Three Novels: Hordubal, Meteor, an Ordinary Life

by Karel Čapek

  “How depressing the wind is.”

  “It’s gets on one’s nerves,” said the surgeon. “Come and have a drink of coffee.”

  CHAPTER II

  THERE was an aroma of iodoform, coffee, tobacco, and maleness. A good, strong smell, something like a field dressing station. Or perhaps not, wait a bit: a quarantine station. Tobacco from Cuba, coffee from Porto Rico, and wind in Jamaica; stuffy, the wind, and the flurry of the tossing palm trees. Seventeen new cases, doctor, they’re dying like flies. Out with the carbolic, quick with the chloride of lime; get a move on, men, and keep a watch on all the roads; nobody must move from here, the plague is on us. Yes, not a single person, till we’ve all gone under. The poet began to grin. But in that case, doctor, I should have to take the position of responsibility—I, the author. I lead in that battle, an old colonial surgeon, a veteran of plague epidemics, who knows the ropes; and you are my scientific assistant. Or perhaps not, not you, but that hairy fellow from the Medical ward. How are your cultures getting on? The fellow’s eyes stick out in terror, the tufts of his hair fall over his forehead. Doctor, doctor, I think I’ve caught the infection. Well, that will make the eighteenth case; get him to bed. I shall sit up with him to-night, sister. See, see how that girl looks, how she looks at his hair all clammy with fever! I know she loves him; silly girl, she’d kiss him if I went away—she’ll be getting the infection next. How those battered Creodoxas rustle and sigh! Feverish hand, what would you like to clutch? Don’t reach after us, we don’t know, we can’t. Give me your hand, I will take you so that you need not be afraid. Pulse like a thread, in extremis; fetch the screen, sister.

  “Sugar?” said the surgeon.

  The poet tore himself from his brooding. “What?”

  In silence the surgeon placed the bowl of sugar in front of him. “I’ve had lots to do to-day,” he said vaguely. “I’m looking forward to the holidays.”

  “Where shall you go ?”

  “Shooting.”

  The poet looked attentively at the taciturn man. “One day you ought to go a long way—for tigers or jaguars. While there are still some left.”

  “I should like to.”

  “Listen, doesn’t it strike you? Can’t you imagine—shall we say, the dawn in the jungle, the warbling of some strange bird, something like a xylophone soaked in oil and rum.”

  The surgeon shook his head. “I don’t imagine anything. I … I have to take damned good care to keep my eyes open. To see, don’t you know? And when you’re shooting,” he added, squinting with his eyes, “you must keep your eyes open too if you want to see properly.”

  The poet sighed. “Well, you’re lucky, my friend. Always when I look I imagine something at the same time. Or rather it’s like this: it begins to take shape in my mind by itself, it goes on, and begins to exist as something apart—Of course, I interfere; I advise, improve, and so on, do you understand?”

  “And then you write it down,” murmured the surgeon.

  “No, not at all! Not usually. Such trash. In the short time you were making coffee, two perfecdy silly stories took shape like that about your long-haired colleague from the Medical ward. I beg your pardon,” he inquired suddenly, “what kind of a man is he ?”

  The surgeon hesitated. “Well,” he said at last, “a bit of a braggart…. A big dose of self-conceit—as is usual with young doctors. Otherwise,” with a shrug of the shoulders, “I don’t know what you would find interesting in him.”

  The poet could not restrain himself. “Is there anything between him and that little nurse?”

  “I don’t know,” snorted the surgeon. “Is it any business of yours?”

  “No,” said the poet contritely. “After all, is it any business of mine how things are in reality ? My task is to invent, isn’t it, to play, pretend—” The poet leaned forward with his heavy shoulders. “That’s just the trouble, sir: reality means such a frightful lot to me. That’s why I invent it, that’s why I always have to invent something to catch hold of it. What I see with my eyes is not enough, I want to see more—and so I invent stories. Please tell me, is there any sense in it? Has it anything to do with life at all? Supposing that just now I’m working on something—

  Let’s suppose that I’m writing something,” repeated the poet after a pause. “I know that it’s … only a fiction. And I know, my friend, what fiction is, I know how it’s done: one part experience, three parts phantasy, two parts logical construction, and the rest artful guile: that it is fresh, that it is topical, that something is being solved or proved in it, and chiefly that it’s effective. But one thing is peculiar,” the poet burst out, “that all these tricks, all that miserable literary hackwork leaves the man who performs it with an accursed and passionate illusion that it has something to do with reality. Imagine a conjurer who can produce rabbits from out of a hat, and who really believes at the same time that he does truly and honesdy conjure them out of the honest hat. What madness!”

