we all thought of him, but Leli thought more of us than we of him, we can see that today, we all have to admit that today. When spring came, we could bet on it that Leli would bring us each a basket of fresh eggs, as usual from the farmers where he bought them, he himself couldn’t stand the sight of eggs, but everything was for us, for his friends, especially for those with children. Then he’d bill us for the eggs and butter, but who else would be such a good pal as to turn his Trabant into a mobile shop? And another time we were waiting for Leli, he’d gone to get us two hundred and fifty eggs, fresh eggs for the children, but there was no sign of him, and suddenly a message came to go and extricate him from the same ditch as before, so we trotted off and it was exactly like with the churn of soup, that time round the pig-killing, Leli, before leaving the road, had braked slightly and rolled over several times before getting jammed in the ditch. We couldn’t see Leli inside the car at all, the entire Trabant being caked in egg, like the cement caked round the inside of a cement mixer truck, the kind that keeps turning to keep the liquid cement fit for purpose, and when we opened the car door, Leli was still sitting there, holding the steering-wheel and all coated in egg, the eggs having been smashed to smithereens, like when you dip a wiener schnitzel in beaten egg before breadcrumbing it…, but all Leli did was ask us to wipe his eyes, because he couldn’t see anything, which we did, and Leli said: “Remember, we learn by our mistakes, again, like that time at the pig-killing, the box with its neat stack of eggs started slipping off the other seat and instead of saying to hell with it, I meant to salvage ten or a dozen eggs for my friends, with the result that I smashed the lot…,” after which we spent all that day and the next cleaning the Trabant, finally poking stringy bits of drying yolk out of all the cracks with bits of wire, and the spring sun beat down on us, and there was such a stench from the eggs that we got out the paraffin and carbon tetrachloride and cleaned and polished everything once again, but two months later Leli said the Trabant still smelled of sulphur dioxide, like Poděbrady mineral water, so he couldn’t give anyone a lift except people in the know, ’cos strangers would automatically think he’d nearly shat himself… yep, a great guy was Leli, everything for his friends, we were always on his mind, while we were more attentive to our girlfriends, wives and children, his mind was on us. And another Leli thing: every time the fair came to Velenka or Hradišťko, he’d bring the children, from the fair, trumpets and pea-shooters and little drums, then he’d buy a whole slatted takeaway tray of cakes, and one time he was bringing them in his car and the tray threatened to shed a number of choux buns and creme rolls and make a mess of his carpet, but the main thing was that he wouldn’t be arriving with them the way we usually got them, by the trayful that he used to bring onto the patio outside the pub like a confectioner, holding it cleverly aloft and carrying it the way waiters carry a whole tray of meals, but yet again he drove into the ditch and again he got out unscathed, except that the whole tray of cakes, as the car rammed sideways into the ditch, Leli fell, just like in an American slapstick film, face and gloved hands right into the creme rolls and creme slices and choux buns, fifty fancy pastries, all cream and meringue, he fell into them face first though he never ate cakes himself, he didn’t even like them, if ever he was offered one he claimed it would make him throw up, even the sight of them made him puke… yep, a great guy Leli was, a great pal who only ever thought of his friends and their families, as if he were some kind of president…, and we never learned to appreciate it… Take this, on New Year’s Eve, Leli would always organise a New Year’s Party at the house of one or other of us, we’d have met a fortnight before at the Keeper’s Lodge, Leli in the chair, first he secretly told the waiter: “Hey, mate, six Bechers for our table, on my tab…,” and he broached every meeting in the same kind way: “Gentlemen, mates of mine, I declare this meeting of the Committee for a Dignified Farewell to the Old Year and Welcome to the New open…, right, I reckon the eats should be: pork, four kilos, for a special pork, potato, bacon and sausage bake, a large boiled ham…,” and he went on to list all the dishes, and we all agreed or suggested amendments, and finally, and this was Leli’s thing, eight litres of tripe soup, which he made himself, that was for the morning after… and in the pauses, Leli popped over to the waiter and in a whisper said: “Six double Bechers for our table, mate, on my tab…” Generous to a fault was Leli, and so once, as New Year’s Eve approached, Leli was in his long white apron with its blue and red embroidered initials on his chest, since the afternoon he’d been preparing the pork, potato, bacon and sausage bake and the lads were already drinking, and there was still a keg of beer and some bottles and suchlike, but Leli, ever the true butcher, was sipping white coffee and nibbling marble cake, as soon as everything was ready he’d also have a Becher, a ‘President in Exile’, his favourite, but only afterwards, because, as he told us in a lecture, pork, potato, bacon and sausage bake is not as simple as it might seem, he’d known a chef at the Grand Hotel in Tatranská Lomnica, the very man the President had had helicoptered all the way to Prague Castle when he needed this dish to be spot-on, “and you can be sure,” Leli concluded, “I kept a close watch on his hands, I’m very particular about making it like he did, most important’s the preparation stage…” And when the pork, potato, bacon and sausage bake started cooking on the barbecue — Leli, just like Mr Čány, couldn’t stand to have it roasted over hot coals, so we had to made a log fire outside and Leli, like Mr Čány, would take some tongs and bring hot pieces of charcoal in from the burning logs — as it was cooking, Leli undid his apron and said he was off to fetch his famous tripe soup, the one that would put anyone back on their feet the morning after and fortify them so as to be able to carry on drinking, so good was Leli’s version of tripe soup, and no one else’s was a patch on his, because Leli had his secret, just as the President had taken the secret of Becher liqueur with him into exile, and his secret was compounded by the fact that he got all his spices from the St Saviour pharmacy, hardly anyone else did, but Leli did because he was pals with the chemist and they’d talked a lot, and later Leli talked a lot to us, all about this spice we’d never even heard of. And Leli, having got in his car, suddenly remember the incidents with the churn of soup and the box of eggs and the tray of cakes, which he only ever brought specially for us, and got out again and took a moped, it would be safer by moped, and this we only learned later, he popped the short way home on the moped, donned his dinner jacket, put some bottles in his rucksack and the huge pot of tripe soup in a large bag, and to play safe he sat the bag in front of him, and so, all eager, he set off back to bring us the soup, which he would always stir, once it was ready, all the time until it went cold, because that’s how it should be, as he disclosed to us, because if it was left to its own devices, the fat and the grease would congeal on the surface and you might as well pour the whole thing away in the morning and feed it to the pigs… and as Leli, our great pal, was on the way back, driving slowly, a deer suddenly ran across the road and Leli, not so as not to hit it, but so as not to spill the soup, swerved and went into a skid on the snow, and Leli, a man who for fun could execute every conceivable fall and do tricks that had us worrying that he’d get up with a broken arm or perhaps never rise again out of the sand, he would always hop off and shake the sand off him, this time, so as not to spill the tripe soup, Leli was afraid to kick free of the moped as it grated along the ground the way he normally would because he was thinking not of himself but of the soup, and as he held on to it with both hands so it wouldn’t spill, he went spinning, and even as he caught the back of his head against a milestone he still managed to set the pot of soup down safely… With no sign of Leli, we set off to meet him halfway, and we found him, lying on his back and looking up at the stars as if he were dying, like when young Rosemayer crashed into that bridge near Darmstadt. When Bob lifted his head, his hand was all covered in blood, and Leli said: “Watch out, mind you don’t knock the soup over…,” and an hour later he died, for his pals, died rescuing his tripe soup for them, like I say, a great guy, a great pal was Leli, but who was going to entertain us now?