Translation of part I. of Neprebudený

MARTIN KUKUCÍN:

THE UNAWAKED

Ondrásh Macula, the goosherd of Lenovec, a little village in the mountains named after its flocks of sheep, is lying on the ground. Not that he has been killed or wounded – he is lying idly on the pasture because he has no work to do. His body looks like a dead matter, only his legs, built as if to form a loom, reveal a sign of life – by occasionally peeling off. He does not even care about the flies that attack him ruthlessly and graze on his face. So great does this rest make him feel during the scorching sunshine. He would not stand up even if half the village of Lenovec came begging him to interrupt his comfort. He is enjoying himself not unconsciously, but with eagerness and greed. A little black spot appears at first in front of his closed eyes, then it grows, takes on colors and widens in all directions. Yet one single eye movement is enough to dispel the apparition, which immediately starts over and gets lost again – Ondrásh is dreaming. Who would not envy him? He does not worry about wife, children, livestock, house or farm – he does not worry about anything.

His work is similar to that of a lieutenant. However, one can see no horse grazing in his vicinity, nor a uniform that would cover up the shortcomings engendered by mother-nature. Instead, one can see his geese scattered all over the hillside, in bigger and smaller flocks. This republic of geese does not want to recognize the gooseherd as its sovereign lord – except when it is necessary. Yet, in truth, he will not even consider breaking their rebellious will. For this would cost much effort and the result would be absolutely futile. After the time needed for praying a short Our father would have elapsed, the geese that were driven back would again be dispersed all over the hillside and the gooseherd could start driving them back again.

Well, good for him to be lying idly on the ground, this is the only advantage of his social status anyway. He gets enough of trudging here and there from one house to another – when he is in the fields, at least then can he repose. In the village, people jostle him from one spot to another – he is a bit of a bother in everyone's eyes. Here in the fields he does not bother anybody, except maybe the grass on which he is lying, by taking the light away from it. Yet, by heavens, even this loss suffered by the grass will be restored by the time the fall will have come.

In truth, Ondrásh Macula is a poor God’s creature. Whoever just looks at him must be filled with pity. As if the Creator wanted to inspire people with awe by pouring every shortcoming on him. His head is big, covered with spiky hair so unyielding that it resembles an animal’s fur. His forehead is low, his eyes are unusually small, his cheakbones sticking out, his nose smashed like a flat cake, and his mouth is wide. His body is small, underdeveloped, and hunched. When he walks, his arms dangle in front of him like threshing flails – the whole human being can scarcely be seen as human. People look at him with compassion and they treat him quite sparingly, as if he were a small, weak child. Only he does not consider himself a cripple, he is content with the way he is made, and he has never revolted against his fate or misery. He even seems to find himself beautiful, for he often makes a stop at the shore of a putrid pond and keeps staring conceitedly into its dirty water. He does have good taste, he can tell the beautiful from the unsightly, but the judgement he makes with respect to his own person is biased. Well, he is a human being.

His parents were known in Lenovec as very honest farmers. Everybody liked them as honest and open-minded people. No-one could say a single bad word about them. Thus, everybody felt sorry for them when their son Ondrásh was born. A rumor spread across the village that a shrew jinxed them by exchanging Ondrásh for a beautiful and becoming child, while others reproached the fresh mother that she had had no reason to keep looking at the monkey brought to the village on one market day.

Mr. Macula was filled with despair, and his wife felt like dying every time she had to look at her own child. Yet the poor woman humbly committed herself to the will of God, which made her cuddle the child with love, and her heart found its place next to his. She loved him with his defects more than she would, had he been as she had wished he were.

This made it easier for the father to breathe. He could not even look at the child. Whenever he did, his heart was deadened and he suffered excruciating pains. He often sat at the table absorbed in reflections, resting his head against his palm, with his face darkened by dreary thoughts and despair. His wife did not dare asking what the matter was. She knew well what grieved him. One day she found the courage to tell him: "Yano, stop mourning for nothing. It was God’s will."

He looked at her bluntly and his voice assumed a tone of anger, too, which his wife had never heard from him. The pain he had been hiding made him cry out:

"How should I not mourn when I have a child, but – oh, what a nightmare." – and he made a gesture of disappointment with his hand – "it’s not a child. All the people are laughing at me – you can tell from their eyes how happy my unhappiness makes them. It’s breaking my heart. Behind my back, they are bursting with joy – they think I am blind and don't see them."

"No-one is laughing you out – not at all! Surely, you aren’t saying they are heathens for goodness sake, they can't be laughing at your unhappiness.

Yano broke into a desperate laughter.

"Yes, right! You say no-one's laughing! No-one's laughing! It’s easy for you to say no-one’s laughing when you never leave the house – that no-one’s laughing. If you just went to the fields as I do, or to the blacksmith, then you would see how they are laughing! And why shouldn’t a parent that has a beautiful child laugh at a parent that has an unbecoming one. God, if I had a child as I had wished! Oh…"

His groan of grief caused the whole soul of the woman to tremble. She caught her breath, however, and came close to him. She knew him as being someone with a good and gentle soul, open to a loving word.

