Three Novels: Hordubal, Meteor, an Ordinary Life

by Karel Čapek

  A tremor ran through the whole of his body as he said this. ‘Wait, I shall also come, and say: Well, now I belong to you. Ah, sister, do you understand, she knew it, she realized that even although I didn’t say so. And so she said: No, wait till another time. That means that I am to return, doesn’t it ? Say, say yourself, that means that she will be waiting for me, doesn’t it ? And that’s why she did not say even good-bye, that’s why I didn’t see her go away. I shall return, and both halves, like life and death, will fall into each other; well, now I belong to you. There is no proper and complete reality but what it is to be.’ He sighed deeply, like a man with great relief. ‘Love, death, life, everything that is in me, inevitable, and absolute, will all fall together into one another. Here you have me, only now am I in my true place; the only certain thing is to belong. Myself, my whole self I have found in that now I belong to somebody. Thank God, thank God, at last I have arrived.

  ‘No, let me go, I can’t wait, I’m going back. And she will only smile, Well, now I belong to you; I shall not be afraid any more, I shall not cover her over, I’m coming now, I’m coming now, I know that she’s already tugging at the tapes and clasps of her dress. Do, quick, you know that I am to go back! You call this a storm?—get away, I know a hurricane when I see one, I have seen tornadoes and water-spouts; this breeze is not fresh enough to carry me. Don’t you see, she flies into my arms, she bends forward, and flies, look out, we shall dash our heads together, and teeth, look out, you’re falling on me, I shall fall on you, how passionate you are, how you snatch me into your arms!’ Suddenly he began to wander feverishly. ‘Why is that pilot flying into empty space ? Sister, tell him that it’s not there, tell him to come back! Or no, go to her, and tell her, let her know that I’m coming back! Don’t you know that she’s waiting! For God’s sake, please tell her that I’m on the way, just till that pilot can find where to land; I couldn’t write to her, I don’t know where she is-’ He raised his eyes, desperate and full of terror. ‘What—what do you—Why don’t you tell her? I must fly round, always round and round; and you only blink at me, and you don’t want to tell anything, because-’ Suddenly he began to change, on his head he had a mask of bandages, and he trembled frightfully; and I realized that he was scoffing at me. ‘I know, you are an evil, envious, nasty nun; you are incensed with her because she loved. You needn’t envy her; well, to tell you the truth, then even in that I lied a bit. Because of that, perhaps, do you see, I behaved so cowardly. So that you know, another time—’ ”

  The sister of mercy sat still with quiet sad eyes. “Then he cursed and swore; it was as if Satan were talking in him. He vomited abuse and insults—God be merciful to me.” She crossed herself. “The most terrible was that those words came from a chrysalis without either mouth or eyes. I was so frightened that I woke up. I know I should have taken my rosary to pray for his soul; but instead I went into number six to take his temperature. He was lying unconscious, a hundred and four point five, and he shook with fever.”

  CHAPTER X

  Now he was only a hundred and one point six; he mumbled in his sleep, and his bandaged hands moved restlessly over the blanket. “Do you know, sister, what he says ?” asked the surgeon. The sister of mercy shook her head, with her lips tightly pressed together.

  “He says ‘Yes’r,” ‘ burst out the little man on the next bed. “ ‘Yes’r,’ he says, ‘Yes’r.’ ”

  Yes, sir, guessed the surgeon. Well, English then.

  “And said ‘Mañana,’ “ the little old man remembered. “Mañana, or mañana.”

  The old man crowed hoarsely. “Mañana. Mañana. Like a baby in swaddling clothes.”

  Somehow it struck him as extremely funny, he choked with laughter until he shook again, they had to make him be quiet.

  And up till then no fresh information as to who he really was. Three times a day the poet rang up on the phone: “Hello, do you know anything further yet?”

  “No, we don’t know anything.” And—”Please tell me how he is.”—”Well, you can’t shrug your shoulders through the phone—He’s still alive.”

