Three Novels: Hordubal, Meteor, an Ordinary Life

by Karel Čapek

  Mr. Kettelring raised bloodshot eyes. ‘Last time he wrote that the erectors had nearly finished the presses; now he writes that the room for the presses hasn’t got a roof on yet.’

  The Cuban bit his cigar; had he not other worries now?

  ‘Somebody ought to have a look at that building,’ mumbled Kettelring, and again started rattling the machine.

  The old Cuban began to snigger silently. ‘That is an idea, Kettelring, Wouldn’t you like to go there?’

  Este hombre shrugged his shoulders, it was apparently all the same to him; but the Cuban veiled himself in smoke, and meditated, rocking with laughter.

  ‘Excellent, sir, you go to Haiti. In the meantime things will cool down here, and we need someone to look after our affairs over there. There is the agency at Port au Prince, those things in Gonaiva, and in Samana—but you know about them.’ The old Camagueyno was immensely amused. I should like to know what este hombre will do on Haiti; it’s not like Cuba, sabe? Most likely he will drive himself to death with rum, as long as the negresses don’t shake him out of his trousers; there people get so idiotic that they don’t even steal. It’s true we need an able man; there’s money to be made there—The Cuban grew serious. Haiti isn’t Cuba; there the Americanos haven’t yet stolen it by bits, nobody can stick it there, no, nobody can stand the life, but a negro. All the same, you could buy and sell there—And this man hasn’t got overmuch conscience. He may stick it there; a man can stand a lot when he’s got no conscience.

  ‘I’ll go,’ replied Mr. Kettelring indifferently.

  The Camagueyno grew lively; dipping some sort of a pear into salt, he began with a full mouth to explain what information he wanted from there. ‘Drink, Kettelring, your health; and mind the women, they’re quite mad after fair hair. I’m looking for land that would do for sugar-cane. I put my money on sugar, Kettelring, for ten more years I put my money on sugar-cane, a la salud de usted! And beware of sorcerers, those cattle aren’t even Christians. Yes, we shall want a warehouse in Gonaiva. I’m sending you as if you were my son, Kettelring, and I warn you, beware of those obeahos, those sorcerers. That, and see you bribe the officials, that’s the chief thing.’ The old Cuban sucked some dark wisdom from his cigar. ‘Rather negresses than mulattos, man; a negress is at least a beast, but a mulatto is a devil. A devil, I tell you. Mind that agency in Port au Prince. Don’t forget to take with you some stuff for the bugs, Kettelring, and write to me how it goes, and how it is there with the women.’ ”

  CHAPTER XXVII

  “OF course I went to have a look round the hothouse at the Botanical Gardens to give myself an idea of tropical vegetation. Now I should be able to describe sufficiently well the Crotons, whose leaves are streaked with red and yellow, so magnificent that you might think they’re poisonous; Acalyphas with its bright red leaves, the velvet foliage of Anthurium hanging over the dark pools, and smelling sweetly of decay, the bushes of black pepper, and the hard cups of Bromelias, from which spring incredibly pink or ethereally blue sprays of flowers, Pandanus standing on the tips of its roots, sharply toothed like little saws, not to speak of the palms; amongst those an ordinary individual who doesn’t walk about with his head tipped back, like Gulliver when he came from Brobdingnag, can’t find his way about. But if I had to say concisely what I imagine a tropical country to be like, I should have to leave all that aside and burst out like Rimbaud into data geographically rather vague. ‘I came to incredible Floridas, you know, where eyes of panthers, with human skins, mingle with flowers, and rainbows stretched like reins; I saw fermenting swamps where gigantic snakes, eaten by bugs, drop from crooked evil-smelling trees; I would like to show the children those golden countries….’

