Karel Matěj Čapek-Chod

“ Burris (Pausing from his pacing) .—Fate, kismet! How directly the finger points! For every one of us it is fixed and no resistance can avail. Welcome every aid to its fulfillment. My Fate, be assured that I shall aid thee to the uttermost.
Lena (Frightened) .—Mr. Karl, what’s that you are muttering?
Burris.—The curse of Iblis is about to take effect. Smail Beg, you are well avenged! First you destroyed my offspring and now you destroy me. Fate! Surely Fate! Or is it my own incompetence? Perhaps . . . Miss Lena, I took good care of your colts, but my own I destroyed. (Pausing close to her.) ”

“ Karl!
Burris.—Miss Lena, please let me go, you hurt me.
Lena.—And no one ever asks about my pain. (Burris tries with supreme effort to free himself, and grows momentarily rigid with pain.) I shall not let you go. You shall stay here with me, or you must take me with you.
Burris.—How do you mean, take you away? I am going away with Erna.
Lena.—You can’t deceive me, Mr. Karl, and don’t try to deceive yourself. I know what road you mean to take. Please, Mr. Karl, all is not lost. If you have been disappointed in one love—another may . . . Harshaw will remain true to you till death. ”

“ A noise as of thunder is roaring beneath the vault of the printing-house; the brass axles of the innumerable cylinders which grind the print turn in their steel beds, from which drops of oil are oozing; through the fine dust which rises from the crushed paper, electric lamps are shining with a steady glow. Spattered Kuba has eyes for nothing but his paper, his axles and taps. ”

“ Erna.—Bara, leave the kitchen door open, lest we freeze in the dining room of Harshaw—a venerable castle, but a trifle holy.
Burris.—Begging your pardon, Miss, Harshaw is as snug as a cage.
Erna.—My sentiments exactly, but as far as cold is concerned I’d as soon live in a hen coop.
Lena.—How you talk, Erna! Don’t forget that we are dining with real officers.
Erna.—Why be sensitive! It’s the truth, and I fear me, the eternal truth. Harshaw is a hen coop, and we two poor hens will perch here for the remainder of our lives. ”

“ For a good while the overseer looked him in the eyes, then suddenly his own severe eyes were lighted up by a smile so genial and almost friendly, that Kuba could not help smiling back at him. The overseer gave him a nod which expressed trust and at the same time a warning. Then he turned to the two other workmen. ‘Attention!’ he called out.
The brake left the cylinder with a click, the men cried: ‘Ready.’
The chief engineer set the lever in motion, the engine purred like a spindle, and broke into a roar like a waterfall, to finish the last ten thousand copies. ”

“ A new life shall come to Harshaw, dear Miss Lena, if you will permit me to call you by that intimate name again. There is no need now to place an additional mortgage on the old estate. This year has been so prosperous that we can pay off a considerable portion of our old indebtedness, and begin to look forward to a debt free future. (He leads Lena to Erna.) Erna herself will grow more reasonable; the sweet promise of motherhood will prepare for her a glorious reparation for her broken dreams of vain military honors. ”

“ For one moment all are shocked dumb and motionless. Erna gazes with bulging eyes, and with her arms still raised in the position they were in when Bara lifted the gown over her head, she clenches her fists and throws herself on Burris with an insane screech. ”

“ Lena would speak, but Erna stops her mouth with a kiss, takes the lamp and goes out. The scene is dark. Lena is barely distinguishable in her cozy corner. The brilliant moon shines through the bay window whenever it comes out from behind the clouds, which a strong wind chases across the sky. Lena finally appears in the stream of light. She feels along the table, then stops and sobs pitifully. She succeeds in finding the kitchen door, opens it, and stands in the flood of light from Bara’s lamp. Through the open door Bara is seen sitting with her elbows on the table and her face in her hands. ”

“ His thoughts are flying, perhaps not as fast as the mad paper-strip in front of him, yet in the course of the two hours since he has been standing there, he has been totting them up one by one, and the sum-total which he has drawn in the end is so fearful that it scares him; but not a single movement betrays what he is thinking. ”

“ Johnny (Struggles free of her hand and runs to Hans) .—I don’t want to! Let me go, mama! (Ann about to pursue, but remains seated.)
Johnny (Caressing Hans’ head) .—Don’t cry so bitterly, uncle.
Hans.—Oh, it’s you, Johnny!—I am not crying, see?
Johnny.—I thought you were. Why don’t you, when your father died?
Hans.—One does not always cry when one is sad. When you grow up you will realize that often your heart will be breaking when your eyes will shed no tears. Did you love grandpa?
Johnny.—Oh, yes, very much, but they would never let me go to him. Aunt Julia, she loved him very much too. ”

“ Mr. Fable, Hans does not even dream of the changes that have taken place here, in a business way, since he left. And you can imagine how a question like that coming from him at this time . . . when it is a question of what will happen to us all, if . . . A question cannot be entirely indifferent to me. . . a man, asking his cousin, my husband, if I am married. . .
Fable.—And your being that cousin’s wife . . . is that matter of indifference to you?
Ann.—You used to be chivalrous!
Julia.—Ann!
Fable.—God forbid, Mrs. Karvan, that I should willingly touch a sensitive spot. ”

