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

When we came out of the pub, there was a frost, we all shot across the road, the engine oil casting us off the roadway against the far side of the ditch, into which we fell by turns. When we got to our feet, the Fernet ran us across to the other side into a wire fence. Mr Procházka the roadmender hopped on his bike and rode off, calling into the darkness: “Out of the way, folks, I’m going too fast to stop…,” we saw his torch drive into the ditch, fall silent, then in a moment the light scrambled out and sat on the edge of the roadway, then it got up, gripped the shiny handlebars, wavered this way and that a few times — that was his shoelaces getting tied — and once more the light started hurtling along the road and we lay in the ditch and Mr Procházka shot past shouting: “Out of the way, folks, I’m…,” and again he receded into the distance until he reached the main road and there the light rode into a snow-filled ditch. Only Mr Jumbo Man walked erect and in a straight line, and he hissed: “Shitbags!” and made off towards his cottage, his little house, to feed his dog before bed, and then in the morning, at four o’clock, he set off through the forest on his bike, taking the forest footpaths to Lysá station and then onwards to the airport, which he loved and loves as his own, more than his life. I was lying on my back in the ditch as Mr Jumbo Man pedalled past in his lightweight, blue nylon coat, gripping its tails on the handlebars to keep them out of the wheel-spokes, and with his beret perched jauntily on his head, heading off into the distance, while Mr Procházka the roadmender was again riding hither and thither on the main road and when he realised he wasn’t back home, that he was going well but a hundred and eighty degrees in the wrong direction, he came hurtling back and shouted from a distance, because his bell was broken: “Out of the way, folks!” Mr Kuzmík was still lying beyond the fence and the Alsatian barking on the other side woke his master, who took his bullwhip and set off to give the innkeeper a thrashing because his patrons were making a racket, his dog was barking and he couldn’t sleep, and so he found Mr Kuzmík and called to him: “Can I help you, sir?” And Mr Kuzmík, lying there, called back: “I didn’t ask you for anything, you old brute, so you can leave me alone.” So he lay there till morning, then he dragged himself as far as the electricity substation where he was found by the milkman, who drove him home with a broken leg. And Mr Procházka did finally make it home, but not before falling off his bike, grazing his face and ramming the bell on his handlebar into his cheek, five hours it took him to get home, just like me, though it’s only half an hour on foot without engine oil. Mr Franc took only four hours on his bike and he went quietly to bed, but in the morning he was startled out of it by his wife screaming. “What’s up?” he said. “Did you get drunk again yesterday?” And Mr Franc said: “Me, drunk?” And his wife grabbed him by the ear and hauled him out of bed to the window and said: “Look at that, you sodden sod!” And Mr Franc looked and there on the little snow-covered grass patch he saw his footprints like the handprints of the chimney sweep on the pub tablecloths, as if twenty people had been waiting for a bus, keeping warm by tramping up and down, and then there were a dozen or so bike-prints like spectacles wherever he’d tipped over into the snow, like turning the pages of a comic strip involving a cyclist. And while Mr Jumbo Man had long been tightening lock nuts and seals at the airport and sobering up in the cold air, Mr Procházka the roadmender was lying in bed, his face chafed from the hardened snow, and with the sunken imprint of his bell lever in his cheek, which led his granddaughter to come in and tinkle the bell-print on his face and ask: “Were you a bit sloshed last night, Grandpa?” And the roadmender, devotee of the truth that he was, made a Slav bow, prostrate, to his granddaughter and said: “Yes, I was, and I’ve counted a total of twenty-eight bruises, which I believe is quite a success, given that I’ve broken nothing, nor do I have concussion despite falling on my back several times and banging my head on the cold, frozen concrete of the road.” The chimney sweep topped off the horrors of his year of tribulation by waking up in the morning in his clothes and with his brush in bed with him, he felt thirsty and popped out to his cellar to get a drink from a pot of sour milk, and as he was savouring the drink, he saw two eyes floating towards him; he thought it must be an effect of the engine oil, but the eyes got bigger and bigger until they reached his eager thirsty lips and into his mouth sailed some horrid living thing and the chimney sweep, having pulled it out, twitching, by the leg, he saw it was a tiny toad that must have fallen into the milk. Mr Zákon the landlord got a shock in the morning when he saw the tablecloths, he tried to turn them over but the soot and the sweat- and grief-soaked palms of the chimney sweep had percolated through to the other side, so there was nothing for it but to gather them all up and put out new ones… In the afternoon he went for a lie-down and as he gazed out of the window he thought he could hear a growling noise, thought he was in the cabin of a Boeing 727 Jumbo Jet and that he’d just landed, or was the giant plane about to take off with him on board? The golden mane of his wife’s curly hair came in and Mr Zákon smiled at her, stroked her and asked: “No fornication under duress? Rape?” And the golden-haired beauty tipped her head and her squinting eye filled her with mystery and a forgotten culture. And Mr Zákon asked anew: “And there’s no one who might endanger our marital bliss, is there?” And his good lady blushed and shook her head and dropped her eyelids. “And there’s no one to sue me for obstructing their happy marriage?” And she hugged him and gave him a kiss, of her own volition, as hadn’t happened for several years. And Mr Zákon lit the stove, which hadn’t been lit for a year, and as he went outside with the ashes, Mr Bělohlávek came cycling past, numb with cold. The publican called out to him: “Good afternoon, Mr Jumbo Man, d’you fancy popping in for a chat? A dram? I’ve got the stove on now!”

