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

“MY DEAR,” I TELL MYSELF, “you no longer need to butt in on people’s conversations and have someone hang on your shoulder reeling off all their troubles, I don’t want,” I say, “anyone to blow on your cuts and bruises to make them better or you to find in their eyes some universal validity for your snap judgements.” I say: “You no longer need to look for the common denominator of your nearest and dearest, instead, my boy, pretend you’re dumb, pretend your hearing’s gone, instead, beset by any torrent of talk, lend an ear to the interior monologue of your lost youth, instead lend an ear to the secret of sameness, and the solitude which you are entering won’t frighten you, and instead, by staying silent, transport yourself beyond the curtain of human conversation and be brought face to face with a mirror of silence. Thus, my dear, will you pass through the din into a vacant silence in which you will be, a second time, in mystical union with all things, as you were first time around in your mother’s womb, swathed in central heating and conjoined by your umbilical cord to the beginning of infinity…

And from the front platform of a tram there was a bleached blonde watching me for a long time with enormous interest, and having attuned my eyes I saw that, yes, it was the dream-girl of my youth, whose heart I sought to break and in return she promised to afford me the most beautiful proof of love. And I reached out and she stepped forward through the swaying tramcar, and as our hands met again after so many years, I let out a snort of excitement and a frightful bogey shot from my nose, a great long thing, like little kids get. And my dream-girl immediately extinguished the flame of her delight and her green eyes froze with revulsion, in my agitation I sought, but failed to find, the pocket in which I usually keep my handkerchief, and so I stood there in the middle of the car, riven by embarrassment and ignominy, passengers who up to then had been envious now schadenfried me, and the soulmate of my youth struggled towards the step, grabbed the brass handle, extended one shoe and her heels clacked down one by one and off she ran across the pavement, slingshooting with her enraged eyes and spouting abuse from her mouth so as to cauterise the predicament I’d contrived to put her in. And I had no alternative but to go for a pint.

Things were quite lively at the White Lion. A wedding party, much the worse for wear, was staggering into cabs, the bride came back for her bouquet and as she tried to find the way back out, she cast about for the door handle in the wall, the groom, a dreamboat in the Berber mould, had his tuxedo lapel covered in sauerkraut, these remnants of the wedding feast twinkling on his jacket like a recruit’s rosette, and as he led his new other half off, by drunken misjudgement they ended up in the kitchen. The waiters having taken the newlyweds outside, one bespectacled guest rose from the floor next to the toilet, the 00 sign on the door floating above him like a double halo, and started clapping and shouting: “Encoooore! Bravoooo!” And the taxis left and the waiters closed their eyes and heaved a theatrical sigh of relief.

However, the maid of honour, drunk, came back inside and started knocking back the party’s leftover Gambrinus, that golden pilsner brew, which trickled past her pink lips onto her pink bosom, inside her pink bodice, over her pink dress, which clung to her beer-sodden pink lap. Having downed the last dregs from the wedding feast, she didn’t dare lean forward, because the beer inside her reached all the way up to mouth level. And I just toyed with a beer mat, too scared to think of that unpleasantness in the tram. So instead I watched the hairy male arm encircling and squeezing the leg of a plump female at the next table. A pale man in an indeterminate uniform rose beneath the chandelier and staggered off to the toilet, and the door’s double zero having settled back in place, there was a bang of the bakelite seat followed by a long, mournful mooing sound, the kind tritons would blow on sea-shells to summon errant nymphs. The maid of honour’s fish-eyes roved about until they alighted on the hairy male arm.

“Got a license for that? Bet you haven’t!” she shouted.

And all eyes turned to the male hand, which may indeed not have had a license for such public intimacy, since it ceased to fondle the precious flesh.

And the pale guy came back from the toilet, drops of clean water twinkling in his hair. The maid of honour stared long at this watery halo and cried out, delighted as it dawned:

“’Ad a good puke, did yer?”

And the man in the indeterminate uniform nodded, sank onto a chair and worked his jaws. And I went on toying with the beer-mat, still staring at the cardboard circle going round and round in my fingers and a pink shadow fell over me, then the maid of honour’s pink hands rested on the tablecloth and her pink frame drooped over me and I froze in fear lest her pink throat start gushing beer over me as from a pink fountain, as from a pink jug. But instead the maid of honour spewed out words that shook me even more.

“Old man,” she cried, “you bought yourself a rosary yet?”

And I went on toying with the halo, the maid of honour watched me and she can’t have been more than eighteen, her chubby pink arms, pink neck and all her exposed flesh shone with golden beer, she was like a little pink piglet, which, to give it nice crunchy crackling, has been gone over with a pastry brushed soaked in beer. And I put on my best human eyes, that look of an apologetic little dog who’s just caused a car crash, and with those eyes I begged the maid of honour to retract that with which she had just soaked me. By this point, the two middle-aged lovebirds had paid and were standing in the doorway, waiting to see how I would come to terms with the next home-truth. But the pink maid of honour raised a finger at me and cried:

“Old man, writers and pigs are only memorable after death!”

The drunk patron in spectacles rose from by the toilet and clapped and shouted:

“Hurraaah! Encooore! Bravooo!”

Then a woman came running in and before we knew it she’d felled the man in specs with a single punch, his glasses flew up and away, then clinked against a brass bracket and the woman grabbed the patron and dragged him lightly towards the door as if she was trailing her jacket, and as she dragged him along, she couldn’t stop herself pushing his bleeding face against the wall, leaving a long streak along it. Then she jammed her straw hat on her head and barged out onto the pavement with the drunk patron, who was enjoying every minute of it and shouting: “Bravooo! Encooore!” And the middle-aged lovers left in a hurry, as if they’d just seen what the future held for them. And the pink maid of honour danced off out of the White Lion and I drank one Gambrinus after another, such sweet beer that it is, and thought back to that blonde girl of thirty years before, sitting in a rowing boat with a red parasol, and I’d walked into the river in my suit and asked if I might take her out for a row. And she’d said yes, and I, waist-deep in the water, swung one leg straight into the boat and then got rowing and I was dripping wet, and far beyond the city I jumped into the water and pulled the boat up onto the sand, then I offered her a hand to help her out of the boat, so we lay there on the hot sand and she begged me to dry my clothes, there wasn’t anyone around anyway, and once I stripped off, she calmed down and lay down next to me and closed her eyes; I plucked up the courage and silently undressed her too, but once she was naked, I couldn’t go any further, so beautiful was that white body among the osiers beyond the city that I did no more than gaze on it. After that we only ever met with our clothes on, never again was I so carried away by her beauty that I walked into the river with my clothes on forgetting to strip off. So for thirty years I remained that young man, until last year, when I was walking down Lazarská Street and this woman ran into me and: “I say, granddad, where’s the court around here?” I said: “Sorry?” And again: “Where’s the court around here, grandad?” Since when I’ve been an old man, leading up to last year when a student offered me her seat in the tram: “Do sit down, pop.”