Simon Wels - At the ‘Bernats’

II. 1864 ‒ 1872

In 1864 war broke out. The Austro-Hungarian Emperor and the King of Prussia joined forces to invade little Denmark. And wonder of wonders, those two gigantic and mighty powers overcame the little state of Denmark. And they quite rightly went on to seize Schleswig and Holstein.

We still recall all too well the reasons for that particular war. Bismark’s hairless head was buzzing with new plans ‒ so-called “high politics” ‒ which gave rise to Austria’s war against Prussia in the North and the South. The year was 1866.

Archduke Frederick was due to assume supreme military command against the Prussians. But at the last minute, the “Erzherzog” Friedrich found out that the Prussian was well armed and in battle readiness, equipped, moreover with breech loaders whereas our troops still had old-fashioned “ladstocken” or muzzle-loaders. The Archduke feared for his Habsburg reputation and preferred to go off to the Southern front to fight the Italian.

We in Bohemia were assigned General Benedek. Being unfamiliar with the terrain, that distinguished soldier was unwilling to take over the command, but he was quite simply ordered to assume the unfortunate role. A soldier is bound to obey, and that is what he did.

Our troops were supposed to protect the frontiers. We were sure of victory. The Bavarians and Saxons were fighting on our side.

The enemy crossed the border without difficulty, despite its natural fortresses, mountains, cliffs and forests.

But we did not lose heart. We said to ourselves ‒ though goodness knows who prompted us to think it ‒ “Benedek has his secret strategy, he’s merely luring the enemy into Bohemia, and our fine troops will wipe the floor with him.”

But things turned out quite differently. The Prussians advanced rapidly to the very heart of our wretched homeland. Dreadful tales were told about them: how they stole everything they laid their hands on, and what they could not steal they destroyed; how they burnt down entire villages and towns that refused to pay them enormous ransoms, and how they spared neither old people, women nor children.

We too panicked, and people started burying their money and valuables, and walling up their clothing, linen and feather beds.

The war was soon over and the outcome was terrible. According to our newspapers we were always winning. And then came the battle of Králův Hradec [Sadowa] where more than 30, 000 men were killed in a single day.

Králův Hradec etched itself into the imagination and memory of our people. However, in spite of all the pain and suffering and all the misfortune, it was, after all, a Habsburg war, so the people celebrated it in songs that displayed deep down a healthy and poignant humour. In market squares a song about “Jab&úrek” was soon being sung, and in no time it was on everyone’s lips.
“By Králův Hradec the battle raged
“The shot flew fierce on every hand
“From cannons and from guns
“Into poor people’s sons
“He stood by the cannon and just went on loading
“He stood by the cannon and just went on loading
“A cannon ball came by him
“And both his arms went flying
“But he didn’t leave his post
“And went on loading with his toes.”

Then came about fifty more verses. And the last one of all went:
“And when the Crown Prince Frederick he saw this,
“He said ‘den Mann Jab&úrek lieb ich’
“Come cannoneer, give me your hand
“You’re the bravest soldier in the land.
“And he stood by the cannon
“And just went on loading
“And he stood by the cannon
“And just went loading.”

Apparently, the battle of Střešetice (Sadowa) is still quoted in the text books for higher military training as a classic example of the art of strategy.

Lacking the means for a major offensive, our troops retreated. It was thought that two of our fortresses, Josefov and Terezín, would manage to hold off the enemy for a time, but the latter just ignored them, leaving both towns alone and instead pursuing our retreating army.

A few days later they were at the walls of Vienna, where they signed an armistice.

Our emperor withdrew from the German Bund and the German King Wilhelm took over its leadership. In addition, we were obliged to hand over 60 million guilders. Moreover, Italy, which had been beaten ignominiously at Lisa, received two provinces with Italian populations.

The Prussians had signed a pact with Italy that Austria would have to pay reparations to both Prussia and Italy, even if one of them was defeated.

Thus the war lasted just a few months, and though it was a trifle compared with wars where millions fight millions, it was a cruel one all the same.

I read a fine book about that war and the senseless slaughter, about the selfishness and ambition of the leaders, whom may God punish, about the bloodshed, the suffering, the wounds and the tears. Its title is “Die Waffen nieder!” and it was written by Countess Suttner.

And even though such books were written, the Great War ‒ the World War ‒ was to break out just a few years later.

But let me get back to narrating what I still remember from my childhood.

As I was saying: people became very frightened about the approaching enemy army and they started burying anything they had of value in their gardens, or in the woods and meadows. Even the shopkeepers did likewise. International cataclysms like that place the life and property of every individual in peril. It is unthinkable that such a catastrophe should spare anyone in particular. Even though the individual may escape death, injury or disease, impoverishment is the inevitable fate of both the nation and its organs. The effects are usually so immeasurable that they tend to elude the control of those who started the war in the first place. History is then falsified in favour of one class or another. If only humanity finally realised this! But I fear we have a long way to go before that day arrives and that much innocent blood is still to be spilt and many tears to be shed.

My cousin rented a cellar from a farmer and though no bricklayer managed to wall up all his goods in it. My father hid all his wares too. At the side of our cottage, which served as bedroom and kitchen, stood a little extension which served us as a shop. Two or sometimes three of us children used to sleep there in a big bed. In the morning, after the bed was made, a big board would be placed on top of the bed to turn it into a shop-counter. Father would clear away our bedding, mattress and bed-boards and filled the bed with our wares. He would then cover them with the “counter” so that all our belongings were hidden from thieves and plunderers. If someone came in to buy a shirt or work-trousers, Father would tell them he had none. The customer would beg him to sell them something, saying that they had nothing but what they stood up in and before long my good old Pappa would be lifting off the counter with the poor fellow’s help. They would then sort out something to satisfy the customer’s needs before carefully replacing the lid together.

This rigmarole could not be kept secret, however. People got to hear about it, and since all the shops were bare, they all started rushing to buy from us. We did not even have the time to cover and uncover the bed.

Our cousin heard about it too and rushed over. His first words were: “Uncle, poor chap, you’ve never seen the world and have no idea what a bunch of enemy soldiers are capable of.” He drew himself up to full height and declared proudly that he had been a soldier and knew all about it, which was why he had cleverly hidden all his wares. Pappa smiled with embarrassment and told him he had already heard about it, but he doubted whether the cousin would be bringing his wares home afterwards. More likely the stuff would end up being thrown on the farmer’s dung heap, because the cellar was damp and unventilated. “Well yours will get stolen, seeing as you’ve made such a clumsy job of hiding it!” our cousin snapped back.

Pappa then took him by the hand and led him to the bed in the extension. Taking off the lid, he said: “Take a look. The bed’s empty. The enemy won’t have anything to plunder.”

A few days later the annual fair was held in Plzeň. Pappa managed to buy two cases of wares there for a song ‒ the traders were all trying to clear their stock. When he got home, everyone scoffed at him for throwing away his money for the benefit of the plunderers. But before the latter arrived, we had sold out once more. My cousin came off badly. When he came to break down the cellar door he discovered that all his stuff had gone mouldy.

Our elders went about like souls in torment, but we boys could not wait to see what the “cannibals” would look like.

