Three Stories/On Condition: or Pensioned Off/Chapter 10

by Vítězslav Hálek

 

CHAPTER X.

 

LD Loyka continued to be a constant figure of the district surrounding Frishetts. If any one from the neighbourhood or from abroad had come there and enquired what novel or peculiar event had happened there, he would have learnt that they had there a vejminkar (pensioner) belonging to a large estate and with a large pension, but who would not dwell on his estate, and roved about even in the woods and dwelt in the cemetery with the gravedigger Bartos.

“You have here a strange and ludicrous thing,” he would hear said: for people frequently regard what is strange as also ludicrous. “Perhaps he would sooner allow himself to be nailed to a cross than to return to the farm in which his son is hospodar. Some years ago he was just a little touched in the head and walked with a band of musicians from village to village—what a peasant it is! Now he is a little more reasonable; only no one can persuade him to go home—the fool!”

“And has he been long thus,” the stranger would perhaps enquire.

“Already a good many years. His wife dwells in the farm house, and about her Loyka says ‘Let her stop there, she merits it.’ ’Tis a strange and ludicrous affair.” So would run the discourse of the native of the place.

And so we see that even over his sufferings several years have flown and, before we had expected it, we are several years older, and with us Loyka and Frank and Staza and all the rest.

During this time, it is true, Joseph importuned his father to return home. He despatched servants after him with the assurance that he never dreamed his father would make such a fuss about the two chambers by the coach house and take the matter so seriously, and that if only he would return he might dwell in the pension house unmolested. But the servants who were sent with these messages never succeeded much, because on these occasions old Loyka behaved as though they wished to hale him to the butcher’s, stuffed his fingers in his ears, and took to flight. Moreover, at times, he sent strange messages to his son, though it is hard to say whether the servants delivered them just as he gave them.

But old Loyka took so violent an aversion, even to the servants from the farm, that if he came to a village, his first question was whether any one from Frishett’s was on the watch for him. And if he tarried several days in a village he posted guards here and there, that he might timely take to flight if the servants ventured to approach.

And it happened on one occasion that the servants from the farm entered several villages close upon his heels, because the young hospodar had charged them with a message in which he declared that he would no longer be held up to the eyes of the world as a villain, and have his name bandied about from mouth to mouth as that of a God-forsaken reprobate.

Here old Loyka fumed furiously. “Only let him come himself and I’ll show him how I hold him up to the world as a villain,” said he, and from that time forth he avoided the villages and dwelt most willingly with Bartos at the cemetery.

I know not how it came about, whether Joseph took the message to mean that he was to come personally to his father, but so it was that he came to the cemetery, and all the servants with him who had ever been despatched after his father with any message. No sooner did old Loyka become aware of their approach than he was almost beside himself, and locked himself into the charnel house among the shin bones and skulls, only that he might see no one and need not have to speak to any one.

Then Joseph called in a loud voice in the cemetery to his father, bidding him come forth and return home; ay, he swore that he himself would not return home without him, that he would no longer endure to become the bye-word for a God-forsaken reprobate among the populace, and that if his father refused he should be dragged home forcibly.

“And how do you mean to accomplish it,” enquired Bartos, who had appeared during this scene on the threshold of his dwelling.

“I shall have the doors forced,” responded Joseph.

“How so?” enquired Bartos, calmly.

“Oh, you know all about it,” said Joseph to Bartos, “It is you who are the cause of all this, and I will suffer it no longer. It is you who purposely retain my father in your house to make capital out of him. It is you who are purposely coupling my brother with that young vagabond——”

Further Joseph did not proceed in his harangue.

“What is it you called Staza?” Bartos asked Joseph, and at the same time uttered a yell so menacing that the servants who were with Joseph, recoiled several paces. But scarcely had Bartos pronounced the words before he had already gripped Joseph under the armpits, swung him into the air, and balancing him like a racquet ball, continued, “I’ll, pound every one to a jelly who dares once to say such a thing.”

And from the way in which Joseph turned deadly pale in Bartos’s hands and impotently shook and shivered, it was evident that he believed the gravedigger to be in earnest, and about to fulfil his threats to a tittle.

