jaro can be right here in Kersko… All right?” He’d had his say and started drifting off again, then his head dropped to his chest and he was sound asleep. And again silence reigned, and so as to drive away any thought of raping his own wife and attempting to thwart marital bliss, Mr Kuzmík said: “The finest tool in old Russia, my friends, was the broad axe…” The landlord cheered up: “That’s what I like to hear!” And Mr Kuzmík went on with his story: “All your Russians of olden times had an axe slung from their shoulder on a kind of suspender attached to a strap under their coat… you’d never believe the things the old Russians could do with it, they could even carve themselves a rustic wall clock with it.” And Mr Bělohlávek banged his fist on the table and neighed with delight: “Another bottle of engine oil… Gentlemen!” And the landlord rose, brought a bottle and, having broached it, poured out the glasses, and he brought some beer as well, so soon everyone felt warm, hot even, they sat back away from the smouldering papers, ashtrays and the warm enamel pot, the landlord extricated the gurgling baby and carried it off to their little back room. When he came back, the chimney sweep was wandering about again and trampling his hands all over the cloths in the corner as well; the landlord cast an eye towards the stockwhip hanging on the doorframe, but then dismissed it with a wave of his hand, and Mr Bělohlávek shouted: “Gentlemen, what are you doing on the twenty-sixth of July this year?” And all the men, having fortified themselves by turns, said they were off work that day, or would take time off. And Mr Bělohlávek blared: “Good, you’re all invited to the airport! A Jumbo is due in Prague, on my taxiway, my tarmac, for the first time ever!” And the ones who didn’t know what a Jumbo was voiced their surprise: “What? A jumbo?” And Mr Bělohlávek rose and the figure of the man in a white tablecloth was a figure of progress: “Yes, a Jumbo! A Boeing 727 Jumbo, gentlemen, a giant that can seat three hundred and sixty passengers! This giant carries twenty-five thousand litres of fuel in each wing! But me, I’m in charge of the landing, so what if the concrete doesn’t go sixty centimetres down? What if the Jumbo lands and starts shunting the concrete slabs ahead of it and hurling them like icefloes far and wide, way out towards Kladno somewhere, and the Jumbo goes and crashes on me!” Mr Bělohlávek exulted, tearing at his hair. “How’ll I answer for that at a court martial? I’m in the service of the army, and I am in the service of Pan American, an American airline, so I get paid in dollars! Yes, dollars! In the spring I’m buying myself a Simca at the hard-currency shop, how about that, eh? Though I know I’ve gone and let out something I was supposed to keep as a professional secret!” Mine host Mr Zákon said: “So how big’s that piece of junk then?” Mr Bělohlávek took a sip, then tossed the engine oil right back, followed by a long swig of beer from the bottle, and yelled gleefully: “It’s seventy-seven metres long, it’s twenty-eight metres high, wingspan nearly thirty metres, our cabin alone, meaning for the crew and the captain, is as big as this place,” he roared and made a sweeping gesture with his hand to describe the Keeper’s Cottage restaurant. Mr Franc said: “That big! That’s hard to imagine, but say, a jumbo, if a jumbo was standing here and me here, and the landlord and me were holding onto its wings, it couldn’t take off then, could it, your jumbo?” And Mr Bělohlávek clapped a hand to his forehead: “What? You’d get swept away! One time they left a truck on the taxiway and a jumbo jet just swept it aside like a toy, like a kitten, a pussycat,” he miaowed. And Mr Franc, he wouldn’t give up: “If we all held on to a wing and dug our heels in, then it couldn’t take off!” And Mr Bělohlávek said: “A jumbo jet’s got a thrust coefficient of fifty-eight tons…,” he gave another sweep of his hand, “it’s an awesome plane, see, it’s got two-storey restaurants, it’s like ten supersized barns, ten massive trucks, trailers an’ all… have you all got torches?” And because it was evening and the depth of a winter’s night, they all got their torches out of their coats on the coat-rack… Mr Jumbo Man said: “Who’s good at pacing out metres?” Mr Franc said: “Me.” And the patrons, merry and sweating, so as not to have to think about forced fornication with their own wives or attempts at thwarting someone else’s marital bliss, went out into the raw night air; only Mr Procházka was sound asleep and he just flung an arm out in his sleep, said: “You bag of wind from Zeleneč…,” and slept on. And the night was bright and cold, snow outlined the edges of the inn and the white birch trees glinted as if emitting neon light and the trunks of the oaks appeared black as the chimney sweep. Mr Jumbo Man was reeling, they were all lurching about in the fresh air, but Mr Jumbo Man was on form, he tapered the beam of his Hungarian torch and shone it up into a birch that was so tall that its outer twigs covered the entire inn. “Right,” Mr Jumbo Man yelled, “how many metres tall is this birch?” Mr Franc said: “Twenty,” and Mr Jumbo Man blustered: “So imagine it extended upwards by another half-birch and that’s how tall a Jumbo jet is! There, and this is the cabin for me, like for the captain and his team, of which there are thirteen! Like a football side plus linesmen! And now pace out eighty metres along the concrete ride…” And Mr Franc set his pace and strode off and counted metre after metre, eleven, twelve… and fifty-three and fifty-four… and his torch receded into the distance and then stopped, rose and Mr Franc announced: “Eighty metres!” And Jumbo Man commanded: “Now two of you go off to the side and measure fifteen metres from the lodge.” And off went two of the