Simon Wels - At the ‘Bernats’

VII. 1887

1887

There was nothing splendid or spectacular about our honeymoon but it brought us complete happiness. It convinced us that we understood each other and that our happiness would last.

Our rest after the rigours of the ceremony and before our return to the daily routine and duties lasted three days in all. That time was not looked on as one of spiritual and physical relaxation as it is nowadays. Only the wealthy went away on journeys for their honeymoons, or for their summer holidays even. With the exception of Sunday afternoon, everyone, even schoolchildren from the earliest age, had their noses kept to the grindstone. It was not sensible. For someone with higher than average expectations it was twice as hard. Education was not looked upon in the way it is now, a working day of twelve or ten hours was nothing unusual or exceptional. It was the rule. Socialism was beneficial in putting an end to that misery and suffering. However, the farmer’s work differs little now from the toil and drudgery of those days. Let us hope things improve here too.

Since we were dependent on farm work, our daily task was similar and we could not afford anything different. So only three days. But they were marvellous

We took the train from Plzeň to Mariánské Lázně.

For a small consideration, the guard reserved us a separate compartment. I made a blind for the window and we were alone at last. Lawfully before God and people, alone in a cosy little corner. It was a pity the journey did not last longer.

It did not matter to me that Žanynka’s coiffure, which had entailed such artistry and effort, came to grief during the journey. But I had to help her recreate that splendour. Before we knew it we were at our destination. We boarded an omnibus which took us to the Hotel “New York”.

We wanted a large and comfortable room but our wish was impossible to grant in the spa season and we contented ourselves with a small room with a window onto the courtyard. After a wash and brush-up we went into town. It was the loveliest and most welcoming little town we had even seen. Lush greenery criss-crossed by narrow footpaths, white benches in arcades of shrubs and flowering exotic trees, wonderful flowerbeds with thousands of roses, and I in that paradise hand in hand with my beloved talkative wife. It was more than I could ever have aspired to for myself, and I felt that I did not deserve it and that God was too kind to me. Nature and people, sun and flowers all smiled on us and were here for ourselves alone. Happiness all too unmerited. We visited the parks, the castle spring (Schloßbrunn), the churches and the magnificent spa building, passing on our way woefully corpulent ladies and gentlemen who no doubt were less enchanted with Mariánské Lázně than we were, even though they were there for a whole month. After supper at Rübezahl’s, we wended our way, splendidly weary, through a wood of tall trees, back to the hotel to sleep.

We rose early next morning, lured by the sun and a blue sky, and went to listen to the spa band. A lot of people had already begun their promenade around the precious spring, and we joined the queue to taste the health-giving water, but we did not like it.

I bought my bride a beautiful red rose and pinned it to her breast myself. She was as beautiful as that rose and she took sincere pleasure from everything. We walked along a quiet woodland footpath and arrived at the Café “National” where we drank a cup of excellent coffee, the best we had ever tasted and partook of a spa breakfast of eggs, open sandwiches, slices of roast meat, and goodness knows what else. We looked down and saw the beautiful town lying there like a white fairy-tale in golden sunlight.

We dawdled to the station like two happy children to catch the train to Františkovy Lázně.

But we missed the train. We were not even surprised, so happy we both were. So it was back to town again, this time to the hotel “Egerländer”. We had no regrets! we had the whole day to ourselves once more. That hotel “Egerländer” is a magnificent wooden building in a grove atop a hill. It has a huge veranda, a motto over the door in old German style, and very distinctive furnishings inside. There are two replicas of old-German farmhouse rooms, with life-sized models of farmers and their wives in traditional dress, with all the utensils and implements. Everything is there, even a dish of potato dumplings on the table. And there is a magnificent old-fashioned stove. Everything emanates old-world calm and comfort.

We should create something on similar lines, an old-Czech cottage like there was at the Jubilee Exhibition in Prague. Unfortunately that one was taken apart afterwards and the various fixtures found themselves back in museums once more. Storing things like that does not appeal to me, it is like stuffing things into a high-class storeroom and waiting like one entranced for an admirer to come. And one very seldom feels like going to a museum, even if one has the time.

In the twilight we went on to visit the church, the synagogue and the theatre, but nothing caught our imagination as much as those splendid, well-kept woods. With heavy heart we took our leave of that beautiful vale and the town. There can be few places as lovely as that in the world and we were proud that this gem of Nature was in Bohemia.

The next day we travelled to Františkovy Lázně, without missing the train this time. We had two hours to wait in Cheb for a connection. We went to have a look at the town. The Annual Fair was just taking place on the main square. We saw old-fashioned, mediaeval houses and the old town hall, where so much recalled the days of Wallenstein, including the room where that imperial general was assassinated, and a statue of Joseph II. All in all we came away very well informed. I was pleased that I had read Schiller’s “Der Dreissigjährige Krieg” beforehand.

Františkovy Lázně is a pleasant little town lying in a landscape of brown moorland. Our tour of the spa was soon over; it consists entirely of little lanes, the “Cursalon”, the Kaiserbad, the mud baths, churches and the Russian church in course of construction. So we went shopping for presents for the ones at home. I bought two ashtrays, which Rudolf was later to admire greatly. On one was painted in decorative script: “Frau, ärgere deinen Mann nicht”, and on the other, “Mann, ärgere deine Frau nicht, die Cur kostet viel Geld!” We listened to some spa music again and early in the evening we journeyed onwards to Karlovy Vary.

The compartment we entered was already occupied by a man of about fifty in the company of a very young woman, of about twenty dressed in an elegant travelling costume ‒ without question, another couple on their honeymoon. They were sitting very close to each other, but were far apart. They each tried to converse with the other but the conversation faltered. The man diligently tried again and again, but the lady was obviously bored. Probably a man and wife with conflicting personalities, a marriage blessed by a priest, but not by God. It was obvious from a mile off that they were mismatched. Good humour is infectious, but so is tension.

I noticed that my bride was looking a bit glum and I asked ‒ first myself and then her ‒ what was the matter. And how did my darling reply? With a hackneyed phrase, no more nor less: “One ought not always tell what is on one’s mind. Thoughts are free.”

I was totally unprepared for such a dose of cold water from my beloved wife. In my view everyone had the right to know the other’s every thought. I loved that woman with every ounce of my being, I had tied my destiny to hers, I had given myself heart and soul, and now, right at the very beginning of our life together, black clouds like that were already beginning to appear. And suddenly the enormity of my task flashed upon my awareness, but I had no wish to settle accounts with the idealist within me. I had always found material life abhorrent and now I was faced with a twofold task. But I did not give in, as I was in love. I came to the conclusion that the person at my side was still a child, whom I would have to bring up, that I would have to control any rashness on my part and clean the gold of all impurities. Was this an evil wedge driven into our budding happiness?

I started to have misgivings about whether I would be up to the task I had set myself ‒ of making a real wife of my wife.

We were silent as the train pulled into the station. It was unbearably sultry and the air was full of electricity that had to be released as soon as possible ‒ just as my pain had to be released eventually. We alighted quickly and left behind us that ill-fated carriage with its silent couple and boarded the nearest omnibus. It carried us to the “Drei Fasanen” hotel where once more we were allocated a bad room with a single tiny window, which would not even open very wide. We refreshed ourselves with cold water and we went into town when it was already dusk. We had dinner and hurried back to our hotel room just as a storm started to rumble. I went to the window and watched the black clouds approach from the Dreikreuzberg and the flashes of lightning criss-cross the sky.

A half an hour later the storm had abated and the thunder could only be heard faintly in the distance. The air was immediately different ‒ clean and fragrant. And it was easy to breathe. While Žanynka sat writing I stood by the open window watching the clouds roll like enraged mythological giants from and thought about eternal God, about my God.

