Three Novels: Hordubal, Meteor, an Ordinary Life

by Karel Čapek

  And he ordered retorts and barrels, he bought an old light railway complete, and moved back to Haiti.

  Dear doctor, I shall feel happier when I’m at home again—the scent of thyme, the smell of juniper, and Carthusian pinks in my hand; strange how foreign lands fill you with disquiet. I certainly should be revolutionary if I didn’t live on my native soil; here (I mean on the islands) I feel the injustice, and horror of things, stronger … or at least with more hatred than at home. If I were really to write my story, a man with an open shirt, and with a gun slung on his shoulder, wouldn’t be missing, that partisan, that avenger, that passionate antagonist of all Kettelrings, would be myself. It’s no use, I must give it up; and when I sit at home again on a bank with flowers, and rub in my fingers the sweet scent of resignation, horror and hatred will melt away, and I shall drop the wild flower, the northern flower, over the grave of a half-breed in an open shirt who fell somewhere on the islands fighting against the Laws of Economics.”

  CHAPTER XXXIV

  “THEN the destiny of Case X got mixed up. Suppose that the mulatto contractor left the road unfinished, and ran away, enticed by the star of a variety dancer. Mr. Kettelring began to build the road himself, and spent a lot of money on it because he was in a hurry. He couldn’t make the negroes carry stones in wheelbarrows, those black longshanks put the boulders on their heads and carried them as if they were baskets of pineapples; and the wheelbarrows were only good for giving a ride to shrieking wenches kicking their legs. Oh, to punch their faces and make them realize that life isn’t just for their cackling guffaw! Behind the columns of workers moved crowds of girls, at night they swayed with their buttocks to the sound of guitars and tamtams, while Kettelring was gnawed with desperate impatience. He daren’t even urge those louts on as much as he would have liked; the ecomonic crisis hit Haiti too, with the strange result that the negroes indulged to an unprecedented extent in fetishes, and each week they brayed and raved in the clearings in the forest; they came back like shadows exhausted and wild, and Kettelring never let his revolver go from his hand, even at night, as he listened to the tapping of their bare paws. Not far away two or three children went lost, and Kettelring was careful not to try to get to the bottom of the affair; and the black police from Gonaiva, barefooted, and with golden epaulettes, who came to investigate the case, were also careful not to discover a certain stone altar in the jungle to which led well-trodden paths.

  Month after month slipped by, and with them Kettelring’s funds and health melted away; he suffered from boils and fever, but he didn’t go away to get better lest the band of negroes should disperse. He watched over them with evil eyes, sunken with hatred, and he only hissed out his commands. The road was still unfinished when he setded down at the asphalt swamp in a hut, built on piles, to direct the building of the light railway; but in the meantime people had stolen the rails lying in the harbour at Gonaiva, God knows what use anyone could make of them. The whole place smelt of sulphuretted hydrogen, and it fermented with a yellow suppuration like an immense distintegrating ulcer; it exuded heat like a kettle of boiling tar, and every step hung with the semi-fluid, trembling, squelching bitumen.

  At last the road dragged itself to the swamp, and Kettelring went to Port au Prince to hunt for credit, get the lorries, and barrels, hire drivers and overseers. When he came back there wasn’t a single soul alive on the spot; the devil himself, they said, had appeared in the middle of the swamp, and lashed up all the slush until it had boiled like jam. With great trouble he got together a handful of mangy sickly negroes with inflamed eyes, full of flies, and they began to dig the asphalt. It was a glossy black glance-pitch of first-rate quality. It was worse with the lorries; one was ruined by a mulatto who was bringing retorts and barrels from Gonaiva; the other ran into the swamp, and in a few days it disappeared under the surface; only one was left to transport the asphalt to the harbour. Kettelring took charge of the retorts to see that the pitch was well boiled up; he was black and dirty like a stoker, and he shivered with malaria by that hellish fire; they all had it there, so what about it. He didn’t even take in his hands that little lace handkerchief so as not to make it dirty; he thought of nothing but the barrels full of asphalt. Well, now things were on the move, and with eyes scorched by the heat and with his feverish finger Kettelring outlined in the air the factories that were going to stand there. Haiti Lake Asphalt Works, or something like that.

