When we came out of the pub, there was a frost, we all shot across the road, the engine oil casting us off the roadway against the far side of the ditch, into which we fell by turns. When we got to our feet, the Fernet ran us across to the other side into a wire fence. Mr Procházka the roadmender hopped on his bike and rode off, calling into the darkness: “Out of the way, folks, I’m going too fast to stop…,” we saw his torch drive into the ditch, fall silent, then in a moment the light scrambled out and sat on the edge of the roadway, then it got up, gripped the shiny handlebars, wavered this way and that a few times — that was his shoelaces getting tied — and once more the light started hurtling along the road and we lay in the ditch and Mr Procházka shot past shouting: “Out of the way, folks, I’m…,” and again he receded into the distance until he reached the main road and there the light rode into a snow-filled ditch. Only Mr Jumbo Man walked erect and in a straight line, and he hissed: “Shitbags!” and made off towards his cottage, his little house, to feed his dog before bed, and then in the morning, at four o’clock, he set off through the forest on his bike, taking the forest footpaths to Lysá station and then onwards to the airport, which he loved and loves as his own, more than his life. I was lying on my back in the ditch as Mr Jumbo Man pedalled past in his lightweight, blue nylon coat, gripping its tails on the handlebars to keep them out of the wheel-spokes, and with his beret perched jauntily on his head, heading off into the distance, while Mr Procházka the roadmender was again riding hither and thither on the main road and when he realised he wasn’t back home, that he was going well but a hundred and eighty degrees in the wrong direction, he came hurtling back and shouted from a distance, because his bell was broken: “Out of the way, folks!” Mr Kuzmík was still lying beyond the fence and the Alsatian barking on the other side woke his master, who took his bullwhip and set off to give the innkeeper a thrashing because his patrons were making a racket, his dog was barking and he couldn’t sleep, and so he found Mr Kuzmík and called to him: “Can I help you, sir?” And Mr Kuzmík, lying there, called back: “I didn’t ask you for anything, you old brute, so you can leave me alone.” So he lay there till morning, then he dragged himself as far as the electricity substation where he was found by the milkman, who drove him home with a broken leg. And Mr Procházka did finally make it home, but not before falling off his bike, grazing his face and ramming the bell on his handlebar into his cheek, five hours it took him to get home, just like me, though it’s only half an hour on foot without engine oil. Mr Franc took only four hours on his bike and he went quietly to bed, but in the morning he was startled out of it by his wife screaming. “What’s up?” he said. “Did you get drunk again yesterday?” And Mr Franc said: “Me, drunk?” And his wife grabbed him by the ear and hauled him out of bed to the window and said: “Look at that, you sodden sod!” And Mr Franc looked and there on the little snow-covered grass patch he saw his footprints like the handprints of the chimney sweep on the pub tablecloths, as if twenty people had been waiting for a bus, keeping warm by tramping up and down, and then there were a dozen or so bike-prints like spectacles wherever he’d tipped over into the snow, like turning the pages of a comic strip involving a cyclist. And while Mr Jumbo Man had long been tightening lock nuts and seals at the airport and sobering up in the cold air, Mr Procházka the roadmender was lying in bed, his face chafed from the hardened snow, and with the sunken imprint of his bell lever in his cheek, which led his granddaughter to come in and tinkle the bell-print on his face and ask: “Were you a bit sloshed last night, Grandpa?” And the roadmender, devotee of the truth that he was, made a Slav bow, prostrate, to his granddaughter and said: “Yes, I was, and I’ve counted a total of twenty-eight bruises, which I believe is quite a success, given that I’ve broken nothing, nor do I have concussion despite falling on my back several times and banging my head on the cold, frozen concrete of the road.” The chimney sweep topped off the horrors of his year of tribulation by waking up in the morning in his clothes and with his brush in bed with him, he felt thirsty and popped out to his cellar to get a drink from a pot of sour milk, and as he was savouring the drink, he saw two eyes floating towards him; he thought it must be an effect of the engine oil, but the eyes got bigger and bigger until they reached his eager thirsty lips and into his mouth sailed some horrid living thing and the chimney sweep, having pulled it out, twitching, by the leg, he saw it was a tiny toad that must have fallen into the milk. Mr Zákon the landlord got a shock in the morning when he saw the tablecloths, he tried to turn them over but the soot and the sweat- and grief-soaked palms of the chimney sweep had percolated through to the other side, so there was nothing for it but to gather them all up and put out new ones… In the afternoon he went for a lie-down and as he gazed out of the window he thought he could hear a growling noise, thought he was in the cabin of a Boeing 727 Jumbo Jet and that he’d just landed, or was the giant plane about to take off with him on board? The golden mane of his wife’s curly hair came in and Mr Zákon smiled at her, stroked her and asked: “No fornication under duress? Rape?” And the golden-haired beauty tipped her head and her squinting eye filled her with mystery and a forgotten culture. And Mr Zákon asked anew: “And there’s no one who might endanger our marital bliss, is there?” And his good lady blushed and shook her head and dropped her eyelids. “And there’s no one to sue me for obstructing their happy marriage?” And she hugged him and gave him a kiss, of her own volition, as hadn’t happened for several years. And Mr Zákon lit the stove, which hadn’t been lit for a year, and as he went outside with the ashes, Mr Bělohlávek came cycling past, numb with cold. The publican called out to him: “Good afternoon, Mr Jumbo Man, d’you fancy popping in for a chat? A dram? I’ve got the stove on now!”