Three Stories/Poldik the Scavenger/Chapter 3

by Vítězslav Hálek

 

CHAPTER III.

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ROM that day Poldik considered himself strictly and formally engaged to marry Malka. All the domestic arrangements which he made had a speedy marriage in view, now he ceased to think of himself that Malka also might not be too much in his thoughts; but, of course, you know how one feels under similar circumstances.

It came to pass once at mid-day, and yet more frequently later on, that Poldik was obliged to desert the shadows of the lofty wall and drive some hundred paces further to the river side, to Naplavka. He was delighted to watch Malka with the dinner searching in vain for him in the old place, and Malka, too, was delighted when she found him at last close to the margin of the river.

Here Malka enjoyed herself vastly, and she told Poldik that he was to halt here more frequently in future for the mid-day meal under the shade of the tall poplar, for it was far pleasanter here than by that old wall yonder.

And it was pleasanter by the shore, boats laden with sand lay to, and smaller skiffs kept circling round them, and in these smaller boats were wherrymen punting about. The distant view upon the water, too, everything was better than yonder by that lofty deserted wall.

On the Quay Malka was considered in the light of Poldik’s future bride, and thus many a joke passed between them and the folk there present when Poldik took his dinner from Malka’s basket.

The next day Malka brought the dinner straight to the shore. And she was still more pleased with the scene than she had been the day before. I know not what called Poldik away for a moment, but in his absence Malka stole down close to the water’s edge, and said half to herself “How I should like a trip on the water.”

I also know not whether these words were a simple soliloquy, but they caught the ear of one of the wherrymen, who gallantly replied “Sit down in my skiff, and we will have a lark.” Malka looked at him, and did not answer. Perhaps she considered the whole affair a joke. But the wherrymen understood it for earnest. “Only just a minute” said he,“before Poldik comes back we will be ashore again.”

Before she expected it the little skiff lay close by the shore at Malka’s feet. She need only take one step forward, and she would be afloat. The young wherryman stood all prepared as if he were a winged being, and as if his whole attitude was an embodiment of the words “Come and let us flutter about.” He was like an embodied smile, like an embodied jest. Everything in him was playful, everything in him was so full of gaiety that it was hard to resist. His eyes alone were a comedy, his words were like snatches of merry songs—Malka never meant it, and lo! there she was sitting in his skiff.

The skiff acquired wings; a few strokes, and it was in the middle of the river. The river smiled around them, the heavens smiled above them, when Malka looked at the young waterman he smiled, too. Everything was smiling; Malka also was smiling.

And then they looked from the middle of the river, and watched Poldik as he slowly returned to the shore.

“Never mind” said the young waterman, “before he gets back we can yet take a look somewhere else.” And again he plied the oar, and they seemed to fly along; like a five’s ball they were at Podskali, not far from Vysehrad (High burgh), and like a five’s ball they were back again. And they stopped again in the middle of the river just as Poldik was returning to his vehicle which stood by the shore.

When he reached it some of the bystanders exclaimed “Your bride has eloped, Poldik, look! yonder. Francis has carried her off,” and they laughed.

Poldik looked in the direction whither the wherrymen pointed; there from the skiff Francis and Malka looked smilingly at him, and Francis shouted “Now she wishes me to tell you that she is faithless to you,” and Malka shouted to the shore “Wait a minute, Poldik, dear, I will be there directly.”

Poldik also laughed feebly, all laughed and joked, and so it may be concluded that they were all very merry at the Quay that noon.

Poldik waited for Malka a minute or two; but when she and Francis only dallied amid stream to teaze him, he shouted “Malka, I must now be off!”

“We too,” shouted Francis from the river to the bank; and he laughed, and before anyone expected it he was again pulling hard against the stream. The skiff was soon concealed behind larger craft, vanished from sight and, perhaps, was already again somewhere under Vysehrad.

Poldik still stood waiting for Malka, hoping that she might yet soon return. But she did not return, and the wherrymen began now to laugh at Poldik in earnest.

