e, to our cemetery in the forest, I could see how these outsiders so loathe each other’s guts that they’re on the go and up and down all day long, blasted by their hatred into a far corner of their plot, only when a cloudburst or night arrives do they withdraw into their shared chalet, their family tomb, where they deceive one another with sweet talk while actually checking them out to see how much longer they’re going to live. I saw these incomers laying themselves down in common coffins, a common pit, like freaks tidied off into crates after the last show, I can see sleepers tossing about in bed and getting the sheet in knots as they worry whether or not they’ve forgotten to put away their name-tagged picks and forks, spades and mattocks, whether or not they’ve forgotten to raise their ladder skywards and prop it against a pine tree and bind it with a chain through the rungs round the tree, and whether or not they’ve forgotten to padlock the chain… and so I rode on with ever more beautiful ideas, ever prettier images, streaming lightly from my eyes and brain, and I knew that what the girl, going on and on at the top of her voice about her uncle, it had suddenly dawned that what she was saying she wasn’t saying just to me, but to the entire forest, and not even just that, but to the entire world, so sure was she that her uncle was the oddball to end all oddballs. And she rode nice and slowly and I, like a faithful hound with my eyes sunk into her like her saddle, she rode as if riding through tar or honey or gum arabic, just sauntering along, and then she turned off into a side avenue and the way brightened through a birch grove, and this very birch grove is the one like when you’re reading Chekhov, all television stories are also shot here in this little wood, and the little meadow beyond the trees was bright, with a mist floating over it, and down at the whole thing gawped the moon, but a moon so stupid that it was as magnificent as some moron, a breeze gusting from New Leas rustled the reeds and I’d never noticed that rustling before, but now, on that leisurely ride, I heard it all and I was proud of myself and wished for nothing more than to be pedalling behind that girl on a bike, spurting thousands of little lights from the buckles of her black shoes adorned with fake diamonds. And I envied the bike its exquisite load, and the girl kept looking back and when she looked at my hair, her bike began to zigzag, she had to make a quick grab for her handlebars to counter an imminent fall, but all of this was due to me shampooing my hair every other day, spending ages with a comb in front of the mirror and constantly checking with my right hand that my hair had the proper hippie look, of that I’m sure, but if she wants to have a good time, so be it, I mused, because I could see myself and my tea-washed toupee riding through the dark woods, if she wants a good romp, okay, she’s the right age and figure for it. And suddenly I looked and there in front of us was a white gate, and the girl hopped off her bike, unlocked the gate and I was into the yard after her, she propped her bike against the fence and I put mine against hers, but the frames slipped with an almighty racket into the sand and the handlebars got hooked together and in that I saw a promising sign. She’d unlocked the gate, now locked it again, and next to the white fence with white laths stood a white-painted bench and the moon was reflected on the seat and the girl sat down on the moon, the bench was gloss-painted, and I sat next to her and she swapped her shoes for something lighter, handing me some white sandal things as well, and I took them, so light they were that they almost flew up and away like the wings of a bird, and they were like crêpe paper to the touch, but they fitted me like a glove, and as I looked round the plot I knew for definite that something was going to happen here, because the whole yard was marble sand and as meticulously raked as my own fair hair, like corduroy, and as the girl walked about the yard in those shoes, the sand crunched, and only now, by the full light of the moon, did I see this creation, saw that her body was like a spindle with threads unwinding from it that I rewound optically straight round my genitals, and what turned me on most was that as she walked, her thighs heaved fabulously and described such a beautiful curve that I knew that this girl had fallen from the fifth floor of Ottoman heaven. And I saw that the walls of the chalet had been whitewashed the day before, as it seemed, and I saw that the windows had been cleaned with glass cleaner that very morning and the curtains washed the day before and rehung that day, not that that was really the case, but everything was so neat and tidy that I, a young and messy old thing, couldn’t fail to notice until it hurt. After that I wasn’t in the least surprised by the white Octavia estate parked under an oak tree, its seats covered in white sheepskin, spare shoes on the floor, and the whole Octavia gleaming as if it had just driven out of a beauty parlour. And I told myself ‘Get a grip, lad, here we go,’ because she’d unlocked the front door and having gone inside, she stopped and suddenly turned and pressed herself against me, and I could feel her thigh touching the key in my pocket, and her hands went straight for my hair and I knew it made her feel good, my straw-coloured hair, and I held her by the waist, but she still had all ten fingers in my curls, so I had all my ten about her body, twenty fingers in all, and ten of them couldn’t get enough of my coiffure and my ten couldn’t get at her skin, and I thought this was the one thing on her mind, but then she went on with her family saga and full of her own mystique, she