Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light

CHAPTER ONE

1

A crowd had begun to gather at the lower end of the square. Most of the people were young. Some of them Pavel remembered from earlier demonstrations. He had a good memory for faces and even thought he recognized some of the onlookers lounging on the pavement. Like him, they were fixtures on these occasions. They were probably here on duty too, though it was duty of a different kind. Not far away, in front of a large display window full of shoes, was a man with a small movie camera. He didn't recognize the man, though he knew most people in his line of work; perhaps he was a curious tourist, an amateur photographer or someone taking pictures of the demonstrators for the archives of the security police.

But what was he doing here himself? Why were he and his crew filming these events? For television? The network wouldn't broadcast a thing he shot, or rather what they did broadcast would have little to do with what actually happened. Perhaps he was working for the future.

But what was the future?

The future was a time that called into question everything that came before it.

Several uniformed policemen were standing around on the pavement. As usual, it was a peaceful demonstration. No one was shouting slogans, or getting ready to throw stones through shop windows, overturn cars or attack the police. Yet in most of the faces he observed through his viewfinder, there was tension, the nervous anticipation of the inevitable clash that would take place according to precise, though unwritten and not exactly high-minded, principles.

Why had the demonstrators come? What were they trying to prove, or change? What did they believe in that made them willing to endure being beaten, locked up, dismissed from their jobs? Was their protest for some higher cause, or were they there only because there wasn't enough else to interest or motivate them — were they simply bored?

He wanted to ask them, but knew there was an impenetrable barrier between himself and them, a barrier symbolized by the logo on the transmission van and by his camera, a barrier as blatant as the double row of barbed-wire fencing that isolated this country from its neighbours, or at least from the country to which he had once foolishly attempted to flee. Sometimes he felt a vague uneasiness about being on this side of the barrier yet, at the same time, he felt safe. No one would beat him or interrogate him or try to blow him off the street with a water-cannon.

The crowd closed ranks, although there were still no more than a few hundred people in it. A young woman raised a piece of white cloth above her head. It bore the inscription less smoke, more air. He took a shot of the banner, studying the woman's face and hands as he did so.

Her hands were small, almost childlike, with unpainted nails, and they were quivering slightly, perhaps because of the wind straining against the banner. Her face too was childlike, guileless and innocent. For a moment she reminded him of Albina. Where was she and what would she be doing right now? She might be somewhere here on this square holding a sign above her head. He'd put her out of his mind for so long. What would he say to her if she appeared? What would she say to him if she saw him on the pavement, trying to capture her and her presence on an Ampex tape?

She would say: how could you bring yourself to do this? Or she would say nothing at all. Why should she talk to him?

He looked around at the crowd, partly out of professional interest — in case he saw a new banner — but he also wondered if he might not actually catch a glimpse of her. She wasn't here, of course; there were only more uniformed men on the pavement and a lorry with a water-cannon mounted over the cab which had begun moving slowly down from the upper regions of the square. In the same instant the crowd came together and acquired a voice of its own, a low rumble like a swarm of bees or a looming thunderhead. He felt its agitation grow in anticipation of the coming clash.

The clash would be as absurd as all the others before it, but there was no stopping it. Everyone knew this: those who would administer the beatings and those who would be beaten. This utter certainty transformed the raw determination on both sides into movements that almost seemed preordained. Even Pavel found himself hoping that the clash would soon start, not because he was eager for violence, but because he wanted the inevitable to be over with so that he could do his job and leave.

A yellow-and-white car with a large loudspeaker on its roof moved slowly down the square. The amplified voice, sounding more bored than threatening, announced that the gathering was illegal and ordered everyone present to disperse peacefully. The clamour around Pavel grew.

He took a shot of the car with the loudspeaker and then looked back at the woman with the touchingly naive banner. The white cloth in her hands was trembling more obviously now.

When it was over he walked down one of the narrow side-streets to where he had parked his red sports car. He looked at it, as he always did, with affection, then got in and drove off. The road and the pavements were still wet, and the buildings were spattered with water, but anyone who happened to come this way now would be unaware of what had happened here only moments before. He drove as fast as he dared through the narrow, winding streets. He would love to drive somewhere far away, as far away as possible from people, demonstrations and water-cannons, but he'd promised to visit Eva that evening, and

had promised her son that he would stop off at the stadium to watch his game — he was the goalkeeper of a youth soccer team. He was a sweet kid, and Pavel felt a fatherly concern for him. It was certainly more pleasant to demonstrate his interest in the kid by watching a game than by talking to him about school in the evening. First, however, he had to drop in at the studio, look at the tapes and hand over his material.

The news-room secretary told him the boss had asked where he was twice that day. She supposed it was because of the president's birthday. They'd talked about it at the meeting, she said; it was a big event, they were going to have to shoot a special report at the castle, and he and Sokol were naturals for the job.

He didn't respond. It gave him some private satisfaction that they would trust him, of all people, with such a responsible job, but publicly he liked to say that the only thing he had in common with the head of state was that both of them had been let out of prison the same year.

As usual, the small editing room was hot and stuffy and stank of smoke and bad coffee. To make matters worse it was crammed with people who wanted to know what had really happened on the square. Two bottles of wine and some glasses stood on the mixing desk. Someone must have been celebrating something; you could always find something to celebrate. He pulled a banknote out of his wallet, tossed it in the kitty and poured himself a drink, then handed the tape to the executive producer, a churlish man named Halama, who slipped it into the machine.

Pavel watched the monitor intently. There was the young woman who wanted to breathe less smoke and more air, but now he noticed a young man standing near her. He was tall and thin, wearing a check shirt, and had a pale, dreamy face that looked briefly and sullenly into the camera. He has blue eyes like me, Pavel thought. In fact, he's very like me twenty-five years ago. Would I have been out there too, demonstrating, if I were twenty years younger?

The young man moved out of the frame. The car with the loudspeaker crossed the screen. The crowd roared and stood its ground. A squad of riot police with truncheons

poured out of one of the side-streets. The crowd began to break up and retreat, chanting: 'Why can't you be human? Why can't you be human?'

'All of that's got to go absolutely!' said Halama irritably. As if the rest of it could stay.

He tried to spot the girl with the banner again and couldn't, but he noticed the young man in the check shirt holding his hands over his face. Truncheons thumped and thudded against bodies; there were shouts and curses. Someone behind him sobbed. He turned around, surprised. Halama's secretary was wiping her eyes. Then she quickly shook her head: 'It's nothing, it's nothing,' she apologized, as though she'd done something inappropriate.

A precisely aimed stream of water came pouring out of the water-cannon. More shouting and running, then a rather good close-up of a face streaming with water, hair drenched, eyes blinded.

Pavel looked at Halama, whose narrow lips were drawn tight, his grey face expressing distaste. Was this a response to what had happened? No: more likely to the fact that it had all been captured so clearly on tape. 'Don't even think of using any of this!' he said.

'Why do they do it?' whispered the secretary behind Pavel.

Her question was not directed at him, but it was one he had asked himself. Only now, when someone else asked it, did an answer occur to him. 'They want something different,' he said.

'But they won't get it that way.'

'Maybe they're not after anything in particular at all.'

He turned back to the monitor. He'd managed to take a wide shot of the fleeing crowd. The retreat was so well executed it looked staged.

Almost thirty years ago he too had wanted something different, wanted it so badly he had tried to escape from the country. It wasn't that they'd gone after him with truncheons, like this. Back then, it would have been futile to demonstrate; no one would have turned up. Why had he tried to get out? It was a question he still found hard to answer. Perhaps because his father had left his mother and

he couldn't stand living in a half-empty house. He had also wanted to travel. To see Indians, the Yucatan and the Mayan pyramids. He'd gone to the Mexican embassy and offered to work for them for nothing. They asked him what skills he had. He was good at photography and knew a little Spanish. Unfortunately there are many people like you, they said. If you were a doctor, we might consider you. So he decided to run away, and Peter decided to go with him.

He'd met Peter by chance. They were both taking pictures at the zoo, in the reptile pavilion, when they got talking. Pavel said he'd like to make films about wild animals — lions in the desert, tigers in the jungle, kangaroos in the bush, rattlesnakes or sand vipers sunning themselves on rocks. Peter was more interested in the snake as a symbol. 'The serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made,' he said, quoting the Bible. The snake had seduced man into curiosity, made him long for omniscience, and so it had become a symbol of evil and satanic will, though not everywhere and not to everyone. Peter loved to display his knowledge. Some Egyptian pharaohs wore bronze headbands representing a snake, which they believed would protect them from evil. Some African and Indian tribes thought of the snake as a divine being. Peter wanted to study theology. He was fascinated by every facet of the relationship between man and God, by anything which suggested superhuman power. There was something pontifical in his manner of speaking, as though he were always trying urgently to communicate something. His voice was unpleasantly shrill. It would be a handicap were he to become a preacher, but in the conversations he had with Pavel it didn't matter. The important thing was that he too longed to travel, to visit the Holy Land and Rome, Athens, Corinth, Ephesus and the temples in Luxor and Palenque. The very first time they met, they shared their secret wishes and tried to outdo each other with their knowledge. But neither of them had the slightest hope of seeing what they longed to see, or even of getting beyond the border, for the border was sealed with barbed wire. The wire was a symbol, like the snake. How could you possibly live your entire life,

learn anything, or achieve anything in a country fenced in with barbed wire?

They began to fashion plans to escape. At first it was a game, but gradually they surrendered to the allure of their own longings, those perfectly integrated steps that would take them to their goal. Who had been the instigator of this act that had changed the course of both their lives? He was the more pragmatic and had far more practical ideas. But he also had greater misgivings. Peter was more casual, and besides, he firmly believed, sacrilegiously perhaps, given the implications of what they were preparing to do, that the mercy and love of God would protect them. Peter had turned out to be wrong about divine protection, but his faith had made Pavel start to believe in something as well.

What had he actually believed in then?

That you must not live without purpose, that you must look to the consequences of your actions, live in a way that brings harm or pain to no one. And you must leave some trace of yourself behind, and that trace would be a work of art. At the time he hadn't been entirely sure what form it would take, but he knew he had the power to create it.

The final escape plan seemed brilliantly simple. They would cross the border in the north where there was no barbed wire, continue to the sea, then catch a boat. Stowing away seemed easier than cutting through wire, clambering over a wall or swimming across a heavily patrolled river. Unfortunately it wasn't as easy as they'd imagined. The God Peter thought of as their protector was clearly preoccupied with worries of cosmic dimensions in which the two of them had no place.

The tape was nearly over. All that remained at the scene were the victors, puddles of water and several men looking on from the pavement with professional interest. Pavel tried to fix their faces in his memory. Why? Just in case.

Halama stood up disdainfully. Someone behind him began to clap, and several others joined in. Were they applauding his professional achievement, the victors, the puddles of water or the enemy that had just been dissipated?

All of us applaud on demand, yet we fear everyone.

2

The boy was wearing a black jersey and yellow gym shorts — the colours of a jaguar. A proper goalkeeper's outfit. He was tall for his age but still too short to block a shot placed just below the crossbar.

Pavel stood behind the goal and asked him how they were doing.

'OK, but I've been lucky. They hit the post.' The boy gestured to his right. 'I still haven't had a touch. It's good you've come, Pavel. I never know when to move forward.'

'You have to make up your mind fast. When a sheep or a wild boar starts day-dreaming, it misses the right moment to run away, and the jaguar gets it.' He felt awkward with the boy; he was really talking about his own experience with Peter.

