Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light

CHAPTER TWO

1

The demonstration, which was really more like a public meeting, had been given a permit. It was the first legal assembly of the opposition in twenty years. Most of the faces he saw through his viewfinder were familiar. They were the faces of those who had been branded as public enemies. That they were now standing on a podium addressing the crowd that had dared to gather was both a milestone and an unsettling omen. The authorities had allowed them to use a small square on the edge of the city. In a month or two, they would let them use a square in the centre, and if the demonstrators didn't get permission they would come anyway, so many of them that they would be unstoppable. You can rule with a firm hand, or you can rule through consensus. Those with neither the strength for firmness nor the courage for consensus take refuge in the belief that they can remain somewhere in between. But that is an illusion.

It was a freezing day. Clouds of breath were coming from the speakers' mouths, but they didn't appear to notice the cold. Even those who formed a circle around the podium had apparently so submerged themselves in the warmth of the words they heard that they were able to remove their gloves and bare their heads. Onlookers in the tenement houses around the square opened their windows to hear better.

There were many speakers, but Pavel was here today by himself. Sokol was off sick, and besides, his bosses felt it would be politically inappropriate to express too great an interest in this assembly.

Supposing he were to ask for an interview with one of the speakers? Would he be turned down, or would the speaker welcome the chance to talk to him? Probably the latter. These people had been denied free expression for too long.

What do you think about the state of human rights in this country? Does being allowed to hold this assembly represent a change for the better? Do you expect to be holding assemblies like this more often? What are your immediate aims?

But they would only be speaking to him. The tape would first be monitored by his bosses, who had expressly forbidden the conducting of such interviews. Would they fire him for insubordination? Probably. He shouldn't kid himself: just because they'd given in to these people didn't mean they'd give in to him as well. The people on the podium enjoyed an international protection of sorts: their names were known to foreign heads of state. His name was known only to the head of this state, that is, if he had taken note of it in the first place and managed to remember it. By conducting such an interview, he would be helping neither himself nor anyone else. So why bother?

He filmed the speeches. He had to admit they were more interesting than the speeches of official politicians, and the faces of the speakers seemed more interesting as well. They were still full of expression and enthusiasm.

When he was packing up his equipment, an old man with a nose like a parrot's beak approached him. 'I see you're in films. What do you think about all this, sir?'

He shrugged. He had no desire to get into a conversation about anything, let alone this assembly, with a complete stranger.

'The voice of truth has been heard at last.'

The remark took him aback and he looked at the man more carefully. He was too old to be an agent provocateur.

'The truth can be silenced for years, sometimes for

centuries, but it will always come out in the end. Would you believe that I've been saying this for years now?'

When he received no reply, the man went on to explain: 'At first I told this only to my birds, but ever since they certified me, I say it everywhere. In streetcars, in bars, at meetings. I used to be a proper schoolteacher. First I had pupils, then I had birds in a cage, and now I have birds here.' He tapped his forehead. Then, with a dramatic flourish, he pulled out a dog-eared sheet of paper, apparently a certificate that confirmed his madness.

'Good piece of paper to have,' he told the old man. 'I'm sure it comes in very handy.' And he quickly got into his car to escape him.

An hour or so after dropping the tape off at the studio, he was climbing the stairs of an old tenement house only a few streets from the square where the public meeting had taken place. This was where he'd been born. He'd gone to school nearby. It was from this place that his father had run away. Then he too had tried to escape. Unlike his father, he had come back, and was still coming back today.

His m6ther was sitting in a deep armchair by the window. Now, in the autumn, almost no light came into the room. She was asleep. She seldom left her chair any more. He'd put the television where she could see it, but she never turned it on, nor did she ever open the book that lay on the table beside her. She could no longer sew; the needle was too small for her to hold in her fingers. Her life had become empty of interest. Her face was expressionless, and the veins on her hands stood out so starkly that they looked like a crude wood-carving. She reminded him more and more of a wooden puppet with the perfectly carved head of an old woman. One day, probably not long from now, he would speak to her, and touch her, and the puppet would no longer respond.

His mother shifted in her chair and looked at him through her thick glasses. 'Is that you, Pavel?'

'It's me.'

'What are you doing here?'

'I had some work nearby,' he explained.

'You're always up to something.'

'The opposition held a demonstration.'

'I don't know what you mean.'

'Some people gathered in a square. They made speeches.' It no longer made any sense to explain anything to her. She didn't understand him. Either she couldn't hear what he said, or she could make out the individual words but couldn't fit them together into sentences that meant anything to her. For years he'd talked to her about his life, mainly about his achievements, and she had listened to him. She'd been silent, perhaps even mistrustful, but she had listened. He found it hard now to accept the fact that he was losing her, that he had, in fact, already lost her.

'It's good of you to stop by. What are you up to all the time?'

'I finished that film about the president. They're going to broadcast it next month.'

She nodded. She had no idea which film he was talking about, nor which president. She'd lived through many presidents, and she wasn't interested in them. She wasn't even interested in him any longer. If she had ever been interested in anyone but herself, that is.

'What should I do?' she asked.

'We could go for a little walk.'

'I can't do that.'

'Why not?'

'Because I can't.' Then she added, 'It's cold out there.'

'You could take your coat.'

'I don't have a coat.'

'I'll fetch it for you.'

'I can't go for a walk when my feet are dead.'

Her feet were all right; it was her mind that was dead.

She closed her eyes. On a table beside her lay a plate of cold, half-eaten food — a few potatoes covered in a reddish-brown sauce with an unsavoury smell.

'What should I do?'

'What do you think you can manage?'

'I don't know. That's why I'm asking you.'

'Should I turn the television on?'

She didn't understand him. Besides, he saw that she wouldn't pay any attention. And anyway television was a

sop for the lonely and forlorn, for people who see no one, to whom no one ever speaks. He took the plate with the leftovers into the kitchen. The washer on the kitchen tap was worn, and a thin stream of water dribbled out of it. Hanging on the wall above the sink, in cheap frames, were several photographs he had once taken: a self-portrait when he was eighteen, the hands of an old woman who by now was long dead. The Dalmatian in the next picture was dead too. He was called Ciudad. Ciudad means city. Back then, the word embodied all his longing for a faraway place. With this distant city in his mind he had planned his escape. When he was in prison, his mother used to visit him, always bringing a carefully wrapped parcel of food. On one of her visits he had asked her how she was. She had replied: What do you expect? I'm alone. Everyone's left me. Even you tried to leave me.

He threw the leftovers into the garbage and washed the plate. Then he fetched some tools and began dismantling the tap.

'I was fond of one person,' Albina had said to him when they had gone off to the borrowed cottage together. He waited for her to tell him more, but she said nothing and looked at him as though she had said too much already and now it was his turn to speak.

'Who was it?' he asked.

'It's not important. You didn't know him anyway. I only wanted you to know. We were going to get married.'

'But you didn't.'

'He left the country. He succeeded where you didn't. He didn't take the adventurous approach. Besides, he was older than you were then. He got himself an exit permit. Before he left he was able to sell almost everything he had. But he didn't tell me anything, and I didn't know until he wrote to me.'

'What did he say?'

'That we would meet again.'

'Do you want to meet him again?'

'Never!'

Her 'never' sounded very resolute. At the time he'd liked that, because her resolve had nothing to do with him.

'Where is he now?'

'I don't know.'

'When did this happen?'

'It doesn't matter. I don't know if I'll ever completely believe in anyone any more.'

'You will.'

'How can you know that?'

'I feel it. I can feel what is in you.'

What did he really feel? That she was a passionate being who was suppressing her own desires.

How long can you suppress your own desires?

Until you understand that in doing so you will destroy yourself.

'That's just talk,' she said. 'What can you know?'

'That I won't leave you.'

The same night she asked him: 'How can you do what you do?'

At first he didn't understand that she was talking about his work.

'You must know that what they broadcast is a lie. And you work for them. How can I believe anything you say if that lie doesn't bother you?'

'The two things have nothing to do with each other. I make films about animals.'

'Only about animals?'

'I like animals,' he said, avoiding a direct answer, 'and I don't have to lie about them.'

'I don't know. Maybe I don't understand.'

'I don't tell lies,' he said. 'I promise I will never lie to you.'

They had intended to spend the whole week at the borrowed cottage. They were together for five days, day and night. He wasn't used to that kind of closeness, and on the fifth day he was overcome by exhaustion, or perhaps it was anxiety. He felt trapped, locked in a cage, in a prison cell again, even though her tenderness made it easier for him. By the sixth day his need for change, for another voice and different company had become too great. He got up at dawn, when she was still asleep, and gazed at her face for a while. All at once it seemed alien and unfriendly. Her limp hair was stuck to her forehead, her sensual lips had become

chapped and dry in sleep and marks left by his mouth were still visible on her slender throat. He tiptoed out of the room and fled, leaving not a whisper behind, only an unmade bed and an unfinished bottle of wine.

He ran across the dew-covered meadow and suddenly felt free.

What did it mean to be free?

It meant to have the right to define the space for our own actions.

Who conferred such a right?

We were born with it. He had believed that when he first tried to escape across the border, but they had denied him that right. He had let himself be deprived of it.

He finished fixing the tap, turned the water on and off several times and, when he was satisfied, he put the tools away, buttered a roll for his mother, made her tea and returned to the sitting-room.

'Did you bring me breakfast?' she said, surprised.

'Dinner. It's already evening.'

'What makes you think so?'

'Just take a look,' he said, pointing to a large clock on the wall.

'It always shows the same time.' His mother stared at the clock with a vague, confused look. 'A quarter to twelve?' she guessed.

'A quarter past five.'

'There's no difference. It's always dark outside.'

It was already getting dark and had started to rain when he returned to the cottage. He was drunk, drunk enough to walk jauntily, but not enough to be unaware of the wretchedness and the boorishness of what he had done. He saw the light in the window from a distance. She was still there. She hadn't gone, she was waiting for him. He didn't even know whether he was pleased or not. But at least he would have somewhere to dry his clothes and somewhere to sleep.

She was sitting on the floor, her knees hunched up under her chin, looking into the flickering fire. Her eyes were red from smoke, or from crying.

'Forgive me,' he said. 'I'm sorry.'

She was wearing black trousers and a shaggy white sweater with black horizontal streaks that made it look like birch-bark. She seemed beautiful to him, and he longed to put his arms around her. 'Forgive me,' he said again. 'I had to leave. I love you, but I had to see some new faces.'

'You don't have to explain anything to me.'

'I brought you something.' He reached into his pocket, but it was empty. All he could feel was a hole. 'Forgive me,' he said a third time.

'Why did you come back?'

'Because I love you.' He sat down on the bed and took his shoes off. 'I thought I'd be back before now, but I couldn't get away. There was this fellow there, he looked a little bit like my father.'

'Were you tired of me?'

'I guess I was.'

'And you say you love me?'

'I needed a rest. There's something strange and persistent about you. I can't relax beside you.'

'You don't need to explain anything.'

'Or perhaps there's something strange in me. I needed a change. I feel this need to escape whenever I feel hemmed in.'

'We can leave. Or you can leave by yourself, if you want.'

'No, it's all right now.' He stretched out on the bed. 'I'm glad to be back with you again. I just needed a break. You didn't feel anything like that?'

'If I had, I would have left too. Only I would have told you before I did.'

'I'm sorry. I should have left you a message. I didn't expect to be back so late.'

'I thought you wanted to stay with me. How could you stand being with me for the rest of your life if I bore you after a few days?'

'But that would be different. Here we were too alone. Too much together and alone at the same time.'

'Do you think that later on we won't be so completely together?'

'Well, there would be other people around, and then

we'd have to go to work. And there'd be children.'

Instead of answering, she began to cry.

'Why are you crying? Christ, why're you crying again?'

'You can go. Leave, if you find it hard to be with me.'

'I feel good with you.' He got up and put his arms around her.

'You'll always go away.'

'And I'll always come back.'

'If you still feel like it.' But she put her arms around him and began to kiss him.

That evening she told him for the first time that when she was little, her mother, who was a doctor, had been sent to India. She had gone with her, and they lived for almost two years in a city on the Ganges. One morning, she ran outside and saw a lot of gaunt people lying in the street. Then some men in dirty white coats came with a cart and loaded some of these gaunt men on to it. It was only years later that she realized those gaunt people were corpses. 'Sometimes, when I think about it, I can still see that scene so vividly.'

'What made you remember it just now?'

'Maybe because I feel a great restlessness in you. Mostly I remember that scene when I see how everyone around me is in such a rush, chasing after things they can't possibly find.'

'Does that mean you think I'd be better off dead?'

'Don't blaspheme. You know I want you to be alive. It's just that I'm afraid for you.' Then she said: 'You place too much importance on things, and too little on your own soul.'

'What is a soul?'

'It can't be put into words.'

'Well, how can I devote myself to something that can't be put into words?'

'God can't be put into words either.'

'I'm not saying I believe in God. Do you think the soul can be seen or somehow perceived?'

'I don't know. Why are you questioning me like this? You're making fun of me.'

'No. You're the one who started talking about it.'

'Indians say that the soul is woven from consciousness and spirit. From life and vision. From earth and water. From lightness and darkness. They say it's what is divine in man.'

