than himself. Ay, it seemed to him that he was the most wretched of all. Then both felt as if in presence of an apparition; they could not grasp the truth, and it seemed to them as though this truth was somehow not quite true; and then again it appeared beyond all suspicion to be the truth. And the truth was yet more irresistible when people brought a coffin to the house. Then Venik went to meet this coffin, and felt as though he himself must be lodged therein; he embraced it and cried out, “So this is now papa’s only chamber.”
After this anguish silenced him; perhaps it deafened and stifled him. Venik found no more words; he neither wept again nor lamented. Not even when they bore away his father in that new, narrow chamber to the cemetery, to lay him beside Venik’s mother, who perhaps after all was already buried there. Venik took his violin, to conduct his father to that last resting-place, and when the singing and the weeping above the grave were ended, Venik began to weep above it. He wept on his violin; he wept so that all the people burst forth into tears afresh. He played “The Orphan Child”. It was a language which every one understood better than words—it was the language of the heart already inaccessible to words, those tones opened for themselves every fastening, and pierced and saturated all. People had never heard speech so moving, and Venik hitherto had never spoken in such moving language.
Every one was astonished at him, and Krista stood as though changed to a statue. Those tones were not the outcome of mere memory; they were the offspring of anguish, and Krista again found force to weep. They were the tones of orphanhood, and where in the world are there tones more touching?
This time Venik for long would not detach himself from his violin, and long was the burial-speech he spoke upon it.
Only now for the first time he saw exactly how people are laid in the grave, because he whom they laid there was his father.
When all was over Riha’s cottage had a new owner. Instead of Riha the cottager came Riha the peasant, brother of the defunct, and now Venik’s guardian. He was already at the cottage with his wife when Venik and Krista returned from the funeral, and he at once began to order this and order that.
Venik and Krista did not understand what all these orders meant. They were still in fancy by the father’s grave, and when they came home they heard many words. All they understood was that from that moment everything would be different.