The play moved closer to the goal, and he was glad not to have to talk. When had he ever been able to act quickly, with resolve? They'd caught him once and locked him up, and since then he'd simply tried to keep out of their way. An animal might seem to know when his life or his freedom is threatened, but do people? They think they're running towards freedom when in fact they're rushing headlong into a trap.

'Now! Now!' he shouted at the boy in the black-and-yellow outfit. The boy charged out to meet the attacking players, managed to get to the ball and deflect it off his fist back into the field. He stood for a while at the edge of the box and looked at the retreating cluster of players.

'How was that?' he said when he came back.

'That was great, Robin, you got to the ball first.'

'I need you to stand there all the time and tell me when to move out,' said the boy.

He wanted to tell him that that would only ruin him as a goalie, but he stopped himself.

How old would his own son have been today? If indeed it had been a boy. Whenever he thought about the child, he thought about him as a son. How would he have treated him? Would he have been a good father?

I'd probably have done a decent job, he thought. I take this one out in my car and I advise him when to go for the ball. But I know that I can walk out on his mother and him any time I like, without losing any sleep over it. The truth is he's not my own son and he never will be, and his mother will probably never be my wife.

After the match he waited for the boy to shower and change. When they got in the car he noticed a cheap gold ring glittering on Robin's finger. It didn't go with his jeans at all. Eva must have got it for him. That was her business, their business. He never asked about more than he absolutely needed to know.

Eva lived on the seventh floor of a tower block. The flat had one large room and two smaller ones. Her former husband lived in the larger of these. He was a quiet, affable person, who worked as a fitter and was away from home most of the time on construction jobs. He could probably have found himself a new flat but didn't appear to be looking for one. With this arrangement, he was at least close to his son, and perhaps he wanted to stay close to his former wife as well.

She never told him why her marriage was over. He assumed it was because her husband did not seem prosperous or important enough. Pavel was a better bet in her eyes; prosperity, like importance, is all too relative. Eva had sought him out herself. Two years ago she had seen a film he'd made on divorce and its impact on children, and she had written to him about it. She was in a similar situation and wanted to see him and ask his advice.

The film was a documentary he'd directed and appeared in. The problem it dealt with had haunted him ever since his own childhood, and he was pleased that the film had spoken to someone. He wrote back, giving his home address. Several days later she rang his doorbell. It was evening. She introduced herself and asked hesitantly if she was disturbing him or his wife. She was wearing a short bluish-purple skirt, a reddish-purple sweater, high dark purple leather boots and an ultramarine ribbon in her dyed-red hair. Large green jasper earrings were swinging from her ears. He assured her that she wasn't disturbing him, that he

wasn't married and that his mother was away. She was clearly pleased to hear this. She walked in without an invitation, her hips swaying and her bracelets clinking with every step. She sat down on a chair facing him, her skirt riding up as she crossed her legs. She looked at him eagerly. He asked what he could do for her. He had done a lot for her already, she said, just by making the film and letting her see him. Without boring him with the banal details, she was living with a man she couldn't respect. She'd married him because she was pregnant; there was no love between them. She had a bizarre way of speaking, hesitating in the middle of sentences, sometimes not completing them. Her face was plain, but there was something bold and inviting in her every movement and glance. When she finished telling her story, she fell silent and seemed to be waiting for him to embrace her. When he didn't, she stood up, walked over to him and said, 'I want you to make love to me.'

When Pavel let himself into Eva's flat, Argus bounded out to meet him, planted his huge paws on his chest and licked his face. Only then did Eva appear, freshly made-up as always, her mouth painted, her eye-shadow replenished, strawberry-blonde hair combed high. She could have gone directly in front of a camera. He had to bend over slightly to kiss her on the mouth. She smiled at him. She did everything she could to bind him to her. She tried to be pleasant, to tolerate his eccentricities, his occasional disappearances, his silences. She even went with him sometimes to visit his mother, always remembering to take flowers, though his mother forgot about her the minute she left. She did his laundry for him, cooked for him, made love to him and listened to what he said. If he was silent for too long, she would complain that he hardly ever spoke to her.

What did they talk about?

About life, of course.

What was life?

Life was a heap of things, an enormous accumulation of old clothes, tubes, creams, mincing-machines, coffee-mills. It was also masses of wires, lamps, mirrors, cameras, cassettes, scissors and water-cannons.

He took his sweater off and went into the living-room.

The television in the corner was on as usual, but nobody was watching. The sound was turned down, and for a while he watched a silent singer swinging her arms to the rhythm, while behind her waves beat against a rock and a gull hovered overhead. Lacklustre, empty images, but who had any good ideas any more? Who had a point of view? Who was doing decent work? He was, or at least he could still inject the most heavy-handed material with life, and one day, when they let him show what he could really do. .

'Guess what we're having for supper,' said the boy, coming up to him.

He shook his head.

'Fried chicken. Your favourite.'

'I eat everything.'

'Except potato dumplings.'

'Potato dumplings I can do without. They don't fit down my throat.' He made a face as though he were gagging.

The boy laughed. 'Dad likes them.' Then he stopped. 'He was here yesterday,' he said, somewhat embarrassed. 'He bought me these jeans.'

'And the ring?'

'Yeah. Do you like it?'

'Let me see it.' He took the ring from the boy. 'I've never worn rings,' he said, avoiding the question. The ring had a hallmark and might have been a family heirloom. The boy's paternal grandfather had once owned a factory. The factory had been nationalized, but the state had apparently let the family keep their jewellery. Perhaps it was the jewellery that had first attracted Eva to her husband. But either there wasn't enough to go around, or it wasn't enough to compensate for the impoverished heir's other shortcomings.

Pavel had inherited nothing. When they caught him, he was wearing a threadbare duffle-coat with twenty marks in his pocket and some maps in a knapsack: a map of Germany, one of Belgium and a forty-year-old map of Mexico. It was all he could get. What do you need a map of Mexico for around here? I wanted to trade it for a local map. They struck him in the face and told him to stop lying. Still, he held out for several days. They told him there was no point in denying anything, because Peter had

already confessed. It seemed likely. Lying went against Peter's nature. In fact, Peter hadn't talked until they'd told him Pavel had confessed. The two of them had fallen for the oldest trick in the book, but they were still young, stupid and inexperienced.

Sometimes, when he thought back over this botched period in his life, he thought that the worst thing about it was not the locked doors, nor the guards shouting at them, nor the fact that there was never enough to eat and what little they had was often stolen from them: it was that everything was saturated with lies. Meanness, rottenness, baseness lay concealed behind every word, every allusion, every promise, every smile. Only later did he come to understand that his time in prison was the best preparation he could have had for the life awaiting him outside. Everyone had to get used to it, and he at least had had a crash course.

The boy left the room. When Eva opened a cupboard to take out the tablecloth, he saw several colourful sweaters in Cellophane wrapping on a shelf. 'What are those?'

'They brought these to the shop yesterday, so I kept some back. They'll certainly sell well. Shetland wool.' She took one of them off the shelf and unwrapped it.

'I know. You've got your own private customers.'

'I have more customers than goods.'

'One day you'll have your own shop and then you won't have to drag these things home.'

'You think so?' She smiled happily as though he'd told her he loved her. She longed for a shop of her own, but the truth was she couldn't possibly imagine it. Most people can't imagine a life that is any different from the one they are actually living. They can dream about it, they can even go into the streets and demonstrate for it, but they still can't imagine what it would be like.

Eva's smile reminded him of the shy smile of Ditta in a film by the Jensens, and it moved him. Maybe he should spend more time with her, be a little nicer to her. She was all he had. As she bent over by the cupboard, he reached out and stroked her hair.

She looked up at him in surprise. 'Is anything the matter?'

'No, nothing — nothing at all. Why?'

She went into the kitchen and after a while came back with supper. His sudden feeling of warmth towards her had, in the meantime, evaporated. She had nothing at all in common with Ditta; there was no shyness in her demeanour. Besides, he was certain she valued success over kindness. Success meant buying cheap and selling dear. It was a simple formula, and kindness or no kindness, he obviously fitted in with it. He knew how to sell his abilities, and himself.

Eva ate only a few mouthfuls. She was afraid of gaining weight, although there was no danger of that. She had a pretty figure, with small breasts, slim hips and a long neck. He'd photographed her nude several times, mostly with her face obscured. Her face looked good behind a counter, but it wouldn't have been right on the cover of a magazine. There was something missing from it, the thing that would make it special, a birthmark, a small scar, a mole. But most of all it lacked interest.

'Looks as though I'm going to have to do a film about the big chief,' he told her.

'That's good, isn't it?'

'I'd rather film animals than people. Big animals. But then again not as big as this particular one. Not as old, either. And certainly not the kind they're likely to send to the slaughterhouse.'

She looked at him in astonishment. She wasn't used to hearing him talk like that. 'Does that mean you're going to turn the job down?'

'They haven't offered it to me yet.' The first time he had been entrusted with filming the president, he had felt honoured. Gaining access at such a high level strengthened his position, made him less vulnerable. And the president's life, which had been so full of ups and downs, was an attractive subject for a film. Yet so much had changed in the past few years. The president's influence was in decline, and so was the position of everyone connected with him. Perhaps the best thing would be to turn down the offer when it came. But what excuses could he make? That he was tired? That he had heart trouble? Perhaps a doctor would back him up. But the idea that the job might go to

someone else didn't appeal to him either. Presidents come and presidents go, and the president who replaces the present one will need someone to record his achievements. Whom will he choose? The most skilled and experienced manipulator he can find. No, he mustn't drop out of the game, not even for a second. The single most important thing was to recognize in time that the old game had ended and a new one had begun.

He quickly swallowed a mouthful of food. Whether they offer the job to him or to someone else, those in charge will not allow authentic films. They won't be looking for a genuine, inimitable work of art. 'Did any replies to the ad come?' he asked Eva, changing the subject.

'Yes,' she said happily. 'Do you want to see?'

She longed for a house of her own. She was saving up for it and she assumed he was too. Until then, she was trying at least to exchange this flat for another. Perhaps she believed that once she had a flat all to herself she would have him to herself as well, and that he would finally marry her and surrender his right to leave at any time. He neither confirmed nor denied her belief. He studied the ads, and occasionally the two of them would ring doorbells and look at flats which, fortunately, he could declare too ugly, or which were no longer available. He had no desire whatever to acquire a cage in which he would have to set up house with her.

He picked up the leather folder and leafed through the papers in it.

'Does anything take your fancy?'

He shrugged.

'Kučera came yesterday.' She always referred to her former husband by his last name. 'I don't like running into him all the time.'

'Robin told me he'd been.' Pavel got up from the table, but there was nowhere to go. He'd been coming here for two years and hadn't yet found a corner of the flat he could call his own.

She got up too and stood close to him, waiting for him to embrace her. 'Sometimes I think you don't really want to be with me.'

'I'd never be with anyone I didn't want to be with,' he replied, using a line he'd heard in a television serial. But the reply satisfied her for the moment, or she thought it proper to pretend that it did.

What did it mean to be with someone?

He lit a cigarette and waited. The boy came in to say goodnight. Eva unfolded the sofa bed and went into the bathroom.

