Vyhľadávanie
Now, when everyone is fleeing from the towns, as if they’d been stricken by an epidemic, I’ve also come to spend the summer in the village. Actually, my intention is to ensnare some villager or other, as I’ve failed to find a husband in town, despite there being no shortage of philanderers.
I’ve already lost all patience, being twenty-five years old, and therefore I shall put all I have into desperately snatching at this last hope.
My uncle, the village priest, has been inviting me to visit them every summer, but I have always scorned the idea, saying: “What do I care for the village? How can you hope to find a gentleman there?!” Now, disappointed with gentlemen who only court you, but are unwilling to be caught, I’ve begun to daydream of naïve villagers, who do not court, do not woo, do not fall in love, but – allow themselves to be caught.
I noticed that my uncle was not exactly overjoyed at my arrival in his home. He shook his head doubtfully. “I don’t know whether you’ll like it here,” he told me. “Here the intelligentsia is me, two teachers and the Jew who sells spirits. You’ll run away!”
Aunt Tereza, uncle’s sister, who had looked after him ever since he was a child – he being a bachelor – cheered me up, saying that the teachers were both single young men and that I could let them court me, to make the time pass quicker.
“Oh, no!” I thought, “courting’s the last thing I want! I’ve had quite enough of that. It’s a wedding I want, a wedding!!” But otherwise Auntie’s news filled me with pleasure and I immediately imagined one man of slight build with an innocent face and inexperienced – the other half-wild, fiery, but also – inexperienced.
In the evening, when my aunt had shown me to the room that was to be my bedroom, I wrote a letter home with the question: “Would you let me marry a village schoolmaster, or wouldn’t you?”
Today my uncle introduced me to the teachers. They both arrived at the same time for a game of cards, as was their custom every afternoon. They bowed politely when Uncle introduced me and immediately sat down at the table. We were sitting out here in the courtyard in the shade of a tree, in the company of Auntie’s ducks and hens. I was sitting to one side, reading a novel – so I had time to observe both the teachers. One, named Rudolf Mišov, was tall and thin; he had black hair combed down over his forehead and sharp, restless eyes. He had brought with him a bottle of beer in each of his jacket pockets – he said little and looked very serious. That was the choirmaster.
The other one, Samuel Bút by name, was a fat, round-cheeked young man with a handsome face, but otherwise absolutely nondescript; he walked with a stoop as if he’d been carrying heavy knapsacks ever since childhood. He ate the sour cream Auntie had brought them and spoke in sudden spurts, as if chopping each word off from the next, while recounting how his neighbour, the herdsman’s wife, beat her husband and how his other neighbour, the Jew, had thrown the blacksmith out of the grocery store for insulting him by calling him Aaron and Moses. Although he chatted on endlessly, Bút ate and drank the most, while my uncle and the schoolmaster just looked at him admiringly and laughed at his tales. It could be seen that all three of them got on very well together. They played for about three hours. Then Bút left first, without saying a word to me – maybe he didn’t want to interrupt while I was reading – so I laid my book down in my lap, so that at least Mišov could address me. Sure enough, after a moment or two he asked me how long I was going to be here.
“For as long as I like it here,” I answered, taking Bút’s place at the table.
“That won’t be long!” my uncle’s responded with a sigh, which surprised me. He propped up his fat chin with his palm and stared at the ducks and hens in the courtyard. It was a pleasant evening. Swallows flew in circles around us, twittering cheerfully. I, too, felt overcome with good will and began to twitter as if competing with them, so that Mišov would see what an agreeable city girl I was and would admire me. From time to time I looked warmly into his eyes, expecting him to drop his gaze in confusion. But no! He watched me, sitting quietly, saying nothing, and studying my face. But the merrier I spoke, light-heartedly arguing with my uncle about the better writers and music, the more suspicious the expression in his eyes seemed to me. In the end, I sensed that he was not in fact gazing in admiration, but staring, as if he condemned my boastful, self-confident behaviour and wanted to silence me with his eyes and perhaps even expected me to lower my eyes before him!
Well, I wasn’t going to do that! I didn’t want to give in to him. Was some village schoolmaster to have intellectual superiority over me? So I defiantly prattled on about Victor Hugo’s novels; in fact I mentioned works by writers from all over the world, to the delight of my uncle, who was glad to see how well educated I am. After about an hour, Mišov left. I boldly kept going to the end and neither he nor I lowered our eyes, but I was not satisfied with myself. “A fine state of affairs,” I thought, feeling disgruntled, “to be examined by such a teacher. I gave away more than if I’d lowered my eyes before him.”
