“Conceded.”
“Concretely speaking—Mr. Joseph Benda, our host, came back from the war and found his factory dead, a shambles.”
“True.”
“By sheer guts and will power, he set out to rebuild it, and he succeeded, and he was ready to do business once more and to contribute to the welfare of his country. What do you think was his motive, Councilor?”
“Private profit.”
“Exactly!” It was Elinor who was smiling, now. “But this is the incentive you’ve taken away. Do you think it’s humanly possible for him to show the same kind of initiative now that you’ve deprived him of his chance of making a fair profit for himself?”
“I think so,” said Novak. “Would you want me to ask Mr. Benda?”
“No, of course not!” she said, suddenly recognizing where Novak had led her. “Your question is loaded and would be most unfair.”
Joseph straightened. “I wouldn’t consider it unfair at all!” he threw in, only the barest trace of hoarseness betraying what he felt. He looked squarely at Novak. “I assume that the Government must have some confidence in me.”
Very shrewd, thought Karel. A whole lot had remained unsaid, and the half-answer, with one swoop, had placed Joseph at the helm of the situation.
Novak was studying the liqueur which had followed the dessert and coffee. Then he stood up.
Into the silence that settled around the table, he said in Czech, “We’ve been having some sort of discussion here, about socialism. Since today marks an occasion, and a very important one, for our host, let me make a few remarks in connection with this discussion.”
He gave a bow of apology to the others and, in his deliberate English, told Elinor what he had said.
“We have nationalized the glass furnaces, at Benda and at Hammer, among others. We will now produce for ourselves, more and better than ever before. We will produce for a richer life for all the people. This will have to be done according to plan, and such a plan will be forthcoming.”
He paused and gave his courtesy translation.
Karel kept his eyes on Joseph. Joseph seemed occupied with his own thoughts; he was rubbing his hands nervously.
“Under this plan,” Novak went on, “the private and the socialized sectors of our economy will work hand in hand. This ought not to be too difficult. In Mr. Joseph Benda, whom we gladly appointed as National Administrator of both the Hammer and the Benda Works, and in Mrs. Lida Benda who, I understand, owns one of the refineries here in Rodnik, we have within one family our present national picture.”
The smooth surface of our present national picture, Karel paraphrased silently, recalling Professor Stanek’s analysis.
“Within one happy family!” Novak added, and began to tell Elinor the gist of this part of his talk.
She listened closely. In one tier of her multileveled mind, she was drafting the column she would one day write about him. It was a honey of a story: A fairly young, cultivated official, who had suffered much, and who was not stupid at all—he believed in this new setup and worked for it, hard and devotedly—but slowly, everything he did would fail because it couldn’t be otherwise and because his premises were cockeyed—and by and by he would begin to see that instead of the plenty he wanted for everybody, all he helped to achieve was a drab, dissatisfying life beset with scarcities and regimentation—the doubts would come which he would not dare to utter for fear of the men in his office and the police, and more important, for fear of admitting to himself that he had been wrong and had given his brain and his energy and his devotion to a miserably mistaken speculation—and then the breakdown.
“And so, Joseph Benda,” Novak concluded, “all I can wish you on behalf of my distinguished chief, Minister Dolezhal, and myself, is Good Luck!”
The table applauded. Karel clapped, too, trying at the same time to calculate roughly how much of the enjoyable little speech had been sincere, how much irony, and how much a warning. In one aspect he was relieved: He didn’t have to say anything to Novak about his brother. Joseph was pumping Novak’s hand. His face was aglow as it should be, because the evening was nearly wound up without a major fracas.
“Thank you, thank you!” said Joseph.
And there was something else on his face, something hidden, something which roused in Karel the same disagreeable flurry as when Joseph had pulled his trump in Lida’s office by saving Blaha’s job.
“Ladies and gentlemen!”
Quiet set in.
“Only yesterday I had the pleasure,” Joseph began, “of talking to Minister Dolezhal over the phone. He has endorsed what I’m going to say.”
He glanced at Lida; her face was a study in conjecture, apprehension, and vexation. Karel’s expression was noncommittal; but he knew Karel could have no idea of his relationship to Dolezhal. Novak’s lines had slipped back into their woodcut stiffness; Dolezhal had kept his word and left the Councilor in the dark.
“I am honored by the trust which the people, through our Government, have put in me. I’ve always been a good businessman; I shall be a good Administrator. However, in these days, a man must see farther than his desk, or his machine, or his plant. He must have in mind the whole nation, its welfare, its growth, its future. It is in this spirit that I am using this opportunity to make an announcement.”
His grave tone, his fists stemmed on the table before him, his solemn expression, his whole bearing lent the moment austerity. Karel sat uneasily.
“Ladies and gentlemen, friends, my dear wife—I shall be a candidate for election to the Constitutional National Assembly.”
He leaned over and kissed Petra tenderly.
“What is it? What did he say?” asked Elinor.
Karel told her as briefly as possible, and then left her to her inanities.
