Three Stories/On Condition: or Pensioned Off/Chapter 8

by Vítězslav Hálek

 

CHAPTER VIII.

 

HEN Frank learnt that his parents dwelt in the pension house, he began to yearn for home. To his shame, be it said, not for the sake of his parents to whom he had already become disaccustomed owing to his fondness for his grand-father, but for his own sake, because he longed to see once more a spot where he had fashioned for himself in company with his grandfather so special a mode of existence that he fancied on the whole estate there was nothing to be compared with it.

As we know, Frank at present tramped the world, and, indeed, in the true sense of tramping. But it is much stranger that his parents should have permitted him to tramp abroad, aye, that later they wholly ceased to search for him in order to forbid it. From the beginning old Loyka had learnt that he walked about with the kalounkar, the fiddler, or the sieve-maker—let him walk with them, thought Loyka to himself, to be sure, even at home he was constantly with them when he was not with his grandfather and it did him no harm. He was rather pleased to think that the kalounkar, the musicians, and the others still preserved a kind of predilection for the farm, paying back to the son the hospitality they had enjoyed from the father. Then again he heard about his son that he was with a certain gamekeeper, and that he was happy in the woods and ravines, and when the gamekeeper sent word that Frank behaved well with him, Frank was suffered to remain. Then a forester saw Frank at the gamekeeper’s house, and hearing that he was a son from Loyka’s estate, said: “So you must come and stay with me as well,” and then Frank advanced just like a vagabond, having been a vagabond at the gamekeeper’s, in course of time he became a vagabond at the forester’s.

And here in these woods it seemed as though he had found once more all that he missed at home. When he found himself in some rocky haunt overshadowed by pine trees, all the fairy stories stood before him, just as if he were seated at home in one of those chambers by the coach house, until he even felt himself involved in horror, until even a panic seized him in that chilly dusk of the woodland, just as at home when at even they narrated about white women, about black hounds, and about accursed personages.

When a panic seized him, he laid foot to shoulder, sped out of the wood across the fields and to the cemetery, shouted to Staza, and then led her away that she might hear with him what he had heard before alone. On the way he had already prepared her for what she was to expect, that, as he said, she might not be too much startled. And on the way through the fields they visited various hedgerows and their trysting places, and here they had already lost half their fear and on their way through the wood there was no need to penetrate to its rocky haunts, not at all, they took the path by the outskirts of the wood, or perhaps amused themselves at the keeper’s house, and so lost the other half of their fears.

And this expedition into the wood was for Staza something unutterably charming and wonderful. From Bartos, the gravedigger, she heard how robbers fell upon him in the woods and how he defended himself. From Frank she heard how a panic seized a man when he retired to its rocky wildernesses. And when she came thither with Frank, she saw trees like giants, she heard the murmur as of a mighty river, she felt the breath of flowers, she felt the chill of the woodland, her little soul opened and something of the great unknown entered into it. It was not so smiling nor so clear as the white light of day which she saw from the cemetery, but it was just as majestic and inaccessible, so that she sat beside Frank silent and, as it were, full of reverent awe.

Neither the one nor the other knew how to express it all, but they knew so much as this—that in their inmost soul was a sort of language which explained it all. Once Staza said that they would sing; and they began to sing “odpocinte vpokoji verne dusicky.” (Rest in peace ye faithful spirits), but scarcely had they pronounced the words before Staza burst into tears, and when she was quieted it seemed to her as though she heard organ tones above her; then she said that never in her life, not for the whole world would she dare to sing in this place again. And it seemed to the two as though she had expressed herself as follows: In the fields there is a presence which inviteth to the dance and singing, but here in the woodland there is a presence which inviteth to silence and attentiveness, because it would fain tell its own story.

