would buy one, which he did, so as to be shot of the other dogs, but the dogs’ owners started shoutin’ about suin’ if they didn’t get their travel costs back as advertised, so Kožíšek had to pay not only their fares out here, and some came from as far away as Moravia and Vimperk, but also their travel back, but if you’ve got the money, you can afford to have fun, see?” And he added: “But Kožíšek repaid me twice over, he threw a big party and I had this stupid habit of always havin’ my pockets full of false teeth from their makers an’ I tossed one such mandible in Kožíšek’s coffee, ’cept he slipped his coffee my way an’ he drank mine, an’ I’ve got such a delicate stomach!” said Mr Svoboda and he stopped weeding, made a mooing noise and retched and puked something up with the memory of those wonderful years of his youth, buried it in soil with his great big paw and continued: “I drank it an’ the teeth got jammed in my mouth like some great fish bone an’ I started to choke, an’ I could easily have died, ’cos I weren’t expectin’ it, so I got my own back on Kožíšek when he were pukin’ outside the front into his rose bushes an’ I puked out of the window right down the back of his neck, so when he came in he were right surprised, an’ his wife was too, like how could anyone puke down the back of their own neck… like I say, we was young and when you’re young it’s time for fun.” And I nodded cheerily because I liked being with Mr Svoboda and his bare belly, and I liked listening to him talking, saying, artlessly and sincerely, all those things that one is more inclined to feel shame than pride at, and Mr Svoboda, seeing the admiration in my eyes, continued, slowly plucking out the weeds with his fat fingers, himself a very picture of endless contentment and ease: “But the biggest bastard’s my midget friend Eliáš, there’s no other candidate for the title… so one time, during the Protectorate, when cement was the Reich’s life-blood, I like an idiot thought, no, I wasn’t thinkin’, but I did get fifty bags of cement on the cheap an’ took it into my ’ead that ’ere, between the gate and the cottage door, there could be two strips, two cement walkways, just right for the wheels of a car or for people in the rain to walk up… an’ suddenly I gets this telegram, which said, in German: ‘Herr Svoboda, Kersko, Revision und Kontrolle ihrer Parzelle, Dienstag’, signed by SS Sturmbahnführer Habrman. So first I shat myself, then my wife shat herself, then we had an argy-bargy over who on earth had had the bright idea of the cement pavin’ for a car, then we shat ourselves again jointly, an’ I, all miserable, drove to Kersko and begged the mayor of Semice to loan me a couple of carts for the weekend, for which I’d pay him regally, an’ so all day Saturday an’ all day Sunday, I ’ad farmers fetch me soil, an’ I raked it out over the concrete tracks an’ slowly they disappeared, all fifty metres, an’ I was thinkin’, why hadn’t I built the cottage right next to the gate! An’ when I’d finished, I scattered pine needles on top of the soil, fortunately this was in the autumn, so I went back and forth fetchin’ and spreadin’ leaves like children at Corpus Christi, until there wasn’t a trace left, and come that Dienstag I waited, throwin’ up now an’ again, even though I’d had nothin’ to eat, kept retchin’ and pukin’, reduced finally to whimperin’ and bringin’ up no more than spit, too scared even to shit myself, didn’t have the wherewithal, just some green watery stuff… an’ I waited an’ that morning seemed like a week, an’ the afternoon another week, a fortnight’s fear I got through in a single day, but nothin’ happened… an’ suddenly it dawned, it was my mates what had done it to cheer me up, for a lark…,” said Mr Svoboda, heaving up his belly like a 200-litre barrel and pushing it slightly aside and backing up after it and puffing and smiling, though he’d paled at the recollection, and he went on: “… but I got my own back, the chemist, Kožíšek, ’e ’ad a garden like mine, back then we ’ad apples an’ we was amateur gardeners, an’ I offered to take ’is best apples to the flower an’ produce show an’ set up his table for him, an’ I ate all his apples and collected some windfalls and set ’em out an’ next to ’em I put the sign that ’ad been beautifully written by Kožíšek ’imself: James Grieve an’ Jonathan an’ Nonnetit… an’ so on, an’ at the corner of the table I puts a big, fancy sign: ‘From the garden of my friend Jan Kožíšek, Kersko’, an’ although there was fifty growers of fine fruit there, most people was clustered round my friend Kožíšek’s table, it were the sensation of the county show, a blockbuster, an’ when Kožíšek ’eard that most of ’is friends an’ other people