s knitting and crocheting Brussels lace. When I turned around I heard the sound of emptying intestines, the nurse smiled and a halo appeared around her starched white cap. In the bed next to Uncle Pepin lay a man with stumps on both hands instead of fingers, on his nightstand was tea in a saucer and another little plate of bread cut into small cubes, he raised himself up on his stumps and leaned toward the plate like a whipped dog and greedily ate the bread, piece by piece, with his lips, then he leaned out of bed a bit farther to lap at the lukewarm tea. Someone touched my arm and there before me stood an old man who squeaked tearfully … It’s terrible, Ma’am, I’m ninety-six years old and I still haven’t died, just my luck, I’ve got a good heart and lungs, you see, so I’m practically immortal, it’s a terrible thing, let me tell you … I nodded, completely confused again, and fixed my eyes on the man who in those few moments had crocheted yet another leaf into the lace, now I could see there were tiny birds sitting among the twigs in the foliage, and the man kept looking out the window and quickly returning to his doily, so he could capture in his work what he had just seen outside, as if he were playing a zither or guitar and had to keep glancing at the roaring, soaring notes of the leaves. All done, said the nurse. I turned around and saw the nurse carrying away the chamber pot, Uncle Pepin’s seaman’s cap had fallen off, Francin picked it up, brushed it off with his elbow and put it on his own head, he held on to his brother to keep him from falling, and when the nurse returned she lifted Uncle Pepin, light as a feather, carried him to his bed, while Francin drew back the covers, and then the nurse laid him down and carefully diapered him. We stood there for a while at the head of Uncle’s bed, in the darkness, outside the leaves shone crazily, drenched in blistering sunlight, in the bay window the needles moved like a bird caught by its wings. Once again Uncle Pepin folded one arm under his head and stared up at the ceiling, he didn’t blink, he just stared. The nurse gently removed the seaman’s cap from Francin’s head, handed it to him and nodded and smiled. Not here, she said, outside. And she walked to the window, stretched out her arm, her enormous figure was silhouetted against the windowpanes, she unbolted the window and opened it wide. The monotonous roar of the tall aspens came pouring into the ward for bedridden patients, the leaves were as loud as aircraft engines. Francin leaned over his brother and said … Pepin, what are you thinking about? The nurse came back and looked down at Uncle’s purple lips that whispered … What will happen to love … The sound of the leaves grew louder, they buzzed and swirled in the open window like a swarm of demented bees. What did you say, Francin asked, and put his ear to Uncle’s lips that whispered … What will happen to love … Francin repeated this to me and looked at me, frightened … What will happen to love? he repeated. The nurse bent down, lightly touched Francin’s sleeve and nodded sweetly, Francin understood and got up, he stepped back from the bed, I stepped back too, the nurse opened the door and we backed out into the corridor. Francin put on the seaman’s cap and I could just see through the slowly closing door that the man in the bed in the bay window had stopped knitting and crocheting and was looking at me, I could see only the gleaming frame of his silver glasses and the silver needles in his hands. In the corridor the string orchestra softly purred “Harlequin’s Millions,” from the ground floor came the smell of sour sauce and spilled soup, the clinking of spoons and plates, and the young cook sang with great feeling in her womanly voice … If I were a singing swan, I’d fly to you, and in my final hour I’d serenade you, with my very last sigh … We walked through the gate of the retirement home, Mr. Berka was on duty as gatekeeper again, Francin saluted him and the old man came running out and made a deep bow from the waist, he just couldn’t get enough of that splendid seaman’s cap, he stroked it and fondled it and asked Francin if he could have it, he offered him a hundred crowns for that cap, but Francin handed him five crowns and said … here, have a beer instead. And we walked on aimlessly, steeped in thought, I was reminded of the time Dr. Gruntorád had declared that Uncle Pepin would soon be unable to walk and that the only thing that could save him was plenty of exercise, so every day Francin made sure there was an empty tire in the yard, he attached a large bicycle pump to the valve and thrust the pump into Uncle’s hands and Uncle held the base of the pump in place with his shoe and started pumping, all morning long he pushed and pulled, bending and stretching, like a jumping jack, the kind of toy children play with by pulling on a string, so that the arms and legs move up and down, Uncle Pepin had such good lungs, because he’d never smoked, and if he had it was only a cigar, which he’d been offered by one of the pretty young girls in the bars, a cigar that always made him nauseous but the girls happy, because then they could take him to bed and make him feel better again. So Pepin would spend the whole morning pumping, every other minute Francin came with a mallet, he felt and tapped the enormous tire, praised his brother and then took him inside to have lunch and in the afternoon Uncle Pepin pumped up a second tire, he pumped and pumped, for hours on end, so that