My Golden Trades

The Courier's Story

One

I DIDN'T GET to the institute until nine; they almost never had anything to deliver before then anyway. They seldom had much after nine either. It was summer and most of the employees were on holiday. Besides that, the mainframe computer in Strašnice was down, so there weren't even the usual reams of print-outs to deliver. I took the stairs to the office on the fourth floor. I don't trust the elevator; I see no reason why elevators should be exempt from the general state of disrepair that holds everywhere and, in any case, I like going under my own steam.

The office was usually occupied by the secretary and the manager. Both were young and sweet, and each was pretty in her own way and liked to chat. The mail, if there was any, would be laid out for me on the table beside the door. Today only the manager was in and my table was empty or, to be more precise, it held only a vase full of gladioli. I said hello, and the manager looked up. 'You needn't have come at all today,' she said by way of welcome.

But I love coming here,' I replied. 'I look forward to seeing you.'

She laughed. 'Have you heard the latest definition of socialism?' And she told me one of the many merciless

jokes against the system we live under, and against which we are forbidden to grumble, for it is allegedly the best, the most just and the most humane way of organizing human affairs. In return, I told her another definition.

The telephone interrupted our illicit diversion. When the manager hung up, she asked, 'Do you know how Julinka is doing?'

I didn't.

Julinka Vandasová was the wife of one of the programmers. I had never met her, but I knew what she looked like from the photographs her husband kept under a sheet of glass on his desk. She looked delicate and gentle. Yesterday she was operated on for a cyst that was supposed to be benign. She had two little girls and all the women in the institute were wondering how Mr Vandas would cope by himself. 'I called Chodov this morning,' the manager announced, 'but Peter hadn't come in yet. Are you going over there today?'

'If they have anything for me.'

'They don't,' she said. 'I've already asked. They've finished work now in Strašnice, and they say there's a terrible jam at the the mainframe in Vršovice.'

'Anyway,' I said, 'maybe something will show up there during the day.'

'Whatever you think. If I were in your place, I could. . ' and she began daydreaming about all the things she could do if all she had to do was run errands. 'If you're going there anyway, take this with you. Nobody reads it, of course, but it's just arrived.' She took several copies of the in-house journal from her drawer. And,' she said, getting up and walking over to the table, 'if you could give Vandas these and say they're for Julinka.' She took three gladioli

from the vase, wrapped them in a damp tea-towel and handed them to me. I slipped them, along with the bundle of magazines, into my pushcart.

'Oh, and Engineer Kosinová wants to give this to someone.' She handed me a three-year-old mail-order catalogue from Neckermann's.

Outside, I was enveloped in a wave of hot air. I hurried across to the shady side of the street and walked towards the Old Town Square. I was wearing light cotton trousers, a short-sleeved shirt and a pair of deer-skin moccasins I'd purchased years ago in Chicago. I'd forgotten all about them until recently, when I started this job, which involves a lot of walking, and I loved them because they were so light and soft. I "was in no hurry: no one was expecting the magazines, the three-year-old Neckermann catalogue could certainly wait as well, though the flowers would soon need water.

Two days before I had brought Mr Vandas several boxes of tape from Letna. He was sitting in his cubicle, but instead of looking at the monitor, he was staring into the forlorn, bulldozed meadow outside the window. There was a half-empty glass of wine in front of him. He asked me if I'd sit and have a drink with him. He'd taken his wife to the hospital that morning. 'You know, I felt strange when we said goodbye,' he confided. 'It didn't feel right, leaving her to the mercy of a stranger who would put her on a table and slice her open. I know,' he added quickly, 'it's what's best, but I think you should have the right to lie down and be cut open for someone else. I was afraid for her, too,' he admitted. 'Still am. For her, for the children — and I'm afraid for myself too. Know what I mean? You hear of someone dying of cancer and the first thing you know you're

checking to see if you've got the same symptoms. I wish things were fairer. For instance, everyone should be allotted a minimum life-span. Forty years, at least. As it is. . My cousin's little girl died late last winter. She wasn't even five. From the time she was three her days were numbered, and in the end, they were feeding her through tubes. We tried to find a healer at the last minute, but it was too late. The poor little thing was buried the first day of spring. The parents weep and what can you say? In the past, you could at least comfort them with the idea that they'd all meet again, but today? I told my cousin to be brave and she said: Why? I didn't know what to tell her. In fact I didn't know what she was really asking me. Not long ago we were driving along the highway to Hradec — Julinka was with me — and on one side of the road there was this brand new fence, a long wire fence, and do you know what was on the other side? Nothing. Weeds, an overgrown, empty field. No construction site, no military training ground, nothing. With this beautiful new fence around it. The fence was five kilometres long — I clocked it — and then suddenly it came to an end. All that nothing was only fenced in from one side. It was like a vision of what we are living through. Do you understand what I'm saying?'

I looked into a bookstore window, though I knew there'd be nothing interesting on display. Even if, miraculously, something good were to be published, they wouldn't put it in the window; they'd keep it under the counter for their friends. Several men, probably construction workers, were standing outside a pub with half-litre glasses of beer in their hands, spending their working hours in pleasant conversation. The repairs to the façades on the Old Town Square were almost finished, and

the square gleamed with newness and colour like a grand Sacher cake; I liked it, and I got enormous pleasure out of just being able to wander about there. Before I found this job I came downtown twice a month at most, and then I was in a hurry to get back home and back to work. But now this job brought me here every day, and I could study the slow progress of repairs to the Týn Church, and peer into the exhibition room of the Town Hall. I could even have gone in, but felt reluctant to do so, for as long as I was moving through the streets with my pushcart in the general direction of my destination, I was working and no one could complain. But I had no business at an art show.

I stopped in front of the Town Hall tower. The first tourists of the morning were beginning to gather on the pavement below the astronomical clock. Tourists from the West were still asleep or perhaps having breakfast, whereas those standing beside me, already burdened with parcels and waiting for the Twelve Apostles to appear when the clock struck the hour, were a group from the empire of our eastern neighbours. I listened to their soft speech, a language that had seduced some of our reckless and gullible ancestors into dreaming dreams of a brotherhood of the strong and the weak. But the conversation didn't seem to be about anything that made sense.

The clock struck, the apostles paraded one by one past the tiny portals, but as always, they remained silent, telling us nothing and then vanishing into their darkness again.

I walked along Ironmonger's Street to Mustek where, in an antique store, I saw a Renaissance armoire costing 180,000 crowns. Doing the work I was doing now, this was the accumulated salary of ten years. I began to plan the story of a courier who decided not to eat, drink, live

anywhere or even read so he could save all his money to buy this antique armoire. Several endings suggested themselves. The courier, who all that time had slept in a cellar and lived on the leftovers he picked off plates in the stand-up buffets, could die of exhaustion. Or he survives but meanwhile — and this was the most plausible outcome — the armoire is sold to someone else. Or, and this was my favourite: he finally drags himself to the shop, where he finds the armoire still waiting for him, but in the meantime the price has doubled.

Just outside the entrance to the subway, a small poster announced in a brief, pointed verse: 'Hey, hey, hey, our pizza's okay kay kay!' I wasn't hungry, but the pizza was surprisingly cheap and there were only about twenty people in the queue, so I decided to indulge in a snack.

In fact, I have no great desire to own a Renaissance armoire, and I make my living as a courier only during the summer months. I have no complaints about the pay; I understand that in the age of long-distance electronic data transfer, interlocking information systems and telecommunications satellites, my job is as archaic, or as folkloric, as a bagpiper, a Buckingham Palace guardsman or a writer. But I have always had a weakness for archaic jobs, even in times when I could, on the whole, choose freely what I wanted to do. I refused to become an engineer or a physician, although my professors tried to persuade me to do so, and although I had inherited a capacity for mathematical thinking from my father. Some time later I committed my first political transgression (I had written an article in praise of Karel Čapek) and when they threw me out of the editorial department of an illustrated weekly, I was offered a job as editor in a factory that manufactured

aircraft engines. I turned it down, not because I feit it was demeaning to be editing an in-house magazine, but because I didn't trust aircraft engines. Had they offered me a similar position in a factory that made hats or mustard, I would have accepted.

