For the fraction of a second, absolute lack of understanding stood on every one of Vlasta’s features. Then her face changed and filled with panic. “Oh my Lord—you don’t think—”
Her head spun. The charge was so terrible that its very magnitude deprived her of all defense. And in front of Petra!
“I do not have to think!” Lida shot back. “I merely need open my eyes. I’m a very busy woman, very busy, I have a thousand and one things to do. You took advantage of me. You played up to Thomas, because he was a perfect front. But it wasn’t the men in this family that you were after! It was this child—this unsuspecting child...”
Viciously, she tugged at Petra. Petra offered no resistance. Half-thoughts and impressions wildly careened through her mind. There had been this sweet, drawing feeling in her, high up in the air, on the Ferris wheel. There had been her joy in seeing Vlasta’s pain when she told her of Dolezhal’s hands. There had been her dreams and her waiting for Vlasta’s caressing voice and for the touch of Vlasta’s long, soft, wonderful fingers. Had it been bad? Bad and forbidden and to be punished? And hadn’t she known, all the time, that it was bad?
“It isn’t true, Vlasta! Say it isn’t true!”
Vlasta’s tortured eyes turned to her. “It is not true, Petra.”
But it sounded weak; Vlasta herself felt how weak. She wanted to cry out that it was a lie, that she loved Petra as you love a lovable, young human being—but all that would materialize in her throat was this toneless, spineless, guilty-sounding, “It is not true, Petra.”
She tried to muster arguments. She despised men, the war had done that to her, the men in this war; it was like a wound in her that didn’t want to heal. Petra had meant so much to her; Petra had been in need of love, and she had given it to her, because it helped both of them, and because inside of her was such a torrent of unused, unconsumed love. And Petra was at the age where young people naturally have a crush on their teachers.
They were good arguments, and there were more of them. Only they were useless with Lida, who would turn them and twist them into a confession of abhorrent sin.
“It is not true, Petra,” she whispered, and attempted to smile.
Petra felt her mother let go of her wrist. She was free to fly into Vlasta’s arms, to protect her with her own body from the blows that were being struck. She didn’t move. She stood looking at Vlasta whose eyes seemed to be far away and whose fingers were toying with the silver medallion. A queer sense of guilt was in Petra’s heart, and she knew she was no longer a child.
Lida’s forehead was creased with the strain of having to think up what else had to be said.
“It is not true, Petra—” Vlasta began again.
“I forbid you to talk to my child!” Lida ordered. “Go to your room. Get your bundle together. Get out of this house!”
Vlasta walked past Petra and Lida. Her lips twitched and she seemed to be dragging herself to the door.
“I love you....” Petra was not sure whether she had thought it or actually said it. At any rate, Vlasta had not heard it, because she failed to stop and turn; neither did Lida give any sign of reaction. Lida was preoccupied. She was praying to the mute force directing her fate for forgiveness if in guarding her child and upholding the God-given laws she had committed grave wrong; she was praying that the righteous might never be without a roof over their heads.
General Duchinsky sat in his chair, very straight, very soldierly; but his once-cheery face looked wan, his hands moved nervously, and the resonance of his voice was gone.
This was to have been Joseph’s third and final meeting with him; time was running out. Joseph had memorized the detailed last instructions Dolezhal had given him to transmit—what Duchinsky was to do and where and at what time and with whom. When Dolezhal had asked whether Duchinsky could be trusted to come through on the assignment, Joseph had laughed reassuringly and had answered that, by now, the General was so deep in the matter that he would have to go the whole way.
Duchinsky’s depressed and fidgety manner caused Joseph to spend some minutes on ordinary, harmless conversation—about Madame Duchinsky, who had returned from the visit to her relatives in England, about the disgusting food shortage which forced people to pay exorbitant black market prices, and how hard this was on an Army man with his limited pay. Joseph could understand the General’s tension that expressed itself in the tautness of his posture, the darting of his eyes. Underneath his own calm exterior, Joseph felt much the same; but his political campaign, his dealings with his workers and the Works Council and his activities in the Assembly had forced him to learn control of his nerves.
