Three Novels: Hordubal, Meteor, an Ordinary Life

by Karel Čapek

  One thing I think needs explanation, and that is the special interest of the Cuban in Case X. I don’t think that he kept him in his house as an interesting psychological case; I rather believe that he was not prepared to take him on trust as a mere onlooker at that nocturnal murder. Apparently at the beginning he suspected that loss of memory is an elegant form of exploitation: if someone will take care of me my memory can remain obscured, what was, was, and I don’t know anything; but look out, and see, sir, that my memory doesn’t come back. At the final end of all he might even think that Case X had done something against the law, and was interested in concealing his identity, or in having at hand evidence that he was something like a fool. So his dealings with him were cautious and circumspect; but even after he had made sure a hundred times that without doubt the man had lost his memory completely, he still was apprehensive in case he should suddenly wake from his dream and begin to talk; and so it was better to treat him well, particularly since day by day it became more and more obvious that he was a polite and obliging man. Let that stay as it is, a knowledge of languages comes handy if our business interests are widely scattered, thank God, from Caracas to Tampico; when you have to deal with Englishmen, Frenchmen, Dutchmen, and with those louts from the States, who, God curse them, won’t learn Spanish all their lives; and those people from Hamburg almost expect you to correspond with them in some language of their own. The Cuban thought of this deeply while he chewed a black cigar, as thick as a banana; he had his own cigars, and he himself looked after the mulattos when they rolled them with the palms of their hands upon their round young thighs; he chose his cigars according to the girls, more strictly speaking, according to the length of their shanks; the longer the legs, the better the girls were grown, and the better the cigars rolled up. When he found, then, that the man whom he had taken into his house knew not only how to speak and write in those different languages, but even how to swear (various suspicious characters too frequently dropped into his house, and the Cuban was already tired of telling them what he thought of them when they didn’t understand), he became enthusiastic about him, and offered him a post; from his own side the relation was something like a contract between crooks, that is hearty and almost humane. To avoid any misunderstanding, the Cuban was an old settler, of noble birth, from Camaguey, who was called Camagueyno, at one time a breeder of bulls on the savannahs; but when it became clear to him that in those miserable times it was no longer sufficient to be owner of herds and rule a house and family, he shrugged his shoulders, and went in for business something in the style of the old and famous buccaneers who played their antics among the islands. In short, este hombre, as he called our hero, was useful for negotiating with the victims in their own language, and for keeping up appearances, even if it were only a matter of stripping and sinking their ships. One must choose one’s men as one chooses stud bulls, with care and with a touch of the prophetic spirit. This bull certainly limps a bit, but I wager, sir, that he will leave good stock. Este hombre was certainly somewhat strange and bewildered, but it seemed as if he knew quite a lot. And sighing deeply, the old pirate went to consult his wife, who sat with swollen legs somewhere at the back of the house, reading her fortune with cards while sweat ran down the wrinkles of her bloated face like eternal tears. Nobody ever saw her; only from time to time, her deep bass could be heard as she cursed the negresses.

