Farces & Novellas

By Janko Polić Kamov and Martin Mayhew

The Croatian writer Janko Polić Kamov died in Barcelona in 1910 aged 23. He left behind a small but potent collection of short stories, plays, poems and one novel which have been labelled as proto-modernist, avant-garde, absurdist, existentialist, futurist and even surrealist in nature. This is a collection of eight of his farces and four novellas painstakingly translated from Croatian into English. Many of the themes in Kamov's writings would reflect his real life experiences and are written in the first person or as his alter ego. During his short life he struggled to be accepted and published as a professional poet, dramatist and novelist. He is considered to be highly original writer for the period, despising bourgeois hypocrisy, injustice, ridiculing the social norms and niceties of the day. His work also deals with the darker side of the human psyche, madness, violence, sexual excess, alcohol, religious duality, the class system, poverty and the overall human condition. Most of his work didn't see the light of day until long after his death. He has been compared to Camus, Kafka and Joyce. The collection has been translated by Martin Mayhew so that his work can be appreciated outside of his native country and in doing so also creating a unique glossary of Kamov's vocabulary. This book has also be produced in the hope of funding for the translation of more of this outstanding author's work.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Martin Mayhew
• Release date: May 7, 2018
• ISBN: 9781912643165

Book preview

translator

The Beard

I shaved off my beard. Until that time I had, in fact, sported a thick, pointed, reddish beard. Why did I shave it off? This is a question of great importance and interest! The human psyche is most touched by those little things that play a great role only in the lives of the great and make them more interesting than their work. Our soul is not economics and science; it is literature because it is very elastic, random, eccentric, original. One individual lived orderly, honestly and decently for years and years; suddenly he snaps and kills; or snaps and rapes; or snaps again and robs.

There is no wonder anywhere, coincidence and religion so obvious as in misdeeds; nowhere is the invisible spirit as visible as in murder, drinking and sexual excess. It is always there where the divine and spiritual enter, where our soul wants to protest against modern society or to express its intimate, unconscious, beastly instincts. The ignorant apostles began to speak several languages overnight, the tale says; our young talent committed suicide overnight, states the chronicle. The one and only one Holy Ghost entered all those holy souls and brought them closer to the deity, which evokes all those who cannot find their way and manage themselves in our social order. The faith in a moral being, which is above people – is the same faith in believers and in anarchists. Christ even spoke of God who is above us and within us, and excused the anarchy of the past and of the future. One young pupil spoke perfect German whilst drunk, but then the poor wretch got drunk out of despair and sadness for failing in – German.

So one elderly man threatened all his life to kill his neighbour but – of course! – he didn’t kill him; whereas the neighbour had even stated that he wished his enemy all the best, and then one night he set his house alight … A dog that barks will not bite, because it is barking and because the psychologies of humans and animals are similar in contradictions, absurdities and wonders.

And so I eventually shaved off my beard. Until that time I had been a very serious man, diligent and decent. I lived for science and felt no need for revelry, idleness or love. ‘Surely you are at least 30’ – they would say to me – ‘you look so serious and aged.’ I was only 20. ‘You must surely be a painter’, remarked others. I had no idea about painting. Generally: they considered me to be something I wasn’t and that I was older than I actually was. Girls passed me by as a potential ‘beau’. None of them thirsted for my lips, sought out my company or thought about my embraces. One time I arrived in one village and everyone took me for a teacher! Another time I took my little nephew for a walk and everybody thought he was my son. The third time I went to the shop with my forty-year-old aunt and the shopkeeper said to me: ‘Oh, so this is your good lady!’

Put simply: girls didn’t jostle for me; I had my peace. It was not required of me that I return glances on the promenade, that at night I follow the rising skirts, that in the cafés I buy the cashier girl a drink with an ulterior motive. So I lived and studied; I didn’t receive any kind of sexual stimuli from the people, because – I did not excite them and they did not excite me.

However, however! Even though I didn’t excite or irritate, I did provoke all the same. Kind of gaunt, tall, my face covered with a long, rampant and dry beard, semi-disdainful and dry lips, with a hunched and learned stature, a long nose on which glasses tiredly rested – I could never pass unnoticed. What a peculiar man! they whispered, whilst the mischievous young people of both sexes joked aloud, alternately nudging each other in the ribs: ‘What a monster!’ one little girl even shrieked when she unexpectedly caught sight of me, whilst another, who was next to her, burst out laughing. Others, when I would stare at them, would turn their backs. My aunt implored me day in, day out to shave off my beard; on the street, everyone looked back at me and in public locales, as a newly-arrived character, I could neither sit at a table nor drink a cup of coffee. And so I, in the fullest sense of the word, did not have my own peace. However, the fact that I had taken up in the world such a worthy position in the face of the buffeting, giggling, nudging and unsavoury remarks, meant, that I in losing my peace in the street gained tranquillity in my room. ‘Amongst the people I am laughable, but what are people to me? I live by myself from my work, for myself and my work.’ A logical, confident and icy misanthropy was forming in my sentiments, which were not able to in any way flow, swell up and spill out youthfully, dignifiedly and warmly amongst people. It befitted me, i.e. my beard, to stand to one side at youth street depositions, to take patriotic declamations and declarations with a negligible, pitiful smiling and to pass by uninterestedly the street shenanigans of dogs, boarding school girls, cats and grammar school boys.

