Harlequin's Millions

by Bohumil Hrabal

  12

  SUNDAYS AT THE RETIREMENT HOME ALWAYS BEGAN on Thursday and Friday. The residents would start preparing to look forward to someone coming to visit, someone from the family, usually children who had children of their own, and so the pensioners would spend what little money they had on boxes of chocolates and truffles. On those days some of the pensioners seemed to perk up a bit, as if they had awakened from a deep melancholy, and were feeling better again. But the ones who made the most preparations for those Sunday visits were those who never had any visitors. And so on Sunday morning, bright and early, small groups of pensioners would be gathered here and there in the courtyard, when it rained they sat in the Count’s great vestibule, but some couldn’t bear it and kept going out in the rain to see if anyone was driving up the avenue of old chestnuts that starts at the chapel and goes uphill, they’d peer all the way down to the bottom of the road, and sooner or later a car always came driving up the hill toward the gate, and the pensioners would hurry back to the vestibule, settle themselves into an armchair and put on their best smile, they watched the door, but those same pensioners who had run outside so impatiently to await the arrival of their beloved family were the ones whom hardly anyone ever came to see. More likely, someone would come whom no one had expected, or had even had time to expect, this was often the case with the five little groups of pensioners who sat and played cards all day, and when the nurses came to tell them that their relatives had arrived, that they had visitors, they had to quickly finish up their game of Mariáš and then, sulking, they left the card table and went downstairs to the reception hall, if it was a nice day they took their relatives to a bench in the park or in the courtyard, and still sulking, told them to have a seat, and then the relatives, when they saw that they hadn’t been expected the way one expects to be expected, actually felt better, they were glad to see that their father or father-in-law was much too busy with other things, they were glad that the pensioner was making their visit easier, that he was still a person who didn’t sit around waiting for members of his family to rescue him, to brighten up his Sunday, but who without even trying to hide his impatience kept looking at his watch, continually pushing back his sleeve to keep an eye on the time, which passed inexorably, while upstairs his friends sat waiting for him to return so they could resume their game of Mariáš, that eternally moveable feast, that perennial Sunday that was always marked in red on the calendar, because playing cards is much more fun than telling all those pointless stories that had been told and retold in the family while there still was time. I never expected anyone, and if someone did stop by I made it clear that I was happy to see them, but that I’d be even happier when they left, because I’ve come to realize that there is a time for everything, I’ve even discovered, here in the retirement home, that this is the first time I’ve ever been able to take a good look at what is going on around me, and on the faces of all these people I could see and read their fate, I could write a book about it, I saw their fate like those old gypsy women who can read palms or see human destiny in a cup of coffee grounds, I saw in each of them that everything was written not just on their faces, but also in the way they walked, on their whole body. That’s why all I did was walk and look around, I tried to assess the relationships between people, and that wasn’t too hard, because all people, even though they may try to pretend, are easy to read, easy to assess. So on sunny Sunday mornings when the visitors poured in and sat down next to the pensioners on chairs and benches and brought cakes and gifts and flowers, I saw that most of them looked rather gloomy, as if life outside the retirement home was almost unbearable, when I walked around and listened to snatches of conversation, all I could hear was people complaining, about how they’d had to stand in line for vegetables and meat, and that if they wanted to buy fresh rolls and bread in the morning, very often the baked goods weren’t delivered till noon, or even later in the day, I heard them complaining that the streets were all dug up, that their houses had to be torn down, that it was no longer safe to walk through Prague after dark because you might fall into a trench, some visitors claimed, even though it was a beautiful day, that they’d been caught in a terrible storm along the way, a hurricane, there had been several accidents, which meant they’d had to take a roundabout route through the countryside in order to get here, to say hello to their mama or papa, and that they’d also had to order the cake ahead of time, because if they didn’t buy it on Friday, by Saturday there wouldn’t be so much as a cream puff left on the bakery shelves. And so I walked around and saw all the relatives