2024-08-17 02:50:44
“Do whatever you want in the forbidden territory,” sang Zuzana Michnová from the group Marsyas. Petra Klabouchová takes the reader to roughly the same time when the song was written, i.e. the height of normalization, but into even more forbidden territory in her new prose crime fiction.
While Michnová had in mind the forbidden territory of her own body, the writer focused on the then most guarded border of the world. To Šumava. A mountain range divided by an iron curtain and guarded by barbed wire as well as live ammunition in long guns. And quite possibly something more. The book called Ignis fatuus was published by the publishing house Host.
It is the end of the 70s of the last century. Something sinister is happening at the Iron Curtain. Comrades border guards tell of an encounter with strange orbs of light. They move through the air in swarms and act like a living organism during the chase, literally chasing and annoying the victim. Some of the border guards never returned to the barracks, and it doesn’t look like they’re skimming over the hills. Is it the secret weapon of the West against the people’s democratic regime, or a ball lightning? But why would the lightning form rays and respond to sound?
In addition, the locals begin to remember old stories about various bodiless or two-breathers. To get to the bottom of the mystery, a group of scientists from various fields, who are dropped by the State Security in a forbidden area, have to. Or that someone else would also play their game with all of them?
Forty-three-year-old Petra Klabouchová comes from Prachatice. She already went to her native Šumava in one of the previous detective stories Pramena Vltava. This time, on the upper course of the Křemelná, he demonstrates his intimate knowledge of the place, in places where even today it is difficult to get to due to the protection of the national park, and half a century ago it was downright impossible.
When one of Klabouchová’s characters is a head taller than everyone else, his name is Rankl – with an unspoken allusion to the 19th century Šumava giant Rankl Sepp. When the figure of a local doctor appears on the pages, riding a horse to see patients, it is a tribute to Zdenek Kostrouch, who achieved near-fame in the last century.
The author of the book, Petra Klabouchová, also worked as a music manager of rock groups. | Photo: David Konečný
The author interweaves the text with references to local realities, characters and literature about Šumava. It tickles the ego of connoisseurs, but those who don’t know the context don’t lose anything either. This is not a book for insiders, the reader didn’t even have to get his sneakers wet in the Šumava bogs to be first-class scared.
The novelty may be a little reminiscent of today’s totally contrived Ďatlov’s expedition to the Urals from the 1950s.
Klabouchová bases her story on a lot of historical facts, and at the same time takes it beyond all the limits of what is expected. And when he finally offers an explanation that will allow the reader to recognize that reality – where reality dances with the ghostly, just like soldiers with corpses once at the chapel of St. Kříže -, he will immediately prepare him for this certainty as well.
Ignis fatuus, like any good detective story, offers a point, but in its own way, it continues even after reading, and the pedestrian can be full-fat afraid during the humid Šumava nights, or rather follow up the story on his own. After all, the plot also jumps to the present, which is not much brighter than the morning mists above the trees.
The Latin term in the title means something like light in motion or restless heat. We could also translate it as a maze, but that would take away much of the tension that Ignis fatuus is filled with.
Ignis fatuus book cover. | Photo: Host publishing house
The story itself remains a horror story. If the book somehow transcends the genre without leaving it, then it is a brilliant work with language.
Klabouchová is strong in her descriptions of the environment and the inner states of her anti-heroes. Adjectives, such as the most insecure novelist would use as mere color, obey her at her word and become the primary bearer of meaning.
And then there are the dots. We can call the author the sovereign mistress of this punctuation mark. He always knows exactly where to place the dot. When to break down sentences into a few bare sentences, which will then unerringly hit the prey as short, precisely targeted bursts. There is no escape from them.
The 30-kilometer long Křemelná is the only Czech river on whose banks there are no buildings today. Some of its tributaries do not have names, these designations left after 1945 together with the original, expelled inhabitants of the harsh region. Petra Klabouchová returns his stories to him. That this is not a sonnet, but a disturbing thriller, is completely secondary.
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