He hadn't been with anyone for a long time. At one time he had had a number of friends, but they had drifted away, their places taken by colleagues at work, some of whom kowtowed to him, while others watched, waiting for him to make a mistake so that they could step into his shoes. Until recently, he had occasionally stayed with his mother. But she had suddenly aged and was losing her sense of time and her interest in the world around her. Sometimes she could be unexpectedly and unreasonably hostile. He might pity her, but he could no longer be with her.

He was overwhelmed by restlessness. He wanted to go somewhere, do something, change something. Go back somewhere.

He opened the drinks cabinet. There was always a bottle of cognac there, and a glass just for him. He uncorked the bottle and drank from it.

The bathroom was free. He went in to wash, then tiptoed past the room where the former husband sometimes lived in silence, and slipped into bed beside Eva. He took her in his arms and without a word skilfully caressed her, just as he had done yesterday, and a year ago. Then he placed his palm on her stomach because he knew that she liked that and would fall asleep more quickly. As he did so he looked into the semi-darkness, faintly illuminated by the lights in the street, and into the windows of the tower block opposite. He was afraid he wouldn't fall asleep. Recently he'd been having more and more trouble sleeping. If only he had something to think about, but nothing in his immediate future seemed worth the effort. What was the point of replaying the same old images and the same old stories? He should be inventing new ones. But he was too tired for that now. Whenever he began a

new story these days, he tired of it before he had finished.

They sent him to an operating theatre to film a chief surgeon who was about to be awarded a state prize. The surgeon wouldn't allow him to light the room properly: the cables were apparently not sterile. Pavel was so angry he felt like packing everything up and walking out, or at least refusing to operate the camera. But he was fascinated by the hands of the young woman passing the instruments to the surgeon. He wanted to see the face that went with them, but it was hidden behind a mask. Only dark blue melancholy eyes beneath a high forehead were visible; the blue in them was so unusual they seemed foreign.

He asked a man in a white gown what her name was.

'That's Albina,' the man replied.

'A strange name.'

'It suits her.'

How long had it been since she appeared in his life? And how often had he replayed that scene? It didn't matter. Perhaps it would put him to sleep. Autumn. Leaves drifting down on the gatehouse. He almost doesn't recognize her because she's no longer in white. The wind plays with her red skirt. Her wide lips seem sensuous.

'Excuse me, Miss Albina, do you have a moment?'

'How do you know my name? I don't know you.'

'This afternoon in the operating room — I was the one behind the camera.'

'What do you want?'

'Nothing, really.'

'Then don't bother me, I'm in a hurry.'

'Could I walk a little way with you?'

'Thanks, I'm fine by myself.'

'Would you mind if I met you here some day when you're not in a hurry?'

'I'm always in a hurry.'

Some conversations stick in the mind. The first is usually the most memorable, followed by the last. It tends to be the same with facial expressions. She attempted a severe look of rebuff, but it did not change the softness of her features. He watched her as she walked away. She seemed smaller than she really was, as though she had

withdrawn into herself. Perhaps it was the cold. Rain had begun to fall, and she was not wearing a coat.

Next day was the last day of filming in the hospital, but she was not on duty. The man who had revealed her name yesterday told him she would be working the night shift.

Next morning he waited for her at the entrance with a bouquet of roses.

Why? He didn't know. Probably out of wounded pride. He didn't like to admit that he'd been rejected.

'I can't accept flowers from you.'

'But I brought them for you.'

'Why?'

'To make you happy.'

'Why would you want me to be happy?'

'Because I find you attractive.'

'I don't like people who work in television.'

'That's discrimination,' he objected.

'I don't like people who work for our television,' she corrected herself. 'Because of what you do, because of the people you make programmes about. Like the surgeon— he's not a good man.'

'Why do you work for him?'

'Because I'm a nurse. I was working in the operating room before he came.'

'Couldn't you have left?'

She was silent for a moment. 'There's a difference. You probably can't feel it. But why should I explain it to you?' She gave a shrug and walked away. He took the flowers to his mother.

A week later he tried again. He left tickets for a concert at the gatehouse along with a card that said: I'd love you to come. But she didn't.

In a few weeks he would be forty-five. What had he actually accomplished? He'd made several short documentaries and a lot of story items that were instantly forgotten. He'd forgotten most of them himself. He had renovated a cottage acquired cheaply from someone who had recently gone into exile (life is full of paradoxes); he'd filled it with things that gave him no particular pleasure. He'd slept with a lot of women but he'd never fathered a child.

Eva was sound asleep, and most of the windows in the other blocks of flats were now dark. He got out of bed, put on his clothes, crept out of the room and left the flat with a feeling of relief.

The streets were like a graveyard. Graveyards remind us of the vanity of all human endeavour. He got into his red Fiat. At night he could drive fast; in half an hour he would be at his cottage.

What would he do there?

He could work on some of his scripts, on some of the screenplays he might one day manage to finish and film. He could give some thought to his future or examine his past.

The image was always the same: a disgusting office that reminded him of an interrogator's room. A personnel manager is leafing through some documents. Most probably they're Pavel's files: a collection of his deeds, his misdeeds, his crimes, fabricated from allegations, catchwords, denunciations and lies. Finally the man raises his bloodshot eyes with dark circles under them. 'So, you want to work in television?'

That had been seventeen years ago. At the time, he had nodded and thus made a decision to join the select few who took the places of those who'd just been fired. He was helping to replace those with whom, until that very moment, he had sympathized.

Yet it didn't feel like a real decision at all; he was simply accepting a job. The position was so menial and unimportant that he could see no reason to refuse. Still, he talked it over with his mother, and with Peter and Alice. His mother thought he should take it. Peter said that he personally would never cross the threshold of that factory of lies. Alice disagreed: she said it depended on what he did there and how he behaved. Everyone had the right to work at what he knows how to do and what he wants to do, even if others have been denied that right. The conditions in which we all live, she said, were not his fault, and he had even tried to escape from them, but it hadn't worked out and as a result his life had been made very difficult for a long time. Alice understood him.

He began work as an assistant cameraman. He dragged

cables around and set up lights as he was directed.

But of course it had been a real decision after all. He believed he would be promoted and eventually make his own programmes, his own films.

He was diligent and patient. He knew that in the end they would let him do what he wanted, and they did, though he had to wait several years.

Fate was on his side. Two young men hijacked a school bus and demanded to be allowed to cross the border. In the twenty years since he had tried to escape, the world had grown used to more extreme methods of breaking through the limits of what was permitted.

The border guards promised the hijackers that they would get what they wanted if they let the children go. The hijackers agreed but, once the children had been released, the border guards reneged. They blocked the bus's passage and opened fire, killing one of the hijackers and the driver.

Pavel discovered that an old classmate of his was one of the guards involved. This prompted him to propose a documentary about the event. His producer granted permission, and his former classmate agreed to meet him — even promising to take him fishing in the border zone.

Almost as soon as he arrived, his classmate gave him fishing tackle and a pair of waders, and they walked along a line of warning signs and through a zone of barbed-wire barriers until they reached a stream that formed the border. Almost twenty years had gone by since his escape attempt, yet every step he took made him tremble.

The stream meandered through a shallow wooded valley, and from this vantage point the wire was invisible. His classmate, who by now had reached the rank of major, stood on a flat stone, threw in his line and, as though they had really got together just to go fishing, began to tell him how hard it was to catch the wily grayling.

Pavel also threw his line in the water but instead of keeping his eye on the float, he looked across the border. For the first time in his life, another country lay within reach, but he no longer yearned to go there and felt merely a sense of curiosity, wondering if a spy, a lost tourist or a border guard might suddenly appear from the

other side to find him wading in this stream with the border running down the middle of it.

The major climbed down off the rock and walked downstream. 'Be careful, Pavel,' he said. 'Don't stumble on to the other side. You never know who might be hidden over there behind those fir-trees.'

He nodded. He understood that his uniformed classmate might get into trouble even if he didn't step over the imaginary line. He had brought him here knowing full well that years ago, when Pavel had tried to reach the other side, he'd been caught by body-snatchers wearing the same uniform the major was wearing now. But that was long ago, and now everything had changed. Pavel was here to make a film about him and his heroism. He hoped that when his superiors saw the film on television, they would promote him.

'You come here often?' Pavel asked.

'Every day if I could,' replied his classmate, 'but I can barely make it here once a month. It's worst when the brass pay a visit. I'd bring them here, but they always get drunk, and no one can keep track of them. Besides, they all want to catch a ton of fish, so we've got a special pond, just for them. It's in the border zone too, but before you get to the wire. You just toss in your line and reel in the fish. That's not fishing, it's like shooting them in a barrel.'

'And what about those two hijackers? Wasn't that like shooting fish in a barrel too? I'm sorry, I know you were just doing your duty.'

'It's too bad the driver bought it and not the other bastard. That's what really bothers me.'

'But did it have to happen at all?'

'What do you mean?'

'I'm just asking, before we start. I don't have my camera here and no one will hear us.'

'You think we should have let them go?'

'That's what I'm asking.'

'They had rifles and a busload of kids.'

'But they let the kids go!'

'Once we promised them they could cross the line.'

'That's what I'm getting at — you made a promise.'

'Are you saying we should have kept our word?'

'I'm just asking.'

'If we'd let them go, we'd have had two more attempts within a week, and four more after that. And then one day they wouldn't let the kids go, or someone inside the bus would lose it and let them all have it.'

'I was just asking.' He began to regret coming here, regret letting himself be drawn to this place, and by such an occasion. He was ashamed of himself for not asking tougher questions, for not raising obvious objections. If the borders had been open in the first place, he wouldn't have had to go to jail back then, and no one would have felt compelled to hijack a bus full of children just to get to the other side.

The man in uniform suddenly froze, then abruptly yanked his rod back. In the clear water of the brook Pavel could see a trout, solidly hooked, attempting to wriggle to safety under a nearby boulder. What hope of escape is there when we swallow the hook? And are we even aware that we have?

'They were the ones who started shooting. They blew out the windows in the guardhouse. And the children were screaming: Let them cross the border or they'll kill us! So what else could we do? Don't think I enjoy shooting at people. It's the first time this kind of thing has happened in all the time I've been here. Anyway, it wasn't my decision. First the general came down, then the prosecutor and some other guys from the district and the regional headquarters. They were the ones who did the negotiating and made the promises. Then I get the order: don't let them through! Everything was decided somewhere else.' His classmate pointed toward the zenith, to where people have believed from time immemorial that the power deciding our fates resides.

Pavel turned off the main road, drove through a small wood and a sleeping village, then turned again on to a narrow road lined on both sides with ancient apple trees. A few minutes later he pulled up in front of the cottage. It stood alone, forlorn and dark. The meadow surrounding it was bathed in moonlight.

When he stepped inside he inhaled the familiar mixture of musty air, wood smoke and dried herbs. He turned on the light, opened the shutters, let down the flap of the writing-desk, poured himself a glass of vodka, turned on the television that stood on a small baroque table, sat down in an armchair and watched music videos for a while. He watched them to satisfy himself that videos, or at least those made according to the latest trends, were designed simply to bombard the viewer with disjointed bits of information and bizarre and deformed shapes until he finally comes to believe that the world is indeed an incomprehensible, perverted madhouse.

Recently, whenever he visited his mother and turned on her television, she would watch it for a while and then say: I've already seen that. It didn't matter what was on — the première of a film, the news or a sporting event: she'd already seen it. Yet she was almost wise in her dottiness. He turned the television off again. Two-thirty in the morning. He could go to bed now, but he still wouldn't sleep. He could sit down with his computer at the table and go on working on his screenplay, but he was too tired for that. He gazed for a while with pleasure at the intarsia on the cover of the writing-desk. The inlay formed the image of a man with a parrot sitting above his head. Not long ago his colleague and tennis partner, Sokol, had tried to sell him a commode with a similar motif, but he'd wanted too much for it.

