Simon Wels - At the ‘Bernats’

III. 1803 ‒ 1872

My father Bernard was born in 1803. His father was born in Osek too and tilled the land for a living. That work cannot have been very profitable, however, because he started to trade in skins in addition to farming.

They had a tiny lodging ‒ a room with a single barred window. My granddad’s first childhood memory was not historical, such as some incident out of the Napoleonic Wars or something equally grand. Not at all. Instead it was how his grandmother once baked two large batches of buns on the eve of a feast day and put them on the table to cool. Before they got back from church the buns had gone.

Some nimble thief had tied a fork to a stick and thereby lifted them all out through the bars. “And he didn’t leave a single one!” So that was his first memory.

His parents had six children: three sons and three daughters. They had too little space and too few blankets so they would sleep in coarse linen sacks and save on sheets and covers. and they used to sleep in linen backs in order to save their top and bottom eiderdowns. They would climb out of their bags in the morning and their beds would be made. Around 1800 all poor families did likewise.

Life was harsh, excessively so, even though in those days the same sun, the same moon and the same stars shone on rich and poor alike. And the same God looked after them all.

The youngest of the children, Bernard, was a good learner and at the age of fourteen was taken on as an instructor (bóchr) in the house of some shopkeeper at Švihov.

His eldest brother died at school. An infuriated schoolmaster had treated him to such a smack that the boy was brought home from school dead.

My father’s patron was pleased with his teaching but this happiness was short-lived. One night they woke father to say that the house was on fire. He got such a fright that he quickly wrapped his things in a scarf and ran away. And he didn’t stop until he was outside the town. By morning the cottage had burned down and my father returned. His master had lost everything in the fire and was reduced to poverty. He fired my father for having saved his own property and not his master’s.

Left without a job, he went around the local villages buying rags, old iron and other valuable things and so became a trader.

Soon their father died and the lad was now obliged to take care of his mother and his sisters. His brother became a peasant farmer.

That was in 1815. I have all these facts from my father who often heard them spoken about at home and kept them in his memory.

My grandfather’s name was Josef. As soon as the little Josef was strong enough to carry it, he would receive a bundle of fabrics from the shopkeeper every Monday and he would peddle them until Friday. He would return the unsold wares with the money he had taken and would be paid a few groats for his efforts. There was an unwritten ‒ one might even say ‘moral’ ‒ agreement among those pedlars that each of them had a certain number of villages in which the others would not set foot. These villages were virtually inheritable, though not in law. It was a gentleman’s agreement and one that was observed more strictly than any official regulation.

Young Bernard needed little on his travels. He would cook himself some potatoes in his own pot when he came to a village, or he would buy milk from the farmer’s wife for a groat. He would be given a bigger cup of cream and bread than he could eat. He would cut just enough bread to soak up the milk. Apart from fruit that was his daily diet and he looked well on it.

But he had a second misfortune with fire. A fire broke out in their house one night and his mother was terribly frightened. She grabbed the bábovka cake she had just baked and in her fear and agitation ran with it all the way to Kamýk. There was not much she could have lost in that fire, but some things did get burned nevertheless. Their greatest worry was their mother who had disappeared. They looked for her all over the village without finding her. She did not return till morning with the salvaged bábovka in her hand. That misfortune with fire occurred in 1815.

My mother was born in 1807 at Poddarová, a village near Kožlany. Her father had married a girl from Prague called Rebeka in 1795.

Her father Naftali lived from 1763 to 1834, her mother Rebeka from 1770 to 1832. [Their children were Bernard, my father and Pesl. Bernard was born in 1803 and died in 1872, his wife, ] my mother Josefina, was born in 1807 and died in 1893.

So in 1795 Naftali brought his Prague girl to Poddarová where there were iron-foundries. She used to be afraid of those black people, as she had never seen such dirty workmen in her life. Their marriage seems to have been a good one. They had one son, four daughters and a cottage with a big garden, which they shared with his brother David. They had some goats, a cow and several fields, a fair property in fact ‒ wealth almost.

Once their only son was grazing the goats by the river. His father was on his way home from the fields. A boy ran up to him and told him: “Jíra pushed your little boy off the bank into the river. He’s been drowned for an hour already!” Grandfather dropped his scythe, ran to the place indicated and his only son lay there caught up in the roots of a willow. My poor grandfather climbed down in to the river, took the dead child across his shoulder and carried him home. I can well imagine his lamentations. A few years later that lad Jíra was conscripted but he didn’t return home. Some of his comrades stabbed him to death during an inn brawl.

In her fifteenth year, my mother found a situation as a maid with a lady in Drážov. The lady was very pleased with her maid. Mamma’s father fell ill and sent his brother to Drážov to bring the daughter home. The brother came to the lady’s and believed her when she said the maid happened to be out and she would send her home to her father as soon as she came in. The fact was she was afraid that the girl would not return but would remain with the patient and she would lose a good servant. She kept the news from her. Without knowing anything, my mother had some sort of premonition and went around gloomily until soon she dreamt that her father had died. She actually leaped out of bed in horror and in the morning she told her mistress that she had had a terrible dream that her father was dead. She told her she would leave all her things there and run home, even though it was many miles away, and that she would soon come back. At this the lady admitted her offence and told how the uncle had been there and she had hidden the news from her. This frightened the girl and she knew straight away that things were bad with her father. And she reproached the lady that because of her she might never see her father again. And she no longer saw him alive. He was already buried. Those were sad times for her when they told her how her father had waited and yearned for her. She had been unable to take her leave of him or receive his final blessing. My uncle told her that when he was near death her father had walked to Radnice to see Count Caspar Sternberg and ask his kind permission for her to marry. He no longer had a son as he had drowned in the river and he wanted to bequeath his family permit (reshoyin) to his eldest daughter Josefa. In those days, whoever held that document was a familiant and could officially get married. And the children would receive the father’s name. Only one member of the family had the right to a family permit. This was a measure to prevent the Jews from multiplying. The other children in the family got married illicitly, the offspring were illegitimate and bore the names of their mothers. That is why there were so many names that ended in “eles”, such as Karpele(s), Jeitele(s), Tewele(s), Vedele(s), etc. The surname was the mother’s name with the addition of the letter “s” that indicated the genitive case. In other words, so-and-so’s son.