“ One of the workmen there had let the cylinders down on an overseer who had worried him; it had torn off his arm ‘as though it had been a travelling bag,’ and the machine had gone on as though nothing had happened.
Spattered Kuba can do it when he likes, at any of the shifts of paper rolls; he will have time to do it until four o’clock in the morning; any one of the white rolls with which the yard is filled may bring death to the tyrant.
It is going to happen in exactly an hour’s time, and death is approaching in the shape of the fourth roll, which has a torn cover ”

“ Hans.—Your policy is to stand by the one who happens to be master and mayor, is that it? Just remember that I could, if I chose, be master here from this minute.
Andrew.—That you could not, Mr. Hans, not today, nor tomorrow, nor ever.
Hans.—I want to know why you think so.
Andrew.—There is no chance of your getting your rights because that fellow will not give way. He always gets what he goes after. Oh, dear! ”

“ His tall, bony figure, covered with a blue blouse which is tucked into his trousers so that there should be no fulness in which a tooth of the machinery could catch, is standing upright like a statue; only the thin bare arms are moving: they have hard broad muscles, and sinews like the strings of a double bass. ”

“ Lena.—When Mr. Burris left here in February for the Bosnian front you looked at him with a contemptuous sneer. Oh, Lord, how do you say it in your horrid military jargon?—Dampfnudel in Kommismontur—Only a half an hour ago you were saying something entirely different. It took a uniform to demonstrate to you what a man he really is. Does he look so much. . . better than he did . . . when he went away?
Erna.—Oh, so much! A uniform puts the figure into a man. Of your administrator it has made a gentleman whom it would be a pity to waste on menial service here. ”

“ There is the place where he will be drenched in his own blood; where he will bleed to death like an ox, there, inside the machine, with just room enough underneath the cylinders for a man to crouch and insert the paper by the light of an electric lamp.
Kuba has seen it done once when he was working at a cotton printer’s, and knows what the power of these cylinders is when they are at work. ”

“ Erna is now the wife of Burris. It is late afternoon on July 17. At the back may be seen a threatening black cloud, still low in the west. The atmosphere is that of an approaching summer storm. From the court comes the noise of the harvest rush.
As the curtain rises Lena is seated in her nook. Bara is putting things to rights. Voices of the men are heard from without.
The voice of the head steward: “John, how much longer will you make me shout at you? Change those horses at once, and don’t give them more than one measure of oats. ”

“ Erna (After a moment’s struggle with herself) .—Listen, Karl Burris, (She gives him her hand ) you are going to have an operation.
Burris—What? Erna, would you really wish that I let them open my chest again and tempt Fate?
Erna.—That would indeed be an act of heroism far more glorious than that of Dubow. On such a token of your love for me I could look with pride.
Burris.—My love for you might make me capable of anything. But for the sake of the little one—I cannot! I cannot bear the thought that . . . there is the risk . . . he might easily be born without a father. ”

“ Hans.—So your name is Jan, also? You are going to celebrate tomorrow?
Johnny.—I am. (Tearfully) Oh dear! Grandpa will never hear my greeting any more and I learned such a pretty one. Aunt Julia found it for me.
Hans.—Never mind, you shall say it to me.
Johnny.—But it isn’t your name day.
Hans.—Oh, yes, it is. I am the Baptist, the same as every other first born Karvan.
Johnny.—But it won’t fit you. Please don’t look in there all the time!—You see, it went like this—Dear grandaddy, my precious old fellow . . You are not even gray, so how can you be precious old fellow? ”

“ Hans.—But love is stronger than death! I carried mine in my heart through all the horrors of the battle fields and the Siberian exile. Meanwhile at home my cousin thrived on my absence. I find him a pharmacist and mayor, enjoying all that should have belonged to me. . . . Son of my father, husband of my wife . . .
Ann (Coming forward) .—And father of your son.
Julia.—Ann, dear!
Hans.—You came just in time to take the words out of my mouth. Any one might have guessed, and yet the sharpest man in Potsedin has remained blind. ”

“ Erna.—That’s sentimental nonsense! In fact, Harshaw is steeped in sentiment. I have tried my best to stand it, but the cursed old country seat will get me yet. I’ll soon be walking around here like a specter.
Lena (To herself) .—Specter indeed! (To Erna.) It’s easy to say Pilsen or Sopote, but you know that the present income from the estate is not equal to such extravagance. We have a hard enough time to make both ends meet right here where our living costs us nothing. ”

“ Lena (Sharply) .—What did you say, Erna?
Erna.—Nothing, darling, only that Mr. Burris is a man who has few equals. To be sure he had to don a uniform to prove it to us. He may be a little heavy for it, but he has his imposing moments.
Rudolph.—Burris is a man . . a—a husband for one of you two maiden ladies.
Lena.—Rudolph, even sisters may be ladies.
Erna.—Why not?
Lena (Betraying more than she intends) .—You, Erna! The daughter of a real baron married to an overseer on my estate!
Erna.—Everything is possible. If he should apply for active service . . . ”

“ Dean.—From which it would seem that he knew Hans was still living while he was trying to convince his father that he was dead.
Hans (Catching John by the throat) .—You coward! You intolerable villain! (Ann shrieks.)
Julia.—Oh, Mr. Karvan, surely you would not so far forget yourself.
John.—Let me go! Would you strangle me?
Dean.—Back, you madman!
Andrew (Re-entering, hastening to John’s assistance) .—Mr. Hans! Mr. Hans! What on earth possesses you? Recall yourself! You cannot do this! This is the mayor!
Hans (Holding John until Julia puts her hand on his shoulder) —Andrew? You old dog! ”