As far as I can, I choose occupations that don't trap me within four walls. When I was an editor, I refused to sit in the office, but instead went out on assignments. Even as a hospital orderly, I spent most of my time rushing between the wards, the pharmacy, the morgue and the labs. Sitting behind a desk, there are no surprises. Outside, there is the possibility of a chance encounter.

I would have liked to work for the post office. People look forward to the postman, since most people, unreasonably, expect good news rather than bad. I used to long to bring people a message of great import. Now I'm more modest, and I'd be satisfied with bringing good news. But the post office didn't want me, so instead I took the job of courier in an institute that tests and evaluates air and water pollution across the country. The thing that interested me most about the institute was that a large number of computer programmers worked for it. I had heard a lot about computers but knew little about them and the people who serve them. I understood enough, however, that I could imagine the future belonging to them.

What will that future be like? I recently read an article, purporting to demonstrate that the interpersonal relationships of computer programmers suffer because of their constant contact with the computer. It used to be, the author went on to say, that a person could carry on a conversation only with another person. There was no other choice if he wanted to talk or to make love, even though

that other person might, at times, have seemed dull and stupid, or even deceitful.

But now you can have a conversation with a computer; a computer not only understands, but replies. Moreover, you know the computer will not deceive you, or leave you; it will always be there, and may even outlive you. Soon, the article argued, you will be able to sit down in front of a friend of the sixth generation or so and converse with it wisely, as you could do with no human being. Can you love a computer, too? If the operator asks that question at all, the author suspects that yes, he will love it and, moreover, the computer will love him back. Who else could they love without being unfaithful?

It was a variation on the theme of robots, our future masters. It was neither inspiring nor, fortunately, very believable.

Because the results of the institute's work, important though they were, produced nothing but public concern, it did not enjoy official favour. It did not even have its own building. Its employees worked at two sites at opposite ends of the city. And, though a quarter of its employees were programmers, the institute had had its only mainframe computer confiscated, so the programmers had to travel to three other locations where they could get an hour or two of computer time to process their information on the state of our environment.

Because data transmission was something you can only read about in this country, the need for a courier became obvious. His — my — job was to deliver from one workplace to another everything that needed delivering. Sometimes it was just the newsletter, at other times a box of diskettes, bundles of punch cards or reams of computer print-outs.

Often there was nothing at all or, like today, flowers. In such cases, I would sit for a while in the modern hall of the institute in the Southern City — an enormous complex of high-rise apartments — and read a book, or study the WordPerfect manual that Engineer Klíma pressed upon me with the injunction that I must not leave the institute without some useful insight into the things a computer can do. In any case, he claimed, this knowledge would certainly be useful in my own profession.

I finally got my slice of Okay Pizza and left the gloomy passageway. A circular bench was occupied by tourists also eating pizza. A dark-haired woman, perhaps Italian or Spanish, was sitting on the lap of her Italian or Spanish boyfriend, feeding him. She had a very short skirt, short legs, and a firm left breast. Her boyfriend's hand covered the right one. I have never been to Italy or Spain, though I have always felt drawn to those countries, not so much by their famous historical attractions as by my theory that the people there are of a passionate nature, with whole, integrated characters and thus with interesting stories to tell. But perhaps I'm wrong; this beautiful young woman probably worked in a department store, and her story wouldn't be much different than the stories of our Czech girls who work in Kotva or Máj here in Prague. She noticed that I was observing her and stuck her tongue out at me. I looked away, above her. For the first time in my life I noticed an enormous clock which, not surprisingly, displayed some unreal time.

I started up Wenceslas Square towards the subway station. I don't find walking through the city distracting. In no time I'm alone, composing a story, a speech or a letter in my head. I don't enjoy writing letters, but sometimes I

like to imagine writing to women I have loved, or even to authors who've drawn me to them with a sentence, an image or an idea. I also write imaginary letters to important personages — but such letters tend to be brief, and questioning rather than reproachful. I actually wrote some of the love letters, but so far, not a single one of the other kind.

In the subway train there was a group of young girls, probably students, or apprentices from one of the department stores. They were not wearing uniforms, yet they all seemed alike, as though they were all from the hand of a single uninspired and untalented artist. I took one of the newsletters out of my bag and opened it:

INTERNAL DIRECTIVES AND INSTITUTIONAL PRINCIPLES FOR THE USE OF THE F.C.S.N. FOR THE PURPOSES ESTABLISHED BY THE DECLARATION OF THE F.M.F., M.F., CSR, SSR, AND THE U.R.O. # 21/1986 SB., ON THE F.S.CP.

Deciphering the headlines immediately absorbed all my attention, and while I read the details about the Fund for Cultural and Social Needs, the train rushed through the dark tunnel, carrying me to my next destination.

It was a six and a half minute walk from the subway station to the institute. The horizon on all sides was punctuated by blocks of grey, mostly unfinished pre-fab high-rise apartments with enormous broad-shouldered cranes towering above them; inspiration for poets who did not have to live there. But the walk itself was pleasant. There was a meadow on one side, and the pavement was separated from the road on the other side by a thick hedge of wild rose. With a little imagination, you could pretend you were walking down to the beach on the Baltic coast.

A fat guitarist was sitting in the porter's office. Students from the conservatory took turns working shifts on the door: the guitarist, a violinist and a clarinet player. All of them had the same peculiarity: they took no notice whatever of what went on outside the porter's booth. The guitarist had a girlfriend with him, and she was sitting on the table with her back to the new arrivals, symbolically emphasizing the wall between the world of the conservatory students and that of the computer programmers. Unobserved, I walked past the porter's lodge, then down several corridors before I came to the door to the main hall of the institute.

The building was new, clean, and full of light. What I liked most about it was a small atrium where, thanks to the efforts of the female programmers, dragon trees, dieffenbachia, plectranthus and even a tiny palm tree I was unable to classify flourished.

There was no one in the hall except a little girl sitting at a table drinking milk from a carton. I thought she must be Engineer Vandas' daughter, and I asked her where her father was.

She shrugged her shoulders and handed me a piece of coloured paper. 'Look what I drawed.'

The picture showed a bed, and on the bed was a figure sliced in two, with flowers laid on her breast.

'Who's that?' I asked.

'It's Mama, of course,' she said.

There was a fresh item on the notice board, a clipping from Lidová demokracie.

MYSTERY UNRAVELLED

Suva: After a sixty-five-year investigation, the Fiji police recently detained an eighty-two-year-old confidence man, R. Tama, who, according to police spokesmen,

had 'dishonoured a hundred and thirty-two women and girls.' The police had long known about the octogenarian Romeo but lacked evidence. They later discovered that all of the women had subsequently perished in a coconut grove not far from Tama's place of residence. Another remarkable circumstance, however, was the fact that all of them had died when a coconut had fallen on their heads. The mystery was solved when Constable Ratilau discovered a personal computer and a large number of programmes under a mattress stuffed with palm leaves in Tama's air-conditioned apartment. Tama had used the computer to calculate when a coconut from a particular tree would fall. Then he would send his 'wives' to lie under the tree. Sources close to the investigation said that an unnamed Japanese electronics firm had, not without profit, helped to produce Tama's computer programmes.

Mr Bauer was just walking past and, noticing my look of disbelief, explained that Mr Vandas had send this report to the papers as part of a bet he'd made with someone that people would believe almost any nonsense about computers. He wrote this story, sent it off — and won.