  Yes, something like that; but one would have to slash that festering jungle with the white-hot hatchet of the sun, set fire to the weeds, and beat out the sparks with a naked paw; plant batatas, or coffee trees, and build straw huts, and only then show the children these golden countries, where flowers and scents mingle, human skins and commercial agents, huge snakes, export, and labour, the blue sheen of the butterflies, and the international conventions about the supply of fruit. What an immense and exuberant bastardy, what a wild jungle; you must realize that I’m not wandering into a paradise where 1 should rest in the shadow of the palms, and let Nature embrace me, cover me with purple blossoms, and the scent of jasmine: alas, alas, things aren’t so simple for me! I should like to peep inside to see what a hellish and acrid sauce is stewing there, made up of the sun, conjuncture, human races, and business, of wilderness and credit, of basic instincts, and civilization; my friend, not even the devil would like to stir the spoon in that saucepan. I should like to see which is fiercer, the Green Snake to which the negroes bow, or the Laws of Economics to which we bend the knee; I know only that these two together make a jungle more fantastic than the groves of Equisetum, in which the Dinosaurs sat on eggs. There is the question whether that black chicken, scratching itself in the shadow of the sweet potatoes, will be sold at the market, or whether its head will be bitten off for the propitiation of the incensed and supreme Snake. I should like to see how the Green Snake, coiled up in his armchair, smiles into the telephone, and expedites his commercial affairs. What, the exchange in Amsterdam is weak ? Well, we’ll abolish the plantations on the Leeward Islands. The Green Snake is annoyed, and lashes his tail round the oceans of the world.

  And I went to look up the statistics to have a whiff and see how that tropical sauce is being cooked. Taking the Antilles, you have all conceivable variations; beginning with Cuba, where only one-third are colorados and two-thirds are white (this is contrary to the classical tradition of slave countries; the right proportion is two coloured to one white), and finishing with the republic of Haiti, where in tropical despair a handful of whites live in agony among the shouting and neighing negroes. To heighten the effect, don’t forget the Syrian usurers, Chinese, and coolies imported from India, Java, or Oceanea. What an excellent idea! an imported coolie is more easily managed than local labour; just wait till the Green Snake colonizes Europe, the workers will be taken from one country to another; they will obey better, and will be interested in nothing but work and copulation.

  And this hot sauce is thoroughly savoured with the salt of the earth. Every colonial power sends there its chosen specimens to represent with dignity the message of the white races. Go out into the world and teach all nations what is State and Commerce; wherever your foot falls, set up offices, and commercial agencies. Show those poor savages the blessings of civilization in the form of the ill-tempered, irritated, unhealthy men, who feel themselves in exile, and count their days and money looking forward to the time when they can come back to their aunts and cousins. They must be made to believe that on their loins rests the Dignity of the State, or its Prosperity, so that they don’t drink themselves to death through nostalgia and laziness, and still hang on marking time with questions of prestige, with gossip, and with changing their sweaty shirts. A man like Camagueyno, at least, made no pretence that he represented any higher interests; he was an honest pirate, and therefore we have dwelt on him with a certain pleasure.

  So we have got it thoroughly mixed up in our saucepan; British, American, French, Dutch governors, lieutenants, commercial representatives, and warehouse-keepers; beautiful Creoles, and old settlers, something like a colonial aristocracy; from here we can cheerfully jump down the steps of mankind from complexions nut brown, to tealike, light coffee, down to the whiteness of leprosy. In our wardrobe we have the sombreros of the Cubans and the orange shoes of the mulattos, the shiny nakedness of Yorubas and the variegated turbans of the girls from Guadeloupe, and all this brought together from everywhere, swept up and moved from the whole world; fabulous sweepings, in which it is possible to rummage; Spanish, African, British, and French traditions in a state of anachronous ex-clusiveness or grotesque bastardization. Only humming-birds, toads, jungle, and tobacco, not counting the weeds, and diseases are genuine there. Others sprang
up on the rubbish-heap of the human business.

  These are, then, the islands of my desire, this is how I imagine them; as you see, I do not hunt for rainbow-coloured butterflies, nor do I pretend to be a dreamer flying into virgin nature to worship the sun naked and garlanded. Nothing of the sort. If I call it an escape, then it is an escape into the very centre of things, where everything is in conflict, and where ages copulate in an addled medley of cultures. Here there is still orgy and violence, here gain is sought for convulsively and widely like fornication. Let it be, this is how mankind appears to us in the remarkable amplitude of its human … and inhuman qualities.”

