Spectacle

PRAGUE, Czech Republic—In the Sedlec Ossuary, about an hour outside of Prague, crowds of tourists turn their cameras on stacks of human skulls and chandeliers suspended by chains of jawbones. The 40,000 odd people whose remains adorn the walls and ceilings of the small chapel receive over 200,000 visitors every year. On this hot afternoon in late June there are probably around 550 of us, maybe more since its the height of the tourist season. Surrounded by so many smiling tourists posing for photographs, their children running around and hesitantly sticking out their hands to touch a skull here and there, in the center of this throng of the living, it’s hard to really feel the presence of the dead. Though their bones dangle from the rafters and indifferentiable eye sockets stare out at you by the hundreds, an equally indifferentiable mass, with their ever present cameras, has reduced these victims of plagues, wars and time to nothing more than the content of images, trophies of tourism. One ought, perhaps, to stop to examine each row of hanging humeruses, each flower of pelvises, as Frantisek Rint, the man hired in 1870 to arrange the excess bones from the small graveyard that surrounds the chapel, must have, searching in each for macabre decorative potential. But the tide of tourists is too strong. We’re soon back out on the tour bus lined sidewalk, heading towards the nearby town of Kutna Hora to eat lunch.

As we get to the center of town each restaurant we come to is closed, defying the hours printed confidently on their doors without explanation. The streets, too, are largely deserted. I hear something that sounds as if someone far away is speaking into a loudspeaker. Soon we round a corner and come upon a dense crowd of people. The street is blocked off and the sidewalks lined with temporary barriers. What must be a large percentage of the local population presses against them. The elderly and the young alike focus with rapt attention on what is going on in the middle of the street. It is a kind of competition I’ve never seen before. Huge hulking men attempt, one after another, to lift and overturn gigantic tires. A good many of the spectators have their phones and cameras out, documenting the efforts of each competitor as he progresses down the line. As they struggle under the weight, their faces red with sweat glistening on their bald heads. Young children and teenagers climb on the temporary fence cheer and shout. And when one competitor fails and gives on the third tire, their shouting takes on an air of reproach. We spot an open kebab restaurant and disengage from yet another crowd of onlookers fascinated by the somewhat perverse potential of the human body.