Computer programmers love practical jokes. Once Mr Klíma added some built-in commands to the master programme used by Mrs Rybová. Suddenly, her terminal emitted a bubbling sound and a message flashed on the screen: Water is entering your computer/ Shut off mains water at once! Rybová ran out of her office, yelling for someone to turn off the water. In addition to playing jokes on each other, the programmers play tennis, go on long

weekend hikes, and occasionally get together, drink wine and tell stories, all so they won't go crazy from constant conversation with their computers.

I walked through the offices, but they were all empty. I put the catalogue on Miss Kosinová's desk; the gaudy cover looked out of place among the test reports and specialist magazines. Miss Kosinová was a group leader at this site, and I wasn't surprised that the catalogue was for someone else; she was always finding things for someone else. I couldn't imagine her wasting her time leafing through a catalogue. She had never married, they said, because a family would interfere with her work. But the real reason, it seemed to me, was her kindness. She was so kind, so concerned for others, that she could not serve two masters; the feeling that she was neglecting one of them would have been unbearable.

The next hall contained only a small desk-top computer, and it was there that I found them all, including Miss Kosinová and the only member of the Communist Party in the institute, Mrs Rybová. In the middle of the room, seated at the computer, was Mr Vandas with his younger daughter on his knee. His good-natured, bearded face showed tension or more likely pain. The coloured monitor displayed a two-lane highway with cars flashing by in opposite directions. Mr Vandas directed his car with subtle movements of his joystick, passing on the left, rejoining the flow while adroitly avoiding the cars that were hurtling towards him. Brightly lit cities, petrol pumps, bridges and side-roads flashed by, and silhouetted on the horizon were high mountains, perhaps the Rockies themselves, where the driver was heading.

The others in the room were so intent on the game that

they didn't notice me come in. I was somewhat surprised, for I was used to finding the programmers in their own cubicles or, when they managed to get some time on the mainframe computer in Strašnice, on Letni or in Vršovice, they were scarcely here at all. Mr Vandas had just successfully cut in on three cars in a row while the onlookers breathed sighs of relief, and it was then I understood that they'd all gathered here to show him their support, since his wife had just had an operation.

The moment I stepped into the room, I was aware of an unusual atmosphere full of kindness and compassion. As a matter of fact, whenever these people asked me to deliver something that it was part of my job to deliver anyway, they always asked first whether they weren't putting me to too much trouble, then hastened to assure me they were in no hurry and if it was inconvenient now, I could bring them the tapes tomorrow. The kindly Miss Kosinová was certainly one of the reasons for this exceptional atmosphere. Several times, when I saw her dispirited by the sheer number of impediments she and her colleagues faced, I wanted to tell her that she was creating something far greater than a bunch of programmes. Moreover, the work they were doing here was important. To make light of the impediments was to make light of the work.

At last Mr Klíma noticed me and asked if I wanted to sit down at his computer and practise WordPerfect for a while, now that his terminal was free. So as not to offend him, I agreed and he led me away to his office. Usually Mr Klíma didn't talk much, but on the way he told me they'd operated on Mrs Vandas the night before. Everything had turned out well, she was in intensive care now but they expected to transfer her to a regular ward the next day. He

switched on his computer, stepped back and with a smile of encouragement, said, 'It's all yours.'

The first time he sat me down at his computer, he had complained that they only had two terminals here, and that this was one of them. Two computers for twenty programmers! 'In the West, anyone who wants can buy something like this for a month's wages. But they can't import them because of the embargo. And for my monthly wages, the most I could buy over there would be a box of diskettes. This computer,' he informed me, 'was smuggled here all the way from Taiwan.'

If that were the case, I asked, why couldn't we manufacture computers here ourselves?

He explained to me that we could probably manage the electronics, but we'd still have to import hard disks. They aren't embargoed, but no company can get the currency to buy them. And Mr Klíma waved his hand dismissively, as though he were driving away an oppressive dream. I had only a vague notion of what he meant by a hard disk, but I understood that the programmers' work was not proceeding according to plan. In that, at least, it was not unlike the work of most of us have to do.

I sat down at the keyboard, slipped a system disk into the upper drive and a file disk into the lower. Messages began appearing on the screen, following one another so rapidly that I had no time to read them. When I got the A> sign, I wrote, as I had been instructed several days before, A: WP, and then I sent this strange code into the machine's innards by pressing the key marked 'Return'. The diabolical machine immediately announced, in English: 'Bad Command or File Name!' But it offered no advice about what to do. I repeated my command, and the machine,

with astonishing speed, repeated its message. I stared helplessly at the screen and waited, afraid to turn around because I was certain I'd forgotten something quite basic and, in asking Mr Klima's advice, would somehow betray the kind effort he had exerted on my behalf. 'You forgot to replace the system disk with the programme disk,' he said finally, behind me. 'How is it supposed to call up WordPerfect if it doesn't have it?'

I changed the disks and sent my commands to the computer, which now whirred and clicked, reminded me that it was from Utah (where, unlike Spain and Italy, I had once been) and then presented me with a blank screen, an invitation to write.

So I wrote: Dear Mr President

I looked around. A satisfied smile appeared on Mr Klima's round, clean-shaven face. 'Go ahead and write whatever you feel like,' he said. 'We can wipe it out later.' And he sat down at his desk and began to leaf through some computer print-outs.

You are probably used to getting a lot of requests and complaints, I continued. I didn't like this introductory sentence, so I gave the computer instructions to wipe it out and it did so with a speed that still astonished me. Then I wrote:

I know that you are very busy, but I am not writing with a request or a complaint. I would only like to express the sympathy, or rather the regret, that you cause me to feel. I remember your inauguration ceremony, when you took your oath of office and were evidently moved to tears. At the time, I thought how hopelessly isolated you must be if you had no one around you to point out how inappropriate your

tears were. After all, you accepted your position at a time so full of sorrow and despair that it brought shame rather than glory to your name. I have tried, several times, to listen to your speeches, for I was curious about the message you wanted to convey to us. After all, I am a citizen of this country and I also try (though I am forbidden to do so) to convey something to the people who live here. So I listened to you and shared with you the horror, the despair of a man who accedes to the throne and surveys his invisible subjects, to whom he may, indeed to whom he must, convey something, and at the same time does not know what to say because he has nothing to say.

I remembered the flowers that by now must have been wilting in my bag. I quickly commanded the computer to wipe out the text, and I went to look for Mr Vandas. I found him in the hall with Miss Kosinová, who, perhaps because she doesn't have children of her own, behaves all the more maternally to those around her. They were giving food to his two little girls.

'Do you know what?' he asked, rinsing out the milk bottle. 'They've just registered the eight millionth chemical. Wait a minute, I'll show it to you.'

What he brought was not the chemical itself, just a piece of paper on which he had written: 2-(4-chloro-5-etocy-2fluorophenyl)-4,5,6,7,-tetrahydro-3methyl-2 H-indazol.

'How long can they go on getting away with this?' he asked.

As if summoned to answer that gloomy question, the youthful Mr Bauer appeared in the hall. I knew him as a quiet man whose glum, rather dreamy expression reminded

me of that of a poet, but now he announced loudly: 'I've just finished my calculations. In five years, the Jeseníky Mountains will be kaput, and in seven, the Beskyds and the Šumava.'

Mr Vandas put the flowers next to a picture of his wife. 'How about the Tatras?' he asked.

'I don't have the Tatras, the Slovaks are doing them. If it wouldn't be too much trouble,' he said, turning to me, 'I have some print-outs here that should go to Dr Myslivec in Komořan. But there's no hurry; he'll be at lunch now anyway. '

'Of course,' I said.

His elder daughter handed me a piece of paper with a drawing on it. There were three green trees, with coloured birds flying among them, and several animals grazing on the grass, of which I could only safely identify a giraffe. There were no people.

'What's this you've drawn?'

'It's the Garden of Eden,' she said. 'It's for Mama, when she comes home.'

'Can't those forests be saved?' I asked Bauer.

'They could,' Bauer explained. 'But people would have to die out first. Of course, if this keeps up, they'll die out anyway, but not before they destroy everything.'

