Harlequin's Millions Read online

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  WHEN THE NEWS CAME THAT THE OLD GRAVEYARD had been officially declared an eyesore, that all the tombstones with the exception of a few large memorial stones were to be pulled out of the ground and the paths between the graves plowed up, that the sacred ground was to be converted into a pleasure park, the pensioners in the castle began to feel uneasy. The three old witnesses to old times didn’t seem particularly upset, but from the moment the tractors with bucket loaders began pulling one tombstone after another out of the ground, the three men had tears in their eyes, while I myself had the feeling that, once again, all my teeth were being pulled out, slowly, one after another, in the morning my teeth had grown back and it started all over again. The pensioners with the strongest nerves went to have a look at the site, they watched for a while, but as soon as they saw how stubbornly those big tombstones resisted, how one tractor wasn’t nearly enough, how they had to hitch up two and rely on the help of the bucket loaders, when the pensioners saw all that, they experienced the same sensation they’d had when the time had come for them to part with their houses, their homes, their front yards, their flower gardens, their surroundings, the place where they had lived all their lives, and suddenly the time came for them to leave. Most of them hadn’t left voluntarily, they saw their retirement as a defeat, the beginning of their end. Some put up a fight, just like the tombstones, but it had to be, they had no one to take care of them, they were unsteady on their feet, they’d stopped functioning, and so they’d had no choice but to go to the retirement home. When they returned from the spectacle in the graveyard and those who hadn’t had the courage to go see it with their own eyes plied them with questions, the eyewitnesses refused to say a word, they were upset, shook their heads, because they were unable to understand why the graveyard couldn’t just remain a park where people strolled, recited beautiful lines of poetry, read and reread the famous names of people they had known when they were still alive, or had heard about from the witnesses to old times, because on this very spot, in this very town where time truly had stood still, people lay buried who were two hundred years old, and older. From the gallery on the fourth floor the rediffusion system played the tender melody of “Harlequin’s Millions,” the pensioners dragged out chairs, held on to the railing, and the old witnesses stared through their binoculars, they snatched them out of each other’s hands to make sure that what the other had said was true, that he’d just seen workmen with pickaxes and a jack, or lifting with crowbars and pulleys the tombstones that had been torn out of the ground and loading them onto drays and tractors, they saw how a chain was wrapped around the next tombstone, how the bulldozer started up and slowly, repeatedly, again and again and with the same force tried to pull the granite or marble tombstone out of the clay, with the perseverance of a dentist trying to pull a molar with crooked roots out of swollen gums. And so all week long an unequal battle was fought in the graveyard between the defenseless tombstones and the tractors and bulldozers, it was an emotional sight, like a bullfight, like every struggle between life and death. And so the tractors cleared the way and because the paths were lined with slender thujas and hawthorns, in order to get to a tombstone the tractor sometimes had to tear a few of those trees out of the ground, but the trees were even tougher than the tombstones. The thujas were centuries old, their roots were wrapped around the tombstones and some of the roots had burrowed so deeply into the ground that they were wrapped around a coffin, a metal coffin, or a brick-lined vault, like a child’s ball held firmly in a net, that was how firmly the roots held a tombstone and that was how firmly they had wrapped themselves around a brick-lined vault, like ivy around an arbor, sometimes they had to use all three tractors and when they finally did manage to pull out the tombstone, it was with great force and a grinding of chains. Sometimes a rotting coffin came up with the thuja roots, a piece of masonry or a chunk of tombstone that had refused to let go. And just as in real life, people knew best how to tackle the children’s graves. The whole children’s section fell in a single afternoon, all it took was one man with a crowbar, one little tombstone fell after another, like the first baby teeth, most of the children’s graves had a wrought-iron fence around them, some had a fence made of wood, like the bars of a crib to keep little children, when they’re still alive, from falling out, or a playpen, to make sure nothing happens to the child or that it doesn’t crawl somewhere it’s not allowed. Mr. Kořínek, our old witness, told us that when elderly Jews had a book that had gotten old, whose pages and cover were yellowed and frayed, they buried it in the graveyard, like someone who had died … But the workmen who pulled out the wrought-iron fences loaded