Harlequin's Millions, Page 3

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  THE FORMER CASTLE OF COUNT ŠPORK FACED DUE south. Whenever it rained, when the skies cleared and the sun came out, the south wall was soon dry, while the north wall was still dappled with damp spots and gray mildew and greenish moss. No one ever walked past the west wall, and when they did, it was only to go around the back and climb over the trampled fence to get to the castle park, with its red birches and sandstone statues. The statues, too, had to endure their share of rainy weather. After a shower, when the rain poured down their coarse-grained bodies, the water dripped from their raised arms, chins and noses, when the sun reappeared, the statues facing south were soon dry, while those on the northern slope remained damp and, like the castle wall, were wreathed with mold and mildew and moss. Somehow the statues also resembled the trunks of the old beeches and oaks, or the trunks of the aspens on the north side that, since the wind usually blew from the north and west, were rough and dappled with damp spots and moss just like the castle and the statues, while the trunks facing south were smooth, so smooth, especially the trunks of the beeches and aspens, that I could never help stroking them, one by one, each trunk was like the smooth body of a dolphin or a seal, I’d run my fingers along that smooth skin … All the windows in the retirement home had white nylon curtains, usually drawn, and when the weather was good, the pensioners spent the morning walking up and down the corridors, which were bathed in sunshine, behind the curtains eyeglasses glittered and every now and then a human hand suddenly appeared at the window and lifted the edge of the curtain, making it billow and crease, as if a frightened bird had gotten its claws caught in the fabric. But after a while the curtain was raised and a pensioner pushed his way to the window and threw it open with great vigor, the window flew open and the old men and women leaned out and looked down at the courtyard, as if someone had called them, or as if they were suddenly suffocating and needed a breath of fresh air, because the retirement home always smelled of disinfectant, medicine, diapers. And so every now and again five or six human faces would lean out and watch attentively all that went on below, they kept their eyes on everyone who went in and out of the castle, followed their every move, as if it were a miracle, as if they were watching a lively wedding procession, or a somber funeral. It was actually a kind of continuation of my life at the brewery, there too I would get such a strong longing, I’d push aside the curtain and throw open the window, I’d lean out and even though there was no one walking past, only the occasional car driving by, or a cart bumping along, drawn by horses or cows, I’d lean out and observe closely, I was really very proud to have my own home, a household, fine lace curtains. But I opened the windows and four times a year I left them open from early morning till noon, because four times a year, in the little town where time stood still, there was a cattle market, the farmers and merchants, gypsies, peasants and local boys led their cattle past the brewery windows, from far off I could hear the neighing of the horses, then the horses would appear, trotting down the road behind a barouche wearing only a halter, five, six, sometimes ten horses, wisps of straw braided into their manes and at the base of their tails, the horses whinnied and their hooves clattered on the hard surface of the road, sometimes the cattle merchants drove their cattle ahead of them in rows of five, while the peasants led their one sad-eyed cow to market, so sometimes four hundred, five hundred head of cattle and horses came past my windows, they left behind a whiff of the stables, and I leaned out the window and watched the procession of livestock, which returned in the afternoon in far fewer numbers, since many had been sold, I also saw the farmers and peasants with their little cows that looked cheerful again now that they were on their way back, they were as eager to return to their stables as I always was to come home to the brewery. When I first arrived at my new home in Count Špork’s castle, while a few dozen faces peered curiously out open windows at the courtyard and at me, here in the dazzlingly whitewashed corridor old men and women came carefully down the stairs to greet me, steadying themselves on the banister, or swinging down step by step on a pair of crutches, that very first day I saw that along the walls of the corridor and in niches along the stairs were white statues of nude young women, Greek goddesses perhaps, caught unawares by a male gaze and defending themselves, in terror, with raised arms, I saw the statue of the energetic goddess of the hunt swinging back her arm to pull an arrow from her quiver, and pensive statues of naked youths with almost childlike genitals, youths with an aura of blissful ignorance and supple, boyish limbs … And here and there an old man and woman came down the stairs past the statues and hobbled out into the courtyard, or suddenly out of nowhere a nurse would come running, her black shoes tapping hurriedly, her starched cap skimming along the stairs like a white seagull, her swift cap and gait made the slow, careful movements of the pensioners seem even slower. I stood here on the first step and when I lifted my head, I saw that the ceiling was decorated with frescoes of naked, dancing women and men, dozens of young bodies were writhing about in those frescoes, in colorful dances, and their glowing eyes were so concentrated on the dance that none of those dancing nymphs and fauns knew what was happening around them, they had joined hands and the naked bodies of the dancers surged from right to