drinkers, tottering, so strong is the air hereabouts, especially when washed down with spent engine oil. Mr Kuzmík fell down twice before completing those fifteen metre-length strides, but finally, in the distance, a torch glimmered at the end of the Jumbo’s tail, more torches at its wingtips, and so we had a reasonable idea of how big a Jumbo must be, and Mr Jumbo Man treated us enthusiastically to all the other details and particulars of a Boeing 727, then hollered: “So, Mr Franc, could you hold it back by its wing? You wouldn’t even be able to reach up to it, given that you board one like from two floors up, that’s how high its wings are!” And suddenly, on the apron outside the inn, there on the patio, some little lights lit up, as if on the flight deck and like the instrument panel was all lit up with its little red and gold and green lights, and so we were disconcerted and had to rub our eyes, because we thought it was the fresh air playing tricks. But a voice put us at our ease. “What are you up to here, my bonny kittens?” called the local police commandant, stepping forward and shining his torch, as was his custom, onto his chest, lighting up the medals and decorations he been awarded by the government and the Party, and he called us all over, so we tottered across to him and he shone his light in our faces and we were afraid that the chimney sweep had not only left his prints all over the tablecloths, but had left his sooty pawmarks all over our faces too, hence the commandant’s exclamation about what we ‘kittens’ were doing there and why we were wearing masks. And Mr Jumbo Man said: “Officer, sir, we’re trying to get some idea of how big a Jumbo jet is, the Boeing 727 passenger plane that’s going to be landing in Prague this summer!” But the policeman was in a good mood and exclaimed: “Pull the other one! I reckon you were working out how to get the Jumbo to land right here…” “Officer, sir,” Mr Jumbo Man wet his fingers and raised them to swear on his oath, “I’m having kittens over whether the airport at Ruzyně can take the strain of a Jumbo landing.” “All right, all right,” the commandant made to go, broody and absorbed, “play your silly games, kittens. If I wasn’t on duty, I’d join in, but woe betide if that Jumbo does land here!” he said, once more shining his torch on his medals and decorations, and went off into the sixth avenue somewhere, to return to wherever he’d left his Volga, and leaving behind him confusion and surprise, as ever. We watched and watched, then we went back to the pub doorsteps, which some of us now had to mount on all fours, such a gale seeming to blow, even though there was a flat calm. So we went back in the warm, refreshed by the outside air, but the worse for wear owing to the Fernet engine oil. Our Landlord Mr Zákon, seeing all the tablecloths so, but so, smudged with the chimney sweep’s palmprints, cast an eye towards his bullwhip, then thought better of it. Mr Procházka woke up and said: “It happens everywhere, landlord, at the Novák tavern he made such a filthy mess of the tablecloths that the landlord, a butcher, who’s also suing over a meadow and a pear-tree, took his bullwhip and gave him a right lashing, so these days the sweep doesn’t go near Nováks’, how about that then?” Out of interest the landlord asked: “Exactly how many lashes did the sweep get?” And Mr Procházka said as he dropped off again: “How many ma-…,” and slept on. The landlord pulled another round of beers, but the police commandant with his glinting medals was still floating before their eyes, so he brought another bottle of Fernet Branca, that old engine oil, and when we’d drunk a shot of it we could see the commandant before us all the more clearly, shining his torch on his medals, nodding and wagging a finger at us with his ‘Play your silly games, my kittens!’. Mr Jumbo Man said: “So we’re agreed then, twenty-sixth of July at the airport, just ask the chief for me, they’ll go and fetch me, the grade 7 mechanics, you know, they drink at the Carioca, but me, on grade 8, it’s my responsibility and I go last, so it’s all down to me!” He had spoken and we all knocked back another shot of the liquor followed quickly and enjoyably by more beer, and Mr Procházka the roadmender woke up as usual, also knocked one back and dozed back off and slept, though his spirit was awake, nodding agreement with what was being said, or shaking its head in dissent, and whenever it spotted a need to intervene, he said his piece and slept on. Mr Franc, to help take the chimney sweep’s mind off his lawsuits and the court, said: “After all your troubles, it’s a good thing you can enjoy a spot of politics on the local council…” But the chimney sweep shook his head, took a newspaper, spread it over the soot-stained tablecloth, carefully sited his elbow so as not to get it dirty from the cloth, and said: “I can kiss goodbye to that too. I’d been really looking forward to the festival sub-committee meeting on the occasion of the presentation of the flag… and I’d prepared my speech, but I was hungry, and when it was my turn to speak, I got up, and was holding the microphone when they brought me a pair of frankfurters, and I could see Baštecký on my left and Horyna on my right taking one each and I hollered into the microphone: “Idiots!” That made everyone jump and only then did I register the mike, so I hollered an apology into it: “They’ve gone and eaten my frankfurters!” And the Chairman thanked me for my contribution and said that would do, that I’d made my position clear, since my mind was plainly on food instead of any solemn speech… And the bottle of Fernet Branca was empty and the men got up, by now the chimney sweep was walking straight and no longer touching the tablecloths with his paws, fearing, as he put it, he’d get his clothes dirty from them.