What’s the matter?

He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder.

Are you thinking about that letter?

Why do I have to go to another school? I was just getting used to this one.

It will be an adventure now to go to school. We’ll take the tram every morning.

The Steinhardts still get to walk to school.

Look there, beneath that bush, Trn said. Look at the toadstool. A whole troll could hide beneath that, couldn’t he?

Can you tell me a story about a troll?

A story about a troll. I don’t know if I have one on me. He put a hand in his pants pocket, in his coat pocket. I may have left them all at home.

Please? I’d like a story while we walk.

They approached a lamp pole with a red placard bordered in black and presided over by an eagle with a wreath in its talons. Below in black the columns of those most recently sentenced for treasonous sabotage.

Let’s see.

The parallel text in Czech, the same names hanged and the towns where they had lived.

After sitting a while beneath that toadstool the troll got very bored.

Because of the war? Because it was so boring?

Maybe so. He was so bored he couldn’t precisely say why he was bored, that’s how bored he was. So he built a little canoe from a fallen trunk and launched it into the stream, and when he was sure it was tight he leaped in and down the way he went. He had many adventures with bridges and a barge from Buda that nearly capsized him in its wake, but the greatest adventure was when he reached the great crystal sea so bright he could barely dare to look at it. So it was with some relief that his canoe collided again with the land and scraped onto a beach of sand like pulvered (pulverized?) sugar.

Did he stick in his finger and taste if it was sweet?

No, he probably should have because he was quite taken with sweet things all his troll life, but on this occasion he was distracted by a sound, or to be more precise a voice, a high little voice that was almost hollow in the middle so that the troll had to look round for quite some time before he saw a grand pink shell nearly as big as his own head, and his eyes and his ears worked together as they can on trolls to sort the thrush of the sea from the hush of the wind to determine that the voice truly did come from the long dark mouth of the shell half sunk in the sand. And he climbed from the canoe and using only his toes stepped slowly up to the shell, coming on it from behind so that he was astonished when the voice in the shell said, I know you’re back there. Help me please, and the troll overcame his astonishment by blinking and rubbing his eyes, and the shell said again, Help me.