An Anthology of Czechoslovak Literature/Timely Death

ON the outskirts of Žižkov there stood a house which was known as “The Hive.” The house had been built for poor families, and besides them it contained all sorts of sub-tenants: life’s outcasts, itinerant musicians, pedlars, women who hawked wares from one tavern to another, artisans out of work. The house had neither morality nor sin. But it had a dizzily rapid vital tempo.

Girls grew into women there overnight, and boys became men with equal speed. Marriages aged swiftly, months were as years, and passions asurge at nightfall had ebbed away by the morning. And what by morning was cold and valueless, was at nightfall a thing to be fervently adored.

Brawls began, graduated by blows, indifference was avenged by contacts which drew blood, the shedding of blood was forgiven with kisses, kisses were requited by stormy embraces. Wild scenes of jealousy were enacted; when a man’s footsteps aroused the terror of a crouching woman, scornful glances flung her imploringly upon her knees; and hard, masculine hands, already strangling the woman’s throat on the dishevelled bed, evoked on her face a smile full of malice, testifying that she was aware of his mastery and his adoration. In one day people loved each other and were loved, they loved and were hated, they hated and were loved.

Such were the ups and downs of the house.

On the third floor lived Mr. Hajs, who at night used to play the guitar in taverns, and at home played it the ​whole day, because he suffered from sleeplessness, so that a quiet strumming could be heard in the house, whenever it was not deadened by quarrels and shouting. Below on the second storey lived a family with Matyáš, a workman from Rustonka, a good-looking fellow, but sluggish and taciturn, and then a mother with Kristinka, a beautiful and charming girl.

When Kristinka had grown into a young woman, she disappeared from the house one day, although she knew full well that Matyáš had her in mind. In the house they were used to such happenings, only Matyáš felt sad about it.

Time went on, and then one day a carriage stopped in front of the house. From it Kristinka stepped forth in silk and furs, and with a rustling of skirts she went up the stairs to her mother. She welcomed her, dusted a chair and made her sit down. Then she called the woman from next door, with whom Matyáš also arrived, and the inquisitive and gadabout house-porter’s wife came as well. Mr. Hajs from the third floor somehow came to hear about the visitor, and he brought his guitar with him. Then Kristinka told them how on the very first day that she had left the house, an old gentleman had made her acquaintance and had taken her home with him. How he had installed her in a villa, and had given her everything she could think of, a maid, a housekeeper, a coachman, and a chef. How the chef did her cooking for her, oh, what cooking! and now she intoned a song celebrating the beauty of food, the bliss of eating one’s fill of pastry light as air, fragrant meat, snails and mussels baked to a golden tint, rose-coloured fish bathed in gravies, rolls as golden as ducats, and what cakes there were The old gentleman brought bananas ​and pineapples, and when she searched his pockets she was sure to find a box of chocolates too. She spoke with gusto and zest about the warmth arising from the plates, the scent proceeding from the slices of fruit, of the simple charm to be seen in the light yellow wicker baskets of cakes. Of the caressing warmth of ovens and grills, the snugness of a bright kitchen, of the fairyland treasures of a pantry always replete. She told them about the displays of the dealers in delicacies, how enticing and inexhaustible they are, of the fruit stores, where the various fruits have such a smiling appearance, and have such an allurement in their smiles, that you must buy them and plunge your teeth into them, of the confectioners’ shops which contain all the dainties in the world. And it all sounded like the account of a dream from an afternoon nap, full of satisfied appetite, relish and delicious savour. That, she said, was how she lived.

When she went away, she gave Matyáš a twenty-crown note to buy a souvenir of her, and not to think ill of her. She would come again, she said.

Matyáš said to himself: “I’ll buy a revolver. I love her and I’ll kill her. She’s too happy. I can’t bear it.”

