Autumn is well advanced, the streets are full of dry leaves which add to our work, from the houses fly tired unenthusiastic flags, public buildings are displaying streamers with jerkish slogans which would undoubtedly please any chimpanzees that might happen along. Luckily we don’t have to pick up any of this colourful textile rubbish: flags and slogans are put up and taken down by special motorised squads.
A little way short of the beflagged Palace of Culture we met our now familiar uniformed pair. The foppish one looked a little wilted, he’d probably come on duty after a heavy night; his companion seemed unchanged.
‘Bloody mess, isn’t it?’ the fop addressed us, pointing vaguely ahead.
‘People are pigs,’ the foreman agreed. ‘Hey, what about the murderer?’ he remembered. ‘Got him yet?’
‘Signed, sealed and delivered,’ the fop said casually; ‘the lads did a good job.’
‘Name of George,’ his companion explained.
‘George who?’ the foreman asked curiously.
‘Would you believe it, he was a juvenile,’ the fop yawned. ‘Introduced himself to a girl he wanted to strangle as George from Kladno. But he made a mistake there; she got away from him.’
‘Told her he was a mining apprentice,’ the fair one added.
‘Yeah. Our lads chased up all the Georges who were mining apprentices, though they realised it might have been a trick.’
‘That’s right,’ our youngster sounded pleased. ‘And was it?’
‘Course it wasn’t. The man was simple! Know how many women he raped? Go on, you tell him,’ he encouraged his companion.
‘Sixteen!’
‘And they identified him beyond any doubt.’
‘And he was a mining apprentice?’ the foreman voiced his astonishment.
‘I’m telling you he was simple. Fellow like that commits one murder, and then has to go on. Things ain’t what they used to be – mining being an honourable job!’ The fop yawned broadly. ‘Still no pantaloons?’ he turned to the captain.
‘After my death!’ the captain snapped. But maybe I misheard him and he really said: ‘Save your breath!’
The fop didn’t even laugh this time. He nodded to his companion and the two continued down the road.
Mrs Venus pushed her shovel into my hand and grabbed the cart. With her free hand she immediately produced a cigarette and lit it. Her eyes were wet with tears. As we were tipping the rubbish into the cart I asked if anything had happened to her.
She looked at me as if deciding what lay hidden behind my inquiry: ‘Happened? Why should anything’ve happened to me? Only the old gent died.’
It took me a while to work out whom she was talking about. ‘The one on your passage?’
‘Well, he was eighty, so he died!’ She flicked her fag-end into the dustbin on the handcart and lit another. To change the subject away from death she pointed to the palace: ‘They say they found a gypsy buried in the concrete there!’
‘You’re telling me,’ the foreman was angry; ‘I’ve got a chum working in the garages there. Last month they came along with pneumatic drills and started to knock down the wall. And d’you know who they were looking for? That woman singer from the National Theatre, the one who went missing eight years ago.’
‘Did they find her?’ I ask.
‘They found bugger-all. Their drills all got screwed up!’
‘It’s a monstrosity,’ the captain gave the palace its proper description. ‘They can drive a million people inside, they switch the radiation on and they’ve turned them into a million sheep!’ At the thought of it he spat mightily. ‘One day someone will set fire to it,’ he added prophetically, ‘and good luck to him!’
At that moment a suspicion grew inside me about the direction of his latest dreams.
My wife went off to the mountains for a week’s skiing with our daughter and grand-daughter, but I didn’t want to leave Dad for so long and therefore stayed behind at home. Only on one day did I go out into the country with my lover. She led me to some sandstone rocks where an anonymous sculptor had over the decades carved out statues of saints, knights and the Czech kings, as well as a lion which towered massively on a rocky ledge. We climbed up narrow icy chimneys and descended on steeply-cut steps. Half-hidden by the fir trunks and raspberry thickets we discovered ever new sculptures. I could see that she was touched and also amazed by the intensity of the creative will of some unknown person who, either not caring for an audience or, on the contrary, full of confidence in his own work, had imposed his visions on these lonely rocks.
I was curious whether it would amuse her to create a similar gallery for herself.
She said she preferred gardens, parks, the sea; and wide open spaces. And she preferred ordinary people to saints.
And whom did she regard as ordinary people?
Everybody else. Saintliness had been invented by those who were afraid of life and real emotions. That’s why they elevated ecstatic rapture to something we should look up to, to something we should regard as a model.
And if she was given the kind of space she wanted, a garden by the seashore, what would she adorn it with?
She was taken aback by my question. She hadn’t thought about it. Certainly with nothing that might give a person a sense of his own poverty, inadequacy or sinfulness.
We found a room for the night in a small hotel; it was built before the war and its tall windows reached almost down to the floor.
Of course there’s something sacred in everyone, she added. She wasn’t thinking of that contrived ecstasy, that baroque gesture, but of something untouchable and unportrayable, the human soul. At moments of enlightenment a person could catch a glimpse of it within himself, he could see his own face as others couldn’t see it. If she were given a garden she’d like to fill it with such shapes that those who came to look at them might see themselves, the way they saw themselves at such an illuminated instant.
What shapes would they be?
The most natural ones. As in that: Prévert poem:
And it may happen to a sweeper
as he waves
his dirty broom
about without a hope
among the dusty ruins
of a wasteful colonial exhibition
that he halts amazed
before a remarkable statue
of dried leaves and blooms
representing we believe
dreams
crimes celebrations lightning
and laughter and again longing
trees and birds
also the moon and love and sun and death…
We spent a long time looking for accommodation for the night. The hotels were closed, or full up, or else taken over by children from ‘nature schools’. In the end we found an inn where, for a bribe, they took us in.
As we stepped into the cold and ill-lit room I tried to embrace her, the way I always embraced her when we found ourselves alone, but she stopped me. She didn’t even let me put our bags in the wardrobe until she had looked into it herself. Then she drew back the discoloured curtains, half-opened the window and sat down in an armchair which groaned even under her slight weight. Can’t you feel something strange here? she asked. But I felt nothing but fatigue.
She became even more restless. I could see that she was listening to something, that she was concentrating on something that was evidently hidden from me. I sat down in the other armchair. Through the open window came alien sounds, someone was starting up a motorbike and a dog was howling in the distance. A silent, sharp-edged patch of light moved across the wall and I realised that I was being gripped by dejection.
At last she stood up. She embraced me and quickly kissed me. Then she asked if I’d mind very much if we left again.
I didn’t think it wise to leave this refuge, knowing that we wouldn’t find anything else in the neighbourhood.
She said that if it came to the worst we could always stay in the open, it would be better than this unhappy place.
I shrugged and picked up the cases again.
In the car she pressed herself against me and begged me not to be angry, surely I knew that she’d never done anything like this before, but there was something evil, something unclean, in that room. Somebody must have died there in terror, without having made his peace, or else have suffered some other great torment.
I told her she’d acted correctly, I wouldn’t wish her to be with me in a place she didn’t feel happy in.
Just before midnight they took pity on us at a mountaineering club hostel. The dormitory was big enough for ten people, but we had it to ourselves. The walls were covered with colour photographs of mountain peaks and outside the window a real mountain towered into the sky. We chose a bed immediately by the window. At last we could embrace.
All of a sudden she burst into tears.
I was used to her sudden fits of crying, but each time I wondered afresh if I was responsible for them.
She kissed me through her tears. No, this time it wasn’t my fault at all, on the contrary, she was grateful to me for showing such understanding and not wishing to stay in that dreadful room. Death had touched her there, and she still couldn’t shake it off. Surely I knew that she was not afraid of dying, she was not clinging to life, never did, but suddenly she’d realised that death would part us.
She attempted to smile. Even though a fortune-teller had told her she’d live to eighty-seven, and even though the lifeline on my palm was long, one day it was bound to happen and then we wouldn’t be seeing each other again, no matter where our souls would go or what fate they’d meet. I embraced her as if trying to carry her in my arms over that river of oblivion which would inevitably divide us.
I’m fine now, she whispered. I feel good with you, here I feel good with you. And she added that she could feel strength and calm issuing from me, that at last I was opening up, listening to my own voice and not just to those around me.
You belong to me regardless, she whispered as she fell asleep; you wouldn’t be here with me if you didn’t belong to me.
And I said nothing, I didn’t reassure her, even though that evening I wanted to be with her, to stay with her, to shield her from the icy waters whose roar I’d managed to hear myself at a moment of total silence. I gazed through the window at the black mass of the mountain and watched the snowflakes driving in the light of a solitary street lamp.
