Krakatit/Chapter 12
CHAPTER XII
Early in the morning he found her scouring Honzik in a trough full of soapsuds. The little dog struggled desperately; but Annie, inexorable, laughing and splashed with water, soaped him energetically. “Look out!” she cried when Prokop was still some way off, “he will splash you!”
She looked like a young, enthusiastic mother. Oh God, how simple and beautiful everything is in this sunny world!
Even Prokup was unable to bear continued idleness. He remembered that the bell was out of order, and went off to repair the battery. He was just scraping some zinc when she softly approached him. Her sleeves were turned up above the elbows and her hands were wet from washing. “It won’t explode?” she asked with anxiety. Prokop was obliged to smile. She also smiled and splashed him with soapsuds; then with a serious face she came over to him and rubbed the splashes of soap off his hair. The night before she would not have ventured to do such a thing.
At mid-day she and Nanda carried a basket of washing into the garden to be bleached. Prokop shut his book with relief; he would not allow her to carry the heavy watering-can. He possessed himself of it and began to sprinkle the linen. The thick stream bubbled joyously on to the folds of tablecloths, white coverlets and the widely spread arms of shirts; the water hissed, guttered and formed little fiords and lakes. Prokop began to water white petticoats and other interesting things; but Annie took the can out of his hands and did it herself. Meanwhile Prokop sat down on the grass, inhaling with delight the damp smell and watching Annie’s beautiful and active hands.
Σοί δέ θεοί τόα δοῖεν, he remembered piously, σέβας μ’ἔχει είσορόωντα.
Annie sat down on the grass next to him. “What were you thinking about?” She blinked her eyes happily, dazzled by the brightness of the sun, blushed, and for some reason was inordinately happy. Plucking a full handful of fresh grass, she tried exuberantly to throw it on to his hair; but for some reason or other she suddenly felt a sort of shyness before this shaggy hero. “Have you ever been in love?” she asked inconsequently and quickly looked in another direction.
Prokop laughed. “I have. And you surely have already loved somebody?”
“I was silly once,” said Annie, and against her will grew red.
“A student?”
Annie only nodded and sucked a blade of grass. “It was nothing,” she said quickly. “And you?”
“I once met a girl who had the same sort of eyelashes that you have. Perhaps she was rather like you. She sold gloves or something of the sort.”
“And what else?”
“Nothing. When I went there again to buy some gloves, she was gone.”
“And . . . were you fond of her?”
“I was.”
“And . . . did you ever . . .?”
“Never. Now my gloves are made by some one else.”
Annie concentrated her attention on the ground. “Why do you always hide your hands from me?”
“Because . . . because they are so knocked about,” said Prokop, and the poor fellow grew red.
“They are just as nice that way,” whispered Annie with her eyes cast down.
“Din—ner, din—ner,” cried Nanda from the house. “Goodness, already,” said Annie, and reluctantly got up.
After dinner the old doctor rested for a bit. “You know,” he excused himself, “I’ve been slaving this morning like a dog.” And a moment afterwards he was snoring away. They signalled to one another with their eyes and left the room on tiptoe; and even in the garden they spoke quietly, as if they respected his repose.
Prokop was obliged to narrate the story of his own life. Where he was born, where he grew up, that he had been as far. as America, the poverty which he had endured, what he had done and where. It did him good to go over his life in this way; he was astonished to find that it was more wonderful and complicated than he had imagined; but there was much which he was silent about, especially certain emotional experiences since, in the first place, they were of no significance, and, in the second, every man has certain things of which he cannot speak. Annie was as quiet as a mouse. It seemed to her somehow curious and amusing that Prokop had once been a child and a youth and something different from the gruff and extraordinary person by the side of whom she felt herself to be so small. Now she ceased to be afraid of touching him, tying his cravat and combing his hair. And for the first time she became conscious of his thick nose, his heavy and severe lips and his sombre, bloodshot eyes. It all seemed to her extraordinarily wonderful.
And now it was her turn to speak of her life. She had already taken breath and opened her lips; but suddenly she burst out laughing. What could she say about such an insignificant life, especially to a person who had once been buried by a shell for twelve hours in the War, had been in America, and who knows what else? “I have nothing to say,” she said directly. But is not such a “nothing” as valuable as the experience of a man?
