The Little Town Where Time Stood Still

by Bohumil Hrabal

  As I ran across the bridge, I found myself in a blizzard, thousands of mayflies were cascading out of the lamps on to the paving of the bridge and walkway, it was slithery, like walking on ice, but the lights of the lanterns on the standards shone away pitilessly and clouds of mayflies soared up from the river into their glow, white-winged moths rose too from the blackness of the river, and winged beetles, only for the light which summoned them up from the river to strike them down to the pavements and roadway, where car tyres skidded and people fell about as if on Hogmanay black ice. I laid my hand on my chest, breathed, and felt my little boat rising up too as if on a swelling sea, and at that moment I wanted nothing else but to show that little boat to the Dean and the two cookery maids, I turned away from the lights, ploutering up to my knees in dying moths, as I picked them up in my palm I felt them moving still, but growing cold and chill just like the dusky river, from whose depths more and more moths ascended in whirling eddies, I slid and fell, crying out, “I’ve broken my boat!” But the boat wasn’t made of paper, or wire, or slivers of wood, it was anchored firmly within, in and upon me, only a knife could gouge it out, like gouging it out of my heart, in which I had vowed my devotion to boats and vessels and ships. Quietly I opened the fastened gate, I had to stick my whole arm through to reach the bolt on the other side, quietly I crept into the vicarage yard, light poured from the two windows of the vicarage, and the mayflies reached as far as here from the river, fluttering in the windows and making a wallpaper covering, a patterning, as if ornamented with white shifting teardrops, creeping vine clambered up the lattices and trellising right up to the roof, sprouting shoots into the light at the window, like tendrils of hair into the faces of the young cookery maids, who freed themselves from the strands and tucked them constantly behind their ears, or under their caps. I said to myself, What’s the Dean likely to be doing, mustn’t surprise him at a wrong moment, maybe he’s lifting the cookery maids on the chair again and carrying them up and down and their hair is drawing lines across the beams of the ceiling and they are shrieking and kicking their little feet in their black shoes, and so I climbed up the laths and lattices like climbing a ladder, brushed aside the latest fresh growth of vine, till I could get a look into the vicarage, and there I saw a scene that put me in ecstasies, I’d never have guessed the Dean had such mighty strength in him, at first I thought the Dean was raising the cookery maids to a higher station, as he tied a towel round them at the waist, knelt before them and diligently bound those little cookery lasses of his at the waist one to another, tied them together with this long towel, and the little cookery lasses like me had no idea of what was going to happen to them, since the chair was a bit far off . . . and first the Dean lifted up those girls, both at once, so that neither even touched the ground and like some little figurines hung there and knocked their foreheads together, joggled themselves apart and laughed, revealing the face of the Dean, who sniffed at their tummies as he lifted them, even sniffed a little bit lower . . . Then he put them back on their feet and laughed one of his joyful laughs that made the hair of just Christians stand on end, as Mr Farda the farmer characterised that laughter of his, then the Dean knelt down before his girls, for a moment I was so stunned that he was sniffing at their backsides, like dogs do or cats, but suddenly the miracle occurred, the Dean straightened up and stood, grasping in his teeth those two cookery maids of his, grasping them in his teeth with that strong towel, and now he carried those girls about the parlour, arms outstretched like a true artiste, and the little cookery maids waggled their little shoes and arms in the air and laughed, they were like Siamese twins joined together by the spinal cord of that towel, and the teeth of the Dean held fast and he moved them with his strength, and I thought to myself, what a surprise it would have been for them in Cana of Galilee, much greater than that miracle with the wine, if Jesus Christ had carried the bride and Mary Magdalene about the wedding hall like that, what a reinforcement it would have been truly for the Catholic faith and for all religious human beings in general, for such loving strength draws towards it not only the hearts of women, but also the hearts of all men, and specially the hearts and souls of sand-workers and sailors. And when the Dean had had his romp, he put them back down on their feet and he keeled over, the whole of him sagged and stretched out in an armchair, and one of his