Three Stories/On Condition: or Pensioned Off/Chapter 3

by Vítězslav Hálek

 

CHAPTER III.

 

T was a dreary mission for Frank to carry to the cemetery the measure for his grandfather’s grave. Hitherto he had not in the least realized that it was a burial ground. He had been there when somebody was being interred, when they sang hymns to him, prayed above his coffin, and wept for him. But what effect have all such ceremonies upon a mere child. Issuing from the burial ground he sees the laughing green fields, the flowery hedge rows, he sees the weasels run along the hedgerows, and forthwith yon grim cemetery is forgotten, and is no longer the truth.

But now he was carrying thither the measure for his grandfather’s grave. So, then, after all it was the truth. And then he saw how the crosses glowered above the wall into the surrounding district, how in the centre rose the red cross into the air, and on it the white-iron figure of the Christus; he saw, too, where dwelt the gravedigger and where was the bone house—so, then, all that world of greenery around him was no longer true, only the cemetery spoke to him. Its speech was like the speech of some direful ogre; Frank scarcely understood the words, and was filled with a kind of vague horror at which the heart within him died away and his throat was half choked with sobs.

The gate by which one entered the burial ground was a wicket gate, and painted the same colour as the great cross in the centre of the cemetery. When Frank had reached the gate he stopped outside it, and looked through the wicket into the cemetery. He looked upon it as upon that horrible Unknown, with which he must now make himself acquainted. He looked first at one grave and then at another, and then thought to himself “Perhaps grandfather’s will look pretty much like that one.” Then he looked to see what state the graves were in. Some had half collapsed into the ground, some were covered with a fair green mound, on some were flowers, others were railed off, at the head of some stood a cross, at the head of others only a staff with a lath nailed across it to form a cross, at the head of a third was only a stave without any lath across it. In one corner of the burial ground lay a few unburied bones.

Although it was a warm day at the beginning of June, and the air was clear and full of pleasant sounds, winter seemed to have entangled Frank in its icy folds. That icy winter breathed from the cemetery and from each and every grave within it. It seemed to Frank as though with the measure for his grandfather’s grave he had taken upon himself an unpropitious task, and as though he had undertaken a mission to an accursed place which it was impossible to carry out without contamination. He stood by the gate as if frozen to the spot, not knowing how to fulfil the task entrusted to him. At that moment came out of the gravedigger’s dwelling the little Staza with a watering pot in her hand. She came out into the cemetery and watered the graves, and all the while sang with a tiny treble, sweet, and tuneful, the words “odpocinte v pokoji verne dusicky.”^[1] “Rest in peace ye faithful spirits.” The grass and the flowers were half withered on the graves: where she sprinkled them they began to smell sweet, and their odour was wafted to the gate where Frank was standing.

It was a very tender sentiment which now filled the mind of Frank. That little girl fluttered like a butterfly over the graves, watering with the dew of life, like a spring shower, nature’s exhausted and withered offspring—and singing all the while “odpocinte v pokoji verne dusicky.” (Rest in peace ye faithful spirits). From the cemetery the blast of winter ceased to blow, a sportive presence seemed to linger there, something breathed warm along the sward, perhaps even the dead felt it. Then once more Staza tripped away and vanished through the door of the gravedigger’s abode, and the place was again untenanted. No song nor dance was there, only the jointed grasses raised aloft their jaded limbs. And now it seemed to Frank that after all the place was cold and gloomy.

But lo! there was Staza once again with fresh water and once again was like a butterfly and once again was buzzing like a bee and once again was watering the flowers everywhere, approaching even almost to the gate. Frank was apprehensive lest she should catch sight of him; if she caught sight of him all must be at an end; he stepped aside a little towards the wall and only just bent his head towards the gate and peeped. Staza was again singing “odpocinte v pokoji,” and now she mingled with it divers other tunes. She drew them forth from her inmost soul one after the other, just as we draw out from a wardrobe dress after dress in order that we may look through them and give them an airing. Even those melodies needed an airing from time to time lest they should be jumbled together in her bosom.

Frank, standing by the gate, felt himself every moment growing more at ease; as though some one had given him in that accursed place a silver clue, and he had caught hold of it. Again he emerged from his hiding place and boldly posted himself in front of the gate indifferent now as to whether Staza saw him there or no.

Staza saw him, she stopped, she ceased to sing, and looked towards the gate only just a moment to see whether the young visitor wished to enter or whether he wished to give some message.