I had long settled accounts with the religion of the Old and New Testaments, but not with piety, and I am a believer to this day. Our Comenius said: “To do good to others is our task and may it be so!” With a sense of bitterness I recalled the teachings of both churches which equally lacked the right sort of solace. I wished fervently and prayed that I should find the right solution in moments of oppression such as now. And I profoundly hoped that I would find it through gentleness.

Next morning we did not wake up until seven o’clock. The sun was peering through the open window, white clouds were sailing across the horizon and the hum and clatter of the waking town reached our ears. We looked out of the window and could make out the spa clients already out on their morning promenade. We got ourselves ready and went out. The air was almost spring- like and full of bird song. We both felt blessedly free and easy again with another fine day ahead of us.

We went round a beautiful baroque church and visited the Sprudl colonnade. This is a very imposing structure entirely of glass and iron, a veritable miracle of architecture. But what was that work of human hands compared to the natural miracle inside the building? From a fountain about five metres across there springs an enormous jet of curative mineral water at a temperature of seventy-two degrees Celsius. It shoots up into an open glass dome from whence the steam escapes. In the adjacent hall, also glazed, the spa visitors promenade to the sound of music. Here we spent a good half-hour sitting on a bench and we would have willingly spent longer observing that natural wonder. I explained to Žanynka about the Earth’s fiery core and the various layers of minerals under the earth which the water passed through, taking in the curative properties of the minerals and healing the poor sufferers on the surface. And it provides a good living not only for the doctors and hoteliers, but for the town as a whole. It was the climax of everything we saw on our journey and we were sure nothing would ever cloud the memory of that view.

We crossed the little bridge to the Markplatz where I bought Žanynka from a Polish Jew for twenty-five kreutzers a bone pen-holder with a view of Karlovy Vary, more out of a desire to help the poor man turn a penny than anything else. Then we paid a visit to the “Alte Wiese”, where we admired the beautiful window- displays, and afterwards breakfasted at the Pupp Café on that excellent fragrant coffee. Then we visited the Mühlbrunn Colonnade, the Schlossbrunn and the Felsenquelle, as well as the Neubad and the magnificent Kaiserbad. At noon we went to the Pupp Restaurant again for lunch, out of gratitude for the morning’s first class coffee. But it was not cheap; the two lunches, which were excellent of course, cost two guilders, eighty kreutzers. After lunch we took a walk through a beautiful wood to go and see the Hirschensprung. Although well-tended, the paths are quite steep, so I left Žanynka sitting on a bench (she felt weary either because of the ample lunch, the noonday glare or some other reason) and I sped upwards on my own to see how much further we had to go. And lo and behold, beyond a turn in the path a cliff came into view topped by a bronze chamois! I retraced my steps and found Žanynka dozing on the bench. I sat down beside her and observed this beautiful creature. The trees rustled dreamily in that sylvan stillness, splashes of sunshine danced on the moss, a velvety butterfly flew by, a golden beetle crawled past, the birds started to twitter and I was overcome with such a moment of quiet piety and thanksgiving. I prayed fervently and wholeheartedly that it should be my lot to walk side by side and hand in hand through life with this person whom I loved above all else, regardless of our destination, whether known or unknown. I prayed fervently in that forest temple. Žanynka opened her eyes, thinking she had been asleep for heaven knows how long. I led her up the path and from the platform at the Hirschensprung, Karlovy Vary was revealed to us in all its beauty, amidst splendid wooded hills.

The town itself, set in the valley, afforded an unforgettably picturesque view. We could see people as small as ants toiling down in the valley, scurrying about, all of them burdened no doubt with their own cares, all of them carrying their destinies on their backs like heavy packs stuffed with their own private pains, so that they were all their own walking tragedies, and in that foolish moment of sentimentality some foolish words escaped my lips: “Jump and that would be an end to it all!” Žanynka shivered slightly, gazed into my eyes and in that secluded place she fell into my arms and we were perfectly happy like two little children.

We had sated ourselves with the view and time was pressing so we took our leave of that monument to Charles the Fourth. Down below we boarded a coach for a further tour, visiting a beautiful synagogue and a Russian church with gilded onion domes, and then a fine gallop past the old-world “Posthof” Café to the beautiful Kaiserpark and back. Once more we had a princely lunch at Pupp’s and drove to Pirkenhamr in the afternoon. This is a porcelain works, about an hour’s drive from town. We were welcomed by an elderly gentleman who guided us all over factory, showing us everything and explaining it to us. We saw the white kaolin in enormous vats in which the clay is pressed and cleaned. It is then mixed with powdered quartz and sand to make a material which the seated potters turn into the finest crockery with extremely skilful decorations. Then the articles go to the drying kiln and are then painted by artists on the first floor. That was what fascinated us most and we could hardly tear ourselves away from those painters. The kilns are also interesting. You look through tiny windows to see the crockery stacked in piles and rows in that tremendous heat. There is a small shop-cum-display-room known as the Mustersaal where the finished products are exhibited, every piece a marvel and miracle of technical art.

We bought some trifles, thanked our affable guide and returned to town by coach. Tea at Pupp’s where the spa orchestra said farewell to us by playing “ach, ich hab’ sie ja nur auf die Schulter geküsst und sie gab mir einen Schlag ins Gesicht”, then: “Komm herab, was die Nachtigall sagt” and other lovely songs, but also some old chestnuts like the one about Count von Luxemburg who “hat alles Geld verputzt, putzt, putzt” (which is not a song to play in that dear town), but all the songs were lovely and Žanynka sang along to the music in a fine, gentle voice.

I was at a loss to think where she could have learned them and she greatly impressed me. And whenever she sang them at home in Osek afterwards as we sat and relaxed, we would be transported in spirit to Pupp’s to be lulled by the spa orchestra.

A final farewell walk through the “Alte Wiese” as far as the “Mühlbrunn”. We wished that we might be able to visit this blessed settlement once more soon, not as patients, but as gourmet tourists. And that was the end of our honeymoon.

During the return journey, Žanynka fell asleep and by misfortune woke up just as we were passing through the station of Ulice-Plesnice. She looked out the window and glimpsed her Rakolusy in the distance. When the train did not stop, “she had an attack of home-sickness” and started to weep bitterly. I consoled her as best I could, saying that the pain of separation had to be vented somehow, that no upheaval in one’s life was abrupt, it was merely a continuation of one’s earlier actions and habits, that she was twelve years younger than me and so it would be best if she forgot her worries and accepted my quiet guidance, that in the end she would come to know me as I already knew her, that love and

fidelity, and so on and so on, but to no avail, she sobbed bitterly in my arms until she fell asleep again. For me the whole scene spoke to me of her best qualities, her loyalty to the people and household that had been her home, and I was pleased and felt a sense of satisfaction. But it also made me realise what a child I was taking back with me to the hard life of the village.

It was night when we got off the train at Rokycany and the carter drove us up to our final destination, home. And she was back in good spirits again, that little queen of my dreams that I had yearned for so long.

How much we had packed into those past four days! Only the previous Monday, Rudolf and I had been varnishing the floor and setting out the furniture, with little pegs underneath it! Then the wedding and the four days and nights of an uninterrupted dream that was real, since it was here at my side.

I caressed her shyly and said, “Just look, four days ago there was a terrible drought in this part of the country. The fields and meadows were parched by the long heat wave. Everything was crying out for refreshment, every sheaf of corn, every blade of grass, but now I can see there has been a good fall of rain, the earth is fragrantly sleeping, and tomorrow we shall be welcomed by beauty and greenery on every side. Isn’t that a good omen?” And a moment later I added: “The home isn’t nicely arranged yet. I expect the furniture has arrived in the meantime but it won’t have been set out. You’ll have to put everything in order just the way you want it. I’ll give you a hand, but I’m not much good at it.”

