Poem with their heartfelt humming, because nearly all of them had stated in their will that they wanted this love song played at their funeral, either a recording or on the harmonium, the witness to old times Mr. Karel Výborný told me in a soft voice … Another curious figure in our little town was Pepík Přikryl, nicknamed the walking delicatessen, after finishing high school he trained as a waiter but only occasionally practiced this profession because he was able to make a living with his own little business, which he plied every night in the pubs. He was short and fat, he sported a voluminous belly upon which rested a large basket that was fastened around his neck with a strap. In the basket were sardines in oil, anchovies, onions, Russian sardines, pickled cauliflower, spicy gherkins and other thirst-inducing delicacies … Now the symphonic poem At Twilight was coming to an end, and just for a moment all the old women including myself were Anežka Schulzová, who had the honor of being loved by the young composer Zdeněk Fibich … The witness to old times Václav Kořínek was inspired, and said, in a scholarly fashion … On the night of Monday to Tuesday, on the twenty-sixth of August eighteen-hundred-and-ninety, the people of the little town where time stood still were rudely awakened by the loud shouting and offensive behavior of the officers of the dragoon regiment, which was taking its leave from the little town because it was being transferred to Vienna. The officers were having a party and their shouts mingled with the barking and howling of dogs and the growling of bears as they bid farewell to the townspeople. On the third of July, eighteen-hundred-and-ninety-three, the town council and the local public prosecutor were investigating the affair of the Austrian cavalry officer Count Schönborn, who was suspected of shooting at three people outside in the square after midnight from the third floor of Dr. Gruntorád’s house, because they were standing under the window of a home where a piano was being played, making a racket and throwing stones at the window. After the investigation the officer handed back the sentence, which had been written in Czech, saying he didn’t understand a word of it. Said Václav Kořínek quietly, and Dr. Holoubek placed another record on the turntable and lifted the tone arm, put in a new needle and said, in a voice trembling with emotion … In just a few moments Herbert von Karajan and his orchestra will play for you The Afternoon of a Faun, a faun is paralyzed by his love for a nymph, his body is stained with the juices of love, he lies by the sea, on the inside of his closed eyelids he projects the blissful moment of love he has just experienced, he lies there in the light of the sun, then sits up and plays a melancholy song of longing on his syrinx, a song about a rite of passage, about his first love, the surf and sunlight are filled with the whinnying, the tender caresses and the weariness that remained after the beautiful nymph was gone, he is surrounded by the elements, by sun and sea, air and earth … Mr. Václav Kořínek takes advantage of this moment to explain, in a low voice … On the night of August ninth eighteen-hundred-and-eighty-seven, Lieutenant Korb from Vienna fired his revolver out the window of his house on the square at František Jirák, who together with several of the townspeople had been outraged by a baron’s cruel abuse of his butler, shouting … A baron would never do that! But Jirák remained unharmed, because the bullet ricocheted off the front wall of Hotel Na Knížecí three feet above his head and buried itself in the cobblestones in the square. The cartridge was found by the worker Kroupa, who sent it to the governor and filed a complaint … And the symphony orchestra conducted by Herbert von Karajan began playing The Afternoon of a Faun, and truly, that symphonic poem was filled with melancholy melodies of love, Dr. Holoubek held his face in his hands and experienced the lover’s lament as if he himself were the faun, his curly hair tumbled over his fingers, the old women gazed with great compassion at that noble head, their eyes glistened and gleamed with tears, perhaps they realized for the first time that they themselves could have been such a nymph, perhaps for the first time in their lives they were pining for their lost youth, for the days when they themselves were still sensual young women and would have gladly allowed Dr. Holoubek to make the kind of love to them that they heard in the melancholy, pagan song that the faun was playing on his syrinx. I too was aroused, with my whole body I could feel the sweet misery of the faun, who probably wasn’t so young anymore either, it even occurred to me that Claude Debussy, when he wrote that piece, might have been thinking of himself, an older man, who no longer had such bizarre notions about happiness, this nymph would be the last woman to whom he’d ever make love, for he had lost all hope that he’d ever be loved as he’d