JIRI KLOBOUK
261
then, and he didn't call quietly to me from his corner at the grand
piano, but outside I could hear some bumblebee-like buzzing while
the milkman's helper dragged empty milkcans along the sidewalk
toward Lower Square to turn them in there for full ones. The tavern
The Austrian's
was emptying its patrons, still boisterous, onto the
street. The butcher's cat, now free, was meowing behind the
chimney on the nearest roof, in all likelihood swishing back and
forth her black and white tail. I could also imagine that the rusty
shrivellies were already up and thoroughly discombobulated, their
wrinkled bodies shaking from the racket in the rapidly disappearing
night. Only the bumblebee buzzing was incomprehensible, and it
pulled me sleepily from the bed back to the window to take a look.
The inhabitants of our capital had formed a long line for meat, stret–
ching from the butcher shop down Uphill Street all the way to Lower
Square where it dropped from the sight around the corner.
Translated from the Czech
by
Charles E. Townsend