She blushed very slightly. I expect she was thinking to herself: ‘Start moving furniture around now, in the middle of the night? A fine welcome I must say!’

We jumped down from the cart and knocked at the door. Mamma opened up fairly briskly, something I was very glad to see. She was pleased to find us in cheerful mood. She led us through the freshly-cleaned shop, kitchen and small bedroom to the large room where everything shone with cleanliness and the air was fragrant with the smell of our new furniture. Everything was in its place and there was even a bouquet of roses on the table. After her initial surprise, Žanynka cottoned on and hugged me, whispering in my ear: “Will you always have surprises like that in store for me, you terrible, naughty man?” My efforts were rewarded.

We rose at eight o’clock the next morning. She combed her hair which was a very laborious task with her long unruly tresses. She asked me not to watch. She was equally shy when she came to make some poppy-seed buns shortly after. But soon she had the management of our home on the right track and she was expert at everything. I loved everything she did and the way she did it, and everything about her was a complete discovery for me. And what pleased me most was that I did not have to sit down every night and write to Rakolusy.

Little Rudolf’s welcome was touching. It was as if they both sensed that everything was all right now, and that it was to continue that way.

My little son, then five years old, was enchanted. Now he was guided by a gentle feminine hand. And his new mother was happy with the child’s sensible and manly behaviour. Now I realised how God had blessed me with good fortune. Gone were the troubles and hardships of my lengthy widowerhood.

I thought I was bringing home a twenty-two-year-old child lacking life’s tough schooling and any experience of hard work, but I was wrong. She seized the reins in a firm grip and in general took the right decision without thinking twice.

Out of the many happenings that marked her arrival I want to recall the following minor incident that was such a major event for Rudolf and me that we just stared at each other in mute amazement.

Our maid, Máryna, was washing the kitchen floor. She was the very image of a maid: morose and ill-tempered, in short she had every possible unfavourable quality and could have served as an example of what not to be like. But I had chosen her deliberately so as to prevent any tittle tattle about me and so that Rudolf should not become pampered, because I too was almost terrified at the thought of the step-mother I would be bringing him. Well then, the floor was not quite dry yet when the little fellow rushed in from outside with his puppy Azor and made the floor a bit dirty. Máryna leaped up in vexation and struck the boy on the back with the wet rag.
“Máryna,” my wife said, “I don’t like that sort of behaviour and if it happens once more, the two of us shall part company!” And it is a fact that washing that floor was her last-but-one job in our house. Half-an-hour later she was having to wash Rudolf’s dirty hands in the basin. When the boy resisted her rough handling of him, she viciously pushed his head under the water. There was a faint cry, but it quickly stopped and half-an-hour later the sullen girl was on her way home carrying her bundle.

That moment sealed the bond between the two of them. They were enchanted with each other. The little boy was always wanting to help his mother in her work and did what he thought she expected of him, and often things he could not know she expected. Their mutual love knew no bounds. And ours was a happy home.

Rudolf grew, but more in mind than in body. He was already preparing himself for school. He was a good scholar and carefully crossed every t and dotted every i. But the very first week he came home red in the face and with tears in his eyes. And he declared:
“Father Klíma came to the school and talked to us about Jesus and said that the Jews killed him.”

But this is a sad chapter. I shall leave it for tomorrow.

VIII. 1887 ‒ 1893

“Pappa,” Rudolf recounted the moment he came home from school, his face red and tears in his eyes, “the priest told us about Jesus and said that it was the Jews who killed him. It’s not true, is it?” I replied:
“Neither I nor he can say for sure what happened nineteen hundred years ago, but it is unfair of the priest to explain things that way to the smallest children. It can’t do any good at all. When you’re older and wiser you’ll learn the truth and the harmfulness of such teaching. You are not obliged to stay there for religion. You can come home when the priest comes in.” He: “But Pappa, I’ll stay there anyway. After all, I want to know why they killed him and what happened next!”

And so Rudolf stayed for religious instruction and became the priest’s best pupil. The priest told me how pleased he was with him, “When none of the other pupils knows the answer I call on Rudolf and he tells them. He’ll be a doctor. Be sure to send him to the grammar school”. And he congratulated me on his gifts and his adroitness and said I would be pleased when he became a doctor. How wrong that priest was, but of that later.

He was not a bad man, but he was fat and superficial. Often he would visit me at home and sit debating with me. But I learnt very little of interest. I think my knowledge of the New Testament was

better than his. As soon as we started going deeper he would wink at me and twiddle his thumbs, and say in all innocence: “But why do you let these things worry you, my dear Bernat?” And the cook at the presbytery, a single woman, was kind and hospitable. Rudolf would often bring home a hatful of fruit from the presbytery garden. But there was no way we could debate. Our conversations almost always ended in the following way: He: “Well I can’t say, I’m sure, but that’s what it says in scripture.” I: “All right, but in the Old Testament it says such and such!” He: “Fine, but the New Testament is right!” So I would leave him alone and instead we would chat about harvesting his fields, meadows and gardens.

But I could not help reflecting on the mysteries of those two religions and pondering on mortality.

Believing Christians have it fairly easy. There are ideas and images to exercise their feelings and imaginations and which they can rely on. The religion’s legendary aspect is beautiful, both accessible and homespun: God the Father, Jesus Christ the Son, the Virgin Mary, the saints, male and female, heaven, hell, paradise, purgatory, they are all tangible concepts. The Holy Spirit is rather less accessible, it is hard to grasp and so you are required to believe. Your life here is something inferior and transient, you only live after your death. Heaven is full of stars and it was all created by the Hand of God. You too will live up there in the company of the saints and those of your relatives who departed from you before. And there will be happiness without end. How comforting it all is!

So my little boy learnt religion from the village priest and grasped from the outset that according to that teaching, God, the Father of the Lord Jesus was different from the God I described to him. I used to explain to him when we were out walking or when he crept into my bed what the moral law was and that every possible rule and all piety was expressed in that sentence of the Old Testament: “Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself!”, and that Christ was a creature of light and a radiant teacher, a rabbi who had come from Jewish people who are proud of him. But the priest had a different method. And a different Jesus Christ too. It got the boy’s head in a proper muddle but I did not interfere. After all, a child too must come to distinguish light from darkness through its own resources. So Rudolf was able to recite beautifully where Jesus Christ was born, how the Three Kings came to see Him, how one was a blackamoor, then about Herod and the massacre of the infants, the flight into Egypt, the dispute in the temple, the return to Jerusalem, the arrest and the trial. He also knew all about preaching, the apostles, and miracles. And who would not be moved to tears by the myth of his being nailed to the cross between two felons, by the last words he breathed: “My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me!”, by the burial and the ascent into heaven? What moved him most of all was mother Mary and her human suffering. He found it impossible to imagine how dreadful it must have been.

That crucifixion bewildered him most of all, and but for me, and my efforts to console him, and the local boys who chided him for it, he would have turned into a rabid anti-Semite. But believe me it was a tragic conflict within his childish soul. A few weeks later the archdeacon came to school to examine the children. Rudolf brought home a holy picture as a reward for being the most knowledgeable. It was a garishly-coloured print of the Lord Jesus, whom he loved so tremendously ‒ handsome and serious, with a golden halo thickly painted round his nicely- combed hair with a side parting, stumbling beneath the burden of the cross, amidst a throng of evil and ugly figures and scowling faces of Jews. Embossed on the picture in silver letters were the words: “Ecce Homo”.

Rudolf dashed in from school, radiant with happiness, and immediately started to explain the picture. And when he reached the end: “and look, Pappa, those scruffy people down below are supposed to be Jews,” I stroked the poor little fellow’s head and thought to myself that that was not the sort of teaching which Jesus Christ, that creature of light, would have wanted.

