Money and other stories/The Insult

​

ojtech was fast asleep (it was a November night, when bed is a comfortable place to be in) when there came a sudden knocking on his window with a stick. The sleeper took one moment more to finish his dream, in which the knocking played a decisive but somewhat confused part, and awoke. There! again, and again! The sleeper pulled the bed-clothes over his ears and determined not to hear anything. The stick, however, renewed its drumming on the glass in a violent and peremptory manner. Vojtech jumped out of bed, opened the window, and saw on the pavement below a man with his collar turned up.

“What do you want here?” he cried, letting his voice betray his angry annoyance.

“Make me a cup of tea,” replied the voice below hoarsely.

The sleeper recognized his brother, and at last woke up. The pitiless cold of the night gripped his chest. Wait a minute,” he flung ​down, turned on the light and began to dress hurriedly. It was only while he was dressing that it occurred to him that he had not spoken to his brother for two years; they had quarrelled about a legacy. He suddenly fell to wondering so much about his coming that he forgot to put on his shoes. He sat there, shoe in hand, shaking his head. Why had he come? Obviously, something had happened to him, he realized at last, and threw on his clothes and rushed to the window again. His brother was not down there any more, he was walking away and had already got as far as the corner of the street. Perhaps he had found the waiting too long. Vojtech dashed out into the passage, opened the front door and ran after him.

His brother was going off at a brisk pace without looking round. “Karel,” called Vojtech as he ran; he was sure that his brother heard him, but that he did not want to stop or even slacken his pace. He started off after him at a run, calling excitedly: “Karel, what are you doing, Karel? . . . I say, stop a minute, do!”

Karel strode on quickly. Shivering with cold, half-dressed, bewildered, Vojtech stopped. Now for the first time he felt that it was raining. Karel went straight on, turned suddenly, and came back just as quickly ​towards his brother. For a moment Vojtech could not for the life of him think what to say to his brother. For two years they had not been on speaking terms. He was an obstinate fellow. Now he stood there with flashing eyes, biting his lips.

“Then you won’t give me a cup of tea?” grumbled Karel, sullen and angry.

“Yes, of course, I will, with pleasure,” gasped Vojtech, much relieved. “I was only just a minute. . . . Come along quickly, I’ll make you some at once.”

“At last,” snapped Karel bitterly.

“Why, good heavens!” Vojtech interrupted him eagerly, “in any case. . . . You could have come long ago. In half a minute anything you want—if you’d like something to eat I’ll be only too glad—just say.”

“Thanks, just a cup of tea.”

“I’ve got some bacon from Moravia, how about that? Or an egg . . . I haven’t the least idea what the time is. It’s ages since we saw each other, isn’t it, Karel? Would you like some wine?”

“No.”

“All right, just say. Anything you like. . . . Look out, there are steps here.”

“I know.”

At last Vojtech got him home. He laughed, chattered, offered all kinds of things, and made ​excuses—“An old bachelor, you know”—hunted out smoking tackle and cleared a chair or two, hardly noticing that he was doing all the talking himself. But all the time the vigilant, restless, inquisitive thought remained with him something must have happened to his brother.

Karel sat frowning and lost in thought. There was an oppressive silence. “Has anything happened?” Vojtech burst out.

“No.”

Vojtech shook his head, puzzled. He did not recognize his brother like this. He was reeking of wine and women. And yet he was a married man; he had a young wife, gentle as a lamb, a meek, pretty creature; for years he had stayed quietly at home enjoying efficient control of domestic affairs, a paragon of life economy; rather austere, methodical, precise, and with an inordinately high opinion of himself. Once he had been very ill, and since that time he ran his life on extremely hygienic and orderly lines, as if life had a value in itself and was to be bought back day by day through regular habits and self-control. And now he was sitting there, his brows knit in frowning sobriety, like a man just awakened after a night of dissipation; there he sat with an indescribable expression on his face, tense, and as if with difficulty biting back evil words. It was ​obvious that something terrible was going on within him.

