Page:Halek's Stories and Evensongs.pdf/352

 Bartos’s witticism flew from Frishets all over the neighbourhood. Joseph heard it afield from the labourers, he heard it on the high road, from the road-mender, who all of a sudden exclaimed with a sigh, “Ah! heavens, when will the kalounkar [tape-pedlar] come this way again; I should like to buy of him a bit of ribbon, mine is quite worn out.” And the road-mender, at these words, laid down his hammer and ceased to break stones and looked at Joseph. Perhaps, even in any case, he would have looked at him as he passed, but at any other time Joseph would have scarcely heeded him; under present circumstances the man’s look galled him.

And thus he saw and heard mockery everywhere, wherever he showed himself. Moreover, his evil destiny contrived that a kalounkar should come about this time to Frishets, who, not daring to put up at the Loykas’s, spread out his wares on the village green. Hereupon, when most of the people had formed a circle round him came Vena and said, “How dare you venture with your tapes and ribbons on to our village green when we have our own kalounkar in the village?”

Those who stood in the circle greeted these words with boisterous merriment, indeed, with acclamations; the children ran about the green squeaking “kalounkar” in shrill trebles, and the boldest of them went before the Loykas’s farmhouse and yelled, “The kalounkar is here, we ourselves are playing at kalounkar”, and every brat wanted to be a kalounkar.

This affair, apparently so trivial, reached such a head that Joseph no longer cared to leave his house, and, in fact, never left it. Vena, standing on the village green, cried to all new-comers who went past Loyka’s farmstead, “None are allowed to enter there, and the peasant proprietor daren’t venture out—just come here here are nice ribbons for you.”

This affair, apparently so trivial, infuriated Joseph to such a degree that he never spoke with any one in the village. He felt that he could not speak with them. Loyka’s farm became the butt of every saucy ribald witling, even a kind of comic song circulated under the name of the “Kalounkarska”, or “Lay of the Kalounkar”, and when any of the musicians straggled into Frishets and began to show off his skill on the village green, all the full-grown lads flocked round him and wanted him to play the “Kalounkarska”. A little later every melody became the “Kalounkarska” if Joseph were within earshot. And they all