How much was too much money? Nothing will ever be any cheaper. If he'd owned a real house and not just this isolated country cottage, which could be broken into and robbed at any time, he would have bought the commode. But he didn't have a house, and if he had, who would he bring to visit? His mother, perhaps. But his mother wouldn't know it was his house. She would only notice a change, and a change would be distressing. When he had been to see her the week before, he had found a photograph of his father. She had looked at him suspiciously. 'Who have you got there?'

'Don't tell me you don't know who it is.'

She hesitated for a moment, then said, 'Quite a handsome fellow your father was. You can take him away again now.'

So he'd taken the photo with him and put it in one of the drawers of the writing-desk. Now he got up and took it out. It was one of the first pictures he'd ever taken. It wasn't bad for a beginner. The contrast was very sharp, and his father's face looked as though it had been carved from wood, so in fact Pavel had succeeded in suggesting the man's profession.

His father had been a trained carpenter who did wood carving in his spare time. He had also liked to read biographies of famous people. His small library had introduced Pavel to Chaplin, Eisenstein, Hus, Balzac, Henry VIII, the unfortunate Maximilian Habsburg and the even less fortunate Anne Boleyn. Except for the last two, he had aspired to be somehow like each of them.

When he had had to move away from his father's house he abandoned reading and started going to the cinema. Unfortunately, the choice of films was limited, and most of them were very dull. They urged people to work harder and emulate the lives of revolutionaries, or they exposed the misery of the poor — in the present abroad and in the past at home. But he was moved by the story about Ditta's daughter. He saw it over and over again, as he did The Ballad of a Soldier. At the time he thought there could be nothing more magnificent than directing films, although that ambition seemed far beyond his reach. Eventually he grew tired of going to the cinema, but he didn't enjoy sitting at home either. He would wander through the woods on the edge of the city, sometimes with friends, more often with Lassie, his collie. The dog would hunt real or imaginary rabbits, while he would invent stories of which he himself was the hero, powerful and indomitable.

Then he decided to ake pictures of things he saw on his rambles. He made the camera himself, partly because his mother couldn't afford a new one, and partly because he enjoyed making things and he wanted to have something unique. He used a cigar box, with the glass from an old pair of spectacles rigged as a lens. At first he took snapshots of everything he saw. When he showed his favourite ones to his mother, she gave them no more than a cursory glance: 'Well, so what? The camera did that, not you.'

He was stung and almost gave up altogether, but then he decided to prove to her that it was actually he who had made the pictures, and not the camera. He began to photograph clouds, animals and the hands of old people. To get pictures of hands, he went to an old people's home. He could have photographed their faces too, but he was more interested in hands. Everyone was doing faces. The worst films were full of them.

For animals, he went to the zoo. That was where he met Peter, and where they plotted their escape. He had actually had to persuade Peter to go through with it. Peter lacked the courage to do something like that on his own. He couldn't have brought himself to hurt his family. Parents, Peter believed, were to be honoured and obeyed. But Pavel had no family, only his mother, who believed that life had done her wrong and would do her more wrong; she constantly complained about her loneliness, her insomnia and her poor health.

Pavel poured himself another drink, lit a cigarette and opened a cupboard where he had stored carefully numbered cassettes.

He selected one, switched the television to the video mode, put a cassette in the VCR and sat down in the chair again.

A road, the border checkpoint, woods. A shot of a bus with children in it (a different bus with different children, of course), then the still photograph of a young man, the sole survivor. He hadn't been able to find pictures of the dead men. An officer in uniform appeared and pointed somewhere behind him. 'They came from that direction.'

'Did you have any warning?' his own voice said.

'Of course we did.'

'Did you have some kind of plan worked out?'

'It was hard to make a plan with those kids in the bus. Our priority was to get them out.'

'And if you hadn't been able to manage that?'

'We couldn't risk shooting as long as the children were in the bus.'

'So you'd have let them go across the border?'

'Only in the most extreme circumstances.'

'What does that mean?'

'The plan was to detain them as long as possible. To negotiate. That's what they've learned abroad — that as soon as hijackers agree to negotiate, you're halfway there. They won't start shooting. Certainly not at children.'

'Where did you stop them?'

'We stopped them twice.'

The officer pointed towards the checkpoint. 'Here's where we negotiated with them. When they let the kids go, we raised the barrier, but meanwhile a roadblock had been set up and sharpshooters were in place.'

The scene changed. The officer pointed to the places where the sharpshooters had been concealed. Then he pointed to a tree, its bark damaged by bullets, exposing the white wood beneath.

'And nothing happened to the other one?'

Off camera now, the officer replied, 'No. He'll go to the gallows without a scratch.' The voice laughed. 'I hope you're not recording this.'

He turned off the VCR and removed the cassette. The film was never broadcast.

Three-fifteen in the morning. He poured himself a final drink. His head was beginning to ache, and he felt an unpleasant constriction in his chest.

His bed was in the other room. Baroque carvings of saints stood on shelves, along with his father's carvings of non-saints. His father had liked carving birds most of all. Once he'd told Pavel that animals have one thing that puts them way ahead of people: they don't dissemble, and you don't have to pretend in front of them. He'd thought of that often in recent years. He was drawn to animals, and the films he made about them were usually better than his films about people.

He took off his shoes, his trousers and his shirt and crawled under the covers. Outside the window, tufts of white mist hung above the meadow. But the sky was clear and full of stars.

For a time, he put the nurse named Albina out of his mind. Then, unexpectedly, she cropped up again. He was lining up for a ski-lift and there she was, at the end of the

queue. Her hair and part of her face were hidden under a red hood. Fortunately he could recall her face well. 'There, you see?' he said to her, 'I found you after all.' They rode up the hill on the same bar, talking of nothing in particular. He could feel her hesitation, her wondering if she should accept this chance encounter as an omen. They skied downhill and waited for the lift together again. As they talked, he avoided any mention of his work, but since they were a short distance from the border, he told her about his abortive escape attempt so long ago. And he mentioned the prison term that followed. He contrived to surround his life with a mystery she might find attractive. At least she didn't try to prevent him from walking her to the door of her chalet.

The following evening they had dinner together. They continued to speak of nothing important. He sensed that her world was very different from his. There were forces at work in it in which he could not believe: faith in a higher law and an omnipresent power. She was prepared to look for evidence of this power in the position of the planets, and in omens. It occurred to him that she might bring a change for the better into his life.

3

On Sunday after lunch he went to visit his mother. He used to have lunch with her every Sunday, but in the past year she'd almost given up cooking and had her meals brought in. So he started coming after lunch; he couldn't bring himself not to come, leaving his mother all alone. Besides, her home was still his registered place of residence: he'd never tried to find somewhere else to move all his things. His bed was still there, and so was his desk, with its drawers stuffed with old letters and notebooks that no one would ever open. He'd carefully sorted the fading negatives of ancient photographs and stored them in two cupboards, and his old clothes, which no one would ever wear either, were gradually mouldering in the wardrobe in the hall.

Several weeks before, the last of his mother's friends had died, and now he was all she had left. She would sit inside all day, refusing to go out if he didn't go with her. She seemed increasingly gloomy and peculiar, full of dark suspicions about a world she understood less and less. He had not felt at ease in her presence for some time — if, indeed, he ever had. Still, he did remember moments of happiness in his childhood. His father enjoyed a joke, and his mother would laugh when he teased her. In the summer holidays she played tennis and volleyball with Pavel, and he liked listening to her talk about the theatre where she worked, though she was only a seamstress. It was a time when no decent play ever made it to the stage, and most of her work involved making Russian workers' blouses or miners' uniforms. She might have lived a completely different life had his father stayed with her. And so might Pavel.

'Is that you, Pavel?' Her surprise at his arrival was probably genuine; she was having trouble telling what day it was.

'I brought you something.' He took a pair of red slippers out of his bag and gave them to her. 'They have a fur lining.'

'Why do you waste your money?' She bent over with a suppleness that surprised him and slipped them on. 'They'll be wonderfully warm,' she said, straightening up again. She was a head shorter than he was, and small-boned. He'd inherited his father's height, but his build was more like hers.

'I'll make you tea,' she suggested.

'Thanks, but let's go out.'

'I bought some nice cakes.' She limped into the kitchen and he slipped into her room. He opened the linen cupboard and, from under a pile of towels, he took the tea caddy where she hid her money. He flipped open the lid and added two green banknotes to the box, closed it again and put it back.

His mother had never kept track of how much money she had. When he was growing up he used to take advantage of this and occasionally take some small change from her to buy a cinema ticket or cigarettes. She never

knew, or if she did, she never let on. When he secretly gave her money now, he was merely repaying an old debt.

"Where are you, what are you up to?' she said from the other room.

Two steaming cups of tea were standing on the battered but clean table. His mother was just dusting sugar on the sweet buns. 'What are you doing these days?' she asked.

'I've just filmed a demonstration. And the day after tomorrow I'm going to the Castle. We're doing a documentary about the president.'

'Which one?'

'Ours. It's his birthday.'

'How old will he be?'

'Seventy-five.'

'He's younger than I am,' she said. 'I'm already old, aren't I?'

'There are people who are older,' he said.

'I can't stand to look at myself in the mirror any more.'

'I can't stand to look at myself either,' he said, and grimaced at the double meaning.

'I don't know, maybe you should be making films about more ordinary people,' she said. 'Someone like that could ruin you if he doesn't like what you do.'

'What if he does like it?'

'Then someone who doesn't like him could ruin you.'

'Why would anyone want to ruin me?'

'Because that's the way the world works, and you needn't talk so loud,' she said, lowering her voice and pointing to the wall. 'The whole world doesn't have to know. And your shirt's dirty. Why can't that woman of yours do a decent wash?'

'She does. And she's not my woman.'

'I don't understand that.'

'We're only sort of half together.'

'What does that mean, half together?'

'Come on, you know she's not my wife.'

'Well, it's still a disgrace,' said his mother. 'To have a man live with you and not marry him.'

'It's not her fault, it's mine. I don't want to get married.'

'Don't you love her enough?'

He shrugged his shoulders.

'It's time you settled down. Surely you don't want to be alone all your life? How much longer are you going to wait? Till I'm not here?'

'Oh, come on, Mother!' She didn't usually talk about her own death, but he was surprised that she still thought of herself as the only one who could relieve his loneliness. 'Why don't we go for a walk?'

She looked out of the window. 'I think I'd be cold. And I've hardly any feeling in my legs. I think we should just stay put. You're not rushing off, are you?'

'I'm playing tennis this evening.'

'Who with? Your father?'

'Oh, for heaven's sake, Mother! With Sokol, one of the producers. He's the one I went to Mexico with.'

'I don't know about any Mexico,' she said abruptly. 'Your father played tennis too.'

His father had died ten years ago. She hadn't gone to his funeral. He had left her, and in doing so had wronged her. Most people had wronged her, including Pavel. He had tried to flee the country when she needed him, aggravating the anxiety that plagued her. She could never see that it was his life and he had the right to live it according to his own lights. During the war, her father had been sent to a camp where he had perished. Her anxiety obviously had its beginnings in that experience, and she had seen nothing in her life since to persuade her it was groundless.