He was trying to come to grips with himself. He knew that Joseph’s sensation had supplied the other half of the answer to Novak’s loaded question. Into his consciousness floated the green-shaded lamp and the maroon-covered table and the glittering pince-nez, and he felt his doubts over his own reply to Professor Stanek. Perhaps one would have to march, even if the band played crudely.
Joseph climbed into his bed and stretched out. There had been a lot of drinking and toasting after the announcement, even though Novak and Kravat and their henchmen had been reserved and thoughtful. His brothers, too, had been reticent—that was to be expected; his candidacy made the whole balance within the family sway violently and lopsidedly.
He had drunk with everyone toasting him, and he had drunk honestly. It didn’t affect him; he could trust his head to stay clear up to the point of his passing out; and he had avoided that point. Now, as he lay back on his pillow, the ceiling kept sliding off to the right, and he laughed at it out of his firm and scientific conviction that his bed would stand on its four legs upright and in place, with him inside it.
Through the open door to the bathroom, he heard Lida brushing her teeth and gargling. He thought of the shocked silence with which she had greeted his momentous statement, and of the quick changeover she had made to being the adoring and gracious wife of an important citizen. He chuckled. She was all right. She was a good and loyal girl, and he had taught her a lesson. He had taught everybody a lesson.
“Lida!” he called.
She finished and came in, the light from behind her making her nightgown transparent. He reached out his hand and pulled her close. She sat down on his bed.
“You’re nice,” he said, “I like you.”
She looked at him. “You’re drunk.”
“A little. Today’s the day!”
“You’ve made a fool of me.”
“Now, now,” he said, “let’s not be so sensitive. This was a deal between me and Dolezhal. Think of how it’ll sound: Mrs. Deputy Joseph Benda.”
She made a move to get up. He held her. “I’m not sleepy yet. I want to talk a little.”
“You said yourself you were drunk.”
He raised his fing
er and brought it in a straight line to the tip of his nose. “See?”
She laughed and ruffled his hair and bent down to kiss him good night—the same slight, impersonal kiss she gave him every night. He grabbed her shoulders.
“I’m tired,” she said. “I worked very hard.”
“Oh.”
His hands fell back. She turned out the lights and opened the window. He heard the springs of her bed creak and her soft groan as she pulled up her covers and settled in the pillows. It was a silvery night, and the squares of the windows were cut out as daintily as on an old silhouette.
“I forgot to thank you,” he said after a while.
She did not answer, and he wondered whether she had already fallen asleep.
“You think you’re very big, don’t you?” she said suddenly. “But you’re like a postmaster transferred from a small town to a larger one; you still remain a postmaster.”
She was trying to get even with him. “The Hammer Works aren’t a post office,” he answered.
“It’s funny,” she said. “They’re what you always wanted, and now that you’ve got them you don’t have them at all.”
His eyes had adjusted themselves to the dimness. He could see her bottles gleaming on the dresser, and the curve of one of her shoulders. “That isn’t so funny,” he said, his irritation showing. She had a remarkable gift for letting her sharp edge cut him where he was sorest.
“You must have thought about it some more...”she suggested.
“Suppose I have!”
“And...?”
“Why do you think I’m going into politics?”
“I wouldn’t know,” she said. “You didn’t tell me about it.”
“To change things, my dear!”
“You don’t believe that yourself. There’s a preponderance of Socialist elements, remember?”
She listened to him move in his bed; he couldn’t find a comfortable position. She thought she had the solution; it had occurred to her when that objectionable Novak had babbled of co-operation between the private and the socialized sectors. She was never one to shoot for the stars when closer game was around.
He was finally lying still. “As Administrator of both Benda and Hammer,” she said, “you’ll be controlling the output of all the furnace-blown hollow glass in this region.”
“Some control!” he said. “I’ll have to produce and produce well and produce profitably, otherwise they’ll take away the Hammer Works as suddenly as they gave them to me—and the Benda Works, too.”
“Sure. But you’ll produce. And you’ll direct to which refineries the glass will go.”
He sat up to get a better look at her. She lay completely relaxed, her skin very white in the light of the winter moon. He scratched his chest. “They’ll watch me,” he said.
She yawned, “There is nothing illegal about it!”
He lay back again. As the details of the room had gradually become visible to him, so now the whole picture of her plan emerged before his mind’s eye. “You’ll stand to make a lot of money by that arrangement,” he grinned.
“Someone in the family ought to make it,” she said factually. “They’ve reduced you considerably. You’re only an official.”
“That’s, right,” he said’ “Only a lousy little Government official.”
“Vesely’s, of course,” she went on, “is not big enough to handle all of the Hammer and Benda production, nor even most of it. But we can enlarge. And we can farm out some of the work to home workers and to the smaller refineries. We’ll do it little by little.”
He saw the scheme, and he saw beyond it. He saw that by controlling the raw glass he was also controlling Vesely’s and Lida. It was funny, all right, but the humor was not where she had thought it was.
“What are you laughing about?” she asked. “You aren’t still drunk?”
“I wasn’t laughing. I was thinking of the risk. You have a blind spot for everything else when it comes to making money. The other refineries are going to kick like hell if I cut them down little by little—”
“Are they?” she said sleepily. “They’ll think twice before kicking against Deputy Benda.”
