MAGDALEN
I
MY reader! You, no doubt, know many a well-drawn and many a hideous picture that in glowing colors,—in ruby, blood, gold, jasper,—paints the setting sun. You will forgive me this assumption, nay, perchance, will laud the author for saying briefly: The sun has just set over Prague. . . .
It is Saturday, in the month of May. The scene is in the Fifth Ward.
The sultry day for the first time draws a deep breath after the sun’s decline. Moisture is borne through the air; ill odors, growing more intense, are wafted through the short, arrow, crooked streets. The wretched shops of the pious children of Israel are shut, but the pulse of life still beats around them in boisterous measure. A variegated crowd of people surges here, talking, laughing, jesting: laborers who come in their grimy clothes after having received their pay; soldiers and loiterers; factory girls with yellow faces, their hair combed over their brows; prattling domestics vociferate around the water basin; women, with their pale babes in their arms, are standing at the doors of the houses, conversing in shrill voices; in the basement taverns the gaslight, subdued through the red curtains, already flickers, and here and there are heard the sounds of the accordion. The pulse of life is beating strong.
Eight o’clock. The bells are tolling over Prague. The proud harmonious tones fall upon this scene of animation. A sacred moment! Over this extinct sultry day, over this sea of red roofs, over this varied mass of spires, over this grey that is flooding the tangle of sweltering streets,—over all that is there in motion, over its empty pleasure, its sorrow, pride, misery, passion, hypocrisy love, over this weak, puny, ephemeral and human “ego,” the hollow brass sends forth into the vault of heaven its Ave Maria!
At the corner of two crooked streets rises a freshly white-washed house, towering by a whole story above the red roofs of its neighbors. The blinds are are drawn in all the windows; a dead silence is everywhere. Only above, in a dormer window, are seen a white head and two folded, sere hands, those of an old woman who, praying, looks up to the ruddy clouds. A beautiful contrast:below,—the wild, whirling, untrammelled life;here,—its end. The white hair, the prayer, and . . .
Like some sentimental poet, I came very near spinning out a beautiful simile, but fortunately the old woman, blinded by the splendor of the sky, looked down upon the whirling life below. Her kindly old eyes suddenly flashed with surprise, and her dry, wizened hands unfolded themselves from their attitude of prayer and smoothed her hair,—and the old woman disappeared from the window.
Some one had just entered the house. With sure steps he walked up the creaking staircase, touched the bell at one of the doors, stepped in, and crossed a small ante-chamber. There stood the pious woman of the dormer window: “Ah!” and she gave him her hand. He pressed it with the tips of his fingers. With her other hand the woman opened a door, and she began to tell him things,—a senseless chaos,—but her guest, without saying a word, stepped into the opened apartment, though it was merged in darkness.
“I should sooner have expected death today, than you,” proceeded the old woman’s hoarse voice. “How many weeks have passed since you last honored us with your visit? Why, ’tis half a year! Just dreadful! Your acquaintances told me that you were married! I only laughed, for I am a doubting Thomas! He and marrying! Never, said I!”
A tall waiter lighted the three large chandeliers, and the parlor, with its gold-red wall paper and its multitude of small marble tables, was disclosed to the eye. Chromos of half-naked female figures in baroque frames looked down from the walls. A piano stood behind a drawn portiere. In the air was a strange odor of wine, tobacco, and the scent of unbraided hair.
My hero (my reader will forgive me for dragging him into parentheses, but these are my study, where I will converse at liberty with my reader without witnesses. So, this my “hero” is not a hero in the sense of those ancient romanticists; I call him so only by habit, before announcing his name), my hero seated himself in a corner, crossed his legs, placed his silk hat upon the table, cast his gloves into it, and smiled at the old woman who sat opposite him.
“Well, how is it with you?” he said, wringing his hands so that they cracked in their joints.
“Everything has gone as usual. . . . But no, something has happened: my Kata has died!”
“Ah, when?”
“Five or six weeks ago. I just happened to call upon her at the hospital. Poor little creature! Would you believe it, she was but sixteen? She was so loath to die! How timidly and pitifully her eyes looked at me! And she was so changed, beyond recognition. . . .” Tiny tears glistened on the old lady’s lashes.
“Hem, you are sentimental, madam, I declare,” and the guest smiled.
“That moment is never to be forgotten,” added the madam.
