“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 sunlit 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 timeworn 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
