An Anthology of Czechoslovak Literature/The Fathers

FROM early morning the square had shone like a hot stone plate beneath the cloudless sky. White gables with arbours, cactuses and geraniums blossoming in the windows, a rust-coloured puppy wriggling on the pavement. The gloomy frontages of the rich houses breathe chillness upon the flame-lit day; a prosperous dimness gazes from within through the large dark panes of the closed windows. In front of the apothecary’s a St. Bernard is sleeping like a sphinx. This square is quiet, is always quiet; quiet when it rains, quiet in the noontide glare, quiet on Sundays, quiet on weekdays. Like a huge and steep-sided ship the church thrusts itself into the centre of the square. That was where the little girl used to walk when she was alive.

She had died, and never had the small town witnessed greater sorrow than the sorrow of her father had been. During the last days he had not stirred from her bedside, only when she was asleep did he stand at the window and gaze at the square. That was where he used to walk with her while she was alive, he used to lead her by the hand and talk to her; the apothecary’s St. Bernard ​always swept the ground with his heavy tail, and stood up so that she could stroke him. The old apothecary reached for a glass jar and gave her a handful of grey cough pastilles. The little girl then spat them out with repugnance, and her poor fingers remained smeared and sticky for a long time afterwards.

That was where he used to walk with her, down hill and as far as the river. She was afraid of certain houses, but she never said why; she was afraid of people and snappish dogs, wells with buckets, bridges, beggars and horses; she was afraid of the river and the engines. At every shudder of fear she clutched her father’s hand, and he responded with a strong pressure of protection: Don’t be afraid, I am here. That was where he used to go with her for a summer walk, rolling the pine-cones down the slope and forcing himself to be jocular; the child never asked any questions. Everybody knew them: he, the father, dignified, stout, round-shouldered and solicitous; she, a badly-dressed girl of six, with fair hair and thin cheeks. The children shouted after her “Little skinny kid”; then he turned red, felt unhappy, and went to complain to the parents. Such were their walks.

The St. Bernard stood up and looked around. She had been ill for three weeks and then had died. A few beggar-women are already standing before the house of sorrow; those invited to the funeral assemble, bake for a moment in the heat of the square, and then enter. The music is already waiting, and the ministrants with crosses and lanterns; four workmen from the father’s factory, in new black clothes, are carrying the bier, draped with a long cloth; the little white-clad girls arrive half embarrassed and half pleased; the members of the choir are there with music under their arms, tall smiling ​young ladies, light dresses and wreaths; gradually the worthies of the town assemble in long black coats and silk skirts, ponderous top hats, dignified and solemn faces; the whole town has come because the father possesses property and enjoys esteem there. Last of all, the Rector and two other priests with white cassocks as a sign of heavenly joy. Upstairs in the big drawing-room lies the little girl, a wreath in her blond hair and a broken taper in her wax-like hands.

The square is quiet, and the St. Bernard is lying down with his head lifted towards the hustled house. Then through the open window is borne the priest’s loud voice: “Sit nomen Domini.” The beggar-women fall on their knees. “Laudate, pueri Dominum: laudate nomen Domini.” The male choir chimes in: “Sit nomen Domini benedictum.” The beggar-women in front of the house utter a screeching, muddled prayer, from which bit by bit the words of the paternoster emerge. “Hic accipiet,” intones the Rector’s powerful voice.“Kyrie eleison.” “Christe eleison.” “Kyrie eleison. Et ne nos inducas in tentationem.” “Sed libera nos a malo.” With upraised tail the St. Bernard scurries off home. “Oremus.” The house is quiet, and even the beggar-women have grown mute. Only the fountain gurgles in the middle of the square.

The little girl died. She was fragile and not even pretty; she was afraid of the broad square, she was afraid of the big dog and of the fountain, which seemed bottomless to her; she passed her life guided by her father’s hand, she fell ill in his embrace, and now, therefore, praise ye the name of the Lord that she died at the paltry age of six in order to become an angel.

Across the flame-lit square the black procession ​advances; the ministrants with crosses and lanterns, the wailing music, the little girls with the wreath of rosemary and a broken taper on pillows, the priests with burning candles, and then the coffin itself, light for all its splendour, stiff, broad ribbons, wax wreaths and strips of crape, the bowed father, his face as if erased with grief, the mother, a pale little woman with a black veil, then the people, dark and frowning, with bald heads in the sun, with white pocket-handkerchiefs, a slow and whispering throng, and behind, like a separated and mumbling island, the beggar-women with their endless prayer.

Through the parched hollow road the procession passes to the Calvary of human sorrows. Behind a bare wall lies the new graveyard, white and dry, the sandy domain of the dead, from which nothing grows but white crosses, tin lilies and the gaunt tower of the graveyard chapel. Everything was stripped and bleached like a bone. A white and lifeless noontide. A white, torrid road. The tiny coffin moves up and draws the black crowd after it the tiny coffin, the tiny corpse in white garments and with a broken taper; that was where she used to walk hand in hand with her father.

Poor fellow, he was so fond of her. He married late in life and was looking forward to his first child; and then, you know, a new choirmaster arrived and turned his wife’s head. The whole town knows about it. That’s why the blond little girl was born to dark-haired parents; she took after the organist, the very image of him, she was. It was as if she pointed with her finger to her real father.

The coffin, light as it was, seemed to have changed to lead. The bearers halt and set the bier on the ground. ​Yes, this was just as far as she used to walk with her father; there they used to sit and look down at the high-road with the carts of the strolling players, the peasants’ wagons and the carriages; from there they looked into the streets and guessed who was coming along that way.

