“Oh, well—” Karel laughed. “Merry Christmas, Lida!” and turning to Kitty and his brothers, “And to all of you!”
“And to you, Karel!” said Kitty.
He looked down. He didn’t want her to see the hunger in his eyes. She was reaching up and kissing him on both cheeks. “How cold your face is!”
“It’s a cold night!” he apologized, embarrassed. How warm her lips were! How well she had succeeded in anesthetizing what had been between them, if she was able to kiss him like that, familiarly and yet impersonally, in front of all of Rodnik!
“Uncle Karel is coming with us!” announced Petra. “I persuaded him!”
Before Joseph or Lida could say anything, the Reverend Trnka’s tiny whistle was sounding the A; he had regrouped his chorus, and was singing a scaled La—la—la—la to his sections.
The children’s voices rose:
Gloria in excelsis Deo...
And then there was a strange sound from far away, dying off, starting up again, approaching, diminishing once more in the distance—a wheezing, four-toned siren. The children’s chorus faltered but kept on under the Reverend Trnka’s urging arms.
Et in terra pax!
Joseph’s mousy secretary came running from the office.
“Telephone—Mr. Benda—”
“I’ll be right back,” he said to the family.
Hominibus boni voluntatis....
The stir and commotion grew among the men and swallowed the thin voices. A kind of premonition seized Karel. Beyond the tree, he saw hurrying shapes; some of the men were rushing out of the yard, calling to each other.
Suddenly Joseph was back. His hair was disheveled, his forehead spotted with red, and his jaw muscles worked heavily. His tongue did not seem to obey him fully.
“The Hammer Works—a fire—a big fire—”
Lida’s fur coat dropped open; her hand went to her throat.
“Burning down—” he stammered, “I must be going....”
They all went.
Joseph sat gripping the wheel, his powerful body hunched forward, his face haggard in the dim light of the dashboard. The car’s headlights cut the night into foggy strips through which the white of the trees and the black of the rock flew like ghosts. The clouds had come low. Where the sky broke through the heavy crowns of the trees, the stars were no more than faint dots in the haze.
The muddy, partially snow-covered road was cut up by the big wheels of the Rodnik fire trucks. Joseph tried to keep away from the tracks, but the car slid into them over and again.
No one said much.
Thomas saw the hand of fate clamping down on Joseph and the family. Nations had been wiped out by history, cities had been destroyed by wars or earthquakes—so why not such infinitesimal cells as families? Of course you fought against it, you did this and that, but it was like the wiggling of a worm caught under the peasant’s foot. You got yourself elected, or you wrote deep essays; but once you were on the downgrade, you went on sliding.
Kitty was ill with pity for Joseph. Her face was pale and she kept her eyes closed; she did not want to have to see him, or anyone. A big fire, on Christmas Eve when everything was shut down and nobody ever was at the furnace! Someone had laid the fire. Someone had picked this night, of all nights—the night of love, when the Christ Child had come into the world to bring peace, when families assembled and brothers remembered that they were brothers.
“By now they ought to have it under control,” Lida was saying with a show of courage. “They’ve got fire-fighting equipment in Martinice, and our trucks from Rodnik must have arrived, and I suppose they’ll be sending aid from Limberk.”
“I suppose so,” said Joseph. He easily guessed what she was thinking. The books of Vesely’s were crammed with orders from all over the world, and where was she going to get the raw glass to cut, if Hammer fell out? So she was keeping up her hopes, refusing to believe in catastrophe until she had seen and estimated its full extent herself. And probably she was already casting about for substitute measures.
There must be people like that, he thought glumly, and perhaps it is good that they exist and that I am married to one. They keep you going and sit on your neck and whip you on. But, oh Jesus, how I wish they’d shut up and leave you alone at a time like this!
The light of a passing car swished through his. He caught a glimpse of Karel’s face in the rear-view mirror, and in this one moment read all there was on it. Karel knew what was on his mind, had been on his mind ever since the Gloria had been jarred by the siren. Karel was a Benda and knew the quirks of the Benda brain; Karel had lived through Blaha’s death with him and had tried to pin that on him. Joseph gripped the wheel tighter. There was a curse on him since Blaha’s death, or maybe from before it, a curse that went back to the years when he had bent under his father’s iron will and stopped doing what he had wanted to do.