But Joseph, in his own impotence, began to pluck up a bolder spirit when he contemplated his servants, and no sooner had Bartos once more dropped him on to the ground than he shouted to them to force the doors of the charnel house without further hesitation and to drag out the aged Loyka.

“And, prythee, why not? Prythee, why not?” observed Bartos, in a voice again perfectly calm, as if a moment before he had not threatened to make a jelly of a human body. And he posted himself before the doors of the charnel house.

“Cleave the doors asunder!” commanded Joseph, seeing that his servants did not wish to have anything to do with the business. “A souterkin of beer to the man who cleaves them open.”

And when the servants made a rush in right earnest to get at the doors, Bartos, as though he had heard nothing of what Joseph had said, merely stretched out his two hands and said, “Cave!” and already two of the servants lay on the ground blubbering, as though they had come to order their own graves to be delved. The rest of the servants wavered in their charge, then suddenly turned and fled at full speed by the shortest road out of the cemetery.

Joseph began to jeer and threaten them.

“Everything is not to be had for a souterkin of beer,” said Bartos, and laughed or rather smiled tauntingly.

“But it will be had all the cheaper,” said Joseph, “when I bring half the village again you, you will pipe in another strain.”

“Do not bring them,” said Bartos, and, continued to smile tauntingly.

“When I report matters at the bureaux——”

“Report it not, report nothing, unless you would report your own precious doings,” said Bartos. “But, of course, if you think it right, bring them, report it all, only, you just sleep upon it and I will sleep upon it too.”

“But I tell you it is notorious how you encourage his vagabondage, how you cause disunion in the family——”

“Ay, ay, peasant, you have it well off by heart; but let me tell you, that if half your village comes with all its bureaux, they will retire hence just as your own servants retired a moment since. And so it is I who cause disunion in families. Behold yonder doors before the charnel house, and think whom they conceal. So it is I who cause disunion between him and thee. I, forsooth, was that notable son who lowered his father beneath the meanest of his servants, who shortly after commanded him to dwell in a stable, who baited him until he had baited him out of house and home, who deprived him of head and of reason, oh! I pray you just bring hither your village and the whole squad of officials. I will enlighten them in your presence as to what a notable peasant thou art, who, in place of a heart, hast planted in thy bosom the gross peasant’s corruption and art a wicked son because thy father is a pensioner on thy bounty!”

Such and more to the like effect said Bartos, and hereupon pressed Joseph, with his body, out of the cemetery. There was little need to use pressure, Bartos was only making sport of him, but it was all the worse for Joseph, because he felt what a ridiculous figure he cut before the servants, and before Bartos, and his humiliation appeared to be intolerable. But there was no escape from it. He must e’en quit the cemetery with his message undelivered and must see to it that he did not fairly take to flight, which would have been more ridiculous than this measured retreat, during which, Bartos, at least, allowed him so much apparent liberty, that he appeared to be retiring of his own free will, and so Joseph had nothing for it but to recoil with threats.

And being now in a towering passion he resolved to fulfil these threats. When he had returned to Frishetts he collected his neighbours and others, and summoned them to go with him for his father, whom Bartos was detaining in the charnel house, and whom he refused to let out.

Certainly this announcement wore little the appearance of truthfulness, because they knew Bartos too well to believe him capable of doing anything of the kind. Nevertheless Joseph contrived to persuade them to go with him, partly out of curiosity, to see what would happen, partly because they thought that the father and son might yet be reconciled, now that the son made such a point of it; and an affair of such importance was worth the trouble of a man’s being a witness to it.

And so they trailed out of Frishetts, and Joseph at their head, towards the cemetery, so that they had the appearance of a procession of people carrying some one to the grave, whereas they went for a man in order to bring him from the grave and back to his own home.

When they reached the cemetery the neighbours remained in the rear, Joseph advanced to the dwelling of the gravedigger, and shouted “Bartos, now we are here, so let out my father.”

Bartos issued from his house, which had also a door into the fields, halted in front of the threshold, and seeing in reality half the village at Joseph’s back, enquired jestingly “Are you come to pay me a visit, neighbours? I am delighted, I am delighted, but you must only come one by one, because men do not enter these precincts all at once.”

“We are come for my father,” said Joseph. “I’ll teach thee, thou son of a spade, that I know how to keep my word.”

“For your father? You have him there,” said Bartos, and pointed vaguely all over the cemetery.