  Of course there were vexations. That mulatto who takes the barrels to Gonaiva. Always breaking down, and yet he bares his teeth at your face. A bad car, sir, and a bad road. Kettelring threw him out, and then he drove himself, he rattled to the harbour with full barrels, and was pleased to see how they were piling up. Hundreds of barrels, hundreds, and more hundreds, how lovely! But that mulatto who had been given the sack was not just anybody, he had seen a bit of the world; he prowled round the Haiti Lake Asphalt Works with an open shirt and held discussions about labour conditions and impudent foreigners, until one day four niggers came to Kettelring, they nudged one another, and shuffled—in short, either he must take that multato back to work, or—

  Kettelring reddened. ‘Or what?’ This question he asked while he moved the safety-catch on his revolver.

  A strike followed. An organized strike as well as cannibalistic rites, but that’s how it is to-day. Only a few people stayed there, so ill that they couldn’t get home on foot. It seems that Kettelring went mad; he snatched up a pickaxe and, up to his knees in mud, he began himself to hack out chunks of asphalt, and hissing and wheezing with the strain he dragged them to the retorts, while the sick ones gazed at him with open mouths, and were too afraid to take a spade in their hands. When he had hauled out sufficient to fill a retort he broke into tears. ‘Pierre, Pierre!’ he sobbed, and beat his head. Then the sick ones ran away too.

  For two days longer Kettelring sat by the deserted lake of asphalt, and watched how slowly the excavated pits filled up again. Thousands, hundreds of thousands of tons of asphalt. Hundreds and hundreds of barrels waiting for a buyer. Then in that lace handkerchief he wrapped a chip of raw asphalt and a bit of the refined, shining like anthracite, and he rattled with the empty lorry down to Port au Prince. There he slept for forty-eight hours as if he were dead.

  And again he came in front of the wrought-iron railings of the Cuban’s house, and knocked; Open, open! The tall peon stood behind the railings, but he didn’t open the door. ‘Que desea, señor?’

  ‘I want to speak with Camagueyno, but at once,’ wheezed Kettelring, ‘Open, man!’

  ‘No, señor,’ murmured the old peon. ‘I have been ordered not to let you in.’

  ‘Tell him,’ gasped Kettelring, ‘tell him that I have business for him, a tremendous business.’ And he rattled the two bits of asphalt in his pocket.

  ‘Tell him—’

  ‘No, señor.’

  Kettelring rubbed his forehead. ‘Could you—deliver a letter—’

  ‘No, señor.’

  There was silence. In the evening air there was the scent or corallita in flower.

  ‘Buenas noches, señor.’

  And down again, down round the islands: Porto Rico, Barbuda, Guadeloupe, Barbados, Trinidad, and Curaçao: Yankees, British, French, and Dutch, creóles and half-breeds; everywhere he had his commercial relations, men on whose necks he had once laid the knife, or with whom he had helped to make sugar go smash; at least they knew with whom they had the honour. In front of them he pulled two bits of asphalt out of a lace handkerchief. Look, what asphalt, black and glossy like the pupil of your eye. Thousands, hundreds of thousands of tons, a whole lake. Millions can be made out of it. So, well, will you join me?

  They scratched their hair, and sighed. Bad times, Mr. Kettelring; think of it, even ashpalt’s no good now; they’re sacking men in Trinidad, they say. It seemed as if when they lost faith in sugar, all their faith in anything was shaken. No, no, sir, nothing can be done; not a penny, not a cent will I put again in those damned islands. (Wha
t a grand invention are colonies! To discover countries which aren’t a home for a man, but only land for exploitation! How it must give scope for commercial ability!)

  Kettelring dragged himself in the boat from one port to the other. During the day he slept, and at night he stood in the bows like a post, they could have tied a cable to him. That huge, blue-black night, shot with lightning, blazing with stars; the soughing sea, phosphorescent, sparkling, black like anthracite; all asphalt, sir, milliards and milliards of tons, millions could be made from it. The boat dragged itself, jerked, quivered as if it couldn’t move from the spot; perhaps the propeller was turning in something thick and oily that stuck to its blades; it was dark like heavy black naphtha; and the black boat slowly made its way through the asphalt lake which closed behind it like batter. Good night, señor. There above … that was the milky way similar to the path in the night, the light path among the purple bougainvilleas, and the blue grapes of petrea. What a scent, what a scent it had of heavy roses, and jasmine; Kettelring pressed to his lips a little creased lace handkerchief; it smelt of asphalt, and of something immensely remote. I shall come back, Mary, I shall come back!

