“Is that so?” exclaimed old Mr. Popel. “So he’s dead now? And what was wrong with him then?”
“Arterio sclerosis,” said the doctor curtly; he wanted to add something about the man’s age, but he looked sideways at the old gentleman, and kept silent.
For a little while Mr. Popel reflected that with him, thank God, everything was at present in order; no, he didn’t feel anything that might somehow point to this or that. “So he’s dead now?” he repeated absent-mindedly. “But he couldn’t have been seventy ? He was just a bit younger than me. I knew him … I knew him when we were lads at school together. After that I didn’t see him for years and years, till he came to Prague, to the Ministry. Now and again I used to meet him … once or twice a year. Such a downright man he was!”
“A good man,” said the doctor, proceeding to tie a little rose to a stick. “I was here in the garden when I first saw him. Once someone spoke to me over the fence: ‘Excuse me, but which kind of Malus is the one that you have in flower over there ?’ ‘Oh, that’s Malus Halliana,’ I said, and I invited him to come inside. You know when two gardeners get together. Sometimes he used to drop in when he saw that I had nothing else to do, and always about flowers. I didn’t even know who, and what he really was till he sent for me. Then he was already in a very bad way. But it was a nice little garden he had.”
“That sounds like him,” reflected Mr. Popel. “All the time I knew him he was such a regular and conscientious man. A good civil servant and so on. In fact, we know terribly little about decent people like that, isn’t it true?”
“He wrote it down,” said the doctor suddenly.
“What did he write down?”
“His own life. Last year in my house he came across some famous biography, and he said that someone ought to write the life of an ordinary man. And when his health began to fail he sat down to write his own life. When … when he got worse, he gave it to me. Perhaps there was no one for him to leave it to.” The doctor hesitated a moment. “Since you were a pal of his I might let you have a look at it.”
Old Mr. Popel was somewhat moved. “That would be very good of you. You know I should like to do it for him….” Apparently it seemed to him like rendering a service for the dead. “So, poor chap, he wrote his own biography!”
“I’ll fetch it straight away,” said the doctor, carefully breaking off a sucker from a rose. “Look how this stem would like to be a briar. All the time we must keep down that other rose, the wild one.” The doctor straightened himself up. “Ah, I’ve promised you that manuscript,” he said, absent-mindedly, and he glanced round his garden before he went, as if unwillingly.
So he’s dead, mused the old gentleman pensively. It must be quite an ordinary thing to the, then, when even such a regular man knows how to do it. But surely he didn’t want to go—perhaps that’s why he wrote his own life, because he was fond of it. Who’d have thought of it: such an ordinary man, and bang, he’s dead.
“Well, here it is,” said the doctor. It was a tidy, carefully arranged pile of sheets neatly tied with tape like a fascicle of completed deeds. Mr. Popel’s hands trembled as he took them, and turned over the first few pages. “How neatly it’s written,” he whispered almost piously. “You can recognize an old bureaucrat; in his days, sir, there weren’t any typewriters, everything had to be written by hand; in those days they thought a great deal of a nice clean manuscript.”
“Farther on it’s not written so well,” mumbled the doctor. “By then he was in a hurry and crossed out a lot. Even the handwriting isn’t so smooth and regular.”
It’s queer, thought Mr. Popel; to read the handwriting of someone who’s dead, it’s like touching a dead hand. Even in that writing there is something dead. I oughtn’t to take it home. I shouldn’t have said that I would read it.
“Is it all worth reading?” he inquired uncertainly.
The doctor shrugged his shoulders.
THREE days ago I knelt down in my little garden beside a group of alum root in flower to get the weeds out; I felt a bit giddy, but that used to come quite often with me. Perhaps it was the giddiness that made the spot seem to me more beautiful than ever before: the little bright red leaves of the alum root and behind them the white cool panicles of the spiraeas—it was so beautiful and almost myserious that it turned my head. Two yards away from me a finch sat on a stone, her head cocked to one side, and she looked at me with one eye: Well, who are you ? I didn’t even breathe, I was afraid that I should frighten her away; I could feel how my heart throbbed. And suddenly it came. I don’t know how to describe it, but it was a terribly strong and certain FEELING OF DEATH.
Really I can’t express it in any other way; I think that I struggled for breath or something, but the one thing that I was conscious of was a tremendous anxiety. When it began to grow less I was still on my knees, but my hands were full of torn leaves. It passed away like a wave, and left me with a sadness that was not unpleasant. I felt my legs trembling beneath me in an absurd fashion, I went cautiously to sit down, and with my eyes shut I said to myself: Well, now you’ve got it, it’s here already. But there was no horror, only surprise, and the consciousness that we have to settle it somehow. Then I had the courage to open my eyes and move my head; Lord, how beautiful that garden seemed to me, like never before, never before; I didn’t want anything, only to sit like that, and look at the light and shade, at the full flowers of the spiraeas, and at a blackbird who was struggling with an earthworm. A long time ago, the day before, I had made up my mind that next spring I should take out two clumps of larkspurs, damaged by mildew, and replace them by others. Very likely I shall never do any more, and next year the plants will be disfigured as if with leprosy. I felt sorry for that, I felt sorry for many things; somehow I was softly moved because I had to go.
I am worried that perhaps I ought to tell my housekeeper. She is a good lady, but she gets excited like a clucking hen; she would run about in terror, her face swollen with crying, and she would let everything drop. But no fuss and no upset; the smoother it is settled the better. I must put my things in order, I said to myself with relief; thank God that I’ve got something to do for a couple of days. Not much of a job for a man who is a widower and retired like me to get his chattels into order, is it ? Very likely I shall not ever move the larkspurs again, and shall not cut out the cankered wood of the barberry in the winter; but my drawers will be tidy, and there’ll be nothing that might suggest an unfinished act.
I am writing down the details of that moment to make it clear how and why that urge arose in me TO PUT MY THINGS IN ORDER. I had a feeling that I had already had a similar experience before, and not only once. Whenever in my official career I was moved to somewhere else, I tidied up my desk so as not to leave in it anything unfinished and muddled; the last time was when I retired; a dozen times I rearranged and went through everything, page after page, and still I lingered, and then again I wanted to go through everything in case some chit had slipped in that didn’t belong there, or should have been finished with. I was giving up to take a rest after so many years of service; but my heart was heavy, and for a long time afterwards I used to worry in case I had mislaid something, God knows where, and left it behind, or not checked it by the last initialling.
This, then, I have experienced a number of times, and so this last time I felt relieved that I could do something familiar; I ceased to be frightened, and the surprise which the sense of death had caused me passed over into relief which came from familiarity and intimacy. It seems to me that because of that people talk of death like sleep, or rest, to give it a semblance of something they know; therefore they hope to meet their friends who have passed away so that they are not afraid of that step into the unknown; perhaps also they make their last wills and testaments because by that the death of a man becomes an important financial event. See, it’s nothing to be frightened of; what is in front of us has the likeness of things with which we are personally well familiar. I shall put my things in order, nothing more, nothing less; well, thank God, that won’t be difficult for me.
For two days I have been going through my papers; now they’re in order, and tied up with tape. There are all my certificates from the first standard in the elementary school; good Lord, how many firsts did I victoriously bring home, for which my father used to pat my head with his fat hand and say with some emotion, Go on, my boy! Certificates of christening and domicile, marriage certificate, appointments, all filed and nothing missing; it’s a wonder I haven’t given them numbers and letters for filing. All the letters from my late wife; they are only a few, for we were seldom apart, and only for short periods. A couple of letters from friends—and that’s all. Just a few bundles tied up in the drawer of my desk. The only thing still to do is to write on a sheet of paper a fair copy of my petition: A B, the retired State official, requests to be transferred to the other world. See documents A to Z.
They were quiet and almost dear, those two days when I was busy with my papers; except for that pain in my heart I felt easier—perhaps the quietness did it, a shady and cool room, outside the twittering of the birds, and in front of me on the desk old and rather touching papers: the calligraphic school certificates, the maiden handwriting of my wife, the stiff paper of the official documents—I should have liked to have had more to read through and tidy up, but my life was simple; I was always fond of order, and never kept any unnecessary papers. My God, there’s nothing to put straight, such an uncomplicated and ordinary life it was.
There’s nothing more to put straight, but still there is in me—what shall I say ?—a mania for order. It’s unnecessary for me to wind up the clock which I already wound up a moment ago, and useless to open the drawers to see if there is still something that I’ve overlooked. I am thinking of the offices where I worked: has anything been left there that I should not have finished, and tied up with tape ? No longer do I think of the finch that cocked one eye at me as if to say: Well, who are you? Yes, everything is ready as if I were going on a journey, and waiting for the taxi; suddenly in some way you feel desolate, you don’t know what to do next, and you look round full of uncertainty in case you’ve forgotten something. Yes, that’s it, restlessness. I was looking for something more to put straight, and there was nothing left: only that uneasiness in case I had overlooked something important; such a fatuous thing, but it swells like anxiety, like a physical depression in the heart. Right, there is nothing more to arrange; but what next? And then it occurred to me: I’ll put my life straight, and that’s it. Well and good, I’ll write it down so as to file it and tie it up with tape.
At first it almost made me laugh; for God’s sake, I ask you, what for, and what to do with it ? For whom am I to write it ? Such an ordinary life: what is there to write? But I already knew then that I was going to write it, I only put it off somehow out of modesty, or something. As a child I saw an old woman the who lived near us, my mother used to send me there to fetch and carry things for her if she wanted anything. She was a solitary old hag, you never saw her in the street or talking with anyone; children were a bit frightened of her because she was so much alone. Once my mother said to me: “Now you mustn’t go in, the priest is with her, for her confession.” I couldn’t imagine what such a lonely old woman could confess; I felt like pressing my nose to the glass of her window to watch her confessing. The priest was there an endless and mysteriously long time. When I went there afterwards she lay with her eyes closed, and her face had such a peaceful and festive expression that I felt uneasy. “Do you want anything ?” I burst out; she only shook her head. I know now that she also had PUT IN ORDER her life, and in that is the last sacrament of the dying.
TRUE: why shouldn’t there be a biography of quite an ordinary life? In the first place it’s my own personal affair; perhaps I needn’t write it down if there were someone to tell it to. Now and again a reminiscence of something long past crops up in your conversation, even if it’s only what mother used to cook. Each time I mention something like this my housekeeper nods her head compassionately as if to say: Yes, yes, you had a lot to go through; I know, I had a hard life, too. With her you can’t talk about such ordinary things; her temperament is too doleful, and in everything she looks for what is emotional. Others again listen to reminiscences with only half their mind, and impatiently, so as to interrupt the conversation with: Well, with us, and in my young days, it was like so and so. I have the impression that people somehow boast with their reminiscences; they assert that when they were young there was diphtheria, or that they lived through that big storm, as if it were part of their personal merit. Perhaps every man has the need to see in his life something remarkable, important, and almost dramatic; and so he likes to call attention to singular events that he’s experienced, and he expects that because of them he will become the object of heightened interest and admiration.
In my life nothing has occurred that was extraordinary and dramatic; if I have anything to remember then it is only a quiet, obvious, and almost a mechanical sequence of days and years until the final stage that is in front of me, and which will be, I hope, equally as undramatic as the rest. I must say that glancing back I almost find pleasure in the straight and clear path that is behind me; it has its beauty, like a good, straight road, on which it is impossible to go astray. I am almost proud that it is such a direct and comfortable road; I can compass it in one glance right back to childhood, and again enjoy its distinctness. What a beautiful, ordinary, and uninteresting life! Never any adventure, no great struggle, nothing extraordinary, or tragic. Looking at it gives one a pleasant and even strong impression like a smoothly running machine. It will stop without rattling; nothing will squeak, it will run down silently and resignedly. So it ought to be.
My whole life long I have been a reader of books. What a lot of remarkable adventures have I read of, what numbers of tragic and strange characters have I met—as if there was nothing else to talk about, and to write of but unusual, exceptional, and singular cases and chances! But really life is no extraordinary adventure but a common law; what is unusual and extraordinary is only the rattling in its wheels. In fact, ought we not to celebrate life for being normal and ordinary? Is it, perchance, less of a life because it didn’t rattle or moan, and didn’t threaten to fly to pieces ? Instead, we have got through a pile of work, and fulfilled all proprieties from birth to death. On the whole, it has been a happy life, and I’m not ashamed of that small and regular happiness that I used to find in the pedantic idyll of my life.
I recollect the funerals in the little town where I was born. In front the acolyte in a surplice and with a cross; then the musicians, the shiny bugle, French horn, clarinet, and the helicon, the most beautiful of them all; then the curate in a white rochet, and with his calotte, the coffin with its six bearers, and the black host, all serious, solemn, and somehow looking like puppets. And above it all waved the funeral march, the clamour of the bugle, the wailing of the clarinet, and the deep lament of the angelic trumpets; the street was full of it, and the town, it vaulted as high as the sky. Everyone stopped working and went out in front of their houses with bowed heads to pay homage to a man who was departing. Who is it who died? Is it some king or duke, was he some hero that they carry him so solemnly and high ? No, he was a grocer. God give him eternal glory; a good man, and just; well, his time has come. Or it was a wheelwright, a furrier; now they have finished their labour and this is their last journey. I, a lad, would have liked most to be that acolyte at the head of the procession, or no, rather be the one whom they carry in the coffin. Surely it’s as glorious as if they were carrying a king; the whole world with lowered head pays homage to the triumphal progress of a righteous man and neighbour, the bells ring out his praise, and the bugle weeps victoriously; you would like to fall on your knees before the holy and great being that is called man.
MY father was a joiner. My oldest remembrance is of sitting in the warm sawdust in the yard next to the workshop and playing with the twisted curls of the shavings; father’s assistant, Frank, grinned at me and came up to me with a spokeshave in his hand: Come here, I’ll cut your head off. I must have begun to whimper because mother ran out and took me in her arms. That pleasant, noisy tumult of a joiner’s workshop envelops my whole childhood: the banging of the planks, the whizz of the plane running against the knots, the dry rustling of the shavings, and the biting coarseness of the saw; the smell of the wood, glue, and varnish; the workmen with their shirt sleeves rolled up, father marking out something on the planks with fat fingers and with a fat carpenter’s pencil. His shirt sticking to his broad back, he puffs and bends over his work. What will it be? Why, a cupboard; don’t you see, one plank will be joined to the other, the grooves will fit together, and it will be a cupboard; with a professional thumb father runs over the finished piece along the edges and on the wrong side; it’s good, as smooth as a mirror. Or it’s a coffin, but that isn’t such a thorough job, only just knocked together, ornaments stuck on it, and now, my lads, paint it and varnish it so that it shines a lot. Father doesn’t run his hand over a coffin unless it’s one of the better ones, of oak, as heavy as a grand piano.
High up on a pile of planks a little chap is sitting. Oh, no, other lads can’t sit so high, and they haven’t got blocks of wood to play with or shavings shiny like silk. A glazier’s boy, for instance, has nothing because you can’t play with glass. Leave those bits alone, you’ll cut yourself, mammy would say. Or with a house-painter, that’s nothing either; unless you were to take the brush and smear the wall with paint; but then varnish is better, it sticks better. But that’s nothing, we’ve got a blue colour, boasts the painter’s boy, and all the colours in the world; but the joiner’s son won’t let himself be outdone. What’s colours? they’re only powder in paper bags. Yes, it’s true, painters sing at their job, but a joiner’s work is cleaner. In the next yard there is a potter, but he has no children; making pots is nice work, too. There is something to look at when the wheel is spinning, and the potter fashions the damp clay with his thumb until it becomes a pot; they stand in his yard in a long row, still soft, and when he’s not looking a lad can leave his finger-marks on them. But stone-cutting, on the contrary, is not nearly so interesting: for an hour you watch the stonemason tap his chisel with a wooden mallet, and still you can’t see anything, still you don’t know how he’ll make the statue of a kneeling angel with a broken palm leaf out of that stone.
High up on the pile of planks a little chap is sitting; the planks are piled up as high as the tops of old plum-trees, you can catch them with your hands and in a moment you are sitting in the forked branches. This is higher still, somehow it is a dizzy height; now the little chap doesn’t belong to that joiner’s yard, he has a world to himself, which is connected with that other world by a single stem. It’s slightly intoxicating; daddy and mammy can’t come here, not even Frank the workman; and the little chap sips for the first time the wine of solitude. There are still other worlds that the child has for himself alone; for instance, somewhere among the longer planks there are shorter ones, too, and a tiny cave is formed, it has its ceiling and walls, it smells of resin and warm wood; nobody would squeeze himself in there, but there is room enough for the little chap and his mysterious world. Or chips are stuck into the ground like a fence, the enclosure is strewn with sawdust, and into it a small handful of coloured beans are stuck; these are hens, and the biggest bean, the speckled one, that’s the cock. It’s true that behind the joiner’s yard there is a real fence, and behind it real hens cluck with a real golden cock who stands on one leg and looks round with flaming eyes, but that’s not the thing; the little fellow crouches over his tiny heap of illusions, sprinkles sawdust about, and cries in a low voice: Chuck, chuck, chuck! That is his farmyard, and you grown-ups must make believe that you don’t see it; you would destroy its charm if you looked.
But the grown-ups are good for something after all: for instance, when midday rings out from the church tower the workmen stop cutting, pull out the saw from the half-cut plank, and sit down squarely on a pile of planks to eat. Then the little fellow scrambles up Frank’s strong workman’s back and sits down astride on his damp nape; and that is his presumptive right, and it is part of the glory of the day. Frank is a dangerous fighter, and once in a row he bit somebody’s ear, but the little fellow doesn’t know that; he adores him for his strength and for the right to be enthroned on his neck in his midday triumph. There is another workman, he’s called Mr. Martinek; he is quiet and thin, his moustache hangs down and he has beautiful large eyes; the little chap is not allowed to play with him because they say that he has consumption; the lad doesn’t know what that is, and he feels some sort of embarrassment, or fear, when Mr. Martinek looks at him in a friendly and beautiful way.
And there are expeditions into THEIR world, too. Mother says: “Sonny, run and fetch some bread from the baker for me.” The baker is a fat man, sprinkled with flour; sometimes one can see him through the glass in the shop running round the tub, mixing and kneading the dough. Who would have thought that of him, such a big, fat man, and he runs round and round till his slippers smack on his heels. The youngster takes the loaf home, still warm, like a sacrament, his bare feet sinking into the warm dust of the road, and he sniffs in rapture the golden aroma of a loaf of bread. Or to go to the butcher’s for meat; terrible gory pieces of flesh hang from hooks; the butcher and his wife have shiny faces; they hack through pink bones with a cleaver and smack goes the meat on to the weighing machine it’s a wonder they don’t cut their fingers off! But it’s quite different at the grocer’s: there it smells of ginger, gingerbread, and of suchlike things; his wife talks gently in a low voice, and she measures out spices with tiny weights, and for one’s trouble you get a couple of walnuts, one of which is usually bad and shrivelled up, but that’s all the same, if only it has two shells—at least you can stamp on it and make it bang.
I remember these people, now a long time dead, and I should like to see them once again as I used to see them then. Each one had his own particular world, and in it his own mysterious work; every craft was as if a world for itself, each of different material, and with a different ritual. Sunday was a strange day because then the people didn’t wear their working clothes or have their sleeves rolled up, but they had black clothes and they all looked almost like one another; they seemed to me somehow strange and unfamiliar. Sometimes father used to send me with a jug for beer; while the landlord filled the misty jug with froth, I glanced furtively into the corner; there at the table the butcher, the baker, the barber, sometimes the gendarme, fat, with his coat unbuttoned and his gun leaning against the wall, were sitting and talking with loud voices and much noise. It was strange for me to see them away from their yards and shops; it struck me as rather indecent and untidy. Now I should say that I was troubled and mystified when I saw their closed worlds intercross. Perhaps that is why they made such a noise, because they were disturbing some order.
Everyone had his own world, the world of his craft. Some of them were taboo, like Mr. Martinek, like the parish idiot who bellowed in the street, like the stone-mason who lived in silent isolation because he was a spiritualist and reticent. And among those worlds of the grown-ups the youngster had tiny reserved worlds of his own; he had his tree, his enclosure of chips, his corner between the planks; these were the mysterious places of his deepest happiness, which he shared with no one. Squatting on his heels and holding his breath—and now it all merges into one great and agreeable roar; the banging of the planks and the damped tumult of the crafts, there is tapping at the stonemason’s, cans rattle at the tinker’s, the anvil rings at the smithy, someone is hammering a scythe, and somewhere there is a baby wailing, shouts of children in the distance, the hens cluck excitedly, and mother calls from the doorstep: “Where are you?” You call it a small town, and yet it is a mass of life, like a big river; jump into your little boat and don’t make a sound, let it rock you, let it carry you till your head turns round and you will feel almost afraid. To hide from everyone—even that is an expedition into the world.
THE common world of children, that is something entirely different. A lonely child in his game forgets himself and everything that is round him, and his oblivion is beyond time. Into the common game of children wider spheres are drawn, and their mutual world is governed by the laws of the seasons. No amount of boredom will make boys play marbles in summer. You play marbles in spring when the frost goes; that is a grave and indisputable law, like that which commands the snowdrops to flower, or mothers to make Easter cakes. Only later can you play at touch or hide and seek, while the school holidays are the time for adventure and escapades: into the field to catch grasshoppers, or to bathe on the sly in the river. No self-respecting fellow will ever feel in summer the urge to make a bonfire; that’s not done until towards the autumn, at the time when kites are flown. Easter, summer holidays, and Christmas, fairs, village wakes, and feasts, these are important dates and big watersheds in time. The year of children has its routine, its ritual is governed by the seasons; a lonely child plays with eternity, while a pack of children play with time.
In that pack the joiner’s little son was not an outstanding personality; he was somewhat overlooked, and they reproached him that he was a mother’s darling and that he was afraid. But at Easter didn’t he have a rattle that Mr. Martinek had made for him, couldn’t he provide wooden chips for swords, and have as many blocks as he liked? With the painter’s son it was something different; once he smeared celestial blue all over his face, and after that he basked in special esteem. But in the joiner’s yard there were planks on which you could swing seriously and silently; wasn’t that a kind of detachment from the earth and therefore an act that fulfils all desire? Let the painter’s boy smear his face with blue: he was never invited to have a swing.
A game is a game, a serious thing, a matter of honour; there is no equality in sport, there is either excelling or submitting. Let it be said that I did not excel; I was neither the strongest nor the most daring of the pack, and I believe I suffered for it. It was of little avail that the local policeman touched his hat to my father, but not to the painter and decorator. When my father put on his long black coat to go to a meeting of the parish council, I grasped his fat finger and I tried to make as long strides as he did; don’t you see, boys, what a gentleman my dad is—he even carries one pole of the canopy over the curate at the Resurrection and in the evening of his birthday the local musicians come and play in his honour. Dad stands on the doorstep, this time without an apron, and with dignity he acknowledges the celebration of his feast. And I, drunk with the sweet torment of pride, am looking round at my friends who listen attentively; with a tremor I experience this summit of terrestrial glory, and I hold on to my father for everybody to see that I belong to him. The next day the boys had no wish to be conscious of my glory; again I was the one who did not excel in anything and one that nobody wished to obey unless I invited him to swing in our yard. And on purpose not, I would rather not swing myself; and out of grief and spite I made up my mind at least to excel at school.
School, that again is quite another world. There children differ no longer according to their fathers, but by their names; they are no longer distinguished by one being the glazier’s and the other the shoemaker’s, but by one being called Adamec and the other Beran. For the joiner’s little boy it was a shock and for a long time he could not get used to it. Up to that time he had belonged to his family, to the workshop, to the house, and to his pack of boys; now he sat there terribly alone among forty little chaps, most of whom he did not know and with whom he had no common world. If daddy, or mammy, or at least the apprentice Frank, or even the sad Mr. Martinek, had been sitting with him it would have been something different; he would have held them by the lapel of their coat, and he would not have lost continuity with his world, he would have felt it behind him like a protection. He would have liked to burst into tears, but he was afraid that those others would laugh at him. He never merged into his class. Those others soon became friends and nudged each other under the forms, but it was easy for them; at home they had no joiner’s shop, or enclosure of chips strewn with sawdust, or the strong man Frank, or Mr. Martinek; they had nothing about which to feel so terribly lonely. The joiner’s little boy sat in the swarm of the class, self-conscious, and with a lump in his throat. The teacher bent over him. “You are a good, quiet boy,” he said approvingly. The little chap blushed, and his eyes filled with tears of happiness never known before. From that time on in school he became the good and quiet boy, which, of course, separated him still farther from the others.
But in a child’s life school means still another new and greater experience: there for the first time he comes in contact with the hieratic order of life. Up to that time, it’s true, he has had many to obey; mother gives orders, but mother is ours, mother is here to cook, and mother also kisses and strokes; sometimes father loses his temper, but at others you can scramble on to his knees or hold his fat finger. Other grown-ups sometimes snap or swear, but you don’t mind that very much and you run away. But the teacher is something different; he is here only to command and admonish. And you can’t run away and hide somewhere, you can only blush and be horrified of your shame. And you will never scramble on to his knees, never clutch his well-washed finger; he is always above you, inaccessible and untouchable. And the curate, he is more still; when he pats you on the head you are not only patted but distinguished and raised above all the others, and it is a hard job in your pride and gratitude to keep your eyes from watering. So far the little fellow has had a world of his own, and round him has been a multitude of closed, mysterious worlds. The baker’s, the stonemason’s, and those others. Now the whole world splits into two distinct grades: into a higher one, in which there is the teacher, the curate, and those who talk with them; the apothecary, the doctor, the public prosecutor, and the magistrate; and then that ordinary world in which there are fathers and their children. Fathers live in workrooms and shops and only come out on to their doorsteps as if they had to hold to their houses; those from the higher world meet in the middle of the square, they greet with a long bow, and they stand together for a while or they accompany each other for a bit of the way. And for them in the public-house on the square there is a table covered with a white cloth, while the other table-cloths are red or with blue checks; it almost looks like an altar. Now I know that that table-cloth was not so amazingly white, that the curate was snuffy, fat, and good-natured, and the teacher a country bachelor with a red nose; but then for me he was the embodiment of something higher, and almost superhuman; it was the first articulation of the world according to dignity and power.
I was a quiet and industrious little scholar, pointed out to others as an example; but in secret I nursed a tremulous admiration for the painter’s boy, a hangman’s rascal who drove the teacher insane by his roguery, and bit the curate’s thumb. They were almost afraid of him and were quite helpless with him. If they thrashed him as hard as they could, the fellow laughed in their face; it was beneath his savage dignity to cry, whatever happened.
