I never felt better than when I was tearing the stubs off people’s tickets and showing them to their seats. In primary school, I loved to make seating plans for the teacher. Then during the war, a weird thing happened to me. A kind of ticket-taker’s demon lit on my back and right in the middle of the newsreel, when the voice announced that eighty-eight enemy aircrafts had been shot down over Dortmund and only one German plane had gone missing, the perverse little imp whispered something in my ear, and I said in a loud voice: “Aw shucks, it’s bound to turn up again.” My voice sounded like it belonged to somebody else, so I turned up the house lights and ordered the person who’d said it to come forward. The other ushers and I walked through the audience, but no one confessed and so, invoking our official powers—we actually had such powers—I declared that the entire program, including the feature film, was hereby cancelled, the tickets were null and void and, as punishment, everyone had to go home without a refund.
But I didn’t become an honest-to-goodness ticket-taker until later, when I was working the aisles at the Time Cinema. That’s where I got the chance to be a kind of supervisor as well. I didn’t just show people to their seats, I also made sure no one tried to sit through the movie twice. For the first time I was really enjoying myself, and I would feel let down at the end of the shift if I weren’t able to grab a patron by the scruff just as he was settling in to watch the movie all over again, in other words, as he was about to defraud the Time Cinema. I’d only have to look at people, and they’d know I was in charge. At intermission, I’d pull the curtains back and open the windows to air the place while the customers who’d seen the complete show were filing out. I’d hold the door open for them with my arms behind my back, while the audience for the next showing was lining up outside, and when the last departing customer had shown his heels I’d open the swinging doors again and tear the first tickets of the new arrivals, at the same time keeping an eagle eye out for anyone still in his seat who’d already seen part of the show, making careful note of when his ticket expired. I also couldn’t stand it when young people talked during the newsreel, because I felt responsible for each showing and I’d lean over and say loudly: “Hush, or they’ll lock us all up!” and my voice was firm enough to command silence; but I still wasn’t persuaded, so I’d stand down by the front row and scan their faces to see if they were really watching the screen or not, and I would usher other patrons to their seats and sometimes ask a whole row to shift over so I could seat a customer precisely where I wanted him to fit my ideal seating plan. I also bought an atomizer with my own money and during intermission I’d spray a solution of aromatic oil into the air. And so I became a bona fide ticket-taker for the simple reason that I felt in charge. That was also why I got promoted and became an usher in first-class theatres, concerts, and public lecture halls.
I applied the same method at home with my family. The only person I was really close to was my brother-in-law, who stamped the passports of people traveling abroad. When we had time on our hands we’d go to restaurants where, just for fun, I’d invent seating plans. I’d tell my brother-in-law which customers belonged and which ones I’d toss out, whom I’d seat where, and whom I’d show the door when they’d had too much to drink or if they’d gotten tipsy somewhere else and just come in for a final round or to make trouble. My brother-in-law would sit there watching the customers arrive and he’d say quietly: “His passport I’d stamp, and his I would not.” My brother-in-law classified people according to whether or not he’d let them leave the country. And although after they’d left it wasn’t really his concern any more, he felt responsible for people’s trips abroad, and was always wondering, right down to the wire, whether he’d done the right thing, stamping someone’s passport or not. Twice, a plane took off while he was still on board, and he’d been taken into custody at the other end, once in Vienna and once in Paris. Then again, my brother-in-law had his own perverse little imp and it befuddled him several times, to the point where he’d stamp the passport of someone he was sure was kosher only to find out later that the guy had defected, while someone he was certain was trying to emigrate would surprise everyone by coming back.
