Czechoslovak Stories/Beneš

by Jan Neruda

BENEŠ

 

BY JAN NERUDA

 

In a certain little wine-shop near the Carinthian theatre in Vienna it was usually lively, day in and day out, but today, laughter and shouts filled the entire side-street. This was the meeting-place of the singers and chorus girls of the court opera and of the members of the orchestra, all of them people free from every care, for if they had admitted the first care they would then have had to admit altogether too many. The less of sweetness life offered them the more feverishly they rushed into it.

Even old gray Beneš, usually morose and short spoken, was as if transformed today. He drank, talked, drank and talked again. His expressive face was already flushed and was covered with a perpetual smile. His classic cape, in winter and in summer always the same, hung behind him on a hook, but the old man felt the fire of the wine and had already removed his vest also. It struck no one as freakish that underneath the first vest of heavy material there appeared a second thick vest. They were thoroughly acquainted with Beneš and knew all of his peculiarities.

Beneš had been an accompanist and rehearser of operas for some forty years. The wider musical circles knew him as an excellent reader of parts, the inner circles knew him as a happy composer of delightful little lyrics, and all recognized in him an all-around good fellow, a little peevish, to be sure, but always willing to make concessions. Therefore, only to the lighterminded ones of the company did his vivaciousness seem unsuspicious. The others surmised that it was probably more of a cloak, that Beneš talked constantly in order to silence something and that he drank much to drown much. These said nothing but they, too, were gay.

“Aha—our Leon! I was sure you’d come in today!” called Beneš to a new-comer. He was a young man of quick actions, merry face and shrewd glance. Willingly they prepared a place for him.

“Leon is a lion,” said some one in the rear. “Daddy Beneš, did you hear Leo today in church?”

“You fellows would teach me to know him!” Beneš puffed up and the second vest was flung off. Under it appeared a third vest. “You dare to tell me what any one’s worth is! Better keep still! Leo will be a second Ronconi—Ronconi was also as small and with a voice like a thunderous flute. You people have heard a lot in life! If I say that someone will really amount to something, they will! I’ve foretold to this little minx here that she will be as happy and as famous as—as Sontag.” This name slipped from his lips as if by accident.

“What’s that Daddy Beneš is saying?” a pretty, merry-faced young girl, sitting near him, asked in German.

“Oh, nothing, minx,” said he, patting her hair. “What’s new in Zlonits, Leon?”

“Nothing for a long time, nothing at all! But, thunder!—Daddy has a new cravat today.” Beneš consciously drew his chin up high and stretched out his legs. “And look at his finely polished boots, too. Daddy is celebrating something today!

Beneš frowned slightly. “Don’t crowd up so close to me, Pauline.” And he turned again to the young girl.

“Lukova is taking a shine to Daddy!” was the cry from around the circle.

“Daddy, haven’t you got some new songs for me?” asked the young chorus girl, destined later to become a renowned prima donna.

Beneš paused to look at her. “You are pretty—but you haven’t such eyes as hers, after all! Well, it’s all one, you’ll amount to something—you and Leon here—but the rest won’t get very far!”

“Oho—who can know that?” wrathfully exclaimed a young violinist opposite. “You, too, had talent, Daddy, well—and—” He did not finish.

“Well, and what? What could an accompanist become other than an accompanist? I was one in Prague and I am the same in Vienna.”

“But what if you had finished your studies in Prague?”

“Yes—if! If I hadn’t run off to Vienna after Henrietta Sontag!”

“She must have been beautiful, wasn’t she?”

“I don’t even know that, absolutely,” burst forth Beneš with a lightness that was plainly feigned. “She was and she wasn’t. When I met her by accident in a Prague company I accompanied her on the piano for the first time and when she looked at me, all was over. Dear God, those blue eyes of hers! I would have followed those eyes further than Vienna!”

No one questioned him further, but Beneš, nevertheless, did not remain silent. It seemed as if something goaded him on to speaking jocularly and lightly of that subject.

“It didn’t even worry me that others also had come here on her account—a young lancer, for instance. I knew she was as pure as an angel. Dear God, those eyes so soft, so heavenly! Why shouldn’t I say so now? What does it matter? I was insanely in love with her and I acted like a madman. I kept silent. She herself cured me. Suddenly she disappeared—it was said, on account of attacks from certain court circles on her virtue and for me she left this written message, ‘I thank you fervently for your services and please accept enclosed three hundred as a reward for your difficult work of accompaniment.’ So then at last I saw what I was to her—an accompanist! But for the first time in my life I had three hundred and—”

He intended to say something humorous, but suddenly became silent. His whole body trembled as if he were shaking with the ague, his face suddenly became rigid, his eye was fixed on the floor, his lips remained open. His folded hands quivered convulsively.

“And when did she die of that Mexican cholera—it can’t be so many years ago?” asked a close neighbor, speaking perhaps only to keep the conversation going.

“On the eleventh of June, 1854,” answered Beneš in a lifeless tone.

“The eleventh—why today it is just exactly—”

Beneš’s head sank down on his clasped hands. Within the room a sudden stillness followed, no one speaking a word. It was a painful silence, broken only by the old man’s audible, unspeakably heartbreaking sobbing.

For a long while the old man’s weeping continued, no one uttering even a whisper.

Suddenly the sobbing ceased. The old man raised himself and covered his eyes with his palm.

“Good night!” he said almost in a whisper and staggered towards the door.