Stefan Heym

by The Eyes of Reason

  Elinor said with conviction, “But you don’t think this thing’s going to last?”

  They came down Avenue King George VI; the traffic grew heavier; the lumbering streetcars had to be passed carefully.

  “Will it last?” he replied. “How can it last! It’s nonsense, economically, politically. And yet—for instance, there’s a fellow named Novak—he’s the evil spirit in Dolezhal’s office—Communist, I suppose. What they get their teeth into, they don’t give up easily. Dolezhal’s all right, though—”

  “He is, is he?”

  “Don’t you remember him? You must have met him in London. He’s a great admirer of yours!”

  “I meet so many prominent people—”

  “We’re being pushed, here; we’re all being pushed. We’ll have to sit tight and wait and see. For the present....”

  “Yes?”

  “For the present, we’ll have to be good boys. If you’re good, they’ll reward you, because they need you.”

  He was crossing the Möldau River. “Beautiful, isn’t it?” he said mellowly. “The sun going down, and the hills, and the gold on the river—that’s still here, at least....”

  “What’s Thomas saying about all this?” she asked.

  “Thomas?” He shrugged with disgust. “What do you expect him to say about it? I don’t know whether he cares; I don’t even know whether he knows. He’s going to find out, though, when his income stops coming in.” He snorted to himself.

  “But Thomas was so alive to these matters—it was always as if he had a personal relation to freedom!”

  Joseph raised his brows. “Yes—when somebody told him to....Perhaps you can bring it to his attention!”

  They drove past the Powder Tower, last remnant of the old fortifications of Prague, down Prikopy Street where once the moat surrounding the Old Town had been, and turned left into Wenceslas Square and right again into Stephan’s Street, and stopped in front of the Alcron Hotel.

  Elinor slowly climbed out of the car. She was lost in thought. At the door, she reminded herself of Joseph’s presence. “You will have dinner with me, won’t you, Joseph?”

  “If you’ll be my guest,” he said.

  “I never could pack,” Karel smiled. “It has a physical effect on me. I begin to sweat with fear and nervousness and my stomach gets restless—horrible! Nerves over packing!”

  Kitty was folding Thomas’s old robe which had been a loan and finally had become a gift. She put it into Karel’s bag, on top of the three shirts he owned. “Please stay here,” she said, as she had said it so many times.

  The coppery light of the November sun came through the large balcony window of the room that had been his in his brother’s house. It dimmed her outlines as she moved about from the closet and the bureau to the suitcase on the bed. He was leaning against the wall and wished she would stand still for a moment so he could see her in this light, the transparency of her hair.

  “It’s time I went,” he said slowly. “You’ve been so generous, both of you—”

  “How will you get along in your new place?” she asked. “It’s run down, I am sure, it’ll need everything, and how will you keep it clean?”

  “I promise you, I’ll have a woman come in every three days to dust it off. And it isn’t such a bad place. Kravat got it for me through the Works Council, and he wanted me to live decently so I can do my work.”

  “Kravat doesn’t know what it means to live decently,” she said. “How can he? His idea of the height of luxury is probably a leather-covered grandfather chair with frightful yellowed doilies for your head and arms.”

  “How did you know?” he laughed. “That’s the prize piece among my furnishings. Kravat delivered it himself—God knows where he picked it up.”

  Kitty closed his bag and sat down next to it.

  “These are his great days,” Karel continued, “ever since the Decrees came through. It’s really quite touching. He and, I would say, most of the men suddenly have developed a kind of personal feeling toward the old Works....”

  “They’ve always needed a Works doctor,” Kitty observed calmly.

  “Must be an odd sensation for Joseph to have me on his payroll. And without being able to order me around—without even having been consulted—”

  “Now, I think that was wrong of them!” said Kitty. “I think that he’s been taking the whole thing wonderfully. When you thought of the Benda Works, you thought of Joseph—and now, he is nothing—”

  “He’s the National Administrator!”

  “They still could have asked him when they hire a doctor. They don’t have to be rude about it.”

  “They didn’t go out of their way to be polite with me, either. They said: Take it or leave it. So I took it. Wouldn’t you have wanted me to?”

  “Of course!...It was the best thing for you to do. But I think people’s sensitivities should be considered, even today.”

  “Is that what Thomas feels?” asked Karel.

  “I haven’t talked it over with him. I told him you’d be starting out as Works doctor at Benda, and that you would have to live in town because of your hours.”

