Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light

CHAPTER FOUR

1

The cobblestones were radiating heat and seemed to be shifting under Pavel's feet. This was happening to him more and more lately. Either he was drinking too much, or it took less than it used to.

He stbpped in front of a small bar. From a distance he could hear the sound of a loudspeaker, but the words were incomprehensible. They could have been in Spanish. Maybe any moment now a small child's hand would press a wilted flower on him, or from the bar a dark-eyed mestiza would beckon him with a nod. He was thirsty. He looked through the open door into the bar, but it was so crowded he did not go in. Everyone was drinking more these days.

As he approached the lower part of the square he began to make out individual words. He was in no hurry to see who the speaker was. They no longer sent him out to cover demonstrations; he'd done all that back when the police were still beating the participants. It would probably not be a good thing if those who had once been beaten were to see him behind a camera again.

The invisible speaker was warning against the new rulers who had cleverly disguised themselves as people who once opposed the old ones. We all know, he said to his audience, that ideals were the furthest thing from their minds. All they wanted was power.

The distant crowd applauded. He would not have applauded. Everything was more complicated than any speech could describe, and even in this partisan crowd there were certainly a good number of the very people the speaker was talking about.

Recently he'd begun to think that without even leaving the country he'd become an alien. It wasn't that all the familiar faces had disappeared; it was that from behind those faces different people had appeared. Butterflies had emerged from their unsightly cocoons and, with growing astonishment at their new appearance, were looking around for places to alight.

Even in the new advertising company of which he was part owner, he was surrounded by such aliens, apart from Sokol, of course. They smiled at him and talked about deals. They expressed confidence in his ideas though they'd never seen a single one of his films. They simply smelled business. The warehouse they had bought to turn into a studio stank not only of old hides but also of this strangeness. He wandered through the gloomy space and thought about how many sections they needed and where the dividers should go, where to put the lights and how to make the acoustics work, but he couldn't make any decisions and went out for a drink instead. When he got to Eva's that evening, she began screaming at him. He was a disgusting drunk, he would come to a bad end, she no longer wanted anything to do with him.

He said he could understood that. He drank because he didn't want anything to do with himself either.

'What kind of nonsense is that?'

That's something you'll never understand.'

'I know. As far as you're concerned I'm just a stupid cow who doesn't understand anything, but at least I don't drink like a fish.'

What could he say to her? She'd changed too. She no longer had anything in common with the past when she would come to him and want to make love to him.

'I thought you would finally stop drinking now.'

'Why now?'

'Because in those days it seemed to me there was

always something preying on your mind.'

'And what exactly did you think was preying on my mind?'

'Not being able to work the way you wanted to.'

'And you think I can work the way I want now?'

'Can't you?'

What could he say to her? Perhaps they would let him go on working, but his days were probably numbered. They were certainly going to watch him closely. Can you do what you want when you're being watched closely? And perhaps he didn't even know what he wanted. Perhaps he was his own worst enemy.

'You'll never sort anything out this way.'

She, on the other hand, had found a solution to her problems. She had decided to go back to her former husband. He at least cared for her; to him she was not just a woman to sleep with twice a week. It would be better for Robin as well. Kučera was his father, after all. She told Pavel that she wanted him to leave, but she wept as she said it. She wept because he had disappointed her, because she had wasted so much time with him, because he'd never expressed any gratitude to her. Sleeping with her twice a week had been all she was good for.

She wept even though her former husband would inherit a factory and almost certainly give her the money to buy a shop. Then she could believe that she was happy.

He should go back to Albina. If only he could. If only she existed. So instead, he went to see his mother, who still recognized him, though she sometimes confused him with his father.

He was a stranger, an alien. One of the many who were coming here to pillage, to set up in business, or merely as observers of the changing scene. Even the camera he still dragged around with him was a sign of his alien, observer status, a status that could not distinguish between what was essential and what was not, in which, for the most part, it was impossible to get excited about anything, regardless of the occasional need to pretend excitement. Indeed, it was with a growing coolness that he had recently filmed exhibitions, theatre rehearsals, interviews with artists and

sessions in parliament, as well as the faces of new politicians. Once, he even filmed an address by the new president. This president had only one thing in common with his predecessor, and thus with Pavel as well: he had spent several years in prison. The new politicians had very little in common with the old ones, at least so far. Yet it was not his job to investigate what they were really like, but merely to capture their image, their gestures and their mimicry. Now and then he couldn't resist the occasional malicious close-up of twitching fingers that testified to insecurity, or some clumsiness of dress. He didn't do this to express an opinion, but merely to relieve the monotony and, unlike before, no one criticized him for doing this or cut them out of the broadcast. Was he unconsciously trying to give his new bosses an excuse for considering him unreliable? Or was he merely trying to persuade himself that this was now possible, that they had accepted him despite his recent past?

After work, he would drive to the still-unfinished studio and film mindless sequences in which beautiful models praised detergents they never used, new magazines that they'd never read and foreign cars they would love to drive but couldn't yet afford. They had plenty of commissions, and models as well. Sokol was convinced the models would love to get into riskier, more erotic things than what they had done so far, but Pavel felt that he had already sunk about as low as he was willing to sink.

They called their company Fusorek. Sokol claimed it sounded Japanese and would therefore evoke reliability. Pavel didn't care one way or the other.

At last he saw the speaker. A gaunt old man on an improvised platform was talking with great passion about how he had spent more than ten years in a prison camp, convicted on a trumped-up charge. The judge who had sentenced him was still on the bench today. What kind of justice, he asked, is meted out by those who once defiled the very name of justice? What kind of redress can we expect in a society where most of those who had a hand in the former crimes remain in their jobs? The revolution is not over, much is still to be done; it will not be complete until we cut out the

ulcers that continue to eat away at the body politic.

He saw Little Ivens, who was filming the demonstration.