been loved by the nymph who had left him, and hence his lament … I watched the old women and saw that the music seemed to be saying something about them too, somewhere in the depths of time they too had been loved, they too had experienced one last night of love, I saw that this Afternoon of a Faun moved them even more deeply than “Harlequin’s Millions,” and that they wanted nothing better than to hear, over and over again, the melancholy voice of the flute accompanied by the symphony orchestra, conducted by Herbert von Karajan, who during the recording must have felt just as intensely whatever it was that now compelled Dr. Holoubek to hold his face in his hands, his curls trembling between his fingers as if he were crying … Mr. Václav Kořínek said to me quietly … In July eighteen-hundred-and-eighty-seven the thirty-seven-year-old journeyman František Štěrba, father of five, was brought before a four-member court in Mladá Boleslav and sentenced to three months in prison and a week of fasting because he had threatened the town guard Mostbek, who had been given orders to evict Štěrba from his council house. Štěrba pleaded that he was a resident of this municipality and that it was their responsibility to find him another place to live. He wouldn’t budge, and even as they were ripping out the living room doors, the windows and the stovepipe, he waved his fist and shouted that he’d beat Mostbek black and blue, break every bone in his body, and he called him a scoundrel and a crook. Before the court he pleaded that it had been an act of desperation. Even when it stormed and hailed he had sat with his underaged children in his house without windows or doors … And The Afternoon of a Faun had finished playing, Dr. Holoubek seemed to wake up again, he lifted the needle from the record and stood there, deeply moved, overwhelmed, and looked around uncomprehendingly, the old women hung on his every word with unblinking eyes, and yes, now I could see that the doctor really was a faun and that all the women had turned into nymphs, at least for the moment, in splendid harmony, and I wished, no doubt like all those other lady pensioners, that this doctor would stay with us forever, that once a week he would teach us about classical music, in the dining hall with the huge fresco billowing across the ceiling that showed the battle of King Alexander the Great, who looked so much like Dr. Holoubek, who wiped the tears from his eyes and raised his arms as if in surrender and said … And now Herbert von Karajan will play Les préludes by Franz Liszt, you obviously need no further explanation, it’s clear to me that you can see straight into the heart of classical music, I’ll say only one thing, Les préludes is both an expression of and answer to the question … What is life? And he placed the needle on the record and, rubbing his hands together, sat down on the Count’s white chair in the middle of the hall, he crossed one leg over the other, dug his chin into his palm and listened intently, and so it happened once again that somehow, because of him, because of his brooding demeanor and fine physique, all the women in the Count’s former banquet hall immediately believed in the first few notes, the men just sat there looking puzzled, they were sorry they had let themselves be lured here, they would’ve been better off watching television or going for a beer in the little town. Perhaps if they had been initiated into the world of classical music by a young lady doctor instead of Dr. Holoubek, they would’ve been carried away too, like the old women … And that symphonic poem by Franz Liszt was truly an even more powerful, more terrifying affirmation of the feeling that life on earth could only ever be complete and beautiful if nourished by love, by the relationship between man and woman, a young woman, who loves with all her being, with her body, with everything, completely, like the statues of the young months in our park, the symphony orchestra poured out its sorrow and longing and rose and fell on waves of emotion, one after the other, the music swelled decisively and triumphantly to the declaration, Franz Liszt’s heartfelt utterance, that without love, without great love, one couldn’t survive … and that one had to fight for such love. The orchestra now thundered with all its trombones, trumpets and kettledrums, and the women sitting in their chairs threw back their heads, so that they looked headless, they gazed up at the ceiling, where the Greek armies were fighting the Persians, in the middle of the battlefield Alexander the Great, hair streaming and arms waving, led his soldiers against the foe, when the armies clashed it was as if the lances and weapons came crashing down from the ceiling, like the clashing branches of the old chestnuts along the castle road … The old men cupped their hands around their mouth and tooted along with the orchestra, which was conducted by Herbert von Karajan, and they tooted and trumpeted, they knew this part of