Summer
It is the summer of 1946, the only year and the only season in which all of this could take place. But the only possible location for the tale I am about to tell is Lounice, a village located at the foot of the Highlands, or perhaps even on an extension of them. Surrounded to the north-west by woods and on the south and east by meadows and also by vast fields of wheat and oats and alfalfa and clover and yellow patches of mustard. On one side a distant cluster of fish ponds shaded by reeds and rushes and also the flash of a river quickly lost in the dense cover of trees, and on the other side a colourful chequerboard of leas guarded along the roadside by mulleins up to six foot tall. The bristling fur of the region, bristling in expectation that the wet days of June, when the region gulped down bottomless pails of rain, will now give way to a hot July. The fields gently ripple, brushed by the lightest of breezes.
I am trying to paint a picture of that long-ago postwar summer, but in doing so I mustn’t leave out the vehicles overturned in a ditch and the erect barrel of a broken-down tank in the middle of a field. People pulled dead bodies out of these wrecks in good time to prevent a plague outbreak, but they also promptly unscrewed anything that could be unscrewed, and the remains of war machines, scattered far and wide, peacefully rusted near wayside shrines and in the shade of linden trees and in the buzzing of bees and for a moment came to life eerily in the mirrors of lightning flashes like monstrous insects lining the road to the underworld. And the smartest lads were already running around in tropical helmets, probably from the African campaign of Field Marshal Rommel’s army.
So much for the location and time of the tale I am going to tell.
Jakoubek
So in 1946 he was fourteen years old, and one day in early July he set off to spend the holidays in Lounice. In Jihlava (with a cardboard suitcase tied up with string) he transferred from the train to a bus for a long and bumpy journey along rough roads.
But nobody was waiting to meet him off the bus in Lounice – the last-minute arrangements had somehow got mixed up. However, it wasn’t his first time in Lounice. Hanuš Málek, husbandman, was Jakoubek’s uncle; during the war he and his mother had gone to him for a little bit of sustenance and immediately after the war they had been there for the funeral of the husbandman’s youngest son, Jakoubek’s cousin Vojtěch. A mine on the path to the fish pond. The endlessly long procession wound its way all around the village so that Vojtěch from the shoulders of his former classmates could take a last look at that corner of the earth where up to the age of sixteen he had experienced all he would ever be allowed to experience in life.
With numerous stops on account of the heavy suitcase, Jakub (who will be known as Jakoubek here, since this pet name suits his modest story better) set out for the other end of the village, towards the green gates he knew so well. Within the large gates was a smaller gate that people went through, while the gate itself only opened when the haycart drove in from the village green, which was almost never, since it usually came in the back way, between the barns, across the farmyard. The little gate was only locked at night, or when everyone was out in the fields. Still, Jakoubek did not reach for the ornate iron handle in the form of a weasel but first rang an unobtrusive bell between the window and the gate.
Somewhere inside a dog rushed forward angrily and struck the gate from the other side, making it creak, and Jakoubek quickly backed away. Someone moved aside a thick curtain. Jakoubek expected that the only ones at home at this hour would be his aunt and maybe the gypsy woman, Pančava, who helped with the milking, feeding the animals and other jobs in the stables, barns and garden. And then he heard his aunt ordering someone to go and open up, and energetic steps and the voice of the farmhand silencing the dog.
Boyar was lying pressed against the ground and the farmhand stepped on him with his bare foot for good measure. A monstrously large sheepdog, he was still giving him the evil eye and it seemed as if he didn’t recognize Jakoubek at all and had completely forgotten how last summer they had spent almost the whole day wandering in the surrounding hills together.
When he and his mother had come to that funeral of his cousin’s last year, there had still been a lot of talk about German werewolves, or Wehrwolves, members of a secret Nazi organization that had supposedly entrenched itself in all kinds of places at the end of the war so it could continue to sow terror and death. But Boyar had been specially trained by the husbandman to flush out werewolves, so he acted as bodyguard to Jakoubek during those wanderings in the surrounding hills, not just because of Wehrwolves but more importantly mines. In the very early postwar days there was a pyrotechnic expert staying on the farm, an old schoolmate of the husbandman’s, and he patiently taught and trained Boyar for – as he called it – mine-hunting. Which was an inaccurate term, because he wasn’t supposed to hunt mines but warn against them. Reliably trained. Only that time Vojtěch, the husbandman’s youngest son, went to the pond without Boyar.