them onto a dray to sell them as scrap metal. The witness to old times Mr. Otokar Rykr said … In the old days only little girls played with store-bought balls, brightly colored balls made of rubber. They kept them in nets. We boys made our own rubber balls out of Father’s old shoes. You pulled out the elastic and rolled it around a sugar cube. When the ball was big enough you boiled it in milk, until the fibers stuck together. These homemade balls were very elastic, but also quite dangerous. If you got hit with one, it was extremely painful and left a black-and-blue mark. You could also make balls out of combed or carded animal hair. And we all looked forward to the beginning of spring, which was heralded by the click-clack of marbles and beans in holes in the ground. The big beans were called Turks, and with one Turk you could pay for a whole throw, it was worth three ordinary beans. After the marbles came the spinning tops. Another game of chance we used to play was throwing a penny onto a chalk line, and at Easter, egg-tapping with a penny, the eggs lay on the ground, or in your hand … The soft voice explained, and down below, by the river, surrounded by a large wall, the tombstones came tumbling down, one after the other, on all sides, just like what happened in ancient times to a city that had surrendered, whose warriors on the ramparts were already dead, and then the jubilant, victorious army slaughtered everyone in the city who was still alive, men, women and children, old and young. The old witness Václav Kořínek put away his binoculars and said … The Ramparts were once called Rose Street, before that it was known as Below the Wall. It got the name Rose Street because of the reddish glow of the bricks in the town walls when the sun shone on them. Seventy years ago the street was called Skinner Street or simply the Skinnery. This street had its own policeman, Lukášek. He lived at number five-hundred-eight. Lukášek had a daughter, who died at the age of one. According to the customs of the day the tiny coffin had to be borne in a carriage driven by a boy and girl dressed as a groomsman and bridesmaid. Because the boy was one of those little rascals from the Skinnery, they had dressed him in a black suit borrowed from Mr. Trnka the varnisher, who was short but stout. The suit was three sizes too large. The big top hat rested precariously on his ears. A carriage was a strange sight on Skinner Street, and when it started moving with the girl and boy onboard holding the little coffin on their knees, a gang of youngsters began shouting and trying to jump onto the rear of the carriage. One of them knocked the groomsman’s top hat over his eyes and he was plunged into darkness, the girl screamed, the coachman cracked his whip at the boys and the horses … The pensioners had been listening attentively and they smiled, nodding their heads, once again “Harlequin’s Millions” wafted down and curled around the pensioners sitting together in little groups on the fourth-floor gallery of Count Špork’s castle, they looked down at the graveyard, at that distance they couldn’t really see what was happening, but Mr. Karel Výborný, who was peering through his binoculars, was so startled by something he saw that he quickly put them down, I grabbed the binoculars from him and focused, my eyes darted from one ravaged tombstone to the next and suddenly, to my delight, I saw that a tractor had fallen into one of the ruined graves, now two other tractors were trying to pull it out. Mr. Karel explained in a low voice … Among the dragoon officers were two illustrious figures. They were two lieutenants, Baron Dahlen and a Siamese prince who lived in a house in Zálabí just behind what is now Dr
. Ruml’s villa, so he was also a bit of a Zálabían. The prince had a small, rather delicate build, a yellowish complexion, slanting black eyes and stiff black hair. We marveled at that hair during our games, when the prince would come and watch. He was an excellent dancer and never turned down an invitation to a ball, the local gardeners would deliver truckloads of flowers on his behalf, because he always gave each of his dance partners an extravagant bouquet. The prince was extremely interested in the games we played, jacks and marbles and ball games, we never needed the interpreter, he always sat a little farther away so as not to interfere, and we were perfectly able to communicate with the prince, we spoke Czech while the prince spoke a language unfamiliar to us, but together we used a kind of international language, with lots of pointing and gesturing, and that worked. We could tell the prince was seriously interested in our games by the fact that he wrote down the rules in some kind of chicken scratch in a little notebook, perhaps so he could make use of them later on in his own country … Said the witness to old times Karel Výborný, he spoke as he always did, as all three chroniclers did, for that matter, as if he were reading aloud from his memoirs, in which he had recorded everything he felt was memorable. I looked with delight at the tractor stuck in the open grave, as if a dead man had grabbed one of its wheels. Mr. Václav Kořínek began to speak … But best