As I said, they used to marry illicitly, and it made no real difference and it was not end of the world. However, the conscientious ones set much store by the family permit lest their family name be lost. The squire issued the permits and his officials used to turn a pretty penny from trading in them.

The first time my father Bernard saw my mother Josefa was at the annual fair in Radnice. He found her so attractive he made a point of attending all the Radnice fairs from then on. Sometimes who would only see her from a distance, and that was enough to make him happy. On the occasions he did not catch sight of her at all it was a wasted fair as far as my father was concerned.

He got a friend to tell her that he would like to speak to her and so they became acquainted. They used to meet quite frequently in Radnice until they finally agreed to get married. Her relatives did not want to consent to the match, however, because Pappa was so poor, and they found every kind of fault with him. But she did not believe them and did not want to give him up.

Her uncle even went so far as to find her a rich trader ‒ Ludvík Levý from Radnice ‒ who traded in oil and oleum which he would take by cart to Vienna and bring goods back from there to Bohemia, such as candles, soap, polishes and grease. Mamma held out for a long time before finally yielding to the pressure of family, uncles and aunts and married Mr Levý and went to live in Radnice.

She could not forget Pappa, her Bernard, however, nor he Mamma, his Josefina. They were both very unhappy.

Later my father made the acquaintance of a decent young girl in Osek, Bety Freundová and thought he would marry her.

But before the engagement he went to see his first love, Josefina, now Mrs Levá. It struck him to the heart, he used to say, and he made up his mind that he could marry no other, now that his beloved Josefina could no longer be his. He went to see Bety that very day, pulled from her finger the gold ring he had previously given her, and hurled it over the wall into the Manor Garden that bordered Pappa’s homestead. They apparently searched for it in the grass but the ring was lost.

And Pappa used to attend every annual fair in Radnice and was happy and sad whenever he saw Mrs Levá.

He noticed that she too sought him out from a distance although they never spoke together, it being against their conscience. It was noticed by his chums from among the Osek and Volduchy lads. One day Josefina was standing by a shop choosing some scarves. When the lads spied her, they grabbed Pappa and made a circle round them to push them closer together. Pappa went red, Mamma blushed and looked for a way to escape the mischievous rabble, which it took her some moments to do. It was a secret, unhappy love.

Mr Levý was a prudent and extremely kind man and treated Mamma most gently. After all, he knew when he was courting her that it was not he who was in her heart, but Bernard, and that even now she was still secretly in love with him and her thoughts were only of him.

They lived together in harmony, if not love, for two years.

One day Mr Levý was taking a cartful of sulphuric acid from Břasy to Vienna. One demijohn started to tip dangerously on the cart and Mr Levý climbed up to put it straight. But the bottle broke and it spilled onto his arm. Both his arm and shoulder were burned. He made it to Vienna in terrible pain. He went straight to the hospital where he lay for some time. There they wanted to amputate his arm at the shoulder but he refused to give his consent. He told them that he would never make a living without the arm and his wife would not like him any more. He would sooner die. He returned home gravely ill.

Mamma gave him every possible care but he did not get better. He secretly sent for the mayor and a witness in order to make out his will. He had no children and so bequeathed all his property to his wife.

Before he died he said: “Now you can marry your Bernard. He is a kind man and I wish you both happiness.” And for the first time she discovered that he knew she was unable to forget her first love. A few days later she became a widow.

Immediately there appeared brothers-in-law, sisters, aunts, brothers and all their relations and they made an enormous song- and-dance that the whole estate belonged to them. But the mayor took the wind out of their sails with the last will and testament and they made themselves scarce when they saw that his last will was legal.

The old Jewish law demands that the deceased’s brother should marry his widow so that she should have a good provider for the rest of her days. The law was made in that way so that the widow should not be left destitute as the other laws of the time did not give her sufficient protection. And the brother of the deceased accordingly appeared. Mamma rejected her brother- in-law and would-be groom, but he was not easily put off and asked for her hand according to the old Jewish law. She gave him most of her inheritance so that he would leave her alone. But that was not enough, he demanded the family permit as well. He said she could not marry, that she was not in her right mind as could be seen from the enormous sum of money she had given him! He bribed the landowner’s steward and all his officials who promised him that he would get the family permit.

Mamma went to petition the Count, who owned the town-hall. He sent her a message telling her not to worry, that she would suffer no injustice.

When her period of mourning was over, Pappa went to visit her. He wrote her a letter and went as far as Tymákov to post it so that nobody in Osek should know. Mamma used to enjoy telling us about it in later years. The letter was headed: “Highly esteemed soul of my heart” and for good measure: “Hochgeerte Seele meines Herzens!”