It was three o’clock in the morning. Vojtech clapped his hand to his forehead suddenly. “Good heavens, the tea!” he remembered with womanly concern, and hurried off to the kitchen. It was bitterly cold. He wrapped himself up in a shawl like an old woman and heated the water over the blue flame of the spirit lamp, quite glad to be doing something mechanical. He set out cups and saucers and sugar, comforted by the intimate clinking of the things; he could only see into the other room through the crack of the door, and there stood his brother at the open window, as if he were listening to the roar of the Vltava’s weir, an all-pervading and steady voice which like a veil obscured the cold patter of the rain.

“Aren’t you cold?” asked Vojtech anxiously.

“No.”

Vojtech stood at the door in melancholy constraint. Here on the one side a quiet, dark, little den, just cheered by the pleasant hissing of the lamp; a dear, cosy, little den, a draught of something warm, the joy of being at home, the delight of giving hospitality; on the other side a wide open window filled with the majestic voice of river and darkness, as though perhaps the night itself were rolling over the Vltava’s weir to make it roar so; and at the ​window a tall man standing erect, strangely unfamiliar, strangely excited: your own brother whom you do not recognize. Vojtech stood on the threshold as on the border of two worlds: his own intimate world and his brother’s strange one, which was somehow unusually grand and terrible at that moment. He knew that some secret was to be revealed to him, that his brother had come to tell him something supremely important; he was afraid of this, scared outright, as he listened with alert, microscopic attention to the hissing of the lamp and the broad murmur of the river.

With motherly care Vojtech set the steaming, ruddy tea on the table and asked: “I say, wouldn’t you like something to eat?” In a minute he was back with bacon and biscuits, pressing him to eat and bustling about; he grew femininely tender, like a kindly solicitous aunt. Karel merely sipped at his tea and then, it seemed, forgot his thirst. “You see———” he began and stopped. He sat there with his face buried in his hands and thought no more of what he had wanted to say.

All at once he straightened up. “Listen, Vojto,” he began, “I just wanted to say—that was a stupid business, our quarrel. Please don’t think that the money mattered to me. Perhaps you thought it did. It makes no difference to me, but it’s not true. It was only ​a question of form, and then . . . I don’t care that about money,” he cried excitedly snapping his fingers. Not that much. Nor about anything. I shall get on without anything at all.”

Vojtech melted completely. Touched beyond measure, he broke into assurances that for long he had not given it a thought, that they had both been to blame, and so on. . . . Karel did not heed him. “All right, that’s enough,” he said, “I don’t want to talk about that. It’s quite beside the point. I only wanted to—ask you,” the words fell from his lips hesitatingly, “to do something for me. Let my wife know that I have left the office.”

“But why, why———” cried Vojtech in amazement. Do you mean you’re not going back to her?”

“I don’t want to yet, d’you understand? and perhaps not at all—that is quite irrelevant. Anyway she can go back to her people if she feels lonely. I only want not to be disturbed. There’s something I have got to start, I have a kind of plan—but for the present the details don’t matter. The main thing is that I must be by myself, d’you understand?”

“I don’t understand at all. What’s wrong with the office?”

“Nothing, some nonsense or other. It’s all the same to me what has happened or is ​going to happen there. You don’t think that is troubling me at all, do you?”

“What is troubling you then?”

“Nothing at all. That is quite beside the point. I don’t think about it any more now. On the contrary, I’m glad of it, very glad. Vojto,” turning to him confidentially all at once, now please tell me the truth quite honestly. Do you think I am cut out for an official? Tell me now, do you?”

“I—d—don’t know,” stammered Vojtech.

“I mean to say, if you know me a little from former days, do you think that can be enough for me? Do you think I could be satisfied with it? That I haven’t the right or—don’t need to live a quite different life? Do you really think that?”

“No, I don’t think so,” said Vojtech reluctantly and unconvinced, trying to take in with a single glance the whole of his brother’s regular, transparently temperate life; a life which he had sometimes envied him; a life in which he had never taken a close interest.