That no doubt was the difference for Staza expressed in the most general terms. But otherwise she here entered into a new world, and still it appeared to her as though it was a world akin to the one she knew before. True, when she and Frank came out of the graves or from the graves themselves into the fields, gaiety, potent even to excess and delight seized upon her spirits, her soul soared aloft with the very skylarks, and fluttered into the blue of heaven and the clear transparent ether. But when she came hither into the wood she partially felt as though she were in the cemetery among the tombs and at home. Just as though she was actually seated in a spot which might be called a cemetery, a grave. But with all its closeness, it was so magnificent and so beautiful, with all its dusky twilight it was so open and so free that her soul, although it had them not, yet felt on itself a kind of pinions, so that it fluttered and was carried aloft and even took Frank’s spirit with it, so that both fluttered together.

Again it was otherwise, when they ceased to listen to the murmur of the woodlands, when they ceased to look at all that grandeur, when before their soul the ha-haing of that organ was mute, and trivial things emerged—things easily comprehensible. Here was the call note of the cuckoo, here a butterfly, a beetle, a fly. Here Staza again found speech, here words came to her; at sight of these trivial things she again found herself, and here she would in a little time have again given way to dancing and singing.

So then this world was to Staza strange, new, and yet extremely welcome. Although Frank used to go for her, and so ought to have been her guide, she took upon herself the role of cicerone and played her part famously. She led Frank from tree to tree, and every tree was like the resting place of some pretty conceit. What she and Frank failed to find when roving through the fields, seemed to find a voice among these gnarled trees, as though it called aloud “Then it is just so.”

Each of our two vagabonds went into the wood with a different object, and only when the mind of the one went halves with the other in all that they found in the wood, could the mental picture of the woodland within them be said to be complete. Frank heard every bird, saw every bird, heard every murmur, saw the squirrel and the hare, heard the foot of the wild goat crunching the gravel, and confided to Staza all he perceived. He was like the visible ear of the wood, and in his head the wood was, as it were, depicted down to the very song of the birds and the sound of the wind among the boughs. His eye was constantly in the crowns of the trees, constantly on the watch, constantly following something. All this time Staza was continually exclaiming “Look at that primrose! Look what a beautiful sweet briar! Here I still smell close at hand the last violet of the spring! Look what a grey coat of lichen that pine tree wears, and how silvery white is yonder birch! And see here are wild strawberries. Here the whortleberry is in bloom. This place we must remember. And here is a plant which I have planted on maminka’s tomb; it is the tearlets of the Virgin Mary (the wild red pink). Look how the wild nut trees are covered with catkins,” and similar things she said.

It is evident that Staza’s mind was attracted to colour, to flowers, to variety. And if the birds skipped and hopped in Frank’s mind, in Staza’s blossomed a whole parterre, the loveliest colours mingled together, rivulets streamed off from blue forget-me-nots, and fringed themselves with blackberries.

And if the soul of Frank was full of sweet sounds, the soul of Staza was garlanded with flowers. And when they paced the woodland, one gave to the other; Staza gave to Frank flowers and colours, and Frank gave to Staza singing and melodious sounds.

But they also penetrated the rocky wildernesses and ravines of the woodland, and lingered there awhile. Only that Staza especially thought that it would be too much to sit there every day, that it would oppress her too heavily. Because in that ravine there was not any sound to be heard, everything was, as it were, embedded in silence, and if a step rustled it startled you. The rocky walls stood narrowly opposed to one another: if they had had hands they could have stretched them out and shaken them. And these rocky walls rose high into the air: high aloft the merest vestige of blue sky bent above them in a tiny narrow strip; all the rest of the sky was banished from the view. Moreover sometimes a large bird appeared high above it all with a strange whistling note which startled you as much as when a footstep rustled.

What was it at home in the cemetery, compared with this huge grave! If she had ever felt oppressed in a grave (but she never did feel oppressed) she had only to sit upright or stand and she saw in a moment all the surrounding world: all the other graves, the ruddy-painted cross with the white iron figure of the Christus, the whole sky, and her cheerfulness was at once restored. But here! if you felt oppressed, standing upright was of slight service to you. You must go quite away, and yourself cause a kind of rustling with your own footsteps, a kind of crunching of the gravel, which here was the source of so much trepidation.