  It should be pointed out that the Cuban had not only business to do with sugar, pimento, molasses, and other blessings of the islands, but chiefly and above all with affairs of all kinds. People came to him, sometimes, it is true, rather suspicious looking, the devil knows what strange races there are in the world; this one, he said, to found an export company for ginger, angostura, nutmegs, and Malagetta pepper somewhere in Tobago; that one, he said, about a bed of asphalt on Haiti; that one, he said, to export kubavi, a wood as tough as armour-plate, pipiri that never rots, Santa Maria, or corkwood, lighter than cork from the Algerian oaks. Or to plant vanilla, cacao, sugar plantations, here and there, where labour was cheap. Or to produce starch in wholesale quantities from manihota, jams out of mombin, extract from Cassia bark. Some of them had already been in the islands for three months at least, and so they knew of all kinds of things with which one could do business, or what ought to be founded. The more experienced carried on negotiations for the import of labour, land speculation, limited companies confidentially supported by their Governments. Old Camagueyno listened with half-closed eyes, chewing his black cigar; he had a tropical liver that made him suspicious and irritable. By degrees on all the islands that the heavenly God had scattered around he had his interests, his sugar-cane and cacao plantations, his drying kilns, mills, distilleries, his square miles of forests which his associates acquired and then ran away, or went down with drink or fever. He himself hardly ever left the house, tormented as he was by his liver and lumbago; but many petty pirates, thieves, many Morenes and shameless half-breeds, sweated and bustled about, drinking hard, and practising fornication on his estates with all the demons and devils of this fiery world. In this cool and whitewashed house, where in the patio green water murmured in Toledo faience, little was heard of that struggle without; sometimes, it is true, someone arrived with feverish eyes as gaunt as a Cassia pod, and cried that he had been ruined; but for such purposes there were three mozos, erstwhile cowboys from the savannah, to show them the way out. Times were different when you rode on a horse through grass as tall as a man; there on a hillock stood an old spreading ceiba, and from its shade you could see for miles.and miles; and on the slopes there were herds of black cattle. And now these people shouted for a couple of greasy dollars as if some big thing were afoot. Just the same kind of ruffians as those who had turned the savannah into a sugar factory. And instead of black bulls had introduced zebu, hunch-backed and lagging animals; zebu being cheaper. The old gentleman raised his bushy eyebrows as if he were astonished. And people like this imagine that you ought to make a tremendous fuss of them. It’s all foreign, so what—”

  CHAPTER XXV

  “IT was strange how it was coming out in the old lady’s cards: heaps of money, and some misfortune; este hombre was from a rich and noble family, but then there was a woman, great vexation, and a letter. As for that woman, it was queer for in the Cuban house there was only herself and some mulattos, who, of course, didn’t count. It wasn’t respectable for a señora to prophesy and thus enter into contact with evil powers; and so an old negress was called in who knew her way about with incredibly dirty cards, rum, and incantations. When the cards were spread out, Morena began her patter so amazingly fast that the old lady hardly understood every tenth word, so that it was impossible to be certain of what was written in the heavens except again a large sum of money, a distant journey, a woman, and a dreadful misfortune, which the negress represented by pointing wildly to the floor. There was nothing there but a tiny beede, with a metallic-looking coat, crawling slowly along; when the black prophetess pointed tragically to the floor, it drew up its tiny legs and seemed to be dead.