'The process could be slowed down,' Miss Kosinová explained to me, 'if we invested in conservation, but there's no money, and there's going to be less and less. It's enough to make you despair.'

'The only question,' said Bauer, 'is will the forests die out in five years or in ten. I recently ran the Krkonoše and the Jizerské Mountains through the computer. They write about all the reforestation going on, but nothing will ever grow

there any more. And before some mutant species that thrives on sulphur establishes itself, there'll be nothing but rocks left.'

'I don't think it's so hopeless,' said Miss Kosinová. 'People will eventually come to understand that they're destroying the world they have to live in.'

'Sure, people will — maybe,' Bauer admitted. 'But the guys on top couldn't care less. They don't give a damn about our calculations.'

The younger girl began to cry.

'There, there now,' said Miss Kosinová. 'You see, you're only just scaring little children.'

I went with Bauer to get his papers. 'The forest situation doesn't seem so hopeless to her because she's not working on it,' he complained. 'But you should hear her when she's talking about her water full of salmonella. If it were up to me,' he went on, 'I'd devise a programme that would tell us how to take all the garbage that's destroying us and render it harmless before we throw it out — but no one would have it, not even if I gave it away.'

'Do you really think humanity won't survive?' I asked.

'Pretty much,' he said. 'This is how it is: our water is down the drain, the seas are full of oil and all kinds of poison, the air — well, you can see for yourself what kind of shape that's in, forests all over the world are dying or being cut down, soils are being eroded and degraded, the deserts are expanding and the gene pool is shrinking. Add in the degenerating ozone layer, plus a Chernobyl every once in a while, the awful waste products they're cramming down every big hole they can find, and — you just heard Vandas— the hideous new shit they're constantly creating. . '

'How long do we have?' I asked.

'Well,' he said, thoughtfully, 'you could more or less calculate it.' He handed me a bundle of print-outs, I stuffed them into my bag and we parted.

At the bus stop, I discovered that the bus to Komořan had left a few minutes ahead of me, and the next one wouldn't be along for fifteen minutes. As I was taking a book out of my bag to read, I heard a tapping sound behind me, like the sound a blind person makes. And sure enough, when I turned around, there was an enormous old man with a white cane. I had seen him here several times before at this time of day; he was probably going somewhere for lunch. Usually, he had someone guiding him, but this time he was alone, so I asked him if I could be of any help. He thanked me and said that he'd be very grateful if I could take him through the underpass to the other side. He had a rather strange accent, perhaps from Ostrava, or even further east.

As I led him down into the underpass, he counted the steps. When he reached ten, he said, with regret in his voice, 'That's as far as I can count.'

His admission surprised me. 'Where are you from?' I asked.

'From Arobidzhan. In Asia.'

'Somewhere in Russia?'

'It's at ninety-one latitude and fifty-six longitude. Right where they cross.'

'There, you see, you can count to more than ten.'

'No, they told me, and I remembered it.' He started counting the stairs again up to ten. I continued for him to sixteen. By that time we were at the bottom.

'You know how to count?' He seemed astonished. 'How far? To a hundred?'

'About that.'

'Are you a legionnaire?'

'No, why did you think that?'

"There were legionnaires in Arobidzhan. They spoke Czech too.' He began to count the steps going up. When he got to ten, he didn't stop as he'd done before, but merely repeated, on each step, 'Ten, ten, ten.'

'I'm not from Arobidzhan,' I said. 'I've never even heard of it. Is it in Siberia?'

Further than that.'

'I'll find it on the map.'

'Are you a geography teacher?'

'What makes you think that?'

Tou have a map at home.' He stopped to catch his breath.

'I've got a lot of maps at home.'

'Aren't you afraid? Or are you from the cartographical institute?'

'No,' I said, 'I'm a courier.'

'Are you delivering letters?'

'No, other things.'

'Aha,' he said, 'Summonses, warrants, verdicts. Piff, paff, boom!'

'No,' I said. 'I've already said, I'm not from Arobidzhan.'

'That's too bad,' he said. 'You should see it in winter when the Northern Lights come out. Beautiful! And the snow! The harder the times, the more snow there was. And wolves. You'd be interested, because I'll bet you're not really a courier, I'll bet you're one of those artists.'

I was surprised. 'How did you know?' I said.

'Not a musician,' he said. Tou have no ear for music. Just for people. But that's important too.'

We were approaching the exit to the street. In a low voice he counted off the last stairs: 'Ten, ten, ten.'

'Which bus number are you taking?'

'The long bus,' he said. 'To Vrsovice. But you don't have to wait, I'll ask for help.'

In Komořan, I got out at the last stop and savoured the view of the wooded hilltop, but I had to go in the opposite direction, down to the river. The asphalt was sticky in the heat and there wasn't a cool spot to be had anywhere. I walked across a large, sun-baked area and came to a bar, toyed for a moment with the idea of going in, but continued on along a street lined with villas. In the middle of the road, an enormous crane was lifting a steel pipe. Two men in overalls were looking on, a third was sitting in the shade of the machine, drinking beer. Without removing the bottle from his mouth, he signalled to me with his free hand to wait until the gigantic pipe had been set in place in the ditch.

I was standing outside a villa with a cherry tree laden with fruit just inside the fence. Several branches were overhanging the street, but not a cherry was left on them.

I smelled the cherries, at least, and watched while the crane operator skilfully manoevred his unstable load into position. When it was situated properly in the ditch, he turned off the engine and got out. All four men now looked into the hole with approval, then wandered over to a wooden caravan trailer. I could see a case of beer in the shade underneath it.

The institute was at the top of a small hill in a one-storey wooden structure that reminded me of the buildings the Germans constructed during the war for various emergency contingencies; some were used as field hospitals. It was old

and no longer smelled of wood inside, but rather of stale tobacco smoke and old paper, huge piles of which were stacked everywhere. Dr Myslivec's office was at the end of a long corridor lined with heaps of brochures, books and parcels. No one was in. The whole building seemed empty. After all, what would anyone be doing here in this heat? I took the parcel of print-outs from my bag, put it down next to the other bundles of paper in a place where, as far as I could determine, Dr Myslivec could not miss them. Then, one of the glass doors opened and a young woman in a light blouse and a denim skirt looked out.

I said hello.

'You're always smiling,' she said, 'even when you're dragging that heavy bag behind you.' She was rather pretty, though her hair was dyed several different colours.

'But my bag is on wheels,' I said. 'And why shouldn't I smile at you?'

'But you smile even when no one is looking at you.'

I couldn't understand how she could know what I did when no one was looking at me.

'I'll bet this heat is making you thirsty,' she said. 'Would you like me to make you a coffee?.'

'I can't put you to the trouble, not in this heat.'

'I'll have one too. Then you can tell me why you're always smiling.'

Her office looked like all the others. Three desks and a little table with a hotplate. She pointed to an empty chair. 'Won't you sit down?' On a cupboard among stacks of dusty papers there was a forgotten vase. Geraniums and cyclamens bloomed in the windows.

'Well, are you going to tell me?' She said, sitting down opposite me. 'Would it bother you if I smoked?'

'You're the one who's at home.'

'That'll be the day,' she said. 'I'm always surprised at anyone who can smile like that.'

'But you don't do yourself any good by looking glum.'

'Then why do most people look glum?' She stood up and began making the coffee.

'You didn't answer my question.'

'Maybe they don't like being in this world.'

'And do you?'

'Well, once you're here

She handed me the coffee. It was hot, but I swallowed it as quickly as I could to avoid this conversation.

'I would have said the same thing myself once, but since my first husband died, it's become harder and harder.'

'Did he die recently?'

'No, it was six years ago. But it was — awful.' She looked at me. Her eyes had the colour the sky above the city sometimes has. When I looked into them more closely, I realized that they shifted slightly back and forth, as though she couldn't keep them steady. 'He was dying for an awfully long time. It was Parkinson's Disease. They had a programme about it on TV not too long ago. Did you see it?'

