Stefan Heym

by The Eyes of Reason

  “They’re with me,” said Petra. “We’re a delegation.”

  Mademoiselle Declerques rose. She was shorter than Petra, and thinner. “Delegation?” She tried to estimate the full significance of this. “You’ve brought a delegation to have a public for my lecture on your bad taste?”

  “The delegation is here to submit our demands.”

  “Demands!...That is in even worse taste,” said Mademoiselle. “Shall I phone your father?”

  “He isn’t in Prague,” Petra informed her brightly. “The Assembly is hardly ever in session on weekends, Mademoiselle.”

  Mademoiselle frowned at her calendar. Of all days it had to be Saturday. She stepped around her desk to get closer to the revolutionary center. She had intended to have a heart-to-heart talk with Petra and then magnanimously to rescind her punishment, because she didn’t want to antagonize Deputy Benda or the Minister. Her kindly intentions had been wrecked, and she was faced with a revolt which she had to put down, here and now. And if she knew Deputy Benda and Minister Dolezhal, they would heartily approve.

  “All right!” she said. “Let me have your demands!”

  Petra felt that this tiny person would not be such a pushover. But she had to proceed, now. She took a deep breath.

  “First, our pocket money is to be ours, all of it, forever. Second, every evening and all of Sunday is free time. Third—”

  Mademoiselle’s wrinkles multiplied. “First—not granted! Second—not granted! Nothing granted! All four of you are deprived of your total month’s allowance. Now, who are the others who sent you? The names! I want the names! All of them!”

  There was in Mademoiselle an elemental, terrifying force which entangled Petra’s thoughts. She felt the fear in the involuntary backward motion of the other three girls, and she knew she must speak out or accept irrevocably all that Mademoiselle would decide to mete out to her. Frightened, she tried to recall Karel’s face, and Vlasta’s, and to derive strength from them, and to think what they would say.

  “The names!” demanded Mademoiselle.

  “We’ll go on strike!” Petra blurted out. “We won’t eat! We won’t go to lectures! We won’t—”

  The slap across her face burned and stung. Tears shot to her eyes and blurred her vision.

  Petra cried out. It was a short cry of shock and sudden pain. She saw the small, ruffled figure, the gleam in the bird eyes, the bared old crooked teeth.

  Petra raised her fist and pushed, hard, into those teeth. Mademoiselle fell backwards, over her desk, over the sharp edge of the tin box. She gave a little squeal and was quiet.

  The delegation fled from the office.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE JANUARY WIND, though not strong, was steady and cold. It came from the mountains and carried with it the bitterness of the iced pines. It jabbed through the holes and the tears in the old tarpaulin which somebody had mercifully suspended from the top of the scaffolding.

  Karel took off his gloves and blew in his hands. He grinned. Poor, sensitive doctor’s hands—red and stiff now, and his arms ached. He leaned forward and scrutinized the last row of bricks he had laid. Most of the bricks were salvaged from the fire; they were chipped and smoke-blackened, and it was hard to fit them evenly. The Martinice church bells sounded forlornly through the thin air, and from the other end of the scaffolding a rusty tenor voice was singing:

  Ah, my poor wife between her sheets this morning,

  Her I am scorning,

  This Sunday morning,

  For my...God-damned...brigade—ta-tah-ta-TAH!

  On furnace hall Number Two, not as badly burned as the one on which Karel was working, they were hammering down the tarboard for the roof, and the nails being driven into the wooden beams supplied the rhythm for the singer. Karel put his gloves back on and picked up another brick. Few were left in the hod next to him.

  He felt the slight trembling of the scaffold boards under his feet. Someone was coming up the ladder. The two handles of a hod appeared first, then Kravat’s long, dusty face, then the whole man, straining under his load. Kravat eased the hod down on the scaffolding and looked on as Karel shoved the next brick in place.

  “Let me show you,” he said.

  He took Karel’s trowel, dipped it into the mortar, with two strokes smoothed the oozing matter, and dropped the brick precisely where it belonged.

  “Slap—slap—one two!” he said. “Just like that.”

