Page:Three stories by Vítězslav Hálek (1886).pdf/26

 seen Venik’s mother; she had not known her, and so she thought that at the Riha’s there had never been a Mrs. Riha, and that Venik all his life had never had a mother. But now when Venik announced his loss, Krista perceived that what he did not possess he had really lost. “Did they bury your mamma?” asked Krista, as if all at once his misfortune presented itself to her imagination.

“They did not bury her,” said Venik, “because I was still quite little and it was winter, but in the cemetery she lies for all that.”

Venik’s mind was haunted by a notion that when his mother’s death took place people had said that they were not going to bury her; and he had clung to this idea ever since, just as it happens still oftener that a chance word which we have heard in childhood, and which we have clothed with a wholly incorrect meaning, hampers us with that incorrect meaning years after our reason has learnt the right one. So Venik till now would have it that his mother was not buried, that thus she was perhaps not entirely a corpse, and that consequently he was exaggerating a little when he said that he had not a mother either.

“Stay, if she is not buried let us bury her here on the hillside,” said Krista, “and then you will always be near her; you shall dig the grave and I will bring her here.”

Very little of all this certainly did Venik under-