Rambling On: An Apprentice’s Guide to the Gift of the Gab

YOU’VE NEVER SEEN, nor could you ever have seen, something we saw with our very own eyes. We were cutting a field of forage maize and suddenly Janeček says: “There’s a wild boar here, fabulous specimen, pop back and get my rifle!” So I ran and got his Lancaster shotgun. And after we’d been driving the tractor round in circles for a week, all that was left in the middle of the field was an island of maize, and that’s where the wild boar was. So we clattered cautiously into the corn and suddenly such a hefty boar came running out that we were positively startled. You’ve never seen the like, and you never will; Janeček, a gamekeeper with a limp, shouldered his Lancaster and fired, but the boar kept running, limping like gamekeeper Janeček, so both were slowish, and we ran after them because we knew of no greater delicacy than pig meat, wild boar meat even better. And so we ran on, having to wait for limping Janeček to catch up, and we hobbled across the fields bordering the woods all the way to the main road. So the wild pig only slowed down for us by — well, you’ve never seen the like — as it ran into the road, luckily there was a Trabant coming along and with one wheel it gave the boar such a clip on the head that the car ended up in the ditch and the boar just lay where it fell. But as we ran up, well, you know what tough stuff a wild boar’s made off, it got up and dashed into the ditch and off out of our parish straight into Psárce wood, which belong to Přerov, and as luck would have it, a woman was passing on a bike, so we kicked her off it and requisitioned it, but Janeček couldn’t ride a bike, even a lady’s bike, so we sat him on the saddle and pushed, the faster to chase the injured boar, which, after being hit twice, had to stop somewhere. But the woman ran along with us screaming: “Thieves, they’ve stolen my bike, thieeeeves!” So we ran on, sweating, each of us holding one end of the handle bars, and now we were pushing Janeček along the main road, on the bike, which stiffened our resolve, and so, all hot and bothered, we saw the wild boar run into the village, but at once we were in the village as well, and it being midday and the desperate boar on its last legs and dragging one of them behind it, the red of its blood led us onward — you’ve never seen the like, nor will you — straight into the village school. And there Janeček hopped off the bike and limped after the limping boar into class four, and in class four the teacher was taking a biology class and just happened to be going through how the domestic pig was domesticated from the wild pig. She had barely finished and was pointing her pointer at a picture of a pig on a chart when the classroom door burst open and in ran the limping boar, he flew between the desks all the way to the teacher’s desk and the blood just poured from it, and shortly after the limping Janeček, our gamekeeper and bailiff, ran in, he who would give his life for the hunt, and the teacher was petrified and the kids were cowed into silence and Janeček limped up to the platform with his rifle and took aim and the boar rose to the attack and as it made to lunge, Janeček shot that wild pig in its wide-open maw and the wild pig flew past him, Janeček leapt aside and hobbled over to the window, but before he could get off another shot, and before the boar could rise again to the attack, it suddenly toppled over and let out a death rattle and stretched out its legs and blood poured from its mouth and ran all over the schoolroom floor. We congratulated Janeček and thanked him, saying that we’d take the pig back to our place to gut it and use the ‘hunter’s perk’, meaning the lights and liver, to make a whole laundry-tubful of paprikash. The teacher pulled herself together and went across to the prone figure of the boar with her pointer and said: “Children, you have just been treated to an extraordinary sight, so look now, this is what hunters call its maw, these its tusks, see?” And so we had to wait while she told the kids everything she knew about boars, and what she didn’t they got from Janeček. Then we tied a borrowed rope round the boar’s legs and hauled it into the daylight outside the school, and Janeček begged me for mercy’s sake to find a photographer, because he would like to have himself photographed with one foot on the boar’s head and the Lancaster in his hand. So I got hold of the chemist, who also hunted, and he quickly pulled down his shutter and came running to the school with his camera. But meanwhile the chairman of the local hunting club had turned up, he was sniffing round the wild boar and going cross-eyed with envy, because we hadn’t seen such a superb specimen hereabouts in a very long time. And as Janeček adopted a triumphant pose, his heel on the pig’s ear, we two, despite our overalls, lay down opposite one another to form a group with the pig, and the chairman of the club walked round and round in torment at the image, while the chemist, to make quite sure, took two photos of us. By then the club secretary had shown up, with his rifle, just to be on the safe side, but the boar was already dead, and so he chatted for a while and praised the masterful shot straight into the pig’s maw, then he had a quiet word with the club chairman and they were obviously on the ball, because they waited until we took up the rope again and were about to drag the pig to the road so I could pop and get the tractor and load the beast onto the flatbed. When suddenly