burbled tenderly on: “… see, darling, uncle’s funeral was just as sad as the rest of his life, he didn’t have a single friend left in the village, because for these bumpkins uncle was a lost cause, him letting his animals get too close, see, darling, in the country he put sheep above people, that’s a sin, see? So it was just me who buried uncle and even then I was on tenterhooks in case the sheep smashed the gates down, because all the way to the grave I could hear them bleating in the knowledge that uncle was in the cemetery, so the sexton quickly shovelled soil over the grave, because, dear, if the sheep did break through the gates, they’d have jumped in and trampled the coffin, see? — when a farmer doth die, his animals cry, so I sold the sheep on the hoof to some butchers, they got planks and trestles and rigged up a place of execution right there in the yard, and it was sad, one sheep after another, and they laid them on their backs in among the planks and cut their throats, and you know, dear, I understood why the sheep is a symbol of longsuffering and Christian humility, and you’d never believe, dear, how handsome those butchers were, beautiful as bulls, yet ox-eyed, like you were looking at statues of Greek demigods, see, if the sins of the world were wiped clean at abbatoirs, they’d be like the priests, the last ewe, dear, she jumped up on her own, all they did was lay her down, and trotting after her came a little lamb, which also jumped up and was still suckling… so first they snicked the ewe, then they watched lovingly for a moment at the suckling lamb, and then like this, one quick swish of the knife, and a trickle of blood started, mingling with the milk, but the butchers were so handsome, dear, with black forelocks, that if they’d been even a teeny bit handsomer, they’d be like part of the family, dear, almost as beautiful as your golden hair…,” the girl kept gushing at me, thinking it might make her feel better if she could transfer these images of the sheep onto me, but I was holding her with all ten fingers under the arms, and when I lifted her up, she ran all her ten fingers into my hair and I carried her over to the sofa under the window into the moonlight, so I had to look out into the yard, where one half of a white-painted shed door had opened, and the gloss paint shone back so like a floodlight that I put the girl down and stood up and looked, and out of the door came the white figure of a man in a long, white, knitted sweater, the kind of sweater, it was, last seen on St Wenceslas, a sweater knitted of thin wire, and the young man was walking barefoot across the marble sand and straight towards our bikes and he stood legs apart and kept staring at them until he threw up both arms and almost shook the stars, so angry was the man that both bikes collapsed with a clatter into the sand and I saw my pedal get tangled in the net skirt guard of her rear wheel, a net that makes a peacock’s tail… and the young man, this alarmed me because the door wasn’t locked, came across to the front door, I heard him put an ear quietly to the door, I heard him quietly, lightly finger the door handle, try it, open it, but then close it again and it went quiet, and the girl held me in all her ten fingers and dug her little nails into my skin, and I could hear the handwriting of her fearful heart as she inscribed the fear into my head… then the quiet footsteps receded, then the back of the man crossed the yard, suddenly the young man was withered and aged, his back like the body of a cello or tiny double base, heading straight for the shed, suddenly I felt sorry for him, because that long, knee-length sweater made him into a saint, and also, the moment he entered the shed, the door half seemed to shut itself behind him, and again I was dazzled by the white gloss until it hurt my eyes, and then all went quiet again, only the Moon moaned on like a moron, like a monotonous idiot. I says to the girclass="underline" “Who in heaven’s name’s that wandering around in the yard?” She said, and she still had all ten fingers in my hair, as if holding on to some priceless vase or something, she said: “Don’t worry, dear, it’s my ex, that’s all, see, but I can’t love him any more, on the other hand he can’t live without me, so I let him sleep here in the shed when he comes for the weekend, and he’s come…” I said: “But what manner of man is he, for God’s sake?” And she said: “Well, my dear, I don’t mind that he’s a hangman’s assistant, the reason I broke up with him was his name, you should remember, dear, that’s how fussy I am, hangman’s assistant fine, but the fact that his name’s Tělíčko, like ‘bodikin’, goodness no… ugh, Tělíčko!” She did that spitting thing like when you’ve got a hair or something on your tongue, right in my eyes, but she was still holding my head in all ten fingers as if she was carrying a rugby ball across the line. I stiffened my resolve and said: “Look here,” I said, “and who are you, my little beauty?” She said: “I’ve got a degree in aesthetics, you know, that beautiful science of beauty, but I’ve only recently found a job that suits me, a job I enjoy…” And I said: “And what do you enjoy, darling?” She sat up, did up the button on the fabulous sweatshirt given me by my ex, the one I was paying alimony to, and having done that, she bent down and handed me one of the endless array of little crêpe paper shoes and sandals, and then she told me: “I wash and dress corpses ready for the coffin…” And before I could compose myself she placed her lips against my chattering teeth, and at that moment I clearly registered that this girl had beautiful eyes, like two butchers, eyes almost as beautiful as my blond, drained spaghetti-like hair, hair like the footballer Pivarník’s.