“Got a license for that? Bet you haven’t!” she shouted.
And all eyes turned to the male hand, which may indeed not have had a license for such public intimacy, since it ceased to fondle the precious flesh.
And the pale guy came back from the toilet, drops of clean water twinkling in his hair. The maid of honour stared long at this watery halo and cried out, delighted as it dawned:
“’Ad a good puke, did yer?”
And the man in the indeterminate uniform nodded, sank onto a chair and worked his jaws. And I went on toying with the beer-mat, still staring at the cardboard circle going round and round in my fingers and a pink shadow fell over me, then the maid of honour’s pink hands rested on the tablecloth and her pink frame drooped over me and I froze in fear lest her pink throat start gushing beer over me as from a pink fountain, as from a pink jug. But instead the maid of honour spewed out words that shook me even more.
“Old man,” she cried, “you bought yourself a rosary yet?”
And I went on toying with the halo, the maid of honour watched me and she can’t have been more than eighteen, her chubby pink arms, pink neck and all her exposed flesh shone with golden beer, she was like a little pink piglet, which, to give it nice crunchy crackling, has been gone over with a pastry brushed soaked in beer. And I put on my best human eyes, that look of an apologetic little dog who’s just caused a car crash, and with those eyes I begged the maid of honour to retract that with which she had just soaked me. By this point, the two middle-aged lovebirds had paid and were standing in the doorway, waiting to see how I would come to terms with the next home-truth. But the pink maid of honour raised a finger at me and cried:
“Old man, writers and pigs are only memorable after death!”
The drunk patron in spectacles rose from by the toilet and clapped and shouted:
“Hurraaah! Encooore! Bravooo!”
Then a woman came running in and before we knew it she’d felled the man in specs with a single punch, his glasses flew up and away, then clinked against a brass bracket and the woman grabbed the patron and dragged him lightly towards the door as if she was trailing her jacket, and as she dragged him along, she couldn’t stop herself pushing his bleeding face against the wall, leaving a long streak along it. Then she jammed her straw hat on her head and barged out onto the pavement with the drunk patron, who was enjoying every minute of it and shouting: “Bravooo! Encooore!” And the middle-aged lovers left in a hurry, as if they’d just seen what the future held for them. And the pink maid of honour danced off out of the White Lion and I drank one Gambrinus after another, such sweet beer that it is, and thought back to that blonde girl of thirty years before, sitting in a rowing boat with a red parasol, and I’d walked into the river in my suit and asked if I might take her out for a row. And she’d said yes, and I, waist-deep in the water, swung one leg straight into the boat and then got rowing and I was dripping wet, and far beyond the city I jumped into the water and pulled the boat up onto the sand, then I offered her a hand to help her out of the boat, so we lay there on the hot sand and she begged me to dry my clothes, there wasn’t anyone around anyway, and once I stripped off, she calmed down and lay down next to me and closed her eyes; I plucked up the courage and silently undressed her too, but once she was naked, I couldn’t go any further, so beautiful was that white body among the osiers beyond the city that I did no more than gaze on it. After that we only ever met with our clothes on, never again was I so carried away by her beauty that I walked into the river with my clothes on forgetting to strip off. So for thirty years I remained that young man, until last year, when I was walking down Lazarská Street and this woman ran into me and: “I say, granddad, where’s the court around here?” I said: “Sorry?” And again: “Where’s the court around here, grandad?” Since when I’ve been an old man, leading up to last year when a student offered me her seat in the tram: “Do sit down, pop.”
Now I’m sitting in the White Lion, drinking pink Gambrinus, the whole pub is pink, pink curtains, even the table-cloths are turning pink, I’m sitting in pink solitude and lapsing into pink doldrums and nihilities, the two floating zeros on the lavatory door are my pink emblem, ‘Little pink life of mine,’ I muse, ‘your once prosperous business is going bust, you must settle with all your creditors, making sure you owe nothing to the elements from whom you’ve taken everything for the book, little pink life, I’m slipping into bankruptcy and it’s beginning to dawn that with true contrition and penitence a new account can be opened at the bank of infinity and eternity, those two zeros, those two cavernous gullets of yawning nullity, the two zeros incised heraldically in the doors of all gentlemen’s toilets…’ I’m in the White Lion and finishing off my last beer, on the wall the waiters have fixed a yellow board at which they’re throwing sharp-pointed darts trimmed with gaudy flights, darts of the sharpness and weight of a pair of compasses bent back straight, each player starts with three hundred points and the first to reach zero wins. I’ve also played and, playing, have won, I was the first to have nothing left.
I paid and went out into the fresh air. From now on, dear heart, I say, you only need to open the paper and every obituary is your own death notice, every fatal accident in the crime and casualties pages is yours, every ambulance hurtling along, siren screaming from its roof, is heading your way. So for you, my dear, I tell myself, everything is somewhere else, returning to the beginnings is your way forward, dreams of beautiful girls are the interior monologue of ageing flesh, my dear, I say, through conversation you have sought the hypertexts and subtexts of all conversations, but now, instead of humour, you find an awkward silence broken by an angel’s song. You may, my dear, consider it a mercy that this night’s end will be marked by the daystar, though you well know that lights-out and reveille are blown on the same trumpet. So, my dear, your sole inheritor is a certain grave from which the sight of the night sky hauls you by the hair, a sky in which from eternity to eternity invisible hands holding two invisible knitting needles knit a dark-blue sweater adorned with visible stars… Meditating thus, I reached Palmovka. The main road rolled its paving stones out into a chequered carpet, the mauve lights of traffic islands cooed amorously and the breeze blowing off the river gave the tramlines a good polishing and the tram wires glinted like saliva trailing from the mouth of a love-crazed swain. Then in the distance a pink figure flitted beneath the lights, I caught the smell of pale beer. And there below, above the railway line, a red light glowed and a bell jingled, and the lamp floated slowly down and I, full of bitterness, asked myself, ‘Am I really a granddad, an old boy, old man?’ And as with my youth restored I raced the descending level-crossing barriers, having to bend low to run under them, so, head down, I ran onto the tracks like a true athlete breasting the tape. And at that very instant a pink mist fell across my eyes and I fell, toppled by the shock of the impact, and fireflies came swarming from my head. When the pink mist dispersed, the pink maid of honour was sitting next to me on the tracks, like me she had hurt her head, against mine. The furious lady crossing keeper ran up and dragged us off the tracks. Just then a steam engine trundled past, splattering my face with a mixture of water and oil and scalding my trousers with hot steam. The crossing keeper raised the large and the small barriers and the red light rattled happily away on the erect pole.
“Pea-brain!” the railwaywoman hollered, “where were you going in such a hurry, come on!”
“To the other side,” says I.