  “Something of yours didn’t come off, isn’t that it?” inquired the surgeon dryly.

  “No, it didn’t. I was walking along the street one evening, and I heard a woman’s voice behind me which said: ‘But you won’t do that to me, surely.’ Nothing else, only those words—perhaps no one even spoke, and it only seemed so to me. You won’t do that to me, surely.”

  “Well, and what next?” asked the surgeon, after a pause.

  “What would come next,” frowned the poet. “From that … a story has grown. That woman was in the right, you understand: a frayed, evil, unhappy woman—And the misery, my friend, in which those people live! But she was in the right; she is the family, the household, she is in a word, order; while he—” He made a gesture with his hand. “A dirty dog, such a blind and physical revolt, a lout, and a brutal fellow—”

  “And how did it turn out?”

  “What?”

  “What was the end of it ?” asked the surgeon patiently.

  “… I don’t know. She ought to have been in the right. In the name of everything in the world, in the name of every law she ought to have been in the right. Do you understand, it all depended on the fact that she was right.” The poet began to break up a lump of sugar. “But that fellow took it in his head that he was also in the right. And the more awful and damnable he was, the more he felt that he was right. For it was evident,” mumbled the poet, “that he was suffering too, do you understand? There was nothing that could be done; once he began to live in reality, he was not to be ordered about, and he just went his own way, doomed, and inevitable—” The poet shrugged his shoulders. “So you see in the end it was I myself who was that lout, that depraved and desperate wretch; the more he endured, the more it was I—and you call it fiction.”

  The poet turned towards the window, for there are some things that are more easily spoken into the void. “It won’t do, I must get rid of it. I should like to … I ought just to play with something … with something unreal. That has nothing, nothing, nothing to do with reality … or with myself. To be free for once from that terrifying personal experience. Tell me, must I suffer every human agony ? Just for once I should like to invent something very remote, and fantastic—as if I were blowing rainbow bubbles.”

  The telephone rang. “Well, why don’t you do it?” asked the surgeon, lifting the receiver, but he had no time to wait for the answer. “Hello!” he said into the telephone. “Yes, speaking—What?—Oh!—So let them take him to the operating theatre—Of course—I’m coming straight away.”

  “They’ve brought someone in,” said the surgeon, hanging up the receiver. “He fell from the sky—I mean an aeroplane crashed and caught fire. What the devil, in such a storm! The pilot is burnt to cinders, they say; and the other—well, a poor wretch.” The doctor paused. “I shall have to leave you here. But wait, f 11 send you a patient—an interesting case, medically trivial, I only took an abscess from his neck; but the man is a clairvoyant. Strong second sight, and that sort of thing. But don’t you believe him
too much.” And the surgeon bolted out of the door like a shot, without waiting for the poet’s protest.

  CHAPTER III

  WELL, SO this is the clairvoyant, this pitiable figure in striped pyjamas, with a bandaged neck, and his head on one side, poor devil! It hangs on him as if on a peg, he shuffles to the table, and with cold and trembling fingers lights a cigarette. If at least his eyes were not so close together, and sunken, if only they were not so distracted, if only he would look at things! Good God, nice company the doctor presented me with! What can you talk about with such a spectre? Certainly not about terrestrial things; as everyone knows, it’s rather tactless to begin to talk about the latest news with someone from beyond the grave.

