by Karel Čapek
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 ?
CHAPTER XXV
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.
CHAPTER XXVI
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 onl
y 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.
CHAPTER XXVII
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!