The halfway mark, the glistening rock of black-blue slate, hove into sight and in the glare of the headlights showed its gashes. With snow in its crevices, it looked this night more than ever like an immense piece of cut crystal, placed haphazardly on the mountain’s back as a symbol to the people who lived and suffered here.
But beyond the rock, the sky had changed. A still, rosy light, dyeing the billowing fringes of the clouds pink, deepened to a bloody red toward the valley of Martinice.
Joseph took the hairpin curve without slackening his speed. The rear wheels of the car slid and screeched, a shower of mud drummed against the windows; then the road downward spread out and the car jumped forward into the valley.
The people of Martinice crowded the streets that led to the Works. Joseph, pressing his thumb on the Klaxon’s button, made them tumble aside. He could see flames now, shooting into the sky, and garbs of sparks where the miserably weak streams from the firemen’s hoses hit the skeletons of the gables. A police cordon had been thrown around the Works, but he and his car were recognized and allowed to pass. He drove into the yard, brought the car to a halt behind one of the pumping engines from Limberk, and climbed out.
The men in the yard, most of them wearing black leather helmets with a cockscomb attachment of metal that shone silver or gold in the reflections of the flames, were far too busy to care about him. A police officer in an olive drab overcoat with red shoulder straps strolled over and saluted.
“Quite a fire, Mr. Benda!” he said as if that were something to his credit.
“I can see that!”
The heat from the crackling flames combined with the hot rush of Joseph’s anxiety. The police officer helped him out of his coat and carried it for him.
“Arson!” he said. “Tonight! There’s nothing that’s holy to them!”
“Arson...” Joseph repeated wearily.
“German bastards! Should have kicked them out of the country long ago. They’d kill us if they could!”
Joseph said nothing. They should have been kicked out long ago—or not at all. It was these half-measures of expediency, these pressures and counter-pressures, this playing politics with production, one day hop and the next day skip, Kravat and Karel and Dolezhal and all of them—and here he was, staring at the flames.
“It started in the generator,” the police officer said, pointing at the tumbled-down shed which still belched heavy, stinking clouds. “But a minute later there were flames in both furnace halls, and we’ve found empty gasoline cans, from the Works garage.”
“The watchman?”
The officer shrugged. “Christmas Eve!”
“Anyone caught?”
Another shrug. “We’ve arrested about a dozen of them. We know pretty much who’s who. The commissioner from Limberk is at the station-house now, asking questions.”
The officer’s answers hardly penetrated to Joseph’s mind. It was a side issue anyhow, even if the police got hold of the unspeakable vermin that had set the plant afire. Thank God that tomorrow was a full holiday—but the day after...! He could see the headlines. The photographers from
Limberk were there, among the firemen. One perched on top of the cab of a fire truck, his camera raised, his flashbulb popping. And the editorials! Responsibility for Sabotage! And a few lines below: We cannot afford to tread easy on this subject. They never could, particularly not with a Benda to be blamed, a Benda who was a deputy. We must expose mercilessly...They were great at that exposing business, it didn’t cost them a penny and it was worth millions to them. Maybe after this, Feldstyn would come to him with a letter all typed out, ready to be signed, and that would be the end of Deputy Benda. Behind the backs of the people, he sponsored a nest of Nazis....He, who had helped to kill more of the German lice than the whole membership of the parliamentary club of the Communists could claim for itself! But what did that count for? Here were the photographers and the searing tongues of flame.
Crash! The roof of one of the furnace halls was caving in, a dense stream of sparks shot up to the skies, and the blackened beams were falling down, cracking, splintering, and filling the empty windows with strange darts of light.
So he had worked and slaved and talked himself hoarse and licked people’s boots until his tongue felt rotten and sore, in order to have and possess and hold what was consuming itself and collapsing before his own eyes! What fun someone must be having with him—that he ruled without possessing, that he could hold only what was being worked, and that he could work it only with the forces which had to destroy it!