left with an inaudible roar, only their eyes remained motionless, locked in a passionate gaze. And in the faces of the pensioners I recognized a few that I’d known from the little town where time stood still, they looked at me and recognized me too, they had guessed who was behind that toothless, wrinkled face, they’d guessed it was me, the woman whom they’d often run into in the main square, whom they knew from the movie theater and the playhouse, now our eyes met and we nodded our gray heads at each other guiltily, we shrugged our shoulders, there was nothing to be done, such a wonderful beginning, and now, such an end. And because Francin was manager of the brewery and had to go to all the balls organized by all the clubs and political parties, all those fancy dress balls where I was queen, and all the men and women, who were young in those days and loved to dance as much as I did, as much as the fauns and nymphs in the frescoes on the ceiling, their eyes too were drunk with dancing and alcohol, I realized that all those men and women, when they first came here as pensioners, had stood looking in dismay at the statues along the walls and stairs, and at the ceiling, that they had stood for a moment, as I did, in utter consternation, when they realized that those splendid days of their youth were past and that before they knew it they had grown old … And there was music coming from the speakers, a string orchestra played “Harlequin’s Millions,” the melody swirled around the pensioners and everyone who heard it was entranced, but the music didn’t sound like a reproach, it was more like a melancholy memory of old times … And when I went up to the next floor and looked down those sun-drenched corridors and into the wards, the entire south wall of the castle was like a row of large, illuminated aquaria, with gleaming fish moving among the water plants. But they weren’t fish, they were gleaming eyeglasses, and the lenses in front of the motionless eyes of the pensioners trembled and quivered almost imperceptibly to the beat of their hearts. I noticed that in some of the eyes behind those lenses, tears glistened, not tears of sadness because one was growing older, but the permanent tears of weary eyes, just like in the old days you wore glasses so no one could see you’d been crying. And I noticed immediately that the castle was divided into two sections. The women lived in one wing, the men in the other. And this was obvious at first glance. In the corridors of the women’s section were flowers in every window, the walls of the castle were so thick that at every window in front of the curtains there was an alcove, where you could put a small table and a few chairs, it was a peaceful spot, like a little arbor. And wherever I looked down that long corridor, I saw old women sitting in the sun, some in satin bathrobes, others wearing what had once been their best dresses, even though those dresses hadn’t been in fashion for thirty years or more, the old women sat there with knitting needles and crochet hooks moving between their fingers, the needles moved quickly,
wool-wrapped fingers drew more wool from a skein or ball, and the knitting needles and crochet hooks worked quickly, so unbelievably quickly that it was as if the old women were knitting and crocheting beams of light, the whole corridor was filled with the reflections and refractions of silvery needles and flashing eyeglass lenses. And out of some of the windows the nylon curtains flapped and fluttered like flags, with a small hole every inch or two, eaten away by some harsh detergent or mangled by a washing machine that had seen better days. There was half the body of an old woman, whose other half was leaning out the window and peering down at the courtyard, the body of another old woman leaned over a pot of flowers on a pedestal and her fingers broke off withered leaves and loosened the soil with a hairpin. As I stood in the doorway of that long corridor, the old women lifted their eyes, they gazed at me, some through their glasses, others bowed their heads so they could see me with the naked eye, I could tell that some of them recognized me because they knew me from the market and the streets and the fancy balls, but then they lowered their eyes again and went on with their work, I realized that if I were to stay here and watch them, they would go on knitting and crocheting until dusk, just so they wouldn’t have to look at me anymore. And I lifted my eyes and once again I saw above me that great fresco, now illuminated by the reflections of the knitting needles, and when I took a step back to view that radiant ceiling from another angle, I was startled by the sight of several hundred cherubs, naked cupids, flitting across the ceiling, kicking their legs and swimming through the fresco, they kept themselves afloat with the groping soles of their chubby feet, padded with tender flesh like plump pink sausages, with their bare, rounded bellies and raised arms, laden with exotic flowers, oleander blossoms and roses and azaleas, the whole ceiling was adorned with acanthus leaves, with garlands of flowers amidst laurel leaves and ivy that were borne upward by the naked, winged children and scattered down from above onto the old women, who were knitting and crocheting babies’ blankets and sweaters and bibs, the cupids scattered down thousands of flowers, thousands of blossoms, from cornets and cornucopias. And the eyes of those children on the ceiling were filled with joy, even though their genitals were still childlike and at peace and unaware of any connection with the opposite sex, their eyes were filled with amorous joy and longing, eyes that burned with the ecstasy of the love that awaited them or that others were expecting, as if those eyes had accidentally drunk a bit of liqueur or sweet, intoxicating wine, and in order to keep