Three Novels: Hordubal, Meteor, an Ordinary Life

by Karel Čapek

  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!

  CHAPTER XVI

  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, a
nd 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.

  CHAPTER XVII

  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.

  CHAPTER XVIII

  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 ?r />
  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.