He was making a short about how people participated in the former crimes, a report on how they were an ulcer that needed cutting. His short will be so good that it will reap praise from those who hold the scalpel in their hands.

2

His mother was lying on the bed with all her clothes on. She'd removed only her shoes. She didn't hear him when he came in.

'Mother!'

'Who's that?'

'It's me.'

'You, Pavel? Where have you been all this time?'

'I had work to do.'

'You're always so busy.' She closed her eyes again. 'And I'm here all alone.'

'Did you sleep?'

'Me? I haven't slept a wink. It's been at least a month, or a year; I don't remember when I last slept.'

He stood in the doorway. The room had not been aired for a long time: his mother was afraid of fresh air.

'Why don't you sit down?'

'Aren't you hungry?' he asked.

'No. That person was here again. Yesterday. He gave me food.'

'What did you have?'

'I don't know,' said his mother. 'I don't remember. I can't remember anything any more. Go on, sit down, but not in that armchair.'

'Why not?'

'There are worms in it.'

'Oh, Mother!'

'I saw them.'

'You must have been dreaming.'

'No, yesterday when that fellow was here to see me,

that do-gooder, he saw them too. He said the armchair should be thrown out.'

'I'll sit on this chair over here.'

His mother reached for the comb that lay on the bedside table and ran it through her thin hair. Recently, this had been practically her only activity. Step by step, reality was receding from her. She was even losing the power of speech and sometimes sought in vain for the most ordinary words. She put the comb down and closed her eyes.

After a while he had made up his mind to get Albina's address. She had moved to a small town and was working in an old people's home. It was comforting to know where he could find her if he wanted to see her. But he never went to visit and he never wrote to her.

Then he was filming a meeting in a large arms factory. When the work was done, he realized that he was close to the town where she lived, and that he could pass through it on his way back to the city without making a detour. The old people's home was situated in a small baroque château on the edge of town. He could have gone in and asked for her, but couldn't bring himself to do it. Next to the château was a park, so he went for a walk.

It was a warm, sunny autumn day and old men and women were sitting on the benches dressed in tracksuits and tartan slippers, their faces turned to the low sun. He found an empty bench, pulled a newspaper out of his pocket and pretended to read.

He didn't know whether Albina was on duty or even whether she was still working here. He should ask. Any one of these old people would have been glad to help. But instead, he sat and waited.

Then he saw her. She appeared in the rear gateway of the château pushing a wheelchair in which sat an old woman wrapped in a brightly coloured blanket. He recognized her petite figure at once, though her features were still obscured by the distance between them. She was walking along the pathway that would bring her to him. Was it an omen? She would certainly have said so.

He felt uncertain, then excited, as though he were waiting for a romantic encounter.

But she didn't come all the way to him. Instead she sat down on a bench and parked the wheelchair beside her. She bent over the old woman, rearranged her blanket and said something to her, but he was still too far away to hear her voice. Then she stood up straight and looked towards the roof of the old house, from which a flock of crows had just taken flight. She didn't glance in his direction at all. Was this an omen, the fact that she didn't even sense his presence, that nothing compelled her to turn in his direction so that she might see him? She would certainly have said so.

He could have walked over and spoken to her! 'Albina, I can't forget you. You are my only hope.'

But he didn't move, merely waited and watched her, and even at that distance he began to distinguish her features, still the same, still alluring. Occasionally an old man or an old woman would walk past and seem to greet her, because she always nodded her head, and he was certain that he recognized her familiar smile.

He had no idea how long they sat there, separated by no more than a few dozen paces. Then she got up, turned her back to him and pushed the wheelchair away in the opposite direction. He waited on his bench a while longer but he knew that he wouldn't see her again, that she would not return.

'Why are you always so silent?' said his mother suddenly. She reached again for her comb and ran it through her hair.

'What is there to talk about?'

'How should I know?'

'What are you interested in?'

'I'm interested in everything. In what you're doing.'

'Eva and I have split up.'

'Is she the one you found in the woods?'

'In the woods?'

'Well — you decided you'd run away from your mother, you went to the woods and that's where you found that German woman. Never a thought for me.'

He said nothing.

'Then you came and started doing — what do you call them? — pictures.'

'Films?'

'Yes, about that big do-gooder.'

'You mean the president?'

'Yes! And about those things that crawl. Is he still alive?'

'Who?'

'That fellow. Mr Do-good.'

'He's alive but he's not president any more.'

'I don't understand that.'

'There's another president now.'

'I don't understand, that he is and that he isn't any more. What are you going to do now that he isn't?'

'I'm going to make films.'

'I don't know — I don't know if you will or not, but I love you all the same, Pavel. . you're my. . what exactly are you?. . my. .?'

'Your son.'

'I thought you were my Good Samaritan. And you were my husband before. Or maybe not. What am I? Your. .?'

'You're my mother.'

'Oh, go on,' she laughed. 'That was a long time ago.'

She combed her hair and then closed her eyes. 'I feel like eating something,' she said. 'I haven't eaten for days.'

'I'll make you some mashed potatoes.'

'You're going to make me mashed potatoes? You're not going to run away from me, into the forest? You're a good boy, Pavel. I'm fond of you.'

He went into the kitchen and took several potatoes out of the pantry. There were various things in the kitchen left over from the commercial shoots. Chewing-gum, different slicers and a set of supposedly ever-sharp knives. Using one of these, he peeled the potatoes and put them on the stove. He could have gone back in to his mother, but his conversation with her had exhausted him. He preferred to sit in the dark kitchen and watch the blue gas-flame.

A few days before, Robin had come to see him. He brought along the dog, and a large bag containing several neatly ironed shirts and his pyjamas. 'This is from Mum,' said the boy. 'She says you might need them. '

'Thanks.'

Argus rubbed up against him, then stood on his hind

legs, put his paws on his chest and licked his face.