eyes was bloodshot, as though someone had fetched him a blow with his fist, and his hair hung damp over his forehead and his shirt was open, and one little cookery maid stood at each side, one kneeling offered roast pork while the other poured vermouth in his cup . . . And I tapped and the cookery maids ran to the door, and I entered in my little sailor suit and round mariner’s cap with its inscription HAMBURG-BREMEN, and the Dean took fright that we were going off somewhere to administer the last rites . . . “What is it?” he said. And he sipped, drank, with his lips fixed to his cup, and I said I’d only come to show him what I had devoted myself to this day. I doffed my sailor’s cap, gave it to one of the maids to hold, then I pulled off my jacket and rolled my shirt up to the chin, knelt down and asked him, “Reverend sir, give me a blessing!” And the cookery maids exclaimed aloud, and the Dean pulled himself up and gazed at my chest, then there was a silence, all you could hear were those mayflies and moths pattering on the windows, and after a while he stroked me on the hair and said, “Who did you this?” And I said, “Mr Alois at the Bridge Inn.” “And what was this tattoo to be of?” The Dean stroked me on the hair once more. “A little boat with an anchor.” The Dean led me off in front of a mirror, took me lightly by the armpits and lifted me up, and there I saw tattooed on my chest a mermaid, its tummy with a full flowing beard, with breasts and eyes as big as round cakes, and that stark naked mermaid was smiling out at me, just like one laughing young Žofín bar girl, before she curled her tongue up into a brazen little tube and stuck it out at me like the devil on St Nicholas’ Eve.

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  When Dad saw that mermaid tattooed once and for ever on my chest, he gazed at it fixedly for a while, he gazed for a long time, blinking neither one eye nor the other, as if searching back in his mind for the connections which might explain that indelible sign of the sea . . . And I breathed out, my heart thumped so hard that the mermaid closed and narrowed her eyes to the rhythm of my heartbeat, and I shaded that naked woman with my palm, just like Adam and Eve shading their bellies on the altar picture . . . But Dad only gave a wave of his hand, because Uncle’s bellowing resounded in the yard, the radiant and penetrating voice of Uncle Pepin, who, as Mum said, had come to us eight years ago for a fortnight’s visit and stayed with us right to this very day. And dear Uncle was yelling out, “What’s all this impudence? Ninny, nincompoop, what would I be grazing nanny goats for? I’ll scrunch you under my heel like a cockchafer! I’ll flatten ye to the pavement like hammering in a nail!” And every time Uncle Pepin took him aback with his yelling, every time Dad just stood there by the stove, poured white coffee into a mug, cut himself a slice of bread and drank his coffee, and Uncle carried on yelling away and his shouts cut like a knife through the buttery yellow light of our kitchen: “What crap is it now? Kiddies? I dinna want the goats, so it’s no kids either, what’s this impudence? Do ye know what it’d cost me if I was to go out grazing goats and Colonel Zawada came and spotted me? He’d holler out, ‘Cholera cripple you, you stupid shithead son of a bitch!’ And he’d give me a right lashing with his old Reitpeitsche, cos no sodger of Austria’s gaun to be seen dead towing any old goats on the end of a rope! Another word and I’ll squash ye like they’ll never scrape ye up off the floor!” And I buttoned up my shirt and sat by the stove on my teeny stool and put my homework out on the little kid’s table, dipped my pen in the ink, but I couldn’t write, my jotter just stayed open and my pen on the paper, just in case Mum came in, then I’d make out that I was writing . . . And the kitchen sizzled with trials and tribulations, Dad’s head constantly emitted a halo of torment, I felt invisible hands pushing me away from Dad, but also just as much from Mum, because I w
anted my mum to be just like the other boys’ mums, motherly, maternal, but my mum was still like a young lady, always thinking of going out to the theatre and having fun, ever elusive, always slipping from my grasp, so that I could never cuddle up to her properly, it would have taken too much mastery of myself, with Mum I suffered constantly from blushings and flushings, as if I were hidden behind bushes of flowering jasmine at dusk with Lida Kopřivová, sniffing at Liddie’s curly locks of hair. And likewise when Mum was pacifying Dad, standing with him under the jingly trinkets of the big lamp, there I sat on the teeny stool, my pen poised on a line in the open page of my jotter, I pretended I was about to write, if someone looked at me, indeed I’d begin to write, but if someone looked to see what I was writing, then that