from falling they had to kick their feet, as if they were treading water in a swimming pool, as if the air, too, were meant for them to swim in … Very softly I walked down the corridor, peeked in through the open doors and saw that in each of the three rooms, which were plunged in deep shadow, the window facing north beamed so brightly, was so sharply framed by the sunlit trees on the other side of the castle that it was as if nature itself were beaming those trembling oak and aspen leaves into the shadowy rooms, as if the screen of a color television were flashing on that northern wall. And in each of these rooms I counted eight beds, these had once actually been the Count’s private quarters, in the semi-darkness I looked up at the ceilings and on each of them I could make out the Count’s frescoes, and in all those frescoes, from one room to the next, like episodes of a television series, I saw groups of young lovers, fauns abducting nymphs, and satyrs, with the lower half of their bodies like goats, making love to defenseless Bacchantes who were completely drunk on the young men’s lust, on one of the beds I saw an old woman looking up at the fresco with her arm bent against her forehead. I staggered back out into the lit corridor and found myself at the staircase, my heart was pounding, and when my eyes had grown used to the light, I saw that I was standing in front of the statue of a nude Greek god, leaning against a tree and thinking about nothing, longing for nothing, just leaning there and gazing at me absently, he was indifferent to me, wanted nothing from me, at that moment he was simply caught in the act, you might say, of doing nothing. He had no interest in me and his eyes seemed to close the moment I turned my back … At the other end of the corridor, in the opposite wing, on all three floors, lived the men. Their corridor was full of cigarette smoke, which glowed in the sunlight like a blue neon tube. The old men were restless, couldn’t sit still, they walked back and forth, though it wasn’t really walking, but a kind of shuffling, as if they were cross-country skiing, they’d stop and stand in groups, the smoke from a cigar or cigarette trickled through their fingers, their faces were as brown as tobacco and full of wrinkles, then all at once they’d set out again energetically, as if they had suddenly remembered they had someplace to go where someone was waiting for them with an important message, but after a while they slowed down again and plodded along as if their legs were shackled, as if they were searching the floor for wild mushrooms or a missing set of car keys or as if they were wading barefoot against the current of a rushing stream. Some of them stood lost in thought, hands behind their backs, following in their mind’s eye some event that must have once been important to them, an incident they assumed concerned them and them alone, suddenly they awoke and opened their eyes and stretched out their arms and were about to confide in the other old men, but when they saw that the others were in the same state they themselves had just been in, or were thinking about nothing at all, that they were no longer capable of thinking back or thinking ahead, that they were absent even in the present, the old men who moments before had seen everything so clearly, whose entire fateful incident had been floodlit and illuminated, even elucidated, well, their outstretched arms seemed to suddenly cast off both their hands, the old men made a gesture of dismissal and shuffled bitterly to the window and stared through the nylon curtains at the courtyard, they listened closely to the sounds of the castle, they heard their own irregular pulse and just like all the other pensioners they listened closely to their liver, spleen, kidneys, heart. One of the pensioners, who wore a jaunty cap, the kind the Prague dandies used to wear, who always seemed to me to be a very pleasant fellow because he knew how to knot a scarf like the kind the painters wore in the old days, a colorful scarf around his neck with an elegant bow at his throat, this man now no longer wanted to see anyone. He stood by the wall with his forehead against the plaster, sulking, he didn’t want to see any more people, or trees, or sky, or Greek statues and tableaux, he only wanted to see what he saw: plaster, tabula rasa, nothing. And I noticed that all the old men were continually turning to look at each other, face-to-face, and when one of them left the group he always looked back once or twice to see whether the others were looking at him, suspiciously, scrutinizingly, because they could always tell from behind, by the way someone walked, how he was feeling, whether he was limping more than usual, whether stabs of pain in the kidneys and liver were distorting his shoulders, or even just to see his trousers flapping around his skinny legs, which were attached to his hip joints like wooden slats. But just then in the castle courtyard there was the shrill sound of a car horn, like when the police arrive wailing and spitting purple fire at the scene of a traffic accident, like an ambulance with a fatally injured passenger racing through the streets or pulling up in front of a house where a man has been struck down by a heart attack. And all the old men crowded around the window, it took a while before the hands and fingernails that were caught in the curtains could be disentangled, the old man with the colorful scarf went on staring at the wall, because he didn’t want to see any more accidents, either. And I walked into the corridor and looked up at the ceiling, at a sprawling fresco that showed a young man sitting on the ground, leaning back on one muscular arm with the other wrapped around his knee, he was draped in a thin veil, barefoot, and had his head turned in the direction in which I, too, was slowly walking, his eyes were filled with desire, the whites of his eyes gleamed and his pupils seemed sewn to the upper lids, he had full lips, and never in my life had I seen such a beautiful man, his hair was strewn with flowers and blossoms, they tumbled like ringlets over his forehead, the flowers were gold and b