He wanted only one thing—to get rid of his instructions and to forget about them. This much he remembered from his conspiratorial training after Munich: The less a man knew, the safer he could feel. Finally, he estimated that enough claptrap had passed between him and the General to ease the troubled waters and to launch into the main business, but just at that moment Duchinsky opened the drawer of his desk, looked worriedly at its contents, and sucked in his lips.
“Rifled,” he said. “Come over here—I’ll show you.”
Duchinsky was a precise person; the symmetrical arrangement of papers and notebooks, pencils and files, in this middle drawer showed it.
“Looks all right to me!” said Joseph.
“Ah, but I have a certain method! Whoever went through this did a slipshod job, or he was in a hurry. These papers here, I had them filed with the date line away from me; now they’ve been turned around. My daybook—I always put it away face down, now it’s face up—” He pulled out every drawer. “Same thing here—and here—and here. Small differences, only I can see them; noticed them immediately this morning....Benda!”
“Yes?”
“I’m being watched. Wherever I go, there are people; they don’t look at me, you know, but they watch. In front of my house—”
“You’re imagining!”
The General nodded as if he were considering this consoling bit of thought. Then he said darkly, “I don’t trust you, Benda! I don’t trust your Minister Dolezhal. You say you two are the only ones who know about me and about what we talked—” He pointed at the yawning drawers. “Well—how come?”
Joseph stared. He felt the bristly touch of fear at the back of his neck. If he and Dolezhal were the only ones who knew—and he was sure he had not breathed a word to anyone...Maybe someone close to Dolezhal! There was Novak; but Dolezhal had known for years that Novak was the enemy. Where was the leak? What about Duchinsky himself? Duchinsky had been hesitant from the beginning. Perhaps Duchinsky had played a part, had skilfully drawn out everything there was to be learned, and was now gracefully retiring and leaving him and Dolezhal in the trap. The desk had been rifled....Who said so? Duchinsky. And it wasn’t Dolezhal who would be trapped. Dolezhal was too big, entertained too many connections; he still had hanging on the wall of his office the framed thousand-crown bill he had won at poker from the chairman of the parliamentary club of Communist deputies. Dolezhal, Joseph grimaced, would drop him as you whisk a crumb off your table....
“They’re probably watching a lot of people,” he said, summoning what morale was left in him. “They’d be complete fools if it didn’t dawn on them that something is going on! And you’re an important man, General! You should be flattered by their attention.”
Slowly, the General closed his drawers one after the other. “I’m in no mood for flattery, Benda—or for your jokes.”
“Neither am I, General!” Joseph knew it was futile. He knew Duchinsky had bowed out. “I have your instructions. Are you ready to listen?”
“No, I’m not! And I never will be! And I should never have listened to you!” Duchinsky had raised his voice but suddenly snapped it off. Even the leather upholstered double doors to his office were no longer necessarily soundproof. “And let me tell you this, Benda—if ever you should be questioned about your visits to me, you say we were talking about the possibility of your
getting back into service. And you stick to that story! Because if you don’t—I may be gone and dead—but I have loyal friends—and I’ll reach out and get you....”
“Yes, sir!” said Joseph and about-faced and went out. As he closed the outer door, he began to laugh. He had had a relapse into the military.
He had gone quite a distance toward the river when he slowed his pace. The little mirth he had felt had evaporated, and the fear he had covered with his laughter returned in full force.
It had been a fatal mistake to see Duchinsky at his headquarters; if the General was being watched, it stood to reason that whoever visited him would be tailed, too. Duchinsky should have called him up and warned him somehow; even if your phone is tapped, there are ways of making yourself understood. But behind Duchinsky’s big hulk was the mean little heart of a coward. Duchinsky was thinking only of himself, his own Goddamned career, his own pink, healthy skin.
And what now? Report to Dolezhal that Duchinsky had refused to play along when the play became serious?
