Harlequin's Millions

by Bohumil Hrabal

  8

  THE PENSIONERS LIVING IN THE OLD CASTLE ARE actually in a permanent state of half-sleep, the doctor sees to it that they get enough sleep and anything even resembling consciousness is nipped in the bud. The nurses generously replenish this half-sleep with pills and injections, they’re constantly on the alert to make sure that no one is ever entirely awake. Everyone wears diapers in bed, like babies, and the nurses who have to change those diapers are like young mothers, every time you turn around they’re hurrying off to throw the stinking diapers into plastic pails, there’s always the sound of running water somewhere as the nurses wash their hands, and every morning the sheets are changed, whole piles of wrinkled sheets with yellow stains, stinking piles, which are thrown out the open window into the truck in the courtyard and then brought to the laundry room in the former library of the monastery, where the Augustinians once studied everything that had ever been written, separating the books that were of use to them from the dangerous ones, the library, which is now a laundry and boiler room … And the rooms are filled with the smells of a maternity clinic, the smell of diapers and babies, of expectant mothers working their way toward birth, but here in the castle under the pall of those smells everyone is slowly but surely working their way toward death. And the nurses hand out pills and give injections to make the pensioners’ journey toward death more bearable, to make sure they aren’t too aware of it all, if an old woman happens to wake up and raise herself on her elbows and look around and realize her situation, she immediately calls for the nurse to come give her a medicinal drink and some pills to dispel reality, and then the old lady sinks back into her dreams, her half-sleep … Outside, too, on sunny days when the pensioners stroll through the park and across the courtyard, most of them are half asleep, and because they have no place to go, many of them will simply stand around looking at the open gate, they could go anywhere they wanted, but it’s just like with songbirds, when you forget to shut the wire door of their wire cage, the old folks wander in and out, sometimes they even set out for the little town, but halfway down the avenue of trees, time suddenly stands still for them, they’ve lost their goal, there’s no reason to go any farther, so they turn around, suddenly they no longer feel like going for a beer, or a cup of coffee, no longer feel like seeing the pigeon market, or the tea room, or any young folk, the pensioners turn around and head back home, the huge castle gate with its splendid ironwork, like the Winged Victory of Samothrace, is open wide, but one mighty sweep of its wings and the pensioners turn back, because an old person really has no place to go, and when they do go anywhere, it’s back to the memories, to the heart of the life that was once as much of a reality as … as what? I was always glad to run into two particular pensioners, who walked along together at the same pace, so cheerfully, both had canes, which they swung in time to their footsteps like the windshield wipers of a car, they themselves were perfectly aware that they had turned into two windshield wipers moving in tandem, they strutted along in that whimsical way, laughing, joking, making funny faces and cheering up the other pensioners, who sat on benches scribbling mysterious symbols in the sand with their canes, their nonsensical scribbling was a rhythmical accompaniment to their rudderless thoughts … I was especially fond of one pensioner who was so sensitive to the cold that he wore a winter coat even in summer, he’d stand at the castle gate staring down the avenue, all the way to the church, where there was always light, sunshine, where the dense crowns of the chestnuts ended, he wore a winter coat and two mittens joined by a cord that ran along the inside of his coat across his shoulders and through his sleeves, so he wouldn’t lose them, the way mothers do with their young children, the way his wife had done when she brought him here … I had lost my heart to one of the old ladies who, one night when a storm rose and gusts of wind shook the castle and rattled the shutters off their hinges, packed up her most valuable possessions and came downstairs dressed and ready to go, with her umbrella tied to her suitcase and her identity card clutched in her hand, she was an elderly Sudeten-German woman who had lived somewhere near Pecer before the war, and after the war, she said, when they began transporting us, I was nearly thirty and still unmarried, at a certain hour on a certain day, the old crone in charge of our colony, where only six families lived, that old crone ordered us to scrub all six tables and cover them with tablecloths, on those tablecloths we had to place fresh bread and a knife and a dish with a