You will appreciate that his wishes had been granted. After all she had never stopped thinking of him and now their mutual happiness was to be fulfilled. Pappa paid her frequent visits and was also presented to the Count’s steward as her fiancé for whom she required the family permit. He and the other officials, part from the actuary and the town clerk, kept telling them that such a weighty matter could not be settled all at once, that the “other party” (i. e. the brother-in-law) was paying bribes and that they too should open their purses.

So both parties stumped up and the honourable officials delayed the matter and milked the two fat cows at one and the same time. The lovers waited patiently for three years for the permit to be drawn up, written out, filled out, appended to, etc.

They saw one another often and each of them went to meet the other half-way at Březina Park, so that Pappa would not have to run the fourteen kilometres for his rendezvous with Mamma.

They used to meet by a big old beech and every time my mother told me about it her cheeks would grow red. Pappa, who was generally there before her, saw her arriving and looking anxiously in the direction of the tree. At that he mischievously hid behind the stout trunk. She sat down alone on a bench and looked along the path to see if the object of her yearning was coming. In her agitation, she jumped up and then sat down again. In the end she made up her mind to meet him on the way, at which Pappa whistled a few familiar notes from a song. This took her aback and she ran to the other side of the tree and the loving pair were together. But Mamma pretended to chide Pappa: “That’s all you ever do, play tricks and practical jokes, and this is the man I love and want to marry. I just wonder whether you’ll manage to provide for me with all your pranks!” Pappa replied: “Not only for you, but also for those to come” and Mamma blushed yet again. They stayed there till evening; Pappa escorted her home and then walked the fourteen kilometres back to Osek. On their next date Mamma went straight to the other side of the tree to look, and though he was hiding from her, she soon had him.

And that is the way it was to stay in their marriage. She was the serious, canny, hardworking one who had no time for “nonsense”, while he was jolly, witty and good-natured in the extreme. He was a good man through and through, with his long, slow stride, his lambskin hat on his head and a ready smile for everyone.

After many applications (“suits” they were called) had been made to the Radnice authorities, in three years the local officials managed to squeeze all my mother’s wealth out of her. And then she found out that her opponent, her brother-in-law Levý, had already received the longed-for permit. That was a blow! She rushed to the town-hall but was unable to discover the truth of the matter. She was utterly confused; one told her he had it and the next that he hadn’t and they sent her from pillar to post. At that she tried something that was unheard of in those days. It was a desperate and bold exploit but she had nothing to lose any more. After all she had lost all her property and also her family permit so she wouldn’t be able to marry the fiancé she had been waiting three long years for. She was truly at a low ebb. And all she had had to put up with from those bureaucrats! Whenever she entered his office, the old steward would always paw her and compliment his “feuriges Mädchen”, and once that old fellow actually forced her on to his knee and started kissing her and calling her his “beautiful little Jewess”. But Mamma was both strong and nimble and that was when the steward’s two-fold hatred for Mamma really began.

So Mamma set off on foot to Prague to see Count Caspar Sternberg. It was a distance of 135 kilometres. In Prague she learnt that His Excellency had gone for spa treatment at Karlovy Vary. And without thinking twice she set off again, once more on foot, of course, and almost penniless, in search of the Count in Karlovy Vary. This was a further 130 kilometres. She arrived there footsore and with her shoes ruined. At last she was in the city where the all-powerful Count was abiding.

Karlovy Vary was not as big a city as it is now and soon she discovered the whereabouts of the Count who was renowned throughout the land. It was the very same Count Caspar Sternberg whom Johann Wolfgang Goethe so esteemed, and as you will see, he was a true aristocrat, not only in name but also in nature.

When she was admitted to him he immediately recognised her and asked what she wanted. At that all the strength went out of her and he led her to a couch. All the way she begged him earnestly for mercy and justice. He raised her up and asked what had happened to her. She told him all about the difficulties she had encountered while waiting three years for the family permit which His Excellency had promised her and how she had now learnt that her brother-in-law Levý had been given it. She told him how she had walked from Radnice to Prague and from there to Karlovy Vary, and that she would never get married if she could not have the fiancé she had loved so much for more than eight years already. After that it was apparently like in a fairy story. The Count stroked her hair and said “I know nothing about the matter, but just you go home and don’t worry”. He asked her about the lucky fiancé who had such a loyal and devoted bride. Mamma started to relate all sorts of things about him, so that she became inflamed and her eyes glistened. The Count apparently laughed heartily and said: “Run off home then, my dear, and have no more worries. Report to my steward. Before you arrive he’ll have received a message to issue you the permit.” At this a burden fell from her shoulders and with tears in her eyes she took her leave. She was terribly exhausted, but even so she set off on her return journey. But first of all she gave herself a treat. She washed her sore feet in the river into which the hot spring runs and “believe it or not my dears” she would always say at this point of her story “that hot spring helped me a great deal and my feet didn’t feel sore any more. I immediately sped off in the direction of Radnice.” It was another eighty kilometres but she was there in two days. And dusty as she was she went straight to the town hall. There she met the messenger that the Count had sent. The Count’s steward was extremely short with her: “You’re a proper little Jewess you are; off she goes as far as Karlovy Vary to see his lordship.” “I went there on my rightful business,” Mamma retorted. To this the steward said: “Look what your brother-in-law left me, if I would help him get it!” He lifted the table-cloth and under it lay a thousand-Thaler note ‒ a huge sum in those days, a fortune! “And will you make up the loss when I have to return him this money?” Mamma replied: “I don’t have so much any more, over these past three years you have already taken everything I have and I had to put up with so much humiliation here, but exhausted as I am I will go straight back to His Excellency and ask him whether this is not too high a tax to pay for that permit.”