Who knows ? Perhaps it was one of the most decisive things in my life that the painter’s boy would not have me for his pal. I would have given, I can’t say how much, if he had gone with me. Once, Satan knows what he had been up to, a beam crushed his fingers; other children began to cry, but he not, he only turned pale and bit his teeth. I saw him when he was going home carrying that bleeding hand in the other like a trophy. The other boys in a crowd round him, screaming: “A beam fell on him!” I was beyond myself with terror and sympathy, my legs quivered, I felt sick. “Does it hurt you ?” I gasped out in terror. He looked at me with proud, flaming, mocking eyes. “It’s not your business,” he trickled through his teeth. I stood there rejected and snubbed You wait, I’ll show you, I’ll show you what I can stand! I went into the workshop and pushed my left hand into the vice which holds the planks together; I tightened the screw, you will see! Tears burst from my eyes, well, now it hurts me as much as it does him; I’ll show him! I tightened the screw more, more yet, I no longer felt any pain but rapture. They found me in the workshop in a dead faint with my fingers held in the vice; to this day the last joints of the fingers on my left hand are stiff. Now that hand is crabbed and dry like a turkey’s claw, but still remembrance is written on it—of what? Of revengeful childish hatred, or of passionate friendship ?
THAT was the time when the railway got to our little town. They had been building it for a long time, but now it was quite near; in the joiner’s yard you could hear them blasting out the rocks for the cutting. There were strict orders that children like us must not go there, partly because they were using dynamite and partly because there were some queer people; the devil wouldn’t trust that riff-raff, they used to say. The first time my father took me there, so that I could see, he said, how a railway is built, I clutched his finger, I was afraid of “those people”; they lived in wooden huts, between which ragged underwear hung on lines, and the biggest hut was a canteen with a paunchy, evil woman who swore continuously. On the track half-naked men were digging with pickaxes in their hands; they shouted something at my father, but he made no answer. Then there was one with a red flag in his hand. “Look there, that’s where they’ll fire a charge,” said my father, and I clutched him still more convulsively. “Don’t get frightened, I’m here,” said father reassuringly, and with a blessed sigh I felt how powerful he was, and strong; nothing could happen while he was there.
Once beyond the fence of our workshop a little ragged girl stopped, she pushed her nose through the bars and jabbered something. “What do you say ?” asked Frank. The little girl stuck out her tongue in a temper, and went on jabbering. Then Frank called my father. Father leant against the fence and said: “What do you want?” The child went on still faster. “I can’t understand what you say,” said father gravely, “who knows what nation you belong to. Wait here!” And he shouted for mother. “Look at that child’s eyes.” She had large dark eyes with very long lashes. “She’s beautiful,” exclaimed mother with amazement. “Are you hungry ?” The little girl said nothing, she only gazed at her with those eyes. Mother brought her a slice of bread and butter, but the little one shook her head. “Perhaps she’s Italian, or Magyar,” suggested father uncertainly. “Or a Rumanian. Who knows what she wants.” And he went on with his job. When he had gone Mr. Martinek took out a penny from his pocket and without a word gave it to the girl.
The next day when I came from school she was sitting on our fence. “She’s after you,” laughed Frank, and I was terribly annoyed; I didn’t pay any attention to her at all, although from something that might have been a pocket she fished out a shiny penny, and she looked at it to catch my attention. On a pile of planks I put one across to make a see-saw and I sat down on one end; the other could stick into the air, that was no business of mine, I turned my back to the whole world, frowning and somehow vexed. And suddenly the board with me on it began to move mysteriously; I didn’t turn round, but an infinite, almost painful happiness came over me. It swung me up to the top, dizzy with bliss; I leaned back to bring the swing down on my side to the ground, the other end responded lightly in rhythm, a little girl was sitting there; she said nothing, she swung with silent joy, on the other end a boy with silent joy; they didn’t look at each other and they began to see-saw body and soul, for they loved each other; at least the boy did, even if he could not give it that name he was full of it, it was beautiful and tormenting at the same time; and so they swung without a word, almost like a ritual, as slow as possible to give it greater glory.
She was bigger and older than I was, with black hair, and as dark asablack cat; I don’t know what her name was or her nationality. I showed her my enclosure of chips, but she didn’t even look at it, perhaps she didn’t recognize that the beans were hens; it hurt me frightfully, and from that day on my enclosure gave me no more pleasure. Instead she snatched up the neighbour’s kitten and pressed it, all terror-struck and with staring eyes, to herself; and she knew with her fingers how to make a piece of string into such a star that it was like a charm. A boy can’t keep on adoring continually, love is a feeling too heavy and tormenting; at times one must temper it down to comradeship. The boys jeered at me for being pally with girls, it was beneath their dignity; I bore it bravely, but the chasm widened between them and me. Once she scratched the saddler’s son, it was a regular fight, but the painter’s boy intervened and hissed contemptuously through his teeth: “Let her be, it’s a girl!” And he spat like an apprentice. If after that he had beckoned to me I should have followed him instead of that black little minx; but he turned his back on me and led his gang to other triumphs. I was beyond myself with pique and jealousy. “Don’t you worry,” I threatened, “if they came for us, I’d let them have it!” But in any case she didn’t understand what I said; she stuck her tongue out after them and altogether behaved as if I were under her protection.
Then it was the holidays and sometimes we were together all the day long, until towards evening Mr. Martinek used to lead her by the hand back to the wooden huts on the other side of the river. Sometimes she didn’t come, and then in desperation I didn’t know what to do; I crawled with a book into my hiding-place between the boards and pretended that I was reading. From the distance I could hear the war-cries of boys to whom I no longer belonged, and the firing of shots in the rocks. Mr. Martinek bent down, as if to count the boards, and he murmured compassionately: “Why is it that she hasn’t come to-day?” I made as if I hadn’t heard, I only read on furiously; but I could feel almost with bliss how my heart was bleeding and that Mr. Martinek knew it. Once I couldn’t bear it any longer and I set out after her; it was a terrible adventure; I had to cross the footbridge to the other side of the river, which on that day seemed to me more terrifying and wild than ever before. My heart thumped and I went, as in a dream, to the hut which seemed destitute; only the voice of the fat canteen woman could be heard somewhere, and a woman in a shirt and skirt was hanging out washing and yawning loudly like the butcher’s big dog. The dark girl was sitting on a box in front of a hut and she was sewing some rags together; she blinked with her long eyelashes and in her concentration she kept sticking out the end of her tongue.
Without any fuss she made a place for me beside her, and she began to talk quickly and pleasantly in her foreign tongue. I never had the feeling before that I was so immensely far from home; as if I were in another world, as if I never should go home again; it was a desperate and heroic feeling. She put her thin, bare arm round my neck, and for a long time she whispered, damply, ticklishly into my ear; perhaps she was telling me in her strange tongue that she liked me, and I was so happy that I could have died. She showed me the hut in which apparently she lived; the sun had warmed it up to suffocation and it smelt like a dog-kennel; a mans coat hung on a nail, rags on the floor, and some boxes instead of furniture. It was dark in there and her eyes were fixed on me so near and beautifully that I could have cried without knowing what for: love, helplessness, or terror. She sat down on a box with her knees under her chin, she whispered something like a little song, and she looked at me with those fixed wide eyes; it was as if she were performing magic. The wind banged the door to and suddenly it was quite dark; it was terrible, my heart jumped into my throat, I didn’t know what would happen next; there was a light rustling in the dark and the door opened, she stood against the light and looked out, quite still. Then again there was the rumble of a shot in the cutting, and she repeated: “Bang,” Suddenly she was cheerful again and showed me what she could make with string; God knows why she began to behave towards me like a mother, a little nurse; she even took my hand and wanted to take me home, as if I were a baby. I tore myself away and began to whistle as loud as I could so that she could see what I was like; I even stopped on the foot-bridge and spat into the water, just to show her that I was big and that I was not frightened of anything. At home they asked me where I had been to; I told a lie, but although I lied easily and often like every child, I felt that this time my lie was somehow greater and heavier; therefore I lied with overmuch zeal and haste—I wonder that they didn’t find me out.
The day after she came as if nothing had happened, and she tried to whistle with pouting lips; I taught her, generously letting her have a bit of my superiority; friendship is big. On the other hand, it was easier for me to set out on a pilgrimage to the huts; we whistled to each other from a distance and that greatly strengthened our friendship. We scrambled up the slopes from where one could see the navvies at work; she basked on the stones in the sun like a viper, while I looked at the roofs of the little town, and at the onion dome of the church. How far it was. That one there with the tarred roof is the joiner’s shop; daddy puffs and measures something out on the boards, Mr. Martinek coughs, and mammy is on the doorstep and shakes her head: What is that rascal up to again? Here, nowhere, you can’t see me; here on a sunny slope where mullein and viper’s bugloss are in flower; here on the other side of the river where pickaxes ring and dynamite goes bang and where everything is quite different. This is such a secret place: from here you can see everything and nobody sees you. And below they have already laid the little rails and they carry away stone and soil in trucks; someone jumps up on the wagon and it goes by itself on the rails; I should like that, too, and to have on my head a kind of turban made out of a red handkerchief. And to live in a wooden hut, Mr. Martinek would make it for me. The little dark girl looks at me steadily, it is silly that I can’t tell her anything. I tried to talk to her in a secret language: “Javra tivri nevrecovro povrovivrim,” but she couldn’t even understand that. All we can do is to stick our tongues out at each other and one after the other make the most dreadful grimaces to express the harmony in our minds. Or to throw stones together. Just now it’s the time to stick out our tongues; hers is active and thin, like a little red snake; altogether a tongue is a queer thing, from near it is as if it were made out of lots of little pink lumps. Down below we can hear people shouting, but someone is always shouting there. And who can look longest into the other’s eyes ? That’s strange, her eyes look black, but from near they’ve got green and gold things; and that little head in the middle, that’s me. And suddenly her eyes opened wide with terror, she jumped up, screamed something, and ran down the hill.
Below on the track a confused little group of people moved towards the canteen. Only their scattered pickaxes were left behind.
In the evening there was animated talk that one of “those people” had stabbed a foreman in a row; the gendarmes had taken him away, they said, he had chains on his hands and his child ran after him.
Mr. Martinek turned and looked at me with his big, beautiful eyes, and he shrugged his shoulders. “Oh, well, who knows which of them it was,” he murmured. “People like this may be anywhere.”
I never saw her again. In sadness and solitude I read anything that fell into my hands, hidden between the planks. “You have got a good boy!” the neighbours used to say, while dad, with a paternal modesty, replied: “Let’s hope that he’s some good!”
I LIKED my father because he was strong and simple. To touch him gave me a feeling like leaning against a wall or a strong pillar. I thought that he was stronger than anyone else; he smelt of cheap tobacco, beer, and sweat, and his powerful build filled me with a pleasant sense of safety, reliability, and strength. At times he was cross and then he was terrible, he thundered like a storm; but sweeter was the touch of terror with which I climbed up on to his knee. He didn’t talk much, and when he did it was never about himself; I never got rid of the feeling that if he liked he could talk about great and heroic deeds that he had done, and I would put my hands on his powerful, hairy chest to feel it resound. He was deeply and thoroughly immersed in his work; and he was very economical, for he measured money by the work which he had done for it. I remember how sometimes on Sundays he took the bank book out of his drawer and looked into it; it was as if he were looking with satisfaction at properly made piles of good, sound planks; there it is, my boy, heaps of labour and sweat. To squander money is like ruining a finished job, it’s a sin. And what is it for, dad, this money you save ? For my old age, perhaps father would say; but that isn’t it, people only say so; money is to show work, life’s virtue of industry and self-denial. Here you can see for yourself, this is the result of a life’s work; here it is written that I have worked and saved, as is seemly and proper. And as economically as is seemly. The time came when father was already very old; for a long time mother had been asleep in the churchyard below a little marble monument (but it had cost lots of money, daddy used to say with piety) and I had a good position; but dad still shuffled on his heavy, swollen legs to the joiner’s yard in which there was almost nothing more to do, saved, counted, and on Sundays, quite alone in the late family nest, he took out his savings book and looked at the numerical total of his honest life.
Mother was not so simple; she was far more sensitive, emotional, and overflowing with love for me; there were moments when she pressed me convulsively to herself and sighed: My only one, I would the for you! Later on, when I was a lad, these bursts of love somehow embarrassed me; I was ashamed that my pals might see when my mother kissed me so passionately; but when I was quite small her fervent love placed me in a state of subjection, or subjugation, I loved her enormously. When I whimpered and she took me in her arms I had a feeling as if I were dissolving; I liked tremendously to sob on her soft neck, wet with tears and a dribbling child’s mouth; I pressed gulps out of myself as much as I could until everything melted in a blessed, sleepy mumbling: Mummy! Mummy! Altogether mother was for me combined with an over-sensitive urge to enjoy my pain. Not until I became a little five-year-old man did aversion to such feminine manifestations of feeling grow in me; I turned my head away when she pressed me to her breast and I wondered what she got from it; daddy was better, he smelt of tobacco and strength.
Because she was supremely emotional she somehow dramatized everything; small family disputes ended with swollen eyes and tragic silence; daddy banged the doors and set to work with fierce tenacity, while from the kitchen an awful repining silence rose to the heavens. She cherished the idea that I was a weak child, that some misfortune might happen to me, or that I might die. (Her first baby had died, my unknown little brother.) Therefore she was always rushing out to see where I was and what I was doing; later on I frowned manfully when she watched me like that and I gave her sullen and obstinate answers. And all the time she kept asking: Are you all right ? haven’t you got tummy ache ? At first I felt flattered by it; you feel so important when you are ill and are put to bed; and mammy convulsively presses you to her breast. You darling, you mustn’t die! Or she used to take me by hand to a miraculous place of pilgrimage to pray for my health; she sacrificed to the Virgin Mary a little wax bust because she said my lungs.were weak. I was deeply ashamed that she had sacrificed a woman’s bust for my sake, it humiliated my manly pride; altogether it was a strange pilgrimage, mammy prayed silently or sighed with her eyes fixed and full of tears; I felt dimly and painfully that it was not all for me. Then she bought me a bun which, of course, was much better and finer than those at home; but in spite of that I didn’t care for going on those pilgrimages. That feeling has remained with me all my life: my mother was something that had to do with illness and pain. Even now I think I would rather rely on father with his smell of tobacco and manliness. Father was like a pillar.
There is no one for whom I might wish to make the home of my childhood more beautiful than it was. It was commonplace and good, like thousands of other homes; I honoured my father and loved my mother, and my days were long upon the land. They made a decent man out of me to their image; I was not so strong as father, not as great in loving as mother, but at least I was industrious and honest, sensitive, and, to a certain extent, ambitious—that ambition is certainly an heritage of my mother’s liveliness; altogether what used to be wounded in me most is very likely from my mother. And see here, even that was in order and to some good; as well as one who was prepared to take pains, there was in me a man of dreams. For instance, it is certainly not from my father that I am looking into my past as into a mirror; father was so absolutely objective; he had no time for anything but for the present because he was absorbed in his work. Remembrance and the future belong to those who have an inclination to dream and who are more absorbed in themselves. That was mammy’s share in my life. And as I look back now on what in me came from my father and what from my mother, I find that both have accompanied me all my life, that my home never came to an end, that even to-day I am a child who has his own mysterious world while daddy works and counts, and mammy follows me with a look of fear and love.
BECAUSE I learned quickly, and because out of solitude and aloofness I soaked myself in books, father let me study; besides, it was somehow understood from the very beginning because he had a great respect for gendemen and because material and social advancement was for him the holiest and most obvious task of a righteous man and of his progeny. I have noticed that the most able children (in the sense of life’s career) come as a rule from those industrious middle strata which have only just begun by modesty and self-denial to lay the foundations of something like a claim to a better life; our advancement is pushed onwards by the labours of our fathers. In those days I had no idea of what I should like to be; except something grand like the tight-rope walker who swung one evening over our little square, or the mounted dragoon who once stopped at our fence and asked something in German; mammy gave him a glass of water, the dragoon saluted, the horse pranced, and my mother blushed like a rose. I should have liked to be a dragoon, or perhaps a guard who slams carriage doors and then, with infinite elegance, swings up on to his step when the train has begun to move. But you don’t know how people manage to become conductors or dragoons. One day my father announced in an awed voice that he would let me study after the holidays; mother cried, the teacher told me to appreciate what it would mean if I became an educated man, and the parson began to say to me: “Servus, student.” I turned crimson with pride, it was all so glorious; it was already beneath my dignity to play, and with a book in hand I painfully and in solitude ripened into adolescent seriousness.
It is strange how the following eight years at the gymnasium seem to me so irrelevant—at least in comparison with my childhood at home. A child lives a full life, it doesn’t take its own childhood, the present moment as something temporal and transitive; and it is at home that it is an important person with a place to fill that belongs to it by the laws of property. And one day they take a country lad and put him in a school in the town. Eight years among strange people, it might be called, for there he won’t be at home any longer, he will be a little outsider and never will he have the reassuring feeling that he belongs there. He will feel terribly unimportant among those strange people, he will always be reminded that he STILL is nothing; the school and the unusual surroundings will create a feeling in him of humiliated smallness, paralysis, and inferiority, a feeling which he will try to overcome with cramming, or—in some cases and not till later—with a mad revolt against the authorities and school discipline. And at school it is continually being rubbed into him that it is all merely a PREPARATION for what is to come; the first year is nothing more than a preparation for the second, while in his fourth year a boy is only getting ready for his fifth if, of course, he is sufficiently attentive and studious. And all those long eight years are again only a preparation for the leaving certificate, and only then, my boys, does real learning begin for you. We prepare you for life, the masters lecture, as if what was wriggling on the forms in front of them was no life worth the name. Life is what will not come until after the certificate: that is roughly the most powerful notion that the secondary school cultivates in us; and therefore we leave it as if we are set free instead of feeling rather upset because we are saying good-bye to our boyhood.
Perhaps because of that our reminiscences of school consist only of fragments, disjointed; and yet how keen is our perception in those years! How well and clearly do I remember the masters, the ridiculous, half-mad pedants, the good fellows who in vain tried to tame the wild swarm of rascals, and the few noble scholars at whose feet even a boy had a vague feeling, almost with tremors, that it is not a matter of preparation but of knowledge and that at that very moment he is in a process of becoming something and somebody. I can also see my colleagues, the battered forms, the corridors of the old building scholarum piarum, a thousand reminiscences as clear as a vivid dream; but all that time at school, those eight years, taken together, are strangely without a face and almost without a sense; they were fleeting years of youth lived impatiently to get them over.
And again: in those years how ardendy and keenly does a boy appreciate the things that do not belong to school; anything that is not a “preparation for life,” but is life itself: whether it be friendship or the so-called first love, troubles, reading, religious crises, or romping about. This is something to which he may give himself heart and soul, and what is his now and not till after the certificate, or until, as one says at school, “when he has finished.” Most of the inner conflicts and follies of youth, lived with tragic seriousness, are, I think, the result of that period of suspense in which our adolescence takes place. It is something like a revenge that we are not taken seriously. In revolt against that chronic feeling of unreality we long at least in some way to experience something positive. And that’s why it is like this; that’s why in adolescence a silly rascality and a tragic, surprising seriousness so confusedly and sometimes so painfully are mixed together. The progress of life is not such that out of a child a man develops gradually and almost imperceptibly; suddenly there appears in a child terribly complete and devilishly mature lumps of manhood; the parts will not fit together, they are disorganized, they clash in him so incongruously and illogically that it almost seems like madness. Fortunately, we older ones have learned to take this state leniendy, and we soothe and make these boys understand who begin to take life with deadly seriousness that they will grow out of it.
(What crudity when we talk of happy youth! Apparently we are thinking of our healthy teeth and healthy stomachs; what does it matter if everything else made our souls ache! If we had in front of us as much life as we had then: I know that we should change at once, whatever we are. I know with me it was the time when I was least happy, the time of longing and loneliness! But I know that even I wished to change, with both hands I should try to snatch that constrained youth—what would it matter if my soul again would ache so infinitely, so desperately?)
ALL that happened with me as it does with every boy, but perhaps less tempestuously, not so markedly as with most others. In the first place, much of that ferment of youth was in me wiped away by the continual longing for my home, in the loneliness of a country boy in strange and, to some extent, superior surroundings. My father was thrifty, he found me a lodging with the worried family of a tailor; for the first time I had the feeling that after all I was an indigent and almost poor little scholar who was destined to have to stint himself and to keep aloof. And I was a shy country lad who felt that he cut a poor figure with the audacious little masters from the town; how they felt at home there, how much they knew and had in common! Because I could not find any approach to them I made up my mind to excel in school; I became the book-worm who found some sort of sense of life, some revenge, some triumph, in that I proceeded from class to class summa cum laude accompanied by the ill will of my colleagues who, in my lonely and serious industry, observed disgusting ambition. The more I became hardened, and pored over my lessons with my fists on my brows in the dry, close atmosphere of the tailor’s irons, in the smell from the kitchen where his sighing wife prepared a pale and eternally sour meal. I grew dull with learning; wherever I walked my lips moved in a continual repetition of my lessons, but how great was my secret and deep triumph when at school I KNEW the answer and sat down amidst the annoyed and unfriendly silence of the class! I didn’t even turn round, but I could feel how they all were looking at me with animosity. And this petty ambition carried me through the crises and fundamental changes of youth; I escaped them by learning by heart the Sund islands or Greek irregular verbs. That was my father in me bent over his work until he gasped with concentration and zeal; my father running his thumb over the finished work. It’s good, no gap anywhere. And it is dusk, you can’t any longer read the lessons; through the open window you can hear the retreat sounded from the barracks; a boy stands at the window with burning eyes and his heart aches with a beautiful and desperate melancholy. What for ? There is no name for it, it is so vast and deep that those sharp little needles of petty offences, humiliations, failures, and disappointments which everywhere goad the shy boy, dissolve away. Yes, that’s my mother again, this overflowing with pain and love. That concentrated drudgery is my father, this that is sentimental and passionately tender is my mother: how is one to contain and straighten out these two in a boy’s narrow chest ?
At one time I had a pal to whom I was drawn with passionate friendship; he was a country boy, older than I, with a light down on his hp, amazingly untalented and gende; his mother had promised him to God as a sacrifice of thanksgiving for his father’s recovery, and he was to study for the priesthood. When he was asked a question in school there was a complete tragedy of goodwill and panic; he trembled like a leaf and couldn’t stammer out a single word. In a strenuous endeavour to help him I taught him myself; he listened with an open mouth and gazed at me with beautiful, adoring eyes. When they examined him I suffered terribly and inexpressibly; the whole class tried to prompt and help him, they even took me into grace and prodded me: you, what is it ? Then he sat down, crimson and ruined; I went to him with my eyes full of tears and comforted him. Look, you’re already doing a bit better, you could nearly answer it, just wait, and it’ll go! During lessons in school I sent him the answers on screwed-up bits of paper. He sat in the opposite corner of the room; my message passed from hand to hand and nobody opened it, it was for him; youth is usually callous, but it is chivalrous. With our combined forces we got him as far as the third year, then he failed inevitably and went home; I was told that he had hanged himself at home. That boy was perhaps the biggest and most passionate love of my life. I used to think back on it later on when I read stories of the sexual motives in youthful friendships. Good Lord, what nonsense! We hardly ever got to shaking hands with each other in a clumsy fashion; almost crushed and overwhelmed we lived the amazing fact that we were souls; we were filled with happiness in being able to look at the same things. I had the feeling that I was learning for his sake so that I could help him; that was the only time when I really liked my lessons and when they all had a positive and glorious meaning. Even to this day I can hear my own entreating, eager voice: “Look here, say it after me: Phanerogams are divided into monocotyledons, dicotyledons, and acotyledons.” “Monograms are divided into,” my big pal would mumble with a voice already masculine, gazing at me like a dog with clear, faithful, and devoted eyes.
A little later I had another love affair; she was fourteen and I fifteen. She was the sister of one of my schoolfellows who had failed in Latin and Greek, an awful rascal and good-for-nothing. One day a shabby, melancholy, and mildly drunk gentleman was waiting for me in the school corridor. He took his hat off and introduced himself as an official, so and so, his voice trembled at the mention of it; and seeing that I was such an excellent student, he said, and would I be kind enough and help his son a little in Latin and Greek. “I can’t afford a tutor for him,” he stammered, “but if you would be so exceedingly kind, sir—” He said “sir” to me, that was enough; could I ask anything more ? I took up my new task with enthusiasm and tried to teach that bristly urchin. It was a strange kind of family; the father was eternally at the office or drunk, and the mother did sewing work with families or something; they lived in a narrow, notorious little street where as evening came on fat and faded ladies used to stand in front of the houses, swaying like ducks. At home there were, or perhaps were not, the young rascal and his little sister, clean, shy, with a narrow face, and light eyes bulging with myopia, with which she eternally bent over some embroidery or needlework. The progress of the coaching was deplorably slow, the rascal had no wish to learn and that was that; instead I fell head over heels in love, and painfully, with that shy girl who used to sit very silent on a little stool with the embroidery right up to her eyes. She always raised them suddenly, and as if terrified, and then somehow she apologized with a trembling smile. As time went on the rascal wouldn’t repeat my statements any longer, he magnanimously allowed me to do his exercises and went his way. I sat hunch-backed over his notebooks as if they were giving me God knows how much trouble; whenever I raised my head she quickly lowered hers, crimson to the roots of her hair; when I spoke her eyes almost shrieked with agitation and a miserably timid smile trembled on her hps. We had nothing to say to each other, it was all terribly embarrassing; the clock ticked on the wall and rattled instead of striking; sometimes I never know how I sensed that all of a sudden she was breathing more rapidly and pulling the thread quicker through the embroidery; then my own heart began to throb and I didn’t even dare to raise my head, I only began unnecessarily to turn over the pages in the rascal’s notebooks so that at least something happened. I was utterly ashamed of my embarrassment and I used to make up my mind: To-morrow I will say something to her, something that will make her start talking with me. I thought out hundreds of remarks and also what she might say; for instance: Show me that embroidery, and what will it be, or something like that. But when I was there and wanted to say it, my heart began to beat faster, my throat turned dry, and I couldn’t get one word out; she raised her frightened eyes, and I sat hunch-backed over the notebook murmuring with a man’s voice that there were hundreds of mistakes. And all the time, on the way home, at home, at school, my head was full of it: what I would say to her, what I would do; I would stroke her hair, I would take up paid coaching and buy a ring, I would save her somehow from that home of hers; I should sit down beside her, put my arm around her neck, and I don’t know what else. The more I thought it out the more my heart throbbed, and the more hopelessly I sank into a panic of embarrassment. And the rascal left us alone with intent almost striking. You will prompt me, he commanded, and dropped out of the house. And once, Yes; now I will kiss her, now I will kiss her; I will go to her and will do it; now I will get up and go to her. And suddenly in confusion, almost with terror, I became conscious that I really was getting up and going to her. And she rose, her hands on the embroidery trembled, her mouth was half open with fright; our foreheads knocked together, nothing more; she turned away and began to sob: “I like you so much, I like you so much!” I also wanted to cry, I was lost. Good Lord, what shall I do now? “Somebody’s coming,” I blurted out stupidly; she stopped sobbing, but that was the end of a great moment; I returned to the table crimson and embarrassed, and began to put the notebooks together. She sat with the embroidery close to her eyes, her knees shook. “Well, I must go,” I stammered, and on her hps a humble and timid smile appeared.