'Is that what they told you there?'

'I had a teacher.'

'Do you think that animals have souls too?'

'Yes.'

'I'm glad. I don't like it when man thinks he's superior to the animals.'

Night was coming, and it was still raining. He got up and put some wood on the hearth. The fire smelled good.

He came back to her. They lay beside each other on the wide bed. Would he spend his life with her? Could he stand living side by side with someone for years?

'Do you feel claustrophobic here?' she asked.

'Why do you think that?'

'I feel that it's claustrophobic for you here. Should I open the window or maybe turn on the light?'

'Just stay. Stay here with me. I feel good like this. I like the dark.' He embraced her. 'Maybe I've been waiting my whole life for you, waiting for this moment.'

'Life is waiting for the light, not for the dark,' she said. 'My Indian teacher told me that. He was blind.'

'I'm already old, aren't I?' said his mother.

'Not that old,' he replied, as he always did. 'Others are older.'

'And how old am I, really?'

'You'll be seventy-eight next birthday.'

'I don't understand that,' she said. 'But yesterday they called me to the office and asked me whether I'd already reached my limit.'

'What limit?'

'Mine, of course. Seven thousand eight hundred metres.'

What did you tell them?'

'That it's a pretty decent piece. It's such a big piece of cloth it can't even be measured. They wrote that down. They can measure very exactly. They have special instruments. They measure it and they cut it. That's what they're there for.'

'Should I read you something?'

'I don't know. What time is it?'

He got up. His books were still in the bookshelf. There were some novels and even several volumes of poetry. He'd got those from Albina. She'd given him poetry, but poetry wasn't his kind of reading. He couldn't concentrate on the lines or look for hidden connections between the metaphors.

He picked up a book from the little table. It was last year's Protestant almanac. He leafed through it for a while, looking for an appropriate text, but nothing caught his eye and so he began to read poems at random.

Then he looked into his mother's face.

She was oblivious.

Where is your soul, your wretched soul, your light, Mother?

2

He stopped again at the studio to see his boss. Halama had already seen the tape. 'Good work,' he said. 'Obviously sympathetic. Maybe one day that will go down in your favour.'

'I just did it the way I always do. I can't control the expressions on people's faces.'

'It depends on who you shoot, and when.'

'There are faces you could look at for a year without ever seeing an intelligent expression.'

The boss laughed drily. 'Did you hand in all the tapes?'

He shrugged his shoulders.

'I know, it doesn't matter a damn. They had their own cameramen there anyway. I saw that video journal of theirs. Pretty soon we'll have two news broadcasts, two governments and two countries in one. Unfortunately, their video journal is better than ours. Not technically. But at least there's something to look at.'

'I could do that too.'

'Of course you could,' said the boss, 'if I didn't get in your way. Maybe you should work for them. It will count in your favour one day.'

'I don't need anyone to count anything in my favour,' he said angrily. 'Either I'm recognized for what I can do, or they can shove it.'

Halama had stopped listening. He rummaged through some papers for a while and then said, 'It looks as though they're going to loosen up, let us show more things now. Get some ideas together, put them on paper and we'll see.'

What is or is not allowed on television is mainly decided by Halama himself, Pavel thought. But he's only one card in a house of cards. Like me. One card goes and the whole house collapses. Doesn't he know that?

'I've got lots of ideas.'

'So, put them down on paper for me and submit them.'

'I think I'll wait a bit.'

'If you're sure they won't get stale.'

'Maybe just the opposite.'

'By the way, you're doing that meeting in the chemical factory. Think about what I've said. And if they get into a real discussion, try not to scare them. And since you're going to be there anyway, I've heard that people's lives are at risk in the aniline dye plant.'

'All our lives are at risk.'

In the flat he had been coming to for the past two years as if it were home, the woman to whom he behaved as though she were the mother of his son, although the real father lived behind the door next to their bedroom, was waiting impatiently for him. The boy was ill. He had a fever, and she couldn't get through to the emergency clinic on the phone.

'All right, I'll take him.'

'Are you sure you wouldn't mind? I don't know what else I can do.'

The boy lay in his room, his face flushed with fever. He tried to smile. 'We're supposed to be playing the last game of the season tomorrow.'

'You'll play in a lot of games yet,' he reassured him. 'What kind of an idea is this, to get so ill?'

'I must have got a chill during practice.'

'It's rotten weather,' Pavel said. 'And there's more crap in the air than a body can stand.'

As it turned out, the emergency clinic had a new telephone number (she might have thought of calling information), and the doctor had just gone out on her rounds. Robin's teeth were chattering with the fever, so he drove him to the hospital to save time. The hospital emergency ward was empty, and the nurse went to call a doctor. The boy sat leaning against his mother's shoulder. Eva stroked his damp hair. She clearly loved the boy, but what was her relationship with Pavel?

He was a man who slept with her and brought her money. He was a man who brought her money, and for that was allowed to sleep with her.

Whom did he love?

His father was dead and his mother was becoming a wooden puppet.

Where was Albina now? She might be only a few steps away. He'd have to walk over to the wing of the hospital where she worked. 'I'll wait in the car,' he said to Eva.

'You'll be cold.'

'I don't like hospital waiting-rooms. I'll turn the heat on in the car. Then at least we'll be warm on the way back.'

He would have time to go to the surgical wing. He would open the door, enter the brightly lit corridor and wait until the nurse came.

'Are you looking for someone?'

'I wanted to ask — a while ago there was a nurse working here, Valentová. Albina Valentová.'

'Albina? No, I can't say. I haven't been here long.'

'Of course, it was quite a few years ago. She must have left long ago. I just thought someone here might know where she was now.'

'Our matron might know. Or you could ask in the personnel department tomorrow. They should be able to help.'

'Thank you. I'll do that.'

Next day, in the cottage, it was still raining. 'I understand you,' she said suddenly over breakfast. 'When I was little and I'd done something wrong, Mother locked me in a cupboard in the basement.'

'Was that in India?'

'No, we were back home again by then. It was an

ordinary cupboard, but there were all sorts of bottles on the shelves and they seemed to be giving off light. I was terrified of those bottles. And I was afraid that a headless knight or some other ghost might burst into the room. I was too ashamed to shout but I cried and waved my arms to frighten the spirits away. Then I got the idea of closing my eyes and imagining that I'd escaped and was outside, in the garden, or the park.'

'It's good when you make up your mind to escape.'

'I could only do it in my head.'

'Could you do that now?'

'But I'm happy to be here with you.'

'We could run away together.'

'If you want. If it's too claustrophobic for you here.'

'What country would you choose?'

Eva and the boy came outside. 'It's pneumonia.' Eva looked terrified. 'We've got some antibiotics.'

'You'll be fine in a couple of days,' he said, stroking the boy's hair.

'You're so kind to us,' she said while he was driving back to the place he happened to be living in at the moment. 'We'll never forget this.'

3

One of the managing directors was waiting for them outside the main gate. The television vehicle couldn't go inside the factory grounds yet, he announced apologetically. The exhaust first had to be fitted with a protective wire mesh. Meanwhile, they could have a tour of the plant in his car. He could show them what they might eventually film, but he had to warn them that this amounted to practically nothing because practically everything was secret.

'We'll find something interesting,' Pavel said and he introduced his assistant, a man everyone called Little Ivens.

The iron gates were rusty, and a layer of white dust covered the ground. There was a sharp, acrid smell of ammonia in the cold air.

The manager opened the door of his car for them and warned the film crew that smoking was strictly forbidden throughout the plant. He hoped their cameras didn't give off sparks, he said with a dry laugh, and that their lamps would not explode. 'You know,' he said, waving his hand in the thick, stinking atmosphere they were breathing, 'sometimes all it takes is a spark.'

The manager was a man with a greyish complexion who tried hard to be jovial. He was a smoker and must have been miserable in a place like this. When they got into his car, he changed the subject to the reason he assumed they had come. They were being asked to elect a new executive director at the meeting, but everyone here felt that the old management team should be kept on despite the reforms. A large and important enterprise such as this one should be run by experts, after all. Of course there was a lot that needed changing. The equipment was antiquated, but that was not the management's fault. The enterprise had to pour money that might have been used to build a modern production line into the state coffers, and once the state got hold of the money, it simply evaporated, or rather got swallowed up by palaces of culture and power dams that did more harm than good… He stopped as though he had suddenly realized he didn't know who he was talking to, or rather, as though he knew exactly who he was talking to.

There were still two hours before the meeting began. On television, meetings were as boring as heads of state receiving ambassadors or saying goodbye to each other at airports. Unfortunately, this was precisely the kind of thing news producers wanted. They didn't care if viewers were bored or not. They knew that most people had no choice of programme and that they would look at the screen even if all they showed was smoke pouring out of smokestacks. Sometimes there were interesting faces at these meetings, but they were the exception, and they almost never belonged to the person who was speaking. The speakers usually had oddly shaped heads and spoke in slippery sentences. In the cutting-room Pavel's colleagues would often try in vain to find a single sentence that actually meant something.

The car bounced along the uneven road. The plant was laid out like a small town. It had streets, junctions, railway tracks and yard engines, hospitals, canteens, timberyards and its own signs with rules and regulations printed on coloured panels.

Pavel remarked that the windows in several buildings were smashed although the buildings were obviously still in use.

'Yes,' said the manager, 'even with the greatest precautions we occasionally have explosions, it's not worth replacing the glass.'

'Many dead?' asked Sokol.

'Oh no, not when you consider we're living under a volcano. Isn't it odd how people go on building their villages under volcanoes? We don't have a volcano of our own, so we had to make one.' The manager laughed stiffly. It was clearly not the first time he had delivered this witticism.

'Living under a volcano takes courage,' remarked Sokol. 'Building a volcano is just perverse.' A pity he would never say that on camera.

They stopped in front of a building that was newer and more modern than the others. The manager got out of the car to take them inside. Sokol was prepared to follow him, but Pavel was more interested in the place than in speeches, so he asked if he could look around the volcano.

The manager hesitated, and then moved to get into the car again.

'I can walk,' he suggested. 'In fact, I'd rather walk. You can't see much from a car.'

'But I can't let you wander around on your own. There are dangerous operations going on. I'm sure you'd like to take some shots around here, and I could probably arrange it, but not just now.'

'That's all right. I'll leave my camera here.'

'Good. Are you carrying matches?'

'I use a lighter.'

The crew followed the manager's interrogation with interest.

'You should have left it at the gate.'

'I won't light up.'

Looking slightly annoyed, the manager promised to send his secretary down to look after him, then went into the building. The rest of the crew followed. While Pavel was looking around the plant, they would set up the lights and position the cameras, which on his return he would order to be moved, just so they wouldn't begin to think him redundant.

He was alone. He noticed that most of the trees near the buildings had their tops lopped off. The buildings had roofs but they looked old and in need of repair.

A lorry carrying sacks and bearing a dangerous load warning drove by him. He could hear short, sharp detonations coming from somewhere in the distance. With every breath, he felt the air scraping his throat and making it hard for him to inhale. It would take more than sound and images to capture the stench of the poisonous fog that permeated everything.

Another lorry displaying a warning- sign drove past, loaded with metal barrels. This plant was where one of the most effective plastic explosives in the world was made. It was odourless and almost impossible to detect, and every terrorist on earth was eager to get his hands on it. He wanted to see how they made it, but they would never let him, and if he so much as asked, they would report him for being too curious. How were they to know who he was working for?

The secretary finally came. They introduced themselves to each other, but her name was as ordinary as her appearance, and he instantly forgot it. She said she would show him what she could, even though there wasn't much: whatever was interesting was off limits. And there was nothing nice to look at.

'Do you make aniline?'

She nodded. She reminded him superficially of Eva. She wore thick make-up that bluned any individual features she might have had. She apparently liked purple, and she swayed her hips when she walked. 'But the plant is being rebuilt now. They had no choice. A lot of women ended up dead.'

'How many women work in the aniline dye plant?'

She gave him a look that suggested he'd asked her

something outrageous. 'Quite a few, a couple of hundred certainly. But they have to be at least forty years old. And they have to sign a waiver saying they understand what the consequences might be. To their health, that is.'

She took him into a warehouse and introduced him to a bearded foreman. The building was old. The walls had not been painted in a long time and were cracked in some places. Warning signs were displayed everywhere. An enormous ventilator roared up near the ceiling. Metal barrels were stacked neatly on spacious shelves. The foreman explained how they handled the explosives to avoid accidents. In the rear two women in coloured dresses were lifting barrels on to the highest shelves with a forklift truck. 'What would happen if one of those barrels fell off?' he asked.

The foreman grimaced. Well, they could spend a week trying to put you back together again but they wouldn't succeed.'

'It happens sometimes,' the secretary added. 'They find a watch on an arm but they can't find the body to go with it.'

They went outside again, and the secretary led him past some low wooden buildings. In the distance he saw a double wire fence and could hear the sharp crack of explosions coming from the same direction.

Suddenly he remembered the prison camp. Escape had been impossible, he couldn't leave for a day or even for an hour, he had nothing and no one, neither his camera nor his dog, nothing but his prison uniform, his defiance and his hope that one day all this would come to an end. He'd been certain at the time that as soon as he got out he would try to escape again, that he'd do it better next time and be done with this barbed-wire country forever. Instead, here he was, still around, waiting to film a meeting, a colourless, odourless, antiseptic meeting in rooms that reeked of death.