It was late in the afternoon when they set off together on a sun-warmed path across the fields. Prokop was silent, and Annie caressed the prickly heads of the wheat with her hand as she went along. She brushed him with her shoulder, lingered and stopped—and then set off again two steps in front of him, pulling at the wheat with some curious compulsion to destruction. This sun-lit solitude finally weighed her down and made her nervous. We shouldn’t have come here, they both thought secretly, and in this oppressive disharmony they dragged out a shallow, fragmentary conversation. Finally here was their objective, a little chapel between two ancient lime trees. It was late in the afternoon, the time when the herdsmen begin to sing. In front of the chapel was a seat placed there for pilgrims; they sat down and became more silent than ever. A woman was kneeling on the steps of the chapel and praying, certainly for her family. Scarcely had she left when Annie knelt in her place. There was in this action something obviously and eternally feminine. Prokop felt himself to be very young by the side of the mature simplicity of this time-worn and sacred gesture. Finally Annie stood up, grew more serious, as it were ripened, having decided something, reconciled herself to it; it was as if she had become aware of something, as if she were heavy-laden, preoccupied, changed in some way. She carried something new within her; when they wandered back home in the twilight she answered only in monosyllables in a sweet and hushed voice.
During supper neither she nor Prokop spoke. Perhaps they were wondering when the old gentleman would go away to read his newspaper. The old gentleman muttered and scrutinized them over his spectacles; something had put him out, was not as it should be. The evening dragged on and on until the bell rang and a person from Sedmidoli or Lhota called for the doctor to attend a confinement. The old man was far from delighted, and finally forgot even to grumble. When already in the doorway with his bag in his hand he hesitated and said tersely . . . “Go to bed, Annie.”
Without a word she got up and slipped away from the table. For a long, long time she was occupied with something in the kitchen. Prokop smoked nervously, and was already about to go away. Then she returned, pale, as if frozen, and said with heroic self-control: “Would you care for a game of billiards?”—which meant that there was no question of going in the garden that evening.
It was a wretched game. Annie was terribly formal, played blindly, forgot her turn and scarcely spoke at all. And when she had missed a particularly easy shot Prokop showed her how she should have played . . . the left hand so, the cue held nearer the end. In showing her he touched her hand with his. Annie gave him a sharp, dark look, threw the cue on the ground, and ran out of the room.
What should he do? Prokop walked up and down the room, smoked and became annoyed. A curious girl; and why should she confuse him? Her stupid mouth, her narrow eyes, her smooth and burning face—well, a man isn’t made of wood. Why should it be wrong to stroke her face, to kiss her red cheeks, stroke her hair, her delicate hair at the nape of her young neck—a man isn’t made of wood. To caress her, take her in one’s arms, and kiss her reverently? How stupid, thought Prokop, annoyed; I’m an ass; I ought to be ashamed of myself—such a child, who never thinks of such things—Good; Prokop considered that he had dealt with this temptation, but it was not to be managed so quickly.
He stood still in front of the glass, sombre, biting his lips and bitterly considering his age.
Go to bed, old bachelor; you’ve saved yourself from being insulted; this young, stupid girl would laugh at you. More or less decided in his mind, Prokop stumped upstairs to his bedroom; the only thing which oppressed him was that he was obliged to go past Annie’s door. He went on tiptoe; perhaps the child was already sleeping. And suddenly he stopped with his heart beating wildly. The door of Annie’s room . . . was not closed. Inside there was darkness. What could this mean? And then inside he heard something like weeping.
He had an impulse to rush into the room; but something stronger sent him hurriedly downstairs and out into the garden. He stood in the thick shrubbery, pressing his hand to his heart, which was beating hard. Thank Christ that he did not go in to her! Annie was certainly kneeling, half dressed and crying into her pillow; why? And if he had gone in what would have happened? Nothing; he would have smoothed, smoothed her bright hair, already loose on her shoulders—O God! why did she leave the door open?
A light shadow glided out of the house towards the garden. It was Annie. She was dressed and her hair was not loose, but she pressed her hand to her temples to cool her burning forehead; and she was still sobbing from her recent crying. She went past Prokop as if she had not seen him, but made no resistance when he took her by the arm and led her to the seat. Prokop mustered a few words of consolation (but, in God’s name, on account of what?) Then suddenly he felt her head on his shoulder; once more she cried convulsively and in the midst of her sobs assured him that “it was nothing.” Prokop put his arms round her as if he were her uncle and not knowing what to say muttered something to the effect that she was a good girl and wonderfully lovable; upon which the sobs changed to long sighs (he felt somewhere on his arm a hot dampness) and it was all right. O Night, Queen of heaven, you lighten the breast of the aflicted and loosen the heavy tongue; you quicken, bless, endow with wings the quietly beating heart, oppressed and silent; the thirsty can drink of your endlessness. At some tiny point of space, somewhere between the pole and the Southern Cross, the Centaur and Lyra, something tender is taking place; some man for no reason at all feels himself to be the sole protector of this girl, with her face moist with tears, strokes her head and says—what exactly?—that he is so happy, so happy, that he loves so dearly, so terribly dearly this creature which is sobbing on his shoulder, that he will never leave her, and so on, in that vein.
