by Ivan Klíma
Adam pretended to be looking for something in his drawer. He took out a sheaf of papers and stuck them in his briefcase. He had had no idea there was something going on between the two of them. He could offer them the use of his flat. Lend Oldřich the keys and stay here. It would be a way of repaying an outstanding debt. Though from what he knew of him, he was bound to have somewhere to go. Then it suddenly occurred to him that Oldřich might be waiting for his own flat to fall vacant, that he was hanging about until Alexandra went off with someone or out to meet somebody and left him her rococo bedroom.
‘Adam has excellent career prospects,’ Oldřich was telling Alice. ‘He was lucky enough to find himself on the other side of the globe during the crisis period and didn’t have a chance to blot his copy-book. And his crimes from before then will soon be swept under the carpet.’
Outside it was pouring down with rain. He ran across the street and sheltered in a gateway opposite the tram stop. He felt wretched. So according to Oldřich his future was rosy. Maybe, after a while – and some further clemency – they would even re-employ him at the institute. Or even at the law school, in place of someone who no longer had a future. No doubt it depended on him too.
His feeling of wretchedness grew stronger. He must put these things out of his mind. Tomorrow he would go down to see the family. But there was something he was supposed to deal with before then. Oh, yes, the money. And he’d buy something for Alena to cheer her up. He was glad he had her – that he had in this world a person who was ingenuous and incapable of deceit. He had always taken it too much for granted. He would have to tell her so: that he loved her for it.
It started to grow cooler. His wet shirt made him feel cold and he was almost shivering. As he was running across the pavement to get on the tram he realised that he could see a familiar figure out of the corner of his eye. He managed to take another look. The young man in the double-breasted jacket (he was now wet and minus his companion, though Adam couldn’t make out where he’d come from so suddenly) was just getting into a car.
They both moved off at about the same moment, in opposite directions.
He remained standing for a moment on the rear platform of the tram, and with almost feverish anxiety waited to see if the car would appear behind. But there was no point. There were too many cars milling about and anyway, there was no hope of recognising it in the dark. He tried to persuade himself that the double encounter had been only a coincidence. Why should they be tailing him?
Then he slumped in the rearmost seat. He knew full well that it hadn’t been coincidence. So it was starting then. The main thing was not to get rattled needlessly. He’d have to take care tomorrow that they weren’t following him when he was carrying the money.
He realised that tomorrow at this time he would be with his wife, he would be lying at her warm, tender side, and he was comforted by the thought.
4
He had no difficulty finding the cottage that Petr had described. The gate was locked, however, and no one answered the bell. The woman next door (she eyed him suspiciously) told him that the young woman had gone off to Turnov with the baby. He fought off the inclination to get back in the car and drive away himself. To go back and return the money to Petr. Let him find another messenger. He’d have to realise that someone in his position was not suitable as a messenger.
He parked the car on the outskirts of the village and lay down on the grass for a while. Waiting was something he couldn’t abide; he could never concentrate on anything while waiting.
If he had ever set eyes on the woman before, he could have gone and looked for her in Turnov. A few days ago now, that town had been mentioned in a quite different connection.
He had inherited his father’s good memory for figures and anything connected with them. He could remember totally worthless dates of battles as well as telephone numbers and addresses he had no need of.
I was born in Prague on 23rd February 1942 but my mother Marie Kotvová now domiciled in Turnov at No. 215/36 Pod kopcem didn’t want to keep me . . .
Clearly she had renounced her child long before he had committed any offence. Or had he committed murder because his mother had renounced him? But that was a question for the psychologists, not for him. He would never be calling this woman as a witness.
It was still only half past four. He could go into town anyway and buy something for the children. He’d have a look in the bookshop to see if they had a book about dogs for Manda and one about cars or suchlike for Martin.
He had to stop and ask directions several times before he finally caught sight of the house with the number he was looking for. The entranceway led straight into the pub. The glass on the notice-board with the names of the tenants had been broken and all the labels removed.
He went up a dark staircase to the single upper floor and walked along the landing that ran outside the house and was littered with all sorts of private junk, until he found himself before a door with the name Kotvová written on it in indelible pencil. He rang the bell. A door slammed; he was unable to tell whether it was in this flat or one of the others. Then the patter of small feet could be heard from inside.
‘Who is it?’ a child’s voice asked.
‘Is your mummy in?’
‘Who is it?’ The child’s voice behind the door obviously belonged to a little girl, though he couldn’t guess her age.
‘You won’t know me. I need to speak to your mummy. I just want to ask her something.’
‘I’m not allowed to open the door to anyone.’
‘That doesn’t matter; I don’t want to come in.’
‘Not even if you gave me a sweetie.’
‘I only need to know when your mummy will be home.’
‘Mummy’s at work.’
‘And where does Mummy work?’
‘In the factory.’
‘Yes, I understand. But what sort of factory is it?’
‘Don’t know.’
‘And what does Mummy do?’
‘She works.’
‘Couldn’t you just tell me when she’ll be home?’
‘She comes home at night.’
‘Hey, I think you’re telling me fibs!’