The conversation slowly proceeded from one thing to another. The guest made ironical glosses, and the old lady, whenever possible, returned to the broad stream of her feelings. Then the parlor brightened up. There entered female figures in gay, fantastic raiments, a bold glance in their burning eyes, their alabaster bosoms uncovered, their hair exhaling pungent perfumes, their arms bare, their calves filled out,—in short, these are the bankrupts of feeling, who in this gambling-house of the world play for a piece of bread. To-day they have youth, beauty, jests and smiles,—to-morrow another card will fall for them, and everything is forever lost. . . .
They greeted the guest with a mute inclination of their heads, while he scanned them with a forced and cold glance. They lighted their cigarettes, hummed tunes, made careless jests,—just as they had the day before, and as, perchance, they would again on the morrow.
“There, that slender one in the black dress,” the madam whispered to the guest. “I take the liberty of recommending her to your kind attention.”
But that slender one in the black dress, which daintily draped her bosom, was the only one among these Venuses of whom you might have said that she reminded you somehow of Marguerite: her face was fresh, her blue eyes had not sunk in their sockets, her hair was beautifully combed over her forehead. She tried to smoke a cigarette, but it was difficult work, as the smoke choked her and she coughed and laughed, until her small teeth shone like a row of pearls.
“Miss Lucy!” called the madam.
She came and bowed to the guest with graceful playfulness. She seated herself opposite him, looked into his eyes, and burst out laughing. The madam went out.
The laughter of those blue eyes shook every nerve of my hero: his ironical apathy fell from him, and a gentle warmth pervaded his whole soul. Something urged him on to laugh aloud with the careless laughter of a child, to joke harmlessly, and then again to speak entertainingly.—Oh, that witchery of woman’s eyes!
(My reader, pray, listen! The psychologist will regard my weak attempt at depicting the characters of my dramatis personæ in general as a kind of somersault,—so I will announce in advance: I do not believe in what people call character. My view differs from that of the best philosophers,—I see in character a little matter, a little mysticism and mystery, yet it is fit for my discourse. Our “ego” is nothing but a slave of the stomach, the weather, and the nerves, and it generally submits to another “ego” of our neighbor, if that be stronger, or more inviting, or the opposite of our own “ego.” In fact, we are nothing but chameleons, though I do confess that we preserve a weak layer of our elementary color which generally shines through the mass of borrowed hues. Or, to speak in the language of the scientists,—man is the result of external forces, and the soul is a photographic plate. Magnetism,—but enough of grey theories.) So the two were discoursing quite vivaciously and laughing.
What beautiful themes they touched upon! Whitsuntide pilgrimages and our country people, fireworks on the Moldau River, the gay life in the streets, and so forth, and so forth,—themes that have interested many people, even of finer mettle than my hero.
The parlor grew more noisy. The guests sat at the tables drinking wine and soda-water. Here, near the table of my hero, Mr. Plojhar knitted his beautiful brow as he started his third cigarette, and then somehow grew pale. There Mr. Brouček related his endless travels, until a lithesome maiden closed his lips with her hand; there Verunský, a dissipated sculptor, bent his head upon the table, while his friend, la Vie, kept on dinning into his ears poisonous maxims. Farther away Mr. Klement (I do not know his surname) sat alone in a corner writing a sentimental letter (I think the fourth) to his friend on the subject of his platonic love, all the time stealthily eyeing a seductive brunette. In another place Bohdan, a landed proprietor from Šumava, who had had bad luck with his country-women, threw himself at once upon the slippery path of life, and to all appearances was better off here: with one arm he embraced the neck of a black-eyed bayadere, while with the other he smilingly carried a glass to her lips. There again gloomy Ronovský made a desperate attempt to rival Onyegin’s frosty calm.
(I have a long poem on Ronovský, I think some ten thousand verses, all in rhyme, put away in my desk. Like all poets I at one time wrote a Faust, but a higher Providence has watched over him: my Ronovský is forever buried in my desk, labelled: antiqua.)
A few more men, some older, others younger, whom I do not care to mention specially, were passing their time with the maidens. The air was soon filled with smoke, and became stifling with the hot breaths of people, but our acquaintances peacefully continued their conversation.
“So you have been in Italy? I envy you. I should gladly give half of my life for half a year there.”
“Why?”
“Well, it is something grand, and it cannot be easily expressed in words. I feel a breath of it in the poem: ‘Kennst du das Land’. . .”
