Three Novels: Hordubal, Meteor, an Ordinary Life

by Karel Čapek

  “I don’t know his name, the name came muddled; but he was entered as a Cuban.”

  AN ORDINARY LIFE

  PROLOGUE

  “Is that so?” exclaimed old Mr. Popel. “So he’s dead now? And what was wrong with him then?”

  “Arterio sclerosis,” said the doctor curtly; he wanted to add something about the man’s age, but he looked sideways at the old gentleman, and kept silent.

  For a little while Mr. Popel reflected that with him, thank God, everything was at present in order; no, he didn’t feel anything that might somehow point to this or that. “So he’s dead now?” he repeated absent-mindedly. “But he couldn’t have been seventy ? He was just a bit younger than me. I knew him … I knew him when we were lads at school together. After that I didn’t see him for years and years, till he came to Prague, to the Ministry. Now and again I used to meet him … once or twice a year. Such a downright man he was!”

  “A good man,” said the doctor, proceeding to tie a little rose to a stick. “I was here in the garden when I first saw him. Once someone spoke to me over the fence: ‘Excuse me, but which kind of Malus is the one that you have in flower over there ?’ ‘Oh, that’s Malus Halliana,’ I said, and I invited him to come inside. You know when two gardeners get together. Sometimes he used to drop in when he saw that I had nothing else to do, and always about flowers. I didn’t even know who, and what he really was till he sent for me. Then he was already in a very bad way. But it was a nice little garden he had.”

  “That sounds like him,” reflected Mr. Popel. “All the time I knew him he was such a regular and conscientious man. A good civil servant and so on. In fact, we know terribly little about decent people like that, isn’t it true?”

  “He wrote it down,” said the doctor suddenly.

  “What did he write down?”

  “His own life. Last year in my house he came across some famous biography, and he said that someone ought to write the life of an ordinary man. And when his health began to fail he sat down to write his own life. When … when he got worse, he gave it to me. Perhaps there was no one for him to leave it to.” The doctor hesitated a moment. “Since you were a pal of his I might let you have a look at it.”

  Old Mr. Popel was somewhat moved. “That would be very good of you. You know I should like to do it for him….” Apparently it seemed to him like rendering a service for the dead. “So, poor chap, he wrote his own biography!”

  “I’ll fetch it straight away,” said the doctor, carefully breaking off a sucker from a rose. “Look how this stem would like to be a briar. All the time we must keep down that other rose, the wild one.” The doctor straightened himself up. “Ah, I’ve promised you that manuscript,” he said, absent-mindedly, and he glanced round his garden before he went, as if unwillingly.

  So he’s dead, mused the old gentleman pensively. It must be quite an ordinary thing to the, then, when even such a regular man knows how to do it. But surely he didn’t want to go—perhaps that’s why he wrote his own life, because he was fond of it. Who’d have thought of it: such an ordinary man, and bang, he’s dead.

  “Well, here it is,” said the doctor. It was a tidy, carefully arranged pile of sheets neatly tied with tape like a fascicle of completed deeds. Mr. Popel’s hands trembled as he took them, and turned over the first few pages. “How neatly it’s written,” he whispered almost piously. “You can recognize an old bureaucrat; in his days, sir, there weren’t any typewriters, everything had to be written by hand; in those days they thought a great deal of a nice clean manuscript.”

  “Farther on it’s not written so well,” mumbled the doctor. “By then he was in a hurry and crossed out a lot. Even the handwriting isn’t so smooth and regular.”

  It’s queer, thought Mr. Popel; to read the handwriting of someone who’s dead, it’s like touching a dead hand. Even in that writing there is something dead. I oughtn’t to take it home. I shouldn’t have said that I would read it.

  “Is it all worth reading?” he inquired uncertainly.

  The doctor shrugged his shoulders.

  CHAPTER I

  THREE days ago I knelt down in my little garden beside a group of alum root in flower to get the weeds out; I felt a bit giddy, but that used to come quite often with me. Perhaps it was the giddiness that made the spot seem to me more beautiful than ever before: the little bright red leaves of the alum root and behind them the white cool panicles of the spiraeas—it was so beautiful and almost myserious that it turned my head. Two yards away from me a finch sat on a stone, her head cocked to one side, and she looked at me with one eye: Well, who are you ? I didn’t even breathe, I was afraid that I should frighten her away; I could feel how my heart throbbed. And suddenly it came. I don’t know how to describe it, but it was a terribly strong and certain FEELING OF DEATH.