Girlish chit-chat, which in itself is mere piffle, if you extract it from those wondering, naïve and wanton lips, eyes, bosoms and all of that which composes itself into an incomprehensible charm under the tact of those playful gestures, slender fingers and brisk steps – was not able to entice an entirely natural little smile, word or captivated glance from me. They would say to me: ‘You don’t even know how to laugh’ – whilst I thought: ‘Why should I laugh at everything? I am not a child!’ And they would think: ‘Well, yes. You are already a complete man.’

It is difficult to tell whether my beard was agreeable to my mother. Taking into consideration the status, purpose and demeanour of every mother, it could be said that my beard bothered her as much as it soothed her. My little cousin who was with us in our tenement never wanted to laugh or chat in front of me. Mother boiled this antipathy down to be in her favour, but at the same time, she could also notice that I was no longer a child.

I travelled a lot, spoke little; I was always reading. I never joked. In foreign parts they gave me the title of ‘professor’, whilst here a stranger could have quite easily said that I was a ‘doctor’. In the villages they considered me to be a scholar, whereas some said that in view of my education to a certain extent my only equal was the local teacher who wore pince-nez. I wore spectacles. This is why not even the village girls liked me.

My ideals were so completely derived from the lives and people amid books and studies. At first, their elbowing upset me, later I became accustomed to it and I began to look out for the elbowing and attention given to my ‘strange and ridiculous’ likeness everywhere. I reacted: contempt and coldness began to reflect back at all of those around me who so heartlessly and again with great feeling exposed me to ridicule. Whenever the little brats would follow me giggling, I felt their gibes oppressive, nauseating and tiring, as though the giggles of these little urchins were a light reflecting from the glazed, empty looks of the passers-by and it would strike me rigid inside. So my relationship with the world is in general, a relationship as it remains on the streets, in the theatre, in public – which was all in my beard and my spectacles. According to this, people judged and evaluated me, and I, according to this, judged and evaluated – people. The appearance of a learned man, serious and ridiculous!

I merged those two public opinions – the serious and the ridiculous – within myself and here my misanthropy turned into cynicism. I became increasingly colder and derisive. I used to stand in the street and watch the throng, how they bow, pass by, prance and curtsey, and the neat, beautiful and elegant people became most repulsive to me. ‘It is all pomade, rouge and perfume: perfume for our sense of smell, rouge for our eyes and pomade for the touch …’ For me the young men became the most obnoxious; I extended falling in love to the youth, stupidity and their little moustaches. Flirting to me became something similar to a caricature of monkeys, love was a caricature of flirting, and parties, promenades and dances caricatures of caricatures. Conversely, I began to like bearded people, and upon encountering them sometimes I would be kind and sensitive, as if I had found a kindred and noble spirit.

No. I was not normal. I knew that I didn’t create the impression of a twenty-year-old young man on the girls because of my spectacles, my beard and my serious life. If they looked at me from afar, they grinned saucily and inanely. But, if I approached them and struck up a conversation, that sauciness became anxiety, and that inanity timidity. The impression, which I made on them from afar, was ridiculous; from close-up stern: therefore I made the same impression on them that a professor makes on a pupil!

Didn’t I because of that almost rape a girl, beating her, because she mocked me, and then begin to feel an inclination for boys? One paradox was obvious: if I hadn’t had the beard, I would, with such an elongated face, nose and stern gaze, and because of my spectacles, create the impression of that of a Jesuit.

But I was sick of everything. I retired to my studies and longed for complete peace. It was by no means in my interest to provoke unknown people: someone would ridicule me, I’d react and get another hiding.

