Nine Tales for Children

 

Karel Čapek

 

plus one additional tale by Josef Čapek

 

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The Water Sprite's Tale

 

            Children, if you think there is no such thing as water sprites I'm telling you now that there is, and lots of them!  There was one very near the place where we were born, for instance, there was one below the weir on the River Úpa, one in Havlovice by the wooden bridge and there was one who lived in the stream in Radeč.  He was a German sprite and couldn't speak a word of Czech; nonetheless, one day he came to my father to have a tooth pulled out, and to pay him he brought a basket full of silver and pink trout neatly wrapped in nettles to keep them fresh; and my father could see that he was a water sprite because the chair was wet after he had left it.  And there was one at my grandfather's mill in Hronov who kept sixteen horses under the water by the weir; that's why the engineers said the River Metuje had sixteen horse power at that place.  Those sixteen horses never stopped pulling and pulling and so the mill wheel was always turning; then one night our grandfather died, and the water sprite quietly went and put all sixteen horses into mourning so that the mill wheels didn't turn for three days.  Big rivers have water sprites with even more horses, sometimes even fifty or a hundred of them; but some are so poor they don't even have a goat. 

            The water sprite in the Vltava in Prague, of course, is one of the great ones, an enormously rich and grand gentleman; he might even have his own motor boat and go away to the seaside in the summer.  But then, in Prague even a common cheat might sometimes have lots of money and rush around in a motor car - Beep-Beep - splashing mud everywhere.  There are some petty, good-for-nothing sprites too, ones that have nothing more than a puddle as small as your hand with just one frog, three flies and a couple of water beetles; or ones that live in such a pitiful ditch that not even a mouse could wet his tummy in it; some of them don't catch more in a year than a couple of paper boats and a nappy that got lost from mother's washing.  For them it is a wretched life.  But there's another sprite at Rožmberk who might have as much as two hundred and twenty thousand carp, as well as tench, barbel and even a sharp-toothed pike.  In short, there's no such thing as fairness in this world.

            Water sprites like to live alone, but once or twice a year when the water is high all the sprites from all round the region meet up and hold what's called a district conference.  In this region, when it's high water, they always meet up at Hradec Králové because it's so nice and flat there with lovely ponds and creeks and blind channels with beds of the finest mud.  The best mud is yellow or slightly brown; if it's red or grey it's not as smooth and can be a bit slimey.  So at some nice wet place such as this they meet up and tell each other all their news: that over by Suchovršice the humans are regulating the water flow so that the sprite living there, old Jireček, would have to find somewhere else to live; that the price of cups and of ribbons is terribly high these days, any sprite wanting to catch anyone would have to pay thirty korun for ribbons and a cup would cost at least three, and such shoddy quality too (better to give it all up and catch something else instead).  And  then they'll say how the sprite over by Jaroměřice, Faltys, that ginger haired sprite, he's gone into business, selling mineral water now, he is, and Slepánek, him with the limp, he's become a plumber, doing people's pipework, and others have found other ways of making a living. 

 

            There are many different ways a water sprite can make a living, and that's why so many of them stop being water sprites.  Every year, at their annual gatherings, they count how many there are and say to each other sadly, "Five less of us again this year; our trade is slowly dying out."

            "Well," said old Kreuzmann, the water sprite from Trutnov, "things aren't like they used to be.  It's been getting worse and worse for thousands of years; all of Bohemia was under water in the old days, and there weren't no humans about then, neither, oh no, all different in them days it was ... damn it, what was I saying?

"That all of Bohemia was under water," said Zelinka helpfully, the sprite from Skalice.

"Oh yeah," said Kreuzmann.  "All of Bohemia was under water, and all the mountains round about and all; us water sprites could walk all the way from Bruno to Prague without getting our feet dry.  Even the Giant's Mountains was under water.  Those were the days, lads, those were the days, them were."

"Those were the days," reminisced Kulda, the sprite from Ratibořice.  "Didn't live all alone in them days, us water sprites, no living like hermits like we do now.  Used to have whole cities under water we did, made of bricks made of water.  Furniture carved out of hard water, there was, and quilts made of soft rainwater, and there was warm water so we didn't get cold.  No bottoms to the rivers, no banks alongside them, there wasn't even any surface on the water; just lots of water and us."

"Oh, and what water it was, too!" said Liška, the sprite from the wetlands by Žabokrk.  "You could slice it like butter and roll it into little balls, you could spin it into a thread and make it into a rope; it was like steel, like linen, like glass, like paper, as thick as cream, as strong as an oak and it kept you warm like a fur coat.  Used to make everything out of water.  They don't even have water like that in America these days, nothing like it!"  And old Liška spat in disgust, leaving a deep little pond. 

            "It was," said Kreuzmann thoughtfully.  "Lovely water it was in them days, and completely dumb it was, and all."

"How's that then?" asked Zelinka, who was not as old as the others.