“What kind of people are these teachers?” I asked my uncle, rousing him just as he was beginning to nod off. When he’d yawned, rubbed his eyes, stretched out both arms and folded them, he finally said: “Bút is the assistant schoolmaster – he used to be a cobbler, but as we didn’t get anyone else, we asked him to come here. And we haven’t regretted it. Bút is a good teacher, and what’s more he mends our shoes, so we don’t have to send them to town. In the summer he studies hard to pass the exams and get a teaching diploma.”
“And Mišov?”
“He’s the son of the teacher from the next village. He wanted to be a doctor, but he didn’t have the money to study, so the state trained him to be a teacher, but he hasn’t stopped dreaming of being a doctor. He teaches children in the winter as well and during the summer he goes looking for herbs in the fields to make poultices and ointments for ordinary folk. So they’ve nicknamed him the quack. But people wouldn’t exchange him for anything in the world. Three times he’s been offered a job elsewhere and three times they’ve raised his salary; it’ll soon be more than mine – that’s how ordinary folks show their gratitude to those who help them.”
“Ordinary folk! – but he’s making himself ridiculous in the eyes of the educated world – doesn’t that worry him?”
“What educated world? I’m the educated world here and I don’t scorn him for it. You do?” my uncle asked, scrutinizing me through the darkness.
“What’s it to me? He doesn’t interest me!” I claim without blushing.
Life goes on quietly and peacefully, one day like the next, today like yesterday. In the morning Uncle keeps an eye on the swarm of bees and catches the queen in a glass jar to stop her from settling in a tree, so he doesn’t have to strain his fat body on her account. Auntie doesn’t set foot out of the kitchen; she spends the whole day cooking, baking and working hard with the servants. Mišov walks through the fields with his stick in search of herbs and makes poultices and ointments, while Bút sews shoes and boots for the intelligentsia in the area. In the afternoon, however, they both come to play cards and I now play with them, but neither of them is courting me. Bút might want to, but he doesn’t know how, so he just tells us stories about his neighbours. Mišov knows how, but doesn’t want to; he is unusually serious, says little and is deliberately being as phlegmatic as possible. He holds his head high and straightens himself up – as if he wasn’t tall enough as it is! – I don’t like that. We’ve been together for two weeks already and we are where we were at the start. In town they’d have got down on their knees and declared they loved me long ago and maybe they’d have already left me!
Another two weeks have passed. I’m beginning to find the teachers agreeable; both of them are in love! Mišov has been neglecting his walks in search of herbs and instead he leans up against the grey pillars of his house, gazing in the direction of the parsonage. Bút is now ashamed to make and mend shoes, and instead of this he spends the whole morning walking around his garden and casting glances at my window. After lunch, I’ve hardly risen from the table when they both arrive and are here until dusk. First we go and have a look at the bees, until the heat of the sun has cooled, then we have tea. Auntie prepares the table, while I fill Uncle’s pipe with tobacco, and so we play around like this, looking into each other’s eyes. Auntie suspects something and is glad she’ll have a relative in the village if I marry one of the teachers. Uncle teases me and is tickled beyond words when I call them silly things, but today, when he caught me in my room secretly looking one moment at Bút’s garden through the window facing south and the next at Mišov’s school through the window facing west, he got cross and stopped teasing me. When we were taking a walk in the evening, he then talked to me about youth, which passes, about beauty, which passes, about love, which also passes. – While he was talking, the thought that was going through my head was: “Which of these teachers should I choose?”
After pondering the matter for three days, I’ve made up my mind to marry the one who loves me best. In order to find this out, I have determined to make them jealous. So when Mišov arrived in the morning – there was to be a funeral with verses – and he brought me a large bunch of mountain flowers, I set to work. Hardly glancing at the unusual, rarely seen flowers, I put the bouquet on the window sill and began diligently admiring Bút’s garden. Mišov sat down at a distance from me – he has never sat close – and I saw he’d noticed my indifference, but ignored it; only when I “didn’t hear” his questions did he get up from the table and, coming up behind me, he looked out of the window.
“Samuel Bút,” he said and calmly went and sat down again in his former place.
“Is he coming here?” Uncle asked.
