Healing Doses of Danger

By Ladislav Sedlak

The text of this book does not fit any category. It's like listening to a storyteller around the campfire rather reading the book. The author does not use any common literary devices as gradation, dramatization or emotionalism. In spite of that, his book made such a strong impact on me that I still remember clearly every story.

-Egon Bondy

• Language: English
• Publisher: eBookIt.com
• Release date: Apr 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9781456606688

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review.

Healing Doses of Danger

Priorities are changing - but not in my life because my priority is life itself. First, I felt it just instinctively. Now it is a deeply entrenched philosophy.

When I was in my late thirties, I liberated myself from my ambitions and started to live. I wanted to qualify for tombstone inscription- Consumed by Life and not Died at Seventy, Lived Two Years.

In spite of my shameful laziness, the harder I played the happier I was. That force accelerated me beyond the point of return. Most of my friends went in the opposite direction. They married and concentrated on their careers. They dropped abruptly the pursuit of madness with me, and started a normal life. I continued on my uncertain path, leaning heavily on my controversial beliefs, for example: few things jeopardize adventurous life of the man as much as good work and good woman. Fortunately, most of my work was boring repetition not worth to keep. The good women left me for the same reason I attracted them -free spirit. I think very fondly about them for many reasons but mostly because they sensed correctly I cannot be domesticated and spared me from painful failure as a husband.

Living by myself offered me unrestricted social life and solitude I needed for reading, practicing my musical instruments and doing absolutely nothing. Responsible just for myself I could act pretty irresponsibly, mainly concerning my finances. I never knew how to make good fast money but I had that deep satisfied feeling I will never learn that and that conviction effectively protected me from money making schemes, which would disturb my peace and would suck me into the world I wasn’t fit for. I did not save any money – luckilyy, because I didn‘t know that one dollar spent in youth is worth hundred dollars spent later.

I would not exchange my sweet years of gypsy living for anything else. The value of the years when I had nothing (except good life) is increasing every day. If this will continue, I will be filthy rich in no time.

Talented artists make beautiful things from words, sounds, wood and clay or just about anything they touch. I tried to make something beautiful out of my life and share it with anybody who cares.

A warm summer night I am just falling asleep. Suddenly I hear a familiar knocking on my window and whisper: Night ride. My parents are sleeping in the next room so I move silently, slipping out, getting my motorcycle and pushing it through the yard. Finally, on the street, I am still half-dazed, kick starting my bike and cursing my friend Dino. It has no effect on him at all; he knows I love these rides. In a few minutes, our bikes begin to whine up the winding road toward the mountains. Smells of wheat, alfalfa and freshly plowed fields, assault me in rapid succession. I perceive these fragrances so intensely I am getting high. We stop at little knoll and cut the engines. For moment, we are afraid to break the magic silence. Stars and city lights almost touching on the horizon just a few miles from us, but I feel like I am light years away.

The next day I worked on my spare engine because the bike was quite old and having one engine ready kept me mobile all the time. The evening was unusually warm, which always made me restless. Riding through downtown, I saw a girl I knew, walking on the sidewalk. I had already given up on her several times because invariably something adverse happened when I met her or wanted to meet her, but her attraction prevailed. I stopped to talk to her. Her smile and short meaningful glance into my eyes effectively paralyzed my brain. I was aware I talked like an idiot but I couldn't do anything about that. I heard myself asking her to come with me right away to my cabin in the mountains. I couldn't believe she said yes. She went home to change with a promise that we would meet in one hour at the same spot. Everything was wonderful save one little detail: I had no cabin in the mountains. Half-dazed and pressed for time, I made some phone calls. Dino was at home and said I could have a key for his family's cabin. Toward the end of the conversation, he mentioned that he would join us with his girlfriend.

In one hour, she was back. I explained to her she must sit close and hold me tight because that's the only way to ride a bike. She did better than I instructed and when we reached the cabin, I tried desperately to stay cool, not to show her how much I wanted her. Dino went to unlock the door and, when he came back, my world collapsed. He had broken the key in the lock. We took the girls home. They shared a room so we parted in front of their building. Dino said see you later, I said goodbye. We both kept our word.

