Jarmila (3 page)

“
B
UT WERE WE
all to lead peaceful lives from now on: Jarmila, the Oom-Pah, Maruschka, the child and I? The news that the bans for Maruschka and I were to be read in church had just become known in the village, when Jarmila came to my small workshop. She’d brought a shoddy old gold watch. It was broken. She held it out to me with her white hand, but I wouldn’t take it. Nor would I look into her eyes, I looked at the palm of her hand breaking out in sweat and gleaming like silver … how well I knew it, I knew every single part of her. Her poor hand trembled. I weakened and took the watch; it had been broken deliberately, the spring wound too far, the hands bent, the glass smashed. ‘It would be an expensive repair job, madam,’ I said, ‘I don’t know if it is worth it.’ ‘Oh, it is to me,’ she said and laughed, and as I examined the watch her mouth was already at my ear and she was kissing me and weeping and laughing and whispering that I should meet her in the feather loft that evening. ‘This evening?’ I said, attempting to salvage a shred of pride. ‘Not this evening, madam.’ ‘So, come when you will, but give me the usual sign and then wait for me up there until I come. Just make sure the trap-door
isn’t open. But even if it were, you’d tumble gently, just imagine you are falling into my arms … The old man had a system, you see, of separating the better, lighter down from the poor, thick quills. A hundred or so of the former would balance a particular weight on the scales, as compared to just thirty of the latter. That’s all the difference there is. The first lot costs one hundred crowns whereas the others only sixty-five. I don’t know whether all this sifting is worth it, but the schoolmaster thinks so and it may just be the case. In wet weather the Oom-Pah shakes one sack of feathers after another through the trap to the storage area below. The coarse, heavy feathers of inferior quality fall swiftly and settle at the bottom. The better ones float through the air for a time, and the finest,
first-class
feathers take the longest of all and nestle on top.” He was miles away. The tavern was virtually empty now, only the blonde waitress stood nearby, the others were at the till totalling up the evening’s earnings. The jangling of coins could be heard. Why was the waitress still hovering at our table although we’d long since paid? He stared at her. “Come now, Libuschka, don’t fear us old bachelors! I’ve something to ask you!” “And what is it you want, sir?” the waitress asked in clipped, but faultless, German. “Not your love, nor your fidelity,” he replied with scathing contempt. “I want to change some money, that’s all.” He delved into his
pocket for his day’s takings: in amongst all the change was only one note, twenty crowns. Without a word, she took the money from him, counted it and went to see the cashier who was busy adding up at the back of the restaurant. The tavern was practically deserted. The tobacco smoke had dissipated somewhat, and a breeze blew in through the open windows: moist, full and pure. It must have been raining. I didn’t have a watch, but it must have been long past midnight. The bank note had been left behind on the table wet with beer. He picked it up, scrutinised it, then called back the waitress. “Why did you leave the note?” he asked her accusingly as if she had committed a mortal sin. “I forgot it!” she answered shyly, but also reproachfully, for she felt embarrassed in front of me. She stretched out her work-worn, red hand. He threw the note on the ground. Quietly she bent down and picked it up. She seemed to stroke the knee of the toy trader with her beautiful, fair hair. “Hurry up, hurry up!” he said contemptuously. “So, have you finally found the note?” Once again he snatched it from her hand which was shaking impatiently for the cashier had already called her. “Why is money so dirty?” he asked, crumpling the note into a ball which he threw at Libuschka. Hurt, she shot us a furious look, aimed mostly at me as witness of her humiliation. She returned immediately with the money changed into a note and some change
that the toy trader stuffed carelessly into his pocket. My poor watch was still inside out and all its parts still lay scattered under the salt cellar on the black table top. He pulled from his breast pocket a letter which was covered in calligraphic scrawls and tore it into little shreds which he flicked to the floor. He placed the watch and all its bits and pieces in the envelope. Libuschka now watched him calmly.

We walked out on to the square which was almost entirely deserted at this late hour. It was raining lightly. The imposing bronze horses which encircled the statue of Saint Wenceslas glistened majestically in the wet. As in the afternoon that now seemed so distant, the smooth neck of one and the haunches of another reflected the light of a street-lamp … Cabs drove past, but the trader’s glinting eyes with their hungry and pleading expression stopped me from hailing one. He desperately wanted to tell his story. The tavern’s doors were locked behind us. We slowly walked across the square.

