by Karel Čapek
Well, before we part. You’ve got it very nice here.
Well, well. My friends, my friends! You must forgive me for not expecting you—
Nice furniture, my boy. It must have cost a lot of money.
It did, daddy.
I can see, my lad, that you have done quite well. I’m very pleased with you.
My only one, my little chap, how badly you look! What ails you ?
Ah that’s mother! Mum, Mummy, I’ve got something wrong with my heart, you know.
Oh, God, with your heart? You see, I also had something wrong with my heart. That’s from my father.
And he’s not here ?
He is. He, you know is that bad grandfather. It was he, poor chap, whose spectre used to haunt here, it’s in our family.
Let me see you, confounded grandfather! So it was you, that sinner ? Who would have thought it of you!
Well, never mind. Who would have thought it of you! It was in you, too.
But not in mother.
I ask you, in a woman! That’s not for women, is it? What can one do ? a fellow must sow his wild oats.
Oh, it’s simple with you, grandfather!
Yes. I was a real fellow, my lad. Well, what, I had my fun sometimes.
And you dragged grandmother by the hair on the floor.
Yes, I did.
So you see; and then they reproach me for wanting to strangle my late wife! That comes from you, grandfather.
But you haven’t got my strength, my boy. You have rather got your nature from women. That’s why it was in you … so strange and secretive.
You may be right in that. So just look at it, from women! Was it you who had that pious and saindy grandmother for his wife ?
Not at all. I had that jolly grandmother. Haven’t you heard of her ?
Now I know! She was that jolly grandmother who was full of fun.
I am that jolly grandmother. Do you remember how you teased that telegraphist ? That came from me.
And where did that humble and holy man come from?
That also came from me, my boy. I suffered much from poor grandfather, no use complaining. You must have patience, well, and you get reconciled.
And what about that other grandmother, that pious and saindy one ?
She, poor dear, was an evil woman. Full of anger, envy, and avarice, and that’s why she made a saint of herself. You’ve got that from her, don’t you know.
What?
Why, that you envied everybody and wanted to be the best of them all, my poor duckie.
And what have I got from the other grandfather ?
Perhaps that you served. That one, my lad, was still a bondsman, and he had to do menial labour for his squire, like his father and grandfather.
And where did the poet come from ?
A poet ? That wasn’t in our family.
And that hero ?
No hero. We were, my boy, all ordinary people. Why, weren’t we and aren’t we as numerous as people at a village wake?
You’re right, grandmother, you’re right, like people at a village wake. And then a man shouldn’t be born as an average of so many people! From everybody he gets something, and together it’s so ordinary and average—thank God!
Thank God!
Thank God, that I was that ordinary man. Indeed, it’s just that that is tremendous—in it you, all of you, so many of you, resting with the Lord!
Amen.
And how many there are of us—like people at a village wake. So many people together—why, it’s like a big festival! You wouldn’t say, good Lord, you wouldn’t even think that life is—such a glory!
And what about us, your possible brothers ?
Where are you ? I can’t see you—
No, you can’t see us, we can only be imagined. For instance—
What, for instance ?
For instance, I should be a joiner, and take over the workshop from father. Don’t you think that it would be a big workshop by now, twenty workers—and what a lot of machines! We should have to buy that potter’s yard to spread into, in any case there’s no potter’s workshop any longer.
Daddy thought of that.
Of course he did, but when he had no son a joiner! It was a pity. After all, it wouldn’t be bad.
It wouldn’t.
But not me, I should be something different. Man, I should have shown that painter’s chap! Frank would have taught me how to fight, and that would be that. He would get something, that blighted painter’s chap!
And what would you like to be then ?
It’s all the same. To smash rocks with a pickaxe, for all I know, stripped to the waist, spit in my hands, and dig. Those muscles, my boy, you would see.
Go away, to smash rocks! I should go to America or somewhere. And not only dream about adventures, that’s nothing. To have a go, damn it, to try your luck and set out into the world. At least you enjoy something and learn.
Enjoy something—you can only do that with women. I should let them have it, chaps? Whether it was a slut or a princess in a tweed suit—
And that canteen woman?
And that canteen woman with her breasts on her belly.
And that whore on the bridge?
That one, too, man. She must have been—gee whiz!
