Judge On Trial

Chapter Four

1

Dear Karel,

BEFORE YOU TAKE a look at my letter, I want to thank you for yours which came as a real surprise. I didn’t realise that you were in trouble again, and it’s a pity you didn’t tell me exactly what you’re charged with. I want you to know that I enjoyed your letter very much too, because after such a long time, I didn’t expect to hear from you again. I don’t want to accuse you of not showing enough interest in me, after all it’s not me that counts but little Katka. Even that little child can tell someone is missing who should be number one in the family. Adults can control their wishes and their wants, and control their feelings too, but it is very hard to explain such complicated things to a child. Karel, it would be lovely to have you with us. Little Katka is sweet and lovable. You’re wrong to think she has my eyes; the expression in them and their shape are yours. Karel, I showed her your letter and said it was from Daddy. She held out her hand and looked at me with eyes so like yours and called out Daddy, Daddy. And she kept looking towards the door, as if you might come through it, I was ready to cry I felt so sorry for her and I would have been happy myself if it had happened. I think that children have a way of learning to bear the most unbearable things and with their help it’s possible to swallow much of the suffering thai: life has brought us or that we brought on ourselves. I expect you won’t recognise her, after all I expect you’ve even forgotten what I look like myself. Karel, if you send us a visitor’s permit then if not me at least you’ll see your daughter. I can’t believe you don’t care about her. It must matter to you the life of your child who has your blood in her veins. Now that you’re so completely cut off from what is happening in human society!

Cut off from your parents, your job, your friends and the two of us, you must have plenty of time to think about what went on in the past and especially about what will happen in the future. Have you any ideas? Have you got any goal or plan to follow? Do you think about your child too? Karel, life goes on and there’s no stopping the clock. The minutes and the hours keep on passing and one day you’ll find yourself an old man, and maybe not such a strong one, your lovely hair will turn grey and you’ll wish you weren’t alone and I’d be happy to have you with me, Karel mine. Write again when you feel like it. I’ll sign off here.

Jarmila and Katka

The letter was harmless, harmless from the judicial point of view at any rate and he therefore initialled the envelope. There was still half an hour of the working day left, he ought to take a look at another of the files but he didn’t fancy starting anything new. And he needed to write to his brother; he had given him rather short shrift on the phone the last time. He had only been half awake and unprepared for a conversation of that sort. Besides being not at all sure if it was prudent to chat with someone who was hesitating over whether to return to the homeland. The fact they were related would likely make matters worse.

If you were to return, dear brother, for my part I would be only too pleased. I miss you, but that’s not the point at the moment. You want to be told what would be best for you to do, what you can expect here. Well: first of all, they’ll put you through political screening. They’ll ask you why you came back at all; it’ll seem to them such a daft thing to do that you’ll find yourself under suspicion. They’ll want you to tell them who you associated with there, and if you do tell them they won’t believe you anyway; they’ll think you’ve concealed something or someone of importance from them. Then they’ll start wondering whether a suspicious character like you, who returns home after three years abroad and then conceals matters of substance from them, could really be a useful member of society and be allowed to go back to where he worked in the past. Mind you, I concede that a mathematician might be thought just slightly less suspicious than a lawyer. For the fact is, dear brother of mine, that we are all under suspicion and cases against every one of us are being drawn up day and night, as one Prague lawyer and writer wrote recently, although I don’t suppose he meant it entirely literally. Evidence against us is amassed constantly, the only question being whether we’ll live to see them complete the preliminary proceedings. As a mathematician you might not. But on the other hand, as a mathematician you have plenty of opportunities where you are. It strikes me, for once, that mathematics has no homeland. Of course, what I say about mathematics need not apply to mathematicians. We do still have the forests you mentioned, as well as the rivers and fires of yesteryear, and even words that got caught in the cracks in the wall or maybe in the drain-hole covers, and those you’ll only overhear if you happen to pass by. The question is how much you want and need to hear them…

He shuddered. He had almost dropped off to sleep at his desk. It was time he went.

He had arranged to meet Magdalena at four thirty in the park. He stopped on the way at a milk bar and had a cup of cocoa and a bun. What time did they knock off at the animated film studio? he wondered. During the day he had been tempted once or twice to call up his friend’s wife, but he had not done so, not knowing what to say to her. Unless he invited her out for dinner. He ought to, in fact, as a way of thanking her for selling the books for him. Only he wasn’t free that evening: he’d promised to go to Petr’s.

He made another stop at the flower-stall in front of the technical university to buy a bunch of carnations. Magdalena was waiting on a bench right next to the statue of a woman writer whose name he could never remember; she was wearing a rather old-fashioned suit. He sat down too and handed her the flowers.

‘That’s sweet of you,’ she said, and laid them on her lap.

He opened his briefcase. ‘I’ve got the money for you and I can give you back a couple of the books. We only needed to sell half of them.’

‘You drove such a hard bargain?’

‘It was a woman friend of mine who sold them.’ He took a look around him, no one seemed to be paying them any attention. Anyway, he had the money in a big opaque envelope. He could hand it over without fear. ‘The fellow who bought them makes films for television,’ he explained, feeling he ought to tell her something about the buyer. ‘Today he brought me the second instalment of money. He can’t be over thirty. Apparently, he makes anything they commission from him.’

‘And why does he do it?’ she asked, and he realised she was only asking out of politeness. No doubt she had long ceased to worry about the details. Besides, she was probably in a hurry to pass on the money.

‘Because they pay him for it.’ He also gave her the packet of remaining books. ‘That’s what almost all of them are like nowadays. No ideals, just making a living.’

‘You were different, weren’t you?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You had ideals and you certainly didn’t make a decent living. Do you remember that barn you lived in all that time? Every other day you would treat yourself to goulash in the pub until you completely ruined your insides.’

He remembered all of it.

‘And you were incorruptible. And you weren’t the only one. What hope could they have, the people you took it in your minds to destroy? Sorry, I’m upset. What if this plan doesn’t help? Our principal is a monster. He makes a habit of doing the rounds of the village on his bike every weekend to find out which of the teachers and the kids have been to mass. Jaroslav’s a Catholic, which is why he wants to put paid to him. What if he gets his way?’

‘You mustn’t be afraid of him,’ he said. ‘People like that generally only go out of their way when they think someone will praise them for it.’

‘You don’t know him; you’ve no idea about people like him. His sole reason for living is to wreak revenge on those who believe in anything.’

‘The world isn’t only made up of people like your principal.’

‘I agree. There are also people who might possibly shout them down — for a consideration. But for how long?’

She spoke to him as if he were someone in a different — more hopeful — situation. More and more people were beginning to regard him as someone who had survived, and hence was part of the establishment.

What if they were right?

She stopped as they were leaving the park. ‘I’m talking the most awful rubbish. I’m very grateful to you. Everyone else only assured me I had their sympathy.’

‘You still have time to change your mind.’

‘My mind’s made up! It would cost even more in a year’s time.’ She smiled at him and shook his hand. ‘We should have gone abroad,’ she said. ‘We’ve only ourselves to blame.’

2

Petr was planning to give a reading from his latest work to a group of friends. He had told Adam the title, but it had gone from his head. Naturally, it would be better for him not to associate with some of the people who would be going. Nor did he fancy attending a lecture.

He was making excuses for himself; he wanted to avoid any unpleasantness. He wouldn’t like to lose his friends, but on the other hand, he wouldn’t like to be the next for the chop. Probably the best policy would be to call on them but not take part in larger gatherings. The trouble was they would soon notice and stop inviting him altogether.

Petr opened the door to him wearing an apron and with his sleeves rolled up. His hairy forearms contrasted curiously with his almost bald head. ‘I’m glad you’ve come early, Adam; there’ll be a horde of people arriving in a moment and there’s a small favour I’d like to ask of you.’

He didn’t tell him what exactly, so Adam took a seat. ‘What’s new?’

‘There are lots of rumours going round, but the only one that sounds at all credible is that they’ll adopt that new law about compulsory explanation. It’s a shitty piece of work, don’t you think?’

He shrugged. ‘You surely didn’t expect any decent legislation now of all times.’

‘No, but I don’t like the thought of sitting around,’ Petr said brandishing a knife, ‘and watching them make off with the remnants of my freedom.’

He would have liked to say that there was probably no alternative, that he’d already seen it all once before: the slow, inexorable slide. There was no telling when it would stop or where, nor how deep was the abyss people would sink into. But Petr would probably take it as a sign he was beginning to knuckle under. It is hard to come to terms with losing control of one’s destiny, and with the realisation that, while one admittedly still had a voice left to shout for help, there was no one to heed the call.

The doorbell rang and immediately he recognised Oldřich’s voice from the front hall. This was one of the reasons he had come that evening, but although he listened out for it, her voice could not be heard.

‘You wanted to say something to me before the others arrived,’ he reminded Petr.

‘That’s right. I’m almost embarrassed to bother you again, but there’s no risk involved for you. Are you going to your cottage some time soon?’

‘Tomorrow, I expect.’

‘Do you think you could take some money to a girl who lives out that way?’ It was money for the wife of a student who was recently convicted. The student, who was unknown to him, had been sent down for some leaflets whose content had not been in the least inflammatory.

Petr pulled out an envelope from behind the crockery on the dresser. The green of a hundred-crown note was visible through the paper. ‘It’s only eight hundred.’

Adam stuffed the envelope in his breast pocket. Just recently he had been acquiring practical experience as a part-time currency messenger.

Meanwhile the guests had been congregating in the sitting room. He knew almost all of them. Many of them had been acquiring practical experience in all kinds of substitute employment — though not on a part-time basis, to be sure. They had been digging metro tunnels, washing shop windows, guarding warehouses or drilling wells, just to earn a living. From time to time, they would get together and act as if nothing had changed since the days when they worked in colleges and institutes.

He had indeed been through it all once before. Back in the fortress town, almost no one had been engaged in the work they had done before the war.

He said hello to Matěj and suppressed the urge to start a conversation with Oldřich about his wife. In the meantime, Petr had changed into a clean shirt and was busying himself spreading out his papers on the table. Now he put on his glasses and announced that he was going to read a chapter about manipulation from his latest book.