He looked around to see if there were guard towers and prisoners in striped prison uniforms, but he could only see two workers in blue overalls moving slowly in the distance, one of them carrying an iron rod on his shoulder. In prison camp they had cut iron rods, old, rusty iron rods, and sheets of metal. They put him into a gang with a man called Gabo, who was inside because he'd slept with his thirteen-

year-old sister. Pavel hadn't given much thought to his crime; what bothered him most was that it was impossible to get Gabo to work properly, and because they couldn't fulfil their quotas, they had their already meagre rations cut back.

The explosions sounded closer.

'The dynamite plant is on the other side of the woods. They're always testing explosives over there. Do you want to take a look inside?'

'Will they let me?'

'They might, if I went with you.' She attempted a coquettish smile. 'You see those buildings in front of us? You can take a look in one of them if you like. You'll be surprised. Instead of setting up proper safety procedures and buying new machines, they simply put light roofs on the buildings. If there's an explosion, the roof flies off and so do the people, but the walls and the buildings around it remain standing.' She was becoming talkative, perhaps to reciprocate his own attempts to be friendly. 'Over there, in the nitroglycerine plant, they have fully automated vats for mixing liquids by remote control. But they still do it by hand, with paddles. The automated equipment doesn't work. If the men were to get slightly out of sync, they'd all go up. Have you seen The Wages of Fear? It's exactly like that. But no one's going to make a film about us. They'd never be allowed.

'I bet you're wondering why they work there. It's obvious: they do it for the bonuses. We're selling ourselves and we never think about it any more. Mum's got emphysema and she's on permanent disability. My brother's little girl is in the children's cancer clinic. In our block of flats three people have died in the past year and not one of them was over forty. Go to our cemetery and have a look at the dates on the tombstones. What good are bonuses to them now? But nobody thinks they'll end up that way. I'm the same.' She smiled flirtatiously again. 'But you'd better keep all this to yourself.'

The path led through the woods. There wasn't a soul around. If he were to put his arms around her now and kiss her, she probably wouldn't object, but what then?

Bare branches, trees with their crowns lopped off stretched towards the sky. The wire fence was quite near now, and he even glimpsed a soldier in a green uniform on patrol.

'Oh, look at the poor thing!' she cried suddenly. A jay was hopping about on the path waving a single wing in a vain attempt to fly.

The poor bird was being punished for the sins of others. Too bad he didn't have his camera with him. He would have liked to film the jay. A ghastly bird in a ghostly wood. If he ever made a film about the end of civilization, or about the world after some great catastrophe, the image might come in handy. But he would never make a film like that now. He would end up like this bird first.

He wanted a drink. He'd ask her to take him into one of the company canteens and buy her one to thank her for her company and then, then he would see. He really should have tried to remember.

She bent over and picked up the bird. 'Oh, you poor little thing. Are you afraid? Do you see that?' she said, turning to him. 'Do you see that?'

'It won't survive,' he said, 'unless you want to take it home.'

She shook her head. 'There's no point. I can't take them all home.'

'Let me have it.' He took the bird out of her hand and ended its suffering with a single twist. Then he kicked aside some leaves with his shoe, put the bird's dead body in the depression and covered it with leaves.

This factory, he realized, was a microcosm of the whole country: shabby, decaying structures surrounded by a double wire fence. Life is dying off, and not even the birds will survive, but there's something explosive in the air. All it needs is a spark, and everything will blow up.

Who will strike the spark? Who will survive the explosion?

'All the same,' she said, 'I envy you. By evening you'll be gone and you'll never have to come back.'

4

It was shortly after noon when he turned off the main highway and followed a road that rose gently through a wood. He still did not really know where he was going, but he needed to drive somewhere. He couldn't just stay put or return to a place where he'd persuaded himself he had a reason to be, where he thought he was at home.

Yesterday, when the meeting with the predetermined outcome was over, he had invited the secretary for a drink, and afterwards she took him to a party in a large house. Outside, to his surprise, several luxurious western cars were parked. Indoors, their owners were getting drunk. Though he drank a lot too, he was aware of how alien these faces marked by life under a volcano seemed to him. The secretary was pleased to have him as her guest, and she introduced him to people who had no desire whatsoever to know him, and whose names and positions he had no need to remember.

There were also many strikingly or scantily dressed women at the party, but they all seemed to be with someone. He listened to several stories from lives which, except for occasional explosions and premature deaths, were much like the lives people lead anywhere else. Here, however, the line between being and non-being had been blurred. Wherever this happens, other lines become easier to cross as well: lines marking greed, dishonesty, dishonour, shamelessness and the despair which probably lies behind all the rest.

What was greed, and dishonour? What was wretchedness?

Greed was a finger down the throat of the satiated, an extra room for useless junk, an unloved lover in one's arms.

As the night wore on, inhibitions vanished and, again without his camera, he watched a young man with trembling hands trying to give himself an injection, unable to find a vein. He saw a couple dance half-naked into the corner of a room and sink to the floor in an amorous embrace, and a man vomiting into a large Chinese vase through a cluster of red asters.

Dishonour was a substitute for honour which had exhausted itself in a vain attempt to bind someone to itself.

Then his attention was caught by a red-haired woman who appeared to be there alone. For some time now she had been gazing at him mistily. Her eyes were red, either from the smoke in the air or from crying. He invited her to dance. She shook her head, but then she stood up with great difficulty. 'Don't be angry,' she warned him, 'I probably won't be a very good partner tonight.'

'You mean a dance partner?'

'Isn't that all you want me for?'

'We don't have to dance if you don't feel like it.'

Wretchedness was the lot of those who hadn't the strength to be honourable nor the courage to be dishonourable. Wretchedness was the lot of those who, under all circumstances, remain in the middle.

She led him away to a room that was empty except for a solitary drunk who had fallen asleep in a leather armchair. She poured two glasses of cognac from a bottle that had been put there for guests who knew their way around. Five years ago, she said, she had married the marketing director of the company. She was a lawyer and had worked in his department. Her husband travelled a lot and had taken her on some of his trips. She had visited many countries and had seen a lot of exotic cities — Tripoli, Dakar, Amman, Lagos — but the names don't tell you anything. If you haven't been there, it's hard to imagine the atmosphere. The sea; the dark, narrow streets; hotels with swimming-pools on the roof; that strange light that makes everything seem to glow; those magnificent carpets in the mosques; the palm groves; the tiny villages with houses that look like brightly painted termite mounds; markets and bazaars where you can wander for hours, haggle with merchants and buy everything from magnificent embroideries, gold, precious stones and beaten copper to miraculous amulets, rattles, marimbas. You can't imagine those sounds, shouts, the music and the whistling, the different smells, and then evenings in sterile hotel rooms, negotiations in which millions change hands. You have no idea what an incredible demand there is in the world for a cheap

explosive with no taste and no smell. They haggle over the price, of course, not like in the souk, but for millions. They stick envelopes into each other's pockets with cheques for amounts you can't even begin to imagine. .

'Where's your husband now?'

'With some slut. Where else? He can buy any woman he feels like. He's thrown me off even though he pretends that he can't live without me. But he knows that he has to be careful, because if I wanted to talk about those business deals of his, nothing could save him, not even the fact that he's politically reliable. . ' 'Have you ever been afraid?'

'Afraid of what?'

'Of what you know.'

She shrugged her shoulders. 'The worst they could do is kill me. I have to die some day anyhow.'

But she didn't seem afraid to him. She was probably politically reliable too', enough at least to go on the record.

'Would you like to talk about this?'

'Maybe some day, maybe to someone, but not now, not to you.'

She knew the house well even in her drunken state. She found an empty room with a key on the inside, so they could lock themselves in. There were no couches, not even a bed, so they made love on the floor. She probably did it to get back at her husband who was big, powerful and rich enough to buy any whore he wanted.

Why did he do it? Because she was pretty and a little sad, because she had tried so hard to persuade him how exceptional she was, how far her experiences were beyond the reach of his imagination. And because he didn't know her name and because he thought he would never see her again.

He drove out of the wood and emerged on one side of a deep valley with a river winding through it. For a second, it flashed through his mind that instead of turning the wheel to follow the asphalt, he could drive straight on, and the car would fly off the road, Hollywood style, turn slowly over in the air and then plunge down into the rocks, the roar and crashing of metal on stone, the explosion and fire. The end at last. Going nowhere, expecting nothing, meeting no one,

listening to no one, knowing nothing, bowing to no one.

From a distance, rising out of the autumn mists, he saw the castle where Peter was in his tenth year as caretaker.

For the first few years after serving their sentences, they saw each other often. They took advantage of a political thaw and started studying for their degrees by correspondence. When they got their diplomas, Peter, unlike him, refused to accept a position from which someone had just been dismissed. His religious convictions had something to do with his decision, and so did Alice, who shared Peter's faith. So Peter worked for several years as a linoleum layer, then he took a job as caretaker of a castle. The castle was not far from the place where they had both once tried to cross the border.

Peter could certainly have found more demanding work than looking after a nationalized, aristocratic country seat. But he wasn't complaining. He let it be known that his work gave him intellectual independence, at least. Neither baroque art nor the ideas of that period excited anyone any more. He could have had complete peace and quiet had he not taken up activities that the current legal system had placed outside the law. Both Peter and Alice wanted to remain independent: to associate with people, read books and live as they saw fit.

In a small village grocery below the castle he bought five bottles of red wine (they only had one kind) and three bars of chocolate for the children. He would have liked to buy something nice for Alice, but there was nothing here he could give her as a present.

Approaching the castle gate, he was stopped by a sudden, constricting pain in his chest. He had to lean against the wall. He should drink less, stop smoking, try to live his life differently. His job in television was wearing him down — not the work itself, but the conditions in which he worked. But what would he do if he decided to quit? He could probably make a living as a street photographer, but the right time for that had long since passed. He should at least take a rest. But where, with whom and, in fact, why?

He rang the bell. A window over the vestibule opened, and dogs began barking inside. A surprised female voice

called out, 'Is that you, Pavel?'

'It's me, Alice, I was just passing by.'

The barking rapidly grew louder, then a key turned creakily in the lock. Two boxers burst through the door, jumped up on him and tried to lick his face.

'I just happened to be driving by,' he said.

'Where are you heading?' She was wearing a short skirt of printed cotton.

'I was on a shoot not far from here, in the chemical factory.'

'Way into the night?' she said, 'or right through till morning?'

'I suppose I do look pretty awful,' he admitted. 'I've been working like a dog recently, and I went on a bit of a bender.' He noticed that she too looked tired, perhaps even unhappy.

They walked together along a cold, gloomy corridor. Rust-stained engravings were hanging on the walls. She walked ahead of him. Her long legs had excited him the first time they met, and even after three children she remained slim, almost delicate. Her fair hair reached almost to her waist. Peter and he had met her together twenty years ago, when they were demonstrating against the invasion of their country by a foreign army. The foreign power had hypocritically presented its incursion as an act of assistance to help quell a non-existent enemy. They were standing near the radio building when they saw her, a girl in a short denim skirt and a boy's shirt, waving an enormous flag and shouting, along with others, the vain demand that the soldiers leave. Her eyes were dark blue. He'd never seen eyes of that colour before.

'They could start shooting any minute,' he had said to her.

'Why're you telling me this?' she said, 'I know it better than you do. They brought eight casualties in yesterday.'

They talked about those who had been shot, and about what would happen next. It went without saying that they were all prepared to take a stand, and even to die, but not a single shot was fired that day, and nothing happened to them.

Peter and he walked with Alice through the crowd and

down the square where years later, when he had learned to keep his own behaviour in close check, the demonstrators would gather again.

Strangers offered them refreshments, and they felt a special closeness that lifted them above the despair of the moment. That evening, they walked her home together. She lived in a hostel in the grounds of the hospital where she worked. They both kissed her goodnight. The kiss meant nothing, promised nothing. Still, he remembered it and he remembered her. He liked her looks and her personality. There was a warm-hearted openness in her behaviour, but beneath it he sensed hidden, impenetrable depths that drew him to her.

For a while they went out together, and he believed he loved her as much as she loved him. He was certain of this until something happened which, at the time, he thought far less a turning-point than she did. He preferred not to remember it now.

When they were going out together, Peter would often join them. They attended plays in small theatres or went to private screenings, which were a pleasure for Alice to watch and a duty for him.

He never stopped believing that Alice was more suited to him than to Peter, but later it became clear that she didn't think so. Or perhaps she sensed that Peter was more constant, more faithful and, most of all, more genuine. He missed his chance. Who might he have become had he been able to live by her side?

'Whether it was by accident or by design, I'm glad you stopped,' she said, smiling. She was always sweet to him, as though nothing had happened to sour their relationship.

They went up to the first floor.

'You'll have to wait a while for Peter,' she said. 'He's with an inspector from the centre. They're always nosing about. They'd love to find something wrong. Or at least to find something missing from the inventory. But they won't catch him out like that.'

'How will they catch him out?'