  And all shook their heads doubtfully. We can do nothing, Mr. Kettelring, no credit anywhere, no interest in anything; on Dominica they’ve also stopped extracting asphalt; but if you waited twenty years, that would be something different; these blasted times can’t last for ever.

  Now there was only one thing left, go to those gentry from the Trinidad Lake Asphalt Company; on Trinidad the funicular was still creaking, which took barrels of asphalt from the lake straight into the boats, but even it creaked rather rustily. Those gentlemen let him stand like a suppliant while with a perspiring forehead he unwrapped his two bits of asphalt from out of the lace handkerchief; they wouldn’t even look at them. What can we do with it, Mr…. Mr…. you said Cattlering, didn’t you ? We’ve got enough asphalt here for at least fifty years, and we can cope quite easily with the world consumption. There’s so much money invested here—why should we develop another deposit ?

  But my asphalt is better; it’s not got as much water in it, or clay—and a thick naphtha comes up there.

  They laughed at him. Worse and worse, Mr…. Mr. Cattle. Couldn’t you, say, flood it with water, so that it disappears for good ? In that case we might buy it, perhaps—of course, for the current price of land on Haiti. Good-bye, Mr. Kling.

  (Good-bye, good-bye! At last I’m out of it, and I feel a good deal easier; I didn’t feel at home in that world of business transactions, it was stranger to me than a swamp with alligators, but what of it, I found myself in it as if I were in a forest. And I was losing Kettelring in it; well, and now we’ve found ourselves again. You know, even he will find himself again; nobody comes to himself so intensely as one who is unhappy. Praise be to God, now we’re at home, and this is MY return; this man with empty hands, who stands for nothing else but a man who has lived.)

  That evening Case X sat in a room of a hotel for half-breeds at Port of Spain, full of bed-bugs, and pestering flies: through the thin walls he could hear how someone was talking and complaining in his dream, and a sailor embracing a mulatto; the whole hotel resounded with the clatter of plates, drunken brawls, guffaws, with hot snoring, and wheezing, as if somebody were dying.

  Case X put into the typewriter a sheet of paper bearing the imprint of the Haiti Lake Asphalt Works, and began to tap out slowly: ‘Dear Miss Mary.’

  No, it was impossible to write this letter on a typewriter. Kettelring sat hunchbacked over the sheet of paper, and sucked the pencil. It is desperately difficult to begin when for such a long time, when we have, as far as one’s memory goes, never written anything like this, making and joining the letters according to some infinitely refined laws and customs. On the typewriter it would be easier to write, it wouldn’t hurt so much, it wouldn’t swim in front of one’s eyes. Kettelring was screwing up his back like a tiny scholar writing out his first effort. Oh—oh—ho—o—oh, gasped the mulatto behind the wall, and somebody was suffocating with nightmare, as if his last hour had come.

  Dear, dearest, my only one, this is my first and last letter. I promised to come back, to come back like a man who has a name, and property; now I have nothing, I am shipwrecked, and I am going away. Where ? I don’t know yet. This life of mine is at an end, and I have had enough not to begin again. The only thing that is certain is that there is no longer a Kettelring, and that it would be useless to remember now who he really was. If I knew of a place in this world where it would be possible to live without a name I should go there; but even to beg one must have a name.

  My only love, what madness it is that I still call you my love, and say you are mine. Now you will know that I am not coming back; but you must also know that I still love you as I did the first day, indeed infinitely more, for the more I have suffered the more I have loved you.

  Kettelring grew thoughtful. Who knows if she is still waiting. It’s three years since I went away; perhaps she’s married to a Yankee in white shoes … Well, let her be happy.

  I don’t know, if I really believe in God, but I clasp my hands, and I pray that you will be happy. There must be a wise God if only because he did not bind up your fate with mine. Good-bye, good-bye, we shall not see each other again.

  Kettelring had to bend right over the paper because he couldn’t see, and he quickly scrawled his signature. At that instant he stiffened as if something had struck him on the head. He didn’t sign his name George Kettelring. Unable to see for tears, blindly, unconsciously he wrote the real name which for so many years had escaped his memory.”

  CHAPTER XXXV

  “HE couldn’t stand it in the hotel, he had to go out into the night; he sat by the harbour on a pile of sleepers guarded by a negro policeman; and, leaning with his elbows on his knees, he gazed into the black rippling water. Now he knew everything, and he needn’t try to remember; he tidied it up inside himself as if straightening up a pack of cards, and he turned over this and that. Yes, it’s there, and nothing is missing. Such a queer feeling—was it relief, or was he painfully overwhelmed ?

