ound 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 political crises in Europe and Asia, Africa and America, he was busy contemplating the fact that foreign armies had invaded some peace-loving state, or a news report he’d just heard, that there had been yet another border change, another assassination attempt on a prime minister, another session of the World Peace Council, another oil tanker accident that posed yet another threat to clean oceans, animals, fish and marine birds, another cordial meeting where opinions were continually exchanged about which no one would ever hear anything substantial. I was finished with my story, and pointed to the district council office on the corner. In our little town they published a weekly called