by Karel Čapek
That idyllic station-master, no, he was no hero; it surely was very disagreeable for him to direct something like the sabotage of his beloved railways. Of course by that time the idyllic station-master was almost lost; the atrocious captain had reduced his model station to the state of a filthy madhouse; there was no more room in this world for a conscientious station-master. That one with the elbows, no; he wouldn’t have risked so much, and he would have said, What shall I get out of it ? it might, you know, end badly, and for most of the time it looked as if the Emperor might win. And then, in that a man could not and must not think of himself; if he had begun to think of what was in store for him his heart would have sunk to his boots and that would have been the end. Instead it was rather a feeling, The devil can have me, what the dickens does my life matter; only in this way could I bear it. No, that one with the elbows had nothing to do with it. And the hypochondriac, who was eternally frightened for his life, still less; strange that he didn’t try to shield himself from that undertaking. The romantic, no. It wasn’t a bit romantic, not a whiff of any visions or adventure; so absolutely sober and matter-of-fact, only just a little bit wild, only just enough to make me want to drink rum; but that perhaps came from the fellow-feeling that united us. I should have liked to hold those guards and conductors round the neck, to drink with them, and shout, Boys, my lads, let’s sing! I who have been lonely all my life long! That was the finest thing about the whole affair that unity with others, that manly love for one’s comrades. No solo heroism, but joy for that magnificent party: Damn it all, we railwaymen, we’ll show them! Not that we ever spoke about it, but I felt it, and I think that we all did. Well, look here, what was lacking in my childhood was now made up; I didn’t sit any longer in my enclosure of chips; I’m with you, boys, I’m with you, comrades, never mind what it is! My loneliness melted, there was our common cause; no more only self, and that was travelling, sir, that was the easiest part of the way. Yes, easier and finer than love.
That life seems to me to have had no connection at all with the others.
Lord, and there’s still another life which I should have forgotten completely. Different and almost contrary to this and all the others; in fact, only such strange moments, as if they belonged to a completely different life. For instance, a longing to be something like a beggar at a church door; the desire not to wish to be anything, and to give up everything; to be poor and alone and in that to find peculiar pleasure or holiness—I don’t know how to express it. For instance, as a child, that corner among the planks; I loved that place immensely because it was so small and forsaken, and it gave me a fine and good feeling. At home every Friday beggars used to go together from house to house; I used to go with them, I don’t know why, and I prayed like them and like them I snuffled, Thank you, God bless you, at every door. Or that shy, short-sighted girl—in that, too, there was the need for something humble, poor, and forsaken, and that strange, almost pious, joy. And it was always like that: like those buffers at the last station in the world, nothing but rusty rails, shepherd’s-purse, and hair-grass, nothing but just the end of the world, a forsaken place, and good for nothing; there I felt best. Or those talks in the lamp attendant’s hut: it was so small and cramped, God, how well one could live! At my own station, too, I had such a corner, it was between the storehouse and the fence; nothing but rust, old rubbish, and netdes—nobody went there any longer except God, and it was sad and reconciled, like the vanity of everything. And the station-master used to stand and look at it sometimes for an Hour at a time with his hands behind his back and realize the vanity of everything. The workmen would come running—perhaps we ought to clear it away ? No, let it stay as it is. That day I didn’t look any longer left and right, at what people were doing. Why always do this or that ? Simply be, and nothing more: that is such a quiet and wise death. I know that in its way it was the negation of life; and so it had no connection with anything else; it only was, in it nothing happened, for there are no happenings where all is vanity.
CHAPTER XXXI
So how many are there of life’s aspects: four, five, eight? Eight lives which compose my own; and I know that if I had more time and a clearer head I should discover a whole row of them, perhaps completely disconnected ones, maybe of those which only happened once and lasted only for a moment. And perhaps there are still more that never had their turn; if my life had run on a different line, if I had been somebody else, or had met with other adventures, perhaps quite different—persons, I should say, would have emerged in me able to act in a different manner. If, say, I had had another wife, a cantankerous and irritable man might have developed in me; or in some circumstances I might perhaps have behaved frivolously; I can’t rule out that; I can’t rule out anything.
At the same time, I know quite well that I am not some interesting and complex double, or God knows what, personality; I think that nobody could ever have thought that about me. What I was I was entirely, and what I did I did, so to speak, with all my heart. I never meditated about myself, I had no cause to; it’s only a few weeks since I began to write this, and I was thinking myself what a nice and simple story it would be, as if made of one piece. Then I found out that I was contributing to that simplicity and compactness, even if unwittingly…. A man has a definite idea about himself and about his Hfe, and according to it he selects or even arranges facts a little to fit in with his idea. I think that at first I intended to write something like an apology for the lot of an ordinary man, just as the famous and extraordinary people write in their memoirs apologies for their extraordinary and prominent destinies; I should say that in their various ways they also contribute to their own life-stories to make of them consistent and probable pictures; it looks MORE POSSIBLE when one gives it a connecting thread. Now I understand that: what a possibility! The Hfe of man is a mass of various possible aspects out of which only one is realized, or only a few, while the others only manifest themselves incompletely for a time, or never at all. Somehow this is how I imagine the story of EVERY man.
