Judge On Trial

Chapter Two

1

ADAM HAD NEVER had an office of his own, but this was the first time he had ever shared one with a woman. Dr Alice Richterová might have been young and single (why would a woman rush into wedlock who so early in her career as a judge had already dissolved hundreds of marriages, and had heard so much evidence proving that married life is composed of deceptions, infidelities, backbiting and fakery, sexual nastiness and disputes over the washing-up and the car?) but she was definitely neither beautiful nor likeable. Her voice was raucous and too loud, and it always seemed to him to have the tone of argument or admonition. He also disliked her reverent attitude to the dignity of her profession. There was no humour there, and clearly no understanding of the extent to which that dignity had been undermined by external circumstances. Moreover, he was ignorant of her attitude to those circumstances. Admittedly she made a pretence of sympathy for his victimised friends, and she seemed to have no objection to the opinions he used to proclaim in the days when people were able to proclaim opinions publicly, but as far as he knew she was in the Party and had actually joined it at the time he left. Why had she been assigned to his office at all? Had she been given the job of keeping an eye on him and reporting back to them?

‘Did you know that Obensdorfová’s son is an army officer?’ she asked. She was just taking off her gown, beneath which she wore a yellow sports shirt and a short white skirt and looked as if she was on her way to the tennis courts. ‘Perhaps there was some other motive involved.’

Why her interest in his case?

‘If all he wanted was to take revenge on the old woman, or he was only after the money, surely he’d have chosen another moment,’ she said. ‘Not the very time the kid was there.’

‘It’s possible he didn’t know about the kid.’

‘Or he deliberately waited for it to be there.’

‘What makes you think so?’

‘He might have hated the whole family. Criminal types tend to be full of hatred.’

‘They got taught at school that hate’s important, some kinds at any rate. Maybe he got the wrong end of the stick.’

‘People like him don’t need lessons!’ She had raised her voice; she was speaking loud enough to be heard in the corridor. Why had he got into an argument with her? He still hadn’t learned it was better to say nothing. At least to say nothing if one didn’t feel like agreeing at high volume with everything said around one. He opened the file with the case history, but added in a conciliatory way, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get to the bottom of it.’

Then I walked about the streets until first light. Then I made my way immediately to my common-law wife’s, Libuše Körnerová, as by then she was alone at home and didn’t go on shift till the afternoon. I asked her for a tablet for my headache which had come back very bad and some money which I promised to let her have back. I told her nothing about what I had done. Then I was arrested. I wish to add that I no longer know what streets I walked along nor did I meet anyone I knew. I visited no one that night and telephoned no one, since there was no one I could.

I have nothing more to add to this statement.

Statement completed the fifth of April.

He read a few more pages of additional testimony which in fact added nothing.

He realised she was staring at him. When he raised his eyes she quickly looked down and started taking things out of her desk and putting them away in her handbag. ‘Adam,’ she said, ‘I think I forgot to give you a message. Oldfich Ruml called you yesterday. You’re to get in touch with him.’

He thanked her for the message.

‘Do you know him well?’

‘Hard to say.’ Her inquisitiveness aroused his suspicion. What is she after this time? ‘We used to share the same office once upon a time. Like you and me now. But it’s ages ago.’ It occurred to him that Oldřich would be able to advise him over Magdalena’s business. He always had plenty of useful contacts and acquaintances.

‘Do you know his wife?’ she asked. ‘He is married, isn’t he?’

Actually he had been married longer than Adam. They had been practically newly-weds, though, ‘ages ago’, and Alexandra looked about sixteen. She used to use a lot of make-up, which didn’t appeal to him. ‘Ages ago’ meant ten years back — no more — when Adam returned to Prague and Oldřich introduced him into society. ‘I’ve not seen her for a long time. I think she used to paint quite well,’ he said, as it seemed a fairly bland piece of information, ‘but I don’t know for certain. Then they had a daughter.’

She snapped her handbag shut but she was not leaving. She waited. Most likely she wanted to hear something more, but he could see no reason why he should tell her anything. ‘Are you going to lunch?’ he asked.

‘I don’t think so.’ She lingered a moment, but as he said nothing else, she left the office.

In response to your enquiry we notify you that the patient Karel Kozlík received both somatic and neurological examination in our department. He was also subjected to several basic tests (Minnesota, Rohrschach, etc.). In general, the patient’s personality displayed certain pathogenic characteristics (chiefly paranoid and schizophrenic). Karel K.’s mental attainments were good, although somewhat neurotically impaired. He is emotionally immature, egocentric and infantile with a tendency towards moodiness. Neurotic features — a negative mater imago (Weiss, shock) and castration anxiety. Most likely other pathol. characteristics such as sensitive egocentricity, narcissism.

The patient was recommended for out-patient treatment, but failed to attend the first appointment.

Best Wishes,

Dr Václav Kvěch

P.S. I also enclose some completed sentences that you might find of interest.

Sentence completion

Name: Kozlík Karel

Finish the following sentences as quickly as you can.

Always write the first thing that comes into your head.

Don’t try and resist your real feelings. If you find any of the sentences difficult to complete, draw a ring round it.

You can always return to it after completing the others.

1. I BELIEVE MYSELF TO BE a special person

2. ONE OF THE MAIN THINGS I WANT TO DO IS eliminate convention

3. WHEN I’M ALONE I feel good

4. IN OUR FAMILY I’m not happy

5. I’M BOTHERED BY social isolation

6. SECURITY IS steadfast unshakeable ideas

7. MONEY IS power

8. MY CHILDHOOD wasn’t worth much

9. I PARTICULARLY LOOK FORWARD TO rambling and fun

10. WHAT MOST DISTURBS ME WHEN I’M WORKING people in charge

11. I’D BET MY BOTTOM DOLLAR THAT my thoughts are basically noble

12. THE HAPPIEST TIME OF MY LIFE when I got to know Vlastimil P.

13. ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT THINGS IN MY LIFE the defect in my right eye

14. WHAT REALLY ANNOYS ME is when some thickhead thwarts my plans

15. WHAT GIVES ME REAL PLEASURE pleasing someone I like

16. THE MEANING OF LIFE IS death…

Forensic examination had found no trace of fingerprints on the gas-stove tap. The tap controlling the burner from which the gas escaped had apparently been wiped with a rag after the last time it was turned (i.e. in the ‘on’ position). The rag had probably been used previously for cleaning shoes, since traces of brown ‘Tagal’ shoe polish were found on the tap. They found the rag thrown into a corner of the kitchen, the shoe polish in the scullery. On the inner handle of the front door, which had been forced, they found a thumb-print with traces of the same shoe polish, and it was identical with the left thumb-print of Karel Kozlík. It could therefore be assumed that Karel Kozlík was the last person to leave Marie Obensdorfová’s flat on 3rd April. Were the opposite true, his thumb-print would necessarily have been wiped off, at least partially, by the hand of the person who followed him — unless they both left at the same time.

Had the door not been forced, but unlocked normally, the print would most likely have been wiped off by not just one hand but by the many hands of the people who went in and out of the flat that fatal night; because who, in a gas-filled flat, is immediately going to think of foul play and worry about something like fingerprints?

Forensic analysis had established that both the water in the saucepan on the stove and the spilt water under the burner had not reached boiling point ‘so it may be safely assumed that the flame was not extinguished by the water overflowing’.

He turned another page.

The pathologist’s report on the examination of the corpses of Marie Obensdorfová, born 19.10.1902, and Lucie Obensdorfová, born 23.4.1960 stated that no traces of violence had been discovered on either of the bodies of the deceased. ‘The colour of the posthumous stains is consistent with carbon monoxide poisoning. Death in both cases occurred around two a.m. on 4th April. Death was probably caused by coal gas escaping from an unlit burner beneath a saucepan half full of water…

‘The age of the householder…’

Someone knocked on the door, and it was only after he had called out twice for the person to enter that the door opened slightly and there appeared a swelling pregnant belly, and only then, as if anxiously tilted backwards, the rest of the trunk and the head; a florid face with expressionless eyes and a large blubbery mouth.

‘I hope I’m not disturbing you!’ Her voice was slightly hoarse and her intonation placed her somewhere between a waitress and a cleaner.

‘What do you want?’ he asked, motioning her to the free chair.

‘My name’s Körnerová.’ She sat down, breathing heavily, her ugly face covered in sweat. So it was her. ‘What do you want?’ he repeated.

She said nothing but sat there with her doleful gaze fixed on him. At last she replied: ‘They told me that maybe you, sir, sir… comrade…’ she corrected herself. For a moment he wondered if she was going to stick fast, and never surmount the problem of how to address him, ‘That you, comrade, will be judging Karel… Kozlík, for what happened in that flat.’

‘Who told you it would be me?’

She started and fell silent.

‘What do you want from me?’

‘I thought… They told me that if he’s expecting a baby they’re not allowed to…’

‘Such concessions don’t extend to an expectant father. Apart from that, anything you want to tell the court you can say during the trial. Your fiancé’s defence counsel can propose you as a witness.’

‘But I…’ she protested, ‘but you can see for yourself, I might not even be able to.’

‘If your testimony might throw light on some essential aspect of the case, the trial would be rescheduled. Counsel will explain all those points to you.’

‘Yes, I beg your pardon,’ she said, getting up. ‘Thank you.’

He noticed she had unusually fat, or more likely swollen, calves.

‘It’s not his fault.’ It was clear the sentence had been prepared in advance and she uttered it staring at the floor. ‘He didn’t mean to do anything wrong, everyone was always against him. He couldn’t take no more.’

‘Mrs Körnerová,’ he said, standing up, ‘your husband stands accused of a double murder. One of the victims was seventy years old, the other twelve.’

‘Everyone says they’ll hang him,’ she said, continuing her prepared statement, still staring at the floor. ‘But surely they can’t do it if we’re expecting a baby, when he’s the father… What would people call it afterwards?’

‘You’ll be able to tell all of that to the court at the trial.’

‘I just wanted to tell you that none of it is his fault. He just couldn’t stand it no more.’

‘There’s no point explaining anything now.’ As if there would be any point in anything she might explain later.

2

His wife had taken the children off on holiday (two days later than she originally intended, of course) so he didn’t need to rush off anywhere after work. Usually when he was left alone for a few days, he felt a thrill: as though a whole crowd of interesting prospects were suddenly opening up. This time he was also aware of a sense of relief. Recently he had started to find the ordinariness of family life tiresome. Maybe life had always been like that, but previously he hadn’t had time to notice the dreariness. He had channelled his interest, feelings and activity elsewhere, into developments he assumed were going to transform the world. It was from that quarter too that he had looked to see fulfilment coming. But with his unavoidable withdrawal from such involvement, he was shocked to find that he had nothing to fill the vacuum left behind. He found nowhere to turn his restless soul; nothing and no one to fix his expectations on.

At half past four, he left his office. The street was still burning hot and surprisingly deserted. He noticed three girls standing at the tram stop like three brightly coloured parrots. They were probably going off swimming somewhere. If he approached them and offered them a lift they might accept. He toyed with the idea for a while but three were too many — even as an idea. There would be two left over and they could easily become dangerous witnesses.

When would he be grown up enough not to let his imagination run away with him like that?