"You see, I love him even as he is. In spite of all, he is one of God’s creatures. Even you will get used to him, the hardest thing is to take him in your arms. Yano, give it a try… you are his father…"

"No, Zuzah, no! Go away – I can’t. God and the world is my witness – I can’t. Just thinking about him makes my heart break. How should I take him in my arms? It would probably be better if he did not even exist.

Zuzah’s body became stark. Her heart was assailed by a raging pain. Speaking in a passionate yet powerful manner, she started warning him:

"Don’t raise your voice against God, Yano! We have been receiving nothing but good things from Him so far – and a single one of them that is bad should already make us raise our voice against him? No – we shall patiently endure what He plagued us with.

"But I would give away all those good things a hundred times if this had not happened – a hundred times! What good is all this to me, that I have enough of everything, when I can’t hand it down to anyone?"

"Well, we people will never have enough. If your wish were to be fulfilled now and God in exchange took away your house, land, pastures, livestock, estate, and health: Tell me, wouldn’t you again raise your voice against him complaining that a beautiful son is no good to you when you have nothing to hand down to him. I know you would again ask that he give everything back and that even your son be as he is now. People are always looking for what they don’t have. What they have is of no value to them at all.

Yano was confounded, he could not say a word in reply. He felt that his wife was saying nothing but the truth and that she saw exactly what was going on in his mind. Precisely this fact troubled him, however. He could not stand at this point that his wife was giving him lessons. His pride offended by her went hand in hand with his pain. His eye wandered restlessly around the room and assumed an expression of harshness. Perplexed and filled with wrath, he slammed the door shut and left.

He searched relief in the pub – for the first time in his life.

It was the deep of night when he finally tottered his way home. His wife could not believe her eyes, could it be possible – it cannot be he, her Yano. She breathlessly followed his footsteps, one after another. But he did not care for his wife or for anyone else. Being tired he threw himself down on the bench behind the kitchen table and he muttered something unintelligible without opening his mouth. He was trying to make himself comfortable but no sleep was coming. Suddenly, the child, sleeping in a linen crib, moved and started to cry. The mother immediately jumped up, ran to the child and sought to hush him.

"Why aren’t you sleeping? Go to bed and sleep! Let him scream, if he wants, even till the morning…"

"You should go to bed, too, Yano. It's very late."

"Me? By Jove, no… I can’t sleep – I am fine over here… leave me in peace – in peace, by Jove…"

He was already half dreaming while he uttered the closing words. One of his feet was still standing in this world, the other was walking through the mysterious realm invented by vivid fantasy, that queen of human myths. As if she wanted to deride him, incited by the family misfortune and the drink consumed, she was conjuring up sweet apparitions for him, in which the consciousness kept on retreating further and further. A cry of the child, which by coincidence did not sleep calmly during that night, tore him away from the beautiful dreams. Yano jumped up on his feet and approached his wife. He whispered some frightful words to her. Filled with dismay, she cried out:

"For God’s sake, Yano! Go away – go away! Don’t you touch the baby!…"

Yano lifted the child from the crib and held him in his arms. However, he did not watch it with love. His face rather revealed violence, wrath, and pain. The mother, sensing a danger, ran to him and grabbed the child away from his hands. He turned all the way to the table and felt stupefied while watching her leave. As she was, barefoot and disheveled, she ran away with her child to seek refuge in her older sister’s house.

Yano laid himself on the bench and slept until late in the morning. When he woke up, he felt as if his memory had been erased – he did not remember anything clearly, but the absence of his wife and the empty crib, suspended underneath the ceiling, brought his thoughts on the right track. He felt sorry for both the woman and the child; what he had done made him weep; he regretted what he had caused, yet he did not go to find her and to ask her to come back to the house. He did not know what it was but something was keeping him from doing it. He staid alone. He now does not have anybody to cook for him or to keep his house in order – how lonely he is feeling at home! He carelessly shut the door and went to find joy in the same place as the day before.

This lasted a year or two. Yano got accustomed to this kind of life; he spent more time in the pub than he did at home. He squandered away the abounding little bit of fortune that his father had handed down to him, and he did not have to have a hard time deciding on whom to bestow it once his death would come. In the village, he had no place to stay – to escape the winter, he moved to the local distillery. Over there, he will have access to as much of the refreshing drink as his spirit will please. When the spring drew near he disappeared even from the distillery – there was absolutely no trace of him. He is probably in Budapest, rambling on somewhere in that part of the world, provided that the intoxicating cocktail has not yet buried him.

Zuzah was living in the house of her sister. Once the child had been weaned, she worked for whomever she could to earn some money. Still, being a rejected woman and mother, she was unable to assuage the austerity of her situation for the rest of her life. As much as she could, she avoided contact with people; she felt offended even when there was no reason for it. Finally, death relieved her from all afflictions. The boy remained in his aunty's care.

The boy experienced none of the miserable hardships his mother had gone through. His aunty treated him as if he were her own son and later on sent him to school. The boy leaned well; one could tell that a soul dwelled even in that disfigured body, just as in other people. This brought immense joy to the attentive aunty – and a reward to her liking.