ess to old times Mr. Otokar Rykr, deeply moved, ran his hands through his hair, then he leaned one hand on the railing of the balustrade, he raised the other, looked down at the ravaged graveyard and said cheerfully … Oh yes, the student outings to Ostrov were extremely popular, the students set up wooden platforms in front of the former restaurant by the old weir, makeshift stages, where they could perform, and they borrowed market-stall tarpaulins from all the confectioners and bakers in the little town to protect these platforms from the rain. Groups of students entertained each other during those Ostrov outings by singing songs from popular songbooks, performing monologues and reciting poems composed for the occasion. They accompanied the songs with drawings, like street singers with their broadsides ballads of life and death … Inside the restaurant, which was decorated with brightly painted and bullet-riddled targets, the remains of old shooting matches, there was dancing till dusk to the music of a quartet, consisting of two violins, Mr. Votava’s clarinet and a double bass, under the direction of one of the violinists, the small, irascible master shoemaker Jan Marysko … said Mr. Otokar Rykr, smiling happily, down below the tombstone-laden drays drove into the light of the street lamps and then sank back into the darkness. Mr. Rykr threw back his head and laughed, then said … Now for something more pleasant, I’m sure you’ll all be interested in hearing the story of Bubi, whose real name was Vincenc Zedrich, do you know, Bubi had a touch of genius, but his mother hated the way he indulged his various passions, buying books and painting … He was always in good spirits, and with his tall, burly frame and black mustache, Bubi was a charmingly masculine figure. He used to toss flowers through the open windows of his favorite ladies … and to brighten up the gray days of winter, he organized the music at the skating rink. But his dreams of a higher education were dashed by his very own uncle Jan Zedrich on the Corner, a bigoted old bachelor. So Bubi abandoned the idea of going to college and went out into the wide world … and far across the sea. His cousin Emil Zedrich took advantage of Bubi’s absence. Emil coaxed and cajoled old Uncle Jan … until his plan succeeded. And that was how Bubi, that good-natured fellow, as people of genius tend to be, wound up with a paltry inheritance. Bubi grew bitter … from then on he only rarely ever walked out the back door of his house, the Old Post Office, into the fields, or worked in the garden. He kept an old manservant, but for the rest lived completely alone. Despondent over the blow fate had dealt him, he reached instead for his revolver and at the age of fifty-six put an end to his life, the life of an unhappy man. The servant found his body in the parlor. He was buried in the old graveyard, not far from the chapel … but I ask you … where is his gravestone today? That headstone, beneath which, only yesterday, lay the urn with his ashes? Cried Mr. Otokar Rykr, in a voice of reconciliation that carried far, he almost seemed to be cheering, the two other old witnesses to old times were about to continue the story, but Mr. Rykr raised his hand to stop them and went on, more solemnly now … In the old house on the square, on the first floor, lived Mr. Augustin Strohbach with his spouse, Bedřiška, and daughter, Gustina. The house belonged to Mr. Červinka the Cigar. Every day that house was filled with piano playing and dancing. Mr. Augustin Strohbach never missed a single festivity, theatrical performance or concert. His other passion was smoking cigars, though at home he preferred his well-browned meerschaum pipe. Every day, weather permitting, the entire family would go Ostrov … Mr. Strohbach’s foresight and solicitude were exemplary, as were his fortitude and equanimity. A practical man, he wrote his own obituary in calligraphic letters, omitting the date, and sent it to his supervisors with the request that in the event of his death his widow and daughter receive a pension, he even wrote the text for the funeral card. He also addressed the envelopes, after his death all his friends and relations received a funeral card addressed to them by the dearly departed himself. A day before he died he had a grave dug for his coffin and instructed his friend Emil Zimmler, Master of Science honoris causa, to check the size of the grave. He died peacefully in January nineteen-hundred-and-seven and was buried in the old graveyard, not far from the chapel, like Bubi. It was said that the deceased, when he felt death approaching, donned an immaculate black suit and lay down on the sofa, where on the nineteenth of January he breathed his last … Cried and cheered Mr. Otokar Rykr … And every pensioner who looked down from the gallery at the graveyard of the little town, where the tractors were uprooting the last few tombstones, put his hand to his cheek, each time they tore out a tombstone he had the feeling that not only were all his teeth being torn out but his entire jaw. The jittery