Harlequin's Millions

1

JUST OUTSIDE THE LITTLE TOWN WHERE MY TIME stood still is a small castle, and in that castle is now a retirement home. There is only one road leading to the castle, which is at the top of a hill, the road is lined with old chestnuts, the branches of these old trees form a tunnel, so when you walk uphill it’s as if you’re striding through a long, Gothic vault, all the branches are intertwined, they don’t just support each other, they’re completely entangled, locked together by storm and wind. Somehow these trees, in their struggle for a bit of light, seem to have grown weary in the crown and are wasting away, so that the road is forever strewn with dried branches, black and charred, worn bare with constant friction. Sometimes when the wind is still, a whole branch will suddenly drop into the sand, you stand and stare as if a tile has just fallen from the roof, then you lift it up and toss it aside and feel the weight that might have injured you. Each time I set foot on that road, I’m putting my life at risk. I look up and see the five-hundred-meter-long tunnel, held up by black barriers that rise to the treetops like lances raised to honor some victory in a jousting match. If I chose to I could take the footpath that runs along the road, where the branches dip nearly to the ground, it’s lovely to walk up that path along the road from spring to autumn enjoying the leaves and flowers, in the autumn you see the burrs splitting open and firing their brown chestnuts, but I prefer to walk beneath the colonnade of black trunks, at the end of which is the entrance to the castle, like a great black curtain, the iron has been worked by a goldsmith’s hammers and tongs, while the gate itself is forged in the shape of the two black wings of a fallen angel, a gate, I should add, that opens only on visiting days. Even on a sunny day, when you climb up the hill to the gate, you’re walking in semi-darkness, all around you on either side of that double road sunlight and colors come trickling through the branches, as you walk slowly up through that shadowy crypt from which now and again, but always suddenly and unexpectedly, a black branch falls. And because on a sunny afternoon the white light in the castle courtyard is intensified by the gravel scattered there and on the road, against this bright background the black outline of Count Špork’s initials and arms stands out even more clearly, inscribed in the wings of the gate the way Francin used to write down the first and last names of the publicans in his brewery book, always embellishing the names with a calligraphic initial in red and blue ink, like the initials in a missal. Next to the gate, under the last gigantic chestnut tree, is a little house where the gatekeeper sits. Even on a sunny day the lights are on inside, because the shadows on the road are so deep, the treetops so dense, covered from spring to fall with an awning of leaves that keeps out the sun. We each take turns acting as gatekeeper, many of the pensioners here consider it an honor to perform this service at what was once the Count’s gate. Everyone who spends ten hours on duty here, keeping watch over that beautiful gate, feels like a changed person, it’s such a great honor to inspect each pensioner who enters the gate. There are some pensioners who live in the castle side by side, have their beds side by side and sit side by side at the table, but here at the gate they act as if they don’t know each other at all, as if they’re seeing each other for the very first time. They question each other about the purpose of their visit, even if they’re friends, during those ten hours the gatekeepers even seem to have forgotten the faces of their fellow pensioners and demand accordingly of everyone who passes through the gate that he not only state his name but also show the papers that prove he really does live in the castle. It’s lovely to walk up the hill along that lane, to be just an ordinary pensioner, an ordinary mortal, exhausted and nearly at the end of her strength and yet still climbing up the hill through that deep darkness, looking up at the elaborate black ironwork of the imposing gate, the lances and curves and points, the circles and great billowing waves all forged under a goldsmith’s hands, it’s lovely to walk through that gate and stroll through the castle park down the sand-strewn path past the stunted yews in the courtyard, meeting other pensioners no better off than you are, old men and women just wandering around, hobbling along and stealing glances at one another to see whether there might be someone worse off than they are, until they hear the bell for morning coffee, lunch, afternoon tea, and finally, for dinner. I still always think it’s lovely to stop in front of the castle and look up at the façade, which, when lit by the sun, is completely beige and radiates such light and warmth that it dazzles you. After a while, when you’ve gotten used to the beige glow of the walls, you focus your eyes on the huge wrought-iron clock, which fills the entire space between the second and third floors. The hands were made by a goldsmith and are as big as a grown man. When I first saw that clock it gave me a terrible fright, because even though it was just before noon, those hands were pointing to twenty-five past seven. At twenty-five past seven the clock had stopped, and no one had been able or even had a reason to repair it. The sad thing was that this clock, which always showed the