WE SAT IN THE quietest corner of the now bustling inn: the toy trader could work undisturbed. I thought he would talk, I’d heard that Czech people were loquacious on the whole. Yet either he didn’t want to or couldn’t. The beer tasted better with every glass. But it was making me heavy and drowsy, my tongue had lost all its feeling, the vaulted room’s contours were obscured with smoke, everything sounded muffled, sleepy, peaceful and still.
I suddenly jolted from my reverie. I’d heard a clicking noise, like the trigger of a revolver being cocked, the noise some weapons make when the barrel is rotated. I jumped up in fright, but the watchmaker calmed me down. With a somewhat malicious smile that didn’t match the expression of his large, grey eyes which in spite of everything were benevolent, even noble, he said: “I just released the spring. The material is coarse, but not the worst, the watch will probably work for ever and outlive you!” I shook my head, I found that difficult to believe. He misunderstood me: “Don’t you trust me?” he asked. “See, I trust you,” he went on, bending over the watch once more, “And I don’t even know who you are! Definitely a foreigner!” He now picked up the simple glass salt-cellar, tipped the salt out on to the floor and placed the glass receptacle over the multitude of tiny screws and the spring that lay there gleaming blue-black, half unfurled like a tiny, inert snake.
He smiled behind his thick, silky blond moustache which glistened with drops of dark beer. I didn’t want to say who I was, I never do on journeys. “Take a guess!” I said, “I’ve worked in many trades.” And indeed, who could have predicted I was destined to become a wholesaler of second-rate apples for a French conserves factory. He picked up on my smile and responded playfully. He showed me his hands: “Now, what do you read in these?”
“Well, these tell me,” I said jovially, “That you’ve never killed anyone.”
“Oh, no, no!” he said, but, unfortunately, now I couldn’t see his eyes for his right eye was glued to the watchmaker’s magnifying glass and the other one was shut. “Certainly not!” he mumbled into his beard, his head bowed over the innards of my poor watch.
I could see now that he did want to talk, but still restrained himself. Instinctively he pressed his dark red, firm lips together. A quarter of an hour later he had almost entirely dismantled the watch, and all its components lay well-ordered beneath the upturned salt cellar. Putting the magnifying glass aside, he gave a satisfied sigh of a job completed and ordered some sausages and caraway rolls to accompany his sixth beer. When he finished eating he looked at me with his oblique smile, drew one of his mechanical birds from his pocket, gazed at it with that earlier look, half hatred, half love, and in one swoop ripped the bright yellow fluff from its tiny chest.
I must confess I flinched when I heard the tearing noise caused by the ripping of the little glued feathers. He kept looking at me, didn’t take his eyes off me. “Let him speak!” I thought. “If only you hold back for another five minutes he will start to talk and pour out his watchmaker’s heart to you.” And that’s indeed what happened. All through the evening (and for how long before?) he had felt an urge to open up. He had simply been holding out for the best moment to begin without burdening anybody. He could see I was waiting and so he began as though picking up an earlier conversation: “Yes, I flinched like that when, as a young man, I first saw my beloved Jarmila. There she was in front of her house, her white hand plucking feathers from the breast of a goose. Jarmila, the most beautiful in a large village full of splendid girls. Her little white feet rested on the cloth where the feathers fell, and she was stretching her toes amongst the feathers. They warmed her rosy soles, her tiny heels, and her sculpted ankles. See how it floats, how it flies! Breathe out, and it is gone, breathe in, and it is there again, and all the while nothing but the stupid feathers of a silly goose.”