'I don't have a television.'

'You don't have a television?' She was shocked at my poverty. How could someone who didn't even have a television smile?

I said, 'I don't want one. I've got a lot of books at home, and I'd rather read.'

'You're right about that. It does eat up your time. But what's a body to do all evening?' She finished her cigarette, pulled another out of the packet, then put it back. She had slender, pretty hands, but her fingers trembled slightly.

'Did you remarry?'

'Of course,' she said. 'And I'm not smiling any more.' She tried to smile. 'This certainly can't be your profession.'

'Why don't you think so?'

'If you did this all the time, you wouldn't smile.'

I said nothing.

'Also, you wouldn't be wearing shoes like that,' she said, pointing at my moccasins. 'You'd have tennis shoes.'

'Well,' I admitted, somewhat taken aback by this feminine logic, 'I have done other things in my life.'

'Yes, and so have I. And do you enjoy this work?'

'Why not? It's OK for a while.' I drank the coffee and stood up to go.

'Next time you come, stop by,' she suggested. 'Too bad you can't bring me something.'

'What would you like?'

She shrugged her shoulders. A body's always waiting for something. You know, some good news. Even though you know by now there's no point. I found that out when Karel died.' She took my coffee cup and went to rinse it out. She didn't offer me her hand to shake, but as she walked by me, she brushed me lightly with her hip.

There were three name-plates outside her door: Anna, Jiřina and Natasha something or other. The Russian name seemed to suit her best.

Outside the wooden caravan, the four workers were sitting in the sun, stripped to the waist and drinking beer. They seemed at least as content with their fate as I was. I walked across the gaping ditch they had dug on a tiny wooden bridge. My working day was over.

At home, I found the intersection of ninety-one east latitude and fifty-six north longitude. It was close to

Krasnojara, but there wasn't a trace of Arobidzhan, nor did it seem likely that there would be any Northern Lights. Summonses, warrants, sentences, perhaps. And snow. The harder the times, the more snow. You fall into a snowdrift and it's the last they hear of you.

Two

THE MAINFRAME COMPUTER in Strašnice is operating again. The Strašnice computer is located in the basement of a tall building belonging to an import-export company. I brought them three bags of blank tape and I'm supposed to pick up tapes with data for delivery. In an enormous subterranean vault, where the air-conditioning hums and smoking is strictly forbidden, the computer screens glow and men and women in white lab coats hurry to and fro. At one of the terminals I recognize the tall, gaunt figure of Mr Bauer. He doesn't see me; his dreamy eyes are fixed on the screen where numbers are marching up and down, aligning themselves into columns. Bauer is collating data on the atmospheric pollution above the Czech mountain ranges. I look over his shoulder. Aerosols and sulphur dioxide are recorded in micrograms; lead, cadmium, copper and zinc are in nanograms — but beyond that I can't make sense of the numbers.

The tapes are waiting for me on the small table beside the entrance. The top reel has a piece of white tape stuck to it with Šumava written across it with a ball-point pen. I stuff the destruction of the Šumava forest into my bag. Through the windows of the glass hallway I see that it's

begun raining heavily. I sit down in a soft chair and watch the traffic in the hall. At a small table next to me are two Arabs, gesticulating violently and talking to each other in loud voices, certain that no one can understand them.

During the war, and then in the 1950s, it was good news when we got a letter from father or the uncles. It meant they were still alive somewhere in the camps or in prison, and that there was still hope we'd meet again. Of course in the end, they killed both my uncles.

I also considered it good news when my wife, whom I loved, sent a message that she was looking forward to seeing me. Genuine good news always relates to encounters that take place in love or in freedom — and best of all, in both conditions: a loving encounter in a state of freedom. The best news of all told us about a free encounter with God's love, which is why I am wary of giving unconditional credence to it.

I delivered rhy first message when I was still a student. It was pouring with rain outside like this too, but it must have been sometime in early spring, because a couple of days before that they had come to arrest my father. Early in the morning someone rang the doorbell. At that time, every ring of the doorbell made my mother nervous, so I went to answer it. It wasn't them, however, but one of my former classmates from high school. I can still see him standing there, drenched, inadequately dressed in a worn anorak, his ginger hair wet and stringy, his face unshaven, his eyes hollow and red from smoke or lack of sleep. Before I'd had a chance to invite him in, he pushed his way into the flat and closed the door behind him.

'What's up?' I wanted to know.

He assured me I had nothing to be afraid of; he'd made

sure no one was following him.

'Why should anyone be following you?'

He explained that they were after him, but he'd managed to lose them.

I wanted to know what they were after him for.

It was better I didn't know, he said.

Very well, but what did he want of me?

I had to hide him. At least until tomorrow. And to deliver one message.

'Me? Why me?'

'Who else have I got to turn to?' he asked. 'They won't look for me here, you have a national hero in your family. And I know you won't turn me in, because you've been in prison yourself.'

'That was during the war.' I felt myself becoming afraid.

'Makes no difference,' he assured me. 'A prisoner won't betray a fellow.'

'They were here a week ago and took my father away.' I was convinced they'd made a mistake, but I didn't say so out loud.

This made him uneasy. 'Is your place being watched?'

'No. At least I don't think so.' It had never occurred to me that we might still be under surveillance. After all, they'd searched our flat so thoroughly. And the rest of us? Surely they had nothing to suspect us of.

My mother appeared and asked why I didn't invite my friend in.

Then we sat in the living-room, drinking tea and pretending to reminisce about things we'd done together. The second my mother left the room he asked me for a piece of paper and an envelope and hastily scribbled something down. He put the paper into an envelope and

stuck it shut. 'Could you deliver this for me?' he asked.

'What's in it?'

'You saw — a letter.'

'What's it say?'

'That's irrelevant. But it mustn't fall into their hands. If. . if they go after you, you have to destroy it.'

'Wouldn't it be better if you delivered it yourself?'

Hadn't he told me they were after him, and that it was a miracle he escaped?

Very well, why didn't he stay until dark when he could deliver it himself.

'It's worse at night than in broad daylight.'

This letter would change everything. He promised. As soon as I brought him a reply, he would disappear, because he would know where to go, and how.

I had to bring him back a reply as well?

'You're not going to leave me in this alone, are you?' he said. 'Surely you understand, now that they've arrested your father.' He gave me a name and address and told me to memorize it. He told me how to get there as well: I had to take the tram and trolley-bus and then walk the rest of the way. And I had to be constantly on the lookout. If I saw them coming after me. .

Yes, he told me that already. But how should I destroy the letter?

You could eat it.'

I went to explain to my mother that my friend would be staying until evening, but I had to go to a lecture. I got dressed to go out. I was afraid, and angry. He could at least have told me why they were chasing him, why I should have taken this risk for him, and what was in the letter. What if they caught me before I had a chance to swallow

it? Besides, I had never had any burning desire to deliver spy messages.

He came into my room one more time. He was very nervous. 'If you're thinking of turning me in,' he said, 'they won't believe you anyway, not when they find me here.'

I wasn't hurt by his insinuation because the possibility had occurred to me. But despite his threats I could never have brought myself to turn someone over to the police who probably hadn't done anything.

I set off in the rain, which had at least emptied the streets. In those days, there were so few cars that I would certainly have noticed if I were being followed. My errand took me all the way to Jinonice on the outskirts of Prague, a village with narrow streets and low country houses. Occasionally a dog barked at me, and I would start with fright. Here, on the hilltop, the rain had changed to sleet that slid down my forehead and into my eyes.

Who was I was going to see? What if he were an agent for some spy service? Or head of an entire network they had just uncovered, and I stepped into his house as they were arresting him?

I couldn't drive out the scarecrows they had put out in my mind at the many political schooling sessions I'd had to attend. They, the secret police, were still fresh in my memory. Grey faces, grey suits. I didn't want to admit it, but they reminded me of the men who had turned over our flat at the beginning of the war, except that those men had spoken German.

