e’s even more beautiful, with a little topknot, and her branches close kempt, like a pixie cut… and she’s also a giant, except that her trunk got so gouged by lightning that her growth rate slowed…,” said the old gentleman and a gentle breeze blew back the silken branches of a little birch grove, and the old boy extended a hand as if to caress them, and he did caress them, fingering the little leaves and restoring emotion to them. I could tell he was a sensitive old man and that he lived at the expense of the elements, and in harmony with nature, as befitted his age. He carried on, constantly putting out his hand, now as if he were warming himself at the flickering flames of the leaves wafting on the birch twigs: “We’ve got another classy number here as well if you go along Avenue Six, known as Nymburk Way, you go as far as the tract we call The Crest, right, and there by the brook you’ll see a spruce, half its height jutting over the other spruces around it, it must be two hundred years old and more, and its nine lower branches are twisted upwards in such a way that their ends are like roots with more spruces shooting up from them, nine spruces, ten metres tall, and the tree holds them aloft like a juggler juggling plates on nine sticks, though plates spin round, it actually resembles a massive candlestick, that giant spruce…” He had spoken, and he lit a cigarette and sat on a chair next to me and his overalls, dribbled with gravy and something that smelled pretty awful, gave off such a terrible stink that I turned to leeward… For something to say, I suggested there might be a lot of woodcock in the area and pointed towards the birch grove that began beyond his plot and was twinkling over his fence. He took a long drag on his cigarette and it was almost like a light coming on next to his mouth, as if he’d bitten the cigarette off, so short it had become, and then the smoke came scudding out of his mouth, resembling the long, solid curls jutting out like little sabres jammed into his head. “This isn’t their time, and there aren’t many anyway, the days are long gone when assistant foresters would bet a bottle of wine that they could bag twenty or thirty in an evening. Woodcock do their celebratory mating dance around the end of March or beginning of April, after the sun’s gone down and the first star’s come out… the males fly about making a glorious love call and the females sit around in the cold grass listening…” He had spoken, he cleared his throat, a prolonged rasping cough rasped forth from him and the cuckoo flew out of the clock and rasped in exactly the same way, marking five o’clock. “I know,” the old man told the clock, and he took another colossal drag and again it was as if he’d bitten off part of the cigarette, so far down had it burned, lighting up the stub… As he spoke, he pointed with his cigarette: “No more woodcock, a pair here and a pair there, but, come July, you do get nightingales warbling away in the night, magnificent, if you keep a lookout, nightingales also warble in your avenue, in the oaks at the forest edge… it’s a violin performance, it’s like when an artist starts cutting a beautiful image in a plate of pure crystal with a diamond stylus. I can’t sleep a-nights, I prowl around, following the voices of the nightingales, and here…,” he patted his chest, “…here I have this sensation of sweetness and I’m happy that there’s still something beautiful so close by… but there’s most nightingales by the ruins of Mydlovary Castle, across the river, like if you were to go from Přívlaky towards Kámen, or — you’re a young fellow — if you go dancing at Kocáneks’ in Hradišťko during the parish fête… after midnight, if you take a stroll with a pretty girl past the King of Clubs into the fields, across the football pitch at Ruždiny… then with the stream of cold air coming up off the water along the track the song gets louder and louder, and not one, but three, a quartet, sometimes I’ve heard as many as six nightingales, for an hour, an hour and a half, giving out a thin silvery thread and embroidering with their voices a violin concerto with no recapitulations, and when it falls silent you can spot one sitting, exhausted, on a branch, you can see the little chap must have lost at least twenty grams… and even if he were to shed half a kilo, tell me, why do they sing like that, and who for?” He’d spoken and was grave and so deeply affected that he bent a little and wiped away a tear with the back of his hand… and the spikes of his hair stood there right before my eyes and nose and I caught the dreadful smell emanating from that cornucopia of odours and it made me see stars and I leaned away so far that I lost my balance and fell flat on my back and as my legs flew up I caught him on the forehead with one knee. I rolled quickly over into the fallen leaves and as I dusted myself down, I saw I was covered in chicken poo, and I blushed, but as the old man stood over me I realised he was taller than me by a head and his gigantic arms were raised to form like a little shrine above me and he tried to be reassuring: “Don’t do that now, you’d just rub it in, once it dries it’ll flake off… but let me draw you a map, since you’re new round here, you don’t have to mind about the people, but do mind about nature, to start with, avenues six and four, between them there’s a clearing, and there you’ll see hundreds of Siberian irises in bloom, and if ever you go to Mydlovary, across the river, I’m off there myself in a moment, you’ll find some centuries-old oak trees, and one of them is so hollow that twenty or thirty people have sheltered from a storm inside it! But I’ve always liked going there and dancing in the spring, and sometimes even now: did you know, there was this lovely old custom last century when the young folk would meet under those old oaks and the girls would deck themselves with snowdrops and dance to the music of the band, right there beneath those ancient giants of the forest? Incidentally, why did you stop at my gate, why? Were you looking for someone, not me, surely?” He pointed at the top of his dungarees, from which chicken droppings were hanging adrift, like ancient medals… “No,” I lied, “I was just passing, but I’m glad you told me all about the forest.” He gestured with his hand and, to the cuckoo, which had just popped out of the Black Forest clock, cuckooed and clattered back inside its coop, he said: “I know, give me half an hour and I’m off, but do you know what else is worth seeing hereabouts? Come the autumn, that little knoll over there, it’s called Semická, is