Imagining a course of action has the advantage of allowing one to escape its adverse consequences. Its disadvantage is that it denies one the possibility of changing anything oneself. But what hope has one of changing anything for the better? Only, a very slender one, to be sure, but he had nursed the hope throughout his life, even though he had associated change more with the world than his own life.

He got into his car. There’ll probably be room on the tennis courts now in the summer. But he usually played tennis with his brother, and his brother was inaccessible. And he’d not even taken his racquet with him; he should have thought of it that morning. If he went home now, he wouldn’t bother to go anywhere else.

He’d also been promising Matěj for ages to go and see him at the caravan; at least he’d get a chance to talk to someone without having to mind what he said.

He had no problem finding the caravan — it stood alone in the middle of a meadow. He could also make out the massive figure of his friend trudging across the field in his gumboots. A short distance away stood a small drilling rig with several pipes running from it. The water fell into a wooden tub and then out of it again and ran away unseen in the grass. Apparently there was a brook meandering through the undergrowth somewhere nearby.

Two sets of bunks occupied a third of the caravan. Half-naked models and film-stars had been pinned up on the walls amidst a rich array of advertising stickers. ‘Those two beds are free,’ Matěj said. ‘You can take your pick. There are three of us here on and off. We’re supposed to be all here at the same time, but that would mean losing one of the job’s main advantages. This way I do my week and then have a fortnight’s break.’

Beside the carefully cleared table, on a kitchen chair that was almost picturesquely old and scruffy, there stood a typewriter.

‘Mr Putna stuck all that up,’ Matěj said, pointing at the pictures covering the wall. ‘He’s the third one of the gang. He’s a beer-label collector.’

Adam leaned over towards the wall. Cedar’s Beyrouth bore the telephone number 221414 and the Tanganyika Tusker label was a red elephant within a green leaf.

‘Tomorrow morning, if you’re intending to stay the night, I’ll show you our storks. They’ve got a nest in a larch not far from here. It’s great to hear them clapping their bills. When they get going, we call it a cabinet meeting.’

‘Aren’t you fed up, having to be here on your own all the time?’

‘Now and then. Otherwise I quite enjoy it.’

‘But you won’t go on working here much longer.’

‘You reckon?’

‘It’s just too absurd.’

Matěj laughed. ‘Absurdity hasn’t been in short supply recently.’ He took a small pail down from the shelf and set off for the nearest spring. Adam walked behind him along a track worn through the long grass — mosquitoes buzzing around his head. They halted by a pipe sticking out of the ground. Matěj placed the pail under it and then timed how long it took to fill. ‘It never varies — at least water continues to have a sense of order. I fantasise that deep down out of reach of our drills there’s a whole enormous lake. The last of the unpolluted lakes.’

They continued along the path through the grass and a bat fluttered over their heads. ‘I can’t say how long I’ll go on doing this job. There’s always someone coming to see me with surefire news that everything’s about to change and we’ll get another reprieve from our lords and masters. They all feel an obligation to bring some good tidings, especially when they see me in my wellies holding a bucket. But would you believe it, the more I come back and forth to this place the more irrelevant everything I’ve done so far in my life seems to me. If a change really does come, I doubt it’ll even affect me any more…’

This was something he could not understand. If it had been himself in this kind of limbo he would be hankering after release like the poor ferryman in the fairy story.

They returned to the caravan and Matěj put a saucepan on the stove. The air was filled with the scent of mushrooms cooking. ‘The meadows around are full of mushrooms,’ he said, ‘and in the woods there are blushers and those deadly agarics. Do you know what,’ he mused, stirring, ‘during the war I had this plan that I’d get into the Führer’s camp in disguise and sell Hitler’s chef a bag of dried toadstools: Das sind die echte Steinpilze. Or I’d sneak by and tip them into the cooking pot. I was sure they must cook for Hitler in a cauldron in front of his tent.’ He poured some soup into a bowl and handed it to Adam. ‘How old were we when we first met?’

Adam reflected for a moment. ‘I think I was twenty-six.’

‘There you go. And you were passing judgement on people and I was telling them how they ought to behave.’

‘It was the way things were then.’

‘It was the way we were. And we wanted to remake the world to boot. You wouldn’t find me doing anything like that any more, even if I got the chance.’

‘What are you waiting for, then? You’re surely not going to spend the rest of your days in a circus caravan.’

‘I sincerely hope not. It’s only bravado when I pretend I don’t care. But at least here I can be sure that I won’t be required to do anything I can’t square with my conscience. Here I can almost feel free.’ He took Adam’s bowl and washed it in the sink. ‘In actual fact I’m waiting for some inner voice to make itself heard. I have the peace and calm for it here.’ He put the crockery back on the shelf, and gave no hint of further explanation. ‘What shall we do now? There are some archaeologists in a caravan not far off. They’re excavating a Celtic settlement. We’re cultivating neighbourly relations. One can learn all sorts of reassuring things from them.’

‘Later maybe.’

‘We could sit outside and see what we can see.’

The moon hadn’t risen yet and the darkness seemed total. Frogs croaked from the water and a warm breeze blew off the meadow.

What inner voices did his friend hope to hear? Had the quiet here unhinged his senses or, on the contrary, sharpened his hearing? What voices do I heed? I listen to all sorts of voices around me every day. They are so numerous that one drowns out the next, and when I go to bed my ears are full of hubbub as if torrents were flowing through my head. ‘I’ve just been given such a case,’ he said. ‘There’s this fellow on a double murder rap. He killed an old woman and a twelve-year-old girl. He turned on the gas in their room and left them.’

‘Is it a murder at all?’

‘What else could it be?’

‘I always used to think that a fellow had to strangle somebody or stab them to death. There’s no reason why they shouldn’t have woken up and turned the gas off. It might not even occur to them that someone had turned it on. What sort of penalty does it carry?’

‘Two people are dead — and one’s a child. And the culprit is a recidivist. There’s only one sentence: the noose. Otherwise the public — or what purports to be the public — will be outraged.’

‘And it doesn’t outrage you?’

‘Of course it does,’ he said. ‘And so do a lot of other things. But it doesn’t mean I want to see people hang for them.’

‘I know, you explained it to me a long time ago. Even so, I can’t help thinking that there are crimes which are unpunishable. Here on earth, at any rate. Surely that’s why we invented hell. The worst horror is perpetuity — and I should think that goes for punishment too, doesn’t it?’

He nodded. And how about happiness? Or relief, or hope, or love for that matter? He sensed the silence penetrate him, traversing him like a soft, cleansing breeze. Usually he feared silence as much as he did solitude or inactivity. He was convinced that at such moments his life was just slipping away to no purpose. But what purpose had his life served so far?

‘I’ll have to do my rounds again,’ Matěj announced. ‘But you’d better stay here this time — the grass is wet now.’

So he returned alone to the caravan. On the bed lay a pillow and several neatly folded blankets. But it was warm and he wouldn’t need more than one blanket.

Suddenly he recalled how, when still a student, he had been moved and also disconcerted by the fate of Ovid — the greatest poet of all time. (Which is how his Latin professor described him, at least.) This greatest of all poets was sent into exile, cut off from his wife and friends, banished from his home, his comfort, his homeland and his public and left to eke out a living, in lamentation and despair, and finally to die among foreigners in a barbarian land. He even recalled a wistful couplet:

Hic ego qui iaceo tenerorum lusor amorum

ingenii perii Naso poeta meo…

He had never thought to ask whether one could be a great man — or maybe a poet, either — if one was incapable of accepting fate. It had never occurred to him because he had always believed that what constituted human greatness was the capacity to protest, change the world and prepare for revolution.

Matěj returned. He took a thick book out of the desk and entered some figures. Then he wound his alarm clock.

‘Do you have to get up at night?’

‘We’re supposed to make measurements every other hour.’

‘But you said that the water flow was regular.’

‘And mostly I don’t measure it at night,’ he admitted. ‘But at least I get up and enter the figures.’

‘You could just as easily do it in the morning.’

‘I don’t want to make things too easy for myself. Besides, in theory at least, we could be checked on at night.’

Later, as he lay on his bunk staring into the darkness, Adam said: ‘I remember reading a book one time; it was the diary of a psychologist they sent to Nuremberg during the main trial. I would keep on going back to the last few pages where he recorded the verdicts and the behaviour of the defendants immediately after hearing their sentence. I felt pleased that they were sent to the gallows.’

‘That’s understandable.’

‘And when I read the memoirs of Hoesse of Auschwitz, I remember I spent several evenings imagining how I’d shut his wife and children in the gas chamber before I executed him, and make him watch them die.’

‘What language did you get it in?’

‘Polish. It was the most shocking book I’ve ever read. I’d never do it, of course.’

‘Wouldn’t you? Not even if you had the power to?’

‘No.’

‘Wouldn’t you even send him in?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

‘I expect it’s because it seems a greater punishment to me to live with guilt than to die, though I realise for some people it presents no problem. Or because underneath I believe that in the end everyone is capable of understanding their crime and starting to regret it. At the same time I know it’s not the case. Most people never regret their misdeeds.’

‘I’m curious to know whether you wouldn’t do it because you feel it’s wrong, or because you know it is.’

He pondered for a moment and then said: ‘I wouldn’t do it because of me!’

3

When Alexandra came to the door, he didn’t even recognise her. He had not seen her for a long while — not since he left for the States. Then she had had short fair hair like his wife, now she had dyed it black, and wore it low on her forehead. She also outlined her eyelids in black. Across her left cheek there ran a scar carefully masked with powder. She was wearing a red T-shirt and a short leather skirt, and still looked like a little girl.

She greeted him in the tone of voice we usually reserve for people we’ve seen the day before. ‘Oldřich told me you’d be coming, but he phoned just now to say he’d be delayed.’ As she came closer to him he found himself enveloped in a fine, artificial perfume. ‘You don’t mind waiting here for him, do you?’

‘So long as it doesn’t put you out. I was only after his advice about something.’

‘You’re not the only one.’

‘It’s not for myself.’

‘Don’t apologise. He likes giving advice, it makes him feel important.’

She led him into the sitting room. He was taken aback by the ostentatiously antique furniture. It was most likely the same furniture as all those years ago, except that he hadn’t noticed such things then.

‘Would you like a coffee?’

‘No thanks, I don’t drink coffee.’

‘Oh, I remember now. You didn’t drink coffee, vodka or wine. But maybe you drink wine by now?’

‘I’m happy as I am.’

‘Lucky man. You don’t have any vices at all?’

‘I play tennis.’

‘That’s not a vice. Haven’t you even given your Alena the slip on the odd occasion?’

He shrugged.

‘Don’t you find it boring, living that way?’

‘I expect it is, but I’ve never learned to live any other way.’

‘I’d teach you, but it’s your affair.’ She brought a bottle and some glasses. She poured him some soda water, herself a glass of wine. ‘I like a drink, if only to cheer me up a bit — even in this graveyard. The last time we met, things were rather more cheerful. You were just off to America or somewhere. You didn’t even send me a card.’

‘I’m a dreadful correspondent.’ He couldn’t see why he should have sent her a postcard, seeing that he hardly knew her.

‘That, I’d really enjoy, travelling round the world. But I expect you just shut yourself up in a library somewhere and sat there reading and drinking weak tea with no sugar.’