But at this point I ought to tell you something about old Čada. On the village square, immediately opposite the statue of St John of Nepomuk stood a tiny little cottage with just one tiny window. It looked like a packing case with a roof. I was always amazed that anyone could live in that hutch. But since it had a chimney from which smoke used to rise, I came to the conclusion that it was inhabited by dwarves. One day I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw creeping out of the little front door of the tiny house a mountain of a fellow, dressed in high boots, each of them big enough for me to climb into. He stood up just in front of me, his arms folded ‒ a veritable “Rýbrcoul” [Rübezahl], or mountain giant. He asked me whose child I was and what they called our place. I told him they called us “The Bernáts’ Place”. At this the hulking great fellow rumbled:”Run off home, then, so I can see how well you run!” I ran off and told Mamma all about it.

She was astonished that I had not come across old Čada before. He was apparently a písmák, or hedgerow scholar, well read and a good writer, and he spoke a lot of sense. And indeed I would happily seek him out and listen to his wisdom. As a young man he had served as a soldier for fourteen years and was proud of having been a flügelman and had therefore always stood in the front rank. He had fought in the Napoleonic Wars against the French and he would tell me ghastly stories that made my hair stand on end. Perhaps not everything he told me was true and perhaps some things he embroidered. But his yarns were so vivid, full of interest and convincing that one immediately sensed that he believed the stories he told.

I got used to him so he no longer seemed so strange to me. And from time to time he would seek me out. He would call us Big Sage and Little Sage. I liked him a lot.

Well then, during those weeks, Old Čada used to walk up and down our street several times a day and every time he would gesture towards the northern side of the town and say: “That’s the wretched corner where the Prajzers (Prussians) will come from”. We believed him unquestioningly. As he strode along with his head held high and with his slow military gait, the seventy- five year old giant felt as if he was a flügelman back in the front rank again.

The Prussians were already in Prague. A few days later they had reached Hořovice and we boys were all in a tizzy. We would spend whole days lying about on the road to Volduchy and at last, one fine day at noon, we could see columns of dust rising from the road in the distance. We gleefully scampered off home to bring the sad news and hid behind the fence ready to be on the spot as soon as there was something to see.

A few moments later, columns of dusty troops passed by us. We rushed out into the street to discover that they were no cannibals but looked just like our own troops. We found out that they were planning to play their military music at the castle in honour of the general billeted there. In a short while there were some fifty of us barefoot lads goggling at their musical instruments. We had never heard of such things before, let alone seen anything so beautiful.

First of all we stood at a distance, but they called us over, saying they would play us something. We still did not dare go closer, though. At this, they came over to us and stood round us in a semicircle. Then before we could take to our heels, we found ourselves standing in the middle with music in our hands, serving as human music stands. Then they started to play and the music was grand. We had never heard anything like it in all our lives.

The people came to listen too, my father included. When he got home he was able to whistle the whole of one of their long marches, such a good musical ear did he have. They gave about three concerts each week and we always looked forward eagerly to them.

It was not as bad with the Prussians as we had feared. They were just people in uniform, even if they were German. And people are always all right. But that does not go for the atrocious ideas that are drummed into peoples heads, not to mention politics! Politics can be so poisonous that it can transform uniformed men into wild beasts. Though the same goes for people in civvies.

At the beginning, the soldiers would crowd into our shop. They would pay for all their purchases properly in silver dollars and had plenty of money to spend.

We also had one man billeted on us. He was a pleasant chap. He dressed me up in his uniform and taught me their drill. I liked it all apart from the shako, which I found too heavy and uncomfortable. It amazed me how he could wear that helmet the whole day long in the field when they wore such lightweight caps indoors.

Our troops were made up entirely of young men, but theirs also included a lot of bearded fellows, “gentry” so-called ‒ doctors, pharmacists, lawyers, gentlemen farmers, etc.

They were also accompanied by a sutler ‒ quite a pleasant, jolly wench who would have bought all our wares, if only we had had some. Whatever Pappa showed her she would buy; she never haggled and invariably paid in dollars.

The Prussians were not at all miserable. We had a merry time throughout the garrison’s stay and the troops brought a lot of money into the village. All the peasant women were sorry to see them leave. The peasants would never again earn such good money for their products. But after their departure there was again plenty of milk, butter and cream ‒ and it was for us now.

The village was once more a lonely place. There was no longer any excitement, the young girls no longer laughed or screamed as they had with the soldiers; there was no more military music. Everyday life returned once more, and with it the drudgery of the peasant’s existence.

Mamma saw her son Josef in each of the soldiers and she would tell them all how he had died an officer in America. Even when they did not understand her, they would show their sympathy. Perhaps it made them think of their own distant mothers and the fate that still awaited them.

Those days Mamma hated staying indoors on her own with only her mournful memories for company. She became very absent-minded and preferred going to a neighbour for a gossip.

One day, Old Štajnerová was at our place buying something when Mamma was alone at home. Quite forgetting that the old woman was in the adjoining room, she went out and locked the house lest any robbers should get in, and went to the neighbours to help strip feathers. I expect you have no idea what “stripping feathers” is, so I’ll tell you, because it’s a long time since it has been done. Several women would sit at a table and the farmer’s wife would tip out a bag of freshly plucked goose feathers into a pile on the tabletop. Each of the women would then take one feather at a time in their left hand and strip the soft flock from both sides of the quill with their right. It was not difficult work but it was dreadfully tedious and it took a long time to make a heap of soft, pure down. Such down was highly prized and a bride’s dowry was assessed among other things by the amount of “down” it brought into the new home.

Mr Kecal in “The Bartered Bride” (or rather Smetana’s librettist) forgets to mention this when he sings:
“I know a lass with
“Double the dowry”

He then goes on to sing about how the bride will get a new chest and goodness knows what else, but he entirely forgot about the prized goose down. Quite wrongly, I’m sure.

So Mamma then locked the door ‒ my Mamma who was once so thoughtful and careful – and locked a strange woman (and a well-known reprobate) in the house. The old woman opened a window and started picking things up and placing them on the ground outside: eiderdowns, pots and pans, and even money from the mug in the latched cupboard. Then she climbed back in the window and on her return, my mother found the old neighbour sitting on a stool apparently dozing.

My parents were not the sort of people who like taking others to court, because no good ever comes of it even when you win your suit. It costs a lot of money and only leads to bad blood. So they let the old woman off that time, even though she was wicked and malicious.

The oven at home was not a good one and one day the bread was spoilt. Mamma would grind rye and bake five loaves of bread every week. Her bread was so good and smelled of the summer countryside, and I have never tasted bread like it since. In those days no one yet carried on the trade of baker in the village.

Mamma had just taken the loaves out of the oven with a wooden peel, and cut a slice, when she noticed with annoyance the “boot-lace” of unbaked dough at the bottom of the loaf. Just at that moment that same old woman shuffled in and let out a squawk as she spotted the fault: “Crikey, if my old man had seen such a thing when he was alive he would have kicked up a proper stink! He’d’ve let me have it over the head with a loaf like that. What d’you think yours’ll say?” In reply Mamma said: “There won’t be any stink, or cursing, for that matter. He’ll feel sorry for me that I’m cross with myself, that’s what he’ll do.” The old woman sat down to wait and see.

Pappa came in exhausted from his journey, flung down the bag of wares and sat down at table. For the old woman’s sake, Mamma placed the loaf of bread before him. Pappa cut himself a piece, took a bite of it and chewed it without comment. At this, the old woman exclaimed: “Bernát, don’t you realise you’re eating spoilt bread. Look, you can see the “boot-lace!” ‒ “I was just about to say,” he replied, “how well Mamma’s bread has turned out. I like it best of all when there’s a “boot-lace”. The old sourpuss went off home disappointed.

