THE THIRTY-EIGHTH
A little roller on the wall, a smoke-stained ceiling, a faded Mánes in a dusty frame. That’s Romanticism for you, said Kosinský to himself, that same Kosinský who’d weighed on the conscience of Ivan Figura for more than twenty years now. He looked past the heads of all the other patrons in the At the Grinder pub in the Holešovice section of Prague. What are we waiting for here, really? Suddenly, he was upset — this happened sometimes, when life went stagnant like that flat beer, a third full, and you either order yourself a shot of something stiff, or you bugger off, and quick. Then, an unbelievably thin little fellow with a recessive chin and a pointy forehead entered the local. This was Prop, an old pal from the underground. He could hide behind a whip, he could, like
