The Little Town Where Time Stood Still

by Bohumil Hrabal

  4

  Once a quarter Uncle Pepin got in a revolutionary mood, refused to let Dad put his savings in his savings book, refused to let Dad give him ten crowns a day for cigarettes, refused to let Mum deal with his washing, refused even to eat his hot meal with us once a day . . . It always began the same way, Uncle Pepin shouted and shoved away his plate of sirloin and hollered, “What kindae Chinese grub is this? It gives me gripes in the tum!” When Mum gave him some goose and asked Uncle, “How did you find that?” Uncle Pepin waved his hand dismissively and said, “The sauerkraut was okay.” And when we were pig-slaughtering and Uncle had eaten his fill of whatever he fancied, on purpose he picked up some pig’s tail at the very end, squinted at it and tugged, gripped that tail in his teeth and stretched it out, and when the tail whipped out of his grasp, and Uncle’s head banged against the wall where he was sitting, he roared, “I’m no eating yon dish cloths! The stupid wumman reckons I’m some old daft daftie, and all in all the folks say, ye’re just diddling me!” And Dad was horrified and wrote out for Uncle on the table just how much he was giving him for his organisation and cigarettes, and how much for laundry, and five crowns for a regular hot evening meal, but Uncle Pepin looked at us coldly, hatefully, all at once he hated the lot of us, for Uncle we were the nobs, we were the lords and masters, all climbing our way up the ladder, while he, being working class, had to walk the flat horizontal ladder, never having had any other option in life but what he had already, and that was till the day he died or took his pension. Every year there was consternation in our house over Uncle’s revolution, every year, but this consternation was on a downward trend, for repetition creates its own order and system, and recapitulation weakens the initial shock of astonishment. And so Dad paid out to Uncle Pepin all the money he owed him, handed over his savings books, because Uncle wasn’t going to let himself be done out of his hard-earned cash, earned by the sweat of these hands, Uncle solemnly disowned his brother, that lackey of the capitalists, waved away Mum’s hand offered in reconciliation, and there he stood in the doorway, as if we’d all done him an injury, as if it was our fault he was staying in the lodgings, while we had three rooms and a kitchen, as if we could help the fact that he was a workman in the brewery where Francin was manager, my dad, my mother’s husband. Even once he was outside Uncle still spat with relish, and departed noisily shouting out that “Every nob oughtae be nabbed by the scruff o’ the neck and slung tae the floor . . .” That evening we all felt small, and were intimate together, Dad clung to Mum beneath the chandelier, and she caressed him, and Dad caressed Mum with one hand and me with the other, I squeezed up close to my parents too, for we couldn’t sort out in our minds quite what had happened. So, first of all Uncle Pepin spent all his ready cash, the second week he spent the money Dad had saved up for him, and the third week, over the Saturday and Sunday night, he spent his last reserves, borrowing more on tick on the following Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. And yet, as Uncle Pepin went off to town, the gates of houses opened and neighbours came out, and women, and windows opened for Uncle Pepin as he walked beneath them in his sailor’s cap, and everyone who could asked after the lovely ladies he was off to pay a visit, and the women asked if Uncle would come and do some play-acting, or when Uncle would make an assignation with them in the dark gloomy woods, or when Uncle would take them on a trip to Vienna and Budapest, the girls asked him when Uncle would take them dancing on the island, and they put his name down for the Ladies’ Privilege, which wouldn’t be held till the winter, the men asked confidentially about the calves of the women at the public houses with ladies’ service, and what the young girls’ busts were like, and the feather beds up in their rooms, at the first house Uncle asked for flowers, and he presented them to the women in the houses that followed after, where he requested some more flowers from the garden to give to the beauties in all those windows that opened up for him, all the way to the streets and on to the town square. There came Uncle Pepin marching along, bowing, saluting and distributing kisses, and his replies to all queries reduced every group or individual to fits of laughter, in the aftermath of which Uncle Pepin departed like a moving train trailing wreaths of smoke . . . His very first halt was the Žofín public house with ladies’ service, the minute Uncle came in the bored young misses sprang up and strove for the bouquet of flowers which Uncle presented to one of them, they threatened to scratch each other’s eyes out, then Uncle sat down and ordered a coffee, and Miss Marta said, “And here’s a bumper of champagne, you old goat, from me, to make you pee.” And Bobinka put on a record, and the gramophone played “O Graveyard, Graveyard”, and Bobinka sat on Uncle’s knee, and the customers applauded and called out, everywhere Uncle appeared, he caused delight and mirth, sometimes he took me with him, I sat in the corner and drank lemonade, or the young ladies took me beside them, and I enjoyed being with them, for I loved the scent of cheap perfume and I liked to see the shaded eyebrows and artificially painted cheeks, when they leaned over me I blushed, and for that they stroked my hair