he’d get enough exercise to keep his sclerosis at bay. And in the evening, while Pepin was drinking milk and eating a piece of bread, Francin spread that dry bread with an inch of lard, then went out into the yard and unscrewed the valve and slowly let the air out of both tires, so the next morning Uncle Pepin could start all over again, like Sisyphus and the boulder. When Francin let the air out of the tires, I always had the feeling that the sound of the air escaping was like human breath, which you exhaled until the day you died, and that every life and everything that was alive was exactly the same in all its meaninglessness as what Francin did every day with the tires, with Uncle Pepin pumping them up and Francin letting out the air in the evening so that everything could start all over again. I always put my fingers in my ears when I heard that long and continuous and then continuously decreasing sound of a deflating tire, I begged Francin to stop, because every day I had to live through my own death. Then Francin had a better idea. In the morning he took Pepin to a water pump with a barrel underneath, a great big beer barrel, and Pepin starting pumping water to water the plants, he pumped and pumped and when he thought it was nearly noon, he felt around inside the barrel and either went on pumping or, if the water was up to the rim, he sat down on the doorstep and listened to his own thoughts. And while Uncle Pepin was having lunch, Francin watered the garden, he kept on watering until the barrel was completely empty, so that in the afternoon Pepin could start pumping again, until it was full to the brim. And in the evening Francin watered the garden until the barrel was empty. When it rained, Francin knocked a hole in the bottom, put in a plug and whatever Uncle pumped into the barrel, as soon as Francin pulled out the plug, it ran out again. After a while he stopped putting the plug back in, Uncle pumped and the water flowed straight through a ditch into the garden, and when Uncle Pepin thought the barrel was full, he ran his fingers along the rim of the barrel, leaned over, but never felt any water, and all the same he went on pumping, went on listening to the water splashing into the barrel, he listened to the melodious creaking and clicking of the pump and waited for the bells to ring out the noon or evening hour, when the radios on the street corners broadcast the evening news. In the evening Uncle Pepin would sit motionlessly in the kitchen next to the sideboard, sitting behind him was the old tomcat Celestýn, who had found us again in our new home on the Elbe, he too had been eaten away by time, like Uncle Pepin, both were toothless, they even had similar faces, every now and then Uncle Pepin would turn around and reach out his hand, and when he felt the cat’s head, he stroked it, the cat nuzzled his palm, so the two old fellows were always touching, Uncle Pepin would say contentedly … Are you there? And Celestýn would sit and purr, he was practically sitting on Uncle’s shoulder, he sat there on the sideboard so close to Uncle that he could touch him, and Uncle Pepin knew, and Celestýn too, that as long as they could touch, life on earth would be in perfect harmony. So every night they waited for each other, Uncle Pepin and Celestýn, and if they felt like having a chat, Celestýn went and sat behind Uncle and laid his paw on Uncle’s shoulder, Uncle sat on his chair next to the sideboard where the tomcat was sitting, he sat there like a king, those two understood each other so well, they kept on touching until it was time to go to bed. And so it happened one day that when Francin was sprinkling the garden with water that Pepin had pumped into the barrel, so that Uncle could start pumping again the next morning, Uncle Pepin sat down on the chair, felt around behind him, but didn’t feel the tomcat’s head. He asked several times … Are you there? But the tomcat gave no reply, nor did he reply the following night, or a week later. And all that time, night after night, Uncle Pepin sat in his chair, feeling around behind him and asking … Are you there? But Celestýn never came, because tomcats never die in the house, but in the wild, in some secluded place, like old elephants. And Uncle Pepin never again sat down on the chair next to the sideboard, he just stood there, with one hand resting on the spot where the tomcat Celestýn used to sit, then went to bed, so that the next morning he could pump water into the barrel, which leaked right out again, just as before he had pumped up those two meaningless tires, which Francin would deflate every night, to keep Pepin alive a bit longer, even though his life had no more meaning, like time itself, which had stood still on the church tower when the hands fell off the clock and stopped moving, because in the little town a time had come for other people, a time full of élan and new endeavors, a time that gladly demolished all that was old, it was the time of a new generation that couldn’t give a damn that the time of cattle markets and Christmas markets and farmers’ markets had stood still, that the time of afternoon strolls and evening promenades was long gone, that political parties no longer organized outings to the forest, outings combined with raffles and picnics and shooting galleries, gone were the days of Carnival balls and festive dance parties and horseback rides through the countryside, gone were the masquerades and allegorical processions and the winter Bacchus and