A Week in a Quiet House

I. In Nightshirts

Darkness, complete darkness. If you close your eyes in it, all you see is a little red circle made by your own thoughts. So let us use our other senses. The air is greasy and mixed: it smells of spruce wood, tallow, lard, dried plums, caraway, schnapps and garlic. An old clock with a long pendulum is ticking, and every so often its tin disc catches and jerks. Several people are breathing, and their breaths never keep step.

The clock strikes. Someone gets up, slips into wooden clogs, feels for the matches, and lights a little lamp — a glass of water and oil, with a wick floating on a cork. The light falls on an old woman in a nightshirt, yawning. We are in a grocer's shop, which is also a bedroom: sacks, baskets, strings of garlic and onions on the walls, and a dark wooden partition across the room. The old woman sits down at the counter among the butter pans and the scales and takes out a fat dream book.

"What are you doing now?" grumbles the old man behind the partition.

"I dreamed of my late father. I want to remember it before I forget." It was cold, she said, in June.

"What time is it?"

"Two."

"And that good-for-nothing came home at midnight again, and now you wake me up with your lottery."

She snapped back that she worked hard enough, and that he was the man of the house and should keep the boy in order. The son, from his bed, asked what they wanted from him now. His father called him a scoundrel who was robbing him of his health; the son said he was asleep and could not be blamed for anything; he whistled a tune, and his mother said he was mocking them, and God would punish him. She chalked three numbers on the wall, blew out the lamp, and climbed back into bed. In the dark the threats went on a little longer; then everyone grumbled, and was quiet; and the son hummed "O Matilda!" until he fell asleep. The clock ticked, and the three of them breathed, still out of step.

II. The House Mostly Wakes

It was early June, and the sun lit the courtyard before anyone was stirring. Then the maids came out one by one, many with their hair still uncombed, carrying their milk jugs; windows opened, and people leaned out and said what a fine morning it was.

On the first floor a tall man with a rough red face and tousled grey hair looked out and said it was not yet seven. At the next window appeared the doctor — Dr Josef Loukota, who was in fact no doctor, but a clerk without a degree — in a grey dressing gown and gold spectacles: tall, round-faced, clean-shaven, a bachelor with something of the priest about him. He admired the morning, and his own well-kept hands with their rings, and the girl in the kitchen opposite.

She came out onto the gallery: Josefinka, about eighteen, with dark curly hair, clear blue eyes, little silver earrings and a plain striped dress, carrying a brown jug. She was taking broth to Miss Žanýnka, who was ill. The doctor said the old woman's dog had howled all night. Josefinka could not get into Žanýnka's room; the door was locked. Václav Bavor, the grocer's son, a young man of twenty with black curly hair, jumped down and teased her, then pounded on the window, and the dog howled inside. The whole house came out onto the galleries.

A locksmith's boy broke the lock. The room was dark, dusty and stuffy, and on the bed lay Žanýnka, dead. Her old dog Azor was guarding her; Václav carried him out by the scruff. The grocer's wife, Mrs Bavorová, prayed and wept. The innkeeper's wife said something tactless about a funeral bringing a wedding after it, and Josefinka blushed and went away.

The landlord, bald and withered, wanted the body taken to the chapel at once, to save expense. But the doctor found Žanýnka's papers: she belonged to a burial society, and had a little pension, and had paid for her own funeral. He took her old letters too; Václav wanted to read them, up on the roof, for the house stank of washing and boiled peas, and Václav, who meant to be a writer, had leave from his office until Thursday. The doctor would see to the parish; Václav would fetch the physician for the certificate; the women would wash and dress the body. And Mrs Bavorová told the innkeeper's wife about her dream, and they agreed to put fifty kreuzers on the numbers together.

III. In the Landlord's Family

The house stood on steep Ostruhová Street in the quiet Lesser Quarter, and it was deep: the front on Ostruhová, the back on the blind lane of St John. In front were a grocer's shop and a little tavern. On the first floor lived a retired official, Mr Lakmus, with his wife and daughter; the doctor rented a small room from them, and had to go through their kitchen to reach it. On the second floor of the back wing lived Josefinka, with her widowed mother and her sick elder sister. Žanýnka had lived on the ground floor.