And then the steward sprang up from his chair, bristling with rage, pulled the permit out of the cabinet and roared: “You’d even try and spoil it for me. Here, take your wretched reshoyin and never show your face here again!” Mamma replied: “You could have given me it three years ago, your worship, and saved yourself this ill-feeling. I could already be married and even kept my fortune.”

She ran home with the permit, but her travels were not over yet. She was unable to stay at home all alone with the priceless document. The one for whom she had travelled a large portion of Bohemia in the previous week still had no inkling of her great good fortune. She had to let him know at all costs. But how was she to get to Osek now it was evening and dark already? But she knew she would not get a wink of sleep that night otherwise and thrusting the paper into her bosom she ran those fourteen kilometres to her Bernard in Osek. The road goes straight there. Pappa was astonished that someone should come knocking at his window so late at night. But he was even more astonished when he opened up and Mamma fell into his arms. So much she had to tell him, that in next to no time the rays of dawn were waking them. Pappa was apparently lost for words the whole of the next day and did not let the priceless paper out of his hand.

They wanted the nuptials the next Sunday morning, but the priest asked them to wait till the afternoon, saying that he had an important mass that morning and not many people would come to church if there was such a wedding on.

As they happily and enthusiastically made their way to the sacred ceremony, they encountered Farmer Hoblík who stopped them and exclaimed: “Bernat, Bernat! Go home, if you still can! Don’t do it, you fool, you jackass, you ninny!” But overjoyed Bernat just squeezed Josefina’s hand and after the service conducted his dear wife to his little home. The marriage ceremony took place in the open air and was apparently marvellous. It took my parents a long time to understand ‒ in fact they never really did ‒ how the news could have spread so quickly throughout the neighbourhood in the space of just three days. Nobody stayed at home. They all came to share the joy of our happy young couple. (And they were certainly happier than Crown Prince Rudolf when he later accompanied the Belgian Princess Stephanie to the castle in Vienna, in spite of the prayers being said in all the churches and all the bells of the Austro-Hungarian empire being rung for him).

Pappa lived with his elderly mother in a little wooden house, a log-cabin with a tiny window and my Mamma moved in with him, bringing her eiderdowns and plain furniture. And that was the beginning of their happy nook that was to remain undisturbed by any great storms for the next forty years, until my father’s death in 1872.

IV. 1872 ‒ 1883

Having written about my parents’ lives, I take up the story again where I left off after Pappa’s death.

We observed mourning for seven days and then re-opened the shop. My brother helped me calculate how much our father had left, and as there was so little, he waived his inheritance and returned to Prague.

I wanted to go with him but Mamma would not let me. She sobbed and sighed, saying that with only my sister there she would be left alone without a man to protect her. She told me I was not to leave her, and she entreated me so much that I relented.

I took Pappa’s book and went round collecting his debts in Osek, Vitinka, Litohlavy, Klabava and Březina. In that way I found a means of picking up from where he had left off. Some paid up, others disputed the debt. The latter I immediately rubbed out in the book. The rest said they would pay some time or not. I tended to believe the “not” rather than the other, since the poverty in the district was as great as it had been ten years earlier when I used to do the rounds with Pappa.

So as not to be just going around chivvying people, I would take a bundle of cloth and if someone asked for some, would sell it to them.

I was nineteen and a half.

Whenever I hoisted that pack of Pappa’s onto my shoulders, I had the feeling he was looking at me.

I would bow my head and bend my back to take the straps, wishing I could just stop thinking. Because the dumb animal in a yoke is better off than a man. I could see no way out anywhere and meekly followed in Father’s footsteps.

Vain dreams of youth!

I encountered a gendarme in Litohlavy who asked if I had a pedlar’s licence, and as I had none, marched me off to the mayor. The gendarme looked in the pack, counted out the money I had brought with me from home and ordered me to leave the cloth at the mayor’s as he would be reporting me to the court. The mayor asked him to forbear, saying I was not a house-to-house merchant and would not be doing any peddling. The gendarme said he would overlook it this once on account of the mayor’s intercession.

That was the last time I took the pack with me. Thus my career as a pedlar came to an inglorious end.

I still lived in hopes of leaving that home and returning to Prague, where a better future might germinate for me, but Mother would not hear a word of it. When I wanted to talk to her seriously about it she burst into tears. I sought my brother’s advice, but he rounded on me, saying how could I possibly give it up just like that, now that I was in possession of the good business Pappa left and was working for myself. And I was too old to work for someone else. It was too late to start learning again ‒ and so many other reasons that I simply did as I was told.

One evening, when I was weighing out spices into penny packages, I chanced on a page torn out of some psalter or old Christian hymnal. I was incapable of leaving any bit of writing unread, which was why others always worked better than I. But that verse on that scrap of paper was of value to me. It read as follows:
“Oh blessed is the man who moved by love for Thee
“And, servant at all times, a single goal does see
“Knowing alway whose eye does rest on him,
“So that Thy holy will be done.
“Where all thy tribe, Thy servants,
“In every place, in meekness and love acting,
“In cheerful spirit bent in labour holy
“Great its honour from endeavour lowly.”

The second page bore another fine verse, but I shall write that one out when the time comes.

So I went on living like that from day to day, carrying out my ever increasing duties.

It was an exercise in meekness.

We kept house together well and in perfect concord, my sister Betty and I. We were never angry with each other, as sometimes happens with brothers and sisters. We lived in proverbial harmony. Cousin Heřman started to come more and more often to borrow things. Once when we were unable to oblige, he lost his temper: “Those two only need to look at each other and the one knows what the other is thinking. You’re one heart and one soul, the pair of you!”

