NARCIS AND OBLIGATIONS

Product detailed description

Barbora Bílková (born 1982)

She completed secondary-school studies in bookselling and worked at the Hus Library in Modřany. Since 2003, she has served with the Police of the Czech Republic and currently holds the rank of senior warrant officer. She regards saving a life as the finest moment of her career; the President of the Police recognised the act with a Medal for Bravery. She also volunteers at Prague’s Central Military Hospital.

Her interests are exceptionally varied, although her seven-year-old son Karel Josef comes first. Bára cycles, formerly played for the Prague Harpies—the 1st women’s American football team in the Czech Republic—swims and is a keen hiker. She also enjoys making things by hand, creating home accessories and restoring old objects. Baking, spending time at her country cottage and gardening are other favourites. Creative writing is one of her newest passions.

Unusual, poetic, thoughtful, funny and moving—in short, a truly accomplished work…

An excerpt from the book He Didn’t Write…

Surprising, really. About as surprising as the sun rising in the morning. Cold outside, emptiness inside; expectation is a road into the abyss. It is afternoon, so what now after work? Well, let’s go and exchange a few words.

“Goodness, look at you!” Káťa stares at me, and I stare back. She is petite and smiling: a white T-shirt, a scarf with dragonflies dancing across it, jeans and bracelets fit for the Queen of Sheba. I glance at the mirrored back of the display cabinet and see a dishevelled, exhausted person with Snow White’s complexion. Several sleepless nights have painted beneath my eyes the striking mask of an animal protected by the very people who once nearly wiped it out. A panda stares into my eyes, and I realise that it really is me.

I mumble something and look at my phone. He didn’t write… How incredible! He did not write a minute ago, and he has not written now either. In a sitcom, the audience would laugh—perhaps even applaud the event of the month. So I laugh at myself.

“I feel exactly as I look. How about you? Is it packed in here?” I glance around the empty shop. Only in the corner is a bearded fellow who looks like Rumcajs, examining something; this morning he seems to have put on a blanket with a hole for his head instead of a jumper.

“So, are you finally going to tell me what you’re doing? Are you sleeping? Eating? I hope you’re not drinking!” launches my kind, concerned friend.

I look up at Káťa’s maternal expression and defend myself. “Tsss, sometimes I have wine for dinner, but I’m not drinking. It will pass. I’m writing for the drawer. I spit all those emotions onto paper and rub them with ashes,” I grimace at the entire male world.

Rumcajs must be telepathic. He heads for the door and knocks a book from the counter on the way. He bends down, picks it up and apologises: “Such beautiful ladies, and here I am getting in their way.” Ding—the bell above the door announces his departure from the kingdom of paper, wit and literary beauty. Behind the glass door, he turns and smiles. Káťa brightens, I do too, and at that moment we both know that men are simply necessary in life.

Káťa looks at me with mild suspicion. She opens my notes, snaps them shut again and puts them in her bag. She says she will read them straight away. A week later she calls.

“Listen, it’s poetic—and funny in places.”

I am astonished. “You think so? Where is it funny? Did you take it into a darkroom and it became funny there?”

She stands her ground and says she understands exactly what it is about. The truth is that many of us have been through it. Every unrequited love hurts. A person often refuses to listen even when everyone around them can see the truth; they themselves are completely blind.

That is what Narcissus is about: loving someone who loves only himself. And that is how the book came into being. They are definitely not poems; I prefer to call them forms—poetic forms. In the allegorical prose piece The Forest, there is a Fairy who is also completely lost because she is in love. There is a Man who behaves like a boy and does not know whose he is, whom he is with or, most importantly, what he wants. The Fairy realises that he does not love her, so she lets him go. If only it were that easy in real life.

Generalities is about the life around us—and it offers a way forward. After a relationship ends and the period of grief has passed, what do people usually do? They discover what brings them joy and begin to focus on themselves. Later, perhaps, they turn towards others as well and start to become themselves again…