Three Novels: Hordubal, Meteor, an Ordinary Life

by Karel Čapek

  Hated, that’s rather a strong word.

  Well, say: felt aversion to it. For it reminded him of his defeat.

  And now you’re at the end. From then on it was a real, modest, and thorough life.

  But for the last station in the world.

  That was convalescence, that was in connection with his lungs. Let it be, a man doesn’t grow up so quickly. But there, and then at the station of the old gentleman, then I did run on to my real line of life.

  Listen, why did you make advances to the station-master’s daughter ?

  Because I fell in love with her.

  I know; but I (the other one—you know?)—I courted her because she was the station-master’s daughter. It’s called a career per vaginam, isn’t it ? To marry an heiress, or the daughter of one’s superior, we know that; “to woo a princess a little bit,” eh? By that you increase your value somehow.

  That’s a he! I never thought of that, not even dreamed of it!

  But I did, and not with my eyes shut. The old gentleman’s popular, and could help his son-in-law; it wouldn’t be bad to marry into his family.

  That isn’t true! You don’t realize, man, how fond I was of her; she was a perfect wife, good, sensible, and loving; I couldn’t have been happier with anyone else.

  Yes, but; a sensible wife who took a keen interest in her husband’s advancement—yes, a keen interest; she understood extremely well his ambition and industry, you must grant her that. And she helped him when she could. You wrote so sweetly and innocently of your first little step upwards: ‘perhaps the old gentleman had helped a bit.” And again the second time: “perhaps my father-in-law helped me a bit, I don’t know much about that.” But I know very well, my dear fellow; the old gentleman knew what was expected of him.

  That may be so; he was a very good man, and he cared for me as if I were his own son; but between my wife and myself there was nothing of the sort; only love, only trust, just a strong and good feeling of fidelity. No, leave my marriage out of it!

  What of that, it was a good marriage; now there were two of them, for that endeavour to scramble a bit higher. As soon as he got married he discovered in himself an “unprecedented joy in property”; he was very glad that he had a decent and proper pretext for it: “it’s for us,” wasn’t it? And straight away “he grows elbows in the office”; he struggled upwards with all his might, some he tried to surpass at all cost, and with the others, those above, to ingratiate himself zealously—why not ?—all this is “for us,” and it’s quite in order. And that’s why he felt so happy; he could follow his own natural inclinations without having to be ashamed of them. Marriage is a good institution.

  Was my wife—also like that ?

  … She was a good wife.

  In the end you’ll say that that station of mine, that work of art of mine, I had nursed it into a model—well, why ? Because of my career ? To win the favour of those above ? If it hadn’t been for the War I should most likely have stayed there until I died.

  That was partly for the sake of the gentry.

  Which gentry ?

  Those counts in green hats. To pull yourself together before them and show them what you were like. As if the station-master hadn’t waited often and looked sideways to see if those gentlemen would notice what a fine station it was! And see they did; even duke so and so, count this and that condescended to shake hands with him. You know, it cheered him somehow even if the station-master pretended to himself that he didn’t care a jot. So really, counts, and the Lord knows who besides; after all, they are the higher world, you didn’t even have them with you at home. And this, if you please, isn’t patronage; through his own work and merit the station-master has got so far. Now his work is more than his wife, she can’t help him any farther, she is no longer necessary; he made her feel it, and so their relations began to grow cool at home.

  That’s not true!

  Why not? It’s there written above, just read it. “I had the feeling of something genuinely mine, the strong and good feeling of my own self…. My wife felt that I was getting away from her…. Vainglory, something of ours has been sacrificed for what is only mine.” And so on. “It lies between us like a gap.” Now the man follows his own bent, he has now detached himself; he only feels that it’s a nuisance that his wife still tries to keep him for herself. Fortunately she’s a sensible lady; she makes no scenes, and she cries it away with dry eyes; after that “she grew accustomed to and reconciled with our lot,” that is, she submits and begins to serve her husband.

  She wanted that herself!

  I know; but what else could she have done ? Either they had to part or hate each other, as married people can hate each other, secretly and madly; or she accepts HIS rules of the game and agrees that HE should be master, and everything revolve round him. When no mutual bonds are left she tries to keep him by what is his: his comfort, his habits, and needs. Now it’s only himself, nothing else but himself; his home, the rule of life and conjugal love only serve his comfort and greatness; he is the master of the station and of the family—it’s a small and shut-off world, it’s true, but it’s his and it worships him. After all, that was the happiest part of his life; so that when one day he will think back on his late wife it will be just at that time which so “strongly and well” pandered to his pride.

  And what came next ?

  During the War ?

  Yes. That also sprang from my ambition ?

  It’s not easy to say. It’s just possible; one might count on the emperor’s losing, but it was too risky. It doesn’t fit into my case. Of course it doesn’t fit into your story either.

  Why not ?

  Look here, that idyllic station-master was no hero; it wasn’t in his line. But I’ll tell you why that story of yours had to be written.