The next day the rascal said to me, expertly and out of the corner of his mouth: “Don’t I know what you are doing with my sister!” And he winked knowingly. Youth is strangely without compromise and consequence. I never went there again.
AFTER all, the course of life is moved forwards chiefly by two forces: by habit and chance. When I had taken my certificate (almost disappointed that it was so easy) I had no fixed idea of what I should really like to be; but because twice before I had already taught somebody (and in each case those were the times when I felt important and big), that was the single thing in front of me that had at least a suspicion of a habit: to teach others; therefore I decided to study philosophy. Father was well pleased with the idea: to be a schoolmaster; after all that is a profession and comes under a pension scheme. By then I was a tall and serious youth; I was allowed to sit at the white-covered table with the curate, attorney, and other big-wigs, and I puffed myself up immensely; now life was in front of me. Suddenly I realized how local, provincial, and rural those big-wigs were; I felt myself called upon to achieve something greater, and I looked mysteriously like a man who has big plans; but even that was only uncertainty and a certain amount of trepidation before that step into the unknown.
I think that it was the most painful moment in my life when I stepped out of the train with my box in Prague, and suddenly lost my head: what now, and where to go? I felt as if all the people were turning round and laughing as they saw me standing helplessly there with my box at my feet; I was in the way of the porters, people pushed into me, cabmen shouted at me: Where do you want to go, sir ? I snatched up my box in panic and began to wander through the streets. Hi, get off the pavement with that luggage, the policeman shouted at me. I fled into the side streets, lost and aimless, changing the box from one hand to the other. Well, where was I going ? I didn’t know and therefore I had to run; if I had stopped it would have been still worse. At last the box fell from my fingers stiff with cramp and pain. It was a quiet street, grass pushed its way up on the pavement like it did at home on the square; and just in front of my eyes on the front gate a notice was nailed: A room to let for a single gentleman. I sighed with an infinite relief: Well, see, I did find it after all.
I hired that room from an old, close-tongued hag; there was a bed and a sofa; it smelt gloomily, but what did that matter? At least I was safe. I was in a fever of excitement, I could not eat anything; but to save appearances I made as if I were going to eat somewhere, and I wandered through the streets, in fear and trembling lest I should lose my bearings. That night my nervous fever muddled and crumbled my dreams; towards morning I woke and on the side of my bed a fat youth was sitting; he smelt of tobacco and recited some verses. “You are astonished, aren’t you?” he said and went on reciting. I thought that it was still part of my dream and I closed my eyes. “Good Lord, this is a loony,” said the youth, and began to undress himself. I sat up in the bed; the youth sat on the side and began to take his shoes off. “Again I have to get used to another ox,” he lamented. “What trouble I had to silence the one who was here before you, and you will sleep like a log,” he complained bitterly. I was immensely glad that someone was talking to me: “What verses were they?” I asked. The youth flew into a rage. “Verses! You talk to me about verses, you cabbage! Listen,” he stammered, “if you want to get on with me then may the Lord protect you if you start bringing in that daft Parnassism. You know darn little about poetry.” He sat with one shoe in his hand, with a faraway look in his eyes; he began to recite some poem hi a low voice and rapturously. I shivered in fascination, it was for me so infinitely new and strange. The poet threw his shoe at the door as a sign that he had finished and got up. “Misery,” he sighed. “Misery.” He blew out the oil lamp and lay down heavily on the sofa; I could still hear him whispering something. “You,” he inquired from the darkness after a while, “how does it go on: Gentle Jesus, meek and mild--You don’t know it either? When you are such a pig as I am you will miss it as well; you wait, you will see how you will miss it—”
In the morning he was still asleep, swollen and dishevelled. When he woke, he weighed me up with cloudy eyes. “To study philosophy? What for? Man, to think you care for it!” In spite of that he took me under his wing and showed me the university. Here you have this, here that, and may the deuce take you. I was confused and fascinated. This, then, is Prague, and people like this are here; very likely it’s part of the thing, and I must act accordingly. In a few days I got accustomed to the routine of the university lectures; I scribbled into my notebook learned expositions which at the time I couldn’t understand, and at night I argued with the drunken poet about poetry, women, and life as a whole; this and that turned my country head and gave it some sort of dizziness which was not unpleasant. Besides, there was much to look at. Altogether there was too much at once, it filled my mind until it was chaotic and turbulent; perhaps I should have crawled back again into my steady and lonely drudgery if there hadn’t been that fat, drunken poet with his stimulating sermons. It’s all muck, he used to say with assurance, and the matter was dismissed; only poetry was partially exempt from his ruthless contempt. I readily contracted his cynical superiority to the things of life; he helped me to master victoriously that mass of new impressions and inaccessible things; I could reflect with pride and contentment on how much I scoffed. Did it not give me a terrific feeling of ascendancy over anything that I repudiated it ? Did it not liberate me from the romantic and painful dreaming about life which in spite of all my glorious freedom and officially legalized maturity still escaped me ? A young man desires everything that he sees, and is annoyed if he can’t have it; therefore he takes his revenge on the world and on the people, and searches for the things in which he can repudiate them. And then he tries to test his own disquiet; nights of loafing begin, expeditions to the fringes of life, endless wordy debates, and haste for the experiences of love as if they were the most famous trophies of the male.
Perhaps it was different: perhaps savagery and nonsense had accumulated during those eight cramped schoolboy years, and now they must break out. Perhaps it is simply a part of youth, like the growth of a beard and the atrophy of the thymus. It was obviously necessary and natural to live through it; but measured by the sum of life it was a strange and deranged period, a grand waste of time, giving something like pleasure because we had succeeded in violating the sense of life. I was no longer an undergraduate of the university; I wrote verses, bad ones, I imagine; in spite of that they were published in periodicals of which for a long time now nobody has known anything. I’m glad that I didn’t keep them and that no trace even of them is left in my memory.
Of course it all went bang. My father came after me and made a terrible scene; and if it was like that he wouldn’t be such a fool as to send his boy money to throw away. I puffed myself up, offended, obviously with a bad conscience; I’ll show him that I can support myself. I sent an application to the Ministry of Railways to take me on an as official probationer and, to my astonishment, I got a positive answer.
I WAS of Ecially appointed to the Franz Joseph Station at Prague in the dispatch department: in an office that had a window looking out on to a dark platform and where we had to have artificial light all the day long; a dreadful and hopeless den, where I looked through transit fees and such-like things. People flitted past the window waiting for someone or to travel somewhere; it had its nervous, almost pathetic, atmosphere of departure and arrival, while behind the window I scribbled down the idiotic and completely bald figures. But never mind, there was something in it. And from time to time I could stretch my legs on the platform with an indifferent face, for I was at home there, you know. Otherwise it was an immense, dull and colossal bore; the only deep satisfaction it gave me was that I was already a man who could support himself alone. Yes, I sat hunch-backed below a lamp as I did when I was doing my mathematical exercises; but that was only a preparation for life, while this now it was life itself. That’s a tremendous difference, sir. I began to despise the fellows with whom I had been squandering the past year; they were unripe, dependent chaps, while I had become a man who was already standing on his own feet. Altogether I avoided them; I preferred to drop into a quiet and respectable pub where steady, middle-aged men expounded their worries and arguments. Gentlemen, I’m not here just as you see me; I’m a mature and adult man who supports himself by a wearisome and boring job. But it is dreadful what I must do to keep myself alive; all through the day the only light comes from a hissing gas lamp, that’s intolerable; probationer or no, gentlemen, I already know what life is like. Why did I take it up ? It was like this, family feeling, and such things. When I was a child they built a railway near my home and I wanted to be a conductor, or that chap who takes and dumps the loosened stones. You know, a boy’s ideal; that’s why I’m writing out notices and things like that. Nobody took any notice of me, every mature man has each his own worries; I was just scared to go home because out of weariness I should have to lie down in bed, and then again I should develop a temperature and that absurd sweat would break out over me. It comes from that dark office, you know. Nobody must know about it, a probationer must never be ill or they would sack him; he must keep to himself what happens to him at night. It’s a good thing that I’ve already experienced enough to have, at least, something to dream about. And what heavy dreams: everything runs together and gets muddled; it’s monstrous. This is such a real and serious life, gentlemen, that I’m pegging out with it. Somehow a man must throw his life away to understand its value.
That period of my life was a kind of continuous monologue; a monologue is a dreadful thing, a bit like self-annihilation, something like sawing through the fetters that bind us to life; a man who holds a monologue is not only lonely, but he is discarded or lost. God knows what sort of obstinacy or something there was in me: in the office I got a sort of savage pleasure from the fact that it was ruining me; besides that agitated haste of arrival and departure, always that rush, always that disorder; a station, particularly a big station, is congested, a little like a festering ganglion—the devil knows why so much riff-raff, petty thieves, pimps, wenches, and queer individuals collect there; perhaps because people who are coming or going are already de-railed from their lines of habit and become, so to speak, a favourable spot upon which all kinds of vice can sprout. I sniffed with satisfaction that faint odour of decomposition, it suited my feverish mood, that revengeful feeling of annihilation and petering out. And then, you know, there was another victorious satisfaction; there on that same platform I had got out a little more than a year before, a startled country bumpkin with a wooden box, not knowing where to go; and now I was crossing the rails, waiving the notice, nonchalant and blase; how far had I gone in that time, where had I left my stupid and bashful years ? How far, almost at the end!
One day I coughed up over my papers into my handkerchief a lump of blood, and while I was looking at it in astonishment a bigger and terrible portion came up. They crowded together round me, frightened and helpless, one old clerk wiped my sweaty forehead with a towel; I seemed to myself like Mr. Martinek at home; it used to come over him while he was at work, and then he sat on a pile of planks, terribly pale and perspiring, with his face in the palms of his hands; I used to look at him from a distance, dreadfully perplexed and frightened—now I had an equally strong feeling of terror and of distance. That old clerk with spectacles, like a slow, black beetle, took me home and put me to bed; he even came to visit me because he saw that I was afraid. After a few days I got up, but God knows what happened with me: I had a terrible desire to live, even if it were as silently and slowly as that old clerk; a desire to sit at a table and turn over the papers while the gas lamp hissed silently and stubbornly.
“Above” in the office there was someone very sensible; they didn’t make much fuss over the investigation into the state of my health, and they moved me officially to a small railway station in the mountains.
IN its way it was the end of the world; the line ended there; a little bit past the station were the buffers where the last rusty metals were overgrown with shepherd’s-purse and hair-grass. You didn’t go any farther; beyond a green mountain river murmured in the bend of a narrow valley. Well, it was like being at the bottom of a pocket there, the end, nothing beyond. I think that the railway was built there merely to carry planks from the sawmill and long, straight trunks tied with a chain. In addition to the station and the sawmill there was a pub, a few wooden houses—Germans like logs—and forests murmuring in the wind like an organ.
The station-master was a grumpy man like a walrus; he weighed me up suspiciously. Who knows why they’ve moved this youngster here from Prague, very likely as a punishment; I shall have to watch his fingers. Twice a day a passenger train arrived, consisting of two carriages from which a group of hairy men got out with saws and hatchets, wearing green hats on ginger-haired pates; when the signal bell had stopped ringing, bim, bim, bim, bim, bim, bim, you walked out on to the platform to assist with the great event of the day. The station-master, with his hands on the back, chatted with the chief guard, the engine-driver went for a drink of beer, the stoker made as if he were wiping the engine with a dirty rag, and again there was silence; only a bit farther on the planks banged as they were being loaded on to the wagons.
In the tiny, shady office the telegraph apparatus would tick, that was some gentleman from the sawmill announcing his arrival; in the evening a little cab would wait in front of the station while the unshaven driver thoughtfully flicked away the flies from the shaggy horse’s shoulder with the point of his whip. “Na prr,” he would say at times in a thin voice, the horse would shuffle from one foot to the other, and there was silence again. Then a little train would come puffing up with two carriages, the station-master somewhat respectfully and somewhat intimately would salute the magnate from the sawmill, who would take his seat in the cab, talking conspicuously and loudly; the other mortals would only exchange remarks under their breath with snuffling voices. And that was the end of the day; there was nothing else but to go to the pub, where one table was spread with a white tablecloth for the gentlemen from the station, from the sawmill, and from the forest management; or to take a stroll for a bit along the rails to where they were grown over with grass and shepherd’s-purse, sit down on the pile of planks, and breathe the keen air. High up a little fellow is sitting—no, it’s no longer so high, and out of the little chap has emerged a gentleman in a tight official blouse, with an official cap on the head, and with an interesting little moustache on an interestingly pale face; the devil knows why they’ve sent him here, thinks the station-master of the last station in the world. I beg to state, sir, that they’ve sent him for this; to sit on the planks as he used to sit at home. You have to go a long way to get back home again. You must learn a lot and commit many stupidities, you must cough up part of your life to find yourself again on the planks smelling of wood and resin. It’s healthy for the lungs, they say. And already it’s dark, stars peeping through in the sky; there were stars at home, too, but not in the town. How many there are, no, how many, it’s almost impossible to believe. And then one thinks how much it matters who knows how much one has gone through; and yet there are such masses of stars! And this is really the last station in the world: the line runs to its end in the grass and shepherd’s-purse, and then comes the universe. Right behind those buffers. You might say that the wood and the river are murmuring, and instead it’s the universe, the stars rustle like the alder leaves and the mountain breeze blows between the worlds: Lord, it’s good to fill your lungs!
Or to go with a rod to catch trout, to sit by a swiftly flowing river and make as if we were fishing, and instead we’re only looking into the water to see how quickly it flows away; it is always the same ripple, and always new, always the same and new, and never an end; man, how much flows away with that water! as if something in you were detaching itself, something were swimming away from you, and the water carries it off. Where does it come from in man ? All the time it’s taking away with it some of his impurities and sadness, and always there’s enough left for the next time. Even from that solitude how much has flown away and never an end. The young man sits over the water and sighs with loneliness. That’s good, something says in him, only sigh a lot, and very deeply; it’s good for the lungs. And the trout fisherman sighs greatly and deeply.
But be it said: he didn’t give in easily, and he didn’t just become reconciled with the last station in the world. First he had to show them that he had come from Prague and that he was not just anybody; it did him good to be a little mysterious, and he put on airs in front of the forestry probationers and the red-nosed, beardy men from the woods, like a man who has much behind him; but look what deep and ironic lines life had etched out round his mouth. They couldn’t understand it very well, they were too healthy; they bragged about their adventures with girls picking raspberries, or at village dances; and they could be absorbed in a game of skitdes for a whole Sunday afternoon. As time went on the interestingly pale man found that he was mildly and quiedy interested in watching the run of the ball and the fall of the skittles, always the same and always new, like the ripples on the river. The line grown over with hair-grass and shepherd’s-purse. The piles of planks sent away, and again there were new ones. Always the same, and always new. And, gende-men, I caught five trout. Where ? Just behind the station, such fellows. Sometimes I became horrified: Is this life ? Yes, it is life: two tiny trains a day, a blind line grown over with grass, and just behind the universe like a wall.
And the interesting young man sitting on the pile of planks stooped down with satisfaction for a tiny stone to throw at the signalman’s hen. So, and now get excited, you silly; I’m already a level-headed man.
Now I understand it; all that squealing and rattling was only a crossing; I thought I should fly to pieces as it shook inside me, and instead I was already running on to the proper and long line of my life. Something adjusts itself in man when his life is getting on to its proper line: up till then he had an uncertain possibility of being this, or that, to go here or there, but now it’s to be determined by a higher validity than his own will. Therefore his inner self jibs and tosses about, not knowing that these tremors of his are just the ratde of the wheels of fate as they run on to the right rail.
Now I understand how it is all rolled out nicely and continuously right from childhood; nothing, almost nothing, was due to mere chance, but a link in a chain of necessity. I should say that my fate was decided when in the place of my childhood they began to build a railway; the tiny world of a little old town was suddenly linked with space, the little town was putting on seven-league boots; it has changed tremendously since then, factories have sprung up, money and misery—in short, it was its historical re-birth. Even if I didn’t understand it then, I was fascinated by those new, noisy, manly things that invaded the closed world of a child, those rowdy troops of ruffians, scourings of the whole world, bangs of dynamite, and riddled slopes. I think that that child’s great attachment to a strange little girl was mainly an expression of that fascination. It remained with me subconsciously and inevitably. Why otherwise should I have jumped at the first opportunity to apply for a post on the railways ?
Those years of study, I know, they were another rail; but wasn’t I homesick enough, and lost ? But instead I found satisfaction and certainty in performing my duties; it was a relief to stick to the prescribed line of lessons and tasks; it was some sort of order, yes, it was a fixed rail along which I could run. I am apparently a bureaucrat by nature; to give me a feeling that I am working fully and well, my life must be directed by a sense of duty. Therefore I suffered such a catastrophe when, on going to Prague, I ran off the straight and safe lines that would have guided me. Suddenly I was not governed by any schedule or by any task that must be done by to-morrow morning. Because no authority had taken me up I gave myself to the wild leadership of the fat, drunken poet. God, how simple it all is, and I thought then what experiences I was having. I even wrote poems like every other student in those days, and I thought that at last I had found myself. When I applied for the post on the railways I did it out of spite, to show my father; in reality, unconsciously and blindly, I was already feeling for MY own firm line under my feet.
And there’s another thing, apparently a mere detail, perhaps I am making too much of it: my derailment began at the moment when, with my box in my hand, I stood on the platform, helpless and miserable, almost crying with embarrassment and shame. For a very long time I felt ashamed of that defeat. Who knows: perhaps I became a young gentleman on the railways and later on a rather bigger cog in the railways, also to efface and redeem for myself that painful and humiliating moment on the platform.
These explanations, it’s true, are retrospective; but at times I used to have an intense and strange sensation that that particular moment CORRESPONDED to something in my-life that happened long ago; that something was being accomplished that I had already experienced before. Perhaps it was when under a hissing lamp I sat bent over the notice: Good Lord, but it was just like the time when I sweated, gnawing my pen over my school exercises, urged on by the awful realization that they must be done. Or the feeling of the conscientious pupil which I never lost all my life: that I have done all my lessons. It is strange that those moments when I was conscious of this remote and strangely clear connection with something long ago moved me like a revelation of something mysterious and great; in them life was revealed to me as a vast, determined whole linked by invisible relations which we comprehend but rarely. When at the last station in the world I sat on the planks which reminded me of father’s joiner’s yard I began for the first time, with amazement and resignation, to live the beautiful and simple order of life.
IN due time I was moved to a more important station. It was, it’s true, not big, but it was on the main line; six times a day big express trains passed through, without stopping, of course. The station-master was a German, and very good-natured; the whole day long he smoked his clay pipe, but when an express was signalled he put it down in a corner, brushed himself, and went on the platform to pay due honour to the international connection. The station was very tidy, petunias in all the windows, everywhere baskets of lobelias and nasturtiums; the garden full of lilac, jasmine, and roses, and then by the storehouse and signal-box nothing but flower beds, marigolds in flower, forget-me-nots, and antirrhinums. And everything had to shine—windows, lamps, green-painted pumps—otherwise the old gentleman was terribly annoyed: “What’s this,” he grumbled, “international expresses pass through here, and you leave muck about like this!” The muck might be a bit of waste paper, but it could not be tolerated, for a great moment was approaching: over there behind the bend with a dull roar the powerful, high chest of an express locomotive was emerging, the old gentleman took three steps forward, and already it was thundering past him: the engine-driver greeted with his hand, on the steps of the express the conductors saluted, the old gentleman stood to attention, heels together, shoes polished like a mirror, and raised with dignity his hand to his red cap. (Five paces behind, that interestingly pale official with a high cap, in trousers polished on the seat, saluting a bit more casually, that was me.) Then the old gentleman, with a wide, proprietary eye, looked at the blue sky, clean windows, flowering petunias, raked sand, his polished shoes, and the metals which glistened as if he had had them specially polished for the purpose, he contentedly rubbed his nose; well, that was all right, and went to light his pipe again. That ceremony took place six times a day, always with the same pomp and the same solemnity. Railway people throughout the whole monarchy knew of the old gentleman and his model station; that festive transit was a pleasant and serious game that they all looked forward to. Every Sunday afternoon, on the covered platform, there was a holiday corso; the local people, dressed up and starched, promenaded politely and silently under the baskets of lobelias, while the old gentleman walked up and down with his hands behind his back, looking at the lines, like the chef of an establishment having a look to see if everything is in order. It was his station, his household; and if miracles could happen so that recompense and glory might be given to righteous souls, one day an international express (the 12.17) would have stopped at the platform, and the Emperor would have stepped out; he would have raised two fingers to his cap and said: “You’ve made it very nice here, Mr. Station-master. Your station has often caught my eye.”
He liked his station, he liked everything to do with railways, and, best of all, he liked engines; he knew them all by their series numbers and their good points. That one there doesn’t go very well uphill, but, sir, what lines she’s got! And this, look, what length, by Jove, that’s a boiler for you! He talked about them as if they were girls, with appreciation and chivalry. Yes, it’s true, you laugh at this short and stumpy thirty-six one with her squat chimney, but think how old she is, you chicken! For express engines he had an admiration absolutely passionate. That short, robust chimney, that deep chest, and those wheels, my friend, she’s a beauty! His life was almost pathetic in that beauty passed him flying like lightning; and yet for its sake he polished his shoes, for its saSe he decorated the windows with petunias, and saw to it that there was no tiny blemish anywhere. God, how simple is the prescription for a happy life: to do what we have to out of love for the thing.
And God knows by what miracle on diat station such a collection of good-hearted fellows had been brought together. The telegraphist, a shy and bashful youth who collected stamps and felt terribly ashamed of it; he always hid them quickly in a drawer, red to the roots of his hair; we all pretended that we didn’t know anything about it, and we dropped secretly on his desk, among his papers, between the pages of the book he was reading, whatever stamp we could lay our hands on. Those stamps the train postmen let us have. Most likely they detached them from all the letters from abroad that passed through their hands; because it was against the regulations, the old gentleman behaved as if he hadn’t the slightest suspicion of it, and it fell to me to perform the forbidden part of our secret undertaking; after that with fine enthusiasm he assisted in playing pranks on the timid telegraphist. That unhappy youth found stamps from Persia in an old coat pocket, or from the Congo in crumpled paper in which he had brought his lunch; under the lamp he found a Chinese stamp with a dragon, and out from his handkerchief he shook a blue one from Bolivia. He always blushed frightfully and his eyes filled with the tears of emotion and amazement; he squinted towards us, but we made no sign, no sign at all; we had no inkling there might be someone among us who collected stamps. Happy grown-ups at play.
The porter who grumbled eternally and ten times a day sprinkled the platform with a dribble of water and scolded those who at the station represented the incorrigible element of disorder and confusion. If it were possible he wouldn’t have let anybody in; but what can one do with those old women, with their hampers and bags? He always struck terror, and yet no one was ever afraid of him; his life was weary and disturbed, and only when the international express rattled through the station did he stop grumbling and throw out his chest. Just to let you know it’s my job to keep things straight here.
The old man who tended the lamps, a melancholy and passionate reader; beautiful, moving eyes like Mr. Martinek had at home, or my late chum at school; altogether he reminded me of them, and therefore I used to drop in to see him occasionally in the wooden lamp-room, sit down on the narrow bench, and without wasting words enter into long and distracted meditations: why, for instance, women are like that, or what may come after death. I used to end with a resigned sigh: and, after all, who knows, but even that was somehow soothing and peaceful; I tell you, a poor man has got to accept the things of this earth and those beyond the grave, whether they are like this or that.
The man who looked after the stores, the father of about nine children or so; his children were also mostly in the storehouse, and when anyone came in they disappeared quickly behind the boxes like mice. It was not supposed to be allowed, but what can one do with such a blessed paternity? At midday they used to sit on the ledge of the storehouse according to size, one fairer than the next, and eat jam pastries, apparently just to have a jam moustache reaching from one ear to the other. I can’t remember what their father looked like and what sort of man he was; I can only see his loose trousers with deep creases that seemed to express all his paternal care. And so on: the whole lot of them were such conscientious, sympathetic people—it was clearly part of the ordinariness of my life that I have come across so many good people.
Once I stood behind a train made up ready; on the other side a signalman was walking with the lamp attendant, they didn’t notice me, and they were discussing me.
“… a good chap,” said the signalman.
“Such a good-hearted man,” mumbled the slow lamp attendant.
Well then. So now we have it, and already we are at home. And get away from the people to turn it over in my mind that I really am a happy and simple man.
A STATION like that is a world to itself; it is more in touch with all the stations on the line than with the world on the other side of the fence. But the space in front of the station where the yellow mail coach is waiting belongs a little bit to us, but you go into town as if into a foreign region; there we are no longer on our own ground and with it we have almost nothing in common. Here is a notice, “Unauthorized persons not allowed,” and what is behind that board is only for us; you others be glad that we permit you to come on to the platform and get into the trains. At the entrance to a town you can’t put a notice “Unauthorized persons not allowed,” to you is not given such an exclusive and closed domain. We are like an island suspended on the iron rails, on which more and more other islands and eyots are strung; all this is ours and it is severed from the other world with fences, crossing gates, notices, and prohibitions.