Two men had stepped on the traffic isle at the other side of the street, where the round blue lamp of the streetcar stop blinked dully in the waning light of the afternoon. The streetcar came clanging along and screeched to a halt and pulled away once more, its motor howling. The two men still stood there, waiting.
Joseph moved on, in the direction of the river. He kept his head slightly turned and observed out of the side of his eye. The two men said good-by to each other, in a casual manner. Perhaps they had met by chance on the traffic isle and had passed up the streetcar because they had been in the middle of a dirty story and hadn’t wanted to miss the point. One, wearing a brown felt hat with a high black band and a ridiculously small brim, seemed to be waiting for the next tram. He had an empty face; its only decisive feature was a long, whitish, peaked nose. The other, in a pepper-and-salt raglan of considerable age, walked Joseph’s way, but on the opposite sidewalk.
It might be nothing at all; but Joseph increased his speed, down the serpentine road that would lead him to the Möldau River and across to Smetana Square and the columned building of the Philosophical Faculty. The Raglan kept behind him. Joseph thought of jumping on a passing streetcar; the cars, however, traveled so slowly on the steep incline that his pursuer could have made a spurt easily and jumped on after him. He would postpone boarding a tram until he reached the foot of the hill, from where the cars, going across the bridge, ran at a good clip.
At the streetcar stop at the foot of the hill Joseph waited. The Raglan ambled a few steps ahead and then lit a cigarette and lingered to study the dreary landscape.
Joseph had a pain in the back of his head. He was trying to think, but his thoughts came in dashes without much connection. The great plan was lost and betrayed. Duchinsky wouldn’t have reneged unless he knew more than he was saying. The Communists controlled the Ministry of Interior and the police; they had their spies everywhere—somebody had tipped them off, they were getting ready to crack down on everybody who had ever done anything for Dolezhal’s plan! That included Joseph Benda, Deputy. They would whip up some treason charge, and his parliamentary immunity wouldn’t help him a whit....He knew how those things were operated, he and Dolezhal would have proceeded exactly that way if they had come out on top....
What could he do? Ah, the phony promises the Minister had given him! Resign as National Administrator—you’ll get everything back: your own, your property. What an illusion! Only God can make a tree grow, but even He cannot ungrow it. If you have the hard luck of having to live in such a period—well, then you make your adjustments, you live! And what was so terrible about being a National Administrator? It was a job, it was better paid than most, and at least one still made glass!
A plague on Dolezhal! Dolezhal, who had ridden him into this! From the very beginning, the man had had tentacles out for him, from the day he’d come to Prague to plead for the Works—no, from the days back in London. But this was the end. The Raglan over there, watching and waiting, like a snake waiting for a rabbit...The end, yes. He would wash his hands of the plan and the conspiracy and the mad ambitions and the fears and the running away. He’d go back to Rodnik, back home. There was still Vesely’s, and a man must learn how to be modest. He would write a letter to the President of the Assembly, and another letter to the chairman of the parliamentary club of Dolezhal’s Party. The letters would be couched nicely and respectfully, but simply, and their contents would be clear: I, Joseph Benda, can’t stand it any longer. I am through. I want to work. I want to work hard. I want to build something. That’s what I was made for. Look at my hands. Maybe I’ll design glass, maybe I’ll make it with my own breath and my own fingers. I can make a living for myself and my wife and my child any day. I don’t want to lick boots any more, I don’t want to have to lie and to intrigue and to be on the run.
And maybe they’ll let me alone. Maybe they’ll let me work and live.
He looked at the Raglan, who was stamping out his cigarette. A Number One car drew up. Joseph waited until the tram purred away, then he made a dash and hopped the trailer. The Raglan was still immersed in the landscape.
Joseph sighed, relieved. He found a seat and eased into it. He showed his deputy’s pass to the conductor. The conductor said, “My compliments, sir!” and raised his finger to the shield of his cap. The headache ceased to hack at Joseph’s brain, he gave the conductor an indifferent smile and settled back into the stale warmth of the car.
