Three Novels: Hordubal, Meteor, an Ordinary Life

by Karel Čapek

  (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?)

  CHAPTER VIII

  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.

  CHAPTER IX

  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.

  CHAPTER X

  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.