“No, he’s just walking around his garden,” he replied and asked Uncle something about the funeral. I had thought he would hurry off immediately, but he made no move and I couldn’t detect the slightest trace of agitation in his face. I “accidentally” knocked the bouquet off the sill, then accidentally trod on it, looked down – what’s that? – and pushed it aside with the tip of my shoe. “Will that make him angry now?” I wondered.
All in vain! He noticed that, too, but instead of giving a mocking smile, he asked me to accompany them to the church to hear his verses, “so at least one sensible ear – apart from the priest’s – would hear him.” Then he yawned and as time passed did so more and more frequently, as if he was terribly bored. “Did you write the verses last night?” I asked him, put out by his indifference. “Oh, they were done ages ago. My grandfather wrote them thirty years ago!” was his reply, followed by a yawn. Uncle, in spite of being absorbed in holy thoughts – he was reading the Bible – laughed, and I couldn’t help laughing too, but he remained grave and continued to yawn discreetly – which surprised me, because with him I had never yet noticed such indecorum.
I went to the church to hear his verses, but I didn’t like them; I was angry because he didn’t care even though I had insulted him and also because he didn’t make a single mistake when reciting in front of the pews and when I looked at him, he calmly returned my gaze, as if I meant nothing to him.
I began to doubt his love for me and couldn’t wait for the afternoon, when Bút would come and cheer me up.
At about three in the afternoon Bút came to call me to play cards – I had deliberately retired to my room, knowing they would send him for me. I didn’t go until I’d spent a good while praising Mišov’s verses; I fondled the bouquet and showed Bút the gift of rare flowers, all the time examining the expression on his face.
“Of course, I know,” he said, but in an unchanged voice, “that you have quite fallen in love with him!”
“That goes without saying!” I declare jokingly, to see his reaction. But his expression was just the same – calm. His cheeks weren’t flushed with anger, and there was no spark of jealousy in his eyes.
“Neither of them is jealous! – They don’t love me!” I thought in despair. However, when we were playing cards I noticed that today these inseparable friends and colleagues, who have lived in complete harmony, could not bear each other’s presence. They quarrelled over every trifle like two cocks on the same dunghill and Bút often turned to me with the question, “Well, I’m right, don’t you think?”
Mišov didn’t even look in my direction and took himself off home earlier than usual.
“I’m going to have a look at the rye beyond the poppy field!” he excused himself to my uncle.
“Herbs! Not rye. He’s run out of poultices and has nothing to make his herbal remedies from,” Bút joked at first, when Mišov had left. But a while later he also departed – perhaps to mend shoes. I ran up to my room to watch them out of the window. Mišov was waiting for Bút at the point where the paths crossed.
“You know what?” Mišov said, “It’d be a pity to start a quarrel on account of some woman! She came and she’ll go. We’ll just be left to regret she’s gone. Is it worth sacrificing our friendship for that heartache? Be sensible and leave her be!”
“You can leave her be!” Bút retorted. Mišov looked Bút in the eye, turned round and strode off uphill through the village to the school, whistling to himself.
Uncle came to invite me to go for a walk and as I was very quiet, he may have thought I was sorry the teachers had hurried away so early, because he began to tell me how depraved young people are nowadays, that they are not “like we were” and that they didn’t deserve the notice of a self-respecting girl. I listened to him patiently, but no sooner had we reached the house than I escaped to my room to look out of the window. It was already getting dark, but I could still see that Bút was walking around his garden with his dog and Mišov was leaning against a pillar; he was not looking here, but had turned his head away in the opposite direction, gazing at the evening sky shimmering beyond the village backyards. I watched him for a long time and he didn’t look downhill. Angry at this, I threw the bouquet out of the window into the street and sat down on the sofa in the corner, intending to daydream about the elegant dandies in town, just to spite him. At that moment, however, I heard footsteps and immediately hurried over to the window. Mišov was coming downhill, Bút uphill and they met below my window.
“Where are you going, cobbler?” Mišov asked, stopping in front of Bút. At first Bút was taken aback, but the next moment he dealt his colleague a clout over the ear. Mišov paid him back with two, thrust both hands into his coat pockets and walked on, whistling, as if nothing had happened. Bút stood there for a minute, rubbing both his cheeks, then shook his fist at the departing man, muttering, “Just you wait, you quack! You haven’t heard the last of this!” and set off home.
“A village duel!” I clapped my hands in delight. “They are both jealous! – But which of them loves me more?” That I still did not know.
Translated by Heather Trebatická