Let us take my case—and I certainly am nothing special. There were several aspects which continually intertwined; sometimes one predominated, somethimes another; then there were some which were not so stable and only seemed to be like islands or episodes in that total collective life—as, for instance, the poet’s case, or the heroic story. And again, there were others which were only a permanent and vague glimmer of possibility, like that romantic or that—what should I call him ?—that beggar at the church door. But at the same time, whatever of those lives I lived or whichever of those figures I was, it always was myself, and that self was always the same, and never changed from the beginning to the end. That is what is so strange about it. For that self is something that is ABOVE those figures and their lives, something higher, single, and unifying—is it perhaps what we call a soul ? But surely that self had no content of ITS own, at one time it was that hypochondriac and at another that hero, and it was nothing which floated above them! Surely it was empty in itself, and in order to exist in SOME way it had to borrow one of those figures and its life! It was something like the time when, as a little chap, I climbed up on to the shoulders of Frank, the apprentice, and then felt big and strong like him; or when I went with father, hand in hand, and felt serious and dignified like him. It’s most probable that self was only riding on those lives; so much did it desire and need to be SOMEBODY that it had to acquire this or that life.
No, it’s still different. Admit that a man is something like a crowd of people. In that crowd he wanders, perhaps, say, an ordinary man, a hypochondriac, a hero, that one with the elbows, and God knows what else; it is a muddled swarm, but it has a common path. One of them is always in front and leads for part of the way; and to make it clear that he is in charge let us imagine that he carries a standard on which is written myself. Yes, now he is me. It’s only a word, but such a powerful and domineering word; while he is that self he is the master of the crowd. Then, again, another member of the crowd elbo
ws his way to the front; well, and now he bears the standard and is the leading self. Let us suppose that that self is only just a dummy and the flag is only so that the little band has something in front of it to represent its unity. Except for the crowd even that common badge wouldn’t be needed. An animal perhaps has no self because it is simple and only lives its single possibility; but the more complicated we are the more we must assert the self in us, raise it highest; look out, this is me.
Look at that, a crowd; a crowd that has its unity, its inner tension, and conflicts. Perhaps in it somebody is the strongest, so strong that he rises above all the others. He will bear that self from the beginning to the end, and will not let it fall into other hands. A man like that will appear all his life as if made of one piece. Or perhaps in that crowd there is someone better suited than the rest for the vocation or milieu in which the person lives, and that will then be the leading self. At other times the one of the crowd who looks most respectable and somehow representative; then one says pleasandy, see how noble and manly I am! Or, again, in that crowd there is such a vain, obstinate, egoistic little being which will see to it that IT bears the standard, and it will chafe and puff itself up just to have the upper hand; and then one thinks, I am so and so, I am a proper official, or I am a man of principle. Some of the crowd don’t like each other; some, again, band together and form a clique or majority which then shares the self and will not admit the others to power. With me it used to be that ordinary man, that one with the elbows, and the hypochondriac who associated into some kind of a gang and passed myself from hand to hand among them; they had it well in hand and they kept the lead for most of my days. Sometimes the one with the elbows was disappointed, sometimes the ordinary man let go out of goodness, or embarrassment, sometimes the hypochondriac failed from weakness of will; then my standard passed for a while into other hands. The ordinary man was the strongest and most persistent, just a beast of burden, and so he was myself oftenest and longest. That low and evil being never became myself: when its moment arrived the standard, so to speak, was lowered to the ground; there was no self, it was only chaos without guidance or a name.
I know it is ONLY an image; but it is the only image in which I can see my whole life, not enrolled in time, but complete as it stands, with everything that was, and yet with infinitely much that perhaps MIGHT have been.