Anyway, the day before yesterday I was ushering at the Ledeburg Terraces where they were putting on a tragedy about a black guy by the name of Othello who ends up murdering his wife in her own bed. It wasn’t just paying customers who watched it; people living in the apartments overlooking the gardens could watch through their open windows, free of charge. I went to the apartments so I could at least sell them standing-room tickets, but they locked the gate on me, so I fetched a ladder, but as I was climbing over the wall I fell and landed on my hands, practically wrenching my arms out of their sockets, and when I looked up, the gate was open again, but while I was fetching the ladder someone slammed it back shut. I heard the key turning in the lock, so I knocked to be let in, because I’d dropped my book of tickets on the other side. I couldn’t get it back, and so to avoid being made fun of, I paid for all fifty standing-room tickets out of my own pocket, which earned me a pat on the back; but at the end of the play, just when the noble Moor was strangling his wife, Desdemona, someone began strangling a woman on the second floor of the apartment building, and in the struggle the woman got shoved out the window just as the Moor was finishing off Desdemona, and people in the audience stood up because they thought they were seeing things, and I tried to calm them down but I couldn’t. . . . So I went back and, by the powers invested in me, I climbed the ladder, put my fingers to my lips and like a proper usher, I shushed the people standing around the woman in the courtyard. But she was lying on the ground with a broken leg, howling in pain, and I looked down into the courtyard and then back at the Ledeburg Terraces, and I realized that the wounded woman was none of my business, that my main concern was to make sure the play finished without interruption. When it was finally over, I climbed down, the audience applauded, the fellow who played the Moor, wet with his own tears, stood there receiving the applause like a dead man. Immediately afterward, we carried the woman from the small courtyard to an ambulance, and for the first time in my life I felt as if I’d taken cotton plugs out of my ears. I could hear the final applause rising from the Ledeburg Terraces and the tears and moans of the husband and that woman, and I heard all of it at the same time, yet each sound was separate too. I could hear it all: the creaking of the seats being folded up, the squeal of hinges as the tenants opened their windows and leaned out, the conversations on either side of the wall, and everything suddenly seemed so bizarre I thought my ticket-taker’s demon must have come back to play with my mind.
And the strange state continued into yesterday, when I worked a string-quartet concert, tearing tickets and ushering customers to their seats. A very select audience goes to hear a string quartet: preoccupied people with careworn, melancholy faces, including young girls you just know will go home in the end with a bun in the oven because a proper string quartet can make you defenseless. When the quartet began to play, I went to the top of the stairs at the back of the Ledeburg Terraces and sat beside the statues on the sandstone wall, and I put one leg across my knee and rested my chin in my hand, following the battle of the instruments—because I have always felt that a real string quartet is like a feud, or a bar brawl, or a fistfight in the town square, a life-and-death struggle, and over the years, I’ve learned to see stories and events in a string quartet to amuse myself while I’m keeping an eye on the audience sitting there in rows, to make sure no one has passed out or is causing a disturbance. Yesterday, just as the quartet was coming to the climax and the cello seemed to be winning hands down, the second violin ripped into him and tore him to shreds. It looked like the first violin might come out on top because it was holding back on the sidelines, the way it is when three people are in a fight and the fourth one stays out of it laughing; and you could see it in the listeners, because most of them seemed diminished—cowed and bent, holding their heads in their hands, as though they were nursing a toothache. Just then, a little fellow in the front row stood up and edged his way backward among the chairs. I knew from experience that he was from out of town and worried about missing the last bus or the last train home, and I could see that he was backing straight toward a fish pond filled with water lilies, and if he continued, he’d trip on the low stone edging around the pond and fall backward into the water and cause a commotion. I knew I had to act quickly and come down from my sandstone perch and catch him by the shoulders at the last moment and then gently guide him to the exit. But my private demon whispered in my ear: don’t do anything, just see what happens. I looked up, and the drone of an airplane with colored lights on its wingtips joined in with the music of the quartet, and along with it I heard the clang of a trolley and it all merged in a kind of symphony, and I looked back down and saw that everything was happening as it should: the little man was only a few feet from the pool, the rest of the audience seemed dead, as though a line from yesterday’s play— “Behold what the scythe has laid low!”—applied to them. Then the man’s heels caught on the stones, and he tumbled backward, his little body mirrored in the pool, and for an instant, he curled up like a child in the womb, like the drawings in my Handbook of Home Medicine, and then a splash, and he went under and came up pouring wet and draped with lily pads, two buds resting on his shoulders like the pips on a general’s epaulettes, and as he stood there up to his waist in water he unbuttoned his jacket and a tiny goldfish popped out of his vest, and the patrons in the rows nearest the pool backed away, some running up the stairs in my direction to distance themselves from the embarrassment, so no one would think it was them who’d brought the little man to the concert or that they might be related . . . and I heard the quartet drifting apart, and the cello, which was probably destined to lose the battle, deliberately contributing to the general cacophony; then the ushers pulled the man out of the pond, and someone laughed, but nothing upset me, not even when two of the musicians stopped playing altogether, and the first violinist, deprived of his triumph, ran down the narrow aisle between the rows of seats, arriving just as the ushers were dragging the little man out of the water by his trousers and, as they were pulling his trousers back up, the violinist whacked the little man with his bow, then again, then a third time, with a smack that sounded like a slab of meat slapping against a barn door, and I was on tenterhooks, trembling at the beauty, the utter beauty of it all, and several patrons were pounding their fists against the back wall until the stucco cracked loose, and others were scratching at it with their fingernails as though trying to climb out, but for me, everything meshed, everything blended with everything else, and my heart howled with pleasure. “I had no intention of disturbing you,” the little man said. “I have a train to catch.” Afterward, I went home stupefied by everything that had happened, and when I unlocked the door, the jingle of the key was like music, and I was even at peace with the fact that my daughter hadn’t come home yet.