and squeezed me to their breasts, and I shut my eyes, while Uncle Pepin went on delightedly: “But ah leddies, my lovely lassies, such a bouquet of flowers as the one I’ve just brought ye, only the late Emperor Franz would bring the like of that to Baroness Schrat, or the Archduke Karl to the girlies in the officers’ casino, in the Red Eagle!” Bobinka sighed sweetly: “Ah, maestro, when you fixes your eyes at me I just swoons like your Baroness Schrat, now if we was to marry, that’d be it! Else I’d just take a knife and snick-snick! That’d be the end! Or I’d take a gun and shoot you!” Marta chucked Bobinka off Uncle’s lap, leaned over her and yelled, “I’ll scratch your eyes out, he’s mine, only I’ve got rights to old Pippin here, if you don’t marry me I’ll have to go and poison meself!” Uncle Pepin was delighted by all this talk of shooting and poisoning, he sipped at his coffee, then suddenly he bawled out, “Go on, poison yourself, lassie, with slivovitz!”, the place burst into laughter and Miss Marta said, “But what does Mr Batista’s handbook have to say on the subject, eh, maestro?” Uncle Pepin pulled out his pince-nez, popped it on, offered a hand to Miss Marta and said decorously, “You can tell right off you’re a real lady, gracious as a Mozart, Herr Professor Batista in his handbook on sexual hygiene tells us, that a proper male’s got to have a properly developed sexual organ, and this organ must consist of a penis and it’s got to have properly developed testicles . . .” Bobinka appended naively, “But what if there’s only one testicle?” And she rolled her eyes at Uncle. “That, according to Mr Batista’s handbook, is known as a monorchid, and it constitutes a freak.” And the ladies began to argue over him, tugging Uncle by his sleeves and arms: “We’re not going to buy a pig in a poke, are we! We’ll just have to make a quick inspection! It’ll all have to be fully and properly inspected, won’t it, so you’ll just have to come along with us up to our room, right away, sir!” But Uncle Pepin leapt up, broke free from the young ladies and commanded, “Put me on a real belter! And let’s have a dance!” And the proprietress opened the door, and into the bar came an old St Bernard, called Dedek, and Uncle Pepin took Bobinka off to dance, but the other ladies shoved forward to join in too, so Uncle decided: “Right then, we’ll do the dance for three ladies, known as the trilogy!” And Uncle took the ladies by the hands, and the ladies did whatever Uncle did, they ran into opposite corners and jabbed their fingers into the air at each other to the rhythm of the music, and then jabbed them again at the smoky ceiling, and the customers made a circle, and the proprietress stood by holding a knife, arms folded, and laughing, she knew it would begin any moment, the wine and liqueurs would be flowing like water, Uncle Pepin, master of entertainment, really knew how to get them going, then Uncle lifted a leg, crooked it, shot it up and kicked in the air, and the ladies copied him and died with gales of laughter, squealing to see what they saw, then Uncle ran up and made lunges, he looked like a leaping Jack of Diamonds, and the ladies followed after him, the dust swirled, and Uncle leapt up really high
in the air, parted his legs and landed on the ground and did the splits. Bobinka cried out, “Hey, Mister, don’t go and split your crotch!” Marta exclaimed, “Hey, Pepin, don’t strain your bag of nuts!” Only Dáša flushed and said, “What are you saying, girls? Bag of nuts . . . a hernia, don’t rupture yourself, lad!” And she jumped up and started into the cancan, and the girls kicked up their knees and legs and danced the cancan with her, and Uncle bowed as he knelt, showered with the cloud of dust stirred up by their skirts. Then Dedek the St Bernard got up, reared and laid his paws on Uncle’s shoulders and knocked him over, but Uncle rose, offered the next young lady his arm, took her and tossed her up and lunged forward with her, flung her arms up and taking the whole of her by the waist, flung her backwards till her hair swept the floor to the rhythm of the music, then Dedek the St Bernard knocked Uncle over again, and Uncle lay on his back while the St Bernard growled and dribbled in his face, and the whole place roared with laughter, strangers ordered bottles of wine, and the proprietress brought whole trays of spirit, and Uncle sat up, and the girls lifted him to his feet and seated him on a chair and painted his cheeks with rouge. “You’ve gone quite pale, Maestro,” said Bobinka, while Marta brought her frock, her black frock with a red artificial rose, and so it happened that the young ladies dressed up Uncle in their room in this black frock, and when the music started, Uncle ran into the bar, with the artificial rose in his teeth, he danced Carmen doing her tango argentino, and when he did a somersault and a leap in the air his privates popped out of his underpants, but Uncle took no notice, he grimaced and pouted with his mouth like Carmen . . . And again Dedek the St Bernard got up and knocked Uncle over with his paw, then he lay on top of him growling in his face, till the proprietress, weeping with mirth, took Dedek away, and Uncle bowed, still broadcasting that sweet smile in all directions, with his painted lips and cheeks, not noticing that upstairs the ladies had painted him with enamel paint, which would last a whole week, as he went about doing his barrels and descaling the boiler and descending into the sewer, these days because of the rumpus he made they liked to send him down to the boiler or into the brewery basement. . .