  Let us say home. A home without a mother, big rooms with heavy curtains, and black respectable furniture. Father who had no time for the child, big, strange, and severe. A timid anxious aunt. Mind, baby don’t sit down there, don’t put it in your mouth, you mustn’t play with dirty children. A red and green ball, the most treasured toy because it was stolen in the street from a bawling urchin, one of those lucky ones who could run about with dirty noses, and bare feet, and make mud pies, or sit squatting in the sand. The former Mr. Kettelring smiled, and his eyes glinted. So you see, aunt, and yet in the end I did run about barefoot, and dirty like a coal-heaver. I have eaten chuchu cucumbers which a negress had wiped with her dirty skirt, and unripe guavas picked up from the dust of the road. The late Kettelring had almost a feeling of sated revenge. After all, I did do as I liked.

  And now the restless boy whose natural wildness had been suppressed by so-called education. He began to understand the craft of his father. That craft was wealth. That craft was factories, to force the greatest possible number of people to work as hard as possible, and as cheap as possible. The boy saw those crowds of workers who streamed out from the gates of the factories with their peculiar sour smell, and he had a feeling that they all hated him. The father used to shout and give orders; God knows what vexation it costs to win such a fortune. You’d think that it isn’t worth the bother; but no matter, property isn’t just dead material, it wants its grub so that it doesn’t peg out, and it must be fed properly. You, my boy, one day this property will be entrusted to you, not to have it, but to add to it; therefore learn to save, and get down to it if one day you are going to make others sweat and make ends meet. I’m bringing you up for a practical life; I’m bringing you up for my property. The former Kettelring grinned broadly. So that’s where it comes from, from my father, that I can order people about and make them slave; well, some inheritance
at any rate. Then, yes, at that time the young boy didn’t care for it; he was rather easygoing and lazy—perhaps that was only out of spite against something that had already been fixed as his future. We’re not here for our own sakes, but to serve property; who doesn’t serve his own will slave for a stranger—something like that is the law of life. And you, my boy, will follow in my footsteps.

  The former Kettelring shook with silent laughter. No, certainly he hadn’t followed in them. He was only an heir-apparent, who was waiting one day to give it a turn. And just on purpose—bad society, and such like things. Debts, of course, silly, it’s true, and not particularly honourable. Father quivered with agitation and made inquiries. What does it mean, why have you spent it, and such like things ? You rascal, do you imagine that I slave for that, earn and save my money to pay for your infamies ? And then it broke out in the stripling—of course, only spite, only waywardness, only such a passionate temper; with clenched fists he stormed at his father: ‘Keep your money, stick it down your throat, I don’t want it; I spit on it, I loathe it; don’t think that I shall be such a slave to money as you are!’ Father became purple, strange that he didn’t have a stroke; he showed him the door, and hissed: ‘Get out!’ Then the door banged, that was the end, exit the son.

  The former Mr. Kettelring shook his head. God, such a stupid thing! As if there were only a few thunderstorms like that in a family, may the devil take them. But that time two particularly tough and obstinate people fell foul of each other. The stripling never returned, and didn’t even present himself when father’s legal adviser invited him to see him; in the end the respectable legal friend found the prodigal son in bed with a theoretical and practical anarchist; and because the young gentleman made no move, he had to explain to him his mission in that shocking situation. He managed it quite nicely; on one side he put on a reprimanding frown, and on the other he beamed with tactful and mild good will, for youth must sow its wild oats, particularly the youth of so promising an heir. ‘Your father wishes me to tell you that he doesn’t want to see you till you have come to reason, my young friend,’ he said heartily. ‘I have no doubt that you will try, and that you will succeed, haha, isn’t that so ? Between us,’ he said, with his head bent piously to one side, ‘the property (he very nearly said Mr. Property) of your father is now put at thirty, thirty-five millions; young man, SUCH a property is no joking matter.’ At that moment he really did look immensely solemn and serious, but he cheered up again. ‘Your father asked me to tell you that through me he is willing to make you a certain allowance until you come of age.’ And he named a sum almost miserable—the old miser kept faith with himself even in his righteous anger. ‘Of course, if after that you don’t see reason—’ the solicitor gave his shoulders an eloquent shrug. ‘But I hope that it will be a healthy and hard school of life for you.’