It was a story for Thomas to write, a great and tragic story, if Thomas would only see it! Thomas’s face was distorted by the blaze, his eyes were like dark caves, and the hollows of his face were spreading. Thomas was coming up to him. Thomas’s lips were moving, but the sounds he produced were drowned out by the hissing of the steam, the roar of the fire, the swishing of the water from the hoses.
“What?” cried Joseph. “What were you saying?”
“‘This is cruel!” Thomas said. “Horrible!”
“That much I know....”
“Can’t we do anything?”
“Yes, you can do something, Thomas. You can leave me alone.”
Thomas recoiled.
I shouldn’t have said it, thought Joseph. I’m sorry.
Thomas smiled resignedly. “When I said Get rid of the Germans! you sneered at me—”
Joseph walked away. He pulled down his hat to keep it from being blown off in the gushes of warm wind caused by the flames. He saw Karel bandaging the hand of a fireman. He saw the line of fire fighters retreat and take up new positions, like an army in the field, to concentrate on the second furnace hall—which was still standing although ribbons of fire were leaping around its corners and lapping through holes in its roof. He saw streams of water converge on it, forming a higher roof of spray and gases, he saw people moving inside and ladders go up and arms waving and pumps turning. He saw Kravat.
Kravat was in his shirt sleeves. His eyes were gleaming through the smudges on his face, and light and shadows played a merry-go-round over the hair on his chest. Kravat knew more about furnaces and their vulnerable spots than did the fire chiefs from Martinice and Rodnik and Limberk; with one arm, muscles bulging, he was holding on to the rungs of a ladder; with the other, he was directing the stream of a hose. When the stream hit the edge he wanted covered, he climbed down.
The white under the smudges, Joseph noted with some satisfaction, was unnatural. Kravat was using his sleeve to wipe the cold sweat off his forehead. Sweat! thought Joseph. Go ahead, sweat! I’ll make you sweat! If they pull me down, and they’re going to, I’ll pull you down with me, if it’s the last thing I do!
Karel, having finished bandaging the fireman, came over, took one look at Kravat, and said, “Put on my coat! What d’you want to do—get pneumonia?” He tried to hang his coat over Kravat’s shoulders. With an impatient move, Kravat shook it off and turned to the fire chiefs who, like generals after the battle is joined, stood waiting. He looked at the ladder, longingly. Perhaps if he went up again, directed another stream of water, did something, anything...
“It’s too late for that, Mr. Kravat, don’t you see?” said Joseph cuttingly. “Where was the watchman?”
Kravat shivered. He permitted Karel to put the coat over him.
“Why do you think I put you in charge here?” Joseph continued. “To make you feel important? To have you celebrate a big Christmas and get drunk? I thought I could trust you to keep those miserable Germans in check...”
“Stop it now, Joseph!” Karel ordered. “The police tell me that Ebbing is one of the men they’re holding.”
Joseph began to laugh, hysterically. “Some brother I’ve got! Go ahead, Karel, go ahead! Stick in the knife! Twist it! Tell me I laid the fire myself!”
A great shout rose from the side. Men were running back frantically, ladders were being pulled out of the way, sweat-streaked faces flashed by. The fire chiefs had thrown themselves into the melee, bellowing commands. Then there was a long, low rumbling as the wall of furnace hall Number One cracked, buckled, and collapsed. For a moment, the dome of the furnace with the black cross on top stood out sharply against a purple glow. A screen of dust and smoke and ashes reared itself and hid the cross. When it settled, the furnace was gone, buried under piles of flaming rubble.
“Mr. Benda”—Kravat’s voice came through quietly—“shall we try to settle the question of responsibility a little later? I want to help save the other furnace.”
“You will not resign! Not under any circumstances!”
Dolezhal’s screaming hurt Joseph’s aching head. He held the ear phone farther away. Even so, the piercing voice reverberated.
“If you resign, you admit your guilt! You play into their hands—they’ll use it—nationalization...”