And then a little pebble sometimes rolled over the rocky wall, and you could hear above measure distinctly its every tap again the rocky angles of the stone. Or sometimes a lizard, sunning itself, let fall a morsel of earth, and this, crumbling and rolling down, rustled in a quite mysterious manner. Some times a puff of wind carried a leaflet hither from the beech trees which grew yonder above the ravine, and this leaflet quivered and fluttered in the air as if it trembled and dreaded to take the final plunge. Here every feeble whisper became a voice.

Sometimes when they were seated here they had not the least wish to utter a word. A word here was re-echoed from the walls of the ravine, the walls themselves spoke their own language, and it was in a manner cheery enough—but you could not bear it long. Here they generally uttered their thoughts to one another only in whispers, seated side by side in order that they might not infuriate those walls. But more than once it happened that even those walls themselves began to whisper. For the pellet of earth falling over them and fraying to pieces was also a whispering, and the leaflet falling from above and trembling was also a whispering, and such unexpected whisperings made the children pause abashed, and so many a time they broke off in the middle of their conversation only listening, looking at one another, and holding one another by the hand.

They oftest trusted themselves to converse aloud when the woodland above them yonder also carried on its own conversation, when the wind unloosed its mouth, and when those organ pipes which Staza had first heard in the woodland had their bellows full distended. Then a word was easily spoken, even the walls no longer seemed to spy upon them, having too much to occupy them in the hurly-burly of the woods above them, even the pebble ceased to whisper, nor could you hear the rustling of the lizard or the dropping of the morsels of soil. Then only articulate sounds uttered outloud could withstand the din, and thus also Frank and Staza conversed aloud.

Here and there the brambles trailed over the rocky walls in every kind of amicable embrace. In places the mullen’s tall stem shot upwards as if with some definite aim. “I have got so far at all events,” it seemed to say. At one of the corners of the rocky wall clung a single unlucky briar bush—clung in such a way that it could neither ascend or descend, but hung clinging in mid-air above a perpetual abyss. More fortunately fared a single birch above it which grew symmetrically upwards, and striking its roots into several crevices of the rocky wall maintained itself on its giddy platform.

But one sound was here which never languished and continually sated the ear with its gentle music. From one end of the rocky glen bubbled to the surface a spring of water pure as silver and our ravine offered to it its own lowest parts, in which the spring might arrange its water courses, and here it arranged them most tranquilly, like a good housewife. Where it suited best, it had fishes eyes (a plant), where you least of all expected it, it had strawberries stowed away, and where only that was possible it had some bush, in order that it might be a mirror to the bush.

And this streamlet greatly tranquillised the savage wildness of the ravine. This streamlet seemed to make a charming chamber of that rock-bound tomb, a chamber which especially entertained and welcomed Staza. And so when Frank said “Let us go to the ravine,” Staza at first remembered only its blank walls of rock with their scanty blackberry bushes, the wild sweet briar, and the long lank birch tree, and then she felt as though she must try very hard to be brave enough to go. But soon after this she remembered the water sporting with itself and babbling in its channel far below, and how here it lingered by a stone, here frolicked with a bush, and here streamed off from a whole colony of forget-me-nots—and then she needed not to be invited a second time, and after this Frank heard at once the words, “Well, then, let us go to the ravine.”

And this ravine was like another church to these children. As we know, they had their own little chapels first in the fields, by the hedgerows, not far from the nest of the quail. Here in this ravine they had a new church, substantially different from yon other, and yet in many respects not at all dissimilar. The difference was perhaps this—that yonder by the hedgerows and in the fields the mind expanded and soared aloft, but here gathered itself into its own depths. The similarity then lay in this that both there and here the soul gained strength and courage and other qualities of the like nature.