Pappa was a jolly chap, full of jokes, and his songs and stories made him the life and soul of the company. He was an exceptionally good man and never offended anyone. People loved him and only spoke well of him, but on those rarest of occasions when someone did wrong him, in spite of everything, he was almost pleased to put up with it and was sorry for the person in question, because they would live to rue it in a short while. After all, that’s the way it always is with wrongdoing ‒ it invariably comes home to roost.

People would stay in the shop longer than was strictly necessary just to listen to his stories.

When I reached the age of fourteen, he would take me with him to Plzeň on his buying trips. As the train did not leave Rokycany until half past nine in the morning we would usually walk the fourteen kilometres, making Ejpovice just as dawn was breaking.

These trips were like a holiday to me. We would stride along in step, with Pappa singing in time to our walking or humming snatches from operas, and we would be in Plzeň before we knew it. We would spend the whole day walking round the town and all the time I would be looking forward to the walk home. If anybody joined us on the way it would somewhat spoil my pleasure. I wanted Pappa to myself alone. I was proud when he spoke to me as to an adult. He was sixty-five years old at the time and even in winter if he got too hot he would take off his coat as he strode along with his long legs, not stopping for a moment.

My parents were very devout and Pappa was well versed in the Law. He could spend hours with Mamma and me in contemplation of Holy Scripture. And since he also enjoyed discoursing with Christians, he had a good knowledge of the New Testament too. His friends would often tell him what “the Father”, had said in his sermon and whenever there seemed anything not quite right about it, or if he thought the priest was mistaken he would take down his copy of the New Testament and look it up for himself. Dogma exercised his mind most of all. No one was able to explain to him why the Virgin Mary was holy, and he never did find out.

We kept the religious festivals in proper style. Our favourite, as children, was Sukkoth, the Feast of Tabernacles, of course, which we called “under the greenery”.

In memory of the times when our ancestors spent forty years in tents in the wilderness, we, their descendants would also spend eight days in a booth we called a suké. The booth would be attached to the side of the house. It consisted of a beautiful wooden lattice ceiling covered with an awning and another cover on its under-side. We would spend the week before the festival setting up our canopy and decorating it. I would cut out a star and paste new silver paper over it. I would also cut out paper chains and tie on tinsel-covered nuts. Then I would go out with a basket and search for flowers far and wide. I used to go as far as Bažantnice and to the forester’s at Habr for branches, so that by the eve of the festival, everything would be ready. The branches were for the latticed ceiling and the roof, and with the flaps raised everything in our little booth just glistened and twinkled. When we got back from the booth we would all sit in the booth and Mamma would bring a very large supper because food in an open room without a ceiling soon got cold, and we would eat in style. I was pleased when Pappa praised my week’s work.

Once I climbed up on to the awning to see what it looked like when people were eating below in the shiny booth. I had forgotten that fir-tree needles fall as they get dry and as when I touched it all the plates and bowls below were immediately full of needles. What happened next was not very pleasant.

Proud of my work, Pappa would bring the men of the congregation from the church to show off my achievement.

On another occasion, after we had moved elsewhere, I made a primitive booth out of four sticks which I nailed together at the top and then wound string all round the sticks before sticking fir branches in between.

Pappa went to the church and brought back all the men of the congregation to worship in the booth. They were all deep in prayer when a sharp wind suddenly got up sweeping away the fir branches, which were not nailed on. By the time the prayers ended only four bare sticks were left standing and the men scoffed at our booth.

Our booth always used to come back to my mind when I was already a grandfather and my children were decorating the Christmas Tree for their own children. I used to enjoy watching them because it is also an act of devotion to make children happy, even if it comes from another faith.

But our life was not always so peaceful, nor was it devoted solely to fruitful activity, as witness the following event, which looked pretty bad at first but turned out all right in the end.

In our shop we used to keep a wooden linen-chest and various other things. One morning, we discovered a hole in the wall under the window. It had been made by some wicked man who stole all our possessions during the night. Pappa was afraid that the robber would be able to get into the house that way so he bricked up the wall to the hall, made a new doorway into the yard and built a fine entrance hall out of planks. He then took in s poor widow and her child as lodgers for eight guilders a year.

That woman used to go and work for Mr Knížek until one day they fell out. Mr Knížek came running to Pappa to tell him to throw Markýta out of the house right away. Pappa was amazed to hear what was being asked of him. However could he want such a thing? There she was, a poor widow with a child who had never done anything wrong, apart from expecting another little one, poor soul. He certainly wasn’t going to give her notice. Mr Knížek flew into a rage and shouted: “You’ll live to regret this, and very soon,” before running off.

He erected a high wooden fence in front of our so-called shop and even filled the cracks with mud to prevent the tiniest ray of light penetrating it. Customers would come and find the interior of the shop dark. What a calamity! We had to carry every piece of our wares into the living room and keep it lit all day long. Father went to see the owner of our house who lived in Kamenný Újezd to ask him to get Mr Knížek to remove his fence. Our landlord expressed his regret but told Father that it was hopeless as his brother-in-law was “stubborn as a mule” and would never take any notice of him. He paid the rent, he said, and could therefore do as he liked.

Every Saturday and Sunday the Knížeks would bring their children and sing songs in the courtyard to show how pleased they were with the fence, and particularly with the fact that their competitor’s shop was spoiled.

It was a great headache for my parents.

Pappa discovered that Farmer Kepka was wanting to rent out a house which he had had built four years previously opposite the presbytery. Pappa went to see him and took a twelve-year lease on the house and the barn opposite and immediately had it entered in the land-registry.

Mr Knížek ran round to the Kepkas to try and persuade the farmer not to let us have it, and when he discovered it was already entered in the registry, he begged him to let him buy it, saying that freehold had precedence over leasehold. But good old Kepka came and told us that they were bothering him all the time and he would prefer to sell the house, preferably to us. My parents went with him the very next day to the notary public in Rokycany and bought the house on 14th October 1868 for 1250 guilders and from then on it really was our own. The Knížeks, poor souls, watched miserably as Pappa turned one of the windows into a shop-door. That is the way of the world, both big and small.

Pappa used to buy his cloth at the fairs in Plzeň, which were held four times a year. He would get it on credit from one fair to the next. I advised him to pay more quickly or even on the nail and save 2 or 3 per cent on the bill. He shrugged his shoulders and said that he doubted it would work, but he would give it a try. And it did work. At one fair he got a 22-guilder discount. “The youngsters have got more sense, after all”, he declared.

On weekdays my sister Betty used to look after the shop, as Mamma was often indisposed. I would help Pappa peddle his wares around the villages. We would make two bundles from the one, which made the cloth easier to carry. We used to go to Klabava and collect more material from the weaver and I would wait at the poor man’s cottage until Pappa came back in the evening.

It was pointless my recalling my marvellous life at the modern school the previous year, when I had a chance to study and I could dream of making a proper career for myself. I liked going about with Pappa but my future prospects were rather limited.