It occurred to me that she had really helped to drag me out of a state in which I was not listening to myself, in which I actually longed to escape from my own voice which had once urged me to honesty. She believed that that voice would lead me to her. How could it be otherwise when we are so often and so completely together?
But I was being called back by that voice to ancient longings which were not linked to her, to a time when my life seemed to me cleaner than it did now.
I looked at her. She was asleep, she was here with me, I could still touch her, still hold her tight, again submit to her voice, to her power. Feel the ecstasy of her proximity. Instead I was in full flight, I was returning to my wife. For one more attempt to be completely with her as I had never managed before, as neither of us had managed before, but as we had both longed to be at one time.
Maybe it will be a vain journey with a hopelessly obstinate longing for a return, for a long-past innocence; I shall be wandering blindly through landscapes which will be ever more parched, where not a single human being will be seen, let alone a close and loved being; what I will find eventually will be that majestic inescapable river, but I shan’t be able to stop. At that point I understood that it was not the river that would divide us, but myself.
She sighed softly in her sleep and I went rigid at the thought that she had been listening to me the whole time. How was I to tell her? If I were the person she wanted to see in me, the person I wanted to be, I’d wake her now and tell her that I was leaving: Farewell, my love, there is no other way, I can’t decide differently even though I love you, you most lovable of all women I’ve ever met. But I didn’t do it, that voice within me was not yet strong enough.
Shortly before nine – we were just getting ready to put our tools into the dustbin recess by the supermarket and to make for the tavern, as was appropriate at that time of day – a garbage truck pulled up alongside us and out jumped Franta, the little idiot. His forage cap at a rakish angle, a red kerchief round his neck, he treated us all to a smile. The foreman walked up towards him but Franta, before saying anything, produced a packet of Benson & Hedges from his pocket, holding it out first to Mrs Venus, then to the foreman and then, one by one, to the rest of us. Only then did he take the foreman aside and talk to him for a while. I could clearly hear him uttering some barely articulated screeches in his castrato’s falsetto.
‘God, he stank like a perfume counter,’ Mrs Venus said the moment Franta had driven off in the direction of the Pankrác prison. ‘Must have done a chemist’s somewhere. And a tobacconist’s too,’ she added, remembering the golden pack.
‘I don’t like it!’ The foreman was staring after the vanished garbage truck as if expecting some message from that direction.
I wanted to know what he didn’t like, but he didn’t like anything: neither the cigarette, nor the kerchief, nor the unexpected visit.
‘Did he say anything to you?’ I wanted to know.
‘What can he say? D’you think he can talk?’ The foreman retrieved his shovel from the recess. ‘That shit’s getting ready for some hanky-panky. We’d better not go anywhere, we’ll have our beer on the hoof!’
The youngster set out to get some beer from the supermarket and I joined him, I said I’d get a snack for myself. Mrs Venus asked us to get her her favourite cigarettes, while the captain wanted a box of matches.
‘I’m somehow half-croaked,’ the youngster was all hunched up as if shaken by the shivers. ‘But last night, have you heard?’
There’d been a real New Orleans band performing in Prague, hardly anyone knew about it, it wasn’t a public performance, but he’d managed to get in. ‘You should have heard them! The pianist they had, a real second Scott Joplin, and the stuff they played! At the end they asked us if we’d like to jam with them. Think of it, them and us!’ The youngster’s cheeks were flushed with excitement. He stopped at the entrance to the supermarket and demonstrated how one of his friends had strummed on a dolly-board. ‘I couldn’t stop myself and tried to blow a little, but I had a sick turn. Surely this must stop some time, don’t you think?’
I said I was sure it would, he just had to be patient.
‘I can join the boys whenever I like,’ he said. ‘We were a happy crew. You saw for yourself how they let me play the solo in the Gershwin.’
‘You played superbly.’
‘You really can’t play it otherwise. I imagine that when he composed it he was thinking of something noble, something…’ he was vainly searching for a word which would describe the blissful state of a spirit creating.
Our daughter told my wife and me about a dream she’d had. She was walking in the forest with her husband when they heard strange soft music. They stepped out onto a clearing and there they saw a tall naked Negro blowing a golden trumpet. The trumpet was so bright it illuminated the whole clearing, filled it with so much light that objects were losing their shadows. Suddenly from all sides brilliantly coloured birds came flying in, perhaps they were humming birds, also parrots and birds of paradise, she’d never seen such birds in the flesh. But her husband noticed that there was a swing hanging between some branches. He sat her on it and then disappeared somewhere. But the swing began to swing on its own accord, the music was still there, a kind of music she’d never heard before. She looked about, trying to discover where it came from, but couldn’t see a single musician. It was then that she realised that the music was coming straight out of the ground, that the stones were humming and the trees singing like some gigantic violin. In the clearing stood some naked people, among whom she also recognised us, and on the shoulders, the heads and the extended fingers of everyone those magnificent brightly coloured birds were perching. She was naked too, but she didn’t feel ashamed because she was still quite small. At that moment one of the coloured birds approached and sat on her hand. Its plumage had colours she’d never seen before. She was also aware of a delicious perfume she’d never smelled before, and it was then she understood that she was in paradise.
‘And what seemed to you most beautiful in that dream?’ my wife wanted to know.
Our daughter thought for a moment and then said: ‘That I was a little girl again.’
Daria attributed my loneliness and reluctance to attach myself to anyone to the stars. I am a saturnian person, my Saturn is in fact retrograde and capricornian, there was a smell of bones coming straight out of it. Love alone could liberate me from my loneliness: real love, embracing my whole being. That was the kind of love she was offering me, to save me. She offered me her proximity, such sharing that I became alarmed. Man is afraid to attain what he longs for, just as subconsciously he longs for what he is afraid of. We are afraid we might lose the person we love. To avoid losing that person we drive him or her away.
She wanted us, at least once in a while, to be together for a few days. At least some movement, some change to that immobility, she lamented. But I resisted so I shouldn’t have to invent more lies at home – surely we’d been together recently.
That I had the nerve to hold that against her! That single night? And you’re with her – she meant my wife – all the time! You’re acting the model husband! The hypocrisy of it! What kind of life are you leading? It’s all so miserable and vile!
I couldn’t think of an excuse. I tried to placate her with presents.
I don’t want you to buy me. I want you to love me!
I do love her, but I can’t go on like this. I’d like to find some conciliation – with her and with all those I am fond of, but I can’t muster the courage to reveal the truth to all of them. And she keeps urging me more and more often: When will you finally make up your mind? Have you no pity at all?
For whom?
For yourself. For me! How can you treat me like this? She cries.
Her husband has gone away. She has remained behind for a week, entirely on her own. One day she’ll be entirely alone with only her stones, they are more merciful than me. What kind of life had I made for her? she cries. Well then, so lie for my sake if you can’t speak the truth for my sake!
At home I say that I’m off to visit a friend whose daughter is getting married.
A good idea, my wife says, you’re always at home on your own, at least it’ll make a change for you. And she begins to wonder what present I should take along for my friend’s daughter. And she’ll bake me a guggelhupf cake for the journey.
But there’ll be plenty of food at the wedding! And we kiss goodbye. It’s shameful. How can I treat her like this!
We arrived at a chalet in the foothills. In the small wood-panelled hall tropical plants are growing and lianas climbing, even though spring has not yet come outside, a black terrier is lying lazily and devotedly by the feet of the woman guarding the door. I stiffen as I show her my identity card, which proves me guilty, but the receptionist cares little about other people’s infidelities, she has her own worries and my lover inspires confidence in her. Indeed the two women chat together as if they’d known one another for years, while the terrier on the floor regards me without interest as I wait in this strange hall like a faithful unfaithful dog.
Our room looks out on the lake. For a while we gaze at the deserted water, then we embrace. She wants to know if I like it here, if I’m glad to be here with her. I assure her that I do and that I am. At our moments of ecstasy we whisper to each other, as we have done for years, that we love one another.