After some time she drove up again in a beautiful carriage, and went in to her mother. She wore a pale violet dress with a broad hat, also pale violet in colour, and from it a white plume fluttered. She came and sat among them all, Mr. Hajs was there with his guitar, Matyáš also, with a revolver in his pocket. She drank bottled beer with them, and did not take her gloves off. She just sat at the head of the table, almost invisible beneath the broad edge of her hat, and talked. She told them that the old gentleman had died suddenly, ​unexpectedly, his heirs had shifted her. But one of them, a bank manager, a bald man with whiskers, had taken her to live with him. And now everything was different. There came the affluent plenty of a small villa, resembling a larder in which a child nibbles dainties. There arose a period of magnificence and pride. She was no longer a little pet animal kept for fattening, and causing pleasure to her owner when she ate well. Now she was a sort of little jewel, which has to be seen, admired and envied by all. The gentleman drove with her to the theatres and sat with her in private boxes, so situated that the people could easily look into them from all sides. He sat with her at the centre tables of big restaurants, and cut up her food. In the afternoon he drove with her in an open carriage through the Stromovka and took a delight in greeting all his acquaintances. In the evening he invited his friends, among whom were rich men, artists and army officers, and all of them paid court to her, used fair words to her, and envied him. Oh, she could feel among them the atmosphere of her beauty, in which she let them bask and languish. She knew her smiles which aroused joy on their faces, her insuperable side-long glances, the movements of her limbs, which drew the gaze of all towards them, the motion of her body, which distended all nostrils and clenched all lips in the room. She spoke and was captivated by her own beauty; enraptured she half-closed and opened her languid grey eyes, in pride she linked her hands above her head, enticing and provocative, she swayed to and fro slightly. On that day Matyáš was totally unable to shoot her, she was like an innocently fawning kitten.

When she came the next time, she was dressed in the ​gray attire of an elegant lady, extremely dignified in her bearing and apparel. She sat down among her people and told them that she was no longer living with the banker, but that she had left him for a bandmaster. Oh, the life she led now! She would never have thought it possible to live like that. What had her life been before, first abounding in milk and honey, then all noise and show? Now she had no villa of her own, she had only one maid, and no coachman at all. But she lived enwrapped in her friend’s kisses, her hands were covered with them from morning to evening, and they never even dried upon her lips. She ranged amid a warm haze of love, she waded in smiles, she bathed in contacts. At night her pillow had a warm smoothness, as if her lover’s hands embraced her from all sides, the fragrant cambric of her linen caressed her like his unfailing lips. How beautiful it all was, how beautiful. Mr. Hajs accompanied her words with a slow serenade. She told them how her lover spoke to her, what words he sought, what kisses, how before going to bed, he sat down at the piano, and with her head on his shoulders, and pressing his lips into her hair, he played her lullabies which his fingers devised, and which made her eyelids droop, until, rocked by the music and the kisses into a half-sleep, she was carried into the midst of the white pillows. Then all who were listening to Kristinka’s words, let their arms sink into their laps and closed their eyes. Mr. Hajs let his guitar slip from his clasp, and Matyáš released the hand which was toying with the revolver in his pocket.

The next time she came in high-heeled boots which made her small foot quite tiny, and holding an embroidered hand-bag, she sat down among her friends to tell them that she had left the bandmaster, who had ​become jealous and wanted to insist upon marriage. Now she had a lover, a married man, who paid for her cosy furnished room. But she was rarely at home, she avoided him so as to be able to spend her nights in dancing. She danced in ballrooms under white glittering lustres, where coloured lamps, red and green, shone from the palms, in the corners of the hall, from the curtains of the windows. She danced at fancy-dress balls, carnivals, and evening revels with sentimental pierrots and dominos who flirted with water-nymphs, she danced and wearied her partners, changing a powdered clown for a florid Falstaff, whom she then replaced by a brown Oriental with a false red beard. She danced with her head thrown back, her body bent sideways. The world twisted around, the whole earth twisted beneath her feet. She expressed the rhythm of the ’cello by the movements of her legs, the melancholy of the violin by the heaving of her shoulders, the trills of the clarinets by the flashing of her eyes and the glitter of her teeth, by her smiles. She danced till dawn, till she was breathlessly weary, she was mad with the dance, and all who looked at her were mad too. Even the memory of it made her close her eyes, enlarged from being slightly painted, and she smacked her lips for joy. Mr. Hajs played a tarantella on the guitar, Kristinka tapped on the floor with her toe and heel by turns, while Matyáš, not feeling enough courage, crouched in a corner.

