The House of a Thousand Floors (CEU Press Classics)
The House of
a Thousand Floors
Jan Weiss
Translated from the Czech
by Alexandra Büchler
Central European
University Press
English translation copyright
© 2016 Alexandra Büchler
Published in 2016 by
Central European University Press An imprint of the Central European University Limited Liability Company Nádor utca 11, H-1051 Budapest, Hungary Tel: +36-1-327-3138 or 327-3000
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ISBN 978-963-386-070-0 ISSN 1418-0162
Originally published as Dům o tisíci patrech in 1929 by Melantrich. The translation of this volume is based on the 1964 edition by Naše vojsko.
Copy-editing: Linda Jayne Turner and Robin Wright
The translation of this volume has been supported by the Ministry of Culture of the Czech Republic.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Weiss, Jan. | Büchler, Alexandra, translator. Title: The house of a thousand floors / Jan Weiss ; translated from the Czech by Alexandra Büchler. Other titles: Dům o tisíci patrech. English Description: New York : Central European University Press, 2015. | Series: CEU Press classics Identifiers: LCCN 2015036178| ISBN 9789633860700 (pbk.) | ISBN
9789633860717
(pdf)
Classification: LCC PG5038.W45 D813 2015 | DDC 891.8/635—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015036178
Printed in Hungary by Prime Rate Kft.
Contents
Translator's note
The House of a Thousand Floors
I
II
III
IV
V
VI
VII
VIII
IX
X
XI
XII
XIII
XIV
XV
XVI
XVII
XVIII
XIX
XX
XXI
XXII
XXIII
XXIV
XXV
XXVI
XXVII
XXVIII
XXIX
XXX
XXXI
XXXII
XXXIII
XXXIV
XXXV
XXXVI
XXXVII
XXXVIII
XXXIX
XL
XLI
XLII
XLIII
XLIV
XLV
XLVI
XLVII
XLVIII
Afterword
Translator's note
When I was growing up in Czechoslovakia, Dům o tisíci patrech was one of my favourite books. This remained so long after I emigrated, and I often wondered why it had never been translated into English, since this literary gem had made its way into many other European languages, including French, German, Greek, Italian, Polish, Portuguese and Russian. When I was asked to choose a title to translate for CEUP's modern classics series, I seized the opportunity to give readers around the world access to this major work of modern Czech literature in English.
Translating Dům o tisíci patrech, I was faced with the task of rendering Weiss's highly dramatic, expressionistic style into English, a language which does not easily accommodate stylistic exultation with multiple exclamation marks and dashes. At the risk of being seen as a translator using excessive domestication, I decided to remove a great many of these punctuation marks to make the English translation flow more smoothly.
Switching from the past tense to the present and back again is another characteristic feature of Weiss's style, as is fluctuation between first and third person singular. Both are devices which aim to heighten the dramatic impact of the narrative but could result in some confusion and make following the sequence of tenses in English virtually impossible. Here again, my editors and I agreed that we had to use these stylistic devices sparingly for the sake of clarity and adherence to English grammatical structures.
Characters' names presented another dilemma and, in this case, the decision was to keep the names of various characters and places throughout, without domesticating them in any way; the name of the protagonist Petr Brok (Peter Bullet, Pellet or Shot in English) retains its Czech form, as do the various German, French, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish and Russian personal names, appellations and titles which give the novel its distinctly cosmopolitan flavour.
When it comes to the word central to the entire work, the name of the nightmarish "house of a thousand floors" which in the original is alternately called Mullerdóm — echoing the word for cathedral and the pan-Slavic word for house — and Mullerton, suggesting a phantasmagori-cal vertical "city", we opted for Mullerdom throughout. The suffix means domain, jurisdiction or realm in English rather than house, thus playing with the ending of the word "kingdom", but at the same time nods towards the original use of the word.
Alexandra Büchler
The House of a Thousand Floors
I
It started with a dream · A man on the staircase · The red carpet · Who am I?
It was a terrible dream. A hollow skull filled with darkness and, within the centre, a flickering yellow light. Below, a game of cards is being played, but the cold is such that colours disappear beneath a layer of frost. And then a wide platform, as if suspended in the air — with a row of people lying on it, all lined up on their left sides, warming each other with stiffening knees and frozen laps. If one moves, the entire chain of bodies is set in motion, the S-shaped links become unstuck, the chain is broken as the bodies turn onto the other side. And there they become glued together again, knees bending, laps interlocking. — But no-one is warmed any more. They slowly turn cold, pierced by a long icy skewer...
Suddenly, a gigantic hand seizes the skull with its infernal vision and hurls it into flames. — The skull cracks open! A terrible, unbearable pain — and then — awakening!