‘I drove all over from north to south. Right down to Texas.’

‘Texas? That sounds so grey-green. I bet they have a sea coast.’

‘There is a gulf, but I never got that far.’

‘I’ve never been to the sea at all. I just might have made it once if Ruml hadn’t gone and given me a baby. I had to sit at home instead. That’s why I never got to university either.’

‘You wanted to study?’

‘Why not? Everyone thought I’d go on to college.’

‘And what are you doing these days?’

‘Don’t even ask!’ She went into the room next door and he heard the sound of drawers being pulled out. She returned with a long strip of film. He took it from her and held it up to the light. A brown puppy with drooping ears looking out of a yellow kennel next to a speckled hen scratching by a purple fence.

She studied him, then came and stood behind him as if she wanted to have a look herself. He felt the soft touch of her hand on his right shoulder.

‘That’s what I do. Colour in the frames.’ She leaned over him for a moment longer, then stepped away and took the strip back. ‘I’ve already squandered three years of my life on it. At first I thought I’d learn something in the process. But it’s just a bore.’ She moved her chair a bit closer to him. They were so close, their knees almost touched. ‘When I come in at night my eyes are sore from it.’ She raised her eyes to him as if to let him see just how sore they were. They were a light blue like his daughter’s.

What expectations did she have of him? None, most likely. It was a summer evening and she was bored. And what expectations did he have of himself? Wasn’t he bored too? No, surely not. But he was so strait-laced and unbending: as dry as the Negev Desert.

‘Does Alena still work in the library?’

He nodded.

‘It’s a daft world where women have to work. Having to look after their children, their husband, their furniture and go out to work on top of it all. I can’t even read in the evening, or paint, my eyes are so tired. Would you like me to put on a record?’

‘If you like. And you did painting before?’

‘When I was still at school. I used to paint there every day. Since then I only paint on the odd occasion.’ She got up and put a record on the gramophone.

From the corner of the room there came the sound of a husky jazz singer. ‘What sense would there be in dusting the furniture, ironing shirts, frying schnitzels and tossing off the odd still life?’

She continued to stare at him. He was incapable of concentrating on her words. It would be better if he got up and left. Instead he asked: ‘Would you show me your paintings some time?’

‘You want to see my paintings? Why should you look at them? There are plenty of pictures around by people who are better at it than me and you won’t even have the time to see half of them. There’s so little time, don’t you think? Sometimes when I get up in the morning it really hits me and I panic. I’d really love to escape.’

‘Escape where?’

‘Somewhere I’d know I was alive. Do you fancy running away with me?’

He shrugged.

‘I’m rattling on, aren’t I? And I’m letting you sit here with just a soda water when I bet you’re hungry. Wait a sec and I’ll make you some soup.’

‘Please don’t go to any trouble.’

‘I’ll enjoy it!’ She went out.

His throat was dry. He drank the rest of his soda water but it did nothing to slake his thirst. Moreover he felt hemmed in here, it was a space quite different from the one he was used to moving around in. A few steps more and he’d find himself on a very slippery slope. If he didn’t escape now the walls would close in, whirling about an invisible axis, and he would find himself trapped. He peeped into the kitchen. Alexandra was just pouring ketchup into a saucepan. The crimson liquid reminded him of blood.

‘I don’t think I should detain you, seeing that Oldřich doesn’t look as if he’s coming.’

‘I should think he’ll come: he promised you, after all.’ She shrugged. ‘You won’t even wait for a drop of tomato soup?’

‘I’d better not, if you don’t mind.’

‘I don’t mind. It’s your bad luck — I make a good tomato soup, with ham and double cream.’ She turned down the gas, distant now and indifferent. She saw him to the gate: ‘Don’t feel you have to wait five years before you call again.’

The gate slammed behind him. He was suddenly overcome with regret: it welled up from somewhere deep inside him. To escape somewhere, to where you’d know you were alive. But where was that place, and in whose company?

4

It was almost eight o’clock — but he didn’t feel like going home to an empty flat. He was right to have left her. He was pleased he had got away in time, but the regret did not leave him. He ought to do something to take his mind off it.

Why had she stared at him so hard? What could she find fascinating about him? He had never thought of himself, even as a young man, as someone attractive to women. He was unsure of his appearance. If he was suddenly summoned to an interrogation and asked to describe himself, he probably wouldn’t be able to. He would have difficulty in stating for certain whether his lips were full or thin, he didn’t know where his birth marks were without having to think, or what shape his ears were, and if he was given some paints and told to mix from memory the same shade of brown as his eyes, he would certainly fail. On one occasion when he entered a tailor’s cutting-room where several mirrors were installed, he happened to catch sight of his reflection in profile and it took a moment or two before he realised that the stocky fellow with the prominent nose was himself.

So the only thing he knew about himself was that he was rather ponderous, unrhythmical, unmusical (he had never learned to dance or to sing the simplest of melodies, and when he was doing his military service he had even had difficulty keeping in step with the rest) and he was clumsy with his hands.

Magdalena used to maintain he had an interesting or even beautiful nose but he hadn’t used to take comments like that seriously. In his younger days, he had been such an impassioned speaker and debater that people found his energy attractive. But he had talked less and less lately. He had developed an aversion to repeating other people’s ideas and experiences, or his own: to repeating anything, in fact. And since most conversations consisted entirely of repetition — phrases, events, ideas, opinions — he usually kept quiet. And if he did start to speak he would dry up after a few sentences. As a rule he didn’t confide in anyone else, but didn’t discourage others from confiding in him.

Why had she confided in him? Was it because he was already old and inspired people’s confidence?

He stopped at the corner of the Old Town Square. He ran up to the first floor, and was scarcely through the door when his mother appeared in the front hall. ‘Close the door quickly,’ she told him, ‘or we’ll have the place full of flies. And take off your shoes!’ She had an obsessive dread of filth, and of flies in particular. Throughout the period from spring to autumn when a fly might conceivably make an appearance in the square, all the main windows in the flat had to be kept shut. The maximum his father was allowed during those months was a frame of fine wire-mesh in place of the ventlights.

‘Go and wash your hands in the kitchen, your father’s in the bath!’

He went to the kitchen and she brought him a towel. ‘He wants to fly to Brno early in the morning,’ his mother grumbled. ‘One of their motors has broken down. They called him this afternoon. He’d be flying this evening if he could. He’s always at it. You ought to tell him to stop rushing around like this. While he still has the chance — before he wears himself out.’

He smiled. His mother had voiced the same anxiety for twenty years at least. Though one day her constant fears could be sadly justified.

‘You’re hungry, I’m sure. And just when I have nothing in the house.’ Always now that Hanuš was abroad (albeit still legally) and inaccessible, she livened up whenever he arrived and fell over herself to do things for him.

‘I’m not hungry. It’s too hot to have an appetite.’

‘So what’s the reason you’ve dropped in out of the blue?’ she asked suspiciously.

‘I happened to be passing.’

‘We had a letter from Hanuš. He’s found himself a new flat. One whole floor of a house, with a view of the garden from his study. It’s quite a big garden and there’s a bed of peonies right opposite his window, and they’re in flower.’ His mother described the view as if she’d just got back from a visit to Hanuš’s new flat. ‘But I don’t like the way he’s settling in. He’s acting as if he meant to stay for good.’

She refused to countenance the thought of Hanuš staying overseas and never returning to the country where he was born, where she was born, the country for whose freedom, as she believed, her two brothers had died, and where her ancestors had been born and buried. His mother was deeply attached to her home town and its speech, and in that she differed from his father, who was only attached to his machines — which knew no homeland. All she had known so far — two wars and imprisonment — weighed on her and made her grumble, although she never associated her afflictions with her country itself. Foreigners had brought them every time, after all. Whereas his father constantly analysed the reasons for what happened in order to forecast the future, his mother let the future alone, and accepted it all fatalistically. His father, perpetually prepared for the worst, was undoubtedly relieved that his younger son at least had managed to remove himself beyond the borders of this least secure of areas. To his mother it seemed that she already had the worst behind her and subconsciously she expected fate to bring her some relief. There was an anxiety deep within her soul, but she refused to pay it any greater tribute than her yearning to have her sons close by her.

‘You ought to write to him. When was the last time you sent him a letter?’

He couldn’t remember, but said: ‘Just recently.’

‘You should write, you should tell him to start thinking about coming home. The longer he leaves it, the harder it’ll be for him to get used to it here again.’

‘But he’s a grown man.’

And what expectations did he have of the future? He had inherited his father’s capacity for logical thought, but also his mother’s dislike of treating her life’s experience with logic. Moreover he had the foolish habit of forgetting the past, so how was he supposed to draw conclusions from it? It could well be that the day was not far off when the doorbell would ring and messengers in some new guise would finally hand him the long, narrow strip with name, date, number and irrevocable verdict; but should he let the fear of it poison his days beforehand? That must surely have been the attitude of most of those during the war who were destined for the final solution and then fared worse than he. And most likely it was the attitude of those destined for the final solution after the February coup of ’48 — and where had they ended up? Had he graduated from law school just a few years earlier he might well have pronounced sentence on them. An awful thought.

‘But he listens to you,’ his mother continued. ‘He respects you. He knows you understand this sort of thing.’

‘All right, I’ll write to him.’ Perhaps he was foolhardy because he had always got off scot-free so far. Or more likely because he plain refused to accept escape as the only way out of danger. What would become of the human race if we all opted for escape?

‘And what are the children up to?’ his mother asked, changing the subject.

‘They’ve already gone,’ he replied, aware that this news would not be warmly received. ‘I drove them all to the country on Saturday.’

‘And they didn’t even bother to come and say goodbye.’

He had begged Alena to take the children over, but she hadn’t found the time, even though she postponed the departure twice. Like most women, she was not enamoured of her mother-in-law and did what she could to avoid her. He was obliged to take the children to see his parents on his own. He suddenly felt a pang of resentment towards his wife for not having done him that little favour. Goodness knows where she’d been gadding about those two days. The last evening, she had only come home just before midnight. Then she had fallen asleep as her head touched the pillow, though she knew very well they wouldn’t see each other for at least a week. ‘I’ve had a lot of work on my plate,’ he explained, ‘and I just didn’t have time to bring them over.’

He didn’t like complaining but now he felt a need to talk about himself. In the old days, when he was still a boy, he would go to his mother every so often and launch into a lengthy narration of everything that had befallen him recently. She would listen and he would find relief. But what was he to tell her now? That they were piling cases on to him and making attend endless meetings and pep talks where he was forced to listen to things he found repugnant? That he was sleeping badly and waking up in the small hours worrying about what he would do when they kicked him out of his job? That for a long time his wife had not felt amorous towards him? That he now hated getting up in the morning as there was nothing to look forward to, nothing hopeful? That, on top of it all, for the last week he had also had the household to look after, with all the shopping, the children’s meals to cook and even the laundry? That this afternoon he had been to see a friend, but only found his friend’s wife at home, and she had said things to him which, however meaningless, still rang in his ears?

‘You mustn’t overdo it,’ his mother said. ‘You’ve got bags under your eyes.’

‘They’re not from overdoing it.’