'They won't,' she said, and for a moment she looked almost annoyed. 'Peter respects the rules and only does

what's permitted. But as you well know, there are areas where almost everything is permitted.' Perhaps she suddenly regretted saying this because she added quickly: 'Even so, they won't leave him alone. Just last month they came to get him twice. They say they're from Criminal Investigations, but it's always the same people, the ones who are trying to drive us out of here.' As if trying to change the subject, she stopped in front of a door. 'Wait, let me show you something.' She unlocked the door, and he looked into a room containing several pieces of baroque furniture wrapped in sheets of translucent plastic. A fresco on one wall was disfigured by a layer of mould, and the parquet flooring was buckling in several places.

'They're trying to blame this on him too,' she said. 'At the end of the summer, a gale lifted off a piece of the roof, and we've been trying ever since to find someone to repair the hole. Peter covered it with tar-paper, but every time it rains the water gets in. It's a pity you're not a roofer. But maybe you can take a couple of pictures, and we'll send them to the ministry. Or you could make a film.'

'I doubt that they'd approve it.'

'I forgot, you have to have everything approved.'

'I can take some snapshots for you.'

He sat down in a chair facing the mouldy wall. The fresco depicted the birth of Venus. The goddess reminded him of the woman standing beside him, with long, golden hair tumbling down to her waist: he saw an infinite tenderness in both their faces. A big brown blotch was creeping down the wall, coming closer and closer to the goddess, threatening to swallow up her features.

A child was crying somewhere in the house. Alice had become distracted.

'Go and feed the children. Just ignore me.'

'You can come along.'

'I'll stay here. I'd like to take a good look at this mouldy fresco.'

He was alone. He could hear quiet music coming through the wall. The dogs were barking outside. What was he doing here? Why had he come?

Because he didn't have a home of his own.

He went from home to home, from castle to castle, like a wandering minstrel. Except that the minstrel had a lute and a song to offer. He had nothing.

What could a wandering photographer offer?

To take a picture.

A picture of what?

A picture of everything that could be captured on film: a hand, legs, clouds, snakes, banners, mouldy goddesses, presidents, faces, truncheons, naked bodies, flowers, hypodermic needles, fences, volcanic explosions.

What was a picture?

A picture was a motionless record of motion. An arrested representation of life. A picture was the kiss of death pretending to possess immutability.

What if he were just to leave quietly? After all, he had dropped in uninvited and he knew he didn't belong here. But where did he belong?

On a pile of old pictures.

He was lying to himself. He hadn't come because he was looking for a home. He'd come because he was looking for an alibi. One day he would be able to say: I was never ashamed of my friends. That is, if there was anyone to say that to. If anyone would listen. But he was still lying to himself. He was here because he needed, every so often, to see Alice.

Venus was looking at him tenderly. Her long blonde hair was waving in the wind, and flowers were drifting down around her. Suddenly he heard a stifled sob. He jumped. 'What's going on?'

Silence.

'Were you crying?'

Silence. A sob.

'Why are you crying?'

'You said everything would be different when children came.'

'Is that why you're crying?'

'But darling, what if they don't come?'

'We won't think about that now.'

'They won't come. I wanted to tell you anyway. You have to know. We would be alone.'

'What are you talking about?'

'If they came, it would be a miracle.'

'Are you sure about this?'

'I know it.'

'I didn't mean what I said about children. I never imagined I would have children. I used to imagine a lot of things, like being an Indian chief, but never that I would be a father.'

'You're only saying that.'

'I say it because I mean it.'

'But one day it will really get to you.'

'I don't know what will happen one day. Why should we think about it?'

Two months later Albina announced to him that she was pregnant.

Alice came to get him. She had changed into a dress of Indian cashmere, obviously for him. Perhaps she wasn't happy with Peter. Perhaps she hadn't been happy with him for a long time. Or she was bored with their quasi-exile. Something had happened between them, something that you don't even confide to a friend. But what kind of friend was he anyway? Chocolate bars for the children and the occasional visit couldn't hide the fact that he'd sailed away to another continent.

'They've left,' she announced, referring to a group of inspectors, whom he hadn't seen and didn't care about.

'That dress looks good on you,' he said. 'You're more and more beautiful all the time.'

'Thank you for saying so, but I know it's not true.'

Then he sat with her and Peter, his fellow escapee, his former partner in crime, in a small room in the castle. They drank red wine, and he tried to pretend that he felt a kind of closeness, a common bond with his friend, whom fate, or rather circumstances, had hounded all the way to this remote castle with mouldy walls and a leaky roof. Yet he felt neither closeness nor a common bond, just an uncertain sense of guilt, shame and envy. He needed to justify himself to Peter and even more to Alice. He told them about his problems in the department, where everyone was just waiting to pounce on everyone else's mistakes in the

hope of gaining promotion; about the director of programming who flaunted her authority by forbidding women to wear short skirts; about the chief producer who knew that if he blocked a good piece of work, nothing would happen to him, but if he failed to block something that might upset a minister, or an under-secretary's wife, he could lose his job and so, just to be sure, approved nothing but ineffective and tedious mediocrities. Pavel's film on a psychiatric hospital had been banned because it might have been interpreted as an allusion to the country that ruled over them, where they sent their political opponents to such places. They even tried to block his film on carved nativity scenes because they said it endorsed religious sentiment. The film had taken almost a month to shoot, and the commentary was written by an officially recognized poet. Fortunately for the film, the official poet was very put out by the ban and complained. The censor then ordered him to tidy up the script. Instead of 'Jesus' he was to say 'the little child', and instead of 'the Virgin Mary' he was to say 'the mother of the child'.

He didn't mention his ineffective and tedious film about the president, which they had just finished editing.

He noticed that Peter was restlessly drumming his fingers on the table-top. 'I can see what a bore it must be to argue with the censors,' Peter said. 'But what I don't understand is why you hang on.'

Yes, faced with Peter, he had no defence, and should never have mentioned his problems. At the same time Peter's self-righteous superiority, which was possible only because he had found a way to exist on the margins of society, irritated Pavel. 'I got myself into it. Yes, I could have tried working in some castle and waiting for things to change. But I was afraid I'd forget how to hold a camera.'

'Aren't you afraid you'll forget where you are?'

'What do you mean?'

'I'm going to say this because no one else will. We sometimes see your films. There's nothing to them except a little technique. I mean, you must feel that yourself.'

'I do as much as can be done.'

'Exactly. And because not much can be done, you fool

around and kid yourself that it hasn't got anything to do with you.' Peter was frowning sourly.

'Are you saying I should have found myself a castle too?'

'What kind of question is that? You wouldn't dream of it. You have more important things to do. Like showing that anyone who dares to make a protest, or isn't completely happy here, is a criminal and a threat to the common good.'

If conversations like this had to happen at all, they should be private, between the two of them. But because Alice was here, Pavel said, 'I'm not trying to show anything of the kind. I can't help what they decide to broadcast. As far as the demonstrations are concerned, even if I sometimes get to shoot them, I'm never in on the final edit.'

'No, you just give them the material,' Peter said.

'Yes, but scissors can turn a demonstration against something into a demonstration for it, and vice versa.'

'Don't hide behind someone else's scissors. You must know when you're filming what someone is going to do with those scissors.'

'That's how it is. I can just mark time where I am, leave completely or turn material over to them and let them edit it. But I take pictures just like people do all over the world. I know that at least something of what I do will survive. One day it will make interesting documentaries.'

'One day, maybe. But people are watching this stuff now, and you're helping to mislead them.'

'So what? Do you think this is the only place where people are misled? Do you-think that in other countries they churn out masterpieces? The minute you turn on the box over there someone's murdering somebody else or shooting them or kicking them when they're down. And those music videos! Once you've spent a few hours watching them, you're ready to believe that the world is a writhing, screaming, absurd madhouse. Of course you can always switch channels and watch a porn film or a horror show or look at piles of dead bodies, victims of the Mafia or terrorists or revolutionaries or brave soldiers who have just staged a coup d'état. And you can always find an ad

that will tell you which chewing-gum brings the greatest happiness to the greatest number.'

'As you well know, I haven't had a passport for fifteen years and I can't make these comparisons as easily as you can.'

'That's enough,' said Alice. 'You see each other once a year. Do you have to argue? We all have our faults — it's just easier to see other people's.'

Am I to take that personally?' asked Peter.

'It didn't occur to me that you would. But if you do, you probably have a reason.'

Just as another argument seemed about to erupt, one of the boys ran into the room and asked his father to come and help settle some less essential dispute, leaving Pavel alone with Alice.

'I don't mean to make excuses for myself,' he said, though in fact his greatest wish was to vindicate himself in her eyes, 'but I really did hope that I could do what I enjoyed doing and what I think I'm good at, and that people might occasionally learn something from it. And sometimes I think they do. Yes, I have to do things I detest. That's the price I pay. Almost everyone pays it, one way or another.'

'Peter only meant that you were destroying yourself. What you destroy in yourself can't be fixed, and that's not just true of alcoholic livers and smoked-out lungs.' Perhaps she wanted to add: or children killed before they are born. But she merely refilled his glass. He quickly downed his drink. They could hear children's voices coming from the next room. 'Would a little walk in the park help? I mean, since you were out drinking last night?'

The dry leaves rustled under their feet. The red of the honeysuckle contrasted sharply with the blue sky. She put her arm through his. The low sun surrounded her head with a shining halo. If only he could kiss her and hold her as he once had. But he knew that there was no point, so he merely said, 'It's beautiful here, and you are getting prettier and prettier. You seem to belong here for always.'

'Would you want to replace these statues with me?'

'It would certainly improve the park.'

'It would be fine during the day,' she agreed, 'but I'd be afraid at night. I don't know whether you heard about what happened. There's a club near here where the local big-shots hold weddings and banquets. One morning about a month ago, an escaped prisoner showed up with a machine-gun and killed everyone there. A cook, a waitress and three customers.'

'Why did he do it?'

'No one knows. Perhaps he went berserk, or perhaps he was drunk or just desperate. Or maybe he had always had murder in his heart and finally got his hands on a weapon.'

'Did they catch him?'

'They got him at the scene of the murder. He laid the corpses neatly side by side, then sat down, had a cigarette and waited. Actually, he must have been smoking two at a time, because when they found him, the ground all around him was littered with butts. The police just shot him. Anyway, I doubt they'd approve of me as a statue. They don't even approve your screenplays.'

'The fact that they don't approve isn't so important. I have screenplays ready that I don't even think. . ' he stopped and then added, 'I think they're quite different.'

'Different from what?'

'Different from what I do now.'

'That's good,' she said encouragingly. 'Can they be filmed?'

He shook his head.

'Some day perhaps?'

He shrugged his shoulders. 'I don't know what will happen some day — or even if I'll still be around.'

'No one knows, only God.'

Now that he'd finally found the courage to mention his screenplays, he was disappointed she hadn't given him a chance to tell her more about them.

'But I believe that nothing this bad can last forever,' she said.

'Do you really believe that?'

'Yes. The world is like an enormous set of scales. When evil begins to outweigh good, angels cram themselves in

on the lighter side. You can't see them, but there they are, restoring the balance.'

'You're that kind of angel, Alice.'

'Oh, you're always talking blasphemy. I believe in change because I don't want to stay here for the rest of my life. At least I don't want that for Peter. Actually, I quite like it, and the children love it. Growing up in a castle is quite different from growing up in some prefab high-rise. There's space here. Everywhere you go you can reach out and touch the past.'

Even the trees here were ancient. They must have witnessed many wars, many deaths, countless conversations. He noticed the imprint of a horseshoe in the sand on the pathway. Who could possibly go riding here?

'I'm glad you're not unhappy,' he said. 'People usually use their children as an excuse to explain why they are not living their own lives.' He wondered if he dared speak of himself as a potential father in front of her. Then he said, 'I think that if I'd had children, I'd be doing something completely different. Of course, you can only be decent for yourself. But you need to have someone, someone for whom you want to make the effort. I know that how I live is my own fault, but what good is it to know that?'

'You have Eva.'

He shook his head.

'OK, I'm sorry. But a person always has something more than just work and people he loves.'

'You mean God?'

'You don't think so?'

He shook his head. 'I don't see the slightest sign of his presence anywhere.'

'I'm sorry about that, Pavel.'

Now he ought to say: I am too, Alice. If I'd been able to see it then, our lives would have been different. But I could never believe that God was made man and let himself be crucified and then rose from the dead, or that centuries or thousands of years after my death I would rise again and return to my body to be judged for some actions lost in time. But it seemed absurd to talk to her about that. And besides, problems of dogma were not essential to her faith.

'When they tried Peter and me back then,' he recalled, 'they assigned me this old lawyer. When I got a year in jail, he told me: you're young, and it won't be easy, but you have to realize that what you can't avoid, you have to accept. There's no point in resisting the yoke. He told me that before the war, he'd been in America and watched them breaking in young colts on a ranch. The ones that resisted and bucked and kicked got beaten the hardest. At the time what he said made me angry. It seemed like a filthy morality he was preaching. But I've had many occasions to remember it since. I actually think he meant well.'

'It's a nice story,' she said. 'Except that we're not horses.'

