Three Stories/Under the Hollow Tree/Chapter 2

by Vítězslav Hálek

 

CHAPTER II.

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ROM that day forth these children felt that they were equals. From that day forth one was no more an orphan than the other. From that day forth the hillside was their consecrated ground, it was also their home. In the house they had a father, even Krista had a father in old Riha; on the hillside they had a mother, even Krista had there a mother. Immediately after school she used to be with Venik, and when there was no school she was with him the whole day.

Such days were like saints days to both of them. Then she sang till her voice rang all through the woodland, and Venik would play on his violin, till people going past used to pause, and all the shepherds of the village would most gladly have pastured their flocks on the hillside if they had had the right of pasturage there. When it rained the two crept into the hollow tree, and then it seemed as if the tree was resonant with string and song, as if in its old age it grew young again in heart and mouth, and as if itself played and sang.

The rain drops fell splashing among the leaves of the old tree, and from its hollow, from its extinct portion, issued songs as though the tree had a young heart and a young mouth. When the sun shone the children seated themselves before the tree in the cool shade; and while all around the faded grass drooped and died, in the cool shade of that hollow it grew rich and strong as if it had been watered by the dew.

After a time Venik learnt also to imitate the birds on his violin, and when he had a mind could arouse such a concert that Krista herself sat beside him in astonishment, and as if in the presence of a revelation.

In the meantime Krista learnt to sing at school, and learnt also with Venik; at school with more ardour than formerly, in order to give pleasure to Venik, and when with Venik with more ardour still, in order to give pleasure to him and herself too. And so over the hillside these two young artists fluttered like two birds with happy notes. They reanimated it, for all its life the like of these had never there been heard. They were like the living heart of that hillside; they were its language and its speech, and could well have been a consolation to any who chose to listen to their conversation.

They were developed beyond their years; the girl’s little throat was as consonant to Venik’s strings as the two children were to one another, one was the complement of the other, so that I might have called the tones of her voice and the tones of the violin comrades, if there had been as many likings and dislikings in the kingdom of tones as there are among men.

And they grew. When Venik was fifteen and Krista twelve, Krista also quitted school; and proud she was, as Venik had been before, to think that she was now twelve years old. But what delighted her most was that now she could linger on the hillside all day long; and then at that time Krista desired nothing more than this; she had everything; twelve years of age, the hillside, and on the hillside singing, and besides singing, Venik and his violin. A loftier ideal of happiness she had not. Her little heart panted for no other bliss, but was filled to the brim with that of the present hour. Nay, it was even overflowing. She even felt that the world had a superfluity of joy and brightness, the sky a superfluity of blue transparent ether, the world a superfluity of song and all sweet scents. It never oppressed her now—the thought that she was an orphan. She felt no special want to be supplied, and if she could have managed to give full expression to her feelings, she must have said that she rejoiced to live in the world.

But all at once Venik was again a solitary on the hillside. Riha, his father, began to fail in health, he took to his bed and Krista had to stop at home with him. From that moment Venik ceased to take his violin with him: the song and the playing were silenced; death, like the shadow of a heavy pinion, hovered over Riha’s cottage, and our children all at once ceased to be children. The world all at once took ona different colour; it suddenly lost for him its brilliance, and his breast was overflowing with anxiety. When Venik from the hillside saw his cottage-home it looked to him as though it could be singled out from all the other buildings by particular signs, and to Krista sitting in complete silence in the sick room with the ticking of the old clock and the groans of the failing Riha, it seemed as though an invisible finger had wiped off from the world all mirth and all sweet singing. All who came into the sick room were gloomy and grave; those who went away from it seemed to be without hope, and Krista, who sat continually in the sick room, felt as if all that gloom and hopelessness had concentrated itself on her; and time elapsed. ****** Krista flung herself on the bed sobbing, and out of doors the death knell was sounding far and wide. When its deep vibration thrilled over the hillside Venik started to his feet like a wounded hart. With weeping and lamentations he collected his sheep, and with weeping and lamentations drove them home. He had no need to ask for whom the death knell was tolling, he knew it in an instant, and if he had not known it, a single glance at the sick room would have told him all, The sign of death was visibly scored upon the house. That heavy wing had swooped down upon it, and the expression of everything was one of gloom and sorrow.

