Three Stories/Under the Hollow Tree/Chapter 4

by Vítězslav Hálek

 

CHAPTER IV.

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T seems to me that then for the first time was Venik without a public, without listeners, when seated again on the hillside, he took once more his violin in his hands and played, “The Orphaned Child.”

He was that orphaned child. Long ago, when Krista had accompanied him with her voice for the first time in the gloria, she had burst into tears because she was an orphan; and Venik convinced her that she was not an orphan. Then his father died: Krista was driven from the house, and when she had to begin her wandering in the world he had taken her by the hand, and wandered with her, and pointed out the way; again she was not an orphan. And when it was all finished, she voluntarily departed from him, at the very moment when he had hoped with her to enter paradise. That paradise closed upon him—where was it now?

Venik’s thoughts had no beginning and no end, they were like an unbroken wilderness, where the eye tires itself. There was nothing for it to rest upon, nothing to look upon with pleasure. He had desired so little for himself; and when he lost even that little, it seemed to him that he had lost the whole world. He also had cherished her; and when he looked and saw how she had torn herself, root and all, from his very heart, he saw that where those roots had been was a bleeding heart.

He had moments When it still appeared to him that what had befallen him could not really have happened. Surely he was befooled, surely Krista would return to him all at once. And then he seemed to hear her step, and the rustling of her dress: for a moment he saw her dancing eyes, her heavenly look, and heard her glorious voice. He turned his eyes in the direction whence that step and that rustling seemed to come, and, when he perceived that it was but a mere delusion he cursed his fate.

If some one had asked him how long he had already sat thus, he would have said, “a whole eternity,” and he would have spoken the truth. And if he had been further asked how long he had walked with Krista in the world, he would have answered, “Two or three days,” and would equally have spoken the truth.

Then Venik arose and went again into the world. Sometimes he played and sometimes he did not play, as the fancy took him. Sometimes it seemed to him as though he wandered in the world in search of Krista; and again it seemed to him that if he found her he should cast her from him that he might have her no more with him.

First he came to the parishes in which he had dwelt long since with Krista; and when his old comrades saw him desolate, they asked him where he had left Krista. Then he sometimes answered with a word, sometimes with a smile, sometimes with a tear, just as was consonant with the answer. But through it all it was apparent that each of these modes of reply tormented him; he felt it too, himself, and, therefore, made up his mind not to go to villages where he was known, but only to go among strangers.

In villages where he was not known, indeed, no one enquired for Krista, because no one had known her. But even that was not a clear gain to him, for he observed that he himself also on that very account made fewer enquiries about her. Already he had not enquired about her for many a long day.

Sometimes the whole business of strolling through the villages and of playing to people also wearied him; he was sick of it all; and then if he could find any gay young fellows anywhere he would attach himself to them as long as they wished to listen. By his playing he lured them to the dance, and he played so that anyone who had wished to tarry always beside him would perhaps have been led to destruction. And then although at the beginning he was but sombre and melancholy, the further his merry companions prolonged their orgies, the gayerhe became. His gaiety waxed in proportion as his youthful followers slackened and grew weary.

If people from the villages in which he had been so dear, when he and Krista were still their young musicians, had seen him at such orgies, verily they would have shrugged their shoulders at him, and the mothers would have cried “What a pity it is, poor boy, so young and bonny as he is, and once so good and honest.” Now people began to nickname him “Wild Venik.”

Then again it would happen that he had nothing to say to anyone. He shunned the villages, or at most seated himself or laid him down somewhere behind the barn under the willows, as long ago he had done with Krista. And here, just as he who praying with a rosary takes and pushes one bead after another, so Venik dwelt in memory on Krista, and word by word repeated everything he had ever said with her, everything he had ever felt for her, each single recollection was like a single bead of the rosary, and the whole remembrance was like a single prayer. Sometimes these prayers soothed him, but yet it was so only apparently. Then again it seemed to him either that he felt surfeited, or that he had not begun to be satisfied at all.

