will get the better o’ myself, one day I really will fine one to perfection, one day I’ll bring one all the way out ’ere so you can ’ave a taste an’ see what a delicacy it is, salami fined for a fortnight, like what I ate in Moravia… but I’ll bring it when you’re not hungry exactly, but you’ll still fancy somethin’… just for you I’ll buy a whole thirty-five crown salami, just for you I’ll hang it in the central heatin’ ventilation shaft, there’s a little hatch, see, in the toilet, like the one in a farm smokehouse, an’ that’s where I’ll fine it, except the moment I lie down, even on a full belly…, like when I’m on the way ’ome from work, I spend an hour in the shop, my bag’s full, an’ it’s a hundred grams of this salami an’ a hundred of that, an’ a hundred and fifty grams of Silesian brawn an’ two hundred of ordinary brawn an’ some mayonnaise an’ little pots of pickled fish, Russian sardines an’ rollmops, that’s ’ow I live, whenever I see ’em in a shop window, I get such an appetite an’ I weaken, so straight into the shop, an’ first I order a plateful to eat in, then I buy all sorts of cheeses, then it’s ’ome, not walkin’ but runnin’, an’ at ’ome we eat it all in front of the telly, an’ I keep reachin’ forward until there’s nowt left on the table, ‘So I’ve eaten it all,’ I says, then we go to bed, an’ I wake up at midnight an’ it’s like there’s this golden salami hangin’ from the ceiling before my very eyes, the salami that’s hangin’ in the draught in the ventilation shaft in the toilet, the salami glitters an’ gleams like crown jewels, an’ I shade my eyes, but the salami so seduces me with its beauty that I tells myself: ‘You’re finin’ it for your friends, you’re finin’ it for your friends,’ but on an impulse I gets up an’ ‘Bollocks!’ I says, an’ I goes into the toilet, cuts ’alf of it off an’ tucks into it there an’ then, to finish it off in bed, an’ the wife says, in ’er sleep: ‘Don’t get grease on the duvet…,’ then she sleeps on, I drop off as well, but an hour later I sees that fined salami again, the salami that’s only been being fined for less than a day, an’ I can’t ’old back an’ I get up, then I lie back down an’ I’m beginning to get the better of myself, a moment longer an’ I’ll overcome that cravin’, that urge to eat the rest of the salami, until, just when I thought I’d won, I let out a deep sigh an’ the wife half-rose an’ said: ‘Stop torturin’ yourself, Karel, eat the damn’ salami…,’ an’ havin’ waited all day, all night, I wolf down the rest of the salami, then I sleep like a loach…” Mr Svoboda carried on meticulously weeding the parsnip bed where he lay, the sun bobbed up over the pine trees and flushed the garden with the pre-noon heat of a glorious July day, and like a machine he pulled up tiny weed after tiny weed and loosened the soil round the parsnips to give them room to swell, because weeds know no greater delight than to strangle anything more noble, destroy everything they enclose and convert it into humus for their own benefit… “You mustn’t think…,” said Mr Svoboda gently, “it’s not unknown for me to buy an extra salami, so I’ve fined two at a time, I’d wolf one down in the night without finin’ it properly, but the other one — twice now — hung there the full fortnight, it must have been fully fined by then, it was a salami for you an’ my friends to taste what an ordinary long-life salami is like after it’s been fined, tastes like ’Ungarian salami, an’ twice I’ve set off with one in the car, but I got as far as Počernice an’ I had this vision of it danglin’ out of the sky on a string in front of the radiator, a gold salami fined by me, an’ just past Počernice I had to brake an’ shout ‘Bollocks!’ And the wife ’ad to say: ‘Stop torturin’ yourself, Karel, or you’ll crash…,’ an’ I lifted the bonnet an’ I took a knife an’ went an’ sat in the ditch, that disgustin’ gully behind the Počernice abbatoir, in among the stinkin’ vapours an’ old pots an’ a pile of shit here an’ there, but I really enjoyed wolfin’ down that salami an’ afterwards I could drive easy, an’ all the next week I was resolved to bring specially for you that other fined salami, and I did get further this time, I nearly won, but near Mochov I suddenly got so hungry that I weakened and the cravin’ were so strong that I started seein’ things, again the fined salami was danglin’ out of the sky on a golden string in front of the radiator, an’ again the wife says, me havin’ started to weave across the road: ‘Stop torturin’ yourself, Karel!’ An’ I stopped an’ hopped right into the ditch with the salami, that salami fined for a fortnight and meant specially for my friends… but next time I eat a salami, when I’ll ’ave got as far as Semice with a fined salami an’ eaten the whole thing there on the green, without bread, chopped into little cubes, after that, once I’ve slowly but surely got the better of myself, I will bring one all the way ’ere for you, ’cos from Semice to Kersko it’s no distance, though even havin’ got this far, I can’t vouch for myself, havin’ arrived with it, I’ll start soundin’ my horn at the edge of the forest, at Vicarage Lane, and you’ll ’ave to drop what you’re doin’ and come runnin’, because I can’t vouch for myself, if I got the fortnight-old fined salami out, I might dive right into it, there and then; before you can take it from me it might be inside me, ’cos though I don’t get so ’ungry as in the past, I do get cravin’s, and they can be more dangerous than your actual hunger…,” said Mr Svoboda and he raised himself up, knelt and set his belly on his knees, then quickly lifted his paunch and prised himself up from the knees with it, then stood upright, from behind Mr Svoboda looked slim, so erect and proud was he as he bore that vast, unbelievably huge belly before him, and his 130-kilo persona strode off in his glazed-cotton boxers — three metres of the fabric went on them — and as he strode over the stream, the footbridge sagged and Mr Svoboda turned and said gleefully: “Right, I’m off now, an’ before I start weedin’ the carrots I’m goin’ to polish off a whole long-life sausage that I’ve got ready for finin’ and bought yesterday in Semice…” I said: “Why torture yourself, Mr Svoboda…” And, contented, Mr Svoboda withdrew through the greenery beneath his fruit trees and on past the trunks of Goldilocks pines to enter his cottage with its green shutters, and I used to see him every Easter, doing the rounds on Easter Monday with his friends, who deliberately let him carry their baskets of eggs, and at every cottage and every chalet they’d get eggs a-plenty, because everyone looks forward to Mr Svoboda coming, and they’re honoured to be able to treat the visitors to dozens of sandwiches, and Mr Svoboda rewards them with his wonderful account of fining salamis, stories that everyone knows already, but every Easter Monday the people in their cottages in the forest look forward to hearing them again. They love to see how, after the thirty or forty sandwiches he’s eaten in the thirty cottages and chalets, he can still manage more, and his appetite is at its height when, at the back of the procession of carollers and brandishing his randy-pole decorated with red and blue ribbons, Mr Svoboda can down eggs whole, shell and all. And each time his carolling friends say: “Karel, didn’t you just swallow a whole egg?” And Mr Svoboda, Easter caroller, gulps and says: “Me?” And his friends say: “Come on, open your gob!” And Mr Svoboda opens his huge mouth, and it’s empty, the egg’s already gone to join the dozens of other painted eggs down inside his stomach… Right now, though, with Mr Svoboda gone off in his glazed-cotton boxers that took three metres of cloth to make, it came to me that the man who’d gone off was a king. I’d noticed that Mr Svoboda had wonderful hair, as thick and curly as Africans’, one little curly wire after another, clinging to his head like a helmet of curls. Mr Svoboda is actually quite a dazzler, and so a king.