  Just because of that War episode. Perhaps someone will read it and discover, see, here there was a station-master who acted like this. He even risked his own life for his nation. Only a bit, only half a bite, and unobtrusively to call attention to one’s merits—isn’t that the reason why memoirs are written ?

  That’s a He, a lie! I wrote the reminiscences of an ordinary life!

  And that heroism—?

  Just that is also part of an ordinary life.

  Quite. It’s a pity that that isn’t the last word. My dear fellow, it wasn’t any longer a hero who sat up there in that office. It was me sitting there, my friend. There just a zealous, vain, and servile person sat there, who wanted to get somewhere. Just a small person who wanted to be bigger.

  Don’t mention that, even there he was a good, conscientious worker.

  Nonsense. He did everything possible just to win respect and to scramble a bit higher. All his life long he thought only of himself, of nothing but himself. What solid drudgery have I done for it, Jesus Christ! a model pupil, a model official—how much have I had to swallow! Really it has cost me my whole life, I have sacrificed everything for it; and at the end one sees the cute fellows who are still a step higher—why ? Only because they were stronger and more daring! They needn’t even wear their trousers through in the service, they needn’t sweat, and look how far they’ve got; you have to get up politely when they come into the office! Then why was it that even in the elementary school they pointed to me as an example for the others, and again afterwards, and brought one another to see my station, what was it for ? The world is for the stronger ones and the more daring, and I lost it. You know this was the final culmination of an ordinary life: that I could look at my defeat. For that a man has to get a bit higher to see it.

  And now you are having your revenge.

  Yes, now I am having my revenge; now I see that it was in vain and therefore small, pitiable, and humiliating. As for you, you’re different, you are in clover; you can play with little flowers, with the garden, with your enclosure of chips; you can forget yourself for that game, but I can’t, I can’t. I’m the one who was beaten, and this is MY ordinary life. Yes, I’m having my revenge; an
d haven’t I reason? Didn’t I give up almost with shame ? Christ, but they did question me! Of course, I knew that there were awful irregularities—in the supplies, and so on; but that was the work of others, the braver ones—I knew that, but I held my tongue; I’ve got you under my thumb, my lads, and if need be these things will come to light! And then there was a scandal, and they interrogated me, me, I ask you: the blameless and model official! Of course, they had to admit—but I went into retirement. Defeat, man, and then I ought not to avenge myself! Of course, that’s why I’m writing these memoirs—

  Only because of that ?

  Yes. So that it will be said that I was not to blame. It ought to be in full detail, and not always just: an ordinary life, an idyll, and nonsense like that. This was the only thing which mattered; that dreadful and unjust defeat. It wasn’t a happy life, it was terrible, don’t you see that it was terrible ?

  CHAPTER XXII

  I CAN’T go on like this, I must stop; it gets on my nerves too much, or something—when those two voices argue my heart begins to flutter and then I feel such a sharp oppressing pain here in my chest. The doctor came, he measured my blood pressure, and frowned. “What are you up to ?” he grumbled; “your blood pressure’s going up. You must keep quiet, absolutely quiet.” I tried to stop writing, and just lie down; but then fragments of a dialogue spring up in my mind, again they squabble about some trifle, and I must again expostulate with myself: Keep quiet, you there, and don’t quarrel; this and that is true, it was like that; but isn’t there in man, isn’t there even in the most ordinary life, scope enough for various motives? But it’s quite simple: a man can think selfishly and stubbornly of his own profit; after a while he forgets it, forgets his own self, and nothing exists for him but the work that he is doing.

  Stop, it isn’t as simple as that: these are two completely different lives, aren’t they ? That’s what matters, that’s what matters!

  What does ?

  Which of them is THE RIGHT ONE ?

  Well, enough of that, it doesn’t do me any good. I’ve been accustomed to looking after myself; from that time at the station when I began to spit blood, I said to myself, Look out. Almost all my life I have been looking into my handkerchief to see if I hadn’t brought up a tiny thread of blood; I began doing that at the last station in the world, and since then that continual worry about my health has stuck to me as it if were the most important principle in life.

  The most important principle in life; and what if it really was ? When I look back at my whole life—that was really the greatest shock when red blood spurted out of me at the station, and I sat there in misery; I felt extremely weak and wretched, and the terrified clerk wiped my forehead with a wet towel. It was dreadful. Yes, that was the greatest and the most astounding experience of my life: that dreadful amazement, and horror, and afterwards that desperate longing to live, even if it were the most insignificant and the most humble life; for the first time I had a conscious and completely overwhelming longing for life. In fact at that moment, my life changed completely, and somehow I became another man. Up to then I had only squandered my days, or almost casually lived them through; but suddenly I appreciated immensely the fact that I was alive, and I began to look quite differently at myself, and at everything around me. It was enough for me to sit on the planks, to gaze at the rusty line grown over with shepherd’s-purse and hair-grass; or watch the ripples in the little river for hours, and see that they were always the same and always new. And at the same time to repeat a hundred times to myself: breathe deeply, it’s healthy. Then I began to like all the small, regular things, and the silent course of life; I still boasted a bit with Bohemian cynicism; and I grinned at many things, but then I wasn’t yet sure that I was going to live; it was still a wild and frosty prank of despair. I began to cling to life silently and contentedly, to enjoy nice, intimate things, and look after myself. In this way, in fact, the idyllic part of my life began: in convalescence. That was the important and decisive crossing.