And the landlord's family lived on the first floor of the front, where old Mrs Bavorová did their washing in the kitchen. In the parlour, with its lithographs and its piano, sat Mrs Eberová, sharp-featured, sewing coarse linen for the army; and her daughter Matylda, fair-haired and certainly past twenty, sat in her petticoat although it was nearly eleven, writing a German verse in an album, with ink on her lips. Her mother scolded her: Dr Loukota looked at her every morning; she would rather have the doctor than the lieutenant. Matylda would not.

Then Mrs Baurová and her daughter Marie came to call, and the sewing was hidden: Mrs Baurová about fifty, elegant but toothless, and Marie about thirty, faded, with restless, lively eyes. They switched between Czech and German. Marie asked about Matylda's engagement to Lieutenant Kořínek, and Matylda defended him: he was good and fond of her; his health had been spoiled by damp lodgings in Graz, and his memory was failing, which was why he had left the regiment. Marie read the verse aloud and teased her about the lieutenant's name. The Ebers invited the Baurs to a little concert on Thursday, when Valinka, the younger daughter, the "little angel," would sing. At the window the girls watched young Bavor hurry upstairs, and laughed at him: the Starling, the house called him. And as the visitors left, Marie said that Matylda had had a great many fiancés, and wondered whether she would go on tearing up verses for ever.

IV. A Lyrical Monologue

On the evening of that first day the moon was full, and poured a corner of its golden cloak through every open window, and lay on the doctor's white bed. Late in the evening the doctor came home, sleepy and cheerful, hung up his cane and his straw hat, put on his dressing gown, and hummed an aria about Bartolo.

He leaned out of the window and thought of Josefinka, his little kitten, asleep. He would marry her; they would take the flat downstairs; her mother and her sick sister Katuška could live with them; he was not too old; love keeps a man young. He took down his guitar and played a few chords; Azor howled in the courtyard.

Then he sat at his desk and spoke his thoughts aloud. At his age such a matter must be settled quickly, but not too quickly, and with a little poetry. He could not write verses himself; but he had some poems of Václav's, and he would send them to Josefinka without a name, one a week. Václav had talent, but he ought to give up poetry and stick to his office. The doctor read the three poems over: the first compared the beloved to a mountain landscape, the second was passionate, and the third threatened to shoot himself if she refused. No woman could resist that one; it would go last. He folded his clothes neatly, blew out the candle, and fell asleep murmuring a line of verse. Down in the courtyard Azor scratched at Žanýnka's door and howled softly all night.

V. An Old Bachelor Is a Thief of All Happiness

Mr Lakmus had a bad leg, and rarely left the house; he sat at his window wrapped in flannel, and was said to drink a good deal of wine. Mrs Lakmusová was plump, lively and bold, and generous to the neighbours with flour and butter. Their daughter Klára was in her early twenties, tall and slim, fair-haired and blue-eyed, and quiet — and she was in love with the doctor.

"She talks about him in her sleep," Mrs Lakmusová told her husband. He was a good match, and had money. Mr Lakmus thought him too old, and doubted he wanted Klára. His wife waved that away, and went to knock on the doctor's door.

The doctor had posted his first poem to Josefinka that morning, and was restless and feverish with poetry. Mrs Lakmusová found him flushed, and teased him: was he thinking of marriage? He admitted that he was. She told him that she had already told her husband, that Klára loved him, that the papers could be arranged quickly, and that he must come to lunch. He would not. Alone, he resolved in a panic to write poems faster, to propose within a few days, and to find another flat. Then Mrs Lakmusová came back on the pretext of a silver tea set, and whispered that she had already told Klára.

VI. The Manuscript and the Cloud

Mr Eber came home from his office just after noon, far earlier than usual, with his old top hat jammed down over his eyebrows, his hair on end, his mouth clamped shut and a rolled paper held stiffly in his hand. His wife asked whether he had been dismissed. He told her to fetch Mrs Bavorová. Matylda laughed that he looked like a pigeon stuffed with vetch.