And diat… little girl with frightened eyes ?
That one specially, that one specially. I shouldn’t let her go! And altogether. By Jove, I should have some fun.
And what about you ?
I, nothing.
What should you be ?
Well, nothing, nobody. Only just so, don’t you know.
Should you beg ?
Perhaps even beg.
And you ?
I ? … I should die in twenty-three years. For certain.
And you wouldn’t have enjoyed anything ?
Nothing. But because of that everybody would pity me.
Hm, to think that I should have been killed in the War. Crikey, it’s silly, but at any rate you’re with pals. And when you’re kicking the bucket at least you’re all worked up, so dreadfully and beautifully worked up as if you’re spitting in somebody’s face. You swine, what have you done?
And none of you would be a poet ?
Ugh! When once you’ve begun, then something decent. What you, you were almost the weakest of us, you couldn’t do what we—well, it’s good that you remembered us, brother. After all, we’re all of one blood. You beggar, adventurer, joiner, ruffian, and rake, the one who fell in the War and the one who died early—
We’re all of the same blood.
All. Have you already seen, brother, someone who couldn’t be YOUR BROTHER?
CHAPTER XXXIII
STILL to be a poet, he has it nice; a poet sees what’s in him and he can give it a name and a form. There’s no phantasy, nobody can think out what wouldn’t be in him. To perceive and to hear, in that is the whole miracle and the whole revelation. And to think out to the end what is only suggested in us. And he finds a whole man, and a whole life in what for others is only a tremor or a moment. He is so overcrowded that he must send it into the world. Go, Romeo, and love with the savagery of love, murder, jealous Othello; and you, Hamlet, hesitate as I did. All these are possible lives who lay claim to be lived. And the poet can let them have it with a miraculous and omnipotent fullness.
If like the poets I could give free rein to those lives which were in me then they would look different. Christ, I should make something else out of them! That ordinary man wouldn’t be a station-master; he would be a farmer, an owner who farms his own land; he would curry his horses and plait their manes, two heavy brown geldings with their tails to the ground; he would grab his oxen by the horns and he would lift that cart with one hand, such a whopper. And the whitewashed homestead with red roofs and a wife on the doorstep; she wipes her hands on the apron, and Come, eat, master. We should have children, wife, for our field would yield. Why work if it isn’t for ourselves?—It would be an obstinate and testy farmer,
like a slave-driver with his people, but, on the other hand, a nice farm, and what a lot of animals and life swarming there! That, sir, isn’t any longer an enclosure of chips, it’s a real chunk of the world, and real work. Everyone can see what work I’ve done for myself here.—This, then, would be the real story and the complete, full, not partial truth about an ordinary man. That farmer apparently would risk his neck for his homestead: not because it would be tragic; on the contrary, because it’s obvious; isn’t that fine holding worth a man’s life? Maybe he’s working in the fields, and in the village someone rings the alarm bell, there’s a fire somewhere. And then the old farmer runs, his heart isn’t good enough, but he runs; it’s dreadful what a heart like that can do. As if it would burst, as if it were contracting terribly, and couldn’t expand again, but the farmer still runs. Just a few steps, but it’s no longer a heart, it’s already just an overwhelming pain. And here we are, here is the gate and the yard, whitewashed walls and red roofs; why is it turning upside down? No, these aren’t whitewashed walls after all, it’s the sky. But there always used to be a farm here, the farmer wonders; but then people are already running out from the building and are trying to lift the heavy body of a man.
Or the one with the elbows: that would also be quite a different story. First he would get on better, an official table wouldn’t be enough for him; I don’t even know what he’d have to be to satisfy his ambition. And he would be more reckless, he would have a dreadful will to power; he would trample over corpses to achieve his aim; he would sacrifice everything for his career—happiness, love, men, and himself. At first small and humble, he would scramble up at all costs; a model pupil who always crams and helps the teachers on with their coats; a zealous htde official who devours work, flatters his superiors, and denounces his colleagues; then he himself can order others about, discovers what it tastes like. Masterful and callous, he pesters people, like a slave-driver cracking his whip; of course, now he’s becoming an important and useful personality, and he develops faster and faster, always more and more lonely and more and more powerful and always more and more hated. And still he hasn’t got enough, never can he be enough of a master to blot out the humbleness of his beginnings; he still must bow to a few, it’s a wonder that he doesn’t snap in two with eagerness and respect; so that there is still that feeling in him of being small and servile which he hasn’t overcome yet. Well, farther yet, still a bit higher, exert himself to the utmost—and then the one with the elbows stumbles over something, and at once he’s down, he’s in disgrace, degradation, and the end. That’s the reward for wanting to be great, it’s a just retribution. A tragic figure, look at it; he was such a severe gentleman, and now he sits and holds his hand to his heart. Did he ever have a heart? Well, at one time he hadn’t, and suddenly there’s something that aches deeply and horribly. This, then, is his heart, this pain and anxiety; who would have believed that a man may have so much heart!
