then, but now I’m on duty, right? And what’s the axe for?” Joe says: “You know I’m a carpenter, I do odd jobs, like.” And I says: “And do you have a license and pay tax?” Joe says: “Of course, I do, I pay my taxes…,” and he tottered and says: “Don’t you reckon that’s enough? Can I go now?” And I could tell he was going to fall into the ditch again, so I unscrewed one of his valves and tossed it over a hedge into an irrigation channel and the tyre let out a sigh and I decided: “Look here, Joe, you’re not as young as you used to be, you’d be better off on foot…” And Joe stood there speechless, I could see he wanted to say — and inside he was saying — ‘you filth, you bloody piece of filth, what a way to treat an old pal, you shitbag, what a way to treat a friend you’ve known since we were kids, what a way for one worker to treat another!’ But he said nothing, just set off, wheeling his bike with the vein on his forehead swelling with rage. And I stood there and watched him go, the Moon lifting so as to push him along by the shoulders. Joe’s shadow had shrunk, like when you look down on a cello or double base from above, and I wondered, had I done right by tossing his valve, or not? In the end, I decided I had been right to let his tyre down because, like a father, it was down to me to prevent an accident, so I wasn’t even surprised when I heard Joe calling back to me from the spring: “You should be ashamed o’ yourself, treatin’ a fellow worker like that!” And then I ran after him, took him by the shoulder and said: “And because you were riding without lights, I’m going to fine you fifty crowns, and let that be an end of it, all right?” And he looked at me, and I could just see him in the same situation as that time, long ago, when I was a warrant officer and riding along on my bike, and as I reached the point where there was a culvert under the road, I thought I heard someone shouting: ‘Help! Help!’, dully, like from inside a house… so I leapt off my bike and kept running into the woods and then the voice came again as if from the road, so I ran across to the far side of the road and beyond, and then it sounded as if it was on the road, so I kept running hither and thither and reducing the actual distance to the road, and all the time there was this terrible shouting: ‘Help! Help! good folks, help…,’ by which time I could tell the shouting was coming from the very middle of the road, so I went towards the culvert and there in among the wild raspberries and brambles lay a bicycle, and a pair of legs were poking out of the culvert, and I grabbed the legs and pulled and out came Joe, the roadmender, rumbling drunk. He sat up and rubbed his eyes: “I thought it were night-time! Thanks, pal, you saved my life, I owe you fifty pints an’ an invite next time I kill a pig…” — this time I shone my torch and knew that as he handed me the fifty crowns he was thinking of the same thing as me, how for fifty pints I’d saved his life beneath the culvert, but I wanted to take him down a peg, teach him a lesson, that he had to have lights, because rules is rules… And then he took himself off with his bike, meek and barely able to walk, it wasn’t just his tyre I’d let down, but his soul, too, and that’s how it should be, when I’m on duty I don’t know even my own brother, I once fined my son for parking in the wrong place, and though he hasn’t spoken to me since, I’m quite happy talking to myself and the Moon, the Moon hanging up there in the sky, I talk to the pine trees when they let out their smell, these are my friends, and I can tell that ditches and streams and ponds are my friends, I don’t care for others any more, I don’t want to know them. I’m a loner. So I sat down, the Moon sat on my lap like some girl or other, I held out my arms and the moonlight licked my hands like a kitten, or a police dog. By now the lights in the inn were all out, some cyclists rode past me saying things that I didn’t like very much, some folk, when they’re on their bikes, they’re so loud, it’s not exactly anti-state jibes, nothing conspiratorial, but they can say such treasonous things that if I were the least bit inclined, I could have them up in court and into jail, but from their general tone and tenor I took it to be the beer talking, and when all’s said and done, things come to my hearing like to a confessor, I hear what people are thinking, I hear them having a rant, and when I’m talking to myself, I also have the odd rant, but never out loud… So I got up and strode moonwards back to the inn, the restaurant in the woods, inside they were all asleep, I took a chair, one of the red folding chairs, stood it by the edge of the road and thought awhile about myself, then with some effort dispelled the image of my wife, who had left me, and of my son, who had left me, and saw myself sitting there, abandoned, on a folding garden seat, powerful, but alone, and if I didn’t have the Moon, and if I wasn’t so fond of drainage ditches and didn’t love pine trees and ripening fields and the sweet-smelling furrows of arable land, I’d actually have no grounds at all for feeling happy, more the reverse, but whenever I started getting a bit morbid, I’d place a hand on the medals I’d been given, the decorations, and that gave me strength, and I would tell myself that people who’ve received the highest honours, they’re not all happy either, their wives and sons might have left them too, but when they look at their medals, they attain that happiness, that recognition that equates to