the club chairman says: “Look here, you leave the animal exactly where it is, he’s not yours…” And Janeček said: “So who shot it, eh? Not you, I think.” And the secretary said: “No, but it fell in our parish, and where a beast falls, that’s the parish it belongs to…” And he laughed, rubbing his hands, and the chairman laughed, but Janeček’s dander was up and we closed ranks over the boar’s bristles and blood and we looked at Janeček, who shouted menacingly: “It’s my boar, I shot him, I only came this far to find him and finish him off…” But the secretary and chairman of the local hunting club laughed: “Yes, but under the game laws…,” but they didn’t finish because the woman came trotting up from the main road, pointed at us and screamed: “Cycle thieves, they stole my bike here…” And Janeček said: “Take it, we were only chasing this, you understand?” And he poked his rifle in the boar’s ear, and the woman grabbed her bike and wailed: “They’re crazy, they knocked me off my bicycle, this’ll be the death of me…,” and Janeček said: “Get away, missus, I’ll give you a rabbit to make it up to you, I’m Janeček from Velenka, but…! I’m not giving up the boar! He’s mine!” And we looked up and our tractor had arrived, and jumping off it and straight towards the wild boar and kneeling down beside it was none other than the chairman of our own hunting club, Hamáček in person. And he looked up and congratulated the marksman and said: “What a feast it’s going to be!” And the chairman of the local club said: “Yes, it is, but here, because this boar breathed it’s last on our patch… shot on yours, breathed its last on ours, so he’s ours…” But we looked at Janeček the shooter and at our chairman, and he said: “The boar’s ours…,” and we dragged the boar towards the tractor, and having bent down to load it, we were already lifting it when the members of the local hunting club sprang into action and dragged it back down onto the roadway… and again we lifted it and again the locals dragged it back down… at which point Janeček grabbed his rifle and loaded it and bellowed: “If you don’t give us the boar, we’ll attack!” And their chairman and secretary and the chemist shouted: “And if you load the boar up, then we’ll be the ones attacking!” And Janeček yelled: “Get your hands off it, or I’ll get nasty!” And he raised his rifle. And the secretary raised his rifle and shouted: “If you so much as move this boar, I’ll shoot!” And more people arrived at the double, and more members of the hunting club, and even ordinary folk, because our two villages had never seen eye to eye, suffice it for a field of sugar beet of ours to border one of this village’s and when the squadrons of women weeding got within a hoe’s length of each other they’d start hacking at each and anyone’s heads with their hoes until an ambulance had to be sent for, which was as nothing compared to the idea of losing from their own turf a wild boar that the entire village had got their sights on. And who knows how it would all have ended, we’d already started brawling, I’d already had my shirt ripped off and my neighbour one sleeve and Janeček was just taking aim when all the school windows opened, one after the other, with a neat little clicking noise of all the catches, the windows filled with children, and the teacher called out: “What you see here, children, is a lesson in civics, what you see here is how international events should not be resolved, what you see here is what a divided Korea means, what a divided Germany means, what a divided Berlin means. Comrades!” the teacher cried, “Be reasonable, this brave marksman saved us in our very own classroom, he felled that huge, fearsome beast, so shake hands now, hold a joint feast and you can all eat the pig together, on neutral ground, perhaps in Starý Vestec, at the Start tavern…” And there was a brief silence, broken by the recorded sound of the school bell coming from a loudspeaker, and there was a hush, the barrels of almost crossed rifles glinted like the trademark on Meissen porcelain, I had old Cuc by the throat, I’d had it in for him a long time, and he had my torn-off sleeve in one paw. The chairmen stepped forward and ours said: “I reckon there might be something to what the teacher says…” And the local chairman nodded and said: “Agreed, load up and take the boar to the Start, and we can decide when to hold the joint feast…” The teacher and the kids came back to life, no longer stock-still like posed for a studio photo, and the teacher called out: “Children, we have just witnessed an extraordinary event, here you have seen a graphic example of how international conflicts should be resolved, as Comenius…” And the children’s faces withdrew and the windows closed and then, after all eight of us together had loaded the boar onto the trailer with ease, the children started pouring out of the school and they were shouting and the colours of their caps and T-shirts were radiant, the kids screamed and punched each other and thumped each other in the back and hit each other with their schoolbags, joyful at being out in the fresh air, going home from school, but we thought their gaiety and shouting were meant for us, that they were paying homage to us, and Janeček, leaning on his rifle, bowed to them in acknowledgement, but the kids went charging past screaming, and the colourful throng kept clattering along, towards the pond which bore the children’s screaming and shouting across its surface to every corner, down every street of the village and up to a high heaven…