5
THERE WAS A TIME, I WAS STILL YOUNG, WHEN I thought there was a life waiting for me elsewhere, I even thought it was in Prague. When Francin drove to Prague once a month, to the Brewer’s House, he always went in the Škoda 430, I’d put on my most fashionable dress, but each time Francin begged me to pretend I was just going out for a walk, I had to leave half an hour earlier than he did, so no one at the brewery would know he was taking me with him, people might resent that. And so I sometimes had to walk ten whole miles toward Prague, sulking, angry, I, who wanted to see for myself whether I could live in Prague, I, who assumed I could be just as much the center of attention in Prague as I was in our little town, I, who wore the latest high-heeled shoes, I marched down that dusty road, avoiding the big whitewashed stones that the road workers put down to mark the broken spots, in those days the stones were called “bandits,” and usually Francin caught up with me just past the forest, I’d climb into the Škoda and climb out again, embarrassed and humiliated, in Prague, then Francin would rush off to the Brewer’s House, we had agreed on a departure time, we’d meet back at the Škoda in front of Saint Stephen’s Cathedral. And then I’d stroll across Wenceslas Square, strut down Národní třída and Na příkopě, trying to see if I could ever be unfaithful to my little town, if I could ever live in Prague, if I could spend my life here. And I believed I could, I never tired of the shops and window displays, in the ten years that Francin and I drove to Prague every month I got to know all the shops and in all the shops they got to know me, I stopped into all the furriers’, all the silk merchants’, I walked through all the arcades, visited all the cafés, even the waiters greeted me, I knew all the perfumeries and ladies’ shoe shops, everywhere I went I pretended I’d buy only the most expensive goods, shop assistants ran out into the street with rolls of fabric and silk to show me what they looked like in daylight, and after a while I knew every price, every brand, every article in the stockroom, I even knew what they were expecting the following month. And because I liked to sit in the brewery reading Elegante Welt, all the shopkeepers assumed the brewery was mine. And every month I bought myself a little something, once a year I bought fabric for a suit, every six months for a new dress, and in those days I also made Francin buy himself the most expensive shoes at Kabele’s and Poldi Gutman’s, once a year he bought material for a new set of clothes, but actually I was the one who bought all that, so I would become known in Prague as a woman of the world. But I could never get Francin to come along with me to the tea room at the Hotel Šroubek, or to have lunch at the Reprezentační dům. Francin had been there only once and had felt so wretched in those surroundings that he did one wrong thing after another, so I just gave up, and in the end, whenever we went out, we always went to the pub, to the Keys, where Francin, delighted that he could eat standing at the counter, polished off a huge pork schnitzel and potato salad for four crowns fifty, a schnitzel as big as the whole plate. But in all those years that I went to Prague, I was still just someone from the little town where time stood still. Whenever I walked into the tea room at the Hotel Šroubek, when I found myself among the dozens of mirrors and hundreds of lights, the glittering of the chandeliers, when the eyes of all the waiters and the maître d’ and all those people lounging in their armchairs, wicker chairs in summer, which had been brought out onto the sidewalk, with only the waxy-leaved shrubs in green flower boxes separating the guests from the passersby, when all those eyes were fixed on me, I nearly died of panic and blushed to the roots of my hair, I ordered coffee and tried to calm myself by lighting a cigarette, but cigarettes always make me nauseous, I went pale, tried to save myself by leafing through newspapers and fashion magazines, but my hands were shaking so hard that the pages trembled between my fingers … All those years, I tried to calm myself by going into the ladies’ room, but all I wanted to do once I got there was lean over the sink and splash my face and forehead, again and again, to cool myself down, that’s how upset I was, I talked nonsense to the toilet attendant, because I always had the feeling that everyone could tell I’d come straight from the brewery and what’s more that I’d had to walk a long way, sometimes ten miles, before Francin had caught up with me and smuggled me into his Škoda, the same fate awaited me on the way back, when Francin made me get out of the car half an hour before we had reached the brewery and then drove on to the brewery by himself, while I arrived covered in dust, like a thief, and had to pretend I’d just been out for a walk, a nice, healthy walk. And the brewer’s assistant was almost always there waiting for me, we never liked each other much, peering from behind the curtains of his house, he’d always come running out and say, grinning broadly … Great city, Prague, eh? But all the same, I was unfaithful to the little town where I thought my time had stood still. The waiter from the tea room at the Hotel Šroubek introduced me to the owner of a real estate agency, who claimed I was a very capable young lady who had all it took to run my own little shop, a perfumery in the busy Revoluční třída, he drove me to see the perfumery and I was under no obligation of course, but the moment I saw the shop, it was called the Oreum, I could think of nothing else, my whole life consisted of nothing but the Oreum, I took out all my money, all our savings, Francin’s and mine, and invested it in my new venture, and that’s how I became the proprietress of a perfumery, a glowing little perfumery on the Revoluční třída, I’d sit up late every night memorizing the names of perfumes and powders, eyebrow pencils, French and German and English names, in the shopwindow on a clockwork turntable with mirrors was the triumph of French cosmetics, Elixir Lavalier, pills for a perfect bosom, jars and flasks and powder boxes shone in the permanently lit perfume case behind the counter, cut-glass bottles with roses, water lilies, sprigs of lilac and jasmine unfurling in aromatic oils, perennially fragrant fantasies, the gentlest hair lotions with a scent of violet that bore the secret of how to stay young and eternally beautiful. In those two months I had the time of my life, I felt myself becoming one with everything around me that could make a woman happy, fulfill her mission on earth, and I never gave a thought to Francin, or the brewery, or the little town where my time stood still, I rented rooms from a milkman and his wife, I slept on the second floor, next to the window, trams rode past every ten minutes, all night long, the bed shook, but to me it felt like my bed was a lovely little boat that would carry me away to all the factories in Europe, where the most expensive perfumes were made, and cosmetic preparations and remedies and miraculous soaps that would remove all impurities, not just freckles, from a woman’s skin, and creams from California to make the skin as smooth as velvet, and modern American nail polish, because varnished nails added to every woman’s charm. And as my bed shook up and down, I smiled, and sailed in my little boat back to the Oreum, to my perfumery on the Revoluční třída, where Peruvian herbal soaps waited on cut-glass shelves and mirrored plateaus, soaps that removed wrinkles and postponed them until a later date, and transparent glycerin soaps with the scent of Highland heather, birch water from Hamburg, a lotion that worked wonders and defied old age, Pearls of Venus for pearly-white hands, cleansing milk that made a woman irresistible, Kaloderma jelly with no fats or oils, rose-colored powders and soaps with glycerin and honey for a peaches-and-cream complexion, Dralle’s lily-of-the-valley perfume Illusion, a highly concentrated flower essence, undiluted with alcohol, that all the ladies were mad about … And as the trams rumbled down the tracks every ten minutes along the broken cobblestones of Na poříčí, I dreamt that I’d have to hire a shop assistant, someone I could train, because such beautiful things as I had in my perfumery would attract all women who wanted to keep their good looks, with lily soap, for a youthful appearance and velvety skin,