Ještěd in a cage 09 - 2nd place

He stood on the tower and looked around, houses rose around him, some taller and some very low to the ground, behind them stood the majestic mountains and in the distance, Praděd could be seen, it was a clear day. He looked over the city and observed the ring that hovered above the streets and houses with a strange calmness. It encircled the city like a mother-of-pearl necklace encircles a woman's neck, he thought, as if it wanted to beautify it, make it stand out, give it a frame, perhaps a framework. The city inside the ring suddenly became a painter’s painting, or the neck to which the necklace points. He stood on the tower and wondered who had the idea to build a tower in a valley from which one cannot see very far, but perhaps it simply isn't important to see as far as possible. On the left was Zlatý chlum and on the right the baths, those famous ones, where once Vincenz Priessnitz treated, for example, Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol, who was even at Grafenberg twice, so they put up a bust of him down in the city, right under the ring. Those baths were perhaps the very first hydrotherapy spa in the world and probably helped to cure many people; Vincenz was a great doctor, but he also understood the nature in which he grew up and felt its strength. He was a bit of a shaman or a wizard; there had always been plenty of those in this area. The baths managed to heal people, but unfortunately, they could not heal this city or rather the world around it. For a moment, he imagined flags with swastikas hanging from the windows of the gymnasium, but he quickly dismissed the thought. He wondered what it would have been like if the war had not happened and if Germans still lived here, whether the city would look different. It definitely wouldn’t be called Jeseník. He thought about how that city must feel. A city from which all its inhabitants were alienated in a moment and which remains completely abandoned, devoid of anyone. Robbed of all life, with scars on its soul. After all, a city has a soul, right? Perhaps back then it was at least looking forward to the newcomers who would connect their existence with it, who would take care of it again and cherish it again, because what else should people cherish if not their closest surroundings. Back then, it probably had no idea that it carried a coded identity within, that old, foreign one, that connected with those swastikas and everything. And that a difficult period would come for it – it would grow, yet rather swell. New people, a new regime, and also new houses would come. Everything old would somehow cease to matter because it no longer truly belonged to anyone. He stood on the tower and thought about how much it must have hurt when they tore its insides out piece by piece and replaced them with others, new ones, supposedly better ones, which still hadn’t really been able to adapt to the original organism, perhaps similarly to the new people. All together, they now create a mixture of different shapes, heights, qualities, and characters. The city lost its splendor, even though it had committed no sin. He wondered what kind of nature this city had, whether it was angry, or on the contrary, rather sad. He had the impression that it was sad. That it needed to be hugged and stroked, calmed and comforted. He stood on the tower and realized that it was precisely the ring that was trying to embrace the city, calming it with its lightness and grace. He also saw how this city spread across the landscape, like an oil stain spilled on the body, like a virus destroying its surroundings. It left its mark everywhere, as if it wanted to swallow the whole landscape one day. He saw the struggle between man and nature, but both represented chaos. Perhaps man even more than nature. Only the ring, in its perfect geometry, twisted around the city, thus imposing order, meaning. Against that chaos around. It twisted between the church and the fortress, above the freshly filled moat, among the pre-war houses and among the panel buildings that the communists built. It twisted around all of that, and now and then someone walked across it, sometimes people shortened their way here, sometimes they simply wanted to take a stroll, to look at the city and the landscape. At the struggle. Or at the sunset. They walked here and saw the city from another angle, they met and greeted each other, which was probably because the bridge was quite narrow and they passed each other in close proximity. Or it was simply because the ring was a new, additional layer on the collage named Jeseník. Perhaps in this layer, people behave differently.

He stood on the tower and it was already evening. He only heard the wind blowing, pounding on the facade of the tower, which was whispering something to itself. Sometimes he had the impression that he understood it, that everything that came to his mind was quietly being told to him by the tower. He liked it; he sensed that there was some wisdom within it. He stood on the tower because he had a meeting here; it was Sunday and they had agreed to roast a few sausages by the fire. Every Sunday, they would go to the former monastery courtyard to grill; it had become a sort of tradition. They never knew who would come, sometimes almost half of the city showed up, sometimes there were just two. He had already seen smoke rising and maybe he heard a melody and singing, or perhaps it was just a figment of his imagination. He heard footsteps; it was Adam.

"Have you been waiting long?" "No,"
"Quite a wind, isn’t it?" "Yes,"

"Hey, I was wondering, why are those columns spaced so nonsensically?" He didn’t answer.
"You don’t know either!?"
He just smiled.

They set off on their way around the invisible center of the universe. In the orchard, they picked an apple and slipped into the glow of the fire pit.