The barber who used to cut his hair on the ground floor of the barracks had been a professor of ancient languages in peace time. He would tell Adam stories about the Greek gods and enjoyed reciting Ovid to him. It was possible that after finishing his day’s work in the barber’s shop, it had been his custom to get together with other classical philologists or philosophers, who were working then as gardeners, cooks or maintenance men, and organise lectures. He had been too young at the time to have noticed. On the other hand, he could still remember how they had put on a performance of The Bartered Bride in the loft of the barracks. There had been no orchestra, of course, just harmonium accompaniment. Mařenka was sung by an elderly lady — apparently a former member of the Vienna Opera, though what she was employed as in the fortress, he did not know. He could still recall the exalted mood that had reigned in the gloom of the enclosed attic room, as if the singing itself was somehow opening those closed impassable gates.

‘What is distinctive about this new regime is that it derives its legitimacy neither from the will of the gods nor from other external symbols, but instead pretends to express the will of the people, the will of the individual whose subjugation as a free personality it is intent on achieving. For this very reason the hallmark of the regime is arrogance: it recognises no transcendent moral law and hence there are no actions it would not stoop to, or be ashamed of if it thought they served its aims.’

It was possible that the music had opened the gates as far as the soul was concerned, but our bodies continued to sink further into the depths. Did people ever really control their destiny? They certainly made every effort to. To the extent of handing their king over to the executioner when they thought he was trying to hinder their efforts. They had elected parliaments and taken pains over their choice of representatives, but again and again the parliaments would declare a war and leave people no less desperate or hopeless than before. Therefore they had tried getting rid of parliaments and establishing leaders enthusiastically in their place. And what had been the upshot? Even greater disaster.

It was worth asking whether the idea of a world in which people controlled their own destiny was only a foolish dream; quite simply a fable we like to tell ourselves about an imaginary paradise. If I were to accept that, then I might make a better job of taking vital decisions than I have so far. The trouble is I don’t want to accept it: that fable is rooted within me and has taken over my brain; it’s in my blood. I want to assert myself, to struggle; I want there to be ever greater justice in the world; that’s the reason why I studied law, it’s the reason why I do the things I do. The trouble is, bad laws are adopted somewhere higher up, and it’s left up to me to decide whether I accept this state of affairs and try people according to bad laws, while doing what I can to get round them a bit and lessen their impact, or whether I protest and attempt to prove the possibility of adopting better laws. Protest without any hope of my protest being heard, though in the certain knowledge that sooner or later I will provoke the legislators. Then not only will they remove me as a judge, I’ll also lose the opportunity to make any meaningful protest. At most it would be a gesture, and then the memory of a gesture. Perhaps one day it might encourage someone, or encourage their false hopes, more likely.

Maybe there was a flaw in this way of thinking. He ought to try to identify it, otherwise he’d never reach a decision on anything.

‘This new étatisme — I shall call it police étatisme because the police become its chief agent and support and in the end proclaim themselves to be the state and their interests to be the interests of the entire community — has created a new form of exploitation, which we might describe as intellectual exploitation.’ Petr looked up from his paper and took off his glasses. It looked as if the interval had arrived.

He helped himself to a sandwich and moved away to the open window. The sound of voices came from all around him. He overheard encouraging stories, all sorts of encouraging stories about how the present status quo could never be maintained and changes for the better were therefore inevitable. If only some of them were true the decline would be halted, the resurgence would begin again and paradise would be in sight after all. But this too brought to mind the days when he was in the fortress town. Every day parched souls would be refreshed by a shower of good news: the German front would be collapsing and twice a week the Allies would be making landings on the French coast. Hope never ceased to shine and its sunny rays accompanied the multitudes all the way to the ramps where they were selected for the gas chambers. The only thing that puzzled him was that some part of the hope had been fulfilled after all: the war had come to an end and the decline seemed to have been halted, and it really had seemed to him that he held his destiny in his own hands. Most likely it had been the greatest mistake of his life.

It was probably important to know who or what embodied one’s destiny at a given moment, whether king, party, God, leader or police. But the thing he’d like to know above all was how one should live in the knowledge that destiny is irreversible.

He suddenly became restless; there was no sense in his staying; he wouldn’t listen anyway.

At the corner of the street he found a telephone booth. Before entering it he looked back at Petr’s house. Oldřich was just coming out of the front gate. Fortunately he set off in the opposite direction.

3

Someone picked up the receiver and before Adam had a chance to say anything, the sound of distant music and a muffled man’s voice could be heard from the other end. It might just as easily have come from a radio.

‘Hello!’ she said.

‘Is that you, Alexandra? This is Adam. Am I disturbing you?’

‘Why should you be disturbing me? Oldřich said you’d be at some party or other.’

‘We were.’

‘And did you leave?’

‘I left to call you.’

‘That’s nice of you.’

‘I didn’t catch you in the middle of something, did I?’

‘Not in the least, I was just listening to a record. A friend sent it me from Holland recently. Drop by some time, I’ll play it to you.’

‘Are you going to spend the whole evening playing records?’

‘No — I’m not sure. I never know in advance what I’ll be doing. I’ll probably buzz off somewhere, it’s too nice an evening to stay indoors.’

‘Do you think we might go somewhere together? Or do you have company already?’

‘Something, yes.’

‘I’m sorry!’

She dropped her voice so that she was scarcely audible: ‘I didn’t know you’d be calling.’

‘Of course you didn’t.’

‘Unless you felt like joining us. There’d be no problem if you fancied it.’

‘No, thanks. I’ll go straight home.’

‘As you like. But there was no reason why you shouldn’t join us. And don’t forget to drop by and hear that record.’

‘Thanks, I’ll come over some time.’

‘You can always give me a call at work beforehand so I know you’re coming.’ She hung up and was gone.

He left the booth. Television sets screamed from open windows and a tramcar squealed in the distance. Otherwise the place was a desert. Neither people, dogs nor trees. Just drab cars parked along the kerb. But then he caught sight of a young couple crouching behind one of the cars. The young man was wearing a double-breasted suit and carrying an attaché case under his arm. The woman was certainly older than he. They sensed his eyes on them, turned and walked slowly away.

Where should he go? If only Alena were here with the children. But there was no sense in driving out to them now. It would be midnight before he arrived and he’d have to leave again in the morning. Or he could get on with some writing. He had actually started an extensive study of the role of the judge in different legal systems. Except that nobody would be interested in his book, so why go on working on it?

A wind rose from the river and there was a flash of lightning over Petřín Hill in the distance.

He was not too far from the courthouse. If he was going to be sitting on his own, he might as well sit in his office. At least in one’s office one could look forward to going home, even to an empty one, but what was there to look forward to in an empty home?

He walked up to his floor. An open window rattled in the corridor; he had to climb up on to the radiator to close it.

A glimmer of light was coming from under his office door. It startled him. Who could have left the light on in his office? During the summer even the cleaners went home before dark. Or was there someone inside?

He stood waiting outside the door until it struck him as a little ludicrous that he should be trying to eavesdrop on his own office.

At the coffee table, Alice and his friend Oldřich were drinking wine.

They exchanged glances. Alice blushed. Oldřich smiled.

‘I beg your pardon, I didn’t realise…’

‘Don’t apologise,’ Oldřich interrupted him. ‘It is your office. If you’ve come to do some work, we’ll go elsewhere.’

‘No, not at all. I just came to pick something up.’

‘If you’re in no hurry, you can join us,’ Oldřich suggested. ‘There must be another glass around here somewhere.’

‘No, thanks all the same. You know I don’t drink.’ He’d had enough polite invitations for one evening.

‘So you did a bunk too, then? It’s not the best sort of company to keep at present. It’s unfortunate,’ his friend said, turning to Alice, ‘but one has to be very careful whom one associates with these days. Things like that always used to stick in my gullet.’

Adam pretended to be looking for something in his drawer. He took out a sheaf of papers and stuck them in his briefcase. He had had no idea there was something going on between the two of them. He could offer them the use of his flat. Lend Oldřich the keys and stay here. It would be a way of repaying an outstanding debt. Though from what he knew of him, he was bound to have somewhere to go. Then it suddenly occurred to him that Oldřich might be waiting for his own flat to fall vacant, that he was hanging about until Alexandra went off with someone or out to meet somebody and left him her rococo bedroom.

‘Adam has excellent career prospects,’ Oldřich was telling Alice. ‘He was lucky enough to find himself on the other side of the globe during the crisis period and didn’t have a chance to blot his copy-book. And his crimes from before then will soon be swept under the carpet.’

Outside it was pouring down with rain. He ran across the street and sheltered in a gateway opposite the tram stop. He felt wretched. So according to Oldřich his future was rosy. Maybe, after a while — and some further clemency — they would even re-employ him at the institute. Or even at the law school, in place of someone who no longer had a future. No doubt it depended on him too.

His feeling of wretchedness grew stronger. He must put these things out of his mind. Tomorrow he would go down to see the family. But there was something he was supposed to deal with before then. Oh, yes, the money. And he’d buy something for Alena to cheer her up. He was glad he had her — that he had in this world a person who was ingenuous and incapable of deceit. He had always taken it too much for granted. He would have to tell her so: that he loved her for it.

It started to grow cooler. His wet shirt made him feel cold and he was almost shivering. As he was running across the pavement to get on the tram he realised that he could see a familiar figure out of the corner of his eye. He managed to take another look. The young man in the double-breasted jacket (he was now wet and minus his companion, though Adam couldn’t make out where he’d come from so suddenly) was just getting into a car.

They both moved off at about the same moment, in opposite directions.

He remained standing for a moment on the rear platform of the tram, and with almost feverish anxiety waited to see if the car would appear behind. But there was no point. There were too many cars milling about and anyway, there was no hope of recognising it in the dark. He tried to persuade himself that the double encounter had been only a coincidence. Why should they be tailing him?

Then he slumped in the rearmost seat. He knew full well that it hadn’t been coincidence. So it was starting then. The main thing was not to get rattled needlessly. He’d have to take care tomorrow that they weren’t following him when he was carrying the money.

He realised that tomorrow at this time he would be with his wife, he would be lying at her warm, tender side, and he was comforted by the thought.

4

He had no difficulty finding the cottage that Petr had described. The gate was locked, however, and no one answered the bell. The woman next door (she eyed him suspiciously) told him that the young woman had gone off to Turnov with the baby. He fought off the inclination to get back in the car and drive away himself. To go back and return the money to Petr. Let him find another messenger. He’d have to realise that someone in his position was not suitable as a messenger.

He parked the car on the outskirts of the village and lay down on the grass for a while. Waiting was something he couldn’t abide; he could never concentrate on anything while waiting.

If he had ever set eyes on the woman before, he could have gone and looked for her in Turnov. A few days ago now, that town had been mentioned in a quite different connection.