happiness, so I began to smile and I was proud of myself and at peace with myself. And then a car came out of the trees down below, I could tell it was a white Trabant and could see it belonged to none other than Mr Kimla from the chemist’s, so I switched my torch on and waved it up and down, and when the car slowed, I shone the torch on my medals so the driver could see it was the commandant himself waiting here for him, and he drove right up to me and stopped. He wound down the window and asked disconsolately: “Should I get out or not?” I said: “You can stay where you are, Mr Kimla, but how many glasses of wine have you had?” Mr Kimla brightened: “Two, two small ones.” And I said: “Not more?” He replied anxiously: “Not more…” I paused, letting him suffer, I was tormenting him, all was quiet and the night came streaming through the leaves of the oak trees and moon-white blotches like coconut milk formed on the ground. I said: “And what kind of wine was it, white or red?” And the chemist agonised: “Red, and I had a lot to eat and I was also drinking mineral water.” He had spoken and I could see that he’d had rather more to drink, but I could see what a beautiful night it was and how beautiful the Moon was and so, as with Joe, I was indulgent, magnanimous. I crossed one booted leg in front of the other and said: “We might suppose that’s not very much, mightn’t we?” And the chemist rejoiced: “Very little…” And I pulled myself up to my full height and said: “But it’s enough to lose your license for. However! I’m in a good mood and so a fine of five hundred crowns will put matters right. And get out of the car!” And I could see that he couldn’t get up out of the seat, not that he’d been drinking, just mortified at the image of a five hundred-crown fine, mortified to the extent that his rheumatism got him and he started staggering and I was wallowing in it — I couldn’t stand people who broke down in the face of a fine… And I says: “Lock the car, and have you got the money on you?” He picked up his bag and said: “No, I’ve only got a hundred…,” which he offered to me, but I says: “And at home, have you got any money in the house?” He said: “Yes…” And I says: “My Volga’s parked there in the ride behind those oaks, so we can pop along and get that fine…,” and I strode off ahead, and the fact that the chemist followed me wearing only slippers rallied my spirits and my class awareness, and so we got in my car and the chemist squirmed and whimpered, he didn’t have much money and would three hundred do, and I let him hope by saying wait till we got to his place… and so we reached his place, well, a cottage like that could only belong to a chemist of substance, all those valuable pictures and beaten copper jugs, and he wandered about explaining that the pieces came all the way from Italy and he went on and on, but I told him to get the money… the fine, and he pulled out the hundreds as if they were thorns jammed deep into his palm…, I picked them up, tore off a receipt and put it on the table… The chemist shoved his wallet in his breast pocket, smiled and said: “Shall I get some glasses?” I said: “No,” and tore off another receipt for two hundred crowns, and the chemist blanched and came over queasy and his hands shook as he shelled out two hundred more in fifty-crown notes. I rose, jingled the keys of his Trabant and my mind was made up… “Now you can walk back to your car, by the time you get there you’ll have sobered up enough from your two glasses of red wine…” He moaned: “Take me back in your Volga, Comrade Commandant…” But I was unrelenting, and held the door handle. “I’ve told you. It’s three kilometres, so walk slowly, treat your lungs to the fresh air and sober up. And as you pass the St Joseph Spring, have a sip of the water…,” and I left, ran down the steps and strolled over to my Volga, which shimmered and shone in a bottle-green colour that was edged in silver and covered the car in fantastical flashes. On the way, I was thinking how wonderful it would be when every national committee all over the world would be chaired by someone with a university education, when that chairman would speak both his own language and then Russian, and he would send reports to the district authority, and the district to the regional authority, and the region to the Central Committee, and the Central Committee would send reports to Moscow and there all the reports from all over the world would be assembled, showing how many thefts and robberies there’d been all over the world, how many murders and adulteries there’d been and how many crimes against the state, and there the Comrades would know, just as for a thousand years the Catholic Church has known, how to set about reducing crime and elevating mankind, to which I myself, though with no university degree, have already been applying myself, like today, in the Kersko forest, when I let Joe Procházka’s tyre down and then opted to return a drink-driver’s car keys to him, but leaving him to walk three kilometres, sober up and then return home with the car… Governor of Kersko, Governor of Kersko… I whispered to myself, but that Soviet-style nickname was invented for me by my enemies and enemies of the state… but there’s something to it, I have no degree and yet they call me Governor… that’s nice, it’s quite pleasing, I thought, reaching for my breast, for the orders that covered the beating of my Communist heart… so tomorrow I’ll give my friend Joe his fine back and buy him a valve for the tyre I let down today…