The mountains always cured my ailments. This disappointment with pretty blonde needed some curing, so I decided to go to the most beautiful mountain range in Slovakia-Vysoke Tatry. Planning the trip made me feel better already. I picked deep valley with tarns, solid granite walls and spires. As usual, Dino agreed to come.

To be prudent, we wanted to bring along an experienced climber. The best candidate was our mutual friend Oczi. He was one of our classmates in the technical school. In the beginning, it didn't look like we would ever become friends. He was four years older than everybody else was quiet, unassuming and he looked like a horse. He was like an island everybody saw from the shore, but nobody bothered to go there. One day, to the amazement of the whole class, he started to run between the desks jumping like a colt and making sounds just like the real horses do. I knew that right away he was my kind of man. After the seizure, I went to him. We talked and became friends.

It was up to me to visit him and talk him into this trip. His mother hated his mountain climbing just as passionately as he loved it. She thought her colt would never jump over the fence if we were not braying on the other side. In order to avoid her, I didn't approach the main entrance. Instead, I went to the little window of his basement room. Looking through it I saw this rugged, hairy man knitting. His huge hands hypnotized by his bulging eyes moved quickly under the lamplight. He said, he couldn't find knee socks to fit him, so out of two pairs of short socks, he was making long ones. He was slightly damaged from previous trips and short of money so he grudgingly declined our invitation. However, he lent us his rope and climbing guide.

Dino and I agreed to take just one bike so we were nicely loaded. We fastened one sleeping bag just below the headlight and another on the rack, which supported the backpack worn by the guy on back. Roaring through the villages, we yelled obscenities at the villagers and laughed hysterically assuming they couldn't hear us. (I found out later they could) I drove the bike so hard that the tachometer needle fell off from the vibrations. We couldn't get very high with our bike because Vysoke Tatry National Park is closed to motor vehicles. We parked, redistributed the gear to backpacks, and started to walk.

Tery's cabin is at an elevation of over 6000 feet and is high above the timberline. Among other reasons, I loved this place because it was located in the Democracy elevation. Communism never got higher than 6000 feet. It was too strenuous and dangerous for informers and the rest of the scum to get so high. We could bitch about the government and freely discuss any topic. We savored every minute of it. However, the day we came, nobody talked politics. A bunch of rock-climbers from the prestigious Mountain Rescue Team was there. They were drinking, laughing, playing guitars and telling stories nobody could match. One was about a glider pilot who hit the mountainside. He survived the crash but had many broken bones, so they took him to one of the air tram stations, removed the door from the hinges, and lashed him tight. For some reason he ended up in the position of a crucified man. They placed him on the floor of the gondola departing for a foothill town. It never happened before but the cable snapped and the gondola plummeted to the ground. The rescue team found him again. He was almost in a vertical position with outstretched arms gazing calmly down at the disaster in front of him.

Before midnight, we left this lively bunch. Falling asleep, I still heard soft guitar sounds filling the place with the special atmosphere only cabins high in the mountains have. Morning came very fast. Staggering at some ungodly pre-dawn hour, we put our gear together, and after a few minutes of walking, I woke up and started to enjoy the life again. Suddenly, we broke through the fog into the sunshine. Only the highest ranges were protruding over the clouds. I realized why in most off religions the gods dwell in some high place. We stopped for a moment to enjoy this rare sight as we gnawed on hard sausage, pity the poor mortals down under the clouds.

From there it was not very far to Ram Pass where we started to climb. I cursed the damn climbing guide and Dino to the black hell because he disappeared somewhere behind the rocks to study the terrain in a nice sunny spot while I belayed from a cold windy place below. Finally, we started to move. The ridge was so jagged and narrow that sometimes we had to straddle it. Then we reached our destination: the highest of the Swallow Towers. My thrill was tainted by worries of how we would get down. I had never before been to such an exposed place. There was no obvious descent. We snapped a few pictures and to my surprise, the repel to easier terrain went quite fast. The trip marked the end of the summer vacation. We stretched it to the last minute.