He had inherited his father’s good memory for figures and anything connected with them. He could remember totally worthless dates of battles as well as telephone numbers and addresses he had no need of.

I was born in Prague on 23rd February 1942 but my mother Marie Kotvová now domiciled in Turnov at No. 215/36 Pod kopcem didn’t want to keep me…

Clearly she had renounced her child long before he had committed any offence. Or had he committed murder because his mother had renounced him? But that was a question for the psychologists, not for him. He would never be calling this woman as a witness.

It was still only half past four. He could go into town anyway and buy something for the children. He’d have a look in the bookshop to see if they had a book about dogs for Manda and one about cars or suchlike for Martin.

He had to stop and ask directions several times before he finally caught sight of the house with the number he was looking for. The entranceway led straight into the pub. The glass on the notice-board with the names of the tenants had been broken and all the labels removed.

He went up a dark staircase to the single upper floor and walked along the landing that ran outside the house and was littered with all sorts of private junk, until he found himself before a door with the name Kotvová written on it in indelible pencil. He rang the bell. A door slammed; he was unable to tell whether it was in this flat or one of the others. Then the patter of small feet could be heard from inside.

‘Who is it?’ a child’s voice asked.

‘Is your mummy in?’

‘Who is it?’ The child’s voice behind the door obviously belonged to a little girl, though he couldn’t guess her age.

‘You won’t know me. I need to speak to your mummy. I just want to ask her something.’

‘I’m not allowed to open the door to anyone.’

‘That doesn’t matter; I don’t want to come in.’

‘Not even if you gave me a sweetie.’

‘I only need to know when your mummy will be home.’

‘Mummy’s at work.’

‘And where does Mummy work?’

‘In the factory.’

‘Yes, I understand. But what sort of factory is it?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘And what does Mummy do?’

‘She works.’

‘Couldn’t you just tell me when she’ll be home?’

‘She comes home at night.’

‘Hey, I think you’re telling me fibs!’

The latch-chain rattled, the door opened as far as the chain permitted and from inside there came the heavy, stuffy smell of dish-water and decaying food. Through the chink in the door he saw a pale face, half of it wrapped in a dirty cloth. Two dark eyes gazed out at him from under a forehead wet with perspiration. At that moment there was the sound of footsteps coming up the staircase. He turned round and saw a woman lugging two shopping bags. Although he had not yet seen the lad who was her son except in the botched — or perhaps deliberately sinister-looking — mugshot taken by the police, he recognised her instantly.

‘If you wouldn’t mind, Mrs Kotvová, I’m…’

‘I’m sorry, but I can’t hear you.’

‘Oh, yes. My apologies. Here’s my identity card.’

‘There’s no need to bother. I don’t understand those things anyway. There’s not much I can tell you if you’ve come about the boy. I never set eyes on him.’

‘Mrs Kotvová, I’m not from the police. I’ve not come to interrogate you.’

‘I can’t hear you. It’s always the same when I come back from that place. Those machines make such a din, I’m like a deaf woman when I get home. But I’ll be all right in a minute.’

‘Mrs Kotvová, I’m not here in an official capacity. I’d just like to ask you something.’

‘I don’t know anything about him. They must know that back where you come from. I told them already. They’ve sent you here on a fool’s errand. He took him straight from the maternity to that other one. The bastard who gave me him.’

‘And you never saw the child afterwards?’

‘I could have got him sent down, but I told them it was born premature. Just ’cos he promised he’d take him.’

‘Mrs Kotvová, you brought the little boy into the world: didn’t you care what would become of him?’

‘It wasn’t me who brought him into the world. It was him as took advantage of me being so young and silly. And they told me that if I signed the paper to say I renounce him in favour of her, then from that moment he wasn’t my son no more.’

‘Yes, that’s correct, legally speaking.’

‘You’re wasting your time. I won’t be able to tell you nothing. I have to get on with the supper.’

‘Of course. Don’t let me delay you.’

‘It’s all right, you can sit down again. You aren’t getting in my way. Well if he done it, it’s not me he takes after, and you can tell them that. I never did no one no harm. It was always me who got it in the neck from everyone you can mention. The last time it was from the father of that little whippersnapper. And I never got no help from no one!’

‘But what about your parents — they’re still alive, aren’t they?’

‘They are. And what about it? They never killed no one, if that’s what you’re on about.’

‘And didn’t even they give you a hand when the going was tough?’

‘You must be joking!’

‘Was your father a drinking man?’

‘What, do you think lads these days don’t drink? Just take a look in the pub downstairs.’

‘Yes, I know. Was your father ever ill?’

‘My dad? No fear. People didn’t have time to be ill in them days.’

‘I didn’t mean seriously ill, but whether he might have suffered from headaches, for instance.’

‘How should I know? Go and ask him yourself if you’re so keen to find out. But he never hurt no one. Apart from when he used to belt us kids.’

‘And this photo you have here — I’m sorry, I just wondered who it is on it?’

‘But that’s… They sent me it when he finished his schooling. I didn’t ask for it, but what was I supposed to do with it when they sent it? It’s him, of course. Or isn’t it? You mean you’ve never seen Karel?’

‘No, Mrs Kotvová. I’ve not yet had the occasion.’

‘Well there you are! And you was surprised I hadn’t neither.’

5

The children finally dropped off to sleep. Then Bob and Sylva got up to go. They made a point of leaving early so that she and Honza had time to themselves. And even though she didn’t find this unspoken complicity at all congenial, she was glad.

She had hesitated about whether to bring him back here at all, but she was afraid to send him home on his own. And she needed to explain to him how futile and senseless his action had been. ‘Do you fancy a drop more tea?’ She threw another log in the stove (the woodpile was dwindling; it was always Adam who chopped the wood) and moved the kettle of water into the middle of the hotplate.

‘Isn’t your husband coming?’

‘Not now. He doesn’t like night driving.’

‘Why do you live with him, as a matter of fact?’

‘With Adam?’ she asked aghast. ‘Because he’s my husband, of course!’

‘That’s no reason.’

‘It is for me.’

‘Do you love him?’

That was a subject she had no intention of talking to him about.

‘When I saw him he reminded me of my father. There’s something cold about him. Or maybe it’s disillusionment.’

‘I’ve never seen your father.’

‘They’re all disillusioned,’ he said, continuing his ready-prepared speech. ‘I know several of them and they all remind me of Father. They all maintain that they can’t believe in it any more, that they’ve already seen where they went wrong, that they don’t have anything to do with what’s going on now. But how can they claim such a thing, seeing it was they who caused it all?’

‘Adam never did anything bad.’

‘They all did. Even my father, before they sent him to prison. At the very least they all kept their mouths shut about the crimes that the others were committing. They said nothing because they were glad their party was in power.’

The light in the kitchen was feeble and it made his face look even paler than it really was. She ought to send him off to bed, but she still had to talk to him. To talk to him maybe for the last time ever and therefore she must use the opportunity to communicate with him as much as she could, and draw him back from the abyss to the edge of which he was still desperately clinging. ‘Shall I sugar your tea?’

‘Thank you.’

He got up and looked as if he was intending to sit down next to her. She stopped him: ‘No, I want to be able to see you.’

He sat down again.

‘Honza, my pet, will you listen to me now?’

‘Yes. I always listen to you, Alena. And every one of your words will stay with me: till the day I die.’

‘That’s fine. So tell me how you could do such a thing. What were you thinking of at the time?’

‘I wasn’t thinking of anything. I just realised I would never see you again. That it was the end.’

‘You know yourself that isn’t true.’

‘Isn’t true. Tell me once again that it isn’t!’

‘No, hold on. That’s not the point. Didn’t you give any thought at all to what effect you’d have on the people around you? On your mother? And me? How can someone do something like that and not give a thought to the people around him?’

‘There was only one thing I could think of: that I wouldn’t be able to live without you!’

‘You know very well you’ll live without me.’

‘I’ll live if that’s what you want.’

‘No! Say: I’ll live because I myself want to.’

‘I will live because I want to if that’s what you want!’

‘You mean you don’t enjoy life?’

‘I do enjoy it.’

‘Well, there you are!’

‘When I’m with you, Alena. When I know I’m breathing the same air as you. When I can see your wonderful brow, when I can hear your voice. Are you cross with me?’

‘No… I don’t know… I’m touched by what you say. But don’t you even enjoy listening to music? Or dancing?’

‘Alena, whenever I hear beautiful music it reminds me of you. And if ever I go dancing again I’ll tell myself how you danced with me that evening and had a snow star on your forehead. Because that was the happiest evening of my life.’

‘You’ll be happy again. There are lots of people you’ll be happy with. You’ll be happier with them than you ever could be with me.’

‘Are you serious, Alena?’

‘It’s what I believe.’

‘I don’t, Alena. I’ve already got to know people. I’ve got to know what they’re really like. Just after Dad went to prison I had my eighth birthday. Mum baked a cake and said: invite some lads. I had three pals; we were always together. And she made sandwiches too. And that wasn’t as simple as it sounds; we had no money at the time. I told those boys and they all promised they’d come. Then I spent the whole afternoon waiting for them and when evening came not one of them had turned up because their parents wouldn’t let them on account of my father being in prison.’

‘But that’s ages ago, Honza! There’s no need to dwell on it now!’

‘I always got top marks at school, because Mum told me that that was my only hope of getting into secondary school and that she had a promise from the principal. But then they sent me to a factory, anyway.’

‘But it worked out all right in the end, didn’t it?’

‘Yes, because I met you.’

‘I’m talking about something else, aren’t I?’

‘Yes, forgive me. It’s all been inconsiderate of me. I’ll go. I’ll go out of here and out of your life.’

‘All I want is for you to be happy. With me you wouldn’t be.’

‘I’d be the happiest man on earth.’

‘You know that’s not true.’

‘Anyone who’s lucky enough to be near you, Alena, has to be happy. Anyone who glimpses you, if only for a split second. When you have this look in your eyes. When you have eyes like an angel, like a goddess!’

‘Stop saying such things!’

‘It’s the truth, Alena. You’re the most marvellous person I’ve ever met. And the most beautiful. You’ve got such lovely hands.’

‘Honza, my love, please, you gave me your promise…’

‘But it’s all right on your hand, isn’t it? I’d love to kiss your hands from morning to night. And through the night. And listen to you breathing.’

‘Hold it. I wanted to tell you that it’s not because of me that you see and feel as you do. It’s because you’re in love. Promise me…’

‘But I’ve promised you everything: that I’ll be happy, that I’ll walk around Prague smiling at everyone…’

‘Please, don’t be ironic. I want you to promise me you’ll never again… that you’ll never again try to take your own life.’