Today I stood on a street corner since the early morning, amazed. The streetcars and human conversation, each thing responded to the other, like good footballers passing the ball. A flashy young man was standing beside me—my brother-in-law would never have stamped his passport—he was holding under his arm a packet of newspapers or something tied with binder twine. Then a car ran over the curb, up onto the sidewalk and back down again, and two cops looking on just laughed, and the young man came right up to them and said, “Didn’t you see that car?” And the cops replied, “Anything wrong with that?” The young man said, “Anything wrong with that? I’ll show you what’s wrong with that!” and he ripped the cover off his packet and shook a sheaf of funeral notices in their faces, saying, “My mother was hit by a car that ran over the curb like that one did!” He held up the funeral notices with both hands, the way a priest holds up the monstrance during the holy sacrament, and it all fit together for me, even the sound of tearing paper, everything harmonized, even this morning when I stood by my daughter’s bedside, watching her sleep, and her nightdress had slipped up to reveal a nicely shaped calf, and any other time I’d have raised the roof and demanded to know where she’d been last night. But today, I could only gaze at her, moved by her beauty, and I walked out of her room without a sound, past my wife who was white with fear that I’d make a scene. I caressed the back of her hand, and she snatched it away as though I’d bitten her, and a boy was skipping down our street on one foot, shouting to anyone who’d listen: “My mum and dad are getting married!” I wasn’t scandalized in the least, I did the opposite of what I’d have done as a proper ticket-taker and supervisor, I patted the young lad’s head and then looked at my hand and felt the pleasure the gesture had given me; and then I came across a hearse with a coffin inside, then another with two, and a bit further on, a third carrying three coffins, and I said to myself, you’d better take a side street, because God knows what kind of evil omen you’ll come across next, and as I was tying my shoelaces, someone rolled up a storefront shutter with a terrible clatter, and I jumped up and ran across the street and found myself standing in front of the Prague Municipal Funeral Service, and on each floor there were coffins in various stages of manufacture: and on the ground floor, on the other side of the shutter, the coffins were neatly stacked in the shop, like a warehouse full of black shoes. Any other time I’d have been knocked for a loop, but today I just smiled. A Russian Tupolev flew over the city, and everything came together in a grand symphony. I felt like I was becoming a rotten ticket-taker, a rotten supervisor, and turning into someone else, as though someone had taken the plugs not just out of my ears but out of my soul as well, or taken the blinders off my eyes, as though I’d been a cab driver’s nag until now; and on my way home for lunch, I bought a box of pastries and a panel truck nosed up alongside me, and a guy leaned out and asked where the pub called U Pudilů was. I’d say, “They used to call it that, my friend, but now it’s got a sign that says U Kroftů, but everyone calls it U Marků.” And the driver was thrilled and pounded his fist on the door like it was the kettle drum in a symphony, like Beethoven’s in Fifth, and he said, “Glad to know that, ‘cause I’ve been around this block four times, but you know what?” and he jumped out of his cab and said, “Let me show you something, a kid who’s been torn to shreds.” And he went around to the back of the truck, opened the doors, and there was an ordinary-looking coffin. So I said, “My friend, I’ve got a vivid imagination, and I can see him right here”—and I tapped my forehead with my finger—“not only worse than he actually is, but far worse than he could ever be. That’s the size of it!” And I went home and my wife and daughter were white with fear, they kept spilling their soup on the tablecloth, dropping pieces of meat on the floor, but in my mind, everything was as it should be, so I just smiled, which frightened them more than if I’d started shouting and threatening to beat them, and they got even more upset when I brought out the box of pastries and said, “Go ahead, open it up,” and my daughter wrung her hands and couldn’t bring herself to do it, because she must have thought I’d bought her baby clothes, and my wife broke her fingernails trying to undo the knots and then she cut the string and I had to open the lid myself. . . . Inside were cakes and cream puffs, and I held the box out, but my wife and daughter backed up against the wall and if they could have, they’d have retreated right through the wall into the neighbors’ apartment, and I grew