by Karel Čapek
“Which one?” suddenly asked the Chinese plenipotentiary, Mr. Kei, lifting at last his wrinkled eyelids.
“Which one?” repeated Dr. Wurm in astonishment. “Why, surely there’s only one.”
“Our Japanese God,” smiled Baron Yanato blandly.
“The Orthodox Greek God, batushko, and none other,” contradicted the General, as red in the face as a turkey-cock.
“Buddha,” Mr. Kei said, and again dropped his lids, becoming the very counterpart of a dried-up mummy.
Sir W. O’Patterney stood up agitatedly. “Gentlemen,” he said, “kindly follow me.”
Thereupon the diplomats again proceeded to the council chamber. At eight o’clock in the evening His Excellency, General Buchtin, rushed out, purple in the face, and clenching his fists. After him came Dr. Wurm, agitatedly arranging his papers. Sir W. O’Patterney, regardless of polite usage, came out with his hat on his head: his face was deep red; M. Dudieu followed him in silence. Prince Trivelino walked away looking very pale, Baron Yanato at his heels with his perpetual smile. The last to leave was Mr. Kei, with downcast eyes, an exceedingly long black rosary sliding through his fingers.
This concludes the report which I. Sawitt published in the Herald. No official communication concerning this Conference was given out, except the one already mentioned relating to the spheres of interest, and if any decision was taken it was apparently of no great value. For already, to use the familiar gynæcological phrase, unforeseen events were shaping themselves in the “womb of history.”
CHAPTER XXI
THE TELEGRAM
SNOW was falling in the mountains. All night through it had come down in great silent flakes; nearly two feet deep of it lay there new-fallen, and still the white starlets of snow floated earthwards without a pause.
Silence lay over the forests, save that now and then a branch would snap beneath too great a load, and the sound would drive itself a little path through the stillness intensified by the snow.
Then it grew colder, and from the direction of Prussia came whistling an icy wind. The soft flakes changed into stinging hail hurling itself straight into your face. The fallen snow rose in sharp needle-points and whirled through the air. White clouds blew down from the trees, swirled madly above the ground, spun about, and soared up to the darkened heavens. It was snowing upwards from the earth to the sky.
In the depths of the forest the branches were creaking and groaning; a tree broke and fell with a crash, shattering the undergrowth. But abrupt noises like these were sundered and swept away on the whistling, booming, shrieking, rending, distracted howl of the wind. When for an instant it ceased, you could hear the frozen snow crunching shrilly under your feet like powdered glass.
Above Spindelmühl a telegraph messenger was making his way through the storm. It was confoundedly heavy going through the heaped-up snow. The messenger had his cap fastened tight over his ears with a red handkerchief, and had woollen gloves on, and a gaudy scarf round his neck, and still he was cold. “Ah, well,” he was thinking, “in another hour and a half at any rate I’ll have crawled up to Bear Valley, and I’ll borrow a sledge for the run down. But what the devil possesses people to send telegrams in filthy weather like this!”
At the Maiden’s Bridge a gust caught him and spun him round nearly in a circle. With frozen hands he clung to the post of the signboard set there for tourists. “Holy Virgin!” he muttered, “this surely can’t last!” And then across a clearing a huge cloud-like mass of snow came whirling towards him—coming nearer and nearer—now down upon him . . . he must hold his breath at all costs. . . . A thousand needle-points drove into his face and made their way inside his coat; through a little rent in his clothing the icy particles reached his skin; the man was drenched beneath his frozen garments. The cloud blew past, and the messenger felt very much disposed to turn back to the post-office.
“Marek, Engineer”—he repeated the address to himself. “Well, he certainly don’t belong to these parts. But a telegram’s urgent, you never know what it’s about—one of his family, maybe, or something important. . . .”
The storm calmed down a little, and the messenger struck out across the Maiden’s Bridge and up along the stream. The snow crunched under his heavy boots, and his feet were frightfully cold. Once more the wind began to howl, and great lumps of snow fell from the trees; the messenger caught a full load of it on his head and under his scarf; a trickle of icy water ran down his back. But what plagued him most was that his feet were slipping wickedly on the hardened snow, and his path now ran steeply up the slope. Next moment he was caught in a hurricane of snow. Like a white wall it came crashing down upon him. Before the messenger had a chance to turn, he got the full force of it in his face; he bent forward with the utmost effort, gasping for breath. He took a step upward and fell. Then he sat up with his back to the wind, but he was seized with a dread of being buried by the snow. He got up and tried to scramble on, but slipped again, fell on both hands, pulled himself up again, but slid backward a good way. He held on to the trees to steady himself, breathing heavily. “Curse it,” he said to himself, “I’ve got to get up there somehow.”