The latch-chain rattled, the door opened as far as the chain permitted and from inside there came the heavy, stuffy smell of dish-water and decaying food. Through the chink in the door he saw a pale face, half of it wrapped in a dirty cloth. Two dark eyes gazed out at him from under a forehead wet with perspiration. At that moment there was the sound of footsteps coming up the staircase. He turned round and saw a woman lugging two shopping bags. Although he had not yet seen the lad who was her son except in the botched – or perhaps deliberately sinister-looking – mugshot taken by the police, he recognised her instantly.
‘If you wouldn’t mind, Mrs Kotvová, I’m . . .’
‘I’m sorry, but I can’t hear you.’
‘Oh, yes. My apologies. Here’s my identity card.’
‘There’s no need to bother. I don’t understand those things anyway. There’s not much I can tell you if you’ve come about the boy. I never set eyes on him.’
‘Mrs Kotvová, I’m not from the police. I’ve not come to interrogate you.’
‘I can’t hear you. It’s always the same when I come back from that place. Those machines make such a din, I’m like a deaf woman when I get home. But I’ll be all right in a minute.’
‘Mrs Kotvová, I’m not here in an official capacity. I’d just like to ask you something.’
‘I don’t know anything about him. They must know that back where you come from. I told them already. They’ve sent you here on a fool’s errand. He took him straight from the maternity to that other one. The bastard who gave me him.’
‘And you never saw the child afterwards?’
‘I could have got him sent down, but I told them it was born premature. Just ’cos he promised he’d take him.’
‘Mrs Kotvová, you brought the little boy into the world: didn
’t you care what would become of him?’
‘It wasn’t me who brought him into the world. It was him as took advantage of me being so young and silly. And they told me that if I signed the paper to say I renounce him in favour of her, then from that moment he wasn’t my son no more.’
‘Yes, that’s correct, legally speaking.’
‘You’re wasting your time. I won’t be able to tell you nothing. I have to get on with the supper.’
‘Of course. Don’t let me delay you.’
‘It’s all right, you can sit down again. You aren’t getting in my way. Well if he done it, it’s not me he takes after, and you can tell them that. I never did no one no harm. It was always me who got it in the neck from everyone you can mention. The last time it was from the father of that little whippersnapper. And I never got no help from no one!’
‘But what about your parents – they’re still alive, aren’t they?’
‘They are. And what about it? They never killed no one, if that’s what you’re on about.’
‘And didn’t even they give you a hand when the going was tough?’
‘You must be joking!’
‘Was your father a drinking man?’
‘What, do you think lads these days don’t drink? Just take a look in the pub downstairs.’
‘Yes, I know. Was your father ever ill?’
‘My dad? No fear. People didn’t have time to be ill in them days.’
‘I didn’t mean seriously ill, but whether he might have suffered from headaches, for instance.’
‘How should I know? Go and ask him yourself if you’re so keen to find out. But he never hurt no one. Apart from when he used to belt us kids.’
‘And this photo you have here – I’m sorry, I just wondered who it is on it?’
‘But that’s . . . They sent me it when he finished his schooling. I didn’t ask for it, but what was I supposed to do with it when they sent it? It’s him, of course. Or isn’t it? You mean you’ve never seen Karel?’
‘No, Mrs Kotvová. I’ve not yet had the occasion.’
‘Well there you are! And you was surprised I hadn’t neither.’
5
The children finally dropped off to sleep. Then Bob and Sylva got up to go. They made a point of leaving early so that she and Honza had time to themselves. And even though she didn’t find this unspoken complicity at all congenial, she was glad.
She had hesitated about whether to bring him back here at all, but she was afraid to send him home on his own. And she needed to explain to him how futile and senseless his action had been. ‘Do you fancy a drop more tea?’ She threw another log in the stove (the woodpile was dwindling; it was always Adam who chopped the wood) and moved the kettle of water into the middle of the hotplate.
‘Isn’t your husband coming?’
‘Not now. He doesn’t like night driving.’
‘Why do you live with him, as a matter of fact?’
‘With Adam?’ she asked aghast. ‘Because he’s my husband, of course!’
‘That’s no reason.’
‘It is for me.’
‘Do you love him?’
That was a subject she had no intention of talking to him about.
‘When I saw him he reminded me of my father. There’s something cold about him. Or maybe it’s disillusionment.’
‘I’ve never seen your father.’
‘They’re all disillusioned,’ he said, continuing his ready-prepared speech. ‘I know several of them and they all remind me of Father. They all maintain that they can’t believe in it any more, that they’ve already seen where they went wrong, that they don’t have anything to do with what’s going on now. But how can they claim such a thing, seeing it was they who caused it all?’
‘Adam never did anything bad.’
‘They all did. Even my father, before they sent him to prison. At the very least they all kept their mouths shut about the crimes that the others were committing. They said nothing because they were glad their party was in power.’
The light in the kitchen was feeble and it made his face look even paler than it really was. She ought to send him off to bed, but she still had to talk to him. To talk to him maybe for the last time ever and therefore she must use the opportunity to communicate with him as much as she could, and draw him back from the abyss to the edge of which he was still desperately clinging. ‘Shall I sugar your tea?’