The whole town knew who his wife was running after, only he was blind, he had his child, the blond-haired and pallid little girl, whom he fondled while his wife was running about and causing scenes of jealousy with every young lady whom her musician taught to thump the keys. At last he had to leave her for fear of losing all his pupils on her account; then he gave everybody who asked for them, her letters to read, and everybody did ask for them.

The music again wails a disjointed march, and amid the pealing of bells the procession laboriously moves upward. The little woman with tightly clenched lips beneath the veil fumbles with the edge of her skirt; she holds herself erect in order to evade all those glances, before she shut herself up at home again with her endless embroidering by the window, pale with loneliness and hatred.

Yes, he had gone from her then, and so she had been left with this child, which had become coldly repugnant to her, and with her husband, who had no thoughts but for this lifeless child which was not his. He clung to it with all his melancholy affection; and the little town did not even know whether to laugh or whether to pity him, when he took her out, absurdly dressed, pale and bewildered, away from the cold rooms of the house on the square. At that instant the bells gave a brief peal and stopped.

​The tiny coffin is beating at the gates of eternity. It rests on planks above the open grave in the midst of the large hushed throng; in the dead silence only the choir rustles with the music, and the Rector slowly turns over the leaves of a little black book. In the crowd a child burst out crying. The gaunt shadow of the tower severs the torrid fallow-land of the dead. It is only a year since they started burying people there; and perhaps this graveyard is too big, perhaps they will never fill it, perhaps it will never achieve complete growth, perhaps it will have to remain so empty and bare for ages. The crowd breathes heavily with unrest. What is the matter? Why do they not begin? The stillness is being prolonged tormentingly, grievously, oppressively.

“Laudate Dominum de coelis, laudate eum in excelsis! “Laudate eum omnes angeli eius,” chimes the choir, “laudate eum omnes virtutes eius.” The assembly took a deep breath. “Laudate eum sol et luna laudate eum stellae et lumen.” “Laudate eum coeli coelorum.” A slight breeze, as if aroused by the chorus of male voices, wafted relief into the pale faces; a cloudlet of incense arose, the ribbons and wreath rustled, and from the grave came a chill whiff of clay. The father stared fixedly at the tiny coffin, bowed over as if he were about to fall; the people stand on tiptoe, in order to get a better view; now, now comes the leave-taking.

“Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison.” The young priest swings the censer; the slender chains rattle faintly, the smoke rises and quivers—“Oremus.” The broad, flaming sky is rigidly opened above the white graveyard, a moment of anguished eternity, only the ​heart beats with the stress of a terrible, sublime and painful moment. “Per omnia saecula saeculorum,”Amen.” Drops of holy water fall on to the coffin, the father with loud sobs sinks on his knees; the coffin with a slow movement enters the grave, and the choir chimes in with the sweet, mournful, muffled anthem, “God has beckoned.”

The little woman in the veil listens as if nailed to the spot. Only too well does she know that rich, glossy, self-satisfied, smug voice. Once she listened to it elsewhere, and glowingly melted at its palpable touch. The whole township listens with bowed head: the choirmaster himself is singing with the leader of the women’s choir, Marie, the Venus of the town, a tall girl in full bloom. From the whole choir only these two voices can be heard. It is said that this Marie goes to him. The two voices fondle and embrace each other in the full sunshine; the Rector himself listens with closed eyes; the little woman bursts into convulsive weeping, the blue cloudlet of incense soars heavenward, and softly, faintly, the finale rises above the grave. The Rector rouses himself as if from a dream, and bows to the ground, One, two, three clods of earth.

One, two, three; everybody presses forward to the open grave, where the father is kneeling on a knoll of clay and sobbing as if he would never stop. All have flung their three clods into the grave and would like to depart. They are only waiting for the father to stand up, so that they can shake hands with him. The priests fidget with their feet, they have to go back to the chapel; the gravedigger has blown his nose loudly, and begun to shovel the dry and torrid clay into the grave. The whole assembly maintains an embarrassed and dull silence.

​Then a ripple of tickling mirth passes through the choir. The choirmaster is glad that he has brought the joke off, and his eyes sparkle. The pale Anežka has blushed, Matylda bites at her pocket-handkerchief, and Marie is bent by a suppressed outburst. The choirmaster has contentedly run a comb through his moustache and hair, leaned forward to Marie and whispered something to her. Marie has gulped with laughter and escaped. The whole assembly looks round, half smiling and half scandalised.

Suddenly the father gets up, trembles and tries to say something. “To you—to all of you—who showed my only—beloved daughter———” But he can say no more, he bursts out sobbing, and without shaking hands with anyone, he departs as if in a dream. A general feeling of awkwardness ensues. While the priests enter the chapel, the crowd breaks up and disperses. A few hastily scrawl three crosses on the tombs of their dead, others halt for a moment in front of some gravestone, and scarcely anybody waits till the end of the service; only the choirmaster with Marie and other members of the women’s choir amid noisy laughter go to the chancel of the graveyard chapel.

A few women in black are praying by the graves. They wipe their eyes and arrange the poor withered flowers.

From the open chapel floats the Rector’s chant: “Benedicite omnia opera Domini Domino.”

“Benedicite angeli Domini Domino,” chimes in the choirmaster.

With copious shovelfuls the gravedigger buries the child of the two fathers.