He managed to take a few steps, but fell once more, and slid downwards on his stomach. He began to crawl on all fours. His gloves were wet, the snow was inside his leggings, but he must push on. Anything rather than stay there! Melting snow and sweat poured down his cheeks. He could not see for the driving snow, and it looked as though he had lost his way; it made him weep aloud as he crept toilsomely upward. But it was hard work crawling along on all fours in a long coat; he stood up again and stepped forward, battling with the blizzard. For every half-step he made forward he slipped two steps back; he did climb a little farther, but then his feet flew out from under him, and he slid downward with his face buried in the prickly snow. When he picked himself up, he found that he had lost his stick.
Meanwhile clouds of snow were flying over the mountains, massing on the rocks, hissing, bellowing, roaring. The messenger sobbed aloud, gasping with terror and exertion; he climbed on, stopped, took another step and another, halted, turned his back to the wind and took a deep breath through his burning mouth, and then—O Christ in Heaven!—took one step more. He held on to a tree. What was the time? With the greatest effort he drew out his turnip watch in its transparent yellow case. It was encrusted with snow. Perhaps darkness was coming on. Should he turn back? But he couldn’t have far to go now!
The fitful gale had changed into a steady blizzard. Clouds rolled along the slope, a dark and dirty mist full of hurtling sleet. The snow rushed down horizontally, straight into his face, blocking up the eyes, nose and mouth; with wet frozen fingers it had to be dug, half melted, from the cavities of the ears and eyes. The front of the messenger’s body was covered with a layer of snow two inches thick; his coat was rigid, as stiff and heavy as a board—you could not bend it; the cakes of snow on his boot-soles grew bigger and heavier with every step. And in the forest it was getting dark. And yet, good heavens, it was barely two in the afternoon!
Suddenly a greenish-yellow darkness poured over the forest, and the snow gushed down like a cloudburst. Flakes the size of your hand, wet and heavy, flew whirling by so thickly that the dividing line between earth and air was lost. A man cannot see a step in front of him. He breathes the flakes in, wades on through the roaring blizzard that dashes high over his head, pushes on blindly as if he were cutting a little passage down there under the snow. He has but one overmastering instinct—to push on. He yearns for one thing only—to breathe something other than snow. He can no longer lift his feet from the snow; he drags them through the drifts reaching half-way to his hips; he makes a track which instantly closes up behind him.
Meanwhile in the cities far below a few sparse flakes fluttered down to be melted into black mud. The lights were lit in the shops, the cafés were all aglow, people sat around under the electric globes and grumbled what a miserable gloomy day it was. Numberless lights were ablaze all over
the great city, sparkling in the watery mire.
One solitary glimmer shone over the storm-swept field on the mountain. It pierced with difficulty through the falling snow, wavered up and down, and nearly expired; nevertheless, it was there, still shining. There was a light in the Hut in Bear Valley.
It was five o’clock, and therefore pitch-dark, when a shapeless something stopped in front of the Hut in Bear Valley. That “something” spread out its thick white wings and began to beat its body with them and peel off a coating of snow four inches thick. Beneath the snow a coat became visible, and below the coat two feet, and these feet stamped on the stone door-step, till great lumps of snow dropped from them. It was the messenger from Spindelmühl.
He entered the hut and saw a thin gentleman sitting at the table. He tried to utter a greeting, but his voice failed him completely. It only made a little wheezing noise like that of escaping steam.
The other man rose: “My good man, what the devil brings you here in a blizzard like this? Why, you might never have got through alive!”
The messenger nodded and gurgled.
“If it isn’t absolute madness!” growled the other, and told the servant to bring some tea. “Well, where were you making for, then, dad? Martin’s Hut?”
The messenger shook his head and opened his leather pouch; it was full of snow; he took out a telegram frozen so stiff that it crackled.
“Bha, bha, Bharek?” he croaked out hoarsely.
“What do you say?” asked the other.
“Is . . . anyone . . . here . . . named . . . Mar . . . ek, an . . . Eng . . . i . . . neer?” the messenger stammered out with a reproachful look.
“That’s me,” the thin gentlemen cried. “Have you something for me? Let me see it, quick!”
