Karolina Světlá

“ But Barka always cut them off sharply.
“Just you take whomever you please for a turn. I’ll keep Matýsek and I’ll not let you abuse him either. He knows how to weave an Easter whip of forty strands, he can make a broom, and a battledore for a shuttlecock as well. Everybody doesn’t have to go ramming his head into idlers for beauty or to crush rocks with their hands.” ”

“ They smiled at the mountains, rejoicing with them that soon they would be green and glad when the fir groves and the blue violets would pour forth their fragrance, when they would hear the nightingale sing beside the stream, when from every rock a flower would spring and in every furrow the lark would call. Even the stars are sad when they see nothing but snow, frost and ice. ”

“ But Barka made up for it by bobbing up all the higher and the more merrily beside him, looking about over the whole room meanwhile to see if everyone was taking proper notice of how well Matýsek could guide. During the entire dance she smiled happily, showing her white teeth. The people fairly held their sides when watching these two dance.
“Why do you persist in dancing with such a clumsy fellow? You trip so lightly and we’d like to take you for a few turns ourselves,” the boys shouted to Barka, but only in mockery and never in earnest, just to see what she would say. ”

“ They say the dead see and hear everything that happens around them before the priest sprinkles their grave. What, dear God, would I see and hear? He will not want to give me up to death and will get anger God Himself by his stubbornness.”
From that time Barka meditated on nothing else than how to contrive to have Matýsek let her go to her grave without too great an ado and too much sorrow and longing for her. ”

“ If Matýsek had let the children go alone to Bezděz for the berries, they would have done to a hair exactly what he prophesied to Barka. His journey passed quickly, for he often had to stop to scold the children and give them proper training. Whenever they liked a spot, they would stop and pick, regardless of where it was. Of little use would they have been to Barka. They had no other thought on the trip than where they could eat the greatest amount of strawberries and blackberries. Their cheeks and hands were constantly painted with them. ”

“ For instance, if, from their position on the boundary line, he saw a carriage approaching on the highway, he would begin conjecturing who rode in it, whether the steward from the court, the brewer from the city or, perhaps, the Prince himself.
“There ought to be a law against certain people always riding while others must continually go on foot and also against some persons having great wealth while others have nothing,” Matýsek reasoned between conjectures.
“The court will hardly make a law against such things,” was Barka’s opinion. ”

“ Barka’s eyes grew misty and great tears dropped on her clasped hands. For her, spring had come for the last time. But instantly her thoughts returned to Matýsek.
“He need not stay here alone. Now that he has a house, any good and capable woman would marry him. It would be best, perhaps, if I myself would select someone for him. It’s a pity, he does not like our tenant. She would never do him any injury.”
Just then a young woman, a neighbor, came running into the orchard. She was returning a hatchet which she had borrowed of Matýsek and began joking with him. ”

“ From the time he heard his banns proclaimed in the church, Matýsek never got out of people’s way, but, on the contrary, others stepped aside for him. God alone can judge where by a hand's turn he acquired the ability to act the part of a great man. Those who had not seen him for a long time and now met him did not know in what manner to address him. In a word, he was totally changed from his former self.
Barka inherited with the property a female tenant with four children. ”

“ The children hardly dared to breathe. “You’d like it, wouldn’t you?” continued Matýsek. “All day to be in idleness, to fear no one or nothing? But I’ll spoil all that for you. I’ll give you exercises and training until I teach you order.”
Barka was not at all opposed, for why shouldn’t he speak up to the children if it pleased him? ”

“ Sometimes he rose and went to the clock to push it ahead so that it would go faster, but after a while he again came back with downcast head. At other times he seized the chalk as if he wished to make marks on the door each day Barka was gone, to count up as he had before, how long before she returned from the pilgrimage. Often he had the door open ready to go to see if she were not already returning, but he never carried out this intention. ”

“ Matýsek cried, seeming to have grown a head taller, “I, too, would know what I want. At once I’d quit all peasant toil and would begin weaving brooms. That’s something worth while. A man can sit in the warmth and where it’s clean and can keep busy at his own work. Everyone inquires after him and knows of him. Nobody can get along without a broom-maker.”
“That’s true,” Barka nodded assent. “To be a broom-maker is a very fine thing. ”

“ Barka consoled him and attempted her customary bright, agreeable smile, which, with effort, she achieved. “This will all change soon. It seems to me I’d get well very quickly if I could only eat some sour berries.”
"You can have all you want of those now. In the grove it looks as if the ground had a red coverlet. I saw them when I went there this morning to cut saplings to make bars for the cage.”
“Those in our grove wouldn’t refresh and strengthen me. If berries are to help me, they must come from Bezděz itself. ”

“ Barka encouraged him.
“Oh, no, it won’t,” complained Matýsek, but at the same time he wanted Barka to assure him again.
“Yes, indeed, it will come,” she reiterated. “Isn’t it already beginning for you? It is commencing for me, too. We have quite a bit of money out among people, and if we are alive and well, we can get the good of it.” ”

“ Instead of wages he let her have small tips whenever he sold a head of cattle from his stables or when she carried the corn to the mill, and yet she found cause for praises.
“Not a day passes but what the peasant gives me food,” she said delightedly to Matýsek. “And I have shoes to wear to church. Since I’ve been on his estate I have provided myself with two heavy wool head shawls, one skirt and one coat. I don’t have to wear my linen jacket on Sundays if I don’t wish to.”
And Barka was in the tenth year of her service at the miserly peasant’s. ”

“ She made an end to all at once by vowing with uplifted hand that she would never again go away on a pilgrimage. At that time the poor thing did not know that she had near at hand another pilgrimage from which there is no returning.
Without any previous warning, Barka’s hand began to swell.
“It must be because I am no longer doing any real work,” she said to Matýsek. “All the strength stays in my hand and that’s why it is swelling. It isn’t healthy for anyone to be lazy. ”

“ Keep your things in good order so that they would last. Wear your fur coat whenever you wish, but take care of the top coat, for such a piece of goods you can’t again get in a hurry. Those new shirts, the linen for which I spun for you last winter, you know, those with the little red hearts at the collar band, do not wear them all the time. Put them on only on Sundays and holidays so that you’d not wear them out at once, for then you’d have no memento of the work of my hands—and that would grieve me. ”

“ Some days the children did little else than open the door to each other in a succession of such “exercises.”
Barka did not cease to marvel at the fortune which was theirs, especially when her eyes fell on the wall beside the stove, where hung a spoon rack, painted red, made for eight sizes and four pewter spoons on each, the kind she had always longed for. ”

“ She knows that the house and estate will be hers if she serves us both well unto the day of our death, for we have given her our written agreement. Don’t stay at home all the time. Go out to different places and visit the neighbors to learn what is happening among people and out in the world and you’ll have something to laugh at. ”

“ We’re not in any hurry just now.” Matýsek never answered such questions, but always remembered everyone who approached them in this matter. A hundred times such an inquirer might pass or call to him, but each time he would drop his eyes and pot lift them until the mocker was past.
How did Barka guess that whatever awaits a man will come to him of itself? Everything that they had ever wished for and which they had discussed on Sunday afternoons was fulfilled for them with the excep tion of one little point. Would anyone have said that such things are possible? Never! ”