Three Stories/On Condition: or Pensioned Off/Chapter 6

by Vítězslav Hálek

 

CHAPTER VI.

 

OW occurred in the farm house a trying period which it is a painful task to have to chronicle. And it is the more painful, because in the Loykas’ farm may be seen a picture of a hundred other farms in which similar scenes are enacted, only slightly differing in their details.

It is, perhaps, the most painful thing for a writer when in his pursuit of truth he has to delineate nauseous realities.

Among all social questions there is, perhaps, no single one which can elicit in men so profound a sentiment of indignation as the question of the vejminkar (pensioner).

We need not go beyond the confines of Europe if we wish to discover slaves and slave masters. We have them at home, each of us in his own village, and what is more disgusting is that the son is the slave master, the father is the slave; and what is still most disgusting, the law sanctions this relation, approves it, ay, incribes it on the public rolls like a commercial treaty. The greatest popular immorality is carried on before our very eyes, nature debauched and trampled under foot, is distorted into what is unnatural and monstrous. The law allows that sons should take upon themselves the part of criminals, and the sons wittingly, ay, hanging their heads in shame the while, hasten to adapt themselves to the criminal’s vocation: custom and habit consecrate the deed, and baffled nature loses here even her power of speech.

But to our tale. The harvest home at the Loykas’ passed as gloomily as Ash-Wednesday. In the farm house there was not a cheerful face, the old folks shunned the young, the young couple avoided the old ones. They never looked at one another if they could help it, nor, if they could avoid it did they speak to another. And if they did look at one another or spoke to one another they neither returned the look nor listened with the least satisfaction.

Just as in years gone by the harvesters used to gather eagerly to the Loykas’, so this summer every moment they spent here was a torment to them. And they heartily thanked the Lord God when it was all over, and they might go thence. “I do not come here again,” they said to one another. “Not if I have to look for work I know not in what village.”

It is true puncheons of ale were rolled into the courtyard for their behoof, and they were given a glass or two of rosolek, but not a single face displayed any affability either in looks or words. They had said to their good old master, out of politeness, that this summer they would have two mistresses to dance with, and lo! they had not one. The harvesters and harvest women were glad when they could disperse to their different homes.

And then when the harvest was over the relation between the young and old people became further strained, until it could be strained no further, and the only question was when would be altogether sundered.

When after harvest the fields had to be put in furrow, and old Loyka ordered the servants to go to such and such a field, Joseph came, cancelled his orders, and told them not to go where his father bade them, but to go somewhere else.

When old Loyka bade them sow rye in this or that field, Joseph bade them take the rye into a different field, and sow wheat in the other.

If old Loyka told them to reap beyond the meadow, Joseph vowed there was time enough for the crops beyond the meadow, and so they were to work in the field.

Thus things went on until at last the servants paid no heed at all to old Loyka’s bidding, but at once questioned their young hospodar to see whether he approved of their old master’s orders or whether he would wish to cancel them. Only what the young hospodar ordered was a valid order. And thus it came to pass in the course of a very short time that, although according to contract and the letter of the law, old Loyka had reserved the right of still managing the estate for six years, already at the beginning of the first year his right of management was snatched out of his hands, and Joseph virtually became sole lord and master of the estate.

And what took place between the male portion of the family, had its counterpart also in the relations subsisting between Loyka’s aged wife and Barushka. No maid-servant whom Barushka did not wish to have in the house was permitted to stay there, nor would she have been had Loyka’s aged wife moved heaven and earth to retain her. And there was not a maid-servant on the place who did not consider Barushka as her mistress.

And so, then, the hospodarship was completely monopolised by the young folk. Some points old Loyka yielded for the sake of “divine peace,” some because yield he must, others because they were taken from him—until, at last, no one troubled themselves about his whims and wishes. And so not six months of the reserved six years had elapsed and old Loyka was deprived of all his rights of hospodarship save the right to dwell in the farm house; and how secure his tenure of the farm house had become we already know.

Old Loyka must have gone to law with his son at every step if he had wished to maintain his position. When he wished to sell rye to the corn factor, he became aware that Joseph had already sold it underhand, when he thought that some samples might be left over the winter the merchant’s agents came and began to fill their carts with it, because Joseph had sold it also. And so now i’ faith I know not what still remained to old Loyka to testify that he was still master.