And so the two of us, father and son, went through agony in that first class of the village school. We did not want to be deprived of the Old Testament myth, nor did they not want to take it away, but they interpreted it in such a preposterous way that they added something which antagonised my soul. After all we lived by our religion, as we ourselves had organised it and how one ought to live by it.

Only now did I start to get a notion of how clericalism is organised on military lines, now that I shared the distress of that young soul, which proceeds along quite different paths from those of the adult and his cold, down-to-earth reasoning. And in spite of all I wanted my child to keep a warm heart and was loth to let him pass through that terrible institution that warps human minds.

And so life went on, lacklustre on the outside but full of growth and development within.

In his first two classes, Rudolf had Mr Krátký as his teacher. A pale man, prone to colds, he was a stickler for detail, but instilled in the boy an appreciation of good spelling and clarity of handwriting, drawing and tracing.

I took care of his reading, because by the time he had been there three weeks the little scholar was no longer needed to look at his primer as he knew all the pieces in the book off by heart. He had problems with sums and he was not as outstanding at them as at the other subjects, and in our spare time we wrestled with tables. I wrote them out for him on a piece of cardboard and we would take it with us on walks. “Pappa leave that old card behind!” he would beg me, so I often forgot it.

One day his Guardian Angel was to make his presence felt yet again:

They were building a new railway bridge on the way to Chrást near Smečice over the River Klabavka, which flowed at the bottom of a gorge, twenty metres deep.

The piles were stone clad as were also the supporting pillars on each bank and I was curious how they intended to shift the ready-made iron bridge onto the stone supports.

And of course there was no question of going anywhere without my little friend Rudolf.

We set off one Sunday in July 1889 at five in the morning and in three hours we had covered that distance of eleven kilometres. There were already many spectators by eight o’clock.

And it was worth coming to see. The immense weight of the iron construction complete with the track started to shift from one bank to the other in total silence. The spectators all held their breath at the sight of the engineers’ skilful work.

I was standing in about the third row from the front and all of a sudden the little lad broke away from me and wormed his way through to the front in order to get a better view, but he was unable to keep his balance there on the edge of the chasm and hurtled downwards.

We watched in horror as he went head over heels down the sheer slope towards the river.

I gripped the person next to me and shut my eyes so as not to see him hit the bottom of the gorge.

Then, as if in a dream I heard a cry and the clamour of the people: “The bush has broken his fall!”

I looked down. Below me lay the little body and it was not moving.

I ran down to the river by a roundabout path in the company of several others. Little Rudolf was just picking himself up. Nothing at all had happened to him. I felt him all over and he had not even been grazed.

Only when I got to the bottom did I feel queasy. I could see that just a few feet more and he would have drowned.

I took him by the hand and we scrambled back up, helping each other.

Back at the top, one woman said to him: “Oh, you confounded little whippersnapper, I could already see your Daddy gathering up your little bones into his hankie!”

But he started to brag: “Not at all, ma’am. I’m a good gymnast, I was just doing perfect somersaults and headsprings until I got myself nicely to the bottom.” “You little scallywag,” another woman burst in, “I still haven’t got over it yet.” And another: “Your Pappa should give you a good hiding!”

He turned and looked at me rather anxiously: “Pappa, we shan’t say anything to Mother about it, shall we?”

We went for some refreshment to the village inn and were back home by nightfall. But he told his mother of his own accord. He could not keep the secret to himself. And again he boasted that it was only his good gymnastics.

He was just seven-and-a-half then and was always wishing for a little sister or brother. He used to say: “All the boys have one, and I’ve got nothing,” and promise that he would really like it, really very, very much, more than his pals even.

His wishes were heard and we were soon looking forward to the event. Seven months later we had a little girl but she was born dead. That is easily said and written in two lines, but it conceals much pain and disappointment, and unfulfilled wishes. It is the ordering of fate by God’s inscrutable wisdom.

My mother used to enjoy visiting the neighbouring cottages. She had lots of friends and liked hearing the latest news. Right up to her death she showed little of the resignation one finds among the aged. Her mind was extremely active, but in her eighty-fourth year her body could no longer cope. She was admittedly very game when it came to housework but she was weak.

She used to come home late of an evening and I would have to sit down with her and recount all our news. She wanted to know everything. Often she complained that the house was badly run, that we were not thrifty enough and Žanynka was altogether too good a cook. I used to try and persuade her otherwise, saying we could not be more sparing, that our strenuous work meant we had to eat properly. I would urge her not to reproach us since she benefited most from it. But it was only a question of her body tormenting her ever resilient spirit. She became weaker and weaker until in the end she was bedridden.

She wanted her bed moved nearer to the shop so she could see what customers were coming in and what went on there. Resignation in old age, not a bit of it! Her vital energy still needed to be kept fully occupied. She suffered terribly from rheumatism. Even in bed she had her head wrapped in an eiderdown and her feet bandaged with flannel. The poor thing suffered but kept her pain to herself. She blamed her poor temper on external matters.

A year later we were once more looking forward to a new baby and we were luckier this time. When the happy evening arrived I called in Granny Pokšteflová to act as midwife and Rudolf could not make out what the neighbour was doing in our house at night. The air was so full of expectation that the little chap just could not get off to sleep. The maid had to keep him in the next room to stop him running in. He lay there open-eyed, all agog.

Around midnight a little girl came happily into the world and when he heard her cry, the little lad called out joyfully: “I want to see our baby!” The girl held him back with all her might, trying to appease him by saying it was little Mafienka Blahovcová crying, but he said that she did not cry that way, she made much more noise, and besides he did not believe it. I could hear the shindy from next door.

As soon as the baby was swaddled, I called him in and the first thing he did was run to the bed and shower his mother with kisses. I could not understand that impulsive show of thanks and I still cannot explain it. However could that little seven-year-old have known that he ought to pay tribute to the mother first of all?

He went meekly off to bed and I picked up the bundle with the baby inside and took her to Grandma’s bed so she could see her little grand-daughter and admire her. And Grandma certainly did admire her! We were all relieved. A healthy mother and a healthy baby girl. I was not going to bed now. I sat beside my dears and rejoiced at the lightness of their sleep.

Next morning the midwife came in to bath the baby and Rudolf’s delight was beyond measure. What tiny little hands, what tiny little feet, what tiny little toes, ‘such as he had never seen the like of before’ and were we going to have another one” “Whatever next, you silly. It’ll be hard enough feeding the one, and here you are wanting goodness knows how many!” And he replied: “Don’t you worry yourself about her, Pappa. I’ll soon be earning and I’ll fend for her and you too.” “How could you, young fellow?” You’re still at school.” And he: “Never mind school, I shall go down the pit like the rest and anyway I’ll start to see about it tomorrow!” And he himself named her: Aninka.

Aninka grew and thrived until she was too fat to close her mouth and she was everyone’s favourite. She was only a year old when she started to run about and chatter. Grandma used to grumble in her bed. “What a shame I can’t cuddle her. Oh, this confounded old age!”

And I found out that Grandma was feeding her Aninka with sweets that she always had with her in a bag, and with chocolate. It was something I did not like, and here she was secretly passing her “čekuláda”. Oh my, we had plenty to worry about at that time!

Grandma kept her wits about her for a long time and everything interested her. She could not leave her bed anymore, but she had to know how many fattening pellets the goose could eat, who had sold us the geese, how much they cost, how much they weighed and how well they were fattening. And the worries she had! Beware of someone stealing the pellets! She had the feeling we were making more than the geese could eat so where were they hidden, then?” Endless lectures.

When the geese were being plucked she would sit up in bed and pay very careful attention to the way Žanynka did it. She used to say: “She’s handy that one, I wasn’t as good as that at it. I’d draw the innards out along with the fat, and see how she separates it all properly. Hands of gold, hands of gold!”

After she had been bedridden for more than two years she suddenly lost her appetite. She was sleeping poorly and had trouble breathing. The doctor said it was catarrh and her condition would improve.