“Open the charnel house, gravedigger,” said Joseph imperiously.

“It will not be necessary,” answered the gravedigger. “Yonder is thy father,” and he pointed to the great ruddy cross by which stood old Loyka with dishevelled hair, holding in his hand a human shin bone which he had picked out for himself in the charnel house, and looking from one to the other of those who had approached the cemetery, as much as to say, “If any one comes near me I will break his head for him with this shin bone.”

All started back who saw it, even Joseph started. That grey-haired sire among the tombs, holding his left hand around the great cross on which hung the old white iron figure of the Christus, and in his right hand a human bone, seemed standing there the defender of the dead against whom the living had come in battle array.

“What went ye out for to see,” began old Loyka in the words of Scripture. “A notable son who promised in presence of you all to bear me on his arms, and then waved me to those chambers which I had reserved for beggars, and bade me dwell there. Behold him, yonder, he is among you. Or came ye out for to see a father bereft of sense and reason who long ago invited you to the feast, danced with you and made you merry. Behold me here, I stand beneath the crucified Jesus, but I have no more to spend on feasts, nothing remains to me save this bone, and none of you have much appetite for that. Surely, you do not believe that old Loyka has ceased to be hospitable? Oh, I could feast you freely, but you would spurn my dainties, saving such of you as are like me, pensioned off on a son’s bounty, and his son and his son’s wife have meted out to him for his portion two chambers which were reserved for tinkers and pedlars—but you know it all.”

Among the neighbours who had come thither was also the mayor, and he said “Pantata, you would not have to dwell in those chambers. Joseph promises you that he will not meddle with you in the pension house.”

“Ha! Ha!” laughed Loyka, “and so you believe him, do you? This man who went against me like an enemy until he had stripped me of everything! Of my rights of hospodarship, of my respect with the servants, of the love of my children, and of this last span of earth on which I had laid my head. If he were to stretch out his hand to this cross, and lay it here in the side of the martyred Jesus, I would say to him “thou liest.”

On this no one spoke more. The neighbours saw that it would be in vain, and Joseph perhaps said nothing, because he saw that every further step he took only the more incensed his father. Only here and there among themselves the neighbours exchanged a few desultory remarks.

And after awhile Loyka began to speak again almost meekly, as though he were fit to cry. “What injury have I done you, my neighbours, that ye have leagued yourselves against me with yonder fellow. I always avoid you all, I do not get in any one’s way, I do not beg anything at your hands, I creep away like the field mouse beneath the hedgerow, for many years ye have not heard my voice, I suffer and am mute; what do ye find so sickening in me that you come to the cemetery against me as against a savage beast.”

This speech excited the neighbours compassion, they felt that they ought not to have yielded so easily to Joseph’s summons, and that old Loyka deserved more consideration at their hands than that they should have allowed themselves to bustle off as to a spectacle: just as when we wish to see something which is not to be seen every day. Even Joseph felt too well that he had invited them to play an ungracious part, and therefore used his best endeavours to turn their attention from his father and himself, and to concentrate it upon the gravedigger on whom he thought it high time to be revenged; and he began to talk as though it was Bartos alone who hindered his father from returning home, and here he began to threaten his neighbours with the anger of the bureaux if they did not aid him in rescuing his father from the power of Bartos.

On this occasion Bartos rid himself of Joseph by a sarcasm, and this sarcasm was more properly a very serious blow. “I had not thought,” he said to Joseph, “that you would offer yourself as village messenger to the bureaux so long as we had Vena for the purpose. But it is all of a piece with the rest of your hospodarship. You bow the messenger out of your house, and turn messenger yourself—before I die I still expect to see you turn kalounkar (tape pedlar)”.

Bartos, as we know, had never far to go for an answer, and generally had the laugh on his side. Thus it came to pass that everyone lost who measured his strength with him even before he was ready himself with a suitable retort. Having heard Bartos say his say, people did not wait to hear how his adversary would defend himself: they were convinced that every one who began a dispute with Bartos would be worsted either by fisticuffs or some smart repartee.

And so the neighbours gave way even here to quite audible laughter, looked at one another, turned right about face, took their way to Frishetts, and on the way smilingly observed that Joseph wanted to be a village messenger or a kalounkar (tape pedlar).