In 1875, I went to do my military service along with the other conscripts, but they did not take me into the army because I have been partially sighted in one eye since birth and have a squint. It was just as well. I don’t know what my mother and sister would done without me. We had no maid and Betty had to do the housework all on her own and help me in the shop too. The doctor told me that they would be able to cure my eye in Prague. It only required a minor operation. But for want of time I put it off for so long that it was too late and no longer worth the trouble.

Mamma never got out of the habit of chatting with the neighbours and would go off visiting her friends returning only to ask how business had been and how much we had made, and lost interest rather in our daily cares.

My father’s name was Bernard, but people had dubbed him “Bernat” according to the local custom. Mamma was known as “Bernatka” and where we lived “u Bernatůch”, i. e. “the Bernats’“. As a result, not many of the local people knew my name and I was simply another Bernat. I erected a signboard with my name on it and they merely expressed surprise at this new fashion.

That year I received a rare visit. Our sister Roza arrived from America. It was a great event for us, and the village as well; in those days one did not cross the sea to make visits. Those who were in America were virtually lost to the homeland. Roza had aged a great deal over those sixteen years, but was still beautiful nonetheless. She spent a whole year with us. Sometimes, though not very often, travellers would call in who spoke schoolboy English after a fashion. She would speak to them in that language and I really enjoyed the way it just flowed from her lips, and the beautiful way she must have been expressing herself. That language, so totally unknown to me, pleased me immensely and I was very proud of my sister.

But I noticed how time hung heavy on her hands in our house. She was unaccustomed to our slow ways. She had been discontented before her departure for America, so she must have been even more so now, having lived in nothing but big cities overseas. We were unable to give her what she required and it made things particularly difficult for Betty. Roza ignored domestic duties and the household was simply not made to cope with a noble guest. Poor Betty now had a lot of work, much more than before. At least Roza still had a slight interest in sewing and she started to make herself an additional trousseau from the best linen in the shop and took a trunkful of it with her when she left. When our brother Josef died that time in the war she had received the entire legacy, which included a substantial diary. He had started to keep it from the moment he left home, and he had made a thorough and detailed job of it. I was sorry she had not brought it with her. I would certainly have looked after it with great respect and it would not have been lost. He had apparently described taking leave of us, the long journey, a storm at sea, being welcomed by our aunt and uncle at the port, his disappointment at the conditions in which his relations lived and his thoughts on their way of life, the enthusiasm with which he had gone to war for the emancipation of slaves, battles with the Southerners, the victory and rejoicings. Oh, what a waste, what an incalculable waste! Scarcely more than a child still and we lost him. And the world lost him too.

And I discovered the actual reason why he allowed himself to be recruited. The uncle, Father’s brother, had been a different sort altogether from Pappa. He was fond of his whiskey, and life in their home was disordered. They had no property and it did not occur to them to find him some schooling, even though it would have cost next to nothing there. A childless and sometimes drunken man, he had no clue about how to treat children. The children arrived and he wanted to make money out of them so that he could be idle. Roza left them quite soon and Josef managed to obtain some books, though studying was difficult in such surroundings. The uncle could not abide it and ordered him very sternly to go and find work in a shop somewhere and bring money home. But the boy had a mind only for study and in order to obtain some money volunteered for the army. It seems that the uncle made an attempt to buy him out of the army, but by then the young idealist was fired by the slogans and enthusiasm and he was past helping: he had to fight for “the cause”. I have already related how he died an officer from pneumonia on the homeward march.

After a year’s stay with us, Roza returned to America. We gave her her dowry in advance and she was not in the best of moods when she departed. We never saw her again. She wrote from time to time, once to tell us she had married a certain Mr Dyk and that she was happy. Later she sent us a picture of two pretty little boys and later still, a huge American photograph of them when they were bigger lads. She also sent us each a present ‒ twenty-five dollars for each of the children of her siblings: seventy-five dollars in all. Her last letter was in 1908. We wrote back, but received no reply. Rudolf wrote a further letter to her sons in English. It was returned unopened, not known at that address.

Betty received visits from a number of suitors, but we did not like any of them. And then it was the turn of Ludvík Roubíček from Neveklov near Benešov, a man about a year her senior. He was a decent man. He paid us several visits and became acquainted with my sister and I made the trip to see his home and shop. Conditions there were much the same as in our own home, with an old mother also, but not one sister but two, both of them decent and kind girls. Julie later left for America and married an uncle of hers there. The younger sister, Anežka was very pretty. She had beautiful eyes and had a fine figure. She was charming even when engaged in housework.

I have always been a thorough person, and particularly when it came to such an important matter as my sister’s future, I felt bound to “have my eyes everywhere” as they say. I therefore made several visits to Neveklov. But I have to admit I enjoyed going there. Not on account of the brother-in-law-to-be, but because of the kind and comely Anežka.

But Mr Roubíček’s treatment of my sister gradually pleased me less and less. His visits had started to be less frequent of late and his letters were naive, brief and terse. That led us to conclude that his love was rather less than steadfast. None of his letters pleased either my sister or myself. We had been accustomed to more tender treatment from our parents. But my sister wanted to marry and have a home of her own, and she suffered. The letters were neither tactful nor cordial and I advised my sister to end the acquaintance. She replied that she had been intending to suggest the same thing to me.
“And what about you and Anežka?” she asked. And I replied that I had gone off the idea of marriage like her, and that she and I were quite well off together.

