FullReads

Whenever he spoke of his early life he always became quiet and depressed, and for a long time I believed that he brooded over his mistake in exchanging a happy home for the vicissitudes of Bohemia. It came out slowly, however, that he was haunted by a superstition, a strange and ingenious one, which was yet not without a certain show of reason for its existence. Little by little I learned the following facts about it: His father was of pure Szeklar or original Hungarian stock, as dark-skinned as a Hindoo, and his mother was from one of the families of Western Hungary, with probably some Saxon blood in her veins. His three brothers were dark like his father, but he and his sister were blondes. He was born with a peculiar red mark on his right shoulder, directly over the scapular. This mark was shaped like a forked stick. His father had received a wound in the insurrection of ’48, a few months before the birth of him, the youngest son, and this birth-mark reproduced the shape of the father’s scar. Among Hungarians his father passed for a very learned man. He spoke fluently German, French, and Latin (the language used by Hungarians in common communication with other nationalities), and took great pains to give his children an acquaintance with each of these tongues. Their earliest playthings were French alphabet-blocks, and the set which served as toys and tasks for each of the elder brothers came at last to him as his legacy. The letters were formed by the human figure in different attitudes, and each block had a little couplet below the picture, beginning with the letter on the block. The Y represented a gymnast hanging by his hands to a trapeze, and being a letter which does not occur in the Hungarian language except in combinations, excited most the interest and imagination of the youngsters. Thousands of times did they practise the grouping of the figures on the blocks, and the Y always served as a model for trapeze exercises. My friend, on account of his birth-mark, which resembled a rude Y, was early dubbed by his brothers with the nick-name Yatil, this being the first words of the French couplet printed below the picture. Learning the French by heart, they believed the Y a-t-il to be one word, and with boyish fondness for nick-names saddled the youngest with this. It is easy to understand how the shape of this letter, borne on his body in an indelible mark, and brought to his mind every moment of the day, came to seem in some way connected with his life. As he grew up in this belief he became more and more superstitious about the letter and about everything in the remotest way connected with it.

The first great event of his life was joining the circus, and to this the letter Y more or less directly! led him. He left home on his twenty-fifth birth-day, and twenty five was the number of the letter Y in the block-alphabet.

The second great event of his life was the Turin lottery, and the number of the lucky ticket was twenty-five. “The last sign given me,” he said, “was the accident in the circus here.” As he spoke he rolled up the right leg of his trowsers, and there, on the outside of the calf, about midway between the knee and ankle, was a red scar forked like the letter Y.

From the time he confided his superstition to me he sought me more than ever. I must confess to feeling, at each visit of his, a little constrained and unnatural. He seemed to lean on me as a protector, and to be hungry all the time for an intimate sympathy I could never give him. Although I shared his secret, I could not lighten the burden of his superstition. His wound had entirely healed, but as his leg was still weak and he still continued to limp a little, he could not resume his place in the circus. Between brooding over his superstition and worrying about his accident, he grew very despondent. The climax of his hopelessness was reached when the doctor told him at last that he would never be able to vault again. The fracture had been a severe one, the bone having protruded through the skin. The broken parts had knitted with great difficulty, and the leg would never be as firm and as elastic as before. Besides, the fracture had slightly shortened the lower leg. His circus career was therefore ended, and he attributed his misfortune to the ill-omened letter Y.