Bohumil Hrabal - Rambling On - An Apprentice’s Guide to the Gift of the Gab

The hunt feast was no less incident-free than the actual downing of the wild boar. Because our hunstmen had a more refined taste than the Přerov men, our chairman decided that the goulash would be made of the offal, and that the legs and loin would be cooked in a gamey rosehip sauce, and that an extra ten kilos of pork would be purchased and mixed with the rest of the boar so that each hunter could receive a small salami. However, the Přerov men wanted the legs and loin roasted like ordinary pork with dumplings and sauerkraut. So once again, the chairmen and secretaries faced each other and shouted at each other, threatening to settle the matter of the feast by the gun, but the headmaster said there’d been enough troubles locally already, that we were still living in Přemyslid border country, where, back in the tenth century, discord had led to first the Slavníks being wiped out, then the Vršovec family, who had helped the Přemyslids wipe out the Slavníks, and finally the last Vršovec had lain in wait for the Přemyslids and murdered the last king of the Přemyslid dynasty, we though would find a middle way, the loin would be done in the gamey rosehip sauce, and the rear legs would be done as classic pork, so that, given that there’d already been bloodshed on the part of the boar, there need be no major shoot-out before the animal was eaten. That evening, the huntsmen turned up in Starý Vestec, both groups, on the pretext of simultaneously going out stalking, having with them their rifles, hunting daggers and Bowie knives at their hip. The chairmen, before sitting down to the feast, both checked the toilets and back yard for lines of retreat in the event of any possible or actual need to flee. Then we all sat down, not mingling, but with each hunting club having its own long table, we’d spent the entire afternoon bringing in conifer branches to decorate the chandeliers and walls like at a final meet and hunt ball. And there was music, Mr Kučera from Vykáň on the accordion with a drummer whose accompanying flams and diddles made up for the base line that Kučera wasn’t very good at. The singing though! That was really something, so beautiful that we all sung along, using the breaks to eat that glorious hunters’ goulash, served to the brim in deep plates, and the beer, beer from Braník, and invigorating liqueurs and shots of rum. But behind each hunter was his gun, hanging on a peg, and if any of them went to the toilet, he took his gun with him, because they were all mindful of what befell the Slavníks and then the Vršovec clan, they all remembered from school how, at a banquet, the Přemyslids had told their Vršovec guests: “Set ye aside your sabres, set aside your swords, so you may feast at your ease, for you are guests in our hall…,” and as the guests did as bidden, in the middle of a boar roast, the Přemyslids fell upon them so disarmed and hacked them to death to a man, bar the last man, who later took his revenge. It was good that we had our artist, Mr Jaruška, with us, the one who used to have an antiques shop in Prague and did wood carvings, though for years he’d been living among us in the Kersko woods, also he used to make all kinds of comical things at Shrovetide, by hand and out of plasticine, and at the rate of one a minute a man’s cock would fall from his hand, or a woman’s muff, at the Sokol carnival he created a sort of naked woman, fixed her to his shoes and danced with her, moving with such precision that the figurine seemed alive. He’d brought on her his trailer with him, in part to entertain us again, in part to show these Přerovites who we were and who we had among us, because nowhere in the entire district could they boast of anything of the kind, let alone in some piffling village. And indeed, the moment he started dancing on the table with his naked dummy we all roared with glee, but the Přerovites were deathly pale and crazed with envy and averted their gaze or stayed in the toilet with their rifles until Jaruška’s dance was over… but by then the roast boar was arriving and we ate it with its wonderfully gamey rosehip sauce and Pálfy dumplings on the side and next to the dumplings a spoonful of wild cranberries, but when the Přerovites saw it, they pretended to puke and heave and their chairman was deliberately sick over himself to convey his antipathy to the dish that we had dictated… and now Jaruška was dancing on the table again and we raised our glasses to the figurine’s breasts, and Jaruška wound up and set off a mechanism and red wine flowed from her breasts and we drank a toast to the great marksman Janeček, and now the Přerovites were licking their chops and maundering happily over the sauerkraut and roast pork with Pálfy dumplings on the side. And so Mr Jaruška provided the entertainment and the music played and Mr Kopřiva