“What else are you?” Novak asked with a bitterness so sharp that it seemed to charge the air in the room. “You’re guilty by your own admission. But you refuse to see the full extent of what you’ve done. There’s a war on! I don’t care if he is your brother, or whatever other rationalization your Benda mind produces—”
“Well, he is my brother, and it did make a difference!” Karel said flatly.
Novak hit back: “We’re sweating blood, our people sweat blood, to make this a decent country—and you let loose on us a man who may come back tomorrow flying another plane, bombing to bits what we built and killing the people who built it! Didn’t you think of that?”
Karel stared at him, chalk-white. “No, I didn’t. I didn’t think that far. And if I had, I wouldn’t have believed it.”
“If you don’t mind,” Inspector Konecky said.
Novak turned away. “He’s all yours.”
“Did you know, Dr. Benda, that your brother was going to kidnap a plane of the Czechoslovak Airlines?”
“No, of course not.”
“Did you know that he and the former Minister Dolezhal were planning to make their escape together?”
“No, I didn’t. I learned that only from the papers this afternoon.”
“Did you ever hear your brother mention a General Duchinsky?”
“No.”
“Did you know that your brother tried to help organize a military uprising against the Government?”
My brother, thought Karel. My Brother, the Enemy...
“Did you?” Konecky repeated.
“Oh my God, no!”
“Let me ask him a question, Inspector,” said Novak.
“Surely.”
“Now that you know, Karel—where do you stand?”
As if he were in pain, Karel rubbed his temple. “What do you want from me?” he said, tortured. “Should I tell you that under those circumstances I hope to Christ I would have had the guts to go to Kravat or to the police? What is that worth, now?”
“Not a damned thing, as far as the past is concerned. But for the future, it has some value....” Novak nodded to Konecky. “Is there anything else. Inspector?”
Konecky pocketed his pad and stood up. “Not at the moment, sir. There will be proceedings in absentia, I believe, against the former Minister Dolezhal and the former Deputy Benda. You will hold yourself in readiness to testify, Doctor?”
“Of course.”
Novak waited until the inspector was gone. “Another cigarette?” he offered, and this time he permitted Karel to give him a light.
The minutes dragged as they smoked in silence. Novak was kind to let him stay on and recover a little, thought Karel. Or were there other things to be said which were not for the ears of the inspector? As for himself, he didn’t want to plead that hindsight isn’t as good as foresight, or that a man’s upbringing conditions his mental reflexes,, or that one learns through experience. These were saws. And he didn’t believe that Novak wanted to hear them.
“What do you think you’re going to do now?” Novak said quietly.
“I don’t know. Work, I guess. What else can I do?”
“You worked in Buchenwald, too—and what did it teach you?” Novak dropped the matter abruptly. “I saw Stanek. He’s had a talk with Villner of People’s Books. They have reconsidered, and they’ll print a small edition of your brother Thomas’s essay, if he’ll let them have it.”
“Buchenwald!” Karel said. “Maybe it takes some people longer to learn than others!” Then the new information sank in and set his mind moving in another direction. Thomas, who had been ready to desert, was being rewarded, and he, who had only tried to do the humane thing, became the accessory to a conspiracy. “You mean, Stanek finally threw his weight around?” he said sarcastically. “Then why did they have to put Thomas through that mill? Villner’s refusal and the way he put it drove Thomas to the point of running out—”
Novak stopped him. “Stanek did not throw any weight around. You’ll learn a little faster if you forget the Benda standards. In the discussion about the book, Villner saw that he was wrong.”
“Maybe he had Benda standards, too?” said Karel.
Novak smiled, “Yes—in reverse!” Then, serious again, he said: “That’s our problem! We have a vision and a plan, but we’ve got to build with the tools we inherited until we make our own, and with the people we inherited—people like Vaclav Villner and Karel Benda....”
He sighed and stuffed back the empty sleeve that had worked itself out of his pocket.
“...and Jan Novak,” he added, angrily.
What a lot of paper!
Notes, drafts, sketches, unfinished manuscripts—I don’t know where to begin, but when did I ever know where to begin? And where to end?
