saw the two wide-open mouths and the tiny quivering nostrils quite distinctly. And he saw the eyes of his wife into which he had not dared to look all this fortnight; they had pursued him from the corner of the room behind the door. Before he had left, she had called him to her and said in a hardly audible whisper: ‘Jakob, you are out of work, I know it; Mrs Skemralka has told me to-day . . . what are we going to do . . . for God’s sake . . . Jesus Mary. . . .’ And she had begun to cry.
It was a curious thing, but as soon as the cylinders left off turning and the engine stopped, these visions ceased, and now, at the moment when he ought to have done what he wanted to do, his courage failed him, and his reason returned. While the overseer inside the engine was putting in the fresh paper, two workmen were turning the machine with a separate lever in obedience to the orders from inside: ‘Slowly . . . enough . . . go on.’ It would only have needed a movement of Kuba’s hand towards the lever, and the overseer would never have given another order. But Kuba became like a statue, his arm cleaving to his body. He wished he were at least capable of looking at