trying to suggest that here, in the retirement home, in this castle, while it wasn’t exactly paradise, it was certainly a haven of tranquility, some took a tour of the place, they walked around looking at the corridors full of flowers, they peeked into the dining hall, where that enormous fresco raged across the ceiling, and when they returned, they were bursting with enthusiasm and said that if they could, they’d retire tomorrow, there was no place they’d rather live than here, in Count Špork’s castle. And the pensioners smiled quietly, most of the women had spruced themselves up, they had put on their very best dresses, they smiled, and when they tried to explain that things weren’t quite the way the relatives said they were, that being here on your own and condemned to live in a room with eight others, while those who had money and could afford it, like me, were allowed to live in twos, when they tried to explain all that, the relatives would throw up their hands and implore them not to speak such blasphemy, and once again they described to them in abundant detail those lovely walks around the castle grounds, those lovely roads to the little town, which was the loveliest little town they’d ever seen, once again they grabbed their mothers and fathers under the arm, and while the grandchildren stuffed themselves with cake, they took them for a stroll through the castle park, where the rows of Baroque sandstone statues stood along the footpaths among the pruned old beeches, the visitors pretended to take great interest in the statues, which they surely never would have noticed if these statues of the months carved from sandstone by Braun and his pupils hadn’t given them the perfect opportunity to point out to the pensioners certain details, the lovely heads and breasts, and when the pensioner now tried to tell them that things weren’t nearly as lovely inside, that when night came and everyone wanted to sleep, they kept each other awake with all their coughing, with their tossing and turning and digestive troubles, that even though they never lacked for company here, well, that was terrible too, because they could never be alone anymore, alone in their own home, the way they used to be, the way the young people who came to visit still could. But as soon as a pensioner indicated that he wanted to let them know there was another side to these splendid surroundings, the relatives quickly got down on their knees and tried to make out the German inscriptions on the plinth, they took great pains to decipher and read out syllable by syllable the names of the months carved into the stone and weather-beaten and blurred by moss, because the statues had stood there for more than two hundred years … And then all of a sudden those who had come to visit, and this was always at the very moment the pensioner was about to pour out his heart, not so much because he had to live here with all those others, but because old age was terrible, there was nothing one could do about it, of course, but young people should be grateful they were still young, because every pensioner would be more than glad to stand in line for vegetables, or bread, he’d be more than glad to walk through the broken-up streets of Prague and other cities, more than glad to go to his butcher and order meat for a certain hour, more than glad to do anything, if only he could be young again, younger than he was, so he could take care of himself when his time had come, when he was bedridden and powerless, and the nurses had to bring him the chamber pot and wipe his bottom the way you do with little children … I saw how, whenever the situation arose that a pensioner wanted to say something truthful to his children, let them know they should appreciate the fact that they were young, each of the relatives, whose responsibility it was to
prevent such outpourings of emotion, would glance at his watch and gasp, he’d even clap his hand to his forehead and wail, hurry, we’ve got to get back, and suddenly everything seemed to be over, like a market or a festival or an outdoor picture show hit by a cloudburst, the relatives hurriedly said their good-byes, snatched up their bags, grabbed their children by the hand and pulled them so hard they practically flew through the air, because in less than half an hour the train or bus would be leaving, and if they had come by car, they suddenly all had to be home on time, where an important visitor was waiting for them who would decide whether something could be arranged concerning admission to a high school, or where something important had to be finished, even if it was a nice day the relatives suddenly looked up at the sky, inhaled deeply and could smell that a storm was brewing, that the skies would roar and the rain would pour and the tires on their car were worn and would skid on a wet road … And the pensioners pretended to be even more dismayed by all this, they made a great show of concern, and then the relatives went away, turning back to wave their handkerchiefs and hands until they reached the gate … and when they