Utz Read Online Free

had never got to grips with the concept of the private collection. Trotsky, around the time of the Third International, had made a few offhand comments on the subject. But no one had ever decided if the ownership of a work of art damned its owner in the eyes of the Proletariat. Was the collector a class-enemy? If so, how?
    The Revolution, of course, postulated the abolition of private property without ever defining the tenuous borderline between property (which was harmful to society) and household goods (which were not). A painting by a great master might rank as a national treasure, and be liable for confiscation — and there were families in Prague who kept their Picassos and Matisses rolled up between the floor joists. But porcelain? Porcelain could also be classed as crockery. So, providing it wasn’t smuggled from the country, it was, in theory, valueless. To start confiscating ceramic statuettes could turn into an administrative nightmare:
    â€˜Imagine trying to confiscate an infinite quantity of plaster-of-Paris Lenins . . .’

H is face was immediately forgettable. It was a round face, waxy in texture, without a hint of the passions beneath its surface, set with narrow eyes behind steel-framed spectacles: a face so featureless it gave the impression of not being there. Did he have a moustache? I forget. Add a moustache, subtract a moustache: nothing would alter his utterly nondescript appearance. Supposing, then, we add a moustache? A precise, bristly moustache to go with the precise, toy-soldierish gestures that were the only evidence of his Teuton ancestry? He had combed his hair in greasy snakes across his scalp. He wore a suit of striped grey worsted slightly frayed at the cuffs, and had doused himself with Knize Ten cologne.
    On reflection, I think I’d better withdraw the moustache. To add a moustache might so overwhelm the face that nothing would linger in the memory but the spectacles and a moustache – with a few drops of paprika-coloured fish-soup adhering to it – across our table at the Restaurant Pstruh.
    â€˜Pstruh’ is Czech for ‘trout’ — and trout there were! The cadences of the ‘Trout’ Quintet flowed methodically through hidden speakers and shoals of trout – pink, freckled, their undersides shimmering in the neon – swam this way and that way in an aquarium which occupied most of one wall.
    â€˜You will eat trout,’ said Utz.
    I had called him on the day of my arrival, but at first he seemed reluctant to see me:
    â€˜Ja! Ja! I know it. But it will be difficult . . .’
    Â 
    On the advice of my friend, I had brought from London some packets of his favourite Earl Grey tea. I mentioned these. He relented and asked me to luncheon: on the Thursday, the day before I was due to leave – not, as I had hoped, at his flat, but in a restaurant.
    The restaurant, a relic of the Thirties in an arcade off Wenceslas Square, had a machine-age decor of plate-glass, chromium and leather. A model galleon, with sails of billowing parchment, hung from the ceiling. One wondered, glancing at the photo of Comrade Novotný, how a man with so disagreeable a mouth would consent to being photographed at all. The head-waiter, sweltering in the July heat, offered each of us a menu that resembled a mediaeval missal.
    We were expecting the arrival of Utz’s friend, Dr Orlík, with whom he had lunched here on Thursdays since 1946.
    â€˜Orlík’, he told me, ‘is an illustrious scientist from our National Museum. He is a palaeontologue. His speciality is the mammoth, but he is also experienced in flies. You will enjoy him. He is full of jokes and charm.’
    We did not have long to wait before a gaunt, bearded figure in a shiny double-breasted suit pushed its way through the revolving doors. Orlík removed his beret, revealing a mass of wiry salt-and-pepper hair, and sat down. His hand – rather a crustacean claw than a hand