Now I saw that such a weaver was even worse off than we were. He used to tell me that he sat at that primitive loom from dawn to dusk. There was no way he could rise earlier or work by lamplight in the evening, as he couldn’t afford the oil. He was forty years old but looked seventy. He told me how he sat hours every day on a bench before his loom that took up almost half of his dwelling, working the treadle with his feet and throwing the shuttle from right to left, catching it and throwing it back from left to right. All the time he had to keep an eye out to mend any threads that broke. It was monotonous and arduous work. It took him a whole day’s work to weave eight ells of fustian. When he had woven fifty ells he would run out of yarn. Then he would wrap up that piece of cloth and take it to Plzeň where he would get more yarn. When he took his cloth there he would get six or seven kreutzers depending on the width of the material from the elbow and he would bring yarn for another piece. Nobody paid him for the trip to Plzeň, of course. When he didn’t have to see the middleman in Plzeň he could do the round-trip of twenty kilometres in four hours with a load on his back. Almost as soon as he got home he would be back at the his loom again and his back-breaking mindless work throwing the shuttle from left to right and right to left, without a moment’s rest, in dust and misery.

Those people had children too. They had only two meals a day: at ten in the morning and three in the afternoon. The boys were twelve and fourteen years old. They used to get half a litre of coffee made only from chicory, which they would pour into a saucepan and dilute, with the same amount of water. They would heat it up and soak slices of bread in the black liquid. It was a frugal meal but they were so apathetic they didn’t even complain. The boys used to tell each other how happy they would be when the time came for them to start work in the ironworks because they would be able to have three meals a day. Their poverty was indescribable and Pappa used to help them out as much as he could. They were slaves to life, like mere cogs in the global mechanism. They called it “industry”! The weaver was a genial man and was good at telling stories about the foreign lands where he had roamed and worked in his younger days.

He was also good at describing the way foreign nations lived. When I asked him why he did such monotonous and unprofitable work he replied: “My father sat at this loom from his youth until the day he died. I’ve been at it for nigh on thirty years already and I’ll keep it up until my end too. I don’t know what will become of our loom. I wouldn’t recommend my boys to take up the weaving trade.”

Then he told me how he had been in Germany too, as well as Silesia and that “Webers” were even worse off there. “And the masters there are wicked!”

Later, as an adult, I read at home one day a play about weavers by the poet Gerhart Hauptmann. It reminded me of that poor fellow in Klabava enslaved to his loom, and I could have cried for the pity of it. After all, poor people would still be slaves without rest even now if they had not invented the mechanical loom. Nevertheless, even though the work is not so arduous they are just as enslaved. Admittedly the socialist party is doing what it can, and not without success, to ease the life of the poor, but it is such a slow process. May they go on thriving with God’s help and win their struggle against the capitalist classes. It’s a struggle that calls for perseverance and clever heads. And clean hands, above all!

On rainy days I had plenty of time to think about myself and my future, sitting there in Klabava the whole day with nothing to do, sheltering at some old pensioner’s, or with the foreman at the red ore mine. I used to reflect on the way I was living, what I was doing and what would become of me.

To myself I seemed worse than those people! I was not at all pleased with myself at that period of my life.

Mr Frydrych, the mine foreman, was a man of about fifty-five and given to drinking hard liquor. His wife kept the spirits well under lock and key or he would have been in a stupor all the time. She always kept the key with her. She was kind and pretty, but rather small in stature, whereas the mine foreman was a giant of man, a brawny bearded fellow. He would trail around behind his little wife, trying to wheedle the key out of her: “lend it to me, my sweetie, I swear I’ll only have a little drop”. And he would promise to take care of everything: the cooking, the laundry and the fires. He learnt to do all those jobs and would often stand in for his “little lassie” so that sometimes her heart would soften and she would bring him “a tiny sup” of alcohol.

That miniature belle was so good at charming her husband’s superior, the colliery supervisor, that the latter would often turn a blind eye to the foreman’s ever more frequent lapses.

There was not much done at the hill-mines, which were in imperial ownership. The miners did not work a whole day and still managed to earn nine or ten guilders a month. They were all old veterans who had worked there for thirty years or more and knew the mines like the back of their hands. So the mine supervisor most likely had little to do down the pit. Each miner had a small field rented from the big landowner and so he was able to make ends meet even on such a small wage. While they were at work down the pit, the mine foreman would be at home baking griddlecakes and taking ever so great care not to burn them. He had to eat the burnt ones himself. And after lunch when work was over, the foreman’s wife would come in with the colliery supervisor and they would all three have a glass of schnapps together.

But after a while the friendship with the supervisor cooled somewhat and the foreman was always having a skeleton key cut, and each time his little lady confiscated it, he would get yet another one. He probably had a whole number of spares, just in case.

In this way the pit foreman went from bad to worse and declined morally and physically.

On one occasion his wife came to ask my mother if she wore a nightcap, and if she did, whether Mamma would lend it to her. Mamma blushed and protested that it wasn’t clean and needed washing. “That’s just the kind I want,” the foreman’s wife said pleadingly. “And what might you be wanting it for, if I may make so bold”, said my mother. At this, our visitor replied that she was going to wash the nightcap and put the water it was washed in her husband’s drink. This was supposed to make him give up liquor. She said that she had received the advice from some gypsy woman.

Mamma gave her the nightcap. The little thing gave all the water to her husband to drink. He found it extremely tasty and kept on drinking. His wife, poor thing, was terribly distressed and unhappily she herself took to drink too.

I used to take our wares only to the outskirts of Litohlavy. Pappa would take them from me at the Sedláčeks’ and towards evening I would go to Mrs Krouzová the tailoress’s at the other end of the village and wait for Pappa to come there with what he had not managed to sell during the day.

The tailoress had one leg shorter than the other and walked with a limp. She was about forty and unmarried, a very upright and diligent woman. On one occasion she fell seriously ill and things looked very bad with her. Her brother went to Rokycany for the priest to come and hear her confession. I advised him to bring the doctor too, as he might be of help. The brother took my advice and both gentlemen arrived. First the priest gave her last rites and then the doctor cured her.

As I mentioned before, Mamma liked going out, “so as not to have to think”, as she put it. We had long realised that there was only one thing constantly on her mind, and that was her dead son. In her effort to soothe her grief she would “gad about” as Pappa put it, “gadding and gabbing”. On the days she baked bread she would go out in the morning early for skimmed milk and sometimes come back as much as two hours later. On such occasions, Pappa would ask her, “so, what are they having for lunch at the Bakses’, then’? Theirs was the last farm on the way to Rokycany, about a mile from our home. “You never go where they would have milk, only to the people who don’t have any. It’s just so you can do the rounds of the whole village. Come on, tell us who you were gossiping with now!” “Well I must say I even unburdened myself to old Ficná. She’s in a bad way as well.” Pappa told her crossly that she only sought out people who were in a bad way.

Mind you, things had truly come to a sorry pass with that Ficná. One day she sent for Pappa. She had a long-standing debt with him. Rejoicing at the prospect of being paid what he had been owed for so long, Pappa went to see her. Gravely ill, the old woman asked him to tot up how much she was owing, since she herself had no idea and she wanted to clear things up before her death. Pappa pulled out his book, added it all up and told her that it came to 45 guilders. “Yes, that’s it”, she said, “I thought that’s what it came to. Thank you, dear Bernát, for totting it up for me. Now that I know exactly, I can die more peacefully. I’ve got no money, so I can’t pay you, but I’ll need to know when the Almighty asks me up there in heavenly glory about my debts down here below.” And Pappa went home.