of all was our Rose Street when school was out for summer and the morning sun was shining, the guinea hens on Mr. Macháček the baker’s wall squawked loudly but you could still hear the rhythmical clatter of wooden mallets on tin from the workshop of Prachenský the whitesmith. Outside the house with the number four-hundred-thirty-three, veteran standard-bearer Havlíček sat and talked about the war. The next house, number four-hundred-seventy, belonged to the stove fitter Jan Maudr, who used to have a business on the corner of the Ramparts and Saint George Street with a sign that said: Huge Selection of Clay Ovens at Jan Maudr’s. When Jan Maudr died in nineteen-hundred-and-seven, the house was bought by Rudolf Kolář. The Kolář family had eleven children, the eldest daughter was married and by nineteen-hundred-and-ten she had two daughters of her own. So then there were sixteen people living in that house. Kindhearted Mrs. Kolář, who had been blessed with all those children, generously handed out homemade buns or pancakes to other folks’ children whenever they showed up at her front door. You could remember the names of the eleven Kolář children with a little rhyme: Sláva Vlasta Řina, I know a ballerina, Rudolf Otík Nina, she comes from Argentina, Lojzík Oldřich Elina, she plays the concertina, Jaroslav Bělina, and lives on semolina … There was also the occasional humorous incident in the privies, which were usually located in the courtyard of the houses and quite primitive. At number five-hundred-eight a two-year-old boy was once sitting on the toilet and tried to reach the rope so he could close the door, but his arms were too short, and then a very portly lady came running out of the house to answer the call of nature, at the door of the privy she turned around and began backing in bottom-first but gave the lad such a scare he was almost sick with fear … Mr. Václav Kořínek held forth, as if he were reading aloud these tales from the old days in a large auditorium, he stood there, leaning with both hands on the wooden railing, the wind blew through his white hair, he held his head forward like the bow of a ship and his memories cleaved the merciless waves of time, while down below, one shattered tombstone after another fell to the ground. The witness to old times Mr. Otokar Rykr broke the oppressive silence, in which all you could hear was the sound of “Harlequin’s Millions,” like a soft, sweet sonatina about a pair of lovers in a cheap color print … In the old days people went skating on the old Elbe, near where the footbridge now stands, on skates screwed to the bottom of their shoes, most unsuitable for figure skating. Ladies in long skirts, their hands in muffs, men in long winter coats. Here at least a young man had the opportunity to skate arm in arm with his sweetheart while gently squeezing her hand inside the muff. We impecunious lads made our own skates and called them gliders. We broke the iron sides off an old grater, snapped the curve of the handle in half, which gave us two fine blades, these we mounted on a piece of wood, then tied them under our shoes with a bit of rope and off we went. On Sundays a barrel organ used to play at the ice-skating rink and on rare occasions a little band … And lest I forget, of all the carousels in those days Šlemlajn’s from Kutná Hora was the most famous, and popular, because it had a platform. The carousel was hung with innumerable glass beads that glittered against the evening sky … Said Mr. Rykr and I put down the binoculars, it made me tired to watch something that caused me such pain, I felt like I was watching a bullfight, I, who love cows and bulls and calves, why should I watch something I found so painful? Because you should only dwell on the joyous things in life, in your memories, the things that give you the greatest pleasure, even something that may not be true but that you’ve believed in for so long that it actually does happen … When my tomcat didn’t come home for a week, then fourteen days, I was tortured by the thought that he’d been run over, that someone had shot him, that he was locked up somewhere and couldn’t get out and was slowly dying of hunger, it tortured me so that I couldn’t sleep at night, in my dreams one tomcat after another ran away and never returned, until I got to the last tomcat and finally said to myself, and believed it too, that my tomcat was probably much happier elsewhere than he had been with me and that he was now living with people who loved him even more than I had … In the graveyard three trucks were loaded down with tombstones, six men were loading the heavy stones with names and dates of people who had lived in the little town, six men loaded those tombstones onto the trucks, whose license plates were from completely different regions, they were taking them to places where no one knew those names, where the tombstone portraits in little glass ovals would mean nothing, sometimes one of the workers would smash the portraits with a sledgehammer before loading the tombstones onto the truck, he shattered the faces beyond recognition, he mutilated them, the way murderers do, but it wasn’t necessary, because wherever they were being taken, the