15
I WALK SLOWLY DOWN THE CASTLE LANE, OLD WOMEN are feeding the birds, they empty or crumble bread and rolls into feeders that look like the rediffusion boxes, the titmice, sparrows, warblers are practically eating from their hands, now I’m standing in front of a large bulletin board strewn with hundreds of thumbtacks pinned to schedules of movies playing in the little town, there’s also an old death notice, I’ll post Uncle Pepin’s death notice here too, he died early this morning. The thumbtacks with the latest messages are brand new, but people have undoubtedly been tacking messages to this bulletin board for more than ten years, many of the thumbtacks are rusted through, yet each of them still holds a bit of moldering paper in place, because no one ever bothers to pull out the old thumbtacks, everyone who comes here with a notice in his hand tears down the old piece of paper, the old death notice, and, in its place or directly beside it, tacks up what he considers his civil duty, that is, to draw other people’s attention to new movie schedules, lectures, death notices and so on. So here I stand looking at the bulletin board and wondering where to pin Uncle’s death notice, in a little while the men from the funeral home will be coming with the coffin to take him away, I try pulling out a rain-rusted thumbtack with my fingernail, but it’s no use, the scrap of paper acts as a kind of clamp, which is why the thumbtacks are stuck so tightly, like all those thumbtacks from last year, some may be only a few years old, but they’re still impossible to remove, the scrap of paper is moldy, yellowed or completely brown, I see that some of the old thumbtacks have lost their little caps, only their sharp points are sticking out, I run my hand over the bulletin board and it feels like one of those cylinders with sharp pins, those revolving cylinders from an old music box built into a painting, my aunt had one just like it, the music box played a religious song, or like the raised dots that help you read if you’re blind. Yes, yes, tomorrow I’ll post that death notice here too … Lost in thought I walked back to the courtyard and down the footpaths to the Count’s greenhouse, which is now the mortuary. Uncle Pepin lay stretched out on a gurney, a metal table with wheels, he was still wrapped in a sheet, under the taut linen I could see the outline of his head and feet, the four corners of the sheet were knotted firmly over his stomach, and when I had given a nod to his mortal remains, I suddenly had an idea and tapped Uncle on the forehead and listened carefully. And then I heard coughing behind me, once again I rapped on the forehead of the corpse and listened even more carefully. Come in! said human voices behind me, and when I turned around, there they stood, the three witnesses to old times, they bowed politely, they were wearing their Sunday best and beaming with some great happiness. They were holding up their notebooks the way singers in a choir hold up their scores, Mr. Václav Kořínek beat time with his finger and then burst into song … In the little town where time stood still, there was singing and music making, in pubs and clubhouses … But the most important event for these music enthusiasts … was their performance at High Mass … Among the first violins is the amateur actor Červinka, who always plays out of tune … the second violins give the pitch to choirmaster Vraný … Šnora is hunting for his bow … Cyrus tunes his viola … Votava tootles a few notes on his clarinet … Dlabač the Useless polishes his flute with a handkerchief … Fajtl, Holub and Stůj assemble their French horns … Tavík adjusts the pegs on his bass … in the choir Mr. Dlabač the Baron chats pleasantly with the singers Márinka, Bertička and Fanynka … Rubinger is last to arrive, in his raglan, he’d stopped for a bite to eat at Café U Fišerů … today the dead are also among them … the tenor Slabihoudek and the bass Vágner … At a given sign the organ blower Mareška puts her foot down on the pedal of the bellows and the mass begins with a solo on the kettledrums, which Krása beats with great bravado … the organist, schoolteacher Lhota, slowly pushes in the stops of the organ … and improvises, pianissimo, a prelude on his favorite song … Think it over, Mařenka, think it over … This was told to me by old Mr. Špoutil, the fellow who used to own a stationer’s in the former apothecary shop … Mr. Václav Kořínek finished singing and the scent of a sweet love song drifted through the greenhouse. I glanced around and the three old witnesses smiled, looked me in the eye and suddenly they seemed much younger, as they always did, come to think of it, when they reminisced about long-ago events to which they alone held the key. Mr. Karel Výborný went and stood at Uncle Pepin’s head, bowed, opened his notebook and gazed up at the ceiling of the glass mortuary, the panes of glass had been painted dark blue and Mr. Karel Výborný lectured … On the banks of Ostrov, where the weir ended, stood a little shack, where in salmon-run season the watchman from the salmon fishery would spend the night … The shack was connected to the taut net by a wire with a little bell on the end of it, and when a salmon leapt over the wire and landed in the net … the weight of its own body tugged at the wire … and the little bell rang in the shack … Mr. Karel Výborný paused and listened, and in the mortuary there was the tinkling of a little bell, more and more joined in until a whole