Scribblings › Bridge Work

At the eastern end of the Charles Bridge, Satan sells self-portraits. He has been granted special dispensation to continue his affairs after losing his mind. The magistrates of Prague have never offered formal permission, but the citizens—long resigned to all things wry—simply accept him in their midst. For centuries, 31 black baroque statues have lined the rails of the footbridge. There is a lion nibbling a Legionnaire's toe, a dog with a flaming torch in its mouth, a blind nun voluptuously kissing the open wounds of a crucified Christ. What more is one live, misguided devil?

In this life, you are a tourist. You snatch magpie souvenirs out of chaos to build a smaller, pithier world. You ask unanswerable questions. You make up true stories.

Crossing the Vltava, from Hrad Castle on the western bank toward the labyrinthine tangle of the city center to its east, you have hurried past the sellers of moody architectural photographs, of intricate lacework, of Moravian cimbalom tunes.

But here—a safe six feet from the devil's display—you cannot resist pausing to draw in the scene. Satan crouches under his kiosk table, knotting and unknotting sinewy arms around his shirtless torso. He growls at the dozens of color-clotted images that surround him: rectangles of childish tempera, trick-or-treat orange and thick baby blue. At the center of each canvas is a crude but recognizable image of his own face, with brick-brown horns protruding from the temples. The paintings' slashed grimaces correspond to his own as he writhes beneath the table. His forehead is cinched by a soiled terrycloth sweatband, from which droop two cotton-stuffed cones of red velveteen, flapping down against his ears.

You turn toward the kiosk next to Satan's. An apple-cheeked woman sells nested wooden matryoshka dolls, her greying blond head warmed by a tight blue babushka. Though the Gulf Stream rides this mythic river, the mist-damp air is bone chilling on a gray December afternoon.

You stare at the woman's hands. You imagine her name is Hana. To keep warm she fidgets with her wares, assembling and disassembling the little painted people. Some of her dolls are a single person all the way through, but others are composed of completely different characters, hiding inside each other. Hollow shells yield hollow shells, over and over, dissembling, until, at the heart of each, is a small but solid figure.

Now, discreetly, you glance at Satan, hoping not to catch his eye. He discomforts you, and so you name him, too: Tomas. Tomas tugs at the spongy clumps of his unwashed hair.

You cast your eye back and forth, between Tomas and Hana, taking mental snapshots. Taking it apart. Putting it back together.