  During the afternoon his temperature fell further, but the patient (at least, what could be seen of him) seemed yellower than before, and began to hiccup. That points to some injury to the liver—or does it look like icterus; the surgeon grew doubtful, and for a second opinion he called in a famous visceral specialist.

  The specialist was cheerful and pink, and an eminent old man, full of talk; he was so pleased that it was a wonder that he didn’t embrace the sister of mercy, “Yes, yes, we two had some cases through our hands before they made a surgeon of you, eh?”

  In a low voice, and more or less in Latin, the surgeon explained the case. The specialist blinked through his gold-rimmed spectacles at the figure made up of cotton-wool and bandages. “God bless you,” he exclaimed with feeling and he sat down on the side of the bed. The sister of mercy silently removed the cover. The specialist sniffed and raised his eyes. “Sugar?”

  “How do you know ?” muttered the surgeon, “I had his water examined, of course … if there’s no blood. Besides other things they did find sugar. You recognize it by the smell?”

  “I’m not often mistaken,” said the specialist. “You can tell acetone. Dear me, our ars medica is 50 per cent intuition.”

  “I don’t put much on that,” opined the surgeon. “I only … when I see someone for the first time I have a feeling at once: I shouldn’t like to operate on this case, not even if it were only for corns. Something would go wrong with him, embolus, or something. But why—that I don’t know.”

  The specialist gently passed his hands and fingers over the body of the unconscious man. “I should like to examine him,” he said regretfully, “but we must leave him in peace, I suppose ?” He carefully, almost tenderly, laid his pink ear on the patient’s chest, his glasses pushed up onto his forehead. Silence followed, even a fly could be heard at the window. At last the specialist straightened himself up. “But his heart has had some wear,” he muttered. “It could tell some stories. And his right lung isn’t all right. Distended liver—”

  “Why is he so yellow ?” burst out the surgeon rather rashly.

  “I should like to know that myself,” said the specialist thoughtfully. “And his temperature has fallen so much, you say—Show me his water, sister.” The sister silently handed him the tube: it had in it a few drops of thick brownish water. “I say,” said the specialist, raising his eyebrows. “Where did you get him from ? Ah, so you don’t know where he was coming from when he fell out of the sky to you. Hadn’t he got tremors when they brought him to you.”

  “He had,” said the sister.

  It seemed as if the specialist was counting up to five. “Five, at most six days,” he murmured. “That’s hardly possible. He might get here … from the West Indies … say, in five or six days ?”

  “Hardly,” remarked the surgeon. “Almost impossible. Unless he came over the Canary Islands, or somehow by that way.”

  “So it’s not impossible,” remarked the specialist caustically. “Or where else could he get amaril fever?” (He pronounced amaril as if he were enjoying the taste of the word.)

  “Where could he get what?” asked the surgeon, failing to catch his meaning.

  “Typhus icteroides. Yellow fever. In all my life I’ve only seen one case before, that was thirty years ago, in America. Now he has got to the period of calm and is getting to the yellow stage.”

  The surgeon did not appear to be convinced. “Listen,” he said dubiously, “mightn’t it be Weil’s disease ?”

  “Bravo, doctor,” said the specialist. “It might. Do you want us to try it on guinea-pigs ? That would be something for my hairy assistant; he’s quite mad about tormenting guinea-pigs. If the guinea-pig keeps alive and well, then I’m right. And I should say,” he added modesdy, “that I am right.”

  “How do you know?”

  The specialist made a gesture with his arms. “Intuition, my friend
. To-morrow his temperature will go up, and he will develop black vomit. By all means I shall send that fellow here to make a blood smear for us.”

  The surgeon scratched his head in embarrassment; “And … listen, what is that red fever?”

  “Red fever? Ah,jievre rouge. That’s the Antilles fever.”

  “Only in the Antilles!”

  “The Antilles, West Indies, the Amazon. Why?”

  “Only, well,” mumbled the surgeon, looking uncertainly at the sister of mercy. “But yellow fever also occurs in Africa, doesn’t it?”