“Perhaps it looked like that,” continued Karel reflectively. “Or perhaps it was slumbering in me. You see, Vojto, I never even knew, myself, but now I know quite well.”

“What do you mean?”

Oh, what does it matter?” Karel brushed the subject aside and fell into thought.

​Vojtech waited a moment. “Look here, Karel,” he began, “something has happened to you; you are angry or hurt—and you are letting your imagination run away with you. Tell me first what has happened to you. Perhaps it can be put right. Certainly it can. And as for your not going back to your wife and the office, that is absolute nonsense. You can’t really be serious and—are you listening?”

Karel stood up and laughed. “That’ll do,” he said, and began walking about the room. Now for the first time he looked about him, stopped in front of pictures, and noticed the things standing about. “Poor old Vojto,” he jeered, “so this is where you live? And all alone? And you have room enough here to live your whole life? your whole life? Look here, supposing you got married. Married like me! Suppose you had a nice little wife. Someone to look after you as if you were a wilful child. To make you her little boy because she is afraid of childbirth and has no children. Think if you had a nest of pillows—like me! Why, man, you don’t know what happiness is!”

“You are not fair to your wife,” objected Vojtech gently.

“Of course I am unfair to her,” retorted Karel, “and more than that: she bores me, ​I’ve had enough of her. You must tell her that, but tell her too that I know I wrong her. Tell her that she has been the model of an official’s wife. Oh God! it’s an absolute crime. Think of it, she has been waiting for me all the evening! All the evening she has been keeping up the fire, looking at the thermometer, laying the table and waiting; consider, she doesn’t suspect anything yet! Still waiting even now, getting alarmed, sitting on the bed, unable to make it out. . . . Until in the morning you come to her and say, ‘Madam, your husband has gone off.’"

“I shall not tell her that!”

“You will say: He has gone off because he is disgusted with himself; he is awfully bored with all he knows of himself. Just think, he has just discovered in himself a soul which he never knew before, a rather worse soul, violent, strange, and he wants to make a fresh start with it. He cannot sleep with you any longer because your husband was a quite different person; he was a homely fool who drank warmed beer and was loved by you. Tell her that, Vojto, you understand? Say to her, Madam, he hates warmed beer, he even hates you, for yesterday he drank iced and fiery wine and was unfaithful to you; he has found another sort of woman for himself and is going to her—Ah, man.” Karel dropped ​suddenly from dramatic rhetoric to eager undertones, “It’s awful for that poor girl, if you could see her wretchedness. Christ! what a life! Her feet were frozen through like ice, so that they simply couldn’t be warmed. I must go back to her because of her wretchedness. If you could see the way she lives! It can’t be remedied by giving her money; you see, she drinks it all away, but somebody ought to be with her———”

“Karel!” said Vojtech hoarsely.

“Wait a bit and don’t talk,” Karel defended himself. “It isn’t only that. That is after all really beside the point. At first I did not even think of women. But really, Vojto, can a man go back to his pillows and lambrequins when he has seen such misery? You know, of course, what it’s like at home; I could smother myself in it all for shame and disgust. That, of course, my wife couldn’t understand. Oh, I know she is good and sweet; you needn’t speak about that anyway. I did not mean to begin about it at all; it is only a detail and it really only began after that.”

“After what?”

“After I had decided. Wait, you don’t know anything about it yet. It all began quite differently. It began . . . while I was still in the office. To put it shortly—well, there was a row in the office—and I,” Karel brought his ​fist down on the table in violent anger, “I was in the right, and there’s an end of it.”

“What was the row about?” inquired Vojtech attentively.

Oh, nothing, some nonsense. It really isn’t worth mentioning at all. It was the last straw, you know. But you feel trampled on and simply can’t defend yourself. Just as if you were a rag. So I stayed on in the office and looked through documents and books, and it appeared that I was quite clearly in the right; someone else had made a blunder, but who? It’s strange that that’s all the same to me now; but at the time I writhed like a worm and made up my mind to kill myself.”