I came home before midnight and started school the next morning. It started very pleasantly. A few guys were missing but there was a new girl in the class. Pretty face and sexy body. Guys were buzzing around her all the time. I liked her too but she was my height and beside her, I felt small. The first two weeks I said no more to her than Hi but one morning she was standing at the open window admiring the colors of autumn and I sensed that she felt the restrictions of the classroom walls precisely as I do at such moments. I walked slowly to her, looked at this gorgeous world outside and said my first words to her: Let's go to the mountains for the weekend. She looked calmly at me and said OK. When Dino asked me what I was doing for the weekend my answer made him speechless, not because he doubted what I said, but because he was puzzled about how this could happen when he never saw me talk to her. I told him I had already reserved the state forest cabin for us. I left him out of the plan because I knew he would be playing piano Saturday night at the nightclub. He said he was sure he would pick up some girl and come to the cabin after midnight.

For some reason I went to pick up Eve quite late. When we got to the cabin, it was already dark. I don't remember how we got to the bed. After that my brain probably started to function partially because I do remember us being nude under the blanket in one of the two beds, stuck together. It was enough for me to feel and caress her but she encouraged me to employ all my senses in the exploration of her body. It intoxicated my mind to the point that everything ceased to exist. Nothing mattered anymore. In all this space and time there was only she and nothing else. During the lovemaking the candle threw soft light at her, she looked heavenly beautiful and exciting and I wanted to stop time forever. However, I couldn't. We lay on our backs. The candle was dead. It was pitch dark and my eyes were open. There was no wind and I could hear only the bubbling creek. Suddenly there was a new sound. I listened for a while to be sure then whispered to Eva, Dino.

He came by himself and undressed in a hurry. I think he lay down on her right away because I heard the noises of lovemaking immediately. He had a stuffed up nose or something because he was huffing and puffing like a locomotive. So after years and years of romantic fantasies about my first woman, she was lying beside me and making love to my best friend. To maximize my confusion she grabbed my hand, planted a kiss on my palm and whispered, Don't be angry with me. So as not to disturb them, I answered silently, I am not. I wonder if in a situation like that a person can process thoughts about love, friendship, loyalties, morality, principles and come up with a clear answer. Finally, silence fell again and we all went to sleep. Eve woke me up very pleasantly: she rolled under my blanket. The presence of her body revived my senses very fast. Dino woke up too. The sun was already high so he got up and went to the kitchen to make breakfast. By eating and joking, we hyped ourselves into an excellent mood. Suddenly all I wanted was to feel the sun and wind on my face and laugh with my friends. Before we left, Eve went to the bedroom and with her fingernail wrote on the soft wood wall, Latzo + Eva. When she left I set the record straight by adding + Dino.

The next morning in class we acted like everything is normal. Even on the academic level: she had her homework and I didn't. Gohgoh as we called our architecture instructor wanted to see our drawings. He still didn't have very much booze in him. We knew exactly how drunk he was by the amount of hair falling on his face. He tried to keep it on the sides but when he quit doing even that his eyes disappeared and he turned into a longhaired lapdog of the formidable size and we knew he was as drunk as a Russian officer. He started to call us to the desk in alphabetical order. Eve was among the first. He started to look up and down on her drawing but I had the feeling he was focused on her and not on the paper. In addition, I even noticed traces of a lecherous gleam in his eyes, which is rarely caused by renderings of the Corinth column. By this little observation, I built my plan. I sent her a note and in no time, I had her drawing in my hands. I erased Gohgoh's initials and proudly presented to him my work. It was the only drawing in the class graded twice. Eva got an A and I got a C.