Krista knelt by the bedside on which Riha had just expired, Venik knelt beside Krista, and in broken syllables—for in such the deepest anguish is wont to speak if it finds words at all—thus addressed her, “Now I also am a poor orphan”; now he had sacrificed his father also; now Krista was at last in no sort poorer than himself. Ay, it seemed to him that he was the most wretched of all.” Then both felt as if in presence of an apparition; they could not grasp the truth, and it seemed to them as though this truth was somehow not quite true; and then again it appeared beyond all suspicion to be the truth. And the truth was yet more irresistible when people brought a coffin to the house. Then Venik went to meet this coffin, and felt as though he himself must be lodged therein; he embraced it and cried out “So this is now papa’s only chamber.”

After this anguish silenced him; perhaps it deafened and stifled him. Venik found no more words; he neither wept again nor lamented. Not even when they bore away his father in that new, narrow chamber to the cemetery, to lay him beside Venik’s mother, who perhaps after all was already buried there. Venik took his violin, to conduct his father to that last resting place, and when the singing and the weeping above the grave were ended, Venik began to weep above it. He wept on his violin; he wept so that all the people burst forth into tears afresh. He played “The orphan child.” It was a language which everyone understood better than words, it was the language of tears, which are disparate from words. In a region of the heart already inaccessible to words, those tones opened for themselves every fastening, and pierced and saturated all. People had never heard speech so moving, and Venik hitherto had never spoken in such moving language.

Everyone was astonished at him, and Krista stood as though changed to a statue. Those tones were not the outcome of mere memory; they were the offspring of anguish, and Krista again found force to weep. They were the tones of orphanhood, and where in the world are there tones more touching.

This time Venik for long would not detach himself from his violin, and long was the burial speech he spoke upon it.

Only now for the first time he saw exactly how people are laid in the grave, because he whom they laid there was his father.

When all was over Riha’s cottage had a new owner. Instead of Riha the cottager came Riha the peasant, brother of the defunct, and now Venik’s guardian. He was already at the cottage with his wife when Venik and Krista returned from the funeral, and he at once began to order this and order that.

Venik and Krista did not understand what all these orders meant. They were still in fancy by the father’s grave, and when they came home they heard many words. All they understood was that from that moment everything would be different.

All that had been heretofore began to crumble beneath the children’s feet: with their father perished even their home. It was unloving words which they now heard, and a loveless home is no home at all. They listened like frightened birds, and longed to flee away to the hillside.

“You Venik,” said Riha, “can’t you leave that precious violin to be a violin. A great boy like you and nearly grown up to go mooning about the hillside; what a pretty affair it is! Thy father was too good-natured to thee, and when he saw thee and thy violin together, he thought—God knows what he thought. But what will become of the house and farm, I wonder, if you treat it like that? Until harvest you shall still pasture the sheep. When harvest comes I will take a turn with thee in the field myself, and after harvest I will find someone to put you in the way of things.”

“And thou,” said Riha’s wife, turning to Krista, “dont let me see thee running out of the house any more after Venik. A girl like thee, who could already be in service, to go prowling and howling in the woods! Once I miss thee from the house and I make short work of all thy caterwauling! Just remember that thou hast but a slippery foothold in this house and that we can manage to do without thee. Thy howlings wont make the cottage bloom, and we cannot have thee here to be muffled in cotton wool for the sake of thy singing. Mercy on us! I suppose thou thinkest thyself a cut above all our peasant girls.”

It is possible that many of these words were true, but they were all ill-timed. At that moment it was cruel to scourge hearts already in any case bowed with grief. I have already said that Venik and Krista did not fully understand all they heard; only so much as this, they felt that every word inflicted a wound opon them, and that each wound smarted.

That day, at even, may be by accident, Venik and Krista met at the hollow tree on the hillside. Krista was already there, and Venik came somewhat later.

“I am come to say good bye,” said Krista, and flung herself on the little grave which three years before they had dug for his mother.

“And I am come to say farewell to the hillside and my violin,” said Venik plaintively!