lue, then just behind the youth I saw a blue gown slipping off the edge of an enormous bed with blue cushions tossed against the headboard and covered with a rumpled golden sheet, in the middle of that bed sat a woman in a long white gown, a young girl with the fierce expression of a bird, the bride’s clenched lips were listening intently to some half-naked goddess, who had one arm around the girl’s neck and with the other was tilting her chin upward, so she could look more deeply into her eyes, which were averted from the burning eyes of the youth, who was looking angrily at the bride, who was deep in conversation with the beautiful goddess, whose forehead was adorned with an acanthus leaf and whose flowing gown fell back to expose her naked breasts, belly and mound of Venus … I was captivated by this unusual wedding scene, with the near-divorce right at the very beginning, one by one I looked into the men’s rooms, where just as in the women’s section there were eight beds and a window on the north wall that beamed in the darkness with the trembling, sunlit leaves of aspen and oak trees as tall as the castle itself, the leaves illuminated by the glaring light like an overly bright television screen. And outside you could hear tires grinding to a halt in the sand of the courtyard, you could hear car doors slamming, a stretcher being taken out, when I walked past the old men leaning out the window, several of them instinctively turned around, sure enough, they didn’t want me to see their skinny legs in baggy trousers, they stood there facing me and smiled and hoped I’d leave, go somewhere else, where I wouldn’t be able to look at them, but I reassured them with a wave of my hand, like an orchestra conductor, I looked up, they didn’t trust me, they squinted out at the courtyard but kept their faces toward me, once again the soft melody of “Harlequin’s Millions” began to play, unraveling in a flurry of notes that twirled around a solo by one of the violins in the orchestra, until the concertmaster regained his hold on the compelling refrain, which was in harmony with this wedding somewhere in Greece, somewhere on a southern sea, and even the eyes of the beautiful youth, even the anxiety of the bride, and the kind but urgent words of the goddess, even the palm of her hand lifting the bride’s chin to look her more deeply in the eyes, and the other hand, cradling the back of the girl’s head in such a charming position, they were all in perfect harmony with “Harlequin’s Millions,” even the sounds from the courtyard, where you could hear, in the sun, the sliding of the collapsible bed along the rails in the ambulance, and the four tires churning the sand, even the shrieking of the motor and the gears shifting and Mr. Berka shouting … Hold on! I’ll open the main gate!, all of this was in complete harmony, and when I turned around to run quickly back down the corridor on the second floor of the men’s section, all the old men turned too, as if they had each been struck in the back, they rose up from where they had been leaning out the window, one by one they rose up behind the curtains, like people in old church paintings of the Last Judgment rising from their graves. They stood there, completely hidden behind the curtains, and bowed to me slightly, they touched the curtains with their foreheads and their skulls left an impression, one head after another made the nylon curtains bulge, and there in the late morning sun I was suddenly frightened, terrified, stricken with fear, as if I had just seen the Noonday Witch, whom I hadn’t believed in for years. Because not only are all the statues turned to the light of the human eye, not only is the whole castle built so that it points to the sun and the south, as if it were destined, in all its splendor and glory, for all those who enter the gate and cross the courtyard, not only that, even the trees present the best and smoothest side of their trunks to the sun, and people too are always presenting their faces and chests to each other, so they can show off their jewelry, and not only that, everything turns toward the south and the west, and toward the sun, even when the sun moves away from a bench in the park and a shadow falls on the pensioners sitting on that bench, they drag their bench over to where the sun is still shining, because none of the statues looks very good from the back, they’ve been badly neglected, the sight of them from behind can even be somewhat painful for the pensioners, they have the feeling, and rightly so, that they’ve caught someone sitting on the toilet, or deep in thought with a finger up his nose and then wiping off the snot on a tree or a wall, the unexpected sight of the back of a statue is, for every pensioner, like a glance through a keyhole, a curious glance, which catches an old person taking out or putting in his false teeth. There is also a castle chapel at the retirement home, from the outside you can clearly see that the head of the nave is pointing east, the chapel has gothic windows behind wrought-iron grillwork in which sparrows have built their nests, some of the windowpanes have been smashed in, so that now there are several hundred sparrows living inside the chapel, the organ pipes are dotted with their nests, they’ve taken over the gallery, in spring the swallows come and glue their nests to the gothic arches, to the consoles, the swallows raise hundreds of young birds, often the witnesses to old times sit on a bench by the chapel wall and watch the swallows feeding their young, watch how quickly they get