lump of fresh butter, and then the old hag, who was in charge of our colony deep in the forest near Pecer, ordered all six families to stand outside in front of their six houses, each mother had to tie up her most valuable possessions in a tablecloth and hold her identity card and other documents in her hand, the German woman told me without emotion, she too had had to obey that old Baba, just like everyone else in the colony she had to hand over all her money and Baba distributed it among the families, giving them each as much as she felt they needed … And so at noon on that day in nineteen-hundred-and-forty-five, six families sat outside their farmhouses, where they’d let the stoves go out, Baba suddenly changed her mind and walked into each farmhouse and stopped all the clocks and then came back out again, the police arrived and without shedding a tear Baba got into the car to have herself thrown out of the country like all the rest, and never again would they see the colony here in the Sudeten Mountains where they had been born, and their fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers … said the little old German woman, but I escaped from the wagon and spent the rest of my days working as a weaver in a factory in Broumov and now I’m retired and every so often I go back to have a look at the sunken road near Pecer, our farms are now weekend cottages, I was sitting there one day on the hillside and a young man invited me to come closer, I had nothing to be afraid of, because he’d guessed, seeing me sitting there from morning till noon, that I wanted to come inside and take whatever was left of what may still have been mine, but I blushed with shame and fled into the forest, because I would’ve died on the spot if I’d seen the place where I’d once lived. Said the German woman, who, whenever there was a loud noise from somewhere, a chimney falling, an old oak felled by a storm, hitting the ground with a mighty crash that shook the castle walls, when that happened she wrapped her most valuable possessions in an old tablecloth and went running down the stairs into the vestibule, sat down under the old pendulum clock, clutching her identity card, and waited for something terrible to happen. She would even rise fearfully, turn and open the door of the glass case and stop the clock … I understand her, that German woman, because when the war was over, they nationalized the brewery where Francin was manager, the stocks were all sold to the workers, even Uncle Pepin had three shares and he shouted day and night at me and Francin that he was now a millionaire and that all the workers were now millionaires, he had stood in the doorway bellowing out everything he had against us, how he and the workers were now in charge, now nobody could exploit him ever again, now he could even fire Francin, now he, maltster and former shoemaker, was a millionaire, now it was for him to decide whether Francin would pitch barrels and haul ice in the winter, now he’d have us evicted and we could damn well go live in the servants’ quarters and he’d move into our four rooms, now they had a Council of Workers here and that council was what used to be the Executive Board, now the workers themselves would sit here once a month in the conference room at the long table, which was covered with green worsted like a billiard table … I’d turned pale and Uncle kept on shouting and roaring with laughter and waving around his shares from the nationalized brewery, and later, when I walked through the little town, I knew how despondent I must have looked, while the women in the little town, all those women who for twenty-five years I had tormented with my condescending smile and my dresses straight out of Elegante Welt, now they smiled condescendingly at me as they walked past, I saw the way they walked, their heads held high, proud that the brewery now belonged to the workers and that rumor had it we’d be moving soon, that we were being evicted and that only those w
ho did real work would be allowed to live there. And when I got back to the brewery, the brand new chairman of the Council of Workers was standing opposite the assistant brewmaster shouting at him, We don’t have to work for a slave driver anymore, we don’t have to put up with His Lordship Francin anymore with his goddamn castle on the Elbe, no, never again! From now on we’ll divide up the work among ourselves! And the assistant brewmaster snarled at him … I’ve been appointed as your superior, and as long as there’s an Executive Board, you’ll answer to me! I stood riveted to the ground, the master cooper looked serious and stern. He replied … You obviously haven’t been paying attention, from now on the brewery is a national enterprise, from now on we’re in charge and I’m the chairman of the Council of Workers … And the master cooper sliced his hand through the air as if he were chopping the world in two, the assistant brewmaster