The Little Town Where Time Stood Still Page 7
8
Uncle Pepin had been working in the brewery for three weeks now; the coopers took him on, and from then on there was merriment in the brewery. When I had a chance, I took some buckets for draff and went across the brewery yard, the foreman looked at me searchingly to see if he should bring a two-litre pot of beer, I nodded, and while I collected the draff from the wagon, the coopers were having their morning break, Uncle Pepin was lying on his back and on his chest an empty cask of keg, the cooper men were laughing fit to burst, choking on crumbs of spread slices of bread, and Uncle Pepin sang, “Doh re mi fa so la ti doh!”
The assistant cooper knelt over Uncle, saying, “Now, Mr Josef, let’s have that scale backwards, just like Caruso and Mařáček used to practise it!”
And Uncle Pepin cleared his throat and screeched horrifically, “Doh ti la so fa mi re doh . . .”
And when the workmen had had their fill of this din, the assistant cooper said, “And now, Mr Josef, give us a high C.”
And the cooper men stood up, leaned over Uncle Pepin, who screeched out that high C, and the cooper men roared with laughter, lay on their backs with their spread slices of bread, and hopped up again and choked over their crumbs and rested against the cooperage and chuckled and chuckled, to avoid asphyxiating with mirth.
And in the middle of the yard the old maltster Mr Řepa roasted the malt for the dark ale, he sat on a chair and turned the black drum on its shaft, and under that drum the charcoal burned bluely and pinkly and redly, and the old maltster, with his scattering of grey hairs, majestically and regularly revolved the soot-caked globe like some god from an ancient myth of earthly spheres.
And the assistant cooper leaned over Uncle and said, “And now once again, one last breath exercise, sing us another high C, and this time sing it in the head . . . but watch you don’t do a job in your pants, or give yourself brown trousers!”
And Uncle Pepin breathed in, screwed up his nose, and the cooper men leaned over him and Uncle sang inside of himself that high C, the kind of long drawn-out note made by a creaking gate, he sang that high C with all his might and main, he kept that inward singing note going a whole minute, and then he was so exhausted, he spread his arms and breathed out and the cask on his chest heaved, just like in the music academies when the pupils lie on their backs on the carpet and the teacher piles books on their chests.
And I stepped along with my pails of draff past the open door to the boiler house, there in the half-dark glowed the lower hemisphere of the boiler, the ash-box shining with the saffron shade of the burning coal on the grate, down through the glowing ash-box tumbled red and purple violet burning coals and green-blue cinders, and right next to it in the darkness glowed the open boiler with its beige tinge, and there the workman crouched like a child in the mother’s womb tapping the scale out of the boiler in that cramped position, two light bulbs lit up sharply that workman crouched there in an arc, as he worked in the dust and sang with it, encircled by cables of the electric circuit like an umbilical cord. Each time I glimpsed out of the sunlight that sharply lit oval and that workman tapping away bit by bit with a hammer, I thought that anyone going past would be startled by this image framed in the lunette, but no one even paused for thought, no one was sorry, nor was he sorry for himself either, that man who spent a fortnight on end like a woodpecker tapping saltpetre in his crouched position, on the contrary, he sang with it.
And the coopers had finished their break, the foreman cooper stood like a shepherd among sheep, around him hundred of barrels, he leaned over one of them, examined it with a searching eye, then he straightened and pulled up a burning candle on a twisted wire from the wame of the barrel, and again he leant over another barrel and dangled the candle into its interior scanning it with a watchful eye to see whether the barrel was fit to be filled with beer or whether it had to be caulked, that is to say pitched. Uncle Pepin stood by the enormous stove and stoked it with anthracite and coke, heated up the pitch, the stove thundered darkly away and out of its short bent chimney there erupted a red fire hemmed with blue borders, flames ornamented with a sizzling green corona, like the flame on a blow-lamp used to thaw out frozen joints or burn off old paint.
