Dancing Lessons for the Advanced in Age by Bohumil Hrabal, Michael Heim, Adam Thirlwell Page B

head, I could tell from the picture that he admired the European Renaissance too, he had fantastic muttonchops, you know, the whiskers our own Franz Joseph wore, and Strauss the composer, I was walking along the river one day when Libuška rode up to me on her bicycle—practically knocked me over, in fact—and said, When are you going to bring me another bunch of roses, another bouquet? and for an answer I upped and kissed her, just like Hans Albers in the steamship scene, and she screamed, My God! and I laughed and said, Not your God but your man, which made her laugh and practically knock me over again and opened the way to another adventure, which I was man enough to take advantage of, and in another pharmacy I saw a whole row of bottles of Peru Tanin, which promised to make your hair grow long and thick and showed the two daughters of the inventor with hair down to their ankles, though in the days of the monarchy long hair was less important than big busts, there were women who had to wear rucksacks filled with bricks to keep from toppling over, they were really something those bosoms, from morning till night the monarchy thought of nothing but bosoms, the bra stuffing that went on! having a daughter with breasts smaller than beer bottles was a family tragedy, it’s making a comeback now, by the way, you’re starting to see the build you saw then, when I watched the Spartakiad on television I saw a pack of giants in shorts and halters hurtling across the screen, as fully packed as Maria Theresa, our girls all of them, the men were beat after a day of watching them on parade in such numbers, that night I stole into a garden and picked some roses, then I climbed the fence into Libuška’s garden and left the roses on her windowsill like the Mexicans and the Spaniards, and they do nothing but ride horses and serenade their señoritas with guitars, and I was so diplomatic that the next day Libuška called to me through the curtains to come and see her, so I looked on while she slipped out of her shoes and peeled off her stockings, draped herself over the ottoman and asked if she sent shivers up my spine, threw herself on the couch and sniffed the roses I’d given her, and then, sitting up and making eyes at me, she undid her blouse and cut into her skin with a razor blade and said, Come and bind it, quick, before I get blood poisoning, and while I pulled the bandage tight she said, You don’t like me as much as you like the bar ladies, do you? and I, ever the cavalier, put her mind at ease, You have other charms, dear lady, I said, You are slender, you have shapely legs, and she revived at once, so we took the wash out to the mangle, and the old women were green with envy, Wouldn’t lift a finger for us now, would he! and I quoted Anna Nováková’s dream book to her, Putting laundry through a mangle means you will soon be privy to deep secrets, and she told me how she planned to celebrate her twenty-first birthday and that she’d be scared to go to the island with me at midnight, there was something in my eyes, but I said, You’ll get over it, Libuška, you’re wild now, but eventually you’ll be snapped up by a widower and then you’ll need every trick in the book, you can’t be too careful, Keep a low profile, a young wife once told me, and we’ll make for the woods after dark, another of the Havrda girls, Vlasta—the one who played the piano and spoke German and did handstands on the billiard table and her skirt flopped like a poppy—Vlasta would say to me, You know what makes you so exciting? the way you ignore me, while Navrátilová whispered in my ear in the midst of one of our eccentric dances at the Catholic House, Look, all eyes are upon us, so I tried the step Fuksa-Koštálová is known for, but eccentric force landed us under a table, Jarmilka once tried to do at the Slávia what she’d seen at the Ziegfeld