'He came to see me yesterday,' said his mother.

'Who?'

'Who were we talking about? Your father. He even brought me a ring to make it up to me. But I don't have it, so I probably didn't accept it. I can't remember.'

He should probably have tried to make her see the truth, but what good would that do? It was a harmless delusion, and perhaps it made her feel better.

'You shouldn't go anywhere else today. You look tired. You must be driving yourself too hard.' His mother cleared the teacups off the table and went to wash them.

'I'm going to call you "Sister",' he had suggested to Albina back then in the mountains.

'They all call me that at the hospital.'

'But it will mean something different to me.'

'What will it mean to you?'

'That I don't know anyone who is closer to me than you are.'

'How can you say that when you don't know me at all?'

'I'm serious. Besides, I like the word: Sister.'

'Stop it!'

'Do you like working there?'

'You mean in the hospital? I don't know. I don't know of anything better.'

'There are lots of other jobs. And you wouldn't have to watch people die.'

'Dying is part of life. And people who are dying need someone with them more than anyone else. Because. . mostly they're not ready for it.'

'What do you mean?'

'When they're alive they don't think about death. And then when the moment comes they feel cheated. Death has caught up with them before they've had a chance really to live, before they've managed to understand what life is all about. They leave life before they've come to terms with death.'

'Have you come to terms with death?'

'I don't know,' she replied, 'but I try to live as fully as I can.'

'What does living fully mean?'

'It means not wasting time.'

'That's not a proper answer. What does not wasting time mean?'

'Being close to someone you love.'

And what if you don't love someone?'

'Then you have to look for that person.'

It's odd that when they first talked of love they talked of death at the same time. Was this an omen? Or was it no more than a realization that love and death cannot be separated?

By summer they were living together. Once, they drove to a borrowed cottage. On the way he noticed a small clump of trees standing in a meadow, surrounded by crumbling walls. It was not hard to find an opening to squeeze

through. When they had crawled through a tangled patch of bushes they came upon some old rain-worn stone slabs. Some were sticking at odd angles in the earth, others had been overturned and lay broken in the grass. They still bore traces of Hebrew lettering. He pulled his camera out of his bag and took a picture of a toppled gravestone.

'Why are you doing that?' she asked him.

'It's what I do.'

'You want to sell pictures of graves?'

'No. I only want to capture what's here.'

'The dead should be left in peace.'

'Am I disturbing them? I didn't knock these stones over.'

'Not everything needs to be captured.'

'Haven't you ever wanted to preserve the image of something that impressed you?'

'Not like that.'

'How then?'

'Inside me.'

Her remark made him angry. 'I'd soon die of starvation.'

What did it mean to preserve an image inside oneself?

To carry, for oneself, an intimation of what is hidden beneath the surface of a thing, of what you have liberated from it in the act of perceiving it.

Who might be interested in such images?

Someone who was also free.

What did it mean to be free?

'Pavel,' said his mother, 'why have you been silent for so long?'

'I'm glad just to be able to sit here beside you and not have to say anything.'

'And why are you sitting here with me? It can't be much fun.'

'You're my mother.'

'Yes,' she said, as though his answer surprised her. 'I am your mother.'

An hour later he walked on to the tennis-court in his whites. His adversary Sokol was almost ten years older than him and, although somewhat overweight, surprisingly agile. But agility couldn't save his game. He lacked the capacity for a good clean return, just as in his work he lacked

precision in his use of language. But he made up for his verbal clumsiness with an acute political antenna; he was very sensitive to what went on beneath the apparently immobile surface of society. He could anticipate not only what was required at the moment, but also what would be required in the near future. Sokol's story ideas were always appropriate. He would have fits of dynamism, followed by periods of utter indifference to everything beyond his immediate surroundings. He liked to eat and drink well and when they were together in Mexico he preferred the beach or a shot of tequila en la fonda to work. Pavel could go along with him, or he could go off by himself and film whatever he wanted. It was a style of collaboration he liked because it placed no limits on him.

As usual he defeated his partner so quickly that he didn't even manage to tire himself out.

'I'm thinking,' Sokol said casually as they were showering, 'that it might make sense to start some kind of business. What would you say to setting up an advertising agency?'

'Me?'

'We'd'be partners.'

'What would we make advertising for?'

'When private enterprise gets off the ground,' the producer explained, 'they'll need advertising. No ads, no business. Ads will be good biz, and TV ads will be the best biz of all.'

'Advertising isn't my speciality.'

'That's all propaganda is — just advertising.'

'You think what I do is propaganda?' he asked defensively.

The producer mumbled something into his towel. He didn't like to argue and he didn't like direct questions.

But Sokol was right, he thought. Their films were commercials for a way of life that no one would buy if it were for sale, including him. And it would be good business.

'It's never even crossed my mind,' he said. 'There's no private enterprise — how could there be any advertising?'

'Suppose things change?'

'If things change, the two of us won't be making any money out of it.'

'Why not? It will only depend on what you can do. And who is more skilled than you? That's all advertising is, ideas and skill.'

If it only depended on what he could do, he would try to apply his skill somewhere else in some other way. He would film his own screenplays. He knew they were better than the ones that were being made and given prizes.

They came out of the showers, had a glass of vodka and chatted for a while about how things might change. Sokol had a scenario of his own. He thought there would be a series of gradual changes that would begin as official policy but quickly gain an unstoppable momentum. The initiators of change would be swept aside, and the world in which they lived would collapse.

Pavel listened carefully, wondering what kind of role his colleague imagined for himself after the collapse. He remembered that long ago, he too had been obsessed with ideas of change. He had even dreamed of it. In prison, his dreams became so intense that he almost believed it would happen. But now he could no longer imagine it and preferred not to think about it.

When they parted Sokol said, 'Don't forget, next week we're filming in the Castle.'

Apparently he did not expect the changes to happen in the immediate future. Otherwise he would surely have found a way to send someone else to the Castle in his place.

4

The filming was over. Pavel wasn't sure if they had anything they could use. They had had to work magic with the lights to hide the fact that the old man could no longer move his left arm and to soften the ingrained harshness in his face. And Pavel's job was the easier. Sokol, who was conducting the interview, had the worst of it. It was no small task to coax lively and interesting remarks, let alone original ideas, out of the head of state. For years he'd been repeating the same thing over and over again: vague hopes

that people, ignoring their own experience, would accept the aims and values he still espoused. At one point he appeared to be on the verge of saying something heartfelt. 'In religious instruction they used to teach us that if we believed, our faith would save us. We changed that old-fashioned doctrine: believe only what stands the test of reason. But. . ' He stopped, then waved his hand dismis-sively. It must have been frustrating for Sokol. Half a thought was useless. A president dismissing his own idea with a wave of his hand was something they would never allow him to show on television.

If only the man who had been the president for so many years could do something genuinely appealing, something they could capture on film — ride a horse, play tennis, levitate. It was said he had been a sheet-metal worker when he was in prison. No one, of course, had filmed him doing it, and today they preferred to remain silent about that period of his life. There were miles of old tapes in the archives, but they were all the same: a gloomy old man standing behind a microphone, making a speech, shaking hands with one group of statesmen, kissing another, inspecting a guard of honour, boarding or getting off an aeroplane, embracing the comrades — now seeing him off, now submissively awaiting his return. There were also shots of the leader waving to cheering crowds, accepting ceremonial offerings from villagers in folk costumes, and bouquets from terrified little girls. In some he still looked young, full of energy and authority. But it all amounted to desperate and uniform tedium.

What was tedium?

Time filled with encounters that leave no mark on us.

If only the president had some special objects around him that were really his, like a terrarium with snakes, or a stuffed bear, or a parrot in a cage. Or if he'd had some dynamic and interesting people in his entourage. But the only people he could bear to have near him were an ancient maid, who had been with him since his youth and survived both his wives, and two valets. And somewhere in the background, you could still sense the presence of a whole cabal with whom he had once conspired to gain

control, and from whom he could never completely dissociate himself, bound as he was to them by common actions and crimes.

The lighting technicians rolled up their cables and carried away their lamps and reflectors. Once more, the room became a pristine and aristocratic antechamber. Though Pavel would not have admitted it, it made him feel good to be here, able to move about freely in this setting. The double doors leading into a series of adjoining chambers remained open, and he observed that enormous crystal chandeliers were prodigally ablaze throughout the entire wing of the castle.

The old man stood up, walked over to them and shook hands, first with Sokol and then with him. 'Thank you. For your efforts,' he said, attempting a smile. He was clearly wondering whether to go on. 'Would you like to stay for a drink?' he said finally.

The invitation was a surprise and clearly impossible to refuse. The old man motioned to them and they followed him into an adjoining room where an obliging waiter was standing with a tray of glasses ready to offer them. The president sat down in an armchair, which meant that they too could sit down, and even speak to him. The old man who now sat opposite them had the power to grant any of their wishes, though why should he use his power for that?

'To your health, comrades!' said the president, raising his glass.

And what did Pavel wish for? To gain a top position in his profession? It was hardly the best time for that. To film his own screenplay? It wasn't the right time for that either. This particular leader would hardly understand his screenplays. Should he mention that his superiors had recently banned his innocuous documentary on life in a psychiatric hospital? The president had more important things to worry about than a film about the mentally ill. The most he could do would be to appoint someone to investigate; Pavel's bosses would be interrogated and eventually the whole thing would be turned against him.

'So, what do you think of the present situation?' asked the old man, peering at them through his thick glasses. His

question caught them off guard. What did he want to hear? The truth? Or another one of the comforting cock-and-bull stories he must hear every day?

'What do people think in your line of work, in television?' Fortunately, he either didn't expect an answer or he immediately forgot that he had asked a question. The president reminded him of his mother, except that his mother was not in power, and she had no maid and no valets to wait oh her hand and foot.

'The situation isn't exactly ideal,' the old man went on. 'Unfortunately, it would appear that we haven't been able to maintain the standards that our people have come to expect. You know, a man may be on top, but he can still be helpless. I do everything in my power. Sixteen hours a day. I would need three lives, not all of this.' He waved a finger in the air, as if to rebuke the luxury around them. 'To serve a good cause and change the world, that is what we must do. But who still wants that? And who can carry it off? When we were young, we had a different kind of enthusiasm. We were ready to suffer, even to go hungry, but we knew we were fighting for a cause, for an order that was more just. Sometimes we didn't have enough for supper, but I managed to save enough for the train that took me to meet the comrades who were waiting for me that evening.'

'Was that when you were in university?' asked Sokol.

'In university, before university and after university. Sometimes it was better and sometimes it was worse, but it was never easy. When we were children'—the old man's eyes now had a distant look—'we used to go barefoot most of the year, except in winter. On mornings when the dew fell, it was bitterly cold. But no one wants to hear about that any more. When I finally got a pair of shoes, they were hand-me-downs from my sisters,' he went on, giving in to the flow of memories, 'but I could only wear them on Sundays for church.' He stopped, as though he were suddenly afraid he had said too much.

At last the old man was talking about himself, but, unfortunately, not on camera. Had he spoken about his childhood for the record, Pavel could then have added

footage of his native village, dug up some snapshots of his parents who were only simple labourers — that is if the president hadn't falsified his biography to fit the legend of a leader who had emerged from the bosom of the people to serve the people. His mother had died when he was a baby, and by his own account he had not had an easy childhood.