“
I
T WAS AROUND
this time that my mother died. She wasn’t old but in a lot of pain. The funeral left me devastated. Jarmila slipped away to see me. This time her silvery hand didn’t hold any wretched watch which had been broken deliberately.”—I noticed how cautiously he pronounced the word ‘silvery’, as though trespassing. “Instead she had come as if to comfort me! Though as it turned out I had to comfort her: she couldn’t live without me, she said, the child was a constant reminder of our past. When awake she’d think of me, in sleep she’d dream of me. And I believed her because I still loved her and felt that from now on I needed to love her differently, even more, needed to love her as my mother too, and, above all, as the mother of my child! Once again we started meeting in the feather loft. Yet it was no longer the same place. The mice had vanished for Jarmila’s husband had bought some cats whose green eyes startled us in the dark. An icy draught reached us from below. I wasn’t sure where it came from but I assumed it was because the
Oom-Pah
had laid the storage room with flagstones. Admittedly it made it easier to keep the place clean … And for a while things continued like this. But
Maruschka, my bride, knew nothing of it. I would tell her to wait. I would tell her I was still saving up but I assured her she had my word. That’s all she had, for I was faithful to Jarmila. One night Jarmila said to me, ‘Touch my body. Can you feel how hard it is? It is not swollen yet. That won’t happen until the sixth month. It’s like the first time round, do you remember? But I know now my second child is on its way, and this one will be ours at last, yours. Do you understand?’ Playfully she pinched my ear with her strong rough fingers but when I flinched with pain, she shuddered too and gave herself to me with a violent and increasing passion. I had never experienced her like this before, so at odds with our country girls’ ways … As she was sitting up afterwards, breathing heavily and staring with a brooding expression ahead, her hands clasped beneath her bosom, I said, ‘I’ll set off for Harlem, via Hamburg or Bremen. I’ll wait for you there and send you money for the voyage.’ She shook her head. I could clearly see her fair hair shining in the darkness of the loft. ‘I won’t let you!’ she said. ‘Why should you be hers? You’re my little darling, aren’t you!’—‘Don’t joke, and don’t call me that,’ I said, ‘What I do is my business.’ She fell silent and let go of my ear which she had grabbed again. She trembled and sobbed. ‘I have to go back now, the boy is all alone and I think I can hear the creaking of a cart in the distance. It might be my
husband returning,’ she said. ‘Just one more month, be faithful to me, forget about Maruschka. Four weeks, that’s all! Then we’ll discuss everything!’—‘But what will have changed in just one month?’ I asked her. She quickly turned her head away as if expecting a blow. Yet I hadn’t hit her for over a year. She didn’t want to answer my question. In fact she couldn’t, as there was someone calling her. She may have won the full support of the two farm-hands, mostly due to their hatred for the mean-fisted Oom-Pah. He rationed their food, scrimped on wages, not to mention beer or tobacco. However, I now realised I had to give her up to him. What can a man do when he has got the law against him? The next day I ran into the schoolmaster. On seeing me he grew pale with anger, for people had started to talk about Maruschka, his pretty sister-
in-law
. You know how it is, girls never leave a man in peace, even if they are still virgins. It bothers them more than us. More intensely, more quietly. The schoolmaster summoned me to the inn that evening and, coward that I was, I turned up and swore to marry the girl. I needn’t have. But I didn’t want to love so desperately any more, nor did I want to be Jarmila’s slave, nor wait for another four weeks having already waited a month. The schoolmaster was delighted … But do I really have to mention what happened three nights afterwards and as often as possible after that? All
I knew was that I had a new enemy: an intelligent, sober, crafty one. Soon the whole village turned against me, but also against the married couple: they did all they could to spite Jarmila. But she was proud and didn’t let it get to her. She just gave a frivolous toss of her beautiful blonde hair. There wasn’t much they could do to me: I was strong and the schoolmaster would have landed in a heap in the corner had he laid a finger on me. Maruschka couldn’t hurt me either for she was a virgin and virgins hold no sway over men. So their easiest prey was the grey, fat old spouse, and the whole village rose to this with small-minded malice. Being more of a feather trader than a farmer he didn’t have many good fields, but there was one large and lovely meadow not far from his house, and in summer its grass was mown twice. The second mowing produced especially luscious hay which was then stored in the upper reaches of the feather loft. In recent years he had needed help with the mowing and the drying: the work had become too cumbersome for him and he wanted to spare Jarmila. As anywhere else, the village needed work and money. But although he had put out word of the work three times no worker showed up. In the recent unsettled weather he couldn’t get the work done quickly enough by himself, not even with the help of his two farm-hands, one of whom (the better one of course) had just been admitted to hospital. He inquired
about their reasons, and while they wouldn’t say: ‘Listen, Oom-Pah, we won’t work for you because your wife is a whore, and your second child will be a bastard too,’ they still would hint at it ever so clearly … He returned home in a blind rage. Jarmila, who normally wasn’t burdened with many chores, was put to work with rake, sickle and hay-fork without delay. In the evenings I would see her just for a moment, for she was pale and tired. We exchanged a quick embrace between the house and the feather store, not far from the geese coops. We pressed together for no more than a second, yet it was wonderful for the child was alive inside her. ‘Just six more weeks! You can wait, you’re young!’ ‘Yes, I’ll wait,’ I said. ‘I’m happy, I hope we’ll be content together over there.’ ‘Content?’ she said, finally kissing me with her warm little mouth, ‘Only content? No, rapturous! Overflowing with happiness!’ If only she hadn’t said that! It was too beautiful, too much. I didn’t trust her. I wanted to leave. ‘Wait awhile,’ she said, pressing up as close to me as was possible in her condition. ‘Will you set off from Bremen or Hamburg? Which is it? Which is nearer? What about the cost? We have to consider everything.’ But she didn’t want to consider anything at all, all she wanted was me, and I shied away from her for I was afraid it might harm the child. Don’t laugh, but I felt it might dirty my child. She sensed my reluctance and rebuffed me in turn.
‘On your way, then!’ she said, ‘You’d best travel ahead to Hamburg and then straight to America, you have money enough, haven’t you?’ ‘Yes,’ I said. I’d inherited something from my poor old mother and had been saving all the while. ‘Well, are you going or aren’t you? When? When? When?’ she asked. ‘No, I won’t go yet. I have to wait for it. I can’t leave you on your own. Your husband might well be on to us: he is not very good to you, he is working you hard, you’re made to till the fields day after day. And then … no!’ ‘And when? No?!’ she whispered, and so she had her way, for how could I resist … ‘No!’ she uttered once more, almost imperceptibly as we took each other, I don’t know quite how, but with such a burning fury, with a force as though she were tearing at me and all my blood was rushing to the surface … How could I leave her? From then on I often waited for her, in vain. The Oom-Pah didn’t let her out of his sight. The first child, my child, my Jaroslaus, was teething. He wasn’t exactly unwell, but he was grumpy and wasn’t drinking, whatever. I didn’t get to see my beloved. He, her husband, was her daily bread, of course, lawful husband that he was.