“She has taken a small outing,” said one; “She wants to enjoy her freedom a little longer,” “Francis is showing her the world,” said another; “What matter! Francis knows the world, and he knows how to show it, too,” said others again.

Such was the tenor of the observations sarcastically interchanged among the bystanders.

Here Poldik suddenly turned his vehicle round loaded with sand, and tarried no longer. When he drove away his first word was “Heesta!” His horses got a severe belabouriug until at last they flung out with their hoofs, and after this Poldik discharged a whole volley of oaths. But with this volley his store of ammunition seemed to become exhausted, and a considerable portion of the road and several streets were passed, and Poldik neither swore nor smacked his whip nor cried “gee up” to his horses. He looked continually at the cobble stones as if he had lost something among them, and was now searching for it.

He had been already some time at this amusement before Francis returned with the little boat on which he had given Malka a trip. “To-morrow we must take another trip,” said the young waterman to Malka when she stepped out upon the beach.

“Poldik has gone off on account of you,” said the wherrymen.

“He is in a precious huff on your account,” added others.

And they laughed; Malka also laughed. Malka thought that she would meet Poldik and excuse herself, but she did not meet him.

The next day Poldik halted for the dinner hour in the old place by the high wall, and there waited until Malka should bring his dinner. He had already looked eagerly on his way thither to see whether she was following him, in order that he might give her a lift. But he did not see her, and waited a pretty long time in vain expectation of her.

Otherwise no signs of vexation were visible in him, perhaps he had slept or driven off his annoyance of yesterday.

They greeted one another, and when Malka had produced the dinner from her basket—“I am just going to have a look at the water for a minute,” said she, and away she went.

Here it appeared to Poldik as if he had already dined. Whether he ate or not he himself scarcely knew, but he soon got himself and his horses under weigh without waiting until they had satisfied their hunger, threw the basket with the fragments of his meal into the cart, drove off to the beach for sand, and asked half mechanically “Where is she.”

“Ask Francis when he returns with her,” said one of the wherrymen who was loading his cart with sand.

Poldik asked no more nor said another word, but as he was driving off he put Malka’s basket with the plates and knives and spoons on to a boat which was loaded with sand, and said generally to those on board “When Malka returns tell her I shall not require dinner to-morrow.”

This speech seemed to the sandmen and wherry-men somewhat too serious to be considered a mere matter for jest, and as jest they had hitherto looked upon all which had been enacted at the quay side.

“But, But!”—began some attempting to humour Poldik “who would take matters so seriously all at once?”

But Poldik paid scanty attention to what they said, and vanished with his vehicle as quickly as Francis had done with the skiff on which he was giving Malka a trip.

And this time Francis and Malka were really long in returning. They must have put in somewhere or other beyond Vysehrad, otherwise wherever they had gone they could have already returned. Poldik was already a second time at the quay for sand, when the wherrymen shouted “Look, there they go!”

Poldik did not look to see who was going or where they were going—he only made haste to finish the loading of his cart before the skiff had reached the shore. And he had just finished as they lay to, and Malka stepped smiling out of the skiff, on which the jolly waterman remained smiling also. Though Malka stepped out of the skiff as quickly as she could, she did not move quickly enough to stop Poldik, who was just that instant driving off and discharging upon his horses every oath in his vocabulary like a shower of hail.

When Malka took her basket and the remains of the untasted dinner, some of the men who were lading sand said, “Poldik wishes us to tell you that to-morrow he will not require dinner.”

Malka at these words felt somewhat conscience-stricken, but she soon recovered herself when the waterman said to her “Anyhow, bring the dinner, and to-morrow we will have another trip in my skiff.”

This time, at all events, Malka made every effort still to overtake Poldik; perhaps she felt that she was bound to excuse herself, even though she could not wholly exonerate herself from suspicion. But Poldik for once seemed not to be driving scavenger’s horses, nor himself to wear the buskin of a scavenger—he had vanished, and there was not a trace of him.

