Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light

CHAPTER THREE

1

Tiny flakes of snow swirled in the air, melting the instant they touched people's clothes. The crowd was so densely packed that almost no snow reached the ground. Carrying his camera on his shoulder, Pavel pushed his way through the people until he reached the statue of the country's patron saint. They had hung flags on it and surrounded the saint with flowers and burning candles, and stuck posters on the pedestal demanding free elections, democracy, the end of one-party rule, dialogue, freedom of expression and information, the dismantling of the People's Militia, solidarity with the students, a general strike and the resignation of the government. Only a few days ago no one would have dared voice a single one of those demands, let alone write them down and post them up in the centre of the city. And even if someone had dared to do so, the poster would have disappeared before anyone had had a chance to read it.

The demonstrations had been going on for five days now. On the first day, the police had attacked a student march with such fury that they had wounded many of the participants and onlookers. How many had really been hurt, he didn't know, nor did anyone else. Official reports could not be believed, many of the wounded were afraid to seek medical help and doctors preferred not to reveal how many they had treated. Either the cruelty of the police had gone beyond bearable limits, or the present regime's time had simply come without its even noticing. The students declared a strike, were joined by actors and supported by everyone Pavel knew from earlier demonstrations, and this time they in turn were supported by all those who had so far remained silent. There were so many of them that only gunfire could have scattered them now.

He watched with amazement, or rather with suspicion, this strange transformation by which those who had so recently been beaten and doused with jets of water now addressed the assembled crowds, and those who had until recently been silenced and bowed now cheered, clenched their fists, raised two fingers in the victory salute and rattled their keys in anticipation of victory.

What was victory?

The illusory hope that a dream could last; the mad dance of those who are about to die, on the graves of those who have just died. It was a state in which the weeping and wailing of victims was drowned out by shouts of joy.

In the faces of people, he saw an ecstasy that he had seldom witnessed.

He looked around for the familiar faces but could not see them. The people who filled the square now had obviously swarmed out of places he had never been. They were an alien people, yet he found their excitement infectious, to the point where he had to remind himself that he was here to record the event, not to join in. If anything excited him, it should be the possibility that what he was filming might actually reach television viewers. For the past two days he'd gone around with Sokol, who had suddenly become a man of action. He forced his way into striking schools, tirelessly asking people questions without trying to second-guess their answers as he always had in the past.

And now Sokol was thrusting the microphone into the face of a plump older woman. He had selected, perhaps unconsciously, a type he chose to interview during the May Day celebrations every year. 'What do you do?' he asked her.

'I work on a cooperative farm.'

'Great! And what exactly do you do there?'

'I milk the cows.'

'So you've come from far away?'

'I have a daughter studying here. It's not right for them to beat our children.'

People gathered round to listen.

'It's enough what they've beaten into us. They hauled my father off to the uranium mines. Do you know why?' She was getting ready to launch into her life story. But now wasn't the time for life stories. Pavel panned his camera into the crowd where a little boy was perched on a man's shoulders waving a flag.

He could hear chanting down the square: 'We want truth! We want truth!'

The little boy shouted something too. His voice was lost in the swell of other sounds, but he seemed to be joining in the chant.

What was truth?

Sokol had now turned his microphone to a young man in blue overalls.

Until now the belief had been that truth was what you found in the pockets of workers' overalls, under miners' helmets and in the heavy gloves of steelworkers.

The young man announced that his workmates in the factory supported the students. He'd come here to demonstrate for genuine socialism.

What did he understand by that?

Justice, free elections. Not to have the police beating innocent people. The right to travel.

The demonstration was almost over. When he was carrying his camera to the car, he finally saw a familiar face, and smiled broadly. 'Alice, what are you doing here?'

'Surely you didn't think I'd be sitting at home at a time like this?'

They walked together down the square. The crowd was gradually thinning out.

'Do you remember that time, long ago, right here. . when we first met?'

'Yes. It was far more hopeless then. That was the beginning of the darkness.'

'Do you think the light is coming now?'

'You don't think it is?'

He shrugged. 'I have almost no time to think now. We're filming from early morning into the night. As a matter of fact, I haven't had a thing to eat since breakfast.'

She put her arm through his just as she had twenty-one years ago, except that then there were three of them.

They found an empty table in a small restaurant just below the square. A television in the corner of the room was still showing the demonstration. 'You've done a tremendous job,' she said, gesturing towards the television set. 'People who can't come to the city will learn what's really going on.'

'Did you leave Peter at the castle?'

'I haven't seen him for about three days. He simply vanished. He's in meetings somewhere.' She didn't seem anxious to talk about him.

'What about the children?'

'They're with their grandmother. We're taking turns. It's her turn to come here tomorrow.'

You're being very responsible about it.'

'But there's so much at stake,' she said. 'It's about how we're going to live from now on. If we lose now, we'll lose the opportunity for years to come. You don't see it that way?'

'I told you, I don't have time to think.'

You're making excuses, Pavel.'

You say "if we lose". Who are "we"?'

'"We" means all of us, doesn't it?'

'All the people can't lose all the time, and all the people can't win all the time either.'

'It would never occur to me to look at it that way.'

'I'm not looking at it any way. I'm only saying that usually some win and others lose. Sometimes it turns out that the ones who lose are those who thought they had won, and vice versa. '

You're being disgustingly objective about this, or at least you're pretending to be. Doesn't any of this concern you?'

The waiter put two glasses of wine on the table. 'Will you be leaving your castle now?' Pavel asked.

'Probably. If all this works out. But to tell you the truth, I can hardly imagine leaving. And anyway, I asked you a question: what about you?'

Why was she asking him? Was it out of interest in him? Or was it rather with a sense of malicious satisfaction that now it would be his turn to suffer for a change?

'It does concern me. Don't you think I want to work freely? What I don't know is: will I be able to work freely if things do turn out well?'

'Do you think you've lost the knack?'

'I hope not. But what if the winners decide to include me among the losers? What can I do then?'

'You're talking nonsense. You'd finally do what you do best and you'd do it the way you wanted to.'

Perhaps she was genuinely interested in him after all.

'If only. If only you were making the decisions.' He paused. 'It would be nice. But I can scarcely imagine it myself. I haven't even thought about it much. I'm not in the habit of thinking ahead. I've spent so long up to my neck in the present. It was like a spider's web with a lot of spiders in it, not just one. They lay in wait for you at every corner of the web. Once you got caught in it you couldn't get free. And they didn't suck your blood right away, they'd just very slowly wind you into their web: they'd approve this, censor that, come down on you for showing something that shouldn't be shown, or for not showing something that should have been shown. They'd involve you in meetings, briefings, political training sessions where you were told how to work by people who'd never done anything in their lives. If you told them what you thought of them, you'd be fired on the spot. Sometimes I thought I couldn't take it any longer.'

'But you took it.'

He nodded. He still wanted to find a way to vindicate himself in her eyes. He explained that the world could not be neatly and clearly divided by a line that separated good from evil, that separated him from her. 'When I was in Mexico we got to see a television studio,' he said, recalling an incident that had brought this truth home to him. 'They showed us their fantastic equipment. Their network is well

endowed and it's in a wealthy neighbourhood. We thought we might be able to find a spot nearby to get a view of Popocatepetl. So we walked up a hill past magnificent villas and luxurious haciendas and all of a sudden, it was as though we'd stepped over an invisible borderline. We found ourselves surrounded by shacks nailed together from old crates and sheet metal. The paving came to an abrupt end and the streets were a sea of mud with lots of children wading in it. Some of them shouted at us and begged for money; an adolescent mestiza invited us into a shack that didn't even have a door. Then a little girl in tattered rags ran up to us. She was barely four, and she held out a wilted flower, a chrysanthemum or something, and tried to sell it to us. That's when I thought that no matter where you are, you get tangled up in some kind of spider's web that you can't get free of.'

'Wait a minute, look at this,' she said, interrupting him.

They were now broadcasting a clip of the student demonstration that had started the whole thing. It showed the moments before the police attacked: a phalanx of men in uniforms with plastic shields protecting their faces, a crowd of students singing the national anthem, girls sticking flowers in the policemen's shields. There was no movement, each side waiting for the other to advance, young men and women sitting on the ground with burning candles set on the paving-stones in front of them, chanting: Our hands are empty! Then the phalanx of policemen began to shuffle forward. The first frenzied punches. Screams of pain, and then the noise of crunching blows, angry shouts, the pounding of boots on the pavement, the cries of the beaten.

Alice sobbed. There was absolute silence. Everyone was looking at the screen. Once it was over, Alice wiped her eyes. 'That was awful,' she said quietly, 'But the fact that you broadcast it, that's. . it's the beginning of freedom.' She embraced him. For a moment all he could see was the dark blue of her eyes, which were again full of tears.

Back at television headquarters he went straight into the garage, where a very emotional meeting was just winding up. They were discussing, as they had been constantly

over the past few days, whether future demonstrations should be broadcast live. The management were still refusing to allow this. Most of the technical staff, as Little Ivens told him when he sat down beside him, were making live broadcasts an unconditional demand, otherwise they were prepared to go on strike. 'Are you going to get up and say something?'

'I don't know what's already been said.'

'It's obvious we should do it live. After all, we broadcast every stupid hockey game live,' said Little Ivens.

Pavel nodded. He listened for a while to the passionate speeches, speeches that he would have found entirely persuasive and reasonable were they not being delivered by the very same people who, only a few days before, had been willing to say the exact opposite. During the day, when he had been running from faculty to faculty and freezing on the square, the course of events had apparently shifted so radically that the trend now seemed almost irreversible. That was why everyone was scurrying over to the side of the victors before it was too late.

But who' would testify on their behalf should they all be considered the losers?

We have no witnesses, we have no one to appeal to and our work will be used against us.

He dialled a familiar number. 'Is that you, Ali? You're not asleep yet?'

'No, not yet. I'm reading. I don't even know what time it is. Has something happened?'

'No, nothing. It's just that I can't get to sleep.'

'I'm glad you called.'

'I've been lying here for an hour staring at the ceiling. I see beetles swarming about up there. They're having races. I'm watching them and betting on this angry beetle who's losing and biting the leg of the one in front of him. Then I realized they're not beetles, they're people. I can even recognize their faces.'

'Darling, is something wrong?'

'No, nothing, it's just those beetles. They're closing in on me.'

'Have you been drinking?'

'It's beetles I'm seeing, not white mice.'

'Should I come over?'

'It's too late.'

'But I'm used to that. You know I'm used to night shifts.'

"That's different. But I'd like to see you. I'll drive over and pick you up. At least you'll see I haven't been drinking.'

'You don't have to come for me. I'll take a taxi.'

She was there in half an hour. She kissed him standing in the doorway. 'Aren't you feeling well?'

'Why do you think that?'

'I can tell'

'I'm a lot better now. I suddenly felt I couldn't breathe, but it was just a brief sensation.'

'Should I call a doctor?'

'I can't stand doctors. Only someone afraid to take his own life will put himself in the hands of doctors.'

'Then you should lie down at least.' She made him swallow a pill, then put a cold compress on the left side of his chest.

'The work's been piling up on me,' he said. 'I have to finish everything before I go, and there's so little time left.'

'Don't talk to me about your work, or about going!' She put her hand on his forehead. Her hand was soft and warm and smelt of leaves.

'When I come back, we'll get married,' he said.

'I know. But we don't have to get married. It's not important.'

'Fine. Come and lie down with me.'

'I'd rather sit beside you.'

'Lie down with me. I want you to be as close to me as possible.'

'You want me as close as possible, and yet you're going away to the other side of the world.'

He watched her undress. 'I'll only be gone a month, but if you don't want me to go, I won't.'

'No, I don't want anything of the kind. I just feel anxious. But it's no big deal. It's my condition.'

'There's nothing to be afraid of. I'll come back whenever you want.'

'It's not you who decides when you come back. You

can't just go and leave the rest of them there.'

'I've always made my own decisions.'

'Don't be so arrogant. No one ever makes decisions about himself alone.'

'So who makes them, then?'

'God, or the angels.'

His boss, Halama, was warning them not to get caught up in the mood of the crowds. Of course, we're all trying to improve living and working conditions and achieve greater freedom, but at this moment in time the very foundations of our system are in danger — everything that generations have worked for, that people have not hesitated to give their lives for.

His speeches were usually lacklustre and soporific; now his words were charged with emotion. If we continue to submit to the demands of the mob, soon no one will be able to stop the forces that have unleashed this whole campaign. They will sweep away the government, they will sweep away us, they will sweep away our whole system, they will set us back a century. Therefore, we must calm people down, not add petrol to the flames. It was a serious error to broadcast shots of the police action. Police intervene like that everywhere in the world.

Someone in the room shouted that everywhere else in the world, they show it the same day on television.

'Yes, they do,' admitted the boss, 'but everywhere else the viewers are more hardened. They're used to that sort of thing.'

Someone in the room began to whistle. Others joined in.