ran after him wailing … But I’m one of you, I worked here with you in the fermentation room, just an ordinary worker … He grabbed the cooper by the sleeve, but the cooper pulled away and said, raising his voice … You’ve always been against us, you’ve always wanted what the big bosses wanted, and not only that, you’ve always lorded it over us, and that’s something we can never forgive, aren’t even allowed to forgive … the assistant brewmaster tried to defend himself … But you didn’t hire me! The master cooper turned around, raised his hand and roared with laughter … That’s true, the bosses hired you, and now we workers are firing you, incidentally your notice is in the mail, you’d better just stay home and not come back to the brewery … And the assistant brewmaster went away, his eyes filled with tears, I never liked him much, he probably didn’t like me either, still, it didn’t take much effort for me to imagine that his fate was quite closely connected with ours, after all, we belonged to the same class, to the people who had run the brewery, given orders to the workers, not because they wanted to, but because they had to, because that was what the Executive Board of the brewery, a limited liability corporation, paid them to do. At that moment it dawned on me that for a quarter of my life and more I’d been a source of great aggravation to all the women in the little town, the wives who lived in a kitchen and one room, and that I, with my three pigs, had in fact provoked the wives of the station staff and the railroad workers, women who were willing to travel all the way to Prague with their rail pass to buy cheaper lard and bacon, while I had pails full of lard and smoked meat from the pigs I fed with waste from the brewery, with draff and sludge, the only thing we may have had in common was that I never went on vacation, just like the other women, who set out in the summertime with buckets to pluck blackberries and raspberries and blueberries … But the assistant brewmaster was no longer allowed into the brewery. That autumn I’d gone out to pick apples and pears and nuts, my payment in kind, I was standing with two hired pensioners on the ladders, picking the fruit I had earned and dropping it into a basket, when the assistant brewmaster’s wife appeared and climbed up onto my ladder and began picking apples and putting them in her own basket, she was weeping and wailing that this was her tree, it had been her tree for thirty years and the profits from this tree had always been her payment in kind. I was seized with anger, and said to her, yes, it used to be yours, but your husband’s been fired, now all the apples and pears are ours, half the orchard, and this Reinette tree is on our half! And I scraped off my shoes on the rung of the ladder, the mud fell on the face of the assistant brewmaster’s wife, but she furiously scrambled her way up and went on picking the apples within her reach, the ladder tilted and sank farther into the branches under the weight of the two bodies, but the assistant brewmaster’s wife scrambled higher, several piles of apples were already gleaming in the grass under the old trees, but the assistant brewmaster’s wife climbed up another rung, I went down a rung and stepped on the back of her hand, the hand holding on to the rung, and then she grabbed me like a madwoman by the hem of my dress and pulled herself up a few rungs, she leaned sideways to reach the apples, but the branches in the crowns gave way, the apples fell and the ladder slid diagonally down past the branches, pulling down Reinettes in its wake, and we fell slowly to the ground, the assistant brewmaster’s wife fell on top of me, I pushed her off, the baskets of apples tipped over and the apples spilled out, the assistant brewmaster’s wife quickly filled her baskets with apples from my piles and dumped them into her wheelbarrow, I let her take as many as she wanted, but then tore the shafts out of her hands and tipped over the wheelbarrow full of apples into my pile, and we stood there face-to-face, our eyes narrowed, and weighed the empty baskets in our hands to see if they were heavy enough to be used as weapons, I was waiting for the perfect moment to launch the attack with a hefty swing of my basket, hoping to win the fight and defend the ten quintal of apples we’d picked in two days’ time, when suddenly three workers from the malt house appeared, led by the master cooper, and marched straight across the autumn grass to the piles of apples, when I looked up at the approaching men the assistant brewmaster’s wife saw her chance and gave me a shove. I fell onto the pile of apples but jumped right back up and threw the assistant brewmaster’s wife down with all my might and raised my basket, but the master cooper took my hand gently and said … From now on there will be no more payment in kind, the orchard and the fruit are ours. The piles of apples, even the ladders and