Jakoubek was proud of his friendship with such a giant canine beast, but now he understood that in reality it hadn’t really been friendship. Now that Boyar was still giving him the evil eye, it didn’t mean that he had forgotten Jakoubek, but on the contrary remembered very well that last year he had only been acting friendly towards him on the husbandman’s orders, and in the meantime those orders had lapsed.
And so the subject came up over dinner.
You know, Jakub, it always takes a while for Boyar to accept someone into the family. But we’ll get him used to you. And we’ll start right now.
Auntie immediately protested. But the husbandman insisted that there was still plenty of time before it got dark, and that as long as he was with Boyar there was no need to worry.
And so they headed out the back, across the yard, between the pigsties, stables and barns, and Boyar, that lamb of God, was suddenly acting friendly again and there were friendly threads of drool hanging from his chops. But not for long. No sooner had they emerged than the threads of drool sizzled as if on a hot stove. It was on the very day of Jakoubek’s arrival that the anticipated heatwave struck. The blazing summer sun heated up the region with such force that Jakoubek and Boyar were the only ones (for a long time they thought they were the only ones) to venture out in that evening swelter. Everyone else was sitting at home behind closed shutters.
As soon as they were behind the barn, Jakoubek took off his sweat-soaked shirt and tied it around his waist, and Boyar looked up and stared in surprise at his alabaster-white torso.
Imp
And now that I have introduced the main character and am leaving him for the moment to run with Boyar in that July swelter, I imagine it is now my turn. But don’t expect too much. This summer I am staying in the hollow of an oak tree, having evicted a small owl from it, and I live in village yarns and old wives’ tales as a trow or at other times a rath, and who knows what else. Those who have chanced upon me, or whose dreams I have got caught up in, mistakenly regard me as an evil being. But I am actually beyond good and evil. I am the only imp who will never harm you but will never do you good either. And my greatest desire is to set in motion some kind of whimsical story. And then tell it with gusto right to the end. After all, I only contrive stories so that I can tell them.
In better circles they would call me a demiurge. But I don’t enjoy contriving stories that are worthy or comforting. They bore me to death. But I don’t like stories that are cruel or nasty either. I’m only interested in jests, jokes, pranks, whimsical folly. And for me the most jocular are love stories. Love is always a marvellous prank, always the height of folly. And it’s the same with Jakoubek’s story.
I possess various powers. I can do things you have never even dreamed of. If you catch me rummaging around in your sideboard (I’d do anything for sugar cubes) and then carrying off one cube in my dwarfish arms, and you throw, say, a slipper at me, you definitely wouldn’t expect me to burst into an aria from Verdi’s La traviata there and then. Even if I did pull it off – no way, that would be sneaky and that’s not my style. So you don’t have to worry about Jakoubek. His story won’t be spiteful, only whimsical. All right, I admit it: very whimsical.
Wake
Jakoubek decided he would sleep in the little room in the hayloft directly above the stable. He preferred it to the guest room, whose windows faced onto the village green. Even a year after the war, one of the temporary stopgap routes to Prague still passed through the village green. So at night the windows were assailed by headlights and the noise of engines. Whereas the only sound to be heard in the hayloft was that of the horses in the stable down below (Strakoš, Fuksa and Lysák) stamping their feet all night long. And that was a peculiar lullaby. Just as peculiar as the way the husbandman decided (the third evening of Jakoubek’s presence on the farm) to commemorate the anniversary of his youngest son’s death: he organized a noisy funeral feast, certain it would be just the thing to please his dear departed son.