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  “THAT sugar factory on Haiti I imagine to have been near a negro village called on the maps, let us say, Les deux Maries; it consisted of some partly built walls, no machines, and three hundred acres of yellow, cracked soil, grown over with jungle weed and sugar-cane of the fourth ratoon, that is, the fifth year, one without juice or sugar. The Dutchman had already discreetly disappeared some time ago, and Mr. Kettelring moved into his hut after he had the centipedes killed off. On the whole he felt content; behind his back was the jungle, a thicket of chestnut trees, kaklines, and devil trees, the little bird keskidy sang to him, and in the evening, in the evening the shining beetles swarmed out from the thicket, and the bats flitted in a zig-zag course over the dry buzzing of the sugarcane. From the village he could hear the negroes drumming and dancing, celebrating the arrival of their new master. Mr. Kettelring sighed with relief, here, my word, you needn’t have a name, and as for a memory, what could you do with it, what could you do with it ? You blink with heat, or sleepiness, and have no desire to wander in time along the footpaths of reminiscence. You are here, and that’s enough; it’s such a lasting, buzzing present.

  He ought to have written a letter to Camagueyno to say what it looked like there, but he felt too lazy. Round the hut the convolvulus and hibiscus flourished, kasava and the mafafo banana; a hairy caterpillar crawled on a stalk, and an ant ran up and down across a huge leaf as if it had some business there. For a time it amused him to watch the lizards chasing one another on the factory wall; but then the lizards became stiff, and sat still, sat as if nailed down; if only there was a stone to throw—they would flash like lightning! But wait, I’ll make you move. With his finger, Mr. Kettelring beckoned to a negro who was hiding behind a wall. It was the local mayor, labour contractor, surveyor, and altogether a dignitary. ‘What state of affairs is this,’ says Mr. Kettelring. ‘You band of thieves, you toads, get a move on and build the factory; bring here thirty men, do you understand, compris ? I’ll make the bullets fly, you sluggards!’ Yes, and then a score of negroes swarmed on to the plot, and made a show as if they were building something; the lizards had their rest cut short, and Mr. Kettelring blinked his eyes in the quivering heat. At least something was going on; at least it seemed to him as if he were doing something; at least he needn’t look at an unfinished, miserable wall, on which a lizard sat immovable as if it were fixed to the spot. Something was going on, and days, weeks, months passed; and nights, well, at night there was palm wine, and sleep, at night there were the stars, you could exist through the night.

  Now they were putting the rafters on; it was about time to begin inquiring for what purpose this huge edifice was being built. Around it nearly the whole village was messing about, old hags, young pigs, naked children, hens, every living thing, at least something was going on. But it won’t be a sugar factory, there are no machines. Quick, laggards, quick, don’t you see that in the corner a lizard had stopped again as if it didn’t know what it was after? It might be, say, a drying-shed; a drying-shed is always handy for something.

  Sometimes a neighbour came to see him on a mule, a young planter, his name was Pierre; a peasant son from Normandy, who wanted to make money there so that he could get married at home. He was gaunt, and heavy, tormented with swellings and fever, death looked out of his eyes. ‘You Englishmen,’ he used to say (for he took Mr. Kettelring for a Briton), ‘you know how to command; but a man who saves will never learn. No, a man who saves can’t make a master. When these negroes saw that I was working with these paws of mine—it was impossible to live with them any longer. Do you think that I can order them to do something ? They laugh in my face, and they do all kinds of things to me on purpose—and lazy, my God!’—He trembled with hatred and disgust—’This year they let seven acres of young coffee trees perish—I couldn’t weed it myself, could I?’—He was so embittered, he nearly cried—’And when I go to Port au Prince to those gentlemen in white shoes who call themselves commercial representatives, and I say, I have coffee, I have ginger, I can deliver nutmegs—”We don’t want anything.” Say, Kettelring, well, why do they stay here, if they don’t want anything? Not that they’re catching flies. They behave as if I weren’t even there. And then they say: “What do you want after all ? We can give you so much and so much”—a ridiculous price. And they’re Frenchmen too, Kettelring. If you knew what it is to be up there—’