serious and began to sweat and took a cream puff out of the box and put it in my daughter’s hand, then I did the same for my wife, and they just stood there, holding the pastries I’d bought them, something I’d never done before, each holding a cream puff they couldn’t bring themselves to taste. . . . “Go on, try them, I bought them for you,” I said, and I took one myself and ate it, and they lifted the pastries to their mouths and finally took a nibble, but they couldn’t even swallow that tiny morsel, and I could hear that what I’d seen this morning in the street and now here at home was part and parcel with the Symphonie Pathétique, which I’d be hearing for the thirty-seventh time that night as a ticket-taker, a symphony I’d have to set up for this afternoon, putting out folding chairs and making sure the cleaning ladies dusted the seats properly. My wife and daughter hung their heads, staring at the carpet, and I couldn’t see their eyes because their hair hid their faces and almost touched the cream puffs they held trembling in their fingers. That’s what you get for wanting to impose order on everything, I thought, or would have, if my old way of thinking hadn’t been blocked.
It’s not easy to be a good ticket-taker in the Waldstein Gardens. There’s a lot of dispute over whose bailiwick it is, because a high wall separates the Waldstein Gardens from the St. Thomas brewery next door, and although it’s difficult to climb over, the wall doesn’t block the sounds of music or conversation. It’s a real test of a good supervisor’s nerves when the Prague Municipal Symphony Orchestra, under the baton of Doctor Smetáček, plays the same evening as Mr. Polata’s Šumava Regional Brass Band on the other side of the wall. It always leads to conflict, because each side thinks the other is interfering with its music. And since I’d torn tickets and ushered exclusively for these elite performances in the Waldstein Gardens, I couldn’t stand the beer gardens at St. Thomas’s, and the very sound of a brass band would turn my stomach. My brother-in-law was different and although he stamped passports for a living, he was a simple man who loved beer and other worldly pleasures. So Waldstein was right to have had such a high wall built, as though he’d known all along that the Czech nation would be divided. I was not divided, however: I stood firmly on the side of symphonic music, and often, during a concert, I found myself daydreaming about how I’d put a ladder against the wall, climb over it, and pound all the patrons and their brass band into unconsciousness. I harbored such high-minded notions until now, when I felt in my bones that I’d reversed the course of my thinking and that today something was bound to happen. When the conductor came out and tapped his baton on his music stand and the audience fell silent, you could hear Mr. Polata’s brass band playing a clamorous polka. The musicians stared painfully into the whispering crowns of the ancient trees. After that, there was nothing to do but take Mr. Polata’s music on, so now it was the Prague Municipal Symphony Orchestra’s turn to start poking its nose into the flowering garden of the St. Thomas brewery. The Symphonie Pathétique began, and the conductor directed it like a high priest, but I, I heard Mr. Polata’s brass band not as an enemy but an ally, and the brass band’s music blended with the Symphonie Pathétique as though they’d been written by the same composer . . . and for the first time, I imagined that there were people on the other side of the wall, not just a bunch of barbarians, but people living by their own lights, with beer and brass-band music, and they were probably just as fond of that as I was of the Prague Municipal Symphony Orchestra, so it wasn’t just them getting in our way, the interference was mutual, and I heard that old chestnut, Waldteufel’s Skater’s Waltz, floating over the wall and blowing a kiss to the Pathétique and no one could stop it from happening, or if so, it would mean stopping one to the detriment of the other, or, like me, you could learn to listen to everything at once, though to do that, you needed patience. Usually I stood leaning against the broad trunk of a tree, but today I gradually moved into the shadows under a large branch, until I reached the wall, where I bumped into a small man pounding the wall with his fist. Then he put his ear to it, and I put my ear to it too, and I could hear the scraping of brogues and oxfords on the brewery’s sandy dance floor and the dancers’ heavy breathing and their conversations, and over it all a great tree of brass-band music opened out. I felt a powerful urge now, as never before, to see what was happening on the other side of the wall. So overwhelming was the urge that it led me to remember that there were ladders in the Waldstein’s