Everybody crowded into the kitchen, but bear in mind that the kitchen was the size of a barn. They all sat there at the table and on benches: the husbandman’s eldest son, Olda, who’d had to come all the way from Prague for the funeral feast, and then some of the husbandman’s relatives from Lounice and the wider surroundings and also the husbandman’s nearest and dearest, followed by Jakoubek and the husbandman’s wife. The husbandman himself was enthroned in a rocking chair, sitting there like the cat who got the cream. He had clearly got himself the chair as a throne-like prop to emphasize his majestic husbandry status, but he didn’t stick it out for long and in the course of the evening he moved to one of the benches too. Olda turned the handle of the gramophone and the husbandman stared in disgust at the upmarket barrel organ his son had brought back from Prague. But he restrained himself – he knew that soon his moment would come. And come it did, as the farmhand and Pančava appeared, bringing with them so many sausages, including the husbandman’s famous saveloys (and with them a battalion of bottles also marched to the table) that there was simply no room left on the table for the gramophone. So they finished playing the song I’d Like to Have Your Photo and then Olda snapped the green case shut and gathered up the records and carefully carried it all through to the guest room.
And now for something we all know! decreed the husbandman.
The husbandman had a huge song collection, which was based on songs he had heard from his father or some other old husbandman, but he didn’t even turn his nose up at songs he had found in printed collections, as long as they included the music. Then all he needed was for someone to play it through for him (he himself couldn’t read music, although he could play all the musical instruments available in Lounice and nearby Zouhary, from the fiddle through the school piano to the church organ, passably well) and he was able to sing or play it until his dying day. And I can swear to that on my impish soul – that is, of course, if we goblins have some kind of soul. I tried not to miss any opportunity when the husbandman was singing – it was always worth listening to – and so I sat down there as well, on an overturned saucepan right on the stove, and I wasn’t taking any risks by doing that, because those who believe in bogies, goblins and imps took me for a hobgoblin that came to them for sugar but otherwise did no harm and so had become a self-evident part of the feast, while those who don’t believe in me attributed my presence to the effects of that bottle battalion. So the husbandman was justifiably proud of his ability to immediately sing any song he had heard, no matter how fleetingly, which he would bring back from all kinds of celebrations: a church fair, wine harvest, pig slaughter, harvest supper, carnival parade or, say, a ball at the Sokol clubhouse in Jitelice. And he remembered the songs he had heard to the last note and the last word, even though he sometimes returned with a heavy head from wine laced with plum brandy. Any husbandman worth his salt likes to sing now and again, but for Hanuš Málek his songs were a ticket to paradise and he took it for granted that singing was the greatest pleasure in life for everybody else too.
And so that funeral feast or wake to mark the anniversary of the death of the husbandman’s youngest son was primarily a long series of songs. Jakoubek sat in the corner at the end of a bench, occupied by his own very pressing thoughts (don’t worry, we’ll come to those soon) and sipping wine. But when the husbandman clocked the utterly taciturn Jakoubek, he got up and hunkered down beside him and began prodding him until he at least got Jakoubek to hum and hee and haw.
Jakoubek didn’t yet know what we imps, goblins and bogies have long known: those songs contain all that human life amounts to – happiness, unhappiness, dreams, anxieties and joys, the very secret of life and death, you just have to know how to listen to them. But Jakoubek only came round from his humming and heeing during a break between songs as everyone gorged themselves on the husbandman’s saveloys and the farmhand, or maybe the husbandman’s eldest son, brought up the German slut. But whichever of them brought her up, they both went on to deftly complement each other, and it was clear that Jakoubek was listening to them racked by curiosity.
Slut
The SS slut, as they also called the luxury high-class whore the Germans kept in a small villa some way outside the village, a villa erected shortly before the occupation by Mr Záliva without him ever enjoying the use of it, because he was among the first to be executed by the occupants, and nobody even knows why, but after all they never actually needed any warum, as the husbandman’s eldest son remarked. And apparently the most distinguished German officers visited the slut at that villa, where they could not only divest themselves of their gun and uniform in the hall but also of all their worries about the fortunes of the Thousand-Year Reich; and on the steps to the first floor, where the slut awaited them, they would gradually discard their shirt, underwear and socks too, so that they could come to her as naked as the day they were born. And each of them spent two or even three days there before leaving to go back to his general staff, or even to death on the Eastern Front. And after those solitary and actually quite sad visits, during which the whore-villa was guarded by a special SS unit, then for a change the slut had it chockablock all night long with the cheerful German garrison as well as Göring’s Luftwaffe soldiers, and then the slut was helped out by sluts brought in all the way from Jihlava for that purpose. But of course none of those Jihlava sluts was a match for – if you’ll pardon the expression – our slut, said the farmhand, because she was as pretty as a picture. And Olda, the husbandman’s eldest son, agreed with him and also added: As a picture of a saint! As the Virgin Mary! But the husbandman immediately smacked him firmly across the gob: Now, now, no blaspheming!