‘What are they from then? Adam,’ she asked anxiously, ‘you’re not doing anything foolish again, are you?’

‘What do you mean “again”?’

‘You know very well what I mean. Getting up to something with those friends of yours who were given the boot.’

‘You’ve no need to worry.’

‘I hope you learnt a lesson from what happened to you that time over your article.’

He knew that his mother would go on to remind him of his father’s time in prison. Of all the things that had ever happened to her she only ever recalled the worst. The lesson she had learned from everything was that resistance was undesirable, that one should not have different aspirations from other people, that one should only aspire after what was permitted. ‘You’ve no need to worry,’ he repeated.

‘I do worry, because I know you too well. You’re like your father — always wanting to save the world.’

‘Don’t be upset — it’s ages since I wanted anything of the kind.’ At most he wanted to save himself — but how? Which was the path of salvation? What was the country, where was the place where you would know you were alive?

He could see the black harmonium in the corner. The brick floor still covered in dirt, the warm light shining in through the narrow dormer window and forming a sharply edged cone; a girl, her face hidden in the darkness, gently touching the keys and he in an unprecedented ecstasy escaping upwards to where he would be able to live according to his soul’s needs.

He marvelled at how long this longing had been in him: to be alone, in a place he could rise out of by his own willpower, and escape heavenwards up the shafts of light. And now he was gazing high through the narrow dormer window at the distant heavens, which had not yet heard the groans of his friends, the kindly heavens which gave off a scent of lime blossom and rejoiced in the divine presence. It occurred to him that he knew, that he had some inkling what he would see there: he was looking forward to that familiar face.

His father came in and sent his mother off to make some tea. Then he started to ask him about the state of the world.

He answered his father and listened to gloomy predictions without abandoning his vaulted private space.

5

Alena sat by the open window, a writing-pad on her knee. In front of the house, her niece Lucinka was yelling something at her son, from the kitchen came the clamour of a transistor radio and the smell of mushrooms.

Dear Honza,

This is my third day here (the children are with me, along with my sister-in-law and her children, who share the cottage’s other room), but I slept the first two days, because I spent the whole night before we left packing.

At this point she ought to write: ‘I’m with you in spirit’, but the statement seemed indelicate to her, disloyal to Adam and even shameful. Compared with actions words have the disadvantage of carrying within themselves the seeds of judgements.

I live with the children in a room with a view over the brook. It’s a narrow brook and its water is too cold for bathing, but in the still of the night I listen to its murmur and remember a room with a view of the Danube.

And again she could see the river whose waves were about to close over her head, and as on many occasions since then could feel once more that dread of being unable to reach the bank and dying amid the torrent. That time, the night had made the bank seem even more distant, the current carried her with it and the waves were already washing over her head. She had probably shouted out, though sure she was completely alone and no one had followed her. At that moment he had appeared at her side. Nothing more. He hadn’t rescued her, it was unlikely he would have had the strength; he had just swum at her side, and this had calmed her enough to make the bank on her own. Then they had both lain down on the deserted beach. A cold breeze had been blowing but she hadn’t noticed it, and from the distance had come the hooting of a train or a river boat. It had taken her some time to realise she was shivering uncontrollably and he was kneeling over her, stroking her face and uttering soothing words. Then he had taken her hand and they had walked back along the river bank. She had felt weak and had had to stop from time to time. Once she had rested her head on his shoulder. He had stood motionless and even his breath had been inaudible. Back at the hotel, he had brought hot tea to her room and sat on a chair by her bed talking about himself while she had succumbed to the onslaught of sleep. She had woken up to find him still sitting by the bed looking at her and been dismayed to discover that someone so much younger could have fallen in love with her. Her first thought had been how incongruous it was, and that she ought to send him away and avoid him. She was a married woman, after all, and had children. But when all was said and done there was nothing wrong with his sitting there looking at her.

From that moment he had been constantly at her heels like a puppy. He would touch her hand in the dark and relate the events of his life, curled up at her feet.

She had been moved by what he told her, especially that he had grown up constantly yearning to be understood, in search of some divine or at least human authority, and had found nothing of the kind. And it occurred to her that that was why she attracted him. He had discovered in her both understanding and authority, and it would therefore be cruel and insensitive to rebuff him.

If he were to turn up here now (but what would she say the children — and Sylva?) they would sit together on the overgrown hillside opposite. And he would talk about himself. Nothing else. And it would be marvellous if nothing else needed to follow it.

Familiar steps could be heard in the passage. She thrust the letter under the blanket, gathered up the children’s dirty tights and opened the wardrobe.

Her son pushed open the door. ‘What are you doing there, Mummy?’

‘What do you think I’m doing? Clearing up after you.’

He was about to sit on the bed just where she had hidden the letter. She managed to stop him in time. ‘How many times have I told you not to sit on the bed in your outdoor clothes!’

‘Mummy, when will Daddy come?’

‘Is that why you have to come and bother me?’

‘I didn’t know it bothered you when you’re tidying up. Do you think he’ll come this evening?’

‘No, Daddy is very busy at work.’

‘Do you think he’ll buy me a bike if he comes?’

‘Martin, if you’ll go off and play now like a good boy I’ll take you both on a lovely walk afterwards.’

‘Why can’t you come now?’

‘I can’t just now. I’ve still got something to do.’

‘I’ll wait here with you, then.’

When she had finally succeeded in getting him to go outside and taken the letter out from under the blanket she found she hadn’t the strength to continue writing.

It’s all left me terribly tired. I feel I need a few moments’ peace, some moments to myself. To be entirely alone. Write soon, Honza, love.

She hid the envelope in her skirt pocket (it was an unsightly skirt that Adam had once brought her from somewhere; he always brought her back things that were totally unsuitable, a touching gesture rather than a pleasant surprise). The post office was down in the village, so at least her walk would be to some purpose.

They were walking along a forest path: Look, a frog. No, that’s not a cep. What d’you think that rock looks like? I think it looks like a bear stretching its paw out. Who wants a feather? No, it can’t fly right up to the sun, otherwise it’d burn up; a bird would burn up too. That’s lucerne. No, they don’t bake bread from it. How about if we had a look in the chapel? We’ve never been in it before!

It was an ordinary little chapel from the days when the Jesuits roved the countryside and when they also burned books. Nowadays books didn’t get burnt; banned books were withdrawn from circulation on the basis of secret lists and were either stored in special departments or carted off to be pulped and made into new paper. And it was her job, when she went into some library, to make sure that none of the banned ones had remained on the shelves by mistake.

The stations of the cross had most likely been painted by the local chaplain or parish priest, and the statue of the Virgin Mary resembled a target in a shooting gallery. The air inside was full of the scents of dried flowers, wax, incense and old wood. She sat down in one of the pews and motioned to the children to do likewise. She shut her eyes. The sunlight shone in through the window above the altar and she sensed it as a red warmth on her eyelids. She had not believed in God since He went and got lost during her childhood, when He abandoned His cloud. But suddenly — for the first time in how many years? — she felt herself part of an eternal order, as if she had been suffused by an awareness of the countless weddings, christenings and masses for the dead that had taken place here, as if she were cradled by a protracted litany of ever-repeated prayers, genuflections and exhortations; she was among the Sunday throng slowly dispersing in festive mood after standing a while to ask after someone’s health or express sympathy or condolences. She was overcome with a sense of belonging, belonging to something firm and unchanging there was no running away from or abandoning: the security she always reached after; real love. Love which had its own order and grandeur: qualities which exalted it above mere lovemaking.

That was why she had once been so taken by the idea of living on a kibbutz, believing she would find that kind of love and fellowship there. She abhorred the sort of life in which people were made to act like strangers; in which fear and denunciation ruled, people shunned each other, were frightened to talk to each other, exchange letters, confide in each other; in which people could be accused of having uttered some heretical thought years before; in which people were required to speak a strange official jargon that almost prevented communication.

Human life had to be superior to the life of the ants, and human speech something higher than the grunting of pigs. She believed that this was attainable in the home, if nowhere else, but Adam had no such aspirations. He had no desire to open up, just as he didn’t hanker after the fellowship or friendship of other people; it would only waste time better used for something more important to him, such as his work or his studies or his endless, absurd striving for success and recognition. He didn’t care whether people liked him or not, and even less whether people around him liked each other, or whether they suffered, or whether his insularity didn’t cause them suffering. His life lacked any order. Yes, that was his greatest deficiency. It had to be immediately apparent to anyone looking at him, from his appearance — his unkempt hair, his badly buttoned clothes — to his disordered and hasty utterances. Order was lacking in his everyday dealings. He was always starting things and not completing them. She remembered times he would be transcribing or translating several things at once. Now his work was no longer sought after, at least he had started reading a lot, though a month later, of course, he would be incapable of saying what the books had been about. And he had been building a fence at the cottage for the past two years already while in the meantime the roof was collapsing and the window-frames rotting. He never managed to do anything properly, he was never ready to devote himself one hundred per cent to one particular thing, or to commit himself to somebody, and he had the least time of all for her and the children — he devoted almost nothing of himself to them. And all the while he harboured the notion that everything he did simply anticipated some momentous future achievement which would justify the mayhem he caused all around him, and justify as well his arrogant conviction that he was better or anyway more important than the majority of people. As if activity was of some value for its own sake.

Maybe his hectic behaviour was a substitute for order and higher purpose in his life. With some people, drudgery was a sign that their lives lacked calm and harmony: they slogged away in order to drown out the emptiness within them. And at that moment it occurred to her that she too had offended against order — she had been unfaithful, something she had never bargained for, something she condemned and considered incompatible with a well-ordered life. She put her hand in her pocket and touched the envelope. And the very first thing she had rushed to do was to put her love down on paper, though she herself considered it untenable. She started to crumple the letter in her pocket; when she had crumpled it into a small ball and made it impossible to send, she felt a sense of relief, as if she had crumpled up those few days in Bratislava, her indiscretion, her lapse.

When she went to bed that evening she thought no more about the events of the previous week, as if she had completely distanced herself from those few days. She didn’t regret them; it was fine they had happened; she had long wished for something of the sort and Adam would be unlikely to hold it against her particularly; after all, he too had loved other women before he met her and would understand her desire to get to know someone else. She loved him for it, for that capacity to understand, that’s why I love him, I love him because he’s mine.

She was awakened by the sound of someone banging on the cottage door. Before she had a chance to get up, apparently it was opened and she heard the sound of muffled voices. ‘Ali!’ her sister-in-law called from outside her room. ‘You’ve got a visitor.’

‘A visitor?’

‘Some young fellow. Will you come and see him?’

‘Yes, I’m on my way.’ She dressed hurriedly. It was nearly midnight. She had no doubt who it was waiting for her and it seemed so unreal that her head swam.

‘What are you doing here?’

‘I had to see you. I took three days’ leave and hitch-hiked here.’

‘This is silly of you. You can’t stay here, for heaven’s sake!’

‘I’ve brought a tent with me.’

‘You’re crazy!’

‘I’ve already put it up, over there across the stream, at the bottom of the cliff.’

‘But I’m here with the children!’

‘I’ll just watch you across the water.’

‘Adam’s coming in a couple of days!’

‘But meanwhile I’ll be able to see you. I’m so happy to see you. I love you, Alena!’