It had been nothing. He had let himself get rattled by a lughead of a General and a man in a raglan coat who had been taking a walk. Dolezhal was much too clever to slip up, and for one Duchinsky who deserted, there were dozens of braver men who didn’t see ghosts. Duchinsky had probably put his daybook face up, himself—everybody slipped up once in a while. And as for the papers lying the other way—the most meticulous people are the ones who forget most easily; otherwise why would they have to be so meticulous?
Nevertheless, Joseph wanted to make absolutely sure that he was not being followed. He got out after only two stops, in front of the Hus Memorial. In the maze of the crooked streets and passageways of the Old Town, any pursuer would be easily recognized and even more easily shaken off.
Joseph laughed soundlessly—as a boy, he had played many such games. He was the only passenger to leave the car, and aside from a few nondescript people gaping at the ruins of the old City Hall and at the destroyed face of the astronomical clock at its tower, the street was empty.
It was fantastic. Why should anyone follow him? They knew he was staying at the Esplanade, and they could pick up his trail any day in front of the Assembly. Well, they might want to know where he went after his visit to Duchinsky—he would show them. He would lead them a merry chase. He was going nowhere.
He ducked into a passageway and stopped at a tobacco stand which was built into the corner of a narrow-breasted house with wooden balustrades. The woman sold him a pack of cheap cigarettes. He glanced behind. The courtyard formed by the aged houses was empty. He snickered. I’m getting as nervous as Duchinsky, I can’t let these things get me, times are hard and I have to win out and go back to Rodnik and take over my factory and the Hammer Works and become master of my own life again. Anyhow, this murkiness before the storm won’t last much longer. It’s going to break soon....Jesus Christ, it couldn’t be too soon for him.
He decided to give up the stupid Cops-and-Robbers game. He could cut directly to the Old Opera House and from there, passing through a short one-lane street, come out in the modern part of town, at Wenceslas Square. He felt safe, and it was darkening, too. He walked quickly, listening to the clucking of his soles on the wet pavement. He dug his hands into his pockets and whistled the beginning of a tune. He could see a cut-out of the lights of Wenceslas Square.
He stopped. Where the narrow street opened on the square stood the Brown Hat, with the high black band and the ridiculously small brim, and from under it jutted the whitish, peaked, overlong nose.
Joseph felt out of place in the dingy waiting room to Karel’s office. The old man with the bandaged foot, the two women with the thin faces and the kerchiefs wrapped tightly around their heads, had stopped talking very soon after he entered and sat down in the corner. He had tried small talk with them since he knew them slightly, as he knew most of the citizens of Rodnik; but there was no making headway against their morose silence. Out of Karel’s office sounded the faint whimpering of a child.
Joseph sighed and re-crossed his legs. He hated this odor, this mixture of Lysol and the sweat of anxiety, it made him want to swallow. He had asked Karel to come to the house; Karel had said that a thorough examination had to be done at the office.
The child, a girl, came out, still crying and holding her ear. One of the women jumped up and said, “Now, it doesn’t hurt, it doesn’t hurt, does it?” Then she pulled out a pocket comb with some of its teeth missing and ran it vigorously through the child’s hair, which was matted with perspiration. There were new tears, and the other woman ran up with a handkerchief and held it in front of the girl’s nose. “There, blow!”
Then the women and the child were gone. Karel appeared in the door, nodded briefly to Joseph, and gestured the old man to come in. The old man shuffled along heavily. The door closed.
If Karel hadn’t seen him, Joseph might have left and gone back home. He was afraid. He’d always been well, never a day’s sickness except for the measles and whooping cough when he was a boy. When Peter Benda had finally given permission to Karel to take up the study of medicine, he had joked that the family, at least, would never have to pay a doctor’s bill. Joseph had made no use of that privilege. It was Thomas who had always been sickly.
Joseph didn’t believe much in doctors. They took a little symptom and blew it up into a great big disease; only the Army doctors were different: they gave you a five-minute check-up and a kick in the behind and said, “Get out of here; there’s nothing wrong with you!” Now he was full of symptoms that worried him and kept him awake at night.
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