Playboy … Today for the first time I saw that the sandstone statue of April has one hand resting on an upright spade, while the other caresses a tall bush of ripening lemons, the top of the bush grazes the bare sandstone breasts, which look exactly like the lemons, young officers had shot an eye out of this statue too and several of the lemons had been hit, but I could still see that the statue of the young beauty was even more beautiful with those injuries, like the antique statues that fishermen dredge out of the sea, statues with no arms … Yes, now I could see that all the other statues must’ve had these same small breasts, not much larger than a boy’s, the only statue that hadn’t been wounded was February, a dancing statue with a dress clinging to her body, a wet drapery, a dancing Carnival statue carrying a bread basket filled with kolacky and candies, her knee is touching a keg of wine and a tankard, and she’s surrounded by the same kind of chickens and ducks grilled on a spit that I used to offer my guests at the brewery at Carnival time, when I was a young woman filled with rhythm and dance, a woman with small breasts that no one had ever shot at with a military pistol … I noticed that the statues of the months that had been depicted in sandstone as men, that no one had shot at them, the officers were lured only by beautiful women, which was probably as it should be … And for the first time the Count’s garden appeared to me in its entirety, two rows of months, then two sphinxes opposite each other, their claws clutching their sandstone plinths as they crouched there guarding the lane, then two sandstone lionesses, tame as watchdogs, and then the stairs to the castle, on the left a heavenly cupid offering a mirror that reflected the moon and a star, on the right another cherub reflecting a beaming sun in an oval platter, and then on the last step two statues, to the left the statue of a woman in a pleated gown, and for the first time I saw that this statue was smiling the broad smile of a woman in love, while at her feet stood a cupid with a quiver full of arrows, with one chubby hand he lifted the hem of her gown and with the other hand pointed to the statue’s belly, this winged cherub turned to me and there was something obscene in his grin, because probably every cupid knows that love is supreme … And standing across from this statue was a nearly naked man, one hand resting on a bow and the other drawing an arrow from the quiver on his back, yes, that too was as it should be, a man is young as long as he can still wound women with his arrows … I stood there enchanted by the knowledge that I had unraveled the mystery of all the statues, in their entirety … on the left the statue of Spring, her profile suffused with an amorous glow, a rose on her forehead, roses in her hair, roses around lap and breasts, around hips, roses arranged in such a way as to accentuate the nakedness of her spring body … and next to her the statue of Summer, ears of wheat in the hair of the naked woman, a sheaf of wheat at her thigh, wheat ears between her fingers, in her other hand a sickle with which she plucks the ears in the wheat field, ears of immortal wheat symbolizing the infinitude that is constantly being revived by the present … and on the other side of the terrace the statues of two men, Autumn, holding an enormous cluster of sandstone grapes against the sky, he crushes the grapes with his other hand, the juice drips into a seashell, which is made of glass, and a cupid, a heavenly sandstone cherub, gulps it down … and then finally the statue of an old man, Winter, which completes the cycle of man and nature and most resembles everything that surrounds me here in the retirement home, once Count Špork’s castle, where today I’ve seen all the sandstone phases that I and the others have lived through, and it makes me regret that when I was young, I forgot about love, which had slipped through my fingers before I knew it … But then, isn’t that what life is?