Such were the conditions amid which Frank grew up, and thus he began to feel ill at ease at home. Everything there was altered and in confusion. After his grandfather’s funeral he had led Staza about the courtyard and showed her where his grandfather had once dwelt, and which was the abode of the kalounkar (tape pedlar) and strolling fiddlers—but now all must be re-christened.

Into those chambers he had conducted Staza when he had invited her to the farm, and they had still remained almost untouched since the banishment of their previous occupants, here he and Staza could still feel at home, just as when they seated themselves in a grave at the cemetery. Here they could tell over to one another all the stories they knew, and thus story-telling was still not wholly banished from the farm. It had dwindled to the youngest member of the family, and to a most modest audience.

Sometimes Staza was the teller of the story and Frank formed the audience, at other times Frank was the narrator and Staza the listener.

The growing difference between father and son had one advantage for Frank, if we can call it an advantage, viz., that Frank was pretty well overlooked by both of them, and being left to himself might draw profit from this freedom. That is to say he might so far profit himself, that he need not be a witness of all that took place in the farm, might wander at will through the fields, might go to the cemetery for Staza, and lead her wherever he chose.

We are not among those who think that home is always the best place for children. On the contrary, it is frequently the greatest blessing for a child if he be freed from the fetters of home and be left to mother nature and her relation chance, that they may develop what home cannot impart, and what, indeed, it often thoroughly perverts.

These children, at all events, found together away from home what at home they had lacked. Nature and chance lovingly made good to them the deficiencies of home life. We mean by nature the apparition of the heavens, and we mean by chance heaven’s divine providence, and we have two instructors with which few homes can be compared.

Staza took him with her to the cemetery, and there they beheld face to face the serious side of life. Frank took Staza into the fields and to the open wold, and they recognised the smiles of the green turf on the earth, the azure blue of the firmament of heaven, the laverock which fluttered like a singing messenger from one to the other.

Staza led Frank to the cemetery whenever a new grave was delved. There they heard from the lips of Bartos the life history of the defunct, there they squatted together, slept side by side, and were “faithful little spirits.” Frank again reconducted Staza to the field when he found a new bird’s nest, when he had discovered any young quails, or when he wished to show her how the partridges sit. Here again he narrated to her the whole life history of these creatures, so far as he knew it, and when they sat by the hedgerow during the narration, it seemed to them like fairy land.

Staza came for Frank whenever the bees winged their way to the clover which bloomed on his grandfather’s grave, in order, as she said, that Frank might see whether they were the bees from his grandfather’s hives. And then Frank sat beside his grandfather’s grave and Staza beside the grave of her mother, and they were at home.

Then again Frank led Staza to the farmstead, to those hives which were now his own, and they observed in which direction the bees flew away and whether they went to his grandfather’s grave. Then the two children settled themselves in the chambers by the coach house, and burst forth into story telling just as musicians burst forth into song and melody.

And to tell the truth these two chambers at the Loykas’ farm seemed steeped in fairy lore and ballad history. He who stepped into them involuntarily remembered things which he had here heard from the musicians and from the kalounkar, and scarcely had he seated himself before it all seemed to come upon him so that he was compelled to relate it all again. Something of this kind Frank and Staza experienced when they went into the burial ground and when they seated themselves in a fresh dug grave. Even there on that little hillock into which the grave was heaped some one seemed to sit with a harp and to softly sweep the strings.

And somehow Staza so aptly interpreted it all, that it seemed to Frank that never in his life had he heard such sweet and reasonable discourse.

After that they consecrated with their visits every hedgerow in the fields. And that spot where either of them had narrated some particularly pretty story was, in a manner, the source of that story. The circumstance that had been related was dear to them, and so also was the spot on which it had been related. Whenever they came to that spot a tender feeling was awakened in their minds, as often as this feeling was awakened within them, the place became still dearer, until it was to them like a consecrated shrine, without masonry, however, and without pictures. Many such shrines had they carefully chosen, resting places and trysting places, fringed with green turf, and above each bent a heaven aglow with the sun’s rays and saturated with its smiles.