somebody would see it was all a lot of nonsense, because my heart was thumping away with indignation because Mummy was hugging Daddy . . . And I felt as if Mummy was throwing away hundred-crown banknotes on the square, as if she had taken the whole Christmas tree with the presents beneath it and given them away to other children . . . So here I was sitting again on my little seat, and what caused me horror now was that Dad was horrified just like me, that instead of a little boat with an anchor Mr Lojza had gone and tattooed me a naked mermaid lady, and suddenly I felt that the lady with the fishy tail on my chest was as nothing compared to the grief that was streaming through Dad and shooting out of him on all sides of the whole of his body, like the halo in the shape of those golden swords issuing from around the whole body of St Ignatius on the side altar of our church. I felt that Dad was suffering so much that he wished he could just get up and go, not anywhere in particular, but just go and keep on going, on and on right away from this brewery, where he was manager and where he even had his own motor-car, where he had a nice flat to live in and my lovely mother, where I was born too — the brewery, where his brother now worked, Uncle Pepin, whom I loved more than Dad exactly because of all his yelling and dancing, Uncle Pepin, who, when he finished work at the brewery, popped on his sailor’s cap, his admiral’s sailor’s white cap with its black peak and golden cords and embroidered gold anchor in front on a blue backcloth, a cap ornamented with golden buttons, Uncle’s cap which no one was allowed even to finger, only the lovely ladies in the bars where he went every day . . . And I wanted so much to go out on to the doorstep and see who Uncle Pepin was shouting with out there, but I thought it better to stay seated, to make Dad just a little happy, with my ink-dipped pen on my jotter, so as to start writing the moment Dad looked at me . . . Oh, how I suffered with this home, how I felt myself shot out through the window, even when it was closed, out through the walls, just out and out and out, where the branches of the old lindens and chestnuts waved at me through the window, where the rain tapped at me, where the wind called out to me, as it rattled in from the brewery through the open window! And just as Dad always wanted Mum to be a decent woman, and just as I always wanted Mum to be a decent ordinary mummy, so Dad and Mum together wanted me to be a proper good little boy, and they often told me off for not washing myself enough, but I cried and swore that the dirt made me feel happy and warm, they showed me how to fold my school primers and counting-books, but I always tore out every page that we’d just finished reading, so that for St Nicholas I always got a new school book and for Christmas a couple more, one to keep for January, Dad wanted to teach me and instil in me a love of gardening, he planted cabbage and lettuce and taught me to dig it and explained how it was necessary to pluck out the weeds, just as it was necessary to root out my bad qualities, so that only the good ones were left, but when Dad went away, I had my little spade and hoe all ready, and I looked about me, the coloured birds embroidered the air and the sun warmed me and the wind flew out of the pine woods right behind the brewery and from the river you heard the shrieking and calling of children and all around me there were so many wonderful things to see and things going on, but there I stood in the middle of the garden, in the middle of the beds overgrown with weeds, I stood, and whenever a window opened somewhere, or I heard footsteps coming along the concrete path, quickly I seized the waiting hoe and dug, but when I could tell it wasn’t Daddy or Mummy, I stood again with the hoe ready waiting, but with my head and all its desires distracted far away to any other place but this . . . And so I resolved, no I didn’t resolve, but I got an idea, and I pulled up and weeded out all the lettuces and all the cabbage, I chucked it all in a heap, I waited till the greenery wilted and couldn’t be planted back again, and then with my hoe over my shoulder I went and reported to Dad that I had finished weeding the whole lot, and Dad was surprised, but I was like Mum in this, I managed to put on such a truthful face, that Dad stroked me and said I could go where I liked, as long as I didn’t have any homework still to do. Then in the evening Dad stood over me, holding his belt, but then he fastened the belt on again, went and brought the cycle pump in from the passage and unscrewed the rubber hose, but after thinking about it for a bit he concluded that even this was too little, that giving me a beating, whipping me with the hose, whacking me with the belt, all that was too little, it was fixed inside me just like it was with Mummy, whom