Joseph then was far from successful on this occasion, he not only became hateful to his neighbours for the want of respect which he had shown towards his father, but he became still more an object of ridicule, and that was a thing he dreaded very much indeed.

But yet he did not despair.

And now as soon as ever his pair of heels had crossed his own doorstep, the children on the village green began to play at being messengers and kalounkari (tape pedlars); when people met each other their discourse was of messengers and kalounkari. He even heard it amongst his servants. Even when he stood up in chapel, all at once a bee seemed to buzz past his ear and he heard a whisper about the kalounkar (tape pedlar) and messenger. He heard it even when no one was saying anything about it, but that was seldom. When he went into the alehouse he imagined people there had just ceased to speak about kalounkari, and when he desired to return home he hesitated, because he felt sure that as soon as his back was turned they would begin to talk at once (though they had ceased in his presence) about the kalounkar.

Bartos’ witticism flew from Frishetts all over the neighbourhood. Joseph heard it a-field from the labourers, he heard it on the highroad, from the road mender, who all of a sudden exclaimed with a sigh, “Ah! heavens, when will the kalounkar (tape pedlar) come this way again; I should like to buy of him a bit of ribbon, mine is quite worn out.” And the road mender, at these words, laid down his hammer and ceased to break stones and looked at Joseph. Perhaps, even in any case, he would have looked at him as he passed, but, at any other time, Joseph would have scarcely heeded him, under present circumstances the man’s look galled him.

And thus he saw and heard mockery everywhere, whereever he showed himself. Moreover, his evil destiny contrived that a kalounkar should come about this time to Frishetts, who, not daring to put up at the Loyka’s, spread out his wares on the village green. Hereupon, when most of the people had formed a circle round him came Vena and said, “How dare you venture with your tapes and ribbons on to our village green when we have our own kalounkar in the village?”

Those who stood in the circle greeted these words with boisterous merriment, indeed, with acclamations; the children ran about the green squeaking “kalendar,” in shrill trebles, and the boldest of them, went before the Loyka’s farm-house and yelled “the Kalounkar is here, we ourselves are playing at kalounkar,” and every brat wanted to be a kalounkar.

This affair, apparently so trivial, reached such a head, that Joseph no longer cared to leave his house and, in fact, never left it. Vena, standing on the village green, cried to all newcomers who went past Loyka’s farmstead, “None are allowed to enter there, and the peasant proprietor daren’t venture out—just come here—here are nice ribbands for you.”

This affair, apparently so trivial, infuriated Joseph to such a degree, that he never spoke with any one in the village. He felt that he could not speak with them. Loyka’s farm became the butt of every saucy ribbald witling, even a kind of comic song circulated under the name of the “Kalounkarska,” or “Lay of the Kalounkar,” and when any of the musicians straggled into Frishetts and began to show off his skill on the village green, all the fullgrown lads flocked round him and wanted him to play the “Kalounkarska.” A little later every melody became the “Kalounkarska” if Joseph was within earshot. And they all began to play the “Kalounkarska,” one after the other, although they had been singing quite different songs till then.

And so it came to pass that one day Joseph went to his wife and said, “Barushka, it is impossible for us to hold out any longer in Frishetts, I shall sell the farm and we will emigrate elsewhere.” There was no sign of hesitation, he meant it in earnest, nor did Barushka by any means endeavour to divert him from his purpose. So then, let him find a purchaser and Joseph Loyka would decamp from Frishetts.

Not long after this the good folk of Frishetts whispered to one another that the kalounkar wanted to decamp. Vena one day delivered on the village green a complete disquisition: How, even this kalounkar, who showed the door to every real kalounkar, was now every day peeping out of that very door, how he had already all his wares in his pack and how they would soon have to drum him out of the village to his own tune.

At that time, it so fell out, that Bartos, the gravedigger, came into Frishetts to pay a visit, and went direct to the house of the mayor.

“I have friends with us just now. Do you come to take their measure—eh?” said the mayor.

“Not exactly that,” said Bartos, “but I could wish to take my spade in hand to clear a certain something out of the way.”

“Well, seat yourself, seat yourself,” said the mayor.

And Bartos began:—

“You are Frank’s guardian, my dear mayor.”

“I am, I am,” admitted the mayor.