But Grandma’s condition was worsening daily, she had a rattle in her throat, she became pale, rings formed round her eyes, he nose sharpened and she was unable to swallow. Dr Kozler came once more and told a different story this time. Pneumonia and, at that age, almost no hope. He still had another patient to see, farmer Šmolík. I sent a telegram to my brother Jindřich in Prague telling him to come. He arrived and was so shocked to see the state our mother was in that he was unable to speak to her. I moistened her lips with a damp cloth to help cool her a bit, she could take nothing more in her mouth.

Jindřich had to leave once more to return to work.

When Dr Kozler arrived back home in Rokycany he told them at the Stádlers’ that he had two seriously ill patients at Osek. Čmolík, he’d pull through, he said, but our mother would die very soon.

The “burial association” sent up two old gentlemen that evening to spend the night here and pray at the patient’s side for merciful God to take her soul into heaven.

The men arrived and my mother turned in her bed to face them, I was happy to see she still had enough strength. Messrs Kuš and Gottlieb sat down and the patient wriggled in her bed. I noticed that she was thinking about something again. She could not fathom out what those gentlemen from Rokycany wanted, seeing that they had never been here before. Why didn’t they go home, it was dusk already!

I stood at her side and she whispered to me to send them home. But I could not bring myself to do it. I would have insulted the whole Jewish community.

At that, my mother sat up in bed. Believe me, she really did, and declared in firm tones: “Listen here, you soul-catchers, you run off home before it gets dark. I’m not going to die yet, so you get home to your beds!” They did not need telling twice, but grabbed their sticks and hats and rushed out of the bedroom. Mother raised her voice even more and shouted after them: “Stuff and nonsense! You didn’t think I’d die that quickly, did you?”

She had a healthy core. The crisis was over, her condition eased and she started to speak and eat again. She got better. She tried to get out of bed, but that was very difficult for her now. At her age ‒ she was eighty-five ‒ her strength had not been restored enough for her legs to carry her. She went on running the household from her bed. She knew my daily turnover, how much I had earned and from what, how much meat my wife was cooking, everything that was bought, and no detail escaped her. When I came to sit by her in the evening I had to furnish her with a detailed report. She would generally wake up in the evening from her daily sleep, light the oil lamp and pull out from under her pillow a bundle tied up with several bands. The bundle contained age-old, yellowing letters. Letters from her dead Bernat, from her son “Heindrych”, from Betty and from me in Prague.

She read them over and over again to me a hundred times and was always wanting to read them to someone. And since letters are generally more attractive than reality, and since the past is generally more sunny than the gloomy present, and since youth is more attractive than old age, she came to love that bundle of letters more and more. She read them at her advanced age without glasses!

When she was tired she would call me and read me a passage from some letter or other and then grumble: “You see, you see, Heindrych is a kind boy, and just see how Betty is kind too, only you can’t spare a moment to come and sit by me and talk to me.” She would have wished me to stay till morning. But that would not have suited Žanynka. So I shared out my nights between them.

Rudolf attended two classes of the village school with good results and in 1891 I enrolled him for the third class of the German school in Rokycany. He was now nine years old and it was time for him to start studying German and the Old Testament, now that he was so good at the Catholic religion.

During the summer he would walk home every day. Those four kilometres to school and back were very good for his health. It was like it was with me twenty-eight years earlier. But in the winter he stayed in the house of his teacher, Mr Böhm. He was a handsome man, tall and with a blond beard, and was a good teacher. He had a large family ‒ nine children of all ages, from six to nineteen ‒ so Rudolf was not homesick. He lived with them every week from Monday to Friday. On Friday evening he would walk home, something he always looked forward to. Then he would relate to us, or more precisely, to his little sister and his Grandma, what had been happening at school. He never forgot to bring his mother some wild flowers picked in the meadows and something for Aninka to play with, usually a piece of toy crockery ‒ a little cup for a kreutzer, or a cooking-pot, or a jug. When he left again early on Monday morning Aninka would usually cry. But he would promise to bring her a little tin pot and all would be well again.

He never mentioned to us that for supper every day he was given a slice of bread topped with a Russian sardine. A supper like that every day must eventually pall, so Rudolf ended up putting the fish in his trouser pocket. When he came home on the weekend he smelt offensive. We soon discovered the cause and the boy had to own up. At home we washed his trouser pockets and threw away his purse which also stank terribly, and on Monday he took with him a canvas bag full of buns and fruit for his suppers. He did not want us to say anything to the Böhms about it, lest his landlady should be offended by the boy’s bringing extra food when she fed him so well.

One sultry autumn day Rudolf was walking home from school with his bag full of books, and he was drenched with sweat by the time he reached the cross at the top of the hill. The sky, which just a moment before had been clear was suddenly covered in black clouds. He set off with his pals at a run in order to get home and dry before the rain. But before they reached The Knoll the storm broke. There followed a torrential rainstorm which lasted a good while. The sweat-soaked boys first sheltered under a tree but when the downpour did not abate they walked home in the rain.

The next day, the other schoolboys left for school as usual, but Rudolf was unable to go as he was complaining of a pain in the side of his chest every time he took a breath. His mother gave him a cold compress and I went for the doctor in a panic. Dr Kozler arrived, examined the boy and diagnosed peritonitis. He warned us: “It’s a dangerous condition. A cold compress every hour to be changed even more frequently if he gets too hot in the meantime. Keep constant watch on him day and night and only milk to be taken.”

But the poor thing could not even manage that. He suffered severe pains each time he breathed. He was very bad for five days, but then he started to get better and twelve days later the little fellow was well again.

Dr Kozler warned me to keep the boy away from anyone who might infect him as he was weak and prone to illness of every kind.

The school in Rokycany was not up to the standard of the one in Osek. I took particular objection to the way arithmetic was taught there and our Rudolf used to look for any way to get out of it. It did not interest him and the fault lay with the teaching, of course.

His first love, Klárynka Böhmová, used to do his homework for him at school; she was in the fifth class and was excellent at arithmetic. She was a tall, lanky girl, twice Rudolf’s height and they enjoyed walking about together on the square. She was in love with him because he was “so delicate” and his mouth was “so small” you could hide it behind a kreutzer coin. Thus he had romantic attachments at a younger age than his father.

He used to walk home from school with his pals from Osek, but most of them had been contaminated with the teaching about the Jews killing Jesus Christ and there was no antidote to it. The lad suffered greatly and preferred to go by himself.

In the end he did find two friends after all ‒ Edward Engelthaler and Gustav Synkulů. Eda was a tall aristocratic-looking fellow, the village school headmaster’s son while Gustl’s father was a wealthy farmer. Gustl it was who first introduced Rudolf to literature. He used to buy so-called “Indian books” at six kreutzers each. That was an enormous sum for Rudolf, but in return he would read the stories to them on the way home from school. Thus they shortened their journey with reading that was not so much instructive as thrilling.

Back home they would go and play in the Sinkulůs’ garden holding battles between backwoodsmen and Indians precisely in accordance with what they had been reading. They also used to do a lot of woodcraft, making Indian bows, arrows, tomahawks, peace-pipes, knives, swords and lances all carved out of wood with a pocket knife.

And while they were taking part in their skirmishes, their squaw, Gustl’s ten-year-old sister Milena would be cooking and keeping house in the tent. Rudolf would deliver almonds, raisins, poppy seed, sugar and vinegar from the shop and she would cook with them. Generally their victory feast consisted of a sugar lump soaked in vinegar. Apparently that was her best and quickest dish. But one day, when Edward and Gustav were engaged in a fierce contest over Milena, during which they battled and pursued each other bloodthirstily all over the garden, she eloped with knight Rudolf to the shop, lured by dried prunes. That incident served to sour the friendship among the boys. And, as often in history, a woman had a hand in it.

