JUST LIKE I COME HERE TO SEE YOU, young ladies, I used to go to church to see my beauties, well, not exactly to church, Iâm not much of a churchgoer, but to a small shop next to the parish house, a tiny little place, where a man by the name of Altman sold secondhand sewing machines, dual-spring Victrolas from America, and Minimax fire extinguishers, and this Altman he had a sideline delivering beauties to pubs and bars all over the district, and the young ladies would sleep in Altmanâs back room, or when summer came they set up tents in the garden and the dean of the church would take his constitutional along the fence and those show-offs would put a Victrola out there and sing and smoke and tan themselves in their bathing suits, a sight for sore eyes it was, a heavenly sight, Eden on earth, which is why the dean took all those inspection tours along the fence, that and the rotten luck he had with his priests, one ran off to Canada with his cousin, another converted to the Czechoslovak Church, and a third defied his ban and climbed the fence, fell in love with one of the beauties, and shot himself out of unrequited love, revolver or Browning, it always gets you in the end, we borrowed one when we were boys and shot at the fence like Conar Tolnes, but then my brother took it apart and we couldnât put it back together, we were so desperate we wanted to shoot ourselves, but we couldnât because we couldnât put it back together, a good thing too or I wouldnât have been able to go to church to see the ladies, I was always dressed to kill, striped trousers like a bank clerk, and sat on a Minimax case like a diplomat, the sun beating down, the ladies lolling in bathing suits on blankets like a sun worshipersâ society, six of them flat on their backs, cradling their headsâwigs and allâin their hands, gazing up into the clouds, delivering their bodies to menâs eyes, and because I was as sensitive as Mozart and an admirer of the European Renaissance I stared at them like a crocodile, one eye on the dean, the other on their crossed legs and dangling ankles, the shivers that ran down my spine, how many people get to see so many beauties in one place? only emperors or sultans, anyway, Iâd tell the ladies my dreams, like the one where the baker puts his loaf into the oven, which means winning the lottery, a pity I had no ticket, dreaming of a bakery means nocturnal revels, though what good is that? neither HavlÃÄek nor Christ ever laughed, if anything they wept, because when you stand for a great idea you canât horse around, HavlÃÄek had a brain like a diamond, the professors went gaga over him, they tried to make him a bishop, but no, he chose justice, a little coffee, a little wine, and a life for the people, stamping out illiteracy, only perverse people dream of rolling in manure (better days ahead) or of chamber pots (your future is assured) because the thing is, dear ladies, youâve got to rely on yourselves, take Manouch, who thought he had it made because his father was a jailer and all he did was drink and pick up bad habits, which leads to fights like the quarrel in the days of the monarchy between the social democrats and the freethinkers and clerics over whether the world comes from a monkey or God slapped Adam together out of mud and fashioned Eve from his insides, now He could have made her out of mud too, it would have been cheaper, though nobody really knows what went on, the world was as deserted as a star, but people twitter away like magpies and donât really care, I could set my sights on a charmer, a prime ministerâs daughter, but whatâs not to be is not to be and could even take a bad turn, Mother of God! the crown prince had syphilis and that Vetsera woman shot him, but then she got shot by the coachman, though any young lady will tell you you might as well be buried alive if the man in your life has a faulty fandangle, when I was
Similar Books