Coming home from school, I noticed my neighbor on the bus. He was a huge man and I never saw him sober. I tried to avoid contact with him but his murky eyes located me anyway. He took a deep breath and with his thundering voice asked me: why don't you want my Tanya? She will be a doctor and you will be just a shit. Embarrassed and blushing, I couldn't come up with any answer. By the way, half of his prophecy is already fulfilled: she did become a doctor.

In his younger years, he made quite a splash as a journalist. By now most of his wit was dissolved in alcohol but he was not finished yet. One rainy night he tried to get home from the tavern and he couldn't get a taxi. And since he couldn't get a taxi he called an ambulance. With little money left, he couldn't persuade or bribe the medics to take him home. They took him to the hospital to file charges against him for misuse of hospital services. They shoved him into the room where the night duty doctor was sitting and explained to him what happened. After that, the doctor dismissed the medics, got up from his chair and warmly greeted his long lost friend. Being an alcoholic himself, he procured a bottle and they drank, talked and laughed until dawn. Then the doctor gave the medics written instructions not only to drive him home but also to carry this behemoth up to his bed on a stretcher.

Beside Tanya, he had two sons. The older, Tono was my good friend in grade school. Friendship with me got him into a lot of trouble, but he followed my mad ideas anyway. One day Tono, my cousin Ivan, and I were bicycling along a highway lined with apple trees. We all knew that the trees belonged to the state and were guarded. I didn't like apples very much but I saw the opportunity for some excitement trying to get them. In Tono's family, they rarely had extra money for fruit, so it was easy to persuade him to climb the apple tree with us. Ivan and I found a comfortable position in the branches and began to nibble on the apples. Tono, on the other hand, became frenzied eating and stuffing the apples into his pockets and under his shirt. Suddenly we noticed the guard rushing to us on a bicycle. With Ivan, I disappeared from the tree like a greased lightning. Tono's bike wasn't mechanically sound and the only way to start to move was to gently apply pressure on the pedals. With the guard coming, he didn't have the nerve to do it. He jumped on the bike and started to turn the pedals at lightening speed only to fall over onto his side, not budging an inch. We knew the guard got him, so waited anxiously for his arrival at our house. Finally he came. He looked scared and dazed, so it wasn't difficult to talk him into another madness. We told him they would come looking for us and that we must leave our homes. We all met in the morning but we modified our decision to leave for good. I told my friends that we would visit my aunt. It was a formidable distance especially for Tono who was just in fifth grade. He was too small to reach the pedals from the seat so he was riding his bicycle twisted under the bar, his hands reaching up for the handlebars. His bike didn't even have brakes so he had to walk down steep hills. We still had about ten miles to go when he collapsed in a ditch, completely exhausted. On top of this, he started to cry telling us he had to be home for supper. We promised him the impossible and he got up and went along. When we reached my aunt's house the guys rested under the tree and I went to talk to her.

At that time, she was an old lady with a sweet disposition living by herself in a sleepy little village. Nevertheless, she had a dramatic past. At sixteen, she married a Hungarian hussar. A few days after the wedding, he went to war and was killed. At seventeen, she noticed a photograph in a newspaper of a handsome young man looking for a bride. She sent him her picture and a letter and in a few months, she received a boat ticket to Baltimore. She liked him. They got married and she got pregnant, but her husband never had a chance to see the kid because he managed to be killed. She returned home as a teenage double widow with a son. She never married again. Her son was living in the city but he came to visit her regularly.

At her place for the first and only time in my life I saw an emaciated pig. When I peeked into the pen and saw this bony creature with a thin neck and big eyes, it resembled anything but a pig. My aunt had a weird theory that it is healthier for a pig to be skinny. Moreover, it grew anyway. When the pig reached a desirable size, she started to feed it well until it ballooned to her liking. Before that, the pig had received just one German helmet of hogwash per day.