I was twenty-two, I wanted to paint pictures and write love poetry, not visit houses I might never leave.

The person I was taking the message to lived in a cottage with a well-kept garden. The tree trunks were painted with

lime, the flower-beds were protected with evergreen branches and the leaves had been carefully raked from the grass. The curtains were drawn. I checked several times to make sure I'd got the right house. There was no name on the door. I rang the bell.

For a long time nothing moved. I seemed to be able to discern the outline of a face behind the curtains. I remained still; so did the face. I longed to tear up the letter, throw it off a bridge and never come here again.

However, my uninvited guest was waiting for me back home and if I didn't deliver the letter, he wouldn't leave. He would stay with us until they caught him or I drove him out, and then they would arrest him. He, of course, would tell them where he had hidden.

I rang the bell again. At last the door opened. There stood a man with a wreath of white hair around a bald head. His face was sickly yellow, he had a sharply protruding nose and on it, a pair of spectacles with thick lenses. 'What do you want?'

I asked him if he was — , the man I was looking for.

He said he was. 'And what do you want?'

'I have a letter for you.'

He nodded and invited me in.

I stepped into a small entrance hall with a floor of well-scrubbed boards. A few pairs of shoes stood beside a painted wooden box, along with a sweet-smelling basket of apples. A cross hung over the doorway. Through another half-open door I could see shelves full of books. I handed him the letter. He took it carefully, scarcely touching it. He put it on the box, took a penknife out of his pocket and slit the envelope open. He stared for a while at the paper with the message on it, then he folded it and put it back in the

envelope and handed it to me. 'I don't know what this is about. I don't know this person. I don't understand what he wants from me.'

This took me by surprise. 'But he… I mean you… he knows you,' I stammered. 'He sent me here with this note. He's expecting a reply.'

'So I see,' he said. 'My reply is that I don't know him and I don't understand what he wants from me.'

He spoke with such emphasis, with such exaggerated certainty, that it occurred to me he was lying. He was afraid of me. He didn't know me and was therefore afraid that I was part of a trap.

I didn't know what to do. I refused to take the letter back home. I asked him to destroy it. Then I suggested that he come with me because the writer of the letter was waiting at my place and desperately needed to speak to him.

He took the envelope from me and went into the next room. I heard a stove door snap shut. Then silence. Nothing moved; from somewhere high up, a cat miaowed.

If he came with me, what would my mother say? She was already frightened enough without me bringing a stranger into our flat. The neighbours might notice. Or was this a trap to catch both of us? What if all of this had to do with my father's arrest? What if they simply wanted to test me to see how I would behave, and, for some reason, they wanted to test this man as well. Or perhaps he really did not know what any of this was about, and I was behaving like a fool.

He appeared at last, wearing a black, threadbare winter coat. 'Well, let's be off,' he said.

We arrived at our flat just after mid-day. I didn't think anyone had seen us. Most people were at work.

The two of them did know each other. I left them alone

in the next room, but even though they lowered their voices, I could tell that they were arguing. Half an hour later they announced that they were both going. As he was leaving, the old man said, 'God bless you, and forgive me. These days you just don't know who's the good messenger and who's the evil one.'

It wasn't until years later that I fully realized just how oppressive and destructive a state is in which people are afraid to accept messages brought to them by a stranger. I never heard from either man again and so I never found out what the message I delivered said.

Outside it had stopped raining. The Arabs had long ago disappeared somewhere.

The guitarist was on duty in the porter's lodge again, and because his girl-friend wasn't with him today, he was playing. It was a wild Spanish melody, and he played with such passion and concentration that if a gang of masked bandits had carried the director of the institute out bound and gagged he would certainly not have let it interrupt him. I listened for a while, but my sense of duty did not permit me to stay until the piece was over. I had already spent too long in Strašnice because of the rain.

It was noon, and from a small kitchen adjacent to the hall I could smell soup, as Miss Kosinová made lunch for everyone who didn't eat in the works canteen. 'Did you read,' Mr Klíma was saying to the only member of the Party in the institute, Mrs Rybová, 'that they've set up a special prize for scientists in America?'

'What are you trying to tell me? That we have no prizes here?'

'Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars!' said Klíma gleefully.

'You could really do something with that,' remarked Vandas, his good-natured, bearded face radiating contentment. He was expecting his wife home the following week; she was doing well.

'Certainly, if money is what it takes to get some people thinking,' Rybová shot back. She turned to me. 'Are you going to Komořan this afternoon?'

'If you need me to.'

'I'll leave it here,' she said, pointing to the table.

Klíma called me over, and I knew he wanted to torment me with WordPerfect again.

This time I remembered to change diskettes, and when the computer told me it was ready, I began to write:

Ladies and gentlemen,

Permit me to take advantage of this extraordinary opportunity to address the representatives of all nations and express some of my concerns at least to you—

In the days when I was still working for a literary magazine, an experienced colleague told me always to cut the first paragraph of any article, regardless of who wrote it. It is always expendable, he said.

I erased my paragraph, and then wrote:

I know that many wise words have been spoken in this forum, and I fear there is not a lot I can add. Yet I know as well as you do that we are rushing headlong towards a catastrophe that we refuse to see, that we are hoping to postpone, though we know too that each day we choose postponement over change, we make the catastrophe all the more inevitable. This assembly is like a boat attempting to rescue the drowning while it itself is sinking. I know you must be

quite deaf to the cries for help, to the voices of the sick, the hungry, the innocently imprisoned, the voices of the tortured and the powerless. I know that when you look at our planet, you see below you a sea of flammable liquid waiting for a spark to ignite it. This is our tragedy: we are on the lookout for sparks, while we keep on filling that flammable sea with rubbish, tanker ships full of crude oil, cubic kilometers of gas, the last living forests. We cannot prevent a spark from flying. We must realize at last that it is not just nations that are in danger, it is not just freedom and rights that are threatened, but life itself, as long as we do not stop our insane, headlong race after the mirage of prosperity, the lazy consumption of. .

I felt excited and agitated, as I always am when I feel the desire to communicate too much at once and, at the same time, realize how fruitless my efforts are. You can't change things with words. With what, then? And besides, the telephone had been ringing for about half a minute and no one was answering it. I got up to do so, though I knew it wouldn't be for me. Miss Kosinová got there first. 'Yes, he is,' she said. 'No — oh, that can't be true!. . But just yesterday. .' She laid the receiver down beside the telephone. 'Peter,' she called. 'Peter — the phone.'

The parcel of print-outs was ready for me beside the telephone.

Vandas emerged from his cubicle.

'It's the hospital,' Miss Kosinová said, as though she were wondering whether or not to give him the receiver. 'But it's not good news.' She looked at me and I saw tears running down her cheeks.

Vandas held the receiver to his ear and listened to what

they were telling him. 'Yes,' he said. 'I'm still here.' Then he hung up. He turned to us and said: 'And they told us it wasn't malignant! It wasn't malignant — that's what they said. Everything is malignant.' He sat down and put his head in his hands. Miss Kosinová stood over him and stroked his hair. Others came up to comfort him, while I stood back; I felt out of place, as though I were a parasite on someone else's pain. I was an outsider here. I went back into Mr Klima's cubicle and destroyed another of my pointless, incomplete and undelivered speeches. Then I took the parcel of print-outs, stuffed them into my bag and slipped out of the hall without anyone noticing.

At the subway station I bought three irises.

The door to Natasha's office opened before I had a chance to knock.

'You've brought something again?' she asked.

'Something for you, too.'

She took the flowers. 'Thank you. They're beautiful. They look like orchids. But you needn't have done that. That's not what I meant last time.' She took the vase from the cupboard, dusted it off and filled it with water. 'I'll make some coffee. Or would you rather have some wine? Yesterday was payday,' she explained. 'Otherwise I couldn't afford it. In any case, I'll be short by the end of the week.'