stones would be sanded down, the first and last names that were carved into the surface would be removed and stonemasons would inscribe the names of the newly deceased, for the benefit of the grieving relatives who had ordered the tombstone … Mr. Václav Kořínek, witness to old times, seemed to have brightened up a bit, he sat down and said, this time not as a reproach, or for the sake of comparison, but simply for the fun of it … Oh yes, on the day before Christmas, everything was ready, in the Ramparts too, the street where we lived. Freshly baked Christmas cakes, mothers placed them proudly on their windowsills and people who met each other in the street were full of good cheer. They wished each other Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Mr. Rubek the mailman came to the door in full dress with a shiny new almanac for us tucked under his arm. Mr. Kulička the chimney sweep came by too, with a clean face and a white cap, and gave us a calendar that he said would bring us good luck all year long. We trimmed the Christmas tree, a fine young spruce that Papa, a boilerman, brought back on his return trip from Hanušovice, on the way there the train passed a little watch-house and Papa tossed a chunk of wood out of the locomotive with a note attached asking for a Christmas tree. On the way back the railroad watchman was waiting for him with the spruce and simply handed it to him … Said Mr. Kořínek and suddenly he grew solemn, three trucks had started off down the road, from up on the castle gallery you could see the black tombstones lying side by side in the back of the truck, the way they transported the dead during the war, the trucks disappeared, then reappeared a moment later, closer than before … Mr. Kořínek took out his notebook, removed a folded letter from between its pages, he unfolded it and read it aloud, so loudly that the pensioners sitting on the benches in the courtyard turned their faces to him, and those who were strolling froze, slowly turned and looked up toward the voice shouting out across the fields … My dear little town, although I have spent so many years abroad and am now such an old man, I still think of you, my native town. I
salute you, Ostrov, avenue of birches, restaurant by the weir, where one could sit back and listen to the roaring of the water, I salute you, avenue of limes, the road to Šumava, great, beautiful meadow, flat as a tabletop and fringed with tall trees, I salute you, mighty dam, and Dubina, and you three tall poplars in Rohov, and you, Mr. Kofroň. Do you still monitor the water level and sound the alarm when the ice breaks up? And the bridge? Does it still tremble when a heavy floe hits one of its piers? And how are Mr. Poláček and Boháček and all their friends? Such fine fellows! In summer they mined sand from the Elbe and in spring, when the ice began breaking up, they pushed apart the ice floes with long forked sticks. And how is the Old Fishery? And that lovely spot at the foot of the Ramparts, where we used to stand and watch the foaming water tumbling from the weir into the millrace? I often think back on the quiet Church Square with the imposing structure of the cathedral, whose towers can be seen from miles around. And the fountains, into which people nowadays probably throw things that don’t belong. And I think of the promenade from the Bártl home to the Měšťans, where even now the girls probably still smile and wink at the students, oh how we envied them. And do the great windows of the dance hall at Hotel Na Knížecí still glow in the distance when there’s a soiree or a ball? And Mr. Preclík, does he still play those beautiful waltzes? And whatever became of Stázička, our lovely dancer, who was said to be the prettiest girl in our little town and would show up for a date wearing her brother’s shoes? They were too big for her, but she obviously wanted to shock us, because they were bright yellow, and that was a rarity back then. I salute you all, as you live on in my memory, even if Mr. Hanuš has made your bed for all eternity, and no doubt someone else has done the same for him. May a summer breeze blow the petals from a rosebush and scatter them on your graves, together with a handful of memories … Cried and shouted the witness to old times Mr. Kořínek, reading what it said in the letter, and there, within sight of the retirement home, the three trucks disappeared with the black tombstones of citizens, people, who years ago had lived in the little town where time hasn’t stood still for anything, not even for the old graveyard. In the afternoon the wrought-iron playpens from the children’s section were carted off to the scrap-metal yard … but in the old graveyard, among the few remaining graves, among the uprooted acacias and thujas, there, with even more zest and enthusiasm than before, almost a kind of malice, and now with plenty of space to drive around in, the three tractors engaged in battle with the remaining tombstones, which no longer had as much strength as when they had been standing side by side, in close ranks, and for a moment it had seemed, but that had been only an illusion, that the tractors didn’t stand a chance … Now their victory was assured, the