So, because of that and only that I shaved off my beard. I was overcome by a strange feeling. I grabbed my double chin and it seemed unusually tender, small and childlike. I looked at myself in the mirror, I cheered, became confused, paid the barber and flew home. Everyone cheered. My mother kissed me – like a long-lost son; my aunt’s eyes came to life and she unconsciously began to hug me, whilst my little cousin clapped her hands, blushed and ran away shouting wildly. Immediately I felt unburdened; I straightened up; I skipped through the streets, looked at the passers-by and seeing a smile now on the women’s lips, I became waggish everywhere, cheerful, a child. I had even surrendered to my mother’s kiss, like an infant, to my aunt’s embrace, like a little boy, to the girls’ glances like a young man. These glances couldn’t possibly be mocking now: I sensed it and knew it. So I passed the day loitering the streets and cafés. In fact, I suddenly felt the will and desire for kisses, as if my mother’s and my aunt’s kiss, and then that ecstatic leap by my little cousin had transported me back to my boyhood when all pranks are forgiven and judged with the same leniency, a threatening finger and compassion. Now I looked younger than I was; some said to me: ‘Like a grammar school boy!’ I looked at one of my photographs from elementary school and the same spoilt, malicious expression was still carved into the edges of my lips now. I remembered my first love from nursery school – a slight, slender little girl with a button nose and one lip curled over the other. I had even kissed her, and then she began to cry, and from shyness stuck her face in her little skirt that only reached to her knees. And my little cousin ran away today too, and I saw the same look in her eyes that was burning over her flushed cheeks. I now began to notice all these colours and shapes of innocence with an unusual appetite. I had come out from my aunt’s and mother’s embraces completely giddy and befuddled. I had felt the same sense of being lost and indulgent resignation six years before, when a woman in one public locale had embraced, kissed and tickled me with thoroughly private intentions. And with the same contented and light step I had walked out of the barbershop and my own home, as though I had gained something the same as with the loss of virginity, with the loss today of – my beard.

This evening I strolled down the promenade like all the others, and I began to glance at the girls, first of all out of curiosity (to see what impression I made), and then out of real passion and indulgence; because now those smiles and glances said: ‘From afar and from anear you are the same, darling, dear, the only one! Kiss us now – your kiss doesn’t prickle! Bring your little moustache close to our thin nostrils now; a beard reminds us of old men, our fathers, and the teachers who forbid us from flirting, our first and last love, our one and only eternal cigarette.’

I felt a chill on my chin; I felt that I was missing something, and as if by shaving off my beard I had undertaken a real adolescent adventure, a twinkle came to my eyes: I could no longer, nor did I know how to, laugh cynically. All the cynicism of my ideas and facial expression had been in my beard.

It could be said that this is absurd; but, if this is absurd, then it is psychology. A scholar seeks logic and invents a theory; a man of letters states a fact; if he cares that they take it as the truth, then he spends time, ink, paper and his common sense to connect them, make them logical, understandable and interesting and invests everything into pulling the wool over the eyes of his readers. A scholar delivers a theory – an abstract untruth; a man of letters – a tale – a concrete lie.

So I had shaved off my beard and set off for studies the following day, equipped with chocolate, jam and several addresses of various young ladies, and with the solid conviction that I would be able to study in peace in my room and on the street. ‘I no longer provoke; but I do irritate. All the same. As long as I am not irritated’ – I thought, sitting in the carriage, after I had told my cousin that I would write a letter to her with melted chocolate and seal it with the jam, and that I would never forget her.

I set off in the evening. I travelled the whole night. Also in the compartment was one young lady. There were others too; but I noted her in my mind, almost underlined, that girl. At first there was conversation, then some fell fast asleep right where they were sitting; others began dozing just as though they were sleeping, but I kept quiet, watching the girl and I just covered my eyes! Then everyone fell asleep. New passengers crowded into the compartment; the girl had to squeeze up and I had to squeeze up: and so we came closer to each other and we continued to sleep. But I only half-closed my eyes.

A faint light wandered over our faces, drowsy from all the clattering and clanging. Sometimes our heads would bump together, but only for a brief moment. Our thighs were touching continuously. The line where they joined was carving cinders into my flesh. Every now and then I twitched my leg, and then our knees would collide, and then I would completely press myself onto her, because, well – I couldn’t bear it, I couldn’t even speak. I was wearing a short coat. And she was so close … Momentarily I saw her eyes, the circles under them and her face completely on fire, blackened from insomnia, fatigue and the jolting of the carriage. But I wasn’t thinking about anything; these two ‘beardless’ days remained distant and close: like a dream, which is invoked and felt but then forgotten. Whilst outside night had fallen over the land, struck at the firmament and pressed against the sooty, frozen windows. We flew over plains, at the foot of mountains, past villages, towns, streams and forests. And there always remaining in the same place, further and further away from home, my home village, my mother and acquaintances. And this girl too was going out into the world, into employment. And the night flowed deeper, further, closer and thicker like a flood and the hiatus of thoughts, the sensation of winter and the impending snow, the little red noses, the fast pace, the tapping soles, chapped lips, wool, gloves, overcoats and punch overwhelm me completely. Some drunken, dreamy sadness had momentarily cooled my passion and the touch of young flesh. Entering unfamiliar regions, leaving familiar faces, imagining life in the metropolis with nights spent in a theatre gallery or at a café window or at masquerades I was unconsciously moved, and I wished I had a female presence by my side on the pavement and in the galleries, wrapped in a woollen scarf, on which snowflakes had become caught; who trembles, while her eyes filled with tears, as though a cigar had tickled her nose and mouth.

Day was breaking. The dawn burst through the spacious air, although