Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/189

 both his waking and his sleeping thoughts. Yes, in sleep he had no rest. That tearful awaking out of sleep certainly did not occur again, but if he behaved stiffly at lessons, that stiffness vanished entirely in his dreams. There he took walks with her, there he ran races with her, led her by the hand and told her far more than in his lectures. Sometimes the dream was so strange, that when he awoke from it, he could not manage to say whether it really was a dream or whether it had so engrossed his thoughts, that it only appeared to him to be a dream. It sometimes happens that we are dreaming while we are awake.

Sometimes Lidunka read, sometimes Vojtech, but there were moments when no one read. They remained gazing upon one another as though one asked the other for explanation, or as though the explanation lay in the silent looks. That was when the mother was not present. Once they remained spell-bound even in the mother’s presence. They had been reading a beautiful poem of Firdusi called “Sal and Rudabe”. Lidunka came to the passage which runs thus:—

At the third line her mother entered the lesson-room. Lidunka stopped short, grew pale, the fingers with which she followed the lines began to tremble, her throat felt as though it were parched. Lidunka remained silent. The sudden collapse even confused Vojtech so that he was unable to prevail on Lidunka to continue her reading. Only he thanked his own presence of mind for prompting him to say, “It is no matter if you cannot remember”, and then he went on reading himself.

Once Lidunka came to her lesson in tears and Vojtech received no reply when he asked what ailed her. She would not answer any questions he might put to her. It was an embarrassing lesson that day. Vojtech felt his own words fall as dead as the ticking of a clock in a silent room. He felt constrained. He had to spin out a monologue for a whole hour, but a glance at Lidunka almost choked him. For that one day speaking was a burden to him and a ton load seemed to hang on every word. He laboured so that hot drops stood on his forehead. And when he came to the end he felt quite exhausted.