Therefore observe that on this our own preserve we walk differently from other people, with more importance, and a nonchalance that greatly differs from your confused rush. If you ask us something we bend our heads a little as if we were astonished that a creature from a different milieu were talking to us. Yes, we say, train number sixty-two is seven minutes late. Would you like to know what the station-master is discussing with the chief guard who is leaning out from the luggage van ? Would you like to know why the station-master sometimes standing on the platform with his hands behind his back suddenly turns and, with long, rapid, determined strides, goes away into his office? Every closed world becomes somewhat mysterious; to a certain extent it is conscious of it and accepts it with deep satisfaction.
When I think back on that time I see that station as if from above, like a small and clean toy; that other block is the store-house, that is the lamp-room, these are the sheds and the platelayers’ houses; here in the middle the toy lines run, and those little boxes, you know, are wagons and trains. Sh-sh-sh, sh-sh-sh, along the toy lines minute engines run. That tiny, squat little figure is the station-master, he has just come out of his office and stands by those miniature lines. And that other one with a pointed cap, with his legs stretched right out, that’s me, that blue one is a porter, and that one in the tunic is the lamp attendant; they are all good and pleasant and they stand out with nice distinctness. Sh-sh-sh, sh-sh-sh, look out, now the express is coming. Where have I had that experience before? But that is like when I was a little chap in daddy’s yard; I stuck chips into the ground to make a fence, covered the enclosure with clean sawdust, and put a few coloured beans in it; these are hens and the biggest bean, that speckled one, is the cock. The little chap bends over his enclosure, over his tiny world, he holds his breath in concentration, and he whispers: Chuck, chuck, chuck! But the little chap couldn’t take other people to his enclosure, the big ones; each of them had his own game, a game of making things, keeping house, a little town; but now when we’re grown up and serious, we all play together, the game on our station. And therefore we have decorated it so that it is ours still more, and still more a toy; and therefore, yes; everything hangs together, even that it was such a closed world shut in with a fence and prohibitions. Every closed world becomes something of a game; therefore we form exclusive, ours only, jealously guarded regions of our pastimes and hobbies to be able to give ourselves up to our favourite game.
A game is a serious matter, it has its rules and its binding order. A game is an absorbed, tender, or passionate concentration on something, on something ONLY; therefore, let that on which we concentrate be isolated from everything else, separated by its rules, and removed from the reality around. And, therefore, I think a game likes to be on a reduced scale; if something is made small and tiny it is removed from that other reality, to a greater extent and deeper it is a world of its own, our world, in which we can forget that there still is another. Well, and now we have succeeded in tearing ourselves away from that other world, now we are in the middle of a magic circle which separates us; there is a child’s world, school, the Bohemian poet’s party, there is the last station in the world, the prim station sprinkled with sand and all trimmed with flowers, and so on, till at the end there is the little garden of the retired man, the last thing isolated from the world, the last silent and concentrated game; the red ears of alum root, the cool panicles of spiraeas, and two steps farther a finch on a stone, his little head to one side, looking with one eye: Well, who are you ?
The enclosure made of chips stuck up in the earth toy lines which run apart and come together again, the little cubes for storehouses and signal-box; the toy signals, and points, of coloured lamps, and pumps; the little boxes for wagons, and the smoking engines; the little grumbling blue figure sprinkling the platform, the fat gentleman with a red cap; that little man with the legs stretched right out, that’s me. Above in the windows behind petunias in flower, a doll for a little maiden, that is the daughter of the old gentleman. The little man salutes, the maiden quickly nods her head, and that’s all. In the evening the maiden goes out and sits down on the green bench under the flowering lilac and jasmine. That one with the pointed cap stands by her, his legs stretched right out. It is getting dark, red and green lights shine on the lines, railwaymen swing over the platforms with lamps alight, there is a hoarse whistle from the bend of the rails, that is already the evening express, and it scuttles through with all its windows alight. The one in the pointed cap doesn’t even look round, there is something more important for him here; but it passes the two young people strangely and excitedly, like distance and adventure, even the eyes of the pale maiden light up in the dark. Yes, already she must go home, and to the one in the pointed cap she gives her fingers which tremble and are a bit damp. From the lamp-room the old lamp attendant comes out and mumbles something very likely: and altogether, who knows? On the platform that one in the pointed cap is standing and is looking up into a window. Why wonder, for she is the only girl on this island, the only young woman in the closed domain; that already gives her a terrific and dangerous rarity. She is pretty with youth and cleanliness; her father is such a good fellow and her mother dignified and almost aristocratic, smelling as if of sugar and vanilla. The maiden is German, but that makes her a bit exotic. Good Lord, but even that has happened before, when that little imp with an unknown tongue—well, is it really true that the whole of life is made as if it were of one piece ?
And then those two sit on the bench side by side and talk mostly about themselves; the jasmine is no longer in flower, but the autumnal dahlias are. All pretend that they can’t see those two at the back; the old gentleman prefers not to go in that direction, and the lamp attendant, when he has to pass that way, coughs from a distance: Look out, it’s me. Oh, you good-natured ones, why such fuss? as if it were something unusual and rare that one is up to his ears in love with the daughter of one’s chief! That does happen, it already belongs to that ordinary and conventional life; but it is as if it were in fairy tales for children, to try to win the hand of the princess. Everydiing is as simple and clear as the palm of one’s hand; but even that is part of the poetry of the case, to dally excitedly, and not to dare as if something inaccessible were at stake. The maiden is also in it up to her ears, but in her she has deeply written the rules of the game; at first to give only the tips of her restless fingers, to look out through the petunias, and then do nothing. Then it comes out that the other one was seriously, terribly, gravely ill; if it was like that, she can hold him maternally by the hand and remonstrate with him eagerly and anxiously: You must take care of yourself, you must not fall ill; I should like so much to look after you! And already there is a bridge over which from one side to the other groups of excited, generous, and intimate feelings can pass; now even that bridge isn’t enough, one must hold hands so as to communicate also without words. Wait, when did that happen before, when have I experienced this delight of being coddled and commiserated with in my pain? Yes, it was when my mother picked up her howling child. You, my cherub, you, my only one in the world! If I fell ill now no elderly clerk would come who had no neck and who looked like a black beetle; I should he pale and feverish, into the room a maiden would slip with tearful eyes, and I should pretend that I was asleep; and she, leaning over me, would sob suddenly: You, my only one, you must not die! Yes, like my mother. For the little maiden it is also good somehow to be a mother and weave round the other one her sentimental care; with eyes full of tears she is thinking, If he fell ill how well I should look after him! She doesn’t realize how much by that she appropriates him, how much she tries to make him submit to her; she wants him to be hers, to be unable to defend himself, and to give in to the terrible immolation of her love.
We say love, but it is a whole host of feelings; we can’t even discern them all. For instance, not only the need to impress, but also the need to be regretted. See, maiden, I am a strong and dark fellow; strong and dreadful like life. You are so pure and naïve, you don’t know what it is. And one black evening which covers everything, the man on the bench begins to confess. Does he brag or is he humbly prostrate before the angelic purity of the maiden whom he holds by the hand? I don’t know, but it must all be told. Loves which were. The waster, and the shameful life there in Prague, wenches, waitresses, and such experiences. The maiden does not even say a word, she snatches her hand from the other one and sits perfectly motionless; God knows what hosts of feelings she has. And that is all, my soul clean and redeemed; what shall you say to me, you pure little girl, what shall you say to that? She did not say anything, only quickly, convulsively as if in sharp pain, she pressed my hand and ran away. The next day, no maiden behind the petunias in the window. All is lost, I am a dirty and rude pig. And again it is such a black night, the white figure on the bench beneath the jasmine is the maiden; the one in the pointed cap daren’t even sit down beside her, and he murmurs imploringly; she turns her head away, she may have tear-washed eyes, and she makes a place beside her. Her hand is as if dead, you can’t get a word out of her. Oh, Lord, what is one to do? Please, please, can’t you forget what I told you yesterday ? Suddenly she turns to me, our foreheads hit together (as it was with the girl with the frightened eyes), but somehow I find her cramped and tighdy held hps. Someone is moving on the platform, but now it’s all the same; the maiden takes me by the hand, she lays it on her small, soft breasts and presses it to them almost desperately—here you have me, here, and IF EVEN THIS MUST BE, let it be! there are no other women, here I am; I don’t want you to think about others. I am beyond myself with compunction and love. God forbear, maiden, that I should accept such a sacrifice; there need be nothing of the sort, it is enough to kiss tearful eyes, to smudge the tears, and to be terribly and solemnly moved. The maiden is immensely touched by this chivalry, she is grateful for it, so grateful that out of sheer enthusiastic gratefulness and trust, she would be able to give herself still more. God Almighty, it can’t go on like this; she knows it, too, but in her the order of things is written deeper; she takes me wisely by the hand and says: When shall we get married ?
That evening she doesn’t even say that she ought to go home; why, now we are quiet and sensible; from that moment there is in our feelings a perfect and beautiful order. It is taken for granted that I accompany her as far as the door, we linger yet and are in no hurry to part. The grumbling porter disappears in some other door and we two are left alone, everything is ours: the station, metals, red and green lights, and the lines of sleeping wagons. No more will the maiden hide behind the petunias; she will always show herself there when from the office on to the platform the one in the pointed cap will come, wink into the window, and, holding himself together happy and reliable, will do what is called his duty.
But turn it round, turn it round; it wasn’t just fun, it wasn’t fun at all; great and heavy is love, and even the happiest love is horrible and crushing in over-measure. We can’t love without pain, let us die of love, let us measure its vastness in suffering, for no pleasure plumbs the bottom. We are immeasurably happy, and we clench our hands almost desperately; you save me, I love too much. It is good that there are stars above us, good that there is space enough for something as big as love. We only talk so that silence will not crush us by the vastness of things. Good night, good night, how difficult it is to tear eternity into bits of time! We shall not sleep, we shall feel heavy, and our throats will ache with crying for love. If only it were day, God, if only it were day so that I could greet her at the window!
SOON after the wedding I was transferred to a big station; perhaps the old gentleman had a hand in it, for willingly, and almost with a healthy appetite, he had taken me under his paternal care. Now you are ours, and that was the end of it. His wife was more reserved; she came from an old civil service dynasty, and she would evidently have liked to marry her daughter into a higher grade; she cried a bit with disappointment, but since she was romantic and sentimental she became reconciled because it was such a great love.
The station to which I went was as gloomy and noisy as a factory; an important junction, miles of track, storehouses, and engine sheds, a heavy goods transit; coal-dust and soot, a finger thick, over everything, whole herds of smoking engines, an old and crowded station; several times a day it got into a knot and one had to undo it in a hurry, as when, with fingers already chafed and bleeding, you undo a knotted cable. Nervous and irritated officials, grumbling staff, altogether something a bit like hell. You went into it like a collier going down a mine in which cracks are forming; any moment it might collapse, but it’s man’s work; here at any rate he feels a man, he shouts, decides, and carries his responsibility.
And then home, to scrub oneself down to the waist and to roar with delight from the clean water; my wife was already waiting with a towel in her hand and smiling. This was no longer a pale and interesting youth; it was a well-set worker, weary and hairy, with a chest, sir, like a cupboard; each time she used to pat him on his wet back like a big and good animal. So, now we’re washed, now we shall not make our clean wife dirty; still we must wipe our face so that nothing remains on it that was said between the rails, and then, decently and decorously, we kiss the lady wife. So, and now tell me about it. Well, there were some troubles, this and that, the whole station ought to be pulled down, or at least those storehouses at the back; that would make space for six new lines and it would be easier to manage; I told so and so that to-day, but he only just gave me a look. You tell us something, and you’ve hardly been here a couple of months. She nodded her head with understanding; it is the only person with whom it is possible to talk about everything. And what were you doing, darling? She smiles, such a stupid man’s question! What do women do? This and that, and then they are waiting for their man. I know, my dear, it is not visible, all pettiness, here a few stitches and there to buy something for supper, but it all makes a home; if I kissed your fingers I could tell by my lips that you had been sewing. And how nice she is when she gives me supper; the supper is frugal, it’s true, German, but she herself, she has her head in the half-shadow and only her hands move prettily and kindly in the golden circle of the home light. If I kissed her on the forearm she would shrink back, and perhaps she would blush because it is not seemly; and so I only squint at her good, feminine hands and mumble praises of the supper.
We did not want to have any children until later. There, she used to say, it was too smoky, it would not be good for a child’s lungs. How long ago was it since she was an inexperienced and pathetically helpless maiden? And now she was such a sensible and quiet wife who knew what to do; even in her conjugal love she was as quiet and kind as when she gave me supper with nice bare arms. She had heard, or read, somewhere that tuberculous people are very passionate: so she used to watch anxiously for any signs of excessive passion in me. Sometimes she frowned and said: You mustn’t do it so often. But not really! She laughed pleasantly into my ear: You wouldn’t be able to concentrate on your work to-morrow, and it’s not healthy. Sleep, just sleep. I pretended that I was asleep, while she, anxious and worried, gazed into the dark and thought about my health and about my work. Sometimes—I don’t know how to express it—sometimes I could have wished very much that she would not think of me alone. It’s not only for me, darling, it’s for you, too; if only you would whisper into my ear, My only one, how I have been longing for you! And then again she was asleep, and I awake. I kept thinking how well and safe I felt with her, never had I had such a reliable friend.
It was a good, strong time; I had my heavy, responsible work in which I could prove my worth; and I had my home, again a shut-up world only for the two of us. We, that no longer meant the station, it didn’t mean men in joint service, it meant just we two, wife and I. Our table, our lamp, our supper, our bed: that “ours” was like an agreeable light, which fell on the fittings of our home and made them different, nicer, and rarer than all the others. Look, darling, curtains like that would look nice in our house, don’t you think ? And so that’s how love proceeds: at the beginning to acquire one another is enough for us, it is the only thing in the world that matters; and when we have acquired one another body and soul, we acquire objects for our joint world; we are immensely pleased when we make something else our own, and we make plans to get something more some day to add to the things that are ours. Suddenly we find unprecedented joy in property; I like to economize, to be thrifty, and to put something aside; but it’s for us, and it’s my duty. In the office, too, my elbows are growing, and I push upwards with all my might; the others look askance at me, and almost with hostility, they are evil and unsociable, but what does that matter? But then, one has his home and a sensible wife, one has his own private world of trust, sympathy, and well-being, and the devil take the others. Here you sit in the golden gloriole of the home lamp, look at the white, agreeable hands of your wife, and readily talk about those envious, evil-minded, and incompetent people in the office; you know, they would like to get in my way. My wife nods her head in appreciative agreement; with her you can talk about everything, and she will understand; she knows that it is all for us. Here a man feels strong and good. If only she would whisper sometimes at night, confused and confusing: My dear, I’ve been longing for you so much!
AND then I was moved to a nice, good station; I was rather young to be a station-master, but wasn’t I thought well of by those above me? Perhaps my father-in-law also helped a bit, but that I don’t quite know; I was my own master now. I had my station, and when I moved there with my wife I felt with deep and solemn satisfaction: We’ve done well, and now, with God’s will, we can settle down for life.
It was a good station, a junction mainly for passenger traffic; a nice country, meadows in deep valleys, the clatter of mills, and vast estate woods with shooting boxes. In the evening there was the smell of hay from the meadows, and estate carriages rattled in chestnut avenues. With the autumn gentlemen came to shoot, ladies in tweed dresses, gentlemen in hunting kit with piebald hounds and with guns in waterproof cases; a Duke, a couple of Counts, and here and there a guest from some ruling house. And then in front of the station carriages with white horses were waiting with grooms, lackeys, and stiff, erect coachmen. In the winter there were bony foresters with moustaches as big as foxes’ tails and mighty agents from the estates who went to town from time to time to carouse gloriously and splendidly. In short, it was a station in which everything had to clatter without a hitch; no longer such a garlanded democratic festival as the station of the old gentleman, but a respectable and quiet station, where expresses came to a halt noiselessly to set down one or two gentlemen with chamois brushes at the back of their hats, and where even the conductors shut the carriage doors silently and respectfully. There the naïve and gay flower-beds of the old gentleman would have been out of place; that station had another soul, something like the courtyard of a castle; so that there had to be strict order, clean sand everywhere, and no domestic clatter of life.
It gave me plenty of labour and touching up before I had made the station a work of my own. Up to that time it had been orderly, but characterless; it had not possessed, so to speak, any inspiration; but round about there were beautiful old trees and the smell of meadows. And I decided to make it into a clean and silent station, like a chapel, like a severe courtyard in a castle. There were hundreds of small problems, such as how to arrange the service, how to change the order of things, where to put empty carriages, and such-like things; I didn’t make my station beautiful with flowers, like the old gentleman, but with system, a beautiful order, a smooth and silent circulation. Everything is beautiful if it is in its proper place; but there is only one such place, and it is not given everyone to find it. And suddenly it comes as if it were a bigger and freer space, things have a clearer outline and acquire something like nobility. Yes, now it’s the right thing. I built my station without masons, merely out of what was already there. The old gentleman came to have a look, he raised his eyebrows and rubbed his nose almost with astonishment. “Well, it looks very nice here,” he murmured, and squinted at me doubtfully; it looked as if, at that moment he wasn’t certain if his flower-pots were the right thing.
Yes, now it really was MY station, and for the first time in my life I had the feeling of something genuinely mine, the strong and good feeling of my own self. My wife felt that I was getting away from her and that what I was doing was only for myself; but she was sensible and let me go my way with a smile, Well, get on with it, it’s your work, it is for you, and I shall guard what is ours. You’re right, darling, perhaps I have estranged myself a bit from what used to be ours; I feel it myself, and that is why perhaps I’m so terribly considerate to you when I have a moment to spare; but you see how busy I am! She used to treat me kindly and with maternal leniency. Go on, but I know that with you men it can’t be different, you get absorbed in your work like—like children when they are playing, isn’t that so ? Yes, like a child at play. We know all this without having to say it, it’s not necessary to talk about it; vainglory, something of ours has been sacrificed for something that is only mine. My work, my ambition, my station. And she doesn’t even sigh, only folds her hands at times in her lap, and looks at me kindly but anxiously. “You”—she hesitates—”perhaps you ought not to work so MUCH; surely you haven’t got to.” I frown slightly. What do you know about the things that have to be done to make a model station here ? You might say sometimes: You are a fine man, and you do a good job well; and not always: Take care of yourself, and so on. At times like that I used to take a stroll outside just to make sure once more that everything was in order, and that it was worth the labour; but it took some time before I could again enjoy my work.
But never mind; it WAS a model station, people walked about almost on tiptoes, as if in a castle; everything so tidy and straightforward. The gentry in green hats most probably thought that I was doing it for their sake; they used to shake my hand, as if I were a landlord with whom they are very, very satisfied, and the ladies, too, in their tweeds waved pleasantly and appreciatively to me; even the piebald hounds wagged their tails politely when the gentleman in the official cap passed by. Ah, you people, don’t deceive yourselves. I’m doing it for myself, you know. What do the stupid guests from the noble houses matter to me ? If need be I salute, pull myself up, and that’s all. Do you really know what railways are, stations, order, and smoothly-working transit? The old gentleman understands something, his praise means something; that’s like the times when father passed his hand over a piece of furniture. It’s good. None of you can appreciate what my station is and what I have put into it. Even my own wife doesn’t understand it; she wants to have me for herself, and therefore she says, Take care of yourself. She is self-sacrificing, no doubt about that; she is able to sacrifice herself to man, but not to find, big things. Now, she thinks, if there were children, my man wouldn’t be so wrapped up in his work and he would be more at home. And look, like a curse: no children. I know how much it is on your mind; and that’s why you’re always after me: so that I don’t overwork myself, and you rush here and there and feed me like a woodman. I’m putting on weight, I’m big and strong, and still nothing. And then you sit with dry eyes and the sewing falls into your lap—like my mother, but mother’s eyes always had tears on the brim. It’s like a gap between us; no good now it’s you who press convulsively to me, but the gap still remains. Then you lie in bed and don’t sleep, neither do I, but we do not speak in case we might suggest that something is lacking. I know, my dear, it is a bit hard; I have my work, my station; it is enough for me, but not for you.
And the gentleman in the official cap walking up and down the platform throws his arms out a bit: Well, what can I do ?—at least the station is really mine, it is in excellent order and clean, and it functions like a perfect engine, running silently in well-oiled bearings. What can I do? In the end, a man is most at home in his work.
WELL, everything changes with time; after all, time is the greatest force in life. My wife grew accustomed to and reconciled with our lot, no longer did she hope for children, but instead she hit on another mission in life. As if she had said to herself: My husband has his work, and I have my husband; he keeps a piece of the world in order, and I keep him. She found out a lot of things which for some reason unknown to me she took to be my habits and rights. This thing my man likes to eat, and that disagrees with him; he wants to have the table spread like this, and not in any other way; to have water and a towel ready here, his slippers ought to be there; he likes to have the pillow like this, and his night-shirt like this and not otherwise. My man likes to have everything ready at hand, he is used to his own system, and so on. And when I came home I was at once surrounded by a pedantic order of my own habits; she thought them out, but I had to fulfil them to satisfy her fancy that I wanted it like that. Not knowing myself how I was falling into that system of habits prepared for me; unconsciously I felt terribly important and noble, for everything centred round my own self; I would raise astonished brows if my slippers were waiting even an inch away from their usual place. I was conscious that my wife was getting hold of me through my habits and dominating me more through them; I gave in to it gladly, partly out of comfort and partly because it really flattered my self-esteem. And most probably I was also getting older, for I was beginning to feel established and well at home in my habits.
And my wife was glad that she could reign like that on the first floor behind the windows full of white petunias. Every day had its fixed and almost sacred routine; I knew by heart all the small, everyday, agreeable noises: my wife getting up quietly, putting on her dressing-gown, and going on tiptoes into the kitchen. Then the coffee-mill rattled, orders were given in a whisper, somebody’s hands lay my brushed clothes on the back of my chair: I obediently used to pretend that I was still asleep until the moment when my wife came, neat and tidy, and pulled the blinds up. If I opened my eyes a bit too soon she became upset and would say: “Did I wake you?” And so it went on day after day, year after year; it was called “my order,” but she created it and she watched over it with eager eyes; she was mistress there, but everything was done for me—an honest conjugal division. I was in my official cap downstairs, walking round the station from one set of points to the other—that was my household; I felt very much like an important and exacting overlord, for they were extremely careful and zealous when I was in sight; just to look was my chief task. Then I used to shake hands with the bearded foresters; they were experienced men who knew what order meant. The gentry in green hats by then felt that it was their duty to shake hands with the station-master; by now he belonged to the place like a curate or the local doctor, and so it was good form to talk with him about one’s health or the weather. And in the evening one used to remark: “Count so and so was here, he looks very badly.” My wife used to nod her head and observe that it was due to his age. “Age,” I used to protest, with the offended air of a man who is approaching fifty, “but he’s ONLY sixty.” She used to smile and look at me as if to say: What, you, you’re just in your prime; that’s due to a quiet life. And then silence reigned, the lamp buzzed, I read the newspaper and my wife a German novel. I knew that it was something touching about a great and pure love; she was still extremely fond of reading about such things, and it made no difference to her that in life it is different. Conjugal love is something quite different; it is part of an order, and it is healthy.
I am writing this while she, poor thing, has already been a long time in the grave. I still remember her, God knows, how many times a day; but least during those months before her death when she was so very ill—I prefer to avoid that; strangely little of our love, and of the first years of our married life; but most of all just this quiet and regular period at our station. Now I have a good housekeeper who does her best to look after me; but when I am looking even for a handkerchief or fishing under the bed for a slipper, it comes home to me, Good Lord, how much love and attention was in the order of those things, and I feel myself terribly an orphan, and a lump wells up in my throat.
THEN came the War. My station was quite an important little point for the transport of troops and material, and so they placed there an army commandant, a drunken captain, half mad. From early morning he roared, as long as he was in his senses; he interfered with my arrangements and drew his sabre to the foreman; I asked headquarters to send me someone, if possible, less out of his senses, but that didn’t help matters, and all I could do was to shrug my shoulders. My model station wasted away, it was saddening to see it; the waste and disorder of the War swept over it: the smell of the hospital trains, piled-up transports, and the detestable mess of dirt and filth. Families from the evacuated front and their belongings on the platforms, in the waiting-rooms, on the benches, on the bespattered floors the soldiers slept as if dead. And all the time hoarse, irate gendarmes patrolled and kept their eyes open for deserters, or poor fellows with bags in which were a few potatoes, people continually crying and shouting, bawling at each other irritably, or being pushed somewhere like sheep, in the middle of that confusion a long and terribly silent train carrying wounded men overshadowed everything, and from somewhere you could hear the drunken captain vomiting as he leant against a wagon.
God, how I began to hate it! War, the railways, my station—everything. I was sick of wagons smelling of dirt and disinfection, with broken windows, and scribbling on the walls; I was sick of that useless running about and waiting, lines eternally blocked, fat Samaritans, and altogether everything that had to do with war. I detested it madly and helplessly; I crawled between the wagons and very nearly cried with hatred and horror, Jesus Christ, I really cannot bear it, nobody could bear it. At home I could not talk about it, for my wife, with shining and enthusiastic eyes, had faith in the victory of the emperor. With us, as everywhere during the War, children of the poor went to get coal from the passing trains; one day a little chap fell down and the tram ran over his leg; I heard his shriek of terror and saw the smashed bone in the bleeding flesh. When I told my wife about that she turned rather pale and burst out vehemently: “It was God’s punishment!” From that moment I didn’t talk to her about things that had any connection with the War. Well, can’t you see how tired I am, and my nerves all are gone ?
One day a man presented himself to me whom I couldn’t recognize at first; we found that we had been together at the gymnasium and that he was something in Prague. I had to get it out of me, I couldn’t talk with anyone about it at the station. “Man, we shall lose this war,” I wheezed into his ear; “let me tell you, here we have our finger on the pulse.” He listened to me for a while and then whispered mysteriously that he would like to talk to me about something. That night, behind the station, we came to an understanding, it was almost romantic. He said that he and a few other Czech people were in touch with the other side, they wanted to get hold of regular information about the transport of troops, the condition of supplies, and suchlike things. “I’ll do that for you,” I burst out. It made me terribly afraid and at the same time I was immensely relieved of that convulsive hatred that was suffocating me. I know that this is high treason and that I might get hanged for it, but I shall let you have the information, and that’s that.
