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I like those few minutes before seven o’clock at night, when, as a young wife, with rags and a crumpled copy of the newspaper National Politics, I clean the glass cylinders of the lamps, with a match I rub off the blackened ends of the burnt wicks, I put the brass caps back, and at seven o’clock precisely that wonderful moment comes when the brewery machinery ceases to function, and the dynamo pumping the electric current around to all the places where the light bulbs shine, the dynamo starts to turn more slowly, and as the electricity weakens, so does the light from the bulbs, slowly the white light grows pink and the pink light grey, filtered through crape and organdie, till the tungsten filaments project red rachitic fingers at the ceiling, a red violin key. Then I light the wick, put on the cylinder, draw out the little yellow tongue of flame, put on the milky shade decorated with porcelain roses. I like those few minutes before seven o’clock in the evening, I like looking upward for those few minutes when the light drains from the bulb like blood from the cut throat of a cock, I like looking at that fading signature of the electric current, and I dread the day the mains will be brought to the brewery and all the brewery lamps, all the airy lamps in the stables, the lamps with round mirrors, all those portly lamps with round wicks one day will cease to be lit, no one will prize their light, for all this ceremonial will be replaced by the light-switch resembling the water tap which replaced the wonderful pumps. I like my burning lamps, in whose light I carry plates and cutlery to the table, open newspapers or books, I like the lamp-lit illumined hands resting just so on the tablecloth, human severed hands, in whose manuscript of wrinkles one may read the character of the one to whom these hands belong, I like the portable paraffin lamps with which I go out of an evening to meet visitors, to shine them in their faces and show them the way, I like the lamps in whose light I crochet curtains and dream deeply, lamps which if extinguished with an abrupt breath emit an acrid smell whose reproach inundates the darkened room. Would that I might find the strength, when the electricity comes to the brewery, to light the lamps at least once a week for one evening and listen to the melodic hissing of the yellow light, which casts deep shadows and compels one into careful locomotion and dreaming.

Francin lit in the office the two portly lamps with their round wicks, two lamps continuously bubbling on like two housekeepers, lamps standing on the edges of a great table, lamps emitting warmth like a stove, lamps sipping paraffin with huge appetite. The green shades of these portly lamps cut off almost with a ruler’s edge the areas of light and shadow, so that when I looked in the office window Francin was always split in two, into one Francin soaked in vitriol and another Francin swallowed up in gloom. These tubby brass contraptions, in which the wick was adjusted up or down by a horizontal screw, these brass skeps had a huge draught, so much oxygen did these lamps of Francin’s need that they vacuumed up the air around them, so that when Francin placed his cigarette in the vicinity of the lamps the brass hive mouth sucked in ribbons of blue smoke, and the cigarette smoke, as it reached the magic circle of those portly lamps, was mercilessly sucked in and up the draught of the glass cylinder, consumed by the flame, which shone greenishly about the cap like the light given off by a rotted stump of wood, a light like a will-o’-the-wisp, like St Elmo’s fire, like the Holy Spirit, which came down in the form of a purple flame hovering over the fat yellow light of the round wick. And Francin entered by the light of these lamps in the outspread brewery books the output of beer, receipts and outgoings, he compiled the weekly and monthly reports, and at the end of every year established the balance for the whole calendar year, and the pages of these books glistened like starched shirt-fronts. When Francin turned the page, these two portly lamps fussed over every motion, threatening to blow out, they squawked, those lamps, as if they were two great birds disturbed out of their sleep, those two lamps positively twitched crossly with their long necks, casting on the ceiling those constantly palpitating shadow-plays of antediluvian beasts, on the ceiling in those half shadows I always saw flapping elephant ears, palpitating rib-cages of skeletons, two great moths impaled on the stake of light ascending from the glass cylinder right up to the ceiling, where over each lamp there shone a round dazzling mirror, a sharply illumined silver coin, which constantly, scarcely perceptibly, but nevertheless shifted about, and expressed the mood of each lamp. Francin, when he turned the page, wrote again the headings with the names and surnames of the public-house landlords. He took a number three lettering pen, and as in the old missals and solemn charters, Francin gave each initial letter in the headings ornaments full of decorative curlicues and billowing lines of force, for, when I sat in the office and gazed out of the gloom at his hands, which anointed those office lamps with bleaching-powder, I always had the impression that Francin made those ornamental initials along the lines of my hair, that it gave him the inspiration, he always gave a look at my hair, out of which the light sparkled, I saw in the mirror that wherever I was in the evening, there in my coiffure and the quality of my hair there was always one lamp more. With the lettering pen Francin wrote the basic initial letters, then he took fine pens and as the mood took him dipped them alternately in green and blue and red inks and round the initials began to trace my billowing hair, and like the rose bush growing over and about the arbour, so with the thick netting and branching of the lines of force in my hair Francin ornamented the initial letters of the names and surnames of the public house landlords.

