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and holding her head back … Everyone stared … The whole hill was awash in horror … They pushed her into the cart from the rear, like some broken thing … everyone crowding around the door … Nothing was visible, except for its gray wall … The gendarme tromped back uphill … This was the first time I saw a murderer, a murderess … The whole time I was waiting for everyone to jump on her, or attack the gendarme to rescue her … I was waiting to see how far they would go in their rage … from what depths they would draw it … But nothing! For a full week that was all they talked about … They were simple … Sheer gossip-mongers … All they had inside them were bruises, cheap wine, and howls … Nothing but meaningless junk … But the women were different … They at least kept all of their music … the moments of great emotion, the moaning, the tears … Everything in my surrounding that was far off and that I didn’t know well enough stayed the same after this murder … But thepear tree in front of the house, the garden, the barn, Karel’s meadow, the turnip beds all refused to change back to the way they were before. They didn’t want to be tamped back into their shells. The shade under the pear tree was black … it ate right into the grass and deep into the dirt … It took a week for me to somehow regain my composure. But I still didn’t feel safe. Not until Sunday, when I went with Karel to mass. I had to. To Prečna on foot … Clusters of peasants were walking down the road. Wearing black shoes, neckties, hats, pocket chains. To hear the word of God … Uncle Jožef drove his carriage past us with his children and wife. He and Karel didn’t exchange greetings. They had been at each other for some time now … I only said hi to Ciril and Ivan, who saluted me back … The church was packed with people singing the holy songs. It stank of cheap wine, tobacco, lavender, and soap. And on account of the soap, that much more strongly of dung, which their shoes had tracked in … Nothing bothered them. What sort of God was it that they imagined, anyway? The priest, wearing a gold-edged scarf over his white shirt, spoke above a stove that had two books lying on it … Calmly, like a teacher who always says the same thing. His voice echoed in a way that was supremely grotesque … But he should have been scolding them, he should have shaken his fist at every last one of them down here, thrown books at their heads, or a cross, or the angels that hung from the stove … Nothing. It was only the high walls that made his voice echo and a few times his eyeglasses flashed in a way that made me think: here it comes now! No … His steady voice put me to sleep … I started to doze … After mass Karel weeded a bit around his parents’ grave … otherwise he stood with hishead thrust up like a construction crane. That mound was where his mother and father were … not that far down at all … He ought to do something! Establish some contact with them!… The whole cemetery had a fine, intensely sour scent to it, despite all the flowers … If you took a deep breath of it here, it would follow you out onto the street … Then Karel tried to get me to go with him to a tavern … I didn’t want to go inside with him, I resisted, because I knew he was going to force me to drink brandy again … I stayed on a bench outside, waiting … There was a crowd in the tavern … A whole bunch of women were inside … wearing headscarves, the town ones wore straw hats with lots of flowers and hard-edged barrettes … the peasant men wearing hats … They talked like animals, like the fabled town musicians of Bremen … with loud barks and belches … They were like dogs, hens, tigers, wolves, donkeys, lice … The best you could hope for from their likes was scabies …
    One Sunday the postman came by on his bicycle and hollered