My Lord, such a crowd—in fact it’s a drama! All the time they are fighting inside us and settling their eternal disputes. Each of those leading persons would like to seize the whole life, want to be in charge, and become that acknowledged self. The ordinary man wanted to take charge of the whole of my life, as well as the one with the elbows and that hypochondriac; that was a tussle, that was a silent and fierce struggle over what I was to be. Such a strange drama where people don’t shout at each other and don’t go for one another with knives; they sit at one table and discuss current and indifferent things; but how it lies between them! Christ, how tensely and hatefully it lies between them! The ordinary good fellow suffers silently and .helplessly; he can’t cry out for he is rather servile by nature; he is glad when he can become absorbed in his work and forget the others. The hypochondriac only gets mixed up at times; he thinks too much about himself, he is annoyed that there are other interests besides himself; God, what a bore those others with their silly worries! And the one with the elbows acts as if he weren’t conscious of that hostile and close atmosphere; he gives himself airs, is ironical, and knows everything better, this ought to be like this and that like that, this isn’t necessary and that ought to be done because it shows promise. And the romantic, he doesn’t listen at all, he thinks of some beautiful stranger and doesn’t know what’s going on. Then in disfavour there is the poor and humble relation, one of God’s beggars; he doesn’t want anything and doesn’t say anything, he only whispers to himself—who knows what he whispers so mysteriously and silently? Perhaps he might look after the hypochondriac and whisper it into his ear, but those gentlemen pay no need to him, nothing of the kind, such a feeble-minded and passive simpleton! And still there’s something that one doesn’t mention; sometimes it rustles and jolts somewhere like a ghost, but the gendemen at the table only frown slightly and go on talking about their affairs as if nothing had happened; they only peer at each other a bit more irritably and spitefully as if they were accusing each other for something spectral that jolts. A strange household. Once somebody forced his way in, that was the poet; he turned everything upside down and haunted this place worse than that ghost; but the others, those self-respecting people, somehow squeezed him out from that decent and almost venerable household—that was already a long time ago, a terribly long time ago. And once a fellow came there, he was the hero; he made no fuss, and began to give orders as if in a fortress, You must get on, boys, and so on. And look, what a crew it was: that one with the elbows was beside himself with all the frenzy, and the ordinary man was strong enough for two, and the hypochondriac suddenly felt, with relief, my life doesn’t matter a brass farthing: That was a time, boys, that was a time for men! And then the War ended and the hero had nothing left to do. Crikey, those other three were relieved when that intruder had gone! Well, thank God, now it’s here, ours again.
To me it’s like a picture, so lively and definite. This, then, is the whole of life, this drama without action, and now already it’s moving slowly to the end; even that eternal dispute has been settled somehow. I see it like a scene. The one with the elbows doesn’t talk any longer so haughtily and doesn’t preach about what ought to be done, he holds his head in his hands and looks down at the ground. Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ! That ordinary good fellow doesn’t know what to say; he is terribly sorry for the man, for that ambitious egoist who has spoiled his life; well, what can one do?—it wasn’t a success, and don’t think about it any longer. But on the other hand, God’s little beggar sits at the table, he holds the hypochondriac by the hand, and whispers something as if he were praying.
CHAPTER XXXII
THERE were some things in me of which I knew, this is my father, and others in which I felt, this is my mother. But in father and mother again their fathers and mothers existed, of which I knew almost nothing; only one grandfather who they said used to be a great spark, all women and pals; and one grandmother, a saindy and pious woman. Perhaps to some extent they are also present in me, and some member of that crowd bears their features. Perhaps that multitude that is in us is our ancestors for God knows how many generations. That romantic, I know, he was my mother, and that beggar at the church door might have been that pious grandmother, and the hero perhaps the grandfather, a good drinker and a ruffian, who knows ? I’m sorry now that I don’t know anything more about my ancestors; if only I knew what they had been and who they married—from that you might learn all sorts of things. Perhaps each of us is a sum of people which increases from generation to generation. And perhaps we now feel perplexed because of that infinite differentiation, and so we want to escape from it and we accept some mass self to make us less complex.
God knows why I must think of my little brother who died as soon as he was born. The thought worries me as to what he might have been like. Surely quite different from me; brothers are never the same. And yet he was of the same parents and under the same hereditary conditions as I was. He would have grown up in the same joiner’s yard with the same appientice, Frank, and with Mr. Martinek. All the same he might have been more talented than I, or more obstinate, he might have gone farther or done less, who can tell ? Apparently he would have chosen others from the multitude of possibilities with which we come into this world, and he would have been quite a different man. Perhaps in a biological sense we are born a plurality, like that crowd, and only afterwards, through development, environment, and circumstance, one man is more or less fashioned out of us. Surely my little brother would have realized possibilities which were then too much for me, and perhaps I should also have recognized in them many things that are in me.
It is dr
eadful when one thinks of that uncertainty in life. Two others of the millions of germ cells might have met, and then it would have been another man; it would not then have been myself but some unknown brother, and God can say what a strange fellow he would have been. Another of those thousands, or millions, of possible brothers might have been born; well, it was I who drew the right lot, and they were in a fix; what was to be done? we couldn’t all be born. And what if that plurality of lives that is in us is the crowd of those possible and unborn brothers? Perhaps one of them would have been a joiner and another a hero; one would have gone far and another would have lived like a beggar at the church door; and they weren’t just my own, but THEIR possibilities, too! Perhaps what I took simply to be MY life was OURS; of us who lived and died long ago, and of us who weren’t even born and only MIGHT have been. God, it’s a dreadful thought, dreadful and beautiful; that ordinary course of life which I know so well and by heart suddenly looks to me quite different, it seems immensely big and mysterious. It wasn’t me, it was us. You don’t even know, man, how much you lived!
Yes, now we’re all here and we fill the whole space. So look here, our whole race; and how is it that you all remembered me ?
Well, we came to say good-bye; you know—
What?
