Bapašaba

>From: Gaspar < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >

>To: “Me“ < This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it >

>Subject: Email

>Date: 23 March, 2002 03:15 AM>

Hi Jerry:

I'm in Auckland and I’m still busy answering X number of emails from the police in Napier. They keep on asking the same thing, but always a different police officer or a detective. A Maori woman sole my car keys by the river, and a Maori man hit me over the head with a wench. The red was coming out of my head. I told them I had to go to the hospital. So they took me there but they wanted to keep the car. So I continued with the robbers on their way. They said they were going to shoot me and that was no joke, but here and there we laughed. I spent three hours with my robbers, so we had to talk about something. Three hours flew by like nothing. I was telling them that they were fools and idiots, and they told me that they would shoot me if I said a word. I promised them that I would not squeal on them, but when they drove off with my car, I immediately called the police. Three squad cars came. Even the best journalist in the district wrote an article about the robbery on the first page. The bizarre thing about it was that it was a tourist from Slovakia – nobody knew where it was. There are many Czechs in Napier – a Czech wouldn’t get on the fist page. Photographs of the robbers were published the second day, also on the first page. On the third day they were caught. I’m writing with mysteaks, like that crazy Kerouac. "That‘s not writing, that‘s typewriting," mocked him the crazy Capote.

Gaspar

>Attachment

THE END OF GENERAL W. K.?

by Peter Gaspar

The shop was in a row of six similar houses on a street connecting the Revolution Square with the Cathedral Square. Hats of various shapes were stacked tightly next to each other on three shelves behind the counter separating the room into two unequal parts. The doorbell rang and a grayish older man wearing a white shirt and polished blue shoes with long sharp toes firmly walked into the shop. He was holding a brass walking stick in his hand, which he did not use to help him walk since his bones and tendons were completely in order, but rather as a fashion accessory, an aid for making gestures and possibly a weapon against pickpockets. When walking he combed his hair in a slow motion with his fingertips and shifted his eyes from one end of the room to the other as he looked at a nice collection of different hats. He did not even glance at the lady shop assistant in a courteous stance behind the counter. The room lighting was poor. A canvas canopy was stretched above the window onto the street and showcase. Although a chandelier with many arms hanged on the opposite wall above the mirror, which could flood even the dining room of a medieval castle with light, the shop was nevertheless dim because one of the two bulbs had burned out, and the other one was blinking ready to go out soon too. The shop assistant said:

"What would you like, sir?"

There were drops of sweat on the man’s forehead. They were slowly trickling from among his hair and stopped in deep wrinkles, where they remained until due to their own weight they went down to the lower part of the man’s face or until he wiped them off with a handkerchief. He did so twice at the counter while inadvertently looking into the saleswoman’s eyes, but otherwise he did not show that he had already noticed her. It was hot in the street. The thermometer in the park showed 36 degrees Centigrade and new drops of sweat were forming on the man’s forehead.

A long black car with dark blue windows, armored doors and bulletproof steel casing cast in rubber tires stopped on the street outside. The driver did not turn off the engine, and bluish smoke was crawling from the two shaking exhaust pipes into the dust. A few people, with large sombreros covering their gloomy heat worn faces of indigenous cattle herders, were passing on the other side of the street. A man sitting next to the driver pulled out an automatic rifle from a violin case, mounted a silencer and patiently waited while occasionally stroking the deadly weapon with passion.

The shop assistant was curiously looking at a business card on which was written: Gen. WILHELM W. KRANSKI as moths were flying around the blinking bulb.