'He misses you,' said Robin. 'He waits for you every day.'

He nodded. He had always got on better with dogs than people. Or rather, they got along better with him. He didn't like attributing human qualities to animals, but at least they certainly didn't try to own people, or punish them for being less than perfect.

The boy hesitated for a moment. 'Don't be angry with Mum,' he said. 'She means well. She thinks that I should be with my father.'

'I'm not angry with her.'

'You were always good to me,' said the boy. 'Honest. I feel bad that I might not see you again.'

'You can always come and visit me if you want to.'

'Thanks! But maybe they wouldn't like it.'

'I'm sure we'll see each other again.' He felt he should say something more, but instead he merely asked, 'Things going well at school?'

'It's OK.' Suddenly he perked up. 'School was always a pile of crap, but now they're teaching us things that weren't in the old textbooks. And we don't have to call the teachers "Comrade" any more.'

'Is that better?'

'I'll say!'

He rumpled Robin's hair and then gave him a fistful of chewing-gum before he left. He would probably never see him again.

His own son had never been born, and he'd lost his substitute son. He was surrounded by total strangers, and his mother barely recognized him.

He drained the potatoes, added milk and mashed them. Then he fried some eggs and put them on the plate with the mashed potatoes.

His mother had fallen asleep again. Her sunken cheeks were yellowish-grey and they puffed up slightly with each breath she took. The sound of feeble snoring came from her chapped lips.

He put the plate on the bedside table. 'Here's your food, Mother.'

She didn't move.

He spoke to her again, louder this time, and then he touched her shoulder with his hand. 'Mother!'

The doctor arrived in less than half an hour. She took his mother's pulse and blood pressure and looked under her eyelids. Then she sat down at the table and asked him a few questions, quickly jotting down his answers. 'We're taking your mother to the hospital. Here's an ambulance voucher. But I'm afraid that there's not a lot that can be done.'

'You think not?'

'She's eighty years old.'

'She hasn't been very well lately,' he said. 'Life was pretty much a burden to her.'

The doctor left. He called the ambulance, then sat in the armchair and looked at his mother. She was still breathing regularly, and her head rested on the pillow at an odd angle. He got up, ran the comb through her thin hair and stroked her forehead.

What was death?

You live for as long as you still see some meaning in being alive. You can live less than your allotted time, but not longer. It's not important whether you're still breathing or not.

Death is the moment a person, as an alien, falls among aliens and they surround him like a clinging layer of damp earth.

He suddenly felt the full weight of his mother's loneliness. He'd been with her so little in recent weeks and months, and hadn't stayed long even when he came to visit her, not even when he slept in her flat. And now, at this moment, he would have liked to make it up to her, but as usual he came to that realization when it was too late.

3

Before he set out for the castle, he stopped in the little shop in the village. It was now in private hands, and offered several different kinds of wine and chocolate. At the castle, he learned that Alice had moved away two

months ago. It might have occurred to him that she would not have stayed there by herself after Peter had gone.

Fortunately she had moved to a neighbouring town, where the local authorities had found her a flat. They desperately needed a nurse for their health centre. 'Nurses are leaving for abroad in droves,' the new custodian told him. 'They can make five times as much as they do here.'

It was evening by the time he reached the small house where she lived. A window on the second floor opened when he rang. 'Pavel, is that you?' She ran down, hugged him and held her face up to be kissed. Perhaps she was really glad to see him.

Her new flat was small and modestly furnished.

'I hear you're working again,' he said.

'Yes. The children are bigger, I have to make a living and I needed somewhere to live.'

'Are you enjoying it?'

'There's plenty to do. And life is interesting now,' she said, avoiding a direct answer. She took him into a small room wjth a couch, an armchair, a table and some shelves on the wall. Even with its meagre furnishings, the room seemed crowded. Some geraniums were blooming in a window-box. 'And what are you doing? Are you still working in television?'

'I'm about to leave,' he said. 'I've left Eva, and my mother died last month.'

'I'm sorry to hear that.'

'It was for the best.'

'That's too many things all at once. I want you to tell me all about everything, if you're not in a hurry.'

'No, I was only in a hurry to get here, to see you.'

'I still have to put the baby to bed. The others are fine on their own. Then we'll have time for ourselves. '

He would have liked to go with her, but would probably have been in her way.

There were several books on the shelves. A concise medical dictionary, nursing-school texts.

Haemorrhagai cerebri, brain haemorrhage.

Respiratio agonalis, terminal respiratory distress.

There was also an anthology of love poetry.

The geraniums gave off a faint, musty smell. He felt as

though he were suffocating. He stood up and opened the window wide and then went and opened the door slightly. As he did so, he caught a glimpse of her leaning over a small fair-haired child in the bathroom. Although she had had three children, her figure was still girlish.

She noticed him looking at her. 'Don't stare at me. My hair's a mess and I'm wearing these awful old clothes.'

'You look fine to me.'

She laughed, lifted the little boy to the floor and closed the door.

The fourth child, or really the first — his son — had never been born.

There was a newspaper lying on the table. He picked it up but couldn't concentrate on the headlines. It shook in his hands. He put it down and held out his fingers. Either I'm drinking too much, or I'm overexcited at the thought of being here alone with her.

Finally she came back, wearing a pale blue dress with a handmade lace collar. 'The collar was my grandmother's,' she said when she saw that he was looking intently at her.

'I'm not looking at the collar, I'm looking at you. You've changed so little. But you're more beautiful than you seemed then.'

'Thank you. You're flattering me, but it won't get you anywhere because I don't believe you.'

The children were either asleep or staying quiet. She spread a cloth on the table and put a bowl of apples on it. Then she brought in some sandwiches and a bottle of wine. She smiled at him but said nothing, and suddenly he couldn't bring himself to speak either.