phalanx of tombstones had been almost entirely mowed down and carted off, a few still lay on their backs, yet it seemed to me that the tractors were now much fiercer, almost deranged, like an angry swarm of bees, they charged furiously at the stones that were still standing, the machines seemed to cheer each time they knocked down another tombstone, their engines roared with determination, as if they wanted to resolve this unequal struggle as quickly as possible. When dusk had fallen, and then evening, all you could see were the moving headlights bringing down the last tombstones … It was alarming to watch a bulldozer, which you couldn’t see, light up a tombstone, headlights coming closer and closer, until it crashed into that stone with its enormous shovel, the headlights seemed to sniff at the first and last names of the deceased and for a moment neither tombstone nor tractor moved, from a distance all you could see was that terrible tension, like when the dentist clamps your teeth one by one in his pliers and pulls with all his might, then there was a dead minute, and then something in the foundation gave way and the tombstone fell, and then the next one and finally at midnight the last one … and the tractors kept driving around and around the former graveyard, their headlights sniffing, scouring the battlefield, everything that had been standing now lay flat, but that wasn’t enough for the tractors and their headlights … they drove around in circles to make sure they hadn’t missed any tombstones, perhaps one of the smaller stones in the children’s section … The witness to old times Mr. Otokar Rykr, deeply moved, ran his hands through his hair, then he leaned one hand on the railing of the balustrade, he raised the other, looked down at the ravaged graveyard and said cheerfully … Oh yes, the student outings to Ostrov were extremely popular, the students set up wooden platforms in front of the former restaurant by the old weir, makeshift stages, where they could perform, and they borrowed market-stall tarpaulins from all the confectioners and bakers in the little town to protect these platforms from the rain. Groups of students entertained each other during those Ostrov outings by singing songs from popular songbooks, performing monologues and reciting poems composed for the occasion. They accompanied the songs with drawings, like street singers with their broadsides ballads of life and death … Inside the restaurant, which was decorated with brightly painted and bullet-riddled targets, the remains of old shooting matches, there was dancing till dusk to the music of a quartet, consisting of two violins, Mr. Votava’s clarinet and a double bass, under the direction of one of the violinists, the small, irascible master shoemaker Jan Marysko … said Mr. Otokar Rykr, smiling happily, down below the tombstone-laden drays drove into the light of the street lamps and then sank back into the darkness. Mr. Rykr threw back his head and laughed, then said … Now for something more pleasant, I’m sure you’ll all be interested in hearing the story of Bubi, whose real name was Vincenc Zedrich, do you know, Bubi had a touch of genius, but his mother hated the way he indulged his various passions, buying books and painting … He was always in good spirits, and with his tall, burly frame and black mustache, Bubi was a charmingly masculine figure. He used to toss flowers through the open windows of his favorite ladies … and to brighten up the gray days of winter, he organized the music at the skating rink. But his dreams of a higher education were dashed by his very own uncle Jan Zedrich on the Corner, a bigoted old bachelor. So Bubi abandoned the idea of going to college and went out into the wide world … and far across the sea. His cousin Emil Zedrich took advantage of Bubi’s absence. Emil coaxed and cajoled old Uncle Jan … until his plan succeeded. And that was how Bubi, that good-natured fellow, as people of genius tend to be, wound up with a paltry inheritance. Bubi grew bitter … from then on he only rarely ever walked out the back door of his house, the Old Post Office, into the fields, or worked in the garden. He kept an old manservant, but for the rest lived completely alone. Despondent over the blow fate had dealt him, he reached instead for his revolver and at the age of fifty-six put an end to his life, the life of an unhappy man. The servant found his body in the parlor. He was buried in the old graveyard, not far from the chapel … but I ask you … where is his gravestone today? That headstone, beneath which, only yesterday, lay the urn with his ashes? Cried Mr. Otokar Rykr, in a voice of reconciliation that carried far, he almost seemed to be cheering, the two other old witnesses to old times were about to continue the story, but Mr. Rykr raised his hand to stop them and went on, more solemnly now … In the old house on the square, on the first floor, lived Mr. Augustin Strohbach with his spouse, Bedřiška, and daughter, Gustina. The house belonged to Mr. Červinka the Cigar. Every day that house was filled with piano playing and dancing. Mr. Augustin Strohbach never missed a single festivity, theatrical performance or concert. His other passion was smoking cigars, though at home he preferred his well-browned meerschaum pipe. Every day, weather permitting, the entire family would go Ostrov … Mr. Strohbach’s foresight and solicitude were exemplary, as were his fortitude and equanimity. A practical man, he wrote his own obituary in calligraphic letters, omitting the date, and sent it to his supervisors with the request that in the event of his death his widow and daughter receive a pension, he even wrote the text for the funeral card. He also addressed the envelopes, after his death all his friends and relations received a funeral card addressed to them by the dearly departed himself