FILM

I

The man from the archives is elderly and unremarkable. He's wearing an army shirt, black trousers and grey shoes. Ella is dressed completely in purple because she knows purple excites men. Despite his greyness, the man does indeed give her a hungry look, but he addresses her politely: my dear Mrs Fuková. He listens to what she has to say with an obliging expression, but his grey eyes are crafty.

'Of course, I know his films,' he says. 'He was one of our best documentary-makers. Hardly anyone was a match for him in his field, but now. . well, you understand.'

Ella is chilled by the little word 'was'. 'But he's not entirely banned,' she objects quietly. 'Occasionally they let him make something. He has the odd contract, but it's never the kind of film that lets him show what he can really do. It's very painful for him.'

'My dear Mrs Fuková, who said anything about a ban? No one is banned in this country. Your spouse is simply. . shall we say, not in favour at the moment.'

'That's why I asked your wife. I just thought you might be able to arrange something. I understand you choose films for the president to watch. If you were to send him one of his films. . ' Ella gropes for the right words. She's grown used to shady dealings in her shop, but even so, she feels oddly embarrassed and uncertain. Her husband—

who is not really her husband, and in whose interests she believes she is acting — has no idea that she's here. Still, she adds: 'We'd certainly make it worth your while.'

The man from the archives frowns, and she is suddenly worried. 'Of course, if you think nothing can be done, you can tell me straight out.'

'No, no, we'll think of something. I seem to recall your husband's film — from South America, or Mexico wasn't it?'

'Mexico.'

'Do you remember, Mrs Fuková, whether or not there's something in it about snakes?'

'Why, yes,' she replies eagerly. 'He did something on rattlesnake hunters.'

'Of course, now I remember. That's wonderful. We always send films about snakes to the Castle, mainly because the president's wife was interested.'

'But she's dead.'

'Comrade President maintains his old habits. At his age it's quite understandable.'

'Would you send him that film?'

'We'll try*. Of course, that's not really enough. He doesn't pay much attention to credits any more. We'll have someone draw his attention to the director's name. And if he shows an interest, then we might point out that the director isn't exactly — how did we put it? — in favour at the moment.'

'And do you think you could arrange that?'

'For you, I'll do everything I can.' And he moves closer to touch her hair as a sign of his compliance.

'We'd be terribly grateful to you, and as I say we'll certainly make it worth your while.'

'Don't mention it, Mrs Fuková. My wife enjoys shopping at your store. She's always full of admiration at the way you manage to come up with everything she needs.'

She thanks him once again and promises to try and find something really special for his wife. Then she leaves, feeling that she has accomplished something that might win her the right to use the name by which the archivist has addressed her.

Fuka, meanwhile, is filming a news feature in a notorious chemical factory, which seems like a modern

manifestation of hell. Because most of what they make here is secret, they show him the library, the showers, the clinic and a small timberyard between the buildings. They don't take him to the graveyard where the tombstones bear witness to the sudden deaths of young men and women— many on a single day. They introduce him to smiling female workers who speak in glowing terms of their miserable wages and their summer holidays in the company chalet. He manages to slip away from the filming and visit a building where workers are mixing an explosive liquid with large ladles in huge vats, aware that at any moment they might be blown through the roof, which has been specially constructed for this eventuality. He gazes in astonishment at this Boschean scene, aware of a gentle tingling in his spine, because his life too hangs by a thread.

When he returns to the crew, he finds someone else standing behind the camera, a colleague known to everyone as Little Ivan.

Little Ivan tells him he was sent over because they said Fuka had had to leave early. Someone has obviously got it wrong. Or, worse, no one has got anything wrong, they have merely decided to get rid of him.

Little Ivan reassures him that he has no personal interest in this job. It's hardly what you'd call a great environment here, and anyway he wouldn't want to complete a job that someone else has started. It's a question of principles.

Then why is he doing this?

What could he do? They ordered him to.

Fuka decides to call the studio management. By now he's convinced that there has been no mistake. True, he has a contract for this job, but what good is a contract in a country where the law is changeable and selectively applied?

As usual, he can't get through on the phone. He eventually calms down and decides what to do. They won't tell him anything over the phone. He'll deal with this in person.

The deputy director of the studio receives him in a friendly and even fatherly fashion. 'That wasn't really a job for you, with your abilities. . ' he says, and Fuka begins to think that he was wrong, that something unexpected has

happened, that a miraculous reversal has taken place. At last, they'd noticed his work.

'So what should I be doing?'

'You've made some interesting films. I remember the one about Mexico. That sequence about the rattlesnake hunters was brilliant.'

'I wanted to go back to Mexico, but you wouldn't let me.'

'Trips abroad are not my department.'

'They wouldn't let me,' he corrected himself.

'Others have to be given a chance too. You know how much a trip like that costs.'

'That film paid for itself. It was sold abroad.'

'No one's accusing you of anything. But you should try doing something like that here.'

'But you — they — turned down three of my ideas.'

'Is that so?'

'And I can't make a movie about rattlesnakes here.'

'Rattlesnakes are not the point. People are. You should find a good story.'

'You've just pulled me off something that might be called a good story. The conditions those people work in… '

'That's exactly what I'm talking about. You always look for the negative side of everything. That's not a good story; that's prejudice. I don't want to tell you what to think, but you know yourself that there are different ways of looking at everything.'

'I look at things the best way I know how.'

Their conversation continues. It is as round and slippery as a billiard ball. He can feel the phrases winding and tightening around his throat as though he is being enmeshed in a ball of string. He should start screaming but he knows no one will come to his rescue. What will he do? What should he do? Should he plead? Offer the deputy director a share of his fee? Walk out and slam the door behind him? How would he make a living? What would he have to live for?

He gets up and tries to smile. The deputy director smiles too and offers him his hand. His cuff slides up and Fuka glimpses the flash of a gold cuff-link. Or is he actually hiding a dagger up his sleeve?

'Don't fret,' says the woman he's been living with for two years. It's later in the evening and they are having dinner together. 'Even if they don't give you any more work, I'm still earning a living.'

Poor woman. Eight hours behind a counter for what he can make in one.

'It's not just the money.'

'I know,' she says, although what can she know? 'Today I went to see that man who works in the archives.'

'You went to see who?'

'I told you about it. The man who chooses films for the president to watch. He's going to send him your film. Everything will change, you'll see.'

'Oh, sure it will,' he says angrily. 'What did you do that for? Who asked you to go begging on my behalf?'

'You can't just let them drop you like that. And maybe the president will ask to see you. Then they'll come crawling, you'll see.'

He slams his fork down on the table. 'I wish you'd stop that idiotic talk!' He storms away from the table but has nowhere to go. So he turns on the television. A blue sky appears on the screen. There is a bright spot in it — an aeroplane. The aeroplane lands, a line of soldiers stands to attention. Another pointless visit. He should turn the damn thing off but he has to fill the time between dinner and sleep somehow. Then he sees him: a liverish face, fleshy lips parting to reveal sparkling white dentures. The dark, evil eyes behind thick spectacles stare ahead, ready to meet the new arrival.

The aircraft door opens. An enormous black man grins into the camera. The old man toddles stiffly toward the aircraft, followed by his sycophantic entourage.

Two men walk past the ranks of soldiers. Then the contemptible old man raises a bony paw to greet the invited guests, the sycophantic entourage and everyone who is watching television. Fuka gets up and angrily switches it off.

When he's lying beside Ella in the stuffy but immaculate bedroom she suddenly says, I've wanted to say this to you for a long time — if you wanted to have a child of your own. . '

'What gave you that idea?'

'We've been together so long, how could I not have thought of it?'

'I know. Would you like to have another child?'

'I'd like to have one with you.'

'How nice.'

'What about you?'

'I. . I've never really thought about it. You know the situation I'm in.'

'But you've been in that situation for as long as I've known you.'

'I haven't given it any thought for quite a while.'

'People have children in worse situations.'

'Yes. I used to think about it,' he added. 'It seemed odd to me that people would even consider bringing a child into a world like this. But I suppose that was shallow thinking. The world has always been a terrible place in one way or another.' He is spouting banalities — after all there have been times when he has enjoyed life and felt happy. 'I'll think about it,' he says, though he already knows he does not want to haVe a child with her. Then he embraces her.

They make love as they usually do: wordlessly, without great passion but deftly, both of them coming to a climax at the same time. Then she snuggles close to him and falls asleep almost at once, while he tosses restlessly on the bed, and in his mind caresses the woman with whom he might really have had a child, returns to the cottage where he stayed with her before leaving on his long journey across the sea.

Of course she doesn't go with him, and perhaps that's why she tells him about living in India when she was a child, and about the blind teacher who taught her about the human soul. They pretend that they are travelling in foreign countries, and are happy.

The rain that day beats relentlessly against the window-panes, and the wind whips through the tops of the nearby oak trees. 'What country will you choose?' he asks Alina. Sometimes he calls her Ali, and sometimes Albina.

'I think I hear the sea. It's a warm sea. Even the sand is warm. And the mountains begin close to the shore.'

'Are they high mountains?' he asks.

'Not very high, but they look steep and bare. There's a pathway leading up into them. Do you see it?'

'Wait, yes, I think I do. It's winding among the boulders.'

'That's the one. There are shrubs growing beside it— tamarisk, I think. Would you like to see what it's like on the summit?'

'Why not? Perhaps we'll find something up there, something special. What sea is this?'

'It's a warm sea. When I was little I liked the name "Sargasso". It's the Sargasso Sea.'

'What's sargasso, Ali?'

'It's the name of a seaweed. It's brown.'

'For a long time I never saw the sea. After my attempt to escape, they wouldn't let me travel at all. Then I finally made it to the Baltic. The first day I climbed up on a cliff overlooking the water. I was lucky, because on the ledge of a nearby rock there was an enormous seal, sunning himself. The water in the sea was two different colours. A current, like a stream, was as blue as the sky, but there were dark currents flowing on either side. I sat there for maybe an hour, watching the pure waters battle the dark waters. I remember it well because it was unusual for me— just to sit and look. I was always in a hurry, always eager to see new, amazing things that would change my life.'

'Did you ever see anything that did?'

'If I did manage to catch a glimpse of something, I was soon past it. You can't find anything if you're in too much of a hurry.'

'You're not in a hurry now.'

'Now we're walking along a pathway that leads into the mountains. You know, I didn't really know how to look, either. I sought out things that looked interesting, that would make a good picture.' It seemed odd to be talking about himself so easily, without reserve.

And so on a rainy day, in someone else's cottage, he wanders through her landscape with her. They climb higher and higher until they near the summit. He looks around. The sea lies far beneath them and seems to rise like a smooth, shimmering slope to meet the horizon. The

tamarisk gives off a spicy scent. On a nearby rock a purplish gecko is sunning itself. They climb through the final twists in the pathway and come to a stony plateau overgrown with high, yellow-brown grass which waves in the wind. Perhaps this is sargasso grass. On the opposite hill, several stony crags rise abruptly and barrenly to the sky, heralding another range of mountains beyond. At the base of one of the crags he can make out the shape of a white building. Two low towers rise from a grey roof, and a column of blue smoke hangs above it.

'What kind of building is that, Ali?'

'Perhaps it's a Buddhist temple.'

'Isn't it odd that it's the only building for miles? And there's no sign of people.'

'There must be people there. There's a fire.'

'What if they're spirits?'

'Spirits don't need fire,' she objects.

As they get closer to it he begins to distinguish details of the structure. There is an arched loggia running across the front, and behind it several crenellated stone walls extending back, purictuated by many entrances and low windows. The steep roof is covered with shingle, and flag-poles extend from the peak, with banners that snap in the wind.

'The windows are all closed, and so are the doors.'

'Yes. But there's someone over in the corner, sitting under that little gable.'

'I believe you're right, Alina. He's wearing a black cape and has long, white hair. He's sitting on a throne.'

'That's not a throne, it's a trunk.'

'Do you think he can see us?'

'His eyes are closed. I think he's blind. But he knows we're here.'

'I have a strange feeling,' he says. 'It's as though I was expecting something, as though I was about to learn something vital.'

'It will be him. My teacher. The blind one.'

'The one who told you what the soul comes from?'

'Yes.'

'He taught you about the soul. What else did he teach you?'

'He taught me to exercise and breathe and concentrate and look into the setting sun. He also taught me how to disconnect from things around me and listen to myself, ask questions of myself and reply.'

'That's strange. I don't think we're getting any closer.'

'It's the air that does it. It's hard to judge distances, or… '

'What are you thinking?'

'Or perhaps we're not meant to meet him.'

'I'd like to know what he taught you. Would I understand?'

'I don't know. That would depend on you, wouldn't it?'

'I'll try, and you will help me. I'll be your pupil and you will be my teacher.'

'That's impossible. I can't be your teacher.'

'Why not?'

'Because I'm yours, but in another way.'

'But please, be my teacher, just for a moment.'

'All right. Shall we sit down here?'

'If that's what it takes.'

They sit down on the grass, which is dry and coarse. He watches the wind ruffle her hair. For a long time she says nothing. It makes him anxious. He also feels tired, close to exhaustion. Finally, he decides to speak: 'Why don't you say something?'

'Wait! You have to concentrate.'