There is another dramatic event I would like to recall here. My parents believed that God saved our lives through a miracle, and they believed profoundly in the Guardian Angel.

It was the time when we were living in the distillery, the house behind the Jewish church, before we moved to the Forejts’. My parents noticed that the ceiling was beginning to sag somewhat, so that half of it bulged outlandishly. It was the part of the room where the children slept. Pappa was afraid for their safety and every evening Mamma had to climb up on a table and tap the ceiling to make sure it wasn’t going to fall. Once Pappa was in Prague and it must have been on his mind all the time because when he arrived home that night he went straight away to take a look at the children and the ceiling. He called Mamma and even though she herself was unconvinced she had to help him carry the beds with the sleeping children to the other side of the room. Pappa then sat down calmly to supper with Mamma, and just as he picked up his spoon there was a dreadful crash from the next room followed by a cloud of dust. More than half of the ceiling had collapsed onto the floor, rafters and all. The next morning they carried out several wheelbarrow loads of rubble and a number of rotten beams into the yard. It was God and His Guardian Angel who had saved the children. Always on that day Pappa and Mamma would pray and offer thanks to them both.

As I have already mentioned several times already, at the age of fifteen I had plenty of time to think about myself and what I would become. It seemed to me that I was worse off than any shepherd-boy taking his animals out to graze, looking after them and then bringing them home in the evening. To my mind he was a useful member of the community. But I had nothing to look after. Every morning and evening I would do some labouring for about two hours altogether, and then I would sit, a proper sloth on my lazy backside. I was not learning to do anything and had no proper skills, so I decided that I would learn to work in the shop and enjoy it, and thereby learn a decent trade.

My parents could see that I was miserable so Mamma took me to Radnice on market-day to see a particular shopkeeper and ask him to take me on as his apprentice. It was a wholesale store trading in colonial goods.

I impressed the wholesaler who said he would take me on as his apprentice for three years for a payment of one hundred guilders a year. Mamma was shocked by the sum asked and the apprenticeship came to naught. Empty-handed, we went home.

That very day I sat down and wrote to my brother Jindřich in Prague and I wrote the letter in German so he should know I spoke the language a bit.

I do not want to criticise my brother, but I think that on many occasions he ought to have treated me better, in a more brotherly way.

He sent me back the letter and had underlined almost every word, so full was it of mistakes. Had I written in Czech, it would have been a different story, of course. He wrote that he was surprised at my bad German. After all I had had some schooling. He also told me that he would not accept me in Prague until my German was perfect.

I immediately took out the German grammar and got down to work. A few weeks later I wrote him another letter and again he returned it to me, but by now there were just a few mistakes. Even so, he didn’t ask me to join him in Prague. It took many begging letters before he finally relented. I whooped, when at length he invited me. I had everything packed straight away and set off the very next day. Nobody came to meet me off the train. I therefore went to see his superior and my brother sent me off to a family where I was to lodge for 16 guilders a month. Then I went with another lad to have a look at Prague, the city I had longed to see for so many years.

We arrived at the Old Town Square and my guide told me: that’s the square.” And further on, “that’s the little square,” and a bit further still, “that’s Hus Avenue”. And he continued in the same vein, so that I would sooner have sent the lad home and walked on my own. And that is what I did on subsequent occasions. My brother did not take much notice of me.

I was only an artless country boy but I had a yearning for education. I went straight to the theatre on my first evening, and it did not matter to me a jot that it was an opera, which was still beyond my understanding: the Mastersingers of Nuremberg. I enjoyed it immensely since I had a profound respect for all art. However, the music failed to touch my heartstrings. I was worried about how I would get home if the house turned out to be locked. So I hurriedly left the theatre in the middle of the piece and raced off home. I was pleased to see the house-door still open.

That was my second night in Prague. On the third day I visited my brother’s place again. I thought I would get a job there but there was nothing for me and I went from pillar to post. The lads there stared at me.

On the fourth day, my brother took me to a hardware shop in Dlouhá Avenue. The moment I entered the door, the seventeen- year-old lad by the name of Sojka, whom I was coming to replace, said to me: “Go back to where you come from. I was happy to come here, but I’m happier to be leaving. You’ll live to regret it!”

And regret it I did. In the office my boss did not even look in my direction but just sent me off to the stockroom to help the porter known as the hausknecht. That fellow was my favourite there. There was something of the country boy about him. The two of us did the heaviest labouring work in the place. Our boss was never to be seen in the stockroom and my brother showed no interest in whether I was learning anything or not.

I kept a careful eye out to see when the proprietor went into his office. He was a small, wizened, balding man whose eyes would constantly assume a far-away expression as if his mind was not on what he was saying. He spoke haltingly, unsure of what he wanted to say or who he was talking to. The poor rich man must have been at his wits’ end. Many of the things for which his travelling salesman took orders we did not even keep in stock. But as they were ordered we had to rush all around Prague trying to buy them and then bring them back. And that was my job. The work was unpleasant and you don’t learn much cleaning paraffin barrels from morning to night.

There were fifteen to twenty each day at the lunch table, including some gentlemen who didn’t live on the premises but just came in for their meals. I had no time to wash, clean up and change before lunch, and I would sooner have eaten outside. Sometimes I stank of paraffin, on other occasions of chlorine, etc. I would also be a different colour every day. One day we were unloading chlorinated lime and I came to lunch all white. At other times we would take delivery of washing blue, which had to be stacked into five different kinds plus a substitute, and I would arrive a beautiful shade of blue. Then there were the times when I would come covered in green when we were filling barrels with oil. Consequently I was a real delight to sit at table with. It is amazing that my eating companions put up with me and even liked me, seeing that I used to arrive every day in a different state ‒ and never a nice one.

Our shop had a small staff. The proprietor and a young bookkeeper in the office, and the three of us in the stock room. It was as freezing in the stock room as it was outside. On the first floor we found a small room with a little stove full of straw. We brought it downstairs and used it to heat the place. I managed to burn many of my boots warming my frozen feet over our stove.

I had been engaged on probation without any wage and when, after five months there, I protested, I was given five guilders a month without demur. I wrote home to tell them to send me only fifteen guilders, instead of twenty, in future. I paid sixteen guilders for board and meals and the remaining four guilders went on linen and repairs to my boots and clothes. I found the flikšustr and the flikšnajdr, as the cobbler and tailor were known, in Golden Lane, but neither they, their house, their apartment, nor their furniture were of gold. It was in the Jewish quarter, called Jozefská. They were houses built in times of oppression, each of them a little citadel with low narrow doorways, narrow winding passages, a labyrinth admitting only one person at a time. Those mute walls could tell a tale of so much persecution, misfortune and suffering. Barring firearms, it would have only taken two to hold off an entire gang of pursuers in that maze of foul-smelling passages. One would proceed up a dingy staircase winding in all directions, then feel one’s way along in the dark to find the passageway, and shuffle along bent double across a wooden balcony with no railing, so rickety it could have collapsed at any moment. Then there were three dark stairs down before one felt the handle of the apartment of the unfortunate person who was obliged to live there.

I asked the cobbler why he did not light that dreadful and dangerous passage. “Well, young sir,” he replied, “it winds such a lot I’d need so many candles. I’ve come to know my way in the twelve years I’ve been here, and you’ll find you’re way with no trouble after you’ve been here four or five times, you’ll see.”

