Stefan Heym

by The Eyes of Reason

  “Yes,” he repeated, “if I had anything to say about it, we’d have such a law!”

  Lida was waiting for the peasant grin to spread over Joseph’s face; he had delivered himself of an unexpectedly clever diversion, and she hoped it would work; but he always gave himself away with that smirk.

  Joseph didn’t smile. A plan was shaping up in his head. “As things are,” he said, “you want Vesely’s Cut Glass to finance Blaha until he’s been retrained and can stand on his own—in other words, to make him a rather munificent gift.”

  “Put it any way you like,” said Kravat.

  Joseph turned to Lida. “Can you afford it, darling?”

  She glared at him. “No!”

  “If you’d let the union have a look at your books,” Kravat suggested, “we’d show you how.”

  “Mr. Kravat, you’ll just have to take my wife’s word.”

  Kravat moved restlessly. Lida frowned with every squeak of his boots. “I thought you had learned something,” Kravat was saying. “I thought when the people took things into their hands in May, that showed you something. I thought—”

  Joseph interrupted him. “I don’t care what you think we should have learned, Mr. Kravat,” he said cuttingly. “And I don’t like threats. Now—here is Blaha. It isn’t his fault that his hands went bad on him; he shouldn’t be made to suffer. And here is Vesely’s Cut Glass, financially unable to keep him....Blaha, I’ll tell you what I’ll do for you. Take a few days off, and Monday, you’ll report for work at Benda—at your old pay!”

  He permitted Blaha to thank him. He put his hand on his wife’s shoulder and stood next to her, a little like the bridegroom on the wedding picture. He said to Kravat, “Let’s get together on such a law, sometime! In an industry like ours, and in times like these, the interests of workers and employers coincide more and more.” And as Kravat wouldn’t commit himself, he walked over to Karel and laughed, “You’d make a hell of a good Works doctor!”

  “Very cozy idea,” Karel agreed. “All in the family.”

  “But, unfortunately, it wouldn’t be right for me to hire you.”

  “It wouldn’t be right for me to work for you,” said Karel.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE BLOW came without warning.

  The second mail reached Joseph’s desk usually by three in the afternoon; with it came the Prague morning papers. He saw the headlines—they were black and prominent and practically identical in all the papers.

  The President had signed the Nationalization Decrees.

  The Decrees were modestly headed: On the Nationalization of Mines and Some Industrial Enterprises. The “some” caused Joseph to snicker. His eyes were held by a few of the sententious phrases that were printed under Benes’s name as an introduction to the decrees: It was always clear to me that all modern wars must inevitably assume revolutionary aspects in Europe....

  Must they? thought Joseph. And why must these aspects, so-called, always be turned against the few who were strong and bright enough to get ahead in the world? He read on: There simply is, on the continent of Europe, a transition from pure Liberalism to a system in which the Socialist elements will have considerable weight or even preponderance.

  And how far would that go? Where was the limit to that preponderance? Was there nobody to stop that nonsense? We are one of those States, Benes had written lamely, which are mature enough and whose citizens are sufficiently enlightened not to have to be forced into any Socialistic measures by strikes, revolts, and conflicts, or even by a civil war....

  Joseph scoffed. Small Nation talk—we’ve always aped our master’s style. Time was when we used to be Imperial because in Vienna, they had a court; after 1918, we were conservative democrats because in Paris, they had that kind of Republic; then we went authoritarian because in Berlin they told us to; and now we’re having a preponderance of Socialist elements because in Moscow—

  What was that! He read again, his hands clammy, his fingers crumpling the page: On the day of promulgation of this decree, the following enterprises are nationalized by transferring them to State ownership...two types of glassworks (all enterprises in existence on the day when this decree comes into force), to wit, all sheet glass factories, all glass furnaces....