‘I promise you, but…’

‘If you love me just a little bit, then there’ll be no buts about it…’

‘I’ll never forget you, Alena, as long as I live.’

‘That’s fine. You’ll have to live a long time so I always have someone who will never forget me!’

‘You want me to think about you?’

‘I’ll think about you too, even when you have someone else to love. And I’ll be glad there is someone you love, and who…

‘I’ll never love anyone. How can you even say such a thing, Alena? Alena, you can’t seriously mean it — that I’d be capable of loving someone the way I do you. I’d sooner… I’d sooner not live…’

‘You will live and you will love someone!’

‘I get you, Alena. You’ve had enough. I’ll leave tomorrow. I promise. And you won’t have to worry about me any more. That was also one of the reasons why I did it, Alena: so I wouldn’t be a nuisance any more. I’m always a nuisance to everyone.’

‘Don’t talk that way. You know it hurts me when you say such things.’

‘But afterwards, when we were already in the car, I suddenly saw how everything was slipping away from me, how you were receding, and it struck me what an awful thing I’d done, and I longed to wake up and see you once more. In ten years’ time, say! That was the last thing that went through my mind — I sort of pictured myself ringing your doorbell, but it was years from now, because I could see myself and I had grey hair. I got terribly frightened in case you weren’t there behind the door, that it wouldn’t be you who opened it or that I, that by then I…’

‘Will you shut up, Honza! Stop saying things like that to me!’

‘Are you crying, Alena? On account of me? I love you for that. Oh, I love you, I’m madly in love with you, Alena. And then when I woke up — wait a sec while I wipe that tear from your cheek.’

‘Hush! Can’t you hear? It sounds like a car coming up the hill.’

‘I couldn’t say. I just want to hear you.’

‘It is. It’s Adam.’

‘But you said he wouldn’t be coming. After all it’s almost midnight.’

‘It can’t be anyone else. Oh, my God!’

When he entered the door, he stood staring at her companion for a few moments. He didn’t recognise him, obviously. ‘You’re not asleep yet?’ he observed with surprise.

‘Honza twisted his ankle,’ she said. ‘He was camping nearby. So I told him he could sleep in the upstairs room for the time being. He’s leaving tomorrow.’

‘Of course.’

‘Would you like some tea, as well?’

‘No, I don’t think so.’ He poured himself some water from the jug and took a few mouthfuls from the glass. Then he sat down at the table. ‘Children asleep?’ he asked pointlessly.

Someone should get up and leave; they couldn’t sit here all three together. Can’t he sense it? Doesn’t it occur to either of them? ‘Aren’t you hungry?’

‘No. I’d be ill if I ate this late. Anyway I’m pretty tired already, I haven’t had much sleep this week.’

Why did he have to talk about it? She hadn’t had much sleep either, but she didn’t complain, even though she was a woman.

‘What do you actually do?’ he asked, turning suddenly to Honza. ‘You’re still a student?’

‘No, I’ve finished,’ the other replied in a deeper voice than usual. ‘I’m now working in a library, like Alena.’

‘I shouldn’t think that’s the nicest of jobs at the present time.’

‘A lot nicer than sitting on the bench,’ said Honza with the obvious intention of offending.

‘You’re right there.’ He might not even have been listening. He only listened when he felt like it, and then only to people who interested him in some way. He was oblivious to the rest. He stood up again: ‘Shall we go to bed?’ Then he turned to Honza: ‘Would you like me to help you up the stairs?’

Probably he meant well, but the other took it as a churlish hint that he should leave.

‘No, thank you. I’ll manage myself!’ On his way out he gave her a look that terrified her. What if he swallowed some pills again upstairs?

Adam scooped some water into the wash-basin. ‘I brought some money to a woman who lives not far from here; her husband’s in prison.’ He took off his shirt. ‘I had to wait for her till eight thirty and then listen to her story.’ Instead of starting to wash, he squatted down on the stool and talked. ‘I managed to leave town by three o’clock. I was missing you and wanted to get here as early as possible, but I didn’t know whether this woman was in a hurry for the money. She’s extremely young.’ As usual when he was tired, he talked ramblingly about all sorts of unrelated things.

‘I don’t know who you’re talking about,’ she said.

‘About the woman I had to wait for.’ And he continued his incoherent narration, throwing in something about another woman in a run-down flat, and now that woman was the mother of a man on remand whose case he was going to try, but the mother had never set eyes on him. Her son. As if that could possibly be true. And his friend Oldřich was having an affair with Alice, and yesterday two people pretending to be lovers had apparently tailed him, and then he was back to the first woman again and about what she earned, as if it was the most interesting and important thing he could possibly say to her. Nevertheless she made an effort to attend, while straining her ears to hear what was happening in the rest of the house. Had he gone to bed yet? What if he heard them later? His bedroom was immediately overhead.

He came over to her and put his arms around her. ‘I’m glad I’m here with you.’

‘I’m glad too.’ She slipped out of his embrace. He was bulky, unfamiliar, almost alien. What was she to tell him, when it came down to it? The children would spill the beans anyway. ‘Are you still going to wash?’

‘Yes.’ He stood up. He plunged his hands in the water. The floor around him was instantly wet.

‘He tried to commit suicide three days ago!’

He soaped his chest and went on automatically to lean over the wash-basin and scoop up water in his palm, as if unable to postpone the planned gesture. In the end he asked: ‘Who?’

‘Honza, of course!’

He turned towards her. She saw that he was trying to recall who she could be talking about, but he asked: ‘Why?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said reluctantly. How could he possibly suspect nothing? Was it because he trusted her so much or because he had become so alienated from her? ‘I think he’s depressed about something.’

He reached for a towel. ‘Why should he be depressed?’

She was incapable of lying. She had never lied about a single bad mark when she was still at school. To live a lie seemed to her like living an illness. ‘I don’t know,’ she said in a whisper.

‘How did he do it?’

‘He took an overdose.’

‘But that’s a woman’s way.’ He picked up his shirt up from the chair. ‘I have to go and get my pyjamas.’

‘Aren’t you even going to ask how it turned out?’

‘OK by the look of it. He was calmly drinking tea when I arrived.’

There was one thing, though, she had never told him about: her night with Menachem. But oddly enough she didn’t feel it to be a lie, maybe because she had loved Menachem before she loved Adam; she had only been repaying a debt, albeit a debt to her own imagination. Moreover, Adam knew they were together that night and never asked what they had been doing. Had he asked she would have told him the truth, even though she wasn’t entirely sure herself what had really happened. They had been drinking wine together so that reality and her imagination had gradually blurred together and merged.

But this time she had no doubts about what had happened, and was still happening, and she felt she had a duty to tell him everything herself, before he asked, the moment she joined him in the bedroom, in fact. Only she wouldn’t have the strength to do it this evening.

She had already had her wash and was rinsing out her underwear. Maybe Adam would fall asleep in the meantime and nothing would happen for the one upstairs to hear. The trouble was Adam wouldn’t fall asleep. He’d not seen her for almost a fortnight and would wait until she came and lay alongside him and he’d have a chance to cuddle her. But how was she to join him in bed with the other one’s voice still sounding in her ears, how was she to cuddle and caress him with hands covered in a stranger’s kisses?

He lay in bed reading by the light of the wall-lamp.

‘What are you reading?’ she asked in a whisper.

‘I’ve no idea; some book of Manda’s. Something about puppies. You were ages coming. I was afraid of falling asleep.’

‘There was no reason why you shouldn’t have. You must be tired.’

‘I am.’

She still didn’t get into bed. She opened the cupboard. On the uppermost shelf there lay a packet of cotton-wool. She reached for it. But there was no point. Had Adam been like other men and not thought about such things, she might have fooled him by that gesture. But he counted her days (as he counted everything) and he kept track better than she did herself.

‘How long has he been there?’ he asked.

‘Why?’

He pointed towards the ceiling.

‘About a week.’

‘Did it cause a big commotion when he took those pills?’

‘No, I took him to hospital. Fortunately Bob was here with his car.’

‘He might have found somewhere else to do it!’

‘Ssh!’ she admonished him. ‘He’s sleeping just above!’

Just then, as if exactly cued by some invisible stage-manager: thump! thump! The plaster cast crashed on the floor several times and the door above creaked. The terrifying thought gripped her that he might come in, carrying a knife or wielding an axe, exclaim: My love! and then attack Adam or herself, or — even more likely — turn the weapon on himself.

Finally she lay down at his side and he drew her to himself in his usual manner. ‘No, not yet!’ she whispered. ‘I have to get used to you first.’

‘But it’s so late already!’

‘It’s not our last day, after all,’ she objected weakly.

‘I’ve been looking forward to you. The whole time.’

‘I know. I’ve been looking forward to you too. But everything can be heard here.’

‘It doesn’t matter. Anyway, everyone’s asleep.’

‘He isn’t,’ she said, pointing upwards. ‘I don’t want him to hear us.’

‘He won’t. Why should he?’

‘You didn’t even have a look at the children.’

‘I did. Before you came in!’

Thump. Thump. (Oh, goodness, why doesn’t either of them feel like sleeping?)

Thump!

‘Is he going to walk around like that all night long?’

‘I don’t know. How should I know?’

‘You brought him in here!’

‘That’s neither here nor there.’

Above them there was the sound of water running into a wash-basin or somewhere else. Thump. Thump. The bed.

‘I love you,’ he whispered.

‘Why?’ she asked wearily.

‘People sometimes depress me,’ he said. ‘I get the feeling that everyone is ready to betray his fellow or harm him somehow. I know you to be different.’ He pressed her to him and caressed her breasts with his fingertips.

She felt she was falling. It was an insistent awareness of falling through pure, empty space. She should cry out or try to catch on to something. But she remained silent even when she realised, painfully, that he was entering her body. Surprisingly she felt nothing: neither shame nor remorse, but no pleasure either; just a total emptiness that engulfed her and pervaded her.

He asked: ‘Didn’t you enjoy it?’

Before we drink from the waters of Lethe

1

If only I had a trace of my father’s singlemindedness. When he was only seven years old, he apparently connected some uninsulated wires to a lamp and used the electricity to drive a set of cog wheels. He could have killed himself in the process, or anyone else who touched the wires, but amazingly, nothing happened to him, and his little motor worked.

