Rambling On: An Apprentice’s Guide to the Gift of the Gab

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11 LELI

LELI WAS A GREAT GUY, with so many pals he never had time to get married, such a great pal he was. No festivity in the Kersko forest range, and there’s some celebration or other almost every Sunday, because anyone who’s young, that’s a cause for celebration in itself, none could happen without Leli being there. Especially if someone had got a keg in. That was a major kind of celebration, like when someone got married or had a baby, then the litre glasses came out to be drunk at whichever cottage or in whichever avenue the wedding or christening was being held. And so Leli would show up as MC and technical consultant. Leli could cope with anything, because he was one big technical encyclopaedia, he was so well read that there wasn’t really a book he hadn’t read, and he could give a lecture on anything whatsoever, wheresoever it took place. One time there was a barrel to broach, but the lads had brought it on a handcart, and when they set it down in front of the fire under the old oak trees, whose branches were bent low right over the barrel, no one dared tap the barrel. Then suddenly Leli turned up and at once: “What don’t you understand? Where’s the problem?” And when they said they were afraid to spile the barrel, Leli said: “Bring me an apron,” and he donned the apron then gave a lecture on what a spile is and the principle it works on, then he set the spile, loosened the screw and with a mighty blow drove the spile in, but the lads who’d brought the barrel along on the handcart were right, the spile shot upwards like a spear, the beer spurted and fizzed in a mighty geysir up into the oak branches, and Leli stood there in that fountain of beer, handsome and soaked, and after the beer had shot up and was dripping back from the leaves onto the benches and us, Leli pronounced with an appropriate gesture: “Technical defect… bring me a bowl of water and a towel,” and he untied the apron and blithely washed his hands of the technical fault, so we drank what was left in the barrel and then we went back and forth to the pub with jugs and ended up fetching crates of bottled Popovice lager, we sat on the benches and sang and played guitars till morning, beer never stopped dripping on us from the leaves, and we were all sticky and tacky with the beer and we smelled of beer, we were so fantastic because we were young. “Yep,” says I, “Leli’s a great guy.” And again Leli would go around Kersko and wherever someone didn’t understand something, he’d first give them a lecture, then his advice, or he’d get on and do what he’d advised himself. Mr Svoboda couldn’t paint his kitchen, so Leli said: “What don’t you understand? Where’s the snag?” And Mr Svoboda said he was afraid to spray the kitchen, which he wanted blue, and Leli said how lucky Mr Svoboda was that he, Leli, was passing, and at once he prepared him a pail of blue wash, improving it with a few drops of oil from a special bottle he’d been and got, and Mr Svoboda painted the kitchen, but after he went to bed he was woken at midnight by a strange sound coming out of the darkness of the kitchen, like someone giving sloppy kisses, and when he put the light on and looked up at the ceiling, it had bubbles all over that were cracking open, crow’s-feet cracks opening up everywhere and showering blue powder down to the floor. When Leli heard about it, he said “technical defect in the paint” and walked on unbowed, and he saw Mr Kuchař mending a windscreen-wiper on his car, so he went up, looked a while, then said: “Lucky I’m here, can I mend it?” And before Mr Kuchař knew it, Leli had given him a lecture on each of the components and on all the little screws, then asked Mr Kuchař to hand him a screwdriver, and with that and Leli having tightened the last screw, the wiper snapped and Leli pronounced knowledgeably: “There’s a technical defect in the material…,” and he handed Mr Kuchař the broken blade and departed, and the next day, Mr Kuchař was driving to Ústí on business and it was raining, and he steered with one hand and in lieu of the wiper wiped the rain away with the other through the open window, cursing all the way to Ústí: “Damn the man, that bastard Leli,” adding some other salty Moravisms… Yep, Leli was a great guy.