Marek tore open the telegram. It read:
“Your predictions confirmed. Bondy.”
Nothing more.
CHAPTER XXII
THE OLD PATRIOT
IN the Prague office of the People’s Journal everyone was working at top speed. The telephone operator was yelling furiously into the telephone and quarrelling with the young lady at the Exchange. Scissors clicked and typewriters clattered, and Mr. Cyril Keval sat on the table and dangled his legs.
“I say, they’re holding a meeting at Vaclavak,” he said in a low voice. “Some Communist’s up there preaching voluntary poverty. He’s haranguing the people, telling them they ought to be like the lilies of the field. He’s got a beard right down to his waist. What a frightful lot of long-bearded chaps there are about nowadays! All looking like apostles.”
“Mhm,” answered old Rejzek, turning over the papers from the Czechoslovak Press Bureau.
“What makes their beards grow so long?” Mr. Keval ruminated. “I say, Rejzek, I do believe the Absolute has something to do with that as well. Golly, Rejzek, I’m afraid of something of the sort growing on me. Just imagine it, right down to the waist!”
“Mhm,” Mr. Rejzek said ponderously.
“The Free Thought Society is holding a service in Havliček Square to-day. Father Novaček is performing miracles in Tyl Square. There’s sure to be a row between them, you’ll see. Yesterday Novaček healed a man who had been lame from birth. Then they had a procession, and just think, the fellow who’d been lame gave a Jew an awful hiding. Broke three of his ribs or more. He was a Zionist, see.”
“Mhm,” remarked Mr. Rejzek, marking some items of news.
“There’s certain to be a dust-up to-day, Rejzek,” Keval expatiated. “The Progressives are holding a meeting in the Old Town Square. They’ve trotted out ‘Away from Rome’ again. And Father Novaček is organizing the Maccabeans; you know, a sort of Catholic armed guard. You wait, there will be a scrimmage. The Archbishop has forbidden Novaček to perform miracles, but his Reverence is like one possessed; he even goes and raises the dead.”
“Mhm,” said Mr. Rejzek, and went on marking copy.
“I had a letter from my mother,” Cyril Keval confided in subdued tones. “At home in Moravia, you know, near Hustopec and thereabouts, they’re simply raving mad with the Czechs—say they’re heathen and heretics and idolaters and want to set up new gods, and all that stuff. They’ve shot a gamekeeper there because he was a Czech. I tell you, Rejzek, things are fairly seething everywhere.”
“Mhm,” came Mr. Rejzek’s sign of acquiescence.
“They’ve even gone for each other in the synagogue,” continued Mr. Keval. “The Zionists gave the people who believe in Baal a fearful licking. There were even three people killed. And have you heard about the split among the Communists? There you are, I nearly forgot about it; that’s another grand mix-up. Now we’re going to have the mystic Communists, a sort of left wing; then the Christians, Marians, Scientists, Resurrectionites, textile Knights of St. John, iron Knights, miner Knights, and about seven other parties. Now they’re squabbling about the sick benefit funds and the workmen’s dwellings. Just wait, I’m going to slip over to Hybernska Street this afternoon. My boy, the garrison was confined to barracks this afternoon; but in the meantime the Vršovice barracks have sent an ultimatum to the Černin barracks calling on them to recognize the Vršovice dogma of the Three Degrees of Salvation. If they don’t accept the doctrine, they are to report for battle at Sandberk. The Dejvice artillerymen have gone to the Černin barracks to disband. The Vršovice garrison has barricaded itself in, the soldiers have planted machine-guns in the windows and declared war. They are being besieged by the Seventh Dragoons, the Castle Guard, and four light batteries. They’ve been given six hours, then the firing will begin. Rejzek, it’s a real pleasure to be alive in these days.”
“Mhm,” said Mr. Rejzek.
“Yes, and at the University to-day,” Keval went on quietly, “the natural science faculty and the history faculty came to blows. You know, the natural science faculty, being rather pantheistic, so to speak, disputes the Revelation. The professors conducted the fight, and Deal Radl himself carried the flag. The historians fortified the University Library in the Klementinum and defended themselves desperately, armed with books. Dean Radl got hit on the head with a bound volume of Velenovsky and was killed on the spot. Probably concussion of the brain. The Rector, Arne Novak, was seriously injured by a volume of Invention and Progress. Finally the historians buried the attacking party under the Collected Works of Jan Vrba. Now the sappers are at work on the scene of the battle, and so far they’ve recovered seven corpses, among them three lecturers. I don’t think there were more than thirty buried though.”
