Harlequin's Millions by Bohumil Hrabal

forget … It must’ve been sometime after the twenty-fourth of June eighteen-hundred-and-fifty-nine, when the Austrian army had retreated to Verona after their defeat at the Battle of Solferino, there, in the stifling heat, by a stream, a soldier was standing guard. Not a leaf was stirring and the air shimmered with heat. The soldier had been standing there thinking how nice it would be to take a cool dip in the stream. He looked around, every which way, then quick as a wink he stripped off his clothes and ran into the water. He was splashing about to his heart’s content when suddenly he heard the whinnying of horses. He ran back out of the water, to his pile of clothes, but saw that a cavalcade of officers was already riding down the hillside. There was no time to get dressed. The soldier grabbed his shako, cartridge box and gun, and then, naked as the day he was born, he saluted the escort of none other than Commander-in-Chief Count Gyulai. The Count halted,followed by his entire retinue, and everyone stared in amazement at the stark-naked soldier. They saw at once that the sentry had been swimming, and in wartime this was punishable by death. The commander thought for a moment, then said … This man shall be pardoned, for he didn’t lose his head and the first thing he did was reach for his gun … Bitterly, the witness to old times Mr. Kořínek finished telling his story, during which he had continually smoothed down his grayish hair, which sprang right back up again, the rain drummed against the windowpanes and leaves flew through the air and clung to the windows, to the statues, when I’d walked through the castle park all the wet statues had been covered with leaves too, aspen and red beech, a gentle, steady wind was now blowing in from the south, it came from somewhere in Libya, this gentle breeze, but brought with it feelings of anxiety and deep depression, the barometer had dropped so low that the nurses had been on their feet all night long bringing around sedatives and giving injections, and on the four beds in Countess Špork’s bedroom, under a net, lay four old women who, for the past ten years, had been affected by every change in atmospheric pressure, but who now, ever since that balmy foehn had begun blowing in from Libya, felt such pain in their souls that they had lost the will to live. The whole castle even seemed slightly drunk to me, some of the pensionerspreferred not to get out of bed at all, the more courageous among them staggered down the corridors, they tottered along, clinging to the walls and railings, the wind blew through the castle and made Mr. Kořínek’s hair stand straight up, the wind came in gusts, sometimes it seemed to die down, but then all of a sudden it rose again and blew steadily across the landscape or forced its way through the roof and through the weather stripping along the windows and doors, the nylon curtains billowed, as if the invisible hands of bridesmaids were lifting the edges of a bride’s train as they carried it into the church in time to the “Wedding March” … The three witnesses to old times now watched as the wind ruffled the edges of the children’s smocks and crocheted bibs on the tables, and all the baby things suddenly rose, as if there were a vacuum cleaner somewhere on the ceiling drawing them upward, the lacework and the cords that held together the children’s mittens rose up and did a ludicrous little puppet show on the tables before settling back down again, and Mr. Otokar Rykr spoke … The foehn blows in from Austria and Bavaria, I daresay there are many people in Vienna and Munich who can’t endure that steady wind and commit suicide, it is this same foehn that blows through South Moravia, as in the old folk song “The Wind Blows in from Buchlov” … In the evening the vintner is merry and in the morning he has hung himself,