Before supper we set out for a walk. We stroll round the lake and continue through the woods until we find ourselves on a wide piece of flat ground in the midst of which, as in a dream, stands an extensive wooden construction: a pattern of roofs, turrets, silos and metal hoppers. Probably a stone-crushing mill or a building for the shredding of old banknotes, securities and secret documents, all brought here by the lorries which are now parked in the deserted yard. We don’t see a living soul anywhere, only a few rooks cawing from beneath a tall wooden tower. For a while we stand waiting, in case a face appears in one of the windows, or somebody yells at us to get out of here. She is also anxiously looking about in case some vision appears from somewhere in the darkness, but nothing happens, except for the wind making a half-open door creak now and then. We step through that door. In the vestibule, where everything is covered with a layer of grey dust, towers the metallic bulk of some machinery. The huge motionless wheels glisten greasily in the twilight. We climb some rusting iron stairs, up to a boarded platform above the machinery. Through a narrow window we can see the woods and beyond them part of the lake, now darkening in the fading light. Across the sky float drink-sodden faces with reddish noses. Through the cracks in the walls or in the roof rustles the wind. Do you still love me at all? she asks. She picks up some old sacks and rags. She takes off her coat and her soft leather skirt and lays them down on the blackened boards, we make love on the platform of the abandoned mill.
The dusk is obliterating her features. I see her now as I saw her when we first met. I feel as though I were returning to those days, or rather as though I was outside any definite time. With her I am outside anything, and that emptiness bewitches me. I am tossed by the waves, I rise up in my net so high that I can see absolutely nothing from it.
The floorboards are creaking, the wind is rattling some loose corrugated iron, grains of dust are swirling in the air, but these sounds merely heighten the silence in here, the absolute isolation. I say tender words to her and she replies to me. Then we just lie by each other in the darkness. I am conscious of the familiar scent of her body and the smell of stone and timber, and suddenly it hits me that I know this enclosure, that I’ve been here before. I feel the icy touch of fear, even though I have probably only been reminded of the wooden huts in the fortress ghetto of my childhood, or perhaps of the wooden floors of the barracks to which I was forcibly confined, and where death reigned. At just this moment I have to think of death!
My uneasiness won’t go, we make love again, I clutch her to myself in the darkness of this seclusion, in my own ecstasy, I press myself to her, grateful that she is here with me, that she has climbed up with me to this spot which is more suggestive of some elevated hell, where the bones of sinners are ground to dust, than a place intended for love-making.
Out of the blue she asks: Do you also make love with your wife?
Her question snatches me back into the present.
I don’t want you to sleep with another woman, I want you to be with me alone! She draws away from me. Do you hear what I’m saying?
I hear her. What am I to say? How can I chase away her question, how can I chase her away, she who’s lying next to me, when she wants nothing but that I accept the consequences of the fact that I am embracing her, that I’ve been embracing her for quite a few years now, that I call her to me and that I hasten to her whenever she calls. The meanness of my situation and my behaviour overwhelms me and stifles all the words within me.
She pushes me away, gets up hurriedly, dusts down her skirt and dresses. For a while she rummages in her bag, then strikes a match and runs down the creaking stairs. Tell me, who do you think you are? she asks when we are back in our room. You think I have to take everything from you, you think I couldn’t find another man like you? Maybe she really couldn’t find another man who’d treat her the way I do, she adds, who’d treat her like a slut from the streets.
I never ask her how she lives with her husband, but now I say that, after all, she isn’t living on her own either.
What did I mean by that? The fact that she had a husband suited me very well. If she were on her own I’d have dumped her long ago, I’d be afraid for my splendid marriage.
A few weeks ago we were at the cinema together. In the interval she noticed that in the row in front of us sat her husband with a strange woman. From that moment onwards I could see that she couldn’t keep her eyes on the screen. When the film was over she kissed me hurriedly, I mustn’t mind her leaving me now, and she ran off after those two. The following day we met as usual. Her eyes were swollen from crying and from lack of sleep. Her husband, she explained to me, had consistently denied the existence of that woman, now at last she’d caught him. They’d been awake all night, she said things to him he’d probably never forget, she’d reminded him of what he’d be without her. In the end she’d given him a choice: either he stayed with her alone, or else he could pack his things and leave. He had to promise to stay with her.
I was afraid she might have had to make a similar promise. But she had not accepted any talk about herself and me: that was totally different. After all, she’d never denied or concealed my existence.
I am disgusting, she now screams at me, first I get her into such a humiliating and shaming situation, she’d never thought this kind of thing could happen to her, and now I have the effrontery to reproach her with it.
She starts to sob.
How long have I now been listening to her passionate accusations which seem to her flawless? I am the only guilty party and I have no hope of defending myself.
She changes her clothes and attends to her eyes. She’ll have a drink somewhere but she doesn’t want me to come with her.
She wants me to persuade her to stay with me or to let me go with her. She loves me, she merely demands that I should decide for her, she is afraid that otherwise she might lose me. In order not to lose me she’s going out. She slams the door behind her.
On the other bed, near enough for me to touch it, lies her open suitcase. Immediately next to it lies her leather skirt, the stone dust is still clinging to it.
The Garden of Eden, as a learned rabbi described it two thousand years ago, has two gates adorned with rubies. At each of them stand sixty thousand comforters. The joyful features of each one of them shines like the light in the firmament. When a just and faithful person approaches they will take off his clothes, in which he’d risen from the grave, and clothe him in eight robes of clouds of glory, on his head they will place two crowns, one of precious stones and pearls, the other of gold from Parvaim, into his hands they will place eight twigs of myrtle, and they will say to him: Go forth and eat your nourishment: in joy!
Each person, according to the honour he deserves, has his chamber, from which flow four springs: one of milk, one of wine, one of balsam, and one of honey. Sixty angels hover over each just and faithful person. They repeat to him: Go forth and eat honey in joy, for thou hast devoted thyself to the Torah, which is like unto honey, and drink wine, for thou hast devoted thyself to the Torah, which is like unto wine.
For the just there is no more night, night-time is transformed for them into three periods of wakefulness. During the first the just becomes a child and enters among children and delights with them in childish games. In the second he becomes a young man, he enters among young men and delights in their games. In the third he becomes an old man, he enters among old men and delights in their games. In the midst of the Garden of Eden grows the Tree of Life, its branches reach out over the whole garden and provide five hundred thousand kinds of fruit – all different in appearance and taste.
The just and faithful are divided into seven classes and in their midst the Holy Everlasting, blessed be his name, explains to them the Writ, where it is said: I shall choose from all the land the faithful, so they can dwell with me.
When I awoke in the morning I realised that I was alone in the room. Her skirt and suitcase had disappeared. It was odd I didn’t wake up when she packed her things, I am a rather light sleeper.
I went down to the hall where the talkative receptionist was watering the plants.
The lady had been in a hurry to catch the morning train, she told me. She asked how long I intended to stay. But I had no reason to stay on at all. I went back up to my room and began to pack my things. I realised that my predominating sensation was relief.
We have been expelled from paradise, but paradise was not destroyed, Kafka wrote. And he added: In a sense, the expulsion from paradise was a blessing, because if we hadn’t been driven out paradise itself would have had to be destroyed.
The vision of paradise persists within us, and with it also the vision of togetherness. For in paradise there is no such thing as isolation, man lives there in the company of angels and in the proximity of God. In paradise we shall be ranged in a higher and eternal order, which eludes us on earth, where we are cast, where we are outcast.
We long for paradise and we long to escape from loneliness.
We attempt to do so by seeking a great love, or else we blunder from one person to another in the hope that someone will at last take notice of us, will long to meet us or at least to talk to us. Some write poetry for this reason, or go on protest marches, cheer some figure, make friends with the heroes of television serials, believe in gods or in revolutionary comradeship, turn into informers to ensure they are sympathetically received at least at some police department, or they strangle someone. Even murder is an encounter between one man and another.
Out of his isolation man can be liberated not only by love but also by hate. Hate is mistakenly regarded as the opposite of love, whereas in reality it stands alongside love and the opposite of both of them is loneliness. We often believe that we are tied to someone by love, and meanwhile we’re only tied to them by hate, which we prefer to loneliness.
Hate will remain with us so long as we do not accept that loneliness is our only possible, or indeed necessary, fate.
When we got back the others had gone on a little way with their equipment, up to the seats on which, while it was improper to sit down while on duty, one could comfortably put down the bottles of beer.
The foreman smoked and talked a lot. He promised better jobs to all of us, provided of course he managed to gain influence in the organisation. He’d send us to clean at the building sites, where, admittedly, you may get a damn tough job but you can earn more. I could move up into his place, he’d fix that. He’d make some significant changes without delay. He’d try to introduce some light mechanisation, he’d also make sure they drove us straight to our workplace. This would save a lot of time, we’d make more money, our earnings would really go up. That’s what he’d do, whereas those in charge of street cleaning now didn’t give a monkey’s, all they were interested in were their own bonuses, and they relied on perverts walking about all ponged up like hard-currency tarts.