'I see a bird of prey circling around the cloister.'

'Look at it but don't think about it. Don't think about anything. Slowly close your eyes.'

Silence. Her breath and the distant sighing of the wind. The whispering of the leaves. The rain.

'What are you thinking?' she asks.

'That you're near.'

'What is nearness?'

'There may be a definition of it, but I don't know what it is.'

'Try saying what comes into your mind.'

'I don't usually say what comes into my mind.'

'Say it now.'

'Alina, it's not easy for me to be intimate with someone.'

'That's exactly why I'm asking you this.'

'Nearness is the moment at which love climaxes.'

'And anything else?'

'I don't know. Perhaps the willingness to listen.'

'You're looking somewhere outside yourself again. What are you looking for?'

'I don't see that building.'

'Don't think about it.'

'It seems as though a fog has come in.'

'Don't think about it.'

'If the fog comes in, we might get lost.'

'Are you afraid?'

'Sometimes. Ever since they locked me up I'm afraid of falling into a place I can't climb back out of.'

'What is fear?'

'Fear is the touch of death, death reminding us of its existence.'

'Is death touching you now?'

'No, not now. It can't touch me when I'm with you, when I'm so near you.' And he feels something he never knew before — ecstasy, or perhaps true nearness.

The next evening he drops in at his regular bar. Little Ivan is here; he's obviously finished the job without being blown through the roof. The producer, Poštolka, is here too, and so is the crazy pensioner with the beak nose who used to teach history and natural science. He taught something he didn't believe for so long it befuddled his mind. Now he breeds exotic birds and is gradually coming to resemble one himself.

'I knew they were getting ready to shaft you,' says Little Ivan, looking indignant, though he had obviously not been indignant enough to turn down Fuka's job. 'I bet it's the police, because they confiscated your film. They put the word about, and now no one has the guts to let you work. You should definitely do something about it.'

It's the same advice he had heard yesterday from his woman. 'Actually, I couldn't care less.'

'What if they don't let you film any more?' Poštolka interjects; it sounds almost like a threat.

'But you brought it on yourself,' says Little Ivan suddenly.

'How did you work that out?'

'You made it too obvious you couldn't care less. You have a perfect right not to give a shit, but you don't need to tell everyone.'

'Or if you do, you've got to have the right piece of paper,' says the ex-teacher with the beak nose. 'Get certified or get a tame bird. My parrot can say the names of all our presidents, even the ones you don't have to say under your breath.'

'To hell with your parrot.' He takes a draught of beer. In his mind's eye, he sees a grove of mimosas populated by yellow-green parrots with coral beaks. Was he supposed to fly around in circles forever — condemned to live in an aviary from which only death could liberate him? He takes another draught of beer and waits in vain for relief.

Poštolka starts talking about a prediction he's heard about the impending end of the world. They say it will be the consequence of some cosmic catastrophe, but he believes the end will be brought about by people themselves. They will poison the earth and then, in a final gesture, blow it to smithereens.

As usual his opinions are second-hand and banal. The teacher with the beak nose pooh-poohs the predictions, then launches into a ridiculous account of the three possible attitudes a man who wants to remain free can take.

First, he can try to gain the confidence of those who have power over his career. He hides what he really wants to say in his most secret drawer, and puts his heart on ice. But he can never gain their trust, because those who have the power to decide his fate are untrusting as a matter of principle. Still, he may gradually make a career for himself; acquire a car; two women; and a cottage where he goes to make love, get drunk and forget. But the heart he has put on ice suffers, and the man will be prematurely struck down by a heart attack.

'Anyone who takes the opposite position,' the old man goes on, 'puts nothing off and gives no ground to those who have the power to decide his fate. So he keeps his integrity. But those above him never give him a chance, and he achieves nothing of what he had vowed to achieve.

Disappointed, he takes to drink, and will probably end up in a clinic.'

The third position is somewhere in between. He dissimulates, makes concessions to the powerful, while at the same time secretly trying to live and work in harmony with his beliefs. Yet he knows what he has done wrong, and because his heart is still in his body, he torments it with pangs of conscience for so long that he eventually breaks down. He will probably end up in an institute for nervous disorders. An Austrian writer has claimed that before you can do good, you must first impress people. The old man, however, claims — with the air of one offering him the flower of his wisdom — that man must first do evil in order to gain room in which to do good, if he is still capable of doing good.

The old man's ranting angers Fuka. 'Shut up!' he shouts. 'Save the advice for your budgies.'

The bar closes at eleven o'clock. The producer invites Fuka to go on drinking. The former teacher invites him to visit his aviary. Little Ivan promises to put in a good word for him. He certainly means it, at least until he sobers up.

Fuka walks unsteadily back home along an empty street. He notices a drunken woman sprawled on the pavement opposite. Her handbag is in her lap and she is wearing a kerchief. She's probably from the country.

'I just couldn't make it,' he says to Alina when he returns, 'I had the air tickets, but there was an earthquake. You must have read about it.'

'I know,' she replies without looking at him. 'But I was desperate to have you back. When you didn't come, something happened, something inside me.' She'd lost some weight after the occurrence. She was wearing a yellow kerchief and not a hair on her head was visible. She must have had it cut.

He takes out snapshots showing half-demolished houses, the ruins of a bridge, crushed cars, uprooted trees, sunken pavements, cracked walls and cracked earth and even dead bodies arranged in a row beside a pile of rubble. 'It was spooky,' he says. 'I've never experienced anything like it. You don't really know what's going on. If

you could hear an explosion or something — but there was only the sound of things cracking and then shouts and then a moment of silence and then the cracking sounds again, and everything's trembling and you still don't know what's going on. I ran out into the street and at that moment the first building collapsed. . '

She shakes her head, not wanting to hear any more. 'I'm not accusing you of anything,' she says. 'Something happened, and I don't love you any more. It might have happened even if you'd come back. You're different from how I imagined you, from the person I'd like to live with.'

He wants her to tell him how he is different, but she suddenly begins a strange fit of trembling and begs him to leave her alone, never to call her, never again, to forget all about her.

He is dumbstruck, but he manages to nod. He wants to kiss her one more time. He takes her head in his hands and kisses her cold lips. He smells the perfume of her breath, but she does not reciprocate the kiss and tries to wriggle free of his grip. As she does so, the kerchief slips off her head, and he's stunned to see that she has lost not only the child, but her hair as well.

Fuka pulls his camera out of its case, and he even manages to change its lens and photograph the drunken woman, who may or may not have hair but almost certainly has no home to go back to.

What is a home?

A home is something we carry inside us. Those who do not have a home inside them cannot build one, either from defiance or from stone.

II

He finishes his breakfast. Since his wife died he has breakfasted alone. Alone in spacious dining-rooms, at enormous tables spread with bright white tablecloths, served with generous portions of food he hardly touches, for in the mornings he suffers from a feeling of fullness. But he must

take a few mouthfuls to help him swallow all the pills his doctors have condemned him to take. The nurse, or his faithful maid, always lays them out on a tray beside his glass of milk. They wait until he's put each pill into his mouth and swallowed it. Only then do they wish him a pleasant meal and withdraw. Sometimes he manages to hide some of the pills under his tongue or to shift them into the space between his teeth and his lips and then, when he is alone, he spits them into his glass of milk. But how can he know which of the pills is beneficial and which contains the slow-acting poison they are feeding him to ease him gently out of this world? How can he, when he doesn't even know which of his doctors is real and which merely one of his many executioners in disguise?

He slides his chair back from the table, gets up and walks across the soft carpet to the window. The harsh noonday sun is pouring into the garden. Two men are running a coloured bundle of cloth up a pole. He waits by the window until the bundle reaches the top, breaks open, and fills with wind. He's certain that he's never laid eyes on that kind of flag before. Two goats, or perhaps they're antelopes — at that distance it's hard to tell — face each other on a green-and-white field.

That's the sort who come to visit him. They embroider their flags with goats, elephants or monkeys and they expect him to embrace them, smile at them and be photographed with them. He should look at the map to see exactly where this president of goats comes from.

Sometimes these potentates bring him acceptable presents: lion skins, an interesting weapon, a dagger with an ivory handle or a rifle with a finely carved butt. When his wife was still alive, they would bring her magnificent fabrics, embroideries, ostrich-feather fans, shawls that she could wrap around her whole body, hairpins set with precious stones. Those who were better briefed would bring shoes or handbags made of snakeskin.

He feels like taking a look at some of those old gifts. He leaves the room and walks down an inner staircase to a hall, where he waves away a valet and goes into a room with a high, panelled ceiling and wood-panelled walls.

This is where he keeps both the gifts he likes and those he doesn't care about, gifts whose worth he cannot even guess at and gifts whose value, if any, is symbolic.

Here are glass cases crammed with marble ashtrays, boxes with mounted butterflies, busts of himself, folk carvings from the Cameroon, peasant costumes, a leather saddle from Mongolia, a grandfather clock, crystal goblets, cut-glass chalices, Chinese vases, Japanese plates and also some models: miniature machines and motors, automobiles, rockets, aircraft, spaceships, models of his residence, of factories and blast furnaces, dams and television towers, models of weapons, and, of course, real weapons as well, hunting guns both antique and modern. He stands for a while in this odd junk shop, his very own flea market. He opens one of the cases and takes out a bronze plaque and a diploma bearing an enormous seal. He stares at it for a while, ignoring the obsequious citation in which his vassals, all men of letters at a famous university, award him an honorary doctorate. Then he returns the piece of wrought metal to its bed of velvet. He leaves via the rear doors set almost invisibly in the panelled walls. He walks along a narrow corridor until he comes to a side staircase. He goes down the stairs to another room, in which the windows are covered with ornamental grilles, and the ceiling is vaulted like that of a wine cellar.

This is his room. The walls are white and bare, with no pictures or decorations, only shelves that hold his special collection of strongboxes arranged in rows. These are treasure chests, but they are empty. No coffers could contain his wealth; the entire country belongs to him. Their only value for him is that they can be opened and closed again, that he can admire and investigate their complex, precise mechanisms. Sometimes he pretends to himself that he's lost the key to one of those apparently foolproof boxes, and he has to try to break into it using the methods he was taught by the safe-cracker he shared a cell with when they were both in the hands of the executioners. Not with a blowtorch, in that barbarian way they do it in gangster films, but with fine wires and files.

Of course he collects locks as well. Brand-new locks;

locks with rusty works and complicated systems of levers that operate huge bolts; modern locks in which miniature springs trip small steel-tongues with teeth, and gears that mesh to create apparently solid elements; locks that can be opened with keys, or by setting the right combination of numbers on a dial, or by slipping a card with a magnetic band or a pattern of punched holes into a narrow slit on the face of the mechanism; locking devices that can only be activated by using the right five keys. There are combination locks in which a key can only be inserted after the proper combination is dialled, locks which trigger sirens the moment the wrong key is slipped into them. All these devices thrill him and allow him to forget his ceaseless flow of worries.

Sometimes, when he has the time to linger, he isolates himself completely from the world that surrounds him. He sits down on a round stool. In front of him, on a workbench, are boxes with labels in foreign languages, new and as yet unwrapped packages sent to him by faithful embassy employees. They understand next to nothing, of course, and they usually spend large sums of money buying out the first junk shop they come to — or sometimes they even buy them in a department store.

Impatiently, he tears the wrapping off the first parcel. A golden padlock tumbles out of the box. At first, it looks like an ordinary lock, but he cannot find the keyhole. He explores the lock carefully with his fingers. The box will certainly contain a set of instructions to help him find the opening mechanism, but he derives great satisfaction from discovering how these things work by himself.

Sometimes he imagines himself changing the locks of his residence during the night. Then he will summon the impostors that swarm around him — the doctors, the valets, the gardeners, the bodyguards, the ministers, the chauffeurs, the cooks, the secretaries and the waiters — and invite them all into one room. He will then excuse himself, leave the room and lock them in. He will also lock the door in the hall and the gate at the main entrance. Now, let them call for help, or telephone out, or shout through the window; let them break down the doors. But before they

manage to raise the alarm, he will have walked freely through the gate and vanished into the forest, and it will be a day or two before they find him.

He hears footsteps in the corridor and quickly puts the lock aside and looks guiltily at his hands. They are smeared with oil. He wipes them and then holds them behind his back.

The valet appears in the doorway. 'Comrade President, the Comrade Chancellor has arrived,' he says, his face expressionless.

'Let him wait.'

'In two hours, you must be at the airport. The Comrade Chancellor urges you. . '

'I know. Let him wait.'

They never give him a moment's peace. They have sophisticated ways of harassing him, of wearing him down. And just now, when he was ready to begin work. 'Let him wait!' he repeats. Let them all wait, including the nigger who doesn't care about meeting him anyway. All he's interested in is women, or what he might be able to squeeze out of them. They call it extending credit. Credit extended to eternity, and never otherwise. Everything we do here is forever, and meanwhile death knocks on the armour-plated gate.

He walks heavily up the side staircase.