from Vykáň sang whatever we told him to, and because he favoured our side, the chairman of the Přerov hunting club kept deliberately thinking up awkward songs, but Kopřiva always played them for him, and the chairman began losing his appetite and just drank reinvigorating rum out of a mug. And Mr Jaruška danced and the stream of breast wine dried up, but Mr Jaruška wound up another mechanismus, and by now we were just drinking and the clock struck ten, and the figurine stood legs apart and white wine began to flow from her belly button and genitals, Burgundy or Moravian, and we held out our goblets and glasses, and we drank straight off, so niftily, that we spattered our hunting jackets and hunting coats so little as you’d barely even notice. And the chairman of the Přerovites got so agitated that he rose and plumped himself down next to Mr Jaruška, and as he stared gloomily and bleary-eyed at the table, what did he see? Next to Jaruška’s tobacco pouch lay a child’s whistle, the kind of little whistle we used to make as kids, ‘Whistle, daughter, whistle; Whistle, daughter dear’, and the hunt chairman smiled at the whistle and the whistle smiled at him, and he couldn’t resist and he picked it up in his fingers and blew on it twice, but suddenly he stopped still and the whole room fell silent, and our table roared with laughter because soot had come flying out of the whistle and the chairman’s face was covered in it, black all over, and his hands as well, and he grabbed his gun from the wall and yelled that Jaruška would have to pay for this ignominy with his blood… and our people also grabbed their guns and the other hunters from Přerov grabbed their rifles and shotguns, and alone Mr Jaruška stayed on the table, his arms round the naked dummy, whose belly button and genitals kept dispensing Burgundy and South-Moravian wine, and there were no hands and no cup and no mouth that might be offered up to the stream of wine, so Mr Jaruška said quietly: “Now did I ask you to blow it? So, you should have left well alone…” And silence reigned, and everyone knew and shared the view that the chairman should indeed have left the whistle alone, since no one had told him to play it. So he hung his gun on its peg and Mr Kopřiva started playing again and his base line was beautifully made up for by drums and cymbals, but the party was still in two halves, still there were two tables, and heads were drawn inwards and bent over the centre of each table, everyone was laughing, but only at the jokes told by someone at their own table, and each table knew they had truth on their side, and each table had its own in-jokes and its own laughter. And for a change, Mr Jaruška — he’d had enough of dancing with the naked dummy, whose breasts had run with red wine and her crotch with white Burgundy — laid out two flugelhorns and a euphonium on the side table and the hunters shared them out, two even scrapping over the same instrument, and our lot tuned up and sat on the stage and at once the thunder of a new kind of music filled the room, our bodies tingled with joy as we stood there, holding each other at the hips in the manner of true huntsmen, and we sang and were merry, savouring the musical talents of our hunters, while the Přerovites turned even paler and stared at the ground, stunned, and two of them began to throw up and they knew they could never again get the better of us, unless the way the Přemyslids did it with the Slavníks and then with the Vršovec clan, slaughtering the lot at a banquet, on the sword side and ultimately on the distaff side too. Such was their rancour against us, so far had we outdone them in so many respects, and yet we had no inkling of the oil and paraffin we were pouring onto the flames of our glee. Well, they’re never going to recover from this defeat, they’ll never forgive us, I gloated as I watched the poor wretched hunters of Přerov, those Přerovites… And suddenly the chairman brightened, their chairman, and he smiled a quiet inner smile and slavered over some bright idea he’d had, he let us play five or so numbers more, conferred with his crew and then played his trump card — that we should let his band play, and we knew they were all hotshots, there was no denying that, and their brass band used to be the best, and that they’d play something more intimate for us, O sole mio , something our boorish cauliflower brains weren’t up to… and Mr Jaruška took the horns from our reluctant players and handed them over, one brass instrument after the other, to the Přerovites, they took up position, stood astride on the stage and the conifer-frond-bedecked room indeed began to ring to O sole mio , even the chef trotted in and stood there abstracted, in his apron, and finally we sensed that at least in this regard and by this device the Přerovites could match us, and that there would be a truce, a grand truce, because O sole mio , we