When Frank did not speak, she advanced several steps towards the gate, and then said “And so it is at your house, Frank, is it? Wait and I will go and call tatinka.” And she ran into the gravedigger’s abode. Frank was lost in amazement to know how the girl could read in his face what was passing in his inmost soul. We, however, need no explanation of the mystery. They had heard the funeral bell, and Bartos had said to Staza “Where is it, I wonder?” And he waited expecting some one to give orders about a grave. Staza now saw Frank and said, as if repeating her father’s question, “And so it is at your house!”

When Bartos sallied forth with Staza he had already a pick on his shoulder and Staza had in her hands a shovel, wherewith, apparently, to throw out of the grave the loosened clods of earth. Bartos went directly to the gate, and said in a peaceful manner “My dear Frank, perhaps it is grandfather, eh?” “It is grandfather,” responded Frank in a voice still half drowned in tears. “Grandfather, grandfather,” repeated Bartos to himself while opening the gate. “Ah! well a day, none escape the bed I make them here. Some of us fight longer than others against being sleepy, but each sleeps once.”

Frank stepped into the burial ground and handed over the measure. “The measure!” said Bartos, “your grandfather could just get under my chin, he was amongst the tallest men in the village, I know his measure. And where, pray, would you like the grave to be?” he enquired of Frank. “Take a look round, I will be with you almost immediately and set myself to delve the grave.”

Bartos departed into his house in quest of sundry other implements, and now Frank cast his eyes here and there in search of a suitable spot. But he saw none, because even a grown up person when overtaken by some real and sudden sorrow, is as one entranced so soon as anything is given him on which to come to a decision.

Here Staza led him by the hand, and said “Do you know what, Frank, the people from Frishetts lie by yonder wall, which faces Frishetts: take a peep, yonder in that corner is the highest spot of ground, you can see it from the gate, and if you were to stand upon the grave in that corner you could catch a glimpse of Frishetts.

It is hard to make out what internal connection these words had with one another; but they appeared to Frank to be so consecutive and reasonable that he agreed at once. “Well, then, there in the corner let the grave be,” he said.

“And if you put a cross there it will be visible as far as your house; and if you plant a sapling there it will soon grow big enough to be visible also as far as your house,” observed Staza, almost enthusiastically. And now, all at once, Frank discovered so many good reasons why the grave should be in that corner that nothing in the world would have induced him to permit of its being dug in any other spot.

“Yonder,” said Staza, when Bartos returned, and there they began to delve.

These few and briefly spoken words had already deprived the cemetery in Frank’s imagination of much of its horror. Bartos dug, Staza shovelled out the loose earth, and Frank was a silent spectator. Bartos from time to time sang over some popular song which was in keeping with his trade, Staza’s little voice accompanied him like a fiddle string, and Frank formed the audience.

Bartos also occasionally muttered a few sentences which apparently had reference to the defunct, but which neither of the children at all understood; perhaps Bartos purposely spoke in such a way that Frank should not understand him, and should not have his sorrow reawakened.

All at once Staza said “Franky, when the grave is delved, we will lie in it together.”

At these words Frank recoiled several steps. Staza laughed, and Bartos remained pensive. Frank recoiled like a machine without volition; Staza laughed at this, and Bartos, after a moment’s pause, said “We are digging close to your mother’s grave, we must take care not to come upon her coffin, it has only been in the ground six years.”

“Delve so that I may come quite close to Maminka, then I shall sleep with her,” said Stara, as if she consoled herself with the idea, for anyone who had looked for melancholy from this poor child, would have proven himself completely ignorant of the heart of childhood. Staza was but three years of age when her mother died; in such a little heart sorrow cannot obtain a foothold, and after six years a child does not know what it means to have lost a mother.

After these words Frank again drew near the grave on the pretence that he wanted to see whether Bartos and Staza would delve so cleverly as not to disturb the neighbouring grave.

“Thou hast never yet slept in a grave Franky,” said Staza not at all interrogatively, but just as though she were stating a certainty.

“In a grave?” enquired Frank in astonishment. Staza grew on graves as the grass and the floweret grew upon them. This cemetery was her playing ground, her village green where she frolicked, where she delved and watered the plants and tended them, it was her school where with Bartos on those graves she learnt little of literary lore ’tis true, but more than all the patter of the class room.

When she was yet quite young she had once asked Bartos “What is my mamma doing in the grave?”

“She sleeps,” said Bartos.

After this, the very next time Bartos delved a new grave, she laid herself in it and slept there as she said “Like Maminka.” From that time she slept in every grave as soon as it was delved, if it was not winter time and if it did not rain. When any one died she consoled herself with the idea that she and Bartos would dig a new grave, and then that she could once more sleep in one. On the whole a funeral was a considerable source of pleasure to her. She saw plenty of people, she saw the priests, then she heard them sing and weep and pray. These funeral prayers became her own morning and evening prayers, these hymns were her hymns, and from the people whom she saw there she formed her notions about human beings, and about the great world. And so she always looked forward to a new funeral, because it was something novel.