'All the same, those years were better than what came afterwards. The comrades were still true to the very core and wouldn't betray each other even under torture. And my first wife was still alive.' His voice had taken on a tone of regret, and he quickly reached for a glass to conceal the fact. 'But then everything changed. I found myself in the clutches of the executioner, and he was working round the clock. The worst of it was that our own people turned me in, turned the best of us over to him. At least, they pretended to be our people. They were all protestations of loyalty, but their knives were out. I wrote letters proving my innocence. They didn't reply. I demanded that they at least produce witnesses, but they never materialized. The executioners came up with a punishment for me: six years in solitary confinement with no news of the world, no visits from my family. Six years when the only faces I saw were their faces, executioners' faces. And where do you think these people are now?' He took another drink. 'They say they are restructuring things for the better,' he said, suddenly animated, 'but all they will accomplish is to tear down what is still hanging together — not entirely, but somewhat. And when they've torn it down they'll try to shift the blame on to me. That's how it has always been done. But a time will come when they will say, "The good was buried with his bones.'" He laughed drily, then added, 'The torture we withstood! Money will destroy us. They are selling out everything to get it: ideas and each other.'

When people said 'they,' they usually meant those in power. Who did the head of state include in this little word? Those who were under him. Those who surrounded him. Everyone else.

Again the waiter appeared with his tray. The president shook his head, the waiter held the tray out to them, but

they too refused, not daring to take another glass when their host was no longer drinking.

'Don't forget to send me the film as soon as it's ready,' the president said. 'Not that I want to censor you, but you know how it is. At my age I might not live long enough to see it.'

'I'll do that,' Sokol promised.

The president stood up. The informal audience was over. Pavel hadn't used it to any advantage. Perhaps it could not have been used to any advantage anyway, because life and power only appeared to reside in such places. Where did they really reside?

He wasn't certain of the answer. And the thought disturbed him.

FILM

I

A wedding party streams out of the main entrance of the town hall. A tall man with a camera steps out in front of them. He has to crouch slightly to get them all in his viewfinder. That is if he wants to get the rest of the square in the picture as well. Further down, a demonstration is brewing.

The sun is peeking out from behind a tower. The wedding guests squint while trying to put on appropriately happy expressions.

'Please don't stop because of me.'

The groom is small, elderly and plump; the bride is half a head taller, at least fifteen years younger, has long, fair, almost white hair, like the photographer's. They could even be related, but for him this is probably just another job, or perhaps an excuse to get a camera into the area inconspicuously.

'Now I'd like the bride in the centre, the groom on her left.' He squeezes the shutter and then changes his lens.

The newly-weds disappear from the viewfinder, and the photographer now watches the demonstrators, the uniformed police officers and the militia.

'Thank you. Now if the others would just step to one side slightly, and the groom just a touch to the right. That's right, thank you,' and he presses the shutter. Then he bows

slightly, shakes hands with the wedding guests and walks away. As soon as he turns the corner, two men block his way. The older man looks like a shabby office clerk; the second, who has long hair and is wearing jeans, reminds him of a drummer in an underground band.

The older man shows him some ID. 'Well, Mr Fuka! What are we taking pictures of today?'

The photographer is taken aback. He'd like to hide his camera, but he can't. 'A wedding.'

The man who showed him the ID points to the camera. 'I thought you'd given up photography.'

The photographer holds the camera behind his back, perhaps in a childlike belief that if it can't be seen it doesn't exist. 'I'm working the night shift now.'

'We'll check your story. Whose wedding was it?'

'An acquaintance of mine.'

'Can you tell us his name?'

'No. I don't see why I should.'

'We'll find out anyway. Are you willing to hand over your film voluntarily?'

'No, why should I?'

'Maybe to save yourself a trip.' Both men wait for his reply.

The photographer looks around to see if there is any hope of escape, but the square is teeming with men in uniform, so he shrugs his shoulders and asks, 'Does that mean I'm under arrest?'

The younger man speaks for the first time. 'Why under arrest already? Do you feel guilty or something?'

'Unfortunately,' he replies, 'whether I feel guilty or not has nothing to do with it. Neither do actions.'

'In other words, you'd rather come with us?'

The photographer shrugs his shoulders. He probably can't save his film, but he won't surrender it voluntarily. They have no right to demand it from him.

They lead him away to an ugly, poorly lit room in a nondescript tenement house where they fire questions at him which, for the most part, he does not answer. They want to know about a friend of his who is working as a caretaker in a castle, and about the friend's wife. They even

ask about the woman with whom he's now living, but to whom he is not yet married.

'If you'd behave a little more reasonably,' says the older man, 'you could do better than working as a stoker in a hotel boiler-room. After all, you graduated from the film academy. You've even made a few documentaries about animals. Or have I got that wrong?'

'What does behaving reasonably mean?'

'You must see enough reasonable people around you to give you the right idea,' says the rock drummer.

'You certainly shouldn't be taking pictures of an act of protest organized by the enemies of the state,' the older man advises. 'Maybe you've been promised a bundle for those pictures by some foreign agencies, but I assure you, when you work out your profits and your losses, you'll come up very much on the short side.'

He replies that no one has offered him money for anything, that he's not selling his pictures to agencies or private individuals. He is only taking them for his own pleasure.

The last thing they do is give him a piece of paper stating that they've confiscated the film from his camera. Then they let him go.

That evening he complains to the woman he's living with about losing his film. Unfortunately, he had shots of the demonstration on it, along with the wedding pictures. He thinks he's in real trouble.

'You should have been more careful,' says his girlfriend. The second piece of good advice he's been given today.

'I'm being as careful as I possibly can,' he says testily.

'Maybe you should do something about it.'

'What do you mean?'

'There's a woman, one of my customers,' she says. 'Her husband works in the film archives. He chooses films for the government types and bigwigs to watch. And he picks films for the Castle.'

'Why are you telling me this?'

'Apparently he likes films about animals, and especially about snakes,' she says, stressing the word 'he', to leave him in no doubt that she means the man whose primary

residence is the Castle. 'If they sent him one of your films, maybe he'd go for it.'

'I don't give a damn if he'd go for it or not.' 'But he might be able to help you.' 'Don't you think he has other things on his mind?' 'Well, maybe not him. The fellow from the archives must know lots of influential people. He might be able to arrange something.'

'Stop right there. I don't want to hear any more.' 'I only thought…' She falls silent. He gets up from the table and goes into the other room. For a while he paces up and down like an animal in a cage. Then he stops at the window. He looks out at the metal fence. Cars are parked behind it, among piles of scrap metal. The fence reminds him of the fence on the border. He turns away and thinks of a woman he once loved, the only woman he was ever really fond of. He sees her in a white nurse's uniform walking down the long hospital corridor. He calls her by a name that has a foreign sound to it. He calls, he almost pleads: Ali, Alina. But the woman walks on, not hearing him, or at least pretending not to hear him.

II

A narrow grid of sunlight falls into the cell. When the gavel came down and they gave him the rope, they shoved him into a better cell. Now, when Robert stands on his toes, he can even see some hilltops out there. But they've stuck this Gabo character in with him — a halfwit pervert who molests and then murders little girls and howls with terror when he thinks of what's coming, and on top of that his stupid face reminds him of that idiot Míla who got him into this mess in the first place and then goes and dies, leaving him to take the rap. When they give a guy the rope, they leave him alone. So he doesn't have to beat metal or polish glass beads. . but it also means he's got nothing to help him drive out the boredom, drive out the thoughts that plague him.

Like Gabo, he was issued with one book, several magazines and a chess set. They can forget the chess set because neither of them knows how to play. Gabo's old cellmate had tried to explain the rudiments of the game, but nothing can penetrate that thick skull. Gabo can't read either, so once he's made his bed and washed himself, there's nothing left to do. From morning wake-up to lights out Gabo paces up and down the cell. The only time he stops is to swallow a couple of mouthfuls of grub or straighten his slippers or gape at his own enormous freckled paws, the ones he used to strangle those pathetic little girls. Sometimes he mumbles a few words about how he did it, but without regret, absent-mindedly, as though he was talking about somebody else, or about something completely unimportant. More often, he starts wailing in a high voice like a dog howling, or like a siren blowing.

It's enough to drive you crazy, but the strange thing is Robert gets used to it after a while and stops paying attention. He tries to read. Fortunately, one book can last him a whole week. What the inmates' library has on offer is strictly anodyne. The librarian usually sends historical novels, so for the first time in his life he is learning about something that has nothing to do with his life. Savage landscapes, ancient codes of honour, banquets, tournaments, torture chambers, executions, romantic love, strange foreign names like Robespierre, Gandhi and Anne Boleyn. What fascinates him about Anne Boleyn's story is that if the king wanted to get rid of an inconvenient wife, he didn't have to strangle her, he just had her head cut off. He tries to convey this new insight to Gabo, but Gabo doesn't see what he's getting at. If only he didn't remind him of Míla and of everything that happened, everything they so hopelessly screwed up. He tries to persuade Gabo to listen to the whole story over and over again, because even that idiot should be able to understand that their plan was flawless and it was Míla who ruined everything. They keep an eye out for a bus full of brats. No one will dare shoot at that. They easily get aboard with their hunting rifles, and he shouts a line at the driver that he's been dying to use ever since he was last in prison, when the thought of it

kept him going. 'Put your fucking foot down! We're going to the border.'.

Little girls start screaming behind him, but he doesn't even bother to turn around. He just watches where they're going. They're at the barricades in half an hour, and when they open the little window they unload a few rounds into the guardhouse so the sentries will know they're serious. They get the message fast and start running about, scared shitless, begging for Robert and Míla to be patient till the brass come.

Then some general in civvies shows up and starts trying to butter them up. They should have blown him away, wiped their arses with him, but Míla — damn that son of a bitch — starts talking to him. Either he's lost it or it makes him feel good to have this general cringing in front of him, a miserable private, promising the fucking sky if he'll just let the kids go. And then more brass show up and they all swear on their honour — their honour, for Christ's sake! — that they'll let them cross the line, and they'll even let them have the driver — one hostage ought to be enough, right? — and Míla really does lose it. Well, they both do when they believe them, those double-crossing bastards who'd never spoken the truth in their lives, not even by accident. And he let it happen. He forgot that when he broke his leg, when they stabbed him with a knife in a fight, when they didn't let him eat for two days in the kids' home where he'd been left to rot, no one ever lifted a fucking finger for him, no one thought of him as a human being — and he was no older and no worse than these brats on the bus. But it actually makes him feel good when they talk to him, make promises, call him 'Sir'. So they go along with it and let the kids out of the bus. Then the barrier swings up, and they cheer, but those double-dealing swine block the road further on with an armoured car and, before they know they've been had, flames start spewing at them from all sides.

It's something he's only seen in films, but a steady stream of flame actually pours from the gun barrels. He catches only a glimpse of it before he hits the floor, and Mila's body falls down beside him, Míla screaming like a madman, and more in surprise than terror he sees a row of

holes popping across the windscreen, the cracks in the glass zigzagging in all directions, and he watches the glass collapse and sees the driver's body go rigid behind the steering-wheel and then slide down beside Míla, drenched in blood. The full horror hits him and without a thought he edges to the door, rolls down the steps, right up against the door, and later he realized that was what saved him because those motherfuckers were raking the bus high, shooting into the windows and through the seats. So he curls up against the closed door, shouting, 'You motherfuckers, you motherfuckers,' though he can't hear his own voice over the din.