‘Thank you.’
He got up and looked as if he was intending to sit down next to her. She stopped him: ‘No, I want to be able to see you.’
He sat down again.
‘Honza, my pet, will you listen to me now?’
‘Yes. I always listen to you, Alena. And every one of your words will stay with me: till the day I die.’
‘That’s fine. So tell me how you could do such a thing. What were you thinking of at the time?’
‘I wasn’t thinking of anything. I just realised I would never see you again. That it was the end.’
‘You know yourself that isn’t true.’
‘Isn’t true. Tell me once again that it isn’t!’
‘No, hold on. That’s not the point. Didn’t you give any thought at all to what effect you’d have on the people around you? On your mother? And me? How can someone do something like that and not give a thought to the people around him?’
‘There was only one thing I could think of: that I wouldn’t be able to live without you!’
‘You know very well you’ll live without me.’
‘I’ll live if that’s what you want.’
‘No! Say: I’ll live because I myself want to.’
‘I will live because I want to if that’s what you want!’
‘You mean you don’t enjoy life?’
‘I do enjoy it.’
‘Well, there you are!’
‘When I’m with you, Alena. When I know I’m breathing the same air as you. When I can see your wonderful brow, when I can hear your voice. Are you cross with me?’
‘No . . . I don’t know . . . I’m touched by what you say. But don’t you even enjoy listening to music? Or dancing?’
‘Alena, whenever I hear beautiful music it reminds me of you. And if ever I go dancing again I’ll tell myself how you danced with me that evening and had a snow star on your forehead. Because that was the happiest evening of my life.’
‘You’ll be happy again. There are lots of people you’ll be happy with. You’ll be happier with them than you ever could be with me.’
‘Are you serious, Alena?’
‘It’s what I believe.’
‘I don’t, Alena. I’ve already got to know people. I’ve got to know what they’re really like. Just after Dad went to prison I had my eighth birthday. Mum baked a cake and said: invite some lads. I had three pals; we were always together. And she made sandwiches too. And that wasn’t as simple as it sounds; we had no money at the time. I told those boys and they all promised they’d come. Then I spent the whole afternoon waiting for them and when evening came not one of them had turned up because their parents wouldn’t let them on account of my father being in prison.’
‘But that’s ages ago, Honza! There’s no need to dwell on it now!’
‘I always got top marks at school, because Mum told me that that was my only hope of getting into secondary school and that she had a promise from the principal. But then they sent me to a factory, anyway.’
‘But it worked out all right in the end, didn’t it?’
‘Yes, because I met you.’
‘I’m talking about something else, aren’t I?’
‘Yes, forgive me. It’s all been inconsiderate of me. I’ll go. I’ll go out of here and out of your life.’
‘All I want is for you to be happy. With me you wouldn’t be.’
‘I’d be the happiest man on earth.’
‘You know that’s not true.’
‘Anyone who’s lucky enough to be near you, Alena, has to be happy. Anyone who
glimpses you, if only for a split second. When you have this look in your eyes. When you have eyes like an angel, like a goddess!’
‘Stop saying such things!’
‘It’s the truth, Alena. You’re the most marvellous person I’ve ever met. And the most beautiful. You’ve got such lovely hands.’
‘Honza, my love, please, you gave me your promise . . .’
‘But it’s all right on your hand, isn’t it? I’d love to kiss your hands from morning to night. And through the night. And listen to you breathing.’
‘Hold it. I wanted to tell you that it’s not because of me that you see and feel as you do. It’s because you’re in love. Promise me . . .’
‘But I’ve promised you everything: that I’ll be happy, that I’ll walk around Prague smiling at everyone . . .’
‘Please, don’t be ironic. I want you to promise me you’ll never again . . . that you’ll never again try to take your own life.’
‘I promise you, but . . .’
‘If you love me just a little bit, then there’ll be no buts about it . . .’
‘I’ll never forget you, Alena, as long as I live.’
‘That’s fine. You’ll have to live a long time so I always have someone who will never forget me!’
‘You want me to think about you?’
‘I’ll think about you too, even when you have someone else to love. And I’ll be glad there is someone you love, and who . . .
‘I’ll never love anyone. How can you even say such a thing, Alena? Alena, you can’t seriously mean it – that I’d be capable of loving someone the way I do you. I’d sooner . . . I’d sooner not live . . .’
‘You will live and you will love someone!’
‘I get you, Alena. You’ve had enough. I’ll leave tomorrow. I promise. And you won’t have to worry about me any more. That was also one of the reasons why I did it, Alena: so I wouldn’t be a nuisance any more. I’m always a nuisance to everyone.’
‘Don’t talk that way. You know it hurts me when you say such things.’
‘But afterwards, when we were already in the car, I suddenly saw how everything was slipping away from me, how you were receding, and it struck me what an awful thing I’d done, and I longed to wake up and see you once more. In ten years’ time, say! That was the last thing that went through my mind – I sort of pictured myself ringing your doorbell, but it was years from now, because I could see myself and I had grey hair. I got terribly frightened in case you weren’t there behind the door, that it wouldn’t be you who opened it or that I, that by then I . . .’