A short nap and a good meal revived us enough to roam the orchards of this lovely little village. Some fruit was ripe and some wasn't but Tono didn't mind. He ate until his belly couldn't stretch any further. When he poured a large glass of buttermilk down his throat, we knew he had turned into a time bomb. I decided to stay, but Ivan and Tono said they had to go. Tono twisted his already swollen and deformed body back into the bike frame and started his tortuous journey home. A few turns of the pedals and he was squirting brown liquid all over the place. Ivan was getting apprehensive because night was falling and progress was slow. He roped the two bikes together threatening Tono to leave him behind if he tried to stop. Tono was a bright kid. He pulled down his pants, his shirt covered his butt anyway, and he happily squirted on the fender. Now Ivan was getting tired. They came to some small village and saw a military truck parked in front of a tavern. The soldiers took pity on them and took them to our hometown. Around midnight, Tono reached our house. He looked like death. His and Ivan's family all came to our house expecting the worst. Everybody was hanging on his lips but no words came out. Finally, he stuttered: he stayed with his aunt. So the families went home, their fears transformed into rage, they beat up the kids and went to bed. One week later, when I came home, the storm had already blown over.

Finally, the bus stopped in front of our house and I could get away from all these people who knew so well I didn't want his Tanya. Sometimes our house felt like a waiting room. Most of the time, somebody was sitting in the kitchen when I came home. Mother learned to work and talk at the same time. Actually, she got so good at it she had animated conversations with her guests even when the place was empty. She and father had short tempers, so quick flare-ups with yelling and utensil throwing were common. I really appreciated the benevolence of the society to let us live freely among them. The noisy parties where weird and eccentric people frequented our house didn't help either. One of our guests, a catholic priest named Kenedich, was so controversial that the religious authorities tried to transfer him, but the villagers said they wanted only him and they vowed to chase the new priest out of town. He worked on many projects at the same time, but managed to keep everything functional and beautiful. When he came to his small foothill village, there was no electricity so he built a dam with his own hands on a small creek, which ran through his property. It generated enough electricity so he could read and paint at night. He had a meticulous garden and he grew the most beautiful apples I ever saw. For his guests he always served excellent wines. It went very well with another of his obsessions: cards. Once he started to play, he could not stop. One Sunday the sexton came to remind him, It's time to prepare for mass. Seeing he was playing cards, the sexton left with a worried look. He came back several times, pleading on behalf of the waiting congregation, until Kenedich's companions couldn't take it anymore and got up from the table. Absentmindedly, the priest stuck the cards into the sleeve of his robe and rushed to the church. He was a good orator and he liked to use his hands too. In one of his wild sweeps, the cards flew out of his sleeve and started to fall from the pulpit onto the children below. The kids picked up the cards and looked at them. He asked kindly children what card they were holding. Almost all answers were correct. Then suddenly, with a strong accusing voice, he started to blame the parents for their children's familiarity with cards and lack of knowledge about the scriptures. He pounded on them hard until he saw on their faces that the punishment of God would be a relief for them.

Our family has an oil painting by him. It depicts startled horses pulling a disintegrating coach with a driver attempting in vain to halt. Everything is in the air. Nothing touches the earth, and it reminds me of Kenedich in many ways.

It was almost Christmas time and an unusually peaceful evening in our house. No guests, sister gone, mother busy in the kitchen and through the wall, I could hear the faint clicking of father's typewriter. It was so pleasant to lie in bed, read and listen to the radio on this cold windy night. When sister came home she even didn't argue with our mother. Tonight we are an exemplary family reflecting the true spirit of Christmas. Except for one insignificant episode in which my father attacked me with an unsheathed saber and chipped about a foot-long sliver from the bathroom door, which I slammed just in time behind me. He mumbled something about my deviant tendencies in music, the loud radio and left. Since I was already in the bathroom, I brushed my teeth and went to sleep.