At last there's silence, but he doesn't dare move or look around or even examine himself. He hears footsteps, one of those motherfuckers yanks the door open and he's looking into the barrel of a machine-gun, and someone yells, 'Hands up!', like they do in films, but instead he just rolls out of the bus on to the ground, straight into a puddle of petrol leaking out of the bullet-ridden tank.

Míla is already dead; the driver is still groaning. They put cuffs on him and take him to the customs shed.

He's been inside twice, always the kind of slammer where you could work out ways to survive. Now they toss him into a hole all by himself, and they only take him out for interrogations. They try to get him to confess that someone has put him up to this and told him what to do, that he's a terrorist and a murderer who shot the poor driver, a father of two. Mostly he keeps his mouth shut because how could these bastards understand anyway? He'd only wanted to clear out of this god-forsaken shithole country where the one thing they care about is having him work his arse off and then give a public display of how happy that makes him. Then he gets the rope.

Robert doesn't know what else there is to say. If he could talk to this moron, maybe the two of them could find a way of making a run for it, even though he can't imagine how they'd break out of this hole, let alone from death row, then get over a five-metre wall and slip past the machine-gun nests at each corner of the outer perimeter. But at least they'd be making some kind of mental effort, rather

than just waiting for the door to open and the guard to call their names and say, get your things, or on second thoughts, don't bother, you won't be needing them any more.

There's a rattling in the lock, and then the bolt slides back and the door opens. He stiffens. He's always terrified when the guard appears unexpectedly. He stands to attention, looks into the guard's expressionless eyes and gives the regulation response. No, this can't yet be it. He's put in a request for clemency, and they can't have turned it down so quickly — if they had, they'd have had to let him know.

The guard handcuffs him and lets him walk out of the cell. Two more guards are waiting in the corridor and they motion him to go with them. This is the only moment when he might try making a run for it: with cuffs on his hands, two escorts on his heels, in a locked corridor. Right.

Now he's only got the strength to think about where they're taking him and why. Maybe they have turned down his appeal and taken pity on Gabo because they think trying to get out of the country is a worse crime than strangling little girls. Now they're taking him to the yard, or wherever it is they put up their fucking gallows.

They enter the lift and go down to the ground floor. His lawyer is waiting for him in the visitors' room. He's been assigned to Robert's case, he's a state-appointed lawyer, a young man with a ruddy complexion and a high forehead. When he speaks, the veins on it stand out. Robert, of course, doesn't know whether he's a good lawyer or a swine like all the rest of them. Probably the latter, although he'd been taken aback when the lawyer tried to persuade that rat in robes that he, Robert, had had no intention of killing anyone, as proved by the fact that he allowed all the children off the bus.

The lawyer, a tall, thin man, rises slowly and quietly to greet him. 'There are just a few small items, Mr Bartoš,' he says, and in this place, the formal salutation almost sounds like an insult: 'We've submitted the request and we can expect an answer within four weeks.'

'What kind of answer?'

'We have to hope for the best. But I've got two pieces of good news for you.'

Robert looks at him expectantly.

'When I asked you last time about the exact date of your birth it was because I have an acquaintance who is involved in astrology and wanted to do your horoscope.'

'I don't know — I don't understand what you're talking about.'

'You don't know what a horoscope is?' He shakes his head.

'It's an attempt to predict someone's future from the position of the planets at the moment of his birth,' explains the lawyer. 'Unfortunately, we don't know the exact hour of your birth,' he adds regretfully.

'My mum never told me. They locked her up when I was little and that finished her off. She only came back to die.'

'I know,' says the lawyer quickly, 'but my friend managed to chart your approximate horoscope, and he found that very event in it. All of last year was a very critical time for you, especially May and September. But this year you have several promising conjunctions.' The lawyer suddenly leans towards him and says, almost in a whisper, 'We've managed to establish a contact with the man who will decide on your appeal for clemency. This is very important. You know how these things work.'

'Thanks,' he says. The lawyer never speaks directly. It's difficult to understand what he's actually talking about.

'We have to hope for the best. We've done everything in our power. Everything else is in God's hands. Do you believe that, Mr Bartoš?'

'I don't know.' The lawyer is acting strangely today. He seems too formal and too ingratiating. It scares him.

'You ought to believe. It would certainly make your wait easier.'

'I don't really know much about it,' he replies, trying to be polite.

Yes, well, I didn't think so. Anyway, that's all I really wanted to say. Any complaints about your treatment?'

He shakes his head.

'Good,' nods the lawyer. 'So we have to believe—you have to believe — in that horoscope.' The lawyer lowers his

voice again. 'And in our contact with the man who can give you clemency.' Then, in a normal tone, he says, 'I'm quite optimistic about your case. Try to think about the mercy of God, even though you don't know much about it. People in your situation sometimes discover these things for themselves. There must be someone standing above all this. Above the world, above justice, above history — you know what I'm saying?'

Robert says nothing. He stares at the table in front of him. Someone has carved graphic representations of the female pudenda in it, along with some kind of caption. The words have been scratched out, but the symbols remain.

The lawyer leans close to him and asks in a whisper, 'Now that it's all over, I mean now that we've submitted our appeal, I wanted to ask you, Mr Bartoš, why did you do it? What could you possibly have been thinking?'

So the guy was probably just one of them after all, who had been given the job of dragging a last-minute confession out of him. 'Like I told you already, we wanted out.

'Yes,' nods the lawyer, 'you did say that. But why? What were you expecting on the other side? Did you think you wouldn't have to work there either?'

'The hell I thought that!' His face flushes in a sudden rush of anger. 'Why don't you just bugger off, you stupid prick!'

III

The convoy consists of two yellow-and-white police cars, three ugly, heavily chromed black limousines with white blinds covering the side windows, then one final police car. The ornamental wrought-iron gates swing open, the vehicles drive through the gateway, past a cluster of box trees and rose-beds, and pull up in front of the entrance to the château. A valet is waiting at the bottom step. He bows, steps up to one of the limousines and opens the

door, then utters the official salutation: 'Honour to work, and good evening, Comrade President.'

An old man is sitting in the car, alone. At one time his body must have been tall and sturdy. Now it is bent with age. His dark eyes are almost lost under bushy eyebrows, and he looks blankly through a pair of thick glasses at the man holding the door open. Then his eyes flash in sudden recognition. The old man turns, reaches for a briefcase lying on the seat beside him and hands it to the valet. Then he swings his legs out of the car and plants them heavily on the ground. 'Yes, that's right,' he says, and with his eyes fixed unseeingly ahead of him, he climbs the stairs and goes through the main entrance into the hall. Then he stops and hesitates. 'What time is it?'

'It's just eight, Comrade President.'

'I can't possibly sleep before midnight. What are we going to do?'

'Shall I call the projectionist?'

The old man shakes his head almost imperceptibly.

'The librarian? Or your maid?'

The old man hesitates a moment, then shakes his head, walks through the hall and enters the conservatory where he keeps snakes in terraria. He stops in front of the terrarium where the Gabon viper lives. He leans close to the glass and appears to be examining the horn coming out of the centre of the serpent's flat skull. 'My poor dear wife liked them,' he says. Tears run down his cheeks. With his back still to the valet, he gives an order. 'Tea in my study.'

Two of the four walls of his study are covered, floor to ceiling, with shelves full of books, but he hasn't had time to read them for years. Now he walks past the bookshelves and stops at a table on which a neatly stacked pile of folders stands between two telephones. He opens the top folder and leafs through it, looking around the room as he does so. He closes the folder again, walks over to the window, leans on the sill and, hidden by the curtains, looks out into the garden. Pathways sifted with bright white sand diverge, converge and criss-cross over well-kept lawns, and on the upper part of a slope, windblown bushes and purple rhododendrons have scattered their

petals on the grass. In the lower section, among the boulders of a rock garden, three men potter about, pretending to plant something.

Perhaps they are real gardeners, but he never knows what the people around him are — what they really are.

For a moment he considers going into the garden and speaking to one of them, asking him what his real job here is, or what he really thinks. What do you think about our new society? What do you expect from the future?

Genuine gardeners or not, they would still not answer him truthfully. They've been chosen carefully and trained even more carefully. Not about flowers, but about what to say if they should meet him.

One of the men is now coming down the path with a bouquet of white flowers in his hand, walking towards the château. The president watches him until the man disappears into the entrance, then he turns, walks away from the window and sits down in a deep armchair. He reaches out for the folder he was looking at earlier, leafs through it again and examines at the clusters of letters whose individual shapes he can no longer distinguish.

Someone knocks on the door, and when he gives permission to enter, the valet comes in with the soundless tread of a cat. He is bringing flowers and tea. With fluid movements he sets the china cups and saucers on the glass table-top, then puts the vase with the white flowers on the window-ledge. The valet is a small, thin man. His greyish-yellow face is indecipherable. It reveals neither willingness not deference.

'What's that you've brought?'

'Your favourite white peonies, Comrade President.'

'My favourite?' whispers the president. 'It was my wife who loved them, my poor wife. She loved to look at them. I. . ' He stops. Then he adds: 'Just recently, I find things are blurred. They want me to have an operation'—he points to his eyes—'but I'll be hospitalized, and what will happen here? Then the doctors with the knives — who will assure me that they are genuine doctors?' He stops, because he has said something that he could have said to his wife, with whom he still carries on conversations,

although not usually in front of the valet. He reaches for the cup of tea and dismisses the valet with a wave of his hand.

Indeed, since his wife's tragic death, he speaks to her more often than he did when she was alive. Perhaps it's because now she can be near him at all times.

After the valet has left, he complains to her that his comrades are increasingly plotting against him and spreading malicious gossip among the people through the familiar channels.

His wife, God rest her soul, thinks he should do something to regain the people's favour. He could lower prices, or grant someone a special favour.

Favour for whom? he wonders.

Has he already forgotten that when he came to power, years ago, he had had to banish from public life many important officials who refused to acknowledge the immutable reality of his government? That he got rid of most of the old guard and disbanded most of the military command units? That he drove professors from the universities and silenced all the journalists, film-makers and writers who had displayed the slightest sign of insubordination? Some of the more defiant ones escaped abroad, and several ended up in prison. But most of them had taken refuge in the twilight zone of menial work in warehouses, boiler-rooms and other places of asylum. What if he were to show magnanimity towards some of them? Doing so would certainly spark hope in many others, thus dulling their resistance to his government and throwing his enemies into disarray. He could even grant clemency to someone condemned to death, and so enhance his reputation abroad. He recalls how he himself had once waited in a cell for a trial in which it seemed the only possible outcome was the death sentence, though he was completely innocent. They condemned him to life in prison.

At the time, oddly enough, he hadn't worried about death, nor thought about the hopelessness of his situation. On the contrary, he imagined himself coming out of prison and returning to the comrades from whom he had been forcibly separated by his enemies' intrigues, and he was certain that he would continue towards his ultimate goal of

being first among them all. He imagined that once he finally held the reins of government in his hands, he would summon everyone who had wronged him: the interrogators who had tortured him for long days and nights to drag absurd confessions out of him, and the prison guards who had tormented him with thirst and cold, or had dragged him into freezing, damp solitary confinement for the slightest misdemeanour. And of course he would summon the public prosecutor, a successful and dedicated son of the nation and the working people, who had railed against him as though he were a sell-out and a traitor; and the false witnesses; and the scheming chairman of the tribunal who didn't hesitate to condemn him for the duration of his life to prison. He would have them all summoned and lined up in the hall where he usually received foreign dignitaries and heads of state and he would ask them to say what they thought of him now? And he'd watch them sweat with terror, and he would be amused as they fumbled to explain that they had always admired him, that they had merely obeyed orders and had acted against their own convictions.

