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

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.”

Now I’m sitting in the White Lion, drinking pink Gambrinus, the whole pub is pink, pink curtains, even the table-cloths are turning pink, I’m sitting in pink solitude and lapsing into pink doldrums and nihilities, the two floating zeros on the lavatory door are my pink emblem, ‘Little pink life of mine,’ I muse, ‘your once prosperous business is going bust, you must settle with all your creditors, making sure you owe nothing to the elements from whom you’ve taken everything for the book, little pink life, I’m slipping into bankruptcy and it’s beginning to dawn that with true contrition and penitence a new account can be opened at the bank of infinity and eternity, those two zeros, those two cavernous gullets of yawning nullity, the two zeros incised heraldically in the doors of all gentlemen’s toilets…’ I’m in the White Lion and finishing off my last beer, on the wall the waiters have fixed a yellow board at which they’re throwing sharp-pointed darts trimmed with gaudy flights, darts of the sharpness and weight of a pair of compasses bent back straight, each player starts with three hundred points and the first to reach zero wins. I’ve also played and, playing, have won, I was the first to have nothing left.