And all that was just five minutes away from a theatre where beautiful ladies with decolletés and top-hatted gentlemen gathered every day in bright lights and lavish opulence. It really is amazing that the tormented people in those catacombs put up with that filth and poverty for so long in such close proximity to the boundless wealth of the aristocracy and bourgeoisie. But even during my time in Prague, a lot of those outwardly picturesque lanes and alleys were demolished as part of so-called “slum-clearance” and hygienic housing rose in their place. Even so, what a difference there is between those apartment-houses they built in the seventies and the houses being built nowadays, such as by my son Rudolf, for instance. It strikes me so often that architecture and building are such commendable activities, as beneficial as the work of the doctor, and I am gratified that he chose such a profession, for his own satisfaction and for the pleasure, and yes, the happiness and progress of humanity. There are few fields of activity which offer scope for both ‒providing a livelihood and promoting human happiness ‒ as building beautiful and salubrious homes for all, including the poor.

My landlord, Mr Kanders, was already an old man and could no longer go out to work. His wife, on the other hand, a jolly, plump, unkempt woman about forty-five years old, was still hale and hearty. She used to cook lunch and supper for twenty people and still go out and cook in other homes on high days and holidays. She was the very model of a good hard-working woman who always stuck to one golden rule for herself and others ‒ there was always plenty of good food to eat.

Once or twice a month I would treat myself to the theatre. I had a favourite corner in the Gods where the seats cost a šesťák ‒ i. e. ten kreutzers. At the Stavovské [Estates’] Theatre we would go and see the doorkeeper who would let us in for five kreutzers, five minutes before curtain-up. We were not the theatre management’s best clients! The productions I loved most and remember best of all were The Bartered Bride, Don César, die Räuber, Faust, der Vogelhändler and ‒ don’t laugh, because it was lovely: The Miller and His Child.

On Sundays I would go walking in the Prague suburbs with a friend of mine named Beck who came from Spálené Poříčí. Once we went as far as Šárka, but it was a whole day’s outing, something we could seldom afford as we were very thrifty. Even so, we saw more than enough in and around Prague. We would often go and take a look how work was progressing on building the Villa Gräbe in Vršovice and laying out the big park on the hillside above it, in which navvies were building an artificial cave. Watching buildings going up was always my favourite pastime and I could stand watching for hours on end. It truly is a marvellous to see a house growing according to a precise plan, with all the labourers swarming around, each one of them knowing what he is to do next, to watch how the mason prepares the work for the carpenter, how he in turn gets things ready for the tiler. Then comes the joiner who makes way for the locksmith, the painter and the glazier ‒ and how well they all do their jobs. Time and again it struck me that I would do better for myself in that field than in trade. It was not to be, however, and now I must content myself with the modest portion and small success that I have achieved in life.

We were good friends, young Beck and I, enjoying as we did the same things. We shared our free time for over a year, until at last, for some reason I cannot recall, we fell out and separated. He and I left Prague for our homes. I heard later that he died of consumption.

My landlord’s daughter was to be married and I was invited to the wedding. I accepted the invitation because I liked Régy. There was to be a dance in the evening. I took a cab to the hall where the dance was to bring the wedding to a festive conclusion. However, fate decreed while I was in Prague that I should not go in for extravagances. As I nimbly jumped down from the cab my black trousers ripped open at the back. I went there none the less, but was unable to dance. I excused myself by saying I had a pain in the leg. Fate most likely saved me from an even greater disgrace, as I was no dancer. There were so many comely girls there and all I could do was sit and watch from a corner (on account of my trousers). I walked home.

One day, warehouseman Josef failed to turn up for work at the shop. The following Saturday the cashier told me to take Josef his week’s pay and ask him why he had not been at work. To my surprise those ordinary people turned out to have a clean and tidy apartment with carpets and curtains. His father worked as a packer in a goldsmith’s factory.

His mother thanked me for the money and asked me whether I would care to visit the patient. Josef lay in the neighbouring room. He was greatly pleased to have a visitor and offered me his hand. It was covered in smallpox. I stayed with him for a while and as I prepared to leave he offered me a glass of wine. Not wishing to offend him I drank a toast to his recovery. But I realised my mistake immediately.

On the third day after my visit I started to get a pain in the back, I lost my appetite and was seized with extreme weariness. They called the doctor who was unable to diagnose anything but said he would call back the next morning. When he arrived he said I had smallpox and would have to go to hospital. It was the last thing I wanted, but if I stayed at home everyone would go in fear of infection and I would have no one to look after me. I accepted his argument and agreed to go. When the doctor broke the news to my housekeeper I instantly found outside my bedroom door my boots freshly polished and my suit newly cleaned, and a cabman was waiting for me in front of the house. The landlord’s little boy, Mořicek, went along with me to in order to show me sympathy and get a chance to ride in a cab.

We arrived at Charles Square and I felt like a prisoner on his way to execution. The hospital’s dismal grey walls would have spoilt even the best of moods. A doctor tapped my chest and I was taken off to the infectious diseases department, which stood all alone in the hospital garden.

I asked to be placed in a ward with plenty of other patients so as not to be lonely. They led me to a large ward with eighteen beds and windows on three sides. The beds were all occupied except one, into which I settled myself. The patients all turned to look at me and it was not a pretty sight: all those reddish faces covered in pustules and with inflamed puffy eyes. I saw the way I would look on the morrow.

It was noon and a nurse came and placed a soup-plate on the shelf attached to the foot of each of the beds. A second nurse poured into each of the plates a ladleful of thickened soup in which swam a few grains of barley. I did not feel like lunch ‒ or supper, as it was the very same soup again. And it was the same the second and third days as well. I gave away my portions and to my amazement my neighbours found it extremely delicious, particularly those who were famished and already free of infection.

The patient in the next bed to mine lay in a high fever. He was a German. He had a mass of dark coloured pustules very close together. During the night he had a call of nature, and as the nurse was not about I brought him a bottle and held it for him. It was a shock for me to see his disfigured body. Scarcely had he laid back again when the priest came to confess him. But the patient was no longer coherent. The stout man in the cassock prayed alone standing about two metres away from the patient. Then he took out some cotton wool soaked in consecrated oil and gave him extreme unction without touching him.

It is heroism on the part of such priests, doctors and nurses to move around such contaminated wards every day.

When the priest left, the patient screamed out: “will Bier! will Bier!” several times. He then fell silent and died.

Vertrová, as the nurse was called, came and covered his face. Her movements and the way she touched him betrayed how accustomed she was to the task. She left him there lying next to me until morning. The doctor came and declared him dead, after which two men arrived and carried away the corpse.

For the first time I saw an unknown light go out and somewhere people wept, and then stopped weeping, and life rushed on.

That was my first night in hospital. The patients chatted as before, a nurse brought fresh linen for the bed and wiped all the notes off the blackboard with a wet sponge, so that nothing remained of the man at all, not even a number. The bed lay ready for its next unknown occupant.