baskets, everything is ours. From this day on we will pick the fruit and nuts, we have children, grandchildren, and even if we didn’t, the orchard now belongs to us and not to the bosses … The assistant brewmaster’s wife got up, leered at the three workers and grinned at me triumphantly, while I suddenly felt sad, the two pensioners whom I’d fed for two days and given bottles of beer, every evening I paid them and gave them each a basket of apples to take home, those two, who only moments ago had been hidden in the crown of an apple tree, now climbed down the ladder with baskets full of apples, went and stood next to the assistant brewmaster’s wife, and even though for the past two days they had addressed me as Madame and smiled at me politely when I gave them beer and bread, now they stood looking at me just like the three workers, their eyes burned with rage at something I had been the cause of, they were indignant, the world would be better off without me, now they were all looking at me and suddenly I couldn’t help thinking that they must have had some sense of shame, or they would’ve started punching me, given me such a beating that the world would have had to do without me after all, it was better that I go straight back to the house I’d been allotted, or better still, that Francin and I go live somewhere else, because a whole new era had begun and the old times, my golden times, were over, they had slipped away right before my eyes, in the brewery orchard as well as in the little town, where I’d been spending less and less time, because ever since the war was over I’d had the uneasy feeling that the people there didn’t like me anymore, that they didn’t see me, as if I had become transparent, they looked right through me, as if I weren’t there … It’s raining now, for the second day in a row it’s raining at the retirement home, I sit by the window, drops of water stream down the windowpane, below me are the little town and the pink ramparts and the pink streets and the pink church in a blue haze of rain. It’s raining, but in the western sky is a patch of pink light, somewhere out there the sun has already broken through the rain, it’s the moment just before a rainbow appears, the air is filled with shreds of beige mist. In the corridors the rediffusion boxes tenderly play “Harlequin’s Millions,” actually, half the old women here at the retirement home come from the little town, I know practically all of them and they know me, they now seem to be in much better shape than I am, they have dentures, they’re more pain-stakingly groomed, comb their hair with great care, while my hair is cropped like a reform-school girl’s. What must they think when they see me here in my cotton dresses, when they see me always on the move, always wandering around the castle, curiously studying the ceilings and walls, standing before that gigantic, elaborate gate, looking up at that gate in a permanent state of amazement … Yet I know
perfectly well that even now, just as in the old days when these women couldn’t forgive the fact that I was the wife of the manager and that I liked wearing beautiful clothes … The old women still don’t forgive me, can’t forgive me, for being different from them, for walking around like a slob, they don’t forgive me that they like to watch television, that they find the programs not only entertaining but educational, but that no one ever sees me gazing at a television screen the way I gaze at the tapestries on the former castle walls … I never go to the lectures organized at the castle by cultural officials from the little town, no one has ever even seen me reading a book … and so once again I’m different from the rest, once again I’ve detached myself from their community. And I must say I’m rather proud that I am who I am, two of the old women had even bought jeans and were showing them off in front of me, but I walked past without paying them any attention, indifferently, they purposely ran to catch up with me, said hello, I returned their greeting, but strutted right past them, just as when I was still a lady and wore the kind of clothes you saw in Elegante Welt, even here at the castle I didn’t live as the others did, four or eight to a room, no, I had my own little room, where I lived alone with my husband, so really I was living here just as I had in the brewery, in our four rooms … Now the sun came out, the rain spilled down on the little town, someone opened a window in the corridor and the fluttering curtains filtered the damp, fragrant air, the frescoes on the walls and ceilings blazed with color, I walked across the polished floor of the corridor, which was bathed in pink and gold sunbeams, and peered carefully and with emotion into the darkened hall, gradually I could make out the eight hospital beds where the old women lay, old women who no longer had the strength to get up, they pushed themselves up on their elbows, but then collapsed