The foreman was getting more and more agitated, and less assured. He stopped talking only when he took a swig from his bottle or when he looked in the direction of the prison, from where, it seemed, he was expecting the insidious attack.
He wouldn’t like us to think he was afraid of anything, he knew what was what, and he’d been in a few tight spots in his life. Had he ever told us how, years ago, when they first introduced the supersonic MIG-19s, it happened that a machine, almost as soon as it had taken off, sucked in a pigeon or some other bird, and instantly plunged down again. It was piloted by his chum, Lojza Havrda. He should have ejected straight away, stands to reason, but because it was a brand-new plane he didn’t want to abandon it. Naturally he was way off the runway, and as he tried to brake his MIG he took along with him anything that stood in his way: bushes, empty drums, and the mock planes outside the hangar. Worst of all, he was headed straight for the new quarters. They were just having their midday break when someone yelled: Get the hell out! He’d looked out of the window and saw the eight-ton giant, fully tanked up, tearing straight towards them. No one quite knew what was happening, they leapt out of the back windows. He alone stayed behind and watched Lojza wrestling with that kite. It was like a dream, but a few yards from the men’s quarters he braked it to a halt. Now of course he should have got out of the crate as quickly as possible, but not Lojza! And he, the foreman, had wasted no time then, jumped out of the window and raced up to the plane. Found Lojza in the cockpit, all bloody, unable to move by himself. He got him out of the harness and carried him down on his back. Not till he’d dragged his mate to the crew quarters did it occur to him that the whole caboodle could have blown up, and them with it.
‘And did it?’ I asked.
The foreman hesitated, as if he couldn’t remember, then he shook his head. ‘The fire crew drove up and sprayed it with foam.’
‘D’you know that he gave me a picture?’ Mrs Venus said to me.
‘Who?’ I didn’t understand.
‘My old gent, of course. About a month ago. A big picture he had over his bed.’
‘Oil?’
‘Virgin with the infant Jesus. Said to me: “You take this picture, dear lady, I can’t see it any longer anyway.”’
The beer was finished. The youngster picked up the empties and put them into his big bag; he’d take them back to the supermarket. He was walking slowly, as if the uphill journey exhausted him.
I too found it difficult to breathe. A blanket was spreading over the city, and smoke and fog were billowing right down into the streets.
I thought we wouldn’t see each other in a hurry, that she’d also made a decision for me. She hadn’t just left the chalet in the foothills, but she’d left me as well, she’d been wise to withdraw from me. Even though the dawning day would now and again greet me with dead eyes, I still felt a sense of relief.
For nearly a month we both remained silent, then I phoned her to ask how she was.
She’d been in bed for the best part of a week, she informed me, she couldn’t even move, she felt so sick. Her voice was full of pain, reproach, but also tenderness. I suddenly realised that I’d been waiting for that voice all that time. I was still close to her, so close she could move me with a few words.
Why did you wait so long before you rang? she asked. You were offended? I was able to offend you after all you’ve done to me?
This is a way of telling me she still loves me, she’s waiting for me. An hour later I give her a purple gerbera and kiss her. Her lips are dry.
She’d gone to the country when she didn’t hear from me, she’d planted some trees, she’d obviously injured her back, for three days she’d lain motionless in her cottage, alone.
She limps over to the bed and I fill a vase with water.
A neighbour had found her and called for an ambulance, at the hospital they’d given her a jab so she could at least manage the bus ride. And I hadn’t even phoned her. You could really forget me so soon? she asks.
I know I won’t forget her as long as I live, but for her the inevitable question is: What good does it do to lie somewhere all alone?
You’ve never considered staying with me altogether?
She’s testing my resolution, my devotion, she forgets that I couldn’t very well stay with her even if I wanted to. After all, she’s got her husband. Maybe she’s prepared to drop him, but I’ve never asked her to do that, I’ve never wanted that kind of arrangement.
How could I possibly not consider it?
But what good is that to her? she asks.
What good is it to her that I have spent nights reflecting on how I would, how we would, live – what use is it to her when nothing has actually changed, when I’m not really with her, when I see her only in secret?
I go out to the supermarket and then cook lunch for us.
You’re so good to me, she says. When you have time! When you can fit me in.
I want to wash up, but she asks me to leave everything and come to her. She’s lying down. I hold her hand. She looks at me, her eyes, as always, draw me into depths where there isn’t room for anything else, for anything except her.
She asks what I’ve been doing all this time.
I tell her about Dad, about my son, I try to explain what I’ve been writing about, but she wants to know if I’ve thought of her, if I thought of her every day.
She’d left me in the middle of the night and she’d left me on my own in a strange hotel, and then for a few more weeks, so I should feel the hopelessness of living without her. I’m beginning to understand that she left me in order to push me, at long last, into making a decision.
She asks: How can you live like this? How can you believe that you’ll write anything when all the time you’re living a lie?
She regards me with anxious love. She’s hoping I will at last find the strength to live truthfully. That is, to stay with her according to the command of my heart. She believes that she understands me. She’s been appealing to me for so long to abandon my unworthy life of lies, and it hasn’t occurred to her that by doing so she is appealing to me to leave her. She is right, I must make up my mind to do it.
On the little table by the bed lie a few books. I pick up the one on top – short stories by Borges. I read her one of them. It is about a young man who is crucified for an illicit love affair.
The plot sounds outrageous to our ears, we’ve got used to the notion that there is no such thing as illicit love, or, more accurately, that all’s fair in love.
She listens to me attentively. I ask her if she wants me to read another story.
Better still, come to me!
She isn’t thinking about her painful back, she presses herself to me and moans with pleasure: My darling, I love you so much, and you torture me! Why do you keep hurting me when you know that you’ll never feel so good with anyone else, that no one will ever love you as I do?
I embrace her once more and then I have to hurry, her husband will be home shortly.
Will you come again tomorrow?
Her gentle fingers, her lips, her eyes: No one will ever love you as I do! No one will make love to you as I do! Why won’t you admit to yourself that you belong to me? Let’s go away somewhere together. We’ll make love till we die! Why do you resist when you know it’s bound to happen? Surely it couldn’t be so perfect if there was anything bad about it.
She looks at me, I look at her face. She’s changed over the years, there is less tenderness and enchantment in her now, and there is more tiredness, or even bitterness. She has aged. Over the last few years she has aged at my side, in my arms, in her vain waiting, in bad dreams and in fits of crying. In sleepless nights more little lines have appeared in her face, and I have only been able to kiss them away temporarily.
I was aware of a surge of regret or even pity, and promised to come the next day without fail.
We were approaching the metro station. We watched the crowds of people who, out of a need to be transported as quickly as possible from one place to another, were voluntarily descending into an inhospitable underworld. Around the stations there is always an increase in litter, the grass is almost invisible under a multitude of bits of paper and rubbish, of course we don’t sweep the grass, even if it is totally covered with rubbish. I noticed the youngster falling behind, then stopping completely, leaning against a street lamp and turning motionless.
I walked back to him. His pallid face had turned even whiter, and there were droplets of sweat on his forehead.
‘Are you all right?’ I asked.
He looked at me without answering. In his right hand he was still holding the scraper, his left hand was pressing below his stomach.
‘Does it hurt there?’
‘It’s nothing. It catches me there now and then.’
‘Shouldn’t you see your doctor?’
He said that mostly it passes by itself.
But it didn’t look to me as if his pain was passing. I offered to accompany him to the doctor. The foreman let us go without objections. ‘If you finish in time, you know where to find us!’
It didn’t take us more than twenty minutes to get to the hospital, but even so it seemed a long time to me. On the bus I made the youngster sit in the seat for disabled passengers. He was silent. From his postman’s bag he produced a dirty, army-khaki handerchief and wiped his forehead with it. Who does his laundry? I knew nothing about him, I could not picture the place where he slept.
We got off in front of the hospital. I suggested he leant on me but he shook his head. He gritted his teeth but didn’t complain.
The young nurse with whom we checked in was angry that we had no kind of personal papers with us, but in the end accepted the information the youngster gave her and sent us to the waiting room with its depressing atmosphere of silence and greyness. We sat down on a peeling bench. The sweat was trickling down his cheeks.
‘Probably got over-excited last night. At that concert.’