was clustered round ’is table, ’e grabbed the family and took a carriage, that was a sight to see back then in Kersko, for a hundred crowns farmers would hitch up a carriage, oh, the carriage journeys we ’ad, legless, at night, by the light of the moon, by carriage all the way to Poříčany to catch the last train, the sidelamps lit up the horses’ back ends beautifully, young folk would stand, holdin’ onto the box, with one foot on the step an’ holdin’ bottles or flowers in their free hand, we’d ’ave the seats… but where was I? Kožíšek arrived at that memorable flower an’ produce show in the carriage with some flowers an’ his wife an’ he had to part the crowd clustered round his fruit, an’ as he stood there beamin’ over his windfalls with the whole place eruptin’ in laughter, Kožíšek suddenly shrunk by fifteen or twenty centimetres an’ his wife were burnin’ wi’ shame an’ embarrassment, an’ so they went back ’ome in utter misery, not by carriage this time, but by the back way, through gardens an’ along cart-tracks, back to Kersko… But that was because we was young an’ we’d got money, an’ when you’re young it’s time for fun, an’ to this day I get awful hungry, but back then, every time there were a pig-feast, I’d eat eighteen white puddin’s an’ three plates o’ goulash, I never even counted the black puddin’s ’cos I already weighed a hundred and thirty kilos. One time we was invited by Baroness Hiross to their huntin’ lodge, an’ while my friends was admirin’ the huntin’ trophies, I were sat at the dining table, then down the stairs comes the baroness wi’ my friends behind ’er, affected by ’er showing them ’istoric portraits of ’er and ’er husband’s ancestors, an’ from the stairs she says: “And now let me invite you to partake of a small collation,” but the table was empty an’ I were just stuffin’ myself with the last plate of fifty open sandwiches, one sandwich after another, but I were young an’ I’d got money, an’ the baroness took it in good part, ’cept there were no more food at the lodge, so she sliced some bread for my friends an’ spread drippin’ on it, Christ, I can feel the hunger even now, such wonderful hungry times they was, but I don’t have so much money these days, an’ even though I don’t get so hungry any more, I can really enjoy a whole salami sausage, salami that I hang in my toilet ventilation shaft to fine it, but I never leave it to get fully fined ’cos I always eat it whole the very first night after buyin’ one to fine, only once did I eat a fully fined salami, it was during the Protectorate and I’d got a whole Hungarian salami, anyway, I were comin’ in and saw, down in the basement below our flat in Prague, the concierge with a great chunk of salami in a vice, cuttin’ bits off it with an ’acksaw, an’ I could tell from the colour of it that the swine was slicin’ salami, so I ’eads straight down and says: “My mouth’s fair waterin’, ’ow much do you want for that salami?” an’ ’e says: “Two thousand,” so I gives him the money, but the salami really were that ’ard that you really did need an ’acksaw, so I gave ’im an extra two hundred an’ ’e ’acked it into rounds for me, I completely lost control an’ wolfed down each slice as he cut it off, until I wolfed down even the string at the end, ’cos there were this woman walkin’ past an’ I bent down to see up her skirt from down below in the basement an’ grabbed the last piece an’ that’s ’ow I ate the string as well,” said Mr Svoboda and he heaved up his mighty belly, plopped it back down and rolled over on his other side, his spine following his belly, then he switched hands and again put one massive paw — as thick as my leg — under his head, like a pillow against his ear, and with his free hand he weeded the bed of parsnips, slowly and totally engrossed in the task, as if he were extracting sharp needles, and he went on talking, quietly, dreamily and with a smile, revelling once again in his youth…, “an’ a week later it dawned! an’ there an’ then I ’eaded for the larder, an’ there an’ then I throttled the wife and then the maid, an’ in tears the maid said that, when they was ’avin’ a clear-out, they’d found a salami of sorts ’angin’ there, all mouldy and rotten, so she’d slung it in the bin in the yard, an’ just like Baron Hiross, who paid twice over an’ feasted on his own huntin’ dog as a moufflon, I paid twice for an ’Ungarian salami… but you, my friend, what I’m tellin’ you isn’t true, every week, before leavin’ for Kersko, I do fine a salami, salami fined off in the ventilation shaft ’as a special flavour, the draft takes warm air up from the central heatin’, an’ I really must fine a salami to perfection one day, an’ that takes a lot o’ will-power, but one day I