aviary, so I opened the screen door to the place where they had once raised vultures and eagles; the mesh ceiling wasn’t there, but I saw three ladders leaning against the wall and climbed quietly up one with the Adagio splashing at my back, and up where I was heading, one rung at a time, there was more light and more music as well. . . . The trees were resting their branches on the top of the wall, but I pushed them out of the way and looked down on the other side, and though I could easily have just walked into the brewery, today was different, today I saw it through the Symphonie Pathétique and I was going to look down at the other half of my new self where, whence like a breeze, the tones of the brass instruments were wafting upward along with the aroma of beer and the fragrance of women . . . one more rung and there it was! It seemed to me, just as it had been with the string quartet. Through the branches and between the leaves, I saw, in the yellow glow, an array of square tablecloths with glasses of beer on them, I saw the square dance floor and the people dressed in black and white and busty women swirling in circles, one hand hanging free, the other resting lightly on the napes of their partners’ necks as they spun around, their faces flushed, while the men held them round the waist or placed their faces against their cheeks as if the dancers were drinking in one another’s breath . . . and then I saw a beautiful woman standing in the middle of the garden surrounded by four men who might have been tailors, using a tape measure to measure her waist and her bust, then each breast separately, as if they were judges in a contest to choose the queen of the bounteous bosom, and one of the men drew white lines on her body with tailor’s chalk—lines of classic beauty—covering her black evening dress and tracing the shape of what lay beneath, those classic arcs and intersections and who knows what else, and I heard everything that was going on here dissolved in the music that came from behind, from across the wall. I glanced back for a moment to see the audience in the Waldstein Gardens holding their cheeks and their chins, for the music had so undone them they had to support their heads in their hands, whereas on this side the dancers—men and women—were moved to cheer ecstatically in response to the joy that flowed from Mr. Polata’s music . . . and waitresses walked among them, their backs arched, carrying a bouquet of five brimming beer glasses in each hand, moving from table to table, marking the beer mats with pencil strokes. Then the Skater’s Waltz ended; the musicians blew the spittle out of their instruments, while the women let their partners hold on to them and lead them back to their tables, their hands still curled gently around the mens’ necks, and now they were playing the finale of the Symphonie Pathétique, the Adagio lamentoso, and some of the men in the beer garden walked over to the wall and shouted over into the Waldstein Gardens: “To hell with your Beethoven! Goddamned Mozart! Killjoys!” The little man had climbed up through the aviary and appeared on the wall beside me, tugging my sleeve and saying, “Aren’t you in charge here? Why don’t you do something?” But I had just seen my brother-in-law sitting in the beer garden at a table with two plates on it, next to the entrance where they were taking admission, and my brother-in-law no doubt amusing himself by picking the dancers he’d let travel abroad and those he wouldn’t. But then I saw it! Surrounding the beer garden on three sides was a monastery that was now an old folks’ home for women, and in every window on the second and third floor I could see the bright eyes of these old women staring down in the same direction: at the queen of the bounteous bosom, staring feverishly at those male hands as they took her measure and made their notes; and as I looked down it hit me! This was where the real music was. This was why all the women down there danced the way they did, why they let themselves be grasped around the waist and promenaded beneath the trees and why they placed their hands on their partners’ necks. They did it for the old women to see, these women who no longer had anyone to touch, who would never again be embraced that way, which was why the old women’s eyes sparkled as they did, why they glowed with longing and envy and resentment; and I saw that there were walls not just dividing symphonic music from brass-band music, but between people as well, walls far more real than the one I was sitting on, gazing down and seeing everything at once, so mesmerized it’s a wonder I didn’t go plunging off. And the little man tugged at me again and urged me to intervene, because the dancers below were shaking their fists and shouting at the orchestra, “Stick your music up your A major!”