Or that hypochondriac; just to get him finished properly and he would be a real monster. His story, that would be a prodigious tyranny of weakness and fear, for a weakling is the most terrible tyrant. Everything must turn round him, awestruck and on tiptoes. Nobody must laugh, nobody enjoy life, for there is a sick man here. How can, how is anybody allowed to be healthy and cheerful! Put an end to it, you rascals, may your faces twitch, with pain, may you dry up with fear and depression! At least for you, my kinsmen, I shall poison days and nights with thousands of pettifogging demands, at least you I shall compel to wait upon my illness and weakness—am I not ill, and isn’t it my right, pray? So look at them, they will die sooner! It serves them right, that comes from being healthy! And in the end he alone remains, the hypochondriac; he outlived them all, and now he has no one to pester; now he’s really ill and he’s alone with it; there’s no one with whom he might be annoyed, whom he might blame for being worse again to-day. How selfish of those people to have died! And the hypochondriac who tormented the living begins silently and bitterly to hate the dead who have forsaken him.
And what could be made of that hero—he wouldn’t escape with a whole skin; sometime in the night the soldiers would arrest him—how he would look at them with haughty, burning, derisive eyes, like that painter’s son; he would be shot on the spot, apparently with a bullet in his heart; only one painful twitch, and he would lie between the rails on his back. The mad captain with a revolver: Take that dog away into the lamp room! Four railwaymen drag the body—God Almighty, how heavy such a dead man is! By this time the poet would have been dead long ago, he would have drunk himself to death; he would die in hospital, swollen and dreadful; what’s all this rustling, is it the cocos palms or Wings? The sister of mercy prays over him, she holds his hands so that they don’t wander much in his delirium. Sister, sister, how does it go on:
Gende Jesus, meek-? And the romantic, what about him ?
something would have happened, some great and unusual misfortune; and he would be dying, without a doubt, for that beautiful stranger; his head would be in her lap, and he would whisper: Ne pleurez pas, Madame. Yes, that would be the proper end, these are the right and complete lives as they ought to have been.
And are these all, and are they all dead ? No, there’s still that little beggar of God left yet; he isn’t dead yet, then? No, he’s not, perhaps he’s eternal. He always was there where everything came to an end; and perhaps he’ll be at the end of everything, and he’ll be looking on.
CHAPTER XXXIV
EVERYONE of us is plural, everyone is a host that fades away into the invisible distance. Just look at yourself, man, you are nearly the whole of mankind! That is what is so dreadful about it: when you sin the blame falls on them all, and that huge host bears all your pain and pettiness. You mustn’t, you mustn’t lead so many people along the path of humiliation and vanity. You are myself, you are leading, you are responsible for them; all these you were supposed to bring somewhere.
Yes, but what is one to do when there are so many lives, when there are so many possibilities? Can I lead them all by the hand? Shall I look eternally into myself, and turn my life inside out and outside in—isn’t there anything still left ? haven’t I perhaps overlooked some little crouching figure which, God knows why, is hiding behind the others? Shall I perchance drag out of me some addled embryo of a possible life ? But at least there were nearly half a dozen of them that one could pretty well make out, and call by name, and even that’s more than enough; each would be sufficient for a WHOLE life—why seek farther! If you did you wouldn’t even live, but just rummage about in yourself.