. A day before he died he had a grave dug for his coffin and instructed his friend Emil Zimmler, Master of Science honoris causa, to check the size of the grave. He died peacefully in January nineteen-hundred-and-seven and was buried in the old graveyard, not far from the chapel, like Bubi. It was said that the deceased, when he felt death approaching, donned an immaculate black suit and lay down on the sofa, where on the nineteenth of January he breathed his last … Cried and cheered Mr. Otokar Rykr … And every pensioner who looked down from the gallery at the graveyard of the little town, where the tractors were uprooting the last few tombstones, put his hand to his cheek, each time they tore out a tombstone he had the feeling that not only were all his teeth being torn out but his entire jaw. The jittery German woman sat huddled on a bench, staring at the transport of the tombstones, she trembled all over and tried several times to get up from the bench, but each time her legs failed her. Mr. Rykr spread his arms and cried, his voice swelling … This is the end of the golden olden times, where have they taken those tombstones, where are Červinka the Parasol, Červinka the Perch, Červinka the Gimp, Červinka the Lousehead, Červinka the Periwig, Červinka the Greyhound, Červinka Busted, Červinka Koruna, Červinka the Cigar, Červinka Sweatbuckets, Červinka from Upstairs, Červinka Untergleichen? Where is the seating plan for the Last Judgment, Dlabač the Rib Roast, Dlabač Moneybags, Dlabač the Ramrod, Dlabač the Baron, Dlabač Pork Butt, Dlabač the Rogue? Who will miss the tombstones of Votava Pantelone, Votava the Musician, Votava the Useless? Where are the graves of Voháňka Rawhide, Voháňka Laudon, Zedrich on the Corner, Zedrich Bubi, One-Leg Theer, Miss Taubicová-Holdmytail and all those others who died so long ago … Only my friends and I, we, chroniclers and witnesses to old times, shall guard the contents of that empty graveyard! Cried Mr. Otokar Rykr and the German woman from Pecer groaned each time she tried to get to her feet, finally she managed to stand up on her shaky legs and make her escape, she dragged herself from the gallery to her room, spread out an old tablecloth, tied up her most valuable possessions, ran slowly down the stairs, sat down under the clock in the vestibule, where she waited, fearfully, she had her identity card ready, after a while she changed her mind, listened, and stood up, she put aside her identity card and knotted tablecloth, opened the glass door of the clock case and stopped the clock. It was evening, the clock said twenty-five past seven and the German woman from Pecer sat down again, contentedly, she placed the tablecloth on her lap and showed her identity card to someone who never came … And “Harlequin’s Millions” curls around and around the gallery with its fine green tendrils of honeysuckle, I smile and it’s all the same to me that the tractors are carting away the last tombstones from the old graveyard in the gleam of their headlights, I sit and think back on that one beautiful spring day, when Francin and Uncle Pepin were delivering bottles of seltzer and soda in the White, that day they were going to drive their refreshing beverages to a little town where a memorial stone was about to be unveiled for a famous general, they were just setting off when they had a flat tire and Francin had to change it, which made them late. When they finally arrived in the little town they were stopped by a lieutenant of the artillery, who told them it would be better if they waited, in ten minutes there would be a celebratory salute from the row of cannons standing in the ditch, but Francin said it would only take him a couple of minutes to drive past the cannons in the ditch and he had to deliver the soda and seltzer in time for the ceremony. So the lieutenant picked up the receiver of the field telephone and someone on the other end told him the truck full of refreshing beverages could drive through, because the whole little town was waiting for them. And Francin saluted him and the White started off again, he drove slowly, the cannons gleamed in the ditch, the loaders stood in the sunlight next to the muzzles with their ammunition, as they passed the third cannon Francin noticed a couple of auxiliaries kneeling down next to the carriage and securing it to the ground with enormous bolts … And at that very moment the White began sputtering and came to a halt. When Francin later told me the story, he said he’d had an attack of rheumatism right there on the spot, he’d