Today she looks through the window to see if her doctor has arrived, but on the street she can see nothing but a few uncouth officers whacking at maids’ skirts and untying their aprons. Today, oddly enough, even this she finds amusing and thinks about a story or novella that could be set in this kind of environment. She goes off to jot down a few notes. Later she returns to the window so as not to miss the sight of him coming to her home. What must he look like when walking along the street? People probably look at him.
They weren’t looking at him. On the street, nobody took any notice of the moustachioed man who swung his cane with confidence as he walked. She, on the other hand, upon seeing him, thought that Neptune himself had made a hole in the dark grey sky, or rather several holes, so that the rays of the sun, like countless torches, could project their light on that broad-shouldered man with a cane.
“Let’s not waste time, Fräulein Zaleski. You visited Mrs. Němcová after she returned to Prague from Northern Hungary.”
“More than once, Herr von Päumann.”
“What comments did she make about her deportation to Northern Hungary?”
“She told me that when she arrived at Banská Bystrica, the city’s prefect, whose name was Zólom, told her that he had received an order from his superiors to the effect that she should return home at once. She answered: ‘Dear me, whatever must I have done for them to be so afraid of me!’ She was very sorry not to be able to finish her literary tasks in Slovakia.”
“Northern Hungary.”
“I’m sorry, I meant Northern Hungary. That evening on her way from Northern Hungary, after having reached Bratislava and gone to the house of some acquaintances to spend the night, the police went to fetch her. She had to go with the officers at once. At four in the morning, they put her on the first train back to Prague.”
“All of this confirms our own information. What else were you able to discover?”
“After coming back, I visited Mrs. Němcová several times . . . ”
“You already told us that, also in writing. I have it here: ‘I visited Mrs. Němcová more than once . . .’”
“Forgive me. I imagine you will be interested in her relationship with the Czech writer, journalist, and revolutionary Karel Havlíček, who was deported to the Tyrol.”
“We are certainly most interested in that!”
“The last time I saw her, Němcová declared that she had to go and see Havlíček’s wife because she hadn’t visited her for a long time.”
“I will make a note of that. You may go, I will summon you here again soon.”
What Němcová cannot possibly know is that Julie Havlíček is seriously ill. Tuberculosis, like that pathetic informer of ours. Mrs. Havlíček will die before her twenty-seventh birthday. And she will not see her husband again. Havlíček, that arrogant journalist who, despite our efforts, we could never get on our side. I don’t want to wish anyone any harm, but fate will pay him back for all the damage he has caused our empire.
We have managed to silence many of the ringleaders of the 1848 revolution. We removed Palacký from the ranks of our scientists, we obliged Rieger to emigrate abroad, we forced some, such as Tomek and several others, to come to our side. But Havlíček is a tough nut to crack. We banned his newspaper but he went on publishing it clandestinely until we were obliged to deport him to some remote corner, in this case the Tyrol.
Oh, this Czech nationalist movement is so absurd! We have managed to paint it into a corner. Only this Havlíček remains! Now that we have reduced him to powerlessness in the Tyrol, the Czechs have converted him into a symbol of all their suppressed attempts to keep going. Yes, Havlíček, you’ll get what’s coming to you. I’ll make sure of that personally! Just as we shall knock the stuffing out of that miserable witch Němcová!
He came in. She melted in the shine of his smile. Then she lay face down, her muscles happily relaxed, lots of glass cups suctioned to her back. He went to the kitchen and brought out a steaming towel. When removing the glass cups he dropped the towel onto her back. The patient almost screamed, the burning fabric scalded her back so, but she imagined herself looking like a screaming pig and controlled herself. Afterward, he spread the burning towel over her entire back, pressing it down in various places: the nape, the waist, the thighs. Now the towel was warming her up agreeably.
“Turn onto your back.”
Betty Pankl signed the marriage certificate in her childlike, ornamental handwriting. Then her husband took the queen of the dahlia dance off to his prosaic, brutal, military world.
Červený Kostelec—a city both small and poor. A world of disappointment, misery, and suffering. Her husband’s coarse manners were better suited to the barracks. Betty got to know his habits well, without ever getting used to them. She never quite managed to tolerate Němec’s personality. From the start, fights broke out between husband and wife, leading to violent scenes: her husband was jealous of Betty’s admirers at society balls, he would haul her off mid-dance and at home he gave vent to anger befitting a military man. People said that one time he wanted to shoot his wife and that some day he might really do it.
Later came the journeys, those journeys that left Betty half-dead from exhaustion, those transfers from somewhere to somewhere else in Bohemia or Moravia. In this way, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy made Němec pay for his active participation in the Czech national movement. From Červený Kostelec they had to move to Josefov, and when Betty was seven months pregnant, they set off on a long journey along dusty, uneven roads to Litomyšl. From there they went to Polná, then back from the east to a place far in the west, to Domažlice, and then to Všeruby, a mountain village, and then all of a sudden off to the east again, to Nymburk, and when that was over they headed north, to Liberec. Over this period, Betty had four children, became chronically ill, met Czech patriots, and burned all the literary drafts that she had written in the German language.