could manage it as well, but their delivery… but all of a sudden, as they were blowing away with such feeling, a black cloud burst in a shower all round them, and the more they blew more and more delicate soot from their instruments, the less they meant to be outsmarted, so they trumpeted on, but then the first flugelhorn player started to splutter, he dashed down from the stage, the other players behind him, all black with soot, and we roared with laughter fit to split our sides, but for the Přerovites it was the insult to end all insults, a desecration of the host, it was a terrible thing that we’d failed to give a timely pause for thought, timely consideration to this thing that Mr Jaruška had contrived with the whistle, and now with the brass instruments. He had sown the same contention between us as between the Vršovec and Přemyslid clans, as before that between Prague and Libice… and now the hunters from Přerov grabbed their guns from the wall and the waiter and the chef fled into the kitchen, and now we too grabbed our guns and so we stood facing each other, implacable and with rifles at the ready and safety catches off, and one false move was enough for it all to have ended with a grand exchange of good old Bohemian gunfire, when the door opened quietly and someone’s hand reached in for the light switch and the lights went out… and now someone came in and suddenly we saw a brightly lit chest covered in decorations, the apparition left us startled and the medals marched to the middle of the room and they were still all lit up and glinting like a prophecy and its signs, a hand writing on the wall, mene tekel… and suddenly the medals withdrew towards the wall and the lights went back on and I saw the figure turn and there stood the police commandant, debonair, and still shining his torch upwards on the medals ‘for merit’ bestowed upon him by the state, and he was smiling and said: “Do sit down, my chickabiddies, and let the feast go on, with me!” He’d turned up, as ever, at just the right moment… and he sat down and signalled to the kitchen to bring him the food he’d had set aside for himself, and not only for himself, but for his entire squad, his own selection from both courses, and he went and sat with the Přerovites, thus intimating that the victors would be they, and their chairman, black from the soot, cried out at once: “Commandant, you’ve saved us, I don’t know what would have become of us if your medals hadn’t appeared, you’ve restored order and peace… but you!” And he pointed at Jaruška, “you, call yourself an artist, you’ll pay for this one day, and how! Because you’re the intellectual begetter of our ignominy, our humiliation…” And before anyone knew it, the commandant, wreathed in smiles, smug and self-assured, picked up the whistle, which was still lying there, and blew it, and enough soot whooshed out of the whistle to soil not only the commandant’s face, but also his uniform, and above all it covered the medals that embellished his chest… “See that?” the chairman of the Přerovites shouted, “look at me, not that we matter, but now you’ve gone and sullied the commandant here!” But the commandant had someone fetch the mirror from the wall in the lobby, he tweaked his slicked and perfumed quiff and all blackened as he was, he said: “Serve me right, my fault for having a blow!” And with relish he set about the gamey rosehip sauce and asked if they’d bring him the roast boar with sauerkraut next, the classic version, since he thought of the former as just a starter… And there was more music and Mr Kopřiva from Vykáň sang and the drum kit supplemented the base line, and given that the commandant was sitting there, we pushed the tables together and within an hour we’d all changed places and were all mixed together and we all sang our favourite songs at the top of our voices, and we sang with the commandant who, black as the ace of spades, had pointed the way to our reconciliation, exhibiting a rare command of diplomacy, so we started calling him Governor of Kersko . Like I said, you’ve never seen, nor could you have seen, the things I saw, we saw, the things that came to pass that time when a boar, a wild boar, got shot by us folk from Velenka inside the school at Přerov… When news of the glorious feast reached the teacher, the one who happened to be in the classroom when the boar ran in and our gamekeeper Janeček felled the beast right by the desk so that for the benefit of the children she was able point with her pointer and describe all the parts of a wild pig and their names, she was sorry that she couldn’t have fetched the children so that she and they might have watched the feast, if for only a short while and through the window, whereat she would have pointed with her pointer and demonstrated and explained what the ‘Bohemian question’ was, a question of nearly a thousand years’ standing in our neck of the woods…