Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/272

 Bartos approached. The lad who saw him first jumped down and cried out to the other to make haste for Bartos was coming. But the other one dawdled. Just as he was about to spring down Bartos ran under him, caught him by the collar, so that the lad found himself treading the air with both feet. While continually threatening him with the whip, his captor only said, “I’ll teach thee to dawdle another time”, and then he let the lad go scot-free.

Just as people told stories about Bartos as the country Hercules so also they had to tell about him in his character of sexton. More than once they had seen him weep while he dug a grave, and more than once they heard him hold mysterious communication above an open grave. More than once they had seen him sitting on a grave as though he were holding intercourse with the dead. But not perhaps with this or that dead man, but with all whom he had known.

He used to visit them in succession or according as he missed them, and felt sorry for them. “I must go to Klimoff,” he would. say, “just now I feel so sorry for him.” And then he reminded Klimoff of all sorts of things—where he had walked with him, where they used to ramble together, when they had gone to hear the band play, and so forth. When this recapitulation was quite at an end, he would say, “And now it is your turn, Klimoff, to tell me how you get on down there.” After this he listened for a moment, and when no reply came, he made as though he had heard an answer, and said, “Ah! yes, that is just what I thought. How curious! Ah! ha! so it is like that down there. Ah! well! how different it must be when it is like that”, and so forth.

He had a very special set of reflections when after seven summers some one’s turn came to be exhumed. When he had delved down to the coffin, he rapped on the lid, and shouted, “Are you there, Vaclav!” After this he answered himself for the dead man, “I am.” “Come then, creep out”, he said again for himself; then with the greatest care he raised the lid of the coffin and, beholding the corpse which looked as if swathed in spider’s webs, he said, “And pretty dainties thou dost get down there! What a figure thou art! Thy own children would not recognize thee if ever they were to meet thee! And not to have a rag on! Shocking! Pray, when did you comb yourself? And what is the fashion your head-gear follows? Nowadays we never wear it thus. To think of combing it thus.” And so on. Then again he ran through the dead man’s past life with him, and