by Ivan Klíma
No one shouted me clown, and my interrogated fellow-pupil, instead of rebuffing me, quietly replied that if I had in mind the time he happened to attend a meeting, he had only gone there as a guest.
With the feelings of a hunter who had shot into a bush and hit his prey by luck, I asked him how often he had attended those meetings and why, and what attitude he had adopted to the things he had heard there. I repeated my questions while he started, in a faltering voice that became quieter and quieter, to give evasive and contrite answers. He was lost, he could no longer remove the stigma of having belonged somewhere he ought not to have belonged. He apologised for something for which it was improper to apologise, thereby admitting that he knew his actions to have been improper in the first place.
The last of the three whose future I had decided to thwart was the best pupil in the class. I don’t think even our teachers liked her, though they could count on her rattling off the correct answer every time, in her monotonous voice.
She spent her time amongst us as a loner; she never made friends with anyone as far as I recall. I would even go so far as to say she found contact with others intolerable. None the less, either from lack of imagination or in an effort to ingratiate herself with her teachers, she had written on the compulsory questionnaire that she wanted to teach herself.
I informed her that we (the class tribunal) were prepared to recommend her for further education, but not teacher-training. She gazed at me in amazement (she wore spectacles whose bottle thickness lent her eyes even more horrified proportions) and declared that she definitely wanted to be a teacher.
I replied that we were unable to give our consent to it. And she, alone out of the three, actually asked a question. ‘Why?’
I said that we did not think she was suited to that profession.
She burst into tears. She shattered the silence of the classroom with loud sobs, and her fellow-pupils, who until that moment had probably shared my opinion, found themselves forced to support her and join her in her hatred of me. Then she started to scream at me hysterically, telling me to leave her alone, that she knew very well why I hated her, why I wanted to ruin her life. She loved children, she shouted, and wanted to devote herself to them. After that she just sobbed. Now the headmistress took a hand in the proceedings for the first time and told us to continue, saying that the teaching staff would deal with her case and decide who was suited to which profession, so I quickly read through the remaining five or six sheets of paper. Then everyone stood up. I was expecting someone at least to come up to me (after all, we had been indulgent towards so many of them) with a word of thanks or perhaps criticism, but they walked out past me as if I had the plague, or more accurately, as if I didn’t exist. The headmistress noisily ushered out the hiccuping guest and the teachers left without comment. Even colleague Švehla made himself scarce and I – only now conscious that my hands were trembling – returned my papers to their file and put the file back in my bag, before being the last to leave the classroom.
5
About three or four days later (in the course of them the others started treating me more or less as usual again, which put my mind at rest and confirmed me in my conviction that I was a fair judge), Vlastirnil Polák came and asked me if I would spare him a few moments.
I was full of good will and affability. So we set off together in the direction of his home near the church of St Francis. I listened to my companion, as he tried (though the matter suddenly seemed abstract and trifling) to explain that he had never been a member of that organisation, as I had accused him of being, that he’d only attended two or three meetings and afterwards he’d given it up because it was always too noisy and they spent too much time on politics which he didn’t enjoy – and anyway he had only gone there on account of Marie. Surely I knew he had been going out with Marie, he asked, and I gave no reply, as I never willingly admitted there was something I didn’t know.
Then he suddenly blurted out that he was sure the accusation hadn’t come from me, because I had no way of knowing he had been at those meetings, and even if I’d known about it, I had no score to settle and no reason to use it against him. Who knew he’d been at those meetings? Why, Marie, of course! And he asked me in amazement whether I couldn’t see the connection. I couldn’t, as I was unaware that Marie was now engaged to Švehla, and I couldn’t even understand the connection when he told me how his erstwhile friend had stolen his girl, the reason being that I had no idea at the time that hatred can be motivated, not only by the feeling we have been wronged, but also by the feeling we have wronged someone else.
By now we were standing in front of the house where he lived and he invited me in. I hesitated. I was shy of entering a strange flat and I was certainly afraid of meeting his parents. But there was no way I could let him think I was afraid to stand by what I had done, and so I followed him inside.
He unlocked the door. I knew nothing about his family apart from the few facts that each of us was obliged to enter on that questionnaire. (Father former civil servant, now retired, mother housewife.) I walked gingerly on the clean carpet. He opened one of the doors and we entered a little bedroom which had apparently been his since childhood, for everything had remained small-scale and brightly coloured: a table, chairs and a cupboard, on which an enormous teddy-bear still sat. But in front of the teddy-bear, clean and white as if it had just been brought from the shop, a plaster bust of Lenin was enthroned. I gawped at that sculpture and as he became aware of the object of my attention, he blushed and asked me whether I might like to take a look at his bookshelf. He opened the cupboard, and there in a neat row stood his books, painstakingly covered in yellow paper and with titles and numbers written on their spines. He took out one volume after another – they were mostly medicine or chemistry – and quickly said something about each. He told me his greatest interest was in medical chemistry and he wanted to make it his career. And he opened a door into some sort of grey cubby-hole, which immediately exuded an unpleasant animal smell. I was able to see a space so small that there was only room for two UNRRA boxes and a small table with test-tubes, beakers and a hypodermic syringe. He lifted the lid of one of the boxes and I caught sight of several white mice running around on a layer of sawdust at the bottom. He told me he practised on them and conducted experiments. He pulled one of the mice out of the box, picked up the hypodermic with the other hand and told me he would demonstrate to me anaesthesia using procaine, but at that moment, his mother entered and he quickly put the mouse back and introduced me to her. (Only later did I guess that she had been expecting me, and that they had agreed not only on his bringing me home, but also on what would be said and done during my visit.) She told me she was pleased I had come, though she had imagined someone rather different.