When Mrs Bavorová came, he made a speech, in a solemn monotone. He could not help; it was out of his hands. Her son had been careless; he had written something shameful about the whole office, and even about the president, and left it in his desk drawer when he went on leave, and it had been found. And because Mr Eber was considered the best Czech stylist in the office, the president had handed it to him to report on. She must prepare for the worst. Mrs Bavorová went white and begged him; they were poor. He waved her away: duty was duty, justice must be done. Then he shut himself in his room, set the paper down as carefully as if it might break, straightened himself before the mirror, dusted his blotter, moved his chair three times, and began to unroll the manuscript with his eyebrows at the top of his forehead.

VII. Scraps from a Trainee's Notes

This is the manuscript.

I have finished my work, but may not hand it in until tomorrow. I mean to write satires on office life, like that Englishman who travelled round his own desk. The clerks work by rule, like draught animals. The councillor reads the newspaper; when I asked to borrow it, he only looked at me, and I was ashamed. We were set an exercise in style: describe your feelings at the sight of a locomotive. I wrote about Pegasus. The president shook his head and called me odd.

The president trod on old Mr Hlaváček's foot, and Hlaváček suffered in silence, still smiling politely, like Laocoön; the president said "pardon" and walked on. Then the president summoned us all and criticised our style: some of us write sentences too long, some too short, and it all comes from our Czech habits; from now on no Czech is to be spoken in the office. The clerks scrambled for German newspapers. I go on speaking Czech, loudly, and they avoid me. Most of them are in debt to a moneylender and to the grocer; nobody invites anybody home, from shame. I have been ordered to cut my hair, and have not. I got my leave by saying my grandmother was dying; the councillor granted it, and remarked that a trainee had no business having a grandmother at all.

VIII. At the Funeral

On Wednesday, at noon, Žanýnka's coffin stood in the sunny courtyard on a bier draped in black: glossy, with gilded handles and a gilded cross, a myrtle wreath and a white ribbon, and the silver emblems of the burial society beside it. The whole house was gathered in its best clothes; Mr Lakmus watched from his window, and Josefinka's sick sister leaned over the second-floor railing. Some strangers stood among them, with cold, dutiful faces: Žanýnka's relations, who had never cared for her while she lived and had come now for the inheritance, said the innkeeper's wife. Had they given Mrs Bavorová anything for her trouble? Not a thread. She wanted nothing, said Mrs Bavorová; she had served the dead woman out of Christian love.

The priest came, the prayers were said, the coffin was carried out to the hearse, and the cabs drew up. The relations took the first, the landlord's family the next, and Mrs Lakmusová, Klára and the doctor the last; and seeing there was room for one more, Mrs Lakmusová asked the women whether they would like a seat. The innkeeper's wife and Mrs Bavorová stepped up at the same moment; and the innkeeper's wife turned on her: was she not a burgher's wife? — and climbed in.

Mrs Bavorová stood frozen. Václav had seen it all. "Mother," he said steadily, "we two will walk behind the hearse, since nobody else will." She had not spoken to him since yesterday; but she agreed. She would walk with the poor woman, who had done her much good in life; it was the last act of Christian love. Václav offered his arm, and she said she could not walk like a lady; he said he would only support her, the way was long. And so the hearse moved off, followed only by Václav and his mother; and Václav walked as proudly as if he were escorting a duchess, and his mother felt as if she had arranged the whole funeral herself.

IX. Another Proof of the Saying

That evening the doctor sat at his desk, serious and resolved. He took out a sheet of paper, said a firm "Yes," and began a formal petition to the Prague magistrate, announcing his intention to marry — and left the bride's name blank. Tomorrow he would take his third poem to Josefinka and read it with her and watch her face.

A knock: Václav, with a manuscript he called a little novel, to soothe the doctor's nerves. He would probably be dismissed from his office, he said cheerfully, for those notes about the president; so he would become a writer. The doctor lectured him: only real talents should enter literature; a first book doesn't sell, the critics attack, and a man ends as a bitter hack. And his poems? Some were pretty, said the doctor; but he should burn the book.

Václav stood with his forehead against the window, and then asked whether the doctor would be at the wedding on Sunday: Pepička — Josefinka — had said the doctor was to be a witness, and Václav was to be groomsman. Whose wedding? Pepička's, to Mr Bavorák, the master machinist.