Finally, she asked, 'How did your mother die?'

'In her sleep. She just fell asleep and never woke up. It was a stroke.'

'She had a nice death, if death can be nice.'

'When I was in Mexico, I asked an Indian how old he was and he said: soon it will be sixty-five years ago that I began to die. I didn't understand what he meant. He said that was how everyone there expresses his age. A person begins to die the moment he is born.' His voice sounded unnatural. He wasn't able to control the tremor in it. He reached for a

glass and poured some wine for himself and for her.

'One day you'll see your mother again,' she said.

'Do you believe that? Where would all those who have ever died fit?'

'Into a space as small as one of those apples. Souls don't need space, and death can't be the end of everything.'

He wanted to object that everything not only could, but must, come to an end, that even the stars would one day go out, that only time would last for eternity. But he hadn't come here to argue with her about everlasting life.

'You know, you always were a bit spoilt. Your mother did everything for you,' she said.

'She didn't really,' he objected.

'You phoned me one evening and said there was something wrong with your heart. But your heart was all right, it was just that you'd overeaten.'

'My mother was in a spa at the time. I felt sad and lonely and I wanted you to come over, so I invented a pain in my chest.'

'You recovered pretty quickly, as I recall.' She laughed.

It had all happened too long ago. Twenty years ago. He shouldn't forget that. 'What about you?' he asked. 'Don't you ever feel sad and lonely?'

She became defensive. 'Everyone feels sad and lonely sometimes. But I'm alive. I'd be quite happy if… ' She shrugged her shoulders. 'If I only had a little more time. So many things are happening now, and I have the feeling that they're passing me by because my work. . Illnesses, they're always the same. But what's happening now can never be repeated.'

'Nothing can ever be repeated.'

'Yes, but before it often seemed to me that one day was just like another. Now it's different.'

'Do you think it's really all that different now?'

'Doesn't it seem so to you?'

'Well, maybe it's just a new version of the old war. Over who keeps their job and who doesn't and who gets the most out of it.'

'You haven't changed, Pavel. You always see the worst side of everything. I happen to think that people have

changed for the better. They have here at least, I don't know about where you work. Maybe you've rubbed someone the wrong way?'

'No. I've only rubbed myself the wrong way.'

'You've been doing that all your life.'

'Does anyone know how to live the way he'd like?'

'You're right. I'm no better. I believed — for the children's sake, not mine — that what happened to so many marriages would never happen to us.'

'It couldn't have been your fault.'

'I don't know. I racked my brains for a long time trying to work out whose fault it was. Then I said to myself that I can't be the judge, and that it's not so important anyway. The important thing is that it happened. Something I hadn't expected. I don't think Peter expected it either. You often do things you don't want to do, or at least you end up somewhere you never wanted to be.'

'Maybe he'll come back.'

'He won't come back, and even if he did I wouldn't want him to.'

'Why did it happen?'

She shrugged. 'Maybe it was the times we lived in that did it. He couldn't do what he wanted to do and live the way he wanted to live. Or perhaps it was already in him. Some discontent. Maybe it was a need to destroy what he loved. Maybe I wasn't interesting enough for him. Or maybe he just fell in love.' She got up and walked over to the window so he wouldn't see the tears in her eyes.

'He sometimes comes to visit,' she said. 'Actually, he comes to see the children. He tells me what he's doing, of course, but he's never mentioned you. He never told me that you were going to leave.'

'Several of us have set up a studio and we're going to make our own films. We're going to be more free to do what we want.'

'Are you really going to make your own films?'

Her question took him aback. He ought to let her think so, to keep alive the notion that he was acting more freely. But he told her the truth. 'So far we're only making commercials.'

'Ads? You can't be serious.' She came back to the table, apparently relieved that they were no longer talking about her.

'To make an independent film that no one is going to mess around with I need money. Advertising is a way of making money.'

'I suppose I just don't understand. I thought that when the moment came and you were able. . that you'd do something really wonderful.'

'Did you really think that?'

'Didn't you think that too?'

Almost everyone thinks that of themselves. There's nothing easier than persuading yourself you could really do something if you tried, as long as you know that they'll never give you the chance. The system never allowed you to win, and so it saved you from defeat as well.'

'You told me you were writing a screenplay.'

Yes.'

'Have you written it?'

Yes.'

'Whaťs it called?'

'Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light. '

'Waiting for the Dark?' she repeated.

'That's it.'

And Waiting for the Light. What are you waiting for now?'

'It made sense to make the film when it couldn't be made. It doesn't make sense now.'

'If you've written a good screenplay, why wouldn't it make sense now?'

'I don't know whether it's any good or not. I don't know whether you'd like it. Probably not. It's mad.'

'I like madness.'

'I wrote it as a reaction against what I was doing. It was a kind of escape.'

'Yes,' she said. You've always tried to escape. Do you remember you promised to take me with you to Mexico? It was like promising me a trip to the moon. When you finally got there, you didn't even send me a postcard.'

'But I thought of you when I was there.'

'I'm supposed to believe you?'

'In a big colourful market-place near Tula I bought a turquoise bracelet to give to you some day when we saw each other again, but then I thought that it wouldn't be appropriate. I still have it at home.'

'Didn't you give it to Eva?'

'It was for you.'

'Why did you leave Eva?' she said, ignoring his reassurance.

'It hadn't been great between us for some time. My drinking upset her.'

'I don't blame her a bit.'

'One of the reasons I drank was because I didn't have anyone to love.'

'You always have an explanation for everything.'

'We were together out of necessity, and the necessity ended. At least for her. She went back to her husband.'

'Well, good for her.' He thought there was a note of grumpiness in her voice, perhaps a touch of jealousy, and it encouraged him.

'Did you let her read your screenplay?' she asked quickly, as though she wanted to avoid the topic of possible reconciliations.