‘Honza, my love, you’re crazy. What if someone heard us? My sister-in-law is here with me too. And the children might wake up.’

‘I’m off. I’m so happy… Can I? It’s just I want to make sure it’s really you.’

‘Oh, Honza! Please… It isn’t on, really!’

‘I’m off then. Sister of my dreams.’

‘What did you say?’

‘Sister of my dreams. My honey pot. I’m going.’

‘Hold it. You can’t just go like that. Aren’t you hungry?’

‘No. I’m just so happy to be able to see you.’

‘I’ll walk with you a little way. Just as far as the bridge.’

‘You see I just couldn’t stand it any more. I borrowed a tent and came.’

‘Where have you got the tent?’

‘Over there. Just the other side of the water. I’ll show you if you like.’

‘But I can’t just go off and leave the children on their own.’

‘But they’re sleeping. And anyway you said you’ve got your sister-in-law here.’

‘Exactly. What would she think if I went off with you?’

‘We’d come straight back. Alena, I love you for coming with me. For the three whole days since I last saw you I’ve thought about you all the time and even thought up names for you: My amber. My homespun — I want to roll myself in you! My honeysuckle — I wish you’d twine around me!’

‘Hush! What was that?’

‘I didn’t hear anything.’

‘Someone called. Stand still and listen.’

‘I can’t hear anything.’

‘Maybe it was some bird or other, or the frogs. Haven’t we got to your tent yet, for goodness sake?’

‘Just a little way now. Alena, I’m so happy you’re going there with me. My golden-eyed beauty. I’ve never loved anyone like you. I love you so much, Alena.’

‘Those frogs are going to make a row all the time. You won’t get a wink of sleep.’

‘I don’t care, so long as I know you’re near.’

‘And won’t you be afraid, all alone here at night?’

‘No. I often used to go away alone like this. I always used to run away on my own so that Dad would worry about me. But he didn’t care, anyway.’

‘And won’t you be miserable here?’

‘No, not any more. Not now that you’ve come here with me. Will you have a look inside?’

‘It’s awfully dark here.’

‘Wait a sec, I’ll switch on the torch. Won’t you sit down for a moment?’

‘No, I really must go now. The children might wake up.’

‘They won’t. I never used to wake up when I was small.’

‘And it’s cold here. Aren’t you cold?’

‘I’m not, but if you are, I’ll light the cooker and some candles. I brought three candles with me.’

‘Now it smells all Christmassy here.’

‘Do you think it’ll warm you up?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘So wait a while and sit down. I’ll put a blanket round you.’

‘No, please don’t, Honza. No. I really have to go back.’

‘I love you so much. This moment will live for ever, I’ll never ever forget it, I can tell I’ll remember it always. Are you still cold?’

‘No, not any more.’

‘Shall I blow the candles out?’

‘No, leave them burning. It’s just like Christmas. I like it when I can see you. Your eyes, they’re so childlike.’

‘It’s because I’m not wearing my glasses. I’ll blow it out now, OK? Anyway, I can still see you in the dark.’

‘I can see you too. But don’t. You mustn’t.’

‘Alena, don’t you love me any more?’

‘I don’t know. Yes, but please be careful.’

Before we drink from the waters of Lethe

1

For four years I had imagined my homecoming. Home meant the Renaissance house on the square with its wooden staircase, the old crucifix in the alcove with its rusting Christ, my green couch and the ‘timetable’ of my day hanging above it (painted on Bristol board with the departure to Slumbertown marked in red), the china cabinet with the silver fruit-bowl and the cobalt-blue glass vase, the clattering tramcar under the window and my little grandfather with his nicotine-stained moustache alighting from the tram and bringing me razor-blade wrappers in his tiny scuffed briefcase or a packet of advertising comics drawn by Artuš Schneider. Home meant going back to the place where my childhood had been interrupted.

Now we were entering the building I had hungered for. The staircase seemed to my eyes shabby, different, smaller; the crucifix had been removed and when Father unlocked the flat (the locks were the only things left. The neighbours said: the tenant who came in after you took everything away and redecorated. Who was it came after us? Some bigwig in a uniform; a chauffeur in a Mercedes used to call for him every morning) I set eyes on a familiar space filled with unfamiliar furniture. Father approached the mammoth great cupboards and opened doors here and there. I waited in excitement to see what we’d discover. But the cupboards contained nothing: neither time-bombs nor treasures; only in the kitchen did there remain a few dozen wine goblets and glasses. Father took his red notebook out of his pocket and noted something in it. I watched his face, emaciated beyond recognition, and his shaven scalp. It looked almost horrifying silhouetted against the bright window. I glanced at my mother who was leaning tiredly against the wall by the door. (A few days earlier, after examining her thoroughly, the doctor had discovered she had a heart condition and told her with almost exaggerated directness that any exertion, or any illness, even the slightest, could kill her.) And suddenly the depressing realisation dawned on me that this would never be my old home again. I turned and ran out of that alien room. My father had possibly felt something similar. He came to me and told me that everything would be fine once more; we would furnish the flat again and it would be even better than before the war. Then he asked me where I would like to sleep. Nowhere, I replied, so they gave me a corner for myself in the kitchen: a new iron bedstead and a small table where I was supposed to study.

The next day, I had to go to school, even though there were scarcely three weeks of the school year left. I was fourteen, so they sent me into the fourth year. I have no detailed memory of that class. I am unable to recall a single teacher or single fellow-pupil, I remember only the feeling I had: awe combined with disappointment and uncertainty. I could understand nothing of what was going on around me. For the first time in my life I entered a gymnasium, and while everyone else was swarming all over the place, exercising on the parallel bars or doing arm swings on the horizontal bar, I stood to one side, aware that I would never manage any of it. The teachers used to bring the strangest objects into chemistry and physics lessons and speak in a language full of symbols whose meaning was a mystery to me. I was not even capable of concentrating on those things I might conceivably have understood, such as history and geography lessons.

Two or three attempts were made to get me to answer questions on the previous lesson. Even though they asked me the simplest and friendliest of questions I maintained a terrified silence. Everything set me apart from the rest, even my appearance. I could not relate to them in any way. I was waiting for them to make the overtures (after all, I was superior, having undergone exemplary suffering of the kind then held in high esteem). But they had no reason to. They had no use for me.

I was waiting for Arie. Whenever I found myself alone at home I would take out his photo and the picture he had given me and sit looking at those two relics, the only mementoes of his existence. Once I took the cloth off the kitchen table, set up some goal-posts, took out some buttons and played a game of button-football. In it I played for myself and my pal — playing fairly for him, since I beat myself in his name. But there was no point in it, so I put the buttons away and went out to wander around the streets instead.

That first month, Father had given me a hundred crowns to spend. I bought my first illustrated magazine ever. It smelt fresh from the press. I sat down on a bench behind the Rudolfinum and read some concentration camp story. Then I continued on my way. I took a tram as far as Košírěv and was amazed to discover that the woods began so soon. A bilingual street sign lay in a narrow ditch, but apart from that, nothing recalled the war. After so many years, I had trees above my head once more. I lay beneath one of them and listened to the sounds of the forest. I no longer remember what I thought about, but it must have been one of the most telling experiences of my childhood as it turns up again and again in my dreams: I get on a tram that takes me through an unbelievable cluster of houses and eventually arrives at the edge of a wood. I get off and find myself in a silent landscape. I walk along a soft footpath, alongside which runs a narrow ditch often full of junk, and start to climb upwards. The trees about me begin to change; I walk through a birch grove and between dreamy pines like fluffed-up parasols, and mountain spruce at whose dark feet the strawberry-red caps of toadstools peer out of the moss, until at last I emerge into a realm of total calm, and in my dream I can hear the musical sound of wind blowing and I am happy.

Strangely enough I did not fail school that time, but came through with flying colours. I didn’t pay any attention to the school report; I couldn’t have cared less about it. I had yet to adopt either the mores or the competitiveness of civilisation. Only years afterwards, when I turned up that already yellowing document among my papers, did I realise that it was a testimonial not to myself and what I knew, but to the era when it was issued and most of all to the people who issued it.

The war was finished — and so was the regime of occupation. Its most hated representatives had either fled or wound up in prison while their victims had been proclaimed martyrs. But all that concerned just a tiny section of the population: most of the people had not died, fled or gone to gaol, but merely gone on with their lives. Overnight, they had entered a world which commended actions that yesterday’s laws had identified as crimes, a world whose laws declared yesterday’s crimes to be acts of heroism. They naturally regarded this change as a victory for historical truth and agreed that guilt must be assessed, wrongs put right and society purged.

But what was to be identified as guilt and what condoned, seeing that they had all lived under the former regime, however hated and imposed it was? Seeing that the existence and actions of the regime had also depended on their own existence and behaviour. Who was to be the defendant, who the witness and who the judge? At the trials that were to take place, would not those who confronted each other in the courtroom be equally guilty and equally innocent? The very will to cleanse oneself of evil and to atone for guilt conceals within it the risk of new crimes and new wrongs.

As they looked back, it is certain that many felt pangs of conscience. They would happily have done something to atone for the past, not just for everybody’s sake, but for their own. And some of them had had the good fortune to be sent this emaciated wretch who had come back from somewhere or other. His state of neglect was so great that at the age of fourteen he had no idea what the square on the hypotenuse equalled or when Charles the Fourth died. But was it his fault? Did he not merit magnanimous indulgence?

It is unlikely that my teachers had conspired among themselves; they had taken their decision independently and sent me off on my life’s journey with — in place of the learning I had missed — a little bit of their own guilt in the shape of a faked school report. Perhaps they believed it was some atonement at least for their silence over the previous five years, those five years when they had had to teach lies if they wanted to teach at all, and that through this action they might redress the injury I had undoubtedly suffered. In fact it merely fostered in me the mistaken notion that I enjoyed some kind of special privilege, love and consideration, and served to alienate me even more from my peers, who sensed that their efforts had been cheapened by that single bogus report. My teachers failed to realise that nothing in life can be redressed. Our former actions remain as irrevocable as bygone days. At best we can try to forget what happened. On condition that we find sufficient human forbearance within ourselves and a trace of the nobility of spirit which we sense to be a divine attribute.

2

Father was never over-attentive towards me. On the odd occasion, he would give into my wheedling and play a game of chess or draughts with me, or help me with my maths homework. What is the sine of sixty degrees? Fear grips me as I struggle in vain to remember. I remain silent. Father is patient. Not to worry, I can work it out, after all. On his instruction I draw an equilateral triangle. What am I supposed to do now? I have no idea. Why did I draw the triangle? he asks. In order to work out the sine of sixty degrees, I mutter, because if I said I didn’t know for a second time, Father’s wrath would most likely blow me off the face of the earth. Of course it was to calculate the sine of sixty degrees, but that wasn’t the question. Why an equilateral triangle? I look at the drawing in front of me. Most likely because all the sides are the same length, but I realise I mustn’t say so. I say nothing. What do I require? How will I work out the sine of sixty degrees — what does sine mean? I mutter the definition. Right-oh, then, so what do I need? A right angle, of course! Yes, that’s obvious, a right angle. So what do I do now? I’ve no idea, but I say I’ll bisect one of the sides. Excellent. And what’s that called? A perpendicular, of course. I drop a perpendicular. Quite right. What is the cosine of sixty degrees? Father watches me expectantly. From his expression I surmise that every numskull, every country bumpkin, every retard knows the value of cos 60°. All I have to do is look. Father is raising his voice and getting red in the face. I must surely see it, let me not dare to say I don’t know; I’m only pretending not to see the relationship. My mother rushes in and begs my father not to shout at me, can’t he see it’s only terrifying me. But how is my father to keep his temper when this nincompoop fails to see he must divide a half by one. He most likely doesn’t know what that makes. A half divided by one is a half. Well, at least that, then. So what is the cosine of sixty degrees? I surmise it must be a half. But how is that something so meaningless, so imaginary, so inconceivable as the cosine of an angle of sixty degrees can be at the same time so tidy and balanced as to be expressible by the two words ‘a half’?