The carters loaded the wet barrels of beer into the carts, and carried out casks of ice. The foreman handed me a measure of orange-coloured beer, a measure full of drops of condensed steam. And I knew the foreman didn’t like me, and that he would have given me not one, but five measures of beer, and more, as long as I would drink them, drink them down, and the workmen would see what an inclination to drunkenness the manager’s wife possessed. But I was young, and hence above all that, whatever I did, I did, only asking prior permission of myself, and always I nodded my own assent, and that inward nodding of mine, that sign from my mentor, who was somewhere in my heart inside, that consent went straight to my blood, and my hand stretched out and I sipped with gusto, with such gusto, that the carters stopped stacking the barrels and stared at me. So I stood by the ramp, alongside the horses, Ede and Kare seemed to have an understanding with me, their manes and great tails had that same colour of golden beer. And old Řepa in the middle of the brewery yard now pulled out the crank-shaft, examined expertly the contents of roasted malt and nodded to himself, pulled a handle and swung that black globe on the mechanism away from the red-hot coals, loosened the lock carefully with a small hammer, turned the handle, and the hot roasted malt tumbled out on to the black griddle and the aroma of malt shot off on all sides. It must have reached the square by now, and the passers-by will be turning their heads towards the brewery, where in the middle the old maltster mumbles contentedly and rakes through the roasted malt with a black wooden poker.
And Uncle Pepin stood by the pitching stove and smiled at me, he wore a leather apron, the furnace behind him thundered and threatened red-hot to explode into the air like some kind of fantastic rocket from a Jules Verne novel. That flame which sizzled out after Uncle Pepin was so terrifically beautiful, that I took a look about me, but no one was marvelling at the display. And the master cooper came and began passing the barrels down the skid to Uncle Pepin’s feet, and Uncle Pepin took every barrel, heaved it on to his knee and stuck it on the pin of the nozzle, pressed the foot lever, and boiling pitch squirted into the barrel, and Uncle Pepin lifted the barrel and let it go in a free fall, and the barrel slowly birled over with blue smoke trailing from its filling hole, enlacing the barrel with a blueish ribbon, like a rabbi winding the holy phylactery ribbons round his arm, and when the barrel stopped at the bottom, the assistant cooper took it, or sent it on its way with a kick, and the barrel came to rest on the slowly turning shafts of the rotary mechanism, one barrel alongside another, now all the barrels were turning and blueish smoke twisting round them like those circlets which bob round the heads of sanctified figures.
I watched, and as always when I watch work with fire, I got thirsty, my tongue stuck to my palate and instead of saliva I had nothing in my mouth but the like of cigarette papers. I raised the measure and received a shock, the pot practically shot up in the air, I had thought it still heavy with beer, but it was altogether light, because I had already drunk it all. The foreman squatted down and took the measure from me and laughed and went into the conditioning cellar, I knew he would draw me my beer with one pull, put a good top on it, maybe fill half the can with lager and finish it with dark garnet, a mixture that sends your body purring all over with approval. The Belgian geldings swished their fair tails like barley and whinnied, the drayman came out of the conditioning cellar bearing two cans, and gave one to each gelding, they took those cans in their teeth, pulled on the bridle and drank, as they drank they raised their necks high to let the very last drops of beer drain down their throats, and when they had finished, they tossed aside their cans and uttered a joyful neighing sound and pawed with their hooves and from their shoes pittered hardly visible sparks, the drayman laughed and nodded to me, I nodded back and the horses nodded too, the foreman squatted down and handed me
the measure from the ramp, I sniffed at the foam and nodded, and Uncle Pepin began to sing, “Oh ye lindens, o-o-oh ye li-i-inden trees!”
And the assistant cooper called out, “Mr Josef, you know what a glorious day that will be when you sing Přemysl in the National Theatre?”
And Uncle Pepin nodded, stacking the barrels on to the sprayer of boiling pitch, tears dropped on to his apron, and the assistant cooper continued, “And I warrant you this, when the first night comes, the folks from the brewery alone will make a whole busload to Prague, but you must keep training, now instead of the quarter we’ll give you an empty half size on your chest.”
“A hectolitre, or a double if you like, long as it gets me up to the standard of Caruso and Mařáček,” Pepin shouted back.
“Half-and-half,” I told myself into the can and then I sipped in and gradually, holding back the desire to pour down the whole measure at once, ever so slowly and sweetly I swallowed down that light lager mixed with dark garnet, that half-and-half, mutra the maltsters called it, I drank ever so slowly and tenderly, just like when on a summer’s early evening out there beyond the brewery, on the margins of the fields of rye, someone sits sweetly blowing a mournful song on the trombone, just for himself, with closed eyes and the tremor and quiver of the gleaming instrument in his brassy hands, just for its own sake till nightfall with his head leaning gently backward, playing for himself his melancholic song.
The assistant cooper waved his hand over his head, “And, Mr Josef, do you know who’ll be in the box? Your brother and your sister-in-law, then Mr Jandák the mayor, that goes to the bars to check if the young ladies’ calves are nice and firm as per regulation, what a pity your parents didn’t live to see that day of glory, your mum and dad! What a joy it would’ve been!”
