Czechoslovak Stories/Spiritless

by Božena Viková-Kunětická

SPIRITLESS

 

BY BOŽENA VÍKOVA-KUNĚTICKÁ

 

The first cold breeze of winter blew over the country and swept from a tree the first faded leaf. Could it indeed be true that the leaves had begun to wither so early? Yes, truly, for look! the leaf is sere and trembling and almost spasmodically curled up as if it had expired in the very act of its struggle with death. And now it flutters downward through the branches of the tree which is crowned with such an abundance of green foliage that it seems as if a cloud had settled on it or a mournful pall of the future which gave no promise of spring blossoms, songs of birds or whispers of lovers. The sad little leaf had indeed fallen in the midst of all the greenness spread underneath the blue heavens and lay upon the grass where the first dying blade shivered and sighed among its mates!

“Alas! The leaves are fading!” cried a sweet young wife as she closed the window which she had opened a few moments previously in order that the fresh breath of morn might enter the sleeping-room.

She had opened it thus after the departure of her husband every morning for the last four months and, filled with delightful intoxication, she had presented herself to the rays of the sun, sighing in the very excess of her bliss.

Today the chill breath of the wind rudely touched her hand and brow for the first time and caused her to experience a disagreeable sensation of disappointment, aye, of sorrow.

The young wife turned away from the window with a sense of weariness which she herself scarcely comprehended. She cast her eyes over the room which was still in disorder and filled with the breath of sleep. The air was heavy and the silence of the apartment productive of melancholy and gloom. She stepped to the mirror to begin her toilet and discovered that her eyes were tiredlooking, without their usual luster, her lips were dry and compressed, the pink was gone from her cheeks and her hands were colorless, cold and strangely weak and limp.

She meditated, thinking what kind of a ribbon to put into her hair. Long she pondered on what gown to wear and her thoughts finally reverted to the subject of what to cook for dinner.

She had reflected thus each day for the past four months, at first in a sort of enchanted spell, later with something akin to impatience and now as if from habit or a sense of duty. On the table still stood the cups out of which she and her husband had been drinking coffee, before he departed for his office. They had not conversed much either today or yesterday and had breakfasted with some degree of constraint, for they were intent on the necessity of eating, which fact had not been before apparent to them becausewell, because—they had been in love.

But now for a number of days both had sipped their coffee to the last drop and afterwards carefully wiped their lips as if feeling the need of some occupation. The husband had arisen, taken his hat, cane and some documents (the young wife noticed that he always took some sort of papers) and, kissing her on the lips, he departed for his office, while she had called after him with a bright voice: “Bring me something in your pocket, Otto! Don’t forget! Perhaps you’ll see some of my favorite apples—some ‘Míšenská’ somewhere and you’ll bring them.”

He had answered briefly from the hallway, because he was in a hurry, “Why can’t you send Veronica?” (Veronica was the maid.)

“But I want the apples from you, dear Otto,” the young wife had cried after him sadly.

“I have many cares on my mind today,” he had replied.

“What are they?”

“Oh, you don’t understand such things.”

“But you will bring my apple? Do you hear? Don’t forget!”

Her last words reached her husband as his hand touched the knob of the house door and he did not reply to them because he did not wish to cause an unnecessary noise in the house.

At noon he indeed brought his wife two, three or four of her favorite “Míšenská” apples and, laying them on the table, he asked at once for his dinner that he might again depart as soon as possible.

They both felt ennui stealing on them. Heaven knows why they were tired. They slept soundly without dreams. Often when alone together they were silent and each was at a loss for a topic for conversation. The young wife with the instinct born in every woman divined that the touch of her hands no longer aroused a thrill in her husband’s senses and that he kissed her without any tremors of pleasure, but rather in a hasty, careless, perfunctory manner. And she herself felt exhausted, languishing, discontented and saw no fixed purpose anywhere.

What was the matter?

She discovered as she gazed into the mirror that blue was unbecoming to her and, looking down at her hands, she saw that she had not trimmed her nails for some days. That was the only thing to which she could devote her attention, as everything in her household was bright, shining and new—every article was in its appointed place. The perfect order and exactness of it all was enough to drive one mad.

It entered her mind that it might be a good plan to cook lentils today for dinner. She wanted a new fragrance in her kitchen—an odor to which it heretofore was unaccustomed, as she had not yet cooked lentils during her married life.

She continued to look at herself in the glass stupidly and without interest. She had a beautifully molded figure, but her inspection of self did not impress her pleasurably or otherwise, because her goal was attained—her purpose achieved. She possessed charming lips and large, clear eyes which she opened wide, as if in constant wonder. On her left hand shone the golden wedding-ring which proclaimed her a wife and which proved in her eyes that the object of her life was accomplished. She was married! Ah, well, at any rate she had no more worries about a husband such as she had at first heard expressed by her sisters when they had finished school and which she herself had felt when she donned her first long dress and realized that the most important period of her life had arrived.