covered in hundreds, thousands of blue fringed gentians and yellow hawkweeds! They get scrunched by tractor tyres day after day, yet there’s always more and more of them… and if you go a bit further west to the hill called Bílá, above Přerov, there you’ll find, you won’t believe this, wild asparagus, I mean, asparagus!” And he placed his hands on my shoulders and only then did I notice that his entire arms were dappled with chicken poo, and that his hair was full of bits of straw and chaff and scraps of hay and several flaky chicken droppings, all like bits of leaves fallen from birches that were old before their time, but now the old boy seemed in a bit of a hurry, he looked straight at me, beating time with one hand as he quickened his delivery: “Do you know that planks cut from the pines in this forest are a lovely copper colour and that they turn red with age? And do you know that in olden times pines from Kersko were floated all the way to Hamburg? And do you know that in olden times the drive shafts in Dutch windmills were made from Kersko oaks? That the fortress at Theresienstadt used up five hundred Kersko oaks in beams and planking? And do you know that you enter the council offices and three different cottages in Hradišťko through Gothic windows, which peasants made into doorways having taken them from the ruins of the little church at Kersko that got destroyed during the Hussite wars? And do you know that they used to make ships’ masts out of Kersko larches? And do you know that what we call Lablets are oxbow lakes detached from the Labe, as the great River Elbe is known hereabouts, and that they’re home to white and yellow water-lilies and greater spearwort, and spiked loosestrife? And do you know that the St Joseph Spring comes up from seventy-eight metres below ground and that its waters arrive along a fault all the way from the Jizera Mountains and that the water takes seventy years to get here? Do you also know which cottage in Kersko is the most beautiful? Right next to the concrete road, in Avenue Twenty-one, built by a ship’s captain and made to look like a cabin cast up on the wave of a sand dune?” In a kind of fit, the old man hurled question after question and I wanted nothing more than for him to let go of me, the smell of his dungarees being in excess of a cowshed’s, the quintessence of ripeness that threatened to wreak havoc — a faint or allergy, hives or maybe even death. And the old Black Forest clock began to strike, striking like mad, as if to upbraid the old boy, and swishing away with its pendulum like a nervous cow with its tail… And the old man came to and told the cuckoo, before it popped back in its coop: “I know…” And he kicked at the latch of the outhouse, the door of which swung open under its own weight and angle of suspension, and inside the shed, utterly filthy with chicken poo, stood an ivory-coloured luxury car, the latest Ford with automatic transmission and sliding doors, studded with chicken poo, and with some chickens dozing away inside… And the old boy laughed and watched me, having let on he was the very man I’d been looking for and I hadn’t recognised him, and he’d hidden from me so brilliantly in this retreat of his that never in my wildest dreams would I have expected what I was seeing now. And the old man swept the chickens away with an elbow, walked round the car and stood there amid a flurry of wing-flapping chickens who made hastily for the outside over his head and arms… and the old man, as he was, pressed a button and the door slid up into the Ford’s roof, the very Ford that I’d heard was at Mr Liman’s, and so there I was now, at Mr Liman’s, and I’d wanted to ask where Mr Liman lived, though what I’d been told was right, it was just that the old man and his dungarees had confused me, but he knew I’d come to ask if he’d sell the car, he knew I was looking for Mr Liman, but he knew that the best thing is to cover one’s tracks, like a fox, and then pop up at the far end when you’re least expected… And the Ford rolled out of the shed and was a sight to behold, and I saw — how could I not see? — that Mr Liman was that one-time millionaire, the one whose sons in America sent him a car every year, and that it quite suited him, like some bank president, for all he was covered in chicken poo… and Mr Liman hopped lightly out of the car, leaving chicken poo-prints on the leather seat and the whole car full of feathers, but it all suited Mr Liman nicely, chickens and all. “I know,” I said, “You’re Mr Liman.” He bowed and said: “That I am…,” and, to complete my surprise, he opened the door of the other shed with its window onto the little garden, and out shot two billy-goats, almost knocking me over and followed by that awful stench, which now gave explanation of its source, and the billies were overtaken by a nanny-goat, and Mr Liman stood there like some god and bellowed: “Bobby, Lucky, Janey! Time to graze! Let’s be having you!” And as the nanny-goat and one of the billies tried to scramble into the car, they got their horns tangled in the door, but the nanny-goat was quicker and she went and sat by a window and watched impatiently for the car to start, the reeking billy-goats went and sat with her and Mr Liman got into the driving seat, pressed a button and the doors slid back down from the roof, Mr Liman wound the window down and behind him there was a crunching sound and a fearsome, dry crackling of leather, and I saw all three goats’ hooves digging into the leather, tearing it, and I felt a sensation of their hooves digging away inside my brain, I could feel my meninx cracking, ripping as the goats’ feet sank into it, but Mr Liman laughed and said: “It tickles me pink to watch Bobby and Janey fighting over the window seat on the right…” “But what’s with the left window?” I asked. “Lucky has that one, but you get a nice view of the river from the right one, see? Now, young man, we’re going down to the river, then we’ll row across to the other side to the Mydlovary meads, and there the goats will graze and I’ll play my transistor and, under the ancient oaks and in remembrance of the snowdrop festival, I’ll maybe do a little dance, with all the goats, like an old faun, an afternoon of a faun, don’t you know…” And he beeped the horn and the Ford, six metres long, ivory-white, set off down the avenue of birches, whose tiny leaves were all a-flutter in the blazing sunlight, in the wafting perfume of blooming oleasters, oleasters blossoming somewhere beyond New Meads, which Mr Liman was now entering with his animals, taking them to pasture.