  “In Nigeria, and such places, but it’s not indigenous there. When anyone says yellow fever, I think of Haiti, or Panama—just like a landscape, palms, and all that.”

  “But how could he get as far as here with it?” wondered the surgeon anxiously. “The incubation lasts five days, doesn’t it? And in five days—Then he must have flown all the way.”

  “Well, so he did,” replied the specialist as if that were nothing nowadays. “He must have been in a tremendous hurry. The devil only knows why he went at such a pace.” He drummed quickly with his fingers on the bed-post. “I don’t think he’ll tell you much about what was driving him so hard. His heart is very bad, and he’s gone through a lot.”

  The surgeon nodded slightly, and sent the sister of mercy away with a glance. “I’ll show you something,” he said as he uncovered the thighs of the unconscious man. Right on the groin in a semicircle there were four hard white scars, and one long one like a scratch. “You can feel how deep these scars go into the flesh,” he said, “I’ve always wondered what could have made them—”

  “Well, and?”

  “If he’d been in the tropics it might have been a paw—a cat’s paw. See how hard the claws clutched. But a tiger’s paw would have been bigger; perhaps a jaguar—that would mean America.”

  “So you see,” said the specialist, and blew victoriously into his handkerchief. “Here you have a nice piece of biography already. Locus: West Indies. Curriculum vitae: hunter and adventurer—”

  “And a sailor as well. On his left wrist, under the bandage, he’s got an anchor tattooed. By origin from the so-called better classes; comparatively long narrow feet—”

  “By the body altogether, intelligent, I should say. Anamnesis: drinker, obviously alcoholic. An old lung trouble which broke out again some time ago, perhaps as the result of some fever. And you see red fever fits exactly.” The specialist’s eyes shone with pleasure. “And the scars of tropical framboesia. Ah, my friend, that nearly takes me back to the days of my youth. Far countries, Red Indians, jaguars, poisoned arrows, and such like things! What a story! A globe-trotter who goes to the West Indies—why ? Apparently without any object, if we are to judge by the luggage labels of life. He leads a strange and restless existence, for his age, his heart is terribly exhausted; he drinks from despair and owing to the thirst of diabetes—Man, I can almost see that life.” The old gentleman thoughtfully scratched the tip of his nose. “And then that strange, headlong return, that mad chase after something—and somewhere before the goal he dies of yellow fever, which a miserable tiny Stegomyia fasciata squirted into him almost the last day of his wanderings there.

  The surgeon shook his head. “He will die of concussion, and internal injuries. Leave him to me.”

  “Yellow fever is not so common with us,” protested the specialist. “Don’t grudge him a famous exit, let him go from this world like a unique and remarkable case. With that bandaged head of his, with no face and no name, doesn’t he look like a mask to represent mystery?” The specialist gently covered the unconscious body. “Poor chap, you will tell us something or other when we have a look inside you; but then the story of your life will be already over.”

  CHAPTER XI

  IN the morning his temperature rose, about a hundred and one, and the bandages round his mouth were stained dark as if from vomited blood. The patient was yellow, according to rule, and as one says, was clearly sinking. “Well, what?” inquired the surgeon of the sister of mercy, “Nothing last night—you haven’t dreamt of him again?”

  The sister of mercy shook her head quickly. “No, I prayed, and it helped.” And then she added, frowning, “Besides, to make sure, I took three doses of bromide.”

  Then another nurse appeared and announced that the patient in the general ward, the one with that abscess on his neck was feverish and hiccupped, he wouldn’t say anything, and was getting weaker. Mumbling and upset, the surgeon rushed to the clairvoyant’s room so fast that the tails of his white coat flapped behind him. The clairvoyant was lying with closed eyes, and his thin nose pointing pathetically at the ceiling.