Sometimes wishing neither to go to villages where he was known, nor to those where he was unknown, he prowled around so purposely and futilely, that when he tried to recall that wandering to mind, all he knew was that he sat on the hillside at the outskirts of the wood beside the hollow tree. It was passing strange to him. Like a heavy dream rested upon him all that had taken place beyond that spot of ground, and that had ended there. He peered into the tree, and there yet lay Krista’s couch of leaves and moss as though he had strewed it there that veryday. And here he flung himself on this couch and embraced the whole of it as if in a wild frenzy of passion. Then he laid himself down on it and lay awake or dreamt. He reflected how constant were those fallen leaves and that shrunken moss in comparison with man. Deprived of the sunlight and the sun’s warm beams, it had not proved unfaithful to its post. In the hollow, worm eaten tree, he had laid that moss and foliage, and he found it there whensoever he returned.

Here it seemed to him that after all it was impossible that he was so deserted as he held himself to be. He got up, ranged the wood once more, and shouted “Krista, Krista!” but there was no reply; there was not even her footprint, there was not even her shadow. And when he turned back without success, he did not wish to go again to the tree, or to the couch within it.

Then he cast his eyes over his own native district, and felt as though here he was in his own home once again. He longed to go back once more to the Riha’s to offer to tend his flock, and even to leave behind him that violin which he knew not whether he ought to curse or bless. Once, indeed, under cover of evening he approached the village and wended his way to his own parental roof, and debated long with himself as to whether he Should enter the house or not. He passed the courtyard and stood behind the hall door, next to which was the kitchen. In the kitchen on the hearth burnt a fire, beside the hearth stood Riha’s wife preparing the evening meal. The fire flashed into her face, that face had the colour of the fire, and it was a strict face. But still it seemed to him like an honest face, and one that he could trust. Always it had never promised him anything, always it had only threatened him; and just because it realized its own threats, it was honest. Krista had never threatened him; there was no strictness in her words or face, and yet how had she sinned against him in comparison with yon poor old beldame.

Perhaps he would have entered, perhaps he would have offered to drudge at anything, and nothing would have been too burdensome for him. But at that moment Riha’s wife carried away the supper from the hearth, she returned no more, and Venik departed. He paused awhile at the window, and looked into the lighted room. And here it flashed across him that the cottage with its bit of land was his property, that it was a rare stroke of fortune for his uncle and aunt, the Riha’s, when he went a-roving in the world, and that he might even now enter the chamber where they sat and demand of them an account of their stewardship over his farm and rights. He might settle here, leave his vagabond life far behind him, and become a well ordered man. A well ordered man!

Hereupon Venik turned from the windows and from the cottage, and went once more toward the hillside.

To be a well ordered man. What was that? Venik laughed sarcastically. When he had fled into the world with Krista he was a well ordered man. When she departed from him—an end to orderliness! even though he should be the master of a farm. Perhaps Krista was well ordered, and now he could be so too. Fie upon it all. Where was the good of perfunctorily saying, “I will be a well ordered man,”—and then to have in one’s bosom everything in disorder. A cottage and a settled life do not create orderliness. And yet something still drew him back toward the cottage.

Then Venik struck off again from the hillside, bent his steps into the world once more and hurled himself upon it like a drop of the mountain torrent which blindly hurls itself into the river that it may reach the sea at last.

He was again the wild Venik who made merry all night long with a merry gay brotherhood; who tippled with them heart and soul, who made them merry with music and jesting, and who would not feel the dint of care till morning. Venik was again the centre of a group of lads in their prime; only that at this time mothers would no longer have invited him to their homes: rather, they would have slammed the door in his face lest he should entice their son to drunkenness and debauch.

But he only acted thus in unfamiliar villages where he was not known in the days when he walked with Krista. When he came to the villages he knew he was different, as though he fain would humble himself, and as though he did penance for his nights of revelry elsewhere. He was gloomy and melancholy. Here he seemed to be still treading in Krista’s footprints: and sometimes he fancied that he was tracing her and on the search for her. His familiar listeners perceived in his silent moods something sinister and had him in compassion.