In the library everything is spotless. Not a sign of yesterday evening. He remembers sitting here, but who was he with? They've done this to him deliberately. Whenever he drinks a little, they always remove the evidence of what he did, so he can never find out what happened, never know who he talked to, about what. On the writing-table they have arranged his briefing papers, as they always do. On top of the pile is a small note written in an unfamiliar but legible hand:

Dear Comrade President,

As you requested, allow me to remind you that you wanted to see the director, Mr Fuka, whose film about the rattlesnake hunters in Mexico you enjoyed.

There was no signature, of course. Who could have

forged this? Who is leaving him messages like this without having the decency to sign them? Unless the person assumed he would recognize his handwriting, or remember asking for a memo. He does have a vague memory of something like that.

He opens the folder and finds another message.

Dear Comrade President,

If you'll allow me, it was your express wish that I remind you to consider the request for clemency submitted on behalf of the hijacker Bartoš.

Again, no signature. This is beginning to annoy him. Someone has infiltrated his study and forged these shabby little memos. Now that he thinks of it, though, he does have a dim recollection of a film about rattlesnakes. He remembers a scene in which some half-naked savage was holding a repulsive snake in his hands. As he watched he thought of his poor wife. She would certainly have been fascinated and would have wanted to invite that native to see her. But why was he expected to grant clemency to a director? Had the director stolen something? Or had the snake bitten him? Had he not come home, and then changed his mind and wanted to get back into the country? Such things happened. Hadn't a well-known singer had the same problem? He had simply telephoned him and told him all was forgiven. But then he remembered another criminal who had hijacked someone. He would never dream of pardoning him.

The memos were probably slipped into his papers by his mortal enemies to confuse him and then trap him.

He closes the folder again and then suddenly, he remembers. The valet! Yesterday evening his favourite valet was sitting here with him. But why would he be concerned about the life of some criminal elements? Evidently, he was only passing on someone else's request. All over the world, there was always a tremendous outcry whenever one of his sworn enemies ended up behind bars. How concerned they all were about who was in jail! They even protested when ordinary criminals and murderers were locked up. That's what really irritates him

about these self-righteous critics: they invoke the law in regard to those who have never hesitated to break it. He knows these criminals: he has shared prison cells with them and paced concrete prison courtyards with them. They can't tell him these people are innocent victims.

He's incensed. As if he didn't have other things to worry about besides the lives of a few nobodies. As if violence had never been perpetrated on others. As if they had never sentenced anyone to death themselves. And what do you have to say, gentlemen, about those sixty miners lost underground, or those five hundred women working in the aniline dye factory who are gradually dying of cancer? Someone should stand up for them. But what can he do when the world pays good money for those dyes? All his ministers and his bankers, all those people who are just waiting for him to make a wrong move, would pounce on him at once for depriving the state of the necessary dollars.

But they don't hesitate for a moment to bring him those poor wretches covered with white shrouds. Like those little babies: how many have they already brought him, and how many are yet to come? He doesn't know. In the northern coal basin, every eighth child is born dead, and soon it could be every fourth child. All those poor little creatures who died from inhaling that terrible smog saturated with poison. Who stood up for them? Who sent protests in their defence?

All these unfortunates could have submitted requests for clemency. They were the true innocents, but they didn't ask for a reprieve; they did their duty. They were simple working people, heroes, patriots, waiting silently for someone to stand up for them.

The learned minds in the Academy of Sciences are predicting a day when a sufficient supply of energy can no longer be guaranteed. A freezing day when the generators in the electrical plants give up, and the trucks that bring bread to the cities won't start, and people don't go to work and are trapped, imprisoned in their freezing homes with nothing to warm themselves with and nowhere to run to. All they will be able to do is put on their overcoats and rush into the streets, where they will loot the shops and

rampage through the cities in mad terror and rage until they come to the Castle, where he will still hold power, and they will demand that he feed them and give them warmth. He will live to see a time when he can no longer show himself to the people whose welfare he has desired, whom he has served for so many years, because he will have nothing to offer them but the end, nothing but slabs of wood on which to lay out their dead.

People everywhere are waiting for someone to stand up for them, to fulfil both their hidden desires and public demands, to fill their stomachs, house them, provide them with heat and light and water and air, grant them clemency and guarantee them a feeling of security forever, but his powers are only human, stretch them as he might. And he's surrounded by enemies, imprisoned among pretenders who doggedly wait for him to make the fatal mistake, wait for his fall, wait for his end.

And they dare bemoan the fate of a violent criminal!

Thank goodness there are still people to be found who can take his mind off these things. Like the fellow who made the film for him about hunting rattlesnakes. One of the rattlesnakes reared up and rattled and blinked its tiny eyes, just like his chancellor. He should command the chancellor to watch the film as well. Let him see it. Let him learn something.

The chancellor waddles into the room, little snake's eyes, the legs of a chicken, a leonine mane smoothed smoothly back, large protruding ears. 'I suggest we speed things up, Comrade,' he hisses with his snake's voice. 'We must depart soon, in an hour.' And he gestures vaguely towards the leather folders.

The chancellor carries on talking, dispensing advice and instructions. A walking textbook, this treacherous rattlesnake with the legs of a chicken. The capital city is Omba (or Bomba — he didn't quite catch it, and it's beneath his dignity to ask). They can offer us uranium, cocoa beans, cotton and copper; the prime minister studied law at Cambridge, even if he is black, from the Bantu tribe. Now be careful: the Bantus have an ancient culture, they even have their own literature, epic poetry. Avoid mentioning

law; talk about the economy instead. Remember they give us uranium, copper, cotton, cocoa beans. We give them trucks, cannons, tanks, chemicals. Don't say anything against God, avoid ecclesiastical politics, music is a possible, the prime minister plays the piano, is fond of the romantics — Grieg, Beethoven, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Liszt. Stay away from modern painting in our own country. Advisable to talk about the struggle against colonialism. The prime minister has a special custom: once a month he has a complex court case presented to him, along with appeals and petitions for pardon. He summons the disputing parties, hears the case himself, offers his opinion or grants clemency as the case may be. This practice has won him acclaim both among his own people and abroad. He has suspended the death penalty, so it's advisable to avoid mention of our own practice.

And then there was the recent accident at the explosives factory. A while ago, when a whole building blew up, he had ordered the management to take strict measures to avoid a recurrence. Instead, they merely rebuilt the roofs so that when an explosion did occur, the roof would blow off and the walls would remain intact. Of course there was another explosion, and they all went through the new roof — the nitroglycerine mixers, the entire saltpetre section, eight fifteen-year-old apprentices, the warehouse workers and a car park full of lorries and drivers and drivers' mates — all of them lifted into the air in a single instant, transformed into ashes and smoke, atoms of human matter scattered in all directions by a whirlwind. Not a single recognizable particle of any of those people was ever found. The officials were refusing to issue death certificates, and the president would have to intervene personally, visit the place himself and put medals in the hate-filled hands of weeping widows and angry widowers and, in this way, confirm the deaths as heroic, the victims as heroes of labour, as warriors in a common cause, the cause of the people, of the most forward-looking system in history, for which so many have already laid down their lives.

When he awoke that night, there were the biers again, covered with white sheets. This time there was no one

under the sheets, only emptiness, air. He got out of bed and walked past them, opened the door into the long corridor, and there they were, more of them, side by side, each with a white sign at its head with a name written in black letters. A hundred and thirty-nine of them. And when he walked past them, down the corridor faintly illuminated by the moonlight, the biers suddenly began to float. He couldn't understand how his enemies had created this effect. Perhaps it was overheated air, or magnetism, but the biers floated up to the level of his chest, wobbling slightly so that the wooden legs and the frames collided and sounded like the clacking of bones, like a menacing applause, and then, above all these sounds, there emerged a high-pitched howling, as though a hundred throats were wailing all at once, and he came close to opening the window in sheer terror and jumping out to escape those sounds. He might have leapt from the heights into the depths and fallen, not flung to his death at the hands of an outraged people but driven by the intrigues of those who did not hesitate to exploit the wretched victims of a tragic accident in their silent campaign against him.

And the prime minister's wife — he realized that the cunning reptile was still speaking to him — her name is Patricia, she's his only wife, and be careful to remember that both are Christian, she studied psychology in California and you can talk about charitable activities and medical care, not about. .

The valet enters carrying his black suit over his arm. He will tell him that the time has come to go into the bathroom and change. The chancellor snaps the folder shut. 'Any comments, Comrade President?'

The ministers and experts will be present at the negotiations. Let them worry about those things. That's what they're paid for, after all. Let them think about something else for a change besides their secret Swiss bank accounts.

'Would you like to read over the welcoming speech now?'

'In the car, there'll be time enough in the car.' The valet guides him into the bathroom.

There's a shirt on a hanger, a pure white shirt, and his

golden cuff-links lie ready on a small wooden tray.

Suddenly he has an idea. 'That hijacker, the one sentenced to hang,' he says, turning to the chancellor. 'Do you know who it is?'

The chancellor does a little skip on his chickenlike legs and nods enthusiastically.

'Summon him here,' he orders. 'I want to hear what he has to say.'

'But, Comrade President,' he says, winding himself around the president's leg, 'He's a dangerous criminal and the court has already sentenced him. . '

'Summon him,' he repeats, 'I want to review his case and offer an opinion.'

'Of course, Comrade President.' The chancellor's voice sounds constricted, as though the hunter were already closing his hand around his neck. 'When?'

'Find some time,' he says. 'But let it be when this nigger is still here.'

'Yes, Comrade President.'

'And that film-maker who entertained me so well.' The name has slipped his mind and he doesn't even know the film-maker's crime. That's not important, they'll find that out for him. Let the chancellor look at himself writhing in the hands of a hunter, watch as they break his poisonous teeth.

'Should I summon him as well?'

He dips his hands in the wash-basin. Behind him the valet obligingly holds a clean white towel ready for him to use. The chancellor's snakelike eyes gaze at him disapprovingly.

That's their method: prevent him from meeting with anyone, except perhaps some black man who will put on airs and flaunt his authority. They even say he can act as a judge because he's got a Cambridge education, while the president has only been to a provincial university. So he will choose someone, summon him and then demonstrate his magnanimity. But how can he do this when they sabotage his invitations, when they only pretend to do as he says? And then, of course, they spread rumours that he can't relate to people, that he's incapable of judgement, of making decisions, that he can't do anything, or change anything and should therefore be replaced. But he will surprise

them all. He will foil their treacherous plans, and one day, when they least expect it, he will appear before the people and declare freedom. Let the people themselves decide his fate, and then let all his enemies tear themselves apart. But he will have done what he had to do, and no one will ever again say that he lost touch with the people or that he had governed merely through compulsion and fear.

'The day after tomorrow at the very latest,' he orders. 'And bring both the criminals here in a civilized manner. I don't want to see any shackles, or any handcuffs.' He sighs and begins to pull his shirt over his head.

III

It's eight-thirty in the morning. Once again, a key rattles in the lock at an odd time. With the guard in the doorway are two unfamiliar men, one, obviously some big-shot, in uniform, the other a fat slob in civvies with a pistol swelling his back pocket. Could this be the moment?

Robert rattles off the regulation response with Gabo's quickened breathing on the back of his neck.

'Bartoš, get ready to go!' The guard's voice sounds strange; it wavers, with a tinge of kindness in it. It fills him with a terrifying premonition.

'What about my things?'

'Did I say anything about things?'

They lead him down the stairs without even putting the cuffs on him. He doesn't know what to do, so he counts the floors as they pass them. As they approach ground level, his terror intensifies. The steps lead directly to the exit into the third courtyard. Maybe the gallows are down there ready for him. They will drag him on to the platform and some shit-faced strangler will push forward, probably this fat guy in civvies, and yell at him to prepare himself. It's only now that he can imagine what it will be like. He can't stop visualizing a pair of huge, hairy, sadistic hands fingering his throat. He can bite them, at least, kick the bloody sadist in the balls, and then they'll jump on him as

they have so often before, only this time will be the last time. There are always enough of them to overpower him, and then nothing in the world could prevent those disgusting hands from tying the noose around his neck.

Sweat pours down his forehead, and the back of his shirt is soaked. Aren't they even going to offer him a last breakfast? Won't they let him smoke his last cigarette?

They walk past the exit to the courtyard and trudge down the stairs into the basement. If they were to shove him into a bunker he'd go quietly. Anything would be better than the rope. That would put an end to everything. They go past a row of bolted doors until they come to one that's open. Inside, a guard with a simian forehead brings him civvies, and he is ordered to change. Then they herd him down some more corridors to the barber's shop where a man in a white smock sticks a paper cloth under his collar, soaps his face and passes a razor over it a couple of times. At one point, his chin is in a tight grip; the barber would only have to make a quick slice and that would be it. . But he doesn't. The barber rinses his face off and even sprays it with some kind of perfumed shit, and then they can go.

Why hasn't he ever wondered about how they would play the last dirty trick? He might have realized that these bastards would have their pleasure spoiled if they had to watch a jailbird swinging in shit-filled sweatpants and a vomit-stained windcheater; that's why they're decking him out like he's going to a wedding. Finally, at the end of the corridor, they put the cuffs on him. A grille slides back and he finds himself in the first courtyard where two policemen and a yellow-and-white prison van stand ready. The policemen escort him to the wagon, but before they can shove him inside, someone in civvies rushes up gesticulating wildly and says something to the fat man. Then the fat man goes over to the driver and sends him and his rabbit hutch on wheels to hell.