“Dreams, dreams! It is but a poetic tradition. Just listen, I pray, to my impressions: On a hired donkey I crossed the Apennines. Well, there was Florence, the blue Arno, blue skies, immense olive groves,—but over everything lay the traces of millions of stupid eyes, open mouths, and echoes of Baedeker quotations.”
Just then Mr. Plojhar’s contemptuous, indignant look reached my hero from the neighboring table.
“Rome,” he continued, “is indeed a thing of beauty, I have run through the churches, have taken in the art collections, have crawled through every catacomb, have seen a couple of cardinals, the Pope, and in the Parliament have witnessed a fine sally of the Opposition, have wearied myself in walking through the Campagna, have cursed its stage-coaches, its heat, its flies, the radishes, and the garlic,—the terror of the Italian cuisine,—suddenly one’s breast is torn by a painful longing for one’s smoky Prague, and the fastest express that takes one north seems to one to be moving at a snail’s pace. . . .”
Here the sharp, whirling sounds from the piano interrupted my hero. They were playing a waltz.
The wave of tones brought new life to the company. One of the maidens marked time with her foot, another clapped her hands; a young fellow with a big shock of hair put his arm around the waist of a slender blonde, and they danced between the tables.
As if in a dream, Lucy sang in a soft soprano voice:
“Only once we live down here:
Beauty, youth soon disappear;
Age runs riot with our face,
Of our youth leaves not a trace.”
She bent her head. Suddenly sadness flashed in her eyes, but only for a moment. She stroked her forehead with her open hand. She threw her head back, as if in defiance, and laughed: “Well, what else?”
Reader, do not judge from the characters and from the surroundings that the author of this poem is a worldly or licentious man, rebelling against the order of things, an immoral, worthless cynic, who wishes to hurl poesy from its pure azure heights into the mire of orgies. No, he is a common Philistine, a slave of his office, a citizen who pays his taxes and is peaceably inclined; who eats and drinks in measure; who at supper reads the editorials and the news in the daily paper, for which, as is proper, he has paid his subscription in advance; who at times borrows a book that has been favorably reviewed, and, reading it, is glad if on the last page everything ends with a marriage; who retires after ten o’clock and sleeps a peaceful, restful sleep until half past seven. . . . The verses, which he has written in leisure hours, were at first a little strange, yet sounded harmonious and contained an approved moral,—so he is probably not far from right when he thinks that after his demise he will be pleasantly remembered by his acquaintances, Such, in reality, is the author.
Furthermore, he makes the solemn promise that from this place we shall issue among decent people, that he will describe peaceful life, christenings, weddings, the conversations of our good neighbors,—and so he hopes that on the last page of his book he will bid his reader good-bye in the best of friendship. . . .
“. . . Tell me, how could you with such a pure soul, with those clear eyes of yours have come to this bagnio? Did not the world have some other place for you?”
“Oh, Lord,” she smiled, “you are not the first man to ask me this. It is easy enough to get here,—before one knows how. . . . A pretty face and a little misfortune,—and the world is at once as an inclined plane: one step,—and you are below. However, I often think that there is probably an eternal law that for some there is no other place than here below . . . below. . . .”
“With what enviable calm you look upon your life?” he said, with some irony. “What, is there not a moment in this impure atmosphere when you feel yourself choking terribly? Do you ever think of that? Do you ever think of the future?”
“What good would it do? How will it help me? No, I do not think, and there is no time for such foolishness as thinking.”
My hero was in a strange state. A certain solemn moral rectitude took possession of him. Every word which he spoke hovered for a while in his soul. He secretly admired himself, and somehow valued himself more highly on account of the wealth of morality which was suddenly manifested within him. He was, however, unpleasantly irritated by the calm of the girl. He would have preferred to see her sad, and in tears; would have wished to hear some story colored with romance; would have liked to see her press her hands to her brow in despair,—but no. She sat opposite him at a small table in her narrow room, her hands resting in ber lap, her blue eyes, two brilliant points beaming in the pupils, looking into the flame of the lamp.
From below came the sounds of the piano, laughter and trampling of feet, but softly and subdued, as if it were some echo from far, far away. . . .
“Future! Why should we think of something that is not yet?” she said calmly.
“No, you lack the proper understanding of this life,” he continued excitedly, “and what a fairy thing this life is! The sun, the stars, the fragrance of spring,—just think! Your dead eyes are lying somewhere down below in a coffin, and above, everything keeps growing, shining, blooming,—do you not feel a terrible, endless sorrow? And your life. . . . I swear to you, I would rather see you in that coffin than here. How will it all end? Just as with Kata, of whom your madam has been telling me to-day? Or will you grow old here in misery, slime, and shame?” My hero drew a deep breath, partly from moral excitement, partly from a feeling of pity.