were standing at the Count’s elaborately forged wrought-iron gate with its doors open like the gigantic wings of the angel Gabriel, they turned back one last time, wept, and then waved slowly, as if this were the very last time they would ever see each other and that they would never, never meet again … And I just wandered around, I pretended to be watching the tips of my shoes as they slid out alternately from under my long skirt, or listening to the sand crunching under my shoe soles, but from the corner of my eye I could clearly see the pensioners standing there in the middle of the courtyard, next to a small table, leaning on the tabletop and waving with their free hand, like someone waving from his sickbed at departing relatives as they back away to the door, for the very last time, because his days and hours are numbered. And when the relatives were gone, the smiles always fell from the pensioners’ faces, they came unstuck like the sole of an old shoe, and there was silence, everything that had taken place on visiting day, the whole show, was played back on the inside of closed eyelids. And late in the afternoon, after the visitors had left, all the vases were filled with flowers, I always had the feeling when I saw those visitors arriving with bouquets of flowers, when I saw them making their festive entrance, that it was as if they were coming to visit a grave on the name day or birthday of the deceased, or at Christmas, I came to the conclusion that these visits were actually a kind of preparation for the funeral, every visiting relative wanted to convince himself of this, but was afraid to look at anyone directly, so instead each visitor stole a searching glance at his or her parent, or grandparent, or uncle, or aunt, whenever they bent over, whenever they turned around, to try to see from the scrawny neck, the shaking hand, whether that relative was ripe for the coffin, whether he was preparing himself for man’s final resting place, the graveyard. The only pensioners who always looked good were the ones who waited faithfully, even though nobody ever came to see them. Every few minutes they walked to the gate, each time they heard the sound of a car their faces lit up with excitement, but each time they realized that the visitor had come for someone else, they went pale, closed their eyes and walked away, only to return moments later, with that same sense of excitement, to the gate, whose doors were open wide to the town, and look from there to the bottom of the road to see if anyone else was coming. And their Sunday lunch was very much like that of the pensioners who hurried through their meal so they could get back to their never-ending game of Mariáš, they even wrapped their dessert in a napkin and went back out into the courtyard or, if it was raining, to the front door, they stood in the doorway and stared out at the rainy courtyard and rubbed their eyes so they could see if anyone came running through the downpour. Those were the pensioners I was most fond of, because early in the evening, when the gate was shut, these pensioners headed straight for bed, not only was their temperature above normal, but with all that waiting they had developed a real fever, because they had been waiting for no one, not really hoping, just waiting for the sake of waiting, so that they had spent their lovely or rainy but always lovely Sunday waiting for the arrival of someone they knew, like the relatives or friends who came to visit the others. When Uncle Pepin began to have trouble seeing and walking, in order for him to get more exercise, we used to take him mushroom hunting, the day before, Francin would go to the market and buy three wild mushrooms, he always went to the market because he could tell by the quantity and price of the mushrooms on sale there how many mushrooms were growing in the forest. If they cost twenty crowns per kilo, they were plentiful, if they were forty crowns, they’d be scarce. And he always asked the vendor where he’d gotten them and that’s where we’d go looking for mushrooms. If we set out at dawn for the station in our little town and there were a hundred other mushroomers waiting with their baskets for the morning train to Dymokury, we knew right away there would be plenty of mushrooms, but if there were only five mushroomers, that meant mushrooms would be hard to find. And so sometimes there would be a few hundred mushroomers swarming out of the station in Dymokury and if any of those mushroomers got ahead of us, Francin would run up behind them and hold up one of the three ceps he’d been hiding in his basket and call out to the mushroomers … Are you sure you’re looking hard enough? And he’d show them the cep and cut off the stem and put it back in his basket, and then he’d go up behind the next mushroomer and hold up the second cep and show it to him … Have you ever seen such beauties? and he’d cut off the stem and hand it to Uncle Pepin, who sniffed enthusiastically at the cep and cried … Damn, that’s a fine-looking fungus! And by the time he’d held up the third cep