To my regret I was no longer able to spend so much time on Rudolf, helping him with his studies and sharing his cares, large and small. I had a lot of work with Mamma and had no time to devote to his arithmetic. I think that is why he almost came to hate arithmetic in the following years. He had not mastered the basics. Moreover, from his earliest years he had been more suited to spiritual concepts than to a logically direct and precise thought process. He took after his mother in many ways. Goodness knows how he later got through algebra. It must have caused him a lot of heartache. Even in those days I could see that drawing, history and literature were his strong points.

At that time I bought a subscription to the illustrated weekly “Šípy” [Arrows]. Rudolf used to spend hours looking at the pictures. He could already draw neatly and skilfully for his age. After a while I cancelled “Šípy” on account of its crude and offensive anti-Semitism. It was disgusting how hatred was instilled into people in those days. And generally speaking Jews were treated unfairly. It is no one’s fault who their parents were. And what about usury and Jewish acquisitiveness? Is that solely a Jewish attribute? I would have thought education and catholic teaching above all, should display a proper concern, seeing that it is based on Jesus Christ, the Light of the World. Is it the fault of the Jews that they were long denied access to trades and crafts and had to stick to hawking and commerce? Just ask a door-to-door pedlar, a poor tinker for instance, whether he would not sooner be sitting in a warm office, or on a cobbler’s stool or in some workshop. He will be sure to say yes. But since time immemorial, the Jewish question has been a weapon in the hands of political weaklings. But that is another matter which I do not intend to deal with here. Whether the rich Jews allowed themselves to be Germanised and why they did it, I cannot say. We in the villages always lived in friendship with our Christian neighbours and never heard of Germanisation. I was later to discover that a truly good man does not judge his neighbour by his religion or his race, but by the goodness of his heart, his wisdom and his education. And that only a drunkard curses.

And while I am still on the subject of that filthy creation “Sípy”, I must express my amazement that divinely gifted artists like František Krejčik or Mikuláš Aleš should have lent their talents to such unbridled vulgarity. I expect they were afflicted by the very same need ‒ to earn some money ‒ as that poor little Jewish country pedlar whom they so loved to attack.

Those incredibly brilliant “Confessions of a Writer”, not to mention the articles by Gamma, Herben, Růžena Benešová, Professor Rádl and Professor Drtina and above all the ones by T. G. Masaryk on alcoholism, science and the church, the value of work, and the humanitarian ideal!

Are you capable of appreciating what it meant for someone in a remote village who yearned to hear words of reason, but mostly heard nothing but the crudities of country folk who were either clericalised or corrupted by Young Czech big-headedness and self-importance?

Those articles warmed the cockles of my heart and for nights on end I would read them out to my wife who generally fell asleep, exhausted from her daily drudgery. But Rudolf enjoyed listening to them.

We would look forward from one Sunday to the next for the following instalment of Machar’s “Confessions of a Writer”. They were written in the language of the common man, poems interwoven with prose, so simply, unlike the high-flown Pegasus of Jaroslav Vrchlický, or the sentimentality of Hálek. When a book by Rudolf about the English garden cities came out in 1911 in the “Čas Library”, I had every right to be proud as Rudolf was in a very good company of authors. The proximity of Masaryk pleased me especially.

But I see that these references to poetry and literature have caused me to move forward in time slightly.

So let me return to Rudolf aged ten.

I considered enrolling him in middle school. How loth I had been as a thirteen-year-old to leave the Modern School and become stuck in the lowly world of the village. My parents had been too poor to afford further schooling for me. I was a bit better off and was happy to be in a position to pay for Rudolf’s studies. But the middle school was in Plzeň and I dreaded the thought of our boy’s leaving us. Up till then I had lived with him, worked with him and grown with him. All his ideas he had got from me and I for my part had learnt much from him. The child’s opinions were a frequent source of pleasure for me and his expressions often made me laugh. And soon we were to part!

IX. 1893 ‒ 1897

I had lengthy consultations with Böhm the teacher about Rudolf’s abilities and his future. He had taught him for three years and ought to have had a thorough knowledge of him. He advised me categorically to send him to the grammar school and counselled against his learning music. I took his advice and did wrong on both counts. We greatly regretted it because he had difficulties with both Latin and Greek and it soured his young years. But I expect the fault lay largely with the priests’ grammar school in Plzeň and the gentlemen of the Premonstratensian Order. But of that, more later. He wanted to learn the violin. It is a pity I opposed it, he has a good ear and also talent, I believe.

Someone let on to him that he was soon to acquire a little brother in addition to his sister and he looked forward eagerly in anticipation. He was sorry he was having to leave home and go so far away, all the way to Plzeň. He did well in the entrance exam. Before his departure, we got his underwear, footwear and outer clothing ready for him and packed it all in a wooden trunk with a heavy lid.

Inquisitive Aninka rushed in and, while holding on the trunk with one hand, slammed down the lid with the other. Suddenly we heard a piercing scream ‒ the lid had closed on her hand. We quickly opened the trunk and the poor little thing’s fingers were bleeding. We were frightened in case the lid had

broken them, but fortunately she escaped with only a graze. It gave her Mother a real shock, however and she started to get various birth pangs. And she was only in her seventh month. The midwife was summoned and she announced the baby was on the way. So it was all very dramatic. But we had still been hoping that the danger would pass and I would be able to go with Rudolf to Plzeň and take him right to the apartment of Žanynka’s aunt where he was to lodge. But now it was impossible for me to leave. I asked our neighbour Engelmajer to take the boy, our budding student, to Plzeň for me.

And so, terrified Rudolf travelled to Plzeň without me and started at a strange school in a strange city with strange ways. On his third day in Plzeň he learned that he had a little brother.

It was an exceptionally beautiful baby. Grandma named him after her son Josef who had died in America. The little boy grew and thrived. He was as white as the fallen snow, his cheeks were rosy pink and his eyes were alert.

Early in the spring, Grandma fell ill once more. Her legs started to swell dangerously and the doctors were helpless to prevent it. But she lost none of her quickwittedness. She would unwrap and rewrap her canvas package of letters and read them to herself out loud without glasses. These past years, particularly now she could more or less see everything her daughter-in-law did, she had been very pleased with her. She no longer complained that she cooked too well for our means and appreciated it when she prepared her something nice. When she had eaten the delicacy, she used to say: “Oh, those golden hands of yours, may the Good Lord protect them!”

She and Aninka were inseparable. She was not allowed to give her sweets, but I discovered another abuse. Grandmother always used to keep a bottle of sweet wine on a side-table by her bed and liked taking a sip from it “to keep her strength up”. And when no one was looking she would give three-year-old Aninka a drop from the bottle to taste. And Aninka got a taste for it, so that one day she drank a whole bottle in one go and staggered about, well and truly drunk.

My mother’s condition worsened and she suffered a great deal, but she did not complain. That woman had a hard and unyielding core. No softness remained in her, only energy and struggle right to the end. The neighbour came to see her, and advised us to move Grandma into the back bedroom, saying that her mother had had the same illness and had died from it. When her mother’s swelling burst, she said, the fluid stank. When our one reached that stage, people would stop coming to the shop, and so on and so forth. Žanynka said to her: “Missus, ever since this cottage has been here, and that’s twenty-six years now, Mother’s bed has stood in that corner. And we are supposed to move her from that corner now, now that she is ill, as if she was a chattel? No, she’ll stay just where she is, whether they come to the shop or not. Mamma’s staying here.” The neighbour mumbled something under her breath and took her advice elsewhere.

