Ivana Myšková

The Long Thread Running Through Life

2017 | Host

…he began once more to believe in the existence of a happier life, and almost had an appetite for it, as an invalid may feel who has been in bed for months and on a strict diet, when he picks up a newspaper and reads an account of an official banquet or an advertisement or a cruise round Sicily.

— Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time I

 

The youthful countess was sitting in a rococo armchair in an ostentatious hall surrounded by portraits of her ancestors. In her left hand she held an embroidery frame and in her right she passed a needle with red thread through a snow-white canvas. Behind her stood her hand maiden, who was approximately the same age, and just when the needle passed through the canvas she carefully took it from the countess’s fingers and set off with the needle and thread through the open door to the next hall. When the thread pulled tight and the girl could go no further, she ran back to her mistress. She knew that the stitch had been made. The countess then carefully took the needle and thread again from the girl’s fingers and slowly inserted it into the canvas beside the previous stitch. The girl waited expectantly and then, again, very gently took the tip of the needle with the red thread and, again, set off slowly towards the other room. And then, naturally, she returned with it once more.

The same thing was repeated about four times when the countess said:

“I’ll never finish embroidering it this way.”

At first, due to her upbringing, the servant hesitated as to whether she was allowed to speak, but as she was becoming exhausted and annoyed from all the running, she plucked up the courage to answer:

“You’d need to shorten the thread.”

“I see…” said the countess in agreement, resignedly looking up from the embroidery frame, nodding her head thoughtfully.

The countess’s doubts emboldened the girl even more.

“If you are going to finish the embroidery, it will take a very long time.”

“Yes,” said the countess resolutely, and before she could work in the needle and red thread into the canvas again, she unexpectedly lifted her head and said:

“So long that perhaps it would be more sensible to leave the whole thing unfinished.”

“Perhaps it would be more sensible!” cried out the girl hopefully. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing, and she hoped that this would be the end of her back-breaking work.

“Perhaps,” said the countess calmly, and as though in a dream pushed the needle through the canvas and left it hanging by the eyelet.

The girl looked at the needle, then at the door, leant down to the countess and this time spoke quietly and persuasively: “If you shortened the thread, it wouldn’t be so time-consuming.”

“Certainly,” said the countess smiling, straightening up ever so slightly,

“perhaps it would only require a very short time.”

“And I wouldn’t need to run about as much,” said the hand maiden dreamily.

“That’s right,” agreed the countess, looking at her eagerly. “It would change your life!”

“And it would change your life too!” said the hand maiden, now unable to hide her happiness. She wanted to grab the countess, lift her from her armchair, take the embroidery from her and dance with her in all of those grand rooms.

Fortunately she was able to control herself.

“That’s true,” said the countess looking at her with still eager eyes.

“It would be a different life,” said the girl smiling.

“Yes, a completely different life,” smiled the countess in unison, and it seemed as though she really would get out of the armchair.

The girl noticed this and decided to help her. She took the embroidery frame in her left hand and tried to slowly take it away from the countess as though it was a dangerous toy. But then she began to feel resistance. Weak but insistent.

Frightened, she looked at the countess who was lifting her gaze somewhere to the emptiness and shrugged her shoulders.

“But what are we doing? We have this,”

The tug-of-war stopped, the hand maiden meekly let go of the embroidery frame, the countess gave her the needle which she had pulled out of the canvas somewhat impatiently.

“…a long thread running through life.”

 

Translated from the Czech by Graeme Dibble