  “What business have you to get fever,” shouted the surgeon. “Let me see.” His temperature was about a hundred and one. Annoyed, the surgeon undid the bandage, but the wound was clean and nice, with no inflammation round it. And, altogether, there was nothing to show, only rather yellowish eyes, and the hiccup. The surgeon strolled along the corridor and dropped back again into number six; there bending over the bed of Case X the famous specialist was standing, surrounded by four young doctors in white coats, and announced, “Amaril fever,” as if fondling the word. “My friend,” he said, turning to the surgeon, “nothing can be done, you must let us visceral experts have this patient a bit. Such a rare, and beautiful case! Wait, the whole faculty will come to you here, with all the scientific luminaries; at least you ought to let him have a canopy over his bed, and an inscription crowned with laurels, ‘Welcome to you,’ or something like that.” He blew into his handkerchief as if it were a war-trumpet. “With your leave we should like to take a small sample of his blood. Secundarius tell the assistant to take from the patient a sample of blood.” When passing down the ranks, the message reached the assistant who stood at the left elbow of the great specialist, this long, hairy fellow bent over the fore-arm of the unconscious patient and wiped it with a swab of cotton.

  “When you have finished,” murmured the surgeon to the specialist, “I should like to speak to you for a moment.” But the old doctor could not lose so quickly his enthusiasm for the yellow fever, and he was still talking of it when the surgeon hauled him into the clairvoyant’s room. “Well,” announced the surgeon, “now tell me, what’s the matter with this one.” The old gentleman snorted, and went for the patient with all the quick demands, and silent touches of his art. Breathe out, hold your breath, breathe out deeply, he down, tell me if it hurts, and such familiar things. At last he stopped, doubtfully rubbed the tip of his nose, and looked suspiciously at the clairvoyant. “What can be the matter with him?” he said. “There’s nothing amiss, that’s quite clear. Very neurotic,” he said peremptorily. “But what’s behind that fever beats me.”

  “So you see,” thundered the surgeon at the clairvoyant. “Now my man, tell us what you really think you’re up to.”

  “Nothing,” the clairvoyant made an effort to deny. “That’s to say, it may have some connection with that case, don’t you think so?”

  “With what case?”

  “With that man from the aeroplane. For he’s in my mind all the time … Has he got fever again?”

  “Have you seen him?”

  “No, I haven’t,” mumbled the clairvoyant. “But I keep thinking of him … that is, I concentrate on him. You know what an experience that is. It exhausts me terribly.”

  “He’s a clairvoyant, you know,” remarked the surgeon quickly. “And you had no fever yesterday.”

  “I had,” admitted the clairvoyant, “but… I kept it down from time to time, and my temperature went down. You can control that by your will.”

  The surgeon looked questioningly at the coryphaeus of abdominal medicine, but the latter rubbed his beard, and meditated. “And what pains ?” he asked suddenly. “Didn’t you feel any pains ? I mean the pains that that other one has.”

  “I had,” said the clairvoyant rather timidly and unwillingly. “That is, they were purely mental pains, even although they were local
ized in certain parts of my body. It is so difficult to say exactly,” he apologized shyly. “I should call them mental pains.”

  “Where?” let fly the specialist.

  “Here,” pointed the clairvoyant.

  “Aha, in the upper part of the abdomen. Right,” muttered the specialist with satisfaction. “And here in the diaphragm?”

  “Such a heavy pressure and a feeling as if I were sick.”

  “Quite right.” The specialist felt pleased. “Nothing else?”

  “An awful headache, here at the back—and in my back. As if I were broken in two.”

  “Coup de barre,” crowed the old doctor. “Man, that’s a coup de barre. You’ve hit on it perfectly! That’s yellow fever, just as it is in the book.”

  The clairvoyant grew frightened. “But then … Do you think that I can get it?”

  “Not at all,” grinned the specialist. “You needn’t worry, we haven’t the right gnat here. Only suggestion,” he replied to the questioning look of the surgeon, evidently feeling that with that word the matter had been solved to his complete satisfaction. “Suggestion. I shouldn’t be surprised if he hadn’t a bit of albumen and blood in his water. With neurotics,” he said, “you mustn’t be astonished at anything; they know some dodges—Turn to the light.”