So my sister proposed that we call it off. I bundled up all the letters from Ludvík and Anežka and sent them back by registered post with a brief letter explaining that I found the thought of a life without love intolerable and it would therefore be better for us to break off our relationship. I also asked for our letters to be returned.

For the first hour, my sister was cheerful, which indeed surprised me, but I found it very touching and was downhearted. The next day my sister went about miserably. She gave no reply when I asked her the cause. I started to have a slight inkling about the mystery of the female heart.

That is female logic for you ‒ and the consequence. And now I demonstrated just how far I had got in my practice of meekness. I sat down at the table and wrote a letter to Neveklov. I wrote asking them to forgive what I had written earlier in a fit of pique, and requested them to burn it.

It was early November and the weather was foul. The roads were muddy. so I walked up to my knees in muck. The night was pitch black and a mixture of sleet and rain whipped into my face. I set out with the letter around two in the morning so that it should reach them a few hours earlier. I arrived at the bridge at Roudná where, so rumour had it, travellers were set upon and robbed at night in the valley. I called out: “If there’s a robber under the bridge, come out, here’s a victim for you!” So vexed was I at the thought of what Anežka must be thinking about my letter and my character, which I had always prided myself on.

No robber came, and I took the letter to the station. When the Prague train arrived from Plzeň, I tossed the letter into the boy on the mail van and relaxed with a sigh of relief.

I met not a soul on the way there or back and no one learned of my nocturnal walk.

And it turned out just as I had predicted. Handsome Mr Ludvík arrived three days later and behaved with modesty and more than usual courtesy. A week later he came back once more, this time in the company of our brother Jindřich, and we celebrated the engagement of Betty vs. Ludvík. I still recall how Mother bought two geese for that celebration. She served up two lots of giblets for supper and Jindřich told her off for serving such a thing up to guests. And it was our favourite dish.

The next day we had the roast geese. Betty was happy. She had got what she wanted ‒ her fine, upstanding, moustachioed Ludvík and then I set off for Neveklov and I too became engaged. Two more happy people.

On 16th January 1879, all four of us were married in Prague.

So not much changed at home. In place of my sister Betty I now had the company of my beloved wife. Scarcely had I opened the shop the next morning than a host of inquisitive folk immediately rushed in. Everyone wanted to take a look at the young bride. She came out wreathed with smiles and served the customers as if she had always been there. So many people came that we did not have time to lunch properly, and they all loved her.

My Anežka was so thoughtful and fulfilled my every wish. Gentle, quiet, unpretentious and unassuming throughout her life, she was just what I had always wished for. We never quarrelled once and we lived an exemplary married life.

Two years later we lived in hopes of joyful news. She kept fairly fit during her pregnancy and bustled about the shop. Just before the birth she had a good meal and when towards dawn she felt the expected signs, I went to fetch Granny Bejčková, the midwife, who then stayed with us and kept us calm, especially me. I was much more of a coward than my dear, sweet little wife.

And then the joyful moment arrived around eight o’clock on the evening of 28th April 1882, bringing us a pretty little boy.

Granny Bejčková bathed him, swaddled him, put him down to sleep and sat down, saying she would stay overnight to keep an eye on the mother and baby son. I sent her home. “I shall take care myself of my nearest and dearest!” I took her place in the chair and observed the calm breathing of the baby and its mother. They slept beautifully the whole night long.

The next morning, after they had bathed the little chap, I weighed him on the shop scales, which I otherwise used for totally different things. He weighed 3 kilos 15 decagrams. He received the name “Rudolf” after the Crown Prince.

Our little son did not leave the house for six whole weeks, so anxious was his mother about him. At the end of that period, she dressed him up, with a red scarf round his head and red-and- white swaddling bands, and the two of them set off proudly on a walk. Everyone stopped her: “Do show me your little boy, Missus, God forbid I should charm him with my staring. Oh, but he’s lovely, the image of his Daddy” and his young mother quivered with pleasure as she recounted to me what the different people had said to her, and I was proud of my family. I found a dry nurse in Klabava, an attentive fourteen-year-old girl by the name of Marjána Kočárkovic. I remember coming home from somewhere and their coming to meet me. From afar I could already see that little nurse carrying white swaddles and peeping out of them a pretty little head. I carried that little bundle home myself.