A man woke up from a heavy dream. His gaze followed the sloping ceiling. His first thought was: Where am I?
A staircase! The first step, covered with a red carpet, had served as a cushion for his dream. A scarlet hanging rope formed the railing, and, on the other side, a diagonal row of ascending marble cones.
Where am I?
The man sprang up. Up or down?
Up!
Taking the steps two or three at a time. A deserted landing between two floors, with no windows and no doors. And again the red-carpeted staircase. Another floor, blind and deaf, with a white lamp hanging from the ceiling. Red carpet. Up. — The scarlet rope, like an endless snake on his right, and those ascending cones on the left.
When was this going to end? Where were the doors? The man keeps running up. His head is spinning and the scarlet cascade of the staircase is burning into his brain.
Suddenly he stops. Perhaps. perhaps it would be better to run down instead, to go back. No, it's too late. I've come up too far now. Have to keep going.
Another floor! — And another! Can't go on!... One last floor! And another, equally desolate, with its tongue of red carpet hanging out.
His heart cried out, his legs
buckled. No more, impossible to go on. Where am I now...? Who...? I...? Who is I? Who am I?
An astonishing thought! — A surprise! — The man grasped his mind in his hand.
Who am I?
But his mind is silent. He has no memory.
What's my name? — What do I look like? Where have
I come from?. My God, I must have had a name in this world. but what was it. what was it?
The pain boring into his temples when he asks that question. If he remembers, everything will become clear and this staircase will disappear. what was it?
More floors stacked up on top of one another, deaf and blind, each with a sun in the ceiling, an electric globe made of milky glass.
II
A terrifying discovery · Hands · Face? · What was written in the notebook The possibility of being a detective · Princess Tamara
For the second time during that frantic flight up, the man stopped in his tracks. Woe! — Horror! — In the white corner of one of the floors is a small pile of white crumbling bones. A fitfully twisted spine snakes through them like a piece of hose. — And, tossed in the corner, the fragment of a cracked human skull. Above the sad heap of bones, at the height of a kneeling man, initials are carved into the wall — . — and five horizontal lines below the initials.
What did it mean? — Someone had hurtled up this staircase before me... S.M. got as far as here and collapsed. He died on his knees, having carved a sign to mark his grave! Five lines... Had he been lost here for five days? Did he take five hours to die?
The running man shivered in terror. Away! Away from here! But where to? There are only two directions: up or down! — Up, then. Stairs and more stairs. The red carpet pierces through his brain like a hot wire. — When was all this going to end? — Ah, if only I knew who I was! I must remember, despite this pain crushing my temples! — Memory! What happened to my memory? — The past, memories, terrible pain! — Who am I?
Then, suddenly, hands. Yes, these are my hands... and I might remember when I see my face. — White hands with long, narrow fingers, the palms speckled with a pink rash. White coat sleeves, sleeves of a silk shirt, white trousers, white canvas shoes. and my face? How will I recognise myself?
The man covered his face with both hands, wanting to grasp his likeness with the nerve ends in his fingertips, the shape of his face — was it handsome or ugly, old or young?. A nose, mouth, hair — was it black or was it, at the same time, also white?
All of a sudden, his blindly groping right hand seized something hard in the inside pocket of his coat — a small notebook. And, on the first page, in unfamiliar handwriting:
I. Walk through Mullerdom and explore all its floors. Penetrate the bricked-up areas.
II. Export/import company Universe — star travel. Is it a scam?
III. The miraculous metal called solium, used to build spaceships for travel to the stars. Is there any truth in this?
IV. Who is Ohisver Muller? The benefactor of mankind or a vampire? Why is he hiding from the world?
V. Unexplained kidnappings of beautiful women. — Princess Tamara. Where have they all disappeared to?
The man wondered, am I a detective? Are these the tasks I have been charged with? The main points of a problem to be solved? But how can I work if I've lost my memory?!
He continued leafing through the notebook. There! Three small newspaper cuttings have fallen out. The first one contains the following news item:
Escape or kidnapping?
Tonight, Princess Tamara disappeared from her bedroom, together with her companion Ellie. It is suspected that she has been kidnapped and flown to the Isle of Pride, site of the notorious Mullerdom. But we cannot rule out the possibility that she may have run away since even the princess had herself recently become consumed with desire to travel to the stars. At the same time, her jewellery worth five million has gone missing.
The second cutting reads:
Detective expedition
The detective expedition has just returned from Mullerdom with no results. According to information provided by the offices of the Universe Company, the princess and her companion left for star L4 in the Swan Galaxy. It is worth mentioning that the fare for one person to travel to this lucky star is 250 mulldors or 796,000 of our crowns.
And another scrap of paper with a very short item:
The famous detective
Petr Brok
has just been charged with the task of finding the princess.
