Harlequin's Millions

by Bohumil Hrabal

  11

  THAT AFTERNOON WE HAD LOVELY WEATHER, FOUR cardplayers carried their table out onto the gallery, they took turns playing, with every new game of Mariáš three would play and the fourth could hardly wait for the next game, they fanned out their cards and smiled blissfully, or frowned if they had a bad hand. When Headmaster Polman was about to play a card, I begged him … Please tell me, what is this wonderful game that leaves you in raptures one minute and miserable the next? And the headmaster, who had written a guide to the rules of Mariáš, fixed his eyes on me, his face was patterned with wrinkles but his blue eyes gleamed. He turned the cards facedown on the table and said … If you insist … This game of Mariáš, from the French mariage, got its name because of the so-called weddings and marriages between sad kings and beautiful queens, a regular marriage is worth twenty points, their alliance is worth forty points if announced beforehand as a trump. The seemingly highest cards are the aces and tens, but the true charm of the game is that an ordinary seven, eight, nine or an insignificant knave can sometimes force the tens to follow suit, and then your partner can take a valuable ten with an ace, sometimes even with just a lonely little trump. How democratic it is, that marriage game between kings and queens! Simple, meaningless cards, thanks to their trumping power, can take not only queens, but also lure out aces. Is it not the height of democracy when a player announces, even before the game begins, that his final trick will be a seven! Does it not give you a feeling of self-importance when a Mariáš player announces two sevens during bidding, one of which will launch the winning seven! cried Headmaster Karel Polman, his friends stared at him, undoubtedly he had never said anything so beautiful to them about this game called marriage, “Harlequin’s Millions” fell in garlands from the rediffusion boxes, which rested on consoles in the wall above the players, Headmaster Polman stretched his legs, closed his eyes and continued … The best part of the start of each new game is the mystery of the talon, the two cards lying facedown on the table, two cards that are reserved for the player who has chosen the trump suit, so that he can offer them to the players who, depending on their card, think they can play a Betl or a Durch … What a glorious feeling it is to play a Betl! When a player proudly announces beforehand that he will win the next game by losing every trick, while the players who win one trick after another will ultimately lose the game! How thrilling it is when at the end of a Betl, the player who has chosen this contract is afraid his opponents might have something up their sleeves, a card that can force this player to win a trick and lose the game, what a terrible predicament, what an existential choice! Isn’t it wonderful, dear lady, how a Durch can raise your spirits, as you triumphantly win one trick after another, all the way to the end, it’s like a personality cult, a splendid feeling that you have nothing to do with your fellow players, only yourself, and your own cards, and you claim every single trick! Or what about a revoke? When a player thinks himself victorious, there is only the penultimate trick before total victory is his, but then there is that one small miscalculation, a twitch, disastrous, a card falls out of your hand, well, then you have a revoke, one tiny wrong move that may not seem as if it can alter the final victory, but already has, and every mistake, however small, is punished with complete and unconditional loss, and you have to pay all the players everything. My dear lady, we play the game of marriage with such fatal passion because we’re widowers, we’re satyrs without nymphs, kings without queens, yet we celebrate each new game like a wedding, and once again we are the consorts to beauteous queens, we exchange mistresses like the Merovingian kings of old … The Queen of Diamonds, a queen who always inspires trust, a noble and majestic queen, but with a thirst for adventure, despite the childlike simplicity of her face! Or my dearest Queen of Hearts! A nostalgic queen capable of great emotion and great love, which is doomed to failure, a queen most receptive to love. And what can I say about the Queen of Spades, the queen who protects all that is beautiful about the past, a queen who moves constantly to and fro, often putting you in hazard’s way! But I’m always frightened by the Queen of Clubs, who symbolizes doom and destruction, even though she is noble and highly intelligent, the Queen of Clubs is often the bearer of bad news, yet she overflows with creative energy! said Headmaster Polman, his fellow