he gazed at reproachfully and at such length, even when Mummy laughed and begged him, “Francin, take it like one of those American funny films.” But Dad went out into the garden again and had another look at those heaps of wilted greenery like shot green birds, he looked at the nicely hoed fresh weeds ebulliently rising and lining up in the evening dew, and then he lifted up a few seedlings and dropped them listlessly to the ground again and returned to the house, and there I sat on the teeny stool, dipping my nib in the inkpot and writing in my jotter in deep concentration, just as long as Father stared at me and finished contemplating on my behalf what was to become of me, just like tonight, in the early evening, when I had to show him that mermaid of mine, which I would never have shown him off my own bat, but I was forced to show him, because Dad had got to hear about it in town. He looked at me, I felt his eyes on me and so I went on writing all the more beautifully and decoratively, I did my very best all the more, as if that lettering and writing were my only salvation, and I knew Dad was contemplating how he could kill me with one blow of his fist, but I was relieved to find myself turning the page and continuing my piece of homework: All About My Home . . . And I went on writing and then I was horrified by the thought that Dad would strangle me, and if Dad had thought of it he would have, only Dad found even this too little, he stood, took a knife, and I wrote on and suddenly I felt it was my last piece of writing, my last piece of homework, that only the writing was saving me from death, that when I stopped writing I would die, that only by writing was I averting death, and even when Dad cut my head off I wouldn’t know a thing about it, since I would just keep writing on and on, longer and longer, and when I stopped writing then I wouldn’t know any more that I ever existed, and Dad took a whetstone out of the cupboard, that he kept for sharpening his razor, and carefully he whetted the blade of the knife, whetted it and tried with the cushion of his finger to see if the blade was sharp enough, and I wrote and wrote, and suddenly I thought of a time when I was lying in my cot, and it was such a long long time ago, and Daddy came back with Mummy from a ball, and Dad was wearing a dinner jacket and he was handsome, but Mummy had a pink dress and a fan, and Dad kept shouting something at Mummy, and Mummy was calling out in quite a scared sort of way, “No, no, Francin, it’s not true, it isn’t!” And Dad was calling, “Shut up, you, a decent woman oughtn’t to dance in such positions! You’re a married woman, you’re a mother!” And I lay there stunned with shock and listened to Dad opening the little drawer in the oval mirror, and Mummy clung close to Daddy, and I was paralysed with terror, it was Daddy’s shouting coming as if from a long way off, Dad had a kind of inward way of shouting, quietly, it was a shouting whisper, and Mummy begged on her knees, “Don’t shoot me, Francin, will you? For God’s sake!” And Dad called out, “What must be must be . . . swear there was nothing between you . . .” and Mummy knelt in that rosy pink robe and the
ostrich feather fan was spread on the ground like a rainbow in the sky after rain, and Mummy clasped her hands and Dad with his brandished revolver, in his dinner jacket, was handsome, and Mummy collapsed in tears and stretched out just as she was on the carpet, her pleated dancing dress spread on the carpet just like that ostrich feather fan, and I was stiff with horror and pretended I was asleep. Later when it had been dark for ages, and I was staring with wide-open eyes into the darkness and listening to Mummy’s soft weeping as it faded away, and Daddy was still talking and talking excitedly and whispering, insinuating himself into Mummy’s soul in her submissiveness, and then at dawn everything went quiet and I wanted to go and have a pee, but that nocturnal scene after the ball had so benumbed me that I quietly tipped my weenie between the beds and wee-ed and wee-ed, until I’d wee-ed myself out, like crying my eyes out, urinating instead of crying in the crevice between the beds . . . And Dad got up with the whetted knife, laid it on the kid’s table, and quietly, like Dean Spurný unlocking the holy tabernacle and drawing apart its golden curtain, he drew apart my shirt and stared at that mermaid, I saw his fingers jumping as my heart palpitated, I dipped the nib of my pen into the ink and went on writing, it flowed out of me, that writing, I didn’t even know what I was writing, but I felt that by that writing I was saving my life, but suddenly it struck me that Dad wanted to gouge that lady right out of my skin, my seafaring lady, I felt like Uncle Pepin when they wanted to take away his white sailor’s cap, the one Hans Albers wore when he played the ship’s captain . . . and I stopped writing, I stared into Dad’s eyes like I had never stared into his eyes before, in that look of mine there lurked everything I had ever done to him, everything, I felt like Mummy, when she had lain there and surrendered herself up totally and spread out her dress and her fan on the bedroom carpet . . . “No, Daddy, please, no,” I raised my fingers for the first time in my life to utter an oath, like Christ I stood there with my torn-apart shirt and the drawing on my heart and with two raised fingers I swore, “No, Daddy, I swear, I wanted to have a nice little boat with an anchor . . . and Mr Lojza did me this!” And I tapped the sea maiden with a finger of my left hand and with my right I swore and showed Dad the ink-stained cushions of my fingers. And Dad stood, sliced himself some bread, then stroked me, spattering my hair with crumbs of soft crumby bread and said, “I’m in the same boat, we’re both in it together.” And then angrily, not even angrily, but as if accepting there was nothing else to be done, just like when I was helping the Dean with the last rites, but Mr Kurka died while I was still anointing his feet, and the Dean himself went to open the windows into the summer evening air, to make an easy passage for the soul, so that Mr Kurka’s soul would fly up into the sky like vapour to heaven, so this time Dad opened the windows and the fresh air wafted in and past the window came Uncle Pepin’s white sailor’s cap, hovering, as if floating in the air, as if just slipping along the window breast. And Uncle was hollering, not to anyone in particular, just generally hollering for his own delight into the evening air through which he was walking off into town to see his lovely young ladies, “I’ve chalked up yet another glorious victory, I’ve won, I’m the same all over as Colonel Zawada riding into Przemyaśl after its capture on Corpus Christi day!” And Dad slid between the dresser and the cupboard, clasped his hands and whispered, “It’s just not true, when he was in the army under fire he just lay there in the trench till it all blew over!” But Uncle Pepin ranted on, “Nobody takes any liberties with me, I draws my revolver on him, and bang, bang! there’s just pools of blood everywhere!” And Dad carried on clasping his hands, tormented by the truth: “But he was always so timid, I had to go and meet him coming out of work, even at the age of twenty-five, he was so timid, he always had to sit in the corner!” And Uncle Pepin went on roaring away: “Out of my way! In the days of Austria I was the greatest good-looker, lovely women used to shoot themselves for me! My picture hung on the street in the Zeile in Brno and beauties used to nudge around the cabinet saying to one another, ‘Which one do you like best?’ And each one pointed to this one here. And they tapped through the glass at my picture, and I used to stand at the back and it was like they were rubbing goose fat over my chest, and I sailed along like I was in the money!” Uncle’s voice was radiant and Dad carried on clasping his hands between the wall and the closet and raising his eyes to the ceiling and whispering, “But it’s just absolutely not true, from his youngest days he was always covered in pustules and at twenty-two his neck was all over boils, with bloody bandages peeling off him!” But Uncle’s voice rose jubilantly in the office like the smoke of the sacrifice of Abel to heaven: “I was the one Captain Hovorka liked talking tae best, I was adjutant tae Hetman Tonser, I was the one carried his sword!” And Dad’s voice so quiet and shy crept and crawled over the ground like the smoke of the sacrifice of Cain: “But it’s absolutely not true, he had absolutely no rank at all in the army, that photograph of his, he borrowed the stuff and had himself taken as a sergeant!” Dad’s lamentation rose to heaven, but I knew that the Lord God didn’t actually love the truth so much, in fact he loved madmen, crazy exalted enthusiasts, people like my Uncle Pepin, the Lord God loved to hear untruth reiterated in faith, he adored the exalted lie more than the dry unadorned truth, which Dad tried to use to blacken Uncle in my eyes, and in the eyes of my mother, who could get up to such silly tricks with my uncle that the tears would trickle down my cheeks and I would go into fits of laughter, and sometimes there came a kind of crunching in my eyes and my head, when I got the feeling that any moment a miracle would happen in our kitchen and St Hilary from the square would appear unto us, our patron saint of healthy laughter. And our night-watchman Mr Vanřátko came in through the brewery gates, he was invisible, but you could hear the voice of his faithful doggie Trik, you could hear the chink of the flasks and torches and buckles and buttons that glinted and chinked on the uniform of Mr Vanřátko, who always came on duty feldmässig, battle-ready, with