burning, then he brought his tiny tot in and slipped it into the pot, and it was freezing cold in the pub, but the baby was warm and cosy inside the enamel pot and having our hands warm brightened the rest of us a bit too. And at that moment the door swung open and in among the white figures of the patrons and the white of the tablecloths came a chimney sweep, the village sweep with his brush, and he was so miserable that he didn’t even help himself to a tablecloth, but just as he was, still covered in soot, he sat down at a table, placed his head in his hands and ordered a strong grog, and then he stared absently at the ceiling and said: “Well this year’s been awful and the one that’s coming’s going to be ghastly… It says here I’m charged with raping my wife, yes, wife!” And the other patrons were startled: “You what??” And Mr Zákon pronounced: “That can’t be right.” And the sweep took out his wallet and he rose, leaving the imprint of his elbows and hands on the white tablecloth, and then he went and placed his hands on a clean tablecloth and showed us the writ from the district court charging him with raping his wife. And the patrons scrambled over one another to read the writ and the sweep walked round and round, leaving handprints like dirty footprints all over the tablecloth, and the landlord shouted: “Wait!” And he spread a newspaper out and told the chimney sweep to sit in one spot and keep his filthy mawlers off the cloth and on the 98
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newspaper, or he wouldn’t make him the grog he’d ordered… And the sweep rambled on about his wife having found another bloke, that she loved him and that she’d already got herself a solicitor and wanted a divorce, and so one time the sweep had forced her, under threat of violence, like the ancient Romans did when they carried off the Sabine women, and she’d had to bow to his will. The patrons were amazed, re-read it, and the landlord, Mr Zákon, shook his fist towards the kitchen at his wife beyond the wall, a rare and timid beauty who may have weighed seventy-eight kilos, but her hair was the colour of straw or limewood shavings, and her blue eyes were such a surprise out here in the woods that none of the patrons could tear themselves away from her hair and eyes, and that drove Mr Zákon mad. Mr Zákon said menacingly: “Huh, if my one tried pulling a trick like that! A true Slav household’s not supposed to have an axe in sight, and I’ve got one!” And the sweep rose, and, probably so drunk by now with grief, he kept grabbing the table with his hands, and so his palm-prints promenaded from tablecloth to tablecloth following the publican, and the sweep went on, “Good man, don’t do it, you mustn’t kill her, she’s a human being…” “What!” Mr Zákon roared, “And what am I then? Her spouse or what? Let her be obedient unto her husband!” And the chimney sweep leant on the bar counter and the door opened and in came 100
Ukázka elektronické knihy, UID: KOS201756