The Oom-Pah once met me by the shrubs next to his house. He glared at me, but neither of us said a word. He made his way to the feather store; he had tools and nails with him and something else hidden between his belly and his old apron. He climbed the
outer staircase to the barn that I had descended ten minutes previously, but he only started hammering about a quarter of an hour later, as if on a secret
mission.
As it was time to store the hay in the upper loft I assumed he was nailing the trap-door shut to prevent any accident. That’s how little I read his intentions. In fact I couldn’t read either of them, not him nor his wife! While all this was going on I boldly took my chances and visited Jarmila. She blushed crimson, but allowed me nevertheless to kiss my child who all of a sudden refused to know me, turned pale with fright and started screaming angrily …”

“
I
MANAGED TO
calm him down. Our peace and joy, however, were to be short-lived. How could I have been so impertinent as to enjoy my child while his lawful father was busying himself in the house? I counted the minutes—the hammering in the feather loft had long since died away but I thought he’d do the rounds of the stables, feeding oats to the horses, bran to the geese and whatever else there was to do. He was back already, however, and I missed him by the skin of my teeth. I was trapped in the vicinity of the house, and had to listen to him striking my Jarmila; now he did it! I felt ashamed for doing so myself in the past! How he yelled at my child, and both man and wife quarrelled, fit to burst with anger! It was only when his brother, the schoolmaster, and his two sisters-in-law showed up that the shouting stopped. As chance had it our paths crossed again the next day. I was taken aback by his appearance. I hadn’t noticed before how emaciated he’d become. He ran straight at me, hat-less, his head down low, his thick hair sticking up like an old, grey, bristly brush, trundling at me like an old buffalo that lowers its horns to charge when it encounters a younger one, running blindly. I ignored him and stepped aside.

