Page:The Bohemian Review, vol1, 1917.djvu/183

 are all waiting until the daughter shall have overcome her bashfulness and sing for us to show her talent. “If you desire to enter upon a stage career, you must overcome your bashfulness.”

“That’s what I am continually telling her.”

“But I can’t if I ” Her eyes are downcast; she is plump, with big heavy feet and enormously large red hands.

“Now, go to it, Magda, and quickly don’t make me angry. At home she hollows the whole day long. And now, when her future is at stake, she is bashful and dumb. Why don’t you sing that nice song you have been practicing lately?”

“I too, implore you, please?”

And “Magda” starts in. At first pianissimo, and after she feels sure that I shall not laugh at her, she screams with her terribly shrill voice—well, I wrote about it all in my diary on the second of August.

She has finished and I compliment her on her voice. She blushes and is bashful.

I promise to take care of her future. Her mother is overjoyed and happy. I bow them out of the room.

If you only know how little and insignificant the man is whom you have chosen for your sponsor? What fun I’ll have tomorrow in the office! I must prepare myself to narrate it properly. A story for the office and another version for the cafe. In a week’s time the reporter of our opposition paper will say that he, in reality, was the hero of my story, or he will insinuate that the mother gives me my meals and that the daughter is my sweetheart.

The windows across the street remain closed. Several times I have seen her shadow outlined on the window shade. Now again she covers her face. Does she dry her eyes? She blows out the light! Why so early?

Good night, little girl, God bless you!

August 5th, Evening. Much work today and many hundreds of lines! I am dead tired. I have not seen my neighbor at all. The windows were closed in the morning and now they are still closed and the curtain is drawn.

August 6th, Morning. The riddle is solved. As I got up in the morning and looked across, the windows stood wide open and the room was filled with people. I notice a policeman whom I know and a city physician in the street. Both disappear into the house. Something must have happened. I dress quickly and hurry across. All are requested to leave the room.

“You are in luck”, motions the police man to me, after locking the door securely. “This is a fine story.” The physician stands near the bed and now he speaks to us: “Suicide. The mother poisoned herself and her child.”

I was thunderstruck.

“Here is a letter”, says the policeman.

I read:

“Dear Madame: I fail to understand why you persist in annoying me. In order to end it all, I must tell you that my marriage will take place tomorrow.”

No signature.

She looked ghastly with the death pallor on her cheeks. Shall I write the story? I must—and our paper will have the best story of “The Tragedy in the Garret.”

But I’ll give notice immediately and move out on the fifteenth.

The Austrian Reichsrat met again on September 25 after an adjournment of several months. The government in the meantime had been engaged in finding a solution for the sharp constitutional crisis which developed owing to the determined opposition of the Slavs and principally of the Bohemians. Herr von Seydler reconstructed his cabinet and included therein a number of bureaucrats of Slav race, but he was unable to secure the acceptance of places in his ministry by any parliamentary leaders.

It is the Czech problem which worries the ministers of Emperor Charles the most. The people of Bohemia are becoming bolder and are talking and acting more radically every day. Bohemia’s political developments in the last few months revolved around the interpretation of the memorable declaration which had been made in common by all the Czech deputies at the opening of the Reichsrat on May 30. It became necessary to define further the demand for “the union of all the branches of the Czechoslovak people into one democratic Bohemian state.” The words used were susceptible of being interpreted in the sense of a national state like Hungary under the sceptre of the Hapsburgs.