players were dumbstruck, they probably hadn’t realized any more than I had that marriage was such a beautiful and fateful game of love. The headmaster turned over his cards again and chose trump … Thank you, I said, and walked back to my three friends, who were on the terrace, leaning on the railing and looking out at the little town, one of the witnesses to old times continued … That house down there belongs to the Fuks family, it was once the home of the barley merchant Vincenc Šafránek, who couldn’t read or write but still bought books for his young son, out of love and a sense of patriotic duty. And when his dear son died, Šafránek the barley merchant informed the books, with tears in his eyes, of the boy’s death. Where is Mr. Vincenc Šafránek now? Mr. Karel Výborný asked sadly … Where is Mr. Marysko, barber and hairdresser, bandmaster, who always had a flair for the dramatic and immediately after the introduction of coal gas placed in his display case a splendid, larger-than-life wax bust of a woman with a magnificent hairdo, all around it he’d strewn leaves and flowers, and one evening for an even more dramatic effect Mr. Marysko arranged four Auer gas lamps around the wax bust, but the four lamps gave off so much heat that an hour later the nose and ears had slid off and the whole face had melted and sagged and was covered with the fallen hairdo … Where is that wax maiden? cried Mr. Výborný, the chronicler who as a boy had been brought to the little town where time stood still in a cart drawn by two pairs of butcher’s dogs, just like the prince of Loučeň, whose coach was drawn by two braces of horses … Where oh where is the people’s poet they called Štěpánek, who strolled through the little town playing a barrel organ, in the company of his young daughter Nanynka, and who lived somewhere in Rose Street and was no ordinary organ-grinder, because whenever anyone had a birthday or a name day he gave them a sheet of white paper with a patriotic poem he had written himself? Where is that poet? He lies buried there, in Saint George Cemetery, said Otokar Rykr, chronicler and aged witness. Štěpánek’s daughter Nanynka, he added, who was also a poet, was small and slight and wore a little hat she had made by hand. She would shyly approach the passersby and offer them a piece of paper with one of her father’s poems, and in this way she could discreetly ask for compensation. Her charming figure had disappeared long ago behind the cemetery wall. But now for something more cheerful, do you see that road, that was the imperial road, in eighteen-hundred-and-eighty-one we saw our very first automobile there, it looked like a carriage without shafts and was en route from Berlin to Vienna. Sometimes horsemen competing in the long-distance race from Vienna to Berlin would also pass this way. The riders and their horses from both directions were always exhausted by the time they arrived here. The horses were given sparkling wine mixed with raw eggs to fortify them for the next trot. Yes, said Mr. Výborný, witness to old times, and pointed downward, that road led to a bridge, a bridge built on wooden stilts, where toll was collected, and the toll collector was Mr. Berman, who lived in the third house from the bridge, the house was owned by Mr. Hulík, the last town fisherman, a distant cousin of the fishermen’s family, the family Bolen. Mr. Hulík also ran an inn here, he walked with a limp, as a boy he was trying to escape from a neighbor’s garden and caught his leg on a fence. My friends and I would gaze at him in admiration when he trudged through the water in tall boots catching fish, his wife, who was slightly smaller and sturdier, with a pair of sturdy glasses on her nose, always wore an apron with huge pockets, which were filled with roasted fish, so crispy and crunchy that she munched on them like candy, bones and all. And on the other side of the river, said Mr. Kořínek cheerfully, pointing, there was a swimming pool, which is gone too, it had different sections marked off with barrels on wooden poles, so they wouldn’t float away. One half for men, the other for women. E