But very soon after, when the war had been over for almost a year, I got measles and was confined to bed for a long time in a high fever. When at last I was able to get up, Father himself suggested (what had he got out of my childhood, in fact? We had passed each other by, been torn apart at the very moment when we could have become attached to each other, and deprived of so much time that we never managed to make up, never managed to become close) that we go and play football in the yard together. Metal washing-line posts formed the goals. It was the first time since my early childhood that my father had gone out to play ball with me. We kicked the ball from one goal to the other and I played with all my might to show my father that by now I was a worthy opponent. Then suddenly, in the middle of the match, just as Father was getting ready to shoot, my forehead went cold and I started to lose control of my arms and legs. I could see the ball flying past me into the goal, hear my father shouting ‘Goal!’ I grasped the red-painted metal post and tried to reach the ball that lay only a few paces away from me.

The doctor was small and ruddy-cheeked with gold-framed spectacles. He spent a long time listening to my heart and his repeated request for me to hold my breath aroused my anxiety.

When he finally let me go I went and sat in the waiting room. It was still a private practice, which meant that even the waiting room had a particular character of its own, and I sat there in the company of several dozen ticking clocks of different shapes and sizes while Mother and Father remained in the consulting room. When they finally emerged, my mother’s eyes were red from weeping.

Back home they put me to bed, explaining that I had developed a slight heart condition and the only remedy was bed rest. I might have to be patient for a few weeks or even months and stay in bed without moving too much. (Oddly enough, while I recall it I relive the feeling of regret that when my father wanted to give me a treat the match should have come to such an inglorious conclusion. And I can see the ball flying past my suddenly enfeebled hands, and hear my father’s voice gleefully — no doubt to show how seriously he took the game — shouting ‘goal!’, and I wish a miracle might happen to let us finish that interrupted match.)

The period that followed remains virtually amorphous in my memory although it had an undoubted impact on my life. Initially I lay in my corner of the kitchen. Later, my father was appointed director of a nationalised factory in Brno and his room was empty on weekdays, so I was moved in there. The windows in the room looked out directly on to the square and I was therefore able to hear the sound of strangers’ footsteps on the paving stones, the singing of drunks at night and cooing of the pigeons that roosted in the ruins of the Town Hall. From time to time, something less familiar would happen: a band would play or there would be uniformed parades: Sokol members, scouts and legionaries; I would observe them and envy them their mobility.

I had had no time to form new friendships and my old friends were dead. I remained immobilised in the room’s narrow confines, surrounded all the time by the same old shapes and voices. At least I could listen to the radio, which — maybe there was something fateful in that for me, those repeated encounters with criminal justice — relayed hour upon hour of live broadcasts from the Nuremberg trials, and commentaries on that symbolic act of reckoning with the deeds of the war.

The Protectorate government was also brought to trial. I already knew all the actors by the sound of their voices: the presiding judge, the defence counsel, the prosecutors and the defendants. Oddly enough, the defendants tended to arouse sympathy in me rather than anger. I hadn’t the slightest appreciation, of course, of the tricky doublesided situation that national leaders found themselves in whose country had been betrayed; whose country had betrayed itself and its liberty; and who therefore had had no alternative but to seek some acceptable degree of ignominy. I felt sympathy towards them as people or just as living creatures who had been shackled, stuck behind bars, deprived of their freedom, and were now cornered by the entire machinery of collective hatred. At the same time, the very ceremony of it all fascinated me. Early on the morrow I would eagerly await the newspaper so that I could feast once more on the dead phrases of the previous day’s proceedings. I would search for pictures from the courtroom. Likenesses of the defendants and the judges. And now that the live voices of the defendants were no longer in my ears my sympathy would wane and I would come to share the leader writers’ anger with the traitors who had sold out the nation and people, and hence myself as well.

In those days I still believed in it: justice. I still believed in a world whose inhabitants could be sorted out into guilty and innocent, defendants and judges. A fairy-tale world aspiring to the truth.

3

During that period, almost all the visitors to the flat were brought in to see me. Often they were people I had never seen before; some of them even spoke Polish or German and were only calling in on their way through Prague. They would sit drinking tea (there was never even the tiniest bottle of alcohol in our home) and talking a great deal about the future of the world, as well as reminiscing about comrades whom I had never known either. I have already forgotten the stories they told, but I remember that some of them would appear quite amusing until all of a sudden there would be mention of the death of arrested comrades or terrifying details of how they were tortured. At such moments, my mother would ask them to stop talking about it or at least get off politics for a while, because the lad merely swallowed everything they said and besides, there were other things to talk about apart from war, death and politics. But they would put her right, declaring that politics was the key to everything: happiness, justice and life in general. Their explanation of the world increasingly took root in my mind and my conviction grew that it was the communist movement which embodied courage, conviviality, wisdom, humanity and all the other virtues of whose real nature someone of fifteen has no idea, which is why they have such power of attraction.

The most frequent visitors were my Uncles Gustav and Karel. Both had spent the war abroad. The first as a private soldier on the western fronts and the second in Moscow, where, in company with Mother’s sister Anita, he performed some mysterious and, as I understood it, very important mission.

I could recognise Uncle Gustav from a distance because his stick would bang loudly on the wooden stairs. He would come and sit by me, resting the leg they had crippled in one of the last battles of the war on another chair, and hanging the stick up on the chair-back, before asking me how I was. Better, I would reply, and at that moment I really did feel better for Uncle Gustav brought life with him. He was one of those people who know something about everything and have an opinion on every possible topic. (Only much later did I realise that his self-confidence stemmed not from his personality and experience alone, but also from his political outlook, which incited him to express views on matters he knew nothing about.) He liked describing his escape to Palestine — the passage in a fishing boat so loaded down with people no space was left for food or drink: how, dying of thirst, they disembarked in the shallows a mile off the coast and waded in through the cold sea water. And then how a British patrol boat had appeared and started firing on them. Uncle had no love of the British, even though he had fought in their army. Not only had they greeted his arrival in freedom with gunfire, they had subsequently arrested him, convicted him of being a communist spy and sentenced him to death. (I now suspect that the story about the military tribunal convicting him of an assassination attempt, when after refusing the defence counsel offered he made a fiery speech, asserting that he was to be sacrificed in order to shroud a shameful colonial plot, and declaring that as a communist he would never stoop to personal terror, was largely my uncle’s invention. Maybe it was intended to lend greater weight to his narrative and furnish me with an object lesson in the partiality of bourgeois justice.) In the end, according to my uncle, he was saved by the war, having found his way to England and then to Africa, where he fought at Tobruk. He told of a desert shimmering in the heat, with lions running around and bourgeois officers doing everything they could to humiliate the private soldiers and himself, Uncle Gustav, who purely because of his convictions had never risen above the rank of sergeant. Often he could do nothing but gnash his teeth at the sight of such stupidity and the occasional deliberate reluctance to win the war and destroy the enemy. Admittedly the international bourgeoisie wanted to get rid of Hitler, he explained, but above all they wanted their real class enemy, the first state of workers and peasants, to bleed to death.

On other occasions, my uncle would tell me stories about the days when he and my father were children in a little town on the Elbe (Father never found the time to tell me anything about himself). Though cruelly class-divided, the town he told me about was a peaceful place which had just welcomed its first motor-car and received its first chance visit from a travelling cinematograph, where fairs were enlivened by dancing bears, clowns with trained monkeys and fortune tellers with parrots; and he related how he and Father had helped to catch a mad bull that had escaped from beneath the knife of Butcher Balun whose shop stood right next door to the Kindls’ cottage. When their father fell in the middle of the war they were poverty-stricken and used to help Mr Balun in his shop. The butcher would exploit them as much as possible and was indifferent to the fact they were war orphans. And Uncle Gustav would deliver a speech attacking butchers, bakers, wholesalers and entrepreneurs who only ever lived in order to squeeze money out of the people; he appealed to me never to become a slave to money or property, but instead to serve the great idea of socialism.

Uncle Karel had a professorial appearance: tall, dry and bespectacled — interestingly grey around the temples. He would always arrive in company with Auntie Anita. He would bring me books — almost invariably translations of Soviet novels. Auntie used to ask me about the plot of the book they brought last time and urge me to ponder on the fate of its heroes, following which she would go off to chat with the adults. She worked in some office or other concerned with resettling the frontier areas and would fume about people no better than bandits who stole carloads of valuables and others who misappropriated property they had only been given to administer; and my aunt would declare firmly that things must not be allowed to go on like this, that such people had to be moved against or they would soon be moving against us.

My aunt bore no resemblance to my mother. She was powerfully built — more like a man. She had a loud voice and whenever she spoke it sounded as if she was quarrelling. In those days she seemed to me like the heroines of the books I had just been reading. She was straightforward, active and undeniably selfsacrificing, working for people’s welfare like a good citizen while also taking good care of my uncle. He was not as loquacious as my aunt and kept his sentences short and to the point. He was a born minute-taker and drafter of resolutions, and I think that he had done exactly that on many occasions in his life.

I was excited at the thought that Uncle had been in the country that was so often spoken about with such enthusiasm here. I begged him to tell me about it, but he referred me to books. He brought me, indeed, a biography of Lenin and an illustrated brochure about Moscow. In it Red Army men paraded in spiked helmets and crop-eared Stakhanovites joyfully flashed their teeth.

I once asked my uncle if he had ever seen Stalin. He had. I was bowled over by the news. Where? At a meeting in Moscow. What had he been like? Wise and modest. I wanted to know more but my uncle changed the subject. And what had it been like in Moscow during the war? He replied that sometimes things had been very bad. Cold and hunger. And as if afraid of disclosing something unseemly he hastened to add that the Soviet people had behaved excellently. During the very first days of the war he realised that they could not lose because their will for victory was invincible. And he told me about the girl pioneer who was killed in action on the roof of their house. Though only ten years old, she had volunteered to man an anti-aircraft battery. And what about her parents? Her parents mourned her but were proud of her deed. That was what the Great Patriotic War was like. People understood what their duty was towards the motherland. And when the fascists drew close to their city, the workers went straight from work to the outskirts to dig trenches; some stayed there till morning and went straight back to work. When did they sleep? Those were days when nobody had the time to sleep. They would doze for a few minutes in the tram or by the fire when they came in for their midnight tea.