They oughtn't to whistle too loudly, Pavel thought. Halama's prediction was, after all, correct from his own point of view. He feared for the system that had enabled him to be boss, that had enabled them all to work where they were working. If that system collapsed, the television announcers and everyone who stood behind them would be the first to go. He remembered Alice, weeping over what they had broadcast. The beginning of freedom, she had said. But would any of them survive the kind of freedom that was in the air, the kind that he was trying to

support? Fortunately he was too tired to wonder whether he was building a cathedral of freedom, or merely digging his own grave. He tried to slip out of the room, but Sokol caught up with him in the hall and told him that the student strike committee was still in session and that they should go there now.

'They'll be in session again tomorrow.'

'Tomorrow might be too late. Don't forget, everything's at stake now.'.

He'd already heard that once today. And after all, he'd always longed to film freely what he saw, or rather, what was hidden behind what he saw. Why should he squander this opportunity now, when he might not have it much longer?

The drama faculty was housed in a street that bore the name of an old emperor who had left his mark on the city in the past — everything had been at stake then, too. Two students, acting as guards, were walking up and down in front of the building, and they had to wait until they let them go inside. Then they had to wait again until someone from the committee could give them an interview. Meanwhile the students brought them coffee and a tray full of sandwiches. Although it was late in the evening, the lights were still on in all the rooms. Young people were running busily up and down the corridors, computer terminals glowed in one of the lecture halls, and in another female students bent over large sheets of paper, making posters. As soon as the paint on the posters was dry, others would roll them up and take them away. Most of the benches had been removed from the large lecture hall, and a young man with glasses, whose face seemed familiar, probably from one of the demonstrations, was speaking. Students who were interested were sitting in a circle around him, while others had already crawled into sleeping-bags lining the wall at the far end of the room.

Several years ago, Pavel had been invited here to take part in a panel discussion. He had tried to explain, as best he could, not only the technique but also the philosophy behind his work. In the rat race of the present, when people no longer have time to look around them, we have to show

them what they miss every day. This means not always cutting rapidly from image to image, but lingering on things that might seem ordinary to us. Music videos, for example, are expressions of the neurosis that is engulfing us.

They had heard him out and then argued with him. They felt he was attacking music videos because they came from the world beyond the barbed wire. He had felt a veiled hostility in their responses: hostility towards himself and, even more, towards the world they believed he represented.

At last a pale and weary young man appeared, the one they were to interview. Pavel shot a close-up of his face, his moving lips, his reddish eyes. The words the young man spoke were no more than a distant drone. He talked about non-violence, about moral renewal, about the freedom to believe in anything you wanted to believe in, about how they had to grasp the historical opportunity that had just presented itself.

What was an historical opportunity?

Merely a moment when people believed they had managed to disrupt the flow of history and thus open up room for manoeuvre. Whether they had actually done so, or whether they had actually closed something off is a judgement that could only be passed by history itself.

The interview was over. The young man had to hurry back to his committee meeting. If they would like to wait, he said, the meeting would be over in about an hour. Then they would learn more.

Sokol looked uncertainly at his cameraman.

'Sure, we can stay here until morning, if you think it's useful. It's certainly more interesting here than at home in bed.'

He went back into the main lecture hall where the bespectacled young man was still talking. Meanwhile the number of sleepers on the floor had increased. He found a free spot by the wall, folded his coat to serve as a pillow and got ready to stretch out. A student who was lying to his left watched him. 'If you haven't got a blanket, go into number eight. They'll give you something there.' Her clear articulation and her resonant voice suggested that she was an aspiring actress.

'Thanks,' he said, 'but I won't be here long so it's hardly worth it.'

'Then you can have one of mine. I've got two.'

'Thank you, but I really don't need it. I'm warm enough.' She could have been his daughter. Everyone here could have been his child. What would his son have been doing now?

'Suit yourself,' said the girl, and she turned over to go back to sleep. An annoying light filled the room, and the air was acrid with the smell of tired human bodies. For a moment it reminded him of nights in his prison cell long ago, except for the girl beside him. And that strange, almost exultant mood that seemed to bring everyone, including him, closer together. This feeling of solidarity had surprised him. He wasn't prepared for it, and in fact he'd always resisted it — or certainly ever since he'd become aware of the laws that governed life in the prison.

Perhaps if he hadn't gone to prison he might have married and would now have children of his own. Not only did prison teach him that he always had to watch what he said and did in front of other people, but he was out of circulation at a time when his contemporaries were forming relationships, and he squandered the rest of that time when they released him. He'd been driven by a mixture of ambition, anger and guilt about his mother. He'd also been poor. He had wanted to go to university, but his prison record meant that was out of the question. He'd worked as a driver's mate and later got a job in a photography lab, and then was finally accepted on to a correspondence course. During that time, he'd met a lot of women and had made love to some of them, though he'd trusted no one. He hadn't wanted to start a family with any of them, and anyway, most of them already had children. In the end he lost the ability to tell whether he was genuinely fond of a woman he'd met or not. And his son remained unborn.

The door to the lecture hall kept opening and closing, and the sound of many voices mingled and overlapped. A telephone was constantly ringing on the other side of the wall, pulling him back from the brink of sleep.

The day before he flew off to Mexico, he went to his

studio with Albina. It was still afternoon, but they took their clothes off and lay on the couch and made love. Then they drank wine and coffee, made love again, drank more coffee, and she told his fortune from the grounds. She saw precipices and abysses that seemed impossible to scale or cross, and it made her sad. Fortunately, above that she thought she recognized a bird of prey with its wings spread wide. That might be him, and he might fly across the mountains and further still, but would he come back to her? Then she remembered that he had once mentioned a story he was working on and would like to film one day. She asked him to tell it to her.

It was just a rough idea, he said.

'I'd still like to hear it. As a way of saying goodbye.'

'It's not a story to say goodbye with.'

'Why not?'

'It's about something else.' He put his arms around her. 'I don't remember ever mentioning it to you.'

'I'd like to hear it.'

'In fact, it's not really a story, it's just a bunch of images. I enjoy coming up with images. Maybe one day I'll string them together into a story, and that will be for you.'

'So, come on, tell me. Don't make me twist your arm.' She was lying beside him and he could caress her body, touch her breasts, as he spoke. 'Who's the story about?'

'You know, I don't even have a name for him. He's just called 'he'. Sometimes I think that he's really me, but then we split again, because I'm different. I'm sorry, I'm not being very clear. This person is a carpenter like my father. But that's not important. He's successful and rich and famous for his carvings. Then he has a bad accident and loses his right hand.'

'How old is he when this happens?'

'Not very old, but by that time he was already famous. He doesn't want this to stop him working, so he tries to carve with his left hand, but when he does manage to finish something, it's as though it had been made by someone else. That crushes him. He feels as though he's lost himself.'

'Doesn't he have a family?'

'He has two sons, but they don't live with him. Their

mother took them away when they were still small. After the accident, they come to see him in his studio where he has a lot of carvings, some finished, some not. There's a bird taking flight, a tiger getting ready to jump. Icarus, and Prometheus bound. His sons want to know what he's going to do now. He replies that they needn't worry, he's already done enough in this life and that he is simply going to live and think.

'He really tries. He walks about the city and the countryside beyond, but the things he sees demand that he give them a shape, and he has to reply that he can't, and that depresses him.

'He stops going out of doors. He drives things and people out of his mind, until he finds himself in a state of emptiness, one that bears no resemblance to any countryside or any space. It is true emptiness.'

'And what about God?'

'He doesn't believe in God.'

'But God exists.'

'No one knows that. But he's not waiting for God. If he's waiting for anything, it's for death, and he's curious about what the face of death will look like. Will it be like an old woman who creeps about the world with a scythe, or will it be a beautiful young girl who approaches him with open arms?

'One day he gets an invitation to visit an old uncle of his whom everyone in the family thinks is crazy. He has nothing better to do, so he accepts the invitation. After all, he's living in emptiness. I imagine the emptiness of this particular day as a yellowish fog through which the occasional outline of a house becomes visible. Suddenly, however, a black raven emerges out of this yellow fog. It stands on the rim of a fountain and stares at him. Then it spreads its wings as if it were getting ready to fly away, but it doesn't. It merely watches him through its small, clever eyes as he enters his uncle's block.

'The uncle has an interesting face that reminds him a little of Spencer Tracy. The one thing that gives the uncle's life meaning is drawing up family trees. He looks for direct ancestors and, as far as his strength will permit, searches

through other branches of the family as well. The uncle tells him that he's managed to get as far back as the sixteenth century and has found unknown soldiers, surgeons, impoverished gentry, martyrs tortured by the Inquisition, village magistrates and many generations of serfs. He has discovered a branch that once lived in Burgundy. In his cupboard there are piles of maps and reams of graph paper on which he had drawn the different branches of his genealogical charts. The uncle announces that he intends to leave all this to him.

'He objects that he's never been interested in such things. The uncle, however, brings out a box full of documents: among them are the originals of birth certificates, purchase agreements, faded letters, ribbons, dried flowers, funeral notices, copies of parish registers. The meaning of my work, he says, was to know where I came from and therefore where I'm going.

'What can a few dates and names of long-dead people possibly tell you?' he asks his uncle. His uncle leans close to him and whispers, "They speak to me. They're not dead, they just move in a different space."

'The following week he hires a taxi to take all the documents away. When they are carrying out the last carton and he's getting ready to pay the driver, he notices an enormous raven perched on a pile of dirt and paving- stones, observing him. He understands that he is being given a sign but he doesn't understand what it means. Am I boring you?'

'How could you possibly bore me?'

'In any case, it was you who led me to do this story.'

'Me?'

'By being the way you are.'

'What is the way I am?'

'Mysterious.'

She kissed him.

'It's only after the uncle dies that he starts work. He finds his uncle's final piece of paper, the one that brings him closest to some kind of beginning, although twelve generations means nothing in the history of any family. On the tip of the tree is the name Agrippa Sever, born on the fourth of November in the hamlet of Chiliene, in the region

of Ellis. He copies this information down. He doesn't know what country to look for the region of Ellis in, but he can imagine the era. A Gothic castle perched on an inaccessible rocky promontory, a stony road along which a pair of oxen are pulling a heavy wagon.

'The hamlet of Chiliene, as he discovers by checking old maps, is now called Kyllene, and is situated on a northwestern promontory of the Péloponnèse. He will have to go there if he wants to continue his investigation. When he arrives, he tries to make enquiries at the parish church but he draws a blank. The priest no longer has the register from that period. He takes him out to the cemetery, but he can't find a single grave older than one hundred and fifty years, not a single headstone that suggests the name he is looking for. The priest sends him to the district town on the edge of the sea.'

'You've seen it?'

'Perhaps, in a movie. Or I dreamt about it. Stone buildings, cobbled streets, everything white, pink oleander blooming in the gardens, figs and olives ripening. Dark-skinned, black-haired children are playing in the narrow streets. A donkey is pulling a two-wheeled cart to the top of a hill.

'He asks about the archives, but no one understands him. They take him into a bar where several sailors and some young women are sitting. They offer him wine. Then he's astonished to see the carving of a raven sitting on a ledge beside the door. He realizes his trip will not be in vain. And sure enough, the next day in the archives, he finds the name he's been looking for. He also discovers that the grandfather of this man came here with the army of the Venetian doge.'

'So he has to go to Italy?'

'Yes. Suddenly, he gets the fever. He aches to discover more ancestors. The Italian soldier's name was Severus. What if this man was related to the dynasty of Roman emperors? The idea obsesses him. Not so much because he longs to be the descendant of a line of unremarkable emperors, but he sees something that he can hold on to. But how is he to bridge a gap of thousands of years? Back to a time when barbarians were rampaging through Europe,

devastating towns and countries, when even kings and princes seemed to emerge from darkness, and their descendants seemed to vanish into it once more?

'He continues his journey backwards in time, though it becomes more and more difficult. He chats up unknown archivists. He talks his way into monasteries, rectories, libraries. He writes letters. Some of his correspondents treat him as an eccentric; others think that they might be able to get something out of him, if not money then at least something valuable.

'The sons visit him again. They find that his studio is now empty. Only a few blocks of unworked wood remain, and the carving of a bird with its wings outstretched. They try to persuade their father to give up. They shout at him: you've gone mad, you should get help. He throws them out.

'He probably should seek a doctor's help, but instead he continues his search. In his life now there passes a procession of landscapes, cities, rectories, monasteries. Almost illegible documents flash before his eyes. The letters seem to dance and recompose themselves into words and names. Other landscapes and other people enter his life, people long since lost, of whom only a name remained, yet he sees them. Once, he sees them as if in a wedding procession, dressed in ancient costumes, walking to the sounds of Gregorian chant to a small church set on a white rock. At other times he sees his ancestors in a band of warriors filing along a jungle path and dancing half-naked around fires. He hears the hunters cheer when they strike down their prey. The images increase. At first they come to him only at night, then they begin appearing by day as well. He looks at the sea and suddenly sees a line of warships — triremes— nearing the shore. Or, from the window of an inn, he catches a glimpse of twelve lictors in togas. Once he notices that he is being watched from a distance by a hairy man with a low, sloping, simian forehead. The man is gripping a club in his enormous right hand. He stops to allow the man to catch up with him, but he merely circles around him, as though skirting a circle whose perimeter he cannot enter. This happens several days in a row, until one

night the man finally appears by his bedside. He asks the man what he wants, but he knows the man will not reply: he is from a different space, and is of a different essence. He is merely a shadow of someone more ancient from whom he is descended.