And when he returned tired from the office, he stood in the doorway in the shadow, the white shirt cuffs showed how he was exhausted by the whole day, these shirt cuffs almost touched his knees, the whole day had placed so many worries and tribulations on Francin’s back that he was always ten centimetres shorter, maybe even more. And I knew that the greatest worry was me, that ever since the time he had first seen me, ever since then he had been carrying me in an invisible, and yet all too palpable rucksack on his back, which was growing ever heavier by the day. And then every evening we stood under the burning rise-and-fall lamp, the green shade was so big that there was room for both of us under it, it was a chandelier like an umbrella, under which we stood in the downpour of hissing light from the paraffin lamp, I hugged Francin with one hand and with the other I stroked the back of his head, his eyes were closed and he breathed deeply, when he had settled down he hugged me at the waist, and so it looked as if we were about to begin some kind of ballroom dance, but in fact it was something more, it was a cleansing bath, in which Francin whispered in my ear everything that had happened to him that day, and I stroked him, and every movement of my hand smoothed away the wrinkles, then he stroked my loose flowing hair, each time I drew the porcelain chandelier down lower, around the circumference of the chandelier there were thickly hung coloured glass tubes connected by beads, those trinkets tinkled round our ears like spangles and ornaments round the loins of a Turkish dancing girl, sometimes I had the impression that the great adjustable lamp was a glass hat jammed right down over both our ears, a hat hung about with a downpour of trimmed icicles … And I expelled the last wrinkle from Francin’s face somewhere into his hair or behind his ears, and he opened his eyes, straightened himself up, his cuffs were again at the level of his hips, he looked at me distrustfully, and when I smiled and nodded, he plucked up courage and looked right at me and I at him, and I saw what a great power I had over him, how my eyes entrapped him like the eyes of a striped python when they stare at a frightened finch.