'Do they pay you badly?'

'When I pay the rent, I have a hundred left from the advance. And when I get the rest at the end of the month, I try to send something to my boy — he's in the army.'

'You have a son that old?'

'I was eighteen when I got married.'

'And your second husband?'

She waved her hand dismissively.

'I'm sorry. I didn't mean to pry.'

'Why not? He's in prison. Over in Ostrava.'

I didn't ask further, but she continued. 'He had an enterprising spirit — nothing more. In a normal world, he'd have opened a shop, and that would be it. He understood videos and tape recorders, even though he was a chemist. Just like my first husband — and like me.'

'You studied chemistry?'

'I taught it. Ten years. But then when my husband was arrested — well, they investigated me too. They had nothing on me; I wasn't involved. They were his deals, but they told me I couldn't teach any more.'

'Didn't you fight back?'

'What's the difference? They do whatever they want with you anyway. I was lucky to get this job. The people here are decent — but there's not much money, nor much work either, as you can see. Especially not now. And what about you? Are you going to be coming around for much longer?'

'That doesn't depend on me.'

'And if it did?'

'Another two weeks.'

'See what I mean? And what then?'

I shrugged my shoulders. 'Something will turn up.'

'Well, I don't want to pry. Will you have another drink?'

I said I'd had enough, but she poured herself another glass. 'If you hear of anything half decent, would you let me know?'

'But I have nothing to do with chemistry — not a thing.'

'Neither do I — any more, and I wouldn't want to, either.'

'What would you like?'

She stretched, and then attempted a smile. 'Right now I'd like to go swimming. How about it?'

'I'm not too fond of swimming.'

'Just my luck,' she said. 'My first husband didn't like swimming either. He was born under a fire sign. That was why he started doing what he did, and it was probably why he burnt himself out so soon, too. By the end, he was almost totally paralysed.'

'How old was he?'

'Thirty-one. We went to university together. He was a real athletic type — basketball, tennis, cross-country.' She filled her glass again. 'Am I annoying you with all this talk? But you don't like swimming. And it's hot in here. Aren't you hot?'

I was hot, but I didn't like the idea of swimming in the river, especially one as filthy as the Vltava. So I invited her to a pub near the bus stop, where we could sit in a small garden in the shade.

'Do you think I could leave now?' She was already taking a white handbag out of the cupboard. 'I'll leave the flowers here till tomorrow,' she decided. 'I spend more time here than at home anyway.' She locked the office.

Outside, they were laying another length of pipe with the crane. We had to wait for them to finish, and she put her arm in mine. 'My head's spinning a little,' she said. 'It's the sun. And I haven't had lunch.'

'Why didn't you have lunch?'

'I can't afford it.'

We found an empty table in the garden in the shade of a chestnut tree. The waiter offered us beer and a menu.

'Do you think I could have something to eat? I'll pick something cheap.'

'Order anything you'd like.'

'You haven't told me anything about you yet.'

'That's not important, after all.'

'All right, if it's not important, I'll have the wiener-schnitzel.'

'I was a teacher once myself,' I said. 'But only for half a year.'

'What did you teach?'

'Literature.'

'At university?'

'Yes.'

'Can you tell me something about literature?'

'What do you want to know?'

'What does it mean?'

'It's an encounter.'

'Who with?'

'With another person. The one who wrote the book.'

'I prefer live people.'

'So do I, mostly.'

The waiter brought her food.

'Thank you,' she said. 'You're very kind to me. That's what I thought when I first saw you: maybe that's what he'd have looked like if. .'

'Do you still think about him?'

'I'm sorry, I know it's not — polite.' For a while she ate in silence. Then she said, 'You know, they say that when you have that illness, it's really important how the sick person feels — his mental health. But I did look after him all that time, really well. And then, he couldn't even move, or anything. And Libor came to visit him too.'

'Who?'

'Libor — the one I married afterwards. He and Karel were friends. They worked in the same place. When Karel's illness began, lots of people came to visit, but then there

were fewer and fewer, you know how it is. In the end, only Libor came.'

'Because of you.'

'He helped me. It wasn't until. . But by that time, we knew it was the end.'

'Did your husband know it too?'

'I'm not sure what you mean.'

'Did he know Libor was coming because of you?'

'I don't know. We didn't do anything in front of him that might have. . But now sometimes I wonder… In those final weeks, I would sometimes get ready and go out in the evening… I was awfully tired. . No, not tired, really, but overwhelmed, and so I went out with Libor while my poor husband just lay there. He couldn't even move, or look out of the window to see where I was going. '

'Didn't he ask you?'

'No, he never did. He'd say: go out somewhere, go out and have some fun. You don't want to be cooped up with me all the time. He also asked me to put him in the hospital, but I knew he didn't really want that, that he was terrified of dying surrounded by strangers.'

'So you didn't put him in the hospital?'

'No!'

'That probably meant a lot to him.'

'Do you think so? Those final days keep coming back to me. The horror of it, and at the same time, the relief when it was all over. I was relieved. Don't you think that's awful? Someone I loved dies, and I feel relieved.'

'It's understandable.'

'I sometimes think that what happened afterwards was a punishment. Because I couldn't wait.'

'No, you mustn't think that way.'

'Forgive me. Here you are, treating me to a meal, and I'm carrying on like this.' She drained her glass. 'I only wanted you to know why I never smile. But now I can, now that I've told you all this. Now that you know what I'm capable of.'

Under the table, I could feel her shifting her leg to touch mine. Perhaps she hadn't made love to anyone for ages and was longing to be embraced and therefore offering herself to me. I only had to go with her, or invite her for a stroll in the wood that was just a short walk from here. Then again, perhaps this was just me, a man, imagining her longing. Perhaps she didn't really need to make love, perhaps she merely longed to hear words of absolution. Or she needed both, but felt that if she wanted absolution, she had to offer herself first. So I said something about how I thought she was more capable of good than of bad, then I paid the bill. We parted, saying that we'd certainly run into each other again.

When I went back to the office, the only one left was Miss Kosinová, her eyes red from crying. She told me that Mr Vandas's wife had died from an embolism. The funeral would probably be next Tuesday. Tomorrow they would take up a collection for a wreath. 'But you don't have to contribute,' Miss Kosinová said. 'You didn't know her, after all.'

Three

IN THE FOURTH-FLOOR office only the pretty manager was left. She was reading the satirical weekly Dikobraz and taking great pleasure from the fact that there was even greater chaos elsewhere in the economy than here. 'There's nothing today, again,' she said, welcoming me, 'but they say you should stop by in Vrsovice about nine. The labels have arrived. About twenty packages of them. That is, if you still feel like hauling them around on your last day.'

'I'm actually looking forward to it,' I said. 'I've had nothing to do this week.'

'I wouldn't worry — not for the money you're getting.'

It seemed to me that they were giving me quite enough money for carrying a few extra bags along with the mail, but I said nothing.

'I heard you're going to be cooking something interesting at Chodov today. Is it true?' asked the manager.

'It's a farewell party.' I had let it slip that cooking used to be a hobby of mine.

'And what's on the menu, if I may ask?'

'Chicken à la Rawalpindi,' I said, off the top of my head, because if I like anything about cooking, its the possibility of inventing new and apparently nonsensical taste

combinations.

'Sounds exotic.'

'You're coming to try it out, aren't you?'

'I don't know,' she said. 'The end of the month, one deadline after another, and reports to fill out. And the deputy-director wants the plan for the next six months ready.'

I said I'd be delighted if she could come, and then, as usual, the telephone rang, and I had nothing else to do here anyway.

It was only seven-fifteen — I had a lot of time left before nine. When it's your last day as a courier, you should have something more important to deliver than a bundle of perforated labels. But my letters to the President of the Republic were still not ready to send.

