Harlequin's Millions (16 page)

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a place was when they mentioned it on the news, but he soon discovered that the big world atlas was almost completely out of date, that borders had shifted, some had even disappeared, that the entire world had changed.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 …

        W
HEN 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 Å lemlajn'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