Harlequin's Millions (15 page)

each other again, and then the forest was so full of shouting and swearing, whistling and yelling that we said to each other that next time we'd go mushroom hunting in the afternoon, because if there were any mushrooms growing at all, they'd be growing after twelve, too. Unfortunately that's what all the other mushroomers said to each other, so that at the station waiting to board the afternoon train there would again be a hundred mushroomers, all giving each other dirty looks, even the ones who always greeted each other in the little town didn't do so now, and just as we'd feared, all those mushroomers who had boarded the train in our little town spilled out again in Dymokury and we all ran to the forest and in the forest we all got in each other's way, so Francin and Pepin and I gathered our mushrooms at the edge of the forest, we even found a whole basket of boletes in a nearby field, and once again our basket was full, and when all the mushroomers were reassembled on the platform to wait for the evening train, they looked enviously at our basket, which Uncle Pepin was carrying. After that we decided that next time it would be better to go by car or bicycle. So when we arrived in Dymokury at daybreak and the train came chugging around the bend, hardly anyone got off, but the forest clearings and paths were full of cars and bicycles and the forest was full of mushroomers. This time we didn't hurry, we had decided to pick only suspicious-looking
mushrooms, I'd brought along a saucepan and a bit of butter, some bread and a thermos can of hot tea, we were hoping we'd be lucky, and after a nice long nap we went and picked only the mushrooms that the other mushroomers had left behind, using the book Professor Smotlacha had written, we gathered gray-spotted Amanita and clustered woodlover, made a fire and braised and fried the mushrooms in butter, Francin added a panther cap and when the mushrooms were ready, we let Uncle Pepin have the first taste, he thought it was delicious, then we waited half an hour and Francin asked … Pepin, are your ears ringing yet? And when he said he didn't hear any ringing, we helped ourselves and savored every bite, it was lovely in the forest, we picked only mushrooms that had been uprooted by the boots and shoes of hundreds of mushroom hunters … Another time we had fried up a few slices of common earthball and after eating it our legs went numb, for three hours we couldn't walk, but then the feeling came back, from then on we avoided the common earthball, we only ever added it to spice up a batch of fried red-foot bolete and sulphur knight, along with some elfin saddle, which according to Professor Smotlacha contained methylhydrazine … Incidentally, elfin saddle is also delicious in vinegar, tarragon vinegar, combined with orange chanterelles, wood hedgehog and young pheasant's back, in the winter we put this mixture
in glass tumblers, sprinkled it with lemon juice and a bit of Worcestershire sauce and it tasted like the most delicate mussels and lobster. And so in the days when we ate and pickled only suspicious-looking mushrooms, we were so full of that delicate poison that once when we found some perfectly edible birch boletes and took them home and braised and fried them, we all suddenly began vomiting and had diarrhea and a terrible thirst, a dull headache, cramps in our calves, we had double vision and a constant ringing in our ears, at the hospital they were amazed that we had been poisoned by edible mushrooms, but the head physician told us that this had also happened to Professor Smotlacha, who had been found deeply unconscious after eating perfectly harmless birch boletes … And from then on we only went into the forest to go walking, and one day Francin stumbled upon a truck in the bushes that had probably been there since the end of the war, it was completely overgrown with small birches and aspens, Francin moved into that truck in the woods, he stayed there all week long and slept in the cab, I brought him his supper and watched as he disassembled the whole truck and put it back together again, and on the last day, when I'd brought him a bag with pans of hot food and a pot of soup, Francin held up his finger, grasped the crank handle, turned it, turned it again and the engine started, Francin pushed down on the accelerator with
his hand and laughed, he was happy, then he polished up the weather-beaten emblem on the radiator grille with a piece of cotton waste. The metal emblem was inscribed with the name White. And the following week, with the money in his savings account, he bought the wreck from the local authorities, he bought new tires and took them to the forest, he jacked up the chassis and replaced the flat, moldering tires with the new ones, then he chopped through the young trees overgrowing the White, it was a lovely sight, some of the birch trunks had even sprouted in the driver's cab and grown right through the broken windshield, toward the sun, perhaps this is what it will look like when there are no more people left here on earth, within ten, twenty years merciful nature will have enveloped all the factories and roads, all the cities, everything people have built on this planet, and then there will be order again on earth and a cruel but righteous peace, said Francin, and sat down behind the wheel and we drove home, Francin was so filled with happiness that he couldn't eat a thing, every few minutes he went running out to the courtyard to inspect the White, he drank his coffee standing up while keeping an eye on his truck through the window. Then he went back to the local authorities and when he returned, he was waving a document that said that he, Francin, was authorized to use this truck to haul freight. And so every day Francin drove off with Pepin, who