  Really I can’t express it in any other way; I think that I struggled for breath or something, but the one thing that I was conscious of was a tremendous anxiety. When it began to grow less I was still on my knees, but my hands were full of torn leaves. It passed away like a wave, and left me with a sadness that was not unpleasant. I felt my legs trembling beneath me in an absurd fashion, I went cautiously to sit down, and with my eyes shut I said to myself: Well, now you’ve got it, it’s here already. But there was no horror, only surprise, and the consciousness that we have to settle it somehow. Then I had the courage to open my eyes and move my head; Lord, how beautiful that garden seemed to me, like never before, never before; I didn’t want anything, only to sit like that, and look at the light and shade, at the full flowers of the spiraeas, and at a blackbird who was struggling with an earthworm. A long time ago, the day before, I had made up my mind that next spring I should take out two clumps of larkspurs, damaged by mildew, and replace them by others. Very likely I shall never do any more, and next year the plants will be disfigured as if with leprosy. I felt sorry for that, I felt sorry for many things; somehow I was softly moved because I had to go.

  I am worried that perhaps I ought to tell my housekeeper. She is a good lady, but she gets excited like a clucking hen; she would run about in terror, her face swollen with crying, and she would let everything drop. But no fuss and no upset; the smoother it is settled the better. I must put my things in order, I said to myself with relief; thank God that I’ve got something to do for a couple of days. Not much of a job for a man who is a widower and retired like me to get his chattels into order, is it ? Very likely I shall not ever move the larkspurs again, and shall not cut out the cankered wood of the barberry in the winter; but my drawers will be tidy, and there’ll be nothing that might suggest an unfinished act.

  I am writing down the details of that moment to make it clear how and why that urge arose in me TO PUT MY THINGS IN ORDER. I had a feeling that I had already had a similar experience before, and not only once. Whenever in my official career I was moved to somewhere else, I tidied up my desk so as not to leave in it anything unfinished and muddled; the last time was when I retired; a dozen times I rearranged and went through everything, page after page, and still I lingered, and then again I wanted to go through everything in case some chit had slipped in that didn’t belong there, or should have been finished with. I was giving up to take a rest after so many years of service; but my heart was heavy, and for a long time afterwards I used to worry in case I had mislaid something, God knows where, and left it behind, or not checked it by the last initialling.

  This, then, I have experienced a number of times, and so this last time I felt relieved that I could do something familiar; I ceased to be frightened, and the surprise which the sense of death had caused me passed over into relief which came from familiarity and intimacy. It seems to me that because of that people talk of death like sleep, or rest, to give it a semblance of something they know; therefore they hope to meet their friends who have passed away so that they are not afraid of that step into the unknown; perhaps also they make their last wills and testaments because by that the death of a man bec
omes an important financial event. See, it’s nothing to be frightened of; what is in front of us has the likeness of things with which we are personally well familiar. I shall put my things in order, nothing more, nothing less; well, thank God, that won’t be difficult for me.

  For two days I have been going through my papers; now they’re in order, and tied up with tape. There are all my certificates from the first standard in the elementary school; good Lord, how many firsts did I victoriously bring home, for which my father used to pat my head with his fat hand and say with some emotion, Go on, my boy! Certificates of christening and domicile, marriage certificate, appointments, all filed and nothing missing; it’s a wonder I haven’t given them numbers and letters for filing. All the letters from my late wife; they are only a few, for we were seldom apart, and only for short periods. A couple of letters from friends—and that’s all. Just a few bundles tied up in the drawer of my desk. The only thing still to do is to write on a sheet of paper a fair copy of my petition: A B, the retired State official, requests to be transferred to the other world. See documents A to Z.

