by Ivan Klíma
I was prepared to report on my journey and my research into foreign mores, but amazingly enough no one displayed any curiosity; they were all too preoccupied with their own problems. So in the end it was I who listened: to news of the last parliamentary session (did I know that they no longer voted unanimously?), news of newly created organisations (even the tens of thousands of those who had been unjustly sentenced over past years were allowed to establish them), news of new journals (Matěj had brought a package of them; I was to read them straight away in order to understand what was actually happening – one could even find out things from the newspapers now, as people were writing for them freely). They drowned each other out and choked on news reports – even Oldřich, for whom politics was more of a game which he observed with interest but unemotionally – and pronounced heated judgements. While I had been away, they had all signed lots of appeals, attended lots of meetings, spoken at various assemblies; now they wanted to know what I intended to do. I could, of course, return to the institute, because all the charges that were laid against me had now been dropped, or would be. (Nimmrichter had already been dismissed; it had been discovered that once, when he was still working as a warder, he had tortured some priests and would be having to answer for it in court.) But it would not be advisable for me to waste time in the institute, I would be needed in more important areas. Indeed at this very moment reliable judges were being sought for the rehabilitation tribunals. (Surely I knew that parliament had passed laws allowing the investigation of unjust convictions?) There was such a shortage of people with the necessary skills who also commanded people’s trust.
But I wasn’t publicly known.
I was mistaken; the specialised public knew me.
When they left after midnight, I sat down with the journals. The same faces stared out at me from the different title pages – caricatures of politicians, even: something very novel to my eyes. Dawn was already breaking outside as I scanned the pictures. It was like reading over a fellow-passenger’s shoulder in the tram; my attention was caught by particular headlines and I would read random paragraphs, readers’ letters, complaints about the injustices and crimes of the previous years, and I started to become aware of the purgative significance of what had happened here, and I started to acquire my friends’ enthusiasm, and their excitement at the longed-for freedom which had been unexpectedly obtained. It was as if my long-lost dreams of a perfect state, a juster society and freedom to associate were coming alive within me again. Only this time I was not a powerless youngster, I was of an age when I could take part; and it could well be that the society I lived in expected it of me.
I dozed off in the armchair where I was reading, and in the morning was unable to restrain my impatience and drove into town, parking the car right in front of the Main Station. I stopped at a kiosk to buy some newspapers and behind the glass I could see a postcard with a picture of our first President and even a book about him, as well as some postcards with naked girls. I bought all the daily papers and an illustrated magazine I had never seen before.
As I walked along Příkopy, I encountered two young fellows, both long-haired and one of them bearded, reminiscent of the students in Michigan, standing in the middle of the pavement manning a stall covered in sheets of paper. Passers-by would stop and some would add their signatures.
I went up to them and read the text on one of the sheets, but there was too much commotion for me to concentrate.
I was about to move on when the bearded youngster asked me whether I would like to sign, or whether I had any questions. In sudden confusion I shook my head, pulled out my pen, and added my name to a long column of signatures.
5
A few days after I returned – and on the eve of ‘that night’ – I received a visit from my Uncle Gustav in the unwitting role of harbinger of doom. I had not seen him for a long time and had only heard from my mother that he was not well, that his wounded leg and his heart were playing him up. He hung his stick on the back of the chair and limped heavily around the flat at my heels. He commended listlessly our standard furniture and standardised rooms and then asked after my wife and the children.
I didn’t know what to talk to him about; I had no idea why he had dropped in out of the blue like that: the uncle whom I was once fond of and even admired when he returned as a hero after the war. So I started to tell him about America, but he interrupted me and started to hold forth about America himself. He recalled the black soldiers he had fought with in Africa; they had told him all about the misery of the shanty towns they lived in and the discrimination they suffered. I pointed out that times had changed, but Uncle told me with irritation not to try and tell him how things were, he could see very well what ‘my favourites’ were up to in Vietnam, how they’d found some other coloured subject-race to shoot at and keep their factories in business. Then he asked me whether it was true that we were planning to proclaim innocent all those convicted reactionaries, class enemies and agents who had been found guilty at one time in accordance with the laws in force then. And my uncle’s hands trembled, his eyes became bloodshot, veins stood out on his brow and the froth formed at the corners of his mouth.
I said that it would be necessary to exonerate all those who were truly innocent.
And how did we plan to find out after all these years?
It would be necessary to do all that was humanly possible.
They had all been guilty in their way, my uncle declared. They had hated the new regime and would have happily shot those who supported it.
I said that they had good reason to feel hatred and no one could be convicted for what he would like to do, nor rewarded for that matter. People could only be convicted for what they did, not what they thought. Anyway, he knew very well that savage sentences had been handed out to people who had done nothing wrong at all, not even in their thoughts. Could he have forgotten my father?
He asked me not to bring my father’s case into it. Of course, Viktor had been innocent, but people like him had been, or would be, rehabilitated within the Party; they didn’t need to drag in the courts; that was obvious to every true Communist.