And so let that rummaging be, it wouldn’t lead anywhere. Don’t you see that all the other people, whatever they are, are like you, that they also are hosts ? But you don’t even know what you all have in common with them; only just look—indeed, their life ALSO is one of those countless possible ones that are in you! Even you could be what the other is, you could be a gentleman, or a beggar, or a day-labourer stripped to the waist; you could be that potter, or that baker, or that father of nine children smeared with jam from ear to ear. You are ALL THAT because in you there are those various possibilities. You can look at all people, and in them discern all that is man in you. Everyone lives something of yours, even that ragamuffin whom the gendarmes led away in handcuffs, and that wise and silent lamp attendant, and that drunken captain who drowned his grief—everyone. Look, look carefully so as to see at last all that you might have been; if you search you will see in everyone a fragment of yourself, and then you will recognize with amazement in him your real neighbour.
Yes, it is like that, thank God, it is like that; and no longer am I so much alone with myself. My friends, I can’t go among you any longer, I can’t look at you from a near distance, I can only look out from the window—maybe someone will pass by: a postman, or a child to school, or roadman, or a beggar. Or that youngster may go this way with his girl, they will press their heads together and they won’t even look up at my door. And I can’t even stand any longer by the w
indow, I have such swollen and lifeless legs, as if they were growing cold; but I can still think about people, whether I know them or not—they are as numerous as people at a village wake, such an immense host! God, so many people! Whoever you are, I recognize you; for indeed we are most on a level in that each of us lives some other possibility. Whoever you are, you are my innumerable self; even if I hated you, I shall never forget how terribly near you are to me. I shall love my neighbour as myself; and I shall fear him as if it were myself, and I shall resist him like myself; I shall feel his burden, I shall be vexed with his pain, and I shall groan under the iniquity that is done to him. The nearer I shall be, the more I shall find myself. I shall set limits to the egoists for I myself am an egoist, and I shall serve the sick, for I myself am sick; I shall not pass by a beggar at the church door because I am poor like him, and I shall make friends with all who labour for I am one of them. I am what I can understand. The more people I learn to know in their lives the more my own will be fulfilled. And I shall be all that I might have been, and what was only possible will be reality. The more I grow die less there will be of that self that limits me. But, indeed that self was like a thief’s little lamp—there was nothing but what was within its own compass. But now you, and you, and you, you are so many, we are as numerous as people at a village wake; God, how much bigger does this world grow with other people! one wouldn’t admit that it is such a space, such a glory!
And that is the real, ordinary life, the most ordinary life, not that which is mine, but that which is ours, the immense life of us all. We are all ordinary when there are so many of us; and yet—such a festival! Perhaps even God is quite an ordinary life, only to perceive him and know. I might find him perhaps in the others, since I have not found him and known him in me; he might be met perhaps among the people, he might perhaps have quite an ordinary face like us all. He might reveal himself… perhaps in the joiner’s yard; not that he would appear, but suddenly one would know that he was there, and everywhere, and it wouldn’t matter that the planks bang and the plane sings; father wouldn’t even raise his head, Frank wouldn’t even stop whistling, and Mr. Martinek would look with beautiful eyes, but he wouldn’t see anything particular; it would be quite an ordinary life, and at the same time such an immense, amazing glory. Or it would be in the wooden hut, shut with a hasp and smelling like a beast; such a darkness with light only coming in through a chink, and then everything would begin to stand out in a radiance strange and dazzling, all that muck and that misery. Or the last station in the world, the rusty line grown over with shepherd’s-purse and hair-grass, nothing beyond, and the end of everything; and that end of everything would just be God. Or the lines running into space, and meeting at infinity, lines which hypnotize; and no longer should I set out along them after who knows what adventure, but straight, straight, quite straight into infinity. It might be that it was there, that EVEN THAT was in my life, but I missed it. Perhaps it’s night, a night with little red and green lights, and in the station the last train is standing; no international express, -but quite an ordinary little train, a parliamentary train that stops at every station; why shouldn’t an ordinary train like that go into infinity ? Bim, bim, the workman taps the wheels with his hammer, the porter’s lantern flickers on the platform, and the station-master looks at his watch, it would already be time. The doors of the compartments bang, they all salute, ready, and the little train gathers speed over the points into the darkness along that infinite line. Wait, but there are plenty of people, Mr. Martinek sits there, the drunken captain sleeps in the corner like a log, the little dark girl presses her nose to the window and sticks out her tongue, and from the van of the last carriage the guard greets with his flag. Wait, I’m coming with you!