Finally, on the last pages of the notebook, he finds the following list, written in pencil:
1. Anna Marton, prima ballerina of the National Opera, 24 March.
2. Eva Saratov, model, disappeared from the Artists' Ball minutes after having been declared Queen of the Ball at midnight on 7 April.
3. Luna Kori, banker's daughter, disappeared from the Moria Palace in Venice on 30 July.
4. Sula May, film star, kidnapped from her villa on 8 September.
5. Dora O'Brien, the most beautiful woman in Paris, disappeared from the Bois de Boulogne on 24 October, along with her car.
6. Kaja Barard, actress at the Royal Theatre, disappeared after the first act of the opera The End of the World on 3 December.
III
The secret of the first mirror · The house of a thousand floors · The man who had lost his memory · At last a door in the marble · News about Muller
And there was something else the man found in his breast pocket: a sealed letter addressed to —
He almost broke the seal when he noticed a warning written in red on the back of the envelope:
What did it mean? Am I that detective, Petr Brok? — But his memory is blank and empty, even when a question is asked, there's no reply. As if life had begun with his awakening on the staircase. — And if he insists and tries to remember, a searing pain starts throbbing somewhere in the centre of his brain, like an abscess full of pus. Perhaps I'll find the solution under the seal, he thinks. Perhaps the letter conceals a magic word that will give me back my past, my memories and recollections, my humanity, myself... But where can I find the mirror? — I'll die of exhaustion before I do, of exhaustion, hunger or a broken heart!
In the meantime, there was no choice but to be a detective! Perhaps I was a real detective once! And if I want to be a human being again, I must have a name. It's impossible to live in the world without a name! But the mind refuses to remember like a madman resisting a straitjacket. — Very well, then! — I will be Petr Brok, detective, at least until I remember. I will search for the princess! — Since I have no past, let me at least find a future...
And there is something else hidden in the corner of one of his pockets that Brok had not noticed before: a sheet of paper, folded eight times. Petr Brok felt jubilant: the plan of Mullerdom! The house of a thousand floors! And yet, it is not a mere house; it is a huge city under a single roof. And I am meant to penetrate this labyrinth? Find Muller, the master of this city? Find the princess on one of these thousand floors? A formidable task for someone with no memory! Or have I been rid of my past so I can dedicate myself fully and single-mindedly to my mission, with my every nerve and every thought? But how can I get there? His pockets gave him no more clues.
Petr Brok set out again on his exhausting journey. He continued climbing the stairs, determined and with no respite; and the floors passed by endlessly, with no sign of hope. Does this colossus rise to the sky? No windows and no doors. The red carpet becomes unbearable.
An idea crossed Brok's mind: what if there's a secret door hidden in the wall? He started touching the walls with his palms, knocking on them, but the smooth marble panels, uniform, without a single gap, responded with a monotonous, cold hard sound. He ran one floor up and tried the panels again, one by one. His progress was slow. He counted the floors. He should have done that from the beginning, from the moment he woke up. Why didn't he? Because at that point he didn't know yet that he was a detective sent to uncover the great secret of Mullerdom. Before, ther
e had been horror, the chaotic flight of a frightened mind. But now, now he needed to think carefully about every step. Count the floors! How many had he climbed? Thirty? Fifty? They were gone! But let's start from the beginning! Let me measure Mullerdom, albeit from the middle. One. two. three.
As Brok tapped around the walls of the twenty-seventh floor, examining the narrow hairline gaps between the marble slabs, to his astonishment, he discovered a tiny silver knob, almost flush with the surface. First he pressed it. Nothing. Then he took it between his nails and pulled with all his might. And lo and behold! A thin silver needle came out. As soon as he pulled it out, the marble panel yielded and an opening gaped in front of him, leading into darkness. Petr Brok quietly slipped through, closing the door behind him.
He found himself in a pitch black narrow corridor, his head touching the ceiling, his palms feeling the walls on both sides. Slowly, he inched his way forwards. After a few steps, he saw a thin luminous thread hanging in the depth of darkness. When he reached it, he realised it was a narrow gap in the wooden boarding marking the end of the corridor. He pressed his eye to it and saw a small grey room with no windows. A table with a jug, a chair, a bare light bulb and a bed with an iron frame. An old man was sitting on the bed, staring into the light.
Petr Brok watched him for a long while, leaning his forehead against the boards. But the old man didn't move. Then, suddenly, as he pressed his head against the wall, Brok heard the click of a lock and the wall opened. It was a door without a handle. Before he knew what was happening, the detective stumbled into the room.
The old man started and raised his hands against him with a cry.
"Forgive me for disturbing you," said Brok, "Greetings!"