his Mexican rifle over his shoulder and full of joyful anticipation that surely one day someone would try to rob the safe or at least steal the straps from the little booth between the lifts to the ice chamber. “Halt!” roared Mr Vanřátko, pulling off the Mexican rifle, which was never loaded, because its last owner had lost its breech. “Wer da? Who goes there?” cried Mr Vanřátko, anticipating that one day there would be somebody out there in the darkness. But Uncle Pepin shouted out, “Ruht, Jozip Pepin meldet sich gehorchsamst!” And Mr Vanřátko stepped out, stumbled, as Trik gave a painful yelp, Mr Vanřátko had tripped over his doggie, and right away, having had and continuing to have rushes of blood to the head ever since his wartime malaria, he took the doggie and whacked it against the cement, and the dog gave a pitiful whine and whimper, but Mr Vanřátko stepped out in military fashion and went over to Uncle Pepin, now they stood together in the light of the window into our kitchen, they saluted one another, brimful of zeal, and the night-watchman bawled out, “Mister Josef, take over the gate watch, station number one pronto, I have to make my report to the manager.” And Uncle saluted on the rim of his sailor’s cap, took over the Mexican rifle, and Mr Vanřátko got up on the bench, now he stood there, a terrible sight, with his whiskers and his chauffeur’s cap bisected with the tricolour, with his Entente belt upon which his six torches glinted, through the clear window he saluted Dad and reported, “Night-watchman Vanřátko at your service!” And Dad flapped his two hands like elephant’s ears, warding off this terrible and, for me, so wonderfully precious scene of the night-watchman, who jumped down, as if he had been limbering up, cast off uniformed ceremony, lifted Trikkie up from the cement and kissed him and stroked him and showed him to us, his own little doggie weeping with pain, of whom Mr Vanřátko declared, “That’s my faithful and true animal, I wouldn’t give him up for anything,” and he gave him a smacker right on the muzzle, and then he took off his back his bandoleer made out of an old rolled-up coat and spread it out on the bench beneath the office. Uncle Pepin called out zealously, “That’s
the stuff, Austrian army discipline’s the finest discipline of the finest army in the whole world.” And so, out of the darkness, and even through our closed windows, with the curtains drawn across by Dad, alternate happy commands rang out: “Zum Gebet! Marsch eins! Hergestellt! Paradenmarsch!” And over the cement pavement slapped the boots in the parade-ground steps of their parade march, the impact of the Mexican rifle butt crashed against the ground, and the about-turn of the loudly stamping heels. It was no wonder then that towards midnight the yell and roar of Mr Vanřátko made itself heard exclaiming, “Help, robbers!” And the night-watchman blew his bugle and Dad took his revolver, and I too rushed out with Dad into the night, and outside in front of the office Dad with trembling hand aimed his revolver calling out: “Surrender, you rascal!” And Mr Vanřátko shouted, “I’ve got him, I’m about to put the handcuffs on him . . .!” And he slammed his stick into the gooseberry bushes, twigs flew about as though sliced by the mower, and the chief mechanic ran up and shone his battery torch on it and in the light of the lamp you saw only a smashed, cloven gooseberry bush, and I called out, though like Mr Vanřátko I couldn’t see a thing either, “He’s running over that way, Mr Vanřátko, run and cut him off!” And Mr Vanřátko ran off into the darkness and came back totally drenched with sweat and happy: “Rapscallion, scoundrel, he won’t catch me! I’m on the alert, I’m on guard, I keep good watch over my allotted premises . . .” And Father went off with his revolver and the mechanic with his battery torch, both in their underwear, shivering in the chill of the night. Dad said to the master mechanic, before they went off, “A fixed aim reduces the sense of fatigue.” And tired they went off to lie down, and back in bed I suddenly saw myself in my sailor suit, I was looking down from the great church tower, shading my eyes, watching and calling out to ships at sea, I saw myself seeing them, even though no such ships and sea could ever have been seen, just as nobody had actually tried that night to assault the brewery safe or Mr Vanřátko the night-watchman, who in two whole years of duty in the brewery had apprehended with his Mexican rifle and handed over to the police all in all only six young courting couples kissing by the brewery wall, and three nocturnal passers-by, two of them having a pee in the dark at the corner of the brewery and one having a crap, and Mr Vanřátko handed them over just as they were to the police, with a view to investigation by the authorities on suspicion of intent to rob the brewery safe.