “I understand you completely.”

“Who are you longing for, Valérie?” I asked. Perhaps too boldly, perhaps inappropriately.

But I couldn't help myself. The girl looked so happy! She seemed to have everything she needed. And yet, at certain moments, sadness appeared in her smile, briefly, like a flash of a painful memory. A subtle and elusive sadness.

“I miss my mom,” she whispered rather than said.

 

I encouraged her to tell me about her mother. I wanted to listen to her in return, to allow her to share her pain with me. And she accepted. She began to tell me about her mother. She said she was a very beautiful and very kind woman. She had loved her from the very beginning and wanted to spend as much time as possible with her first daughter.

“But fate didn't allow it,” she smiled, mysteriously, sadly, unhappily. The way we smile at events in which we were deprived of something beautiful, at events that can no longer be undone.

“Did your mother die?”

The question was on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn't bring myself to say it. Valérie, however, as if reading my mind again, responded quickly.

“I know what you're thinking. It was a little different. Your mother stayed in your world, and I was called here.”