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.