With his phenomenal memory for names, numbers and figures, my father knew what he wanted to achieve, and he knew he wanted to achieve more than anyone else. And achieving more, in his system of values, meant knowing more and working more.

But what about me? What was I good for? What was my ambition?

Right back at the time of my lengthy illness, my father bought me a (no doubt rare and expensive) set of miniature electrical devices. It included a number of resistances, a telegraph key, a buzzer, a rheostat and a DC motor. The components could be connected together in various different combinations. The telegraph key could be used to operate the buzzer, start the motor or ring the bell. Out of love and respect for my father, I made a conscientious effort to find some pleasure in building circuits, but to no avail.

I tried to find pleasure in mathematics, at least, and indeed I outshone the others and did get some enjoyment from working out a not-too-sophisticated cryptic solution to a school trigonometry exercise — but maths remained a foreign medium to me. I lacked the sort of imagination that enables one to transform the material world into numbers or (vice versa) see the world in them.

I had no idols of my own — only borrowed ones. I bought myself a small bust of Lenin; it was one of the first things bought with my pocket money, but up to that moment I had never read a single line of the man’s writings, I only knew I had to revere him if I believed in Father’s improved world order.

That was the only thing 1 knew I wanted: an improved world order, my ideal state, to change reality to look like my island where reason held sway, where I ruled alone for the good of everyone, where I had eliminated all the inequality, depravity and immorality of the present-day world, along with want and unhappiness and all other untoward phenomena, and created a realm of love, trust, peace and happiness.

As soon as my friend Mirek had returned my manuscript I mentioned my exemplary composition to my father. Father had little spare time in those days and spent less and less time with the family, coming home only one day a week. So we scarcely saw each other. He took the exercise book containing my text from me, leafed through it — I couldn’t even tell whether he’d noticed the title — and then put it away in his briefcase.

I waited impatiently for his opinion, and would rush home from school each day, convinced that Father would let me know what he thought by letter.

The following week he arrived home, kissed Mother as usual, asked Hanuš and myself our news from school and then started to talk about his own affairs. They had entrusted him with setting up a new research factory. It was a grandiose project at a time when so many specialists had fled abroad, and of those who remained, some had been gaoled and others labelled as unreliable. Father complained that he had been assigned youngsters who were incapable, unwilling, insolent, ambitious, vain and only eager for power and money. He said they were hatching plots and forming cliques, in opposition to him and the handful of people who were capable of anything and wanted to get on with their work in peace.

After lunch I was unable to suppress my impatience any longer and I asked him about it. Father fetched his briefcase, took my exercise book out of it and said that many similar things had already been written. It might be better for me to concentrate on something more substantial. Most of all, I would be advised to read a lot and improve my mind.

So what should I concentrate on? What could be more substantial than reflecting on how best to organise human society?

He agreed, but told me that the organisation of society and politics were now a science. I would have to study a great deal. Gone were the days when people could just dream noncommittally about ideal societies. He did not want me to turn into a mere windbag like those youngsters he was surrounded with.

So what if I went on to study politics? He shrugged his shoulders. It was up to me what I wanted to study.

I had no difficulty in passing my interview for the political science faculty.

It was a strange sort of college. Most of the professors were not much older than myself. Their lectures were all impassioned affairs, irrespective of whether they were called atheism, Marxism-Leninism or logic, and at first I was enthralled. What a marvellously convincing picture of the world it presented us with. A weird and splendid lunar landscape. A sea of luminosity on the one side, the Mare tenebris on the other. Freezing cold craters and sun-warmed plains. One could not lose one’s way in such a landscape, nor hesitate which side to choose…

The way I see it nowadays, our teachers carefully concealed from us everything that had happened in the social sciences since the death of those they regarded as the unchallengeable authorities. We lived in the deep shadow of the idols of social revolution, they were our measure of everything. Trapped within the past century, we spoke their language and solved their extinct dilemmas.

There were at least a hundred of us studying ‘social sciences’ in our year, but we were divided up into several smaller groups within which we were supposed to fraternise, and assist each other with consciousness-raising and study. We would go as a group to the cinema and exhibitions, sing and chant slogans at the May Day rally, and at demonstrations against the Korean war we would yell ‘Go home!’ at the Americans (of whom we had none); we took part in labour brigades in the fields, we attended interminable meetings. And we would all address each other informally using first names or alternatively ‘Comrade!’ I was entranced. I entered into the spirit I knew from literature — I saw myself as a member of a large family whose links were far stronger than any blood relationship. Even at moments of hardship in my life, all I needed to do was call out and a like-minded person would answer: a comrade, who was striving for the same noble goals as I. Could there be anything more noble in this life, could anyone feel happier than I?

Many of my fellow-students were already married. The older and more staid among them astounded me with their self-confidence and assurance. They didn’t hesitate to argue with our teachers for whom I had hitherto maintained a mandatory respect.

Outside college hours, I associated most of all with Plach. There have been many occasions in the intervening years when I thought I once more caught sight of his undistinguished pugilist’s face (with its snub nose, which none of his opponents had yet managed to break) but it has always turned out to be his double.

I would help him with the subjects he found difficult; amazingly enough, they were geography and history. I used to go to his flat in an old house not far from Smíchov Cemetery. He occupied a spacious garret that served him as bed-sitting room, kitchen and, later, as a workshop. (At that time I never even wondered what sort of factory would send a young stonemason to study social sciences.) He still had some of the statues he had carved, set out on a scarlet-painted table. I considered the bust of the president very successful, as it resembled all the other busts that littered the world of officialdom in those days. A sculpture of a metalworker struck me as rather daring, as its proportions were visibly distorted: the hands out of proportion with the head, and the hammer out of proportion with the hands.

Outside the realms of geographical or historical study, Plach held my respect. His opinions astounded me with their tenacity. I regarded his calm and deliberate manner of speaking as a sign of virility. Now and then he would tell me something about himself. During the war, he had belonged to some underground organisation, then during the Prague Uprising he had fought on the barricades and actually destroyed a tank single-handed. He had then received a stomach wound and spent the rest of that spring in hospital. He even showed me the livid scar. He commented that the pigs of doctors had let the wound fester and it was a wonder he survived.

When he was recovered he had moved to Karlovy Vary in the frontier zone and worked there collecting scrap vehicles for some fellow who had been diddling him so much that they had quarrelled and parted. How old had he been at the time? Not very. Eighteen or thereabouts. Then they had persuaded him to go and work as a mechanic in a lace factory. There had been lots of German girls working there at the time. They had included some good-looking ones and he had been able to choose whichever he fancied, as they had thought they would be allowed to stay if they managed to hook him. But none of them had. Anyway he had always kicked them out afterwards. Then the wife of the national administrator had fallen for him in a big way. The husband had almost shot him with a rifle when he found him in his bedroom. But his administrative career had come to an end as well, and he had already spent more than a year in prison, as someone had exposed in time the way he was administering national property.

And what about the wife? Plach made a dismissive gesture. He had already forgotten her name, though not the name of the cognac she had feted him with.

Oddly enough, in his stories, no one was ever mentioned as being close to him in any way. As if he had no friends, as if no one had conceived him or given birth to him, and he had been thrust alone into the world by impassive forces, and had had no option from the very start but to fight for survival.

There was one person, however, he did refer to rather more favourably — although I might have only imagined it: his master mason. The old gaffer, as he called him, still lived not far from Plach’s house in the direction of Košíře. When they had confiscated his workshop two years earlier, he had used his age as an excuse — he had been over seventy then — and ostensibly given up the trade, but in fact, my friend declared, he was still carving stone angels in a toolshed in the backyard of his house.

As the exam season approached, we were joined by Josef Nimmrichter. He had never shown any interest in me before, but I had not noticed him to have much contact with anyone else either. He never had anything to say for himself during seminars. If he was directly asked a question, he would slowly stand up, turn his small head, surmounting gorilla-like shoulders, first to one side then to the other, his low, pale brow would wrinkle and his little grey eyes would stare into space; then, in a high falsetto voice, he would start to weave an endless, convoluted sentence whose sense would sooner or later elude even the most attentive listener. It was impossible to either agree or disagree with him. Nor could one take up from where he left off; what he said had the merciless finality of death. People preferred not to ask him for any explanation.

He would arrive in the garret room with a shabby shopping bag containing a notepad and at least half a dozen bottles of beer. He would join us at the table and watch us as we indicated things on the map to each other. Now and then he would have a swig of beer from the bottle and not utter a word. In a little while, as if weary from observing us, he would withdraw into himself and his attention became fixed on something unspecified outside his present surroundings. Once he had finished his last bottle he would emerge from his gloomy taciturnity and start to ask questions. Where was he to find the Arctic? Why wasn’t the Arctic next door to the Antarctic, seeing they had the same climate? Why did they call Nero a cruel barbarian? Wasn’t he right the way he dealt with the Christians? Had we noticed that the economics professor smiled in a queer way when he was talking about the Five-Year Plan? He could do with a couple of press-ups too!

That was his cherished fantasy. All those who had done something to earn his displeasure would be lined up in a row and he’d start giving the orders for press-ups: down, two, three, up, two, three, down… until at last they broke down, softened and recognised their depravity, the error of their ways and the blindness of their attitudes.

He hailed from a village in southern Moravia. He said his father had been a coachman on a church estate, and as a child he himself had acted as server for some dirty old fat priest up to the day when he discovered that the filthy swine was assaulting his little sister. He had told his father and his father had waylaid the priest after mass and beaten him up. But afterwards it was his father who was convicted, of course. He was only a coachman and no one could give a damn that his daughter had been shamed. His mother had almost gone off her head with shame and they had to put her in the asylum. An hour from their village there was a Premonstratensian monastery and the monks had suppliers in different towns who used to get hold of virgins for them, preferably girls from poor families, or orphans whom no one was looking for, and the monks would thrust them into underground dungeons without windows so not a sound could escape and no one could hear the screams of the poor victims whom they chained to iron beds so they could indulge their desires on them. When they chucked the monks out of the monastery after the war and opened up those cellars, they had discovered a pile of children’s skeletons with broken limbs, hands pierced with nails, fingers crushed and some of the skulls still had gags shoved in the holes where the mouths had been. My fellow-student dwelt on the ghastly details, and his almost womanish voice became even shriller as he thrust red-hot pokers and blacksmith’s tongs into women’s wombs, tearing out the flesh, and then all of a sudden he would be back with us in the present. His eyes, which during his narration seemed to float out of their sockets, would abruptly start to move again and search our faces. I would be terrified each time that happened lest he find something inappropriate in my countenance: lest he decipher from it my church membership, my insecurity or my inadequacy, for which he would exact punishment.