The festival of Corpus Christi came round. By the chapel opposite the cottage, the sexton erected a small wooden altar and placed may-poles around it. At about nine o’clock, the procession arrived and there were prayers and hymn-singing. The little girls were in white dresses with wreathes of flowers on their heads, the men with bared heads, the priest under a baldachin in his best uniform, and a choir of women. Mamma liked watching that shining procession, always having had a liking for public parades and religious devotions and I moved the bed close to the window and set up a mirror so she could see the entire ceremony. Both things pleased her, the parade and what I had done to help her see it.

We kept a close eye on the swelling in case it burst, and eventually it did. By then the swelling had reached her abdomen and tiny pores opened on her legs from which the swelling drained like perspiration. We were attentive to her and made sure the bed-linen was changed constantly, so the poor thing did not even realise the swelling was draining.

Eight weeks later I asked her if I might go to Housek the tailor’s at Borek to collect Rudolf’s suit and she replied, as if it was something she had been waiting for: “You go there, my lad, and God be with you.”

During my absence, Žanynka was the recipient of her last long speech, in which she told her to be kind to me always, always to count her blessings that she had come by a husband who loved her so much, and that she was glad to die knowing she was leaving behind two people as happy together as she had been with her own dear Bernat. And I had inherited his goodness, she said. Then, I was told, her eyes grew bright and her cheeks became red as she started to tell about her first husband and her undying love for Bernat, about her journeys in pursuit of the “family permit”, Count Sternberg, Karlovy Vary, and how she had been happy with her “man of gold”.

It was a familiar story to Žanynka by then, of course, but Mother was holding her hand and she had to listen to it all from start to finish. Then, it seems, both women sat there together, the old one glowing with past happiness and the young one weeping. The gloomy day was drawing to its close and darkness was coming on.

I returned home and my mother asked me to come and join them there. She squeezed our hands and peacefully breathed her last. She had worked for our good till her very last breath. She died on 5th June 1894.

She departed from us and her life of eighty-six years was dreamt to its end. “I will be with our gracious Father God along with my Bernat,” she used to say. And that good and honest soul is sure to have got there.

We hired an eighteen-year-old nurse for our baby boy, thinking her to be reliable. She would take him for walks in his pram, usually along the avenue between the squire’s orchards. One day she went out for a walk and tipped over the pram with the baby in it by a pile of flints. She took out the pillow, sat the baby on it and went into a field to pick herself some peas. The child crawled off the pillow on to the cold ground and caught a chill. He started to have diarrhoea and an enormous thirst, and he could not sleep. The doctor was powerless. We nursed and consoled the baby day and night.

We fretted like that for three days and on the fourth day, that beautiful child died in his mother’s arms in the eleventh month of his life.

Žanynka’s grief caused me great concern. She sat for hours on end neither lamenting nor weeping, until her dejection would turn into a flood of tears. After such a misfortune one cannot be consoled. After all, you still have the vision of that delightful being constantly before your eyes, you have the fragrance of its hair in your nostrils, your fingers can still feel the velvety softness of its cheeks and your arms still feel the lightness of its little body. And you cannot comprehend it, it is just impossible.

And then time comes and patches over the hurt. And all that remains is a painful memory and a tiny grave.

In the month of September 1894, I received a visit from an old friend of mine, Josef Freund, who was living in America. He asked me what sort of pension my late mother had been receiving on account of her son Josef who had died in the American South vs. North war, or whether she had received compensation and how much. We had no inkling of such arrangements. He explained that his parents had received for their son, whose rank had been the same as my brother’s, some thirty thousand dollars. How that inconceivable sum would have eased my parents’ lot! My friend advised us to approach the American consulate in Prague and place the matter in the hands of a good solicitor. The fund was held in the government bank in Washington.

I listened to his advice and wrote to my brother Jindřich in Prague, asking him to see to it all. Six months later, notification was received from Washington that only the parents, wife or children of a fallen soldier had the right to a pension or compensation. The right did not apply to siblings.

We were six months too late. The lives of all of us might have been quite different had that friend come six months earlier when Mamma was still alive.

So what! We were not destined to be wealthy. Nor to acquire money that we had not worked for.

In 1895, on the nineteenth of July, another baby boy was born to us. We gave him the name of Otto. The healthy little fellow weighed three and a quarter kilos. Žanynka was well after the birth and I was happy that God had given us a little boy again to make up for the one we had lost.

Rudolf was thirteen by then and really did take care of his mother and little brother this time. He did everything he could to help during those first six weeks. One evening I did not get home until ten in the evening after a committee meeting. There were no lights on in the house and it surprised me that everyone should already be asleep. I did not want to make a racket with the key, lest I wake Žanynka, so I sat down outside on the threshold. And then Rudolf came and sat down at my side, still in his clothes. He had been waiting outside for me all evening. He had foreseen my predicament, that wise and sensitive lad! He told me he would have waited out there all night for me if it had been necessary.

His little brother Otto grew apace and was a healthy, chubby boy. His mother feared so much for his safety and watched over him constantly. She was determined not to hire a nurse for him, but it made her very jittery trying to do the housework with a little child around. Once, for instance, she was sitting breastfeeding the child when some boy in the street yelled beneath the window and she, poor thing, leaped up to see what had happened to little Otto outside. She was in a constant state of nervous anxiety about the two small children.

Otto grew and thrived quite differently from Rudolf in his day. It was not long before he was running around with Azor, Pakátl, Aninka and Mařenka Blahovcovic. Apart from one brief infantile illness he had no particular problems. There was one incident, though, that at first looked bad or even perilous at first.

He was playing with the children in the kitchen when all of a sudden he started to choke. I rushed over and found him all red in the face. He could not even cry but just pointed to his mouth. The children screamed that he had swallowed a great big iron stud, like the ones for nailing into clogs. I opened his mouth and there was nothing there any more, he had somehow managed to swallow it. For a while it hurt him as it went down but then he stopped feeling it. The stud had reached his stomach.

I told his mother to pay close attention the next time the child went on the chamber pot in case the stud should appear, and I rushed off to Rokycany for the doctor. I asked him whether it was possible to remove a stud like that from the stomach by an surgical means and the doctor told me that it was almost impossible in the case of little child. He advised us to feed him plenty of potatoes, particularly mashed, as a way of thickening the stool and easing the object’s expulsion. I walked home distraught, fearful at the outcome. I was already preparing myself for the worst and the problem I would have with Žanynka!

And then half-way home I suddenly saw our kitchen maid rushing towards me waving her arms. I ran up to her and she gasped: “It’s out! The stud has come out! Missus was searching in the chamber pot with a stick when we heard a ping and it was the stud!” And there was little Otto already running to meet me and I carried him home in glory.

Our life was less eventful now; the children grew and were healthy.

There is little I can record of the subsequent years. Chops and changes occur so imperceptibly sometimes and you can live for months and years peacefully with just your family and your work without noticing the passage of time. Maybe they are the best years of all. You can tell by your children that you are getting older, but you are thriving too and enjoying their growth. Life is no longer divided up into autumn, winter, spring and summer, but the first day of term, Christmas, Easter and the summer holidays. And you count the days like a child ‒ how many days before you’ll have them all together round the table again. And then how many days before the school swallows them up once more? The happy life of parents, in other words. The dear little ’uns come home for their holidays, recount their doughty deeds from school, you listen to them describing their teachers and laughing at their old-fashioned ways and you fix them with a stern eye when they imitate them, but the children know that you are laughing blissfully inside, thinking to yourself that it was exactly the same in your young days when you were going to school and that the world has not yet changed.

Rudolf did well during his first year at the grammar school, although I noticed that the stuffy air of the Premonstratensian Monastery in School Street in Plzeň distressed him. Life with nature during his long walks to and from school was now a thing of the past and he found the broad passages and narrow lamp-lit schoolrooms oppressive. There was nothing about it that he liked.

After the first year he wanted to transfer to the Modern School, which was possible without losing a year. But I have to admit I was against it. I no longer understand what made me so determined at the time. But the failure that time was a lesson to me and I subsequently took greater heed of my children’s own wishes.