“And the money which Frank inherited through his grandfather you gave to me to stow away.”

“I did, I did, you do not, perhaps, want me to take charge of it again. That would be a pretty business. What could I do with it, pray, at my time of life? And, pray, where could it be better stowed away than at your house.”

“I do, indeed, wish you to take charge of it again. It is well stowed away at my house; but it is dead, like everything else that lies there; and this money must not lie dead.”

“And how do you mean to bring it to life, my dear Bartos.”

“Well, thus. I have heard that Joseph desires to sell the farm.”

“And you are the cause of that, my dear Bartos.”

“I am, and I am not. Only tell me this. Does Joseph wish to sell?”

“And did you wish to buy?”

“Not I, but you, mayor, are to be the purchaser.”

“Oh! so I am to buy Loyka’s farm.”

“You, as Frank’s guardian, with Frank’s money, and for Frank. If there is not sufficient, you can advance the money, or a debt might remain on the estate. Frank is young and can economize. Besides this, he has his younger son’s portion on the estate. That would accrue.”

The mayor began to reflect. “Hum! It would accrue perhaps it might be done.”

“If only he wishes to sell?”

“That I could find out from him. I could, indeed, invite him to our house; but now, no one can entice him out of his own at any price—of which you are the cause. I could go to him myself.”

“No, no, mayor! no, no! He must send for you. We must so contrive, not that we should seem bent on buying the farm, but that Joseph should seem bent on selling it.”

“Not in vain do they call you a sapient gravedigger,” said the mayor, flatteringly.

But, frankly, my dear Bartos, I do not as yet see your drift.”

Bartos was glad that he had hit upon something which no one else had hit upon before, and that the mayor had said in so many words, that his (Bartos) more elaborate design eluded his penetration.

“It is as follows,” explained Bartos. “Old Loyka will not return to his estate. Of that you are convinced?”

“Of that I am convinced,” repeated the mayor.”

“That is to say, so long as Joseph is on the farm,” continued Bartos.

“So long as Joseph is there?” said the mayor, interrogatively, as though he again failed to grasp the scheme of the gravedigger.

“Then my idea is this. Might not old Loyka return to his farmstead if Joseph was there no more.”

“If he was not there? That pleases me. That might be.”

“And if everything else there was re-arranged just as it was wont to be in times gone by—Loyka to command the servants; in the chambers by the coach-house mirth to reign as in the days of old; Loyka to dwell in the farmhouse and be hospodar, both in name and reality; Frank, voluntarily, to be subservient to his wishes, whereby, we should make a good hospodar of Frank. Do you not think that in this manner old Loyka might yet recover his health?”

This proposal pleased the mayor.

“If he did not recover, what help? We should have done what we could. At all events Frank would gain a constant occupation and all pretexts would be removed from old Loyka for tormenting himself further.”

“Gravedigger, the more I reflect about it, the more I like it. And for my part, I am almost convinced that Loyka will recover.”

And the mayor rubbed his hands and said to Bartos, “You would be the cause of this also.” They so contrived it that Joseph Loyka sent that same day for the mayor, and came to terms with him about the price of the farm, which the mayor bought in his own name. A few days after the terms of the agreement were made out in writing, and soon after the gravedigger brought Frank’s money, which in great part defrayed the cost of the farm.

And here the Mayor desired that Bartos should also sign his name as a witness to the agreement. But Bartos absolutely refused his signature, fearing lest Joseph might hear that he was the cause of it all and might yet revoke the agreement at the last moment—a notion which was not altogether devoid of foundation.

And so it came to pass that Joseph decamped from Frishetts, not being able to support the ridicule which assailed him on an estate where he could support no one near himself—not even his own father. He sneaked off without giving his neighbours one farewell embrace, as though he had never in his life been on intimate terms with them. He sneaked off in the early hours of the morning, when he thought that every one was still asleep, and he could consequently most easily elude the mockery and taunts of the village—the last taunts and mockery.

He eluded them for that day. He migrated to a distant quarter of the country where people knew him not. But taunts and mockery were raised like dust behind him when it was learnt how he had eluded them. The “kalounkarska,” which they had intended to sing at his departure was now sung by the irritated youths of Frishetts through the long hours of the evening, and before the farmstead long into the night.