It was a queer time; I was as if beyond myself, and at the same time like a clairvoyant; I had the feeling that it was not myself but something powerful and strange inside me that made plans, dropped hints, and thought of everything. I could almost have said: It’s not me, it’s the other one. In a jiffy everything was fixed up, it was a pleasure; it was as if everything had been waiting for someone to make a start; after all, we Czechs had to do something. With my hands behind my back and under the eyes of the gendarmes and of the hiccoughing commandant, I received reports from the chief guards, postmen, and conductors as to where the munitions were going and the guns, what units were on the move, and things like that. In my head was the whole of the transport network, and with half-closed eyes, walking up and down the platform, I pieced it together. There was a brake man, the father of five children, a sad, silent man; I always gave him the message to take farther, this he repeated to his brother in Prague who was a bookbinder, and how it went then, I never knew. It was thrilling to do this sort of thing under the eyes of everyone, and, at the same time, to have it so well organized; at any moment our plot might have failed, and every one of us, elderly men and fathers of families, would have been in it up to the neck; my friends, that would have been a crash! We knew it, and it was on our minds when we crawled to our wives in our feather beds; but what do women know about a man? Thank goodness, our thoughts aren’t visible on our faces. For example, what causes a stoppage on the line at a station? Suddenly everybody shouts and gets worked up, and it takes a couple of days before it is straightened out again. Or lubrication in war time is bad; whose fault is it when axle boxes run hot? Our station was full of abandoned wagons and engines out of use; it’s no good getting worked up and sending telegrams, nothing can be done, we can’t get things through faster. Holding our breath we listened how it was falling to pieces.
There was an accident at the old gentleman’s station, there was a block on the line, and a train with the catde for the front ran into it; nothing big, a few injured, and the cattle had to be slaughtered on the spot, but the old gentleman was so keen on the railways that it turned his head, and he died shordy afterwards. My wife cried on my shoulder at night; I stroked her, and I was very sad. You see, I can’t tell you about my thoughts and about what I am doing; we have lived so well together and now we are so damnably far from each other. How is it that people can become so estranged!
THE end of the War, the end of the Monarchy; while my wife sniffed and wept (it was in her family, that loyalty to the Emperor), I received a summons from Prague to join the new Ministry of Railways and give my great experience to the task of organizing the railways of the young state. Because of that “great experience” I accepted; besides, during the War my station had suffered so much that it was not difficult for me to part from it.
This is, then, the last paragraph of an ordinary life. From my twentieth year I have been associated with the railways and I have enjoyed it; there I foimd my world, my home, and chiefly a deep satisfaction in that I was doing something that I could do well and capably. And now I was called upon to make use again of the whole of that experience. Well, see, that hasn’t been in vain. I knew it all so well from the blasting of the rocks and building of the track, from the last station in the world and the wooden shed of the lamp attendant, to the confusion and bustle of the big stations; I had met with station buildings like glass palaces, and little stations in the fields smelling of camomile and yarrow; red and green lights, the steaming bodies of the engines, signals, points, and the tapping of the wheels on the points; nothing had been in vain, it all was added up and fused into one single and vast experience; I understand the railways, and that understanding is me, it is my life. Now there is everything that I have lived, it is together in my experience; I can again make use of it, and to the full, and that is as if I lived my life again in its totality. In my office I felt—I can’t say happy, for there was too much disorder, but in my place. It was an ordinary but of its kind a complete life; and as I look back on it I see that in everything that happened some kind of order was realized, or …
FOR three weeks I haven’t written a word; again these heart attacks have come over me as I was sitting at the desk, just in the middle of a word (should it have been law, or purpose ? I can’t say any longer). Then they sent for a doctor for me; on the whole he didn’t say much, some change in my arteries. You must take this, and mainly rest, sir, rest. And so here I he and think—I don’t know if this is a real rest, but I have nothing else to do. It is better again now, and so I wish to finish what I began; there is not much left, and I never left anything unfinished. My pen fell from my hand, just when I was about to write a big untruth; I deserved that attack. Surely I have no one whom I need deceive.
Yes, I liked the railways; but I could not like them any longer when they were messed up by war, when I made plans to sabotage them, and chiefly when I came to the Ministry. Sickened and disgusted by that paper and, for the most part, futile work called the reorganization of the railways; on one side I appreciated too well the various troubles below, and above, which offended my bureaucratic conscience; on the other side I began to sense something more inevitable, the tragedy of railway transport, which awaits the fate of the coaches and coachmen; vainglory, the great days of the railways are over. In short, this kind of work did not suit me at all; the only pleasure it gave me was that I was a rather important bureaucratic creature, that I had some sort of a title, and that I could throw my weight about: for in the end that is the proper and the only purpose in life: to rise as high as possible and enjoy one’s honour and position. Yes, and that’s the whole truth.
As I read what I have just written I feel rather flustered. How is it, the whole truth ?
Well, yes, the whole truth about what we call the purpose of life. It was no pleasure to sit in that office; that was only the sense of satisfaction that I had scrambled up to something, and a jealous envy that those more able or politically more artful had got farther still. And that is the whole story of an ordinary life.
Wait, wait, that isn’t a complete story. (There are two voices arguing, I can discern them quite clearly; the voice which is talking now as if it were defending something.) Surely I wasn’t bent in life—on some career, and such-like things!
Weren’t you really ?
I wasn’t. I was too ordinary to be ambitious. I never wanted to excel; I lived my work and did my work.
Why?
Because I wanted to do it well. To run my thumb down the front and the back, see if it’s good. That’s the real ordinary life.
Ha, and that’s why in the end we sat in that office, not to work for anything more than our own position.
That—that was something else; in fact, it had no connection with what took place before. A man changes as he grows old.
Or he gives himself away in old age, is that it ?
Nonsense. It must have been evident a long time ago that I was pushing myself to the front or something.
All right, then. And who was the little fellow who was worried because he couldn’t beat the others ? Who hated the painter’s son so violently and painfully because he was stronger and more daring—do you remember ?
Wait, it wasn’t quite like that; but surely that little chap mostly played alone; he discovered his own tiny world, his little courtyard of chips, and his corner among the planks; that was quite enough for him, and there he forgot everything. Don’t I know that?
And why did he play alone ?
Because it was in him. His whole life long he has been making his small and shut-up world. A corner for his solitude and for his everyday happiness. His enclosure of chips, his little station, his home: surely you can see that it was always in him!
You mean that need to fence off his life ?
Yes, that urge to have a world of his own.
Then do you know why he had his enclosure of chips ? Because he couldn’t excel among the other fellows. That was spite, that was the escape of a little boy who wasn’t strong and daring enough to match himself against the others; he made his own world out of sadness and weakness, he felt that in the wider, open world he would never be anything big and daring as he wanted to be. An ambitious little poltroon, that’s all. Do read carefully what you’ve written about him!
There’s nothing of the sort!
There is, and quite a lot; only you stuck it in between the lines to hide it from yourself. For instance, that good and industrious little pupil in the elementary school: how he couldn’t mix with his class, how he was nervous and timid; he was good because he was lonely and because he wanted to distinguish himself. And how that exemplary little boy nearly burst with pride when the teacher or curate praised him! Then tears of happiness never known before welled into his eyes; later on there will be no tears, but how his chest will puff out when he reads of his appointments. Do you remember with what unspeakable pleasure you took home your good reports ?
That’s because they pleased my father so much.
Well, then, let’s have a look at your father. He was so big and strong, the strongest of them all, wasn’t he ? But he “had great respect for gentlemen”; more precisely, he greeted them humbly, so humbly that it even made his little son blush. And all the time he was eagerly hammering it in, if only you become something, boy, some day, that’s the only thing in life, to become something. You must drudge, save, and grow rich so that the others will respect you and so that you will be somebody. Well and truly, the little chap had an example at home; that comes from his father, all that.
Never mind about my father! Father, that was quite a different example; to be strong and live for one’s work.
Yes; and on Sunday to see in the bank-book—how far we’ve got already. Some day the little chap will sit in an office and measure himself by the dignity into which he has grown. Now my poor father would be pleased with me; now I am more than the attorney and those other big-wigs. At last the little chap has lived to see that he is something; at last he has found himself, and “a great and new experience” has come true which he discovered when he was a child: that there are two worlds, a higher one in which there are gentlemen, and then the humble world of ordinary people. At last I am something like a gentleman; but at the same moment it seems that above me there are still greater gendemen sitting at still nobler tables and that I am again a small, ordinary man to whom it is not decreed to excel. Vainglory: it is a defeat, a damned and final defeat.
AND always it is as if you could distinguish two voices which quarrel; as if two people were tugging in opposite directions over my past, and each wanted to appropriate the biggest bit.
And what about those years at the gymnasium—do you remember ?
Yes, and if you like, I will leave them to you. In any case they weren’t worth much; that immaturity and that aching feeling of inferiority, all that drudgery of a country student—you’re welcome, you can keep it!
Well, well, you needn’t talk: as if that pot-hunting were nothing; that delight in being first in the class, always to have the exercises finished, always to know the answer; in something at any rate to be better than the others, better than the livelier and more daring ones, isn’t that true ? And for those successes to sit up at night with your head in your hands and cram—but it took eight full years!
Not full, don’t say that; there were other things, too; deeper ones.
For instance ?
For instance that friendship with that little friend who was hard up.
Oh, that one; I know, that lumbering, stupid boy. A fine opportunity to feel superior to somebody and to know that it’s acknowledged. That wasn’t friendship, man; that was a burning and passionate gratitude that somebody in the world humbly acknowledged your ability.
No, it wasn’t like that! And what about love for that shy, shortsighted girl ?
Nothing, stupidity; just puberty!
That wasn’t just puberty!
Besides, it was lack of courage. The others, my lad, they got on better with girls, you envied them a lot for their courage; and you, well, what else could you do but crawl into a corner and make your own enclosure of chips, your own shut-off world ? Because in the open one you wouldn’t have won, don’t you know. Either among the boys or among the girls. It’s always the same story with you; always the disappointed child who has his own world, and intently whispers: Chuck, chuck, chuck!
Stop!
Well, then, do explain that year in Prague, that futile and absurd year in Prague. That year when I loafed around with the poet’s group and wrote verses and despised everything.
… I don’t know. That year doesn’t fit in very well. It doesn’t with me either.
Wait, there’s something I can explain. Here we have an industrious stripling; he’sfinished school and he thinks, Now the world belongs to him. At home he could behave like a somebody and feel important and big; but as soon as he comes to town, oh my gosh, he falls right bang into it, into that panic of inferiority, humiliation, and I don’t know what else. If he’d had time to build an idyllic enclosure of chips round himself he’d have saved himself from it.
Only, unfortunately, the poet had taken him up.
Yes. But do remember how it was. But surely this also was a shut-up corner; those little pubs, that little circle of five or so people—man, it was damned small, smaller than a joiner’s yard. And scoff at everything, that at least is an illusion of ability.
And write verses ?
They were bad. He wrote verses to be able to stand on tiptoes. That was only a mask of a wounded and unsatisfied self-consciousness. He ought to have studied properly, and he would have been all right; he would have passed his examinations with success and would have felt like a little god.
But then I shouldn’t have got on to the railways; I had to slip away somehow from the university so as to look for a post on the railways. Surely I had to get on to the railways, hadn’t I ?
I beg your pardon, that’s absurd, what else could I have done ?
All sorts of things. A man with elbows takes root everywhere.
Why, then, did I look for a post on the railways ?
I don’t know, perhaps by accident.
Well, I’ll tell you: from affection. Because the building of the railway was the greatest event in my childhood.
And when I was at the gymnasium, it was my favourite walk in the evening: to stand on the bridge which spanned the station and to look down at the red and green lights, at the rails, and engines.
I know. Over that bridge an old, hideous prostitute used, to walk; she always rubbed against you when she passed.
That, of course, doesn’t seem to belong here.
Of course not, it’s not nice.
Upon my honour: that was my predestined fate; I liked the railways, that’s all. That’s why I joined them.
Or because someone at the station in Prague had such a humiliating experience, do you remember ? My dear fellow, a piqued self-consciousness is a terrible force, especially, you know, with some pushing and ambitious people.
No, it wasn’t like that! I know, I know that it was from the love of the thing. Otherwise, could I have been so happy with my job ?
… I don’t know about happiness.
I say, who are you after all ?
I’m the one with the elbows, you know.
In any case: you must at least admit that in my work I found myself and my real life.
There’s something in that.
So you see.
Only it wasn’t so simple, my friend. What came before? Poetry and women, an immense intoxication with life, is that it ? Altogether, guzzling, poetry, bestiality, and megalomania, reaction against I don’t know what, and a drunken feeling that something in us, God knows what, grand and unfettered, was boiling over. Do try to remember.
I know.
And that’s the reason, that’s how it was, you know.
Wait, how was it ?
It’s clear, isn’t it? Surely you felt that your poetry wasn’t worth much and that you couldn’t succeed in anything like that. That you hadn’t enough talent for it, or personality. That you weren’t equal to your pals in drinking, contempt, women, or anything. They were stronger and more daring, and you, you tried to imitate them; I know how much it cost you, you ass-You tried hard, it’s true, but that was only from a sort of ambition: so I was a maligned poet, with everything that goes with it. And all the time in you there was a sober, faint-hearted, and cautious little voice: Look out, it’s more than you can manage. Then your vain little self-esteem began to prick, then your eagerness to be somebody was balked. That was defeat, my friend. After that all you could do was to look for a way out to save yourself; well, thank God, you found a little place on the railways, and the sobered poet was very glad that he could turn his back on his admittedly short but sufficiently lost Bohemian past.
That’s not true! To get on to the railways, that was my inner necessity.
So it was. That defeat was also an inner necessity, and that flight was also an inner necessity. And how that former poet was pleased that at last he had become a complete and mature man. Withhowmuch superiority and compassion did he suddenly look down on his pals of yesterday, at those immature bunglers who hadn’t yet learned what proper serious life is like. He didn’t even mix with them, and he dropped with old cronies into little pubs where steady fathers of families expanded their worries and wisdom. All of a sudden he tried to get on a level with those small, cautious people; of course, he made a virtue of his retreat: no longer any megalomania, only to show off a bit with bitter, sarcastic resignation; still giving vent to his gall, but in time even that passed. Since then he hadn’t looked at a single verse; he despised it and almost hated it because he considered it to be something unworthy of adult, practical, and genuine men.
Hated, that’s rather a strong word.
Well, say: felt aversion to it. For it reminded him of his defeat.
And now you’re at the end. From then on it was a real, modest, and thorough life.
But for the last station in the world.
That was convalescence, that was in connection with his lungs. Let it be, a man doesn’t grow up so quickly. But there, and then at the station of the old gentleman, then I did run on to my real line of life.
Listen, why did you make advances to the station-master’s daughter ?
Because I fell in love with her.
I know; but I (the other one—you know?)—I courted her because she was the station-master’s daughter. It’s called a career per vaginam, isn’t it ? To marry an heiress, or the daughter of one’s superior, we know that; “to woo a princess a little bit,” eh? By that you increase your value somehow.
That’s a he! I never thought of that, not even dreamed of it!
But I did, and not with my eyes shut. The old gentleman’s popular, and could help his son-in-law; it wouldn’t be bad to marry into his family.
That isn’t true! You don’t realize, man, how fond I was of her; she was a perfect wife, good, sensible, and loving; I couldn’t have been happier with anyone else.
Yes, but; a sensible wife who took a keen interest in her husband’s advancement—yes, a keen interest; she understood extremely well his ambition and industry, you must grant her that. And she helped him when she could. You wrote so sweetly and innocently of your first little step upwards: ‘perhaps the old gentleman had helped a bit.” And again the second time: “perhaps my father-in-law helped me a bit, I don’t know much about that.” But I know very well, my dear fellow; the old gentleman knew what was expected of him.
That may be so; he was a very good man, and he cared for me as if I were his own son; but between my wife and myself there was nothing of the sort; only love, only trust, just a strong and good feeling of fidelity. No, leave my marriage out of it!
What of that, it was a good marriage; now there were two of them, for that endeavour to scramble a bit higher. As soon as he got married he discovered in himself an “unprecedented joy in property”; he was very glad that he had a decent and proper pretext for it: “it’s for us,” wasn’t it? And straight away “he grows elbows in the office”; he struggled upwards with all his might, some he tried to surpass at all cost, and with the others, those above, to ingratiate himself zealously—why not ?—all this is “for us,” and it’s quite in order. And that’s why he felt so happy; he could follow his own natural inclinations without having to be ashamed of them. Marriage is a good institution.
Was my wife—also like that ?
… She was a good wife.
In the end you’ll say that that station of mine, that work of art of mine, I had nursed it into a model—well, why ? Because of my career ? To win the favour of those above ? If it hadn’t been for the War I should most likely have stayed there until I died.
That was partly for the sake of the gentry.
Those counts in green hats. To pull yourself together before them and show them what you were like. As if the station-master hadn’t waited often and looked sideways to see if those gentlemen would notice what a fine station it was! And see they did; even duke so and so, count this and that condescended to shake hands with him. You know, it cheered him somehow even if the station-master pretended to himself that he didn’t care a jot. So really, counts, and the Lord knows who besides; after all, they are the higher world, you didn’t even have them with you at home. And this, if you please, isn’t patronage; through his own work and merit the station-master has got so far. Now his work is more than his wife, she can’t help him any farther, she is no longer necessary; he made her feel it, and so their relations began to grow cool at home.
That’s not true!
Why not? It’s there written above, just read it. “I had the feeling of something genuinely mine, the strong and good feeling of my own self…. My wife felt that I was getting away from her…. Vainglory, something of ours has been sacrificed for what is only mine.” And so on. “It lies between us like a gap.” Now the man follows his own bent, he has now detached himself; he only feels that it’s a nuisance that his wife still tries to keep him for herself. Fortunately she’s a sensible lady; she makes no scenes, and she cries it away with dry eyes; after that “she grew accustomed to and reconciled with our lot,” that is, she submits and begins to serve her husband.
She wanted that herself!
I know; but what else could she have done ? Either they had to part or hate each other, as married people can hate each other, secretly and madly; or she accepts HIS rules of the game and agrees that HE should be master, and everything revolve round him. When no mutual bonds are left she tries to keep him by what is his: his comfort, his habits, and needs. Now it’s only himself, nothing else but himself; his home, the rule of life and conjugal love only serve his comfort and greatness; he is the master of the station and of the family—it’s a small and shut-off world, it’s true, but it’s his and it worships him. After all, that was the happiest part of his life; so that when one day he will think back on his late wife it will be just at that time which so “strongly and well” pandered to his pride.
And what came next ?
During the War ?
Yes. That also sprang from my ambition ?
It’s not easy to say. It’s just possible; one might count on the emperor’s losing, but it was too risky. It doesn’t fit into my case. Of course it doesn’t fit into your story either.
Why not ?
Look here, that idyllic station-master was no hero; it wasn’t in his line. But I’ll tell you why that story of yours had to be written.
Just because of that War episode. Perhaps someone will read it and discover, see, here there was a station-master who acted like this. He even risked his own life for his nation. Only a bit, only half a bite, and unobtrusively to call attention to one’s merits—isn’t that the reason why memoirs are written ?
That’s a He, a lie! I wrote the reminiscences of an ordinary life!
And that heroism—?
Just that is also part of an ordinary life.
Quite. It’s a pity that that isn’t the last word. My dear fellow, it wasn’t any longer a hero who sat up there in that office. It was me sitting there, my friend. There just a zealous, vain, and servile person sat there, who wanted to get somewhere. Just a small person who wanted to be bigger.
Don’t mention that, even there he was a good, conscientious worker.
Nonsense. He did everything possible just to win respect and to scramble a bit higher. All his life long he thought only of himself, of nothing but himself. What solid drudgery have I done for it, Jesus Christ! a model pupil, a model official—how much have I had to swallow! Really it has cost me my whole life, I have sacrificed everything for it; and at the end one sees the cute fellows who are still a step higher—why ? Only because they were stronger and more daring! They needn’t even wear their trousers through in the service, they needn’t sweat, and look how far they’ve got; you have to get up politely when they come into the office! Then why was it that even in the elementary school they pointed to me as an example for the others, and again afterwards, and brought one another to see my station, what was it for ? The world is for the stronger ones and the more daring, and I lost it. You know this was the final culmination of an ordinary life: that I could look at my defeat. For that a man has to get a bit higher to see it.
And now you are having your revenge.
Yes, now I am having my revenge; now I see that it was in vain and therefore small, pitiable, and humiliating. As for you, you’re different, you are in clover; you can play with little flowers, with the garden, with your enclosure of chips; you can forget yourself for that game, but I can’t, I can’t. I’m the one who was beaten, and this is MY ordinary life. Yes, I’m having my revenge; and haven’t I reason? Didn’t I give up almost with shame ? Christ, but they did question me! Of course, I knew that there were awful irregularities—in the supplies, and so on; but that was the work of others, the braver ones—I knew that, but I held my tongue; I’ve got you under my thumb, my lads, and if need be these things will come to light! And then there was a scandal, and they interrogated me, me, I ask you: the blameless and model official! Of course, they had to admit—but I went into retirement. Defeat, man, and then I ought not to avenge myself! Of course, that’s why I’m writing these memoirs—
Only because of that ?
Yes. So that it will be said that I was not to blame. It ought to be in full detail, and not always just: an ordinary life, an idyll, and nonsense like that. This was the only thing which mattered; that dreadful and unjust defeat. It wasn’t a happy life, it was terrible, don’t you see that it was terrible ?
I CAN’T go on like this, I must stop; it gets on my nerves too much, or something—when those two voices argue my heart begins to flutter and then I feel such a sharp oppressing pain here in my chest. The doctor came, he measured my blood pressure, and frowned. “What are you up to ?” he grumbled; “your blood pressure’s going up. You must keep quiet, absolutely quiet.” I tried to stop writing, and just lie down; but then fragments of a dialogue spring up in my mind, again they squabble about some trifle, and I must again expostulate with myself: Keep quiet, you there, and don’t quarrel; this and that is true, it was like that; but isn’t there in man, isn’t there even in the most ordinary life, scope enough for various motives? But it’s quite simple: a man can think selfishly and stubbornly of his own profit; after a while he forgets it, forgets his own self, and nothing exists for him but the work that he is doing.
Stop, it isn’t as simple as that: these are two completely different lives, aren’t they ? That’s what matters, that’s what matters!
What does ?
Which of them is THE RIGHT ONE ?
Well, enough of that, it doesn’t do me any good. I’ve been accustomed to looking after myself; from that time at the station when I began to spit blood, I said to myself, Look out. Almost all my life I have been looking into my handkerchief to see if I hadn’t brought up a tiny thread of blood; I began doing that at the last station in the world, and since then that continual worry about my health has stuck to me as it if were the most important principle in life.
The most important principle in life; and what if it really was ? When I look back at my whole life—that was really the greatest shock when red blood spurted out of me at the station, and I sat there in misery; I felt extremely weak and wretched, and the terrified clerk wiped my forehead with a wet towel. It was dreadful. Yes, that was the greatest and the most astounding experience of my life: that dreadful amazement, and horror, and afterwards that desperate longing to live, even if it were the most insignificant and the most humble life; for the first time I had a conscious and completely overwhelming longing for life. In fact at that moment, my life changed completely, and somehow I became another man. Up to then I had only squandered my days, or almost casually lived them through; but suddenly I appreciated immensely the fact that I was alive, and I began to look quite differently at myself, and at everything around me. It was enough for me to sit on the planks, to gaze at the rusty line grown over with shepherd’s-purse and hair-grass; or watch the ripples in the little river for hours, and see that they were always the same and always new. And at the same time to repeat a hundred times to myself: breathe deeply, it’s healthy. Then I began to like all the small, regular things, and the silent course of life; I still boasted a bit with Bohemian cynicism; and I grinned at many things, but then I wasn’t yet sure that I was going to live; it was still a wild and frosty prank of despair. I began to cling to life silently and contentedly, to enjoy nice, intimate things, and look after myself. In this way, in fact, the idyllic part of my life began: in convalescence. That was the important and decisive crossing.
But it wasn’t even a crossing. Now I can see it better, now I see it quite clearly. I should have to start again from my childhood: with mother, who rushed to the door every second moment to see if nothing had happened to me; with Mr. Martinek, to whom I had not to get too near because they said he had consumption, and of whom I therefore was frightened. Mother was obsessed with the notion that I was in danger, that I was a weak and ailing child; she was, poor dear, so pathetic and passionate; when I fell ill she pressed me to herself as if she wanted to protect me, at night she bent over me in terror, she used to fall on her knees and pray loudly for my health. To be ill, that was an important and solemn thing; everything centred on the little fellow, the saws even, and the hammers in the yard, seemed to have been damped somehow, and father was only allowed to grumble under his breath. By all her love she fostered in me the idea that I was something delicate, more delicate than other children, something that must be specially protected; and so I didn’t attempt any boyish pranks; I was under the impression that I MUSTN’T run about so wildly, mustn’t jump into the river, mustn’t fight because I was weak and delicate. I should have even liked to boast about it, I seemed to myself in some way finer and more precious than they were, but lads are too much like men for that, they like the idea of being strong and brave. That, then, was my mother; it was mother who had fostered in me that timidity towards life and distrust in myself, that physical feeling of inferiority with which I grew up; it was mother’s pathological love which developed in me the inclination to regard myself as the object of endless nursing and coddling, an inclination in which I nestled almost with pleasure when the first tap of a real illness gave me the opportunity. Then, yes, then I discovered in myself that cautious, hypochondriacal being which with grave attention examines its sputum, measures its pulse, loves a safe order in life, and clings to a good, comfortable state of things. This, then, was—I will not say my whole life, but an important and constant component of it. Now I realize it.
Father was something different; he was strong and firm, like a pillar, and in that he impressed me tremendously. If he chose he could have stood up against everybody in the world. At that time, of course, I did not fully understand his cautious economy—in fact, stinginess; I realized it for the first time when Mr. Martinek, who was only a workman, gave that little girl a penny, but father didn’t, he pretended that he hadn’t noticed it; then something strange and terrible like scorn shook the little boy. Now I see that he, poor man, was not so strong, that he really was frightened of life; to economize is a defensive virtue; it is a desire for a protected life, it is fear of the future, of risks, and chances; avarice is terribly similar to some form of hypochondria. Do study, my boy, he used to say, in a solemn and trembling voice, you will go into an office, and you will have it setded. That is about the limit of what we can expect from life: certainty and safety, the faith that nothing can happen to us. If my father, who was as big and strong as a tree, felt like this, how could his weak and coddled son feel brave ? I realize that it had already been thoroughly laid down for me in my childhood; the first physical shock was enough, and the man, with fear crawling into himself, discovered that defensive concern for life and made of it his rule of life.
