Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age (6 page)

he
hangs himself, sometimes
she
, there was a man named Kaura living behind the station who stole by night and mended shoes by day, he had a German wife, but she couldn't steal worth a damn and he was so ashamed he strung himself up on a beam in the attic, or Chytil! his wife went from house to house selling shirts and pilfering all the while and when the cops brought her home he was so ashamed he had no choice but to hang himself, or that dandy Korec who worked in the health insurance office and had a son studying in Olomouc, one day Doctor Karafiát went to him and said, People are complaining they don't get their insurance payments, how do you explain that? and Korec owned up, he'd been taking the money and sending it to his son for his studies, and the doctor said it was no concern of his, though he understood, and Korec, a scapegoat of the monarchy if there ever was one, took a scythe and a liter of rum and went behind the barn and slit his throat, nowadays it's the other way around, the children study free of charge and the fathers are ready to slit their throats because those brats get more money than they do, on the other hand in the days of the monarchy you wouldn't dream of serving beef broth without a wonderful spice from Asia Minor called saffron, my cousin was a twin and a real card, he was christened Vincek and his brother was christened Ludvíček, and when they were a year old their mother was bathing them in a tub and popped out to a see a neighbor, and when she got back half an hour later one of them had drowned, and they were so much alike nobody could tell which one, Ludvíček or Vincek, so they flipped a coin, heads for Ludvíček, tails for Vincek, and it came up Ludvíček, but when my cousin Vincek grew up he began to wonder—and he had plenty of time for it, he was always out of a job—he began to wonder who really did drown, whether the person walking around on earth wasn't really Ludvíček and he, Vincek, was up in heaven, which led him to drink and to wander along the water's edge and go in swimming, testing the waters, so to speak, till at last he drowned, by way of proof that he hadn't been the one to drown back then, but also because back then people had to look for work, while today work looks for people, so they don't have time to get into trouble, which I realized when Bondy the poet wheeled his two babies into the pub and quoted Socrates as saying that prostitution is employment for the unemployed, one day Tóneček from the coffee house offered us a few salamis if we'd break some stones for him, and we were hacking away and hacking away when suddenly a dark cloud covered the sun and it was black as night and thunder roared and lightning flashed and we had to take cover in a ditch, but just as suddenly the sun came out, and when we got home that evening Mama said, You'll never guess what happened, boys, Karásek hanged himself in the woods while you were there breaking your stones, it was because his girl went with other men, young ladies, I was always careful about that sort of thing, the shoemaker I worked for had a daughter, Mařena her name was, with a stomach like a stein, a backside like a barn, and a chest like Maria Theresa's, and one day they made me sleep over and bedded me down next to the stove, and when morning came I felt Mařena stroking my face and rubbing her chest against mine, but I gave such a start—even then I was as sensitive as a Saxon prince—that I banged my head against the stove and had to dip it in the bucket to wash away the blood, and the whole family jumped out of bed and cheered and wanted me to name the day but I refused, I told them that like Goethe I had a weak heart and was more inclined to poetry, which slowed them down for a while, but then Mařena bought me a tie and a ring made of nickel, so I used a tip from Batista's book on how to have a happy marriage and made believe I was thinking about music, so Mařenka married a man named Jetrudka who made her six children and poor, he was drunk all the time and if he so much as sneezed in her direction she got pregnant, three of her children went crazy, and when the other three got old enough to think for themselves they stuck their heads in the noose, so much for Anna Nováková's dream book, which says, dreaming of an infant means pleasure in the offing! well, maybe for a bigwig with a big house, but a baby crying is no pleasure, the monarchy was big on pomp, but when you went out walking you couldn't help tripping over beggars' peglegs and instead of enjoying the women's bosoms I'd worry about their woes, one day I was walking along minding my own business when I noticed a Jewish beauty with a nose like a train hook sitting on the border between two fields, waiting for the first Saturday star to come out, and because she had no panties on I had one eye glued to the spot where Goethe liked to look before he sat down to write his poems, and I went over and introduced myself and we immediately struck up an intimate conversation, she told me how she could ride a bicycle no hands, which was really revolutionary at the time, and I told her about a policeman who'd dug up a public hygiene regulation and used it as an excuse to go and bathe gypsy girls fifteen and under, he'd order the gypsy elders to heat up the water, then shoo them away, take off his coat, roll up his sleeves, and go to, but one day the police chief peeked through the keyhole as the policeman carried out the public hygiene regulation and the policeman landed in court, after which the police chief took over washing the gypsy girls and the gypsy women couldn't understand why he didn't wash