Joseph was tired. Morning had come, the fire engines were gone, and through the smoke-grimed window of the office building which had remained untouched, he saw the ruins.
“You will not resign!” Dolezhal was saying again. It was obvious that the Minister, too, was shaken, because better than anyone else he could foresee the political consequences of the incendiarism. “You will stay and face the music and fight it out in the district.”
“Yes,” said Joseph tonelessly, “I guess I will have to.”
“I’ll do everything to protect you on this end—I’ll get our press to put the finger on that fellow Kravat—but I will do nothing, absolutely nothing, for a quitter! Do you understand?!”
“I understand.”
He understood all right. He heard Dolezhal’s phone click off and, for a few seconds, listened to the empty breath of the wires. He had his orders; but he felt too beaten to move.
Lida came in with a cup of coffee which she had raised somewhere. He drank the hot brew gratefully. He rubbed his stubbles and said, “And no barbershop open this morning, either.”
Her flat nose seemed to have sunk deeper into her face, and her skin was pasty from lack of sleep.
“You can shave at home,” she said. “It’s all over. What did Dolezhal say?”
“I offered to resign.”
“You didn’t!”
“He talked me out of it,” he answered with a brittle, sickly laugh.
“Oh, Joseph...” She put her arms around him and kissed his eyes and his forehead “It will all be rebuilt. At Government expense.”
He laughed again. “The bright side of things, I suppose?”
“It was sheer insanity to offer to resign. Did you actually believe things would always continue rolling your way?”
“No,” he said. “Did they ever?”
But the coffee, and Dolezhal’s promise of help and her tenderness were beginning to soothe him. “Where’s Petra?” he asked. “What a Christmas for the poor kid!”
“I sent her back to Rodnik, with Karel and Thomas and Kitty. They took the early morning bus. So we have the car.”
“Good! Shall we go, then?”
“Unless you want to wish Kravat a Merry Christmas, there’s nothing for us to do here.”
; “No, I don’t want to,” he said.
As they slowly drove through Martinice, he saw that the curtains had come off some of the houses, and that the windows were empty, and the doors locked with official finality. The exodus of the Germans had begun.
He slept a few hours and shaved and then went up to the house on St. Nepomuk.
Kitty received him with a mourner’s solicitude, led him into the sitting room, and called Thomas. Thomas was serious, his face peaked; the fire obviously had jolted him out of the rarefied atmosphere of ideas into the filthy, dirty life of people who work with their hands.
“I came to apologize,” said Joseph. “I was rude. I was wrong. Facts have proved that I was wrong. So I came to tell you.”
This confession could not have come easy, thought Kitty. It must have cost Joseph a lot to humble himself before Thomas, whom since time immemorial he had secretly considered his creation.
A strand of Thomas’s hair fell over his forehead, and he brushed it back impatiently. “Last night...” he said. “They sure lit a tree for us, those Germans!”
Joseph didn’t want him to go off on that subject. He had said that he’d been wrong, hadn’t he? That was enough. Or perhaps not. Perhaps he should humor Thomas, listen to his ramblings. He should—but not today!
“You once helped me,” he said. “You helped to elect me with your statement on freedom.”
A sardonic smile crept up around Thomas’s lips. “Kitty, would you please bring me my copy of the manuscript?”
Joseph suppressed his exasperation. He had not come up here to sit through a reading from Thomas’s book. He had come to grasp at a straw; but even this straw had a life and a will of its own, or the waves that carried it had.
Kitty returned with a large folder. Thomas took it and all but caressed it.
“It looks thin,” he said, “like nothing.”
Joseph fished for something appropriate to say. His mind was empty of compliments.
Thomas opened the folder and paused on the second page. “This is from the introduction,” he said.
“I’m listening.”
“Freedom, of all human ideals, is the most elusive. Perhaps this is why so many have written it on their banner and gone out to speak and to battle in its name. But banners fade quickly, words become divorced from reality and lose their meaning, and the battle may be fought for something quite different from the pronouncements of the leaders and their apostles. Never look at the flags; look at who fights under them.”
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