German woman sat huddled on a bench, staring at the transport of the tombstones, she trembled all over and tried several times to get up from the bench, but each time her legs failed her. Mr. Rykr spread his arms and cried, his voice swelling … This is the end of the golden olden times, where have they taken those tombstones, where are Červinka the Parasol, Červinka the Perch, Červinka the Gimp, Červinka the Lousehead, Červinka the Periwig, Červinka the Greyhound, Červinka Busted, Červinka Koruna, Červinka the Cigar, Červinka Sweatbuckets, Červinka from Upstairs, Červinka Untergleichen? Where is the seating plan for the Last Judgment, Dlabač the Rib Roast, Dlabač Moneybags, Dlabač the Ramrod, Dlabač the Baron, Dlabač Pork Butt, Dlabač the Rogue? Who will miss the tombstones of Votava Pantelone, Votava the Musician, Votava the Useless? Where are the graves of Voháňka Rawhide, Voháňka Laudon, Zedrich on the Corner, Zedrich Bubi, One-Leg Theer, Miss Taubicová-Holdmytail and all those others who died so long ago … Only my friends and I, we, chroniclers and witnesses to old times, shall guard the contents of that empty graveyard! Cried Mr. Otokar Rykr and the German woman from Pecer groaned each time she tried to get to her feet, finally she managed to stand up on her shaky legs and make her escape, she dragged herself from the gallery to her room, spread out an old tablecloth, tied up her most valuable possessions, ran slowly down the stairs, sat down under the clock in the vestibule, where she waited, fearfully, she had her identity card ready, after a while she changed her mind, listened, and stood up, she put aside her identity card and knotted tablecloth, opened the glass door of the clock case and stopped the clock. It was evening, the clock said twenty-five past seven and the German woman from Pecer sat down again, contentedly, she placed the tablecloth on her lap and showed her identity card to someone who never came … And “Harlequin’s Millions” curls around and around the gallery with its fine green tendrils of honeysuckle, I smile and it’s all the same to me that the tractors are carting away the last tombstones from the old graveyard in the gleam of their headlights, I sit and think back on that one beautiful spring day, when Francin and Uncle Pepin were delivering bottles of seltzer and soda in the White, that day they were going to drive their refreshing beverages to a little town where a memorial stone was about to be unveiled for a famous general, they were just setting off when they had a flat tire and Francin had to change it, which made them late. When they finally arrived in the little town they were stopped by a lieutenant of the artillery, who told them it would be better if they waited, in ten minutes there would be a celebratory salute from the row of cannons standing in the ditch, but Francin said it would only take him a couple of minutes to drive past the cannons in the ditch and he had to deliver the soda and seltzer in time for the ceremony. So the lieutenant picked up the receiver of the field telephone and someone on the other end told him the truck full of refreshing beverages could drive through, because the whole little town was waiting for them. And Francin saluted him and the White started off again, he drove slowly, the cannons gleamed in the ditch, the loaders stood in the sunlight next to the muzzles with their ammunition, as they passed the third cannon Francin noticed a couple of auxiliaries kneeling down next to the carriage and securing it to the ground with enormous bolts … And at that very moment the White began sputtering and came to a halt. When Francin later told me the story, he said he’d had an attack of rheumatism right there on the spot, he’d badly needed someone to heat his joints with a soldering iron, he kept his hands on the steering wheel and saw the lieutenant signaling frantically to him to get out of there, they were about to start firing the cannons, Francin gathered his nerve and jumped out of the truck, he opened the hood and went back to get a screwdriver and a wrench, then removed the carburetor, and when he had taken out the float and blown through the jet, he saw the lieutenant, who was listening to his field telephone and then with a sweep of his hand damned Francin to hell, the lieutenant looked at his watch, raised his arm, several of the artillerists stopped their ears, and then the lieutenant gave the command and the first salvo was fired, and Francin watched as the side rails were torn off the White and all the bottles of soda and seltzer went flying to pieces in the ditch, the blast also ripped off the hood, with Francin on top, and he flew over the ripening fields as if he were sitting on an elephant’s ear, flying through the air like Mr. Jirout, a maltster, in his younger years, when he was shot out of a cannon at the local fairs, and when the air grew still again Francin landed on the edge of the farthest ditch, still holding the carburetor and showered with broken glass. And with the force of the second salvo the White spun halfway