So they just leave him standing there and it's more than he can take, so he turns to one of the escorts and asks him where they're taking him. He knows he won't get an answer, but even to be yelled at would be some comfort.

But nothing happens. They remain silent, deaf to his questions, and that terrifies him even more. If they were to start beating him now, he might not even have the strength to defend himself. He'd just howl like a dog drowning in a flooded river.

Then a black limousine pulls up. The fat man gets in beside the driver, he's put in the back seat between the two escorts and they drive off. The gate opens, and soon they're on the open road.

He hasn't a clue where they're taking him. Why are they wasting petrol? Maybe the gallows are somewhere else. Or maybe one of those sadistic bloody hangmen didn't feel like coming all the way out here, so they sent this limo to pick him up. They're giving him a last ride instead of a last meal. If this is going to be his last ride, this is also his last chance to make a run for it. If he could only get out of the car, he'd manage the rest.

The idea blinds him like a flash of lightning, and he has to hold his breath in order not to shout. He knows he mustn't move or make a sound, otherwise they'll get scared and handcuff him to the escorts. So he pretends to fall asleep, while from under his half-closed lids he watches the cars coming from the opposite direction and the roofs of houses and church steeples passing by. They're doing at least ninety. It will be enough to mangle them all to mincemeat. But he has nothing to lose.

Mentally, he rehearses the movement several times until he's sure he can pull it off. They are just coming out of a wood and approaching a small town. He hopes that this is not their destination. He can't put it off any longer. He mustn't be too choosy. He can't afford to hesitate, or they'll get him to a place from which no prisoner has ever escaped.

They drive through the town, then into the countryside again. It's straight out of a film, farm ponds sparkling in the sun, surrounded by trees. It's quiet in the car. No one speaks; the escorts merely glance at him occasionally. The car roars down a hill, through a wooded area. Below that, he can see that the road curves to the left, but it's not a sharp turn; the driver probably won't even brake. All he has to do is choose the right moment. Sunlight flashes

through the trees. A huge lorry is bearing down on them. His throat has gone dry. What hope does he have? At this speed? He reminds himself he has nothing to lose. He flings himself forward and with all his might, like a football player lunging to head the ball into the goal, he head-butts the driver from behind. He hears a cry of pain, some cursing, someone pulls him back but then lets go, there's more shouting and he hits the floor, his hands helpless, but he braces himself with his legs, feels the car leave the road, feels the first impact and then he too shouts, with fear or joy, the car flips over, a crushing impact. Darkness suddenly cloaks his eyes as he hears the shattering of glass and cries of terror and pain.

He tries to lift his head. A reddish, spinning light penetrates the darkness, and he can see the vague outline of things, people, which become more distinct: a twisted door has been punched in on its frame and has pinned one of the escorts to the seat. The dead eyes of the second escort stare up at him from a bloody face. With his hands still cuffed behind his back, he manages to raise himself and shift to an opening between the frame and the door. He sees the driver draped bloodily over the lifeless body of the fat man, but he hasn't time to think about it. He squeezes through the opening and is out of the car and taking his first free step. He feels a piercing pain in his left leg. Surely the fucking leg can't have taken the impact, not now when he needs it most. A car is coming down the road. It will probably stop. They mustn't see him with the cuffs on, so he tries to run. It's almost impossible. There's a pain in his abdomen, his leg is probably wrecked. Fiery wheels spin before his eyes, blood streams down his face, his face is probably messed up too and he can't even wipe it, but at least he's moving, not like those motherfuckers, he's moving, gradually dragging himself into the trees, and he even tries to run, groaning with pain under his breath, but he's running.

He has no sense of time, but when he finally looks around, the road is out of sight.

He kneels down and wipes his head on a pillow of moss like a wild animal. When he gets up again, the moss is brown with blood.

In the distance he can hear the wailing of a siren. It could just be an ambulance, but it could also be the police. They'll bring dogs, and then how long will it take to track him down?

He begins running again, if you can call this painful, stumbling limp running. Everything depends on how soon they realize he's escaped and how far away he is when they do.

The woods are not deep, and he suddenly emerges into a field of wheat flooded with light. The field slopes away into a valley where he can see several damp, glistening roofs. A narrow, dusty path runs alongside the field. He limps down it. It would probably be better to hide among the wheat, but as long as they're not on to him he has to get as far away as he can. Beyond an orchard, the first house appears, and he looks around cautiously. As far as he can tell, there's no one outside in the sticky pre-noon heat. A few dogs bark lazily.

He walks past three houses, and in the yard of the fourth, a fair-haired boy is kneeling over a dismantled bicycle.

He shouts at him and as he does so, his face contorts with pain.

The boy looks around and then gapes. He can't be any more than twelve.

Are you alone?'

The boy gets to his feet. 'What is it?' he says, and backs warily towards the door. 'What do you want?'

'Can't you see? I need help.'

'Yeah, I can see.' The boy stops. 'Did you fall?'

'That's it. You by yourself?'

The boy looks around in alarm. 'Me and the dog. What have you got behind your back?'

'Just my hands.' He turns round to show the boy. 'Look, I won't hurt you, I just need help.'

The boy calls the dog, a limping old mutt that would be hard put to scare a chicken. The two of them edge towards the gate. 'You've run away.'

'You've got to help me. . ' Every word he utters is painful, and his mouth is so dry he can hardly move his tongue.

'My brother has a blowtorch in the shed,' says the boy, and he unlocks the gate.

Inside the shed it's dark and cool, and there's a smell of hay. If he could only lie down. The boy quickly unwinds the flex, puts on the goggles and ignites the torch. 'Are they after you?'

'Shut up and get on with it.' Then he thinks again. 'If they turn up here, asking questions, you never saw me and you don't know anything about me.' He pulls his wrists as far apart as he can, but he still feels the heat of the flame. 'They can't do anything to you. You're not fifteen yet. But even so, you never saw me. If they keep on at you, say you were indoors.' The handcuffs are beginning to get hot but he grits his teeth and keeps his hands apart.

'OK,' says the boy. 'What did you do?'

'Best for you not to know, but I'm innocent.' At that moment his hands fly apart. The steel bracelets still hang on his wrists, but he can get rid of them if the boy will give him a piece of wire or a penknife.

'Do you want to have a wash?'

The first thing he does when he reaches the wash-basin is drink, gulping down long mouthfuls of water. Only then does he look in the mirror. He can scarcely recognize himself. His hair is matted with blood. His right cheek and upper lip are swollen. His left cheek has been cut by glass.

The boy is standing behind him. 'My brother was in jail too. He deserted from the army.'

He wets his hands in the water and carefully runs them over his face. 'Remember, you haven't seen me!'

He sticks his head under the tap. The sharp sting brings tears to his eyes. He reaches for the towel, then decides against it and merely takes another drink.

Meanwhile, the boy has found a large pastry. If he asked him, he could probably dig up some cash as well, but he probably shouldn't waste any more time here. He can always get money. He limps across the yard to the gate.

He should clear out of this village as quickly as possible and perhaps try and find a car, though they must have blocked all the main roads by now.

He hobbles along the fence with his head down. Not a

soul anywhere. People are either hard at work somewhere or swilling beer in the bar on the square. Parked in front of it — this really is his lucky day — is a lorry. The village square seems deserted, and he reaches the back of the lorry without being observed. He lifts the canvas flap. There are cases full of bottles inside. He bangs his wounded leg as he swings himself over the tailgate, but he grits his teeth and doesn't utter a sound, lands on his haunches and pulls the canvas shut behind him.

The bottles are empty, another piece of luck, because it means they won't unload them until they get to the brewery. The cases are not heavy, and he rearranges them so that he's surrounded. Now if they'd just get out of here. The police could arrive any time — if they've managed to figure out that he's escaped.

Then he hears voices. Someone lifts the canvas and slides a few more cases of empties inside, then the doors slam, the motor starts and the vehicle drives off.

If only he could see where they were going. But at least he's getting further away. Every minute, the circle they will have to look for him in is widening. Unless they're taking the bottles right back to the town where they put him in the car that morning. The lorry rattles over the rutted road, and the bottles clatter. They've probably begun the search by now. The police will have been alerted. Maybe they're even sending in helicopters. It won't be easy. Once he gets out of this lorry, he'll have to find a hostage. A woman. At least one. He won't be as naïve as Míla was and let her go. He won't even negotiate.

At that moment the lorry begins to slow down. Robert sits absolutely still and listens to the voices coming to him through the canvas.

Your papers, driver.

Where are you coming from? What are you carrying? Have you seen a man in a dark suit, probably badly wounded, wearing handcuffs?

A voice mutters some reply.

He hopes they don't have those trained dogs with them, but even if they did, he doubts they could pick up his scent over the strong smell of beer.

A shaft of light penetrates his hiding-place. They must have lifted the canvas.

The motor is still running, which is a good thing because it will drown out his breathing. Someone thumps the side of the truck. They move one of the cases. Then silence. They probably don't feel like shifting all of them. He knows them well enough to know what lazy bastards they are. They wouldn't bother, unless they had a whole platoon of prisoners to do it for them.

The lorry starts up again. He's beginning to believe he'll make it out of here, out of this mess, out of this shitty country. He only has to be tough. No mercy, no negotiating.

Now they're moving fast. The driver is obviously in a hurry. Then the lorry slows down, begins bumping over a cobblestone surface and finally comes to a complete halt. He hears the creaking of a gate opening, voices, the lorry inches forward, the motor coughs, then dies. The doors slam, and someone jumps to the ground.

He has to stay on his toes. If they start unloading the bottles, he'll have to come up with a way to get out of here without being seen. But what if he can't? He gets up, still hidden by the barricade of cases, tries to flex his arms and legs, then pulls an empty bottle from the top row of cases, gets a good grip on it and waits.

But no one comes. He can hear a woman's voice somewhere nearby. Someone is dragging something metallic over the cobblestones and whistling. Then silence again. He's probably wasting precious time in here now. He puts the bottle down as quietly as he can and starts shifting the crates to one side. He crawls out of his hiding-place and carefully lifts the edge of the canvas.

The lorry is backed up against a loading ramp with wooden doors. In front of the doors there's a tall pile of the same kind of cases that sheltered him in the truck. He climbs cautiously on to the loading ramp and looks out from behind the truck. He is in a cobbled courtyard with a set of rails for a yard engine running across the middle of it. High brick buildings dominate the courtyard on two sides. The third side is formed by a stone wail with a gatehouse. The fourth side appears to be the best place to

hide, since there are only a few one-storey buildings, apparently warehouses. He can't see anyone; the working day must be over. He creeps cautiously along the loading ramp towards the low buildings. When he passes the last of these, he comes to an open area that serves as a scrapyard. It is filled with rusting machines, old pipes, bundles of wire, piles of empty tin cans, used barrels and even a few ancient, rotting beer wagons. Behind that, there is an overgrown wall low enough to crawl over. Beyond the wall are three apartment blocks, the only vantage point from which he might be seen.

On a pile of refuse he finds several pieces of wire and nails, then he squeezes under one of the old wagons. It will be hard for anyone who doesn't know where to look, or who doesn't have a dog, to find him here. He can remove the handcuffs at his leisure.

He begins to probe the lock on the handcuffs. He's managed to open other locks before. Even back when he was in the children's home, he was determined not to become a uranium miner or a mason. They'd threatened and cajoled, but they backed off in the end and let him train as a locksmith. He'd learned by then that you have to know what you want and let no one stand in your way.

The spring clicks, and he shakes the hideous mark of imprisonment off his wrists, squeezes out from under the wagon, walks over to the pile of scrap metal and throws the handcuffs into an old barrel.

He's not afraid of work. If he lived in a decent country and could open his own workshop he would happily work twelve-hour shifts every day; he would be his own boss, not someone else's lackey. Occasionally, he would close the business for, say, a month, pick up some cute little thing and take off with her to somewhere where they would all call him 'Sir'.

He goes back under the wagon and pulls a flattened and somewhat stale piece of pastry out of his pocket. It's getting dark. Where are they now? There isn't a sign of them. He's given them the slip. If he had some food, he might be able hold out here for a few days. Meanwhile the police would get tired. They'd realize they'd lost him. His

leg would have begun to heal, his whiskers would grow and by the time he got himself some new clothes those smart-arse bastards wouldn't recognize him, not even if he flagged them down and hitched a lift.

But the only thing to eat here is nails washed down with stale beer. And tomorrow morning, people would start turning up for work, so by then he'd have to be somewhere else. His best chance would be in some ordinary house where he could wait for a day or two by himself or, even better, with a hostage. But he has some time now, and he can afford to take a rest.

He stretches out on his back and stares up at the underside of the wagon. A clump of old dried clay is hanging from the mud-covered boards. He closes his eyes and tries to ignore the pain in his leg. It seems to him that the wagon is beginning to float above him slightly, that its floorboards are becoming transparent and penetrable. He passes through them and gently rises above the earth, floating higher and higher, like a kite. When he's so high that not even the sharpest eye can discern him, he catches the wind and floats west until he can feel beneath him that cursed line, defined by barbed wire, so impossible to cross on the ground.