  Nevertheless it was a warning; if the Cuban didn’t mind, it was evident that even he was moved by a deeper necessity. First he produced private papers from some man who had died in hospital; este hombre had to have a name, and an identity, and he could raise no objection to being called Mr. George Kettelring. Kettelring was a good name; it might have been Yankee, German, or something else, and it looked businesslike and reliable. If George Kettelring, then George Kettelring; nobody would ask where he had come from, for he didn’t lead one to think that he had only come to the islands yesterday. He was called el secretario, but that didn’t mean anything in particular; chiefly his work was to translate and write letters. When he put down the first statement I should imagine that he started; and looked fixed at what he had written; most probably it reminded him of something deeply personal that he was unable to recall; perhaps it was his lost personality preserved in the characteristics of his handwriting. From that time on he only wro
te on the typewriter, mildly amused by the extent and complexity of the Cuban’s commercial interests. ‘Mildly amused,’ that is the right phrase; whether it was a matter of business, molasses, or the profit from tobacco-fields, or collective contracts with Ceylon coolies on Trinidad, or land in San Domingo, or on Martinique, or the sugar factory in Bermuda, or of the agency in Port au Prince, it seemed to him as if they weren’t real people, real estates, real goods, real money, but as something rather funny in being so far away and unreal; as if you were telling him about the mortgage on Centauri, or the profit from the fields on Algola, or of the small gauge railway between the stars of the Boot, or of the Little Bear. From a commercial and human standpoint, it is certainly not pleasant to think of someone looking at your interests, investments, and mortgages from such an astral distance, and more than once old Camagueyno raised his irritated brows when este hombre Kettelring bared his teeth so strangely with pleasure on coming across some fresh name. It makes you anxious if someone treats your property with such disrespect as if it were a mere phantom or something. But the old filibuster discovered that it had its better side too. Mr. Kettelring never made the slightest sign whatever he wrote; say, to stop credits to a planter who was toiling in despair on Maria Galante, to dismiss hands, or to put a knife to someone’s throat; sometimes the Cuban couldn’t even get it out of his throat, he snorted, hesitated, and waited for some objection, but already the typewriter was rattling cheerfully, and este hombre merely raised amused eyes to inquire what further. Camagueyno once used to have an old scribe, a Spaniard; that old fellow always got into a frightful temper when he had to write a letter like that, he would begin to cry, and run away; he came back drunk and wrote it with a face like the damned, cursing his mother as the worst of all harlots. But now everything went smoothly, devilishly smoothly, it only clicked. The
  But as you can imagine, there was another point relating to his memory. As you know, it is true that este hombre Kettelring lost his memory, with everything in it, but in return a new one was born with which he might be exhibited. He remembered word for word letters, bills, and contracts that had passed through his hands. To So-and-so we wrote a month ago this and that, in this man’s memorandum of agreement there is so-and-so. A complete living repository. Chewing his eternal cigar, Camagueyno looked thoughtfully at the inconceivable Mr. Kettelring. From time to time he pulled out of his safe in the depths of the house copies of old contracts, and commercial correspondence. Read it, he said, and Mr. Kettelring read it and remembered. The old Cuban did not set much store by such new-fangled ideas like order; besides, many of his interests were of a kind which he preferred not to commit to writing. There were some venerable pirates of equal standing with whom it was sufficient just to smoke a cigar, and then shake hands on it. But man grows old and never knows when his hour will come; and with some misgiving he began slowly to initiate Mr. Kettelring into his business, and confide to his memory what and how it was. We may take it for granted that it was not all commerce. The old country Camaguey, savannahs with herds, noble Cuban farmers of the times; the former races in Havana, the society, courtly and respectable, ladies in crinolines. Do you know that Cuban society was the most noble, and most exclusive in the world? There were only masters and servants, but no rabble. Old Cuba, Mr. Kettelring. And the old gentleman, mastering his rheumatism, showed how a cavalier used to bow to a lady, and how the lady very nearly used to kneel down before the cavalier, holding her skirts in both hands. And the dances, chacomie, or danzón—no, none of these rumbs and sones; they were danced by the negroes, that was the orgy of Morens, and Pards, but a Cuban, sir, wouldn’t let himself go like that. Not till the Yankees turned us negro. Camagueyno’s eyes flared up. Even those mulattos are no longer what they used to be. What small and round little backsides they used to have! To-day they’re already spoiled by American blood, bones too coarse, señor mio, and wide mugs only for shouting. Now they do shout, but then they only cooed, yes, cooed when they’d got it. The old gentleman waved his hand. Altogether we holloa too much; that’s what the Americans have introduced. Before, we were quieter, there was more dignity—

  Mr. Kettelring listened, with his eyes half-shut, and with a slight distracted smile. As if into his empty inner self the remote and knightly past was flowing like a stream.”