went along as his helper, to the fruit and vegetable warehouses, they transported vegetables all the way to Moravia, and the greater the distance the later they came home at night, tired but happy. Uncle Pepin was so old by then that when he and Francin were loading the crates of vegetables onto the pallets, he almost always fell and hit his head, so the warehousemen had to nurse his wounds and the next time they arrived at that warehouse, the men sat Uncle Pepin down on an empty crate and loaded up the truck themselves so they'd be done faster, while Francin just stood there handing them the empty crates that were piled high on the platform of the White … And that was why when both those men of mine returned from their journey, even if Pepin's head was completely bandaged, he always beamed like a winner. Sometimes they had a flat tire on the road, sometimes two, and once when it was a hot day and they didn't reach their destination until evening, the consignees wouldn't accept their wilted vegetables, so Francin instructed Pepin to kneel down beside him, and then the two men put their hands together and begged and pleaded for them to accept the goods, or they'd never deliver any more vegetables to them, after which the men who unloaded the truck signed for the load, but only on condition that Francin take the vegetables to the cowshed, for the cattle, or straight to the dunghill … And all that time I was sitting and waiting, they
should've been home hours before, but they'd only just left from somewhere along the northern border, I was terrified at the thought that they might have been killed in a crash … I scanned the newspaper for mention of an accident and then went back to listening at the window for the distinctive sound of the White, but although various types of cars and trucks drove past, none of them was my Francin's, I could always tell the make of a car by its sound, and just when I was convinced they were both stone dead, I heard the cheerful, almost jubilant crackling and sputtering of the White's engine, which made me laugh, I ran to the gate and opened it in the dark and the White drove slowly onto the premises, Francin tromped on the accelerator to make the engine roar, and then turned the key, which marked the end of their glorious journey. So twice a week my men didn't get home till about midnight even though I'd expected them early in the evening, I paced up and down, I learned to talk to myself, once they didn't get back to me until the following day, because all the tires had blown, even the two spares, Francin had to hitchhike home to take out all our money, buy new tires and then bring them all the way back to Broumov, where Uncle Pepin was still sitting in the cab of the truck singing songs from the operetta
I Have Nine Canaries
, while I spent the whole night pacing up and down and reciting the lines from my most famous roles, from the days when
I performed at the playhouse in the little town where time stood still … Now I walk around the retirement home, the rediffusion boxes play “Harlequin's Millions,” the brown speakers, hanging outside in the trees like bird feeders, make me think of beehives with bees flying out in all directions, into the sun, “Harlequin's Millions” every Sunday and on holidays is more soothing than medicine and injections, I walk down the corridors and before I go to sleep I listen through open doors and behind closed ones to the echoing sighs, the confused conversations, because even long after the visitors have gone home, the pensioners not only continue their conversations with their relatives, they also repeat over and over everything they should've said to the relatives while they were still visiting them here at the retirement home … At the door to my own room I put my ear against the white enamel paint, then open the door a crack and in the shadows I see Francin kneeling next to the radio, completely engrossed in the news from around the world, he's been listening to those reports for more than twenty years, he listens to them like a doctor examining a critically ill patient, now Francin raises his fist and shakes it at someone on the radio, or shouts something encouraging … I close the door and walk on, perhaps because Francin was forever waiting for that one news report that would amaze not only him but the entire world, but I knew he was
waiting in vain, he was waiting just like all those pensioners had waited today for their relatives who never showed up, yet I know that next visiting day they'll be expecting them with even greater hopes … Perhaps it was also because ever since the day we got married Francin was obsessed with the notion that the best was yet to come, that our future would be a bright one and that only in the future, when we were retired, would we truly be happy … that's why he had taken out two very expensive insurance policies, after that we could never go on vacation, Francin reassured me that everything would be fine once the insurance had been paid out. Every month he paid five hundred crowns for that happy future, six thousand a year … and for that money, as I now know, we could've packed up, even brought Uncle Pepin along, and toured the Mediterranean, driven through the Alps and the Pyrenees, taken a cruise to Spitsbergen, traveled to Italy, to Morocco, a different country every year, seen Paris and the beautiful cities of Germany and Austria … But we just sat at home and dreamt that one day we'd be retired and would get to see all those places, Francin even sent away every year for brochures from travel agencies in Hamburg, The Hague and Bremen, from Lloyd's Travel, brochures with detailed descriptions of all the trips, including the names of every port, all the departure dates, even the names of the ships that would carry us across the seas and oceans.