ach section had its own separate pool for nonswimmers. When you walked along the water to the swimming pool, the river smelled delicious and the water was clear. In a little booth outside the swimming pool sat Miss Vičovská, selling admission tickets. She was always dressed in pink, from head to toe, like an advertisement for cleanliness! A fluttering red-and-white flag above the entrance meant the pool was open, and below the flag, on a bench under the sign that said air 20° and water 15°, sat the life-guard, Mr. Kroupa, smoking a pipe and surveying the territory. He always wore a clean, neatly ironed linen suit with blue pinstripes. Sometimes he lay a sturdy pole across the railing with a beginning swimmer clinging to the end of it, he slid the pole along the railing and the beginner swam. There were also women in the pool, absolutely, but you could only see their heads. When they came out of the water, you could see their bathing costumes too. These were mostly made of linen, the bloomers ended above the knee and the blouse had a sailor’s collar. When they climbed out of the water, it poured from their swimsuits like water from a drainpipe. Where is that old Nymburk swimming pool? Asked the witness to old times Mr. Václav Kořínek sadly. And our chronicler Mr. Rykr added … And where are all those fine Austrian uniforms? The dragoons used to ride past early in the morning on their way to the parade ground, we couldn’t take our eyes off that army in their tall helmets with the gleaming golden comb on top. How we envied the officers those glittering helmets! In the evening the soldiers livened up the main streets, they strolled along the pavement rattling their sabers until your ears rang … Down there, that’s where they used to go walking, Mr. Rykr pointed and went on … Outside the apothecary shop was a display of colored prints of saints and nonsaints and a large number of headless dragoons on fiery steeds, brandishing their sabers against an invisible enemy. In the space where the heads should have been, soldiers would paste their own faces, which they’d cut out of photographs … Yes, that’s how it was, added Mr. Kořínek the chronicler … the first dragoons in our little town were the Uhlans. On Cavalry Street an arched bridge had been built out of bricks from the town walls to make it easier for them to ride to the Malý Val. There is mention in the town annals of a scuffle between two girls in Zálabí, who on the thirty-first of July eighteen-hundred-and-four fought over a Uhlan … said Mr. Kořínek. And Mr. Karel Výborný could no longer contain himself and added … In the house where we once lived, Miss Terinka Procházková, a tall, thin, gray old spinster, taught dressmaking. About twenty young girls took lessons from her. Miss Terinka never interested us, but her brother did, Mr. Antonín Procházka, who had been property master for several large theater companies. After he’d quit that job, he and his wife and a stack of crates and trunks had moved in with his sister Terinka. He was always eager and willing to show the contents of his crates and trunks to people he knew, and our eyes nearly popped out of our heads when we saw the weapons, folk costumes, masks and other treasures. And whenever the actors from various theater companies came to visit him, it was a great day for us boys. They’d go boating, and when they called out to each other, things like: Madame Procházková! and Seevoo-play, Madame Pulda!, we always thought it was very posh, where we came from you never heard things like that, although the women did call each other all sorts of names … said Mr. Výborný, roaring with laughter, and then he looked down at the river, and saw there what he had just been telling me about, I even had the impression he had been reading it off the river’s surface and the house where he’d lived as a boy. “Harlequin’s Millions” softly spun its string serenade around the old wooden handrail of the balustrade, where our wrinkled hands rested fitfully, we looked down at the streets and the square of the little town, at the river, into the room where the barley merchant Vincenc Šafránek had just told his son’s books, with tears in his eyes, of the boy’s death, we saw the Auer lamps giving off such heat in the evening that the hairdresser’s dummy slowly melted away, the wax nose rolled silently down and the ears slid off, for a moment the whole face seemed to hesitate and then came tumbling down, it oozed through the leaves and flowers in the shopwindow, Nanynka walked through the town square modestly offering her poems, racehorses and their riders trotted along the imperial road to the little town, in the square we saw the grooms feeding the exhausted horses from buckets into which they had emptied whole bottles of sparkling wine, plump Mrs. Hulíková strutted along the river with her sturdy glasses on her nose handing out fistfuls of crisp-roasted fish from the pockets of her apron, next to the old swimming pool sat Mr. Kroupa with his pipe, dressed in his clean, ironed linen suit with the blue pinstripes, rising from the river were women with Art Nouveau hairstyles, in linen bathing costumes with bloomers and a floppy sailor’s collar and along the river the Uhlans came trotting with their tall helmets and golden combs, on a stand outside the pharmacy were colored prints of headless dragoons on fiery steeds, the property