I made the comment that people who had been wrongly convicted by a court must be acquitted of those false charges by a court, even if they themselves did not seek redress.
He replied that I and the rest of my ilk were all mistaken. We were naive and were being taking for a ride by our enemies. We had forgotten that we were in the middle of a life-and-death struggle in our country, not some village brawl.
I tried to explain something but my uncle was not listening. He informed me that if some injustices had occurred, it was necessary for us to accept the fact. It was the inexorable law of every power struggle. But struggle was a matter for men and not for the sentimental sons of the petty bourgeois. They went soppy over every little injustice, every instance of force, even the justified use of force which revolutions always entail. But what injustices had occurred in actual fact? my uncle asked. It had been no more than a case of the losers suffering the consequences of their defeat. I hadn’t known those losers when they were still in power. I didn’t remember their cruelty, when little orphans had been turned away hungry from their doors, while they themselves lived in the luxury of their many-roomed villas, surrounded by servants, chamber-maids, governesses, cooks and tutors. I didn’t remember anything. But the least I could do would be to read about the Jews of old, and to my amazement, my uncle started to quote from the Bible, about how they had been proud of their intransigence, and how, when they conquered enemy cities, they did not leave one soul alive. It never used to strike them that they ought to apologise for their victims, let alone to them! No power on earth could afford such a luxury: to stop in the midst of battle and start examining itself and disavowing the actions which had won it authority.
I said that the only chance the present regime had of obtaining any authority was by seeking to rectify its actions or, rather, its crimes.
My uncle sto
od up, raised his stick and shouted that I was a subversive. We were all subversives who were undoing the work of whole generations in a few moments.
As if I was not aware that fanatics can only be appeased, never convinced, I tried to explain to my uncle where he was wrong. What was happening was precisely the last attempt to save the work of those generations. I trusted he thought me an honourable person with no ulterior or self-seeking motives. I assured him that it was only now as an adult that I was experiencing for the first time the uplifting feeling that my work not only gave my life meaning, it also served some greater ideal, something that transcended me – an ideal which I represented and which, I believed, was not alien to him.
My uncle froze for a moment, then dropped his raised arm and leaned on his stick. I could hear his heavy breathing. He could see that his visit had been a waste of time. We no longer spoke the same language. I had become a renegade.
He stopped once more in the doorway. He said he was curious what we would make of it. He was curious, though he would sooner not live to see it. Luckily he had hopes of not living to see it. Uncle Gustav made an attempt at ironic laughter and was gripped by a fit of coughing.
I heard his coughing fade into the distance and the sound of his stick on the stairs, and could see again my childhood home: me lying on my bed waiting impatiently for my uncle to arrive and yank me out of my loneliness and immobility with his lively stories. I realised that my uncle would probably never come again, and I mourned the old-fashioned embittered stubbornness of the lonely old man.
As on every evening. I still had work to do and my wife went off to bed before me. For a while, I sat reading some manuscripts and then perusing the magazines that had piled up on my desk.
It was not yet midnight when I fell asleep, and I must have slept very soundly because I was unable to rouse myself, even though the telephone must have been ringing for a long time. Even before I lifted the receiver, I was aware of the roar of some distant machines.
I picked up the receiver. Adam, is that you? Matěj yelled like a madman. Adam, do you know what’s happened? The Russians are here!
I said something like why, or when, and then hung up.
It was a quarter past three; I went into the kitchen and cooked myself some breakfast. Dawn was beginning to break. I wrote a note: They say the Russians are here! I left the note lying on the table.
Then I set off for town. It was light already. Several tanks were standing in front of the radio building surrounded by a throng of people. There was a sound of sporadic gunfire from nearby. The shouts merged. An ambulance siren sounded and I saw two men with a stretcher. Someone was lying on it, but he was covered up, with only the top of his head showing. Oddly enough, I felt no fear at that moment. I elbowed my way through until I was near one of the tanks and could hear the artless phrases which my unknown and unarmed fellow-citizens were using to try to convince the soldiers to go back to where they had come from.
I continued down along Wenceslas Square. There were more and more people about, some carrying flags.
Even on my own square there was a close-packed crowd, some of them singing. Foreign troops stood on guard around the Old Town Hall. I noticed a tall man in glasses get up on a bench (I knew his face from somewhere; most likely we had attended the same conference some time) and start to explain something to the soldiers in Russian. I did not manage to catch what he was saying, but the soldiers listened motionless, or rather, with obduracy. Then an officer appeared and gave an order to the soldiers who then dragged him down from the bench and led him off somewhere.
I made my way into one of the adjacent lanes and leaned against the wall of a house. There was a time when I used to walk this way to school, I realised. A radio was playing loudly from a window above my head, but it sounded distant to me.