  Pierre swallowed heavily, and his Adam’s apple ran up and down; he scratched all over his body where the red mite itched him. ‘But this is hell,’ he growled. ‘These mulattos—they think that they’re as good as me. “My father was an American agent, I am no nigger,” these loafers say, puffing themselves up. And I slave—I have a girl in le Havre, a good girl, she’s a typist in a shop; if only, sir, I could sell out and have a thousand or two francs left.’ With his head in his hands, Pierre remembered how it was in his old home; he didn’t even notice that Mr. Kettelring never told him any reminiscences in return, for recollection is selfish. He complained of sweat and weariness; they advised him to eat elephant lice, nuts of kashu trees, these, they said, drive weariness away, and sharpen the wits. After that, poor Pierre always had his pockets full of them, and he chewed them continually; he didn’t realize that besides other things they were also aphrodisiac, and he was pining with desire for his girl. Besides, he was frightened of the negresses because he thought they were diseased, and he loathed them because he hated negroes; hadn’t they ruined his seven acres of coffee? ‘Say, Kettelring,’ he mumbled feverishly, ‘say, do you sleep with them ? I couldn’t—’

  Once when he hadn’t appeared for ten days Mr. Kettelring went to look him up. Pierre was down with pneumonia, and couldn’t recognize him. ‘Mon amant,’ boasted the negress in the hut, a horrid woman, covered with scabs. ‘Moi, sa femme, eh ? Since last night.’ She neighed and slapped her thighs, while her breasts dangled.

  A few days afterwards Pierre died.

  Strange how people begin to be interested in a man when he’s dead. Two days afterwards a couple of gendemen arrived from below, from Port au Prince. And what will happen to the plantations of Mr. Pierre. They also called on Mr. Kettelring. They sat with him, they smeared their sores with palm olive and simaruba ointment, and cursed the whole lousy region. ‘You could make money here if those nigger scum weren’t as lazy as lice; how is it here with labour conditions ? and what are you building, Mr. Kettelring—sugar factory, or what?’ Mr. Kettelring waved his hand contemptuously. ‘Sugar, here? The country is too dry, sir. Grow cotton-wool here, that would be something. Well, to set your minds at rest, this will be a drying-shed for cotton.’

  Both gentlemen stopped for a bit to smear themselves, and to kill mosquitoes on their sweaty shanks. ‘Well, look here, a drying-shed for cotton—why, we’re interested in cotton. A planter from New Orleans, but labour’s too dear there now. Those lousy niggers up there have already got their trade unions, would you believe it? And how much arable land is there here ?’

  Mr. Kettelring pictured to them three hundred acres of cultivated land; it was, however, mostly a jungle, but in any case it was all the same, nobody would come to look at it. Besides, he didn’t believe in any American planter who was interested in cotton, and why cotton, anyhow? The Haitian Cotton Plantation Society would be founded, and shares would be sold; the deuce take the cotton, business do
esn’t want any cotton; a drying-shed and land is enough for throwing on the market nicely printed shares with which a meritorious piece of work of commercial and political enterprise would be done. At the top of the shares there would be a picture of happy negroes with a perspective view of the new drying-shed in the background. Poor Mr. Pierre; his coffee trees will now be choked with weeds for good.

  God knows, I should like to describe something else, the flowers of frangipans, the blossoms of marhaniks, and the brilliancy of butterfly wings; why, indeed, do I surround myself with that dreadful wall of yellow and muddy brick ? Where have I got to, this is a nice tropical country for me! I might go down into my garden and enjoy campanulas in flower, and the morning freshness of the bushes; instead, I blink my eyes in the midday glare at the yellow wall of the drying-shed lined with banana skins, excrement, and rotting stalks, and I can’t deny myself a deep satisfaction. Now, at last we’re here, so far, that we can prop our elbows on our knees, and laze. Well, that’s how it looks, and this is reality; this wall, long and dirty yellow, baked by the sun. And so we have, praise be to God, escaped to the other side of the world.

  There we left Mr. Kettelring; he was sitting in front of his hut, chewing pig plums, and frowning at the lizards fixed motionless on the wall of the drying-shed. A huge nigger from Port au Prince arrived, carrying a letter on his head. It was old Camagueyno writing, muy amigo mio, and so on; in short, he was rubbing his hands because he had just sold three hundred and sixty acres of cotton land near Deux Maries, a fully equipped gin-house and the drying-house included. That affair is not settled yet, wrote the Cuban; the political parties are attacking the officials and saying that they haven’t yet investigated the affair. Wouldn’t Senor Kettelring have a look round Gonaiva for a time.