Even though he recounted these stories as if they were from his own experience, I realised later that he had actually gleaned them from newspaper reports or from the radio broadcasts on which he worked. They might well have been truthful as far individual events were concerned, but they were lies in so far as they purported to say something about the actual state of affairs and the people’s state of mind during that dreadful war.

Many years later (he always occupied some high post and lived in a very non-proletarian flat in a modern house on Letná Plain) my uncle called me to ask if I might like to come and pick anything I fancied from some books he was throwing out. The parcel that I came away with included a Russian translation of Spinoza’s Tractatus Politicus. When I opened the book back home, I discovered that the ninety-eight pages of preface had been cut out and that someone had taken a knife to the title-page, the contents and even the publishing details, carefully excising the name of the man who wrote the preface and edited the translation. Only then did I understand that when my uncle had been regaling me with his elegant stories about courage, consciousness and patriotism, couched in his meticulously turned phrases, he had also been aware of the reverse side of the reality: cars that drew up at dawn in front of people’s houses; names scratched from the covers of books and from people’s memories, the suffering of those taken away and the grief of those left abandoned; and his own fear. He had known it all, but his grave expression and perfect self-control hid everything. He betrayed nothing of that other reality in those frequent conversations when he entertained me with brightly coloured pictures of life, and gave me jovial advice to get well quickly because every communist would be needed as soon as possible. So he worked on my mind, they all did: my uncles and father alike and the comrades who visited us.

They constituted a singular brotherhood, each member of which could finish the sentence another had started. A choir in perfect unison, a colossal creature formed of countless bodies but having one head and one will alone. I craved to be like them, but I was too self-preoccupied to have been capable — even in spirit — of merging myself entirely with that unique creature.

4

I must have been a lot better already because I was not even lying in bed when the doorbell rang and an unfamiliar voice resounded in the front hall. My mother opened the door to my room and told me with some agitation in her voice and almost formally that I had callers. And then two unknown men stepped straight in. The second of them, a spindly fellow with white, pimply skin and thick spectacles, was really still a boy, scarcely older than myself.

Addressing me as ‘Brother Adam’, the older man told me he had heard about my illness and so, as minister of the congregation to which I belonged, had come to see me with Brother Filip Augusta. They wanted to know how they could help me. I was covered in confusion. I had never crossed the threshold of a church since the day of my christening. My brother and I were the only ones in our irreligious family to have been christened at all, and the two of us only because my parents had deluded themselves at the outbreak of war that it would strengthen our chances. Since, three hundred years earlier, Mother’s ancestors had been Protestants who converted to Judaism after the Catholic victory at White Mountain, deluding themselves that this would improve their chances, I was baptised forthwith by a Protestant minister: thus I became a sheep returned to Christ’s fold.

They spoke to me at length. Both the minister and his young assistant, who was an officer of the youth fellowship, asked me searching questions about my illness, after which the minister declared with conviction that I would soon be well. He knew one brother who had suffered from the same complaint and he had recovered without any after-effects. But physical health, even though it was gratifying and joyous to have a healthy body, was not the only, nor even the most important health, and he asked me whether I read the Scriptures. I confessed, with sudden shame, that we had no Bible at home. At this, without any sign of annoyance, the minister took a black-bound book out of his briefcase and handed it to me. The young man at his side announced that he was looking forward to welcoming me among them as soon as I was well and confirmed. And compared with the minister, he said it severely.

After they had gone I got down to reading, and being a conscientious reader, I read the whole book from ‘In the beginning’ to ‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.’ I didn’t even skip the distribution of the promised land among the tribes of Israel, or the enumeration of the house of Judah, or even the list of thirty-one kings who were trounced by Joshua. I read the Scriptures in the same way I read The Three Musketeers or The Pickwick Papers. I had not the slightest inkling of any hidden meanings, I read it chiefly as a self-assured, though often tragic, account of the journey of the chosen people and its God (whom I perceived as a fairy-tale figure because of His miracles, or as another among the many gods of legend) to power and government over a colourful tract of land. (The land was depicted on cards stuck in the back of the book). And since there are few books written with such a passion for a particular truth, such an unquestioning belief in being chosen, and such ill-will towards all enemies, I could not help falling for it. I felt hatred along with the prophets and rejoiced along with the victors when the vanquished kings were impaled on spikes and captives put to the sword regardless of age or sex, I felt the satisfaction of the righteous when the pitiful thief or the plunderer of war booty was stoned to death with his entire family, and with the wretched people I waited for the Messiah. And because I was also at the age when one not only reads stories but also lives them, I became warrior-king, preacher and prophet speaking those lofty words to the misguided people: thy adultery, thy mockery, thy vile fornication in the hills and in the fields. I have seen thy abomination. Woe betide thee, Jerusalem!

I was saturated with the stories and longed to display my knowledge to someone, but the minister did not come. It was some while later that pimply Brother Augusta turned up again. He was even lankier than on his last visit — or that was my impression. He clearly felt more important at being able to represent the Church to me all on his own. He settled himself in the armchair and talked at length about the depravity loosed upon the world when the spirit was neglected in favour of carnal desires. We spent an afternoon examining and condemning every vice from jazz and the dances people did to it (I had never danced in my life), to the vile and disgusting films that starred the naked Rita Hayworth (whom I had never seen either in the flesh or on screen). I sensed that by displaying a responsible moral attitude I would rise in my own esteem and in the esteem of my companion.

I never dreamed that the condemnation of vice was one way of dwelling on its attractions, and was the path chosen by weak-willed, sick, invalid or timid individuals.

I asked my companion what, in his view, was the proper way to live. In fear of the Lord, he replied. I wanted to hear something more specific. He told me that he intended to deny himself all amusements until at least the age of twenty-five. He was going to study and learn languages, particularly Hebrew (he wanted to read the Old Testament in the original), Greek and Latin. He was going to travel, and chiefly to those countries still awaiting missionary activity.

I wanted to know what he would do if, before that age, he met a woman and made love to her. He shook his head to say that such a thing was out of the question and asked me whether I thought anything of the sort might happen to me.

I hesitated before replying. I was not sure what might happen, and above all, I could hardly wait for it to happen. This caused him to ask me in dismay whether something of the kind had not perhaps already befallen me, whether I had already done it. I did not understand the meaning of his question. He leaned towards me and asked me in a whisper whether I had already fornicated. Coming from his lips, that word exuded an evil stench which hung in the air long after he left. Then I got up and fetched a pile of illustrated magazines from the kitchen, leafing through them all until I finally discovered a photo of Rita Hayworth. She was lying on a couch with her hair loose about her, wearing only the briefest of swimming costumes and her magnificent breasts really were almost uncovered. I gazed at that piece of printed paper and felt a hot pang of delight rising from my genitals.

Brother Augusta appeared early the following Sunday and asked me if I was able to leave the house. I told him I was only allowed out on short, slow walks. He was overjoyed. In that case, he could invite me to divine services. I hesitated and even tried to find some excuse, but he assured me and my mother that in church I would be sitting down and that there was neither a hill nor a single step for me to negotiate on the way. As we neared the church, he told me that everyone was already looking forward to meeting me. That news was no comfort to me and I felt like turning tail and retreating while I still had the chance.

Even after that first visit, when the minister himself actually shook me by the hand as I was leaving and my patron introduced me to his parents and several other members of the congregation, whose names I was too agitated to register, I could still have said no and admitted that my belief in God and Jesus Christ came second to my belief in science, progress, reason and socialism. But I kept it entirely to myself, out of shame and a reluctance to offend. So the following week there I was attending confirmation classes and mouthing the hymns (I was unable to sing). And because I did not have the patience to sit in silence and had just finished reading the Bible from cover to cover — probably the only one of the assembled youngsters to have done so — I readily demonstrated my newfound knowledge, raising instances of God’s mercy, about which I had my doubts, and mentioning miracles which I myself regarded as fables.

My efforts were soon rewarded. I became the minister’s pride and favourite. Maybe I also attracted him because my background was such an unusual one for the Church — because I had surfaced from the depths of catastrophe. He invited me to his house, so that he could help me prepare a biblical essay, and lent me books which he emphasised he would lend to no one else in my group as the others were not yet capable of understanding their message. That indirect tribute to my maturity and my capacities so gratified my vanity that it reconciled me with the books, even though they dealt with concepts and problems as abstruse as the essence of God, predestination and incarnation. For a long time I felt those books had nothing to say to me, until the day the thought struck me suddenly that even if Jesus were not born of a virgin as the son of God, even if He was only a man, what a man He was! What a personality! He gave the world the idea of a way of life that people have tried to follow for centuries. Single-handed, He had changed and influenced the entire course of history more than any ruler, warrior or philosopher.

And there, in front of me, loomed my own future, my life’s mission: I would be a missionary, preacher, teacher and judge, and guide my neighbours to a better life. I would teach them to live in real love. I would teach them continence, modesty and kindness.

Shortly after my confirmation, I was elected chairman of the youth fellowship and took a seat alongside the minister at the head of the table — a long table made up of several shorter tables pushed together. I felt as if I was at the Last Supper as I knew it from Leonardo reproductions. The minister spoke of my piety, my knowledge of Scripture and my sincerity, which stood as an example to everyone else, and I listened in amazement to this improbable depiction of myself, beneath the stern gaze of John Hus and John Calvin and the rather more charitable eyes of the last bishop of the Unitas Fratrum, the three of whom looked down at me from their portraits on the walls. But they had all believed. I felt a sense of shame and disgust with myself for having let myself be elected. Then it occurred to me that I might well differ little from the rest. None of those around the table could be sure of their faith in God, not even the minister. It was inconceivable that anyone could believe fables about Samson killing hundreds of enemies solo, or believe in a God of universal proportions who created billions of stars and then transformed Himself into a gaunt, bearded Jew solely in order to be nailed to a cross and suffer all the pain, horror and despair of dying. (Though how could He have despaired, seeing that He was omniscient and knew He was God and therefore immortal and inviolable, and in a few hours’ time would once more be flying through the universe or wherever His kingly seat was to be found?) Hence it must just be a game, an unspoken agreement not to think about one’s doubts or talk about them, but to talk instead about faith.

If I were now to voice the things I felt, they would tell me that the Lord was testing my faith. Even the Saviour had been visited by the Devil in order to be tempted, and they would all pray that I stood the test. And they might actually have prayed on my behalf to a God whom they doubted, moving their lips and staring into the void. It was maddening; everything would have gone on undisturbed, everything would have been all right, everything was all right. The election was over. I thanked them for their trust, announced we would be meeting again the following Thursday and asked everyone to be sure to be there.

5

It was mid-spring when Brother Filip Augusta brought his cousin Anna to the youth fellowship. By then I ran the meetings like an experienced chairman: as is the way with those who really preside in order to assert their own importance, I excelled at devising activities that seemed to express my deep commitment but actually screened the shallowness of my intentions. Quite a few youngsters attended. The one I best recall was a corpulent young man who used to wear an ex-US Army uniform, complete with a forage cap with the words US Army sewn on to it. To my annoyance and the others’ satisfaction he would sit down at the harmonium before the meetings started and play the Farewell Waltz, Roll Out the Barrel, Chatanooga Choo Choo and many other hits which I considered out of keeping with the surroundings.

