Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age Read Online Free PDF Page A

way around, the children study free of charge and the fathers are ready to slit their throats because those brats get more money than they do, on the other hand in the days of the monarchy you wouldn’t dream of serving beef broth without a wonderful spice from Asia Minor called saffron, my cousin was a twin and a real card, he was christened Vincek and his brother was christened Ludvíček, and when they were a year old their mother was bathing them in a tub and popped out to a see a neighbor, and when she got back half an hour later one of them had drowned, and they were so much alike nobody could tell which one, Ludvíček or Vincek, so they flipped a coin, heads for Ludvíček, tails for Vincek, and it came up Ludvíček, but when my cousin Vincek grew up he began to wonder—and he had plenty of time for it, he was always out of a job—he began to wonder who really did drown, whether the person walking around on earth wasn’t really Ludvíček and he, Vincek, was up in heaven, which led him to drink and to wander along the water’s edge and go in swimming, testing the waters, so to speak, till at last he drowned, by way of proof that he hadn’t been the one to drown back then, but also because back then people had to look for work, while today work looks for people, so they don’t have time to get into trouble, which I realized when Bondy the poet wheeled his two babies into the pub and quoted Socrates as saying that prostitution is employment for the unemployed, one day Tóneček from the coffee house offered us a few salamis if we’d break some stones for him, and we were hacking away and hacking away when suddenly a dark cloud covered the sun and it was black as night and thunder roared and lightning flashed and we had to take cover in a ditch, but just as suddenly the sun came out, and when we got home that evening Mama said, You’ll never guess what happened, boys, Karásek hanged himself in the woods while you were there breaking your stones, it was because his girl went with other men, young ladies, I was always careful about that sort of thing, the shoemaker I worked for had a daughter, Mařena her name was, with a stomach like a stein, a backside like a barn, and a chest like Maria Theresa’s, and one day they made me sleep over and bedded me down next to the stove, and when morning came I felt Mařena stroking my face and rubbing her chest against mine, but I gave such a start—even then I was as sensitive as a Saxon prince—that I banged my head against the stove and had to dip it in the bucket to wash away the blood, and the whole family jumped out of bed and cheered and wanted me to name the day but I refused, I told them that like Goethe I had a weak heart and was more inclined to poetry, which slowed them down for a while, but then Mařena bought me a tie and a ring made of nickel, so I used a tip from Batista’s book on how to have a happy marriage and made believe I was thinking about music, so Mařenka married a man named Jetrudka who made her six children and poor, he was drunk all the time and if he so much as sneezed in her direction she got pregnant, three of her children went crazy, and when the other three got old enough to think for themselves they stuck their heads in the noose, so much for Anna Nováková’s dream book, which says, dreaming of an infant means pleasure in the offing! well, maybe for a bigwig with a big house, but a baby crying is no pleasure, the monarchy was big on pomp, but when you went out walking you couldn’t help tripping over beggars’ peglegs and instead of enjoying the women’s bosoms I’d worry about their woes, one day I was walking along minding my own business when I noticed a Jewish beauty with a nose like a train hook sitting on the border between two fields, waiting for the first Saturday star to come out, and because she had no panties on I had one eye