'No, I haven't let anyone read it. It was too personal to let anyone read it, at least anyone close to me. '

'Personal? Was it about her?'

He shrugged his shoulders.

'Or about you?'

'It was just personal.'

'But there's nothing about me in it?'

He said nothing.

Who's waiting for the dark and who's waiting for the light?'

'The heroine is waiting for something the hero is unable to give her. It's also about a lot of other things.'

'You're intriguing me. What's the heroine's name?'

'That's not important. Her name is Albina,' he said. 'It's not about you. I invented her. But I invented her in a way that reminds me a little of you.'

'Why me?'

'I think you can probably guess.'

'It seems strange, with your profession. You're surrounded by so many women. Or did you write it because of the child? Tell me, is there something about that in it too?'

'It's not about us. I tell you it's not about us. I changed everything.'

'But you can't change that.'

'You can change anything in a film.' Then he said quietly, 'As a matter of fact there is something about the child in it.'

'So am I such a terrible murderer that you're afraid to tell me right out what it is you really want to make the film about?'

'On the contrary.'

'What does that mean: on the contrary?'

'You would know, if you read it, that you are the only person on earth that I still care about.'

'Now you're starting to get really personal.'

'That's why I've come.'

'Your mother died, you've separated from Eva and you've come to tell me that I'm the only person you have left?'

Yes.'

'It's a shame you left it so late, Pavel. In the meantime, I got married and had three children.'

'I don't have any, Alice.'

'But you could have had.'

'You still haven't forgiven me for that?'

'I forgave you long ago. It was my fault as much as it was yours.'

'No. I persuaded you to do it. A child didn't seem to fit into our plans. You weren't even seventeen, and I. . well, I thought I had to do a lot of things before I could allow myself the luxury of being a father. Now I know it was the worst thing I've ever done in my life. Everything else followed from that.'

'What can I say to you, Pavel?'

'If there was some way I could make up for it.'

You can't make up for it, Pavel. You can't bring it back

to life. It's dead. We had it killed before it was born.'

'I'd like to have a child with you, Alice.'

'It's too late, Pavel.'

'I thought — do you remember how we last met during that big demonstration, and we went into that little bar and the television was on… '

'Of course I remember.'

'You kissed me out of the blue, and it seemed… it seemed that we were as close then as we were all those years ago.'

'It was the moment that did it, Pavel, the time. We were all close in those days.'

'Is that time over now?'

'A time like that can't last for very long.'

'So it's too late, Ali?'

'I can't start all over again with you. I don't know if I could live with someone else, but I do know that the two of us can't begin again. You said yourself that nothing can repeat itself.'

'Exactly. I wouldn't want to repeat anything.'

'You'd want to start something completely different?'

He nodded.

"That's impossible. We're not completely different. You're sad and lonely, maybe too sad and lonely. And I really feel sorry for you, Pavel. But that's not enough.' She leaned over and stroked his hair. The way she caressed her children.

4

Their firm, with a name that might have sounded Japanese to anyone not in the know, had been going for a year. The company's accountant, one of the many aliens who had forced their way into his life, suggested that they celebrate the anniversary with a reception to which they would invite as many entrepreneurs — that is potential customers— as possible. The reception, of course, had to take place in one of the top hotels.

Pavel had no objections. He didn't get involved in the

business side of things. It didn't interest him. He tried to do his job well, even to the point of watching pre-war film advertisements in the archives. They seemed wittier than present-day commercials. But he did this only out of professional habit; the work did not satisfy him, nor did he enjoy it. But how else was he to spend his time?

When he drank a little more than he should, his head would ache, and he would feel, more frequently now, an unpleasant pressure in his chest. He was afraid of solitude, yet found himself alone more and more often. The blank spaces in his life that could not be filled were increasing, spaces left by his mother, by Albina and even by Eva, although he could fill that particular blank any time he felt like it. Writing his screenplay occupied his time, but unfortunately he had only two or three final scenes left to write. He put off working on them; what would he do when he had finished?

He bought a new Mercedes coupé even though he had to sell a baroque table from his cottage to raise the money. Sokol was furious; he considered their private assets part of the firm's common property. His plan was to buy a well-located shop when the state began auctioning them off, where he would open a large electronics store. Didn't Pavel understand that there would be a high reserve price, and that other interested parties would have to be bribed to stay out of the bidding? Where would the money for that come from if he squandered what he had on cars?

But he didn't need a big store. He needed a new car.

'What for?'

'For life.'

'You don't understand. Either the firm grows or it dies.'

'I've been dying for forty-eight years now.'

The car was vermilion. Everything was automatic, and the speedometer showed speeds of up to three hundred kilometres an hour.

He drove his new car to the reception, arriving as late as he could. There were more familiar faces here than he expected, faces he remembered from past meetings and conferences. These faces had ruled over ministries, press agencies, factories, personnel departments, the television

network and him. Halama was there. He now owned a private radio station that broadcast the same hit songs he himself had so recently banned. He saw a poet with whom he'd once made a film about folk carvings of nativity scenes. The poet had gained official recognition by writing verses that expressed his love for women, the motherland and the Party. Now, anonymously, he wrote copy expressing his love of ever-sharp kitchen knives, ketchup and chewing-gum. Also, after a moment of uncertainty, Pavel recognized the good-looking strawberry-blonde who seemed to keep looking his way. He'd never known her name, but years ago he'd made love to her at a party near the explosives factory. He wondered if she had got back together with her husband, whose pockets had been filled with cheques from sheikhs and terrorists made out for amounts he could not even imagine. Even Little Ivens was here with a film crew to make a documentary about the new entrepreneurs. Little Ivens had now taken his place, but he had no reason to feel resentful about it because he had relinquished his job voluntarily.

He had no desire to be resentful about anyone.