“Karel!” cried Vojtech.

“You—you be quiet,” Karel commanded drunkenly, stretching out a trembling finger towards him, “you are like that, too. All the evening I’ve been wandering about the streets; I didn’t want to go home. I just let myself drift. I was tired and only wanted to go and get drunk. I found a drinking-shop, you know, a low-down sort of den; I had never seen anything like it: music and women and so much squalor—awful. I’ve forgotten now who else was sitting there with me; one girl had awfully sore fingers, losing her nails; is that a symptom of disease, do you know?”

“Why do you ask?”

​“Because she kept on drinking from my glass—I couldn’t prevent her; but it doesn’t matter now. Then there was one man, I was talking to him the whole evening; I don’t know who he was. I got the idea that they’d all come there as I had, guests and women, the whole lot of them; perhaps they wanted to kill themselves, too, because they were unhappy, and that’s why they were there. I felt that I had something in common with them, but in a different and deeper sense than, say, with my colleagues at the office: that somehow I must suddenly go selling matches and be filthy and old in the place of that matchseller; or that I, too, must lose my nails painfully, that I must become a prostitute or go thieving at night, just as they do. Think of this, Vojto: I got the idea that while I was sitting there the end of the world was happening outside and nothing was left but that drinking-shop and the people in it; harlots, women playing the harp, thieves, drunkards and diseased people; and this was now humanity. There were no more churches or palaces, no more philosophy or art, glory or states, but only that score of outcasts. Can you imagine that?”

“Just go on with your story.”

“No, nothing more. I just wondered what I should do in such circumstances. What should I do, for instance, with my documents, ​my title and worldly wisdom? Why, man, with all that I could not cheer up a single one of them, or give them a vivid idea of human virtue or degradation. There would be no example or image of anything; if I were to play the harp or to cry, it would be a hundred times better; do you understand?”

“Yes.”

“You know, Vojto, that’s why I came to you, because you were sure to understand. For me it threw a light on my whole life. The life I had been living was useless. It had been no good even to me myself. Perhaps it was of some use, possibly to the state; but the state is only something formal—the state is for example, the duty on wine; but it isn’t wine, or a tavern, or a squalid drunkard, or a diseased barmaid; these are facts, d’you understand? A man must go by facts and not merely lay down rules——— Anyway, I was suddenly disgusted with it. You know, Vojto, an official is a man who obeys and makes others obey, and that’s all he does; and the higher officials, such as I was, don’t know at all whether people are ill, or what they’re like. You’ve got to see disease, misery and filth, otherwise you can’t know. But when you have merely seen and observed them carefully, and perhaps done nothing more, even so you do by this very fact render a great service to ​humanity; it makes you miserable, drives you mad, makes you ill, and that is a great deal, far more than when you sit healthy and happy among your cushions. That’s how it is.”

At that moment it was infinitely pleasant to Vojtech to listen. Snugly wrapped up, his knees hunched up to his chin, huddled in his rug, he sat like a child, charmed as much by the speaker’s voice and gestures as by his words. “Go on. More,” he said.

“More,” said Karel meditatively, what more was there? When I had decided never to go back to the office I suddenly felt an immense relief. I didn’t feel any longer that I wanted to kill myself. On the contrary, I saw now that I was just beginning, that this was the starting-point of a new life. That, I can tell you, is a tremendous sensation; I had never experienced anything so wonderful. I wandered about the town again, not thinking of what I was going to do, but round about everywhere; and even behind the walls of the houses I could feel something absolutely new. And just because it was all so wonderful, I knew that I had arrived at something splendid and true. You know, Vojto, inspiration is the greatest happiness of all. It’s a thing that can’t be expressed in words, but it is as if you were talking with God, or as if the whole world, ​earth and stars and all humanity, yes, even past generations, were all thinking your own thoughts with you. It is a happiness like that. Then I came across that girl and she spoke to me. I went to find out whether that amazing, that more than earthly beauty could survive even in such—such horror. And Vojto, would you believe it, I felt freer and freer. When I saw her wretchedness I felt as if I were growing wings. If now I were to see all the misery and horror in the whole world, I should only be happier and more sure within myself. I must still know infinitely more, because that makes one free. Are you asleep?”