'Then the shadows visit him more frequently. They come to him in his studio. They sit around in corners, or at night they stand around his bed and sometimes he can hear them whispering among themselves. Sometimes he can understand fragments of sentences, and he jumps out of bed and, with his left hand, scribbles down what they are apparently trying to tell him: If I have at last found mercy before thy face. . nearer to thee, our Lord, nearer to the fire. . clay from clay, ashes from ashes, dust from dust, life from death. . O, bow down to the powerful and lead our souls into. . Sometimes he even tries to sketch the faces. The wild, hairy faces of the men and the bare faces of the women. Their low foreheads, flattened noses and tiny chins give them a savage, almost animal look. Their names too begin to sound stranger and stranger. They are short and often remind him of the cry of birds, the sounds of animals or the howling of the wind. He learns that SiSiSi was the friend of Tektek, but when, for how long and where he lived, he cannot discover. He tries to summon him forth again, but none of the shadows ever returns, as though they have to make room for others. They begin to behave with more and more abandon, their sentences become less coherent, then they utter single words, then stuttering syllables, and finally they seem to interpolate animal yelps among the syllables. The savage howling of ancient beasts of prey, the deep throaty roar of bears and, almost constantly now, the hiss of approaching snakes and the slurping yawn of mussels and clams. It's exhausting. He still tries to sketch the outlines of these shadows but he can no longer perceive their shapes. Perhaps they no longer have a shape, perhaps their shapes are decayed by time; he can only see coloured, blurred spots that fly and circle around him.

'Then his strength runs out. He no longer gets out of bed. He only looks on as the luminous half-forms dance, and listens to the noises that draw together and blend until

they sound like rushing water. He feels that he's no longer lying down, but falling. He falls into depths that are more bottomless than the sky, and as he falls the light around him becomes calm and clear, the sounds blend into a single tone, a penetrating whistle, which permeates him so that he no longer knows whether it's coming from outside or from within. At that moment he understands that he is perceiving the divine presence, the presence of God, and he whispers, God: his last word.

'They find him in the middle of the empty studio, lying among scraps of paper covered with words in an incomprehensible language and sketches of improbable creatures. The dead man is smiling. One of those who find him says, "The poor bugger must have gone off his rocker."'

The room is silent, like the dead man's studio. Perhaps she had fallen asleep, but her eyes were staring wide into the darkness outside the window. 'And the bird. What about the raven?' she asked finally.

'I forgot about him.' Her question disappointed him. 'He discovers that one of his ancestors had the nickname Corvus.'

'That's a strange story. It's not the kind of story I'd expect from you. It's as though someone else had invented it, someone else inside you, someone who longs to have faith in something.' She leaned over to him and began to kiss him, her cheeks damp with tears. He didn't know if she was crying because the story moved her, or because she was sorry for him, or because they were about to part.

What was faith?

Faith was a longing that pretended to be a conviction.

The noise in the room suddenly stopped. Then a powerful male voice announced that they needed five messengers to go out into the countryside that very night. They would need to be prepared for any eventuality because the situation in the countryside was unclear, and they had unconfirmed reports that armed militia units were standing by at the outskirts of the city, ready to intervene. The voice listed all the places the messengers were to go, the most distant of which was at the far end of the country. Volunteers immediately stood up.

At that moment he heard Sokol's voice offering them the use of the television van.

So he got up. It seemed unlikely that there would be any shooting, but if so, and he and his camera were to survive, he would get some unique footage, though of course there always was shooting somewhere in the world, and that kind of unique footage always looked the same.

A long-haired boy and a girl whose face was still that of a child got into the van. Other students brought a bundle of posters and some flyers.

As they left he looked out of the window and saw several hands waving at them. It was the first time strangers had ever waved to a car in which he was sitting. Both the kids were sitting beside him talking quietly about people he didn't know. The girl addressed the boy as Dan, and the boy called her Dora.

It was already past midnight, and the streets were completely empty. There was no sign of militia units.

He pulled out a packet of cigarettes and offered them to the students beside him. The young man refused; the girl accepted and he lit it for her. She noticed that his lighter was shaped like a tiny revolver. 'It's a good thing we're armed,' she remarked.

'We don't shoot in this country,' said the boy — as though he could remember. 'When the shooting starts, someone has to come from somewhere else to deal with it.'

'You can kill without shooting,' countered the girl.

'Have they killed anyone you know?' he asked her.

'No one I know,' she replied, 'but that's not important. You can poison people so slowly that no one notices.'

'Do you mean with television?'

'That's possible,' she said, 'but there are lots of ways of doing it. Like the way they poisoned us at school for fifteen years.'

'Are you counting nursery school?'

'That's where it starts.' She laughed. 'But now it's all over.'

Sokol, who was sitting beside the driver, turned to her. 'Too bad you didn't say that on camera.'

'Anyone will tell you that any time,' she said. 'Too bad it took you so long to come to us.'

'We would have come sooner, but they wouldn't have broadcast our footage. And maybe you wouldn't have spoken this way either.'

'Perhaps,' admitted the student. 'Everything in its own good time.'

The van drove out of the city, but they had to go slowly because the road was veiled in mist. The girl leaned her head on the boy's shoulder and closed her eyes.

'What are you studying?' Pavel asked the young man.

'As a matter of fact, just what you're doing. I mean I'm studying to be a cameraman.'

'That's good. You can take over from me, if necessary.'

'Why not?' he said. 'It would be more interesting.'

'What do you mean?'

'I couldn't stand your programmes, any of them. Whenever they turned the television on at home, I'd leave the room. Now here I am, riding in the same car as you.'

'Maybe we found it even more disgusting than you did,' said Sokol. 'We had even more reason to.'

'But you did it,' objected the student. 'Even so, you did it.'

'You went on studying too,' said Sokol, 'even though you knew they were poisoning you.'

'That's an interesting comparison. But it's not quite the same thing.'

'Maybe you'll be able to do everything better now, when you take over from us,' Pavel interjected.

'I hope so, otherwise I wouldn't want to touch it.'

That's what you say now, Pavel thought, when you have a hope that things will change. But he said nothing. He lit another cigarette and looked out into the impenetrable fog.

He too hoped that things would change. People like this student would come to replace him because he was one of the poisoners. And he would acquiesce because in the end, he too wanted everything to be done better. So this was what the beginning of freedom was like. If it would not be for him, then at least it would be for his unborn son.

2

The cameras were set up, the writing-desk lit. The old man held in his hand some sheets of paper from which to read. He seemed gaunt, tired and old. Nevertheless, his voice was as harsh and domineering as ever. 'Can we begin?' He clearly wanted to get this over with. A resignation forced upon him by popular demonstrations in the streets, by a people who now eagerly awaited his final humiliation.

'Two more minutes, Mr President.' Pavel also wanted to get it over with, even though no one would see him doing it. He had not wanted to see this man at close range again, though it would probably be for the last time. 'Who else but you?' they had said.

'Stand by, Mr President!'

The old man sat down, pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose. He was obviously feeling very emotional. When they had elected him head of state years ago, he had been moved to tears. Many others across the country had no doubt wept too, from despair or shame. But most had looked on, as Pavel had, with merely curious or shocked indifference.

'Fifteen seconds! I'll give you the signal with my hand, Mr President.'

The paper, covered with words that had been enlarged several times so the half-blind man could read them, trembled. Pavel gave him the signal, and the old man began to deliver the last speech he would ever make before falling into the dark hole of utter forgetting.

Through the viewfinder, he saw the face he had filmed so often; the microphones captured the voice they had captured so many times before. The voice quavered, and the face looked even more gloomy and serious than usual. It seemed that not only had he written this speech himself, he had also invested it with some real feeling, and now was now trying to speak from the heart, to reach the people to whom he had so often delivered vacuous appeals, messages in which emptiness was wrapped up in grandiloquent nothingness.

This time he spoke with dry matter-of-factness. The people were calling for a new government and for the president's resignation, he said. He had received many letters on these matters, some supporting him, some critical. He thanked everyone for their views, positive or negative, for at least now he knew what people really thought. He had decided to appoint a new government and then resign.

'Ever since my youth, I have believed in the same bright ideals, and I continue to believe in them to this day.' He was speaking of his illusory faith from a dark hole, a drowning raven whose broken wings beat against the stormy waves that had finally engulfed him. 'There were certainly errors, but those errors were in people, not in the ideal, and therefore, I will remain faithful to the ideal as, I believe, will most of us.'

Pavel watched the morose face in his viewfinder with purely professional attention. He felt no emotion, not the slightest hint of compassion for the old man. He observed him as he would observe a slithering snake, an eviscerated rat or a warehouse full of toxic waste.

What would have happened had this ruler not emerged from the darkness into which he was now returning? Had he not appeared and defiled Pavel's life, defiled the life of everyone in this country? Would his life have been less tarnished? Would he now be standing on the brink of a dark hole that was about to swallow him up?

For the last time, the president wished everybody success in overcoming the present difficulties, and a quiet Christmas and a happy New Year.

His son would not have been born anyway.

The speech was over. The lighting technicians switched off the lights, the sound men put away the microphones.

The old man stepped up to him. He seemed to hesitate, as though he were afraid of being rebuffed, then he offered his hand and thanked him. Pavel returned the thanks and wished him well.

Who would take his place? And who would film the new president's speeches?

His mother was in hospital now. She had been careless about heating up some tea on the gas stove, and her

dressing-gown had caught fire. Surprisingly, she had managed to tear it off, but not before the flames had seared her left arm and hip.

'For a young person, this would be no more than a painful but minor setback,' a female doctor had told him. 'But at her age the skin sometimes refuses to heal.'

'I understand.' He was holding a bouquet that he had bought for his mother. It occurred to him that his mother wouldn't notice the flowers anyway, so he could give them to the doctor. But the right moment had passed, and besides, it was probably inappropriate to pay the doctor off with a handful of flowers.

'If you need medicine, or any other sort of help. . '

'Please, don't worry. We will do everything we can,' the doctor reassured him.

If he'd had a home of his own where his mother could have lived with him, this would probably not have happened. But the truth was, she was the reason he had not married. He could have spent far more time with her than he had, but he found her mental confusion repugnant. When he was with her, he thought mostly about how to get away again as quickly as possible.

She lay in a small room with three other women, her bandaged arm resting on the white counterpane, her eyes closed. The air in the room was overheated and stale, and he could smell the elderly bodies and some kind of disinfectant.

'The old lady sleeps a lot,' said the woman in the next bed. 'She moaned the whole of the first night, but it's better now.' The woman was young, and her face was apparently permanently scarred by burns.

He ran some water into a lemonade bottle and put the flowers into it, then sat down in a chair beside his mother's bed. 'Mother?'

Slowly she opened her eyes and looked at him. Her expression was blank.

'It's me, Mother.'

'Who's me?'

'Pavel.'

'It's your son,' said the neighbour. 'You told me about him yourself.'

'Is it you?'

'It's me.'

'It's good of you to come. Where am I? This isn't my bed.'

'You're in hospital, Mother.'

'How did you find me here?'

'He looked for you, didn't he,' said the neighbour. 'He knows his mother's here.'

'Yes, he says I used to be his mother,' she allowed. 'Isn't Daddy coming?'

'No.'

'He probably hasn't got the time,' said the neighbour. 'It's like I said, no one's got the time any more. My husband hasn't been to see me for a week. He just phones. They say the president resigned. Is that true?' she asked Pavel.

He nodded.

'What a pity,' said the neighbour. 'A pity I have to be here, I mean. If I were at home, we'd celebrate.'

'But he's resigned so often already,' said his mother.

'Not this one,' laughed the neighbour.

'It doesn't matter,' said the mother. 'They all have to go one day. Have they put him in a hospital too?'

'Who?'

'The one you're always talking about.'

'No,' he said. 'Do you feel any pain?'

'How could I feel any pain? They've taken away my body.'

He stroked her hand. He couldn't think what to say to her. Perhaps she would die in a few days. He should do something for her. What can you do for a mother whose body is departing and whose soul is already gone? Talk to her about hope. But what kind of hope would she understand? And what kind of hope did she have left? What kind of hope did he believe in himself? What would he want in her situation?

He'd want not to be among complete strangers. He'd want someone to hold his hand. Once again he stroked her unbandaged hand. It was cold, wrinkled and rough.

'The air in here is strange,' she said. 'I don't think I'm at home. And I don't know where little Pavel is.'

'I'm Pavel.'

'You're just making fun of me. Little Pavel was my son. A tiny little boy.'

'Well, who do you think I am? It's just that I've grown up since then.'

'Little Pavel never grew up. I don't know what became of him. He was a good boy. I was fond of him, and he was fond of me.' She sobbed under her breath. 'It makes me sad that I haven't seen him so long.' She closed her eyes and continued to sob.

The telephone rang. "El Senor Fuka?'

'Al aparato.' He wasn't properly awake and didn't know what time it was, but it was still deep night outside his window. The fan on the ceiling was turning noisily. He was lying in his hotel room. Karel Sokol was sleeping soundly in the other bed. They'd drunk too many tequilas last night. Why hadn't Sokol answered the telephone? But no, the call was apparently for Pavel. 'Quien habla?'