A full hall gave me enormous satisfaction. I tried hard to imitate the sincere interest with which the minister welcomed guests. I was only too pleased to shake people’s hands as every handshake confirmed my pre-eminence. I also welcomed Brother Augusta’s cousin and told her how pleased I was to see her there. She said she had moved to Prague a week earlier and was living at her uncle’s while she attended college, and was glad she could join us. She went over to the clothes hooks and took off her threadbare winter coat to reveal a fiery red sweater underneath. When she returned to the table at which I presided, I was astounded to note that she had lasciviously magnificent breasts that wobbled at every step she took. She sat down at the table and the room went silent. It was the moment for me to start the meeting and say the opening prayer.

I stood up. Ritual prayer remained something foreign to me. I had no humility, and my awareness that the God I addressed was not listening always made me feel I was acting the fool. This time I offered the prayer as never before. My voice became clearer, beseeching God to hear, entreating, repenting and speaking of love.

For the rest of the meeting, I could think of nothing but how I was to gain her company. I was already getting on for seventeen but I was backward as regards women. To my mind they were different creatures: unattainable, noble, refined and unapproachable. Their proximity or admiration could only be earned by some outstanding feat.

I had the right to shake her hand again as she was leaving (my palms became embarrassingly moist) and I asked her whether she had enjoyed her evening with us. She told me it had been fine and she would be happy to come again the following Thursday. She left, lasciviously wobbling her breasts.

I realised that I had to do something astounding. On the way home I was already dreaming of a series of lectures on the great world of figures of the Reformation and the next day rushed to tell the minister of my plan. He seemed taken by the idea; his only fear was that it would be hard to find so many lecturers. I assured him that I would prepare the lectures myself.

A girl who had just arrived in Prague from a little village near Jihlava would hardly have any interest in Chelčický and Hus, let alone Luther, Calvin and Melanchthon, but I determined to win her through my intellect, my oratory and my admirable breadth of knowledge. With the help of the minister I got hold of at least ten books (the number seemed to me so considerable at the time that I felt I had been exalted to the status of scholar). My knowledge of history was so meagre I could barely understand a fraction of what the books contained. But my age and ignorance emboldened me. Besides, I could hear in the books the familiar voices of staunch battlers for truth and justice. I was astonished to find that life had not really changed since those days. Immorality, lies, violence and hypocrisy remained. People continued to be divided into rich and poor, powerful and powerless, sinful and saintly. I realised that the founders of Protestantism were calling to me. Only now did I understand the clown’s warning long ago that the struggle for truth is the only meaning of life. Therefore, faithful Christian, seek the truth, hear the truth, love the truth, speak the truth, defend the truth unto death, for the truth shall set you free.

I had scarcely come home and had my meal before I was rushing to my desk and starting to write. I would compose long sentences with many dependent clauses whose complexity delighted me. I drew simplified sketches of my subjects, dressed them up in period costume and gave them real names.

Not for an instant in the course of my writing did I forget about her. I was writing for her, recounting to her the story of the just man’s desperate struggle against the sleek and powerful. I guided her steps to Constance to peer with me into the dank martyr’s cell. (I know what it means to be thrown into prison and await a merciless judgement. Don’t cry!) And at the last I squeezed her hand among the mute witnesses to the fiery execution. I could feel her hand tremble, feel her shoulder touch mine imperceptibly and her magnificent breast come slightly nearer. I trembled with longing. I had to see her, to be close by her if nothing else.

The Augustas lived across the river, on the first floor of a villa looking out on Petřín Park. I used to steal over beneath their windows and I can still picture the place I was making for: several thick honeysuckle bushes and the smooth trunk of a mighty plane tree that concealed me from the possible gaze of passers-by.

My hopes of catching sight of my heart-throb were very slim. One of the windows that I could see into opened on a passageway (in which she appeared briefly from time to time as she moved between rooms), the other seemed to belong to Brother Filip’s bedroom. But I went on waiting and had to endure watching Brother Filip mooch around the room, bite into an apple, scratch his head, read something, gawp at the canary cage and even — the hypocrite — light a cigarette (obviously he was home on his own) and after every puff go over to the window to blow out the smoke.

Once in the course of my secret, faithful vigil, my patience was rewarded. She came and played a game of billiards with him. The window was open, so from time to time I could hear tantalising snatches of her voice, and of laughter that filled me with a desire to see her better as she frisked around the table; as, in her effort to reach the ball, she sensually edged up against her cousin (who, to my consternation, did not budge but stood there stupidly pressed against her until she dashed away again); as her breast pressed against the green baize of the table; and at that moment I realised there was no greater delight than to be near her. I would hesitate no longer, I would ask her for a date immediately after my talk on John Hus. My lecture suddenly appeared to me as a love poem that was bound to enthral her, a grand exploit that could not leave her unmoved.

The night before the meeting I was to deliver my lecture at, my thoughts revolved around a single moment. The lecture would end, my audience would get to their feet; she would too. She would make for the clothes hooks. What if someone were to speak to me at that moment, or ask me something? They would delay me and in the meantime, she would leave! No, I’d tear myself away. I would have to catch up with her — the staircase would be the last chance. But what then — how would I address her? Sister Augustová? Sister Anna? Should I suggest a visit to the cinema (or was that too bold for the first date), a walk in the park, or just ask if I could walk her home?

And what if she refused? I would no longer have any hope of being near her. The most I could hope for then would be to wait trembling in the bushes for the chance of catching sight of her now unattainable face, and choking with desire and despair. Everything depended on how I framed my proposal, how I managed to eliminate in advance any possibility of refusal. Sister Augustová, I noticed your interest in the fate of John Hus. If you like I could tell you more about him. This ploy had the advantage that it was cloaked in authority. It would be hard for her to say she did not want to learn more about the Master. Victory was mine and there she was already walking by my side while I described to her the conditions in Gottlieben Castle and above all the final atrocious scene. Each of us had to be prepared for something similar in the fight for truth. Even I? she would ask. Yes, I would reply. I was amazed at my own determination, the dauntless way I offered my body to the flames. I assumed that she too would be astounded and realised that I would have to do something straight away that would bridge the difficult gap between my readiness to die for the truth and my love. I would tell her that my death would be even crueller and harder to bear, since I would be deprived for ever of the sight of her.

I rehearsed that brilliant transition again and again. She would ask why the sight of her was so important, and I would reply: Because from the moment I set eyes on you, I have never stopped thinking of you, because I love you. I love you as the butterfly loves the flower. No. As the bird loves the heights. No — more: as John Hus loved the truth! I was convinced that my words could not but germinate within her like sprouting seeds. That very night they would put forth roots and she would realise that she loved me too.

I rose next morning captivated by my own plans as by a night of passion, unable to think of anything else.

Many guests assembled that evening, even some adults, as the minister had announced my lecture from the pulpit the previous Sunday. But the only thing that mattered was that she had come, that she had sat down in her flaming red sweater not far from me. My love. My great love was watching me.

I have no idea how the usual programme of prayer and bible study went off. Then I took out my text and started to read: but I was totally estranged from the words I was speaking. The sentences I had written were too long and complicated, apart from which my mouth had separated from the rest of my body and went prattling on by itself while my brain tried desperately to perfect a different sentence: Sister Augustová, no, without the title; excuse me, but I couldn’t help noticing… no: it struck me… no: I had the feeling you might be interested…

I became aware of someone whispering at the other end of the table; someone else failed to suppress a giggle — of course it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with me. But she was listening, her heavenly gaze fixed on me as she sat there motionless, following my words. Meanwhile I toiled through the thicket of theological texts, and as I came nearer to Constance, I gradually raised my voice. The drama of the fateful moment had apparently affected them at last. Even the whisperer now desisted. I could feel the blood rush to my head. I looked at her and at that moment she smiled at me, really smiled; I noticed you smile at me; you have no idea what it meant to me — you see I might become a preacher. And I raised my voice still further. I was just reading an extract from the testimony of Peter Mladenitz. It was truly effective, sadly and terrifyingly effective; it was the crowning glory of my talk: ‘Then they made to attach his neck by some sooty chain; gazing upon it and smiling, he saith to his myrmidons…’ Now absolute silence reigned and suddenly I noticed that she was looking at her watch and in that absolute silence she carefully pushed back her chair and tiptoed to the door. ‘But before they set light to the pyre, Reichsmarschal Hoppe von Pappenheim approached him…’ and I thought I would never manage the few remaining paragraphs. But I must go after her! My throat was burning. I started to stutter, skipped several sentences and read the very last one.

It was the end. I sat down. Someone congratulated me and it occurred to me she must be at home, quite simply she had had to go home; I had overshot the usual finishing time for our meetings. I would ring the doorbell at the villa and say I needed to speak to her. But about what? My carefully thought-out sentences subsided, leaving behind a yawning void.

Dusk was only just falling as I stood once more in that ignominious spot in the honeysuckle patch and this time I saw her immediately. One of the doors on to the passage had been left open; the one to the bathroom. She was standing in front of the mirror arranging her hair. Then she made a couple of circular movements around her mouth: she must have been painting her lips. The light went off and a moment later I spied her going out of the front gate. I still had a chance of running and stopping her. I could do anything; but at the same time I sensed that the most I could do would be to follow her at a distance, like a detached shadow, lost and forgotten.

At about the fourth street corner, someone was waiting for her, leaning on an acacia trunk. He came over to her and I instantly recognised the slightly rusty hue of an American army uniform. I don’t know why, but it struck me as preposterous, impossible that anyone should have beaten me to it. Maybe I was wrong, maybe they had bumped into each other by chance. They walked along side by side, he with a rocking gait, she with tiny steps. Then he suddenly slipped his arm round her waist (she didn’t flinch or protest); now all doubts were dispelled, now I could turn and run off home. But instead I trailed behind them as they slowly zig-zagged across the park and ended up on a deserted bench where he coiled his vile lecherous arm round her shoulders.

I felt betrayed: alone and abandoned on that footpath in the park, just a few steps away from her. A wild desire for revenge flared up within me. I’d go to her home. I’d drag Brother Filip and his father here to see this loathsome hussy who let herself be dragged off by the first fellow who asked her. At the next meeting I would call her out in front of the minister and ask her where she was this evening, what she had been up to when everyone else was pondering the death of the martyred Master, and then, because she would be bound to lie and deny it, I would reveal the truth to them. Because it was my duty, my holy duty, to speak the truth, love the truth, defend the truth. I stayed long enough to see him clasp her to him, and his fingers touch those wonderful, gorgeous breasts, now lost to me for ever, and then I turned and fled. Before I reached home I decided that I never again wanted to enter that hall where she would be also sitting and where she would actually smile that friendly smile at me, feigning innocence and purity; where she would insincerely declare her devotion to God, where they all lied about their dedication to God, while their thoughts were turned entirely to their lascivious bodies.

The following day I wrote the minister a letter informing him that, due to unforeseen circumstances, I wished to resign my post and regretting that I would not be attending our fellowship meetings for some while.

Since then, I have been in various churches from time to time but never our own, and whenever I bumped into any of my former brothers and sisters, my hostile expression would preclude any more than a simple greeting. But Sister Augustová I never met again; apparently she fled the country with her parents shortly afterwards.