them
too, anyway, the Jewish beauty sitting and waiting for the first Saturday star to come out blushed bright red and whispered to me, I'm not as pure as I might be either, so I was a hero once more, I went with an embezzler's daughter too, not many men can claim that, her name was Helenka, the embezzler's daughter, and we played Diabolo together, and each time she leaned forward to discard I looked down her blouse, she had such beautiful breasts that for years I would stutter and make spelling mistakes at the thought of them, so I followed Christ's example and kept my illusions, I went with beauties but didn't let them get too close, thus preserving my freedom, like Doctor Karafiát, who shuddered at the thought of even dreaming about a woman in her underwear, which writers find shocking too and they're used to all sorts of things, the embezzler father of the beauty in question tried to get me to work for him, but I knew he had two sons, slick dressers both of them, pince-nez and all, one was caught misappropriating funds and, as was the fashion in those days, put a Browning to his head, only the ruling class used Brownings for the purpose, and the other had a wife whose name was Nina, a giant of a woman who wore nothing but satin and drank nothing but rosolio, and one day when she was drawing water from the well she lost her balance and fell in and they didn't find her for a week because they thought, as was the fashion in those days, that she had been carried off by a student, and by then she was all puffed up and ugly, Mother of God, isn't life breathtakingly beautiful! another reason I refused to become part of their family was that their uncle was a religious fanatic, the kind that goes around kissing the ground because he so loved God's hills and dales and tearing down fences because heaven has no fences so why do we need them on earth, he was one of the first to call for boundary strips between farms to be plowed under, he would kneel down in the public square and cry out that love would tear down all fences between people, but people took it the wrong way and ran home and lay down with one another on their sofas, and so the man went and hanged himself on his mother's cross in the cemetery, and the local priest was furious because he had to reconsecrate the whole place, I was always surprised to read in Anna Nováková's dream book that hanging yourself in church means you will become a church dignitary because suicides have to be buried at night, hush-hush, off to the side somewhere, like the wife of the army doctor, the notary's son, she was a jewel she was, just like you, young ladies, when she came to us for milk she'd say to me, How about popping round for a visit? she said I was the spitting image of the late Strauss in his youth, her mother came from a castle just beyond Přemyslovice, it was called Hlochov and it belonged to Bochner, and her father, who was also a notary, rode around in a coach that was drawn by four white horses and had six spotted mastiffs with their tongues out running behind, and the other notary's son he wore a sky blue jacket and black trousers with a red silk stripe down the side, no army could hold a candle to ours when it came to looks, your soldiers today they're a bunch of sad sacks compared with us, our waists laced in like the ladies', and when we came home on leave the ladies would piss olive oil they were so jealous of our corsets, every member of the medical corps had two rows of buttons, gold buttons, and a gold collar, silk-lined, and the head doctor wore special braiding and a collar made entirely of gold, magnificent, the only possible competition would be nature wanting to show what it could do and coming up with another kingfisher or parrot, but besides pomp and beggars the monarchy was big on discipline, it drove the soldiers up the wall, the torture, the beatings, the prisons and chains, a regular concentration camp it was, but the army doctor, the notary's son, he was as proud as proud could be, he went to war the way beauties go on walks, but then the most terrible thing happened, one soldier murdered another for the money his mother sent to him, and the murderer poured a whole bottle of brandy down the corpse's throat to make it look like he was drunk, and the doctor thought he was and gave the body a kick, but another soldier saw the murderer do it and turned him in, and they threw him in jail, and he strung himself up with a towel, and at the funeral his mother nearly cracked the church open with her wailing, but she paid what had to be paid and he was buried in the churchyard even though he'd committed suicide, only they had to do it at night, hush-hush, off to the side, whereas when they bury you at the front, young ladies, they toss you anywhere and you're gone for good, like a lost handkerchief, and would you believe it? Anna Nováková says in her dream book, holding a dead man's watch means a wedding and being locked up in an insane asylum means a great fortune awaits you! but you'll never guess what happened to our stationmaster, who raised turkeys and was always worried his assistant would forget to switch the tracks for the express train and always went himself and checked, well, one day the express train ran into a whole flock of his turkeys, that was a sight, let me tell you, you know how express trains speed along so fast they blow bits of paper and twigs behind them, well, this one was all turkey parts, and the assistant stationmaster at the next station got three thighs on his head and the stationmaster at the station after that thought he'd had a featherbed emptied on him, those express