gs, I saw some of the women pulling out tufts of their bleached blond hair and throwing them into the draft from the open windows, and then they too began smashing up the Count’s white chairs, bits of wood flew everywhere, one by one the chairs toppled over, but Váša Příhoda, tenderly and dreamily, went on embroidering that sweet, delicate song of melancholy love, he seemed to be playing from a great distance, as if to wound Dr. Holoubek even more deeply, the doctor now raised his hands, he held them in the air as if in prophetic rapture, intoxication … and then started running, he ran through the corridor weeping and wailing and rushed helter-skelter down the stairs, all the old women ran after him, some failed to take the bend, skidded on their slippers, didn’t get back up, but clambered down the stairs on their hands and knees, to the vestibule, where Dr. Holoubek had already run out the front door. I hurried after the women, not to find out what the doctor was going to do, but to see something I never would have believed could happen. But the white coat was already running in through the front door and Dr. Holoubek headed back upstairs, he took two, three stairs at a time, careful to avoid the old women lying here and there, but now the women were following him up the stairs, their hair had come loose, they had lost their handbags, hats, their eyes were wide with ecstasy, they hurried after the doctor, who stood in the middle of the dining hall again and spread his arms wide, threw them open, but after a few more notes of the violin concerto he could no longer control himself and to the amazement of all the men grabbed one of the broken white chairs and threw it out the open window, I saw how the broken legs seemed to hover briefly in the open window with the black air in the background and how only then the chair fell into the sand of the courtyard, and the women fought each other to get hold of the next chair and tossed it out the window too, and the old men looked uncomprehendingly at the frenzied women, the witnesses to old times shook their heads, whispered to each other, the cardplayers stood up and with an angry sweep of their hands they cursed everything they saw happening in the dining hall, then walked out into the corridor to continue their game of Mariáš, Dr. Holoubek went to the phonograph, put his ear against it, listened closely to Váša Příhoda and suddenly gave a loud shriek as if Váša Příhoda’s violin bow had sailed into the dining hall and gouged out his eye, because Dr. Holoubek clapped both hands over his face and ran back out of the room, with the old women close behind him, he ran as fast as he could, stumbling over the old ladies lying here and there on the stairs and in the vestibule, he leapt over them and ran out into the courtyard, then he ran through the park, leaping over the benches and knocking them down, the old women hobbled along after him, from there it was a sprint across the meadow to the fishpond, where Dr. Holoubek came to a standstill, the old women caught up with him and looked him in the face, from the open windows of the Count’s former banquet hall you could hear the powerful chords of the symphony orchestra … and Dr. Holoubek stepped into the shallow pond, he waded in up to his knees, the old women waded in after him, Dr. Holoubek bent over and scooped up a few handfuls of cold water and splashed it on his face, the old women bent over too and scooped up a few handfuls and pressed the water to their painted faces … And the doctor was suddenly wide awake, he trudged out of the pond and walked slowly, painfully slowly back toward the courtyard, in the meadow were sheaves of hay, all of a sudden Dr. Holoubek began dancing around them, he grabbed fistfuls of hay and threw them in the air to the rhythm of his galumphing wet shoes, the old women too surrendered to the dance and threw fistfuls of hay into the air, the doctor danced like a faun, from the open windows Váša Příhoda went on playing his violin concerto, the doctor began dancing more slowly, the broken white legs of the discarded chairs gleamed in the darkness, and the old women, dancing just like the doctor, moved to the rhythm of the Count’s broken chairs, in a slow-motion bacchanal, dancing nymphs, now retired, but filled with the same glow as in the old days, when all that was beautiful and wild was granted only to beautiful youths, demigods and gods who disguised themselves as rain, so that beautiful, credulous mortals were impregnated by a spring shower. Then the moon came out, Dr. Holoubek lay in the hay and gazed up at the sky, the light from the moon was intensified by the pallid glow of the military garrison somewhere beyond the enormous oaks and mountains, the sky was tinted green and pink, it hummed and murmured with neon and electric light, in the courtyard the broken legs of the Count’s chairs shone white, through the open windows of the dining hall Váša Příhoda kept playing his story of an unhappily happy love, and now it dawned on all the old women that the reason they had been powdering and perfuming themselves all week long and had their hair permed in the little town hadn’t been for the sake of the dashing young Dr. Holoubek, but for this moment alone, when they realized that only one thing mattered in this world, and that was love, unhappy love, the kind that meant everything to every young woman, and they knew that this composer had lived through and set down his own love story, even though it had ended long ago, even though it had happened to him when he was still young, and that he had only been able to compose this piece when he, too, was old, the memory of a love that was more than the love itself … somewhere in the distance this declaration rang out, that the memory of love is always stronger. The old women had grown more serious, more beautiful because of this violin concerto, which was still pouring from the open window, the mighty orchestra once again granted Váša Příhoda a few moments’ rest and took the theme, and now the music seemed to emanate from the whole castle, from the cellar up through all the floors to the attic and beyond, the music shimmered all the way to the crowns of the old trees, to the heavens, where it suddenly stopped, and once again Váša Příhoda beseeched his listeners, and himself, with the burning expressivity of his violin, which went on articulating what Brahms considered the most beautiful thing in his world, the most essential, and that was the beautiful misery of unrequited love. And I saw those statues in the castle park, illuminated by the pallid light of our Chicago, I walked from one statue of a young woman to the next, I heard Váša Příhoda and suddenly I knew what I hadn’t known before, that all these statues of young women were filled with wistful music, that these statues were drenched with the sorrow and bliss expressed by the violin, that these sandstone statues trembled with the happiness of a love that at the same time filled them with fear … And when the concerto ended, there was silence. Dr. Holoubek’s white coat glowed beside the old women lying on their backs in the meadow, the magic of the music slowly faded, the open window and broken white legs of the Count’s chairs glowed like a reproach. Dr. Holoubek sat up, looked around and must have had a terrible fright, he stuck his fingers in his hair, got to his feet and zigzagged down the path to the retirement home, leaving behind a trail of wet footprints, the old women awoke as if from a deep sleep, they stood up and couldn’t believe how happy they felt, one after the other they tiptoed into the corridor, they stood outside Dr. Holoubek’s door, they plastered the whole door with their ears and listened closely, then they rapped their wet knuckles lightly against the door panel, but there was no sound from inside … The next day, while the carpenter was repairing and gluing the six broken legs of the Count’s chairs, Dr. Holoubek again advised the nurses to go on playing “Harlequin’s Millions,” and instead of classical music he ordered soothing drinks from the pharmacy to help the pensioners sleep, he no longer advised them to drink Russian vodka or Prostějov rye. And before they went to bed they found a variety of colorful drinks on the table in the corridor, brown and blue, green and red, yellow and purple, with bromide, without alcohol, next to each glass was the name of the pensioner and in the evening before bed every pensioner sipped his drink and dreamt of how splendid it had been, that evening of classical music, but that night no one could sleep, all night long the white coats of the nurses flitted about with soothing injections, powders and suppositories, none of which had any effect, because all the pensioners had been so aroused by the violin concerto, played first by Georg Kulenkampff and then by our very own Váša Příhoda …