In the morning I woke up to the talk of my mother promising my company to a girl I couldn't recognize by voice. I began to get irked but when I saw the girl my anger melted away. She was so cute and shy that I couldn't be anything but nice to her. She was introduced to me as a distant cousin from some little town. I took her to downtown, showed her a few interesting places and then I wanted to go to the movies. The show was sold out so we went to a coffeehouse famous for its excellent pastries. To my displeasure, my cousin Ivan showed up. He ordered a heap of pastries ate them like a condemned man and then happily announced that he had no money. Then he wanted to show how witty he was so he started to talk to this poor little doe. His idiotic and ill-humored remarks made her very uncomfortable. To end her misery, I paid the bill and told him goodbye. He announced that he would come with us. We waited an unusually long time for the bus to take us home. Suddenly I noticed a little waterfall near her high heels. Realizing she was urinating, I started to look at the shop window and pretended not to notice. I was in a state of shock. If somebody had poked me with a knife, I would not have felt a thing. The bright, inquisitive mind of my cousin Ivan reacted differently; he took a few steps away from her, started to stare at her feet and asked, Is this stuff leaking out of you? Finally the bus came. She stayed in our house for two more hours and went home on the night train. I never saw her again.

The cold and snow less winter partially curtailed my activities but I found a good compensation in the class. The scared and the shy were usually my victims. Near the door, three small-town girls were sitting. They carried their oversized boobs high and pointed in tight sweaters. Their rigid morals were a constant irritation for me. Several guys, myself included, tried to seduce them but nobody succeeded. One day I made a crude doll from newspaper and, pressing it into their arms, implored them to nurse my dying baby. They blushed and called me names but I showed them no mercy. The instructor was coming any second so I left the girls and leaned with my back against the door so that if he turned the knob from the corridor he would be knocked down. The girls were terrified and begged me to stop. It had the right amount of excitement for me too, because if this would happen, I could be expelled from school. Now that I had the whole class's attention and absolute silence, I began to count leisurely to ten. When I finished, I straightened up and in that same second the instructor opened the door.

Looks like my antics impressed a few twisted minds from the boy's dormitory. Most of them came from the wine country and they told me they still had a lot of good wine in the dorm. One day I dropped by and experienced firsthand their strange order of dominance and submission. We were drinking and laughing, guys were coming and going. Suddenly, a classmate who invited me there pointed his finger at one kid and yelled Humiliate! They all jumped on the poor kid, threw him on the nearest bed on his back, spread his legs and one guy made a few motions of mating over him. Then, as if nothing had happened, everything came back to normal. Since then, when I overheard the word humiliation in class I knew what it meant.

I was in my last year in school. I knew that after graduation, I must go right away to work. This coming big change in my life made me ponder how it would be: no summer vacations, no fun in class. What will I do when I don’t know anything? Do my parents actually expect me to take care of myself? To make things worse, my father got seriously ill. He spent weeks in the hospital and so-called free medical care cost us dearly. Mother allocated a little money for food and heat and the rest went to the doctors and nurses so that here and there they paid some attention to him. We got ninety percent of his salary while he was sick. But it was nothing; all the good things we had came from his black market activities. When he came back from the hospital, he was weak but not so weak that he couldn't type. It seemed to me that with every click of the key, he made a buck. He wasn't a lawyer but he was making good side money solving complicated legal problems pertaining to financial transfers. Sometimes his ways raised eyebrows but he got the job done. People offered him a lot of money because often they came with papers rejected by the law office with the advice that nothing could be done.

One of his cases dealt with an inheritance suit from the United States to Slovakia. Some guy willed all his money to his brother in Slovakia but there was a stipulation attached: either communism would have ended in Slovakia, or his brother must live in a free world in order to receive the money. Father found it too cumbersome to change the regime, so he went for option number two. It took some time, but his partner in Vienna got papers for a Slovak man proving his permanent Austrian residency. His family loaded him gently into the car, praying that the eighty-five year old would survive the journey to Vienna. With all the necessary documents, they dragged this poor, senile man to the American embassy where he signed the papers. In just a few days his family pocketed his money. I hope that on the way home they at least gave him a glass of water when he got thirsty.

With final exams in full swing, everything became very formal. Besides written tests, there were oral examinations in front of many people. On my last and easiest day I was not so nervous. I had already submitted a design of