And at that Jakoubek drew in a breath and, his heart gripped by anxiety, came out with a question, or rather two: And did she ride a horse? And here at the foot of Bee Hill as well?
And Olda made a face: If you mean the slut, then she didn’t just ride a horse! That one rode anything that could be ridden!
And sometimes anything that couldn’t be ridden too! said the farmhand. And not just at the foot of Bee Hill.
And they both laughed.
And she had her own private aeroplane as well, added Olda.
And at that Jakoubek drew in another breath and asked whether Olda had ever seen her. But before Olda had a chance to answer, the braggart farmhand spoke up: he had apparently seen her at least forty times. And when she didn’t happen to have her slut customers, when she didn’t happen to be fucking —
And the husbandman smacked him across the gob: You watch your language!
When she didn’t happen to have her customers, she either rode through here on horseback – that’s what she liked best – or took a spin in that car of hers, or I’d look up and see her flying around in that sports plane, scaring the cows. And sometimes she’d leave it standing in a meadow and go off to bathe in the pond and just peg her clothes onto the plane and leave them fluttering there till she came back.
Yeah, and that plane and car, and that beautiful horse too, they were presents from those German officers who had experienced heavenly bliss with her, and no doubt they reminisce about that even in Russian captivity while they’re building Stakhanovite factories somewhere in Siberia. She was a beauty, Jakoubek, a real stunner! One look at her would have knocked you for six.
And Olda and the farmhand (and the husbandman too), who until then had known Jakoubek to be shy and taciturn, now stared and listened as he asked one question after another, as if dealing out cards. It was obvious that each of these questions still caused him great difficulty, because in truth he was terribly embarrassed asking about all this, but at the same time he was under enormous internal pressure and the questions came churning out of him by themselves like pinkish strands from a meat grinder.
And where was that villa of hers?
Not was – it still is there, and Olda waved his hand in some vague direction.
And her…
The slut? The slut quit right after the war, like all the sluts that slept with German officers. She wanted to escape justice, said the farmhand, and so she climbed up to the attic of that house and from the attic onto the roof and from there she was going to jump down and escape the back way. Only she went and broke her pins doing it and so they dragged her inside and took down the crystal chandelier and strung her up on the hook for the chandelier. And she’s still hanging there today, because no-one’s taken her down and no-one will…
Has anyone been there lately? Has anyone seen her there?
Who’d go there… Who’d want to see her now… Yuck, said Olda. She’s still hanging there from the ceiling with a hole kicked through her stomach like a busted wardrobe, with long, tangled entrails spilling out of it and the glow of bone from her broken legs and her bared teeth in swarms of flies that have filled in the remains of her flesh with their eggs and —
That’s enough! The husbandman cut him off.
But Olda quickly added that they also say that she actually managed to escape and instead of her it’s some dead dog hanging there from the ceiling, and that since they didn’t get her they at least hanged a canine bitch there in her place, and they’re still searching for her.
And when they started up the singing again, Jakoubek opened his trap once more and sipped the wine, but in fact he was now just on the lookout for an opportunity to finally make himself scarce. Squeezed into a corner, he also began to squirm and fidget and felt the need to go somewhere, but he couldn’t pluck up the courage to get up and leave. Until the husbandman noticed him again. For a moment he watched him fidgeting and squirming with amusement, and then he said: Hold on, just have one more shot and then you can skedaddle.
Upon which he reached somewhere behind him and poured out a clear liquid, and when Jakoubek knocked it back everything went dark, but then he was allowed to make his exit. Everyone immediately cleared a path for him to the yard, where he stood unbuttoned on the stone wall that surrounded the dunghill while looking at the stars, which were flickering in a curious kind of way, probably due to the wine he’d drunk but especially that last glass of something clear and powerful. And as if in a haze he saw before him the room in that villa and the dead dog hanging from the ceiling in a swarm of flies.
Translated by Graeme Dibble