God knows it must have stuck in me deeper than I realized; surely it guided me in life almost like an instinct, so blindly, and so certain. I am thinking now of my late wife: how strange it is that I should have found her, a woman who was almost born just to nurse somebody. Perhaps it arose from the fact that she was sentimental, and, at the same time, very sensible; to look after somebody is such a sensible, sober, and practical form of love. Didn’t she fall for me ardendy the very moment that she learned that I had come from the threshold of death, and that my interesting paleness had its deeper causes ? Then suddenly charity, love, and motherhood broke out in her and a precipitant maturing of feelings began; it was all there together: a terrified little girl, feminine compassion, and a mother’s zeal, erotic reverie and a terribly realistic and urgent concern that I should eat a lot and gain weight. It was equally as important and beautiful to talk of love as to get fat; she pressed my hand convulsively in the shadow of the night and whispered with eyes full of tears: Please, please, you must eat TERRIBLY much; do promise me that you will look after yourself! I can’t smile at it even to-day; it had its sweet and even pathetic poetry … for the two of us. I had the feeling that I was getting better only for her sake, for her pleasure, and that it was fine and magnanimous of me; I struggled for my health to make her happy. And she believed that she was saving me and giving me my life back again; wasn’t I hers by right and by fate ? God, I know: surely it was only an accident that I was appointed to that particular station; but it is strange and somehow amazing how inevitably and deeply the order of my life worked out. Up to that time I had to conceal my hypochondriacal anguish and be ashamed of it as if of a weakness; now no longer, now it was a common and terribly important affair between two people, now it was part of our love and intimacy; it was no longer a defect or a derangement, but something positive and important that gave sense and order to life.
I am thinking of our marriage and how it emerged from it silently and self-evident. From the very first moment my wife took upon herself that concern for my health, as if she had said: That’s a woman’s job; you needn’t worry about it, leave it to me. Yes, it was like that; I could pretend to myself, Myself nothing, it’s her; she is so scrupulous and hygienic, well, let her be, if she likes to; and at the same time to revel silently and indulge in that feeling of security that one is being provided for and that so much is being done for one’s health. When she waited for me with a towel, before I had finished scrubbing myself, to dry my wet back—it, you know, looked so agreeably conjugal, but it was a daily health inspection; we never said as much to each other, but we both knew it, and I always looked sideways at her, so what ? She used to smile and nod her head, It’s good. And her temperate, abstinent love that was also part of it: she made certain rules for me so that I was not driven to lay them down out of fear for myself. Don’t get so excited, she used to say, almost like a mother, and sleep nicely; no rings round your eyes, and such-like things. Sometimes I was angry, but in the depths of my soul I was grateful to her, for I had to confess that it was better for me like that. I had not any longer to watch so anxiously over my physical state, she took that under her own care; instead she nourished my ambition—even that apparently is healthy and sharpens interest in life; it seems that a male can’t breathe without it. Tell me what you have been doing all the day; you enjoy your work better then. Or let’s make plans for the future; optimism is also healthy and forms part of a good mode of life. All that was plainly so self-evident, conjugal, and intimate; now I see it differendy, now there is no one to shoulder for me that dreadful and impotent fear. Don’t be afraid, you’re at home here, you have everything that you need, you are protected and safe.
Then later on at my station, as was most likely I felt as healthy as a turnip; I imagine that that’s why I didn’t need her any longer so much, and in that lay that touch of estrangement. She felt it, and tried to keep me for herself; and therefore so sedulously: You ought to take more care of yourself, and so on. Now she would even have liked to bear me children, for it’s good to be a father; well, no children came. When in the end she could not do otherwise she began despotically to look after my comfort and my routine; she created a BIG LAW out of it, that I should eat well, that I should sleep well, and have everything in its right place. A life which becomes a habit is somehow safe and deeply rooted; to cultivate one’s habits, that is also some kind of caring for oneself. And, again, it was she who took it on herself: she looked after my habits and I, only indulgently and good-humouredly, accepted them; I, only for your sake, old girl, because you get it ready so nicely. Thank God, you needn’t be an egoist when someone looks after you so well; you have an honest and masculine consciousness that you are not looking after your own comfort, but only after your work. And then at the end of your days you will say: I lived only for my work, and I had a good wife; it was an ordinary good life.
So now we’ve got a third one, said the cantankerous voice inside me.
Which third ?
Well, the first was that ordinary, happy man; the second was the one with elbows who wanted to scramble up; and that hypochondriac, he’s the third. Pardon me, man, these are three lives, and each one is different. Absolutely, diametrally, and in principle.
And see here, taking all together it was a plain and simple life.
I don’t know. The one with the elbows was never happy; that hypochondriac was not stubborn enough to scramble upwards; and a happy man couldn’t be a hypochondriac; that’s obvious. Nonsense, here are three different beings.
And only one life.
That’s it. If they were three independent lives, it would be simpler. Then each would be complete, with a nice sequence, each would have its own law and meaning. But as you’ve got it it’s as if those three lives intersected, at one moment this, and at another that.
No, wait, not that! When something intersects it’s like a fever. I know, I used to have nightmares—Lord, how everything in my dreams was an awful mess, and intersected! But surely that ended long ago, I have recovered now; I have no nightmares, have I, have I any nightmares ?
Aha, that’s the hypochondriac again. Man, that one’s lost it!
Lost what ?
Everything. I’ll ask you when a hypochondriac is about to die.
But stop that!
FOR three days I haven’t written anything: something has happened over which on the third day I am still shaking my head. It wasn’t a great and solemn event—such things don’t happen in my life, on the contrary, it was very nearly an awkward situation in which I think I cut rather a ridiculous figure. The other day my housekeeper announced that some young gentleman wanted to speak to me. I was annoyed. What business have I with him ? You could have told him that I wasn’t at home, or something like that; well, now let him in.
It was a youth, one of the kind I’ve always disliked, unnecessarily tall, self-assured, and hairy—in short a swell; he threw his mane back and trumpeted some name which, of course, I forgot at once. I felt ashamed for not being shaved, for being without a collar, and for sitting here in carpet slippers and in an old dressing-gown, shrivelled up like a pouch; so I inquired as grumpily as possible what he wanted with me.
He explained a bit hastily that he was just writing a thesis. The subject was the rise of the schools of poetry in the nineties. This is a tremendously interesting period, he assured me sententiously. (He had big red hands, and his arms were like logs: definitely disagreeable.) He said that he was collecting material, and therefore he had allowed himself to come.
I looked at him with some suspicion: My dear fellow, you must have made a mistake or something; what has your material to do with me ?
And so, he said, in two reviews from that period he had found some poems signed with my name. With a name which in the history of literature had fallen into oblivion, he said victoriously. That is my discovery, sir! He had searched for that forgotten author; one old stager, so and so, had told him that as far as he could remember the author became a railway official. He followed up that trail until at the Ministry he found out my address. And suddenly he demanded straight out: Please, is it you?
Well, then, now it’s out! I felt a strong desire to raise my eyebrows in surprise and say that he must have been mistaken; what, I, and poetry! But no, I won’t lie any more. I shrugged my shoulders and mumbled something about its being only a trifle; I gave it up, sir, long ago.
The youth beamed and shook his mane victoriously. “That’s superb,” he trumpeted. And could I tell him if I had written for other reviews, too? And where had I published my poems in later years ?
I shook my head. Nothing further, sir, not a line. I’m sorry, sir, I can’t help you.
He choked with enthusiasm, he ran his finger round his collar as if he were being strangled, and his forehead glistened with sweat. “That’s magnificent,” he shouted at me. “That’s like Arthur Rimbaud! Poetry that flares up like a meteor! And nobody has come across it! Sir, it’s a discovery, a great discovery,” he shouted, and ran his red paw through liis tufts of hair.
I was annoyed; as a whole I don’t care for noisy young people, somehow there’s no order, nothing solid in them. “Nonsense, sir,” I said dryly. “They were bad verses, they weren’t worth anything, and it’s better that no one knows about them.”
He smiled at me compassionately and almost from above, as if he were putting me in my right place. “Oh, no, sir,” he protested. “It’s a matter of literary history. I should prefer to call it a Czech Rimbaud. In my opinion it’s the most interesting phenomenon of the nineties. Not that it could originate any sort of school,” he said, winking his eyes expertly. “With regard to development it meant little, it hasn’t left any deeper influence. But as a personal manifestation it’s amazing, something so personal and intense. For instance, that poem which begins: ‘Come to the cocos palms when the drums are rolling-’ “ He rolled out with rapt eyes. “Surely you remember how it goes on!”
It touched me almost like an agonizing and disagreeable reminiscence. “So you see,” I murmured. “Never in my life have I seen cocos palms. Such rubbish!”
He almost lost his temper. “But it doesn’t matter,” he stammered, “if you hadn’t seen any palms! You’ve got a completely wrong idea of poetry!”
“And how,” I said, “can the drums roll in the palm trees ?”
He was very nearly offended by my denseness. “But these are the coconuts,” he blurted out, incited like somebody who is compelled to explain obvious things. “It’s like the nuts tapping in the wind. Come to the cocos palms when the drums are rolling—can’t you hear it ? Those three c’s, they’re the knocks; then it dissolves into music—the drums are rolling. And then there are lines accidentally more beautiful.” He became silent, nonplussed, and he threw his mane back; he looked as if in those verses he was defending his own and most precious property; but after a while he took me into his grace—youth is magnanimous. “No, seriously,” he said, “these are stupendous lines. Strange, strong, stupendous new things—of course for that period,” he added with conscious superiority. “Not so much in form, but those pictures, sir! For you, sir, toyed with the classical form,” he started eagerly, “but you violated it from an inner urge. In form faultless, disciplined, regular verses, but loaded inside with terrible phantasy.” He clenched his red fists to reproduce it somehow. “It looks as if you wanted to scoff at that disciplined and correct form. Such regular verse, but inside it is phosphorescent—like carrion or something. Or it glows so frightfully that you feel it will have to burst. It’s like a dangerous game, that regular form, and that hell inside. In fact, there’s a conflict there, a terrible inner tension, or how shall I describe it—can you follow ? That phantasy would like to escape, but instead it’s pressed into something so regular and enclosed. That’s why it escaped those oxen, because at first sight it’s such classical verse; but if they’d noticed how under that inner pressure caesuras are shifted—” Suddenly he was no longer so self-assured, he perspired with effort and looked at me with dog’s eyes. “I wonder if I’ve expressed myself clearly, sir,” he stammered, and blushed; but I blushed still more, I was immensely ashamed, and I blinked at him, I think, somewhat upset.
“But after all,” I chattered on in confusion, “those verses were bad … that’s why I gave it up, and altogether—”
He shook his head. “It’s not like that,” he said, and all the time he fixed his eyes on me so. “You … you were BOUND to give it up. If… you had gone on creating, you’d have had to break the form, to smash it—I feel it so strongly,” he sighed with relief, for it’s always easier for young people to talk about themselves. “It was a terrific experience for me, those eight poems. Then I told my girl… after all that’s a minor point,” he mumbled in confusion, and ran both his hands through his hair. “I’m not a poet, but… I can imagine what it’s like. Only a young man can write poems like that… and only once in his life. If he wrote more that conflict would be setded in some way. In fact, that’s the most amazing fate of a poet: to express himself once so terribly strongly, out of such an exuberance, and then finis. In fact, I imagined you to be quite different,” he blurted out unexpectedly.
I was immensely anxious to hear something more about those poems: if only that blockhead had quoted one! But I was ashamed to ask him, and from sheer embarrassment I began stupidly and conventionally to inquire from where the stripling came, and things like that. He sat as if he had been boiled, evidently realized that I was talking to him as if to a schoolboy. Well, well, you can frown; I certainly won’t ask you what was in those poems, and this and that. As if you couldn’t start on it yourself; don’t I leave enough long and awkward pauses in the conversation ?
At last he got up with relief, again so unnecessarily tall. “Well, I must fly,” he gasped, and looked for his hat. Well, fly; I know youth can’t just come or go. Outside a girl was waiting for him, they took each other by the arm, and dashed off to the town. Why is it that the young are always in a hurry ? I couldn’t even tell him to call again sometime: so impetuous, I don’t even know who he is—
That was all.
THAT was all, and now you can shake your head off if you like. Well, look here, poet; who would have thought that? For a stripling to say it, that doesn’t mean anything, may the deuce take him; youth exaggerates, and must exaggerate as soon as it opens its mouth. You ought to go to the university library and look it up for yourself; but the doctor said rest, rest; well, then, stay at home and shake your head. Vainglory, you can’t remember a single verse, what’s past is gone; how could it vanish so completely? “Come to the cocos palms when the drums are rolling—” You can’t get much out of that; but to shake one’s head—God Almighty, man, where did you get the palms from, and what business had you with the cocos palms ? Who knows, perhaps in that, just in that, lies poetry, that all of a sudden the cocos palms, or let’s say Queen Mab, is somebody’s business. Perhaps they are bad verses and the stripling is an ass, but the fact is that there were cocos palms and God knows what else. “A terrible phantasy,” said the youth; so there must have been heaps of things, and what strange ones, phosphorescent and glowing. It doesn’t matter whether those verses were good or bad, but to know what was in them, because those things were myself. At one time there was a life in which there were cocos palms and strange things, phosphorescent and glowing. Here you have it, man, and now see what you can do with it; you wanted to put your life straight; well, then, tucked away somewhere there are those cocos palms, somewhere at the bottom of the drawer where they wouldn’t be in the way, and where you wouldn’t see them; isn’t that it ?
So you see, so you see; now it won’t do any longer. You can’t just wave them away with your hand. Rubbish! They were bad verses, and I’m glad I don’t remember anything more about them. It’s no use, there were cocos palms and drums rolling, and God knows what besides. And even if you waved both your hands and shouted that those verses were no good, you wouldn’t get rid of those palms and you wouldn’t take away from your life things that were phosphorescent and glowing. You know that they were, and the stripling didn’t he; the stripling isn’t an ass, even if he knows darned little about poetry. I knew, then I knew extremely well what it is. The fat poet knew, too, although he couldn’t write it; that’s why he jeered so desperately. But I knew; and now, man, shake your head off, where did you find it in you ? Nobody understood it, not even the fat poet; he read my poems with pig’s eyes and shouted: You damned swine, where did you get this from ? And then he went and got drunk for the glory of poetry, and cried: Look at that idiot, and he’s a poet! Such a muff and what things he can write! Once he went raving mad and went for me with a kitchen knife: Now tell me how it’s done! How would it be done! Poetry isn’t done, poetry simply is; it’s so simple and self-evident, like night or day. It’s not inspiration, it’s only such a widespread reality. Things just are. It’s whatever you’re thinking about; perhaps cocos palms, or an angel fluttering its wings; and you, you only give names to things like Adam in the Garden of Eden. It’s terribly simple, except that there’s too much of it. There are innumerable things, they have their front and back, there’s a myriad of lives; in that there’s the whole of poetry, that’s all it is, and who knows that is a poet. Look at him, as if he were making magic, the rascal: he happens to think of cocos palms, and here they are, they sway in the wind and shake with brown nuts; but it is equally self-evident, like looking at a burning lamp. What magic: he takes what’s there and he toys with phosphorescent and glowing things for the divinely simple reason that they’re here; they’re in him, or somewhere outside, it’s just the same. This, then, is absolutely simple and self-evident, but only on one condition: that you’re in that peculiar world that is called poetry. As soon as you’re out of it, it all disappears in a moment; the devil took it; there are no cocos palms, no things that glow and are phosphorescent. “Come to the cocos palms when the drums are rolling—” God, what about it ? such nonsense! There never were any palms, or drums, and nothing glowing. And wave them away with your hand—Jesus Christ, what rubbish!
You see, that’s it: now you’re sorry that the devil took it. You can’t even remember any longer what there was besides those cocos palms; and you never will think out what else there MIGHT have been there and what other things you might have seen in you but which you will never see now. You saw them then because you were a poet, and you saw strange and dreadful things: carrion in decomposition, a seething furnace, and God knows what else; you might yet have seen perhaps a believing angel or a burning bush out of which a voice spoke. It was possible then because you were a poet, and you saw what was in you, and you could give it names. Then you saw things which were; now there’s an end to it, there are no palms any longer and you can’t hear the coconuts tapping. Who knows, man, who knows what might be found in you even TO-DAY if still for a while you were a poet. Dreadful things, or angelic ones, man, things from the Lord, innumerable and inexpressible things, of which you have no inkling; how many things, how many hves and relations would emerge if upon you once more descended the terrible blessing of poetry! It’s no good, you’ll know nothing more of it; it sank down in you, it’s all over. Only to know why, to know why at that time somehow you rushed precipitately away from all that was in you; what terrified you so much? Perhaps there was too much of it, or it was too glowing and it began to burn your fingers; it phosphoresced too suspiciously, or—who knows ?—perhaps the burning bush began to catch fire and you were afraid of the voice that might speak. It was something in you which you became frightened of; and you showed it a clean pair of heels, and didn’t stop till—well, where in fact ? At the last station in the world ? No, it still phosphoresced a bit there. Not till at your station where you struck the right order of things. It wasn’t there any longer, thank God, there you had peace. You were afraid of it as if of… say, death; and who knows, perhaps it was death, perhaps you felt. Look out, a few more steps farther along this road and I should go mad, I should destroy myself, I should die. Fly, man, from the fire that consumes you. High time; in a few months the red thing spurted out of you, and you had your work cut out to make that half-broken thing whole. And then hold fast to that good, solid, regular life which does not consume one away. Already to choose only that which is needful for life, and not see all that is, for in that is death, too; it was in you along with those terrible and dangerous things to which you gave names. Well, now it’s covered with a lid, and it can’t get out any more, whether it be called life or death. It’s covered, it’s gone, and it’s no more; quite candidly you did get rid of it thoroughly, and you were right to shrug your shoulders over it: rubbish, what palms; it’s not even proper for an adult, active man.
And now you shake your head, think of it, who’d have said so; perhaps those verses weren’t so bad and it wasn’t at all stupid of you. Perhaps you might even be pleased and a bit puffed up, think of that; I wrote verses, too, and they weren’t so bad. But you, such sadness. Even that cantankerous voice is silent, it mightn’t suit his purpose; he had an idea that it was a defeat and that you gave it up because you hadn’t the means for it, neither the talent nor the personality. You see, now it looks quite different, something like a flight from one’s self, like fear, lest you should succumb to what was in you. Wall it in like a burning pit, let the evil smother itself out. Perhaps it’s gone already, who knows; now you won’t burn your fingers any more, now you won’t warm your hands any more. To keep your own self out of sight you began to busy yourself with things and make out of them your calling and your life; you did very well, you escaped from yourself, and you became a respectable man who conscientiously and contentedly has lived his ordinary life. What do you want ? It was good; why, then, I ask you, that regret ?
No, I wasn’t quite a complete success. Let the poet be, may the deuce take the poet; but there was something very innocent and harmless that I never got rid of, and apparently didn’t even want to. It was present a long time before the poet, in fact from childhood, it was already in that enclosure of chips; nothing special, only such dreaminess, such romanticism, enchantment with fictions, or what is one to call it? All right, with a child it’s natural; it’s more peculiar that it’s equally natural with a grownup and serious man. The child has his little beans in which he sees treasures, hens, and whatever he likes; he believes that daddy is a hero and that in the river there’s something wild and dreadful that it’s best to avoid. But look at the station-master; he walks with energetic, rather negligent strides over the platform and looks right and left as if he were aware of everything; instead he’s thinking what it would be like if a princess, that one in the tweed suit that came for the hunting, were to fall passionately in love with him at first sight. Surely the station-master has a good wife whom he loves sincerely, but at the moment it doesn’t matter; at the moment it’s more agreeable for him to talk to the princess, to keep the most respectable reserve, and at the same time to suffer just a little bit the torments of love. Or if two expresses ran into one another: what would he do, how would he intervene, how would he master, with clear, dictatorial commands, that confusion and horror: Quick, here, there’s a woman under the wreckage! And alone in front of them all to smash open the carriage sides, strange to think where that gigantic strength in him comes from! The stranger thanks her rescuer, she wants to kiss his hand, but he, not at all! It’s only my duty, Madam, and already he’s leading the rescue work again, like a captain on the bridge. Or he’s going on long journeys, he’s a soldier, at the railway he finds a crumpled chit on which is written in hurried hand: Save me. You slip into it without knowing how; suddenly you’re in it, you perform great deeds and go through strange adventures; not till you have to wake up from it and then it almost drags you down, and it creaks disagreeably as if you’d fallen from somewhere; you feel fagged out and grumpy and you feel slightly ashamed.
And see, over these stupidities the station-master doesn’t shrug his shoulders and he doesn’t try to defend himself; it’s true he doesn’t take them seriously; for instance, he wouldn’t confess them to his wife, but he almost looks forward to them. One may say that barring the time when he was in love, every day he dreams some story of his life; to some he returns with special predilection, he spins them out anew, with fresh details, and he lives them somehow in instalments. He has a whole series of collateral and fictitious lives, mainly erotic, heroic, and adventurous, in which he himself is everlastingly young, strong, and chivalrous; sometimes he dies, but always from bravery and self-sacrifice; after having excelled in some way he withdraws into the background, touched by his own unselfish and generous action. In spite of this modesty he wakes reluctandy to that other, real life in which he has not the means to distinguish himself, but also nothing to renounce generously and with self-sacrifice.
Well, yes, romanticism; but just because of that I liked the railways, because the romantic was in me; it was because of that peculiar, slightly exotic mist that railways possess, for that sense of distance, for the everyday adventure of arrivals and departures. Yes, that was something for me, that was just the fabric for my eternal dreaming. That other, that real life, was more or less a routine, a well-running mechanism; the more perfectly it clicked, the less it disturbed me in my day-dreams. Do you understand, you cantankerous voice? For that reason, only for that very reason, did I provide myself with that model, perfectly functioning station, so that in between the ringing of the bells and ticking of the telegraph, between the arrivals and departures of people, I could spin the fiction of my life. You look how the lines are running, they fascinate you somehow, and by itself it starts you off into the distance; and already you’re off on the infinite journey of adventure always the same and always different. I know, I know; that’s why my wife felt that I was slipping away from her, that down there, between the lines, I was living some life of my own, in which there was no rooln for her, and which I kept secret from her. Could I tell her about princesses in tweed suits, of beautiful strangers, and such-like things? Well, I couldn’t; what can one do, my dear ? You have my body to look after, but my mind is elsewhere. You married a station-master, but not a romantic, you can never have the romantic.
I know that romantic in me, it was my mother. Mother used to sing, mother lost herself iii day-dreams, mother had had some secret unknown life; and how beautiful she was when she offered the dragoon a drink, so beautiful that my little childish heart stood still. They always said that I took after her. Then I wanted to be like my father, strong like him, big, and reliable like daddy. Perhaps I haven’t turned out well. It isn’t after him, that poet, that romantic, and who knows what else.
WHO knows what else ? But you know all right WHAT ELSE, don’t you?
No, I don’t know anything more, cantankerous voice. I don’t know anything more to add.
Because you don’t want to know, do you ?
No, I don’t; there’s enough of it already for such an ordinary and simple life. Didn’t I let you have that romantic into the bargain, didn’t I ? Well, look here, it was to be a quite simple yarn, the story of an ordinary and happy man; and now, look, all sorts of people are crowding in: the ordinary man, the one with elbows, the hypochondriac, the former poet, and the Lord knows what else; there’s a whole pile of them, and everyone says of himself: That’s me. Isn’t that enough? Didn’t I break my life into many pieces just by looking at it ?
Wait, here and there you’ve left something out.
I haven’t!
You have. Shall I remind you of this and that ?
No, it’s not necessary. They’re casual things that don’t mean anything. They simply don’t fit into the whole and they have no continuity. That’s the word: continuity. A man’s life must have some continuity after all.
And so many odd things must be thrown aside, mustn’t they ?
It’s like taking a fly out of a glass of water. Could I have ordered a new life to be brought me on a tray! Something falls into it that has no business to be there; well, yes, you take it out, and that’s all.
Or at least you don’t talk about it.
Yes, one doesn’t talk about it. Pray, tell me what you are really after, and who you really are ?
That doesn’t matter; I’m always the other one, the one with whom you are annoyed. Do you know when it began ?
What began and when ?
That about which one doesn’t talk.
I don’t know.
It must have been some time a long time ago, wasn’t it ?
I don’t know.
A terribly long time ago. Strange what experiences a child sometimes has. But shut up!
I, nothing. I only remember that little dark girl. She was older than you, wasn’t she ? Do you remember her sitting on the little box and combing her hair ? she squashed the lice in her comb with her little tongue half stuck out, lup, lup, they did pop. You rascal, you felt a bit disgusted, and a bit—no, it wasn’t disgust; rather a longing to have lice or something. A longing to have lice, isn’t it strange ? Never mind, man, people have such longings.
I ask you, in childhood!
I’m not talking about childhood. And once when you looked what the foreman was doing behind the canteen with that slut of a canteen woman. When you saw them throwing themselves about you thought that he was strangling her; you wanted to shout with fear; but the little girl was prodding you in the back, and how her eyes shone!—do you remember? You crouched behind that fence breathless, and your eyes nearly fell out of your head. She was such a horrid hag, her breasts rolled on her belly, and she bawled wherever she went; but she was quiet then, she only wheezed.
Well enough!
I, nothing. Only how once on a Sunday you went to see the little girl. It was as if life was extinct there, everyone was in the canteen or snoring in the huts. There was nobody in the hut, it only stank like a dog-kennel. Then somebody passed and you hid there behind a box; then the little girl came in and behind her a man, and he fastened the door with a hasp.
That was her father!
I know. A nice father indeed. He shut the door, and it was dark inside; you couldn’t see anything, but you could hear, man, you could hear, how the little girl moaned, and the male voice was soothing and snapping; you couldn’t imagine what was happening, and you pressed your little fist to your mouth to stop yourself from shrieking with desperate terror. Then the man got up and went away; for a long time after that you crouched behind that box and your heart thumped terribly; then you went silently up to that little girl, who lay on rags, sobbing. You were very perplexed, you would have liked to be big, to have lice, and to know what it meant after all. After a little while you played in front of the hut with clothes-pegs; but it was an experience, man, such an experience—I don’t know how you can leave it out of your life.
Yes. No. I can’t.
I know that you can’t. But your games afterwards weren’t so innocent—do you remember ? And you weren’t even eight years old then.