“Mhm,” observed Mr. Rejzek.
“Then there’s the Sparta Club, my boy,” Keval rattled on with mild enthusiasm. “The Sparta has proclaimed that the only God is the Greek Zeus, whereas the Slavia votes for Svantovit, the old sun-god. On Sunday there’s to be a match between the two Gods on the Letna. Besides their footballs, both clubs will bring hand-grenades, and the Slavia will also have machine-guns and the Sparta a twelve-centimetre gun. There’s a terriffic rush for tickets. The supporters of both clubs will be armed. Rejzek, believe me, there will be a shindy! I bet Zeus will win.”
“Mhm,” said Mr. Rejzek, “but now you might have a look at the post.”
“Well, I don’t care,” cried Cyril Keval. “A man can get used even to a God, can’t he? What’s the latest from the Press Bureau?”
“Nothing special,” growled Mr. Rejzek. “Bloodshed at demonstrations in Rome. They’re going for each other in Ulster—you know, the Irish Catholics. The St. Kilda agreement is being repudiated all round. Pogroms in Budapest; a schism in France—the Waldenses have bobbed up there again, and the Anabaptists in Münster. At Bologna an Anti-Pope has been elected, one Father Martin of the Barefoot Friars. And so on. Nothing of local interest. Have a look at the letters, will you.”
Cyril Keval stopped talking and began opening the letters. There were a few hundred of them, but he had hardly read half a dozen when he was off once more.
“Look here, Rejzek,” he began, “it’s the same ta
le all the way through. Take this one for instance: From Chrudim. Dear Sir,—As an old subscriber to your esteemed journal, your readers and the whole of the public who are now being harassed by unprofitable disputes”—(“He’s left out ‘will be interested,’” interpolated Mr. Keval)—“ ‘in the remarkable miracle performed by our local pastor, the Rev. Father Zakoupil.’ And so on. In Jicin it was the storekeeper of the Co-operative Society, and in Benesov it was the superintendent of schools. In Chotěboř it was even the widow Jirák, who keeps a tobacco shop. Have I to read all this stuff?”
Work went on again in silence for a while.
“Damn it, Rejzek,” Keval burst out again, “I say, do you know what would be a real sensation? A giant gooseberry? A lovely canard? Why, if something were to happen quite in the natural way, without any miracle about it. But I don’t think anyone would believe us. Wait a bit, I’ll try to think up something natural.”
Again there was a brief period of quiet.
“Rejzek,” cried Keval mournfully, “I simply can’t think up anything natural. When I think it over, everything is a miracle really. Whatever is, is a sort of magic.”
Just then the editor-in-chief entered.
“Who did the cuttings from the Tribune? Here’s a story in it that we haven’t got.”
“What sort of a story,” asked Mr. Rejzek.
“In the Finance and Commerce Section. An American combine has bought up the Pacific Islands and is subletting them. A tiny coral atoll costs fifty thousand dollars a year. Big demand even from the Continent of Europe. Shares have gone up to two thousand seven hundred already. G. H. Bondy interested to the extent of one hundred and twenty millions. And we haven’t got a word about it,” said the editor-in-chief angrily, and slammed the door behind him.
“Rejzek,” cried Keval, “here’s an interesting letter: ‘Dear Sir,—Forgive an old patriot, who can remember the evil times of oppression and the dark days of serfdom, if he raises a plaintive voice and begs you to use your skilful pen to make known to the Czech people the grief and sore anxiety we old patriots feel . . .’ and so on. Farther on he says: ‘In our ancient and glorious nation we see brother egged on against brother; innumerable parties, sects, and churches struggling together like wolves and destroying each other in their mutual hatred’—(must be some very old chap; his writing is terribly shaky)—‘while our ancient enemy prowls around us like a roaring lion, filling the minds of our people with the German watchword of “Away from Rome,” and supported by those mistaken patriots who set the interests of their party before the national unity for which we yearn. And we behold with anguish and sorrow the prospect of a new battle of Lipany, where Czech ranged against Czech under the cloak of different religious watchwords, will be left lying on the bloody field. And so, alas, the words of the Scriptures about a kingdom divided against itself will be fulfilled. And there shall be piercing and felling of many, as it is written in our own glorious and authentic cycles of chivalry.’”