Kitty did keep some order in this stuff, it’s really a shame I upset everything, tore everything out of its shelves. It’s a miracle how she found her way through this mountain, how she could make head or tail of things—and always behind my back, because I’d chase her out when I found her busy, busy, busy with what was none of her business. Now I’ve truly created a mess—stupid, senseless! Sitting here half the night, reading myself half blind, half crazy....
I guess I thought I’d find something worth salvaging, something on which to build, something about which one might say: Well, he did more then just try....My dear Mr. Thomas Benda, we regret to inform you that your material, while interesting, is very much outdated, practically antediluvian. It shows you have talent, but it also shows how you wasted it. Since, as you know, the country is suffering from shortages, we sincerely suggest that you consign this pile to one of our wastepaper collections which will be held periodically.
You think I think that’s funny? I don’t think so at all. I think you are absolutely and 100 per cent right. I have come to the point where I can afford to be quite open with you and with myself. I’ve maneuvered myself to where I’m sitting between all the available chairs, on a stool of thin air—and now you’ll laugh when I tell you: I used to believe it was a desirable spot and to pride myself on being able to get into my unnatural position.
In my essay, I predicted what would happen to me; and just because it’s coming true, because I’m right, my work and I become ludicrous. I’m like the dog who chased his own tail, or the fellow who stood between the double mirrors and could see himself, front and back, front and back, ad nauseam ad infinitum. I’m ridiculous and superfluous and should have at least enough character to get under my own epitaph so it doesn’t stand astride an empty hole.
Now my good and simple brother Karel, who saved the only thing worth saving out of my life—my wife Kitty—says I should not despair, that millions of people want me to enrich their life, and other well-meant consolations. I suppose that according to his lights he is correct. But I was brought up to protest, disparage, and destroy, to find beauty in strange poisonous flowers growing uselessly in useless swamps, to dream sick dreams and take those dreams apart, take everything apart, including myself.
There was a horrible lightning and thunder, and out of it stepped Father and wiggled his finger and ordered: Put it all together again! Be positive, be constructive! I will reward you if you’re good; if not, I will punish you!
I could be good and trip about and gather little pebbles to be mixed into the plaster they slap at the walls of the house which Father will build.
But I hate Father—always hated him since he put my mother in her grave. She suffered so long and so patiently, and her hands grew more and more transparent, until she didn’t have the strength to lift them and put them on my head. If I’ve said No, I meant it for Father; if I’ve been destructive, I’ve meant to destroy Father; and I’ve always trembled in fear of him. Now Father has become all-powerful, and there is no escape from him.
I’ve tried—oh, I’ve tried to measure up. I climbed on Joseph’s shoulders, or on Karel’s; I used my women for support—but no one can carry you for nothing, not even Kitty
. They all demand their price: Allegiance.
I’ve tried it. And I’ve tried to stand on my own. I wrote this Essay, and it was to be my declaration of independence from all of them, and from Father. But where on this earth is there a spot where a man can plant his feet and stand alone?
And I’m not the kind of man to stand alone. I wanted to give; but no one would accept from me on my terms. On Joseph’s terms—yes; on Karel’s, Kitty’s, Vlasta’s, Elinor’s, Barsiny’s, Villner’s—yes; never on my own. Above all on Father’s terms, who is all of them—the people, the Government, the State, and God. I cannot unmake myself and say Amen to their Yes, and Amen to their No! And so they’ve elbowed me out of their lives; even Kitty has.
And I loved them so much—some of them. I don’t hate people, I love them! I love the land and the peasant plowing it, love to walk alongside of him, talk to him. Our glassworkers with their wonderful hands, and the stories they told! And I stood with the people on Old Town Square!
It’s hard not to belong; it’s hard to have nothing entitling you to belong; it’s hard to have locked yourself out of your Father’s house.
Karel would say they will take me back; but I would come with empty hands, and be a stranger among them and a drain on them and a spreader of doubts.