It was impossible for all of us to go on living together in the village. There was hostility directed at me, too, of course, not just at the two of them. Oh, all those good Christians! It was always the same. What was heavenly manna to me? I’d been to war, after all, still half a child. Still no one would sell me a drop of milk and a morsel of bread. They couldn’t refuse me outright, but when I came to the bakery, or the farm, there was nothing left. It was impossible for me to meet Jarmila at all. A few days later we did pass one another though. She wouldn’t look at me. As she walked by me she stumbled. Her heavy body nearly fell, but it wasn’t me she held on to, but rather the wispy rowan tree as rich a green as ever in that sun-drenched autumn, resplendent in its dark red fruit … ‘I’ll be off soon, I’ll do what you want and you’ll have peace, all of you!’ I whispered into her hot little ear. ‘But I want to see you tonight, try to come, it’s our last time here … Next time we’ll be in Harlem with the Negroes.’ I tried to laugh, but my laughter died away in my breast as she stared at me mutely. Her right cheek was swollen and I knew her husband was left-handed for he played his brass horn with his left hand. How I despised that false hand and yet, somewhere in the depths of my heart was compassion for him, even now, because his baggy peasant trousers hung so loose upon his gaunt frame and because we were all so unhappy. I discovered a
downy feather in my Jarmila’s hair and removed it very gently. I knew she’d been plucking geese again, it was that time of year. Everywhere in the village women were sitting in their sheds, the geese’s warm twitching bodies between their thighs. They plucked with gusto! Perhaps she thought I despised her for not keeping her word, as she had frequently promised me she wouldn’t pluck the geese since the second farm-hand was much better at it anyway. But how could she have defended herself with our child in her womb when he beat her? I stroked her hair which was not nearly as full and soft as when we had first kissed: ‘Why didn’t you come with me then? Now the borders are closed it is much more difficult to emigrate they say.’ She wouldn’t look at me. ‘I felt sorry for my husband,’ she said eventually. ‘I love you, but he needs me, he has no one else …’ I wanted to be angry for she wasn’t right. I had nothing apart from her and she had lied. She did not love me enough and had fallen for his money and the
promise
of Prague’s glamour. Now have a look at life here, take a twirl in mighty Prague! Where is its splendour? Where is the glamour of Prague? Dankness, buildings, lanterns, rain and dirt like anywhere else. So we went our separate ways. I had no idea whether she would come. All she said was: ‘Goodbye!’ I was weak and furious at the same time while the woman was far too cowardly and cold. Her sweet heart was as bitter as
gall. The beautiful red berries of the rowan tree don’t taste of honey either. The village offered everything apart from solace. People avoided me. There was no peace and no bread anymore for I was not allowed to make any money in my shop nor to spend it in theirs. So I went to the train station to inquire about trains to Prague and connections to Hamburg. I discussed this with the station manager who was an educated man and lived far from the village with his wife who was the daughter of a post office official from Pilsen. We were interrupted by two tramps, begging for schnapps and tobacco, an older man with shaggy hair, and a younger fair-haired one, both starving and frozen—for the nights are icy cold during this time of the year … I went to the station buffet and ordered a sausage and a glass of dark beer. Here they gave me everything, provided I paid. I ate, but it all had a bitter taste. The tramps came along, too, to warm up; I gave them something to eat, plenty of it, for money had no value for me now. They were almost falling over with
hunger
and fatigue. I was determined to travel. I suddenly realised that neither of the children would ever belong to me. Nor would the woman. I started to weep, I wept for all the lost years. I wept for all the reasons in the world, even for the lawful father who in his way was no less unhappy than I. For he probably guessed or even knew, thanks to his smart brother, the schoolmaster,
what his wife had done to him. He was bound to this place, couldn’t uproot himself. He was old. But I was young, just twenty-nine and I could easily fit my few watches and the odd bit of jewellery into my little
suitcase
along with my money and clothes. I didn’t want to be clenched between her darling, round knees nor to hiss in wordless fury like the poor geese. I would not let her tear strips from my breast! Thus I saw myself forced to leave. But I had to see her one last time. Just see her! Why? To ask her … I had already dared a lot and even felt some respect was due to her husband for walking past me in silence and not thrashing me. Like a thief I’d entered his house many times. I had sat on his chair and she had served me his bread. Bread? I had consumed the flesh of his beautiful wife. And she didn’t have a soul. She has gone to hell without a soul, or to heaven. God alone knows which.

But now I wanted to meet Jarmila one last time in the feather store. I arrived in the evening, before it was dark: I couldn’t bear to be alone with my packed suitcase. I couldn’t wait anymore. Nothing mattered to me. I gave the old signal—she didn’t come. Placing my ear against the wooden shutters of her home below I could hear her laughing and chattering with Jaroslaus in baby talk. Why did I love her so very much? And my child even more? Couldn’t I have loved only myself, or one of the farmers’ daughters? Had that been possible
I’d still be living there today, a happy father, a satisfied husband, and a decent citizen. A skilled watchmaker, the only one far and wide. But I just could not. I felt it was my right. A thief might steal at night. But if someone tries to cunningly or forcefully retrieve the stolen goods in daylight he puts up a fight. Of course he does! All of a sudden he clings to what is his right and so chooses his own punishment.

I called, I gave the signal, I pounded on the
shutters.
Only the windows on to the street had wooden shutters that closed, those on to the meadow were without. The Oom-Pah in all his bulk was leaning
quietly
against one of these, puffing at his pipe. A tobacco spark almost reached the spot where I was sitting in the shrubs with a wildly beating heart. The farmer smoked contentedly, his pipe hissing. His eyes rested on the tall barn he, the farm-hand and Jarmila had built and which contained all the harvested hay from his lush meadows …”