Vyhľadávanie
IN MIDSUMMER
The sky was clear, birds' feathers were floating in the air, Uncle Bartolomej died.
They found him sitting beside a dry ditch, propped up against the trunk of an apple tree, with his head slumped onto his right shoulder. His eyes were open. At first those who passed by thought he was just resting there. Some people called to him, but they didn't stop, as they were all hurrying to the football match in the next village. On their way back they noticed a little crowd of people gathered at the edge of the road. Only then did it occur to them that Uncle Bartolomej, who was a great fan, had not been at the match.
He was a big brawny fellow. Try and imagine a man with rolled-up sleeves scooping up dough from a deep trough and kneading it on a wooden table until it is ready for the bread basket. A few minutes pass and the dough begins to rise. It's a real miracle, that process where all kinds of cavities, little chambers and empty spaces appear, which are not in fact bread, but which we take so much for granted that we can forgive the bread for them. I suppose that is what Uncle Bartolomej was like. He had a good-natured face, but he would fly into a rage any time, and at such moments he could even go so far as to kick his journeyman. Once, in a fit of rage, he grabbed the long-handled baker's shovel and threw it at an apprentice as if it were a javelin. The boy leapt into the air like the best of athletes and that made his master laugh. He was very temperamental. He liked to joke, but he turned serious very quickly. He did not go to church, he drank a lot; there were times when his mind was full of nothing but trivialities. It's true, he did look after his little family. He sent his son to college and he taught his daughter to resist worldly snares. He did not hit his wife; he didn't even swear at her, but he was unfaithful to her on a number of occasions. He would say that he did everything with the best of intentions, but that devils led him astray, because jolly people were always being led astray by some devilish man or woman.
The priest was very fond of him. Occasionally he came to see him at his bakery; he walked between the wooden racks, tapping the crust of baked loaves with the knuckles of his right hand. He would try to persuade the master baker to live a respectable life.
The baker would laugh. "I must bake respectable bread. And, apart from you, no one cares how I live." He would then invite him into his room, where they played cards and drank several litres of wine.
"Ah, I've forgotten again," the priest would usually realise only when it was getting late. "I haven't prayed the breviary yet today."
"You keep rattling off the same old things," remarked Uncle Bartolomej. "Do you have to pray every day?"
"Every day," said the priest. "Never mind. I'll come here after the Sunday litany."
In spite of the fact that Uncle Bartolomej was interested in worldly pleasures, while the priest devoted himself mainly to the spiritual life, they got on very well together. If the priest couldn't come to the bakery, Uncle Bartolomej would go to the rectory. They always talked like equals. The priest often recalled the times when he was a seminary student (he used to like playing croquet) and how when he was a theologian (he had said that John Huss was a great man and a great saint), the Reverend, his spiritual adviser, had thrown him out of chapel. Uncle Bartolomej fought in the First World War and was captured by the Russians, where he became a legionnaire. He lived in a converted goods wagon. He travelled right across Siberia and so he knew where the town of Irkutsk lay. He'd got as far as Khabarovsk and had seen the White Guards shoot Czech and Hungarian musicians.
That Sunday – the mass was already over and Uncle Bartolomej had set out for the next village to see the football match – the priest had nowhere to go, so he sat in his front room, which was both his study and the place where he prayed, and he quietly said his prayers. It might be that he wanted to get this everyday duty over and done with as soon as possible, because every now and then his hand would wander to the pocket of his cassock and grope around for a few small coins. He was twice interrupted by the sexton bringing money for a sung mass. (Holy Mass for the family of Jozef and Mária Harenčar, sung). I've got it down. And when the sexton came a second time, the priest repeated. Yes. It's in the book. The sexton left and only about ten minutes later the death knell rang out.
The priest opened the window and looked into the street.
"Who are they ringing for?" he asked a little boy about four years old, because he happened to be nearest; he was standing in the road and eating an unripe apple.
The boy didn't answer.
The priest gazed out over the village, where nothing in particular seemed to be going on. People were sitting on benches, each in front of their own cottage. Someone was watering cows at the village pump.
The sexton's wife came across the road. "Just imagine, Father, our baker has died."
"How come? I spoke to him only after lunch." He took off his glasses and stuck them in the pocket of his cassock. "You do mean Bartolomej?" he looked at the sexton's wife once more.
"Our baker."
"He's died?"
"They found him over there. Beside the cross. He must have had a heart attack."
The boy took another bite of his apple and then ran off.
The priest fell silent. You could see he was thinking. He was tapping on the window sill with the knuckles of his right hand. "He died an unprovided death!" he said.
"Poor man!" sighed the sexton's wife and crossed herself.
The priest closed the window.
Someone brought the news to the pub. Those who were playing cards stopped; at first they thought someone was having them on. However, when they had assured themselves that it was true, they began to ask for the details.
Two of the older men, one was called Marcel, the other Leopold, stood at the bar, silently drinking to Bartolomej – may he rest in peace. Then they withdrew to a corner, where they found an empty table and sat in silence for a long time.
"Have you heard the news?" asked a young man, a little worse for drink.
They both looked at him.
"Go away!" the one called Marcel retorted and the young man left them alone.
"So there's only the two of us now," said Leopold. Marcel nodded.
Then they talked about several events directly or indirectly connected with Bartolomej and they agreed that whatever way you looked at it, he had not been a bad man – on the contrary, he had been much better than people thought and therefore it wasn't fair of the Lord God to summon him to the next world all of a sudden like that, without allowing him to repent and be given the last rites.
