Cutting It Short by Bohumil Hrabal

Author:Bohumil Hrabal [Hrabal, Bohumil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780241290279
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2017-05-03T00:00:00+00:00

8

Uncle Pepin had been working in the brewery for three weeks now; the coopers took him on, and from then on there was merriment in the brewery. When I had a chance, I took some buckets for draff and went across the brewery yard, the foreman looked at me searchingly to see if he should bring a two-litre pot of beer, I nodded, and while I collected the draff from the wagon, the coopers were having their morning break, Uncle Pepin was lying on his back and on his chest an empty cask of keg, the cooper men were laughing fit to burst, choking on crumbs of spread slices of bread, and Uncle Pepin sang, ‘Doh re mi fa so la ti doh!’

The assistant cooper knelt over Uncle, saying, ‘Now, Mr Josef, let’s have that scale backwards, just like Caruso and Mařáček used to practise it!’

And Uncle Pepin cleared his throat and screeched horrifically, ‘Doh ti la so fa mi re doh …’

And when the workmen had had their fill of this din, the assistant cooper said, ‘And now, Mr Josef, give us a high C.’

And the cooper men stood up, leaned over Uncle Pepin, who screeched out that high C, and the cooper men roared with laughter, lay on their backs with their spread slices of bread, and hopped up again and choked over their crumbs and rested against the cooperage and chuckled and chuckled, to avoid asphyxiating with mirth.

And in the middle of the yard the old maltster Mr Řepa roasted the malt for the dark ale, he sat on a chair and turned the black drum on its shaft, and under that drum the charcoal burned bluely and pinkly and redly, and the old maltster, with his scattering of grey hairs, majestically and regularly revolved the soot-caked globe like some god from an ancient myth of earthly spheres.

And the assistant cooper leaned over Uncle and said, ‘And now once again, one last breath exercise, sing us another high C, and this time sing it in the head … but watch you don’t do a job in your pants, or give yourself brown trousers!’

And Uncle Pepin breathed in, screwed up his nose, and the cooper men leaned over him and Uncle sang inside of himself that high C, the kind of long drawn-out note made by a creaking gate, he sang that high C with all his might and main, he kept that inward singing note going a whole minute, and then he was so exhausted, he spread his arms and breathed out and the cask on his chest heaved, just like in the music academies when the pupils lie on their backs on the carpet and the teacher piles books on their chests.

And I stepped along with my pails of draff past the open door to the boiler house, there in the half-dark glowed the lower hemisphere of the boiler, the ash-box shining with the saffron shade of the burning coal on the grate, down through the

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