“No, no, no, it will be different. It must be.”
“How?”
“I do not know. I shan’t grow old. I shall go away before that.”
“You will go away? Where, how? It is too ridiculous! You are talking at random! Tell me. . . .”
“I will. Listen. I have attacks of virtue, I know not why,—moments, when suddenly everything overpowers me, my youth, my life of to-day, my life of to-morrow, and I feel only an infinite pity for myself, and nothing else. And sometimes I think that some day I must, at such a moment, leave this house, must fly like an arrow through the muddy street and down to the water. . . . That’s the stronghold from which I look at my life, and at the future. . . . But the terror that freezes every nerve during such consolation! . . . The river is terrible, and greenish, and cold, ugh . . .” and a chill shook her body, her white hand fell upon the table, and the slender fingers tapped it nervously.
My hero, a man fond of complete effects (we are all moderns), felt that something was lacking, as he beheld that attitude of the fair girk. ’Tis true, he felt a sympathetic pity, but that sympathy was only hunger (do you know, my reader, that the sufferings and sorrows of others are soothing to our nerves?) and he was the more hungry, since she had permitted him to taste a piece of her suffering soul. He wanted to have all of her, he again asked for her past, and he asked it in a sympathetic and subdued voice, looking all the time earnestly into her eyes.
She spoke softly, in short, abrupt sentences.
Her father had been a teacher in a country town. Her mother had died young. Lucy grew up by herself, without guidance or surveillance. Her father began to dissipate. He played at cards through whole nights, drank, and gave himself up to debauches. She, in the meantime, at home, read anything that fell into her hands.
While still young she allowed herself to be misled,—not from love or passion, but simply from curiosity. Then her father was discharged. They went to Prague. Here she became a governess to two children of a rich townsman. Her master was a man of the world, and her mistress pursued her at every step with groundless jealousy.
Her father took every penny from her, all the time complaining that it was too little. . . . Oh, that father! In all her life she had not heard one word of love from his lips. She held her mother in pious memory, and did not believe in the love of fathers. In three months that house was a veritable hell to her. She left. Her father found her a place as a saleswoman in a shop. A new hell. She did not manage to earn sufficient wages there. Her companions tormented her with biting remarks. Her employer scolded her with coarse words. She soon left the place.
Her father held a lengthy discourse with her upon the whole misery of life and upon so-called virtue which, he said, was but a word with women; then he hinted to her that she should walk upon another road. So she did. She was now living better than in that other world: her father was satisfied, the old madam loved her,—what else could she wish? Of course, she understood the motives of the madam’s love, but she accepted it gratefully, for love had, indeed, been a rare thing in her life. My hero was satisfied. With his right hand he drummed upon the table, with his left he supported his chin. They both remained silent for quite a while. Finally he arose. He pressed her hand and dryly remarked:
“It will be well, if to-day I leave you thus. . . .”
He went.
Reader, I see you looking with misgivings at the author of these lines! In fact, I am telling you of this hero, drag out hundreds of verses on him, analyze his soul for you,—and yet, contrary to all proprieties, I have forgotten to describe him or at least to introduce him! You have probably said ten times: behold, the older generation is right when it says that the younger is slovenly in everything! Reader, I ask you in all earnestness, recall all the books that you have read, recall all the descriptions of people, which authors have given with praiseworthy minuteness! Your word of honor, tell me: are you able to reproduce a single one of them? I am not.
If I told you that my hero had scanty hair, as is the case with modern youths, a pointed moustache, dark eyes with nothing in them to attract you, his nose not more characteristic, a swarthy face, a not more distinctive figure, long nails on short fingers, that he was fashionably dressed,—tell me, would you know him any better? Then that is superfluous. His given name was Jiří.
That name is not my poetic license, though it may seem to be so: we have not a poem, romance, sketch, or novel, in which the hero’s name is not “Jiří.” His deceased father,—he had a large estate, extensive fields, and a mill in the country, two leagues from Prague,—was a reader of Bohemian history, and with his whole soul loved our Poděbrad,[1]—so his son had to be called Jiří.