‘Not at all, that was quite fantastic.’ After a while he added: ‘I’ve always wanted to play in a decent band, but at the children’s home we had a director… well, he didn’t think music was a proper career, we each had to learn something proper, like working a pneumatic grinder or cutting out soles – he was a qualified shoemaker.’
He took off his orange vest and put it on the seat beside him. ‘I never told the boys what I’m doing now. I mean this business.’
‘Do you have to do it?’
‘They’ve cut back my pension – any convict on costume jewellery gets more!’ He turned white as the pain gripped him.
I am sure that at his age I’d have felt humiliated by having to be a street-sweeper. It would humiliate me even now if I had no other choice and if I had to be a regular sweeper like him.
All of a sudden it came to me how little in fact I had in common with what I pretended to be. What does my fate really have in common with the fate of those with whom I work? What was a desperate choice to the youngster was to me, at best, a rather grim game, which tested my perseverence, of which I was actually proud, and which moreover afforded entertaining and unexpected insights. I felt ashamed. I too took off my sweeper’s vest, rolled it up beside me and decided never again to put it on.
He mopped his face again.
‘Aren’t you thirsty?’ it occurred to me to ask.
‘I wouldn’t mind a drink, that’s a fact.’
I went off in search of a glass.
Ten years ago I worked in the next block. I’d come in three times a week, and put on white trousers and a white jacket, on which as a rule at least one button was missing, but I never became a genuine hospital orderly.
When does a person genuinely become what he otherwise only pretends to be? Most probably when he finds himself in a spot from which he cannot or doesn’t want to escape, the place of his torture. Genuineness is always associated with torture because it closes all doors of escape, because it leads a person to the edge of the precipice into which he can crash at any moment.
The nurse in reception lent me a jam jar and herself filled it with water. But when I returned to the waiting room the youngster was already in the consulting room.
I sat down and put the glass of water on the chair next to me.
Even a person who manages to lie his way through his whole life cannot escape that one moment of truth, the moment from which there is no escape, from which he cannot lie or buy his way out.
I recalled the day when I was sitting in another, similar, hospital waiting room. If I phoned you now, would you come again?
You’re waiting at the hospital again? Has anything happened to your dad?’
He’s not well, but now I’m here with someone else. We were sweeping together and he was taken ill in the street.
And you’ve taken him to hospital. You see what a good person you are? You haven’t changed at all over the years.
He was really in need of help. His liver’s all gone. I’ve written abroad for some drug but so far it hasn’t arrived.
I’ve often been ill. So ill I thought it was the end.
I didn’t know.
How could you have known? You’d have had to phone me, at least. But of course you had no time left for that while you were comforting the sick. Must be a great feeling to help others. Especially the poor and needy. That was your wife’s idea, about that drug?
I’m sorry you were ill.
No need for you to grieve. I was very ill, but you’re probably worse if you’ve taken up good deeds. What are you trying to make yourself believe about yourself? Doesn’t it seem a little cheap to lie your way out of everything?
I’m not lying my way out of anything. You can’t simply judge me from your own viewpoint.
So how am I to judge you? Do you remember sometimes what you used to say to me when we were together? I thought it also meant something to you, something real, something one can’t just walk away from. And now you’re trying to exchange me for a few good deeds! Why don’t you say something? Hasn’t it occurred to you at all that you’ve betrayed me?
Kafka endeavoured to be honest in his writing, in his profession and in his love. At the same time he realised, or at least suspected, that a person who wants to live honestly chooses torture and renunciation, a monastic life devoted to a single God, and sacrifices everything for it. He could not, at the same time, be an honest writer and an honest lover, let alone husband, even though he longed to be both. For a very brief instant he was deluded into believing that he could manage both, and that was when he wrote most of his works. Every time, however, he saw through the illusion, he froze up, and stopped motionless in torment. He’d then either lay his manuscript aside and never return to it, or sever all his ties and ask his lovers to leave him.
Only fools – with whom our revolutionary and non-monastic age abounds – believe they can combine anything with anything else, have a little of everything, take a small step back and still create something, experience something complete. These fools reassure each other, they even reward each other with decorations which are just as dishonest as they are themselves.
I too have behaved foolishly in my life in order to relieve my own torture. I have been unable either to love honestly or to walk away or to devote myself entirely to my work. Perhaps I have wasted everything I’ve ever longed for in life, and on top of it I have betrayed the people I wanted to love.
At last the youngster appeared in the door. ‘Have you been waiting for me with that water all this time?’ He’d had an injection and the doctor had ordered two days’ rest. I offered to see him home, but he declined. If I didn’t mind, he’d like to sit down for a little while, after which we might rejoin the others.
‘When I was a little boy,’ he reminisced, ‘my grannie would sometimes wait for me at the school. She’d always take me to the fast-food buffet, the Dukla in Libe ň, a little way beyond the Sokol gym if you know the neighbourhood. She’d have a beer and I’d get an ice-cream. And if she had another one, I got another one too, she was fair all right. And how she could play the accordion!’ The youngster sighed. I preferred not to ask what had happened to her, it seemed to me that everything connected with him would be touched by tragedy.
Outside, a fine rain had begun to fall. The youngster put on his orange vest but I, faithful to the vow I’d just taken, carried mine rolled up under my arm.
Everything in life tends towards an end, and anyone rebelling against that end merely acts foolishly. The only question is what the end actually means, what change it makes in a world from which nothing can disappear, not a speck of dust, not a single surge of compassion or tenderness, not a single act of hatred or betrayal.
I had to leave for the mountains, on doctor’s orders, and my lover also needed a break. Her work was tiring her out, she complained of being permanently exhausted. To work her material, often hammering into stone for hours on end, was enough to wear out even a strong man, but I knew that she had a different kind of weariness in mind. She reproaches me for her having to remain in the border region between love and betrayal, between meeting and partings, in a space which, she claims, I have set out for her and where strength is quickly consumed, exhausted by hopeless yearnings and pointless rebellion.
We could go somewhere together. I know that she wants to be with me completely just once in a while. I mention the possibility to her. She agrees, and a moment later I wonder if I really want that joint trip, if I wouldn’t have preferred to remain on my own. And suppose my wife offers to come with me? I am alarmed at the mere thought. What excuses, what lies would I invent? I am terrified like a habitual criminal who knows that he’s bound to be caught in the end.
But my wife suggests nothing of the kind, she doesn’t suspect me. She says a stay in the mountains will do me good. Everybody needs a change of scene from time to time. She’ll visit Dad for me, I’m not to worry about him, he’s doing well now anyway.
I know that my wife is immersed in her own world, which, as happens in work which brings one face to face with the sorrow and suffering produced by sick minds, is unlike the real world. In it no one wishes to hurt anyone else, evil appears in it only as suppressed, unawakened or misdirected good, and betrayal is as incomprehensible as murder.
Who does she see in me when she lies down by my side, when she nestles up against me and whispers that she feels good with me? What justifies her reasserted and ever newly betrayed trust? Or does she believe that one day I will, after all, prove myself worthy of that trust?
My lover observes my embarrassment: Do you actually want me to come with you?
I don’t answer quickly enough, I don’t say yes convincingly enough, my uncertainty can be read in my eyes, and she cries. She suspected that I’d be scared at the last moment, she knows me now, I’ve lost the notion of freedom, I no longer have any self-respect, I’ve become a slave to the mirage of my despicable marriage, I can no longer manage without my yoke and now I’m trying to impose it on her. What am I trying to do to her, how dare I treat her like this, humiliate her like this.
I try to placate her, but she’s crying more and more, she’s shaken by sobs, she can’t be comforted. This is the end, the absolute end, she’ll never go anywhere with me again, she never wants to see me again!
I am conscious of relief and, simultaneously, of regret.
Once more she looks up at me, her beautiful eyes, which always lured me into the depths, have turned bloodshot, as though the sun had just set in them. I kiss her swollen, now ugly, eyes, also her hands which have so often embraced me, which have so tenderly touched me: I don’t understand why she is crying, I do want her to come along with me, I’m begging her to.
She’ll think it over, I should phone her from there.
And here I am, alone, in the Lower Tatra. I walk through meadows fragrant with warmth. Above me, on the mountainsides, snow is still lying. At dinner I talk to an elderly doctor about yoga, he tells me about the remarkable properties of medicinal herbs. I walk along forest paths and enjoy the silence all round me, I recover in that solitude, even though I know it is short-lived, as is the relief I am feeling; the rack to which I have tied myself is waiting, it is within me.