When next she returned to the house, she had tired eyes and a jaded face beneath its coating of rouge and powder. She now recounted other curious things. She was the mistress of a gambler. She travelled with him through the world in throbbing expresses, dozing with weariness on leather sofas, she ranged between north ​and south, race-courses and hunting-fields, watering places, mountain hotels. She sat with the man as he played roulette and helped him to rake in the piles of louis d’or. At other times she drank whisky with smart stock-brokers, to find out the quotations on Change for the next day; now and then she sat on the gamblers’ laps as they played poker or faro and with her fingers she pointed out to her lover behind their backs the numbers of their cards. All the while she heard the gold coins ringing round her with the laughter of innocent maidens; on the green tables they glittered, fair to see and delightful to hear, magnificent as the loftiest symbols of enjoyment and ecstasy; and the bank-notes rustled like wanton silk underwear, though submissive to the touch, yet emblematic of the inevitable, though buoyant as vapour, yet heavy as fate. And she greedily clenched her fingers, as if the heaps of yellow gold lay before her. Her hearers looked at the table to see how the coins were raked over, even Matyáš who on that day was deaf and blind. Mr. Hajs with his inseparable guitar imitated on two strings the chinking of gold pieces.

After a time Kristinka glided up the stairs of the house, bringing her mother two bottles of wine wrapped in green paper. Her dress was bright and gaudy, and swinging to and fro on a chair she hummed snatches of a ditty to herself. Now she had no regular lover, she said. But is there anyone who would not love her? She was loved by all, around whom she walked from table to table, for she was in a wine-shop, where could be heard the clink of glasses when healths were being drunk, the buzz of conversation amid the rattle of glasses, the sound of music above the murmur of voices, where the whole night, on the verge of tipsiness, people sang ​and drank for joy, indifference and sorrow, where they remembered, if things were merry, and if they were sad, then they would forget. Wine! It slips coldly into the throat and pours hotly through the veins. It has a brilliant colour, a delicious fragrance, a rich taste. It has its own god, and brings people closer to him. And champagne, a blending of air, juice and fire! When the glass stood before her, oh, how the wine blustered with unexpected seethings so that she drank it up straightway; and when it had vanished in her mouth, a hot fragrance was wafted in place of it. It banished the thoughts and conjured up the passions. And when she washed her hands in it, they were scented with it day and night. She sniffed at her hands and all the others sniffed at them too, because they smelt of wine and dazed the senses, so that Matyáš did not summon up courage to take aim, because he was as if drunk with the delicate palms of her hands. Even Mr. Hajs accompanied Kristinka, who had continued to hum her ditty, so merrily and unrestrainedly on the guitar, as if he had drunk wine.

After that Kristinka stayed away for a long, long time, as if she had forgotten the house. And when nobody was really expecting her, she suddenly arrived. But she was very poorly dressed, and with only a handkerchief over her head, like a servant girl. She sat down quietly by the window, while her friends assembled. But she told them nothing, she sat silently with her hands in her lap. Her boots were down at heel, and they told of nightly tramping along the edges of pavements. The whiff of the hospital, wafted from her clothing, showed that she had been ill for a long time. And then her face and hands, oh, how wretched, how pale and haggard; ​she had scarcely any bosom, her throat was shrunken. Everything about her said: Gone are the years of beauty, the revelling delight in all that was luscious, comely, amorous, agile, reckless, intoxicating.

And her mother did not dust a chair for her, but only watched her gloomily from a corner.

When Matyáš had taken all this in, and Kristinka did not utter a sound, he went up to her with the revolver in his hand, and shot her through the head.

All he said was:

“She was too happy, I could not bear it. I loved her and I killed her.”

Then they sent for the police.