Sometimes they sat upon the graves like two living monuments—cheerful monuments, however, and in their young memory and on their young souls were inscribed even solemn matters. And Frank was flattered when Bartos, the gravedigger, made him the auditor of his narrations; it seemed to the boy just as though the dead grandfather continued to play his part in Bartos, it was too a certain mark of distinction to be made the confidant of a man so sedate and, moreover, the greatest athlete of the county.

Sometimes again the two children sat by the hedgerow among the rye like two quails, only that they broke in upon the clicking music of the cricket with human voices, and upon the buzzing of flies and bees. And this specially delighted Staza, who felt just as though she were at a concert, and as though she must laugh and whistle and press Frank’s hand. It was dull, though only at times, for a mind so very young to be always yonder among the graves, and Staza’s feet grew tired of wandering about the prim and sombre walks of the cemetery. But here where everything made holiday, look whithersoever she would, she likewise made holiday, just as when the lenten season has passed the young sleeper awakens with a glad hurrah.

At first Frank did not at all comprehend why as soon as ever Staza entered the fields she grew so full of mirth and rapture. Her little eyes flashed playfully, she tripped along and skipped about as though she were on wires, her face joy itself, her words like songs. Bnt it could not be otherwise—man was not created to be exclusively sad and serious—gaiety is just as necessary as the sunlight; the young heart of little Staza was a proof of this: unconsciously she wished to compensate herself for all from which, equally unconsciously, she had been hitherto excluded.

But later Frank ceased to wonder at her gaiety; he also was himself saturated with it. When he went to the cemetery for Staza all the way thither he rejoiced beforehand at the thought of her enjoyment, and looked forward to her skips of delight and cries of pleasure, sometimes he half skipped about himself when he thought how she would skip about, sometimes he half began to carol when he thought how she would sing and carol.

And so Frank began to acquire in the parish the reputation of a vagabond who could scarcely be tethered to his home, and we cannot gainsay the correctness of this opinion, he was a vagabond, and became more and more of one every day, so that already he found very little pleasure in his home, and was glad if only he could sneak away out of sight somewhere behind the barn. Sometimes when he went with Staza and they could not esconce themselves in the two chambers by the coach-house he turned away with her at his side, and they explored some choice nook outside the village. If anyone had enquired of Frank what his home looked like, he would only have described those two chambers in the courtyard—nothing else belonged to his conception of home, and no one was associated with these chambers—neither father nor mother nor brother. All that appertained to them was that they were empty, and that he was in them and that Staza was in them with him.

Later his parents wished to attach him to his home, but it was already too late. They set him work to do a-field, and there he went willingly enough. But if he had to work in the courtyard, he soon sought the easiest means of escape into the country; and when once he was out of doors and in the country outside, any one might be sure of finding him on the road to the burial ground, unless he were hiding by the hedgerow or in some newly delved grave.

And now even Joseph began to chaff him for his vagabond ways, and his parents could not deny that their elder son had some foundation for his sarcasms. But we know very well that Joseph was always the spoilt child of the house, and that Frank was the fifth wheel of the coach; and therefore Joseph’s oracular sentences carried no great weight with them. And when Joseph told his father and mother quite seriously that they were teaching Frank to be a tramp, Loyka strictly enjoined upon his younger son to stay at home and not to leave it any more.

But even these injunctions soon ceased to be taken seriously. Frank obeyed for a day or two, and after a day or two was already far away from home without his parents paying any heed to him.

Old Loyka, indeed, already began to grow rather blind to everything novel that originated around him, and Frank’s vagabond habits were something novel. Moreover he himself was too much afflicted by the relation subsisting between himself and Joseph, and was too full of it, with the best intentions in the world, to have much room left in his heart for Frank.

And here we must say, once for all, that old Loyka’s power of resistance which had in some respects so stoutly confronted Joseph’s encroachment upon its rights, now began in everything to slacken at all points. He felt himself crushed and broken, he already found but few sources of support within himself, and thus he willed and acted only by halves. Each new motive entered into him only as it were by one ear, to vanish again immediately by the other. And so it was that he ordered Frank not to quit the house, as to whether his son obeyed his orders or not, the father had already ceased to trouble himself.