And Uncle Pepin wept, wiping the tears into his apron and nodding, and the assistant cooper went on mercilessly, “Then after the performance the young ladies, Mr Josef, they would be throwing you bouquets of flowers and the newspaper men would be asking, where did you acquire all that talent, sir? And how would you answer them, Mr Josef, eh?”
“I’d say it was the gift of God,” cried Uncle Pepin pressing both hands to his face and weeping, and the barrels on the rotary mechanism turned and through its filling hole each barrel went on trailing out its tender saliva, which as each barrel rotated shaped around it a bobbing blueish circlet, a violet wheel, a neon necklace.
The assistant cooper went on triumphantly, “But then you would have to tell the newspaper men, that your voice technique was learnt from a certain Austrian Captain von Meldík, that sang in the Vienna Opera House in his youth, that . . .”
And the assistant cooper didn’t finish, Uncle roared and shook both his hands in the air, “Balls! The Emperor wouldn’t employ a tobacconist in the Opera, and if he did, only in the lavatories, and not even that. Just ye wait, Meldík, next time I pass the shop, I’ll give ye a wee box in your window.”
The assistant cooper turned a barrel, held it, and the smoke rose up the cooper’s chest and twined round his face, and the cooper called, “Only Meldík said, the minute he spots you, he’ll have the pepper ready, and as you bend over, he’ll puff the pepper in your eyes, and then Meldík said . . .”
“Aye, what did he say, what?” roared Uncle Pepin.
“Mr Meldík said then he’d just run up and be able to do whatever he wants with you. Says he’ll just give you a kick up the backside all the way back to the brewery,” the assistant cooper said daringly.
“What? And me an Austrian sodger, that was offered a rank and didna take it, me that carried the Captain’s sabre? We’ll soon see about that! Soon as I gets to the shop, over the bridge she goes, the whole jingbang into the Elbe!” shouted Uncle taking a barrel and heaving it up with his knee, and as he put it on the pin, the sprayer missed the opening and Uncle Pepin pressed on the foot lever and I put aside my measure of beer, laid it on the ramp and wiped my mouth, and at first I thought that the mixed lager with dark garnet must be making me see things, the assistant and the master cooper and the passing mechanic and old Řepa who was turning his shaft with a new lot of malt, all of them started to jig about and as they danced and capered they plucked at their cheeks and slapped their legs, they were like Moravian Slovaks dancing fancy figures, but old Řepa had to stay with his handle, so he went on turning the shaft, plucking at his face and alternately brandishing his hand and with the other turning the black globe, the drum in which the malt was roasting, till eventually, he tugged at the handle and shifted the drum away from the heat of the thirsty charcoal and like the coopers he jigged and capered, slapping his calves, as though being bitten by thousands of mosquitos.
The assistant cooper shouted, “Mr Josef, turn off that pitch!”
And Uncle Pepin stamped his foot, but kept missing the spot, till finally he hit the lever, and only now did I see how, squirting from the spray nozzle in every direction, the tiny droplets of redhot pitch suddenly wilted, and all those delicate little thin amber tendrils, over which flew those little spatterings tiny as millet, or golden rice, or obtrusive insects, all these wands all at once sank into the dust of the brewery yard, and the coopers peeled off drying gobbets of pitch from their cheeks and the backs of their hands and necks and stared crossly at Uncle Pepin, as he stood there beside that huge stove that was still spluttering, hawking and belching thick short fire out of its bent chimney. Uncle Pepin knitted his scorched fingers and stared at the ground.
The master cooper said, “Right, lads, it’s back to work, so that Mr Josef here can get off soon to visit his young ladies.”
9
The new fashion began at the Hotel Na Knížecí. Soldiers brought in some apparatus, school head-masters assembled their pupils as early as six o’clock in the morning, and all the municipal corporations were involved, and as the day marched on through the great chamber there moved a line of curious participants, the soldiers put a kind of receiver, the sort telephones have, on every person’s ear, and in that earpiece a crackling noise was heard and then some brass band music, which kept on playing the well-known tune Kolíne, Kolíne, but this music wasn’t a bit beautiful, it was as if it was played on a long ago worn-out gramophone record, but all the same that music was being played in Prague and it was coming through the air, without wires, it was being drawn along like a thread and into the eye of the earpiece far away in our own little town. And everyone who heard it went out the back entrance of the hotel totally dazzled by this aural sensation, by the absence of any wire in bringing them Kmoch’s Kolín Brass Band, and everybody walked past this queue of townspeople, this queue stretching right across the square as far as the main street, right down to Svoboda the baker’s, and people who hadn’t yet heard this wireless telegraphy, when they saw what blissful amazed expressions there were on the faces of those who had been granted a taste of this revolutionary new invention, all looked forward to it with greater and greater anticipation, as they approached in this procession winding into the Hotel Na Knížecí.