“I don’t know what happened to me,” said Annie through her tears. “I—I so wanted to talk to you before . . .”
“And why did you cry?” asked Prokop.
“Because you took such a long time to come to me,” ran the surprising answer.
Something in Prokop weakened, the will or something of the sort. “Do . . . you . . . love me?” he said with difficulty, and his voice was as confused as that of a boy of thirteen. The head buried itself in his shoulder quickly and nodded.
“Perhaps . . . I should have come to you,” whispered Prokop, crestfallen. The head shook decidedly. “Now . . . I feel better,” sighed Annie after a moment. “Here it is so beautiful!” Most people would find it difficult to understand what there was attractive about a man’s shabby coat, smelling of tobacco; but Annie thrust her head into it and for nothing in the world would she have turned to look up at the stars, so pleasant was it in this dark and smoky resting place. Her hair tickled Prokop under the nose and had about it an exquisite fragrance. Prokop smoothed her drooping shoulders, smoothed her young neck and breast, and encountered nothing but palpitating devotion; then, forgetting everything, he roughly and brutally seized her head and began to kiss her on her moist lips. And, lo! Annie defended herself wildly, became quite paralyzed with fear and gasped out “No, no, no!” She again buried her face in his coat and he could almost hear the frightened beating of her heart. Prokop suddenly realized that she had probably been kissed for the first time.
Then he became ashamed of himself, grew extraordinarily serious and did not venture to do more than smooth her hair. This one may do . . . God, she’s still just a child and quite naïve! And now not a word that might besmirch this innocent young creature; not a thought which would coarsely interpret the confused emotions of this evening! In truth he did not know what he was saying; it had a crude melody and no syntax; it touched in turn upon the stars, love, God, the beauty of the night and some opera or other the name of which Prokop was quite incapable of recalling, but the notes of which were sounding intoxicatingly in his head. A few moments after it seemed to him that Annie had fallen asleep; he remained silent until he felt again on his shoulder the exquisite breath of sleepy attention.
At last Annie drew herself up, folded her hands in her lap and became reflective. “I can’t believe it, I can’t believe it,” she said. “It seems to me impossible that it should have happened.”
Across the sky a star fell in a streak of light. There was a scent of honeysuckle, the peony slept closed up in a ball, a heavenly breath rustled through the tops of the trees. “I should like to stay here,” whispered Annie.
Once more Prokop had a silent struggle with temptation. “Good-night, Annie,” he said. “If . . . your father were to return . . .”
Annie obediently stood up. “Good-night,” she said and hesitated; and they stood opposite one another, not knowing what to do or how to come to an end. Annie was pale, her eyelids fluttered in agitation and she looked as if she were preparing herself for some heroic deed; but when Prokop, this time completely losing his head, took hold of her elbow she recoiled apprehensively and left him. He followed her along the garden path about a yard behind; when they reached the place where the shadow was darkest they evidently lost the way or something of the sort since Prokop struck somebody’s forehead with his teeth, kissed a cold nose and finally found with his mouth a pair of desperately closed lips. Forcing them apart, he violently kissed their moaning, burning moistness. Then Annie tore herself out of his arms, ran to the garden gate and began to sob. Prokop dashed after her to comfort her, covered her ears, hair and neck with kisses, but it was of no avail; she asked to be released, and turned to him a moist face, eyes full of tears, and a sobbing mouth. He kissed and caressed her and suddenly saw that she had ceased to resist him, that she had given herself up to whatever might come and perhaps was crying because of her own abruptness. Prokop became filled with masculine gallantry and, infinitely moved, kissed nothing but her desperate fingers, trembling and damp with tears. Now, now it was better. Now she again rested her face on his rough paw and he kissed her soft, hot mouth and she was reluctant for him to cease.
And now he held his breath, overcome with painful tenderness.
Annie raised her head. “Good-night,” she said softly, and quite simply offered him her mouth. Prokop bent down and implanted on it the most delicate kiss of which he was capable. He did not dare to accompany her farther but stood quite still for a moment and then took himself off to the other end of the garden, untouched by any ray of light from her window. There he remained motionless as if he were praying. But he was not praying; it was only the most wonderful night of his life.