I gaze at the distant peaks. Mist rises above the lowlands. I look back to where the waves roll, where the surf roars, washing away my likeness moulded in sand, she bathes in abandoned rock-pools, the soil is black, the path is barred by an ever thicker tangle of roots, carrion crows fly darkly over the tree-tops. I walk with her among the rocks until we find ourselves in the middle of a snow-covered expanse of flat ground, I embrace her: is it possible we love each other so much?
Nights descend, prison nights, nights as long as life, her face is above me, my wife is beside me, I am alone with my love, with my betrayal. She bends down to me at night, she calls me to herself, she calls me to herself forever: We’ll go away together, darling, we’ll be happy. And I actually set out towards her, I run through cold streets, streets deserted and devoid of people, empty in a way not even the deepest night could make them, I drag myuself through the streets of the dead ice-bound city and an uneasiness rises up in me, suddenly I hear a voice within me, from the very bottom of my being, asking: What have you done? Halfway I stop in my flight and return to where I’ve come from, to the side of my wife. I act this way night after night, until suddenly I realise that I don’t want to leave, that I no longer want to walk through this dead city, at least not for the moment. I say: For the moment, and eventually I am overcome by the relief of sleep.
She too is reconciled, for the moment, to having waited in vain, but after a while she starts asking again why I haven’t come, what has been happening to me? Didn’t I love her, weren’t we blissfully happy when we’re together, so why couldn’t I make up my mind? She seeks an explanation, she puts forward factual and plausible reasons for my behaviour and instantly rejects them, she’s angry with me, she cries, she’s in despair at my immobility, my obstinacy, my insensitivity and my philistinism. She assures me that there was no decision to make: I wouldn’t be leaving my wife now, I’d left her long ago, and I was only a burden to her. And the children were grown-up now, they’d remain my children wherever I was. I listen to her in silence, I do not argue with her. The voice which holds me back time and again isn’t, after all, a reason; it can’t even be broken down into reasons, it is above reasoning. Is it possible, I wonder, that she does not hear a similar voice within her, a voice of doubt if not of warning?
Not even now, here amidst the mountains with no one urging me to do anything, can I break that voice down into separate reasons: into love for my wife or my children, or regret, or a sense of duty. But I know that if I hadn’t obeyed it I’d feel even worse than I do anyway.
Perhaps there is within us still, above everything else, some ancient law, a law beyond logic, that forbids us to abandon those near and dear to us. We are dimly aware of it but we pretend not to know about it, that it has long ceased to be valid and that we may therefore disregard it. And we dismiss the voice within us as foolish and reactionary, preventing us from tasting something of the bliss of paradise while we are still in this life.
We break the ancient laws which echo within us and we believe that we may do so with impunity. Surely man, on his road to greater freedom, on his road to his dreamed-of heaven, should be permitted everything. We are all, each for himself and all together, pursuing the notion of earthly bliss and, in doing so, are piling guilt upon ourselves, even though we refuse to admit it. But what bliss can a man attain with a soul weighed down by guilt? His only way out is to kill the soul within him, and join the crowd of those who roam the world in search of something to fill the void which yawns within them after their soul is dead. Man is no longer conscious of the connection between the way he lives his own life and the fate of the world, which he laments, of which he is afraid, because he suspects that together with the world he is entering the age of the Apocalypse.
The mist from the valley below me is rising and has almost reached me. I know that I must change my way of life, which piles guilt upon me, but I’m not leading it on my own. I feel fettered from all sides, I’ve let myself be chained to the rockface without having brought fire to anyone.
What was there left in my favour? What could I claim in my defence? What order, what honesty, what loyalty?
Suddenly from the mists a familiar figure emerges. I stiffen. From the mists her heavenly eyes look on me: You could give me up?
There is no reason that could stand up in her eyes. I might at best make some excuses, beg her to understand, beg for forgiveness or for punishment, but there’s no point in any of this, none of it will bring her relief.
I phoned her as I’d promised. She said she’d join me for ten days, she was looking forward to it. She added: We’ll have a lovely farewell holiday. But I didn’t believe that she meant it.
We found our companions in place – that is, in the tavern. The first to catch sight of us was the captain. He touched two fingers to his cap.
I joined him and noticed that the beermat before him already bore four marks.
‘I’m celebrating!’ he explained.
He didn’t look to me like a man celebrating, more like a man drowning his sorrows. Nevertheless I asked: ‘Has one of your inventions been accepted?’
‘Haven’t I told you? They’ve found the Titanic !’ He gave a short laugh and spat on the floor.
‘The Titanic ?’
‘With everything she had on board. Only the people have gone.’
‘That a fact? So what happened to them?’ The youngster was no longer in pain and was therefore able to show interest in the pain or death of others.
‘Probably jumped overboard,’ the captain explained casually. ‘No one stays on a ship that’s going down. Everybody thinks he’ll save himself somehow.’
The foreman, evidently still preoccupied with the morning visit, decided to find out how things really stood; he’d ring the office. For a while he searched in his pockets, then he borrowed two one-crown pieces from Mr Rada and with a demonstratively self-assured gait made for the telephone.
‘That really must have been terrible, finding yourself in the water like that,’ the youngster reflected, ‘and nothing solid anywhere.’
‘That’s life,’ said the captain. ‘One moment you’re sailing, everyone saying Sir to you, and in your head maybe a whole academy of science, and suddenly you’re in the water. You go down – finish!’
The waiter brought more beer, and before the captain he also placed a tot of rum.
The captain took a sip: ‘And all your ideas, windmills, encyclopedias, end of the ice age – everything goes down with you.’ He got up and unsteadily walked over to the battered billiard table. From the sleeve of his black leather jacket projected his even blacker metal hook. With this he adroitly picked up a cue and played a shot.
I watched the ball moving precisely in the desired direction.
‘Do you know that I’ve written to her?’ he said to me when he got back to the table.
‘To whom?’
‘To Mary. Asking if she wanted to come back.’
‘And did you get a reply?’
‘Came back yesterday. Addressee unknown. So she’s unknown now!’
‘Probably moved away.’
‘Person’s here one moment, gone the next. All going to the bottom!’ The captain turned away from his glass; he muttered something to himself and softly uttered some figures. Perhaps some new and revolutionary invention, or the number of days he’d spent on his own. Or the number of tricks he’d scored in the round of cards he’d just finished. There was sadness in his features, maybe in his poetic mind some clear vision, perhaps his last one, was just then fading and disintegrating. Again I experienced a sense of shame at sitting there studying him. High time for me to get up and get away from all that street-sweeping. I looked around at the others, as if expecting that they’d read my thoughts, but they were all engrossed in their own troubles.
From the billiard table they were calling the captain again. For a moment he pretended not to hear them, then he rose, firmly gripped his chair, then the back of my chair, then he held on to the table and, moving along the wall, made it to the billiards. He picked up a cue with his hook and concentrated for a moment before imparting the right speed to his ball. I watched the red ball move over the green baize, passing the other balls without coming anywhere near them.
‘You’d better not drink any more,’ I said to him when he got back.
He turned his clouded eyes on me. ‘And why not?’ His question reminded me of my daughter’s classmate who’d put an end to his own life at the northern tip of Žofín island years ago.
By then the foreman was returning from the telephone. His face purple, as if he were near a stroke, he sat down heavily, picked up his glass, raised it to his lips and put it down again. ‘Well folks, we’ve got a new dispatcher!’
‘Would it be you?’ Mrs Venus guessed.
‘Don’t try to be funny with me, Zoulová, I’m not in the mood!’ He fell silent to give us time to go on guessing, then he announced: ‘It’s that fucking bastard!’
‘Franta? But he’s an idiot,’ Mrs Venus expressed surprise.
‘That’s just why,’ Mr Rada explained while the captain began to laugh, laughing softly and contentedly, as if something about that piece of news gave him particular pleasure. Maybe at that moment he gained a clearer understanding of that radiation which turns us all into sheep.
The foreman finally swallowed his first gulp of beer, then drained his glass, and finally announced: ‘If they think I’ll let that shit make out my work schedule for me they’ve got another think coming! This is the end of my work for his organisation!’
‘Don’t take on so,’ Mrs Venus tried to comfort him. ‘He isn’t going to stink up his office for long! He’ll grass on them too, and he’ll be kicked upstairs again!’
They were calling the captain again from the billiards, but he had difficulty getting up, he turned towards the corner of the room, waved his hand and sat down again.
