his one, as a tribute to her sister from the Chobot range, is Jaunty Josephine, this is Comely Caroline, the most beautiful one of all, see how exactly her crown is branched. This one’s fit for a window in Chartres cathedral, which is why she’s called Our Lady, Notre Dame, and this one, from her physiognomy, see? — she’s St Cecilia with both breasts knocked off… the thing is, Mr Methie, when I come out here to get away from Prague, it’s a habit I got from the lady teachers I bought the land from, they also had names for the pine trees, and whenever they came out here they would first bow to the trees, a deep Slav bow from the waist, passing from one pine to the next, and as they left, the same again…,” I said, and we came out onto the grass that sloped down to the brook, which you couldn’t see, but it was babbling away as if it had just cleaned its teeth and was gargling in different keys and agglomerations of sounds according to the inclination of its throat. “Hell,” said Mr Methie in amazement, “and what’s this here?” He took my torch and shone it on a tall, cloven-trunked willow… “Now that’s something,” he gushed and carefully shone the torch on the entire tree, already completely coated in new yellow bark over all its twigs and branches. “Mařenka told me my fortune…,” I said. And Mr Methie pointed the torch and made the shadows of all the branches dance, “What fortune might that have been?” Again he looked about him with the torch and then, having gone down close to the brook and taken a long look at the crystal clear water rolling the tiny pebbles and bits of flint over and over and clattering into the green waterweed and grasses hidden in the water, he gave his considered opinion: “Hell, you’re going to find it hard to die…,” and I understood that Mr Methie had said something really nice on my account and I understood that if you have a beautiful girlfriend or a beautiful pine forest and an even more beautiful stream with living water, you, or anyone, would be loath to die, and all for that very beauty. “Right,” said Mr Methie, “here’s the tub, shall we take it?” And we tried to yank the tub out of the earth, but the wood of the base was still frozen solid. Finally we put everything we’d got into it, our legs giving at the knees, and we yanked the tub out, complete with soil and dead leaves. We carried it to the sidecar and I asked: “Do you have a set of butcher’s knives?” Mr Methie said he didn’t. “So I’ll get my own knives and cutters, come from old army bayonets and combat knives, they do.” Then I turned the lights out and the motorbike started up, I sat at the head of the dead sheep and held on to the tub, the edge of which, with all its soil and frozen leaves, dug into the dead sheep, and I held the tub in such a way as to keep its hoops from touching the liver and lights. Mr Methie drove, and to judge by the motorbike’s sound it was a Jawa 250 Perak, he left the main drag down a side avenue, which was unsurfaced, skirting round puddles of ground water, because it’s low-lying here, the lowest spot in Bohemia, the lowest spot in the area, which is why water gathers here and at just one spade’s depth there’s a gush of mineral water, so every cottage and every building is standing on water, which seeps through walls and piling like when the wick drags the paraffin up in an oil lamp. “Do you know,” said Mr Methie, slowing down and putting one hand on his waist, “do you know what my tree is?” I said: “Pine.” “Noooo,” Mr Methie lowed. “Sallow or willow then,” I hazarded. “Nooo,” he said, adding quickly with a sense of satisfaction, “Aspen, because it’s flowering right now, now at the start of January, because it’s the first, and rather a nice harbinger of Spring. And he turned the handlebars sideways, put the foot-brake on and jumped off, went round into the light of the headlamp, took a key from his pocket, kissed it, then unlocked the gate, then he bent down, lifted the catch and proudly swung the gate open. Jumping back on the bike, he said proudly: “Made the gate myself, took me only a hundred and sixty-five standard working hours. Good, eh?” He turned to me and his white teeth and smile shone in the dark like the numbers on a phosphoresecnt alarm clock that has just started to jangle. I said: “Aspen, aspen, but that’s the tree Judas hanged himself on, after he’d betrayed Jesus, and so did Durynk, having murdered the prince’s page, thinking to please… But listen, Mr Methie, do you like mutton?” And Mr Methie spat and said: “Can’t stand the sight of it…” I said: “So why on earth did you buy it, barter for it?” And Mr Methie jumped off the bike, switched on the lights that had gone out and said with such rapture that his voice faltered: “You have to understand. Not buy a thing when it’s a real bargain? That’s me, buying beautiful things cheap, maybe flawed, but not to buy a thing, when it’s so cheap…” And he went and pressed the switch set into the wall of the house, which connected, downwards, to his workshop, which connected, downwards, to the outhouse, which connected, downwards, to the woodshed, the roof of which ended in the damp earth and which connected, downwards and last in line, to a lean-to, which had some pipes poking ominously out of it like the barrels of a katyusha rocket launcher or an array of little mountain artillery pieces. And over all this was the symphonic hum of the pinewood, which couldn’t grow tall because of the ground