Next day, as he prepared to move, as he fetched the last boxes and crates and put them on the lorry, Mr Novák brought from his little room a basket containing six kittens, Lucy and Polly expected the basket to be loaded along with them, but Mr Novák locked the inn, climbed into the lorry and Lucy and Polly sat on the low wall round the terrace, the kittens crawled out and snuggled clumsily under Lucy, then the lorry receded and the cats were left alone, staring after the departing lorry and not doubting that it was for but a short while, that their master had gone away on holiday, that sooner or slightly later he’d be back. But Mr Novák didn’t come back, it started to rain and the cats dragged the kittens off through a hole in the side of the pub into the dark and dirty, low, underfloor space beneath, and Lucy and Polly sat at the edge of the road and stared in the direction from which their master should be coming back. But he didn’t come, some people did come and left, then more came, they opened the door, Lucy and Polly ran inside the pub and lay down by the stove, but the strangers chased them out and shouted at them, stamping their feet, the cats wanted to get close again, after all, previously everybody loved them and they were accustomed to nothing but being stroked, but these people stamped their feet at them, so Lucy and Polly crawled into the bushes and poked their little heads out, but not even that was enough and the people kept stamping their feet and chasing them away through the bushes into the forest. Then it was quiet, Lucy and Polly brought little mice for the kittens, but there was no milk, and so they learned to go to the gulley to drink, until one day they rejoiced: a lorry was arriving, just like the one Mr Novák had left in, but two people got out of it, unlocked the pub, carried their own crates and boxes into the kitchen and back rooms, and then these people started bringing buckets of water and scrubbing the floor and washing the dishes and cursing and swearing because Mr Novák had left all the dishes as he’d brought them from the tables, cups full of coffee grounds and a mess all round, as the old custom dictated, so that the publican arriving after the publican who’d left would get the best out of the pub. And we regulars turned up the very next day and rejoiced that from now on the pub would be as it should be, it was two brothers, Luboš and Václav, and they immediately set to, planning a menu with seven main courses and considering the possibility of instituting Pilsner Urquell as the house beer, or at least Kozel Beer from Velké Popovice, the one with the dancing goat logo. And once more we were delighted, and once more we had our goulash or tripe soups, and the new boys were spry and brisk, and they let it be known that they hoped to make enough money to afford a car, and that there’d be no day when they’d be closed, but that the pub would jolly along right through the day, from morning till night, and they showed us how they’d scrubbed the floors and that cleanliness was their watchword… And we were all delighted, but I wasn’t, because as soon as Polly and Lucy ran in and sat on our laps or curled up by the enamel stove, the first thing the new management did was to grab hold of them and throw them out of the door, shouting at them that there was no room for them at this inn, because pub hygiene and cats were incompatible… and so it came to pass that Polly and Lucy were no longer allowed inside, they would stand on the low wall round the terrace then, when it started to rain, all their kittens gradually died, when the snow started to fall, Polly and Lucy, by now quite desperate, came running in several times hoping to be permitted at least a little warmth, but the young licensees chased them out with brooms and sticks, or caught them and literally kicked them out through the open door… several times I went to pat them, but they’d lost their trust, and so while the orchestrion blared away inside and the stove was blazing hot and the inn was nice and warm, Lucy and Polly, as soon as someone approached, would flee the other way, away from any person, and then, after the door closed, they’d sit beside the door and watch the handle, wondering whether it might not be opened one day by their lovely master, Mr Novák. But Mr Novák didn’t come, so Lucy and Polly, though two-year-olds, aged and grew wrinkles on their brows like an old St Bernard, they were run down with hunger and during the day, with nowhere else to go, they preferred to curl upon under the floor of the inn, jumping in through the air vent on the street side. They could see any cars arriving, they could see any people arriving and urinating on their air vent at fly height, they stayed curled up and slept, while above their heads feet and boots clomped around and chairs scraped, they heard human footsteps, but they didn’t come out, except perhaps at night to snack on cold, sometimes frozen, scraps. But every winter’s day, when the frost was cruel and Lucy and Polly curled up in a huddle so as to keep warm under the floor, they never missed their evening excursion, and when the inn was crowded and the music loud and commingled with drunken singing, Lucy and Polly would trot out onto the terrace, then round the side they would hop up to the window and the boxes full of soil and shrivelled and frozen begonias left over from the summer, and there they would sit side by side and gaze into the brightly lit inn, at the fired-up enamel stove, and maybe they were dreaming or thinking back to the times when, curled up round the stove, they used to lie there contented, sprawling, turned over on their backs, warming themselves from all sides. When I saw them there, I would walk up quietly, I could see their curious, rapt eyes which saw inside the inn something called hope, a memory of wondrous times past, I could see that this sight alone sufficed for them to live in hope that the day would come when this lot would all leave and Mr Novák would come back, the man who loved them and whom they loved back… And they would stay looking until the frost began to draw ice flowers on the glass, flowers other than flowers of hope, the beautiful flowers of winter, and Lucy and Polly, no longer able to see a thing through the snowy-frosty etchings, jumped silently down and slipped through the urine-soaked, frozen air vent back under the floor and wriggled their way across to the spot from which sprang and reared the flue that served the stove, there they curled up in the dust, entwined, breathing onto each other’s paws and necks, then with a sigh they fell asleep to dream of the wondrous times they believed would return one day, because the pub belonged to their master, not these people, and because, since it did belong to Mr Novák, and so too to them, it was their, Polly and Lucy’s, right to be able to warm themselves by the stove. Later, on my daily visits to the pub, I would pause with my hand on the door handle and wonder, should I go in or not? But because I’m incoherent by nature, I did go in and exchanged a cordial “Good evening” with Václav and Luboš, the new licensees, who might well have kept a clean kitchen, who might well have had a menu with six main courses, who may well have installed a massive orchestrion that drove most patrons crazy because they had to shout to make themselves heard, so in the end they didn’t even try, except in the gaps, which were only very short… yet there, next to the enamelled cast-iron stove, the dustpan and coal shovel sat warming themselves, though it should have been Lucy and Polly… the two cats, who for now would sit, ears pricked, in a window-box for annuals, with one little paw raised at the ready, as if they were on the look-out for a mouse, they would stare into the nice warm pub like two little old ladies who’d sneaked up to the inn’s windows to watch the firemen’s ball, nothing escaped them, they watched keenly all the things they themselves had done in times past, they had danced and drunk griotte and beer and been either happy or unhappy, but they had been in their pub, the pub that belonged to them with all their joys and woes. And the frost intensified and the ice flowers changed into a polyester curtain that drew a misty veil across Polly and Lucy’s precious world…