So now the life of these two young souls began to bestir itself. It began in the grave, it leapt forth among the fields, and here in the woodland it paused and listened. There where life ends their life began, there where life unfolds in germinating ears of corn beneath warm summer rays of light, their life carolled gaily, and here in the ravine and woodland where life has a couch of quiet dreams, their pilgrimage was reminded that it must return again to the graves.

Once Staza said to Frank “Now that you lead me into the fields and woodlands, I sing but seldom among the graves at home. Do you know why?”

“Why?”

“Because I am thinking how I may be with thee. Often and often I have begun to sing, but then it has occurred to me that I would far sooner be with thee, and that it would be better than singing. Once I wished to sing at maminka’s grave, and just then I heard thy call at the wicket gate, and I went just as though thou had’st been maminka.” Then said Frank “and do you know why I so continually run from place to place?”

“I do not know.”

“I am seeking at all times where thou would’st like to be, and when I have found a place I show it thee, and then I cease to rove abroad. But I know that thou would’st not be happy at our house, and therefore I do not lead thee thither.”

“And where hitherto hast thou been happiest,” enquired Staza.

“With you in the cemetery.”

“Then I shall be happy there also,” said Staza.

“And also I like to be at our house, but in the pension house where grandfather lived,” said Frank. “And so my parents stay there now.”

“I should like to be there also,” said Staza, “only that thy brother ought not to live there.”

“My brother is there no longer,” said Frank, “he is at the farm house, and my parents are at the pension house; they are there just as my grandfather used to be, and I should like to see the place again.”

It was true that Frank began to yearn for home, never more to quit it, for he thought that nothing could compare with the delight of dwelling where his grandfather had once been, that is to say, in the pension house or at the cemetery.

And so they went home, and the sun had already set when they came to Frishetts. When they set foot upon the village green a large number of people stood there and all were talking and pointing in the direction of the Loykas’ house. Here Frank involuntarily called to mind the people who came to the farmstead on the day when the funeral bell was tolled for his grandfather, and they were almost all the same people, and Vena was among them.

Frank and Staza halted, concealed themselves behind the trunk of a large linden and listened. Something said the mayor, something said the sexton Vanek, something said Vena, and the rest of the people filled up the gaps with questions.

“They have driven him out, they have worried him out of the pension house,” said Vena. “Truly they did well: was he not old? Had he not given everything to the young folks? Had he not stinted himself for them? Had he not passed sleepless nights for them? and for them toiled at his estate—and this is his reward!”

“And how could they drive him out of the pension house,” enquired a neighbour.

“How could they drive him out? Thus, look you, they could drive him out. They said to him “leave the pension house,” and it was so. When do you peasant proprietors say anything else to your vejminkar (pensioner)” sneered Vena.

And now the mayor began to elucidate matters. Sundry relations came to the young Loykas’, to spend the day, then for two days, but after that they did not wish to leave the farm at all. And in order that the young folk need not have them constantly on their hands, Joseph Loyka’s young wife went herself to the old folk and asked them whether they would object to being removed into the two chambers by the coach-house, and allow her relations to occupy the pension house. On this old Loyka asked if she had anything more at heart? and whether she knew what it was to be banished to those two chambers—and by what sort of people they had previously been occupied. On this Barushka said that she did know, and that since the musicians whom he was so fond of had previously dwelt there well enough, perhaps he also would do there well enough, and that if he felt lonely and out of spirits he might invite the musicians to share the rooms with him. On this old Loyka went to his son and asked him whether he knew what the young mistress of the house had just been saying. “I do know,” replied his son, and repeated to his father everything which the father had heard from Barushka, because the young people had agreed between themselves what Barushka should say to the old man..

“Well, and what dost thou think of it all, my son,” enquired old Loyka.

“I think the rooms would suit you admirably,” said the young hospodar. “You see, of course, that I could not put my wife’s relations there.”