When Poldik came home that evening Malka prepared to visit him at the stable, and there to have the quarrel out which, to tell the truth, was not yet well begun. But Poldik had no sooner covered up his horses for the night than he vanished from the stable and the house, so that not a single trace of him remained, and Malka did not tarry for him.

And when she brought dinner for Poldik on the following day, she neither found him by the high wall nor at the beach at Naplavka. ’Tis true the jolly waterman was waiting there with the skiff, and invited her with looks and words and nods and smiles to seat herself beside him, for he had long waited. But Malka turned aside, and went back through those streets in which she thought she might perhaps meet Poldik. She did not meet him, but seeing his vehicle at the ale-house where he frequently stopped, and in which his comrades often took their half pint, she followed him into the house and placed his dinner beside him on the table.

“Pray, what do you want here,” said Poldik gruffly, just as when he meant to swear at his horses.

“I am bringing dinner for you, Poldik dear,” said Malka, and attempted to set all to rights with a smile.

“What is the good of bringing dinner to an ale-house,” said Poldik in reply.

But Malka paying no attention to this objection, none the less placed the dinner on the table, and bade Poldik to eat.

“What is the good of bringing dinner to an ale-house,” repeated Poldik gruffly, and so saying he tipped over everything that was on the table, so that Malka’s proffered gift, knives, spoons, and broken crockery rolled in a pretty hash upon the floor.

Hereupon Malka had recourse to weeping, and through her tears declared that her fault did not deserve to be remembered, and that he had shamed her before everybody in the ale-house. What a rumpus he made about one little pleasure trip on the water, and when she had never been anywhere all that year, and had only gone such a little distance. And more she said to the same effect. She added that she would go again on the water deliberately, and that Poldik had no business to take on so about it.

But to-day Poldik was quite inaccessible to reason; when Malka said that she was going again on the water and did not go, he got up and thundered out “Well, go then at once if thou dost not wish to be made a hash of like thine own dinner.”

And he spoke each word as if it was stone. We know that Poldik seldom spoke, and that he never spoke a word more, but rather several words less than he meant. Consequently, when he pronounced these words with so much precision, there was nothing for it but to consider them meant seriously. Malka had recourse to a yet more violent flood of tears, but wasted no more words on him, and soon marched off. Those bystanders who were present in the alehouse with mine host at their head, posted themselves round Poldik, whom they generally reputed to be a man of thoroughly temperate thoughts and habits, and endeavoured by peaceful words to persuade him to reconcile himself with his mistress. “Let him sleep upon it.” “Everything will soon come straight.” “Things like this will occur at times.” “But a man ought not to take on so.” “What would matters come to, if?” and so forth.

Poldik sat by his table, covered his features with both his horny hands and never stirred. Whether he listened to what the bystanders, sympathizing more or less with his hard fate, said to him, I know not but when they had ceased speaking, Poldik made no response. So that at the conclusion of those well intended words a silence occurred, such as we are accustomed to call “a torturing pause.” And after that pause, the bystanders began to talk among themselves about indifferent matters, relating to their several trades or occupations; but during their indifferent remarks all kept their eyes fixed on Poldik, so that anyone at all versed in the customs of the people, who had entered the house at that moment, must have guessed that the conversation of those present was so common place and insipid, because they wished to spare him whose face was buried in his palms.

Their conversation went so to say on tiptoe, for fear of outraging that which not long before had been raging very tempestuously.

Poldik suddenly burst in upon these pacable remarks with the following monologue: “Dotards, liars! And they tell us that God looks at the heart! He looks not at all at the heart. He allows the heart of him who hath one to be wrung from him to be torn in pieces, and then the people flock around to laugh at those pieces as at the crucified Jesus. Yes! look at my heart! See how they pierce it—but let them torture it. All your talking is not worthy that I should write it down on paper and then light my pipe with the paper.”

At these words all present looked at one another, and pointed to their foreheads as if they would say: “His reason has given way.”