Yes, eight.
And she was about nine, but she as corrupt as a demon. Some sort of a gipsy or something. My dear fellow, an experience like that in childhood sticks in a man.
Yes, it does.
How you looked afterwards at your mother—almost with curiosity if she were like that, too. Like that canteen woman, or that little Romany. And if father was also so strange and disgusting. You began to watch them, what, and how. Listen, somehow it wasn’t quite all right between them.
Mother was—I don’t know; unhappy, or something.
And dad was a weakling, a lamentable weakling. Sometimes he got into a rage, but otherwise—it was dreadful how much he used to put up with from mother. God knows of what he must have been guilty to let himself be so humiliated and tormented by her. She liked you, but him—man, she did hate him! At times they began to quarrel about some stupid thing—and they pushed you out of doors, Go and play. And then mother spoke and afterwards dad ran out; crimson and furious, he slammed the door and began to work like someone under a curse, without a word, he only snorted. And at home mother wept victoriously and desperately, like someone who had broken everything; well, now it’s over. And it wasn’t over.
That was hell!
That WAS hell! Father was a good man, but he had been guilty of something. Mother was right, but she was evil. And the little boy knew it, it’s dreadful how much a child like that finds out; only he doesn’t know why. And so he only looks perplexed that something strange and evil is going on that the grown-ups are hiding from him. Perhaps the worst was when the little fellow was going with that young Romany; he used to sit at the table, father didn’t speak, and ate; suddenly mother began such quick and jerky movements, she rattled the plates, and cried in a choking voice, Go, sonny, go and play. And those two were picking a bone with each other, God knows how many times, and God knows how serious and spiteful it was; and the little fellow, forsaken and helpless, with tears in his eyes, wandered on the other side of the river where that little gipsy girl lived. They would play in the dirty shanty, white hot with the sun’s heat and smelling like a dog-kennel; while they played they would fasten the door with the hasp. It was a black darkness, and the children played a damnably strange game; it wasn’t any longer so dark, a light came through a gap between the planks; at any rate one could see how those children’s eyes were glowing. At the same time father at home set out to work like someone under a curse, and out of mother’s eyes ran victorious and desperate tears. And the little fellow almost felt relieved. Ugh, now I have my secret, too, something strange and evil to hide. No more does it torment him so much that the grown-ups have something secret before which they push him out of doors. Now he himself has something secret of which they in their turn are ignorant; now he is all square with them and in a way has taken his revenge on them. That was the first time.
What?
That was the first time you tasted the delight of evil. Afterwards you went after that gipsy as if dazed; sometimes she beat you and tore your hair, sometimes she bit your ears like a little dog till your back shivered with delight; she depraved you through and through, an eight-year-old rascal, and ever afterwards it was in you.
Yes.
For how long ?
… All my life.
AND what came next ?
Next, nothing. Afterwards I was an intimidated, shy little pupil, who crammed with his head in his hands. That was nothing, that was absolutely nothing.
You used to go somewhere in the evening.
On a bridge, on a bridge over the railway.
Why?
Because a woman walked there. A whore. She was old, and had a head like death.
And you were frightened of her.
Terribly. I looked down over the railings and she brushed her skirt against me. When I turned—when she saw that I was only a boy, she went on.
And that’s why you used to go there.
Yes. Because I was frightened of her. Because I always waited till she touched me with her skirts.
Hm. That’s not much.
It is. Didn’t I say that she was terrible ?
And how was it with that pal of yours ?
Nothing, it was nothing of that sort. My word of honour.
I know. But why did you take away his faith in God when he was going to be a priest ?
Because—because I wanted to save him from it!
Save! How was he to learn when you had taken away his faith ? His mother promised him to God, and you kept on proving to him that there wasn’t one. Nice, wasn’t it… ? Poor beggar, it turned his head! No wonder that he couldn’t stammer a word! You did help your pal, indeed; he hanged himself in his sixteenth year—
Stop!
Please. And how was it with that short-sighted girl ?
But you know. That was such a perfect feeling, almost stupidly clean, almost—well, almost transcendental, or something.
But to get there you went through a little alley where whores stood in the doorways and whispered: Come to me, my dear!
That’s a minor point. That had nothing to do with it!
Why not ? But you could have gone the other way, couldn’t you?”It would have been nearer; but you, you strolled through the alley with your heart thumping dreadfully.
Well, and what ? I never went TO THEM.
No, of course you daren’t have done that. But it was such a strange, damnable pleasure, that perfect love and that cheap, dirty vice—to carry one’s angelic heart through a street of harlots, that was it. Those were the phosphorescent and glowing things, I know. Let it be, it looked very queer in you.
… Yes, it was like that.
So you see. And then you became a poet, didn’t you ? That chapter also has something about which one doesn’t talk.
Yes.
Don’t you know what it was ?
What would it be ? There were girls. That waitress with green eyes and that girl who was tuberculous—how she fell to pieces with desire and her teeth chattered, that was dreadful.
Go on! Go on!
And that girl—God, what was her name ?—the one that passed from hand to hand.
Go on!
Do you mean the one who was like a devil ?
No. Do you know what was strange about it ? That fat poet, he could stand something; he was a pig and a cynic, of which there are few; don’t you know why sometimes he looked at you with terror ?
That was not because of what I was doing!
No, it was for what was in you. Do you remember how he once quivered with nausea and said: You beast, if you weren’t such a poet I’d drown you in a sewer!
That was—I was drunk then, and I was only saying something.
Yes, something that was in you. That’s it, man: the worst and most depraved thing has remained in you. It must have been—something damnable which couldn’t even get out. Who knows, who knows, if you hadn’t reformed them. But you got terrified of it yourself, and “headlong you ran away from what was in you.” “You covered it over with a lid”; but these weren’t cocos palms, dear fellow, they were something worse. Perhaps an angel with wings, but hell, too, man. Hell, too.
But that was the end!
Well, yes, in a way that was an end. Then you only looked to see how to save yourself. A good job that blood spitting came on; a tremendous opportunity to start a new life, wasn’t it? To stick to life, to investigate one’s sputum, and to catch trout. To watch with a mild and sedate interest how the young foresters play skittles and at the same time to infect them a tiny bit with that deeply suspicious thing that was in you. The universe especially had a good effect; in face of the universe even all evil evaporates, that is in man. The universe is a good institution.
AND then at the station of the old gentleman, when I fell in love—was it still in me there, I mean that evil ?
Look here, not at all. That’s strange. It was a completely happy and ordinary life.
But making love to the maiden—how near was I to seducing her?
That’s nothing, that may happen.
I know that I behaved towards her … decently on the whole; but my desire was not—was not—well, was not entirely under control—
Go on, that’s part of the thing.
Did I marry her to scramble upward ?
That’s again another story. Now it’s a case of those deeper things, you know ? For instance, why did you hate your wife so much ?
I? Didn’t I marry her for love ?
You did.
And didn’t I love her all my life ?
You did. And at the same time you loathed her. Remember how many times you lay beside her, she slept, and you kept thinking: God, to throttle her like this! To grasp that neck in both my hands, and squeeze, squeeze. Only what to do with the corpse afterwards, that’s the problem.
Nonsense! It wasn’t like that at all—and if it were! How can a man be blamed for such fancies ? Maybe he can’t go off, and is annoyed because she sleeps so quietly. I ask you, why should I have hated her ?
That’s just it. Perhaps because she wasn’t like that little gipsy, or like that waitress, you know. That marshy brute with green eyes. Because she was so quiet and composed. With her everything was so sensible and simple—like a duty. Conjugal love is quite proper and hygienic, like eating or washing one’s mouth. Nay, even like an ordinary and serious sacrament. Such a clean, decent, domestic affair. And you, man, at those moments you loathed her convulsively and madly.
… Yes.
Yes. In you, after all, was the longing to have lice, and to play in a stinking hut a deep and breathless game. That it would be unclean and wild and terrible. A fearful desire for something that would ruin you. If only her teeth had chattered, if she had pulled your hair, if her eyes had burned darkly and madly! But she—nothing, she only set her teeth on her lower lip and sighed, and then went off like a log, like someone, who, thank God, has done her duty. And you yourself—just a yawn; no longing for something evil, something that ought not to be. God, to grasp that neck with both my hands—would she at least shudder like a beast and produce one inhuman shriek ?
Christ, how I loathed her at times!
So you see. And that was not only because of that. That was because on the whole she was so orderly and prudent. As if she had married only what was sensible and respectable in you, capable of bureaucratic progress and responsive to exemplary and domestic care. Perhaps she even had no inkling that there was something else in you—something different, by George! She didn’t even know that she was helping to drive it into a corner. And now this was tearing itself as if on a leash, and silently, hatefully, spitefully it howled. To grasp that neck in both my hands, and things like that. Some day to set out along the lines, and go, go as far as where rock is being torn out; naked to the waist, with a handkerchief on my head, and to break stones with a pickaxe; to sleep in a fdthy shanty which smells like a dog-kennel; a fat canteen woman whose breasts flop on her belly, sluts in petticoats, a lousy little girl biting like a puppy; to fasten oneself in there with a hasp. Don’t cry, little pet, keep your mouth shut, or I shall kill you! And instead, here silently, regularly, a model wife to an honest and slightly hypochondriac station-master is breathing: what about squeezing her neck so—
And you weren’t unfaithful to her, you weren’t rude to her, nothing; only in secret, and persistently, you hated her. A nice family life, eh ? Only once did you have your little revenge on her: when you worked against the Emperor. I’ll give you something, you German! But otherwise—an exemplary marriage, and everything; that was already characteristic of you: to be evil and depraved in secret; to be able to conceal it even from oneself—and only relish the idea that perhaps it MIGHT have been. Wait, what was it when you were up there at the Ministry ?
There was nothing.
I know, nothing at all. Only to say with awe, but with quite agreeable awe, God in Heaven, one could make a mess here! It might cost millions, man, millions! It would be enough just to suggest that we were ready to listen—
And did I do that ?
God forbid. A blameless official. Absolutely clean conscience in that respect. It was only such a delightful image of what might have been and how it might have been done. A complete and ingenious plan in full detail: it would have to be done in this way, and so on; if the time comes. And then not to do it, to carry one’s official integrity without censure through temptations left and right. It was similar to the time when you wandered after your clean love through the street of brothels, Come to me, my dear! There wasn’t a single official crime you wouldn’t have invented which you haven’t committed in your mind; you exhausted all the possibilities, and didn’t accomplish one. Well, it’s true, in reality you couldn’t even make so much mischief, you would have to limit yourself to such and such cases; but while you are only thinking about it there are no limits, and you could do everything. Only don’t forget those typists!
That is a lie!
Steady. Steady. Never mind, you were a big enough boss in that Ministry; you only had to frown and those girls’ knees did tremble. To call for one and say, See here, miss, it’s full of mistakes, I’m not satisfied with you; I don’t know, I don’t know, I OUGHT to demand your dismissal. And so on; you could try it on them all. And with that to have those mad millions within the reach of your hand! What wouldn’t a girl do now for her small salary and for a few silk rags! They’re young and they’re dependent—
Did I do that ?
Not at all! But because of that you cowed them down, I’m not satisfied with you, miss, and so on. As if their knees only shook a little before you, as if they didn’t turn their eyes to you for mercy! Just to pat them kindly, and there it would be. It was only just a possibility with which the old rake toyed voluptuously. There was such a lot of those typists, he hadn’t even added them up; it’s best to make a job of it: to take them all in turn, one after the other. To hire somewhere in the suburbs a little room, rather loathsome and not too clean. Or if it had been possible, to have a wooden shanty, heated white hot with the sun and smelling like a dog-kennel; to shut oneself in with a hasp, it’s as dark as hell there; you can only hear a voice moaning, and a voice that is threatening and soothing.
There’s nothing more you know ?
Nothing more. It didn’t happen, altogether nothing happened; such an ordinary life. Only once it was absolutely real; that was when you were eight years old with that little gipsy girl; then something did fall into your life that perhaps really didn’t belong to it. And from that time, well: all the time you kept throwing it out, and all the time it was still there. All the time you wanted to have it once more, and it never happened again. Man, this is ALSO a continuous life story, don’t you think so ?
A CONTINUOUS life story. My God, what am I to do with it now ? But, after all, it is true that I was an ordinary and on the whole a happy man, one of those who do their work conscientiously; that’s the chief thing. But this life had been forming in me from my infancy; in it father, in his blue smock, has left his trace, bending over the planks and running his hand over the finished work; and all those round about, the stonemason, the potter, the grocer, glazier, and baker, seriously and attentively absorbed in their work as if nothing else had ever been in the world. And when something heavy and painful took place, you slammed the door and went to work more zealously than ever. Life, it isn’t happenings, it’s work, our continuous work. Yes, it’s like this; my life was a kind of a task in which I became absorbed up to my ears. I should have been at a loss without some sort of thing to potter about with; even when I had to retire I bought this little house here and the garden, so as to have something to do; I broke up and planted the soil, I weeded it and watered it—thank God, it was a job in which you get absorbed until you don’t know of yourself, and of nothing but what you’re doing; yes, it was a bit of the tiny enclosure of chips in which I used to crouch when I was a child; but I lived to find great pleasure in it, even to find a finch that peeped at me with one eye as if to say: Well, who are you? I’m just an ordinary man, finch, like the others who live just beyond the fence; now I’m a gardener, but the old gentleman taught me that—almost nothing is in vain, in everything there is such a strange and wise order, it’s such a straight and necessary road. From infancy right to here. Yes, that’s the continuous story of a man. This simple and orderly idyll, yes.
Amen, and yes, it is true. But there is still another story which is also continuous and also true. That’s the story of somebody who wanted somehow to rise above the small circle in which he was born, above those joiners and stonemasons, above his pals, above his school form, always and always. That also comes from infancy, and it reaches to the end. And it’s a life made out of completely different stuff, unsatisfied and puffed up, which always wants more space for itself. This man doesn’t think of work any longer, but of himself, and of being better than the others. He doesn’t learn because he enjoys it, but because he wants to be first. Even when he walks with the station-master’s maiden he is puffing himself up with the thought that he’s got something better than the telegraphist or the cashier. Always self, only self. But even in marriage it eats up almost more and more space until it is only himself, and everything turns round him. Well, now he’s got enough, hasn’t he? It’s just that he hasn’t; when he’s got everything that he wished for he must find a new and bigger space where he may again slowly and surely expand. But once it comes to an end, that’s the sad thing about it, and it’s ended badly; all of a sudden he’s an old man and good for nothing and lonely, and all the time he makes a smaller heap. Yes, that was the whole life, finch, and I don’t know if it was made of happy stuff.
That’s the truth; then there is a third story, also continuous and also beginning in infancy; that’s the one about the hypochondriac. There’s mother in that story, Iknow; it was she who coddled me so and filled me with fear about myself. This man was like a weak and ailing little brother of the one with the elbows; both egoists, upon my word, but the one with the elbows was offensive, and the hypochondriac defensive; this one only feared for himself and wanted to let it be modest, if only it was safe. He didn’t force his way anywhere, he only looked for a harbour, the leeward side—apparently that was why he became an official and got married, and set limits to himself. He got on best with that first man, with the ordinary and good one; work with its regularity gave him a nice feeling of security and almost of shelter. The one with the elbows was good in that he provided for some sort of prosperity, even if his unsatisfied ambition sometimes disturbed the cautious comfort of the hypochondriac. On the whole, these three lives agreed pretty well with each other, even if they didn’t coalesce; the ordinary man did his job without worrying about anything else; the one with the elbows knew how to sell it, but also prompted, do this, and don’t do that, nothing is to be got from that; well, and the hypochondriac, he usually scowled with worry; only not to overdo it, and everything in moderation. Three different natures, and on the whole there were no bickerings among them; they came to terms silently and perhaps they even had a certain amount of consideration for each of them.
These three persons, they were, so to speak, my legitimate and hereditary lives, my wife shared them and entered with them into a faithful and loyal bond. Then there was a further story, that was the romantic. I should say: the hypochondriac’s pal. A very essential personality to compensate somehow for what the hypochondriac denied himself: adventure and magnanimity. With those others it was out of question; the one with the elbows was too sober and matter-of-fact, while that ordinary man was—well, so ordinary, and had no imagination. The hypochondriac, on the other hand, loved it immensely; something to be experienced, something fascinating and dangerous and yet at the same time one is safe at home; it’s good to have such an adventurous and chivalrous person in reserve. It has been with me from my childhood, it was essentially and deeply rooted in my life, but not in my marriage; of that personality my wife must not know. Perhaps she also had her other self which had nothing to do with her domestic life, nor with her conjugal love; but I know nothing of that.
But then there is that fifth aspect, and that story is also continuous and true; it began right in my boyhood. It was that shameful life with which none of the others wanted to have anything in common. You mustn’t even know about it, but sometimes … in strictest solitude, and almost in the dark, secredy and surreptitiously, you could recall it just a little bit; but it was present all the time, evil and lousy and infinitely cursed, and it lived on by itself. That was no longer myself or some being (like that romantic was), but some sort of THING, something so degraded and suppressed that it no longer could have any personality. Everything that contained a bit of self avoided that thing with disgust; perhaps was even horrified of it—as if of something that was antagonistic to my own self, something destructive or making for self-annihilation, I don’t know how to say it. I don’t know anything more, I don’t know anything more; even I don’t know about it, I never saw it whole, always only like something groping blindly and in the dark. Well, yes, as if in a hut fastened with a hasp, and dirty, smelling of a beast.
And then there was—not a complete story, but only a fragment. The poet’s case, I can’t help it: I feel that that poet had more to do with that depraved and suppressed thing than with anything else what was in me. In him, of course, there was something higher—he stood on THAT side and not on mine. God, if I could only say it! As if he wanted to release something, as if he were trying to make a man out of it, or something more than a man. But for that perhaps there must be some divine grace, or miracle—why do I think all the time of an angel with beating wings? Perhaps because that unredeemed thing was fighting with some angel of mercy; sometimes it rolled the angel in the mire, and sometimes it looked as if perhaps that evil and cursed thing might be cleansed. As if through the chinks into that darkness some kind of intense and dazzling light were penetrating, so beautiful that even that uncleanliness appeared to shine intensely and amazingly with something. Perhaps it was that that unredeemed thing was to become a soul in me, I don’t know, I only know that it didn’t; the accursed remained accursed, and the deuce took the poet who had nothing to do with that which was my acknowledged and legitimate self; there was no place for it in the other stories.
This then is the inventory of my life.
AND not yet by any means. There’s still one story left—or rather, a bit of a story. An episode which doesn’t fit in to any other continuous story and which stands by itself, let its origin be what it may. Good Lord, what fuss, I won’t hide my light under a bushel all the time. That work that I did during the War needed some damned courage—perhaps even heroism. Wasn’t there a court martial for it, and a rope, that was as plain as a pikestaff, and I knew it quite well. I didn’t even take very great precautions, except for not putting anything in writing; I talked about those things with lots of conductors, engine-drivers, and postmen—if one of them had blabbed or let the cat out, it would have been bad for me and for the others. At the same time I didn’t feel in any way heroic or elated, I had no sense of duty, no feeling of sacrificing my life, or other such sublime thoughts; I only said to myself that something like that OUGHT to be done; well, and so it was done, as if it were obvious. I even felt rather ashamed for not having started on it earlier; I saw that the others, those fathers, those conductors, and stokers had only been waiting to do something themselves. For instance, that guard, he had five children, and he only said: “O.K., sir, don’t you worry, I’ll look after it.” He might have been hanged, and he knew it. I hadn’t any longer even to tell our people, they came themselves, I hardly knew them. “Munitions going to Italy, sir, something will happen there.” And that was it. Now I see how risky it was—for them and for me, but at the time it somehow did not occur to us at all. I call it heroism because these people WERE heroes; I was no better than they were, I only gave it a bit of organization.
We blocked every station where it was possible, including the old gentleman’s station. There was an accident there, and the old gentleman went mad and died. I knew that I was the cause of it; I loved him sincerely, but at that moment it was all the same to me. What is called heroism is no great feeling, enthusiasm, or anything like that; it’s kind of a self-evident and almost blind necessity, such a terribly objective state; motives here, motives there, you go forwards, and that’s that. It’s not even a matter of the will, it’s as if you are led on by it and prefer not to think much about it. And my wife mustn’t know about it; it’s not for women. Well, then, all that’s quite simple and I needn’t refer to it; but now the problem is how it fits together with those other lives that I led.
That idyllic station-master, no, he was no hero; it surely was very disagreeable for him to direct something like the sabotage of his beloved railways. Of course by that time the idyllic station-master was almost lost; the atrocious captain had reduced his model station to the state of a filthy madhouse; there was no more room in this world for a conscientious station-master. That one with the elbows, no; he wouldn’t have risked so much, and he would have said, What shall I get out of it ? it might, you know, end badly, and for most of the time it looked as if the Emperor might win. And then, in that a man could not and must not think of himself; if he had begun to think of what was in store for him his heart would have sunk to his boots and that would have been the end. Instead it was rather a feeling, The devil can have me, what the dickens does my life matter; only in this way could I bear it. No, that one with the elbows had nothing to do with it. And the hypochondriac, who was eternally frightened for his life, still less; strange that he didn’t try to shield himself from that undertaking. The romantic, no. It wasn’t a bit romantic, not a whiff of any visions or adventure; so absolutely sober and matter-of-fact, only just a little bit wild, only just enough to make me want to drink rum; but that perhaps came from the fellow-feeling that united us. I should have liked to hold those guards and conductors round the neck, to drink with them, and shout, Boys, my lads, let’s sing! I who have been lonely all my life long! That was the finest thing about the whole affair that unity with others, that manly love for one’s comrades. No solo heroism, but joy for that magnificent party: Damn it all, we railwaymen, we’ll show them! Not that we ever spoke about it, but I felt it, and I think that we all did. Well, look here, what was lacking in my childhood was now made up; I didn’t sit any longer in my enclosure of chips; I’m with you, boys, I’m with you, comrades, never mind what it is! My loneliness melted, there was our common cause; no more only self, and that was travelling, sir, that was the easiest part of the way. Yes, easier and finer than love.
That life seems to me to have had no connection at all with the others.
Lord, and there’s still another life which I should have forgotten completely. Different and almost contrary to this and all the others; in fact, only such strange moments, as if they belonged to a completely different life. For instance, a longing to be something like a beggar at a church door; the desire not to wish to be anything, and to give up everything; to be poor and alone and in that to find peculiar pleasure or holiness—I don’t know how to express it. For instance, as a child, that corner among the planks; I loved that place immensely because it was so small and forsaken, and it gave me a fine and good feeling. At home every Friday beggars used to go together from house to house; I used to go with them, I don’t know why, and I prayed like them and like them I snuffled, Thank you, God bless you, at every door. Or that shy, short-sighted girl—in that, too, there was the need for something humble, poor, and forsaken, and that strange, almost pious, joy. And it was always like that: like those buffers at the last station in the world, nothing but rusty rails, shepherd’s-purse, and hair-grass, nothing but just the end of the world, a forsaken place, and good for nothing; there I felt best. Or those talks in the lamp attendant’s hut: it was so small and cramped, God, how well one could live! At my own station, too, I had such a corner, it was between the storehouse and the fence; nothing but rust, old rubbish, and netdes—nobody went there any longer except God, and it was sad and reconciled, like the vanity of everything. And the station-master used to stand and look at it sometimes for an Hour at a time with his hands behind his back and realize the vanity of everything. The workmen would come running—perhaps we ought to clear it away ? No, let it stay as it is. That day I didn’t look any longer left and right, at what people were doing. Why always do this or that ? Simply be, and nothing more: that is such a quiet and wise death. I know that in its way it was the negation of life; and so it had no connection with anything else; it only was, in it nothing happened, for there are no happenings where all is vanity.
So how many are there of life’s aspects: four, five, eight? Eight lives which compose my own; and I know that if I had more time and a clearer head I should discover a whole row of them, perhaps completely disconnected ones, maybe of those which only happened once and lasted only for a moment. And perhaps there are still more that never had their turn; if my life had run on a different line, if I had been somebody else, or had met with other adventures, perhaps quite different—persons, I should say, would have emerged in me able to act in a different manner. If, say, I had had another wife, a cantankerous and irritable man might have developed in me; or in some circumstances I might perhaps have behaved frivolously; I can’t rule out that; I can’t rule out anything.
At the same time, I know quite well that I am not some interesting and complex double, or God knows what, personality; I think that nobody could ever have thought that about me. What I was I was entirely, and what I did I did, so to speak, with all my heart. I never meditated about myself, I had no cause to; it’s only a few weeks since I began to write this, and I was thinking myself what a nice and simple story it would be, as if made of one piece. Then I found out that I was contributing to that simplicity and compactness, even if unwittingly…. A man has a definite idea about himself and about his Hfe, and according to it he selects or even arranges facts a little to fit in with his idea. I think that at first I intended to write something like an apology for the lot of an ordinary man, just as the famous and extraordinary people write in their memoirs apologies for their extraordinary and prominent destinies; I should say that in their various ways they also contribute to their own life-stories to make of them consistent and probable pictures; it looks MORE POSSIBLE when one gives it a connecting thread. Now I understand that: what a possibility! The Hfe of man is a mass of various possible aspects out of which only one is realized, or only a few, while the others only manifest themselves incompletely for a time, or never at all. Somehow this is how I imagine the story of EVERY man.
Let us take my case—and I certainly am nothing special. There were several aspects which continually intertwined; sometimes one predominated, somethimes another; then there were some which were not so stable and only seemed to be like islands or episodes in that total collective life—as, for instance, the poet’s case, or the heroic story. And again, there were others which were only a permanent and vague glimmer of possibility, like that romantic or that—what should I call him ?—that beggar at the church door. But at the same time, whatever of those lives I lived or whichever of those figures I was, it always was myself, and that self was always the same, and never changed from the beginning to the end. That is what is so strange about it. For that self is something that is ABOVE those figures and their lives, something higher, single, and unifying—is it perhaps what we call a soul ? But surely that self had no content of ITS own, at one time it was that hypochondriac and at another that hero, and it was nothing which floated above them! Surely it was empty in itself, and in order to exist in SOME way it had to borrow one of those figures and its life! It was something like the time when, as a little chap, I climbed up on to the shoulders of Frank, the apprentice, and then felt big and strong like him; or when I went with father, hand in hand, and felt serious and dignified like him. It’s most probable that self was only riding on those lives; so much did it desire and need to be SOMEBODY that it had to acquire this or that life.