She looked forward to it also because she heard new hymn tunes, and when the burial service was over she sang what she had heard until the next funeral, which perhaps brought her a fresh supply of hymns. However as she heard at every funeral “odpocinte v pokoiji verne dusicky,” (Rest in peace ye faithful spirits), this hymn became her favourite. She did not know what these “verne dusicky” (faithful spirits) were, but putting two and two together in her head she had a notion that they were those who slept in the graves. Whenever she laid herself down to sleep, she said to herself in her inmost heart that she would be a “verna dusicka.” And sometimes when she had slept there a long time she said to herself on awakening “To-day I have been a long time a faithful spirit.”

So then when Frank received her question whether he had ever slept in a grave with so much astonishment, she said “You have never yet slept like a faithful spirit.” And after a time she added “Stop, and we will be faithful spirits together.”

Frank however, of course, did not comprehend the connection between these expressions; however they pleased him somehow; when he looked at Staza he felt as though he had to say “What thou sayest pleaseth me. Why should I not wish to be with thee a faithful spirit.”

After digging sometime longer, Bartos enquired of Frank how his grandfather had died, whereupon Frank narrated about the clod of earth, about the balcony, and how after this his grandfather fell dead at his feet. This narrative was listened to by Staza with great interest so that for a while she even ceased to shovel out the loose earth, and looked upon Frank as a man of mature wisdom, for had he not had a grandfather who was very, very old, and did he not lead about this grandfather even unto his death.

“Good,” said Bartos after a while, we have now come close beside thy mama.” Thus was Frank’s grandfather’s grave all but delved, and because Frank saw that it now already fatigued Staza to shovel out the earth from such a depth, he took her shovel and said “Give it me. I also wish to do something for grandfather.” He stepped into Staza’s place, and shovelled out the earth. Staza sat beside the grave, and looked to see whether he was an adept.

And now it seemed to Frank as though the grave was deprived of its horror with every shovelful of earth which he flung out. So when Bartos said ‘Done!’ Frank had already no wish to depart; he leant on his spade and said to Staza “So, then, come to me faithful spirit!”

Bartos shouldered his implements and paying no further heed to the children, betook himself home.

“Do you know what?” said Staza, “I will sow clover on your grandfather’s grave.”

“Why?” inquired Frank.

“But dost thou not know? And yet I know that thy grandfather loved bees—he had so many hives. Bees fly to clover, they will speed hither to grandfather’s grave, and grandfather will tell them the message he wishes them to give to thee.”

“Sow it!” said Frank; and now he longed for the clover to overgrow the grave, and that the bees might fly hither.

Then Staza sprang into the grave, seated herself in one corner, and Frank seated himself in the other.

“Thy mama has also clover on her grave,” suggested Frank. On this Staza grubbed with her fingers in the direction where her mother lay, until she came to the coffin, then she tapped upon it with her finger and the mouldy wood gave out a droning sound.

“To-day I shall sleep beside mama,” said Staza, and her eyes sparkled with delight. She had no very clear idea of what a mother meant, but she believed that it was a fine thing to sleep beside mamma. And she had advised Frank to have the grave dug in this spot for no other reason than that she might get near her mother.

“Shall you sleep here all night? enquired Frank.

“Why should I not? All night I shall sleep here and to-morrow also I shall sleep beside mamma.

“Who was thy mama?” asked Frank.

“Who was she?” said Staza. “Why who could she be when she was my mama?”

This reply satisfied Frank, at all events if he had tried all his life he himself could not have invented a wiser one.

The sun set and the shadows lay upon the cemetery. In the grave it was already dusk.

“Aren’t you frightened Franky,” enquired Stara.

“Since it is in the grave in which grandfather will have to be I am not frightened,” answered Frank, but he was frightened all the same.

“If you are frightened seat yourself beside me, we will sleep together or we can talk,” said Staza; and she at once made a place beside her where Frank esconced himself without further invitation.

And they sat beside each other like two birdies in a nest.

“If thou art frightened, I will lead thee home,” said Staza. “I am not frightened.”

And now when Frank saw this little girl so completely without any fear, he said that he would not be frightened either, and that he would not go home. At that moment he felt so fond of his new companion that he could not bring himself to go home. He was happier seated by Staza’s side, and was with her in the grave.

After a while the moon rose, and the whole cemetery shone white like molten silver. The moonbeams penetrated even into the grave, all the interior of the grave looked as though it had been whitewashed, and when Frank looked at Staza she was white also. Frank involuntarily nestled closer to her, and Staza laid her sleepy head on his bosom.