It was a new way of looking at his political mission. It was a natural. He thought about it, trying to find flaws, but there were none.
“Lida?” he said.
He heard her breathing, deep and regular. The moon was sinking behind clouds, now, and the room darkened.
CHAPTER EIGHT
LIDA swallowed her pride and acknowledged that Joseph’s moves had made sense. His secretiveness rankled; but it was her own mistake not to have seen that each of his public actions and utterances had been part of a design. In giving work to the crippled Blaha he had laid the foundation, in talking of the need for new social legislation he had erected the beams, in accepting without protest all the restrictions of his new position he had built the roof, and in opening his house to an assortment of ill-dressed and awkward and boring officials he had furnished the trappings for an edifice he must have had in mind since their first visit to Dolezhal.
As a team, Lida concluded, she and Joseph were exceptionally well-matched. He had the imagination and the long-range perseverance of the Bendas; she had the earth-bound practicality of the Veselys. He was subject to flights of fancy and excessive depressions; she could balance him. He saw his politics in a large concept; she could implement them and convert them to immediate advantage. He was third generation and had the security of established wealth; she always had known, and in the dark dank cold single little room in wartime Prague had had branded into her hide, that security meant having and possessing. He would do the talking and handshaking, he would receive the applause; she would attend to the spadework. There was in every great man’s life a woman who made his greatness possible. She would not let him forget her indispensability.
She had Kitty for tea, for a womanly chat. She was not so primitive as to state that Thomas must commit himself openly in support of Joseph’s candidacy, because what would they think in Rodnik, in Limberk, and in Prague if a Benda was taking leadership in national affairs and the ex-Spokesman of the Czech people wrapped himself in silence, and what could Kitty do about it?
She said, “It’s a shame that something has come between Thomas and Joseph. I don’t know what’s at the bottom of it; but Thomas behaved disgracefully at the dinner the other day.”
Kitty stirred the tea in her cup although the sugar was long dissolved. Obviously, Lida had not invited her to rehash an incident which had become town gossip. “The Germans,” she said cautiously, “are like a toothache to him—he wants the tooth out. Besides, he criticized Novak and Kravat just as sharply.”
“Well—yes,” retreated Lida. “Except it was such a nice party, and that was the one jarring note. There is a time and a place for everything, at least I think so.”
“My dear,” said Kitty, “you know you can’t tell Thomas about social matters. He refuses to be concerned. He didn’t want to come to the dinner in the first place....”Underneath the casual manner ran the thought: What is she after? She hasn’t had me at her house since Heaven knows when; she neglects an afternoon’s work in her office; and I have only one vote.
“Lovely suit you’re wearing,” said Lida. “American, of course?”
“American.”
“It does very well by you.”
Kitty could hear no trace of envy, although Lida was dressed simply, too simply—just an ordinary brown house dress without any frills and without much fit. Why would Lida, even though they were alone, permit herself to be outshone?
As if she had guessed Kitty’s thoughts, Lida went on, “You don’t have to pretend before me. You and Thomas are in strapped circumstances?”
There was no condescension, no gloating; her inquiry seemed to have come from the heart.
“I’ve heard it from Joseph,” said Lida. “He’s been worrying about it, ever since he’s had to stop sending the checks from Thomas’s share in
the Benda Works. We’re not so well off, either, Kitty. Joseph is only drawing a salary, and it’s nothing compared to what we used to have....”
Was Lida telling her that she was overdressed? She had not bought a thing since America. “I’m thinking of going back to nursing,” Kitty said wearily. “And Thomas will get an advance on his new book.”
Lida smiled sympathetically. “I’ve asked you to come this afternoon, Kitty, because I want neither of our men to know about this. I’d like to give you some money—” She warded off Kitty’s objection. “I can afford it, out of Vesely’s. We still own that, thank God. I own it,” she corrected, “and I can do as I please with my money.”
She saw Kitty’s surprise change to embarrassment. She poured her some more tea and offered her the platter with the cookies left over from the big celebration and said offhandedly, “I have not talked to Joseph about it. It’s entirely my idea.”
“But why, Lida? Why would you want to do such a thing?”
Lida sighed. A certain Niobe-like quality showed in her bearing, and she really believed in what she was saying. If none of you have any feeling for this family, and for its belonging together, and for what is proper—I have! No Benda woman should have to go out and seek work. None of our men should have to pinch pennies and be unable to do what he’s set his heart to! We should not have to become like the others, like bookkeepers and laborers and kitchenmaids.”
Lida’s snobbery was so well integrated with clan spirit and the knowledge of Thomas’s actual needs, that Kitty had no immediate answer. Her own father had been a minor employee in the Benda plant, and she herself had worked all her life until she married Thomas. And Karel, though by no means fully recovered, was working, too.
“Don’t misunderstand me,” said Lida. “There’s nothing wrong with work. I work, every day. If you want to, Kitty, go and look for work; but take your time about it. And give Thomas a chance to write his book in peace and without being pressured by that kind of problem.”
It sounded sensible. It sounded genuine, and generous. Over her cup, Kitty eyed Lida. Lida’s face was serious, and not unkind.
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