trains are really something when they barrel through a station, the Libice stationmaster had his application for promotion torn out of his hand and couldn't put on his new uniform for two whole weeks until they finally found the application five stations away, then there was the woman on her way home from a pig feast who walked along the tracks to save time, and when the train ran over her it dragged her soup bucket to the next station and splashed the stationmaster with barley, then there are the people who sit next to the tracks in their little huts in the middle of the fields and crank the barriers up and down, you can't even see them at night, but they're there, shining their boots and brushing off their uniforms and standing at the barrier, saluting, the express train rushing into the night, covering them with dust, streaking them with mud, but there they stand at attention saluting it, the last remnants of the monarchy, those people, the monarchy had its Lukases, who made garrison inspections without beatings or even punishments, and its Zelikowskis, who were first-class swine, Zelikowski not only beat his men, he had them tied to trees, officers mostly, so they'd know how things were supposed to look when he rode along and the troops had to go into columns or echelon formation or single or double file or form a square or poof! disperse like sparrows when you shoot at them and then come back together cheek by jowl on command, the officers had to know what he meant when he raised his saber to the sky because a general can't go shouting to sixteen companies, an orchestra conductor doesn't shout at his musicians, Hey, you there, didn't you see that hold? no, he's got a baton, and it's not for whipping, it's for conducting, giving signals, though of course a general has to think about winning a battle and losing as few men as possible, they tried to promote me to corporal, but I refused, they keep putting you on guard duty or sending you out on patrols, you have to go to classes at the edge of the woods, where they draw all over blackboards and the lieutenants shout, NCO front and center! and you've even got to ask permission to do number one, and when you get to the front you start seeing all these unmistakable signs, the ammunition, the grenades, the wounded, one soldier got the trots, also known as diarrhea, from the water, some memory I've got, eh, young ladies? there he was crouching in a trench with his belt round his neck, and who should swing down from his horse but General Zelikowski shouting what a shit-house regiment they'd given him, shithead sons of bitches all of them! and he took his sword and gave the soldier a good whack on the back, I got to know the front like the back of my hand, the pandemonium, the men stabbing one another blindly, by mistake, too weak to stop, anything to keep the enemy from digging in, the officers on pins and needles, whole platoons wallowing in blood, horses and all, everything burning, trees flying through the air, orderlies piling the wounded on horses to take them off to the woods, and not a woman in sight, they weren't allowed at the front, they stayed behind in the brothels of Przemyśl and Cracow, there were windows in the brothel doors and I'd peek in, one young lady once opened the door and said, Do anything for you, soldier boy? some of them did it for a loaf of bread, but Lieutenant Hovorka told us we'd be better off with nonprofessionals, it took a few chocolates, but then it was true love, I found a schoolmaster's daughter who would do it for a nice white roll, but all I had was our army bread, so she kissed my hand and in exchange I told her about the time I spent in Split guarding an old freight car filled to the brim with ecrasite, which they used to blow up bridges and which looked like flypaper or a powder you buy at the pharmacy, and then I read her excerpts from the dream book, chatting with a young lady means a rash business venture, frolicking with a hussy at night means beware of beguiling words, and then I told the schoolmaster's daughter in my best Polish that the young miss was pleasing to the eye and she told me that the young master was too and she hoped the shooting would soon cease, I was always the gentleman, which is why I was in correspondence with Europe's finest beauties, in Ziegenhals I won the heart of an industrialist's daughter, she wore a blue dress and a yellow veil and once, when I was rowing her across a lake in the woods and singing Mein Herz, das ist ein Bienenhaus, the boat started sinking, but I saved her because the lake was shallow, Anna Hering her name was and she wrote me pink love notes, our whole town was abuzz with who I was writing to, once she sent me a bottle of May Magic perfume that smelled like lily of the valley, I was trying to get out of the army by smoking cigars dipped in saffron, you had to be very careful not to let your fingers turn yellow so I'd bite them till they bled, which is in the same category as beguiling a beautiful woman, charming her with words, but as our late mayor used to say when he came into the bar to see whether the beauties there had beautiful calves, Anyone can get it for money, it takes a real virtuoso like you to pull it off free of charge, so I was a hero once more, because I went at it like the officers, Men, Lieutenant Hovorka used to say, you've got to go about it with kid gloves, think of it more like sharpening a pencil than thrusting a bayonet, so I never said much, I just watched to see what little vices my beauties might have and they would out by themselves, I like cigarettes and wine, she'd say, and I'd say, Well, I don't, and she'd say, And what