And Mr Jumbo Man nodded, but he was back to his timid, shy, awkward self and, blushing, he rode on, to turn off down one of the avenues and go and feed his little dogs and dream about the Jumbo and his marriage, which had broken down, just like the chimney sweep’s.

MR FRANC WAS SITTING on a bench in the middle of his orchard in full bloom, revelling in the blooming apple trees, and when he saw me watching him through the wire fence, he stretched and gave voice to his satisfaction: “Wonderful, eh? See how the little pink flowers above me keep falling on my head, that one’s Mazánek’s Wonder… and here,” he got up and went under the apple petals showering down in the gentle breeze, “this is Kronzel Green, the best thing when you’re shredding cabbage is to toss a few of these in…,” he chatted away, and his huge figure in dungarees, with his legs shoved into rubber boots, bobbed along from one spreading apple-tree sunshade to the next, and as he went he stroked the trunks, as as if caressing the living bodies of girls, the way a workman strokes your bathroom when he’s finished tiling it, he also appreciates his work with a nice stroke, just like a carpenter stroking a chair and table or anything else that has issued from his hands and tools. “It could be so nice here,” said Mr Franc, coming over to the fence and sinking his fingers into the wires, following me hand over hand as I walked slowly by, like King David of yore plucking his harp to accompany his beautiful psalm. “It would be so much nicer if I wasn’t forever inundated with sheep. For three years running I’ve been disposing of sheep, but every spring I’ve got six more. My ram Bombo and my oldest ewe Vojanda only have to look at each other and she’s tupped… And do you see this? These petals are from Summer Astrachan, a beautiful shade of pink, like a baby’s ears, but I can’t sleep because of the sheep. Last year I got some great advice, so to tame the ram, I tied a chunk of railway line to his forehead with wire, fifty or seventy kilogram/metre rail it was, so he couldn’t mount Vojanda and tup her… but that’s to ignore what rams are like! He spent the entire night in his shed banging the rail against his iron-clad trough, all that night and the next we got no sleep, or kept waking up, there was this constant, like, bell chiming, ding dong, dong ding, him ringing his rail, and I said: “Stay calm, kids, stay calm, dearly beloved wife of mine, his strength’s got to give, Bombo’s got to drop, weaken…” But this one here’s a Holovousy Raspberry-Pink, takes your breath away when it’s in bloom, it does…,” so the giant Mr Franc rambled on, pitching his mouth so that, as he walked by, the delicate flowers would touch his fleshy lips, and he scented their scent, and as he touched the flower-heads he wallowed in the sun-warmed sprigs and blossoms… “And wouldn’t you know it,” he wailed woefully, again plucking a tune out on the wire fence, “even with that chunk of rail he did mount Vojanda and tup her, and that little ewe there as well, and I was mad enough to think the time when he was sexed up was over, but two months later, the ewes had got great drums for bellies, I’d culled two gimmers, but six more were born, so instead of me decimating the flock, it just grew. So old Vorlíček suggested —, but isn’t this one gorgeous, just look at it!” Like a German spaniel, like a gun dog, he stopped, still with his paws in the wires, and with his legs slightly flexed as he was overcome with sheer delight. “This is another Mazánek’s Wonder, grafted this one myself, I did, but just see how lovely Nature is, how things that bloom are so full of loveliness!… Going back to rams, old man Vorlíček suggested I stick a small tyre over Bombo’s, that’s my ram’s, head and one front leg, claiming that such a contrivance would dampen his ardour, it would make it technically impossible for him to mount Vojanda, and so I could put a stop to the flood of ram lambs and gimmers… it was awful to watch, the poor ram having to go about on three legs, always falling on his face, so I ended up feeling quite sorry for him, but what do you know, three months later I’d got six more sheep, Bombo, supposedly incapacitated with the tyre, still went and tupped all the ewes, and it’s driving me mad, I still want to enjoy life a bit, I want to cut them down to twelve, and I’m back to twenty-one again, and there’s no end to it, no end…,” Mr Franc moaned, tucking the fingers of each hand in turn through the wires of the wire fence and plucking them like a harp, and petals came pouring down onto his massive frame, his chubby cheeks showered alternately by a dense confetti of petals… and Mr Franc comforted them: “Now, now, little petals, dear petals, what’s the matter…,” so worried was he for them, and he shook the blossomy bounty from his face… and I looked towards his cottage in the forest, nothing but pine trees all around, but in the middle of the clearing his blossoming orchard stood proud, you could tell how well manured the grass was, how well filled out the apple trees’ trunks were, but Mr Franc suffered endlessly… “How wonderful it would be if it weren’t for those blasted hornets and wasps, see?” he pointed and only then did I notice that each trunk was adorned, like the handlebars of racing cyclists, with two milk bottles, and Mr