He took a plate of sandwiches and as he did so he recalled his evening at the drama faculty. He remembered the room full of people sleeping on the floor, the girl who had offered him her blanket, the feeling of nearness to students he didn't know by name but who could easily have been his children. In the end, they had delivered handmade posters by car. What were the names of the two students who went with them? He couldn't remember, though he'd know them if he ever met them again. It hadn't occurred to him to invite the student who wanted to be a cameraman here. How could he, if he didn't know his name?

He felt an unexpected sense of uneasiness, as though he'd made a mistake and it had suddenly come back to haunt him.

He ought to have invited the student who could easily have been his son. It wouldn't have been so difficult to find out his name. But he might have felt embarrassed in front of him now.

He drank some cognac and went to look for Peter, whom he had invited. He found him in conversation with Halama.

That of course is the role of sons in the lives of their fathers — to remind them what they had to be ashamed of.

'I didn't know you knew each other,' he said, when he'd led Peter aside.

'Of course we do. A few years ago he tried to stop me from being a custodian.'

'Why?'

'He knew me from the faculty and considered me a subversive element.'

'And now he's talking to you?'

'Why shouldn't he talk to me? It's over and done with. And now he's your guest, just as I am. He's offering me a place in his production team because he doesn't think I'll be in television much longer.'

'Is that what he thinks? Nobody's going to fire you.'

'No one fired you either.'

'But I had reasons for leaving.'

'What were they? You always claimed you were waiting for freedom,' said Peter. 'It seems to me you could use it for something better than this.'

'Possibly, but I don't intend to do this for the rest of my life.'

'Here's hoping you're not just making excuses. But your decision is your affair. Maybe I'd have done the same thing in your place.'

But Peter wasn't in his place, and he had always acted differently. Or not always perhaps, but usually. With regard to Alice, they'd ended up the same. They should drink to that, drink to the fact that at least in something they had come to the same end.

'No one's throwing me out,' said Peter. 'But I probably won't be staying there much longer. I don't know people in broadcasting, and they don't know me. I was out of the picture for far too long. They don't think of me as someone who understands their business. I'm just someone who's been sent in to sort things out.'

'Do you feel unappreciated?'

'No, I feel alone.'

'And would you work for him, for Halama?'

Peter became animated. 'Never! Maybe I'll go back to being a castle custodian.'

'Back to Alice?'

'There are a lot of castles. In some cases, the former owners are getting them back. Maybe I'd get on with some of them.'

'What makes you think that?'

'They were out of things for a long time too.'

He laughed. 'You don't mean any of this seriously.'

The music began to play and he went to get another drink. No one is the same as they were, he thought. Nothing has stayed the same as it was.

Little Ivens stopped him. 'Would you like to say something on camera about your business, Pavel? So I can help my old buddies wipe out the competition?' He grinned at him as affably as he knew how.

'And how are things going for you?' Pavel asked.

'Oh, it's fine — you know how it is. The work's pretty much the same. There's a little more elbow-room but not all that much. You get so used to watching yourself, you don't overstep the mark.'

'But you don't have to watch yourself.'

'Maybe not,' he admitted, 'but like I say, it's in my blood. I'm always trying to satisfy the people who make the decisions. I think it's the same all over the world.'

Or perhaps, Pavel thought, the world around us has changed, and now we're trying to recreate it in its old form.

Again he noticed the strawberry-blonde. He wondered who had invited her here, and why. He went over to her, bowed slightly and asked her to dance. She nodded and looked at him curiously. 'Do we know each other?'

'We met some time ago. You told me about your husband and his travels.'

'These days anyone can travel.'

'You don't travel any more?'

She shook her head. 'My husband's gone into politics. He's working at the Ministry.'

Perhaps that was why she was here. 'Foreign Trade?' he asked.

'No, Privatization. But that's foreign trade too.' She laughed. Not a word about those cheques for unimaginable amounts. Either she'd made up with her husband, or she hadn't had as much to drink as she'd had the last time they met. He felt certain that large amounts of money were still changing hands under the table.

'Have you moved?'

'No, I have enough to do in. . where I lived when we met.' Perhaps she'd managed to place him.

'Business?'

She looked at him warily. 'Something like that.' She said no more, as if she wanted to concentrate fully on the dance.

They'd barely finished dancing when Sokol came up to him and, with an apology, drew him aside. 'I'd like to introduce you to someone. This guy thinks erotic videos will sell very well. He has money, and if we are interested he'll come in with us.'

'You know I can't stand videos, even when they're not erotic.'

'Whatever. But you should meet him. It looks like a great business. And if we don't take him up on it, he'll go in with someone else.'

'I couldn't care less. I won't do it.'

'I'd like you to talk to him.'

'Here?'

'You know a better place? We don't have to commit ourselves.'

'I won't talk to him. I'm not in the mood, and I'd mess up the deal.'

'So you'll leave it up to me? Good. But I hope you won't suddenly get all unreasonable if I work something out with him.' He walked directly across to a young man with yellow hair tied in a short pony-tail. He had an earring and was wearing a purple jacket. He probably owned a massage parlour or something like that.

The strawberry-blonde was waiting for him. Would she make love to him again in an empty room? That wouldn't

be possible here. They would have to go somewhere else. He didn't even know if she was here alone or not.

By now he was having trouble breathing, and the floor had begun to heave beneath him. It was time to leave. He looked at the woman, who had gone off to get a drink. He still didn't know her name. She was probably here by herself. He could always ask her. But he didn't feel like asking, not about that, not about anything. He didn't expect answers from anyone any more, not even from himself.

He wanted to leave by himself and go as far away as possible. Somewhere where he knew no one, where aliens were really aliens, a place where there were no people at all, only rocks and birds.

FILM

Fuka walks around the food tables towards the exit. He passes the bar, where they are still serving drinks. He reaches out for a full glass, knocks it back, and continues on his way.