But in my defence, I must point out that there was a shortage of good doctors in those days. In general, it was a very indolent and devil-may-care fraternity and I therefore dreamed of a better, more capable and reliable profession, of which my son was to be one.

He did not disappoint me. I deceived myself. Well and truly! And to my own cost, as I lived in that lad and shared his concerns. And I blamed myself for the damage to his health.

And now I shall enjoy settling accounts with Rudolf’s grammar school and his schoolmasters ‒ not teachers ‒ in the spiritual garb of the Premonstratensian Order.

I came to know that torture chamber for children as well as he did, poor chap. During the holidays he would relate everything to me in detail during the school year I used to go and ask about his progress or lack of it. The latter was more marked I am pleased to say, and I shall tell you why.

What fascinated me most of all were those gentlemen in their priestly robes who had been assigned the task of making men of children.

And I will not pretend that some of the pupils did not excel subsequently. One of Rudolf’s classmates, a small, good-looking chap, Artur Salz, from Stříbro I think he was, became a professor at an American university. Another, Emil Lederer, became a professor in Berlin and afterwards in Tokyo, and a third, who also lodged with Rudolf at the Steindlers’, is professor at the German university in Prague. So you can see there was a good number of able people in that one year. But it was the exception and I think those gentlemen might well confirm the things I disliked about their school at that time.

For my son, at least, it was the start of several years of drudgery in those grey confines. To neglect even one school rule was to court failure and the ruin of one’s career, and so those poor unfortunate boys in that strait-jacket of a school inevitably resorted to hypocrisy, cheating and lies. It was an unequal contest between a haughty individual possessed of all the weapons and a defenceless child.

The pupil could never be sure he had not forgotten something so he lived in a state of nervous agitation and fear of examinations. Homework could be coped with; there was time and peace to think, but at the blackboard, confronted by the schoolmaster’s arrogant whims or when answering questions around the class, his breath would literally fail him. The boys crammed their brains with the remnants of dead languages that bore no relation to the real world. It was like putting blinkers on a horse. Definitely a lot of time was spent there on useless things, which the pupils would have to forget quickly when they went out into the world, otherwise they would be incapable of seeing it as it really was and their brains would be fit for nothing better than to be schoolmasters. I deliberately say “schoolmasters” and not “teachers”.

And those schoolmasters, those fathers and brothers of that religious order ‒ nervous, tied together by a spiritual and secular order, without any private life of their own, without any children!! – made their vagaries and humours felt. I could see, though my new-boy could not yet, how those unworldly people left much bitterness in his young soul.

That monastery was a prison! Lessons were from eight to twelve o’clock and from two to four o’clock each day, and then at home the boy would have to spend several hours preparing for the following day’s lessons. They used to receive double homework on Sunday. And all that between the ages of ten and eighteen when a lad ought to be developing a manly character and a healthy body.

Ridiculing that approach, one of the masters once quoted and explained to me the phrase “mens sano in corpore sano”. I should like to have laughed in the face of that Jesuitical soothsayer.

They did not turn out people with free spirits and bodies, but people with twisted spines or none at all. Long afterwards those scholars would relive the terror inspired by that petty school work. And what became of that intellectual elite for the most part? Sycophants to their superiors, tyrants to those below them. Like a military hierarchy! Keeping their noses clean and kow-towing to the powers-that-be!

I used to get very cross until Rudolf reassured me by saying I took it more seriously than he did.

I shall never forget the few minutes I spent talking to Master Dvofiák, a tall, slim, handsome man, immaculately shaven, and wearing a clean white soutane and gold-framed spectacles, a veritable god, all haughtiness, with a condescending, declamatory manner of speaking. He used to teach Greek to Rudolf’s class. He said to me, his father: “Nehmen sie ihren Sohn aus der Anstalt, er ist nichts wert und wird nie etwas taugen. Er sitzt still in der Bank und ist geistesabwesend. Wenn ich ihn frage, muß ich ihn erst aus seinen Träumen zurückrufen. Er weisß nichts! Und seine Schularbeiten?” and he pulled out a black saffian-bound gold-edged notebook and leafed through it, before showing me and reading with obvious relish: “da steht 5, 5, 4, 5, 3, und die letzte Schularbeit wird wieder eine 5 sein. Sie war schwer. Nehmen sie ihn weg aus der Schule, ich will ihn nächstes Jahr nicht mehr hier antreffen.” “Und was soll aus ihm werden?” I asked, and he replied huffily: “Das ist doch nicht meine Sache!”

So you see, that dandy, that schoolmaster and doctor of philology, that haughty father of the church opened my eyes well and truly.

I underwent severe mental torment on account of the boy’s suffering and felt shame and regret. Another year there, I said to myself, and that boy’s spirit will be broken, however good he is at heart. Bitterness and resentment would sear his soul and he would be unfit for life’s burden. I did not want autumn to come too soon for him. He had a life to live yet, he still had to know joy and struggle, that little fellow of mine. And out of iron necessity there he sits in that school chamber: “Ecce schoolboy!”

I took it all far too much to heart, of course. Everything had been different for me, those years before. We were taught by sensible people who knew their pupils. Our syllabus did not have any place for such pathetic subjects as the languages of lost worlds. In oral tests, the master would go on helping the boy until the right answer was reached. Pedagogues must lack neither a human heart nor understanding. The black-and-yellow pro-Austrian system of the grammar school and clerical black bunting was inimical to any penetration of light, fresh air and freedom.

We put up with it as far the fourth class, Rudolf and I, and I may state quite definitely that when grade four came the job was completed. Rudolf left there and after four unpleasant years he at last enjoyed his holidays freely and without anxiety about the coming year.

He transferred to the Modern School and looked forward to his first year.

At the grammar school he had frequently suffered from headaches. He used to have strange fainting fits of total exhaustion, with dizziness and vomiting. They were symptoms just like sea-sickness. I regarded it as something very dangerous at the tender age of fifteen. And he was not growing but instead almost becoming stunted. Just a fortnight before his entrance examination, we took Rudolf to see Professor von Jaksche at his farm in Rakolusy where he was spending the summer holidays. I thought that he must be able to give us good advice, seeing that he taught doctors at the Prague German University. The professor found that Rudolf was incapable of study. He had a lot of blood pressure on the brain and it could have grave consequences, he said. That learned man perturbed us greatly. What were we to do now with the sickly chap? Žanynka was of the view that we should seek another medical opinion before withdrawing him from his studies.

Rudolf laughed: “Come off it, Daddy, even a professor can be mistaken sometimes you know. It was the stupid grammar school that got me down. I’ll get over it at the Modern School, you’ll see!”

The third day we travelled to Prague to see Docent Münzer. I acquainted him with the advice I had received from Jaksche and told him in confidence that I was at a loss what to do about his future. It was out of the question to keep him with me in the shop. I was horrified at the thought of his working there as I had done my whole life; besides which he would not even be up to it. What would he become? Not a labourer, certainly: he lacked the physical strength. And to be a decent joiner or shoemaker one also needed some education.

In reply, Docent Münzer said: “I don’t want to say anything against the Professor; he is my teacher. But if you want my advice then let the boy go on studying. I have just given the lad a thorough examination and I think you can let him continue with his schooling, and you’ll see if things improve.” For his headaches he prescribed bromium and no other medicine.

And Rudolf did not need the bromium. From the moment he started at the Modern School he thrived and had no more headaches. I must say that it was our good fortune to consult Dr Münzer.

There is not much to write about Aninka. At that time she was attending the first class of the village school and she was always among the best pupils, then and afterwards. She always brought home excellent reports.

She had a good companion, the son of Engelthaler, the head teacher. He could get away with a lot of things and Aninka took advantage of the fact with the teachers.

My father’s memoirs end here.