master Mr. Procházka opened his suitcases and crates and showed us boys all those weapons, costumes and masks … The witness and chronicler of old times Mr. Karel Výborný seemed to sense what we were looking at, and added … It was only later that Mr. Procházka rented the wooden restaurant on Ostrov, he did a bit of rebuilding so he could stay there all year round, and because he lived on the island permanently he was nicknamed Robinson, to distinguish him from the other Procházkas in the little town. Did you know, the place where the wooden restaurant once stood was originally called the Poplar, also known as the Firing Range, or as the old people called it, Shoot’em Dead, since that was where the rifle club’s shooting range used to be. There was even a special room in the restaurant where the walls were covered from floor to ceiling, like wallpaper, with square wooden targets, all pretty much shot to pieces, they’d been painted with animals, birds, and copies of illustrations from the pages of the Humorist and the satirical magazine the Arrow. On each of these targets was written the name of the winning rifleman and the date of the contest. Not far from the wooden restaurant was a round white bandstand. Mr. Procházka had quickly adapted to his new surroundings. In addition to a dog, cat and various birds he also had two tame otters that, or so they say, would bring him fish from the Elbe. I never actually saw them do that, but when he whistled through his fingers the otters came running out of the Elbe and climbed up onto his shoulder, I did see that … He said, and we who had been listening to him all looked to where Ostrov lay in the river, right near the little town, and Mr. Václav Kořínek added enthusiastically … It was just like in the movies. Like the first traveling cinema, a great attraction in those days, they used to show movies in Goatskin Alley, which got its name in the days when livestock markets were held in the streets of the little town. In Saint George Street was a horse market, in Cattle Way, which is now called Long Street, there was a cattle market, and on Na rejdišti or Goatskin Alley, the sheep and goat market. Na rejdišti used to be called Soldier Street, Watertower Street was Russian Street, Church Street, just off the square, went by the name of Broad Street, Court Street was Butcher Street, the street between the houses where the Srajers and the Dolezals lived was called Water Street, because there was a wooden water main running through it that conveyed water from the big mill to the fountain in the square. Kolín Street, where it met the town square, became the Elbe Gate. Tyrš Street was Saint George Street. Eliška Street was once the Lištínská, the little street known as the Post Office was the Lane of Sighs. Long Street was Cattle Way, Cavalry Street, the Ramparts. The Ramparts was Carpenter Street, Malý Val … Little Hungary … But let’s get back to Na rejdišti! cried Mr. Kořínek triumphantly, in March of eighteen-hundred-and-eighty-nine Mr. Kočka arrived here with his traveling anatomical-pathological museum and waxworks, where for only thirty pennies, soldiers for twenty and children for ten, in the booth and menagerie that had been built on Na rejdišti, the townspeople could feast their eyes, according to the advertisements, on a thousand specimens by the most prominent European taxodermists and thirty species of the rarest beasts of prey and hay gluttons … said Mr. Kořínek, rubbi
ng his hands, and suddenly he drew himself up and shouted down to the little town … I could live without a museum or a waxworks, without Kočka’s pathology and anatomy too, but without delicious smells? Every morning on the corner of Fort and Boleslav Streets you could smell the bread from Macháček’s bakery. On winter mornings, after a frost, the bakers set out wooden boards of unbaked rolls in the courtyard, in the freezing cold, and after a while the bakers put them in the oven. This made the rolls nice and crisp and when they came out of the oven you could smell them all the way out in the street. Opposite the bakery, on Cavalry Street, in about the fourth house, the horse butcher and sausage maker Michálek had his little shop. There you could always smell the hot meatloaf his wife divided into generous chunks with a large spoon and gave to the boys who, for only a penny, received this tasty treat in the palm of their hand, they blew on it vigorously and tossed it from one hand to the other. Another interesting shop was that of Mr. Procházka, a wood turner in Boleslav Street. The products he offered for sale smelled of polish and rare and exotic woods. Outside number one-thirty-nine was a display of whips, brooms and fishing rods, the largest of which had a paper carp dangling