The neighbour to my left was a sturdy young man. As soon as the doctor appeared he would ask him for something to eat, saying that he was starving. He received visits from his fiancée, a strapping country girl. On one occasion she brought him a parcel wrapped in a shawl and he hid it beneath his blanket. The whole time she was there he did nothing but eat. That night he was sick and he groaned dreadfully. When the doctor came to see him during his rounds the following morning, the former asked him straight away what he had been eating. “What have you been eating, I want to know!” the doctor shouted at him. And again, nothing, came the reply. The doctor called the nurse and together they went through his cupboard and his bed and it was not long before they came upon the freshly baked buns wrapped up in their cloth. “Where did you come by these?!” “Marjánka brought me them.” “You could kill yourself that way”, said the doctor and he and the nurse got their portion. He cancelled the improved rations he was due to receive and made him fast. The patient put up with this for a few days and a week later he took his leave of us, and went home cured.

The landlord’s little boy, Mořicek, brought me a letter from my parents. Among other things, my father asked me to buy him two rolls of brown fustian. When replying to that letter I permitted myself to lie to my father for the first time. I wrote that I had been unable to obtain the quality we were used to, and that it would take a few days longer before he received it. I could not bring myself to tell my parents that I was in hospital. They remained blissfully ignorant.

I was in the hospital for only a few weeks: three, if I recall rightly. When the time came for me to say goodbye to my fellow patients, it was a sad moment for me. I had come to know everyone’s cares and woes, as well as peace and quiet in Death’s antechamber, where the doctors and nurses fight for the lives of their unfortunates. I took leave of that enormous atmosphere of calm, where one was free of all cares. The hospital seemed to me a very special island in a tempestuous sea of agitation, discord, rancour and selfishness. That quiet life within its walls was so remote from the world, the nights were so peaceful and I constantly dreamt of the rustling leaves of the silver birches in our cemetery at Osek. I had lived in close proximity to eternal peace and quiet. I walked home through the almost unfamiliar streets in a state of deep melancholy.

The noisy welcome I receive woke me out of my reverie. I stayed home for a further three days and then went back to the shop.

One day, Pappa arrived in Prague and came to visit us at the shop. He went into the office and introduced himself to the proprietor and asked how well he was satisfied with me. The latter replied that my father was mistaken, that he had no one of that name in his shop. “But I have letters from my son to say that that he has been with you ever since he came to Prague, and he is no liar.” The proprietor lost his temper and said that he had told him once already that no such person was employed in the shop. At that point the cashier permitted himself to point out: “He’s been here for about seven months already.” Now it was Pappa’s turn to be angry. “One can see how much concern you have to see that he learns something in your firm, if you’ve yet to discover he works here. You must have an obliging conscience to treat a youngster that way!”

Little did father know that he was doing the man an injustice. Only later did I discover why he was so frequently non compos mentis.

It was the fault of his marriage. He had a beautiful young wife. She married him for his money. He set her up in a fine seven-room apartment in Spálená Street. They never went out together and in the end they even stopped speaking to each other. Her ladyship loved to eat sweets and got very fat. She was not nice to look at. That was why her husband’s life was ruined. So what’s the use of wealth. Isn’t it put so beautifully in “das Lied von der Glocke”?
“Drum prüfe wer sich ewig bindet,
“Ob sich das Herz zum Herzen findet.
“Der Wahn ist kurz,
“Die Reu’ ist lang.”

One day, not long after my father’s visit, our warehouseman decided to take a holiday. I was to stand in for him. But I was not fated to enjoy the honour for long.

He initiated me into all his duties, but forgot about the gas meter. That evening I turned out all the gas lights in the warehouse, but did not realise that the gas had to be turned off at the gas meter, and so one lamp remained burning in the yard. The night-watchman noticed it and went to inform our boss. The boss flew into a rage and the next day summoned me to his office. In all innocence I ran cheerfully to see him, the only thing that crossed my mind being that, after the heart-to-heart talk with my father he might be going to give me a raise or assign me to a better job. Not quite! He gave me such a ticking off because of the gas meter that one thing led to another and before long we were going hammer and tongs. I gave in my notice and it was accepted. I was paid two guilders for two weeks’ work and I left straight away. I recalled the lad Sojka. I went on my way with a light heart.

Even so, I was burdened by the thought of where in that great big city of Prague I would find another job. I would have been ashamed to return like that to my parents in Osek. I was lucky. I found a job at a large drapers’ shop in Melantrichová Street. I received eight guilders a month. Again the wages were small but the work was clean and my boss was approachable at least. On the ground floor was a large shop. On the first floor were several rooms filled with rolls of cloth. Soon I received a rise of two guilders and I wrote home happily to tell my parents to send only ten guilders from then on.

When, some time later, I received a further rise of two guilders, I could afford to attend evening classes at the commercial school. I coped extremely well there in all subjects except handwriting, which was taught by Professor Fišl. He told me that he would manage to teach me to write well if I had more than one lesson a week, and he took me as his private pupil at two guilders a month. He used to sit and fret with me every evening until ten o’clock. We were good friends and he enjoyed chatting with me. But he had some strange punishments. If I did something badly he would rub my face with his unshaven cheek and his stubble scraped and pricked me terribly.

That was in 1872 when the big stores and banks were springing up all over Prague like mushrooms in a forest. Such major movements of capital tend to happen after wars and it happened to be the period just after the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71.

People lost their heads and bought shares left and right. And why not, seeing that what they bought one day would be worth double the next? Our professor also played the stock exchange. One evening I arrived for my lesson and he looked rather miserable. He stroked my face and then that tall, elderly man started to cry.

He was crying over money. It was the occasion of that notorious stock-exchange crash and he had lost all that he had saved up for his retirement, as well as all the money he had made so easily from stocks and shares. But I still could not understand how one could cry over money.

On that occasion my brother Jindřich lost the twelve thousand guilders he had with the Prague Banking Company. My father never speculated and used to warn me against easy money. He was happy when on one occasion at the Plzeň Annual Fair my boss praised me as hard working and conscientious and when he said that he could trust me with anything and that I had the makings of a decent man. That day my thrifty father took me to a pub and stood me a Pilsner.

I received several rises of three or four guilders without asking and I no longer needed anything from home. But it grieved me to read letters from home about all the work they had there. Betty wrote that for the annual fete she had to roast fourteen batches of coffee and was weighing out spices till late at night. I could not help them but was sure that I would find a great situation and then set up in business on my own. Then my family would never have to work again. Those bundles of Pappa’s lay as heavily on my mind as if I had to carry them myself.

I had such a nasty premonition that I was coming to the end of my life in Prague, the city I loved so well and where never a day went by without my learning something new. The only thing I spent money on was the theatre. How I loved theatre and that love has stayed with me all my life. Then there were books. I read entirely at random without any guidance. My favourite was Jan Amos Komenský (Comenius) but also the German classics of which Schiller was my favourite because he had such a common touch and because the freedom of the spirit was his chief concern. At that time I learnt many poems off by heart. I also loved Karolina Pichlerová and Marlitt who was very much in fashion at that time. How I enjoyed Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and not just because he wrote Nathan. But isn’t that a splendid passage where Nathan talks about the three rings? How he talks straight to the heart. How is it possible that people just refuse to understand it, that they are able to kill each other because they happen to be Jews, Christians or Muslims? And sometimes I saw plays by Shakespeare. Most of all I enjoyed Hamlet and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I still know off by heart entire pages from Chamisso’s “Der Mann ohne Schatten” and Goethe’s “Werthers Leiden”.

All in all I didn’t much like trade, but perhaps that was only childishness. I was always appalled at the way merchants would swear blind that the goods they happened to be selling so dear had cost them as much as what they were selling them for. The buyer naturally wouldn’t believe a word of it and would think that the merchant was wanting to cheat him, and so would try and cajole him. It all seemed to me just artfulness and worthless deception.