and sank back into their pillows, they lay there under a light blanket, which weighed them down like a white tombstone, a monument … But high above them was an enormous fresco that stretched to all four corners of the old ballroom ceiling, a fresco of a group of nude young women, their eyes filled with longing, who gazed toward where their lover might be, a young man who wasn’t visible just yet, but whose arrival they sensed, I looked alternately at the ceiling and the beds, where the old women wiped their mouths, and their eyes looked at me reproachfully, they were clearly envious of me, that I could still walk, that I could take care of myself, they even wished I’d ridicule them, if only with my eyes, so that they could tell me everything they thought about themselves, the retirement home and life in general … But above them were all those naked women, floating and swimming around in pure sensuality, women who were unable and had no reason to conceal what it was they were swimming in, a succulent sea of men’s gazes … And the women in the fresco on the ceiling of the ward for bedridden women, these beauties were encircled by divine cupids, plump, naked children, cherubs, who scattered flowers over the lovers from a cornucopia, oleander blossoms and camellias and flowers that grew in the Mediterranean and that I used to grow in flowerpots on the windowsill … Cupids, angels, flitting across the fresco like sperm, like the beginning of a love from which beautiful children are born … I looked at the fresco and was astounded by the shameless sensuality of those nude young women, and I wished, and perhaps the eight old women lying in their white beds gazing upward wished too, that one day, when the time had come, one of the women on the ceiling would reach out her hands and offer me her fingers to pull myself up on, out of my deathbed and into that womanly heaven, into their midst … just as when my mother lay dying and imagined she heard the thundering of an organ and that Mother Mary leaned down to her from the heavens, brushing against her with her blue robes, and reached out her hand and pulled her upward … And I backed out of the ward for bedridden women, my eyes were burning, and in the corridor I pushed aside the nylon curtains and looked out the third-floor window and across the river, to where the beige brewery rose, the place where I’d been happy, but what is it, what was it, that happiness of mine? Unhappiness was always just around the corner … The assistant brewer and his wife had left the brewery and after that Francin was fired too. He had objected quietly … But I’ve never played the boss, have I? And the chairman of the Council of Workers answered benignly … No, Mr. Francin, you’ve never played the boss, you’ve always been kind and friendly to us, but that only works against you now, because by treating us decently you took the edge off the class struggle, understand? Francin shook his head and said … No, I don’t understand, but I do understand that I’ll have to get used to the situation … And the chairman of the Council of Workers said, relieved … Then I suggest you begin by immediately clearing out the garage, your car is in there, on wooden blocks, you’ll have to move it, along with all those jerry cans and spare parts, otherwise we’ll do it ourselves and dump the whole mess outside the brewery wall … And Francin walked into his office for the last time, emptied the drawers of his American desk, the contents spilled out onto the floor, the workers’ director, laughing, handed him the fallen pencils and pens, the members of the Council of Workers came in to have a look and were delighted when Francin knocked over the ink pots and bottles of gum arabic, no one offered to help, everyone just stood there staring at him, as if they were witnessing a train collision, a car crash, a natural disaster, no one felt sorry for him, no one spoke to him, because they saw and were viewing the scene they had always dreamt of, the scene in which the brewery manager, his head bowed in shame, leaves to make way for the victorious new director, who is accountable only to them, the workers, the Council of Workers … And when Francin had carried away all his writing supplies in a laundry basket, including the three elbow pads he used to keep his shirt clean, no one offered to hold the door open for him, so that Francin, both hands clutching the handles of the wicker basket and his chin pressed against the stack of old calendars that reached to his neck, had to put the basket down on the ground, open the door slightly, hold it open with the tip of his shoe and then lift the basket and open the door the rest of the way with his knee and slip outside … And when he returned to pick up his last few things, he also took the two old potbellied kerosene lamps from the cabinet, the ones with the round wicks, lamps that hummed when they burned and spread such a delicious warmth