We had a deep well at the side of our house, but as it was just by the dunghill the water was unusable. I suggested to my neighbour Balín that we should join together to dig a well for the two families. I proposed that we jointly buy the wood for cladding the sides and that I should pay him ten guilders in addition if he would let the well stand on his side of the yard. He liked the idea and thought he would manage to complete the well for the ten guilders. Without consulting me, he got Bejček, his son-in-law to start the work. Noticing that the clumsy fellow had only brought a hoe and a broken spade with him to do the job, I withdrew from the joint project and told my neighbour to do it on his own account. He scoffed at me, telling me he was forty years older and I would be only too glad to take water from them. A few days later, the well was already a metre and a half deep and it needed more people to cart away the earth, as well as a windlass to pull out the stones, until in the end my neighbour came to me and said we would need miners to finish the excavation. They got hold of four colliers and when they demanded wages, I allowed myself to be persuaded and rejoined the project. Only at a depth of six metres was there enough water from the earth to make a little trickle. We would have to wait for rain, they told us, and then we would have water. But they had no reply to the question what would happen in a year of drought. I climbed down into the well, a stupid thing to do. One should never get involved in a job that one has not supervised from the very start. The walls had not been supported with planks and great lump of heather-covered turf broke away from the edge and fell on me. But luckily nothing serious happened and I was only grazed when they pulled me out. We dug down another two metres and a powerful spring appeared. The following day it started to rain and it rained for a week. The clay walls of the well became soaked and started to fall in lumps into the rain-water. Together with Balín’s nephew Blahovec, I pulled up several hundred buckets of water but there was still as much water as ever in the well. At the Balins’ they were all praying for the rain to stop, but it rained for three weeks more. The well lost its rectangular shape and at the bottom it was like a subterranean lake. “It’s not easy to advise you now,” I said to the terrified Balín. “Why didn’t you heed what was told you and obtain the proper tools?” I showed him how the edge of the pit was getting dangerously close to the corner of his house and he was sore afraid. He begged my forgiveness for not having listened to me, saying he was old and silly and pleaded for me to buy some timber to clad the well. I did so and the miners came round again and shoved down two wagon loads of timber and boards. When they had supported the walls with boards and secured them with joists, the latter gave out a sound like a taught fiddle-string when you struck them. Everything was cracking under the pressure of the dislodged earth on the planks and joists. And all the time, that unending rain from the heavens. The colliers were too scared to climb down into it, and they could not anyway, what with all the mud everywhere, the swollen planks ‒ a perilous situation, indeed! I was sorry for my neighbour, he spent many sleepless nights and was constantly measuring how near the crack was getting to his house.

As luck would have it, the son of the mine foreman at Březina came home on a visit. Mr Frydrych came at my request to take a look at the ill-starred well and expressed astonishment at the quantity of timber. He went for old Kroupa the collier and the two of them scurried about like squirrels up and down the planks, straightening one here, getting rid of another there, moving one here, strengthening another there, and My God, what a joy it is to watch real craftsmen at work! The next day, Blažek the bricklayer came and walled the well in. The water was good.

Throughout that building work I was happy as a sandboy. I worked with the labourers and shared in their exertions. But it was not appreciated at home ‒ I would come in dirtier than the labourers.

It is a marvellous thing to have good, healthy water available by day and night next to your house. The well took a lot of work and because of the neighbour’s stupidity it cost a lot of money, but I would always pass by it with a sense of satisfaction. Where will all this fastidiousness end, I wonder? My son, who was born in the same year as the well, has cold and hot water in his apartment, for drinking and bathing! Right inside the apartment! The more the better, I say. Let there be no end to good achievements.

But let us leave the well and go home to our little son. I did not buy him a cradle. There had been babies thrown out of cradles enough times in the past with that awful rocking. The child is not sleepy but gets shaken about on the rough floorboards until the poor little thing is driven out of its wits and falls asleep. But I was no match for Grandma. She heard that the Brejníks at the mill had a cradle up in their loft and one day I came in and to my horror discovered Grandma sitting there rocking Rudolf with gusto. As if he was aware of my views on that infernal machine, he was crying and yelling with indignation. But Grandma just sat there rocking the cradle. She was singing in a very high-pitched voice, drawing out the high notes and reaching an incredible pitch. She was singing age-old Czech and German songs ‒ the latter in her own dialect, though ‒ and since I expect those songs have died out by now, like those confounded cradles, I would like to note them here. She sang (and I think she only dragged that cradle home in order to sing to her grandson, the same way she sang to us when we were small):
“Sleep, my golden, bonny child,
“sleep my little angel little lad.”

Or:
“Little grey dove, where have you been,
“Little grey dove, oh, where have you been,
“That your ash-grey wings
“Your ash-grey wings
“Are all bedewed, ah, all bedewed.”

But one song she enjoyed most of all and she sang it with enormous feeling:
“Morgen früh müss aufsteh’n
“Rauchfangkehrer in da Still,
“Wer ein faules Mädchen hat,
“Sie schlafet alle Morgen, Morgen
“Bis der helle Tag aufscheint!”

I only hope that the cradle mania did not do any lasting damage to little Rudolf’s brain as it was tossed back and forth. Grandma’s pleasure lasted for a full eight weeks, then one night I took the cradle away, claiming he did not need it any more, as he would soon be running around. But it took him a long time to get used to sleeping without being rocked.

As winter drew on, he started to get some tiny scabs on his cheeks. It is a sort of dampness of the skin. But even they did not mar his appearance, while they continued to be few in number. But they started to spread all over his face and on the doctor’s advice we rubbed ant oil into it. The poor little chap suffered a great deal. One night, when he did not stop crying, I took him into my own bed. I was worried stiff at seeing his little legs swell. And then straight to Rokycany for the doctor that night. We arrived there around dawn and there turned out to be pustules and the same scabs on the swollen legs too. We were pleased that it was nothing more serious and almost welcomed it. The rash disappeared from the baby’s body, but the blisters on his face were like a mask, even covering his little eyes. The doctor told us it must not heal and prescribed Malaga from the pharmacy, because he felt the child was too weak. The baby refused to drink it and his Mamma said that it was nothing but sloe water and I took it back to the doctor. He, however, assured me that it really was Malaga and I returned home with it once more. We sweetened it properly and Rudolf took a liking to it.

When he was ten months old he fell seriously ill. The doctor diagnosed chest catarrh, which was hard to cure in a kitchen where, among other things, nappies were hung up to dry. Doctor Kozler advised us to rent a first floor room somewhere. This we did and he and his Mamma spent a whole month there together. The little chap got well again. We brought him home where he was much happier. The young dry nurse would take him out for walks every day in the fresh spring air.