behind the third mushroomer the other mushroomers were in such a state of turmoil that from then on they couldn’t function properly … But there were always a few hundred mushroomers in the forest who lost and couldn’t find each other again, and then the forest was so full of shouting and swearing, whistling and yelling that we said to each other that next time we’d go mushroom hunting in the afternoon, because if there were any mushrooms growing at all, they’d be growing after twelve, too. Unfortunately that’s what all the other mushroomers said to each other, so that at the station waiting to board the afternoon train there would again be a hundred mushroomers, all giving each other dirty looks, even the ones who always greeted each other in the little town didn’t do so now, and just as we’d feared, all those mushroomers who had boarded the train in our little town spilled out again in Dymokury and we all ran to the forest and in the forest we all got in each other’s way, so Francin and Pepin and I gathered our mushrooms at the edge of the forest, we even found a whole basket of boletes in a nearby field, and once again our basket was full, and when all the mushroomers were reassembled on the platform to wait for the evening train, they looked enviously at our basket, which Uncle Pepin was carrying. After that we decided that next time it would be better to go by car or bicycle. So when we arrived in Dymokury at daybreak and the train came chugging around the bend, hardly anyone got off, but the forest clearings and paths were full of cars and bicycles and the forest was full of mushroomers. This time we didn’t hurry, we had decided to pick only suspicious-looking mushrooms, I’d brought along a saucepan and a bit of butter, some bread and a thermos can of hot tea, we were hoping we’d be lucky, and after a nice long nap we went and picked only the mushrooms that the other mushroomers had left behind, using the book Professor Smotlacha had written, we gathered gray-spotted Amanita and clustered woodlover, made a fire and braised and fried the mushrooms in butter, Francin added a panther cap and when the mushrooms were ready, we let Uncle Pepin have the first taste, he thought it was delicious, then we waited half an hour and Francin asked … Pepin, are your ears ringing yet? And when he said he didn’t hear any ringing, we helped ourselves and savored every bite, it was lovely in the forest, we picked only mushrooms that had been uprooted by the boots and shoes of hundreds of mushroom hunters … Another time we had fried up a few slices of co
mmon earthball and after eating it our legs went numb, for three hours we couldn’t walk, but then the feeling came back, from then on we avoided the common earthball, we only ever added it to spice up a batch of fried red-foot bolete and sulphur knight, along with some elfin saddle, which according to Professor Smotlacha contained methylhydrazine … Incidentally, elfin saddle is also delicious in vinegar, tarragon vinegar, combined with orange chanterelles, wood hedgehog and young pheasant’s back, in the winter we put this mixture in glass tumblers, sprinkled it with lemon juice and a bit of Worcestershire sauce and it tasted like the most delicate mussels and lobster. And so in the days when we ate and pickled only suspicious-looking mushrooms, we were so full of that delicate poison that once when we found some perfectly edible birch boletes and took them home and braised and fried them, we all suddenly began vomiting and had diarrhea and a terrible thirst, a dull headache, cramps in our calves, we had double vision and a constant ringing in our ears, at the hospital they were amazed that we had been poisoned by edible mushrooms, but the head physician told us that this had also happened to Professor Smotlacha, who had been found deeply unconscious after eating perfectly harmless birch boletes … And from then on we only went into the forest to go walking, and one day Francin stumbled upon a truck in the bushes that had probably been there since the end of the war, it was completely overgrown with small birches and aspens, Francin moved into that truck in the woods, he stayed there all week long and slept in the cab, I brought him his supper and watched as he disassembled the whole truck and put it back together again, and on the last day, when I’d brought him a bag with pans of hot food and a pot of soup, Francin held up his finger, grasped the crank handle, turned it, turned it again and the engine started, Francin pushed down on the accelerator with his hand and laughed, he was happy, then he polished up the weather-beaten emblem on the radiator grille with a piece of cotton waste. The metal emblem was inscribed with the name White. And the following week, with the money in his savings account, he bought the wreck from the local authorities, he bought new tires and took them to the forest, he jacked up the chassis and replaced the flat, moldering tires with the new ones, then he chopped through the young trees overgrowing the White, it was a lovely sight, some