‘No,’ said the foreman, ‘I’ve had it!’
‘It’s getting cold now anyway,’ the youngster piped up. ‘I think that’s what was behind my funny turn.’ This was evidently his way of announcing that he too intended to leave. I ought to join them as well, but I was still too much of a stranger to think it appropriate to emphasise my departure. As I got up a moment later I merely said to the foreman; ‘All the best, I’m sure we’ll meet again.’ But he got to his feet, ceremoniously shook hands with me, addressed me by my name, and said: ‘Thank you for your work!’
It was a long time since any superior of mine had thanked me for my work.
Mr Rada joined me as usual. ‘You see, the things they’ll fight over!’
He seemed dejected today. To cheer him up I enquired about his brother, whether he was about to go off to any foreign parts again.
‘Don’t talk to me about him,’ he said. ‘it’s all I can think about anyway. Just imagine, he’s joined the Party! So they can make him a chief surgeon. Would you believe it? A man who speaks twelve languages, and after all he’s seen in the world, after what he himself told me not so long ago!’
I suggested that perhaps it was a good thing that just such men should be chief surgeons. It wasn’t his fault that the post required a Party card.
‘A man isn’t responsible for the situation into which he is born,’ he proclaimed, ‘but he is responsible for his decisions and actions. When my mother heard about it she nearly had a stroke. Have you any idea what she’s already been through in her life because of those people? And I… I used to be proud of him, I thought that the Lord had endowed him with special grace… even if he didn’t acknowledge it, even if he acted as if he didn’t acknowledge Him… I believed that one day he’d see the truth.’
In his depression he began to reminisce about the years he’d spent in the forced labour camp. Among the prisoners there’d been so many unforgettable characters, who, even in those conditions, were aiming at higher things. Some of them had there, in the camp, received the sacrament of baptism, he himself had secretly baptised a few of them. Thinking back to those days it was clear to him that, in spite of all he’d been through, God’s love had not abandoned mankind. He believed, for just that reason, that he’d spent the best or at least the most meaningful years of his life there.
We’d reached the little street where our unknown artist lived and exhibited. I looked up curiously to his window, but this time it contained no artefact; instead a live person, presumably the artist himself, was standing in the window-frame, clad only in a narrow strip of sack-cloth. On his head was a fool’s cap with little bells, on top of this cap he’d placed a laurel wreath, and in his right hand he held a large bell-shaped blossom, I’d say of deadly nightshade.
Thus he stood, motionless, his forehead almost pressed to the glass, as if awaiting our arrival. I was surprised to find that he was still young, his hair, where it peeped out from beneath his fool’s cap, was dark and his skin was swarthy. We looked at him and he looked at us without giving any sign of seeing us, of taking any notice of us.
‘Well really!’ Mr Rada was outraged. ‘That’s a bit much!’
But I was aware of sympathy for the unknown young man who offered himself up to our gaze, who had no hesitation in exhibiting his misery, longings and hope. Hope of what? Of fame, of being understood, or at least of getting somebody to stop, look, and see. Standing there with my orange fool’s vest – in what way did I differ from him? In my misery, my longings, or perhaps in my hope?
So I waited for my lover at the small railway station in the foothills. All round me half-drunk gypsies were noisily conversing. A total stranger, smelling of dirt and liquor, invited me to have a drink with him.
I escaped to the very end of the platform and stood waiting there for the train.
Was I waiting for it with hope or with fear, out of longing or out of a sense of duty? What was there left for me to wait for, what to hope for?
At the most for some conditional postponement that would briefly prolong our torment and our bliss.
The train pulled in, I caught sight of her getting off the last carriage, a bulging rucksack on her back. She saw me, waved to me, and even at that distance I could see that she’d come in love.
I was suddenly flooded with gratitude; undeservedly rewarded, I embraced her.
It was getting dark. The station had emptied, and the lights of some train were approaching in the distance.
I wished it would be a special train, a train just for the two of us. We’d board it, we’d draw the curtains across the windows, we’d lock the door, the train would move off, speed along through the day and the night, over bridges and through valleys, it would carry us beyond seven frontiers, away from our past lives, it would take us into the ancient garden where one might live without sin.
Along the track clanked a tanker train, filling the air with the stench of crude oil. I picked up her pack and we walked out of the station.
That evening I phoned my wife from the hotel where we’d taken a room. In her voice too I was aware of love and of her pleasure at hearing me. She told me she’d been invited to an ethological conference somewhere near where I was staying. No, not just yet, in a week’s time, but we might meet then, that would be nice, I must be feeling rather blue being on my own for so long, besides, we’d been to the place she was going to before, surely I remembered, on our honeymoon…
I was in a panic. I wasn’t sure. How could I tell, a week from now. And she too seemed taken aback; of course, she said, if it didn’t suit me I needn’t come to see her. She just thought that I might like to, but she didn’t want to push me or make things difficult for me.
I promised to phone her to let her know, and hung up.
I was finally trapped. My mind, trained on those lines, was still concocting excuses, but I suspected that I wouldn’t escape this time, nor did I wish to.
Why hadn’t she asked straight out? Why hadn’t she objected? The strange humility of her voice still rang in my ears. I was seized by a sense of sadness and regret, I also felt tenderness towards my wife who wanted to comfort me in my pretended solitude, who promised me from afar that we’d walk up among the rocks, where so long ago we’d felt happy, where we’d started our life together. If I were here on my own I’d go to her at once and tell her that, in spite of everything I’d done, I’d never stopped being fond of her and that I didn’t want to leave her. If I were here on my own I wouldn’t have had to put her off, I’d be glad to have her come.
I couldn’t bear to stay indoors. The moon was shining on the flank of the mountain and a hostile wind blew down its slopes. Daria wanted to know what I was doing. But I felt ambushed by my own emotions – I felt unable to assure her that I longed to remain with her.
She faced me on the narrow footpath: But you invited me here! I beg you, maybe this is the last time I’ll beg you for anything, that you should at least behave like… at least like a decent host!
The wind was blowing her hair into her face. Now she really looked like a witch, like a sorceress who’d emerged from some depth of the mountains.
But I’ll pack my things and leave this instant if that’s what you want!
There was no need for her to leave immediately. We could stay here a whole week, just three days less than we’d intended.
You want to bargain with me? Amidst the silent noctural landscape she screamed at me: I was a coward, a liar and a hypocrite. A trader in emotions. A dealer with no feelings. At least not for her. How could I be so cruel to her, so shameless?
She was right.
I took her by the hand and led her further along the path below the mountain. In the dusk we stumbled over projecting roots and stones. I tried to talk as if nothing had happened. We’re here together, after all those months we’re together at last.
The following day we left for another place in the mountains.
I felt humiliated by the knowledge that I was fleeing, fleeing belatedly, at a moment when I no longer wished to flee from anywhere or from anybody. Except from myself.
Spring was exceptionally beautiful that year. The meadows turned purple with wild crocus and clumps of coltsfoot sprang up along the paths. But we climbed to higher altitudes, we were climbing side by side for the last time, we waded through drifts of hardened snow, clambered over great rocks, watched the flight of the eagle and the leaps of the chamois, and when we returned to the twilight of the mountain chalet we made love just as we’d been making love over the years whenever we met.
Then she fell asleep, exhausted, while I lay motionless on the bed, listening to the soft drip of water outside and gazing through the window at the mountain glistening in the moonlight, wondering what I’d do when I got back home, how I would live, even if I could live, but my thoughts stumbled at the first step over the huge boulder that lay in my path.
Then I listened to her quiet breath, and remorse overcame me: What have I brought you to, my pet, where have you followed me, where have we set out together, we stride across snowy wastes, the night is deep and frosty, the silence of the universe is engulfing us. You wanted to save me, I wanted to be with you at all your difficult moments, I probably didn’t love you as I should have, I was unable, I was unwilling, to love you more. I am still very fond of you, you’ve grown painfully into me. If I were stronger, if I were wiser, wise enough to know everything essential about myself, I would have driven you away as soon as you’d come close to me because I would have known that I would not remain with you the way you wanted me to, how happy I would have been if I’d remained alone, because I wouldn’t then have met a woman I longed for so much. I didn’t decide to drive you away. I wasn’t wise enough, and I was moreover afraid of your pain and of my own, I was afraid of a life in which you weren’t present; I believed that with you my life would be full of hope, that I’d found another safety net to spread out between myself and nothingness.