'Un momento. Le llaman. '

'Dr Valentová here. Can you hear me?'

'Yes, I can hear you very clearly, Dr Valentová.'

'I'm Albina's mother.'

Yes, I know that, doctor.'

'I just wanted to tell you the news. I took my daughter to the hospital last night.'

'Oh, God! Has anything serious happened?'

'She began to bleed, but there's still hope. I just thought you should know.'

'Yes, thank you. But I don't know… Do you think I should come home?'

'I have no idea what your responsibilities are. But my daughter isn't in the best of shape, psychologically. I mean, you know what this child would mean to her. . '

'I do. Please tell her I'll come. Tell her I'll come on the first available flight.'

'I'll give you her number at the hospital. Perhaps you should tell her yourself.'

'Yes. Thank you. I'll call her.'

Four o'clock in the morning, which means it's ten in the morning at home, no, eleven.

Still half asleep, Sokol asked, 'Is something wrong?'

'I'm going to have to go back.'

'Back where?'

'Back home.'

'What — are you crazy? Was that production calling? They agreed that we could extend our stay.'

'It wasn't production. You can go back to sleep.'

'How can I sleep when you've just gone off your rocker?'

'I'll explain in the morning.'

He should call the hospital right away but he didn't have anything definite to tell her. Besides, he was confused. The first thing he had to do was reserve a flight. Before that he had to sort things out with Sokol. He couldn't just get up and fly away when the work was barely half finished. So the first thing he had to do was call the hospital and find out if it still made any sense to fly back now. But before that he had to know something definite. And the day after tomorrow they were supposed to fly to Merida, and he couldn't get out of that because the shooting had all been arranged. .

When morning came everything seemed far less urgent than it had in the dead of night. The telephone conversation had become an unreal nightmare.

'Too bad you never introduced me to her,' said Sokol. 'I'd like to see the woman you're willing to drop everything for. You can't help her anyway,' he went on. 'Her mother's a doctor. She'll look after her. You've got responsibilities here. You can't just pack up and leave. She has to understand that.'

It sounded convincing. Besides, he would probably never get to this part of the world again, and there was still so much he wanted to see and film.

The next morning he called the hospital from the airport. He left a message for Albina saying he would return as soon as he could. He flew off to Merida, but he was now in a rush. In a single day, he tried to accomplish what they had to do in a week. Then the Indian chauffeur that they had hired gently remonstrated with him. Why were these white men always in such a hurry? If you are in too much of a hurry, he explained, your spirit won't be able to keep

up with you. If you don't wait for it, it will never catch up.

His mother opened her eyes again. 'Where am I, anyway?'

'You were asleep,' he said. 'You were lucky not to be burnt to death.'

His mother laughed. 'I was lucky. I used to be lucky, once. And what are you doing, Pavel? Are you lucky too?'

'We're all lucky now, Mrs Fuková,' interrupted the neighbour. 'We're all ecstatic.'

'Yes,' said his mother. 'We're delighted you came, Pavel, that you're here with me, that you'll stay with me.'

His mother closed her eyes again. He ought to stay here with her, not rush away. He ought to stay here with her till the very end.

3

He finished work in the editing room earlier then he expected, and an empty stretch of time loomed before him. He saw a small group of strangers in the corridor, conversing with great animation. The building was now full of unfamiliar faces, some of whom might have been returning after years of absence — not to this building, which was practically new, but to jobs they had once held. These people made him uneasy. He walked by them as quickly as he could. The porter in the lodge acknowledged him with a nod on his way out. At least they hadn't replaced him. Not yet.

It was a cold evening outside. The paving-stones were greasy with layers of soot, dust and mist, and the air was acrid with smoke. He got into his sports car and drove the short distance to the city centre. He realized he was close to the store where Eva worked, and could drop in. He hadn't seen her for several days. Somehow, there never seemed to be enough time.

With Sokol, he had driven around the towns and the cities, mostly in the north of the country. Out of the fog that shrouded the countryside, softening the outlines of people and things, demonstrators emerged, flags waved and

speakers rose spontaneously to address spontaneous gatherings. Mostly they were people who had not been allowed to speak for years. They clambered on to piles of rock, balanced on the rims of fountains and on pedestals of statues whose removal they demanded, just as they demanded the removal of those who had bowed down before these statues. They spun visions of how everyone's life, including Pavel's own, would quickly be transformed and rise above the poverty in which it had for so long been mired. Others, who preferred actions to words, climbed on to rooftops to remove the snow-covered symbols of yesterday's power. They pulled down street signs and fastened in their place new plaques scrawled with names that until recently had been unmentionable, and they sometimes gathered threateningly under the windows of abandoned Party secretariats, ready to break in and begin, or rather complete, the purging. In every face he saw a kind of ecstasy that looked almost sexual.

When he had last seen Eva, he had noticed this same look on her face. In strangers, it seemed to make their faces more attractive, or at least more interesting, but Eva's ecstasy had repelled him. What was she hoping for, what did she expect the altered circumstances would bring her, and him? What could she possibly understand of these events? Perhaps he was simply repelled by an emotion in her which was not occasioned by him.

He parked in a side-street right in front of the entrance to a bar.

It was packed inside, as it always was in all the bars at that time of day. He stood by the taps and ordered a large vodka. On the wall, along with posters of half-naked models and advertisements for beer, was a picture of the new president. An American pop song playing softly from a set of speakers was drowned out in the din of voices. A massive man standing beside him was trying to communicate his opinion of the situation to the barman. 'We're being far too soft on them. It's going to backfire.'

'Their turn will come,' said the barman. 'Everything takes time.'

'The way I see it, either we beat the shit out of them or

they're going to beat the shit out of us again tomorrow. It's like rats. They leave sinking ships, and if you don't beat them to death they'll just crawl on board another ship and go on eating everything in sight.'

Where do I belong? he thought. With those who'll do the beating or with those who'll get beaten to death? He didn't know anybody here, but he wondered if someone might recognize him. His picture sometimes appeared in the television guide. He felt uneasy. He ordered another vodka, tossed it back and left the bar.

Eva was rearranging something on a shelf when he walked in. She turned around as soon as she heard the door creak. 'So it's you? What are you doing here?'

'I just got back to town and I've come straight to see you.'

'That's nice of you. I'm closing up soon. Will you come home with me tonight?'

'Where else would I go?'

'I don't know. I don't know where you go when you're not with me.'

'You can close up right away,' he said. 'People have other things to think about now, besides buying handkerchiefs or socks.'

'Business is always slack after Christmas.' She got up, went to the door, locked it and hung up a sign that said: gone to the post office. 'I'm here on my own today. I still have some accounts to do, and then I should take the money to the post office. You can wait in the back and I'll make you some coffee.'

The room behind the shop was partly like an office and partly reminiscent of a women's powder-room, with a basin, a mirror, a shelf crammed with little bottles and vials and creams, a table and two armchairs, one of which unfolded into a bed. On top of a metal filing cabinet stood a hotplate with a kettle on it in which water was apparently always on the boil. The room was hot. He took off his sweater, sat down on the chair and lit a cigarette. She made coffee for him and for herself, then sat down opposite him. She had spent all day in the shop, yet her hair and makeup were flawless, and her white blouse seemed so clean it might have come straight off a hanger.

'So, what was it like out there?'

He said that he'd had a lot of work. Everything was in flux now, so much was happening, there was lots to see and therefore lots to film, and no one had to approve what he shot any more.

She asked how his mother was, but he hadn't had a chance to go to the hospital that day. Over the phone they told him that the burns were healing surprisingly well. It was his mother's mind that was beyond healing.

'What's Robin been up to?' he asked.

'He's thrilled by what's happening. He wants to watch the television news every night.'

'You're not thrilled?'

She looked at him as though she were wondering what he wanted to hear.

Of course she was thrilled. She had nothing to lose, she hadn't got mixed up in politics, she'd only sold things of slightly worse quality than things sold everywhere else in the world.

'They say there'll be private shops again,' she said, not replying 'directly. 'And they also say they're going to give people back their property, maybe even whole factories.'

'What's that got to do with us?'

'It's just that that's what they told us at head office.'

'My parents owned nothing, not even a kennel,' he said. 'They won't be giving anything back to me.'

'Nor to me, either. Unless they give Kučera back the factory his father used to own.' She sounded casual, but it was clear she had given the possibility a great deal of thought.

The telephone rang.

She stood up quickly and grabbed the receiver. He could hear a male voice on the other end asking a question. He saw that she was blushing. He got up, but there was nowhere for him to go, unless he went back into the shop, which was supposed to be empty.

'Call me tomorrow,' she said into the phone, unconsciously lowering her voice. 'I have a visitor.' She hung up quickly. 'That was him,' she said, 'Kučera. He wants to arrange to take Robin skiing.'

'So why didn't you make the arrangements?'

She shrugged her shoulders. 'I need some time to think about it.' She walked over to the desk, bent over and began rummaging for something in the bottom drawer.

He watched her half-exposed breasts, the breasts he had touched so often. He reached for her and took her in his arms.

She looked at him, surprised, but then let herself be kissed. 'Are you mad?' she said, when he began fondling her. 'We can't do it here

'But you've locked the door.'

'The boss has a key.'

'Do you think she might turn up?'

'And I have to go to the post office.'

He stroked her breasts.

'I don't know, I don't know.' But she didn't resist when he carried her to the chair.

She made love to him perfunctorily, silently and passively, probably because she didn't like the place.

'You make love to me, but you don't really like me,' she said as she was putting on her clothes.

'What makes you say that?'

'When was the last time you told me you loved me?'

'I love you.'

'But you don't want to have a baby with me.'

He said nothing.

'And you don't want to marry me.'

'But it's as though we're married.'

'Yes, you can have me any time you want. In the shop, on a chair, just because you happen to feel like it. But you're not interested in the rest of it. You're not interested in me. You're not interested in Robin either. You don't like either of us.'

'I have no idea why you're talking like this.'

'I've known for ages. I'm just telling you now. You only care about your mother and maybe your camera — at least you make bloody sure no one does that any harm.'

'Has anyone done you any harm?'

'Yes. You!'

'Here? Now?'

'Here or somewhere else. It doesn't matter where, you don't really love me. You think only about yourself.'

She went back to the desk and pushed the drawer shut. Then she took some lipstick out of her handbag and began to apply it carefully as she looked in the mirror. 'How long do you think I'm going to hang around waiting to see whether you've decided to stay with me or take up with someone else?'

'But I'm staying with you.'

'All the same, you're cheating on me. Don't think I don't know it.'

'I'm not cheating on you,' he said, without conviction. Her explosion had caught him off guard. Until now, she had submissively done things his way. Something must have happened. She was a real shopkeeper. She had it in her blood. The world around her was collapsing and rearranging itself into something that could bring profit or loss or something else entirely.

Until now, he had represented profit to her. He was a better sort of companion than she could ever have hoped for. Either she had concluded that he could no longer bring her any advantage, or someone else had appeared who offered her better value. Or both of those things had happened, and he had failed to notice.

She got into her coat, glanced at herself in the mirror again and put on her hat. 'Shall we go?'

They were silent for most of the journey. As they were getting close to where she lived, he asked, 'Was there anything else you wanted to tell me?'

'Why? I've said all I want to say for the time being.'

4

Peter had taken over from Halama and was now Pavel's new boss. Pavel didn't know whether this was good or not. On the surface, not much in his life had changed, but the certainty had gone out of it. He brought footage back from wherever they sent him, and then they broadcast it, without

anyone either objecting or approving. He might tell himself that he had finally achieved independence and responsibility, but in fact the situation made him increasingly uneasy.

He even found it hard to concentrate on his tennis and lost three sets one morning to Sokol. In the showers, when Sokol remarked that the same old thing was starting up again, Pavel asked what he meant.

'You know, first they replace the bosses, then the bosses start replacing the ones underneath them and so it goes, all the way down. Except for the cleaning ladies. They get to stay,' he explained. 'Or maybe you think that's not how it's going to be this time?'

He shrugged his shoulders.

'They say this new guy spent years as a custodian of some castle,' Sokol informed him, 'and that he's a Catholic.'

'Protestant,' he corrected him.

'You know him?'

'A bit.'

'So what do you think he'll do?'

'I don't know. Maybe he doesn't know himself.'

'Maybe he'll ask you for advice, since you know each other.'

'I doubt it.'

'Or maybe you'll be the first to get fired?'

'I don't know. I really don't know.'

'What the hell does a glorified caretaker know about running a television network?'

'He wasn't always a caretaker.'

'Even so. The only thing he'll know for sure is that he's expected to replace us. It would be better not to wait. We'd be wasting our time, and now it's more true than ever that time is money. Have you thought at all about my idea of setting up an advertising agency? Remember, we talked about it? Do you have any idea what kind of money the ones who get in there first will make?'

Pavel shrugged. 'I don't understand why you want me to go in with you.' He'd already finished dressing. He didn't want to talk about it now. He was tired and thirsty after the game.

'A lot of empty buildings will be available now,' said

Sokol, sticking to his subject, 'and if we move quickly we can still get something pretty decent, something we can turn into a studio. It will cost a bit, but if several of us get together. . '

'Why should anyone be in any hurry to give us a building?'