What a bore it had been at that time! To be compelled to wear a constant smile, encouraging and yet modest, to drop the eyes shyly, to bow her head, to meditate on what she should say in order to preserve the proprieties of what is allowable and what is not; to devote constant attention to every step, to every “Oh!” “Ah!” “Indeed!” “Certainly,” “Perhaps,” “Oh yes!” “By no means!” and all the expressions for which she would be held to account before the entire company and by which she proved her good breeding, knowledge, modesty and dignity in gracing her home in the future. How many times she had repeated, as she walked lightly by her partner’s side through the dancing-hall which was warm to suffocation, “What an atmosphere! Does it not appear to you, sir, that the atmosphere is heavy?” Or else at picnics or outings while the sound of music filled the air and all around were cheerful and gay, she conventionally uttered her admiration thus: “How beautiful all this is! I love music, and especially do I love to listen to the notes of a flute!” And all the time she was studying the words she would be called upon to utter next, in order that they should be both proper and agreeable. She would bow, extend the fingers of her hand in greeting, sit very severely upright in her chair and thank in a very cold manner all gentlemen who were of an uncertain or unprofessional occupation, as her code did not admit those without means to her favored circle.

Ah, well! The golden band shines on her finger now, and with it all the past is banished, the present solved and the future ordained.

“Well, then, lentils it shall be today.” Lentils are certainly not rare, but they will cause a change in the entire atmosphere of her clean, shiny household. As soon as he reaches the steps her husband will be met with the fragrance from the kitchen and will know that she is cooking lentils for his dinner.

At the thought of her husband she felt a tiny wave of trouble in her soul. It seemed to her that she ought to have something new to say to him, something kind and affable, but she explained this desire as a consequence of the habit she had been trained in of always making an effort to be pleasant to him.

She interpreted it all in her own charming little head as singular that she should allow herself any critical or censuring reflections which marriage itself abolishes and excludes.

Was not everything in her matrimonial existence just as proper as her whole life and its well-ordered details had always been?

Her first kiss given and accepted after a formal engagement, her tears at the altar which were in accordance with strict etiquette, her toilettes, her education which she had received in a convent and which she had concluded with the reading of a few books of which it was perfectly proper to speak in polite society—all these had certainly been eminently proper. What more could she wish, what more could her husband demand?

Some day she would become a mother, and then of course all would be changed. She would have enough to relate to her husband then the child would laugh and cry and make its first little attempts, and later it would learn to walk, to pray, then would attend school and, in the vista of the future, she even beheld its marriage.

All these things would occur in the same succession as they had occurred to her ancestors; it had not been different with her great-grandmother, her grandmother nor even with her mother. Her mother, to be sure, had never felt any uneasiness regarding her husband and how to interest him. Her father was an honest merchant in linen goods and her mother helped him make sales in the shop. No time remained for her to have similar reflections, and her conversations with her husband always appeared important and intensely interesting to both. Their business brought them a tidy income and assured their daughters a handsome dowry.

Ah! How well she remembered the little shop under the arcade into which the daughters were never allowed to enter lest there might appear to be a connection between the shop and their sweet little faces which were only partially hidden by the rich veils. They were not meant to be salesgirls, for they were destined to be young ladies of the most cultured and most select circles of society. ******* The young wife laid aside the blue ribbon and fastened on a pink one instead. She discovered that it really was much more becoming to her, and as a result she felt a corresponding degree of satisfaction.

She walked out of the bedroom, gave her hand to the angular maid to be kissed and passed on through the remaining rooms in which the best of order prevailed.

There really was nothing to think of!

She remembered again that her husband would soon arrive and once more experienced a disquieting uneasiness. What would they talk about today at dinner? Perhaps he does not like lentils and will be vexed when Veronica brings the dish on the table. Perhaps, however, he may like them and then he will be gay. After all, what of it? They must talk of something! Maybe one of the apples will be decayed and she will show him the worm and cry, “Oh! oh! oh! dear Otto, a worm! Such a big, long worm!” and he of course will step on it and thus conversation will ensue. ******* Alas! the apple was not wormy and her husband did not indeed like lentils, and during dinner he was somewhat morose, at any rate dull and lazy in thought and act.

He cleaned his teeth for a long time with a toothpick which she herself had fashioned for him by winding strings of small beads around a tapering quill, according to a pattern she had seen at the convent.

She recalled that this morning she had seen the first faded leaf fall from a tree. “Just think, Otto, the leaves have begun to fall,” she said, gazing at him with her large, clear eyes which hid nothing from those returning her gaze.

“Well, that’s excellent!” cried her husband. “Why ‘excellent,’ Otto dear?”

“Because the falling of the leaves ushers in the season when, as before, I shall go among my old friends to spend the long winter evenings.”

“Where is it you will go ‘among friends’?”.

“Oh, down to the inn for a space of two short hours. You have nothing against it, have you, love?”

His young wife reflected whether or not it was proper for her husband to do what he had just proposed. She reflected that the husband of one of her friends and other men she knew of often went “among friends” to talk over things of which their wives had never heard in the convents in which they had been brought up.

Her mind was considerably pacified by this reflection, and so she answered with a smile, “Why, no, Otto, dear; I have nothing against it! Why, just think, what could we find to talk about together all those long evenings to come?”

And that day when the first yellow leaf fell from the tree, crowned with so much greenness—for the first time, but not the last—the young wife sat at home—alone.