  But it wasn’t even a crossing. Now I can see it better, now I see it quite clearly. I should have to start again from my childhood: with mother, who rushed to the door every second moment to see if nothing had happened to me; with Mr. Martinek, to whom I had not to get too near because they said he had consumption, and of whom I therefore was frightened. Mother was obsessed with the notion that I was in danger, that I was a weak and ailing child; she was, poor dear, so pathetic and passionate; when I fell ill she pressed me to herself as if she wanted to protect me, at night she bent over me in terror, she used to fall on her knees and pray loudly for my health. To be ill, that was an important and solemn thing; everything centred on the little fellow, the saws even, and the hammers in the yard, seemed to have been damped somehow, and father was only allowed to grumble under his breath. By all her love she fostered in me the idea that I was something delicate, more delicate than other children, something that must be specially protected; and so I didn’t attempt any boyish pranks; I was under the impression that I MUSTN’T run about so wildly, mustn’t jump into the river, mustn’t fight because I was weak and delicate. I should have even liked to boast about it, I seemed to myself in some way finer and more precious than they were, but lads are too much like men for that, they like the idea of being strong and brave. That, then, was my mother; it was mother who had fostered in me that timidity towards life and distrust in myself, that physical feeling of inferiority with which I grew up; it was mother’s pathological love which developed in me the inclination to regard myself as the object of endless nursing and coddling, an inclination in which I nestled almost with pleasure when the first tap of a real illness gave me the opportunity. Then, yes, then I discovered in myself that cautious, hypochondriacal being which with grave attention examines its sputum, measures its pulse, loves a safe order in life, and clings to a good, comfortable state of things. This, then, was—I will not say my whole life, but an important and constant component of it. Now I realize it.

  Father was something different; he was strong and firm, like a pillar, and in that he impressed me tremendously. If he chose he could have stood up against everybody in the world. At that time, of course, I did not fully understand his cautious economy—in fact, stinginess; I realized it for the first time when Mr. Martinek, who was only a workman, gave that little girl a penny, but father didn’t, he pretended that he hadn’t noticed it; then something strange and terrible like scorn shook the little boy. Now I see that he, poor man, was not so strong, that he really was frightened of life; to economize is a defensive virtue; it is a desire for a protected life, it is fear of the future, of risks, and chances; avarice is terribly similar to some form of hypochondria. Do study, my boy, he used to say, in a solemn and trembling voice, you will go into an office, and you will have it setded. That is about the limit of what we can expect from life: certainty and safety, the faith that nothing can happen to us. If my father, who was as big and strong as a tree, felt like this, how could his weak and coddled son feel brave ? I realize that it had already been thoroughly laid down for me in my childhood; the first physical shock was enough, and the man, with fear crawling into himself, discovered that defensive concern for life and made of it his rule of life.

  God knows it must have stuck in me deeper than I realized; surely it guided me in life almost like an instinct, so blindly, and so certain. I am thinking now of my late wife: how strange it is that I should have found her, a woman who was almost born just to nurse somebody. Perhaps it arose from the fact that she was sentimental, and, at the same time, very sensible; to look after somebody is such a sensible, sober, and practical form of love. Didn’t she fall for me ardendy the very moment that she learned that I had come from the threshold of death, and that my interesting paleness had its deeper causes ? Then suddenly charity, love, and motherhood broke out in her and a precipitant maturing of feelings began; it was all there together: a terrified little girl, feminine compassion, and a mother’s zeal, erotic reverie and a terribly
realistic and urgent concern that I should eat a lot and gain weight. It was equally as important and beautiful to talk of love as to get fat; she pressed my hand convulsively in the shadow of the night and whispered with eyes full of tears: Please, please, you must eat TERRIBLY much; do promise me that you will look after yourself! I can’t smile at it even to-day; it had its sweet and even pathetic poetry … for the two of us. I had the feeling that I was getting better only for her sake, for her pleasure, and that it was fine and magnanimous of me; I struggled for my health to make her happy. And she believed that she was saving me and giving me my life back again; wasn’t I hers by right and by fate ? God, I know: surely it was only an accident that I was appointed to that particular station; but it is strange and somehow amazing how inevitably and deeply the order of my life worked out. Up to that time I had to conceal my hypochondriacal anguish and be ashamed of it as if of a weakness; now no longer, now it was a common and terribly important affair between two people, now it was part of our love and intimacy; it was no longer a defect or a derangement, but something positive and important that gave sense and order to life.