  Karel stuck his hands into the pockets of his old American Army jacket, by now completely in tatters, and told him, “I’ll let you cut out my next set of tonsils, slap—slap—one two, just like that.”

  “Having fun?” asked Kravat.

  “Moderately. I’d hate to do it all week long.”

  “So do the building workers,” Kravat assured him. “They have some old superstition against building in winter.”

  “But they are working here, during the week!” Karel pointed at the other furnace hall resurrected but for its windows and roof. “That didn’t grow by itself, did it?”

  Kravat smiled. “It took some tall convincing. I asked them whether they wanted the Rodnik glassworkers to show them how you can build in the winter, and they challenged us, and—”

  ...This Sunday morning,

  For my...God-damned...brigade...

  the tenor sounded off.

  “This Sunday, and next Sunday, and last Sunday, hallelujah,” said Kravat. His hands had been busy throughout the patter; now they rested. “What made you come here, Karel?”

  “Oh—I don’t know....”

  “Your brothers wouldn’t do it!”

  Karel reached for the trowel. “You’re wrong there, Kravat, certainly about Joseph. If he’d only thought of it, he would be here and show you a thing or two—he’s got the hands for it. After all, he did go into the furnace—remember?”

  “I remember Blaha....” Kravat picked up the empty hod. “Joseph must be slipping. Or maybe he’s afraid—”

  “Of what?”

  “Let’s say—of falling off the scaffold.”

  Karel squeezed down the next brick and neatly flicked off the surplus mortar. “You mean somebody might make a board slide off where he was stepping?”

  “I didn’t say anyone might,” Kravat said sharply. “I said he’d be afraid of it.”

  “Not Joseph!” scoffed Karel. “Give him credit for what he has—and he has got guts. Besides, I think he feels safer now than ever.”

  “After what happened at the meeting?”

  “Just after what happened at the meeting,” Karel said matter-of-factly. “He was threatened and reviled, and as long as the men know that apologies are due him, he’s got the advantage.”

  “You gave him the advantage, Karel.”

  “I kept the lid on the kettle. Did you want violence?”

  “No,” said Kravat, and moved off. “I’ll get you another load of bricks.”

  Karel watched him climb nimbly down the ladder. Then he worked on silently. Why had he come? Brigade! Volunteer! Contribute your labor! There was a certain exhilaration in joining with hundreds of others for this kind of thing; but after some hours spent hugging a cold wall on a scaffold in Martinice, the exhilaration became largely theoretical. And he really should be in Rodnik. There were cases waiting for him that would crowd him tomorrow.

  No, he didn’t enjoy this at all. Nobody had asked him to volunteer. He had come on his own because, on his own, he had got up on the stage in the auditorium and had changed the course of events. And however sound his political and ethical and personal reasons had been that night, the effect was that he had anchored Joseph more firmly in the job which his brother was obviously unfit to hold.

  Karel slapped down the mortar viciously. On his own—that was the catch. If you wanted to be on your own, you had to stay out of matters collective; but if you wanted to participate, you had to be part of a group. It wasn’t enough to be a man of good will, trying to be helpful, seeing the difference between rig
ht and wrong, and doing what you believed was right. Not in these times.

  Kravat dumped another hodful of bricks at his feet. “Come on, Karel, take a break. We’ve got a fire going.”

  Karel followed Kravat down the shaky ladder. At a corner of the furnace hall, protected from the wind, someone had set up an old oil drum, punched holes into its sides, and fuelled it with fragments of charred beams. About a dozen men huddled around the improvised stove, holding out their hands, and keeping their faces turned from the smoke. They made room for him and offered him an overturned bucket to sit on.

  “We’re warming up in shifts,” mentioned Kravat. “It’s the best way to make the work go steady.”

  Karel lit his pipe. The glow from the oil barrel began to bake him, the numbness slowly left his feet and hands, and he became conscious of some sort of closeness to the men who had welcomed him to the fire and were sharing it with him.

  “You know, Doctor,” said Viteslav Czerny, the team master, “you’re all right. It isn’t every studied man who’d come out on a Sunday like this and do the dirty work we have to do.”