from its hook as if it had just been caught. Next door, a very unusual smell filled the air outside the shop at number one-thirty-eight, two steps down and you found yourself in the drugstore run by Mr. Šebor, a man with a full, soldierly beard and black-rimmed glasses. Liniments for every kind of pain, inside and out. Grandmothers went there to buy turpentine resin, which was such extraordinary ointment that when you pulled a bandage off a tender spot, a piece of skin sometimes came along with it. Mr. Šebor sold bear grease, hare lard, cocoa butter to prevent chafing and other ointments. On the corner of Boleslav and Long Streets at number one-thirty-six you could smell Mr. Šimáček’s shop, which even in those days had two entrances and sold both dry goods and groceries. On the opposite corner, at number one-thirty-five, was Salomon Klein’s alehouse, where the air smelled of Allasch, Diavolo and Mogador and there was often the figure of some unfortunate drunk lying on the sidewalk. The first house on the square was number one-thirty-one and was owned by sausage maker Bártl. On cool evenings, whenever the shop doors opened, the smell of fresh smoked sausages rushed out and lingered under the arcade. There was another shop that you could smell out in the arcade, and that was number one-twenty-eight, the tobacconist’s. You had to go up two steps to get to the shop, which was owned by Mr. Wehr and was always filled with the smell of tobacco. Back then many people still smoked cigars and took snuff. During the daytime older men smoked long cigars, very occasionally a short one, and on Sundays, a Habano. Young men smoked cheroots. Cigarette smokers, who were in the minority, smoked cheap brands like Ungar, Drama or Sport, or the more expensive Memphis or Sultan. Choosy smokers filled their rolling paper with shag tobacco, a fine-cut blend, golden yellow and sold in tins. At number one-twenty-seven was Mr. Hynek Šípek’s bakery, later owned by Mr. Kulich. In the morning the arcade outside the bakery smelled of fresh bread. Each fragrant loaf had a dark crust, delectable flavor and one imperfection, which was that the mother of a large family would have sliced up more than half of it by suppertime. A little farther down at number one-twenty-six was an apothecary shop. We always held our breath when we opened the glazed door. Inside, moving about silently behind large porcelain jars with Latin labels, was the apothecary himself, he would open one of the jars, dribble something into a small bottle on the scale, add a few drops of distilled water, a pinch of powder, and little boys like us watched in complete silence, eyes like saucers, and were glad when they had been handed their medicine and could get out of there … Where are all those delectable smells, where have they gone, don’t we still have the right to enjoy them?… Shouted Mr. Kořínek, and in his voice you could hear the resentment he bore against the little town where the time of fragrant smells, of good food and spices, of medicines and soaps, had stood still. Mr. Rykr gently squeezed my elbow, he pointed down at the cemetery and said … There below lies our poet Otakar Theer, at the age of seventeen he published a collection of poems called The Groves Where People Dance, under the pseudonym Otto Gulon … This was followed in nineteen-hundred by the collection Journeys to My Self. In nineteen-hundred-and-three the book of short stories and novellas Under the Tree of Love was published … In nineteen-hundred-and-twelve the book of poetry Fear and Hope, a year later the collection Defiance. Otakar Theer’s last poetical work was the ancient tragedy Phaethon. First performed in the Prague National Theater on the thirteenth of April, nineteen-hundred-and-seventeen. Rudolf Deyl as Phaethon, Růžena Nasková and Leopolda Dostalová in the other roles. The play was met with critical acclaim and was a resounding success. But Theer was unable to revel in that success for very long. After the premiere, while hanging wreaths and bouquets he had received in the theater on the walls of his house, he fell from a ladder, suffered internal injuries and was confined to his bed. On the sixth of September he was rushed to Vinohrady Hospital, where on the twentieth of December, after weeks of agony, he died, barely thirty-seven years old … Said the witness to old times Otokar Rykr with emotion, and he leaned over the railing and his voice rang out over the little town … Tell us, why did Karel Hynek Mácha have to help put out a fire and ruin his health and die? Tell us, why did Otakar Theer have to hang wreaths and bouquets all over his house and fall from a ladder and die? Why did our poet Karel Hlaváček have to go running off to Sokol, catch pneumonia, and die?