chorus of bells in every pitch rang out in the former castle greenhouse, which had now become a gigantic aquarium into which huge fish were plunging diagonally down from the sky, thousands of sparkling salmon, even in the air they could see to their horror that their journey upstream had come to an end, their eyes saw the nets and with each new leap the death bells tolled for their blissful swim against the current, upriver to somewhere in the north, to clean water, to the game of love. I stuck my fingers in my ears, but Mr. Karel Výborný went on directing other schools of salmon as they plunged into invisible nets, then brought down his hand, and there was a great silence and Mr. Výborný resumed his lecture … The salmon swims upstream until he reaches a high floodgate, he swims back a bit, then rushes forward and leaps … Some salmon were true record breakers, they could leap right over a taut net … And I raised my eyes and above me happy salmon were flying through the air, adorned with water droplets that glistened in the sunlight … I sighed with them, and was happy, blissfully happy about their love, which drove them upstream in search of new floodgates, just as there were obstacles to be overcome with every love. But Mr. Karel Výborný grabbed me by the elbow and squeezed so hard that I screamed with pain. Then he bowed again to the corpse and continued … Under the mill wheel … someone had placed a creel … a large crate full of holes … fish that were carried along by the current and were caught in the creel … these fish were tossed back into the Elbe … but during the eel runs the creel was full in no time, you could make a handsome profit … Cried Mr. Karel Výborný and my hand flew to my throat, the former castle greenhouse had turned into a stinking crate full of holes and slippery fish and eels fell down from above in a gush of water and landed with a thud on the mortuary floor, I was up to my knees in the wriggling fish, I could feel their tails thrashing against me, their fins, I could feel them ripping my stockings with their sharp gill covers, I screamed with horror and disgust, but when I looked at the three witnesses to old times, they were smiling, all three wore pale blue suits and orange neckties, as if they were standing on the promenade waiting for the spa orchestra to begin. The elegant Mr. Otokar Rykr now stepped forward, bowed to the dead man, and I saw in my great confusion that Mr. Rykr had a number on his back, a green number pinned to the back of his jacket with large safety pins … And Mr. Rykr sang in his tenor voice, while pinching his throat gently with the fingers of his right hand … In the old days the little town where time stood still was extremely popular among long-distance runners … They would often run more than twenty laps around the square … their jesterlike running gear was embellished with glittering trinkets and jingling bells … the long-distance runners used to challenge onlookers to a race, for money … Mr. Otokar Rykr pointed to the wall and I saw that on the other side of the glass young men were running past in long johns, their running was a kind of almost-falling, they ran so fast their fingers nearly skimmed the cobblestones below them, but at that breakneck speed they never touched the ground, they jumpe
d around like monkeys and shouted to me as they ran by, signaled to me with their arms to come running with them, but Mr. Otokar Rykr signaled to them with his walking stick, and the long-distance runners disappeared. And the witness to old times cried in a loud voice, as if he were arguing with someone and now made an assertion to prove himself right … A true, bona fide sportsman in the little town where time stood still was the railroad engineer Karel Palme … he was originally from Upper Austria … even as far back as the summer of eighteen-hundred-and-eighty-five he was riding a high-wheeler … figure skating … skiing … his first skiing attempt drew a crowd of curious, envious onlookers who wanted to get a glimpse of this singular sport … at the age of forty he died of tuberculosis … In about the year eighteen-hundred-and-ninety-two the first cyclists began appearing in the streets of the little town … In those days bicycles were called velocipedes, or boneshakers … they had narrow rubber tires … said Mr. Otokar Rykr, waving his green walking stick, and all along the footpaths of the castle park, on the other side of the greenhouse, bearded men were climbing onto their saddles, a whole swarm, a group of men in jodhpurs, striped shirts and caps with cockades, they tried to overtake one another, waved their arms around, shoved each other aside, skidded and went flying into the air and into the bushes, they fell on their backs and rolled over and over just like in a nightmare, when the sleeper gets all tangled up in his sheets, one cyclist even shot off the road and catapulted into the air, he clung to his handlebars, the bicycle soared through the air as the cyclist tried to kick it out from under him, but the two of them, man and machine, went crashing into the glass wall, the glass was smashed to pieces, but Mr. Otokar Rykr raised his green walking stick and the man and his bicycle and even the fragments of glass from the mortuary wall froze in midair, as if they had turned into a poster for a sporting event … Mr. Karel Výborný straightened his necktie, the time had come for him to kneel down next to Uncle, who lay somewhere under the sheet and, right