When he was one year old he fell ill once more. He started to cough endlessly, the scabs suddenly dried up and started to fall off, so that by the next day his skin was completely clear of them. But he started to have difficulty breathing. I ran for Doctor Kozler and the two of us arrived post-haste in a carriage. The doctor tapped the little chap’s chest and diagnosed pneumonia. It is the worst thing in the world to see a baby suffer. His condition worsened from day to day. The doctor, who made daily trips to us, was unable to cure him with his sweet medicines. One woman recommended us to cover his little chest with barley porridge. I told this to the doctor, but I put my foot in it badly: the doctor lost his temper and I had a job to calm him down. And little Rudolf lay there without moving, totally apathetic. The doctor said the eighth day would be critical and would tell us how the illness would end.

On the seventh day I sat holding the little fellow on a pillow. He lay there quietly, scarcely breathing and I expect he could not even see. All he managed to do was swallow with difficulty the medicine we put in his mouth. Mrs Pousková, a farmer’s wife and a woman of experience came to look at the baby. I happened to be sitting with him on a stool. She made the sign of the cross three times over him and said: “Poor child, such a pretty baby to die. He will be gone before tomorrow.” I said to her: “What put that idea in your head? He can still recover. But she replied: “I have to tell you and prepare you for it. I have seen many children fall ill and die. Four of my own died. It’s very sad.” I placed him in his cot and he did not stir in the least but slept with his eyes open.

In the morning I ran to the pharmacy in Rokycany once more and it took an age for them to make up the medicine. I ran back home and went straight into the patient: “Look what I’ve brought you from the pharmacy, little lad,” and I showed him the red label on the bottle. He opened his eyes and the red colour must have taken his fancy because he stroked it. Now my spirits were really given a lift! He sensibly let himself be given the medicine and swallowed it properly. From that moment he started to get better and the battle was won. Three days later he was completely recovered.

Two months later the local children were being vaccinated but Doctor Hořínek said the boy was too weak for his age and told us to give him cod-liver oil. I brought it home but the boy could not be made to take it. I was not even surprised as it tasted disgusting, that liquid. He would not even take it with sugar, so we just had to open his mouth and pour him in the dose. He could see that resistance was useless so he took it, though with disgust.

He could talk and sing by the end of his first year and was cleverer than the other children, even those older than himself. He did not run about though, and we did not make him. Whenever we sat him outside the shop on an eiderdown, a horde of children would rush up to him and he would amuse them. I think it was unusual and must therefore record it, that he sang well and in tune, and could remember all the words. And he was only just fifteen months old. His Mamma would boast to everyone about the way he sang, so every little while he would have to start again:
“The buzzard soars
“He’s no children at all.
“We have some
“But we’ll sell none!”

or:
“I’ve some horses, jet-black horses, they belong to me
“When I give them oats to eat, then they daintily do leap
“I’ve some horses, jet-black horses, they belong to me.”

At the end of September 1883, I went off to church in Rokycany. It was a feast day. Anežka stayed home. I returned at noon and she told me she felt a strange chill inside. She did not want to lie down and I was obliged to carry her off to bed by force. I remember how we expressed surprise that she could catch a cold in September. The doctor diagnosed rheumatism of the joints. I have no idea whether he gave the proper treatment but her condition kept on deteriorating.

Our little son would sit on the ground and play or crawl about the floor. At eighteen months, he still could not walk yet. When Mamma wanted water, he would shout into the shop: “Pappa, Mamma dinkie.” I would run in and pick him up and we would go for fresh water. He would carry the glass and put it to her lips, often spilling it over her. Mamma happily put up with anything from her little son. When she was a little better she would sing with him his favourite nursery rhyme: “Ho, ho, the cows all go, carrying milk they walk in a row. And our heifer, where is she? Way down by the cemetery”, etc.

I could hear the monotonous humming from where I was in the shop, and where it ends with the words: “So gentlemen have a drink but don’t get drunk and drink a toast to me” the little one would always crow with pleasure, his Mamma would burst out laughing and I would think to myself that Anežka would pull through after all.

I used to wait on her day and night, but in the end we were obliged to hire a nurse, a genial elderly woman. But the patient only wanted me around her. Eventually she lost control of her entire body. She was unhappy beyond measure and consolation. The next day the doctor called, shook his head and said to me on the way out: “Your wife has very bad sight. She might make a recovery, but she will remain blind.” That came as a shock. It was on account of her weeping, he said, and something to do with the brain. I asked him to bring in another doctor and the next day there was a joint consultation. They gave me no hope. The third doctor advised me to notify the relatives by telegram.

That evening she recovered slightly and asked me to come and sit at her bedside, very close to her, so that I should hear her last will. She was concerned that she would be unable to bring up her little boy: “I leave him in your care. He’ll be in the best of hands. He might become a weakling, take good care of him. I have little money to leave. The little chap is delicate and not made for hard work like yours. Let him study.” She whispered something else but it was inaudible. My brother Jindřich and her brother Ludvík arrived. She spoke no more. She stroked both my hands once more and then breathed her last. It was two o’clock in the morning on the fifth of November 1883.

We returned from the funeral and I sat down in the empty living room at Rudolf’s side and he asked me where Mamma was. He was surprised to find the bed empty. I was desolate. The little fellow climbed up on my knee, and started to play with my watch-chain, while he sang:
“It’s raining, it’s pouring,
“Where shall we take the horses?
“We’ll take them to the fields,
“My darling little boy …”

Thus we were both orphaned. We were choked with loneliness.

The November days succeeded one another, lifeless and dismal, and I came to regard my little son as the legacy of my dear departed wife.