Of his recent past I knew very little. He said he had worked as a prison warder, but had had to leave the job on health grounds. He never spoke about it and I hadn’t the courage to ask him. All I could grasp was that he was bound by a strict secrecy which shrouded that entire area of his life.

One winter’s day, the three of us went for a walk in the direction of Košíře. At that time, rows of low tenements were still standing there, their gable-ends, which before the war were painted with enormous advertisements for Baa shoes or Neher clothes, now blank. And in between the blackened fences of yards, small factories and workshops there were some single-storey rural buildings left behind from a bygone age, with gardens, toolsheds, hen-houses and rabbit-hutches. Plach stopped in front of one of those houses and asked us if we would like to meet his master mason. We went into the yard and Plach made straight for a high shed from which the sound of hammer blows could be heard.

A little fellow with thinning hair, wearing a shabby, faded coat, was standing with his back to us as we came in. He turned round and gazed at us for a few moments as if he did not recognise any of us. He was already an old man with faded blue-grey eyes. Then he recognised Plach. They greeted each other and chatted while I rather absently-mindedly scanned the shelves on which there lay various tools, alongside doves carved from white stone, sandstone angels and stone crosses, and through the slightly open door of a large cupboard I caught sight of a bust of the first president.

Plach’s old mason took down a bottle from a shelf screened by a curtain, and poured us all a drink. I wasn’t accustomed to alcohol and was soon overcome with a drunken magnanimity that led me to declare that I found some of those sculptures really beautiful, though I had no love of angels. The old man replied that it wasn’t so important that we loved the angels, but that the angels loved us. I pointed out that I didn’t believe in angels and the old man said that belief in angels was a favour not granted to everyone. All of a sudden Nimmrichter joined in. His head, on its short neck, was thrust forward at the old man. Seeing the old man believed in angels, did he believe in the immaculate conception too, he wanted to know. And did he believe in the one who gave the order to shoot the workers, he asked, pointing through the gap in the cupboard door at the bust of old President Masaryk.

The old fellow said he believed in the things he had believed in all his life. My colleague’s voice now soared to such a pitch that it became totally effeminate, and he demanded to know if the old man believed in raping little girls and killing children too. The mason might have said something in reply or remained silent. But I remember precisely what followed. I can see Nimmrichter approaching the cupboard and raising one of the busts above his head. There was the sharp report of stone hitting stone and he was already reaching out for another. Statues spilt on to the ground: broken wings, shattered skulls, stone laurels in detached hands, fists without arms, headless angels — and above it all the victorious yelp of Nimmrichter’s voice. Everything happened so quickly that I was unable to overcome my amazement or the sudden fear that gripped me. I looked round at Plach, who had brought us here and, to a certain extent, was responsible for our conduct. He stood leaning against one of the shelves, his arms folded and a smirk on his face.

2

That autumn saw the start of the political trials. The State Prosecutor charged recent government ministers, journalists and leading Party officials with crimes against the state. The men on trial were only known to me from the viewing stands where they stood waving to me once a year from behind a wall of power and glory. They were people of a different generation. I could have no personal feelings towards them. Having never felt any affection for them, I was not greatly shaken by what happened now.

A special meeting was convened at the faculty where the speaker yelled about filthy traitors and the dregs of human society, urging us on to still greater vigilance and loyalty to the Party and its remaining leaders. It seemed odd to me that those selfsame people he was now denouncing had been glorified by us not so long ago. But the main conclusion I drew was that one ought not to pay unreserved homage to anyone, rather than that the whole trial was simply a terrifying play in whose last act the reluctant actors were hung on a real gallows by a real executioner.

Eva, the leader of our student group, was waiting for me after the meeting. She put her arm through mine (she always did it when speaking to people, but I found it embarrassing), as if we were just planning a date, and told me that various organisations from factories and offices had requested our faculty to send them some comrades to explain at meetings how it was that such enemies had managed to get promoted even to the highest posts of authority, and in general to explain the meaning of the trials. And she thought that I too might be sent to just such a meeting.

My probationary period was just coming to an end. If I refused, they might not have accepted me as a full member of the Party. But I had no intention of refusing. I was brimming over with a need to do something. But so far I had never had a chance to voice publicly even one of my ideas about the new society and the modern world. Now they were offering me the chance, and I took it.

I was assigned to a large shoe-mending workshop in the Vršovice district of Prague and given several pamphlets to help me with my task.

I returned home with a sense of major responsibility and set about writing my speech without ado. I emulated something of Father’s scientific thoroughness and was reluctant to restrict myself to a handful of pamphlets. In the library I found some books about similar trials that had taken place in the past in Moscow. I had no idea that the censors had carefully removed any books that might have clashed with the only valid interpretation of what had happened, so my efforts to delve as deeply as possible into the question had been frustrated before I started. I read those books and discovered not merely stunning similarities but also a clear key to everything that had happened.

The enemy’s sights were always set as high as possible because he underestimated the people and overestimated the influence of personalities. He believed that if he could win over the leaders, he would have no difficulty winning control of the whole movement and entire nations. But that was where he went wrong time and again. For those who abandoned them for personal advantage or betrayed them, the people would always find replacements. I discovered a simple logic within that theatre of blood: the logic of history as I knew it from the theories we studied.

I recall the dim and dirty canteen I was taken to. On a battered, grease-stained canteen table at one end of the room there stood a rough glass of water and behind me there hung an enormous red flag above the usual portraits of the leaders. Several dozen girls crouched at the other end of the hall as far away from me as possible. I knew nothing about them, I had only caught sight of the girls on the other shift standing by tall, noisy shoe-mending machines as I made my way to the canteen down long corridors. I knew nothing of their interests, naturally, nor of what filled their minds. I was merely intent on winning them over.

I can’t remember anything of what I said there, only the fact that, in my pursuit of maximum effect, I recited a poem I had copied out of the newspaper because its final perverted tercet had etched itself on my memory:

And the mountebanks have ended

Their dance

On a rope

No doubt I repeated all the other lies they used in those days to dull people’s minds, as well as all the terms of abuse that littered public speeches and formed an amazing spectrum from criminals, gangsters and hyenas to hideous spiders and vile, shameless Judases. At the end of my half-hour address, I told my audience that I was prepared to answer any questions they might have. I gazed into the gloomy hall and waited expectantly for some sign of agreement or interest, but I waited in vain.

3

One day we had a party in Plach’s garret room. I can’t recall any more what we were celebrating but there were a lot of people there I didn’t know. They might have been Plach’s relations or former friends and colleagues. Among them was a North Korean lieutenant called Nam who was studying with us. There were tables covered in food rare at that period of ration coupons, and from a large demijohn there came the aroma of home-made plum brandy, which we all (including myself: I didn’t want to be different) proceeded to drink.

We ate and then sang. Our Korean class-mate Nam played the accordion, while Plach accompanied him on the guitar. They were mostly songs with a fighting spirit, all about wars, partisans and revolution, which provided an opportunity for yelling political slogans, such as E viva il communismo e la liberta! Viva Stalin! Everybody sang. I couldn’t sing so I shouted the slogans all the louder and clapped in time to the music. We also talked politics — or what we took to be politics.

That night, Nirnmrichter got drunk. Cumbersome, with his gorilla-like shoulders and simian brow, he started to do a cossack dance and Eva, our leader, came over to me and asked me to dance it with her. I had never learnt to dance but I yielded and gambolled ludicrously between the tables and the joists, while the rest of them clapped in time to the music and laughed. Afterwards she told me I was sweet: she had always loved bears. And she gave me a kiss. There was nothing about her I found attractive: she was small and plump with big masculine lips and unkempt, greasy hair. But now I was drunk I had received my first kiss from a woman I didn’t know.

Maybe she realised, and for that reason came and sat next to me after our dance. She declared I had shaggy hair like a dog and ruffled it with her fingers, letting her hand rest momentarily on the nape of my neck. That touch took my breath away. Just then Nimmrichter staggered over to us. He sat down on the floor at her feet and asked me if I thought someone could believe in God and still be a communist. He kept on staring at me fixedly with his bulging eyes until I became nervous and replied that it would be difficult. He agreed with me and declared that the Church had been the enemy of progress since time immemorial and it still had only one thing in mind: to spoil everything, wreck everything and turn the people away from us, but it would never get away with it again. Then he remembered a priest who had buried a rifle and other weapons in his garden. The chairman of the local council had been a one-legged man who used to ride a horse, the chairman’s wife had been the sister of the farmer who owned the pub and he had had a brother who went off to the seminary, and the two of them had decided they would print some leaflets, all clever like, so the husband wouldn’t know, or his friends, especially the treasurer who used to play cards with him, but he had found the leaflets and set them on the trail, because everyone spills the beans in the end, and no one manages to hide what they really believe, and he could assure us of the fact, because he had been there at the time. He looked at me again, and all of sudden he crossed the boundary he’d never crossed before, at least not in our company. His narration suddenly became more coherent, as if previously he had only been groping his way through a mist in a strange land. When they arrested him, the priest told them he hadn’t buried the weapons or printed the leaflets, thinking maybe that the Good Lord would help him keep the whole criminal gang secret.

Eva declared that it was all very interesting and laughed quite irrelevantly. Then she snuggled up to me, again ruffling my hair and calling me her doggie.

Only that was where he was wrong (all the time Nimmrichter kept his eyes fixed on me) because he had fallen into his hands. He had taken him downstairs where he had a few cells that didn’t let in a single ray of light, and he’d made that fat mouse strip. What a belly! Nimmrichter actually stood up to demonstrate it to us, that enormous belly. Where had he got it from? What good had that church mouse ever done, what had it done apart from sponging off the poor and teaching them to grovel? So he had given it the order: walk! And the mouse had walked; in a funny way with its toes turned out, and Nimmrichter gave us another demonstration that made Eva start giggling again, our sides touching. The first day, my fellow-student continued, the mouse had tried to go on mumbling its prayers, but the second day it only groaned and begged him to let it sit down for a moment, saying it had varicose veins and a bad heart, it hadn’t any feeling in its feet. So he had let it do some press-ups for a while and afterwards he had allowed it to curl up on the floor and have a half-hour’s sleep, because even he, Nimmrichter, was beginning to find it tiring. But the mouse hadn’t slept anyway, but just kept on whining and even tried to threaten him with divine retribution, so he made it stand up and walk, and soon it stopped thinking about the Good Lord and started begging him instead, swearing it knew nothing, so he had made it do some more press-ups and walk again, and when it pretended it couldn’t do any more and fell down, it got a bucket of water over it, and then more buckets of water, until it started to shake all over and implore him. In the end it jumped up again and promised it would start walking again. But by now it was beginning to soften, by now it was only crawling on all fours, now it was beginning to sing as it was supposed to.