“No, I’m not asleep.”

“The more misery one sees, the more one has in common with the world. I have discovered the spirit of fellowship: it is not sympathy at all, it is enlightenment and ecstasy; it is not pity but enthusiasm. You, yourself———” he pronounced this oration standing upright with arm outstretched; his intoxication, previously overcome by excitement, mastered him more and more powerfully—“you yourself then see every pain and discover every wretchedness and disease and feel them to be your own. You are poor and wretched, a thief and a harlot, a drunkard, a thing past hope; you are that which you see. And you long only to bear all misery and every ​sickness, to take all degradation upon yourself; you yearn and crave to be satisfied. You will not give alms to the poor, because you will not right the old wrong; but you will be poor yourself, you must be as poor as they if you would put it right. You must be diseased, drunken, hunted, insulted, mud-bespattered, rejected of men. You must reach the supreme point. You must reach that utterly supreme point. You know enough, quite enough; forget it all; you must learn now. But, Vojto,” he turned to him suddenly with unusual kindliness, “you must be wanting to sleep.”

No, really not,” Vojtech assured him eagerly.

“Go and lie down, I’ve something I must write. Do go to sleep; you would only disturb me.”

“No, Karel,” pleaded Vojtech, “I shan’t go to sleep. Write if you want to; I shall just lie still so as not to disturb you; but afterwards I have something to say to you.”

“All right, but do go to sleep,” repeated Karel, seating himself at the table and burying his head in his hands.

Quietly stretched out in bed Vojtech thought over what he would say to his brother. He was perplexed and full of pity; he tried to find some particularly affectionate words which ​should be like a beaming glance. Considerate words like those we use to someone ill. Something by which he could comfort him and make it up to him.

With half-closed eyes he watched his brother, bent over the table as if he were studying. He always learned with difficulty and very stubbornly. He used to have passionate cravings which he overcame by studying. He was so ambitious and headlong. A young drunkard, he had one day entirely given up drinking because he had made up his mind to. Or he would decide to get up at five o’clock in the morning. He got up and studied, Vojtech meanwhile snored in his lair, luxurious and warmth-loving as a cat. “Vojto, Vojto, get up, it’s seven o’clock already.” No sound from Vojtech; as if he had not heard; but all the time he hears the scratching of pen on paper and is snugly conscious of a living creature so near him. For nothing in the world would he open his eyes. He wants to finish his dream; but really it is not a dream (smiled Vojtech to himself), it actually happened when I was in about the fourth form: some fellows in the seventh form, fellow-students of Karel’s, took me to a tavern, wait a minute, there was Kislingr and Dostálek—he’s dead now. . . . Then Vojtech hears a woman singing to the harp, “And I am Esmeralda, faithful daughter of the ​South, Esmeralda, Esmeralda———” He likes it, but he is afraid that they will turn him out; he makes himself as small as he can, so that nobody shall see him. He hides behind the table and only looks at the girl who carries round the wine. Now with arms uplifted she smoothes her hair and sings; now she speaks to one of them, bending towards his face, kneeling with one knee on a chair, a red garter below the other knee; Vojtech does not know where to turn his eyes, he is ashamed of them, he is jealous, and he watches——— And now, great heavens! she sees me! She goes straight to him, swaying a little; she leans right across the table, looking at him from very close with her strange, shining pupils, humming a little song about love, and quietly, lovingly, she laughs; Vojtech feels her damp breath on his lips, and could almost cry with shame and love. He wants to speak, but he does not know what to say; she, too, does not know, and so she only murmurs the little song about love and looks into his eyes with her close, bright gaze. What did she want of me? Why did she not speak? Why, the boys are not here any more, but here sits Karel, writing at his deed-folio and saying: “Now you must study.” But Vojtech pretends not to hear; study as much as you like, he thinks, but let me sleep now.