  “Never mind,” Karel refused the flattery, “never mind.”

  The worker Blatnik rubbed his unshaven, bluish jowls. “If it weren’t for certain people, you wouldn’t have to be here, Doctor, and I wouldn’t and nobody would. Freezing off our asses because—”

  “Are you still harping that old tune?” said an elderly man with a reedy voice. “And with the doctor around who added it up for you at the meeting! It’s our own fault, everybody’s fault—isn’t that what you said, Doctor?”

  “Or something like it....” Karel packed down the tobacco in the bowl of his pipe. “Of course I didn’t mean—”

  “What didn’t you mean?” asked Blatnik.

  Karel wasn’t so sure that he wanted to explain to these men how he could have been both right and wrong at the same time. The expression in Kravat’s eyes bordered on the sarcastic. Karel angrily spat out a piece of tobacco that had worked its way through the stem. “Don’t stand there so smug, Kravat! If you hadn’t let the meeting get out of hand—”

  “You’re absolutely correct. And I’ve been kicking myself ever since. If I hadn’t allowed fellows like Blatnik here to run wild—”

  “I’ll say what I damn please,” grumbled Blatnik.

  “To run wild,” Kravat repeated, with emphasis, “I think your brother Joseph would have resigned.”

  “Is that what you wanted?”

  Kravat shrugged. “I won’t speak for myself. You might think I’m being personal. But I’ll ask all these men here: Who’s got confidence in Joseph Benda?”

  Only three hands rose from the dozen or so men.

  Master Czerny said mildly, “As far as I’m concerned, let him have any other big position in any other big glassworks—but not at Benda nor at Hammer.”

  “Because of the fire?” asked Karel.

  No one answered. Finally, Master Czerny cleared his throat. “I don’t know if you’ll understand us, Doctor. We didn’t understand it ourselves. We only got to thinking about it over the last year, and the fire made us see it. If we’re supposed to own the Benda Works and this rubble we’re sitting on, then one of our kind ought to run them—not somebody who was born to order us around.”

  Karel hesitated. He was staking his right to sit with them before the old oil drum—and much more than that. Then he stated flatly, “I was born in the same bed my brother Joseph was born in.”

  “You’re different!” Blatnik laughed. “The way you read us the riot act at that meeting—do you suppose anyone else could have gotten away with that?”

  Karel stared at the yellow spots of flame that showed where the holes had been punched into the barrel. Their confidences were taking a personal turn, and he didn’t like it. “It was pure chance,” he said harshly, “that my brother Joseph was born the oldest, and that I became a doctor.”

  “Mr. Joseph Benda isn’t so bad,” said the reedy voice. “Now your father, Mr. Peter Benda—there was a man who could make it tough on you!”

  “I know what it is,” said Czerny, throwing the end of his muffler around his neck. “You see, Doctor, you don’t go around thinking you’re better than we are; your brother Joseph does, even though he can turn out a fine piece of hollow glassware, as I can testify myself. That’s what makes the difference.”

  Karel smiled involuntarily. He realized that they had to put their feelings in personal terms. It was their way of opening up to him the door to their community.

  “Yes, sir!” said Blatnik. “Give the doctor another couple of Sundays laying bricks, and he’ll be like us.”

  “Who wants to be like you, Blatnik!” said Kravat. “Enough gabbing! Back to work, now!” He whistled shrilly for the next group to come down to the fire and walked Karel back to the ladder.

  Karel set his foot on the lowest rung, and stopped. “Kravat!”

  “Yes?”

  “This work isn’t too bad!...”

  “It’s healthy.”

  Karel climbed up two rungs, and halted once more, crooking his elbow around the sidepiece. Kravat was still standing below him.

  “Kravat—I think Joseph ought to resign.”

  “We can’t force him.”

  “Why can’t you?”

  “We muffed our chance—you and I, both.”

  Clumsily, Karel mounted the ladder and balanced back to his working place. Slap—slap—one two, he began. The work went faster, now, perhaps because he was rested, or because he was getting the hang of it. The hod was soon empty.

  “Bricks!” he yelled.