where his ear would be, sing blissfully … My father would send me down to the cellar for wine … I got a hank of sturdy rope … covered it with beeswax … a pair of candles and two boxes of matches, for it’s black as night in those underground corridors … Mr. Výborný stopped singing and turned around, Mr. Rykr signaled with his green walking stick and kneeled down next to Mr. Výborný and Mr. Kořínek leaned in toward them, the three witnesses pressed their heads together and sang in three-part harmony … It’s black as night in those underground corridors … they sang sweetly and smiled sweetly, then stepped back again as Mr. Výborný went on crooning in the dead man’s ear … In the cellar I tied the rope around a beer keg and set out on my journey … a lit candle in my hand and around my neck the coil of rope, which slowly unwound … through countless corridors leading in all directions … dark and dusty rooms, intact or in ruins … huge rats that in the light of the candle were the size of cats … with the help of the unwinding rope I reached the spot under the plague column with the statue of the Virgin Mary in the town square … I’d nearly reached Dočekal’s restaurant … when all at once I saw something lying on the ground, it looked like a spur from a riding boot … when I bent down to get a better look my candle went out, just like that … as if someone had blown it out … Mr. Karel Výborný was now chanting and he turned to me and something in his eyes told me that to this very day, this witness to old times still hadn’t returned from underground, from those underground corridors of the little town where time stood still. I cried … But why are you singing for Uncle, who’s already dead? And the three witnesses to old times formed a little group, each placed an arm around the shoulder of the man beside him, as if they wanted to have themselves photographed in the old days, they smiled at the camera that wasn’t in the greenhouse, with unblinking eyes they tried to put on their best smile and looked me in the eye as if I were the camera. I gave a scream … I’m scared, scared! And the three witnesses answered in chorus … When we were alive, we were scared too … they said, and reached out their hands to me, hands that ended in eyes filled with longing … and they shuffled backward out of the greenhouse. I ran quickly out the open door, at the bend in the path I slipped in the sand, but got up again and ran into the vestibule, where the two old women were sitting in their wheelchairs, they sat there sternly, their arms on the armrests, they sat there like sphinxes. I gathered my nerve and asked … Did three gentlemen just pass by here? The three gentlemen who always go walking with me, the three witnesses to old times? Wearing blue suits and orange neckties? The old women hadn’t moved, their profiles were like the fixed profiles of birds in flight. Now they just shook their heads. I said … How long have you been sitting here? One of the old women raised her hand and pointed, since two o’clock. You mean they really didn’t come by? I threw up my hands. “Harlequin’s Millions” tumbled from the rediffusion boxes and wrapped its threads around my fingers, “Harlequin’s Millions,” in which the voice of the violin was now like a beautifully time-worn but honest reproach. I hurried down to the gatehouse, there sat Mr. Berka, he looked at me absently, he looked but didn’t see, I had to wave my hand up and down in front of his eyes like a fan. Finally he came around, blinked twice and asked … Are you looking for someone, Madame? Who have you come to visit? I said … Mr. Berka, you must still be asleep, I was here yesterday, don’t you remember, and you wanted that seaman’s cap … Please, I whimpered. But Mr. Berka asked, surprised … What cap, and who are you? I said … Mr. Berka, for God’s sake, I’m always walking around with three witnesses to old times, didn’t you see them leave the gate on their way into town? But Mr. Berka only grew more and more confused … What witnesses, what are you talking about, I think I’d know if … What’re their names? And I told him, patiently, the names of the three witnesses, then wrote down the names for him, the names of the three gentlemen, my dearest friends here, on a piece of paper. Mr. Berka picked up the phone, he called the main office, it took a long time, and when he had put down the receiver, he announced with satisfaction … Well! Nobody here knows those names, there’s never been any gentlemen by those names on the premises, and just who are you, anyway? I said … Mr. Berka, I live here, don’t I, with my husband and my brother-in-law, my brother-in-law died yesterday, he’s in the mortuary … Mr. Berka said … That’s right, but I’m only letting you through so you can say your good-byes to him … Yes, I said, yes, I repeated, I bowed to Mr. Berka and still bowing I backed out the door … And then I ran up the hill, to my room, Francin wasn’t there, I stripped the sheet off the bed and in the semi-darkness I emptied onto it everything that was in the night table, I felt around in my pocket, yes, I had my identity card, I tied up the four corners of the sheet that were like the four points of the compass in two sturdy knots, I threw the bundle over my shoulder and ran downstairs to the vestibule, in the semi-darkness I sat down under the gently swaying pendulum of the clock, I sat down, took out my identity card and offered it to someone who still hadn’t come, but who I knew for certain would come today.