I can’t stand this room any longer, the papers, the dirt, the quiet. It’s my table, my chair, my mirror, my couch, everything in its accustomed place, and yet, it does not feel like my study. I’ll give myself an excuse to get out. I’ll say I’m hungry. I am, actually, a little. This is, of course, the height of folly—my stomach working on, making demands, as if nothing were happening, as if we were not at the threshold of something so new and so still that even this stomach will stop rumbling.
Here’s the switch to the lamp in the living room. Too much light. Where there’s too much light, there’s too much shadow. People would be better off if they learned to accept more of the dusk where things aren’t so sharp and where questions can go unanswered.
How can I ever find anything in this kitchen! There—the bread is moldy. Kitty didn’t come all of yesterday; she didn’t send up anyone, either. How does she expect me to live? Look at the dishes in the sink! The cupboards are open; that’s yesterday’s coffee grounds in the cups. When you see a kitchen like that, you lose your appetite.
I forgot to turn off the light in the kitchen. Let the cockroaches see what they’re doing.
Ah, there are the fine bindings on the shelves! I always liked these shelves in the living room. I didn’t buy too many books in my lifetime. Books tie you down, just like anything else you possess. Look at Joseph—what could he take along?
Mother’s books—she left them to me. Here are the novels of Jirasek, here is Neruda, Cech, Vrchlicky. A very nice edition of Byron; Shakespeare, of course; Heine; she did read a lot of Maupassant and the early Thomas Mann. Each book with her Ex Libris: An hourglass, half run down—rather a morbid idea. Marginal notes; she had a fine handwriting, a little fragile, like herself....No, I won’t start reading now! I’ve read more than enough for one night, one author the poor woman never had to read.
And this is my book! Bound in green Morocco, my name embossed in gold—distinguished. Kitty had that done, and she carted the thing around on all our travels. To my love, my Thomas, on the flyleaf. She did love me, I swear to God, and I destroyed it. There’s a collection she made of what I wrote in America. It’s not complete; I was quite careless with my clippings. Elinor’s book—she would have a selection of her columns printed—probably paid the publisher, too, or gave up her royalties. To my dear fellow fighter! What did we fight for—freedom? Now freedom has come, the kind of freedom that has no use for me. Three copies of the Essay, typed by Kitty, in cardboard binders she made herself. The woman’s hands are everywhere; it is as if she’d gone but left her hands behind. Why didn’t she take all this along? And here—this I made myself, for Vlasta. Copied them myself, with pen and ink: Poems by Thomas Benda. But I never gave them to her, never could bring myself to it. After all, it is a very romantic idea to woo a girl with poetry.
Books, papers, shadows of people. But more or less, this is the life I always lived! Only I was flesh and blood, the others came and passed. Perhaps I should write a letter to Karel. Dear Karel, I’ve decided to put a period behind my sentences. Better yet: Since you’re the only Benda to survive...No, this way: I could give you many reasons, each of them insufficient in itself; but in the aggregate...
Why bother? He’ll find out soon enough. They’re bound to call him, he’s the only doctor in town. I should write him, perhaps, that he must tell Kitty she is not to grieve and not to reproach herself. On the other hand, why shouldn’t she grieve and reproach herself? Haven’t I grieved all my life and reproached myself?
The rug on these stairs is a menace. It should be nailed down safely, a person can slip and turn an ankle—let others worry. I wonder who’s going to rent the house. Karel wouldn’t—no, not with Kitty. It would be too ghoulish.
I would like to lie down for a while. But my bed isn’t made, neither is Kitty’s. Karel should have had the consideration to smooth out the covers and the spread after he slept on it. Besides, if I lie down now, I’m likely to fall asleep and wake up tomorrow and have another day and another night and go through all this again. I’m tired. I’ll have time to rest, plenty of time, eternity. How long is eternity? It should be easy to tell—that’s where I came from!
Oh dark, sweet, velvety, restful dark! This is the final freedom! If someone should ask me now what I would weep over I would say: My mother’s death; it left me like a crab without its shell. And if the question were whom I would weep over, I would say, Kitty—for I think I loved her.