​When Vojtech woke it was broad day; he was surprised to find himself in bed half-dressed; then he remembered a little and looked for Karel. Karel was lying on the couch asleep. His face looked worn and painfully tired, and he looked older. Then Vojtech, quietly, so as not to wake him, looked for what he had written the night before. He found a letter in a sealed envelope, tore it open and read:

Vojtech shook his head and searched further. In the waste-paper basket were some crumpled and much corrected and torn sheets; he smoothed them out and read:

​Here was the letter, torn and crumpled in evident anger. A further sheet ought from appearances to contain the beginning of a treatise; there was only:

But this sheet, too, was crumpled and torn, perhaps after the long wakeful hours.

Vojtech carefully put together the pathetic papers and with a heart aching with pity, looked at his sleeping brother. You could see that he was already grey at the temples, swollen under the eyes, and he seemed ill. Vojtech watched him with careful attention; then he quietly finished dressing, shut the door after him and hurried to his brother’s office.

He had acquaintances there, and it was easy for him to find out what had happened the previous day. In the afternoon the Minister had burst into the department quite beside himself with rage. “It is disgraceful,” he bellowed from the doorway, “whoever did it is either a fool or a dishonourable man.” It is true that he did not say it in exactly those words, but he implied something still worse. “And who is supposed to have done this?” he cried, waving a draft. Everybody was trembling with apprehension; then Karel ​said, “That is my draft,” and would have defended himself. “Silence, sir!” cried the Minister, and tore up the draft and threw it on to the desk of the youngest clerk in the department, his favourite. “Put that right, sir!” And slammed the door behind him. Everyone remained as if stunned. Karel, pale, and to all appearances moving like an automaton, shut his desk and went out without a word. At five o’clock he returned and worked while everyone went home. None of them, indeed, believed toat he had committed any blunder; but he did not want to talk to anyone. Then Vojtech, almost by force, penetrated to the Minister, a terrible and explosive man; after half an hour he appeared in the doorway, flushed, exhausted, but with the light of victory in his eyes: the Minister himself conducted him as far as the door in order to shake him once again by the hand. Vojtech flew home; he found Karel sitting despondently on the sofa, worn out with fatigue and wrapped in a circle of thought.

“Karel!” he announced triumphantly, you’re to go to the Minister.”

“I’m not going,” said Karel absent-mindedly.

“Yes, you are, because—because he wants to apologize to you; that is, he begs you to come in order that he may express his regret and confidence. And his regard.” Vojtech quickly ​recalled the words which he had prepared beforehand.

“Why did you go there?” Karel spoke heavily. “It’s no good anyway, I don’t want to and I want to be left alone, Vojto. It’s better for me so. Please leave me now. I’ve something immensely more important to think of now. . . .”

There was a painful silence. Vojtech bit his nails in despair. “And what are you going to do now? Tell me that,” he said at last.

“I don’t know,” said Karel reluctantly, and began to pace about the room.

Somebody rang. It was a chauffeur. “The Minister has sent his car for the counsellor,” he announced in the doorway.

Karel gave a start; he searched his brother’s eyes suspiciously to see if he were by any chance playing a trick on him; he saw, however, only naive surprise.

He was overcome now by an absurd feeling, the emotion which overcomes one suddenly at some kind little attention. Tears rose to his eyes; he blushed, and turned to the window. Right in front of the window shone the polished fittings of a splendid car.

“Well,” he said hesitatingly, “I will go.”

He suddenly began to hurry very much; and Vojtech helped him with such elaborate ​and confused haste that they had hardly time to say good-bye.

When Vojtech stepped to the window the street was already empty; and because he felt desolate and homesick, he went to announce to Karel’s wife that her husband was coming back to her.