Black diplomatic limousines are parked outside waiting for the guests. The limousine that brought him is no longer there. He hurries past, trying not to see them, and looks up at the stars shining though the trees. When he walks through the gate and past the guard he almost breaks into a run. He hails a taxi. He should go to Ella's, but he now thinks of her as part of the bizarre world ruled over by that deranged old crackpot.

The sky above the rooftops is turning light by the time he gets back to the studio. He sits down in a chair and stares straight ahead. He can still see the old man, and the stretcher.

After a while he gets up, goes to the telephone and dials a number. 'It's me,' he says to Ella. 'I'm back.'

'Where are you calling from?'

'From my place.'

Why didn't you come here?'

'I didn't want to wake you up.'

'What happened? What did he say to you?'

'Nothing. He granted me clemency.'

'Come on, tell me what happened.'

'Nothing,' he says. 'Nothing happened. He didn't know who I was. Maybe he doesn't even know who he is.'

'That's impossible! What do you mean, he granted you clemency?'

'Everything is possible. That's the only thing I learned. That's the only thing I understood. Anything can happen.'

He hangs up and rips the cord out of the wall. Then he goes to the cupboard, pulls out a box and riffles through the photographs until he finds Alina's picture. Her wistful face, her faint smile, looks at him lovingly as though trying to tell him something. But she will not grant him clemency.

Soon he's racing his sports car through the empty streets, and then along country roads. In a small town he pulls up in front of a snack bar, has a coffee, buys a sandwich and takes it back to the car. He's in a hurry. He drives out of the town, past a baroque manor house transformed into a refuge for elderly men and women abandoned by their families, past a park, a hospital, a brewery. He turns off the main road and stops at the corner of a street. He gets out, goes into a block of flats, checks the names until he finds the one he's looking for. The lift isn't working, so he runs up the stairs to the third floor and stops in front of the door to Alina's flat. He's just about to ring the bell when he notices the seal around the door. He stares at it in shock and then rings the bell of the neighbouring flat. The door is opened at once by a woman wearing a dressing-gown. She has obviously been watching him through the peep-hole.

'You've come to see her?' she asks him.

He nods.

Are you a friend of hers?'

'What's happened to her?'

'You don't know? You're not from around here?'

'No. What happened to her?'

'That monster, the one who tried to shoot all those children in the bus at the border… he killed her.' The woman's voice catches. 'It happened last night. I saw her when they carried her out. No one knows why he did it or how he got inside. But they were after him, with dogs.

There was a lot of commotion, and then he jumped out of the window. Didn't kill himself. They took him off in an ambulance.'

'Is she really dead?' But he doesn't wait to hear her answer. He wants to preserve a fragment of hope. He thanks her and goes down the stairs.

By now it is daylight, and children are leaving for school.

He gets into his car, starts the engine, then turns it off again and lays his head on the steering-wheel. His shoulders begin to shake spasmodically.

Then he's driving again but he doesn't know where he's going. Perhaps he's not even driving, perhaps the car is driving itself. He has become a shadow. If the wind were to blow now, it would blow right through him the way it blows through a flat in which the doors and the windows have been left open, but the wind can't blow here. There's nothing here. He's driving through emptiness, utter emptiness, through nothing, through a white screen bisected by the taut black line of the horizon.

A red light begins blinking on the dashboard, the horizon wavers, the screen turns yellow and dissolves into long grass reflected in water.

He drives to the edge of a pond and stops.

The sun is high in the sky and billows of white fog roll over the mountain peaks.

He leaves everything in the car, his documents, his camera bag, his camera. He takes off the formal jacket he's still wearing from last night and pulls on the old black sweater he takes with him wherever he goes. He carefully locks the doors of the car and tosses the keys into the pond. A narrow pathway winds among the high brownish grass, which may be stalks of sargasso.

In front of him several bare, jagged cliffs rise abruptly to the sky. It is another country.

The sun beats down.

A flock of black ravens rises out of the grass and takes to the air. They look like black crosses floating in the sky.

The cliffs still seem far away, but it doesn't matter, he's in no hurry to get there, no hurry to get anywhere. He

wipes sweat from his forehead. He feels thirsty, so he tears off a few stalks of grass and slowly chews them. They taste bitter, and he makes a face.

He comes to a stream. The water is shallow and transparent and seems clean. He takes a drink and continues walking up the path beside its bed. As the path rises more steeply the stream gets narrower, and the water roars and plunges into the depths.

He finds the source of the stream just below a stony peak. He takes another drink, then finds a wide flat stone, takes off his sweater, rolls it into a ball, lies down and places it under his head.

On the other side of the mountains, down below, he can pick out the rooftops of a distant village, and he sees smoke rising from a fire somewhere quite close, although he doesn't know where; he's in a completely alien place.

The sky is a deep mountain blue, with pure white clouds sailing across it. He'd once taken pictures of them. Hands and clouds.

He looks up to the emptiness above him.

The sun is still beating down. The water beside him ripples over the stones, and the wind whistles loudly among the rocks. Among those sounds, which intensify the silence, he suddenly hears a distant voice calling his name. He jumps up, leans over and looks down.

'Is that you, Ali?' Then he sees her, running up the narrow path. She stops, and looks up towards him.

'Should I come to you?' he asks, so quietly that surely she cannot hear him, but she does because she nods and spreads her arms wide, and he stands above the abyss and imagines that he is a bird, a black raven or a large bird of prey, a condor. He steps lightly over the edge of the cliff and glides in great circles into the depths.

EPILOGUE

Work was over for the day. Lights were turned off. The slightly drunk model who had performed a sex act with an assigned partner put her clothes back on. She had a nice figure and, her well-proportioned face was even pretty, as long as you weren't looking for evidence of intelligence in it. As she finished dressing, Pavel felt aroused by the sight of her.