  CHAPTER XXVI

  “BUT otherwise one can well imagine that with Mr. Kettelring there could be little conversation; it seemed as if he tried to avoid people, as if he were afraid that someone might recognize him, and slap him on the shoulder. How do you do, Mr. So-and-so? When he drank, he certainly drank alone and heavily; he dropped in at the saloons where colorados went, gazed at the bespattered floor covered with fruit-stones, and fag-ends, and talked to himself in a language that suited his mood. I think that at times he jabbered a phrase which then long and thoughtfully he tried to examine like a wreck thrown up by the waters of Lethe; but because he must have been dreadfully drunk for such a word memory to have detached itself from the depths of his unconsciousness, he never came to any solution, and only shook his head half-falling asleep, mumbling something unintelligible even to himself. And in this the sound of the negroes’ drums, tamtams, little bells, and a guitar, wild and sweaty music, a leaping cataract from which emerged a shrieking naked girl slapping her shiny hips, the neighing of a trumpet, and the soft texture of a violin, ah, as if you were stroking a smooth back, and shoulders, a back flexed and yielding just to stick your nails into it. Mr. Kettelring stuck his nails into his sweaty palms, and shook his head, but he couldn’t keep up with the pace of the black musicians, not at all, his head would fall off and roll on the floor. And why do those musicians jump so much, wait, wait, I haven’t drunk enough yet not to see clearly; wait, I shall close my eyes, and when I open them, mind that you are sitting quietly, I tell you, but don’t you stop playing. Mr. Kettelring opened his eyes; black musicians jumped, and showed the whites of their eyes, that one with the blaring trumpet was standing up as if he were emerging out of the darkness, and on a tiny bit of the floor a brown chabine in a flowered dress was wriggling, the olive Cuban threw a red shawl round her hips, and pressed her to himself, belly to belly, they jostled each other in a violent and cramped rhythm, the Cuban with his mouth open, and the mulatto with leaden eyes, they shuffled and hissed, showed their teeth as if they wanted to bite one another; and then another couple; and a third, it was full of them, they wriggled between the tables, they staggered, and roared with laughter, they went for one another, glistening with sweat, and pomade; and above it all the trumpet blared and droned in its sexual triumph.

  See how Mr. Kettelring drums on the table and shakes his head. God, what does it remind me of, what does it remind me of? Surely once before I was just as drunk, yes just so, yes, but how did it end ? In vain he tried to grasp some picture that eluded him. The eyes and teeth of the mulatto sparkled, she had a hibiscus flower in her teeth, and she rocked from her hips; Yes, I know I might go with you, but think of it; girl, I can’t remember—A young man leaned over Mr. Kettelring and said something to him. Mr. Kettelring’s eyes bulged. Que vuole? The young man with the thin neck grinned and whispered confidently. I can take you, sir, to a beautiful girl. Beautiful, coloured, he rattled, and clicked his tongue. In Mr. Kettelring something suddenly gave way; he sprang up, and hit the young man so hard in the face that he flew back, and fell on the floor among the dancers. Mr. Kettelring roared and beat his forehead with his fist. Now I shall remember—He couldn’t. There was a dreadful brawl, and a still more dreadful debauch followed with some Americans, who threw out the whole saloon together with the girls and the musicians, and occ
upied the conquered territory; they declared that the Cubans were a band of half-breeds and negroes, and they crowned themselves with paper roses, which in that land of flowers heightened the splendour of the Cuban saloon.

  Then, arising from that, let us say, demonstrations of Cuban nationalists broke out against the Americans. The local students joined in, and waving flags striped with blue and white, they harangued fiercely against the States. Nothing could be done; the whole affair had to be officially investigated. Old Cama-gueyno thundered irritably amidst his clouds of smoke; on the one hand, he admitted that young people in that climate needed something to keep their spirits up, by which he meant Mr. Kettelring and the hot-headed Cuban youths; but as a business man he was for order, and as a Camagueyno for final accounts with the foreigners. He would not like to lose este hombre Kettelring, and what he feared most was that his identity might be disclosed at the official investigation; who knew if the police might not again take an interest in that dead man with three bullets in his skull, which had been put down to unknown rowdies from the North (for local people, as was well known, settled their own affairs with a knife; not reckoning the peons, who had gained experience in New Mexico). Ay, hijos de vacas, cobardes, cojones! Did ever such things happen in Cuba? Everyone himself, and without official aid, looked after his own honour, there were no disputes and brawls, nobody was keen on getting stabbed. And what justice there was on Cuba! It paid due regard for property, rights, leases, and heritage settlements, and not for brawls of drunkards. The old gentleman frowned, his hairy brows deeply annoyed, and he spat brown saliva, while Mr. Kettelring, bruised and ruffled, tapped away at the typewriter. That Dutchman on Haiti is inquiring again about raising credit for building the sugar factory.