The tanks could start to move and open fire at any moment. I remembered my small daughter, who was probably not even awake yet. I thought how in a moment she would wake up – into this cruel, pitiless world: a world of soulless steel and power which never brought anything but destruction. How could I have forgotten, even for a moment, how could I have doubted its essence?
And I had nothing with me, no weapon, not even a knife. And there was no point in screaming, I didn’t know how to anyway, and I’d forgotten how to cry. It crossed my mind that I would soon be thirty-seven and I could well be at the mid-point of my life, and from here people most likely looked backwards – to take stock, and forwards, to try to guess their future.
But what could I have seen, what could I have seen now?
Chapter Ten
* * *
* * *
1
HE WAS ON the terrace above the aircraft taxi area, leaning on the rail. An icy wind was blowing from the north-west and driving the snow in clouds along the empty runway. He turned up his collar and sheltered as best he could by the side wall.
At least he had left his parents inside; his mother would certainly have caught cold. His mother was happy, his father was more angry than anything else, and he – well, what were his feelings? Right up to this moment he had not believed his brother would really return. It had seemed too unlikely that he would come back. Hanuš had always calculated with such precision. Unless his calculations had only been a front.
A plane appeared high above the western horizon and rapidly came closer. There was no let up in the wind and the cold started to penetrate him.
Perhaps he really ought to have made an effort to influence his decision. Why hadn’t he? Because he thought it was wrong to, or because he had been afraid to? Had he been too preoccupied with his own cares? Or had he subconsciously hoped that his brother would return and they could be together again?
Now he could hear the whine of the engines; several rooks rose from the snow-covered apron and flew over his head.
At least he should have given him a more precise idea of the way things were here. When people were far from home, they easily fell prey to illusions, even if they were the best arithmeticians in the world.
The aircraft had landed in the distance on the concrete strip and was now speeding towards him. Several auxiliary vehicles set off from the terminal to meet it.
He watched in suspense as the aircraft came to a halt and the stairs were driven up to the fuselage. He walked a short way along the terrace as if to get a clearer view.
Fortunately he had good distance vision, like a sailor. The first to emerge was an air-hostess, followed by a Negro in a long fur coat, and several Japanese, or maybe Vietnamese, who all came gingerly down the stairs step by step.
He had butterflies in his stomach like before an exam. He had wanted his brother to return, after all, and now the actual reason struck him: he saw his return as a hopeful sign. Hanuš, who had always calculated everything and who had always valued freedom from his earliest years – so much so that he had always been geared up for a fight – was bound to have some rational motive for returning. Some hope, something of value that could be seen from over there better than from here, at close quarters. Even if that something of value was only that they would be near each other.
More and more figures appeared from inside the plane. His vision started to fail. The sky darkened and the cloud of snow that was swirling round the aircraft became thicker.
Finally an old woman hobbled out, probably the last passenger; he had the impression he could hear the tap of her walking stick on the metal of the steps. He sighed out loud, he had better go back and join his parents in the arrivals hall: and then they emerged. First a man in a dark overcoat and then a gendarme, the bayonet on his rifle pointing menacingly at the lowering sky. The first man waved a dark lantern, and carefully came down the stairs one at a time.
They were already on the ground. They took a careful grip on the stretcher and made their way with difficulty through the snow and darkness. He alone was missing, but that was merely an oversight. He leaped over the rail and landed softly and silently in the snow, scaring a coupl
e of rooks, and was running towards them.
His brother’s pale, emaciated face could be seen from beneath the military blankets.
He leaned over the stretcher so that his little brother would know he was near him and did not have to be frightened any more. ‘So you’re back.’
‘Yeah. I had the feeling that you were in a bad way so I jumped on a plane. I expect you’d have done the same. After all, you even gave me blood that time, if you recall.’
The freezing snow crackled quietly. ‘Aren’t you afraid of what will happen to you?’
‘Of course I am. You aren’t afraid of what will happen to you?’
‘Yes, I am too. But less and less, I think.’
‘You mustn’t look at the gate they close behind you.’
‘And what are you looking at?’
‘At the sky, at this particular moment.’
And all of a sudden, he recalled a distant sense of release, an absurd experience of freedom on a path between two prison buildings. It was immaterial what would happen next. Only an effeminate, pampered and introverted mentality demanded the assurance that everything that caused it to rejoice at a given moment, everything that nourished and intoxicated its body and soul, would last for ever and ever. There was no way of insuring the future, one could only lose the present. He waded through the snow and was so conscious of the uniqueness of this moment that he was happy, even though, each time he glanced up, he could see before him the yawning barrack gates, and between them, beneath grinning horses’ heads, a guard just like the one escorting them stood observing their approach.
His brother was still looking up at the sky. Now his face was quite recognisable, in spite of the unfamiliar beard. Just behind him came his wife, whom he knew only from photographs. He raised his arm and waved, but his brother didn’t see him; his brother’s sight was bad, unlike his. So he ran back into the arrivals hall to welcome him.