  They were quiet and almost dear, those two days when I was busy with my papers; except for that pain in my heart I felt easier—perhaps the quietness did it, a shady and cool room, outside the twittering of the birds, and in front of me on the desk old and rather touching papers: the calligraphic school certificates, the maiden handwriting of my wife, the stiff paper of the official documents—I should have liked to have had more to read through and tidy up, but my life was simple; I was always fond of order, and never kept any unnecessary papers. My God, there’s nothing to put straight, such an uncomplicated and ordinary life it was.

  There’s nothing more to put straight, but still there is in me—what shall I say ?—a mania for order. It’s unnecessary for me to wind up the clock which I already wound up a moment ago, and useless to open the drawers to see if there is still something that I’ve overlooked. I am thinking of the offices where I worked: has anything been left there that I should not have finished, and tied up with tape ? No longer do I think of the finch that cocked one eye at me as if to say: Well, who are you? Yes, everything is ready as if I were going on a journey, and waiting for the taxi; suddenly in some way you feel desolate, you don’t know what to do next, and you look round full of uncertainty in case you’ve forgotten something. Yes, that’s it, restlessness. I was looking for something more to put straight, and there was nothing left: only that uneasiness in case I had overlooked something important; such a fatuous thing, but it swells like anxiety, like a physical depression in the heart. Right, there is nothing more to arrange; but what next? And then it occurred to me: I’ll put my life straight, and that’s it. Well and good, I’ll write it down so as to file it and tie it up with tape.

  At first it almost made me laugh; for God’s sake, I ask you, what for, and what to do with it ? For whom am I to write it ? Such an ordinary life: what is there to write? But I already knew then that I was going to write it, I only put it off somehow out of modesty, or something. As a child I saw an old woman the who lived near us, my mother used to send me there to fetch and carry things for her if she wanted anything. She was a solitary old hag, you never saw her in the street or talking with anyone; children were a bit frightened of her because she was so much alone. Once my mother said to me: “Now you mustn’t go in, the priest is with her, for her confession.” I couldn’t imagine what such a lonely old woman could confess; I felt like pressing my nose to the glass of her window to watch her confessing. The priest was there an endless and mysteriously long time. When I went there afterwards she lay with her eyes closed, and her face had such a peaceful and festive expression that I felt uneasy. “Do you want anything ?” I burst out; she only shook her head. I know now that she also had PUT IN ORDER her life, and in that is the last sacrament of the dying.

  CHAPTER II

  TRUE: why shouldn’t there be a biography of quite an ordinary life? In the first place it’s my own personal affair; perhaps I needn’t write it down if there were someone to tell it to. Now and again a reminiscence of something long past crops up in your conversation, even if it’s only what mother used to cook. Each time I mention something like this my housekeeper nods her head compassionately as if to say: Yes, yes, you had a lot to go through; I know, I had a hard life, too. With her you can’t talk about such ordinary things; her temperament is too doleful, and in everything she looks for what is emotional. Others again listen to reminiscences with only half their mind, and impatiently, so as to interrupt the conversation with: Well, with us, and in my young days, it was like so and so. I have the impression that people somehow boast with their reminiscences; they assert that when they were young there was diphtheria, or that they lived through that big storm, as if it were part of their personal merit. Perhaps every man has the need to see in his life something remarkable, important, and almost dramatic; and so he likes to call attention to singular events that he’s experienced, and he expects that because of them he will become the object of heightened interest and admiration.

  In my life nothing has occurred that was extraordinary and dramatic; if I have anything to remember then it is only a quiet, obvious, and almost a mechanical sequence of days and years until the final stage that is in front of me, and which will be, I hope, equally as undramatic as the rest. I must say that glancing back I almost find pleasure in the straight and clear path that is behind me; it has its beauty, like a good, straight road, on which it is impossible to go astray. I am almost proud that it is such a direct and comfortable road; I can compass it in one glance right back to childhood, and again enjoy its distinctness. What a beautiful, ordinary, and uninteresting life! Never any adventure, no great struggle, nothing extraordinary, or tragic. Looking at it gives one a pleasant and even strong impression like a smoothly running machine. It will stop without rattling; nothing will squeak, it will run down silently and resignedly. So it ought to be.