  The next morning, during the break, the workmen came to see Dad and told him they hadn’t been able to find Uncle Pepin anywhere all morning, not till just now, when they’d finally found him asleep underneath his bunk, maybe he was dying. And Dad was forearmed, he took his bottle of ammonium and went with the workmen, who were all eyeing Dad reproachfully, blaming him for starving his own brother, who was there in a faint, lying in rags under the bunk in his lodgings. When they got there, two workmen lifted the bunk and shifted it away. And there amidst the old musty wellingtons and torn working boots, amidst the grimy rags and dust, lay Uncle Pepin, his cheeks resplendent with dried red enamel paint, his eyes shaded with black, and he seemed not to be breathing. Dad knelt and listened to his chest, then he spotted Uncle Pepin breathing through his nose . . . He stuck the open bottle of ammonium in front of the nose, but Uncle stopped breathing that way and breathed with his mouth, so Dad pressed his palm over his mouth, and Uncle was forced to breathe in some of the ammonium. He jumped up, spluttering . . . And Dad drew himself up, pulled the foot-wraps and rags out of the bed and asked Uncle, “What’s this?” And Uncle, his eyes full of tears, grabbed those rags and exclaimed, “That’s a fine old shirt, given me by that rare beauty Miss Glancová . . .” And Dad pulled out all the rags and tatters and dirty underclothes, which, while Uncle was still coming over to us for his dinner, always used to be quite clean . . . “And what’s this?” And every time, Uncle shouted out that these were precious gifts from various ladies and belles of his, and he took those rags back out of the stove bucket and put them away under the dirty bolster . . . And Dad looked on, and saw that the workmen were staring at him, Uncle wasn’t the cause of all this, but the manager of the brewery, the chap’s brother, who stayed in a three-room apartment, while his brother Pepin had to sleep here like an animal. Before he went out of the maltings Dad opened his bottle of sal ammoniac, breathed it in a few times, but no tears would come to his eyes, even this ammonium stuff was too weak to deal with all the things his brother had done to him since arriving eight years ago on that fortnight’s visit. At dusk I saw Uncle Pepin in his sailor’s cap, with his enamel cheeks, walking round to the back, to the outhouses, I saw his cap descend to the ground, I walked round the cart of draff and past the shed quietly up to the door into the small yard. Uncle Pepin was picking out the boiled potatoes covered in groats, wiping the groats off on his trousers, and eating, till he had eaten all the potatoes meant for the hens, then he finished off the discarded peel as well.

  5

  When the real cold of winter set in, ice formed on the river and it was time for the ice carting to start. Dad used to have some trouble assigning people to work the ice hoists, and deal with the thousands of loads of ice which the smallholders brought on their waggons, because they were well recompensed for every load of ice. Dad couldn’t help getting angry, because nobody wanted to do these jobs on the ice, only Pepin was delighted and looked forward to the ice carting, the other workers considered it forced labour and prevaricated, even threatening Dad that one day the time would come when the tables would be turned, the workers would be snug in the office and the masters would work on the ice, all of them, even the new brewery chairman Mr Dimáček. Dad’s response to such comments was silence, perhaps he too wished that one day the time would come when the tables would be turned, Dad wasn’t fond of the bosses either, especially not the new chairman, who kept pigs and had three pedigree boars, and was so engrossed in his pig rearing, so involved in it life and soul, that he himself resembled a pig, a boar’s head, in the way his lower lip drooped and his teeth protruded from his gums, and he’d inaugurated a new regime in the office, such that the clerks now sat with their pens constantly poised, so as whenever the chairman came in they could be busy writing away and counting. And if nobody was actually writing away and counting, the chairman turned pale and straightaway chided Dad as manager and the head accountant for having people idle and said they had one person too many on the staff. And whereas Doctor Gruntorád, as chairman before, would come riding in with his buggy, this chairman would appear out of the blue, grasping the door handle, barging into the offices and fermenting cellars and maltings and workshops and cooperages, pretending not to see a thing, but seeing absolutely everything, so that not only the workmen, but Dad too suffered under him, Mum had to take Dad every evening and hug him under the jingling trinkets of the lamp, and when Dad poured out his troubles to Mum, suddenly his face took on a terrifying expression, and he would point at himself, grasp himself by the chin, but it wasn’t his own chin, it was the chin of the new chairman, and then, with a single ripping motion, he wrenched off that chin and chucked it far away from him with disgust, and that wrenching off of the chin made Dad feel good, it was the only way he had of calming himself down.