Mr Knížek, owner of the draper’s shop, who liked making speeches, at once ordered his apprentice girl to bring the steps, then he got up on them and explained to the assembled citizenry, “Good people, what you are about to hear is an invention, an appliance which our business party will strive to make available to every household, to every family in a year or two from now, at as reasonable a price as is feasible, so that every one of you can sit at home and receive not only music, but the news as well. I do not wish to anticipate, but this amenity can enable us to hear news not only from Prague, but maybe Brno too, music maybe even from Pilsen, and, to cast modesty completely to the winds, even news and music all the way from Vienna!” Mr Knížek declaimed from his stepladder.
Past that stepladder, with his handbarrow and assistant in tow, came Mr Zálaba, who delivered coal and wood about town, and when he heard Mr Knížek speaking, his assistant had to tip up the barrow, and Mr Zálaba ran up the rungs to the top of it and thundered and
pointed at Mr Knížek, “Look at him, the petty bourgeois! He thinks of nothing else but his huckster’s decimal scales! Citizens, this invention is capable of establishing mutual understanding not only between towns, but also between nations, we welcome wireless telegraphy as the helpmate of the whole of humanity! For understanding among the peoples of all continents, all races, all nations!” Mr Zálaba declaimed, brandishing his arm in the air, and his assistant stood on the shaft of the barrow, but when he spotted a discarded fag-end on the pavement he couldn’t resist and nipped over to pick it up, and the barrow tipped over and Mr Zálaba fell on to the paving stones, I only just avoided him.
And I hurried my bicycle home the minute I heard that foreshortened distance through the earphone between the brass-band music in Prague and my listening ear in the Hotel Na Knížecí. I took off my skirt, laid it on the table, picked up the scissors, and at the point where the knees come in the skirt, I cut short the material, producing so much left-over cloth that I reckoned my dressmaker could make me a bolero out of it, and instantly I took a needle and bound the new edge, and almost feverishly I pulled the skirt on and went straight over to look in the mirror, and there I saw it! Ten years younger I was for that foreshortening of distances. I turned round and knew at once that of course the garters had to be much higher up, and then I saw for an absolute certainty that only now were my legs really beautiful, those beautiful shadows in the tendons under the knees, those brown imprints of God’s thumb, were capable of arousing much surprise and delight, but also much civic indignation, especially from Francin, who, when he saw me like this, would blush to the roots of his hair and declare that no decent woman ever wore a skirt like that. And I ran out into the yard and jumped on my bike and rode out of the brewery to the Cross, such a pleasurable draught wafted round my knees, reaching up to my garters, I could pedal much more freely in that trimmed skirt, the only thing that bothered me was, I had to cycle with one hand on the handlebars, with the other I had to keep pulling my skirt down all the time, as it rode up my legs with the motion of my knees. And now out of the Hořátev turning Mr Kropáček came on his Hendee ‘Indian’ motorbike, as always he was sitting in the sidecar and steering the motorcycle with one leg slung over the handlebars and one hand controlling the gas on the end of one of the bars, I liked to watch him start the bike up in the brewery, the minute he got going he climbed across from the saddle into the sidecar, tossed out one leg as if out of the bath, and then he drove on comfortably home. So now, Mr Kropáček, when he caught sight of my bare knees at the turning in the road, he clean missed the corner and drove off into the cherry orchard, and I took that as a good omen and hurried on across the bridge, only slowing down outside the Hotel Na Knížecí. Slowly I rode past that queue waiting to experience the new invention, on the subject of which Headmaster Kupka had declared, “I don’t know, I really don’t know, but it bodes nobody any good,” and everybody sort of stopped focusing on what was awaiting them in the Hotel Na Knížecí, and concentrated on my knees, and shortened skirt, all of them stopped looking at the hotel entrance and turned in my direction. Headmaster Kupka pointed his umbrella at me and said to the Dean, “And there you have it, the first results!” But the Dean bowed to me and said, “A lady’s full genuflection is another name for the Holy Spirit.” And I stopped outside the cake shop, before putting my little shoe on the pavement I drew back my hair so that it wouldn’t get tangled in the spokes, I leant the bicycle against the wall, and as I went down the pavement I felt as if I was walking along in a bathing suit.