“And I to say adieu to thee, dear Venik,” added Krista. “Ah, heavens! I mustn’t dare to be beside thee any more. I mustn’t dare to sing with thee, they have taken my all. Oh, now I am a poor orphan girl,” and she fell a-weeping.

“Come when you like, Krista,” said Venik with sudden determination. Who eyer heard of such a thing! You not to sing! I not to play! This very night I will bring away my violin and hang it on the tree, and play I will whene’er I have a mind to, and you shall come here when you choose,—upon my word you shall.”

“I shall not dare,” said Krista, plaintively, though Venik’s determination revived her considerably. “I am already but a cipher at the cottage. I have nothing more in the world. Why did they not bury me in the grave!”

At mention of the grave, Venik again gave way; but after a pause he said, “Meet here we will, you shall see, and if they pursue us we will away to the woods.”

And after this they went home as if from a second funeral. That same evening Venik took down his violin, even tore the nail out of the wall, and went with both to the hillside, hammered the nail into the hollow tree and hung the violin upon it. But he soon took down the violin and played upon it its own farewell and its own lament. Possibly the Rihas heard him—and how could they fail to hear him when the village was close to the hillside? however they said nothing when he came home. But Krista was the worse off of the two. Already she had no hillside to fly to. Already she had no breathing time to look forward to as a consolation. Already she had only a hard couch on which to weep herself to sleep at night.

The home which but yesterday was like a warm nest now breathed upon them like a winter’s gust. Venik now encountered no loving looks responsive to his own, and heard no loving words. And if Krista was still attached to the house like the swallow’s nest to the cornice—now the cornice itself began to totter—there were already people to be found who would pull down the nest.

One day, just before harvest, Venik, seated on the hillside, began to reckon how long the hollow tree and the hillside would be still a portion of his world. The wheat already pricked to maturity, it was but a short time to harvest.

Krista was at work in the house when her peasant mistress stepped up to her, tore her work out of her hands, trampled it on the ground, and screamed, “Why, hast thou no hands thou awkward slut?”

Krista stood before her in amazement; and the peasant woman continued, “Perhaps you expect me to pick it up from the ground for you.”

To this Krista replied, “Kind mistress, I cannot do it any better, and if you will not shew me how to do it, I shall not be able to work for you.”

“Then be so good as to be off to-day better than to-morrow. Come, come, none of thy threats to me. Tie up your rags at once, and dont let me see you here by nightfall.”

After this Krista began to implore forgiveness, for she felt that perhaps she had been hasty. But the peasant woman would not hear a word. “Dont let me see you in the house a moment longer,” she roared, and Krista did not venture to address her again.

She collected her clothes, tied them in a bundle, and with the bundle tramped off to Venik on the hillside.

“Now I am going, now it is all over,” she said when she came there. “Now I dare not venture into the cottage.” She said it with a smile, for her grief assumed the guise of smiles, which were indeed a kind of determination. And then she said what had happened.

“Where shall you go?” said Venik, as if beside himself: for indeed he had never before had to face so horrible a calamity.

“I know not,” said Krista, “I only know that I must say good bye to you in earnest. And again she laughed a short constrained laugh, so that Venik began to be embarrassed to know whether it was all jest or earnest.

But it was all so perfectly true, that Venik for a long time lost the power of speech. When he found words to speak the first he uttered were “you shall not go alone; I will go with you.”

“Where would you go,” said Krista with surprise and terror.

“Do you think I shall stop here without you? We will go and be in service together,” spoke out Venik.

Then Krista could have fallen on Venik’s neck and have kissed him all over. To have only him and he not to cast her off,—he to wish to entwine his fate with her’s,—was not that enough to make her feel at that instant twice a woman? was not that enough to bring all at once into her heart spring time, fair weather, flowers, and all sweet songs?

“We will find a place where we shall be allowed to play and sing together,” said Venik warmly, and as if in proof thereof, he forthwith loosed his violin from its nail and began to play as if he wished to say good bye to all the birds in the wood, and as if he gave them to understand that he was going to search for himself a hillside, a wood, and a hollow tree,—everything in another corner of the world. Krista sang to his accompaniment, and it seemed quite impossible for these two beings ever to be separated, for that playing and that singing to be isolated from one another. They were so closely united that it was impossible to think of them as two.