The mountain tops were beginning to emerge from the darkness and the sky above them was turning pale. The mountain rose straight up, it towered, virtually eternal, into a sky that was even more eternal, while we mortals, here only for a single winking of the divine eye, have, in our longing to fill our lives, in our longing for ecstasy, filled our brief moment with suffering.
On the tenth day we returned home, each to our own home. We said goodbye, we kissed once more, and she hoped I’d be strong and not do anything against her.
But I am not strong, at least not in the way she meant. I don’t wish to demonstrate my strength towards the woman who had for so many years shared both good and bad with me. I go back, in my mind I turn over some sentences attempting an explanation.
What a fool I am, my wife laments, to have trusted you again.
She is standing there facing me, dropping her eyes. She doesn’t know what to do, what to say. She says she’s decided to move out, she’s looking for somewhere to live.
I ask her not to do anything silly.
The silliest thing I ever did was to trust you again.
She wants me at least to explain how I could do what I did, while I assured her that I never stopped loving her.
I loved the other woman too!
You see how embarrassing it is! There’s no sense in it any more. How could you deceive me so?
I keep silent. I have no answer other than that it just happened like that. But I won’t deceive you again!
Supposing you do mean what you say, how will you prove it to me?
I don’t know how I can prove anything – I’ll stay with you.
That’s what you tell me now, but what will you tell her?
I’ll tell her the same thing.
Very well. We’ll go and see her and you can tell her straight away. I want to be present.
No, I can’t do that.
Why not? Why can’t you tell her in front of me, if you really want to tell her?
I am silent. I am trapped.
You see, you wanted to deceive me again. I didn’t want to deceive you.
You expect me to believe you?
There’s nothing I can say. I can’t promise or swear.
I’m an idiot, how could I have been such an idiot! Even if I wanted to believe you I can’t any longer.
Again she asks to go and see the other woman. I can say whatever I like to her, but maybe at such a moment I would be speaking the truth.
At the moment, however, it isn’t the truth I’m afraid of. I simply know that I cannot part from the woman I’ve been in love with for so long, with whom I’d made love without witnesses and with whom I’d forgotten my loneliness – I cannot part from her in a theatrical scene.
I’ll tell her on my own. Or I’ll write her a letter.
And why should I believe that you’ll do that?
I shrug.
Night. My wife is sobbing in the next room. She’s waiting for me to come to her. I’ll tell her I’m sorry for everything that’s happened, that I’ve realised that I can only be happy with her. And I’ll tell the other woman to her face so that she too will hear it, so that everyone who knows about us should know that we love one another.
But I can’t do anything of the kind, I can’t even say any more than I’ve said already. I can see myself, I see myself from a great height. Not yet stooping but greying at the temples, I’m standing at the corner, in the familiar spot with a single tree against which I can lean. The clock at the corner has stopped. I wait and wait, no one comes, I wait for her, at least, to show up, but she is not coming.
I kneel down on the ground and press my forehead against the tree-trunk. I can’t manage to cry. I embrace the trunk, I hold it frantically as though someone might wish to tear me away from it. I’d whisper her name, but I can’t. I notice that the clock has moved, but I know that this is the only movement – no one will ever come again.
So what are you waiting for? What do you want? What do you feel? What are you longing for?
The following day I wrote her a letter. I won’t return to a life of lies. I won’t leave my wife, and I can’t live by her side and torment her by informing her that I also love another woman, even if she herself were able to live like that. I also wrote that what we had together will be with me all my life. I would have liked to add something tender, such as that there might be a time when I would come to her at some difficult moment, though differently from the way she’d imagined, also that what we had together couldn’t have been devoid of some meaning, that some part of it might cast a light into our future lives, that I would never hide that light in myself – but I felt that all words were pointless and in vain, that I was perhaps improperly comforting myself and her.
After two days I posted the letter. As the flap of the postbox dropped back I was conscious of the familiar old vertigo getting hold of me.
I knew that I’d never see her or hear her voice again. But from time to time, in the middle of the night I would start up from my sleep and with my fingertips touch her high forehead, and feel a strange distant pain enter into me, and then a soft snapping sound. My net was tearing, I had no idea how many threads were still left, but there couldn’t be many.
I should have liked to know if the man in the window experienced anything similar, whether he felt a sudden sense of relief from this unexpected meeting. I thought that he might step out of his frame, open the window and perhaps ask us in, or at least wave to us with his flower, but this would probably have disturbed something delicate and mysterious that was extending between us, between me and him, he would have crossed that invisible, barely perceptible boundary that divides art from mere tomfoolery, so that I was actually glad to see him remain motionless.
‘They don’t know what to think of next,’ was Mr Rada’s judgement on what he’d just seen.
His remark seemed unfair to me. Before beginning to judge and condemn one another, people should do more to understand one another.
We got back to the office. I thought that perhaps that little idiot Franta might already be inside, but it was the same woman as always. She accepted my vest from me, returned my ID card, and handed out my final pay to me.
‘You’re right,’ Mr Rada said to me in parting, ‘we’re not here to judge others.’ But I was sure he was thinking of his brother rather than of the strange artist.
I followed him with my eyes. He stopped at: the bus stop. He was a tall, well-built man, with just a slight stoop, as if he were carrying a load on his back. Even if he took on his burden for others he possibly took it on needlessly. Who can see into the soul of another person, even the one closest to him, even his own son or his brother who was like a son?
I might still have caught up with him, but just then the bus came along and he got on. I probably wouldn’t see him again, nor would I meet his brother, unless I found myself in his care.
It occurred to me that I might spend the banknote I’d just earned, my last swept-up fifty crowns, in some festive way, and so I walked down into Nusle, where there are lots of shops.
In a little market they were selling flowers. My daily wage was just sufficient for five chrysanthemums. I chose three butter-yellow ones and two amber ones, colours my wife was fond of. At home I put the bunch in a vase and placed it on her table. I picked up the shopping bag with my lunch, which she had prepared for me in the morning, and set out to visit Dad at the hospital.
He opened his eyes, saw me, slightly moved his lips in an attempted smile, and closed his eyes again. He’d hardly spoken these past few days, either it tired him out too much or else he didn’t think anything was sufficiently important for him to utter aloud. The last time he spoke to me he recalled that my mother used to reproach him for devoting too little attention to me, for not looking after my upbringing enough. But surely you didn’t expect any sermons? he asked. And I said hurriedly that he’d always been a model to me, the way he lived and, above all, the way he worked. After all, I stayed with you lot, Dad said. His eyes misted up with tears. I understood that hidden behind these few words was some long-past difficult decision, perhaps even a sacrifice.
I unscrewed the stopper of the thermos flask and put a little custard on a spoon. Without opening his eyes Dad swallowed a few mouthfuls. Then he said: I had a fall today and couldn’t get up. And the sister, the pretty one, shouted at me to get up at once, she wasn’t going to lift me up. Tell me, how can a woman be so wicked? Dad fell silent for a long time. Suddenly he opened his eyes: D’you remember that hat of mine flying off on that bridge? What a laugh that was! He again closed his eyes. I said I remembered, but he no longer heard me.
As I tidied his things in his bedside table I noticed his little notebook. Day after day he’d entered in it, in an increasingly shaky hand, his temperature and the medication he took. The last entry was three days old and I couldn’t make out the numbers. My throat was constricted by pity. I stroked Dad’s forehead and left the ward. Outside I didn’t make for the main gate but walked down a narrow path to the back entrance. The path wound between overgrown lawns, past the morgue. Immediately behind the morgue was a huge heap of broken bricks, rusty cans and shattered infusion bottles, also a rusting old electric motor, maybe one of those for which Dad had calculated the design. He’d spent whole days and evenings calculating motors. When I visited him I’d be afraid to disturb him in his work. And so we hurriedly covered what news there was in the world, and in our lives, but about the most important thing, about our sojourn here, we talked very little.
Round the bend in the path appeared an orderly, pushing the metal cart into which the dead were placed. I used to push that cart too. I gave him a wide berth, but I couldn’t get rid of the thought that he was making for that refuse heap in order to tip out his load there.
I returned to the wooden footbridge.
The train roared past beneath us, the hat flew off and jerkily sailed down in clouds of smoke.
Dad laughed and I felt happy. It was a moment of total proximity, a touch of something linking our lives, and nothing has effaced it or soiled it over all these years.
Dad was bending down low and fished out his hat, all black with soot and grime. He was not afraid to put it on his head, he gave me one more wave of his hand and walked away still laughing.