This evening a horse neighed from the darkened yard, then there came another whinny, and then there resounded a thundering of hooves, rattling of chains and jingle of buckles, Francin jerked up and listened, I took a lamp and went out into the passage and opened the door, outside the drayman was calling out in the dark, ‘Hey, Ede, Kare, hey whoa!’, but no, the two Belgian geldings were pelting away from the stable with a lamp on their breastplate, just as they had returned weary, unharnessed from the dray, in their collars and with the traces hung on the embroidery of those collars and in all their harness after a whole day delivering the beer, just when everyone thought, these gelded stallions can be thinking of nothing else but hay and a pail of draff and a can of oats, so, all of a sudden, four times a year these two geldings recollected their coltish days, their genius of youth, full of as yet undeveloped but nevertheless present glands, and they rose up, they made a little revolt, they gave themselves signals in the gloom of dusks, returning to the stables, and they shied and bolted, but it wasn’t shying, they never forgot that still and even up to the last moment even an animal can take the path of freedom … and now they flew past the tied houses, on the concrete pavement, under their hooves sparks were kindled like flints, and the lamp on the chest of the offside gelding furiously bucketed about and bobbed and lit up the flitting buckles and broken reins, I leaned forward, and in the tender light of the paraffin lamp that Belgian pair flew past, stout, gigantic geldings, Ede and Kare, who together weighed twenty-five metric quintals, all of which they now put in motion, and that motion constantly threatened to turn into a fall, and the fall of one horse entailed the fall of the other, for they were harnessed together with ties and leather buckles and straps, yet constantly in that gallop they seemed to have a mutual understanding, they bolted simultaneously and alternated in leadership by no more than a couple of centimetres … and behind them ran the unfortunate drayman with the whip, the drayman dreading that one of the horses might break its legs, the brewery management would dock it from his pay for years to come … and the loss of both horses would mean paying it off till the end of his life … ‘Hey, Ede and Kare! Hey whoa!’, but the team was already dashing into the draught of wind by the maltings, now their hooves softened in the muddy roadway past the chimney and malting floor, the geldings slowed down also, and again by the stables, on the cobble-stones, they speeded up, and on the concrete pavement, illuminated by sharp-edged shafts of light from passages lit by paraffin lamps, on that pavement, drawing hissing sparks from every buckle dragging on the ground, every chain, every hoof, those two Belgians gathered speed, it was no longer a running pace, but a retarded fall, puffs of breath rolled from their nostrils, their eyes were crazed and filled with horror, at the turning by the office both of them skidded on that concrete paving, like a grotesque comedy, but both rode along on their rear hooves, with sparks flying, the drayman stiffened with horror. And Francin rushed to the door, but I stood leaning on the doorpost, praying that nothing would happen to those horses, I knew very well that their incident was also my story too, and Ede and Kare once more in synchrony trotted alongside one another into the draught from the maltings, their hooves grew quiet in the soft mud on the road past the malting floor, and again they gave themselves a signal, and for the third time they flew off, the drayman leapt and the lamp, as one of the horses tugged the bridle, flew in an arc and smashed against the laundry, and the crash of it gave the Belgians new strength, first they neighed one after the other, then both together, and they pelted off along the concrete pavement … I looked at Francin, as if it were me who had changed into a pair of Belgian horses, that was my obstinate character, once a month to go crazy, I too suffered a quarterly longing for freedom, I, who was certainly not neutered, but hale and healthy, sometimes a bit too hale and healthy … and Francin looked at me, and saw that the bolting Belgian team, those fair blowing manes and powerful air-drawn tails streaming behind their brown bodies, they were me, not me, but my character, my bolting golden coiffure flying through the darkened night, that freely blowing unbound hair of mine … and he pushed me aside, and now Francin stood with upraised arms in the tunnel of light flooding from the passage, with uplifted arms he stepped towards the horses and called out, ‘Eh-doodoo-doodoo! Whoa!’, and the gelded Belgian stallions braked, from beneath their hooves the sparks showered, Francin jumped aside and took the offside horse by the bridle, snatched it and dug it into the foaming maw of the animal, and the motion of the horses ceased, the buckles and reins and straps of the harnessing fell on the ground, the drayman ran up and took the nearside one by the bridle … ‘Sir, sir …’ stammered the drayman. ‘Wipe them down with straw, and take them through the yard … forty thousand crowns that pair cost, do you follow me, Martin?’ said Francin, and when he came in the front door like a lancer, and he served with the lancers in the time of Austria, if I hadn’t jumped aside he would have knocked me down, he would have stepped right over me … and out of the dark came the sound of the whip and the painful whinny of the Belgian horses, swearing and blows with the wrong end of the whip, then the leaping of horses in the dark and cracking of the long whip, wrapping itself round the Belgians’ legs and slashing into the skin.

PENGUIN MODERN CLASSICS

CUTTING IT SHORT

Bohumil Hrabal

CUTTING IT SHORT

Translated by James Naughton

PENGUIN CLASSICS

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