Staza slept with ‘maminka’ beside Frank, they were together ‘verne dusicky.’

Later in the night if they had not been asleep they would have heard the tramp of feet approach the cemetery, they would have heard a rapping at the gravedigger’s window, they would have heard the voice of the gravedigger, and afterwards all these feet and different voices approach the grave. But because they slept they heard nothing of it.

Loyka, the peasant, it must be understood, when the evening was already far advanced and no Frank appeared at home, fearing some mishap, went with Vena and a domestic in the direction of the cemetery to see if he could not meet with Frank somewhere or other. And when they failed to find him, they went as far as the gravedigger’s to make enquiries about him. ‘He was here until quite late this evening,’ said Bartos, whether he has departed I know not, but it is possible that he is lying in the grave.’

“In the grave?” enquired Loyka with surprise.

“In the grave,” replied Bartos with a peaceful face, and he led them to the grave. “Look how prettily they have fallen asleep together. If you choose awaken him, but I would not awaken him if I were you.”

They slept like two birdies, and knew nothing of what was going on around them.

“When he cannot sleep any longer with his grandfather, he spends the night in his grave,” said Vena, “do not awaken him Pantata.”

Loyka, however, was of a different opinion, and awoke Frank, and this caused Staza also to awake. The boy was drowsy, leapt to his feet, and looked about him. Over the burial ground streamed the white light of the moon, the crosses stretched forth their gaunt arms, by the grave stood his father and bade him come home with him. Frank did not at once collect his ideas; only he knew that he was with Staza and that he was not at home.

“Let him be; children are children,” said Bartos.

“But I order him,” shouted Loyka vehemently, and wanted to jump into the grave.

“Softly, softly,” said Bartos quietly; and held Loyka with his hand so that the peasant could not stir a muscle.

“Here I am master—everything only by my consent,” and he did not allow Loyka to take a step forward.

“I am master of the boy,” said Loyka.

“So you are,” said Bartos. “These children consecrated with their breath the grave of your father, and did you wish to desecrate it? Are the wrongs that you have already done him during life, then, not enough?”

These words smote Loyka’s conscience. He ceased from insisting further and in order, perhaps, to escape from hearing the recital of his own past deeds over the open grave, departed from the spot without more words.

Now the children heard the steps and voices receding; but being still frightened they once more cuddled close to one another, and before very long were again asleep, Staza on the bosom of Frank and Frank having his hand entwined around her neck.

When they awoke in the morning, Staza said ‘If only I had thee for a brother.’

Frank still held her head in his hands, and said “Well, thou hast me for a brother, if thou wishest.”

Above the grave, folks say that truth is spoken, these children were speaking in the grave itself, so what they said was certainly the truth.

After this Staza shared with Frank her bread at breakfast, shared her dinner and everything else, led him all ove the cemetery, taught him the airs which she had learnt, and by evening they had more than once sung together in a duet. And because on the morrow his grandfather’s funeral was to be, Frank said that he would not go home at all that day, but would wait until they brought thither his grandfather, and for that one they would still be faithful spirits.

Staza told him to pay attention and notice what tunes were sung at his grandfather’s funeral, and she would learn them all by heart, then they would sing them over again by the grave side until the earth had been raked over his grandfather’s coffin.

And when the funeral took place, that came to pass which no one the least expected. For while people thought that Frank would follow the corpse with tears and miserable lamentations, Frank never wept at all. And while they thought that Loyka’s wife, the peasant woman, would not shed a tear, she sobbed and wept as though she were broken-hearted, and looked as though she wished to tear her hair.

The peasant woman thus conducted herself, because she wished to efface the impression left by her previous behaviour. She deceived none, but she fancied that she deceived them.

Frank and Staza listened what sort of hymns were sung above the grave that they might learn them afterwards.

When the funeral was over, Frank said “Now that we are like brother and sister, thou must come to us at Frishetts that I may entertain thee at our house.”

Staza went with him: he led her by the hand and the neighbours pointed at Frank and said “Just look at that boy: he went to dig his grandfather’s grave and out of that grave he is leading —— Staza.”

The neighbours’ wives said: “Look! look! he is going about with Staza, with that —— she will be just like her mother.”

Frank said to Staza: “Staza, guess whom I love better than anybody else.”

“Who?”

“Thee.”

Staza said “I am so glad for thee to lead me about that I could walk by thy side for ever. I have never gone about with anyone before.”

And they went about together before everybody.

 

1. Odpotchinte vpokoji vejrne dusitsky.