'Would you like a ride home?' he asked her.

'That would be very kind of you, Mr Fuka.'

'You can call me Pavel.'

His new sports car was parked outside. He opened the door for her.

'My God, I've never been in one like this before.'

'Do you want to have supper?'

'If you're inviting me.'

He drove off. There was still some time left before evening, and he felt like going for a drive.

'Do you mind if we go out of town?'

'Why not! I'm free now, since we've finished.'

'Have you got your passport with you?'

'Passport? What do I need a passport for?'

'It's not that far to the border, and in this thing we'll bethere in a little while.'

'You want to drive that far?'

'Maybe. We'll see.'

'I'd have to go home for it.'

'When I was your age,' he said, as they left the city, 'I desperately wanted to go abroad.'

'Of course, doesn't everyone?' Apparently she didn't understand why he was telling her this.

'But in those days it was impossible.'

'I just love shopping there. When I have the wherewithal.'

'If we stay there till tomorrow, you'll have the wherewithal.'

She half turned her head and then leaned over to him and kissed him. Warm air rushed through the open window. The countryside flashed by so quickly that individual objects became smudges.

She rested her head on his shoulder and sighed blissfully. After a while she said, 'I hope you don't think badly of me. I just took the job because they promised me a better part next time. What I really want to do is act.'

'Maybe it'll work out for you.'

'I wanted to go to drama school, but they wouldn't take me. I didn't have any contacts. Not even someone's father.'

'Lots of great actresses never went to drama school.'

'The worst is starting out. Before anyone notices you.'

She was probably thinking that this was her big chance, now that he'd noticed her.

When they were nearing the border, the road began to rise into the mountains. He drove on to a track leading into a field and stopped. 'Time for a break,' he announced. 'Shall we go for a little walk?'

'I'd rather drive.' But she got out of the car.

He took off his jacket and put on a sweater that he always carried with him. He took out his camera, carefully locked the door and stuck the keys in his trouser pocket.

'Are you going to take pictures of me?'

He shook his head. 'I don't want to leave anything inside.'

Where are we going?'

'Nowhere in particular.'

The narrow pathway wound up to the top of a hill. It

was already twilight in the woods. He put his arm around her waist.

'I don't like walking uphill,' she said, panting. 'Let's go back now. Or we can stay here if you like.'

He found a grassy spot among the trees. He took off his sweater and laid it on the grass.

'Do you like it here?' she asked.

'I like you,' he said.

'I like you too.' She took off her skirt and laid it beside his sweater. When he took her in his arms, she gave a practised moan.

It was so dark now that he could hardly make out her features. Oddly enough, he couldn't remember them. She was such a complete stranger that if she had slipped out of his embrace at that moment and become another woman, he wouldn't have noticed.

When they had crossed the border, she said, 'There! Now you're abroad!'

'Yes.' He should have explained to her that he had lived and moved among foreigners for a long time now, but she wouldn't have understood, and wouldn't have been interested anyway.

They had dinner in a small hotel just over the border and took a room there for the night. She got drunk and fell asleep as soon as she lay down. He too was a little drunk. His stomach felt heavy, and every breath he took was accompanied by a stabbing pain in his chest.

He lay beside the stranger, stared into the emptiness and felt anxious. Sleep did not come, and he was sure that it never would. He had to do something, go somewhere, start something — or end something. He got up, though he knew he had nowhere to run to. He flung aside the curtain and looked out of the window. The dimly lit car park was full of cars. His red sports car seemed to have changed colour. He got dressed quickly, drank a glass of water in the bathroom and then slipped out of the door. The night air was fresh and smelled of jasmine. The stars were sparkling in a cloudless sky, and the hotel's neon sign glowed redly behind him. He was abroad, he was finally where he had once longed to be, and he had an expensive

car and a mistress with him. He should feel some sense of satisfaction now, but what he noticed most was the pain in his chest and the emptiness above him.

He got into his car. He could hear the sounds of jazz coming from a nearby bar. He'd come back for the stranger in the morning. He started the car and drove out through the gates of the car park.

Wedding guests are crowding through the open gate. Fuka, tall and thin, has on a slightly worn black suit. Alina is clinging to him in a pale blue dress with a collar and cuffs of white lace. He kisses her, then lifts her up as gently as he can and carries her in his arms over the string that his friends have stretched across their path. The wedding guests form two lines, and as they walk between them to a coach hitched to a pair of sorrels, the guests shower them with flowers. The coachman in a top hat shakes the reins, and the coach sets off.

'Where are you taking me?' Alina says, still clinging to him.

'It doesn't matter. We'll be at home wherever we are.'

'My God,' she laughs, 'You must know where we're going to live.'

'I have nothing,' he says. 'But I've bought a big tent.'

'That's what we're going to live in?'

'Why not?'

'Yes, why not! I'm looking forward to your big tent.'

He thought that this might make a good beginning for his new screenplay.

It was only a short distance to the Autobahn, which was almost empty at this time of night. He sped through the alien countryside, and the faster he drove the greater his sense of relief.

Suddenly he saw an enormous tent pitched directly ahead of him in the middle of the road. In the light of his headlights he could see the red-and-white striped canvas. The horses whinnied impatiently. He braked slightly and at that moment his bride, no longer in pale blue but all in white, was beside him. 'Is that you, Ali?'

She presses close to him, embraces him and kisses him, and kisses him again.

Fortunately, the entrance to their dwelling opens wide. He drives through it, and the horses don't stop but plunge forwards with increasing frenzy.

He suddenly feels anxious and reaches beside him with his right hand, but his fingers close on a void. His bride has vanished. Perhaps she has been sucked up in a whirlwind. The countryside also seems to have vanished.

Nothing distracts him now, and he feels he can almost rise above the earth, rise above his own life as though it belonged to someone else.

What is life?

Which life is really my own?