He had only made the first and most difficult of his dreams come true: he had become the head of state, the first man in the country. Yet those who had once stood in judgement over him went on judging, and his interrogators went on interrogating. He preferred not to look into what had become of them. He now understood that all those who had wronged him were virtually indistinguishable from those who had not. The latter had simply never been given the opportunity. The difference was only that fear had now transformed those who had genuinely wronged him into loyal supporters.

His wife, God rest her soul, is now waiting for an answer. Yes. He will do something, but when the right time comes. Tomorrow a nigger from some country — and he doesn't even know where it is — is arriving on an official visit. He still has to read his briefing papers and check the menu to make sure they haven't forgotten to include the fillet of trout meunière.

Yes, he will make a grand gesture, but it won't accomplish anything. Everyone is just waiting for him to trip up so

they can push him out. That's the way people are: envious, only out for themselves. Given half a chance, they would raze their houses to the ground, reduce bridges to nuts and bolts, roads to cobblestones, machines to gearwheels; they would grind bones into dust. They would burn everything down, for fire is their passion. From his study of history, he knows that people are arsonists at heart. They look at churches, castles and palaces and dream of seeing them go up in flames.

And against all of these forces, he now stands alone. All he has left are chauffeurs, gardeners, valets and doctors, and he cannot be certain that they really are chauffeurs, gardeners, valets and doctors.

The old man weeps. Then he makes a decision and presses a button. The valet enters almost at once, as though he had been poised in readiness just outside the door.

'I'd like a drink,' he commands. 'Do we have a drop of that good cognac left?'

'Of course, Comrade President.'

'Bring me two glasses, comrade,' he orders and then watches the valet open the door of a small refrigerator concealed among the bookshelves and remove an onion-shaped bottle containing golden-brown liquid. The two enormous glasses have stems of unequal length. He will receive the taller one. The valet pours the liquid into both glasses and waits.

'Sit down,' he commands.

Thank you, Comrade President.' The valet sits stiffly on a leather seat, ready to leap to his feet again at any moment.

'What's your name again?'

'Karel Houska, Comrade President.'

The president nods. The name sounds familiar, and no doubt he's asked about it before. 'Well, drink up then.'

The valet grasps his glass and says ceremoniously: 'If you will allow me, Comrade President, to toast your health.'

The valet takes a sip, but the president downs the entire glass in a single gulp. He knows it is inappropriate to drink this way and doesn't do so when taking part in official toasts, but here there is no need to stand on ceremony. 'Powerful stuff, eh!'

'Powerful, Comrade President.' The valet refills his glass.

'Pour yourself some too,' the president orders, and then asks, 'Are you married?'

'I am, Comrade President.'

'Doesn't she mind it when you're on duty like this?'

'She's used to it by now.'

'And what did you do before? Were you in service then too?'

'I was a waiter. It was less responsible, but the work was harder.'

'You're happy here, I take it?'

'I'm very honoured, Comrade President, to have this position.'

And what do people say?' he asks, thinking he may learn something. 'Do they ask you a lot of questions?'

'Perhaps they would, but no one knows I work here.'

'What about your wife?'

'If you tell anything to a woman, Comrade President, it's like putting it in the papers.' The valet's face remains expressionless.

'Go on, drink!' he urges.

The valet ceremoniously raises the glass, holds it for a moment at eye-level and then takes a sip.

'Do you have any children?'

'Yes, I do, Comrade President. Two.'

'Are they at school?'

'They've finished school, Comrade President. One's a soldier, the other's an engineer.'

'Very good,' he praises him. 'We need soldiers and we need engineers. Do they have good positions?'

'They can't complain.'

The old man nods. This valet seems like quite a nice fellow. He knows that one of his valets is a nice, sincere, steady fellow, and perhaps this is the one. The other one probably has two children too. Everyone seems to have two children, or at least they claim to. 'Do you have their pictures with you?'

'As a matter of fact, I do, Comrade President.'

He takes a wallet from the breast pocket of his perfectly tailored jacket and removes two pictures.

The president looks blankly at the unfamiliar faces. 'Fine-looking lads,' he says. 'You can be proud of them.'

He hears a faint creaking behind him and turns his head slightly as if to reassure himself that all the books are in place.

They are, of course. But there, in front of the bookshelf, the ends of its legs buried in the thick nap of the carpet, is that thing again, standing there as it does almost every evening: a bier holding an open coffin. Tonight there's only one, but some evenings there are so many, packed so closely together, that you can scarcely get by them. Today they only managed to get one of them in. His wife is lying in the coffin. He can almost see her features under the immaculate white sheet. They never want him to raise the sheet. They say the sight of her would be too awful. Her body was damaged beyond recognition in the fall, they say. He always obeys them, though their only aim is to torment him and gradually hound him to death. This is why they push her in here every evening, and all those others too, most of whom he doesn't know and for whose death he bears no guilt. Like those nine miners they brought in last Sunday. Some of them hadn't even had their disfigured faces properly covered. Was he to blame for their deaths? Was it he who ordered the Sunday shifts? And even if he had, wasn't everyone complaining that they weren't getting enough coal? There was always something unavailable, something forgotten, something neglected, and then people died, poisoned by bad water, smothered by toxic exhalations, blown to smithereens, exposed to radiation — although experts assured him that no one had been exposed to radiation — killed by impurities in the medicine, or by the lack of any medicine at all. And then they parade the bodies in here to haunt him. Once, he'd slipped out of a reception for some generals to find that they had filled the whole corridor with stretchers and, because there were so many, had stacked them along the walls four deep, like bunk-beds. It was hideous and it was disgraceful. And he had no choice but to squeeze past them and pretend not to see anything.

The valet refilled the president's glass.

'Take some yourself, lad.' He should ask the valet to

have her taken away, but God knows who the valet really is. Maybe he's with them. 'What did you do before you came here?'

'I was a waiter, Comrade President,' replies the valet and he thrusts his chest forward like a soldier about to receive a medal.

'Yes, a waiter. . good, good. And your wife? You do have a wife?'

'I do, Comrade President. She used to be a train conductor.' The valet shifts forward in his chair and something shows in his expressionless face. Memories, perhaps, or embarrassment?

'Yes, a conductor, a conductor,' he repeats. 'She must have travelled a good bit of the world. That's what I've always wanted to do, travel a good bit of the world.'

'And your wish came true, Comrade President,' replies the valet, thrusting his chest forward again, as though he were responsible.

'We could have a look at what's going on in the world,' says the president. And while the valet glides cautiously towards the television, he sneaks a look at the bookshelves. The books are pretending to rest in their proper places, but he knows very well that nothing is easier than insinuating among those thousands of volumes one or two books equipped with a small peep-hole and a hidden device to bombard him with radiation. Sometimes, when he can concentrate perfectly, he can see rays of greenish poison molecules pouring out of the spines of these specious volumes and penetrating his head where they detonate, destroying his brain cells.

The television screen lights up, and the familiar voice of a familiar announcer intones: '. . and it's the correct way, the only way that will lead us forward…' Someone applauds. Two men embrace each other, then one of them boards an aeroplane, turning and waving before disappearing through the door. But he is not one of those men, so he loses interest.

The valet returns to his chair and looks politely at the screen. 'Our society has never been closer to the great goals it has set for itself. . ' the announcer claims.

The valet shifts slightly in his chair, and the president is suddenly worried that he might notice his lack of interest. He searches his face but sees nothing in it. 'Right,' he says. 'Right. And that's how it always is, today and tomorrow, for ever and ever. You can turn it off.' And when the valet turns towards the television set, the president takes another quick look at the bookshelves. One of the volumes moves almost imperceptibly, but he manages to glimpse the peephole in the spine of the book just as it snaps shut. The bier is still in the same place, but another one has now appeared beside it. Who is it for? For him, of course.

The valet walks back from the blank screen and sits down. His face expresses absolutely nothing.

And how did you make a living before you came here, lad?' the president asks.

'I was a waiter,' he announces, almost proudly. 'I served food and drink.'

'I don't suppose you'd want to do that any more, would you?' he asked.

'I'm happy with what I'm doing, Comrade President.'

'You have a wife?' he asks him,

'I have a wife.'

'In good health?'

'In good health, fortunately, yes, in good health.'

'Not even a toothache?'

'Sometimes. She has trouble with her teeth.'

And she has no other worries?'

'Only occasionally, Comrade President.'

'She shouldn't,' he says. 'Your wife shouldn't have any worries. Could we help her somehow, or do something to cheer her up?'

'I wouldn't dare take up your time with such petty matters, Comrade President.'

'Go on, speak!' he orders him.

'As a matter of fact, it would please my wife if you could look into a particular request for clemency.'

'Oh, my,' he says. 'Your wife is asking for clemency?

'No, I didn't mean that, Comrade President. My wife has in mind the one who hijacked the bus. The one they sentenced to death.' The valet's face remains expressionless as

he conveys this astonishing request.

'But surely he wasn't her, or your. .?'

'No, no, certainly not.'

'Interesting, interesting,' he says. 'And why is your wife concerned about him?'

'Oh, you know women, Comrade President. She heard something, or maybe she even saw something, and took an interest. Besides'—the valet hesitates—'it's possible there may even be some distant relative involved here. You know women, they always have favours to call in.'

'Tell your wife not to worry about this,' he says. 'We shall take a look at the request.'

'Should I note it down for you?'

'Note it down,' he orders.

The valet stands up and walks over to the table. Now is a good time. The valet will write the note with his back turned, and he can slip out of the room unobserved and then escape into the garden. In the garden, in the farthest corner, he has a tree picked out, a plane tree, and all he has to do is shin up it. Its branches reach over the wall. Then he will jump — and be free.

Those boneheads thought someone might try to force their way in here from outside, so they cut down all the trees on the other side of the wall. It never occurred to them that someone, perhaps even he himself, might want to escape.

His breath quickens with excitement. He stealthily rises out of his chair, then, hovering above the floor, cautiously, very cautiously, he pushes off from the soft carpet and floats alongside the bookshelves. Then he sees him. Stuck into the shelves right beside the door, surrounded by thick volumes so that only his head and some parts of his incredibly twisted, misshapen body are visible, is his executioner. He recognizes him at once, those lashless, suppurating eyelids, that mouth full of yellowish-brown teeth.

So they sneaked him in after all. Their audacity knows no limits, even though they couldn't have been entirely sure of themselves, which is why they have packed him in so tightly, almost walling him in with books. Now the monster, surprised that he's been found out, attempts something meant to look like a smile.

What if he yells for his valet now? What if he goes to the telephone and calls a cabinet meeting immediately and declares a state of emergency? Then he'd be able to put this creature, and all the other ones as well, where they belong — in front of a firing-squad. But he won't do that. He has made a decision to rule without force.

'Comrade President,' says the valet's voice behind him, 'isn't it time to go beddybyes?'

He lands abruptly on the floor.

The valet helps him back into his chair. They sit facing each other again. On the other side of the bulletproof windows, deep night is pulsating.

He ought to stop drinking. His doctor recommended a strict limit of no more than two drinks a day. But who is this doctor, really? And who is this lad sitting across from him? He should ask him what his name is, what he did before he came here, if he has a wife and children.

But no matter what the fellow replies, it will all be a pack of lies.