I didn’t know what to reply or why she had imagined someone different and what sort of person she had imagined me to be (probably like some kind of wild animal, instead of a stripling with tousled hair and elbow patches on my coat). Worst of all I had not imagined her at all; had not given a single thought to her when I was spouting about her son. But here she stood – a strange woman with a fine, transparent – almost girlish – complexion and thick white hair, and she was asking me whether she might offer me coffee, or maybe I preferred tea. Once more we walked along the passage with its scrupulously clean carpet and entered a room that was their sitting-cum-dining room. The walls were hung with enormous showy pictures in golden frames and the china-cabinet contained sparkling porcelain, along with a single silver bowl and a vase with Chinese ornaments. At a black desk, in a three-wheeled invalid chair, there sat a bald, sallow little man with a ginger moustache and small active eyes, who straight away came forward to greet me. His father. Only now did I notice that on the desk there stood another bust, identical this time to the one I had at home, right down to the colour. I sat down as I was bid. His father welcomed me in the manner reserved for friends whom one has not seen in a long time, or opponents one is seeking to win over. T
hen he asked whether I had already seen Vlastimil’s little creatures. He quickly answered for me that of course I had. And then the man asked whether it was true that I had suffered in a camp during the war, and without waiting for a reply he declared that it must have been an awful experience, that it was a terrible world that wreaked vengeance on children and could subject them to torture.
His wife spread a lace cloth on the table and brought the coffee in tiny little cups with gold handles, together with a cake on a glass plate, and asked me whether I was aware that her husband had been an airman. And her husband interrupted her, saying I was sure to know, and in his cage on wheels he rolled back to the desk, opened a drawer and took out an ordinary cardboard box. When he took off the lid, there, on the base of red velvet, lay a round piece of metal with a coloured ribbon, looking much like a coin; he held it up for me to see and told me that that was what they had given him for his legs.
My classmate intervened to say that his father had been shot down over London and blushed once more. Then they invited me to help myself, and in general to make myself at home. And the man in the invalid chair asked his son if he’d shown me the safety-lamp. And when my classmate, still red-faced, shook his head, his father ordered him to fetch it, and he brought over some kind of old, but brightly polished miner’s lamp, and the white-haired lady explained that her husband’s first job was in the pits and he had kept the lamp as a souvenir. He said that it was back in the days of Austrian rule, and offered to show me a photograph. He rolled back to his desk once again and fetched a yellowing photo showing a group of young men in miners’ helmets standing in the yard of the mine, with the winding gear looming in the background. He explained to me that it was taken in Ostrava, where he worked for three years down the pits and spent his evenings studying. In those days he still had the strength, now he had neither strength nor courage, and what use would they be to him anyway? When they had told him that they must amputate his legs, he had thought there was no sense in living any more, but he had wanted to come back here to see his wife and boy. But now he was only a burden on them anyway, and could no longer give them the help they needed. A tearful note came into his voice and my classmate scolded him for talking that way. The coffee on the table was getting cold and the cake smelt inviting, but I didn’t dare help myself with the others taking nothing. The man in the invalid chair declared once more that he had nothing left to live for, adding that he had hoped, at least, to see his son become a doctor, and asking whether he had shown me his books.
My classmate blushed yet again and without looking at me muttered yes, he had. Now at last his mother noticed I wasn’t eating and told me to be sure and help myself. And she addressed me as Comrade Adam. I got up from the table and announced that I really had to leave and ran out of that flat without having said a single word: either of explanation, apology or justification of what I had done.
The following week – as if as a reward for my services (though in fact the timing was a coincidence as they had offered me membership several weeks earlier) – they admitted me into the Party. The meeting took place in the art room, which still reminded me of the gaunt, once beloved Ivandolič, and put me in mind of a vault in which still lifes by Cézanne had been forgotten on the walls. Apart from Švehla, all the other members were teachers. I was not accustomed to moving in such circles on an equal footing. I sat there at a paint-stained desk, scarcely able to take in what was happening around me. They read out my application and the recommendations of my guarantors. Then the history teacher, a small woman with a hunch back, spoke about my class-consciousness, devotion and selflessness. She said – and I remember her words – that I could serve as an example to many Party members too. Then they approved my application unanimously and they all clapped. I stood up and stuttered my thanks to them for their trust, with the worrying feeling that I had been through it all before.