This is her room, untouched as she left it, with the picture of me on her chest of drawers, her work table, the portable typewriter on which she copied what I wrote, her sewing kit, the sundries of her life. I feel awfully married. She tried to protect me, in her way. Everybody tried to protect me. They should have let me live—I’d be alive now. They shouldn’t have tried to take care of me merely because I was weak and sickly and a great talent. In a few minutes, and henceforward, they’ll have to take care of me.
The door leading out of her room still squeaks. It wasn’t so long ago she promised she’d oil it. Too much happened. I went away, to Vlasta. If Vlasta were alive, I’d be alive.
The bathtub has a dirt rim. There are hairs on the basin. Only one cake of soap left, and not much of that. Let me wash my hands. In a way, I’m going to do something medical, and the hands ought to be clean after going through those old papers.
I should have hired a charwoman, or Kitty should have hired one for me. It’s always best to have a charwoman find you; she doesn’t belong to the family. Too late for that, now! It’ll be quite a sensation. They may forget you in life; but in death, you make a splash. I’ll be good for at least a full column of Elinor’s. She will prove conclusively that I was murdered, directly or indirectly, by the new setup. Since I don’t fit in, she wouldn’t be so far wrong. The papers here will allude to Joseph’s escape, and say that by remaining I proved my loyalty to my country, and hint that I was unable to cope with the pressures brought to bear on me by reactionaries like Elinor Simpson and my brother Joseph. And they won’t be so far wrong, either. Apparently, there were many facets to me, too many.
Kitty will blame herself. For quite a while, she’ll go on wishing she’d stayed with me a little longer, and curse herself for giving in to the only decision I ever made. Sorry, can’t be helped. And she’ll bounce back; she has that sane and healthy, bouncy quality that’s most annoying but in such cases as these quite useful. Karel will be hard hit; he meant so well. Joseph meant well, too. There is an oversupply of people who mean well; they take the webbing of your life and introduce new threads and then act amazed if the pattern looks cockeyed. Joseph will hear about it when the news has seeped across the border, a week or so from now. I can see him, staring at his big, bungling
hands, but Lida will tell him it’s all my fault—why didn’t I fly off with them? That’s as good an excuse for him as any; he’ll begin to believe it because he always must believe that others are at fault, and finally he’ll be convinced and even despise me a little for having taken the short way out while he goes living on, in Munich, or London, or Washington, with a perspective that ends nowhere. Petra will have tears for me. I wonder what she would have grown up to be with Vlasta and myself to guide her. A problem child, probably, like myself. Now she’ll mourn, and then forget and admire Karel and ape him and become a citizen of this new world; they’re getting her early, before she is spoiled. She’ll turn out firm and monolithic, isn’t that what they call it? A monolithic tiny cell in a big organism, warm and comfortable and secure, but oh so humdrum.
For Petra’s sake, perhaps...
No, I could never do it alone. Damn Vlasta.
Vlasta was so beautiful. Too beautiful to let herself be touched. And Vlasta won’t weep. No heart.
The bottle is there on the window sill, still in the druggist’s wrapping. None of Karel’s famous autopsies necessary; he’ll just have to take one look at the empty bottle of what he prescribed for me. The string unties easily enough; let the paper fall where it may; now the cork comes out. How small these pills are and how many there are of them—
I’d better get a glass of water to wash them down.
The train engine whistled disconsolately from the distance. The small group of somber men on the railroad station in Rodnik stepped out of the shelter onto the open platform.
Professor Stanek, his thin white hair moving softly in the wind, wiped his red-rimmed eyes and put his pince-nez back on his nose. “A teacher, damn it,” he said, “is supposed to die before his student.”
Ministerial Councilor Novak put his one arm about Karel’s shoulder and said, “These speeches you make over a grave....But I’d like you to know, Karel, I meant every word. I meant it when I said the country is going to miss Thomas Benda. Miss him—not as he was, but as he could have developed if death had not been in him from the beginning. We will take over from his work what is alive. There was something in him that was of the spirit of our people—the searching, I mean, the self-searching. It destroys some, others it helps.”
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