The sale of medical knowledge also did not appeal to me and I could not understand how a doctor could accept payment for saving the life of a fellow human being, or for easing or curing pain. I always held the opinion that the State should take care of the poor. There was no health service in those days and poor people used to die without medical assistance. Shamefully, all they had were homemade remedies and the advice of so-called “piss-pedlars”. And even they demanded payment. There are people these days, it is true, who say that the advice given by those old women and charlatans was often superior and that nothing can beat a homemade remedy. I cannot say one way or the other, but I do believe that science is science and I also respect well-qualified doctors ‒ although of course it is better to be without them and their bills, which are as unwelcome as the ones for shoe-leather.

As a young man from eighteen to twenty I had a wonderful life in Prague. During the day I would get on with my work; my boss was always pleased with me and was not stinting with praise. And come seven o’clock in the evening I had time for my private life. I would not have swapped places with a millionaire and all his worries about his wealth. To have time to yourself, even if it is only a couple of hours a day, to have your own time in which to sit undisturbed, with wisdom ancient and modern in the books in front of you, what greater happiness is there on earth?

At the Estates’ Theatre in those days they used to put on a play by Ferdinand Raimund entitled “Der Verschwender”.

In it there was a nice little song full of wisdom. On account of it I went to see the show several times.

I often whistle or sing it still. So listen, those of you who haven’t heard it, and those who know it, sing along with me. And once too often, than not often enough.
“Da streiten sich die Leut’ herum
“Wohl um den Wert des Glücks.
“Der eine heisst den andern dumm,
“Am End weiss keiner nix.
“Da ist der allerärmste Mann,
“Dem andern viel zu reich.
“Das Schicksal setzt den Hobel an
“Und hobelt Alles gleich.
“Die Jugend will stets mit Gewalt
“In allem glücklich sein.
“Doch wird man erst in wenig alt,
“So fügt man sich schon drein.
“Oft zankt der Meister mich, o Graus!
“Das bringt mich nicht in Wut.
“Dann klopf ich meinen Hobel aus,
“Und denk, Du brummst mir gut.
“Und kommt der Tod einst mit Verlaub
“Und zupft mich, Brüderl, kumm,
“Da stell ich mich ein wenig taub
“Und seh mich gar nicht um.
“Doch sagt er, lieber Valentin,
“Mach keine Umständ, geh,
“Dann klopf ich meinen Hobel aus
“Und sag der Welt: Ade!”

Isn’t that a nice and wise philosophy?

But when things are going your way there often comes a turn for the worse.

My boss promised that he would take me along with him to the annual Plzeň fair the following year. I was pleased at the news and most of all because I would be able to serve my father. He enjoyed making his purchases from us. Just imagine: I the representative of the wholesaler being able to sell to him as the retailer!

I looked forward to spending whole evenings with my father. How we would laugh when he would start to bargain and I would reply: “Out of the question, dear Sir, es kost mich selbst so viel!”

Out of the entire eleven months I had been in Prague I had only been home once ‒ for three days during the holidays ‒ and now I rejoiced at the thought of Pappa’s jokes and stories, as well as the little rhymes he used to sing to me when I was small.

One of them was so pretty that I must record it here. Even at the risk you won’t understand it. It goes like this:
“Cipe, cipe, hídile,
“Hidili gejt in vacois
“Trinkte sajdile bírois.
“Hot ka geld, cí becůl,
“Vaft es davirt cůr týrois.”

You didn’t understand it? But that doesn’t matter. To me, it was something amazingly beautiful. Don’t take it amiss, my serving you up such old chestnuts here. Some of what I write here is also for my private pleasure and amusement.

Whenever I burrow in the past in this way I feel I am a little lad again in spite of my sixty-five years and it just won’t sink into my grizzled old head that I’m as old as I am. The pictures from childhood are so alive, their colours so bright still, and one succeeds another like in the kaleidoscope our physics teacher showed us.

Wasn’t it only last year or the year before last that my pal and I were herding goats and baking potatoes on an autumn field of stubble? Wasn’t it only last year or the year before last that I stared into the bonfire until the smoke brought tears to my eyes? Wasn’t it only last year or the year before last, that I was walking at my Pappa’s side, imploring him to “tell me another jolly story”? Wasn’t it only a quite a short time ago that I was running to school happy in the knowledge that I was now at the Modern School? Wasn’t it only the day before yesterday that I was taking a barrel of paraffin on a handcart from Dlouhá Avenue in Prague to the Franz-Josef Station? Or that I was getting married and Mamma was saying to me: “Think it over carefully, Šimon my boy: if you are going for a soldier, pray once; if you are going to sea, pray twice; if you are getting married, pray thrice!” However long, life just flies away, away, and snail-like we leave behind the most delicate of trails that soon disappears.

 So why plan so far ahead? Live and make others happy! -

 In November 1872 I received a telegram to say that my brother and I should come home as our father was ill. I took fright, presuming that something serious had happened. People did not send telegrams as a matter of course in those days, such as for a birthday. The very arrival of a telegram was an omen of misfortune.

I immediately ran to Jindřich’s to tell him to travel with me. But he told me he couldn’t as he had something urgent to sort out. I left that very evening and my brother followed on the next morning.

I arrive at Rokycany around midnight and immediately ran home to Osek from there.

They had the light on at home as I could see from a distance and I was filled with apprehension.

I opened the door and heard my father wheezing. He was unable to speak.

I approached the bed and took his cold hands in mine and felt him press my two hands several times.

It was the last thing he did to express his feelings for me.

The following day my brother arrived and Pappa was no longer able to move. He died in the early evening.

It was a sad time for us.

Away went all our hopes of better times when Pappa would be able to find rest from his heavy toil and with them all my future plans of one day taking my parents to Prague and creating something better for them in the twilight of their lives.

We performed the ritual ceremonies. We dressed Pappa in his white “kytl” and “tales” in which he used to pray so beautifully.

Only two months before his death he had ceremonially prayed for the great Passover, the days of reconciliation when Jews fast the whole day. He was still hale and cheerful and had all his strength.

It was ever his wish, and he prayed to God for it, that he should not suffer a lengthy illness ‒ his father had lain all swollen for sixteen weeks ‒ and thus the poor man’s wish was granted. God heard his prayer. He died of a stroke.

On Monday he had gone on business to Rokycany and on his way home had bought half a bull’s head at the butcher’s. It was his favourite food. While he was in the shop his hands began to shake, he came over bad and dizzy, his head started to spin and his purse fell out of his hands. The butcher called for a trap and got my father into it with the coachman’s help. When he got home Pappa was scarcely able to stagger to the bed from which he was never more to rise. The funeral took place attended by people from many villages, the whole neighbourhood turned out to accompany him on his last journey. We returned home bereft and our tiny lodging seemed all too big for us.

Pappa had gone and our home and our lives suddenly loomed empty.

After Pappa’s funeral we observed ritual mourning for seven days. We sat on low stools. Then came less rigorous mourning for thirty days during which it was forbidden to cut one’s hair or shave and we had an enormous job trying to console Mamma.

For a long time she was unable to grasp how that loyal marriage bond that had lasted all of forty years and was uniquely happy among thousands could have been suddenly torn asunder.