badly needed someone to heat his joints with a soldering iron, he kept his hands on the steering wheel and saw the lieutenant signaling frantically to him to get out of there, they were about to start firing the cannons, Francin gathered his nerve and jumped out of the truck, he opened the hood and went back to get a screwdriver and a wrench, then removed the carburetor, and when he had taken out the float and blown through the jet, he saw the lieutenant, who was listening to his field telephone and then with a sweep of his hand damned Francin to hell, the lieutenant looked at his watch, raised his arm, several of the artillerists stopped their ears, and then the lieutenant gave the command and the first salvo was fired, and Francin watched as the side rails were torn off the White and all the bottles of soda and seltzer went flying to pieces in the ditch, the blast also ripped off the hood, with Francin on top, and he flew over the ripening fields as if he were sitting on an elephant’s ear, flying through the air like Mr. Jirout, a maltster, in his younger years, when he was shot out of a cannon at the local fairs, and when the air grew still again Francin landed on the edge of the farthest ditch, still holding the carburetor and showered with broken glass. And with the force of the second salvo the White spun halfway around and the remaining crates were flung out and the torn-off side rails came flying by … and with each blast in honor of the unveiling of the memorial stone for the famous general the truck was lifted off the ground and turned halfway around, like a wretched little mouse being teased by a cat’s paw … Francin would tell me enthusiastically that between blasts from the ceremonial cannons he poked his head out of the ditch and looked around, trembling, to see what had happened to Uncle Pepin. Finally he caught sight of him in a patch of blackthorn and rosehip bushes, he was sitting there in his car seat in those springy bushes and with every solemn boom of celebratory artillery fire Uncle Pepin rocked back and forth in the branches as if he were being rocked to sleep in an old-fashioned wicker baby carriage. When the cannons had finished firing, the lieutenant came running over and when he saw to his relief that Francin had only a rip in his pants and a torn eyebrow and that Uncle Pepin had been rocking all that time in the arms of the bushes, he gave an order, soldiers came running up and carried Uncle Pepin away, he was still in a sitting position, and Francin told me later, roaring with laughter, that his brother had looked just like that monument to a certain Czech writer … But the White had taken such a beating that the soldiers loaded it onto an artillery tractor and carted it off to the town square, and when they’d unloaded it onto the pavement the whole thing collapsed, with a tremendous roar, like a mortally wounded prehistoric monster … I said to myself, smiling, how nice it was to look back years later on an event that had been so threatening you’d had to be careful you didn’t get killed, how nice to have witnessed something so terrible, something everyone was afraid of, but that still, after a while, when you’d gotten over it, in the end you were glad to have seen and experienced events you’d had to pay for with your own self, by becoming submissive, softhearted … I was so infatuated with those sandstone statues in the castle park that it was two months before I noticed that the statues of May and June had cement breasts, a bit of cement at the elbow, cement-patched bellies and a cement eye. The cement looked so different from the sandstone, the cement eyes and breasts were so lifeless that they would certainly catch the eye of anyone who saw them. But I had been so excited by the charm of those nude statues, by their sweetness, which flowed from their hair to the nails on their bare feet, that I’d never noticed the cement repairs. And then it occurred to me that the statues’ wounds must have been there for a reason, and I asked the old castle gardener, an elderly pensioner, about it and he told me there had been a time, perhaps during the war, when this castle was a cadet school, and when the cadets graduated from this military academy and became officers, they got drunk and shot off the military pistols they’d received that day along with
their new uniforms, they fired them in the castle garden and wounded a few of the statues. Said the old gardener, laughing … But before they turned the castle into a retirement home, it was a boarding school, young boys were trained here as bricklayers and as part of their final exam they had to replace with cement all the bits of the statues that had been shot off by the officers. At first I was shocked, but later on the statues seemed even more beautiful to me than before, I experienced it tangibly, as if it had happened to me, as if I’d been standing on one of those plinths and those young officers had fired at my naked body, when I walked past the statues, I could actually feel those young bricklayers replacing with cement everything that had been shattered by bullets from the military pistols … What is life? Everything that once was, everything an old person thinks