  “It is a wind out there,” said the clairvoyant, and the poet breathed a sigh of relief. May the weather be blessed, for it’s a familiar subject with people who have nothing to say to each other. It is a wind out there, he said, and yet it wasn’t worth his while to look out through the window at the tragic flight of the trees. Well, a clairvoyant! Why should he look? He fixes his eyes on the tip of his nose, and see, already he knows that the wind is raging outside. Strange things! You can say what you like, but this is second sight, isn’t that right—

  What a sight, those two; the poet leaned forward with his heavy shoulders, stuck his chin out, and with tacdess curiosity, yes, with a certain amount of hostility, he sized up the bowed head, the thin chest, and the thin, protruding beak of the little man opposite. Was he going to bite him? No, not that, for somehow he felt repelled by him, pardy for this and that in his physical appearance, and pardy because he was a clairvoyant; as if he were something impure and loathsome. But the other—perhaps he didn’t even see; he gazed, without looking, his head to one side, like a bird. And the state between them was cold, tense, and repellent.

  “A strong character,” murmured the clairvoyant, as if to himself.

  “Who?”

  “The man they’ve brought in.” The clairvoyant blew out a thick cloud of smoke. “In him there’s … a frightful intensity, what shall I call it: a flame, fire, heat…. Now, of course, it’s only a conflagration burning down.”

  The poet grinned; he could not stand such misplaced bathos.

  “So you’ve already heard of it, too ?” he observed. “Aeroplane on fire, and so on….”

  “An aeroplane?” replied the clairvoyant absent-mindedly. “So that’s it, just think of it, he was flying in a wind like this! Like a flaming meteor, about to burst into pieces. Why was he in such a tremendous hurry?” The clairvoyant shook his head. “I don’t know, I don’t know anything; he’s unconscious, and he doesn’t know what’s happened to him. But even from the sooty fireplace you can judge how far the flame burned up. How deeply it burned! And how the embers still glow!”

  The poet snorted with disgust. No, absolutely, I can’t stick this morbid dummy. Yes, it was a devil of an ember, if we realize that the pilot got fried to death; and this striped scarecrow here doesn’t even say poor fellow. It’s true, of course: why had that bolt from the blue to fly in such a wind ?

  “Strange,” murmured the clairvoyant under his breath. “And from such a distance! His way lay across the ocean. Queer how the place where a man was last still sticks to him. The sea has stuck to him.”

  “By what signs ?”

  The clairvoyant shrugged his shoulders. “Just the sea and the distance—There must have been many ways in his life. Do you know where he came from?”

  “You ought to be able to tell that yourself?” said the poet, as pointedly as he could.

  “How can you tell?—He’s unconscious, and doesn’t know anything. Can you read a closed book ? It can be done, but it’s difficult, very difficult.”

  “Reading closed books,” murmured the poet. “I’m inclined to think, to say the least, is a waste of time.”

  “Perhaps it is for you,” thought the clairvoyant, squinting in the direction of the corner. “Yes, for you it is futile. You are a poet, aren’t you ? Be thankful that you haven’t to think precisely, be thankful that you needn’t try to read closed books. Your task is easier.”

  “Meaning what?” challenged the poet defiandy.

  “This and nothing else,” said the clairvoyant. “To invent and to perceive are two separate things.”

  “And of us two, you are the one who perceives, aren’t you ?”

  “A pretty good guess this time,” said the clairvoyant, nodding his head as if to punctuate the conversation with his nose.

  The poet began to grin. “I should say that we two don’t intend to understand each other, don’t you think so ? Well, it’s true, I only invent things, I imagine what I like, don’t I ? Just a casual whim—”

  “I know,” exclaimed the clairvoyant, interrupting him. ‘You ALSO thought of that man who fell out of the blue. You ALSO imagined the sea behind him. I know. But you hit on the idea only by a kind of conclusion that most of the air lines link up with the ports. A perfectly superficial reason, sir. From the fact that he MIGHT have come from the sea it doesn’t follow that he really did come from there. A typical non sequitur, sir. It’s not permissible to draw conclusions from possibilities. And so that you may know,” he burst out testily, “that man really has got the sea behind him. I know.”

  “How?”

  “Quite certainly. By the analysis of the impression.”

  “You saw him?”

  “No. I needn’t see a violinist to recognize what he’s playing, need I?”