over your hands as you wrote … Then the workers’ director spoke … Those lamps are no longer yours, they’re listed in the brewery inventory, which we now own lock, stock and barrel … He puffed out his chest and Francin blushed and asked … What if I buy the lamps, those lamps were witness to my golden times, when I was happy … But the workers’ director was firm … The lamps are ours, you’ve already made enough of a fortune with this brewery, you had that villa built, that castle on the river, while the workers were starving … but then again, what do you think, my fellow workers? Let’s be generous, take the lamps, as relics of your golden times … So Francin gathered up the last of his things and left, but the workers’ director called out after him in the courtyard … Since those golden times of yours are never coming back, we’ve divided up the shares among ourselves, we’re the millionaires now, we’re the shareholders of the brewery … and not only is the brewery ours, but all the malt houses, all the locomotives, all the banks, all the hop gardens, all the factories, everything … Then he slammed the door shut and Francin carried off the last of his things … I stand in the castle corridor, looking down at the spotless floor, what is human happiness? Whatever it is, unhappiness is always lurking just around the corner … Someone is standing in front of me, the palm of a hand flashes before my eyes like a mirror, yes, it’s one of the witnesses to old times, Mr. Otokar Rykr, who tells me joyfully … In the old days, in the little town where time stood still, the pubs were always bustling with noise and excitement, this went on all night and didn’t end until cockcrow, which wasn’t surprising, considering how little you had to pay in those days for a glass of good beer, a genuine Malvaz. In those days a glass of Malvaz was truly like liquid bread. Even reputable citizens took part in these drinking sprees, young and
old. Among them were a number of valiant drinkers, who could easily down twenty-five pints or more on a night like that. The high point was drinking from the communal two-liter, a double tankard, sometimes in the shape of a glass boot, an old student tradition that required a certain dexterity on the part of the imbiber, if he didn’t want to spill beer all over himself. The drinking sprees always commenced with a fixed ritual. The first drinker duly baptized the double tankard by slapping the glass three times with the flat of his hand, from top to bottom, without spilling a drop. Then, amid shouts of Ho, ho, ho … hosanna!, he gulped down as much brew as he could. After that the glass boot would be passed to his neighbor. The more a fellow could drink at a time, the more of a hero he was. Each man linked arms with the man beside him, while at the same time hoisting his glass to his lips, they drank a toast to brotherhood and drained their glasses dry, or juiced ’m down, as they say … Due to the lack of a respectable tea room at that late hour the beer drinkers usually concluded their nightly carousals in one of the four pubs where you were served by waitresses, Café Krystlík, opposite the former brewery, where for a couple of pennies they could sit around, preferably in the kitchen, slurping glasses of black coffee. Now and then a few of them would straggle homeward, but only after the priest had left the nearby rectory to celebrate morning mass … said Mr. Rykr, witness to old times. I stroked the back of his wrinkled hand, but he knew that I wanted to be alone, that I didn’t want to keep on dreaming, but to keep replaying over and over everything that had been. Night was coming on, and I stood outside on the damp staircase lost in thought, the sandstone statues disappeared in the gathering darkness, but in the sky to the north, above the outline of the magnificent aspens and oaks, was the luminous glow of a great city, our army garrison camp, the darker it grew the brighter it glowed, like the aurora borealis. Somewhere behind the mountains and hills, the military garrison shone proudly, with its airport and administrative buildings, amusement halls and barracks, movie theaters and other luminous centers of culture … And that light, which shot across the hills and groves like a billiard ball, lit up the statues along the avenues of red birches, the bodies of the young sandstone women were cloaked in evening mist, as if the young women had just bathed and rubbed themselves with fragrant oils in readiness for the game of love, their sultry gazes were filled with longing and all of a sudden I realized how much I’d missed out on in life, before I could turn around all the young men who had once loved me had grown old, just as I had, I, who stand here now beside these gentle statues lit by a military garrison, somewhere beyond the hills and forests, a town we call our Chicago … A feather floats up to the stars and already I’m living in a state of utter happiness.