around and the remaining crates were flung out and the torn-off side rails came flying by … and with each blast in honor of the unveiling of the memorial stone for the famous general the truck was lifted off the ground and turned halfway around, like a wretched little mouse being teased by a cat’s paw … Francin would tell me enthusiastically that between blasts from the ceremonial cannons he poked his head out of the ditch and looked around, trembling, to see what had happened to Uncle Pepin. Finally he caught sight of him in a patch of blackthorn and rosehip bushes, he was sitting there in his car seat in those springy bushes and with every solemn boom of celebratory artillery fire Uncle Pepin rocked back and forth in the branches as if he were being rocked to sleep in an old-fashioned wicker baby carriage. When the cannons had finished firing, the lieutenant came running over and when he saw to his relief that Francin had only a rip in his pants and a torn eyebrow and that Uncle Pepin had been rocking all that time in the arms of the bushes, he gave an order, soldiers came running up and carried Uncle Pepin away, he was still in a sitting position, and Francin told me later, roaring with laughter, that his brother had looked just like that monument to a certain Czech writer … But the White had taken such a beating that the soldiers loaded it onto an artillery tractor and carted it off to the town square, and when they’d unloaded it onto the pavement the whole thing collapsed, with a tremendous roar, like a mortally wounded prehistoric monster … I said to myself, smiling, how nice it was to look back years later on an event that had been so threatening you’d had to be careful you didn’t get killed, how nice to have witnessed something so terrible, something everyone was afraid of, but that still, after a while, when you’d gotten over it, in the end you were glad to have seen and experienced events you’d had to pay for with your own self, by becoming submissive, softhearted … I was so infatuated with those sandstone statues in the castle park that it was two months before I noticed that the statues of May and June had cement breasts, a bit of cement at the elbow, cement-patched bellies and a cement eye. The cement looked so different from the sandstone, the cement eyes and breasts were so lifeless that they would certainly catch the eye of anyone who saw them. But I had been so excited by the charm of those nude statues, by their sweetness, which flowed from their hair to the nails on their bare feet, that I’d never noticed the cement repairs. And then it occurred to me that the statues’ wounds must have been there for a reason, and I asked the old castle gardener, an elderly pensioner, about it and he told me there had been a time, perhaps during the war, when this castle was a cadet school, and when the cadets graduated from this military academy and became officers, they got drunk and shot off the military pistols they’d received that day along with their new uniforms, they fired them in the castle garden and wounded a few of the statues. Said the old gardener, laughing … But before they turned the castle into a retirement home, it was a boarding school, young boys were trained here as bricklayers and as part of their final exam they had to replace with cement all the bits of the statues that had been shot off by the officers. At first I was shocked, but later on the statues seemed even more beautiful to me than before, I experienced it tangibly, as if it had happened to me, as if I’d been standing on one of those plinths and those young officers had fired at my naked body, when I walked past the statues, I could actually feel those young bricklayers replacing with cement everything that had been shattered by bullets from the military pistols … What is life? Everything that once was, everything an old person thinks back on and tells you stories about, everything that no longer matters and is gone for good. And still! Once again I went walking around the pleasure park, the Count’s park, and all those wounded sandstone beauties looked suddenly more beautiful than they could ever have looked to Count Špork and his friends, for the first time I noticed not only the beautiful female bodies, but also the objects they were holding that went along with the statues, a churn that July was leaning against, she was busily churning butter, I could hear the pounding of the butter being churned, like the sound of a lovers’ bed, I saw a rose in sandstone hair, roses pouring from sandstone hands, a bouquet of roses shooting out of the basket like a geyser, touching the thigh of a naked beauty whose limbs smelled of butter and roses … For the first time I saw the statue of May in her entirety, one hand resting on the horn of a young goat, the other holding a wooden bowl from which she scatters grain for the chicks hatching out of the eggshells at her feet, while the happy mother hen protects her little family with her wings, the statue of May with the cemented breasts, which the apprentice bricklayers had copied from