IRISH LOVESTORY - I Am From Prague

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 I Am From Prague

One morning, a curious spectacle unfolded, entirely of Jack’s own making. In one of his whimsical moods, he had bought a Škoda Elegance on installments. Sleek, polished, impossible to ignore—a car that demanded attention, yet, of course, he did not have the funds to sustain it. He parked it a few blocks away, in a quiet row of townhouses, probably hoping the dealership wouldn’t notice, or perhaps simply to keep it from prying eyes.

That morning, he shook me awake.

“Go check the parking lot,” he said, eyes bright with something between excitement and doubt. “Make sure I’m not hallucinating.”

I frowned, half-asleep, bewildered by his need for verification. Still, I followed his instructions. And sure enough—the car was gone.

“Are you certain it’s not there?” he asked, suspicion flickering in his gaze. He hadn’t seen it himself; he needed a witness, someone sober, to confirm the truth. I nodded. The car had been towed. Later, I discovered he hadn’t even paid past the first installment.

Jack’s misadventures rarely ended there. One evening, Barry called me at home, his voice tight with irritation but tempered by concern. The topic: Grace. She had a habit of handing out free smoothie vouchers, flooding O’Briens with customers, overwhelming the staff. But this—this was graver.

“Do you know anything about the missing money?” he asked.

“I… what money? How much are we talking about?” I stammered.

“I saw the footage. Grace stole about fifty euros,” he said, disbelief lining his voice.

I blinked. “Seriously?”

Barry sighed, thanked me for confirming, and I could sense him already taking measures. Grace was fired in dramatic fashion, her mother in tow, screaming obscenities. Barry didn’t flinch. Calmly, he escorted them both out. And in that quiet, deliberate act, I felt it: sometimes karma arrives without warning, and it carries its own satisfaction.

Meanwhile, life in The Elms brought small victories. I picked up translation gigs through a Dublin agency seeking Czech interpreters. My first assignment: Social Services, interpreting for a worker interviewing a Czech couple hoping to adopt a boy. Questions pried into every corner—abuse, neglect, despair. I translated silently, observing, absorbing, my own life momentarily set aside.

The second assignment was in court, in Carlow. The agency neglected to tell me the details. Five minutes before the hearing, I met the defendant—a Slovak man in his thirties, whose car had been borrowed by a drunken friend and wrecked. The tension in the courtroom was palpable, the air thick with muted anxiety. The judge’s eyes fell on me.

“Hello, you back there. Where are you from?” she demanded.

“I’m from Prague,” I said, bewildered.

“I don’t mean your hometown—who sent you?”

Ah. Of course. I felt my knees weaken. “A translation agency in Dublin. I’m here to interpret,” I managed.

“Step forward!” she barked. I walked toward the bench, feeling as though I were entering a lion’s den.

At the Bible, I took an oath, my voice trembling slightly. The judge questioned the young man’s liability. I explained, as clearly as possible, that in our country, a license applies to the driver, not the owner. The verdict favored him, relief flooding the room. The young man hugged me, gratitude radiating in his eyes. But when he confessed to knowingly lending the car, my satisfaction curdled to disgust. Liars—they always find a way. I never worked for that agency again.

Jack and his family, meanwhile, were a study in contradictions. Though ashamed at times, they swooped in to patch up the chaos he created. Court hearings, debts, failures—they cleaned up the mess, always. His younger brother, a steady, reasonable man, once tried reasoning for hours, eventually offering help reluctantly, knowing it would never be repaid. Families like his, I realized, often create more havoc than they prevent.

Jack’s compulsive lying became a performance, almost comical to observe. Once he claimed to be shopping on Tullow Street; I followed discreetly and caught him dashing into a pub. Another time, he said he was at a shopping center; the echo on the phone betrayed him in a bathroom. He lied not out of necessity, but as an art, a signature of his chaos.

And yet, consequences occasionally landed back on him in comic justice. I once refused him twenty euros for cigarettes; in a fit of frustration, he kicked a table, likely breaking a bone in his foot, hobbling around like Quasimodo for weeks. Quietly, I savored the irony.

Jack was chaos incarnate—never accountable, always dramatic, endlessly fascinating. And in that, he left me both exasperated and oddly enthralled, trapped in a world where the absurd brushed against the terrifying, and every day promised a new, unpredictable performance.