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2 A MOONLIT NIGHT
ALL OVER THE WORLD, wherever there’s a chapel or a church there’s a parish priest, everywhere in the world the parish priest has a university degree, and wherever in the world the rectory is home to a man with a university degree, he will have a command of Latin and his native tongue, and in his native tongue he will seek to have some influence on the citizenry entrusted to him and in Latin he will report to Rome any news that reaches him from his parishioners, and so every year, gathered together in Rome from all over the world, summary reports state how many murders there have been throughout the Christian world, how many adulteries, how many burglaries and robberies, how many people have had doubts about the Church’s teachings and how many are in a state of apostasy or are lukewarm in their faith, and so I, police commandant in the area entrusted to me, I note that I’m not university educated, that the members of the National Committee aren’t either, and that for now I must just do what I do, keeping a close watch on anything criminal going on on my patch, but, more than that, I try by my own diligence in office to keep myself, the district, the region and even the Interior Ministry informed of what people are thinking, how they live their lives, and what they commit in the way of petty misdemeanours, from which it is only ever but one little step to bigger ones. Most of all, I like performing my duties within the Kersko forest range, a place close to my heart since childhood, a place where I know everyone, where as a boy I played or did battle, as a youth I chased the girls and gave and received many a bop on the nose or punch in the ribs, so I don’t feel on duty here, more on a kind of holiday, so pleasant is it to be working in the place where I grew up, which is why it’s such a pity that time passes so quickly in the day, and because, come the evening, I still haven’t had enough and going to bed, well, that would be a sin, I stroll along the one metalled avenue through the trees of the Kersko woods, having left my Volga parked down a side track, and in the darkness I keep my ears to the ground to check who’s about, who’s talking to who, sometimes revealing my presence, sometimes just leaning quietly against the wing of my police Volga, and I rejoice in the beauty of outdoors and at the adventures the main road brings at night in the form of cyclists with and without lights, and driving quietly past Keeper’s Lodge, I work out from the cars parked outside who’s in there, who, as a driver, is drinking black coffee, and who’s having a beer or, horror of horrors, spirits. But when the moon rises over New Leas and the smells of the fields drift by on the breeze, that’s when I’m truly happy to be on duty and I’m amazed that the State pays me for the privilege, that I have this uniform and that I am in command. Properly I ought to be paying for all these beautiful things out of my own pocket, so much is it like I’m on holiday, and so beautiful is night-time in the Kersko woods. But