'They'll give it to whoever pays the most, that's how they operate. And if they don't happen to like you or me, we'll do it under someone else's name.'

'Perhaps. But why?'

'God,' sighed Sokol. 'Where do you think you're living? Don't you understand that everything has changed? If we stay in television, we'll always be the black sheep. But if we start out on our own, no one's going to ask us questions about our past, only about what we know and whether we can do the job.'

'I had a different idea about what I'd do when things changed.'

'A different idea?'

Pavel paused for a moment and then said, 'Like making a film that ï really want to make.'

Sokol looked surprised. 'Your own film? And what, if I may ask, would it be about?'

'Did it never cross your mind?'

'What do you mean?'

'You know, that you might have your own way to say the things you always had to say their way?'

'Oh, sure,' he waved his hand. 'But now everybody's going to be doing that.'

'If they still can.'

And you can pull it off?'

'I can at least try.'

'What about money? Where's that going to come from?'

'That remains to be seen. '

'Well, why not? We'll have a studio, and you can make your big film.' He liked the sound of the idea. 'It's probably the one place where you'll be able to do something like that.'

When he finally got back home, three weeks late (he was working all the time), Albina was no longer a patient

at the hospital; she was back at work there.

He waited for her outside the hospital gate. He had a bag of nicely wrapped presents: a necklace of tiny turquoise stones, an alpaca sweater and two small silver pins, but the moment he saw her coming he realized, with a sinking feeling, that not even the most fantastic gifts would be of any help. She must have seen him too, but she didn't quicken her step and her face gave no sign that she was glad to see him.

'So you're back?' she said.

'I'm with you again,' he said, and tried to kiss her.

She pulled away. 'You're not with me, we're standing on the street.'

He wanted to walk her to his car but she refused to go.

'We're going somewhere,' he said.

'No we're not. I wasn't expecting you.'

'You weren't expecting me?'

'I wanted you to come, I wanted you to come a lot, but that was a month ago.'

He tried to explain that he couldn't come, that he had tried to phone her but couldn't get through. She said there was nothing to explain. It was entirely up to him whether he came back or not, and in the same way, it was entirely up to her whether she wanted to stay with him or be alone.

She got into the car with him in the end. She asked him how the trip had gone.

He tried again to explain that he hadn't stopped loving her, it was just that he hadn't been able to come back right away, but she insisted that there was nothing for him to explain. She had always known he would keep running away from her, and that one day he'd leave her for good; it was in him, or rather, there was something missing in him, something he lacked, and lacked so utterly that he wasn't even aware of it.

He asked her if she could at least say what that something was.

She thought for a while, then said that he lacked hope.

Hope for what?

Hope that something in life had real meaning. That life itself had some meaning.

It was odd that she spoke not of love nor of faith, but of hope.

What meaning did life have, then?

It meant, for instance, to be with the one you love when she needs you.

She wanted to get out of the car, but he persuaded her to stay a while longer. So they sat for another hour, but he was incapable of saying anything important. He even forgot to give her the presents he'd brought. But she'd have rejected them, leaving him with the feeling that he'd tried to bribe her. When she got out, she asked him not to phone her any more, or wait for her after work.

But he did try waiting for her for several days after that, although he knew he was waiting in vain. He knew it was all over.

Later that evening he ran into Halama's former secretary, who was now working for Peter. She had been looking for him since yesterday. Her new boss would like to talk to him. 'When?'

'This evening after work.'

Which means when?'

'About nine. Every day. It's terrible, Pavel. I sit there with him, not because I have to, but because I'm afraid he'll think that I've been used to taking it easy. And I've got two kids at home screaming for their supper. '

'He'll get over it.' He went into the editing room to give them a tape of the ceremonial dismantling of the border fortifications. He poured himself a glass of red wine and sipped it slowly, smoking and looking at the screen.

Ministers and lesser representatives of the people were cutting the wire. It seemed soft and fell harmlessly to the ground with a snip of the wire-cutters. Something that concerned him directly was coming to an end. He rewound the tape. He couldn't concentrate. Why did Peter want to see him? Would he try to rub his nose in his triumph, or would he just be friendly? The government ministers on the monitor looked friendly, even human. In fact, they didn't look like ministers at all. This was a different breed of people from the old lot. How long would those expressions last?

Either their places would be taken by others, or their expressions would gradually adapt to fit their positions. There was still some time left before going to see Peter, but he was beginning to feel more and more uneasy.

Again he rewound the tape. He took a sip of wine. Of course, what had happened must have been a great source of satisfaction to Peter. He had laid linoleum floors, been a caretaker in a castle, endured interrogations, while he, Pavel, had spent his time making conformist documentaries, travelling the world and filming eulogies to the man who had run the country into the ground. In return, he was given bonuses and rewards, and from time to time he bought a bottle of wine and went down to see his friends in exile in their castle, and then only because he wanted to see Alice. And now his friend had summoned him and could grant him pardon, trust and work. Or not. There was something humiliating in this sudden transformation. Sokol was probably right: it would be better not to wait.

He stopped the tape, put his feet up on the control panel and lit a cigarette. In fact he had never received many bonuses because he'd never felt that he had to kowtow to the bosses the way those who weren't any good did. Instead, he would argue with them, refuse to cut what they wanted to cut. One Friday, at a weekly meeting of the chief producers, he said out loud what everyone was thinking: they were producing a mixture of blandness and tedium. And lies, he had wanted to add, but when he saw the expression on the director's face he swallowed the word. As a punishment, they assigned him to film meetings held by meaningless organizations, or official visits from their official, though hostile, allies. There were disgusting meetings, idiotic approval sessions when he had to sit and silently listen to drivel that often, in an instant, swept away days of work. The life he led was neither wonderful nor easy. Sometimes it had seemed unbearable. Like most people in this country, he'd done his job. He was one of the ones who got steamrollered daily, not one of the ones who drove the steamroller. He was overwhelmed with regret when he thought of what he might have done if they'd left him just a little freedom. He watched the delight on the faces of those

who were cutting the wires and those who were merely looking on, and he realized that he had tears in his eyes.

A melancholy alcoholic who didn't know whether he was crying for joy or grief or anger, or simply because he had drunk himself into a state in which his eyes produced tears by themselves.

Peter looked tired. He was sitting in Halama's huge office, where nothing had changed but the picture of the president and the books on the shelves. Halama had either taken his books away or, more likely, thrown them out. He never read them anyway. One of the two television sets in the room was on, but the sound was down.

Peter got up and walked over to meet him. In the few months since they had last seen each other he had aged, and his face was sallow and wan.

'Have I kept you waiting long?'

'You've kept yourself waiting too.' Pavel's stomach was in a knot.

'I didn't want to talk to you for any particular reason, but it occurred to me that we're working under the same roof and haven't seen each other yet.'

'People who work here sometimes don't see each other for months at a time. '

'I have no intention of sounding you out about anyone.'

'I couldn't tell you much anyway. In my line of work, you make sure the lighting's right and you look through the viewfinder, not at the people around you.'

'That's a little hard to believe,' said Peter, 'but that's not the point. I know people are nervous.'

'Some are, some aren't.'

'They shouldn't be.'

'You don't think so?'

'It seems to me they haven't understood that this is different from the changes they've experienced in the past. No one is going to start any purges.'

'A couple of people have been sacked already.'

'That's different. They weren't real professionals, or else they broke the journalistic code of ethics. I mean, you can't expect people to accept an announcer beating the drum for democracy when the same person was beating the drum

for the old regime a month ago. And you can't expect new programmes to be produced by old censors.' He was beginning to sound preachy.

'Most people here weren't beating the drum for anything. And it was us who argued with the censors, not you.'

Almost all of us argued in one way or another. And how about you? Are you happy with your work?'

'No, I'm not. I can't concentrate the way I'd like to.'

'Why not?'

He shrugged. 'The atmosphere around here isn't very good.'

'It was good before?'

'No, but that was different. I'm sorry. You ask me, I answer. You said yourself there were people who were unethical. Who's doing the judging here? Who decides who's guilty? And what about me? What are they going to think about me?'

'I've already told you enough times what I think about you.'

'It was hardly flattering.'

'You know very well that I've never thought of myself as your judge. I know you too well for that.'

'You don't have to apologize. If you want me out of here, just say so.'

'I don't want you out of here, but if you don't feel comfortable here, I can't force you to stay.'

'I'm glad to hear you won't force me to stay.' He should have stood up now and brought this embarrassing conversation to a close.

But Peter began to talk about himself. He said he thought it was his responsibility to take the position when it was offered but now he felt like an interloper. Some hated him, some tried to suck up to him and others tried to curry favour with him by informing on their colleagues. Yet he had neither the inclination nor the desire to play the judge. We all lived in this country. Given the conditions that existed here, every one of us came out of it scarred in some way. And who can establish a borderline between guilt and innocence, when that borderline runs somewhere right down the middle of each and every person? People

overthrew the old regime in the hope that they would finally see justice done. There would have to be an attempt at some kind of judgement. 'Someone can probably be found who can establish that borderline,' Peter said, 'but it won't be me. The job will probably be done by someone who will use it to cover up his own guilt.'

What was justice?

Justice was revenge wrapping itself in a cloak of high principle.

On television, the minister was now cutting the border wires. People behind him were cheering noiselessly. Peter looked at the screen for a moment: 'We tried to run away together once, remember?'

'That was a long time ago,' Pavel said.

'Was that really us? People meet, drift apart, and maybe they meet again, but by then they're someone else.'

Pavel nodded. 'Even so, they can still ride in the same car. That is if you're leaving too.'

When they got into his car, he said to Peter, 'I don't even know where you live now.'

'For the time being I'm living at my sister's.'

'What about Alice and the children?'

'She stayed in the country. I thought you knew.' He was silent for a long time as though wondering whether to come out with it. 'I got involved with someone else, a girl who writes poetry and sings. Alice was badly hurt. We separated.'

'I didn't know.'

It was a long time since he'd made that movie about children who had lost their fathers.

'I'm sorry,' he said. For the first time in days, he felt the unexpected touch of hope.

FILM

I

The reception takes place in the small house which also serves as his private dwelling. Tables spread with white cloths are positioned throughout five rooms. There are tables outside as well, in the parts of the garden adjacent to the house, but it still seems crowded in here. He has invited too many spongers. All those cheap suits, black faces and slant-eyed devils milling about. Wherever he looks he sees freeloaders, tinpot attachés in toy uniforms, overdressed cannibals, decorated warriors, retired admirals and failed generals, ambassadors from postage-stamp, godforsaken kingdoms and hordes of would-be artists: actors, musicians and hacks. They brought him a guest list, but he was exhausted before he finished reading the first page, so he signed it, just as he'd signed hundreds of other documents. He knows there are people here who were not on the list, people disguised in tuxedos and waiters' frock-coats, dressed up as gardeners, cooks, lighting experts and television cameramen spread out on all sides of him, creating an impenetrable circle around him.

He's sitting in a small salon off the main rooms. They wedge him in among his special black guests on tiny rococo chairs and ply him with caviar, alcohol, delicious salads, crab meat, stuffed artichokes, shrimps. An ugly, bespectacled interpreter is standing just behind him, droning

on and on in her high, wheezing voice. As soon as that cannibal to his left flaps her thick painted lips three times and utters a few incomprehensible sounds, the woman behind him dumps a load of words on him so rapidly he can't concentrate on a single thought of his own. Fortunately, they've trained him how to behave in situations like this. Every once in a while he throws out a 'How interesting!' and smiles. Then he turns to her spouse, recommends that he try a sip of his favourite drink, then raises his glass and proposes that they drink to the struggle against capitalism, colonialism, neocolonialism, Zionism, racism, apartheid; to the war against poverty, hunger, illiteracy, corruption, crime, disease and exploitation. And when his guest, a huge man who lounges in the imperial chair as if to the manner born, as if, not so long ago, he hadn't lounged about on the banks of the Nile, or whatever river it was, among the hippopotamuses and the crocodiles, nods patronizingly to indicate that yes, he approves of such toasts, the president empties his glass and then announces that to add spark to the programme he has prepared something a little unorthodox. Given his guest's legal training, he might perhaps be interested in the case of a terrorist, who, with a second terrorist, hijacked a bus full of children. He's already been sentenced and has naturally been given the greatest punishment, but before he makes a decision on the man's request for clemency, he wants to hear him out personally. A thousand years ago his predecessors did things the same way. He had intended to have the hijacker brought to him some time in the next few days, but because of his guest, he has decided to do it right here and now.

The black guest nods, emits some incomprehensible sounds which the interpreter puts into comprehensible words strung together in utterly confused sentences. What does it matter? He is not here, after all, to contemplate the ruminations of someone whose parents grew up in the jungle. He'll show him the prisoner. Let his guest see for himself that all the talk about the horrors of unfreedom and biased courts in this country is merely the slander of malevolent enemies. He'll show him an outcast justly condemned to death. He will then talk to this outcast and hear what he

has to say. He understands people like that because he has been a hair's breadth from the gallows himself. Where else in the world can you find the head of a civilized state willing to do that? He has even had a special room prepared for the event. That is, if his staff have obeyed his orders and brought him the chair in which his predecessors used to sit a thousand years ago. Then he will decide. He might even grant the prisoner clemency. Why shouldn't he? The world holds mercy in higher regard than punishment, however just. He can point to this act of mercy when his enemies malign him. He is only exercising his rightful powers. Besides, he who grants clemency holds power firmly; he rules. They know that very well, which is why some of them made rather sour faces when they understood his purpose.