Franc explained: “I can’t abide wasps, there’s a few drops of beer in each bottle… now you suffer, suffer in your turn… you torment me, wasps, now it’s your turn to be tormented!” he was shouting, and I could see lots of dead wasps and hornets at the bottom of the bottles, and others struggling hard, but falling into the beer, getting up again and so it went on until they weakened and died, because there was no escaping from such a bottle. Mr Franc suddenly stopped, looking bedazzled, staring out beyond the orchard, beyond the milk-bottles and the drowning wasps, but, like a prophet, gazing up into the very sky, where I was certain he could see, if not the Holy Trinity, then surely a circle of blaring organs, or maybe a saint was looking down on him from Heaven and extending a hand to him, meaning to pull him straight up to join him, among Heaven’s fluffy white and dark black clouds… he lay a finger on his fleshy lips and spoke in ecstasy… “I’ve got it, I’ve got it, I’ve figured it out! No rails, no tyres on the ram, I’ve got to start from the ewes… I’ll make them some little panties, the kind they sell for rich dogs, bitches… I’ll make the ewes some whatnots… panties! out of a sack, an extra thick sack, little trews… contraceptive bikini bottoms… whatyamacallits,” he said in a daze, and with the next puff of the breeze Mr Franc was standing in a glorious blizzard of petals from a Glassy Gold, as if he’d just tugged on a shower chain, and as he stood there in the dense shower of petals, in his dungarees and muddy rubber boots, the sound of a woman shouting came from the house… “You stupid boy, you’ve gone an’ shat yerself again!” And a young, heavily-built woman came running out, shaking a little boy at arm’s length, she ripped his trousers off and set about rinsing them in a wooden tub, picking out the little turds with evident distaste… and Mr Franc let out a low groan: “How nice it would be here if my little grandson wouldn’t keep filling his breeks, if he wouldn’t keep pooping in his pants, how nice it would be here if my rams wouldn’t go around tupping one ewe after another, if there weren’t all these perishing wasps…,” and the young woman called across to Mr Franc: “Grandpa, what are you gawpin’ at? Go an’ see to the sheep at pasture, and make sure you’re back afore dark this time… d’you hear?” Like a flag flapping, her voice flayed the forest air, and it was as beautiful as the young woman herself, Mr Franc’s daughter, powerfully built and curly-haired, full of figure and rosy of complexion, with her hair in ringlets that danced circles above her large eyes, and her voice that was as nothing compared to the voice that now rang out from the porch and thundered through the Scots and other pines like a tempest until their branches groaned audibly, and that voice so stirred the air, in the absence of any wind, that in the orchard petals came pouring down like flakes in a snowstorm: “Jerry!” the voice hacked into the air, and Mrs Franc appeared on the porch, a giant of a woman, the voice’s owner: “Where are you?” the voice thundered on, “Here,” wheezed Mr Franc. “You haven’t got time for jawin’, you should be out at the pasture…!” The voice sounded jangly and angry, and yet not unkind, I expect that in such a secluded spot in the forest people have to shout at each other, because by shouting they afford proof of their existence, of the love they have for one another… “Don’t worry, I’ve only been here a short while, I’m enjoying the view…,” said Mr Franc, resting his forehead against the trunk of Mazánek’s Wonder. “Come off it,” Mrs Franc shouted from the porch, “you’ve been away half an hour!” Mr Franc held his ground: “Quarter of an hour…” But Mr Franc’s daughter and wife roared with great gusto: “Half an hour you’ve been gone!” And Mr Franc banged his forehead gently against the trunk of the apple tree and whispered: “But I’ve only been here a short while… it would be beautiful here if it weren’t for the rams, if it weren’t for the wasps, if it weren’t for the shouting…,” and he ambled off, waving back, and the two women on the porch hollered until the pine trunks bent and their branches cracked in the canopy: “Half an hour you’ve been gone!” And the woman disappeared, she reappeared on the porch with an alarm clock, and she pointed at the dial of the ancient Austrian alarm clock, which now started to jangle, giving out such a ghastly two-tone jangle that Mrs Franc had to wrestle with it as if it were an animal, as if it were some recalcitrant, silver bird of prey caught in her fingers. And the two women shrieked with glee and stood round Mr Franc: “So, is the alarm clock telling a lie? Go on, say something!” And Mr Franc rested his head against the cement and mica rendering of his cottage and gently knocked his forehead at the plaster, which came off and stuck to his damp forehead, and he gave in: “I confess, I confess… I was —, I disappeared for half an hour, but I was feasting my eyes in the garden of delight on Mazánek’s Wonder… Summer Astrachan…,” and the women jangled with laughter, and Mrs Franc descended one step, she was magnificent with a magnificent bosom and as she bent slightly forward, the centre of gravity of her breasts slid down to level with the step and she was lucky to grab hold of a window box full of dead petunias…