exact same time up there on the castle wall, was like a memento mori, because everyone here and in this area knows that most old people die in the evening, at just about half past seven. And when I first stood here and saw how the poplars and oaks and dark spruce trees towered over the castle, how the park enclosed the castle on the south side in the shape of a horseshoe, when I turned my gaze back to the castle I saw that there were large, bare patches on the front wall where the plaster had crumbled. Here and there the original masonry showed through, as if the wall had been decorated with giant envelopes, engraved in the hardening plaster. And because the castle was on a hill outside the little town where time stood still, I could hear the wind, a stiff breeze that whistled around the castle and surrounded it with the rustling of leaves, the century-old aspens trembled even when there was no wind, millions of leaves fluttering endlessly and trying to free themselves from millions of stems. I noticed at once, on that very first day, that you could walk from the great halls onto the balconies, which, like the gate, had been forged by goldsmiths, the balconies were all shaped like great transparent bathtubs, they looked like transparent sleighs, fit for a nobleman, or transparent coaches, or the flower beds around lavish tombstones. I noticed that the pensioners were sitting out there in the sun, silent and motionless, their heads resting on the railings of those balconies decorated with flower boxes, from which hung withered petunias and snapdragons and zinnias blackened by the sun like tobacco leaves. And below the clock I saw limp human arms hanging down, weary arms, some crossed for no particular reason, palms dangling like droopy flowers, wrists in dazzlingly white shirtsleeves. Through the ironwork I could see a chair and on that chair were a pair of outstretched legs, the rest of the body was blocked by a green flower box. And at that moment a gutter came loose from the side wing of the castle and swung down like a barrier at a crossing, as it fell it spun quickly around a fixed point like the big hand of an astronomical clock, but the rusty gutter stopped and remained there, it swayed back and forth, threateningly, spilling rust and old leaves and a bird’s nest. At that moment it struck me that the façade of the castle resembled the faces of each and every elderly pensioner, with that crumbling plaster and the hands of the clock stuck at twenty-five past seven, those hands that looked so much like arms resting on knees, I noticed that in places the plaster was so ravaged by time that the original masonry was exposed, great blocks of marl and sandstone cemented together with coarse mortar. Exactly like the faces of the older pensioners! Because in that castle there are also younger pensioners without a single wrinkle. But even the younger ones always seem to be looking elsewhere, they stand around as if they’re trying with all their might to remember something, but can’t, not for the life of them. And they’re probably not trying to remember anything at all, they look amazed, as if at any moment they’ll be able to remember something pleasant, something that will cure them, something that will do them good. Their faces give the impression of nobility and that they were once highly educated, but actually they’re still learning, only now is their education nearing completion, they’re perpetually on the verge of a realization that everyone else in the world is after too. But perhaps they only appear that way to me. For these people it’s a great achievement if they can even find their way back to the castle, their rooms, their beds. Then the glazed front door flew open, the reflection of the glass panes made a semicircle on the ground below and dazzled me, I lifted my head and on the second floor a bearded man stepped out onto the balcony, he leaned his hands on the railing and turned his profile to the right and then to the left, the old man looked like Count Špork himself. His raised chin shone with a trimmed white beard as he pretended to be observing the weather, the landscape. He remained in this exalted pose, unmoving, pensive, as if he were relishing this moment, in which he wanted to make clear that he had ended up in the retirement home by mistake. Then, just beside the row of columns that led to the castle vestibule, a face began to move, and I saw, to my dismay, that the face belonged to an old woman in a wheelchair, her hands were gripped firmly around the armrests, she tensed her arms and shoulders so tightly that her back formed a straight line against the back of the chair, so that I kept imagining she was a sphinx. And opposite her, next to another column, sat an almost identical woman, equally solemn, equally sphinxlike. Her wheelchair also had its back to the column, and there they sat, two feeble old ladies in their little black wheelchairs in the sun, both of them had their skirts rolled up so high you could see a white enamel chamber pot gleaming under the sliding seats of their chairs. And as a breeze blew from the north, softly singing and rustling the leaves on the trees, I heard music in the distance, string players, the kind of music they always played as an accompaniment to Chaplin’s Limelight, or that film about the life of Toulouse-Lautrec, music that brought a wistful smile to your lips, a composition for strings that moved me as deeply as the elaborate castle gate. But although I myself