Carnival parades, gone were the days of beautification associations and their competitions for the best painted windows in town, there were no more plays, time had stood still in all five of our little theaters, gone were the days of the Sokol festivals and summer gymnastics camps, where starting at four o’clock in the afternoon the young gymnasts, first the pupils and then the juniors, displayed their skills, gone were the days of men’s and women’s evening calisthenics, in that little town of ours no one could bring back the time when the symphony orchestra and choral societies played and sang to their hearts’ delight, the processions of pensioners walking through the municipal park on Ostrov, the pairs of lovers by the river and in the streamside forest, they had all vanished, no more graduation parties, not a single pub where people still made time for betting games, not a single pub where women served the drinks, gone were the days of the famous white pudding and sausages that the smokehouse workers delivered to the pubs at four in the afternoon and the Mariáš players would lay down their cards and buy themselves a sausage and a roll, gone were the days of singing while doing the carpentry work and the malting, you never heard a barrel organ outside your window anymore, everything that was old and connected with the old days had been lost in the flow of the hands on the church clock, or fallen into a deep sleep, as if those old times had choked on a piece of poisoned apple like Snow White, but no prince ever came or ever will, because the old society, the society that Francin, Pepin and I belonged to, is so old that it no longer has any strength or courage, and that’s why it’s no wonder that a time has come of huge posters and huge meetings and huge parades that raise their fist at everything old, and the old people themselves are defenseless, they live on memories or die quietly and slowly, like Uncle Pepin, like Francin or I if we had been in the same situation. And so we walked on through the twilit streets of the little town, we were approached by a shaggy-haired youth wearing a colorful shirt and denim jacket, he pointed to the seaman’s cap on Francin’s head and asked … Sir, will you sell me that amazing cap, I’ll give you a hundred crowns for it … Francin grabbed hold of the cap with both hands, as if the wind were trying to make off with it, and shook his head. The young man asked again … please, I’ll give you two hundred, two hundred-crown notes … But Francin said … Not even five hundred, not even a thousand. And the young man shrugged and walked away, we were standing in the square, I could tell that all Francin really wanted was to go home, to the castle, to his little room, it was time to listen to the news from around the world, the news he’d been following for twenty, thirty years, and this was how I’d always known him, a man deeply involved with the rest of the world, this little town meant nothing to Francin, while I was falling more and more in love with its past, with what was no longer there. I didn’t even need the three old witnesses to go walking with me anymore, the old gentlemen who had told me so much about everything that had happened here so long ago, all I had to do was look around me and I could see the evening of Sunday the thirteenth of December, eighteen-hundred-and-thirty-five, it was bitter cold, but the windows of the Black Eagle shone brightly on the corner of the square and Church Street, the butchers’ guild was there celebrating the election of a new president … The master butchers raised their splendid guild goblets and drank a toast: God bless you, the Lord God will, God will, God will, God bless you! On the goblet was a picture of a butcher in a white apron with his cudgel aimed at the forehead of an ox, next to that a picture of a dog. At eight o’clock in the evening, after night watchman Štolba, the master potter from the Bobnitzer Gate, had sounded the hour, he came along to the gathering. He sat down by the door and after a hearty supper and frequent servings of beer, coffee and punch had turned red as a beet. After a while he took off his fur coat and was seeing double. But his conscience bothered him and he went outside, into the square. He shuffled past Vštečka’s pharmacy, Dominik Hovátko’s dry goods, Jan Fleischmann’s house and Josef Seigerschmidt’s shop and found himself standing in front of Café Klecanský, where they were just changing the post horses. The night watchman staggered toward the postal coach and saw that the door had been left ajar. There was no one inside. He put his halberd on the ground and climbed into the coach, then closed the door behind him and soon fell asleep on the cushioned seat. He didn’t even wake up when the fresh horses set off at a trot for the nearby town of Loučeň. No one got on there, and so the coachman, thinking the coach was empty, continued all the way to Mladá Boleslav. There the night watchman awoke, when the postal coach stopped in the main square, and quickly climbed out of the coach. Realizing he had neglected his duty, he began blowing his horn. Suddenly a pair of police hands seized him from behind. What’s all this honking? I’m just doing my duty, after all I’m the night watchman of the majestic little town where time stood still! I told this to Francin, who smiled, I told him that story, which the old witness Mr. Václav Kořínek had told me at least ten times. But I could see that Francin had his mind on solving all the politica