  The poet thoughtfully stroked the back of his neck. “The impression of the sea—Perhaps that’s because I like the sea. But I’m not thinking of any sea that I’ve ever seen. I’m imagining a sea warm and thick like oil, and it glistens as if it were greasy. It is all seaweed, like a meadow. And from time to time something flashes up, and sparkles heavy like quicksilver.”

  “They are the flying fish,” observed the clairvoyant, apropos of something he was thinking of himself.

  “Damned man,” mumbled the poet, “you’re right, they’re flying fish.”

  CHAPTER IV

  IT was a long time before the surgeon returned. At last he came, and murmured absent-mindedly: “Oh, you’re still here!”

  The clairvoyant with his melancholy nose gazed at some place in the void. “Severe concussion of the brain,” he said. “Evidently an internal injury. Fracture of the lower jaw, and of the base of the skull. Superficial and severe burns on the face and hands. Fractura claviculae.”

  “Correct,” said the surgeon thoughtfully. “He’s in a bad way. And how do you know all this, may I ask?”

  “You have just been thinking of it,” said the clairvoyant, as if by way of apology.

  The poet frowned. Go to Jericho, magician, do you think that you impress me ? And if you repeat word for word what one is thinking about, don’t imagine that I shall believe you.

  “And who is he really?” he asked, to change the subject.

  “Who knows,” muttered the doctor. “All papers on him were burnt. They’ve found some French, English, and American coins in his pocket, and a Dutch dubbeltje. Perhaps he flew by way of Rotterdam, but the aeroplane wasn’t one of the regular liners.”

  “Didn’t he tell you anything ?”

  The surgeon shook his head. “Nothing at all. Completely unconscious. I should be astonished if he says anything at all.”

  The silence became oppressive. The clairvoyant got up, and slouched towards the door. “A closed book, eh?”

  The poet frowned after him until he had disappeared down the corridor. “Were you really thinking what he said, doctor ?”

  “Why, of course. That was the statement that I had just dictated. I don’t like this thought-reading. From a medical standpoint,” he said thoughtfully. “It’s an indiscretion.” With this, apparently, he let the matter drop.

  “But that’s humbug!” the poet burst out indignantly. “It’s impossible for one man to know what another thinks! To some extent you can deduce it logically—W
hen you came back I knew at once that you were thinking … of that man who fell from the blue. I saw that you were worried, that you were in doubt about something, that it was extremely serious. And I said to myself, wait, perhaps that means an internal injury.”

  “Why?”

  “From reasoning—logical deductions. I know you, doctor, you don’t let your mind wander; but when you came back you made motions as if to unbutton your operating coat, although you had already taken it off. From this it was obvious that in your thoughts you were still with your patient. Aha, I said to myself, something is preying on his mind. Perhaps something that he can neither see nor touch—most probably an internal injury.”

  The surgeon nodded moodily.

  “But I looked at you,” the poet went on. “That’s the whole trick: to observe and deduce—that, at least, is straightforward work. But that magician of yours,” he muttered spitefully, “just looks at the tip of his nose, and tells you what you’re thinking about. I watched him carefully, he didn’t even squint at you. It was… disgusting.”

  And again the only sound was the booming of the wind. “Even now, doctor, you’re thinking about that case. There’s something peculiar about him, isn’t there?”

  “He’s got no face,” said the surgeon in a low voice. “He’s been burned so badly…. No face, or name, or consciousness. If only I knew something about him!”

  “Or this: why did he fly in such a wind? Where was he so dreadfully keen on going to ? What was he afraid of losing ? What senseless and impatient motive shot him forth? At any rate, he wasn’t afraid of death. I’ll pay you pilot, ten times over if you’ll take me where I want to go. If it’s a gale from the west, all the better, at least we shall fly faster—And nothing has been found on him … ?”

  The surgeon shook his head. “Well, come, have a look at him, if you can’t let the matter drop,” he said suddenly, getting up.

  The sister of mercy sitting beside the bed rose with difficulty; she had fat, swollen legs, and a flat and colourless face, a weary vessel of charity. The old man on the next bed turned his face away; he was too interested in his own suffering to attempt to bridge the gap that lies between the sick and the healthy.