of the birch trunks had even sprouted in the driver’s cab and grown right through the broken windshield, toward the sun, perhaps this is what it will look like when there are no more people left here on earth, within ten, twenty years merciful nature will have enveloped all the factories and roads, all the cities, everything people have built on this planet, and then there will be order again on earth and a cruel but righteous peace, said Francin, and sat down behind the wheel and we drove home, Francin was so filled with happiness that he couldn’t eat a thing, every few minutes he went running out to the courtyard to inspect the White, he drank his coffee standing up while keeping an eye on his truck through the window. Then he went back to the local authorities and when he returned, he was waving a document that said that he, Francin, was authorized to use this truck to haul freight. And so every day Francin drove off with Pepin, who went along as his helper, to the fruit and vegetable warehouses, they transported vegetables all the way to Moravia, and the greater the distance the later they came home at night, tired but happy. Uncle Pepin was so old by then that when he and Francin were loading the crates of vegetables onto the pallets, he almost always fell and hit his head, so the warehousemen had to nurse his wounds and the next time they arrived at that warehouse, the men sat Uncle Pepin down on an empty crate and loaded up the truck themselves so they’d be done faster, while Francin just stood there handing them the empty crates that were piled high on the platform of the White … And that was why when both those men of mine returned from their journey, even if Pepin’s head was completely bandaged, he always beamed like a winner. Sometimes they had a flat tire on the road, sometimes two, and once when it was a hot day and they didn’t reach their destination until evening, the consignees wouldn’t accept their wilted vegetables, so Francin instructed Pepin to kneel down beside him, and then the two men put their hands together and begged and pleaded for them to accept the goods, or they’d never deliver any more vegetables to them, after which the men who unloaded the truck signed for the load, but only on condition that Francin take the vegetables to the cowshed, for the cattle, or straight to the dunghill … And all that time I was sitting and waiting, they should’ve been home hours before, but they’d only just left from somewhere along the northern border, I was terrified at the thought that they might have been killed in a crash … I scanned the newspaper for mention of an accident and then went back to listening at the window for the distinctive sound of the White, but although various types of cars and trucks drove past, none of them was my Francin’s, I could always tell the make of a car by its sound, and just when I was convinced they were both stone dead, I heard the cheerful, almost jubilant crackling and sputtering of the White’s engine, which made me laugh, I ran to the gate and opened it in the dark and the White drove slowly onto the premises, Francin tromped on the accelerator to make the engine roar, and then turned the key, which marked the end of their glorious journey. So twice a week my men didn’t get home till about midnight even though I’d expected them early in the evening, I paced up and down, I learned to talk to myself, once they didn’t get back to me until the following day, because all the tires had blown, even the two spares, Francin had to hitchhike home to take out all our money, buy new tires and then bring them all the way back to Broumov, where Uncle Pepin was still sitting in the cab of the truck singing songs from the operetta I Have Nine Canaries, while I spent the whole night pacing up and down and reciting the lines from my most famous roles, from the days when I performed at the playhouse in the little town where time stood still … Now I walk around the retirement home, the rediffusion boxes play “Harlequin’s Millions,” the brown speakers, hanging outside in the trees like bird feeders, make me think of beehives with bees flying out in all directions, into the sun, “Harlequin’s Millions” every Sunday and on holidays is more soothing than medicine and injections, I walk down the corridors and before I go to sleep I listen through open doors and behind closed ones to the echoing sighs, the confused conversations, because even long after the visitors have gone home, the pensioners not only continue their conversations with their relatives, they also repeat over and over everything they should’ve said to the relatives while they were still visiting them here at the retirement home … At the door to my own room I put my ear against the white enamel paint, then open the door a crack and in the shadows I see Francin kneeling next to the radio, completely engrossed in the news from around the world, he’s been listening to those reports for more than twenty years, he listens to them like a doctor examining a critically ill patient, now Francin raises his fist and shakes