He was early sent to school. The kind eyes of an aunt watched over him; the old widow was childless and soon became the slave of the small despot. He passed the Gymnasium with honors, drank deeply from the ancient well of the eternally fresh classics, as we have drunk; and there were permanent traces of it in his soul: he knew that Cæsar was a great Roman with a big bald head, and that, alas! he had written dreadfully insipid memoirs; that Horace had kept his poems for nine years in his desk (Jiří, by the way, thought they ought to have remained there forever); that Lucullus was sweet-tongued; that Cicero had spoken a great deal. The refined youth had with difficulty carried away from the Greek world an equally valuable store of information. Besides, he remembered the jokes and anecdotes about all the funny professors,—in short, he brought as much from school into life as we once did. . . .
Then he studied law, during which time he danced at all the great balls, talked in students’ circles, dragged the carriages of famous singers, and in the morning thundered with his companions the national air in the sleeping streets, proudly wearing the Panslavie tricolor under his laced coat.
He had read a little. He remembered best such passages as he could use to interlard his talk with speeches. Finally he said forever “vale” to his studies and entered life. Being rich, he became the master of his time. He rose late, and cursed the tiresome forenoons which he passed in the deserted Příkopí. After dinner he sat with his companions in the coffeehouse, where jokes, jests, anecdotes were told, and the daily papers run over, and then he went back to the Příkopí.
Here Jiří was in his element. A chain of lamps flickered in the darkness. Feminine eyes glistened from behind curtains. The rustling of dresses, the conversation, the clatter of steps, the passing of yarious forms gave him a pleasant thrill. He exchanged greetings with his feminine friends. Here and there he dropped a few words in passing: a new debauch, a new scandal, sometimes a new toilet. . . .
Then, towards seven, he visited the theatre,—not from any predilection, but because some of his friends went there, and because the next day he could wittily criticise the play and the actors. The ballet, in particular, was honored by his hearty applause.
A year before, his father had died. He had buried him with ostentatious pomp (five priests, fine music, all kinds of societies),—at once ordered for the tomb a marble monument with a gilt inscription, jumped into a coach, and had himself driven back to Prague. . . .
So he walked through the damp night. The gaslight merged upon the wet sidewalk with the pale reflection of the moon. The rows of houses were hid in a grey darkness. The windowpanes glistened with a feeble light. Nearby rattled a coach, dully resounding in the empty street; a citizen, stepping heavily on the sidewalk, muttered something to himself; a woman rughed by in the shadow of the walls.
Jiří strolled on with bent head. He was not meditating. He saw there in the room the slender maiden looking into the lamp light. Her lips said, “There is not time for such a foolish thing as thinking.” Jiří softly and unconsciously repeated these words.
Suddenly a crowd of persons crying, bellowing, scolding, rushed out of a small inn in front of him. In the stream of light which burst forth from the open door gleamed heavy fists; laughter resounded,—they were beating some one. Then the light and the disturbance disappeared, and from the interior of the inn were borne the deadened sounds of singing and the wailing of an accordion.
From the dark pavement arose the figure of a man, who kept on cursing: “Mob! Rascals! Rascals! Scoundrels! I a cheat at cards! . . . You, sir,” turning to Jiří, “you know yourself how easily a card will fall from your hands upon the ground! Serves me right, serves me right! Why do I, an educated man, have anything to do with such scoundrels!” He walked by the side of Jiří.
“There you have our people! What a race we are! Eh? A cancer which destroys us nationally and politically,—no foundation . . .” he coughed. “I know the people. . . . I, sir, have been a teacher . . . you are surprised? I now no longer wonder . . . the product of circumstances and of the times . . . thus does fate hurl a man down. . . . ’Tis my good luck, sir, that I have a daughter. . . . A good child . . . she is the Antigone of my misery. . . . No doubt, sir, your heart is in the right spot, and you sympathize with me,—I thank you. Permit me to make you acquainted with my daughter,—there in that house,—don’t be surprised.”
Jiří quickened his steps, and he at once turned around the corner of the first street. He shook himself, as if a spray of mud had fallen upon him.
In some tower a clock droned out the hours in even measure. . . . At the distant railroad station a locomotive whistled . . . Again quiet . . . quiet. . . .
“The daughter a prostitute, her father a scoundrel of the worst type,—to-day I have had the honor of making the acquaintance of a charming family . . .” Jifi said ironically to himself, but immediately came the head with the unbraided hair, and those eyes, those pure eyes looked long at him with an unspeakable reproach.
- ↑ Jiří (George) of Poděbrad, born 1420, was the last and most famous of Bohemia’s native kings (1458–1471).