The doctor collapsed into his armchair. Václav called for Mrs Lakmusová and Klára, for water and a light. It was nothing, said the doctor, the summer heat; it happened sometimes. Václav left. Mrs Lakmusová brought soda water and raspberry juice, and moved the lamp onto the papers on the desk, and saw the petition. She clapped her hands: he had written about his marriage! He must put Klára's name in! And she handed him the pen. The doctor hesitated a moment; then a sudden resolve seized him, and he wrote: Klára Lakmusová. "Now kiss," cried Mrs Lakmusová, "you silly dear!"

X. In a Time of Agitation

The moon lay on Petřín hill so that its woods looked like a forest seen through clear sea water. At a second-floor window sat Josefinka, and beside her her fiancé, Karel Bavorák, with his thick fair beard and lively eyes. He touched her hair with his lips; she pressed his hand to her mouth, and reached for the myrtle on the windowsill. It came from his mother: his little sister had died, and he had taken a sprig from her hand as she lay in her coffin and planted it, for a myrtle from a dead hand, kept till a wedding, brings luck; and his mother had watered it every day with her tears.

They were silent, looking out into the bright air, as if they could see their future. True feeling has no words, said Karel. She felt so exalted, said Josefinka, that if it could last she would like to die in it.

Then Karel began to tease her about the doctor, who wrote poems; then he was not teasing. If she had not been so friendly to the doctor, he said, the doctor would never have dared. He pushed her away. They stood in silence; and a hot tear fell on his hand. He pulled her to him and begged her forgiveness: he had not known jealousy could take hold of him so; he had forgotten that she was young and pretty, and that any girl who was healthy, and not deformed or ugly —

A rustle behind them. Her sick sister Katuška had been sitting in the room all the while, forgotten. At his last words she rose, took a few steps, and sank weeping into an armchair. And the two of them stood trembling beside her, and dared not say a word.

XI. A First Novel, Which Begs for Kind Indulgence

The morning after his engagement the doctor woke with his head spinning and his nerves shaking, full of figures — Josefinka, Bavorák, Klára, Mrs Lakmusová, Václav — and then he remembered that he was a bridegroom. On the table lay the papers Václav had brought, which he had read in the night to put himself to sleep: "On Certain Domestic Animals," a semi-official idyll by Václav Bavor.

It was made of documents. The notebook of a landlord, Ondřej Dílec, grumbling about his tenant, the widow Helenka, who kept hens, a capon and a rooster that crowed too early. Official letters, a commission ordered to inspect the house, a council protocol finding two hens, one rooster and one capon, and dismissing the complaint, since Mr Dílec was somewhat hard of hearing. Helenka's cheerful letters to her sister, refusing Mr Dílec, who was only after her money. Then a new complaint, about two piglets, which are forbidden in Prague, and with the cholera coming; a fine of five gulden; an appeal. And at last a page from Mr Dílec's notebook at Christmas: Helenka was a good housewife and cook, and had become much more agreeable; and he could not quite work out who had won.

XII. Five Minutes After the Concert

A child's thin soprano strained for a very high note; the accompanist played the last chords; Miss Valinka made her practised bow. "Wonderful!" cried Mrs Baurová; Mr Eber must be a happy man. Mr Eber said that Valinka, at fourteen, would need two more years before singing in public; but talent decides everything; after twenty French lessons she could already talk to her teacher.

Marie Baurová sat beside Lieutenant Kořínek, Matylda's betrothed, a weak-looking man with a fixed smile. Had the child sung well? He praised the high C at the end. It was an F, said Marie. Any note that high, he said, was always a C. He did not care for opera; it was dear, and a man has only two ears. Marie whispered to her mother that he probably did not know which end of a match to strike; then she told him confidentially that the Ebers were deep in debt. When the guests rose, she complained that they lived so far away and had to walk home alone, and gallant gentlemen were so rare. The lieutenant offered to escort them. Mrs Eberová asked Matylda to keep the lieutenant for a bite of ham; but Marie embraced Matylda, thanked her sweetly for the entertainment, and went off on the lieutenant's arm. And Matylda went white, and stood as if frozen to the floor.