Above all, when her husband was transferred to Prague, she got a chance to spend a long time in the city. She decided that it was there where she would put down roots. Not long after her twenty-third birthday she felt healthy enough to take part in social and cultural life. Prague made a deep impression on her. This young woman never missed a ball, or any operatic or theatrical performance, or any excursion or meeting organized by Czech writers.
It was Sunday, a lukewarm March day. Betty put on a new spring dress and a straw hat with a ribbon. I like to imagine that the ribbon was green, so it would match the color of her eyes. Writers, artists, students, and their girlfriends met up among the rocks and woods of Šárka. Spring was already in the air, even though the branches of the trees were still bare. She had always liked that time of year just before the arrival of spring; she called it the era of hope. The groups of friends headed toward the castle submerged in the Star Forest. Nebesky, the poet whose pseudonym was Celestial, approached Betty, whom he’d met a few days earlier on Sofia Island. In Šárka, the poet admired the wild-looking rocks; Betty looked at the emergent grass. The young poet picked a bunch of violets with which he decorated his friend’s hat. He talked to her about German philosophy and other things, but the main theme of the monologue was the role he believed the Czech nation would one day play. Celestial made an effort to impress her, this beauty from the provinces, and she listened to him attentively, but with reserve. The poet held forth more and more because he found this young woman had unusual intelligence and powers of understanding. On their way back, they reached Saint Margaret’s Chapel, where they broke away from the group to continue their walk to Strahov. Prague was at their feet, the dark blue ribbon of the Vltava dividing it in two. From up above, the river looked like a winding stream that crossed a few narrow walkways. Above the couple’s heads, the stars blinked and winked. Both felt that this moment was as unusual as it was unrepeatable.
Even now, a decade later, Božena still remembers that sudden sense of connection. She told me that the world opened out before her: her intoxicated mind im
mersed itself in the shadows of the universe and flew around its lights; in that labyrinth of the infinite there appeared before her a small but brightly lit place. As if ashamed of the grandiloquent words she was about to use, she whispered them into my ear: “my country.” Then and there she promised her new friends that at home she would write a poem about the ideas they had discussed. She wrote it down immediately when she got back, in the silence of the night. The title was: “To Czech women,” and she signed it: Božena Němcová. This is how Betty, who had expressed herself in German, turned overnight into Božena, a writer in the Czech language.
The poem, that Celestial reworked as best he could, soon appeared in the magazine Flowers, it was followed by other poems and in a short time the name Božena Němcová penetrated the consciousness of the Czech literati.
Then came the summer. Celestial went off on a holiday in the woods around Kokořín castle. Božena went to see him there. For one of their walks around that romantic castle, she wore the garnet necklace that her grandmother had bequeathed her, and told its story to her friend. Celestial wanted to have it as a token of her love for him. You gave him everything, Božena, you gave yourself to him unreservedly, despite the terrible scenes your husband made at home. And Celestial lorded over you, but he never managed to obtain your grandmother’s garnet necklace.
In the fall, Celestial left to work in Vienna. Božena sickened with sorrow. She was cared for by the doctor Čejka, one of her countless admirers. He brought her books on ancient Greece and spoke tenderly to her. He hoped that by reading the Iliad and the Odyssey, she would become interested in classical culture—that is to say, in him—and would distance herself from romantic literature—that is to say, from Celestial. Both men, Celestial in Vienna and Čejka in Prague, competed with each other by writing verses that spoke of you, Božena, and of their jealousy. Prague society had fun at your expenses. Since then you have never ceased to offer yourself up as a subject for gossip, for anecdotes recounted at the dinner parties of certain artistic circles in Prague. That has never bothered you one bit. But, for some reason, it saddens me.
You were forever curing yourself of lovesickness as if it were a contagious disease. Later, once the worst was over, you started to write. First poems, then folktales. When it comes down to it, everything you have written up to now has been fairy tales. In your novels and stories you write about the things you had dreamed of as a girl. Long ago, your grandmother told you all those Czech folktales that have happy endings, and you, ingenuous as you are, thought that life was like that too. Even now you still believe in dragons, witches, and Prince Charming, admit it! You’ve been looking for Prince Charming in the kind of men who more resemble dragons. You know this perfectly well, yet you go on searching, you dunce, you keep on trusting, so naively!
But . . . your quest for ideal love will be the end of you. I promise you that. I, Vítězka, whom none of you have ever taken into consideration, promise you that.
The doctor massaged her more attentively than ever. In fact, were his fingers moving above the surface of the corset or beneath it? Where did the doctor end and the man begin?