“Do you know what,” cried Venik of a sudden, with as much delight as if he had found a treasure, “we will not go out to service anywhere. We will go into the world, I with my violin, and you shall sing to it.”

They knew what the world was like which they would have entered on as farm-servants behind the barn, and wished to enter it. But they might quit their home for other scenes, and that would be also to go into the world. They had been willing to take service with people; now they would go and make people merry with singing and music,—would that be worse than service?

All that Venik now thought about was how he could get his clothes quietly into their wallet as Krista had done, and then they would be off. And they arranged between them that Krista should pass the night in the hollow tree, and keep watch over Venik’s violin, lest haply they should lose it just at the very time when they had most need of it. Then he was to bring his clothes there at night and they were to be off before the break of day.

The seed which is no longer sheltered by the husk is easily carried away by the wind: these children had lost the sheltering husk of home, and the wind carried them away. They quickly came to an understanding about a plan and the means of carrying it out.

When that day at even Venik drove his flock homeward, he drove them quickly, as he did on the day when he heard the funeral bell toll out the news of his father’s death. But he drove them with different feelings. For indeed the circumstances were differnt. Venik was in high spirits. To-day he longed for something to occur which should bring down upon him the wrath of the peasant Riha, his uncle; such wrath that he would have to fly his home, and then he and Krista would be just in the same plight. This he did not succeed in bringing about, but it was not for want of trying.

Riha’s wife greeted him with these words, “Haven’t you said farewell to that precious bride of yours,” she said. “At last we have got rid of her, the bread-wasting vagabond—that little pet of thine. We sha’nt have to scrape together cotton gowns for her any longer, nor take care lest her soft hands get callosities upon them.”

To that Venik replied, “For all you say I know why you have driven her forth. It is because my dead father loved us dearer than the cottage. You would gladly be rid of me, too, because all you care about is the cottage. But you wont succeed in that, I tell you.”

These words enraged Riha’s wife because they were true, and because she saw that Venik began to have an inkling of her own bad intentions. And when at supper she told her goodman what Venik had said, the day of judgment. was rehearsed in that building. Riha hunted for Venik to teach him how to speak to his aunt in future, and when Venik was not to be found, he said that it should stand over till morning, and that he would give it him with his breakfast.

But he never gave him anything more at breakfast. Venik had already migrated, wallet and all, to the hollow tree; and when Riha brought him his breakfast next day, where then were Venik and Krista?

In the house an alarm was raised. No one knew aught about Venik; none of the servants had an idea what had become of him. And in the village people laughed at Riha and told him that now he would have to pasture the sheep alone.

And so Venik and Krista threw themselves upon the world. Very early, when above the tops of the old oak wood crept the first rays of dawning, he and she stood prepared for the journey. They stood before the hollow tree as by their sanctuary, as if it were their true home. Thither from the cottage they had fled with light hearts: now that they had to flee from it they felt a load upon their hearts. Here was their church in which they had been both angels and pious listeners. Perhaps that tree had roots even in their hearts. And certainly even the flowerets which grew upon the hillside had in their hearts both soil and sustenance. Now they felt a load upon their breasts. And they knelt beside that little tomb in which, many a long day since, they had buried the sweetbriar, the willow wands, and the sweet marjoram, and of which they had made Venik’s mother.

“Venik, thou weepest,” said Krista, and wept also.

“Krista,” said Venik, “if in the world we ever fall sick, we will come here to get well.”

And it felt very hard to take the first step. Then yet once again Venik took Krista by the hand, held it firmly, and said, “Krista, if thou art lost to me in the world, I shall come here to seek thee—remember the way.”

And both felt heavily oppressed, as though someone was taking their heart out of their breast piece by piece.

The first step was so hard to make that they scarcely managed to take the second. Then their steps soon became lighter, and when village, river, hillside, and wood were lost to view, they were already as light as two birds. Youth alone easily adopts itself to all, and quickly forgets both weal and woe.