XIII. After the Draw

On Friday afternoon Mrs Bavorová sat behind her counter with her dream books and her lists of numbers, content, her spectacles shining. The innkeeper's wife came in. Mrs Bavorová pretended not to see her; the funeral still lay between them. Had they won anything? asked the innkeeper's wife. A merchant had told her that Mrs Bavorová had won a terno on the old numbers, and she wanted her share. Mrs Bavorová went pale, but kept her eyes down: the innkeeper's wife had wanted to change the numbers, and had staked on the changed ones; they had finished with each other. The innkeeper's wife tried another tone: she had hoped Václav and her daughter Márinka might marry. There was no hurry, said Mrs Bavorová. "You can't make a gentleman out of a woodcutter, even if you gild him," said the innkeeper's wife, and slammed out.

For Mrs Bavorová was a lottery player body and soul. Good numbers are not worked out by reason; they grow in the heart, and the heart is a woman's country. She had her dream book; she knew which dreams were valid and when; she drew numbers from a linen bag of ninety, three with her right hand and three with her left, and wrote down every draw; and when the same numbers came to both hands, and the inspiration came back, she knew the time had come. This time she had staked her row unchanged, and won.

Václav came in. "Draw with your right hand first," she said, handing him the bag. And then: "They threw you out of your office today." He started. And she told him she had won a terno: fifty times the stake, several thousand. "Is it true?" "Has your mother ever lied to you?" He ran behind the counter and hugged and kissed her, and she said he would never have any sense, and that now he must finish his studies. His eyes lit up. He took the bunch of keys from the wall. Where was he going? "To the attic. To make plans for my life!"

XIV. From a Tender Household

Mr Eber paced the room in his morning undress; his wife pretended to dust; and at the table sat the moneylender, Mr Menke, with his shabby hat, drumming his fingers. He had lost money there already, he said; he would not give another kreuzer. Mrs Eberová asked, with a forced smile, for just fifty gulden more; she would be so grateful. Gratitude! Their notes were worthless to him; if he did not have his interest by Tuesday he would go to the president. And he went, and left the door open.

Mrs Eberová slammed it. Matylda came out in her petticoat and said she would have thrown him out. "Be quiet!" said her father. He asked for coffee: it was yesterday's, not yet warmed. And for lunch? Dumplings with horseradish sauce; it was washing day. He objected; she taunted him — about his salary, his post, his manhood. Mr Eber lost his temper, pushed his wife into the wardrobe, locked it, and threw a glass at it; Matylda clapped. He dressed to leave, wondered whether to let his wife out, and decided he would do it from the street. But Matylda opened the wardrobe, and mother and daughter chased him through the kitchen onto the gallery; Mrs Eberová told the charwoman to pour the washing water over him, threw a broom after him, then her cap, and screamed after him about his salary. He escaped through the gateway. And the neighbours at their windows saw only Matylda embracing her mother, who was very pleased.

XV. The End of That Day

Josefinka's wedding was on Sunday morning, and the neighbours crowding the courtyard, the passage and the street called it a "pale wedding." Not because it was poor — the bridegroom had spared no expense, the bride wore silk, there were carriages enough — but because everyone in it was pale. The bride was pale, which is as it should be: a pale bride makes a merry wife. The bridegroom was pale with emotion. The bridesmaid, Klára, was colourless; and even the best man, the doctor, whose round cheeks always glowed, was wan. Only Václav, the groomsman, laughed and flirted as usual.

In the afternoon the doctor stood in front of the house, pulling on his gloves and glancing into the passage. Václav came out, dressed for an outing. Was the doctor going for a walk? Yes, to the Stromovka. Alone? Mrs Lakmusová was going too. Václav said Klára looked very well. And Václav? To Šárka — with the innkeeper's family. The doctor was alarmed; he must not get entangled with them. Václav said he knew exactly what he was doing: he was avenging his sex upon the women. And was not the doctor taking his revenge too?

The doctor's eyes flickered. He opened his mouth, shut it again, cleared his throat, and said quietly: "They're coming —"