water, all their lives the trees had stood up to their ankles in the acidic solution, which trickled slowly down to this point from all the more elevated black soils and pools and rust-coloured waters of mineral springs. And that whole stretch about the house, which is hidden in summer beneath a merciful growth of rampant raspberry bushes and baby aspens and birches, the whole stretch, which bore no trace of any cottage, was now illuminated like a circus at night, like a merry-go-round with all the lights on, or a freak show half an hour before the evening performance. On an open space stood an awesome machine, a two-ton monstrosity, something like a lathe. And Mr Methie watched my amazement: “Quite something, eh? All it’s missing is the flywheel and engine, but not buy it when it was going for a song…?” and he took out a notebook and looked in it and raised his head jingling with joy: “If I put in a hundred and thirty standard working hours on this machine, I’ll be able to cut planks, but not just planks, whole rafters! And the outlay will come back not once, but ten times over…” And I hauled the tub down and began to regret ever getting involved in this adventure with a sheep, though remembering that otherwise I’d have been sitting indoors moping over time that had stood still, I commanded: “Mr Mike, get me a scrubbing brush!” And Mr Methie went into the house and triumphantly brought out to the pump a plastic wash-tub containing not ten, but fifty scrubbing brushes, I picked one and started scrubbing away at the tub in the stream of acidic water and saw the bristles of the scrubbing brush crumbling away, but when I took up another brush, Mr Methie jubilated: “Not buy ’em? One brush cost fifty hellers… Have you any idea what a bargain that was?” I said: “That’s all very well, but fetch a table out here, so we can get on with butchering the carcass, the sheep!” And Mr Methie went into the house, I carried on scrubbing by the light of some lamps and spotlights that shone up into the black of the pine trees, I scrubbed away and was already onto my fourth brush… And Mr Methie dragged a table outside, stood it right up against the wall, which was bare brick, not a hint of plaster, and that whole summer seat was starting to look like the ghastly, crummy yard of some poor plumber or mechanic who, dismayed at all that he saw about him, had gone and hanged himself. Then we took hold of the sheep, lay it on the table, I got a knife and, revolted, removed the dry leaves and commanded: “Mr Mike, bring me an axe, will you?” And Mr Methie went to look for an axe and his voice remained jubilant and kept calculating numbers of standard working hours, which he multiplied up then exulted at the gleefully double-underlined total of standard working hours represented by some joyous objective unknown to me as the highlight of the strivings that gave meaning to his life, probably keeping him awake at night, and I worried at the surprises that the house, the workshops and sheds might yet yield up… And from the little shed Mr Methie rejoiced: “Haha! They think they can advise me what to do, when I’m a professional planner! Me! Advise me!” He laughed until he started to choke and he waved his arm around and drove away all that outrageous advice as he handed me an axe. “I’ve got thirty axes in all, but not buy them when they cost three crowns apiece? And you reckon they’ve been overfired? Well I’ll just have to go easy with them… but what a bargain, eh?” And I sliced open the belly and like taking the innards out of a pendulum clock I removed the wonderful fleshy workings of the sheep’s entrails and laid the pluck out on the table, the throat frill glittered like rings of chalcedony, the liver lay limp in the magnificent colour of a cardinal’s hat and in the fluorescent lighting the lungs had the delicate pink of the fluffy clouds and sky after sundown that foretell rain, the lightly frozen caul fat formed beautiful white clouds floating across the sky of the table, clouds against a winter sky, clouds full of sleet and snow, and the flare fat like molehills on a meadow, like a human brain full of folds and incisions… “We’ll make a spicy goulash with it tomorrow and add the tongue…,” I said, and I cut off the head with its blue eyes and jelly oozing out of the nostrils, jelly as beautiful as royal jelly… and I split the head open, pulled out and cut off the tongue, dispelling the ghastly thought of how they’d cut out Jesenius’ living tongue in the market place, a thought that went away, yet didn’t, hanging on disguised in a nebulous haze… And so as to be rid of the haze too, lock, stock and barrel, I said as an incantation: “Fetch me a little bucket to put the offal in, Mr Mike, we can make a nice paprika goulash and use the brains for thickening!” and I tapped one half, then the other and out fell its thoughts, its last thoughts, its last image of a man with a knife, the man who’d cut the sheep’s throat and swapped it for a little electric motor and fifty crowns, although the sheep had wanted to live, most surely she had wanted to live… And Mr Methie brought — it’s a wonder he didn’t topple over — a whole armful of nested pots, set them down, all in a ring, the pots, and there were twenty or more of them. “Quite something, eh? Not buy ’em? Three crowns apiece, when a pot like these can cost thirty! Who cares if the bottom’s a bit chipped! What a bargain, eh? And they think