This week’s Translation Tuesday brings you a modern moral fable from the nationalist Czech writer and politician Viktor Dyk. In “The Death of the Doll,” a child copes with loneliness and perpetual familial strife by finding kinship and love in a cherished doll; in the child’s imagination, the doll even becomes a voiced character. Dyk’s prose is deceptively sparse, mimicking the naïve and heartbreaking simplicity of the child’s worldview, which is brilliantly contrasted with the vitriolic dialogue of the parents. Translator Frances Jackson writes: “In another writer’s hands this could have all too easily descended into melodrama, but instead there is something satisfyingly understated about the text.”
The doll was very beautiful, all slender and white in a little pink dress. Her name was Edda and she could move both her head and her eyes. She could be seen in the window from the street and often made passing children envious because of her great size and beauty. Otilka sat with her by the window for that very reason; it pleased her to know that, in spite of everything, someone could be envious of something of that belonged to her.
If it were not for the doll, Otilka would have been sad most of the time. The room was dim and gloomy; she did not like to be in here. The sun did not shine this way: there was a tall building directly opposite. And the street outside was straight and inhospitable. Really, Edda was all that she had.
Twice a day, of course, she had to take the dismal stairs to get to school. And it was always torture to Otilka. People frightened her and so did school. There was nobody there to play with, nobody who might comfort her; the other children did play games, but she didn’t like it when they did. The games were unpleasant and rough, and the children unpleasant and spiteful. It gave them pleasure to hurt her; Otilka often found herself crying. It was probably all down to the malice of a bad wizard who had cast her among bad people.
And lately, in particular, it was no different with her mother. She used to play with her sometimes, tell her fairy tales and would even laugh every now and again, but now it was as if she did not have any time or just a smile for Otilka. And yet it was just the three of them there.
Her father rarely came home. He was gloomy and rarely spoke. He no longer put Otilka on his knee and rocked her. Of course she was no longer a little girl by then; she was already seven years old. And yet sometimes it made her anxious how gloomily he gazed.
Sometimes he also quarrelled with her mother, and it pained Otilka even though she didn’t properly understand what was going on. The quarrels were about a woman Otilka didn’t know, but who must have been very wicked judging by the things her mother said about her. She was the reason that Otilka’s father was hardly ever home and was so gloomy and that her mother wept and wailed. Sometimes both of them lost their tempers and said horrid things to one another and Otilka trembled with fear behind her curtain; even the doll was dismayed. In the end, her father would slam the door and leave the house; then things became even sadder.
Indeed, the only thing that remained unsullied by all of this was that beautiful white doll who went by the name of Edda. Otilka sat with her by the window and spoke with her in a low voice; she was afraid to speak out loud, so glum had things become.
Edda even allowed herself to be kissed, although not all that often; she moved her head and eyes with captivating prowess. And Otilka could even hear her speaking too, albeit naturally very quietly; she asked the doll whether she loved her, and the doll very clearly said yes. That blissful yes was Otilka’s secret and it was good that at least someone loved her.
Her mother and father no longer noticed her at all. Otilka did not know why, but she could sense it. Her mother and father probably had something quite different on their minds. Otilka would have liked to find out what, but the expressions on their faces deterred her; there was nothing to do but sit behind the curtain so as not to be in anyone’s way. Besides, her parents were frequently not at home, and even when they were, they might as well not have been; they had nothing but ill-tempered and absent-minded words for Otilka.
That day, the day the doll died, was not a day that gave any inkling of such a sad affair. It was one of the first days of spring; the windows were open, and mild, fresh air wafted through into the room. The street below was teeming with people and today they were somehow brisker and more radiant than at other times. The only thing that grieved Otilka was that today nobody was paying attention to her doll; evidently people’s minds were occupied by something that again Otilka didn’t understand. In fact, she didn’t understand anything apart from that Edda loved her. It was enough, though.
That very same day her mother and father were quarrelling once more and much worse than before. Otilka was aghast and cowered behind the curtain, alarmed by their impassioned cries and the ferocity of their gestures.
“You liked the look of her, I hope?”
“You wretch!”
“You and your histrionic play-acting! What is it that you actually want?! You married a man twelve years your junior— What did you expect—”
A bitter, ugly laugh resounded; her father left his wife to her scornful bow.
Otilka’s mother was seething.
She ran headlong about the room with such a wrathful expression on her face, unlike anything Otilka had ever seen before; her hands clenched convulsively, she was shaking with pure rage and coming out with words that didn’t make any sense.
“Let him go. . . Take it all. . . Can’t be like this. . . The wretch. . . Going after that hussy. . . The devil take it all—”
She opened the cabinet and started taking out letters and jewellery.
“That can take a flying leap. . . and that ring, away with it, from him, it was. . .! That doll’s from him and all, isn’t it? Give it here—!”
She wrenched the doll brutally from Otilka’s shaking arms and threw her down onto the pavement in a frenzied fit of rage. Then she slumped down, exhausted, in an armchair.
Stupefied, Otilka could only watch as Edda flew through the air. . . —Would she turn towards her one last time?—and fell onto the hard and dirty flagstones of the pavement. The poor thing, she was done for, all her beauty and splendour lost for ever; she perished in the filth of the street but, in the end, fixed once again upon Otilka her eyes, two poor dying eyes:
“I still love you!”
That look exerted an irresistible pull on Otilka. She rose from the chair to the open window and then, after a moment’s hesitation and dismay, followed after the doll.
The people who were caught up in the tragedy of that spring day claimed that she had spread her arms, as if she wanted to embrace someone. . .
Translated from the Czech by Frances Jackson
Viktor Dyk was a noted Czech poet, playwright, prose author, journalist, and politician of the nationalist movement. Born in 1877, he wrote prolifically during the first half of the twentieth century, but died in 1931 at the age of only fifty-three. He is buried in Prague’s famous Olšany cemetery.
Frances Jackson first came across this short story while studying under the late Jim Naughton of St. Edmund Hall, Oxford. She is originally from the UK, but now lives in Bavaria. Her poetry and translations have appeared in places such as B O D Y, London Grip, The Missing Slate, and Your Impossible Voice.
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