PAGE 6
Neighbour Rosicky
by
“He said I was to tell you some compliments, but I forgot ’em.” Rosicky’s eyes twinkled.
“About you, I mean. What did he say about your asthma?”
“He says I ain’t got no asthma.” Rosicky took one of the little rolls in his broad brown fingers. The thickened nail of his right thumb told the story of his past.
“Well, what is the matter? And don’t try to put me off.”
“He don’t say nothing much, only I’m a little older, and my heart ain’t so good like it used to be.”
Mary started and brushed her hair back from her temples with both hands as if she were a little out of her mind. From the way she glared, she might have been in a rage with him.
“He says there’s something the matter with your heart? Doctor Ed says so?”
“Now don’t yell at me like I was a hog in de garden, Mary. You know I always did like to hear a woman talk soft. He didn’t say anything de matter wid my heart, only it ain’t so young like it used to be, an’ he tell me not to pitch hay or run de corn-sheller.”
Mary wanted to jump up, but she sat still. She admired the way he never under any circumstances raised his voice or spoke roughly. He was city-bred, and she was country-bred; she often said she wanted her boys to have their papa’s nice ways.
“You never have no pain there, do you? It’s your breathing and your stomach that’s been wrong. I wouldn’t believe nobody but Doctor Ed about it. I guess I’ll go see him myself. Didn’t he give you no advice?”
“Chust to take it easy like, an’ stay round de house dis winter. I guess you got some carpenter work for me to do. I kin make some new shelves for you, and I want dis long time to build a closet in de boys’ room and make dem two little fellers keep dere clo’es hung up.”
Rosicky drank his coffee from time to time, while he considered. His moustache was of the soft long variety and came down over his mouth like the teeth of a buggy-rake over a bundle of hay. Each time he put down his cup, he ran his blue handkerchief over his lips. When he took a drink of water, he managed very neatly with the back of his hand.
Mary sat watching him intently, trying to find any change in his face. It is hard to see anyone who has become like your own body to you. Yes, his hair had got thin, and his high forehead had deep lines running from left to right. But his neck, always clean-shaved except in the busiest seasons, was not loose or baggy. It was burned a dark reddish brown, and there were deep creases in it, but it looked firm and full of blood. His cheeks had a good colour. On either side of his mouth there was a half-moon down the length of his cheek, not wrinkles, but two lines that had come there from his habitual expression. He was shorter and broader than when she married him; his back had grown broad and curved, a good deal like the shell on an old turtle, and his arms and legs were short.
He was fifteen years older than Mary, but she had hardly ever thought about it before. He was her man, and the kind of man she liked. She was rough, and he was gentle- city-bred, as she always said. They had been shipmates on a rough voyage and had stood by each other in trying times. Life had gone well with them because, at bottom, they had the same ideas about life. They agreed, without discussion, as to what was most important and what was secondary. They didn’t often exchange opinions, even in Czech- it was as if they had thought the same thought together. A good deal had to be sacrificed and thrown overboard in a hard life like theirs, and they had never disagreed as to the things that could go. It had been a hard life, and a soft life, too. There wasn’t anything brutal in the short, broad-backed man with the three-cornered eyes and the forehead that went on to the top of his skull. He was a city man, a gentle man, and though he had married a rough farm girl, he had never touched her without gentleness.