they can advise me, when I’m a professional planner!” I gently tossed the entrails into a pot with a slightly chipped bottom and then Mr Methie held the sheep by its legs and I cut my way through to the hip joints, dislocated them, broke the hams off like a door from its hinges, then carefully cut the shoulders away, then probed about with the knife to find the last cervical vertebra and with one stroke of the chopper the neck fell away. “That’s the greatest delicacy of all,” I said, shaking the blood-stained scruff, but Mr Methie just made a face like the devil. Then I extricated and broke out the ribs and placed the superb fillet and saddle next to each other on the table. “There we are,” I said, “now I’ll just remove the fat — this sheep was awfully plump — you can render it down, or will you hang it up in chunks for the blue tits?” “For the tits,” said Mr Methie and I listened to the lovely sound made by fat as it’s pulled away using just a finger, a dry sound like when you walk through an oak grove, or oak wood, covered in freshly fallen snow, when your footsteps give a dry squeak and your boots make contact with the snow-covered oak leaves. “Take a break,” Mr Methie said, “we can finish it off later,” and once more he wore that smile of certainty, complacency, about all the things he knew and of which he could never have his full fill, about some grand beauty, some state of dangerous beauty that he wanted to share with me… And he opened the door and my hands glistened with fat, I held my fingers apart, and Mr Methie led me from one heap of things to the next, like a guide in a haunted castle and told me all about everything, his voice jangling with a fervour that had me thinking that Mr Methie had to be a paragon not only to himself, but to the entire world, because Mr Methie had never met such a wonderful, exemplary individual as himself, the professional planner. “So here we’ve got thirty bicycles, never mind the missing handlebars or brakes, but not buy ’em when they cost me a hundred and eighty crowns apiece?… And look at these, hanging here, and I’ll let you have one in a minute, thirty-six waistcoats with little bees all over them, out of fashion now, but they’ll come back in… they’ve got no buttons, or button-holes, because the tailor who was making them got terribly drunk, but not buy ’em when all each one cost me was six crowns fifty?… or here? What’s in these boxes, these cases? It’s theodolites… three of them, they might be old, but not buy ’em when one cost eighty crowns?… but if you were to set out to buy one, they cost eight hundred and more, not everyone’s prepared to let me have things cheap, you know, but I can talk them round! One lens might be missing, but I’ve got a whole box of lenses right here, cost me a hundred and twenty crowns the lot, lenses for every purpose, I’ve got a lifetime’s supply here… but now let me show you the shed, my main storehouse,” said Mr Methie, as I hinted by pointing that it might be a good thing if we finished off that bargain-basement sheep… and he opened up the shed and switched on no less than six bulbs, and inside there were things hanging from the ceiling like in a salami shop, boots, tall padded work boots, and Mr Methie walked round, patting their shins and exulting: “With these I surpassed even myself, one boot cost me five crowns, I talked them round, I drowned out their protestations by the imperative torrent of my will until the manager of the seconds shop himself gave in…” “But I can’t help noticing,” I said, “that all your boots are for the left foot…” “Well obviously,” Mr Methie threw up his hands, “they have to be left-footed, otherwise you couldn’t get them so cheap, right? But look!” And to make his point he took his shoes off and pulled two left boots on, those stout boots, and started walking about in them as if he were sort of limping, or as if he’d got badly adjusted headlights, but he made a good fist of walking in them and revelled: “They’re really nice and warm, like you’re standing in warm water! That’s because they’re felted, see, no good for cross-country running, but ideal for standing while you work, in the workshop, and if you’re just standing, it doesn’t matter whether your feet are left or right, if you’re standing, all you’ve got is feet, and the main thing’s what? That they’re warm… here you are, have a pair as a present from me.” And now he was walking past something that looked like hats for water, but at once he explained: “These here are canvas water buckets! They do leak a bit, but I got a load of patches from the military at a knock-down price, so here you have one army canvas bucket and a sticking plaster… Each bucket cost me ninety hellers, that’s nothing…,” and he led me across to four wind-up gramophones and crowed: “They’ve got no spring, but, not buy ’em when one cost a mere sixty crowns? I’ll get hold of some springs and in a few standard working hours… how much will I make? Thousands, many thou! I’ve already mended one. And Mr Methie brought the needle across and started a record, it was a well-known violin piece played by a symphony orchestra, beautiful and so haunting that I marvelled and looked with my mind’s eye in the direction of the violinist’s bow and arm movements, which bewitched both me and even more Mr Methie, whose eyes misted over, stirred perhaps less with emotion and more with the bargain purchase he’d made, and I too was touched… W