In the evening, she rejected her husband’s advances. She couldn’t stand him. Her head was full of the young doctor. She asked herself what good could come of it, unable as she was to allow herself any false hope. Even if he had taken a serious interest in her, how long could it last? Soon he would find a girl his own age, and Božena would be the one who suffered. Having thought it over for a while, she told herself: I will turn it all into literature. I will celebrate him through my stories and novels, that would be the greatest thing I could offer him. In this respect, no other woman can ever outdo me. But I will not let myself be deprived of reality. Let whatever has to happen, happen. I will experience it to the fullest, even if it costs me my life.
“Your medical treatment has a sweetness to it,” she told the doctor the following day. “Your methods are as gentle as the caress of a bird’s wing. In general, doctors tend to like the sight of blood. At the drop of a hat they bleed you or reach for their scalpels.”
“Yes, my methods are rather refined.”
“Everything can be cured with refined methods?”
“Curing somebody is like fighting against an enemy. If you can’t make headway with a subtle, painless method, you attack head on.”
“Why are you treating me? You are caring for me, a poor woman, free of charge. What do you get out of it?”
“A doctor’s mission is to help people. Our mutual friends told me that you, an admired and respected writer—I will not use the word ‘famous’ because it is not in my vocabulary—are being persecuted by society at large and perhaps even by the secret police. A moment ago, I said that refined people will defeat the vulgar ones. This is a truth difficult to deny, but it is just as difficult to make it fit into real life. I try to do just that: I am always on the side of the persecuted.”
“You’re treating me for free because you think I’m well-known, even though I am not well-regarded by most people.”
“Be careful with the business of fame: remember that the tallest trees are the ones that are felled.”
“Or perhaps you are treating me because I’m a Czech writer who defends everything that is ours, everything Czech, and tries to instill meaning in it all.”
“What interests me is the universe, not national questions. Although there is no doubt that you are right.”
“What do you mean, I’m right? What is truth?”
“Paradoxical, always.”
“What does that mean?”
“That you have to bend. If you don’t want to be broken, bend.”
“How can I bend when I have a goal? I feel that I should become a kind of educator. Or a writer who teaches.”
“An educator, a master? I would only accept the second meaning of the latter word: a good person is the master of a bad one.”
“I have set myself a goal, namely, to conquer ignorance.”
“You, conquer? What is victory? The most appropriate way of celebrating a victory is by organizing a funeral service, a sensible person would say.”
“Come down to my level. Although there is much I do not know, I know much more than most: I know Czech history, the Czech language, Czech culture. What I want to do, what I need to do, is share this knowledge of mine with other people, so that they may follow me if they wish.”
“Have more humility! Nobody knows anything, you included.”
He grabbed his cane and hat, and took a long look at her from the doorway, saying, “Recognize that too, dear friend, and you will be happy.”
She leaned back on the window frame and watched him leave. He didn’t swing his cane; the points of his mustache no longer pointed all the way up. Neptune did not illuminate him with torches. On the contrary, the light emanated from him, she thought.
“Fräulein Zaleski, we do not have enough information on the activity of the writer Němcová during the revolutionary upsets of 1848. Unfortunately, during that period we had not yet started to intercept correspondence. We have asked you for a minute description of this writer’s activity then. I do not need to add that this material is of the utmost importance to us. Do you have it?”
“In 1848, when Němcová was twenty-eight years old, her husband was transferred to Všeruby, a small mountain village on the border between Bohemia and Bavaria. The Němec family was billeted at the home of the pharmacist. The people in that area tended to speak the German language and prefer German culture. Once in the village, Němcová dedicated herself—as she had done wherever she moved—to bringing Czech culture to these people, to popularizing Czech culture, to spreading the use of the Czech language. She ordered Czech books from Prague booksellers, paid for them with her own money, and then set up a kind of mobile library and bookshop.”
“Have you any proof the writer was involved in these activities?”
“Of course. I have a copy of a letter of hers addressed to Pospíšil, a Pr
ague publisher, dated April 17 1848: ‘Last year, during my stay in Prague, you and I decided that I could run a bookshop aimed at educating these country people. The people here know almost nothing about the world. I consider it most important, as would anybody concerned with the well-being of their nation, that country folk be better informed. For the time being, the only way to educate people is through reading. Which is why I have set all my hopes on the idea of a mobile library and bookshop, an enterprise that would prove to be of great value to ignorant people.’
“How did this enterprise fare?”
“As was to be expected, Němcová lost a lot of money with it. Not only that, but also the inhabitants of that geographical area, who had at first been indifferent toward the Němec couple, became openly hostile. This is natural enough: Němcová woke them up from their lethargy and somnolence. Should you require proof in writing, here is a note of hers dating from that period: ‘They’ve shown their true colors, these people from the villages and the town of Domažlice. My husband and I cannot so much as step out into the street, because they have threatened to beat us and throw us out by brute force. This churlishness instead of gratitude for our sincere concern for them.’”
“Could it be said that this writer launched a campaign of political agitation?”
“Yes, what she was doing was mobilizing the poor against the rich.”
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