He has worked the whole thing out wonderfully well, and feels satisfied with himself. He feels the old determination surging through his veins. He's even being a good host. 'Make yourself at home,' he says turning to his black guests, 'as though you were with your own people. All of this is yours. Let friendship flourish between us and the people of our countries, today, tomorrow and forever!' As he says this he looks into the garden where, over the heads of all those fancy-dressed scarecrows out there, geysers of colourfully lit waters explode into the air. 'No more the horrors of war, colonialism and subjugation!' He listens contentedly as his interpreter translates his pointed and comprehensible words into wads of shrill, inhuman sounds. 'For a free tomorrow, and against all those who would suck people dry and lead them astray,' he goes on. 'No more the rule of lords or clerics. . '

His big-eared chancellor, who is sitting just close enough not to miss a word, is shaking his head almost imperceptibly. What is he trying to tell him? Probably that this black charlatan is, on top of everything else, an archbishop or a shaman, if not some kind of local deity, and that he should be careful not to offend him. Has it reached the point when he has to watch what he says and what he thinks in his own home, in his own country?

He lifts the goblet to his lips (the chancellor watching him closely) and takes a modest sip. He should probably

change the subject, otherwise this treacherous little runt of a chancellor will get upset. He should try to tell an amusing story. After they let him out of prison, he worked in the props department of a theatre, where he heard hundreds of stories. He told many himself. He could tell the story of how they arrested him at gunpoint, except that in the land of cannibals in pinstriped suits that kind of thing probably happens every day. In fact, they don't even arrest people there, they just shoot them. That way they can be certain that their opponents will never come back to haunt them. So he sticks to stories about how they prepared the props for a traditional farce set in the mountains. In one scene, the brigands were returning to their mountain hide-out and as they passed through the entrance, each one was supposed to embed his axe in a wooden beam overhead. The beam had a facing of soft wood, and before the performance it was soaked in water so that the axes would go into it more easily. The actor who played the leading robber was a police spy and an informer of whom everyone was terrified. One day, when the president was dressing the set for the performance, he turned the beam over so that the soft wood was on the back and when the robber chieftain came on stage and casually swung his axe into the wood, it bounced off and fell to the floor. The actor bent over, picked it up and this time took a proper swing, but again the axe would not go into the wood, and by this time the whole theatre was rocking with laughter.

When he finishes telling his story, the black potentate stares blankly at him without so much as a grin. He probably only understands stories about cannibalism. The chancellor is also looking rather uneasy, and so the president raises his glass, which one of those conspirators in disguise has refilled, and he is so excited by his own story that he downs it all at once. His guest also takes a drink and looks satisfied. Apparently the savage understands good drink. He should ask him what they drink back home in his country, on the banks of the Nile or wherever he's from. He should also ask him what he was before they made him a champion of peace and people's rights. He was probably a non-commissioned officer who got together with a few

like him, staged a successful uprising and then named himself and his comrades-in-arms generals. But at least his generals had proved themselves in battle, he thinks bitterly, and he's got a good-looking wife too. They didn't get rid of her. He was able to keep a closer eye on his wife than I was on mine, though he may have more than one. Perhaps he has a whole harem, in which case it wouldn't make sense to eliminate just one. They would have to invent accidents for all of them, and that is not easy to do.

He recalls his own poor wife, and how they had all rushed to tell him about the accident, an accident they themselves had planned so carefully and executed so flawlessly that nothing could be proven. He was too devastated even to have them prosecuted, and no one was punished.

He reaches for his glass but they have forgotten to fill it, or rather have been ordered not to fill it any more. It's that scoundrel of a chancellor who has given the order and now he's smirking at him. Of course, he's made mistakes, he'll admit that. He tossed back that last drink just like in the old days, but couldn't they just forgive him that one slip, instead of leaving him stranded here? He could of course order another drink from one of those fellows disguised as a waiter, but they would criticize him first thing tomorrow morning for lack of self-control, and his enemies would be more than happy to exploit his lapse.

He looks around in the vain hope that someone will come to his rescue. But who could he expect to do that? And why haven't they brought him that criminal yet?

Have they even prepared the room as he'd ordered them to? With the special chair in the middle, and twenty-two seats in a square around it for the guests? Have they remembered to get the robe ready? He should check on it at once; they can't be depended on for anything. He's all alone, surrounded by enemies. He knows who they are. Some of them are staggering tipsily around him, others are lurking among the Chinese vases or concealed behind heavy curtains, behind the firescreen, behind secret doors, all of them perfectly disguised in suits and white shirts, their bodies creating a net so dense that not even a little bird could fly through, and they have hidden hooks in their

trouser-legs. When he looks around with his heightened vision, he realizes there are more of them now. On the opposite wall, under the enormous tapestry depicting a scene of debauchery between a naked woman and a swan, two pairs of black shoes peep out. He sees that a tiny, almost invisible door in one of the bookshelves is open, a sinister eye peering through the crack. His heightened senses pick up the sour odour of the deviousness molecule in the air. They are undoubtedly planning something, weaving some treachery around him. Now he must be especially watchful. He must not be caught off his guard, yet he must conceal the fact that he has seen through their designs.

He who grants pardon also has the right to mete out punishment. Suppose that when he grants clemency to the hijacker, he also punishes some of these layabouts who so perfidiously pretend to be his friends?

He hopes they haven't forgotten to hang up the antique banner. He gets up to check, but before he has gone more than a few steps he hears a metallic scraping at his back as though they were stealthily sharpening knives. He turns around abruptly and sees the chancellor, that devious hyena, huddling in treasonous conversation with the minister of the interior, his chief enemy and pretender to his position. The two of them suddenly spring apart, grinning hypocritically. But he pretends that he hasn't even seen them and goes back to his place among the savages.

Before he's able to sit down, the Judas chancellor waltzes up to him on his chickenlike legs and puts on an extremely gloomy expression. As soon as the chancellor addresses him, he knows that he is getting ready to present him with a freshly plucked flower of deception.

'Mr President, I've just learned some rather unpleasant news.' His satisfaction is evident in his voice, although he is trying to conceal it. 'The granting of clemency will have to be rescheduled.' And before the president is able to ask the chancellor why he wants to spoil the plan, the scoundrel informs him that the car bringing the hijacker to him has been involved in an accident. The escorts have been fatally injured, and the hijacker has temporarily absconded.

'The guards are dead?'

The chancellor nods and mentions names and details. So, they did have a plan after all. It was their favourite trick — a traffic accident. It worked before, so now they're going to work it to death. More new victims, and then they'll bring them all in here to haunt him. He could expect them any moment now. This time they killed off the guards too, and it will be left to him to decorate them posthumously, sign letters of condolence to the widows and arrange for their personal pensions. All this, just to frustrate his plans, to diminish him in front of this savage, who is now glancing at him with malicious glee, as though he already knows what they have done. And he can't even have them prosecuted. In any case, who would he prosecute? There is nothing he can do but wait for them to arrange a traffic accident for him too.

'It's unpleasant,' the chancellor drones, 'but it must not be allowed to cast a shadow over the evening.' He snaps his fingers at one of the lackeys, who moves in quickly with a tray bearing a glass of his favourite drink, golden and aromatic. That's something at least — this miserable little fox is trying to mollify him. He grasps the glass, and though the tiny amount of golden liquid scarcely quenches his thirst, it gives him a jolt and he remembers something else. 'What about that other fellow?'

He watches with delight as the devious little runt squirms in embarrassment, vainly searching for an excuse.

'Was this another case of clemency?' the chancellor enquires tightly.

'Yes. And a film,' he remembers, 'a film about snakes.' The chancellor is just about to unleash a torrent of the usual pretexts, but this time he has miscalculated, he's underestimated him, failed to observe that today, the old determination is flowing through his veins. 'Why isn't that fellow here? How dare you not bring him?'

The runt bows his head. He's so small now that all he would have to do would be to lift his leg and. .

'Bring him here!' the president orders. And bring me the other one too, the one who's hiding, the terrorist. Use all means necessary! And I mean all! Right away!'

At last he has managed to foil them.

II

It's dark. Robert crouches in the bushes by the wall, as hungry and thirsty as a runaway dog. His leg is hurting.

It's high time he had a roof over his head, somewhere nearby. He mustn't be seen on the streets. The best thing would be to hole up for a couple of days in one of those blocks of flats on the other side of the wall.

He scans the lit windows. One looks possible, the second on the left on the third floor of the middle block. The lights have just gone on and he sees a colourfully painted ceiling. The walls are covered floor to ceiling with photographs. A blonde girl appears in the window and stares out into the darkness for a while. He waits to see if there's a man with her, but no, she seems to be alone. He watches her as she wanders about the room.

It's getting late. It's Friday evening. He has to get moving before they lock the apartment building. He climbs the low wall and drops down on the other side. A narrow path leads through the bushes. He hopes that no one will be using it at this hour. In the moonlight he can see the grey walls of the prefabricated buildings in front of him, a battery of dustbins and empty sandboxes. He has to get this right. He scans the windows, the courtyards and the end of the path. Not a soul.

When he walks across the open space around the building, he tries not to limp. With only a step or two to go, the door to the next block of flats opens, releasing a shaft of light. He sees a puffy face, a piglike neck throttled by an olive collar. A uniform of some kind. He notices all this in the fraction of a second before he grasps the door handle and pulls. Thank God, it's not locked. The dank corridor swallows him up. He has no idea whether that bastard outside noticed him or not. Maybe he couldn't see much, since he was coming from the light into darkness. He walks up a foul-smelling staircase. They've probably had his picture all over the television, so that fellow must have been curious about a stranger entering a neighbouring building by the back door. He should probably get

the hell out of here. But if this fellow has called the police, there's nothing much he can do about it.

Third floor, second door from the left, a card with a handwritten name on it under the bell:

VALENTOVÁ

He rings the bell twice and waits. He hears a muffled woman's voice: 'Just a moment.' A door slams. He hears a lavatory flushing.

Someone is coming up the stairs. If it's the uniform coming after him, he's not going to pull any punches. He knows how to handle people like him, and he's got nothing to lose.

He hears light footsteps on the other side of the door. One floor below, a key turns in a lock. Someone is bound to hear him. The door opens.

She's not exactly a girl; she's probably older than he is. Not bad-looking. Earrings dangle from her lobes. She's wearing a short-sleeved sweater and a worn skirt and clogs. He notices a blue-and-white nurse's uniform on a coat-hanger behind her. 'Good evening. Sister Valentová?'

'Yes, that's me.' She stares at him, trying to remember if she's seen him somewhere before.

'I've got a message for you.'

'Who from?'

She's not blonde, as he'd thought seeing her from a distance. She's wearing a yellow scarf around her head. Her eyes are like his: large and dark blue.

'I've been on the train all day,' he said — the door on the floor below finally closes—'and I've come straight here from the station.'

'And what is it you have to tell me at this time of night?'

'It'll take a while. But first, I wonder could I trouble you for a glass of water?' He speaks slowly, calmly, choosing his words carefully. But the woman is nervous.

'I don't know you,' she says, 'and I'm not expecting a message from anyone. If you have something to say, say it, but you can't come in.'

Why bother with manners? The woman is going to start screaming any minute now. He has no time to waste. He offers her his hand and says, 'My name is Pavel.' He grasps

her hand and pushes her into the flat, closing the door behind him with his other hand.

'You. . you. . Leave at once… or I'll. . '

'Don't be afraid of me,' he says quickly, 'I won't hurt you. Now, get me something to drink.'

'You haven't got a message for me. What do you want?'

'Didn't you hear what I said? I'm thirsty. Can't you get me a glass of water?'

'Over there,' she says pointing to a door. 'If you're thirsty, get yourself a drink and then leave. Otherwise I'm going to start screaming.'

'Thanks, but you're coming with me.'

'No, I'm going to stay here by the door,' she says, raising her voice. 'You can have a drink, but then you have to go.'

'Listen to me,' he says quietly. 'You want to know where I'm from. . I've just escaped from the slammer.' He pushes her in front of him into the room with posters and photographs all over the walls. 'Now I've got to stay here and you've got to stay with me.'

You're mad.'

'If you keep your head and stay nice and quiet, nothing's going to happen to you.' He opens the door. The bathroom is small. There is a blue toothbrush in a yellow glass. 'If you shout. . ' he says, and very lightly he brings his hand close to her throat. He stares for a moment into her eyes, which are wide with terror and, without taking his eyes off her, he turns the glass upside down. The toothbrush tumbles to the floor. He turns on the tap and holds the glass under the stream of water.

'Who are you?' Her voice is trembling.

'It doesn't matter a damn.'

'What do you want? What do you want from me?'

'Nothing!' He was holding a full glass of water. 'I've got to stay here with you for a little while.' He gulps down the cool liquid.

'You can't! There's someone coming to see me soon.'

She's lying, of course. He can see that she's lying. 'Rubbish!'

'There is someone coming.'

'So, you won't answer the door.'

'He has a key.'