The trolley-bus to Jinonice had long ago been taken out of service and replaced with a regular bus. I went to the last stop and looked around me, feeling perplexed. I hadn't been here in all that time. It was childish to expect nothing to have changed.

I wandered about the housing project for a while in the hope that somewhere at the end of it, I'd find the narrow street with the little country cottages.

This early in the morning, the empty spaces between the high-rises were deserted. The grass was covered with rubbish. Every time there was a gust of wind, large sheets of plastic would rise off the ground and flap in the air like the wings of great doleful birds.

I couldn't remember the name of the street — only the name of the man, which was of no use to me. I would probably only find it in the cemetery.

I had delivered many letters and many messages since

that first one. But I still think that message was the most important of all — at least for me.

In Vrsovice, the mainframe computer was on the second floor; it occupied a huge hall, while the programmers sat in their cubicles in front of their terminals. Miss Kosinová was watching rows of coloured numbers dancing across her screen. The figures stopped and the screen became still. Kosinová looked at it for a while longer, then she turned to me and said, 'You came at a bad time.'

'Is the system down?' I asked.

'No, just overloaded.' She explained that this type of American computer normally has ten times the memory, but the Americans aren't allowed to export computers with that kind of capacity to Czechoslovakia. They had warned our buyer not to attach more than ten terminals, but they'd gone ahead and connected three times that many anyway, hoping they could get the extra memory capacity from somewhere else. They hadn't. 'It's like everything else; we wait in line and hope we can scrounge a few extra minutes. And if we're lucky they let us stay here a couple of extra hours. When there's a greater demand, we always get bumped completely. But it doesn't really matter,' she added. 'We work ourselves to a frazzle and then the results just sit upstairs on somebody's desk. And even if someone does read them, no one does anything about it. Never mind about those labels,' she said, realizing why I had come. 'We'll manage to deliver them somehow.'

The boxes with the labels in them had piled up in the little entrance hall. I stuffed them into my bag, and into the rucksack I brought with me. Altogether, they must have weighed about thirty kilos.

As I finished, the numbers on Kosinová's screen began to

move again. 'Hurrah!' she cried, and ran to her little chair to continue working at a task whose outcome no one was waiting for.

In the porter's lodge, the violinist was on duty today. He stood, legs apart, behind his counter, his violin under his chin and played from memory the solo from the finale of Dvorak's Concerto in A Minor.

I would have loved to listen to him for a while, but I still wanted to get out to Komořan before I began cooking, so I didn't have much time left.

I put the box with the labels down in the hall. Mr Bauer emerged from his cubicle, and when he saw me, he remarked dryly: 'Well, I've worked it out for you.'

'What have you worked out?'

'Don't you remember? Wait, I'll bring it to you. You'll only be interested in the results anyway.'

I went into the kitchen once more to make sure nothing was missing.' The spices stood neatly on the shelf — I'd prepared the curry myself. There weren't many utensils here — two frying pans and two pots, one large and one small. Not a single lid.

'Here it is,' said Engineer Bauer, handing me a sheaf of paper.

I skimmed a column of figures and symbols. At the bottom, the computer had remarked:

LIFE IMPROBABLE IN 2069

LIFE COMPLETELY IMPOSSIBLE FROM 2084 ON

'That leaves us ninety-seven years,' said Mr Klíma, who was looking over his shoulder. 'I'll be exactly a hundred and thirty years old. I'd never have thought it — just think of all the things I won't live to see.'

Mr Vandas, who had come out as well, still had rings of sadness under his eyes. You'll be lucky to live to thirty,' he said darkly. 'If by any chance you should prove too disease-resistant, our health system will make good and sure you won't go on haunting us here for too much longer.'

Many people had come to the crematorium for the funeral ceremony last week. Both the little girls were dressed in coloured dresses and they stood out among the mourners like bright flowers on a black meadow. Vandas did not want a eulogy. It's too late to say what we haven't already said, he explained. So they just played music the whole time. When the curtain was drawn and the coffin began to move towards the fire, the elder of the girls jumped up, leaped over that long fence and ran into the dead area behind it to hold her mother back, since they had all told her she'd only gone out there for a while.

They pulled the girl back, — whispering something in her ear, most probably to be brave.

'I did what I could,' Bauer explained. 'I calculated that by 2025, more than half the budget would be spent on saving the environment. In actual fact, people will never be that determined. Also, I didn't factor in a single nuclear catastrophe, not to mention war, although when you take the number of nuclear generating plants in operation today, and their probable number in 2025, there should be at least three more Chernobyls.'

'Well, thank you very much,' I said.

'Don't mention it,' said Bauer. 'I was interested in this myself.'

'So, are you going to write something for us by way of farewell?' asked Klíma.

'I wanted to nip out to Komořan first. And I have to cook that lunch.'

'As you wish,' said Klíma, somewhat miffed. 'But it's not even half past ten.'

I sat down at the computer. I should have written a few words of farewell. But all I could think of was a quatrain:

All around the city's towers Fall the wildest little showers; But now we're in the mood We'll surely stop a flood!

Still moved by the fresh prognosis of Mr Bauer, I put another quatrain together. Klíma, though he normally did not do so, read the fruits of my labour. 'Did you just write this now?'

'I told you, I was in a hurry,' I said apologetically.

'It's not bad,' he said, delighted. 'Do you want me to print it out?'

He printed both my poems, I stuck the page into my rucksack (I no longer needed my bag) and hurried out of the hall.

Dvořák was still emanating from the porter's lodge, and could be heard from outside the building. In the flower shop they had a single, wilting orchid. I looked around to see if I could see my blind man, but it was too early. Several days ago we'd come back on the same bus. I heard him explaining loudly to someone that in Arobidzhan— which lies on the ninety-first meridian and the fifty-sixth parallel — blind people don't go to school.

'What did you do, then?' a fat man sitting beside him had asked.

'I played the violin,' said the blind man. He lifted his

white cane, put it under his chin and pretended to coax a few plaintive tones out of it. 'I used to play in bars on winter evenings,' he said later. 'While I played, the guests talked, drank vodka and took bites of bread. Sometimes there'd be a blizzard, or the temperature would drop so low that no one could go outside. Then we drank a lot of vodka, and ate a lot of bread.'

'Did you have any bacon to go with the bread?'

'You think too much about bacon!' shouted the blind man. 'Are you a cook, by any chance?'

'What would be wrong with that?'

People around them burst into laughter.

'You haven't got an ear for music, or for people, only for something to fill your face. When there was bacon,' replied the blind man, 'people ate. When there was no bacon, there was salt, and when the salt ran out, there were tears.'

In the corridor of the wooden building I knocked on the familiar door and then entered without waiting for an answer. An unfamiliar woman sat behind one of the desks.

'Are you looking for someone?'

'For Natasha,' I said, someone thrown off balance.

'That's me.'

'Excuse me… I mean, I was thinking the woman who sits at the other desk,' I said, pointing.

'Unfortunately, Anička has the day off today. She had to go to Ostrava.'

'Ah.' I felt strangely put out. 'Can I leave something here for her?' I took out the flower. 'You'll probably have to put this in some water.'

'I'll look after it.'

I gave her the flower. I felt I should write her a message to go with it. Something like: I'm sending you a smile and I

wish you. . Or: Thanks for the trust. Or simply: Goodbye. And my signature. I took out the piece of paper with the print-out of my quatrain. The second one went this way:

In far-off Dubai you do or you die, In the Yukon you ken what you can, In Wooloomooloo there's no one but you— Oh, the end of the world is at hand!

There was no point in signing it; we'd talked but never introduced ourselves.

I folded the paper into a small square and handed it to the real Natasha. 'And would you be kind enough to give her this too, please?' My message was probably bad news, but it could also be understood as good news, if only because it existed at all.

She took the paper from me and promised to pass it on. I thanked her and hurried back to catch the bus so I could get back in time to prepare the Chicken à la Rawalpindi to celebrate my parting with the kind-hearted programmers, and my own career as a courier.