"It's true, it was dumb," Liška Hejkavec told him.  "Didn't have any voice.  Couldn't speak at all.  The water was as quiet and as dumb like it is nowadays when everything's frozen.  Or when the snow falls and it's midnight and there's nothing moving; and then it's so quiet, so absolutely quiet, that it makes you feel nervous, so you stick your head out from the water and listen; and it feels like there's something squeezing your heart 'cause of that remorseless quiet.  That's how quiet it was in those days when the water still couldn't speak."

"How come it isn't still dumb now then?" asked Zelinka, who was only seven thousand years old. 

"This is what happened," said Liška.  "My great-grandad told me all about it, and he said it was something like a million years ago.  There was a water sprite in those days - what was he called now? Rákosník? No, not Rákonsník.  Minařík?  No, not Minařík either.  Hampl?  No not Hampl.  Pavlásek?  No.  Oh for God's sake, what was his name?"

"Arion," said Kreuzmann.

"Arion," Liška agreed.  "Just on the tip of me tongue it was.  Arion, his name was.  Now this Arion, he had a very strange gift, some kind of God-given talent, a sort of special ability, see?  He could speak and sing so beautifully it made your heart jump one moment and then burst into tears the next when he sang for you.  Such a musician, he was."

"Poet," Kulda corrected him.

"Well whether he was a musician or a poet he knew what he was doing, mate," Liška replied.  "Now my great-grandad told me that when he sang everyone was in tears.  This Arion, he had some great pain in his heart.  No-one knew what it was.  No-one ever knew what it was they'd done to him, but it must have been something terrible for him to sing so beautifully like that and with such sadness.  So there he'd be under the water, singing his laments, and every drop of water would shake like it was a tear.  And there'd be something of his singing that would go so deep into every drop of water it would stay there.  Every drop caught a little bit of his voice.  And that's why the water isn't dumb any more.  That's why it's always ringing and tinkling and shouting and whispering and bubbling and splashing and humming and howling and groaning and gurgling and hissing and whistling and sighing and laughing, playing like on a silver harp, warbling like a balalaika, singing like an organ, blowing like a French horn and talking like a man who's happy or sad.  Ever since then the water's been able to speak every language on the Earth and tell us about things that even now nobody understands, they're so strange and beautiful.  And humans understand them least of all.  But if it hadn't been for Arion teaching the water how to sing it'd still be as dumb as it was then, dumb just like the sky."

"It wasn't Arion who put the sky in the water, though," said old Kreuzmann.  "That didn't happen till later, in my father's time, God bless him.  Quaquaquoquoax it was who did that, and he did it for love."

"What happened there, then?" Zelinka asked him.

"It went like this.  Quaquaquoquoax fell in love.  He saw Princess Quaquaqunka and fell in love with her just like that.  Quaquaqunka was beautiful.  She had a yellow belly like a frog's, legs like a frog's and a mug like a frog's from ear to ear, and she was all wet and cold; she really was beautiful.  Don't get many like that these days."

"And what happened then?" asked Zelinka eagerly.

"Well, what d'you think happened?  Quaquaqunka was beautiful and proud.  All she did was fart and say quack.  It was driving Quaquaquoquoax mad, 'If you marry me,' he said, 'I'll get anything you want and give it to you.'  And she said, 'Go and get me the heavenly blue of the sky then, quack.'"

"And what did Quaquaquoquoax do then?" asked Zelinka.

"Well what was he supposed to do?  He sat down under the water and felt sorry for himself: Qua qua qua qua qua qua qua qua.  And then he decided to kill himself.  So he jumped up out of the water and into the air so that he'd drown, quack.  Nobody'd ever tried that before, jumping up into the air.  Quaquaquoquoax was the first one."

"And what did he do up in the air?"

"Nothing.  He looked up and saw the blue sky above him.  Then he looked down, and he saw the blue sky below him too.  Quaquaquoquoax was amazed at that.  Up till then nobody ever knew the sky was reflected in the water.  When Quaquaquoquoax saw the blue sky down in the water he cried out in amazement - Quack! - and fell back down into it.  So then Quaquaquoquoax took Quaquaqunka on his back and jumped up into the air with her.  Quaquaqunka saw the heavenly blue of the sky in the water and she cried out in joy - Quack qua! - as Quaquaquoquoax really had brought her the heavenly blueness of the sky."

"And what happened then?"

"Nothing.  They lived happily together and had lots of tadpoles.  And ever since then, water sprites have been going up out of the water to see that the heavenly blue of the sky is down where they live too.  So whenever anyone leaves home, doesn't matter who it is, and looks back where he's come from like Quaquaquoquoax did when he looked down at the water, he'll see that home really is heavenly.  Just as heavenly as the blue of the sky.  Quack."

"Who was it who showed that, then?"

"Quaquaquoquoax."

"Up with Quaquaquoquoax!"

"Hooray for Quaquaqunka!"

            Just then, there was a man walking past, and he thought to himself, 'Those frogs are making a lot of noise today.'  So he picked up a stone and threw it into the pond.  The water splashed and scattered around and then there was silence.  All the water sprites jumped into the water and they won't have another conference until next year.