Nam played us the accordion again. Eva sang something with her head resting on my shoulder and Nimmrichter went on reminiscing. Some of them didn’t even have to be made to walk, it had been enough to make them stand with their hands above their heads and submit to ‘Nimmrichter’s Luck’. He decided he would give us a demonstration of the technique which bore his name, and asked us all to stand up with our arms in the air — just for a moment; there was nothing to fear. He came up behind me and tried to grip me under the shoulders, and I could feel hot breath on the back of my neck. At that moment a wave of revulsion welled up within me and I slipped out of his grip and thrust back my elbow. I caught him right in the face. He lurched back and caught his head on the corner of a cupboard. I could see the blood rush to his face and realised that the next moment he would leap on me and start to beat me; maybe to death. I swiftly retreated several paces so that there was now a table — still covered in food — between the two of us. But at that moment Eva came up to Nimmrichter, put her arm round his shoulders and pushed her glass to his lips, before slowly leading him away.

A few minutes later he came to find me. He fixed his goggle eyes on me and said that he had never liked me, that he knew all about me anyway, including the things I would rather no one knew anything about, so I should be sure to watch my step, because he had his eye on me. Clumsily I asked him to explain to me what he meant, but he only went on repeating that I should just watch my step, and sat down again on a chair, mumbling orders: Attention, on your feet, flat on the floor, up and down and walk, and no stopping, all the while staring at me with his bloodshot eyes and giving me the order: No stopping!

Eva leaned towards me and whispered in my ear that it would be best if we left now.

Outside it was snowing and the street and pavement had the appearance of a perfectly unsullied white plain. She linked her arm in mine and we defiled the plain with heavy steps. As we passed by the cemetery, the trees beyond the wall seemed to me to be painfully spreading snow-white branches, while the gravestones thrust upwards like dark threatening fingers.

4

Eva unlocked the door and we entered a dark hallway. It stank of cigarette smoke and something like fish oil. She told me that the light bulb had gone in the hallway, opened the door to the sitting room and switched on the light.

Whether there was a chair in the room I do not know. I expect there was, but it must have been covered up with things, like the armchair which I do remember. So I sat down on the settee. She sat down next to me and said she fancied something else to drink. But she neither got up to fetch any nor told me where I could fetch some from. She laid her head on my shoulder and asked whether I minded the mess.

I said I didn’t.

She wanted to know whether I had already had lots of girls, and without looking at her, I told her I hadn’t.

Then she asked if I’d ever been really deeply in love, and I hesitated for a moment before saying I hadn’t.

She knew I was lying, like they all did, but thought I suited her, if only because I was Adam, and she put her arms round me. I kissed her, or rather she kissed me, and as we were kissing each other in a firm embrace she sank lower and lower until we were lying on that settee whose colour I have forgotten. For the moment I was only aware of my own increasing ardour, an ardour which I’d never known before and which took control of my senses. Then she abruptly pushed me away. She stood up and ordered me to stand up too. There was no call for us to act like little children, she said.

So I stood up and she took off the cushions and took out sheets and a heavy country-style eiderdown from inside the settee. I stared at her in amazement, having no idea what I was supposed to do next, whether I was being invited to a night of passion or being shown the door. Then she asked me whether I was going to go for a wash or not.

The wash-basin was in the hallway. In reality it was only a tiny sink beneath a tap, and to one side, an iron washstand.

I did not go out of any desire to wash, but because I suddenly wanted to delay the moment for as long as possible.

I stood there barefoot and half-naked (I’d only taken off my shirt) in the near-dark hallway, and while the water splashed into the sink, I worried in case I didn’t manage to act the man, or that I might become a father, and that what we were about to do together was going to bind us together for the rest of our lives, even though we didn’t even love each other. I also fretted in case I caught one of those loathsome diseases which, so far, I had read about with the reassuring awareness that I had nothing to fear from those afflictions at least.

She called to me from the next room asking where I had got to, so I wet my hand quickly under the tap for show’s sake and splashed my trousers. I turned off the water and returned to the room. I hesitated once again, this time mostly because it seemed improper to me to climb into a bed that someone was already lying in. It was only when she lifted the bedclothes slightly that I took off my trousers too, and with feelings more of shame and anxiety than passion I climbed in beside her.

Oddly enough, the details which have remained in my memory are the less important ones: the intrusive perfume she wore; how she evaded me for a long time, though laughing the while; how she wanted to touch my genitals; how I then recoiled from her in a sudden fit of modesty and stayed her hand. But the act itself has gone from my memory entirely. I was most likely too agitated to concentrate on my own (let alone her) feelings.

I do remember how she got up afterwards and, to my astonishment, fetched some water in that enamel washing bowl (so there must have been a stool of some kind for her to stand the bowl on), and a towel, and asked me whether I’d like to rinse myself.

It struck me as discourteous not to agree after she had gone to such trouble and so — this time to her astonishment — I washed my face.

I woke up just as it was getting light. What had woken me was the feeling I was suffocating. Someone was stamping up the stairs, a door slammed and through the wall could be heard the sound of brass band music. I had no idea who might come in, who might draw back the grubby curtain that separated the room I was lying in from the hallway, and shout out in surprise. My trousers lay crumpled on the floor amidst dirty cups. I was frightened to turn my head towards her, though I could feel the warmth of her naked body which, as I regained my senses, started to arouse me once more. It was cold there and I crouched back under the covers. Alongside my head there lay the face of a stranger: the thick upper lip smeared with lipstick, the mouth slightly open, showing over-large teeth; unkempt hair on the unlaundered pillow. It was so unfamiliar and unexpected, quite different from anything I had ever imagined, that I closed my eyes again and at that moment I could see in my mind’s eye those naked figures marching in the darkness on swollen feet, endlessly walking. Now at that very moment, maybe in the very cellar of the house next door, their tortured footsteps resounded in the silence in which here was I lying alongside a stranger, a silence in which millions of bodies unknown to me were lying next to each other, and still more bodies were lying in the soil, silence in which someone’s fingers had once sowed poisonous crystals in order to increase the number of motionless bodies. A silence broken by orders. Up on your feet! On the ground! A sudden desire for escape led me to stretch out my arm and draw that unfamiliar body to me. She opened her puffy eyelids slightly and, half-asleep, she snuggled up to me and we again made love in a desperate, passionless spasm.

The next day, during our very first class, Nimmrichter came up to me in the lecture theatre with a broad grin on his face, though his eyes searched my face fearfully. He said he had told me all sorts of nonsense that evening, and that there was no truth in any of those stories; he had only thought them up to amuse us.

I felt relieved and said that I had thought so from the very start and hadn’t really believed him. Then I asked him if the story about his sister being raped and the tales about the monastery were also made up. He froze, and his gaze became fixed. And I realised that he had made up those stories about his sister and those dreadful orgies, either that or he had heard or read about them, but what he had told me two nights ago had been true.

I didn’t see Eva for several days. The whole time I wrestled with the question of what I was going to do. What if I became a father? What if she said I was the father and it wouldn’t be my baby at all? How old was she, in fact? I didn’t want to marry an older woman; I didn’t want to get married at all, and I didn’t want a woman I didn’t love. But then why had I done those things with a woman I didn’t love? I was degenerate. I had betrayed myself and all my ideals! Worst of all, I was beginning to miss the thing we had done that night.

When at last I saw her in the lecture theatre, I rushed over to her. She said she didn’t know when she would have the time again; at the moment she had lots of work, but she’d certainly let me know.

The same afternoon, I caught sight of her in front of the faculty, hanging on the arm of a stranger. I was overcome with disappointment, or maybe jealousy, even. At home I started to write a letter. I had been prepared to love her, but she hadn’t been able to find time for me, whereas she apparently had time for others; now I was sad and longing for her. I went off to bed full of hope that my message would have the desired effect and she would answer: Come!

The next day I put the letter into my correspondence folder and never took it out again.

5

One spring afternoon, my father decided we would all go on an outing together. I looked forward to the trip as a rare opportunity to talk to Father. We got into our car (the car, a nineteen-year-old Tatra, was Father’s only luxury, the only thing he could bequeath us if hard times should come — not counting, that is, one still camera, a film projector and a screen).

I was sitting next to Father and noticed (in those days of sparse traffic, it was not difficult to notice) that the whole time we were followed by a black limousine. Father said he knew about it, that it was most probably the State Security.

Why were they following us? Father’s assumption was that his rivals in the factory had most likely denounced him again. On what grounds? Father couldn’t say. Nobody would ever tell him what their actual complaints were. When they finally plucked up the courage to speak out openly, it would become clear where the truth lay; which employees had the interests of society at heart, and which were only interested in their careers.

They came a few days later. They rang the doorbell before six o’clock in the morning: four men. Two others were standing guard outside the house in case the criminal absconded (though who was a criminal and who an innocent party among those assembled?). They burst into the flat, emboldened by the fact that they were fully dressed, which gave them an advantage over people who were only just waking up, and commenced their search.

What were they looking for? Even a tracking dog knows whether the trail it follows belongs to a fleeing hare or to a fox; but what trail were they following? What guilt were they assuming and what evidence were they looking for to prove it? Books were all they found. But they were mostly written in some foreign language, and if that were not enough, they were filled with mysterious figures and Father’s own notes in the margins. The snoopers picked up the books gingerly, as if handling unexploded bombs. They required explanations throughout their visit. Who had written this comment here? And why? Why had he written his comments in German? Why had he underlined this particular sentence and that number?

My father stood ashen-faced in their midst, almost at attention. He had simply wanted to emphasise a sentence he’d found interesting. Why? Because the author had come up with an original solution. Did he know the author personally? No; after all he had died when Father was eight years old. They’d check it out anyway.

I don’t know where they were intending to check out those tens of thousands of underlined sentences and figures, any one of which might have been the cipher they expected, and longed for. But more likely, as I realised later, they knew that they wouldn’t be checking anything really. Their methods were rather different.