was touched by the sound of those strings, I saw that the pensioners were just wandering around and paying no attention to the music, they sat on benches drawing silly pictures in the sand with their canes, or sucking quietly on lozenges and peppermints. On the right side of the courtyard was a separate building, also beige colored, and all along the front wall of that building was a large open corridor, a gallery, not nearly as pompous as the balconies on the front of the main building, and along this gallery were ten brown doors leading to various rooms, mounted on each of the ten doors was a small brown box. A few pensioners, all men, walked out onto the gallery, leaned over the railing and looked down, they looked at me, stiffly, rigidly, but I could tell they didn’t see me, their gaze was elsewhere, they were looking back, to the old times, when they were young, or perhaps they were still grieving bitterly and angrily about some incident they could do nothing more about, something beyond their control, even though the incident had only now reached maturity, while the reasons for whatever had happened were long since past … And I saw that same music drifting down from the long gallery, swirling like smoke around all those figures, I could even see the music pouring from the little brown boxes on the doors, which were open here and there. I shook myself out of my reverie and walked back toward the vestibule, where the two old ladies in their wheelchairs with their fingers clutching the leather armrests still looked like sphinxes, only now they were surrounded by the sounds of a string orchestra, and I saw that the music was coming from the rediffusion boxes, that this music was winding around the two old women like a wild rosebush around a statue, I looked up and saw that between every door on the balcony and the gallery, mounted on a bracket, was the same little box, like a cage for a blind bird, and I saw that from each little cage music was pouring, music for strings, the poignant sounds of the strings were intertwined, they played in unison, and then suddenly one of the players, with great urgency, would play a solo, the theme … yes! It was “Harlequin’s Millions,” those same millions that accompanied silent movies in the old days, an amorous scene, a declaration of love, kisses that made the viewers, who were moved to tears by the string players, reach for their handkerchiefs … Now I’m standing here in the courtyard of the retirement home, once the castle of Count Špork, Francin has rented a room here for the two of us, Francin’s older brother Uncle Pepin has been at the home for three months, in one of the wards of this poorhouse, as they called it in the old days. In the ward for bedridden patients. Whenever I visited Uncle here, then too I’d stroll through the vestibule, I’d walk up the slowly ascending corridor and peek into the side corridors, where old women came to life and pushed aside their curtains to peer into the courtyard … Then too I peeked into the corridor of the ward where the old women lay and where the sharp smell of babies’ diapers hung in the air, then too I peeked into the dining hall, years ago Count Špork held banquets here for hundreds of noble guests, then too I ended my walk in the ward for bedridden patients, where Uncle Pepin lay in his bed in the shadows and where nine other bedridden pensioners looked up at me, and here too I could hear “Harlequin’s Millions,” but only after I had sat down and looked at Uncle Pepin, who lay staring at the ceiling with unblinking eyes, not speaking, not agreeing, not disagreeing, just lying there, only then did I hear “Harlequin’s Millions” in the distance and I had the strong feeling that I was hallucinating, as a kind of defense against everything I had seen here. So strong was my revulsion, so heavy my suffering after all I had seen on my first visit to Uncle Pepin in this former castle! Yet something had happened to me, something that completely shocked me, I decided we should sell everything and Francin agreed, and now here I am standing in the courtyard, Francin has rented a room for us, it costs a whole month’s pension and for a small additional fee we can live here like members of Count Špork’s own family, in one small room, that’s true, but for that extra fee we can have our breakfast, lunch and dinner in the same room where the Count and his family are said to have eaten their afternoon and evening meals, in the dining hall, every day I’ll stroll past the sandstone statues in the park and someday I’ll be able to say that I know what each of those statues represents, I’ll be able to look up at the ceilings, painted with scenes from Greek history, I’ll be able to touch the white Greek vases standing in the niches along the stairs, while Francin checks his watch, again and again, afraid he might miss the world news on all the radio stations where Czech is spoken. I had been in the castle at least ten times or more, but then I was a guest, scared of everything and easily panicked. Today I stood here as a person who is going to be living here for a long time, until something happens to me, suddenly someone will come to me, whisper sweet nothings and make me all kinds of promises and then set me free, in a landscape that knows no limits, no bounds. I’d been in the castle ten times or more, but today the things I noticed, the sounds I heard and the interactions I saw, were sharper, clearer, and in that sense different from all the times before.