“And so I am to dwell there with Vena,” laughed old Loyka.

“As you please. But for my part I think that it would be an excellent opportunity of ridding the house of Vena altogether.”

Just as the neighbours had reached this point, they heard a banging of doors at the Loyka’s house, and from the gate ran old Loyka with dishevelled hair. The moon shone over the village green with its first rays, Loyka ran direct to the neighbours there assembled.

“Neighbours, for the love of heaven, I implore you, lend me a match,” he shouted. “In all the house I cannot find one little match wherewith to kindle the roof above the head of this son of mine!” shouted old Loyka, and kept constantly feeling in his pockets to see if there was anything like a match in them.

It was quite an awful spectacle to look upon the poor old man, and yet more awful to listen to him.

None of the neighbours answered him.

“What, then, will none of you lend me one little match?” shouted Loyka. “Oh! fie! the shame of it. I lent to each one of you whoever came to me at any time; without usury I lent to all. Who of you can say I ever refused to lend him what he wanted. If any one needed stock I lent him live stock. If any one needed a team I lent him a team, if any wanted harvesters I lent him harvesters, and now I want a match from you and ye will not lend it me. And on this he cursed all his previous neighbourliness.

It was evident to everyone without further demonstration that old Loyka’s mind was unstrung. Some in their compassion took one another by the hand, some began to show their pity by shedding tears. The mayor stepped up to him, and said “Pantata, perhaps, if you were to lie down you would get over it in sleep.”

But old Loyka replied instantly. “I thank you for your good counsel, excellent man. Do you think that I could lay me down in the chambers by the coach-house? I might. Why should I not? When the musicians and the tinkers and the kalounkar lay there, why should not I lie there also? But I know why I cannot lie there—because it would break my heart,” and at these words he struck his old breast with his fists as though he would break it in pieces.

Again the mayor seized his opportunity, and said “You need not sleep there, pantata, give me your hand; I will lead you to our house, and you can choose for yourself the bed which you like best.”

“True, that might be,” said Loyka as if he came to himself a little. But immediately after this he added with a bitter laugh, “But think you sleep would visit me, there, either? If Loyka passed a night in the village outside his own estate, could he also sleep! He could not sleep! I thank you respectfully kind neighbour. But hence I will not stir. If no one is willing to lend me a match, the devil is in it, if I do not tarry here until the Lord God sends a fiery brand from heaven upon the farmstead of my son!”

And he raised his hands to heaven, and cried “Oh! Lord God, a little of thy fiery brimstone and thy name shall be exalted for ever and ever.” He cried aloud like one of the prophets of the Old Testament, until horror encompassed every one who listened to him.

Then again he spoke, turning his face to his neighbours. “The Lord God heareth not, and that because I equally inflicted wrong upon my own father—only that I never drove him to the dog kennel. Only when my own father has forgiven me and prayed for me, will the Lord God send down brimstone,” and he sobbed aloud.

Again said the mayor “Take it not so to heart, pantata, perhaps your son will grow wiser, and all will yet be well.”

“Not take it to heart! Already it is late, dear neighbour, already it is quite pitch dark in those chambers, ay, it is dark there in broad daylight.” And here it seemed again as though he once more came to himself a little.

And not long after this he said “I know what would do me good for this one day, and where I could sleep. If some one would lead me to the burial ground to the grave of my father. But where is there any to be found to lead me thither. There is not one.”

“If you wish it, pantata, we will go at once,” said Vena. “I will conduct you thither, I will stay with you there as long as you please.”

“So be it, so be it,” said Loyka, and laughed, and looked from one to another and in fact allowed himself to be conducted by Vena in the direction of the cemetery. Almost all that group of neighbours followed him at a few paces distance, and accompanied him to the outskirts of the village.

And Loyka went with Vena to the burial ground.

But close behind them, even to the burial ground itself, went two small souls in great sorrow and tribulation they were Frank and Staza.