And even here summer sped away. Sometimes the days were indeed as interminable as the sea, but summer whirled away with them as with all else: it engulphed them and there was never a trace of them. Three years floated by from that time when Krista took to flight from her couch in the hollow tree.

Then Venik went again to the same town in which he and Krista had been in a theatre for the first time, and where the people had lifted him and Krista on to the stage for him to play to them. And when he saw the theatre, he reconnoitred it and pryed about it, and felt he hated it so bitterly that he would not have hesitated to throw a burning brand upon it: if any one else had done so, he would have looked on with delight, while the tongues of flame devoured and reduced to nothing a place whence began his hardest turn of destiny. He would have helped the flames yet further to devour and annihilate it, till there remained no trace of it, just as no trace of Krista had survived.

This hatred of the building, be it understood, did not hinder him from entering the theatre. He was now already of riper years than on the memorable day when he was first here, and he looked on things with different eyes. What he saw on the stage amused him: it amused him to see others the sport of adverse fate, it provoked him when they succumbed to their fate, and although it provoked him, yet it tempted him thither, and he seemed to read there a fragment of his own life and to be thereby consoled.

And now he frequented the theatre every day, and when he saw that there was but a spare supply of musicians in the orchestra, he offered himself with his violin, and was accepted. Then he looked from this orchestra on to that theatre as it were at first hand, he drank from it, as it were, the first draught, and when the curtain fell, he concluded all with his playing. And sometimes he was glad of this, and sometimes he laughed at it.

It pleased him well to have his mind diverted and employed. But it did not please him when he saw how those theatrical princesses to-day proferred love to this man, and to-morrow to that; to see them kiss and embrace one man to-day, and to-morrow another. This ran so counter to his ideas that sometimes he would not have grudged his words, if he could have told them what place they had in his esteem.

Sometimes also on the stage was the wood which he had seen here for the first time with Krista, and which reminded him of the hillside and wood, with the hollow tree at the outskirts of the wood.

Sometimes also he was asked to play a tune in that wood; and he played till he made people weep or whistle; for from his strings spoke both weeping and laughter.

Then they held Venik in respect and honour: they led him to a music master, with whom he studied and played all day long. They also taught him many things which he played to their admiration finely and touchingly. But still he only rose far above the rest, when he played those songs of his own just as he had taught them to himself on the hillside. Then, indeed, it was just as though the whole hillside breathed out of him, as though all the wood resounded in his strings, as if even the birds were full of voice, as if even the river played which gurgled far below. Of these songs people could not have enough, and called for them again and again. But, indeed, when he played his “Orphaned Child,” the public was enthralled by the magic of his art. Now it was as though every full grown man were again an orphan, and as though they were gathered together to one common grave to weep their fill.

At length rumours reached the town about other theatres, about theatres in the capital town of Prague. The newspapers wrote about them, and in the town they talked about them, in the theatre, everywhere they talked about them. And with these rumours came one certain piece of news, about a sort of prima donna who carried away the palm, both by her voice and execution, so that hitherto she had not her equal. When she stepped on to the boards, the wonder was that the garlands and bouquets did not smother her; and when she had finished her verformance and prepared to drive home, people unyoked the horses from her carriage and with torches and hurrahings conducted her to her house. Rumour further said that she was young and beautiful, that she had been a strolling musician, until some one interested himself in her and had her carefully instructed, and that now she was a perfect miracle.

When Venik heard these and other things, a pang shot through him and he could not rest a moment. He left the orchestra, took his violin and as though everything was on fire behind him and around him, he hastened onward toward Prague. And in Prague he soon learnt all about the matter. Here, whatever place he entered, people spoke about her. In the beerhouses, hostinets and cafés they were preparing for the theatre, all the afternoon, and evening was spent in conjecturing how many garlands she would get and who would throw them to her.

Venik listened and held his breath, and he had no need to begin the conversation anywhere. In every hole and corner he heard about her.

Was it possible that it was Krista?