  All glass furnaces...! No distinction as to number of workers employed—simply all glass furnaces. His work, for nothing! His planning, his foresight, his dealings with the bank—for nothing! The nights of lost sleep, when he had stayed up with the workers rebuilding the furnace—for nothing! His years in England, and the war—for nothing! The immolation of his youth and his dreams, his obedience to his father, his marriage to Lida, the complete identification of himself with a group of shabby buildings and a pile of chamotte bricks and the constant heat of gaseous flames—his whole life—for nothing!

  The following enterprises are nationalized...all glass furnaces—by a stroke of the pen!...Where was Dolezhal? Dolezhal’s assurances that only plants with more than three hundred workers...Dolezhal’s intercessions with the District National Committee...Dolezhal’s hints, You must come to Prague soon, a man of your personality, your ideas....Yes, where was Dolezhal?

  He was right here, at the end of the Decrees, his name along with the list of all the other Cabinet members. Just a politician hanging on to his seat. What a joke!

  What a joke on me.

  He got up. He shoved the newspapers off his desk. He pulled his chair to the wall and, controlling his wobbly knees with effort and using the top of the display case containing his models as support, he climbed on the seat. Then, with deliberate, strong strokes, he penciled a mustache on his father’s clean-shaven, aloof face.

  The office door opened behind him. He stopped, turned, almost fell off the chair, balanced himself, and blushingly faced his wife.

  Lida went to the wall cabinet in which he kept his stationery supplies. She rummaged for a moment and then came over to him. “Here’s a good, soft eraser,” she said.

  He took it without a word, and went to work on the portrait.

  “It won’t all come off,” he said finally.

  She offered him her hand, and he climbed down. For the first time since she had entered, he dared to look into her face. It was soft, almost young, almost as it had been in the early months of their marriage.

  “So you know?” he asked, still holding on to her hand.

  She nodded.

  “What’ll we do?” he said. “It’s inconceivable, absolutely inconceivable.”

  “We still have Vesely’s,” said Lida.

  He noticed that she had said “We,” and wanted to ask her about it but was afraid she might correct herself and say “I”; and so he said nothing.

  There was the old leather sofa from Peter Benda’s time which Joseph had resurrected from the attic after his return to Rodnik. He had had it placed next to the stove, and there it stood, old-fashioned and broad and solid. Lida sat down in its corner.

  “We still have Vesely’s,” she said again.

  He was holding the eraser between his fingers and kneading it. “You have it, and how long will you have it?”

  She took the eraser from him. “Come sit with me,” she said.

  “I should never have come back! I should have stayed in England, or gone to America! Elinor Simpson would have fixed it for me. A sentimental idiot, that’s what I’ve been!”

  He saw her mouth get thin.

  “I mean—I should have come and got you and Petra out of here, and that should have been the last I ever saw of this place and this ridiculous country! Where do they think they’re going? Who’ll run the Benda Works? Ministerial Councilor Novak?”

  “You’ve had this argument with him before,” she remarked.

  “I don’t deserve that kind of deal!” he stormed. “I’ve been a decent, loyal man. Why are they doing it? Why are they doing it to me?”

  “Maybe you’ve been too decent and too loyal.”

  “First they take the Benda Works, then they�
��ll take Vesely’s, then they’ll take the house and the car and our furniture and clothes, and then they’ll take our child.”

  “Just like the Nazis!” she said.

  “No, not like the Nazis! Herr Hammer wanted the Benda Works, and under the Nazis he got them and then we could take them away from him again. But these people are worse—they’re not going to allow any private property at all! This is a permanent steal!”

  Lida’s face was drawn. “What are you going to do? Sit back here and wait until the Commissars come and order you out?”

  “What can you do?” he sneered.

  “Fight it! What did you do after Munich?”

  He laughed in her face. He slapped her thigh so hard that she winced. “And who else is going to be in the fight? After Munich, yes—there were millions of people in this country who stood to lose everything....Who d’you think is going to risk his neck now so that I can get back the Benda Works? Do you really expect us to have another underground, maybe, against the preponderance of Socialist elements? Do you really think somebody is going to make war so I can keep my property?”