The organist's head appeared around the door. His eyes ran over the people in the pub; he was clearly looking for someone.
"Did you know we won?" someone called out to the teacher from the long table where the jubilant football players were sitting.
The organist muttered something they could not catch and disappeared.
The local bandmaster came in to buy some cigarettes and also hurried off home. He didn't sleep at all that night, but sat at his old harmonium, smoking, while various melodies ran through his head, but none of them seemed sad enough. From time to time he got up and walked about the room, whistling quietly to himself. He found it very annoying that other people's musical ideas kept intruding on his own. He wrestled for a long time with a folk song that seemed ideal for the purpose. He sat down at his instrument and harmonized it quite nicely. But after he had played it through a couple of times, he once more began to feel dissatisfied. A song is a song and what he wanted to compose was a funeral march. He rummaged through his papers until he found some earlier notes scribbled on one of them.
That would do. He pressed one pedal, then the other, he laid his hands on the keys and the melody flowed from under his fingers, forming what was admittedly a simple, but complete musical idea. By the morning the march was ready. An easy melody, easy instrumentation. He wondered whether it wasn't too rudimentary. But the main thing was that it served its purpose. The trio seemed a bit short to him. Never mind. At least the men would learn it quicker. The drum resounded in the pause – dudududum! And once again. He could call it "The Legionnaire's Farewell". Or: "Cemetery, Cemetery". No, we've already had that. "The Last Sigh"? That, too. Someone else should think up a title. The teacher. Or: "Tears and Sorrow". They'd had it all before.
He stepped on the pedal again and played the whole composition another time. He liked it, but he felt a little annoyed that he couldn't think of a name for it. "Bartolomej's"? As he had composed it for Bartolomej, it could be called after him: "Bartolomej's Funeral March."
Ready! He turned out the light and went to lie down.
The funeral was only three days later. The whole village gathered there and even a lot of curious onlookers came from the surrounding settlements.
The priest had a new black cope and the altar boys were wearing clean shirts. The organist excelled himself. He had composed a farewell, the likes of which the village had not yet heard. He mentioned everything: wife, children, bread, love of sport, his brother far away over the sea. Siberia, the converted railway wagon, Irkutsk, Khabarovsk.
My legionary comrades,
Marcel and Leopold by name,
To you too I say farewell…
Both men were standing just behind the priest; they had been drowning their sorrows and now wept out loud.
The organist finished singing. The bearers lifted the coffin and the funeral procession moved on its way. Right at the front an altar boy led the way. He was carrying a cross from which a wide black ribbon fluttered in the breeze. Behind him were the musicians, playing Bartolomej's Funeral March. When they finished, all that was to be heard was the shuffle of feet.
The organist sang the second verse of the psalm Miserere mei Deus. At the tail of the procession someone began praying. Only a few women joined in, as the men didn't want to disturb the solemnity of the procession even with prayer.
The organist was about to sing the third verse when the brass band struck up anew.
This was followed by an eight-measure intermezzo and then Da capo al fine. The trio began in the relative major key.
When the altar boy carrying the cross entered the cemetery, the grave digger hadn't yet finished his task. He'd wanted to make a proper job it, but as ill luck would have it, about a wheelbarrowful of clayey soil had slipped back into the hole. He shovelled out as much as he could in what time he had and spread the rest out at the bottom. He could see the coffin bearers were already approaching, so he had to climb out of the grave.
After that everything went much as at other funerals. The priest began chanting the Lord's Prayer and everyone joined in. The organist cleared his throat a couple of times and then sang: In the grave you… From somewhere in the distance, maybe from the cemetery gate, the brass band could be heard as it began playing the same song, but a fourth higher and somewhat faster. The organist frowned and stopped singing.
The bearers blinked at each other, stepped up to the coffin and began lowering it carefully into the grave.
The women wept. The priest wiped the perspiration off his forehead with a handkerchief. It occurred to him that he should say a few words to the grieving family, and in fact to all those gathered there. Not that it was the custom. He felt obliged to because of the fact that here was a man who had died without the last rites. But somehow he couldn't concentrate. The brass band had already finished playing and he still didn't know how to begin. The organist bent over towards him and whispered something in his ear. It was nothing inspiring, but it came just at the right moment for the priest.
"Dear believers," he addressed the gathering, "we all knew our Bartolomej here. We know he was not a good Catholic, but we also know that he was a good baker. He didn't go to church, he wasn't interested in divine services, my brothers, but is divine service only that half hour that we spend from time to time, or even every day, in God's temple? The Scriptures tell us that the word of God is like a seed of mustard. What if that word took root in our deceased brother when he was still a child? It grew, branched out and filled his whole life. His life was like our lives. In it there were joys, laughter, as well as misfortune, suffering and all kinds of injustice, and he, like any one of us, had to accept all the good Lord put in his way. He was in the war and his guardian angel protected him. He had to protect him, because who would have baked bread for us here in Vrbinka? Look, his bakery has been closed for only two days and we have had to look elsewhere for our bread. So we can see what an important role Bartolomej here played among us. I think if the Lord God came to our village and asked our sorrowful gathering to vote on whether Bartolomej's soul should be damned, he would not find one person who would vote in favour. Or do you, my brothers, think that the Lord God is worse than the inhabitants of Vrbinka?" He had nothing more to say. He breathed in deeply and added: "Amen".
People began to disperse. The musicians struck up, playing Kmoch's Sokol march.
Translated by Heather Trebatická