it at someone on the radio, or shouts something encouraging … I close the door and walk on, perhaps because Francin was forever waiting for that one news report that would amaze not only him but the entire world, but I knew he was waiting in vain, he was waiting just like all those pensioners had waited today for their relatives who never showed up, yet I know that next visiting day they’ll be expecting them with even greater hopes … Perhaps it was also because ever since the day we got married Francin was obsessed with the notion that the best was yet to come, that our future would be a bright one and that only in the future, when we were retired, would we truly be happy … that’s why he had taken out two very expensive insurance policies, after that we could never go on vacation, Francin reassured me that everything would be fine once the insurance had been paid out. Every month he paid five hundred crowns for that happy future, six thousand a year … and for that money, as I now know, we could’ve packed up, even brought Uncle Pepin along, and toured the Mediterranean, driven through the Alps and the Pyrenees, taken a cruise to Spitsbergen, traveled to Italy, to Morocco, a different country every year, seen Paris and the beautiful cities of Germany and Austria … But we just sat at home and drea
mt that one day we’d be retired and would get to see all those places, Francin even sent away every year for brochures from travel agencies in Hamburg, The Hague and Bremen, from Lloyd’s Travel, brochures with detailed descriptions of all the trips, including the names of every port, all the departure dates, even the names of the ships that would carry us across the seas and oceans. But when the war was over and the time had come for the insurance to be paid out, we received a letter from the insurance agency informing us that we were entitled to half a million crowns, but that we had to give them the name of a bank where they could send our insurance money so it could be deposited in an account we could draw on only for specific purposes, which didn’t include travel. And from that time on Francin lost heart, from that time on he was furious at himself, because before the war he had paid the insurance company six thousand crowns a year, every year another and even more beautiful voyage across the seas, through European cities, mountains and valleys, every year a wonderful vacation for Uncle Pepin, too, in those days that was what it cost to travel for three weeks, for a whole month, but now all those trips were tied up in a limited-access account … The first few years he still hoped that things would get better, that one day we’d be able to travel, that we could withdraw our money to pay for a trip, perhaps even a trip around the world, that’s how much money we’d saved, but every year they told us that money in a limited-access account couldn’t be used for such expenditures. Then Francin would postpone the whole thing till the following year, and then the year after that, we ran our fingers along the maps in Otto’s World Atlas and pointed to where we’d go as soon as the insurance money became available, we spent whole evenings poring over a catalogue of international tours, made lists of trips to international capitals, sightseeing tours of the United States and Mexico, we imagined ourselves strolling in the glow of neon signs and the shadow of skyscrapers, discussed the pros and cons of a sightseeing tour through Turkey, with a stay by the sea, where Europe meets Asia under the star and crescent, we journeyed steadfastly from ancient Carthage to the Saharan oasis and wandered through the long white nights of Scandinavia, and all that time we firmly believed that since we had saved such a magnificent sum of money, we would surely be able to take all those trips, if that money was still worth as much as it was when we invested it. And so we traveled on, by finger, to Morocco, we read everything there was to read about that country, about the world of Islam, about that land of contrasts and scenic splendor, but in the end we were willing to compromise, Francin wrote letters asking that a portion of the half million be unblocked to pay for an ordinary tour of Austria, land of Mozart, Schubert and Strauss, or a little trip to South Italy with a brief stay by the sea, or perhaps just to the land of the thousand lakes, forests and the midnight sun, Finland, or a short stay on the Adriatic Coast with its romantic beauty and hot sun, where thirty years ago a thousand crowns would’ve bought you a bus trip for two, hotel included, but each time a letter came back saying that no funds could be released for trips of this nature. Finally Francin wrote that he very much wanted to use his hard-earned and carefully invested money to take me to Romania, for the sun, the beaches, a modern summer resort, or to Bulgaria, the Bulgarian coast, with its long, sunny summer days … But once again his request was flatly refused. And after we had sold our villa on the Elbe, Francin wondered if he should spend the money from the house