No, it’s still different. Admit that a man is something like a crowd of people. In that crowd he wanders, perhaps, say, an ordinary man, a hypochondriac, a hero, that one with the elbows, and God knows what else; it is a muddled swarm, but it has a common path. One of them is always in front and leads for part of the way; and to make it clear that he is in charge let us imagine that he carries a standard on which is written myself. Yes, now he is me. It’s only a word, but such a powerful and domineering word; while he is that self he is the master of the crowd. Then, again, another member of the crowd elbows his way to the front; well, and now he bears the standard and is the leading self. Let us suppose that that self is only just a dummy and the flag is only so that the little band has something in front of it to represent its unity. Except for the crowd even that common badge wouldn’t be needed. An animal perhaps has no self because it is simple and only lives its single possibility; but the more complicated we are the more we must assert the self in us, raise it highest; look out, this is me.
Look at that, a crowd; a crowd that has its unity, its inner tension, and conflicts. Perhaps in it somebody is the strongest, so strong that he rises above all the others. He will bear that self from the beginning to the end, and will not let it fall into other hands. A man like that will appear all his life as if made of one piece. Or perhaps in that crowd there is someone better suited than the rest for the vocation or milieu in which the person lives, and that will then be the leading self. At other times the one of the crowd who looks most respectable and somehow representative; then one says pleasandy, see how noble and manly I am! Or, again, in that crowd there is such a vain, obstinate, egoistic little being which will see to it that IT bears the standard, and it will chafe and puff itself up just to have the upper hand; and then one thinks, I am so and so, I am a proper official, or I am a man of principle. Some of the crowd don’t like each other; some, again, band together and form a clique or majority which then shares the self and will not admit the others to power. With me it used to be that ordinary man, that one with the elbows, and the hypochondriac who associated into some kind of a gang and passed myself from hand to hand among them; they had it well in hand and they kept the lead for most of my days. Sometimes the one with the elbows was disappointed, sometimes the ordinary man let go out of goodness, or embarrassment, sometimes the hypochondriac failed from weakness of will; then my standard passed for a while into other hands. The ordinary man was the strongest and most persistent, just a beast of burden, and so he was myself oftenest and longest. That low and evil being never became myself: when its moment arrived the standard, so to speak, was lowered to the ground; there was no self, it was only chaos without guidance or a name.
I know it is ONLY an image; but it is the only image in which I can see my whole life, not enrolled in time, but complete as it stands, with everything that was, and yet with infinitely much that perhaps MIGHT have been.
My Lord, such a crowd—in fact it’s a drama! All the time they are fighting inside us and settling their eternal disputes. Each of those leading persons would like to seize the whole life, want to be in charge, and become that acknowledged self. The ordinary man wanted to take charge of the whole of my life, as well as the one with the elbows and that hypochondriac; that was a tussle, that was a silent and fierce struggle over what I was to be. Such a strange drama where people don’t shout at each other and don’t go for one another with knives; they sit at one table and discuss current and indifferent things; but how it lies between them! Christ, how tensely and hatefully it lies between them! The ordinary good fellow suffers silently and .helplessly; he can’t cry out for he is rather servile by nature; he is glad when he can become absorbed in his work and forget the others. The hypochondriac only gets mixed up at times; he thinks too much about himself, he is annoyed that there are other interests besides himself; God, what a bore those others with their silly worries! And the one with the elbows acts as if he weren’t conscious of that hostile and close atmosphere; he gives himself airs, is ironical, and knows everything better, this ought to be like this and that like that, this isn’t necessary and that ought to be done because it shows promise. And the romantic, he doesn’t listen at all, he thinks of some beautiful stranger and doesn’t know what’s going on. Then in disfavour there is the poor and humble relation, one of God’s beggars; he doesn’t want anything and doesn’t say anything, he only whispers to himself—who knows what he whispers so mysteriously and silently? Perhaps he might look after the hypochondriac and whisper it into his ear, but those gentlemen pay no need to him, nothing of the kind, such a feeble-minded and passive simpleton! And still there’s something that one doesn’t mention; sometimes it rustles and jolts somewhere like a ghost, but the gendemen at the table only frown slightly and go on talking about their affairs as if nothing had happened; they only peer at each other a bit more irritably and spitefully as if they were accusing each other for something spectral that jolts. A strange household. Once somebody forced his way in, that was the poet; he turned everything upside down and haunted this place worse than that ghost; but the others, those self-respecting people, somehow squeezed him out from that decent and almost venerable household—that was already a long time ago, a terribly long time ago. And once a fellow came there, he was the hero; he made no fuss, and began to give orders as if in a fortress, You must get on, boys, and so on. And look, what a crew it was: that one with the elbows was beside himself with all the frenzy, and the ordinary man was strong enough for two, and the hypochondriac suddenly felt, with relief, my life doesn’t matter a brass farthing: That was a time, boys, that was a time for men! And then the War ended and the hero had nothing left to do. Crikey, those other three were relieved when that intruder had gone! Well, thank God, now it’s here, ours again.
To me it’s like a picture, so lively and definite. This, then, is the whole of life, this drama without action, and now already it’s moving slowly to the end; even that eternal dispute has been settled somehow. I see it like a scene. The one with the elbows doesn’t talk any longer so haughtily and doesn’t preach about what ought to be done, he holds his head in his hands and looks down at the ground. Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ! That ordinary good fellow doesn’t know what to say; he is terribly sorry for the man, for that ambitious egoist who has spoiled his life; well, what can one do?—it wasn’t a success, and don’t think about it any longer. But on the other hand, God’s little beggar sits at the table, he holds the hypochondriac by the hand, and whispers something as if he were praying.
THERE were some things in me of which I knew, this is my father, and others in which I felt, this is my mother. But in father and mother again their fathers and mothers existed, of which I knew almost nothing; only one grandfather who they said used to be a great spark, all women and pals; and one grandmother, a saindy and pious woman. Perhaps to some extent they are also present in me, and some member of that crowd bears their features. Perhaps that multitude that is in us is our ancestors for God knows how many generations. That romantic, I know, he was my mother, and that beggar at the church door might have been that pious grandmother, and the hero perhaps the grandfather, a good drinker and a ruffian, who knows ? I’m sorry now that I don’t know anything more about my ancestors; if only I knew what they had been and who they married—from that you might learn all sorts of things. Perhaps each of us is a sum of people which increases from generation to generation. And perhaps we now feel perplexed because of that infinite differentiation, and so we want to escape from it and we accept some mass self to make us less complex.
God knows why I must think of my little brother who died as soon as he was born. The thought worries me as to what he might have been like. Surely quite different from me; brothers are never the same. And yet he was of the same parents and under the same hereditary conditions as I was. He would have grown up in the same joiner’s yard with the same appientice, Frank, and with Mr. Martinek. All the same he might have been more talented than I, or more obstinate, he might have gone farther or done less, who can tell ? Apparently he would have chosen others from the multitude of possibilities with which we come into this world, and he would have been quite a different man. Perhaps in a biological sense we are born a plurality, like that crowd, and only afterwards, through development, environment, and circumstance, one man is more or less fashioned out of us. Surely my little brother would have realized possibilities which were then too much for me, and perhaps I should also have recognized in them many things that are in me.
It is dreadful when one thinks of that uncertainty in life. Two others of the millions of germ cells might have met, and then it would have been another man; it would not then have been myself but some unknown brother, and God can say what a strange fellow he would have been. Another of those thousands, or millions, of possible brothers might have been born; well, it was I who drew the right lot, and they were in a fix; what was to be done? we couldn’t all be born. And what if that plurality of lives that is in us is the crowd of those possible and unborn brothers? Perhaps one of them would have been a joiner and another a hero; one would have gone far and another would have lived like a beggar at the church door; and they weren’t just my own, but THEIR possibilities, too! Perhaps what I took simply to be MY life was OURS; of us who lived and died long ago, and of us who weren’t even born and only MIGHT have been. God, it’s a dreadful thought, dreadful and beautiful; that ordinary course of life which I know so well and by heart suddenly looks to me quite different, it seems immensely big and mysterious. It wasn’t me, it was us. You don’t even know, man, how much you lived!
Yes, now we’re all here and we fill the whole space. So look here, our whole race; and how is it that you all remembered me ?
Well, we came to say good-bye; you know—
What?
Well, before we part. You’ve got it very nice here.
Well, well. My friends, my friends! You must forgive me for not expecting you—
Nice furniture, my boy. It must have cost a lot of money.
It did, daddy.
I can see, my lad, that you have done quite well. I’m very pleased with you.
My only one, my little chap, how badly you look! What ails you ?
Ah that’s mother! Mum, Mummy, I’ve got something wrong with my heart, you know.
Oh, God, with your heart? You see, I also had something wrong with my heart. That’s from my father.
And he’s not here ?
He is. He, you know is that bad grandfather. It was he, poor chap, whose spectre used to haunt here, it’s in our family.
Let me see you, confounded grandfather! So it was you, that sinner ? Who would have thought it of you!
Well, never mind. Who would have thought it of you! It was in you, too.
But not in mother.
I ask you, in a woman! That’s not for women, is it? What can one do ? a fellow must sow his wild oats.
Oh, it’s simple with you, grandfather!
Yes. I was a real fellow, my lad. Well, what, I had my fun sometimes.
And you dragged grandmother by the hair on the floor.
Yes, I did.
So you see; and then they reproach me for wanting to strangle my late wife! That comes from you, grandfather.
But you haven’t got my strength, my boy. You have rather got your nature from women. That’s why it was in you … so strange and secretive.
You may be right in that. So just look at it, from women! Was it you who had that pious and saindy grandmother for his wife ?
Not at all. I had that jolly grandmother. Haven’t you heard of her ?
Now I know! She was that jolly grandmother who was full of fun.
I am that jolly grandmother. Do you remember how you teased that telegraphist ? That came from me.
And where did that humble and holy man come from?
That also came from me, my boy. I suffered much from poor grandfather, no use complaining. You must have patience, well, and you get reconciled.
And what about that other grandmother, that pious and saindy one ?
She, poor dear, was an evil woman. Full of anger, envy, and avarice, and that’s why she made a saint of herself. You’ve got that from her, don’t you know.
What?
Why, that you envied everybody and wanted to be the best of them all, my poor duckie.
And what have I got from the other grandfather ?
Perhaps that you served. That one, my lad, was still a bondsman, and he had to do menial labour for his squire, like his father and grandfather.
And where did the poet come from ?
A poet ? That wasn’t in our family.
And that hero ?
No hero. We were, my boy, all ordinary people. Why, weren’t we and aren’t we as numerous as people at a village wake?
You’re right, grandmother, you’re right, like people at a village wake. And then a man shouldn’t be born as an average of so many people! From everybody he gets something, and together it’s so ordinary and average—thank God!
Thank God!
Thank God, that I was that ordinary man. Indeed, it’s just that that is tremendous—in it you, all of you, so many of you, resting with the Lord!
Amen.
And how many there are of us—like people at a village wake. So many people together—why, it’s like a big festival! You wouldn’t say, good Lord, you wouldn’t even think that life is—such a glory!
And what about us, your possible brothers ?
Where are you ? I can’t see you—
No, you can’t see us, we can only be imagined. For instance—
What, for instance ?
For instance, I should be a joiner, and take over the workshop from father. Don’t you think that it would be a big workshop by now, twenty workers—and what a lot of machines! We should have to buy that potter’s yard to spread into, in any case there’s no potter’s workshop any longer.
Daddy thought of that.
Of course he did, but when he had no son a joiner! It was a pity. After all, it wouldn’t be bad.
It wouldn’t.
But not me, I should be something different. Man, I should have shown that painter’s chap! Frank would have taught me how to fight, and that would be that. He would get something, that blighted painter’s chap!
And what would you like to be then ?
It’s all the same. To smash rocks with a pickaxe, for all I know, stripped to the waist, spit in my hands, and dig. Those muscles, my boy, you would see.
Go away, to smash rocks! I should go to America or somewhere. And not only dream about adventures, that’s nothing. To have a go, damn it, to try your luck and set out into the world. At least you enjoy something and learn.
Enjoy something—you can only do that with women. I should let them have it, chaps? Whether it was a slut or a princess in a tweed suit—
And that canteen woman?
And that canteen woman with her breasts on her belly.
And that whore on the bridge?
That one, too, man. She must have been—gee whiz!
And diat… little girl with frightened eyes ?
That one specially, that one specially. I shouldn’t let her go! And altogether. By Jove, I should have some fun.
And what about you ?
I, nothing.
What should you be ?
Well, nothing, nobody. Only just so, don’t you know.
Should you beg ?
Perhaps even beg.
And you ?
I ? … I should die in twenty-three years. For certain.
And you wouldn’t have enjoyed anything ?
Nothing. But because of that everybody would pity me.
Hm, to think that I should have been killed in the War. Crikey, it’s silly, but at any rate you’re with pals. And when you’re kicking the bucket at least you’re all worked up, so dreadfully and beautifully worked up as if you’re spitting in somebody’s face. You swine, what have you done?
And none of you would be a poet ?
Ugh! When once you’ve begun, then something decent. What you, you were almost the weakest of us, you couldn’t do what we—well, it’s good that you remembered us, brother. After all, we’re all of one blood. You beggar, adventurer, joiner, ruffian, and rake, the one who fell in the War and the one who died early—
We’re all of the same blood.
All. Have you already seen, brother, someone who couldn’t be YOUR BROTHER?
STILL to be a poet, he has it nice; a poet sees what’s in him and he can give it a name and a form. There’s no phantasy, nobody can think out what wouldn’t be in him. To perceive and to hear, in that is the whole miracle and the whole revelation. And to think out to the end what is only suggested in us. And he finds a whole man, and a whole life in what for others is only a tremor or a moment. He is so overcrowded that he must send it into the world. Go, Romeo, and love with the savagery of love, murder, jealous Othello; and you, Hamlet, hesitate as I did. All these are possible lives who lay claim to be lived. And the poet can let them have it with a miraculous and omnipotent fullness.
If like the poets I could give free rein to those lives which were in me then they would look different. Christ, I should make something else out of them! That ordinary man wouldn’t be a station-master; he would be a farmer, an owner who farms his own land; he would curry his horses and plait their manes, two heavy brown geldings with their tails to the ground; he would grab his oxen by the horns and he would lift that cart with one hand, such a whopper. And the whitewashed homestead with red roofs and a wife on the doorstep; she wipes her hands on the apron, and Come, eat, master. We should have children, wife, for our field would yield. Why work if it isn’t for ourselves?—It would be an obstinate and testy farmer, like a slave-driver with his people, but, on the other hand, a nice farm, and what a lot of animals and life swarming there! That, sir, isn’t any longer an enclosure of chips, it’s a real chunk of the world, and real work. Everyone can see what work I’ve done for myself here.—This, then, would be the real story and the complete, full, not partial truth about an ordinary man. That farmer apparently would risk his neck for his homestead: not because it would be tragic; on the contrary, because it’s obvious; isn’t that fine holding worth a man’s life? Maybe he’s working in the fields, and in the village someone rings the alarm bell, there’s a fire somewhere. And then the old farmer runs, his heart isn’t good enough, but he runs; it’s dreadful what a heart like that can do. As if it would burst, as if it were contracting terribly, and couldn’t expand again, but the farmer still runs. Just a few steps, but it’s no longer a heart, it’s already just an overwhelming pain. And here we are, here is the gate and the yard, whitewashed walls and red roofs; why is it turning upside down? No, these aren’t whitewashed walls after all, it’s the sky. But there always used to be a farm here, the farmer wonders; but then people are already running out from the building and are trying to lift the heavy body of a man.
Or the one with the elbows: that would also be quite a different story. First he would get on better, an official table wouldn’t be enough for him; I don’t even know what he’d have to be to satisfy his ambition. And he would be more reckless, he would have a dreadful will to power; he would trample over corpses to achieve his aim; he would sacrifice everything for his career—happiness, love, men, and himself. At first small and humble, he would scramble up at all costs; a model pupil who always crams and helps the teachers on with their coats; a zealous htde official who devours work, flatters his superiors, and denounces his colleagues; then he himself can order others about, discovers what it tastes like. Masterful and callous, he pesters people, like a slave-driver cracking his whip; of course, now he’s becoming an important and useful personality, and he develops faster and faster, always more and more lonely and more and more powerful and always more and more hated. And still he hasn’t got enough, never can he be enough of a master to blot out the humbleness of his beginnings; he still must bow to a few, it’s a wonder that he doesn’t snap in two with eagerness and respect; so that there is still that feeling in him of being small and servile which he hasn’t overcome yet. Well, farther yet, still a bit higher, exert himself to the utmost—and then the one with the elbows stumbles over something, and at once he’s down, he’s in disgrace, degradation, and the end. That’s the reward for wanting to be great, it’s a just retribution. A tragic figure, look at it; he was such a severe gentleman, and now he sits and holds his hand to his heart. Did he ever have a heart? Well, at one time he hadn’t, and suddenly there’s something that aches deeply and horribly. This, then, is his heart, this pain and anxiety; who would have believed that a man may have so much heart!
Or that hypochondriac; just to get him finished properly and he would be a real monster. His story, that would be a prodigious tyranny of weakness and fear, for a weakling is the most terrible tyrant. Everything must turn round him, awestruck and on tiptoes. Nobody must laugh, nobody enjoy life, for there is a sick man here. How can, how is anybody allowed to be healthy and cheerful! Put an end to it, you rascals, may your faces twitch, with pain, may you dry up with fear and depression! At least for you, my kinsmen, I shall poison days and nights with thousands of pettifogging demands, at least you I shall compel to wait upon my illness and weakness—am I not ill, and isn’t it my right, pray? So look at them, they will die sooner! It serves them right, that comes from being healthy! And in the end he alone remains, the hypochondriac; he outlived them all, and now he has no one to pester; now he’s really ill and he’s alone with it; there’s no one with whom he might be annoyed, whom he might blame for being worse again to-day. How selfish of those people to have died! And the hypochondriac who tormented the living begins silently and bitterly to hate the dead who have forsaken him.
And what could be made of that hero—he wouldn’t escape with a whole skin; sometime in the night the soldiers would arrest him—how he would look at them with haughty, burning, derisive eyes, like that painter’s son; he would be shot on the spot, apparently with a bullet in his heart; only one painful twitch, and he would lie between the rails on his back. The mad captain with a revolver: Take that dog away into the lamp room! Four railwaymen drag the body—God Almighty, how heavy such a dead man is! By this time the poet would have been dead long ago, he would have drunk himself to death; he would die in hospital, swollen and dreadful; what’s all this rustling, is it the cocos palms or Wings? The sister of mercy prays over him, she holds his hands so that they don’t wander much in his delirium. Sister, sister, how does it go on:
Gende Jesus, meek-? And the romantic, what about him ?
something would have happened, some great and unusual misfortune; and he would be dying, without a doubt, for that beautiful stranger; his head would be in her lap, and he would whisper: Ne pleurez pas, Madame. Yes, that would be the proper end, these are the right and complete lives as they ought to have been.
And are these all, and are they all dead ? No, there’s still that little beggar of God left yet; he isn’t dead yet, then? No, he’s not, perhaps he’s eternal. He always was there where everything came to an end; and perhaps he’ll be at the end of everything, and he’ll be looking on.
EVERYONE of us is plural, everyone is a host that fades away into the invisible distance. Just look at yourself, man, you are nearly the whole of mankind! That is what is so dreadful about it: when you sin the blame falls on them all, and that huge host bears all your pain and pettiness. You mustn’t, you mustn’t lead so many people along the path of humiliation and vanity. You are myself, you are leading, you are responsible for them; all these you were supposed to bring somewhere.
Yes, but what is one to do when there are so many lives, when there are so many possibilities? Can I lead them all by the hand? Shall I look eternally into myself, and turn my life inside out and outside in—isn’t there anything still left ? haven’t I perhaps overlooked some little crouching figure which, God knows why, is hiding behind the others? Shall I perchance drag out of me some addled embryo of a possible life ? But at least there were nearly half a dozen of them that one could pretty well make out, and call by name, and even that’s more than enough; each would be sufficient for a WHOLE life—why seek farther! If you did you wouldn’t even live, but just rummage about in yourself.
And so let that rummaging be, it wouldn’t lead anywhere. Don’t you see that all the other people, whatever they are, are like you, that they also are hosts ? But you don’t even know what you all have in common with them; only just look—indeed, their life ALSO is one of those countless possible ones that are in you! Even you could be what the other is, you could be a gentleman, or a beggar, or a day-labourer stripped to the waist; you could be that potter, or that baker, or that father of nine children smeared with jam from ear to ear. You are ALL THAT because in you there are those various possibilities. You can look at all people, and in them discern all that is man in you. Everyone lives something of yours, even that ragamuffin whom the gendarmes led away in handcuffs, and that wise and silent lamp attendant, and that drunken captain who drowned his grief—everyone. Look, look carefully so as to see at last all that you might have been; if you search you will see in everyone a fragment of yourself, and then you will recognize with amazement in him your real neighbour.
Yes, it is like that, thank God, it is like that; and no longer am I so much alone with myself. My friends, I can’t go among you any longer, I can’t look at you from a near distance, I can only look out from the window—maybe someone will pass by: a postman, or a child to school, or roadman, or a beggar. Or that youngster may go this way with his girl, they will press their heads together and they won’t even look up at my door. And I can’t even stand any longer by the window, I have such swollen and lifeless legs, as if they were growing cold; but I can still think about people, whether I know them or not—they are as numerous as people at a village wake, such an immense host! God, so many people! Whoever you are, I recognize you; for indeed we are most on a level in that each of us lives some other possibility. Whoever you are, you are my innumerable self; even if I hated you, I shall never forget how terribly near you are to me. I shall love my neighbour as myself; and I shall fear him as if it were myself, and I shall resist him like myself; I shall feel his burden, I shall be vexed with his pain, and I shall groan under the iniquity that is done to him. The nearer I shall be, the more I shall find myself. I shall set limits to the egoists for I myself am an egoist, and I shall serve the sick, for I myself am sick; I shall not pass by a beggar at the church door because I am poor like him, and I shall make friends with all who labour for I am one of them. I am what I can understand. The more people I learn to know in their lives the more my own will be fulfilled. And I shall be all that I might have been, and what was only possible will be reality. The more I grow die less there will be of that self that limits me. But, indeed that self was like a thief’s little lamp—there was nothing but what was within its own compass. But now you, and you, and you, you are so many, we are as numerous as people at a village wake; God, how much bigger does this world grow with other people! one wouldn’t admit that it is such a space, such a glory!
And that is the real, ordinary life, the most ordinary life, not that which is mine, but that which is ours, the immense life of us all. We are all ordinary when there are so many of us; and yet—such a festival! Perhaps even God is quite an ordinary life, only to perceive him and know. I might find him perhaps in the others, since I have not found him and known him in me; he might be met perhaps among the people, he might perhaps have quite an ordinary face like us all. He might reveal himself… perhaps in the joiner’s yard; not that he would appear, but suddenly one would know that he was there, and everywhere, and it wouldn’t matter that the planks bang and the plane sings; father wouldn’t even raise his head, Frank wouldn’t even stop whistling, and Mr. Martinek would look with beautiful eyes, but he wouldn’t see anything particular; it would be quite an ordinary life, and at the same time such an immense, amazing glory. Or it would be in the wooden hut, shut with a hasp and smelling like a beast; such a darkness with light only coming in through a chink, and then everything would begin to stand out in a radiance strange and dazzling, all that muck and that misery. Or the last station in the world, the rusty line grown over with shepherd’s-purse and hair-grass, nothing beyond, and the end of everything; and that end of everything would just be God. Or the lines running into space, and meeting at infinity, lines which hypnotize; and no longer should I set out along them after who knows what adventure, but straight, straight, quite straight into infinity. It might be that it was there, that EVEN THAT was in my life, but I missed it. Perhaps it’s night, a night with little red and green lights, and in the station the last train is standing; no international express, -but quite an ordinary little train, a parliamentary train that stops at every station; why shouldn’t an ordinary train like that go into infinity ? Bim, bim, the workman taps the wheels with his hammer, the porter’s lantern flickers on the platform, and the station-master looks at his watch, it would already be time. The doors of the compartments bang, they all salute, ready, and the little train gathers speed over the points into the darkness along that infinite line. Wait, but there are plenty of people, Mr. Martinek sits there, the drunken captain sleeps in the corner like a log, the little dark girl presses her nose to the window and sticks out her tongue, and from the van of the last carriage the guard greets with his flag. Wait, I’m coming with you!
The doctor was in his garden when Mr. Popel came to return the manuscript, again so carefully tied round as if it were a fascicle of completed deeds.
“Have you read it?” the doctor asked.
“I have,” murmured the old gentleman, unable to think of anything else to say. “Listen,” he blurted out after a while, “but it couldn’t have done him any good, to write things like that! It’s clear from his handwriting how unsteady he was towards the end, as if his hand was shaky.” He looked at his own hand; no, thank God, it’s not so shaky yet. “I think that it must have upset him, don’t you? In his state of health—”
The doctor shrugged his shoulders. “Of course it was bad for him. It was still lying on the table when they asked me to see him. He must have just finished it—if it really is finished at all—down to the last dot. Of course, it would have been better for him if he had played patience or something like that.”
“Perhaps he might have been still alive, eh?” surmised Mr. Popel hopefully.
“Oh, yes,” mumbled the doctor. “A couple of weeks, or a month or two—”
“Poor man,” said Mr. Popel with emotion.
The garden was silent, except that somewhere on the other side of the fence a child was shouting. The old gentleman thoughtfully stroked the turned-up corners of the manuscript. “Tell me,” he said suddenly, “what ought I to say of my own life! It wasn’t just simple and … ordinary like his, my friend. You are still young, you don’t know yet what kind of things a man can fall into…. Where should I get to if I tried to explain it all somehow? Well, it was, and what’s the use of talking. And you, you, of course, as well—”
“I haven’t time for such-like things,” said the doctor. “To potter about inside oneself, or that sort of thing. Thanks very much, I find enough muck in other people.”
“So you say,” Mr. Popel began hesitatingly, “better to play patience—”
The doctor glanced at him quickly; don’t you worry, I shall not examine you here! “It depends,” he said curdy, “on what one does best.”
The old gentleman blinked thoughtfully. “He was such a good, orderly man—” The doctor turned and made as if he were pinching off a withered flower. “Perhaps you’d like to know,” he murmured, “I’ve changed those aquilegais in his garden there. So that now he’s gone everything is left in order.”