'If he gets in, that's his bad luck.'

'You can't stay here,' she repeats doggedly.

'I've had bugger-all to eat since morning. Where do you keep your food?'

'If I give you something to eat, will you go?'

'I'll go,' he promises. 'That's the last you'll ever hear of me.'

She pulls back a pink curtain. There's an electric hotplate on a shelf and beside it a bread bin, a frying-pan, a green saucepan, several tins and a jar of jam. She opens a tiny refrigerator and takes out a hunk of bacon and two eggs. 'That's all I've got.'

'That'll do.'

She turns on the hotplate and sets the frying-pan on it. Then she cuts the bacon into slices and throws it into the pan.

He breathes in the aroma. 'If you don't try anything funny, I won't touch you. Trust me.'

'When did you escape?'

'You don't want to know.'

She breaks the eggs into the sizzling fat.

He swallows impatiently. 'How about a slice of bread?'

She opens the bread bin and pulls out a wretched little slice.

'That's it?'

'It's enough for me.' She fishes out a plate from under the plastic curtain and dumps the contents of the frying-pan on to it. In the other room, she spreads a cloth on a small table. The cloth is white, with a reddish stain in one corner, probably from wine, but it annoys him and he sits so that he can't see it. He lifts a forkful of food to his mouth, but it's so hot it brings tears to his eyes. The bread is as hard as it was in solitary. He knows she was lying when she told him she was expecting someone.

She stands as far away from him as she can. 'When you've finished, you have to go. Really, you do. I beg you.'

'OK, I'll go, but first I need a change of clothes,' he says with his mouth full.

'There's nothing here for you to change into.'

'He's got his own key and he doesn't even leave his socks?'

'Besides, I have to go to the hospital. I'm on duty.'

'Where do you work?'

'In surgery.'

'Great. You can take a look at my leg. It got a bit of a knock as I was getting away.'

'You can't stay here,' she says. 'And anyway, someone is bound to hear us. The walls are like paper.'

'Then we'll have to whisper, won't we?' he says quietly and gives her a look that makes the woman nod quickly. He mustn't frighten her too much, though. He needs her to help him get out of this town, whatever the name of it is, and help him get a car and go with him when he heads for the wire again. 'You wouldn't turn me in, would you?'

'You promised you'd leave!' She was really whispering now.

'I'll be gone by morning. I've got to get out of this gear or they'll be on to me before I'm out of the building.'

Her cupboard is plastered with posters too. Inside there are several skirts, a few brightly coloured dresses, another nurse's uniform and a pair of jeans. One shelf holds tall, neat piles of sweaters and sheets. There are several boxes on the floor of the cupboard, probably shoes.

He takes the jeans off the hanger. Original Levi's. They look as though they'll fit him — the gourmet prison cooking had taken care of that — but the legs will be too short. He looks at one of them. It has a deep hem. 'Let these down for me,' he says.

'They're the only ones I have. I can't afford to replace them.'

'I'll send you a new pair. I'll send you two pairs. The minute I'm out of here.'

'They'll get you sooner or later.'

'Not alive, they won't.' He should have added they wouldn't get her alive either, but he doesn't want to frighten her. He tosses her the jeans and then reaches into the pile of sweaters and picks out one that he thinks looks the least feminine. He takes off his jacket and only now notices that it's torn at the back and stained with blood. He

pulls the sweater on. The sleeves are too short, but he rolls them up. It won't quite reach the top of his trousers, but it'll do. She holds the jeans in her hands, staring at him.

'What are you gaping at? Get on with it!'

She gets up and pulls a box of sewing things from under the bed. Some shoes would come in handy, but he doubts he'll find any here. Even so, he bends down and opens one of the boxes in the bottom of the cupboard. He almost shouts for joy at what he finds. He'd never have thought of this. Now he's beginning to believe he might get away.

'It's real hair,' he hears the woman say behind him. 'Don't take it, please. I have to wear it. I've lost my hair.'

Ignoring her, he stands in front of the mirror and tries on the wig. It's slightly fairer than his own hair and fits him well. It's too long, but a pair of scissors will fix that. Now, with long hair, in these clothes, arm in arm with this bird, he could walk right up to them and ask them the way to the station.

'I'm only borrowing it. I'll send it back to you, special delivery.' He watches her pull out the stitches around the hem of one trouser-leg and feels hopeful. He's got a roof over his head, he's here with a woman he can reach out and touch whenever he wants. As a matter of fact, he can do whatever he feels like with her. He might have been strung up by now, lying stretched out somewhere, stiff and cold. Instead, it's his escorts who are stiff and cold. 'I owe you one. I'll send you things, stuff like you've never seen before.'

'You think so. . What did they lock you up for anyway?'

'For shit,' he snaps. 'I just wanted to get over those hills.'

'That was it?'

'That was enough.'

'I knew someone like that once.' She stops, then adds: 'He was a patient of ours, on the surgical floor. He tried to escape too. They gave him almost two years for it… '

The conversation is going nowhere. 'Have you got any cigarettes?'

She hesitates, then reaches for her handbag on the couch beside her. She hands him a packet and a box of matches.

He lights a cigarette, inhales the smoke hungrily and looks her up and down. Good-looking. A bit skinny, but nice tits. Christ, when was the last time he'd had a woman? But he mustn't scare her. Maybe she'll give in of her own accord. They usually did in the end. But if she starts screaming now, or later when he takes her with him. . No, he mustn't scare her. When it's all over, when he's made it out of here, he'll have all the women he wants.

She hands him the jeans. 'There. . and now you can She doesn't feel like repeating herself, so she simply points to the door. 'I really mean it. Please.'

He gets up and takes off his trousers. His left ankle is swollen and dark blue, as though he's poured ink over it.

She notices this. 'You made it this far on that?'

'So?' he says, 'What was I supposed to do? Take a taxi?'

'You need to put it in plaster, at least.'

'Fuck that.' He reaches for the jeans.

'Wait a minute.' She fetches a box from the cupboard. She takes a bandage out of it and then she grasps his ankle and moves his foot around. It feels as if she were prising open his leg, but he doesn't let out a peep, he doesn't even move.

She unwinds the bandage with nimble fingers. 'Are they after you?'

'Now what do you think?'

'And when they catch you?

'They'll tie me up here,' and he circles his throat with his thumb and forefinger and sticks out his tongue. 'But like I say, they won't catch me alive.'

'You're not serious.'

He says nothing.

'Are you in for. . Did you. .?'

'I told you, I'm in for shit. No, I didn't kill anybody. If I had, they'd never have caught me. But I was stupid.'

'What are you going to do now? Where are you going to go?'

'We'll see. But I won't make the same stupid mistake twice, I can tell you that right now.'

She winds the bandage around his leg and finishes at his knee. Her head is close to his thigh. Unable to stop

himself, he places his hand on her shoulder.

She jumps back as though he had scalded her. 'Keep your filthy hands off me!'

'Shut the fuck up!' He takes a step towards her, but he can scarcely move his leg. 'I wasn't, I wasn't going to… '

He deliberately turns his back on her and puts on her jeans. They're a bit tight, and he can barely pull them over his bandaged ankle, but otherwise they're all right. He runs some water into the sink and splashes himself. The lump on his forehead has gone down a little, and the wig will hide the scar that runs around to his right temple. He comes back for the wig and puts it on. 'It needs a trim,' he says.

'What'll you think of next?'

'Get me a pair of scissors.'

'No! Please!'

He reaches for the box with the sewing things, takes a pair of scissors, trims some hair off the wig and puts it on again in front of the mirror. How could they possibly recognize him now?

'And now will you get out of here?' she says behind him. 'You should be glad that they haven't caught you yet.'

'Let me worry about that.' She's probably right, though. He's got more than he hoped for here and now he should clear out as fast as he can before they sniff him out, before that uniformed bastard starts thinking about what he saw, or that busybody on the floor below wonders who was talking to her.

But what about this woman? Is she so stupid that she doesn't realize he can't just walk out and leave her? The minute he leaves she'll run to the nearest police station and start talking. He's got to persuade her to go with him. But what if he can't? Or what if she says she will and then starts screaming once they're out in the street? He hasn't thought that one through yet.

He lights another cigarette and sits down. Even if he left her here, gagged her and tied her up, they'd still find her. So he'll have to finish her. . But he doesn't want to do that, and it wouldn't be that much use, because they'd find out something was missing from her wardrobe and then they'd know what to look for.

The woman wants to get up, but he motions her to stay sitting down. "There's something else I've got to tell you.' She lights a cigarette, pulls the chair away slightly and sits down.

'It's funny,' he says, 'but I didn't catch the name of this metropolis of yours on my way in. How far is it from here to there?'

'To where?'

'To the wire.'

'It's a long way. You'd never make it.'

'What, an hour?'

'It depends on how you're travelling.'

'By car.'

'You've got one?'

'I will have.'

'About an hour.'

'Good. We can go!'

'"We"?'

'You're going with me.'

'No! No!' She jumps out of the chair, probably about to run into the corridor and start screaming. He grabs her shoulder and puts his other hand over her mouth. 'Sit down,' he orders. There's a knife lying beside the bread bin, the one she'd used to slice the bacon. He picks it up, tests the sharpness with his thumb. It's not too bad, so he sticks it into the back pocket of his jeans.

'Now look. You're going with me and you're going to pretend that we're together. It'll be OK. If you cooperate. But if you don't, it won't.' He pulls the knife out of his pocket and again runs his thumb over the sharp edge. 'Understand?'

She looks at him, not daring to move. 'You bastard,' she whispers.

He doesn't respond. He's heard some noises outside. Very cautiously, he gets up from the chair and goes over to the window.

It's incredible. How could they have sniffed him out? But there they are. Two of them, with dogs. He jumps back from the window.

'What is it?' she asks, and then she looks out. 'Are they after you?'

He can hear the dogs barking. He's blown it. He's wasted too much time here, hanging around chatting.

'So go,' he hears her say behind him. 'What are you waiting for? Do you want them to find you here?'

'Shut up!'

Where to now? Maybe up to the attic and then on to the roof, but he wouldn't get far with his fucked-up leg. And anyway they've got the place surrounded. He can hear their cars pulling up and he can picture them, each one with a gun in his hand and grenades in his pocket. But they won't get him that easily. It's a good thing she's here. They won't fool him this time. Either he and the woman leave in a car provided by them, or they'll have to carry both of them out of here in coffins.

'What is it?' She's shrieking at him now. 'What are you looking at me like that for? What are you going to do?'

'Shut up!'

'Just get out!' she shouts and she tries to push him towards the door. 'You can't stay here. You're not going to wait until they find you here.'

He hits her across the face. 'Get back, get back in there.' He points to the bed.

She holds her cheek and sobs.

A door slams and they hear feet pounding up the stairs. How many of them have stayed outside? He should keep away from the window now, do something. Barricade the doors. 'Come on!'

She gets up obediently. 'Let me go, can't you at least let me go?' she pleads. 'Maybe they're going to shoot.'

'They won't shoot as long as you're here. Help me with this thing.' He pushes the cupboard that's plastered with photographs and slides it towards the front door.

'Let me go, please, let me go. I haven't done anything to you!'

Only a little bit more effort and the door will be a lot harder to open. Footsteps at the top of the stairs.

'Let me go or I'll scream.'

'Go ahead and scream,' he says. 'Let them know you're in here with me.'

He jams the cupboard against the door. There, now

they're here together. Will the police dare do what they did then? He remembers the moment, the whistling bullets, the groans of the man behind the wheel. His forehead is beaded with sweat. 'Go on — scream!' he says. 'Why aren't you screaming?'

The footsteps stop outside the door. The buzzer sounds. The dogs are yelping and snarling; they sound ready to chew their way through the door. The buzzer goes again.

What is this? Are they here on a visit? They have guns in their hands, dogs at their sides, grenades in their pockets and they're ringing the bell? Maybe they don't want to disturb anyone. They'd rather he opened the door, bowed and then politely put up his hands. But that won't happen. They can find him here lying dead, but he'll make damn sure that his hands are by his side.

He leans against the pictures stuck to the door of the cupboard. The woman beside him is trembling and sobbing loudly. Let them hear her; at least they'll know she's here before they begin to shoot. Where will it come from? Through the door? Through the window? But there's nowhere they could take up a position opposite the window, unless it's on the roof of that warehouse where he'd taken shelter earlier that day. But they probably won't shoot. They'll break down the door and a whole platoon of them will force their way in. But they won't get him alive. He reaches into his pocket and feels the knife for reassurance. This time they won't trick him. He won't even talk to them. Not a word!

Suddenly the buzzer stops, and even the dogs are quiet. Maybe they've taken them away. She's beside him, her shoulders trembling. 'Let them in,' she whispers, 'There's no point. Let them in.'

'Ask them what they want.'

'They want to get in.'

'I'm not asking you, bitch.'

She turns her head towards the cupboard, opens her mouth and then closes it again.

'Go on, ask them!'

'Who is it?' she says in a faint voice.

'Speak up, damn it!'

'Who's there?'

He hears some male voices. Then a strange, yet familiar voice, the same voice that had yelled at him in the children's home and in the army and in prison. 'Security. Open up!'

She turns to him. She's pale and her earrings are trembling.