in through the broken windowpanes, which are so small that only one swallow can fly through at a time. And day and night you can hear coming from the chapel the twittering of the sparrows, the chirping and chattering of the young swallows. When people come to the retirement home for the first time, they can never resist walking up to the door of the castle chapel and trying the handle in the semi-darkness, but the chapel is closed, and when your eyes have grown used to the light you see that there’s even a bolt with a lock on it. So everyone who comes here for the first time kneels down in front of the chapel door and peers through the keyhole. Everyone is amazed to see that the floor is still covered with coal, because in the days when the castle was heated with coal-burning stoves, the coal was stored here in the chapel. But now the chapel is closed and has become a home for birds. The swallows have even built a nest on the head of Christ on the high altar, and when their eggs hatch, the baby swallows twitter and chirp in Christ’s ear, and when they’ve grown and have to leave the nest, they sit contentedly on the arms of the gold cross, sometimes seven little swallows in a row, as the voices of several hundred sparrows and swallows fill the chapel. Whenever a new pensioner arrives at the castle, the first few days he insists on seeing absolutely everything. On my first day I walked all the way to the castle greenhouse, but the windows had been painted blue, and there were no longer any flowers inside, the floor was whitewashed and in the middle stood a bier. When someone dies, he lies here until they come for him, the dead pensioner lies here on a board and waits until they come to take him away, I’ve been told that everyone else sits near him on three benches, the closest friends of the deceased, they hold a wake until the undertaker arrives and members of his family with clothes for him to wear in the coffin. Uncle Pepin will probably be the first of us to end up here, because he’s been in the ward for bedridden patients for three months now, he’s stopped eating, the nurse said I should write a letter to all his friends and relations, anyone who wants to come say their good-byes should hurry, because it won’t be long before Uncle Pepin has beat us to the greenhouse, where the floor is whitewashed and all the windows are painted blue. But pensioners who come to the castle for the first time, well, they want to see everything, even things that might not be so good for them. On the west side, under the mighty branches of the chestnut trees, from the second tier of branches, is the only place from which you can see into the castle, into the room that once belonged to Madame the Countess, that room now has four beds, they look like aviaries for birds of prey. Each one is equipped with a net, like children’s beds covered with a net to keep the child from falling out when he has a fever or a restless dream. From time to time there are patients here, old men and women, who are so crazy that neither sedatives nor injections nor any other medicine can help them. It’s so sad, at my own risk I once climbed into the crown of an old chestnut, the branches were as close together as the rungs of a ladder, it was like climbing up to a deer stand. And there, under a net, I saw an old woman in white
holding the cords between her fingers, she was on her knees peering out the window into the darkness, she looked in my direction, her eyes bulged with terror, her hair hung loose and she had no teeth, and when I looked at her again I nearly fell out of the tree, she looked so much like me that I thought she was me. And I climbed down carefully, from one branch to the next, concentrate, old girl, I told myself, don’t slip and break your bones, stay calm, you had a bad scare, easy does it, and when I reached the ground I walked into the darkness, the only light on the second floor came from the windows where Count Špork once had his chambers. I ran into the vestibule and up the stairs, I ignored the statues and the beautiful frescoes, in the corridor of the women’s section I stopped short next to a little table, I raised my head, but there was no one else in the corridor, the night-lights shone dimly through the open doors and someone was snoring and from the corners of the room with the eight beds, from each corner you could hear a loud smacking noise, which went on until the snoring stopped. On the wall was a sign: How do our ladies pass the time? I didn’t understand it, and read the message again. It was framed behind glass. How do our ladies pass the time? And on the little table and the next one and the one after that, I made my way down the corridor from one table to the next, amazed at first, then I reached out and touched the baby clothes, baby bibs, a baby bolero, even some swaddling bands, which you wrap crisscross around a baby’s quilt like a braided Christmas bread, knitted booties embroidered with flowers, blouses and smocks, sunbonnets and caps with earflaps, tiny gloves that brought tears to your eyes, pairs of mittens joined together with colorful string, muffs. Yes, this was the work of the old women who sat here in the sun crocheting and whose knitting needles cast reflections on the ceiling, on the multitude of cherubs and cupids, divine children who scattered down an ever-replenishing stream of flowers from their horns and cornucopias while treading the air with their feet to keep their balance under the weight of the Mediterranean flora. This was no handiwork exhibition, nor was it an answer to the question of how our ladies passed the time, here on these tables lay the things the old women couldn’t give up, here lay the suppressed and for that reason constant and everlasting necessities no woman could live without, not even an old lady, a pensioner in Count Špork’s former castle …