  She rubbed her thigh. “There’s Dolezhal....”

  “Dolezhal!” He picked up one of the papers from the floor and with the back of his hand slapped the page with the reprint of the Decrees. “Dolezhal signed the whole thing!”

  “With two dozen others. I’m sure he hated it. I’m sure he didn’t enjoy going back on his own word to you. You’re not the only one hit by this and by what’s to come! Every shoemaker, every greengrocer, every peasant, everybody who owns as much as a sewing machine, is right with the you....”

  “Damn few men own glass furnaces and mines and banks and steel mills,” he retorted.

  “People know this is only a beginning. People aren’t that stupid.”

  “Maybe,” he admitted—“maybe they aren’t. But when the Commissars come and say: Joseph Benda, get up from your desk, I can’t throw them out as I threw out Aloysius Hammer! They’d come right back, with a squad of police—”

  “So we must arrange for a different text. Let them say instead: Mr. Benda, you stay right here and carry on for us. You’re a decent and loyal man and you know the glass business inside out and we need you.”

  Joseph looked at his wife. Her face was no longer soft or young; her eyes were hard and small, and the lipstick on her mouth could not give it a more generous shape. He took her hands into his like a man feeling a certain kind of love and lacking a better way of expressing it.

  “Joseph,” she said, “we’ve been too much apart.”

  “Yes,” he said.

  “Why do we have to be pushed into a catastrophe before we remember what we are to one another?”

  “Yes, why do we?” he said gently.

  She was thoughtful for a while. Then, without a trace of emotion in her voice, she suggested, “If I were you, I’d take the car and go to Prague and get busy.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, “you’re right.”

  In the yard, groups of workers were assembled, discussing the news in subdued and yet eager and excited tones. Kravat’s angular frame stood out among them. The workers touched their caps as Joseph and Lida went by. Joseph, raising his hat, said “Good day!” and “How are you?” and smilingly received their mumbled replies.

  “On such a day,” someone said, “you might expect him to forget these niceties.”

  “On such a day,” another answered, “he’d better be damned civil to us.”

  “He’s always treated us right,” said a third, an elderly man. “His father would take the skin off your back and curse you in the bargain, but this one’s all right, always a kind word and a smile.”

  “I wonder how it’ll be without him,” said the first.

  The plane from Paris cut down its cruising speed and for half a minute seemed to hang suspended in the soft oatmeal gray of the clouds. Then the gray fell behind, and under Elinor Simpson’s eyes was spread the familiar, thousand-towered shape of Prague. There was the bend of the river and Charles Bridge, the statues lining it sharp and delicate like tiny chess figures; there was Hradcany Hill, with the spires of St. Vitus’s Cathedral coming up at her at a crazy angle; the fading green of the Valdstyn Gardens, and the deep, black, crooked lines of the old streets.

  I love this Prague! She had written that years ago, just before Munich, but she remembered the piece by rote although she must have pushed out close to two thousand columns since. It is more beautiful than Paris, it has more life than London, it is the incarnation of Europe—it is Europe! I love this Prague and I shall do everything in my power to keep it free! May the compromisers in the Foreign Offices take note: Whoever has Prague, will have Europe....How prophetic she had been!

  A hand was on her shoulder. “Fasten your seat belt, please. We’re approaching Ruzyne Airport,” said the stewardess.

  “And don’t I know it!” said Elinor, without for a moment turning her eyes from the view through the window. Mechanically, she reached for the two ends of the web belt and slipped them loosely together. She never pulled them tight. Her girdle was bother enough.

  Her face was slightly flushed, and her breath was coming faster. It was not because they were losing altitude so rapidly; she was always gripped by this odd excitement when she came to Prague—so much of her life was tied up with it, the fight she had led and lost at Munich and won at Pearl Harbor; and poor little Czechoslovakia; and Thomas Benda.