And then I turned and saw that some members of the symphony audience were climbing up all three ladders through the aviary, and then the dancers in the brewery courtyard started bringing up ladders and leaning them up against the wall and pushing their way up, and it was like those pictures you see of castles under siege, they were glaring at each other as though some unseen conductor were directing them, and now they were standing on top of the wall, and I saw them close in on each other, their eyes flaming with hatred, and they began swinging at each other, and several of them stumbled and plunged down off the wall, but I was somewhere else, I could no longer acknowledge the truth of either side with my fists so I tore off a small branch and began conducting both orchestras, and Mr. Polata’s band began to play With Lion’s Strength the Falcon Soars, and the waitresses quickly cleared the beer off the tables, and the shadow of a falling body would flit past, and they were all so unified by passion that more of them climbed up the ladders, and by now the top of the wall was jammed not just with sand-stone statues but with brawlers as well, some of them so stupefied by rage they began wrestling with the statues, and the Prague Municipal Symphony Orchestra stopped playing and those musicians ran under the branches of the ancient trees and Mr. Polata’s band stopped playing as well and the musicians crowded round at the foot of the wall, some of them climbing up the ladders, and on the other side of the wall, the symphony musicians did the same, bringing their instruments with them, so that now there were instruments as well as people on the wall, and the musicians began to fight, their shiny instruments flashing back and forth, tearing down branches, and it was strange to see trumpets and euphoniums going at each other, and clarinets fencing with clarinets, and every once in a while a body would plummet off the wall, but that didn’t stop admirers of Mr. Polata’s music from gathering down below, and on their side of the wall, fans of the Prague Municipal Symphony Orchestra did the same; they all shook their fists at one another and shouted and made room for Mr. Polata himself to climb up the ladder on one side and Mr. Smetáček on the other, so they, too, could have a go at each other. But then, amid wailing sirens, a milk-white police car swerved into the brewery courtyard and another milk-white police car nosed through the gates of the Waldstein Gardens, as if they had given each other a signal, or had taken their directions from my baton, but by then the melée on top of the wall was so intense that someone grabbed me and shoved me, but I managed to hang on to his coat; and it was a fan of Mr. Polata’s music, and he fell down into the Waldstein Gardens, and at the same time I flew headfirst, arms spread wide, down into Mr. Polata’s orchestra and crashed into the drum set, then fell over into the slippery pool of saliva the trombonist had blown out of his instrument. . . . The cops leaped out of their squad cars, and, as if on command, the old ladies on the second and third floors flung open all the windows, and reflections from the glass flitted across the sky, across the walls and the upturned faces, and in that strange, pallid light I saw everything and heard everything, and I was in harmony with everything and accepted everything and the old ladies were shouting over each other, flailing their bony arms and yelling, “Down with big-breasted women! Lock them up! Chop off their hands! Rip out their tongues! Set the gelders and castrators on them!” And forever after I was a rotten ticket-taker and a rotten organizer, because after everything I’d seen and heard today and yesterday, I had kicked my way through a drum and come out somewhere on the other side, because I saw everything as if it were wrapped in a single enormous bundle. Only my idiot brother-in-law was sitting backwards on his chair, wagging his finger and pointing at people and saying: “I’d give that one a passport, but not this one; I’d let this one travel abroad, but not that one.” And the brawl on the wall crescendoed, and clusters of brawlers came tumbling down, and they were so wedged in together that they fought without knowing why anymore, and when the lamps turned out, they no longer knew who they were fighting with. There were only bodies falling in the dark and there was the sound of wailing . . . but I was in harmony with everything and I was saved, too, but lost in a way as well . . . but I think this will probably be my salvation. . . .
*****
Bohumil Hrabal, the author of Closely Watched Trains, I Served the King of England, and Too Loud a Solitude, was born in 1914 in Moravia. His books of fiction are internationally known for joyfully and tragically depicting the lives of Czechs during the most turbulent period of their modern history. He died falling from the fifth floor of a Prague hospital in 1997.
Paul Wilson has translated books by Václav Havel, Bohumil Hrabal, Ivan Klíma, and Josef Škvorecký. He resides in Canada.
From Mr. Kafka and Other Tales from the Time of the Cult, “Breaking Through the Drum” is published by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp. Copyright © 1965 by the Bohumil Hrabal Estate, Zurich, Switzerland. Translation copyright © 2015 by Paul Wilson.