But when the war was over and the time had come for the insurance to be paid out, we received a letter from the insurance agency informing us that we were entitled to half a million crowns, but that we had to give them the name of a bank where they could send our insurance money so it could be deposited in an account we could draw on only for specific purposes, which didn't include travel. And from that time on Francin lost heart, from that time on he was furious at himself, because before the war he had paid the insurance company six thousand crowns a year, every year another and even more beautiful voyage across the seas, through European cities, mountains and valleys, every year a wonderful vacation for Uncle Pepin, too, in those days that was what it cost to travel for three weeks, for a whole month, but now all those trips were tied up in a limited-access account … The first few years he still hoped that things would get better, that one day we'd be able to travel, that we could withdraw our money to pay for a trip, perhaps even a trip around the world, that's how much money we'd saved, but every year they told us that money in a limited-access account couldn't be used for such expenditures. Then Francin would postpone the whole thing till the following year, and then the year after that, we ran our fingers along the maps in
Otto's World Atlas
and pointed to where we'd go as soon as the insurance money became available, we spent
whole evenings poring over a catalogue of international tours, made lists of trips to international capitals, sightseeing tours of the United States and Mexico, we imagined ourselves strolling in the glow of neon signs and the shadow of skyscrapers, discussed the pros and cons of a sightseeing tour through Turkey, with a stay by the sea, where Europe meets Asia under the star and crescent, we journeyed steadfastly from ancient Carthage to the Saharan oasis and wandered through the long white nights of Scandinavia, and all that time we firmly believed that since we had saved such a magnificent sum of money, we would surely be able to take all those trips, if that money was still worth as much as it was when we invested it. And so we traveled on, by finger, to Morocco, we read everything there was to read about that country, about the world of Islam, about that land of contrasts and scenic splendor, but in the end we were willing to compromise, Francin wrote letters asking that a portion of the half million be unblocked to pay for an ordinary tour of Austria, land of Mozart, Schubert and Strauss, or a little trip to South Italy with a brief stay by the sea, or perhaps just to the land of the thousand lakes, forests and the midnight sun, Finland, or a short stay on the Adriatic Coast with its romantic beauty and hot sun, where thirty years ago a thousand crowns would've bought you a bus trip for two, hotel included, but each
time a letter came back saying that no funds could be released for trips of this nature. Finally Francin wrote that he very much wanted to use his hard-earned and carefully invested money to take me to Romania, for the sun, the beaches, a modern summer resort, or to Bulgaria, the Bulgarian coast, with its long, sunny summer days … But once again his request was flatly refused. And after we had sold our villa on the Elbe, Francin wondered if he should spend the money from the house on one of the beautiful journeys we had been looking forward to so eagerly all our lives, but then he said we'd paid for all those trips years ago, that we'd buy something more permanent with this money, and so we bought a place in the retirement home, a little room for two, I can still remember, Francin traveled around the world with his radio programs and news reports, he often consulted his