And then one day in the presence of Frank was enacted between the old folks and the young one of those scenes which were already of as frequent occurrence at the farm as the Lord’s prayer in the Church Service. For, one day, the kalounkar came to the Loykas’, not to be received there as a guest, but only that he might look once more for old acquaintance sake upon his old friend. And on this occasion Frank saw that old Loyka wept and that the kalounkar also wept. Then old Loyka invited the kalounkar to stay with him in the two chambers at least for the night. The kalounkar excused himself, till at last Loyka drew him almost by force across the courtyard. But when he wished to open the door there was no key, and when he asked for the key he was told that the young hospodar had it and, so they said, had locked the two chambers in order that Frank should not introduce into them any of the servants who had once been dismissed from the house.

On this old Loyka commanded that the key should be brought, but no one could find it. And after he had thus waited a long time and had joked freely in order that the kalounkar might not perceive that he was no longer master on his estate, and when still no one brought the key, Loyka turned, caught up a cleaver from somewhere in the yard and battered in the doors of the two chambers. When they crackled, it seemed as if the whole building would tumble down, and when at last the doors gave way and the two chambers were free of access and Loyka stood like a conqueror at the threshold leaning upon his cleaver, and shouted that he was still master in his own house and so let his friends make themselves at home—then, to his astonishment, he became aware that he was addressing people who were no longer there. For the kalounkar was already far away from the courtyard, and Frank had vanished with him. After this a discordant din of voices reached his ears from the balcony above—the voices of the young folks, to whom Loyka replied throughout the whole dialogue from the courtyard, frequently threatening them with the cleaver which he held in his hand.

And this time Frank vanished from the farm for good. When several days elapsed and he did not re-appear, the Loykas thought that it was one of his usual rambles, and that they need only send to Bartos at the cemetery to enquire for him, and they would get Frank home again. And when he still did not come after several days they sent a message to Bartos just to say that Frank had still not returned. After this old Loyka went himself to the cemetery, but when he saw the grandfather’s grave, he knelt beside it and prayed a thousand times for forgiveness. He almost forgot exactly why he had gone there. And it was Bartos who first reminded him. “You are looking for Frank, I daresay? Certainly he is not at his home, for it is now a week since he has been at our house.”

It was exactly a week since Frank had quitted his home.

“But I heard say that he had gone with the kalounkar (tape pedlar), and that he was walking the world with him,” said Bartos to the astonished parent.

“With the kalounkar? Going all over the world with him?” said Loyka, repeating the words of the gravedigger.

When he returned home he told his wife what he had heard, and they despatched Vena to look for the kalounkar and bring Frank home from him.

Vena departed and came back after several weeks with the news that Frank had tramped it with the kalounkar, but then, so it was said, he had met with a harper, had quitted the kalounkar, and gone with the harper.

“Dolt! idiot!” said Loyka, “then you ought to have discovered the harper and brought back Frank. And so begin the search again—the sooner, the better—and without Frank do not venture near my house.”

Vena departed and found the harper, but Frank, so it was said, had gone off with a fiddler and now, doubtless, was once more with the kalendar. “Pantata,” explained Vena, “I should never have ventured home again as long as I lived, for no one will find Frank again till the day of judgment. He goes off with the people he meets, and we should have to run the circuit for ever of all the wayfarers who ever passed the night here, for it is with these he roves the world.

Although it might have seemed that such news would have not a little ruffled Loyka, such was not the case. Hearing with whom Frank roved the world, he in a sort of way reconciled himself to the young renegade: “They dare not come to us, so he has gone to them,” reasoned Loyka; this appeared to be so certainly true that this truth even, in some sort, gave him satisfaction; at all events Frank published to the world the fact that these humble dependants were no longer domesticated at the Loykas’; at all events he, in some sort, incriminated Joseph for having so ruthlessly stripped their home of its previous mirth and jollity.

“He is not in bad hands,” thought Loyka to himself, and out loud he said “The roving young scamp, but I suppose he knows what a flogging he will get when he comes home again.”

But Frank knew nothing about a flogging and returned home no more. Then more messengers besides Vena were despatched from the farm, and all returned with the news that where he last was heard of, he was no longer to be found, and that they could not track him further.