Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age Read Free Page A

himself puts in an appearance, I once knew a seamstress named Husáková, I gave her lessons, sexual hygiene and art, and I told her the main thing is to fill in the chinks, and she tried to get me to run into the woods and fill hers, but I said anyone can do that, what counts is doing something that didn’t exist before, but women bring everything back to the here and now, one day the owner of a restaurant complained to me that his customers would erase the marks he made on the coaster to keep track of how many beers they’d ordered, and the beautiful woman at my side said, I’ve got a mark no one can erase, gentlemen, though of course lagers spend a full six months in the barrel, sweet Pardubice Porter has an 18 percent alcohol content just like our Nusle Senator, Brno Dragon has 14 percent like Bráník Special and Budějovice Crystal, oh dear ladies, that heady sparkle, those bitter Pilsners, the Cardinals and semisweet brews they serve at U Fleků and U Tomáše’s, why will no one see that progress may be good for making people people, but for bread and butter and beer it’s the plague, they’ve got to slow down their damn technology, in the good old breweries they made a log fire under a copper kettle and the flame traveled up through the copper and caramelized the beer—what a memory I have! a true joy—and the rye they made bread out of would rest in the barns until November came and the whole ear went into the grain and only then did they thresh it, that was some bread, let me tell you, God’s gift to man, you could smell it being baked for miles around, the older the better, which is why the emperor liked his landau more than his motorcar, liked his wine too and died on the toilet, and you should have seen him do the European Renaissance with the Schratt lady, I was on guard duty in Meidling and I saw it all, the Schratt lady standing on a ladder picking plums and the emperor holding the ladder for her and peeking up her skirt like Goethe, which goes to show how right Batista was when he said that the best safeguard of marital bliss is a well-developed body, the emperor liked to wear a Kaiserrock, a kaiser coat, this long, dark frock coat buttoned all the way up the front, a noble family if there ever was one, the emperor’s, but they had the same troubles all families have, his son, the crown prince, was forced to marry Princess Stephanie of Belgium, but he was wild for Vetsera’s body, she had these gigantic breasts and eyes, and it ended in a gigantic shooting match, Dáša, who works in the pharmacy and has problems with sexual hygiene, Dáša said to me when I told her about the emperor’s family tragedy she said, Listen, if you and I were a couple and you started running after that slut I’d have shot you dead too, yes, tragedy rules the world and writers always have something to write about, one day I was walking along the tracks and a railway man came riding up on his bike and when he saw me he jumped down and said, Tell me the truth, Jirka, they didn’t make that goal yesterday, did they? and I said, No, they didn’t, and then he put one foot on the pedal and just before swinging the other one over he turned and called, Thank you, thank you, the truth prevails, I always knew you were a man of character! people keep mixing me up with referees and film stars and I’ve never played soccer in my life, well, only for fun, Mozart and Goethe they never played soccer either, or the emperor for that matter, no, he went chamois hunting in Ischl and wore lederhosen, you know, the little-boy shorts with the drawbridge in front, he liked people and pork, he made only one currency reform during his entire regime, and he had Šlosarek and Hugo Schenk strung up and gave my mother a twenty-five-gulden bonus, whenever she stamped cabbage, my mother, she wore white socks, we were on maneuvers with the emperor’s Uncle Albrecht, the