on one of the beautiful journeys we had been looking forward to so eagerly all our lives, but then he said we’d paid for all those trips years ago, that we’d buy something more permanent with this money, and so we bought a place in the retirement home, a little room for two, I can still remember, Francin traveled around the world with his radio programs and news reports, he often consulted his Otto’s World Atlas to find out where a place was when they mentioned it on the news, but he soon discovered that the big world atlas was almost completely out of date, that borders had shifted, some had even disappeared, that the entire world had changed. But it wasn’t until I came here, to the retirement home, that I began to feel happy, every day I traveled around in the same place, asked the three witnesses questions about life in the little town a hundred years ago and more, I was fascinated by life in the old days and moved and delighted by events that had happened long before I lived there. And while Francin was traveling around the world several times a day with his news reports of events in one country or another, I marched steadily in place, I tread deeper and deeper, nearer and nearer to the dead people who had once lived here in the little town where time really had stood still. I was afraid I’d panic if we did suddenly get that insurance money, if I had to go out and travel all over regions where I’d never been and that I’d already fallen in love with, because I actually had been there, when Francin and I traveled along the maps with our fingers, like children, when we jotted down not only the departure dates but also the names of the hotels that čedok offered in its catalogue of international tours. But that was all because we were still living as if nothing had happened, but something had happened, and we were the only ones who hadn’t noticed, we had actually stopped living from the moment we left the brewery, we remained exactly the same, we were behind the times, like yesterday’s fashions, while all the rest … Francin ignored the fact that there were now other maps, other customs, other governments, he stuck to the old governments and regions as if they were unchangeable … We had grown old, yet we were still the same as we’d been when the war ended, I had moved even further back, to the last century, which had risen for me from the dead. This retirement home with its Baroque halls and garden, this castle in which I lived, suddenly meant more to me than that golden brewery of mine, where I had spent my younger years. Here in this castle I lived every day in the mystery, in the strata of human destinies of people who had long since been buried, but I brought them back to life, thanks to the memories of the old witnesses, Václav and Karel and Otokar, my three dear friends, who each day pointed their fingers to show me things in the little town, where what could no longer be seen was still very much alive to us … Before I went to sleep Mr. Otokar Rykr gave me his right hand, he raised his left hand to the ceiling and said … There are two images I still clearly remember from my churchgoing days. The first is two dragoons with helmets and drawn cutlasses who stood guard at the Holy Sepulchre at Easter time, like motionless statues, waiting for the Resurrection. Only their eyelids gave away the fact that they were alive. The other image, which I found particularly touching, was the extraordinarily pious tinker Matěj Sutera, better known as Matýsek, kneeling, his hands clasped in fervent prayer and his head bowed down to the ground, he sat that way for the entire service. Because he was such a humble, honest man, he was entrusted with the mending of broken crockery and wickerwork, no one could begrudge him those meager earnings. He was small in stature, with a shaggy beard, kindhearted and courteous, but his mind had never fully matured … around his neck he wore a rosary and a medal of the Virgin Mary on a chain. He had been born in eighteen-hundred-and-forty-seven, in Slovakia, although he claimed, when asked about his birthplace, that he’d never actually been born, but had been harvested, in a potato field … said Mr. Otokar Rykr, but then he grew thoughtful, why had he wanted to tell me all this? Confused, he waved his hands around, bowed to me and left quietly, he left the way you enter a theater when the performance has already begun, on tiptoe and with a sense of guilt … The night after all those visits, the corridors of the retirement home were bustling with activity. The nurses rushed about on their clicking heels, they hurried in and out of the rooms bearing trays of injections, pills, thermometers … Someone came toward me in his pajamas with one shoulder raised, he removed a thermometer from under his arm, peered at it over the top of his glasses and exclaimed angrily … Next time I’ll give them a piece of my mind! I’ve got ninety-nine-point-five, and you know why? Because my pretty little niece came today to tell me she’d gone into my flower bed and dug up all my best hyacinths and daffodils …