  My whole life long I have been a reader of books. What a lot of remarkable adventures have I read of, what numbers of tragic and strange characters have I met—as if there was nothing else to talk about, and to write of but unusual, exceptional, and singular cases and chances! But really life is no extraordinary adventure but a common law; what is unusual and extraordinary is only the rattling in its wheels. In fact, ought we not to celebrate life for being normal and ordinary? Is it, perchance, less of a life because it didn’t rattle or moan, and didn’t threaten to fly to pieces ? Instead, we have got through a pile of work, and fulfilled all proprieties from birth to death. On the whole, it has been a happy life, and I’m not ashamed of that small and regular happiness that I used to find in the pedantic idyll of my life.

  I recollect the funerals in the little town where I was born. In front the acolyte in a surplice and with a cross; then the musicians, the shiny bugle, French horn, clarinet, and the helicon, the most beautiful of them all; then the curate in a white rochet, and with his calotte, the coffin with its six bearers, and the black host, all serious, solemn, and somehow looking like puppets. And above it all waved the funeral march, the clamour of the bugle, the wailing of the clarinet, and the deep lament of the angelic trumpets; the street was full of it, and the town, it vaulted as high as the sky. Everyone stopped working and went out in front of their houses with bowed heads to pay homage to a man who was departing. Who is it who died? Is it some king or duke, was he some hero that they carry him so solemnly and high ? No, he was a grocer. God give him eternal glory; a good man, and just; well, his time has come. Or it was a wheelwright, a furrier; now they have finished their labour and this is their last journey. I, a lad, would have liked most to be that acolyte at the head of the procession, or no, rather be the one whom they carry in the coffin. Surely it’s as glorious as if they were carrying a king; the whole world with lowered head pays homage to the triumphal progress of a righteous man and neighbour, the bells ring out his praise, and the bugle weeps victoriously; you would like to fall on your knees
before the holy and great being that is called man.

  CHAPTER III

  MY father was a joiner. My oldest remembrance is of sitting in the warm sawdust in the yard next to the workshop and playing with the twisted curls of the shavings; father’s assistant, Frank, grinned at me and came up to me with a spokeshave in his hand: Come here, I’ll cut your head off. I must have begun to whimper because mother ran out and took me in her arms. That pleasant, noisy tumult of a joiner’s workshop envelops my whole childhood: the banging of the planks, the whizz of the plane running against the knots, the dry rustling of the shavings, and the biting coarseness of the saw; the smell of the wood, glue, and varnish; the workmen with their shirt sleeves rolled up, father marking out something on the planks with fat fingers and with a fat carpenter’s pencil. His shirt sticking to his broad back, he puffs and bends over his work. What will it be? Why, a cupboard; don’t you see, one plank will be joined to the other, the grooves will fit together, and it will be a cupboard; with a professional thumb father runs over the finished piece along the edges and on the wrong side; it’s good, as smooth as a mirror. Or it’s a coffin, but that isn’t such a thorough job, only just knocked together, ornaments stuck on it, and now, my lads, paint it and varnish it so that it shines a lot. Father doesn’t run his hand over a coffin unless it’s one of the better ones, of oak, as heavy as a grand piano.

  High up on a pile of planks a little chap is sitting. Oh, no, other lads can’t sit so high, and they haven’t got blocks of wood to play with or shavings shiny like silk. A glazier’s boy, for instance, has nothing because you can’t play with glass. Leave those bits alone, you’ll cut yourself, mammy would say. Or with a house-painter, that’s nothing either; unless you were to take the brush and smear the wall with paint; but then varnish is better, it sticks better. But that’s nothing, we’ve got a blue colour, boasts the painter’s boy, and all the colours in the world; but the joiner’s son won’t let himself be outdone. What’s colours? they’re only powder in paper bags. Yes, it’s true, painters sing at their job, but a joiner’s work is cleaner. In the next yard there is a potter, but he has no children; making pots is nice work, too. There is something to look at when the wheel is spinning, and the potter fashions the damp clay with his thumb until it becomes a pot; they stand in his yard in a long row, still soft, and when he’s not looking a lad can leave his finger-marks on them. But stone-cutting, on the contrary, is not nearly so interesting: for an hour you watch the stonemason tap his chisel with a wooden mallet, and still you can’t see anything, still you don’t know how he’ll make the statue of a kneeling angel with a broken palm leaf out of that stone.