back on and tells you stories about, everything that no longer matters and is gone for good. And still! Once again I went walking around the pleasure park, the Count’s park, and all those wounded sandstone beauties looked suddenly more beautiful than they could ever have looked to Count Špork and his friends, for the first time I noticed not only the beautiful female bodies, but also the objects they were holding that went along with the statues, a churn that July was leaning against, she was busily churning butter, I could hear the pounding of the butter being churned, like the sound of a lovers’ bed, I saw a rose in sandstone hair, roses pouring from sandstone hands, a bouquet of roses shooting out of the basket like a geyser, touching the thigh of a naked beauty whose limbs smelled of butter and roses … For the first time I saw the statue of May in her entirety, one hand resting on the horn of a young goat, the other holding a wooden bowl from which she scatters grain for the chicks hatching out of the eggshells at her feet, while the happy mother hen protects her little family with her wings, the statue of May with the cemented breasts, which the apprentice bricklayers had copied from Playboy … Today for the first time I saw that the sandstone statue of April has one hand resting on an upright spade, while the other caresses a tall bush of ripening lemons, the top of the bush grazes the bare sandstone breasts, which look exactly like the lemons, young officers had shot an eye out of this statue too and several of the lemons had been hit, but I could still see that the statue of the young beauty was even more beautiful with those injuries, like the antique statues that fishermen dredge out of the sea, statues with no arms … Yes, now I could see that all the other statues must’ve had these same small breasts, not much larger than a boy’s, the only statue that hadn’t been wounded was February, a dancing statue with a dress clinging to her body, a wet drapery, a dancing Carnival statue carrying a bread basket filled with kolacky and candies, her knee is touching a keg of wine and a tankard, and she’s surrounded by the same kind of chickens and ducks grilled on a spit that I used to offer my guests at the brewery at Carnival time, when I was a young woman filled with rhythm and dance, a woman with small breasts that no one had ever shot at with a military pistol … I noticed that the statues of the months that had been depicted in sandstone as men, that no one had shot at them, the officers were lured only by beautiful women, which was probably as it should be … And for the first time the Count’s garden appeared to me in its entirety, two rows of months, then two sphinxes opposite each other, their claws clutching their sandstone plinths as they crouched there guarding the lane, then two sandstone lionesses, tame as watchdogs, and then the stairs to the castle, on the left a heavenly cupid offering a mirror that reflected the moon and a star, on the right another cherub reflecting a beaming sun in an oval platter, and then on the last step two statues, to the left the statue of a woman in a pleated gown, and for the first time I saw that this statue was smiling the broad smile of a woman in love, while at her feet stood a cupid with a quiver full of arrows, with one chubby hand he lifted the hem of her gown and with the other hand pointed to the statue’s belly, this winged cherub turned to me and there was something obscene in his grin, because probably every cupid knows that love is supreme … And standing across from this statue was a nearly naked man, one hand resting on a bow and the other drawing an arrow from the quiver on his back, yes, that too was as it should be, a man is young as long as he can still wound women with his arrows … I stood there enchanted by the knowledge that I had unraveled the mystery of all the statues, in their entirety … on the left the statue of Spring, her profile suffused with an amorous glow, a rose on her forehead, roses in her hair, roses around lap and breasts, around hips, roses arranged in such a way as to accentuate the nakedness of her spring body … and next to her the statue of Summer, ears of wheat in the hair of the naked woman, a sheaf of wheat at her thigh, wheat ears between her fingers, in her other hand a sickle with which she plucks the ears in the wheat field, ears of immortal wheat symbolizing the infinitude that is constantly being revived by the present … and on the other side of the terrace the statues of two men, Autumn, holding an enormous cluster of sandstone grapes against the sky, he crushes the grapes with his other hand, the juice drips into a seashell, which is made of glass, and a cupid, a heavenly sandstone cherub, gulps it down … and then finally the statue of an old man, Winter, which completes the cycle of man and nature and most resembles everything that surrounds me here in the retirement home, once Count Špork’s castle, where today I’ve seen all the sandstone phases that I and the others have lived through, and it makes me regret that when I was young, I forgot about love, which had slipped through my fingers before I knew it … But then, isn’t that what life is?