'Say you won't open up. Say you're a hostage.'

She repeats his words.

'Say I'm going to kill you.'

Silence.

'Say I'll kill you if they don't give us a car and let us out.'

Silence.

'Say something, bitch!'

She sobs.

A voice from outside: 'Bartoš. We know you're inside. Open up!'

'Repeat what I said, bitch, or I'll kill you.'

'He says that he'll kill me if you don't let us leave.'

'Bartoš, the president of the republic has decided to grant you clemency. It's in your own interest not to do anything to make him change his mind.'

'Tell them they're a bunch of fucking liars.'

Silence. The woman's whole body is shaking, and she's sobbing. She turns her moist face to him. One cheek is beginning to swell. 'Leave me alone. Let me go.'

He bursts out laughing. They sentenced him to death when he hadn't hurt a soul, when he let all those kids go free on the strength of a promise. Now, when he's sent a whole carload of escorts to hell, they're granting him clemency. Maybe they think the car went out of control on a slippery road. That makes him want to laugh even more. He laughs so hard that they must be able to hear him outside. Let them know how much he's enjoying this.

'Bartoš, I'll give you three minutes to open up.'

He laughs.

'Then we'll break the door down.'

'Bartoš? Were you the one who hijacked that school

bus?' She looks at him in astonishment. 'Let me go. You let them go.'

'That was the stupidest thing we ever did. If they touch that door. . ' He pulls out the knife and holds it up in front of her face. 'Go on, tell them what will happen.'

'Two more minutes, Bartoš.'

He puts the knife away. 'Tell them!'

'For God's sake, please go away. Leave us alone. He'll kill me.'

'Bartoš, if you lay a finger on that woman, you won't get out of here alive.'

He laughs.

'Tell them to get lost. I want a car for the two of us and I want a green light all the way to the line.'

'It's your last minute, Bartoš.'

'Let me go, you're crazy, they'll never give you a car, but they will give you clemency. You heard them.'

He laughs. 'Clemency?'

'I have an old mother. She's alone and she's sick. Let me go. It's not my fault they want you. . please. I've given you food. I've bandaged your leg. I could have called for help, but I didn't want to betray you.'

He laughs.

'I felt sorry for you. I feel sorry for you now. I'd like to help you if I could but. . '

'Keep your fucking mouth shut, you stupid bitch.'

'Bartoš, your time is up!'

They begin fiddling with the lock.

He grabs her arm, twists it and pulls her away.

'My God, he's going to kill me! Help! Help!'

He puts his hand over her mouth and tries to drag her away from the door.

She resists. She tries to kick him and bite him. He twists her arm harder, and now she really starts screaming, in real terror. He pushes her in front of him into another room. He hits her so hard she falls over, and the kerchief flies off her head. She has almost no hair. He turns away, disgusted, and closes the door and locks it.

He hears something snapping in the hallway but he doesn't care any more. If they want him they can have him.

He flings himself on her and grabs her throat. She kicks, she pounds at his stomach, scratches his face, but he is scarcely aware of it. He doesn't care. Nothing matters any more. He throws her to the floor, digs his knees into her breasts, grabs that strange hairless head and begins pounding it against the floor. The body beneath him thrashes about and groans. It makes him even more furious and he pounds it like a madman. Finally, she stops struggling and is silent. He pulls out the knife and holds it against her throat. He'll wait for them in this position so they'll see that all it will take is a single movement. .

He can hear them now, outside the door, the whine of a drill.

He looks into the woman's blank face. Her pale forehead is wet with sweat. She's not moving. What if he's overdone it? What good is a dead hostage? He leans down and tries to hear her breathing, but he can't hear anything over the hellish buzzing of the drill.

Fear chokes him, and he shudders with the cold. They've got him after all. He didn't escape them. He shakes her lifeless head. Speak, say something. This is not what he wanted. He just wanted to get away from here, where everyone. . where no one ever. . He was always. . like now: completely alone. It wasn't me, it was them, so you shouldn't think that I. . the key on the floor behind him, another couple of seconds and then they'll drag him off to the waiting gallows, but they won't get him alive. He stares at the knife, which won't save him now unless he stabs himself with it, but suddenly he doesn't have the strength, he doesn't even know where to plunge in the blade. But the window's open. You can all kiss my arse. I shit on your world. And as though he were scaling a very low wall, he climbs on to the window-sill, not looking down but staring straight ahead, the warehouse roof and the dark sky beyond, a sky without stars. He takes a single step, a quite ordinary step, as though he had solid ground under him, as though he were still running, continuing on his impossible journey to cross the uncrossable line.

III

Fuka is asleep in his mother's flat when the telephone wakes him up. He fumbles for the receiver. 'Who is it?'

'Darling, it's me, Ella. Thank God you're there. They're waiting for you. . '

'Who's waiting for me? You're crazy to call me with them listening.'

'It's not them. Not the ones you think. They're supposed to take you to him.'

'Where?'

'To the Castle. To the president. Just like I told you. He's going to receive you!' Ella is shouting.

'When?'

'Now, right now.'

'I'm not going anywhere. I just want to sleep. I didn't ask you to do this.'

'Darling, we're coming round for you right away. We'll be there shortly.'

He splashes some water on his face. It's almost one in the morning. This is truly insane. Perhaps he's only dreaming, or perhaps it's just a stupid joke. He doesn't know whether to go back to bed or put on his best suit. He goes to the window and stares out into the empty street. He looks at the wet cobblestones glistening in the glow of the streetlights. Then the glare of car headlights swings into the street and a black limousine pulls up in front of his house. A man jumps out, opens the back door and Ella steps out to bring him the good news in person.

He goes to get dressed.

Two men are waiting for him beside the car. To him, they are indistinguishable from the men who had recently checked his ID and confiscated his film. They have grey faces and are dressed in black, but this time they flash their teeth in a smile of official warmth. Apologetically, they ask to see his ID and they look pleased to confirm that it's really him. They put him in the back seat and drive off immediately, leaving Ella on the pavement, waving. She's delighted, for after all it was her idea, her contact, and she believes that

his fortunes, and therefore her own fortunes, will now improve. He will get work, the work will bring him money, the money will buy them a house, the house will make them happy and she'll finally have him all to herself.

He settles into the back seat and watches the city go by. He doesn't know how long the journey will take. He doesn't even know what he's going to say to the head of state, if he really does get a hearing. Or what he will request. Although he tries not to admit it to himself, he's excited. It's as though Satan himself had invited him to a mountaintop and let him gaze down upon all the world's riches.

All this is yours.

Yes. But how shall I ever repay you, O Prince of Darkness?

We'll talk about that later.

No, I need to know now. Do you want loyalty? My freedom? My life? My soul?

The car turns on to a narrow, sandy road. It stops in front of a gateway, the wrought-iron gate opens, they go down a sand-covered drive between two rows of tall evergreens and come to a halt in front of a low, harshly lit building. They ask him to get out.

Cars are parked everywhere. Dozing chauffeurs sit in those closest to him. Some figures stagger about in the distance. Light and the din of voices flows from the open windows. A dignified fellow in a flawlessly tailored suit walks towards him. He stops in front of him. 'How was the ride, sir?'

He thanks him for asking. The man motions Fuka to follow him. They enter a hall, with several leather armchairs in its centre. The panelled walls are conspicuously bare, and the only other objects in the room are several glass cases, some filled with water, others with sand from which twisted branches and exotic plants protrude. 'Could I trouble you to sit down here for a moment?' the man says.

In one of the glass cases he can see the brown-and-black body of a snake. He gets up, but then, fearing he might be disrupting some kind of protocol, sits down again. What commitments does a man make when he

accepts help? Does he surrender his freedom, or at least his independence? What value can work have when it is purchased with a loss of independence? What seems like an answer to his prayers might merely open the door to his downfall.

He is startled out of his thoughts by the sound of police sirens outside. He gets up and then sits down again. He can hear car doors slamming and the sound of voices. Then two uniformed men come in carrying a stretcher. He looks at them, but they pay no attention to him. They put the stretcher on the ground and wait.

The figure on the stretcher is motionless and almost entirely concealed by a blanket that reaches up to its mouth. Its head is bound in a white turban of bandages, its eyes are hidden behind dark glasses. Only its nose is visible, protruding sharply from its face. Fuka is gripped by anxiety as he stares at this strange creature.

Again, the man who seems to be a master of ceremonies appears. 'The president is ready to receive you.' Fuka gets up. The two uniformed men pick up the stretcher. They walk through several adjoining salons, where a reception must recently have taken place. Tables are scattered with empty glasses and dirty plates; scraps of food are drying out on large platters; swarms of flies circle over bits of caviar, chunks of ham in aspic, the crumbled wreckage of slabs of liver pâté, half-eaten pieces of chicken and turkey.

The last room he enters is full of people talking loudly. The moment he enters, the conversation dies. Deeply embarrassed, he looks around. He notices that there are chairs with high backs set up in a square, and that in the middle of this square is a magnificent armchair, almost a throne, which seems out of place here. It has gilded legs and a wooden back topped by a magnificent crown of carved wood set with diamonds. An old man in a black robe sits huddled in the chair.

At first he's not sure it is the president, for he has never seen him dressed like this. But that rather stocky figure, those grey eyes, those thick glasses, those fleshy lips, all undoubtedly belong to the head of state.

Why have they invited him here in the middle of the

night, with so many drunken guests around? He recognizes some from their pictures in the paper. He also recognizes the enormous black man trying to look dignified in a chair beside the throne: he is an official guest here on a state visit. The mystery deepens. What's going on? Will they bring him a camera and order him to film some insane midnight audience? An audience with whom?

With himself.

At that moment, a dwarfish little man pops up behind the president, as if from nowhere. He has enormous ears set so high on his skull they look like horns. He whispers something to the president. Fuka cannot hear the individual words, but he thinks he hears his own name and the word 'terrorist'. The face of the old man lights up in recognition. He opens his mouth as if to smile, and nods to him: 'Well, at last. Come forward!'

Because the words are obviously directed at him, Fuka approaches the throne. The men with the stretcher push in behind him. The old man watches them. When they place the stretcher at his feet, something in his stiff face moves, a barely perceptible grimace, or perhaps an expression of satisfaction.

Fuka doesn't know whether or not he is permitted to say anything, since he hasn't been spoken to, and in any case he doesn't know what he'd say even if he could, so he merely bows. The black man examines him with interest.

'Well now, my boy,' says the old man, speaking down to him from his throne. 'You submitted your appeal and here you are. With a stroke of the pen, I could have sent you to a place from which you would never return. But you're to have another chance, and you're here to explain yourself. So, what do you say? How do you wish to defend yourself?'

The old man tries to fix his eyes on him, but can't. They keep shifting, seeming to fade and then re-emerge from some inner depths. They are moist, filled with tears. 'You are silent. But then, when you raised your hand in anger, what then? You didn't hesitate then, you killed.'

Fuka is flabbergasted, and can only shake his head. The little man with the big ears steps forward and whispers

something in the old man's ear. The old man nods. His eyes now appear to turn completely inward, searching for something in the depths. Then, aloud, he says something perhaps meant for himself, perhaps for the adviser or perhaps for everyone else: 'It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. The one about the snakes, I remember, yes, I remember. You delighted us all. Do you have children?'

He shakes his head.

'And a wife?'

He doesn't have a wife, not really.

'So why, who do you do it for?' asks the man on the throne, and Fuka's astonishment is now shared by everyone present. No one says a word, except for the slender interpreter, who leans over and whispers something to the black statesman in a semi-audible voice.

'I know what you all want.' The powerful old man is now speaking to the rest and has lost interest in Fuka. 'You want clemency, you want freedom and power, but for what purpose? So that you can evade your responsibilities. So that you can abandon the ship, which I, with all my powers, am still. . What do you think? Do you think I don't know, that I can't see, that I can't hear what you're rustling in your pockets, what you're clutching in your fingers, what you're whispering among yourselves? Who will dare to say that this is not so? Responsibilities!' he shouts. 'Responsibilities must be borne. Like me, like those wretched victims, who call out to me with piteous cries.' His glance shifts to his feet, where the stretcher is resting, but then immediately turns inward again. 'And they ask me to put an end to this, once and for all. No more special considerations!'

Absolute silence descends on the room like a curtain.

'I am the one who grants clemency here,' he bellows. And I'm the only one who knows, who acknowledges, my own responsibilities. And I will fulfil them. Let anyone who thinks he can stop me from. . with a single stroke of the pen. . ' And the head of state stands up, the black robe billowing around him. 'Who dares? No one? Good. Once again then, let everyone see, let everyone take note, that again and for the last time, as it once was, and is today,

may you receive what you request! I grant you clemency. The executioner may leave!' He stretches his arms toward Fuka as if to bless him, then he takes a large step to avoid the stretcher and, while someone applauds, he disappears into the adjoining room. Everyone pushes in after him, while the two men in uniform lift the stretcher holding someone who may or may not be dead and carry it out.

They can carry the dead away, Fuka thinks, but death will always be here, and all he will take away from this place is death's caress. He knows that he could and should leave, but he is transfixed, staring at the bare wall as though intoxicated, until the master of ceremonies appears and announces: 'The audience is over. Allow me to congratulate you, sir.'