None the less, those four men leafed through volume after volume: dozens of books in all. They rifled our family albums, lifted the carpets, went through my writing desk, asked where our money was hidden, ordered Father not to pretend he had none, ransacked my mother’s chest of drawers, and tapped the floors and the walls, already disgusted at what they suspected would be a futile search. In the end they fetched a typewriter from their car and wrote a receipt for the confiscated objects. The list was a short one: just a few books and articles (I never understood why those in particular, and not other ones), a letter from Father’s brother Gustav, a Meopta film projector, a screen and a silent film about the Danube salmon, an Underwood typewriter and a vintage Tatra car. The latter they sealed in the garage for the time being. Thus, with no trouble, they stripped us of all our valuables. We owned neither gold, silver, nor porcelain; not even a cut crystal vase. If we had ever owned anything of the sort it had been snatched by other intruders not so many years before. The process steered its way towards its pre-determined conclusion, but we were ignorant of it and still believed that the house-search had only confirmed my father’s innocence. But Father was apparently better informed, because when they finally ordered him to accompany them, he asked if he might be allowed to take his leave, and they magnanimously permitted him to do so, although in their presence, of course. So Father stepped up to my mother with tears in his eyes. Once again he was leaving for the unknown, except now there was no war whose end might bring liberation. Then, after they had hugged each other, Father turned to me and said that I was now a grown-up man and could be counted on to care for Mother and Hanuš if he didn’t return for a long time. Mother snapped at him that he would be sure to return the following day, seeing that he had done nothing wrong. Father managed to say that sometimes it took a long time to establish one’s innocence. One of the men opened the door and the one who played the good cop role said goodbye to us. Then they left.

We stood at the window and watched them get into the car. Father, dressed in his one and only decent suit, made from black cloth with a light-blue stripe, took a last look up at the window and nodded to us. At my side, Mother sobbed and in a fit of weeping repeated over and over again: Oh my God, this is no life, this is no life! The car drove off and I froze as the thought struck me that, on the contrary, this was precisely what life was.

On that day my brother Hanuš emerges from the obscurity all of a sudden. We had lived side by side, for a long time even shared the same bedroom, but somehow till then he had eluded me. I know that he did well at maths and used to go with a group of his friends to play ping-pong and billiards at a pub, where he also drank beer and occasionally behaved so wildly that — much to my horror — he came home with his clothes torn and covered in blood. He was also a good skier, refused to read the newspapers or listen to anything on the radio apart from music. His interests and lifestyle differed totally from my own. I didn’t know his friends, let alone his loves, or his attitudes to the world he was obliged to live in and about which I, like Father, had such definite ideas. I cannot even recall a single one of our conversations or rows — except for the one that particular morning. Shortly after they took Father away, we were both doing our best to console Mother. I maintained that it was bound to be an error, a false accusation that would be exposed by the next day, because after all, it was against the law to even accuse people unjustly in our country, let alone convict them. Everyone would be bound to testify to Father’s services and convictions. And all of a sudden my brother broke in and started to abuse me, calling me a dolt and simpleton who was guilty of everything that was happening because I refused to see or understand anything. He shouted about rigged elections and crooked trials, about people from our own building who had been sent to prison even though they were decent folk. I expect I tried to contradict him because he suddenly leapt at me: my younger brother, who — I thought — looked up to me, who was no more than a boy and therefore incapable of serious opinions. Now he was punching me with his fists as if I was personally responsible for all the evil in our country.

That afternoon, Uncle Gustav arrived. First of all he brought best wishes from Uncle Karel, who warned us not to make any telephone calls, send any letters, especially abroad, and above all, to visit no one. My uncle agreed with me that it was an appalling miscarriage of justice, and gave us a sermon (happily, my brother Hanuš had gone out) about the incredible complexity of the class struggle, when, after losing the decisive battle, the enemy sought to sneak in everywhere. Hence it was necessary to investigate even the most devoted comrades, and even, of course, those pursuing the enemy. Meanwhile, skirmishes with the enemy were becoming sharper all the time and he was employing all sorts of shrewd tactics such as pretending to be a friend while trying to label true friends as enemies. All this was undermining the most valuable and noble gains of our revolution: the mutual trust and the new relations of comradeship. As a result it was impossible and unthinkable to trust people absolutely. He, however, put his trust in the Party, which would eventually discover the truth. In the end Viktor would obtain satisfaction, though it might take a little time. In the meantime, we all had to wait patiently and have faith, wait and not make any phone calls, wait and write to no one but the authorities. And we could trust the family as well, of course: he and Uncle Karel would look after us until we could stand on our own feet, if the case should happen to go on longer or the enemy’s intrigues succeed for a while. Suddenly my uncle lowered his voice, his dark eyes became moist and he told us that he believed Father was innocent; he was sure of it. Viktor was the most remarkable man he had ever met. And even though it was not possible to trust anyone absolutely, he did trust his brother implicitly and dared to make an exception in his case. And I realised with dismay that suspicion had taken root in my uncle, that the unremitting logic of his thinking was sapping his belief in his own brother.

Uncle Gustav now turned to me and said that I was to go on believing in my father, and in the Party too. I must inform it about what had happened. He went on to reminisce for a while about how the English had caught him in Palestine and charged him with espionage and how the military prosecutor had demanded the death sentence for him. Then he recalled the battle of Tobruk where death stalked like a wild beast, and how, during the siege of Aachen, an artillery grenade had exploded a few yards from him, and yet everything had turned out well for him in the end, apart from the leg wound. But after all, he had been awarded a pension for it. He took his wallet out of his pocket and removed an envelope from it; it probably contained his pension as not even Uncle Gustav owned any property apart from his wounded leg. He thrust the envelope into Mother’s apron pocket, then stood up and left.

There were only two people on duty in the Party secretariat of my faculty: a girl in a blue shirt and some old fellow in threadbare clothes. He could have been one of the lecturers, but equally a boilerman or one of the maintenance staff.

They listened to what I had to say and told me that they had noted my statement and would inform the committee of what had happened. Then they would let me know.

I also told them that Father had recently been spending most of his time away from home but had never changed his opinions and had certainly remained a good comrade. I was not entirely sure at that moment whether those particular words were intended to help myself or support Father, but most probably I needed to tell someone at least what was weighing on my mind.

The girl replied that she understood my attitude and my confidence in my father, but I was certainly not capable of objectively assessing all the factors, and added that if there was any unexpected change, such as my father being released, I was to come and tell them again without fail. And I still remember that dismal combination of words: ‘unexpected’ and ‘released’. Yes, anything but that was more likely: that he would be convicted of the gravest crimes and sentenced to twenty years’ imprisonment or even to death; anything was more likely than his release.

A few days later, we received a three-line notification that Father had been remanded in custody on the orders of the regional prosecutor in Brno. Confirmation of receipt of an arrested person. The signature was illegible. Father had not been granted defence counsel.

Uncle Gustav brought a copy of the Criminal Law and Penal Code and read us out excerpts from it. It had occurred to him — on the basis of what Father had told him just before his arrest — that it was bound to be some recent slander by his enemies. One could not even rule out the possibility, Uncle Gustav feared, that Father, being above all a scientist, might have made some mistake or even neglected something in the management of the enterprise, and this had been seized upon by his enemies and led to his arrest. In which case, he concluded triumphantly, when everything had been weighed up, and assuming Father wasn’t found entirely innocent, they might use paragraph 135 covering damage caused by neglect, for which the law prescribed, and here my uncle raised his voice, a term of imprisonment of up to one year, i.e. one year maximum. This, in Father’s case, was ruled out as the court would be obliged to take into account his utter probity.

After my uncle left, I took that thick volume in pocket-Bible format and, as I had once done with the Scriptures, I read it right through, from cover to cover. From the preamble to the temporary provisions and concluding statutes. It took me a single evening and part of the night. I do not recall whether I had had any particular interest in legal study before then. I had, of course, enthusiastically followed the trial of the Protectorate government and read commentaries about the Nuremberg Trials and even had several pamphlets on my bookshelf dealing with the trials of the war criminals, but I had read them chiefly for their connection with my own past; it had never struck me that anything significant in terms of legal theory and practice had happened during those trials. Like most people I viewed the law more as a device for obscuring true justice. All of a sudden, to my surprise, I had encountered a code. Its perfection, adequacy or absurdity compared with other codes of the same kind of course were issues I could not possibly judge, but the very attempt to encompass the whole of life and organise it into a system enthralled me.

Consideration to be given to a mother’s nervousness after childbirth, to the feelings of under-aged witnesses or those learning of the crimes of their next of kin; the precise distinction to be made between responsibility and irresponsibility, sanity and insanity, between a deliberate action and negligence; the different definitions to be observed of contrition and remorse, given the paramount importance of the time factor! Could there exist anywhere a more exhaustive expression of the longing to regulate and demarcate the proper value of all human relations?

I was summoned to attend a committee meeting at the beginning of the summer vacation. This time, the room was full of people. I knew none of those present except for Nimmrichter, but I was in no state to notice individual faces. I was too upset and subdued by a sense of guilt, though I had done nothing wrong.

They treated me with kindness and consideration, that is if I consider their behaviour not in terms of legal norms, but in terms of the way they could have treated me — with official approval — in those days. They asked me if I had received any news of Father, and if I was coping with things. Then they said that as far as I was concerned, they had the highest opinion of me. I assisted other students with their studies and was active in other fields, and they were sure that I would come through this present test also. (I could feel my heart thumping. Their words and their confidence moved me; despite the dreadful thing that had happened in my family, they still regarded me as their comrade!)

But they were sure I would understand that I could not continue as a student in this faculty. They had no wish, however, to block my future career; they knew that I was not to blame for my father and they would try to ensure that I could continue my studies at some other faculty. And they even asked me if I had thought about what area of study I might opt for.

That question caught me unawares. Anxious not to waste this moment of magnanimity, I replied that I had been thinking about law.

It was not until half-way through the summer that we received the first letter from my father. He told us his address and asked us to write and tell him about our state of health and how we were coping. We were not to worry our heads about him, though for his part he was deeply concerned about us, and hoped in particular that Mother would not get upset unnecessarily as it could only make her condition even worse. The last line of that shortish letter, which was written on both sides of lined paper and looked as if it was torn out of a school notebook, was addressed to me. An individual may make mistakes or even commit blunders, for which he must then atone, my father wrote, but this did not mean he should lose his belief in the noble idea for which many people had suffered and on which all of us had never ceased to pin our hopes.

I knew that someone had read this letter before me (his signature was appended to the beginning of the letter), so I was not sure whether Father’s message wasn’t intended more for that person’s eyes than for my own.