I tried to feel as if there was something to celebrate but instead all I felt was the depressing realisation that my future was now irreversibly restricted. I had become a foot-soldier, and though I had chosen my destiny freely and even enthusiastically, now that my uniform was being brought to me, I was overcome with anxiety.
It was about that time that the telephone once rang unexpectedly in the middle of the night. I picked up the receiver and heard someone in the distance whispering to someone else that it was me. And out of that dry, quiet crackle, an unfamiliar, strident female voice started to hurl abuse at me, calling me a stinking, communist pig of a Jew.
I stuttered something into the mouthpiece, but that voice went on hurling insults without pause, threatening to string me up, cut off my genitals, hang me by my legs from a strong wire, until at last I realised that while I might not be able to silence it, at least I didn’t have to listen to it.
As I remember, scarcely had I hung up than the phone rang again, but I no longer had the courage to pick up the receiver, and for fear of waking my mother I covered the telephone with a cushion and placed it on the carpet, kneeling beside it until the phone bell’s muffled rattle finally stopped.
Chapter Four
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1
Dear Karel,
BEFORE YOU TAKE a look at my letter, I want to thank you for yours which came as a real surprise. I didn’t realise that you were in trouble again, and it’s a pity you didn’t tell me exactly what you’re charged with. I want you to know that I enjoyed your letter very much too, because after such a long time, I didn’t expect to hear from you again. I don’t want to accuse you of not showing enough interest in me, after all it’s not me that counts but little Katka. Even that little child can tell someone is missing who should be number one in the family. Adults can control their wishes and their wants, and control their feelings too, but it is very hard to explain such complicated things to a child. Karel, it would be lovely to have you with us. Little Katka is sweet and lovable. You’re wrong to think she has my eyes; the expression in them and their shape are yours. Karel, I showed her your letter and said it was from Daddy. She held out her hand and looked at me with eyes so like yours and called out Daddy, Daddy. And she kept looking towards the door, as if you might come through it, I was ready to cry I felt so sorry for her and I would have been happy myself if it had happened. I think that children have a way of learning to bear the most unbearable things and with their help it’s possible to swallow much of the suffering thai: life has brought us or that we brought on ourselves. I expect you won’t recognise her, after all I expect you’ve even forgotten what I look like myself. Karel, if you send us a visitor’s permit then if not me at least you’ll see your daughter. I can’t believe you don’t care about her. It must matter to you the life of your child who has your blood in her veins. Now that you’re so completely cut off from what is happening in human society!
Cut off from your parents, your job, your friends and the two of us, you must have plenty of time to think about what went on in the past and especially about what will happen in the future. Have you any ideas? Have you got any goal or plan to follow? Do you think about your child too? Karel, life goes on and there’s no stopping the clock. The minutes and the hours keep on passing and one day you’ll find yourself an old man, and maybe not such a strong one, your lovely hair will turn grey and you’ll wish you weren’t alone and I’d be happy to have you with me, Karel mine. Write again when you feel like it. I’ll sign off here.
Jarmila and Katka
The letter was harmless, harmless from the judicial point of view at any rate and he therefore initialled the envelope. There was still half an hour of the working day left, he ought to take a look at another of the files but he didn’t fancy starting anything new. And he needed to write to his brother; he had given him rather short shrift on the phone the last time. He had only been half awake and unprepared for a conversation of that sort. Besides being not at all sure if it was prudent to chat with someone who was hesitating over whether to return to the homeland. The fact t
hey were related would likely make matters worse.
If you were to return, dear brother, for my part I would be only too pleased. I miss you, but that’s not the point at the moment. You want to be told what would be best for you to do, what you can expect here. Well: first of all, they’ll put you through political screening. They’ll ask you why you came back at all; it’ll seem to them such a daft thing to do that you’ll find yourself under suspicion. They’ll want you to tell them who you associated with there, and if you do tell them they won’t believe you anyway; they’ll think you’ve concealed something or someone of importance from them. Then they’ll start wondering whether a suspicious character like you, who returns home after three years abroad and then conceals matters of substance from them, could really be a useful member of society and be allowed to go back to where he worked in the past. Mind you, I concede that a mathematician might be thought just slightly less suspicious than a lawyer. For the fact is, dear brother of mine, that we are all under suspicion and cases against every one of us are being drawn up day and night, as one Prague lawyer and writer wrote recently, although I don’t suppose he meant it entirely literally. Evidence against us is amassed constantly, the only question being whether we’ll live to see them complete the preliminary proceedings. As a mathematician you might not. But on the other hand, as a mathematician you have plenty of opportunities where you are. It strikes me, for once, that mathematics has no homeland. Of course, what I say about mathematics need not apply to mathematicians. We do still have the forests you mentioned, as well as the rivers and fires of yesteryear, and even words that got caught in the cracks in the wall or maybe in the drain-hole covers, and those you’ll only overhear if you happen to pass by. The question is how much you want and need to hear them . . .