  She reached into her pocketbook and felt for the letter Joseph had written her about Thomas. He hadn’t said much, but it had been enough, quite enough to make her want to come over. And the New York papers had printed conjectures about this new thing brewing in Czechoslovakia, this nationalization.

  The plane set down smoothly on the runway and taxied toward the hangar and stopped. She unfastened her seat belt and got up and was the first in the door, filling it majestically. She paused and waited; only a few men in Air Lines uniform stood at the foot of the ramp. No one was there to meet her.

  “Go ahead, lady!” someone said behind her.

  Joseph was probably inside the airport building, she thought and stepped out.

  Inside were the customs men and the border police, and beyond the wooden barrier, a small group of friends and relatives of other passengers: nobody she knew. Maybe the Western Union in Paris had messed up the telegram.

  The officials were checking her passport and going through her baggage. She had some soluble coffee and two cartons of teaballs and thirty packs of cigarettes and a small battery of toilet water and perfume bottles and jars of creams and a volume of T. S. Eliot’s poetry which she never read but which she knew Thomas would enjoy. The customs man glanced at the things, closed her suitcase, and said in labored English, “Madame, you are ready.” Since no porter was handy, he carried the bag through the gate in the railing.

  And there was Joseph.

  “Elinor!” He offered both his hands. “I’m so glad you could come! Terribly glad!”

  He picked up her suitcase.

  “Welcome to Czechoslovakia! I’m sorry I’m late; I’ll tell you about that. You must be dead. I have my car outside—”

  He was rushing her off and not giving her a chance to get in a word.

  “What is all this?” she managed to say as he pushed her toward his car.

  “Nice car, isn’t it?” he said. “Used to belong to the Kreisleiter in Usti. Got it cheap.”

  He dropped her suitcase and her hat bag in the rear, and held the front door open for her. He banged the door shut, climbed in on the other side, pressed his foot on the starter, and was off.

  “What’s the matter with you?” she demanded.

  He took off his hat and wiped his sweated face. “Now you can say something!” he chuckled. “I just didn’t want you to talk too much at the airport. You never know who’s around, these days.”

  She glanced at him sharply. “Is it that bad?”

  “Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn’t. The horrible t
hing is you can’t tell.”

  “I thought this country had been liberated!”

  “I thought so, too, until three days ago.”

  “And now?”

  “Maybe it’ll have to be liberated all over again.”

  They were entering the suburbs of Prague and driving through Dejvice. The festive precision of the outlines she’d seen from the air was gone. The small houses were strung drably along the road like gray beads on an old woman’s dress, just as she remembered them.

  But the man next to her had changed. He was keyed up, he spoke too fast and a little wildly. He used to be settled in his way, firm, almost sententious, and somewhat countrified. Perhaps it was his mood; or perhaps it was the war through which he had gone. She wondered about Thomas.

  “Liberated from what?” she asked as she smoothed the sides of her shining gray hair.

  “From the preponderance of Socialist elements,” he said sarcastically. “Do you know that, as of this morning, I’m a government official?”

  She had been fishing in her bag for a cigarette. She stopped. “What about your factory? You wrote me that it was taking up all your time.”

  “I had to see Minister Dolezhal; that’s why I was late at the airport. He fixed my appointment as National Administrator of the Benda Works. I’ve been nationalized, Elinor.”

  She frowned. “They took it away and gave it right back to you? Doesn’t sound so bad....”

  “You’ve got to have friends.”

  He stopped at a traffic light. As the light changed back to green, he stepped angrily on the gas. The car jumped forward.

  “I’ve become a little cog in a big machine. I’ll be sitting in the same chair, doing the same work, at one tenth my former income, and with every ignoramus in the district looking over my shoulder.”

  “I see.”

  “And I must be grateful on top of it! Others don’t have it that good. I’m in a relatively favorable position—I was in the war, I’ve got a clean record as far as the Government is concerned, there’s nothing against me in their files. So they’re gracious enough to permit me to be used.”