  “Coming!” It was Kravat again. He set down his full hod and nodded at the wall and said, “It’s growing!”

  Karel didn’t pause in his routine. “There are other ways of getting him to resign,” he said.

  “For instance?”

  “Go to your union headquarters in Prague! I suggested that at the meeting. Or go to your Party!”

  The lines on Kravat’s forehead curved higher. “I was in Prague, you know—before the fire. I saw Novak.”

  “Oh. And what did he tell you?”

  “He asked me three questions. Did I know how powerful Joseph’s Party was? Did I have any concrete proof against Joseph? Did I think our trouble was worth a political crisis? That’s how things are in Prague.”

  Karel placed brick to brick. His hands functioned mechanically. Start the new row so that the brick on top centers over the space between the two bricks underneath. Build solidly. We’re building for a long time ahead.

  “You’re right,” he said finally, “it will have to be done from here. Couldn’t you threaten a strike?”

  “A strike against whom? Against ourselves? We own the furnaces. We need the glass.”

  “Shall I talk to Joseph? Tonight, perhaps? He’s usually home in Rodnik over the week end....”

  “You can try, Karel,” Kravat said tolerantly, “if it makes you feel better.”

  On the Benda Works truck, which shuttled the brigade back to Rodnik, Karel became apprehensive. Despite the dirt on him and his fatigue, his nerves were keyed up and he was short-tempered with the men who were jammed in with him. Actually, now that he was somehow one of them and preparing himself to be their ambassador, he felt quite apart from them. For a while, he almost hoped that his landlady would receive him with a report of one or several telephone calls which would force him to pick up his little black bag and run out doctoring.

  There was nothing of the sort when he got home; nobody had come down with the mumps or a broken ankle. What during the day, at work, in the company of the men, had appeared as easy and natural—just walk in to Joseph and tell him!—now came to look unreal and impossible. And what would it net? Some barbed remarks from Joseph on where he could go to peddle his recommendations?

  But Joseph received him with sincere cordiality.

  “I wish you had come earlier!” he said. “You could have had dinner with us!” He called
Lida. “Tell the maid to fix up a plate for Karel! It was a damned good meal—there must be something left of it—”

  He led Karel into the sitting room. If Lida was suspicious, she didn’t show it. Karel felt his misgivings recede. A dish of roast beef and potatoes and gravy on his lap, he ate and watched a large, comfortable slipper half-dangle from Joseph’s foot. The room was cozy and well-lit; Joseph, wearing a dark green house jacket with a velvet collar, puffed away at a cigarette, ease and contentment in every gesture. The food and the warm air, after the day’s exertion, made Karel drowsy. He couldn’t even rouse himself to his usual frown over Lida’s arrangement of the furniture.

  Joseph was telling him of Petra—how much she liked the Declerques Institute where he had placed her, and what a hit she had made with Minister Dolezhal, who was childless and had practically adopted her. Intentionally or not, Joseph was weaving a cloak of family sentiment which spread over Karel until his mind was hardly able to move.

  “I’m so much happier,” Joseph was saying, “now that you’ve gotten over—well, what you’ve gotten over. It’s given me back a little faith in people.”

  Karel folded his napkin and handed his plate and fork and knife to Lida. Before she set them aside, she gazed at him probingly and said, “Joseph told me you saved his life. Or at least a considerable amount of his blood. I want to thank you.”

  “Oh yes!” Joseph’s slipper was swinging violently. “The way he told off that rabble! It was the biggest surprise of my life.” He rested his head on the back of his chair. “But I always knew it. Karel, I knew that once they went too far you’d see what kind of people you were fraternizing with. Well—let’s drop it, shall we? What have you been doing with yourself? Today, for instance?”

  “Today, for instance—” Karel was sensitive to Lida’s watchful waiting. He was sure, now, that she didn’t set half as much store in his change of heart as Joseph did. It made it no easier to stick the needle under his brother’s skin. “Today I went out on brigade.”

  “Brigade?”

  “To rebuild the furnace halls at the Hammer Works.”

  “Really?” Joseph slapped his knee. “Wonderful! What did you work at?”