  “And?”

  “And he was sorry you were moving out.”

  Karel felt a bitter taste in his mouth. It was as if he had done something wrong—but he knew he hadn’t—and was being blamed for it.

  He came over to her and said, “I wish I could have helped him on that novel. You’re all so damned good to me—” Then he gripped the handle of his suitcase and began to cart it out of the room, down the stairs. It was heavier than he had expected with the things he had borrowed and some he had bought with borrowed money, and three or four times he tumbled against the curve of the wall.

  Kitty called, “How will you get into town?”

  “I spoke to Joseph,” he said. “He’s going to send the car around.”

  The bad taste in his mouth grew stronger. He shouldn’t have asked Joseph; and Joseph shouldn’t have been so noble about it.

  Kitty came down to where he was standing. Together, they carried the suitcase down the rest of the stairs. Her hand was touching his, her fingers were alongside his, and he was beginning to be aware of it.

  “Well,” she said when at last they were in the entrance hall, the bag between them, “shall I call Thomas?”

  “I guess so,” he said awkwardly.

  But she didn’t go.

  “Kitty?”

  “Yes, Karel—”

  “No more Chinese checkers.”

  “It’s a silly game.”

  “And it’s become too cold to sit in the garden.”

  Her eyes deepened.

  “You’ve helped me a lot, Kitty. And I’m sure, with me out of the house, things will be smoother.” He paused. “Thomas needs your help. More than I ever did.”

  “I know,” she said tonelessly.

  Karel looked at the watch on his wrist; this, too, was Thomas’s. “If there’s anything certain about Joseph,” he said with attempted lightness, “it’s that he’s always on time.”

  Kitty touched his cheek and pulled back her hand. She turned quickly and knocked at the door of Thomas’s study. Karel sat down on his bag.

  Thomas appeared; his hair was tousled, his eyes swollen. “I’ve been working,” he said, massaging his chin. “I don’t know what it is—I write a few pages and get deadly tired. There’s no pleasure in this work. I don’t know where I’m at or what I’m aiming for....”

  “Karel is ready to leave,” said Kitty, hooking her arm into Thomas’s elbow and hanging on to him as if he could hold her.

  Thomas nodded. “Why the great scene? He’s not going abroad, he’s not even going to Prague! He’s staying in town! We’ll see him!”

  “Sure!” said Karel. “I’ll be around. Whenever I need a home-cooked meal.”

  Kitty said nothing.

  Thomas put out his hand, “Good luck in the new place. And don’t strain yourself!” He laughed thinly. “At least y
ou’ll have a salary. No more Benda dividends for me! Now I’ll have to hustle for my living....” He pressed Kitty’s hand. “It’s not the first time that’s happened to us, is it?”

  They heard Joseph’s car grind up to the gateway and stop. Karel opened the house door. He shook their hands, “Well—good-by....”

  Joseph came bouncing up the stairs. He was not alone. “I’ve a surprise for you!” he cried. “Thomas—here’s Elinor Simpson!”

  He stepped aside, so that Elinor could enter. She marched straight for Thomas. She threw her arms about him and kissed him resoundingly on both cheeks, in the manner of a Russian general greeting his colleague after a victory. Then she loosened her embrace. She held him at arm’s length and examined him.

  “You look terrible!” she said. “Wan! Positively wan! Haven’t you been feeding him well, Kitty? Why didn’t you write to me? I could have sent you everything! We’ve got an excellent canning industry in America—”

  “How are you, Elinor?” said Kitty. “No, we’ve been having enough to eat....You know Karel—”

  “Karel!” Elinor said, “of course! You’re the brother who stayed here during the war”—and turning back to Thomas—“Aren’t you glad to see me?”

  “Certainly!” said Thomas.

  He was furious. He was furious at Joseph for having exposed him to this without the slightest warning, without a chance to prepare himself. The sudden meeting dug up the things he was still trying to bury—the whole mad glory of the Simpson-appointed, Simpson-created, Simpson-anointed Spokesman of poor little Czechoslovakia; the humiliating discovery that all of it was a business item in the Simpson stable of gifted young men; the attempts to free himself; the defeat and the realization that he was nothing without her guidance and connections. That came on the night train from St. Louis to Kansas City, with the telegram from Burrough’s Lecture Agency canceling the rest of his tour. She had come into his compartment, deus ex machina, as if she had known of the telegram—and perhaps she had—and had taken him in her arms, and that night they had slept together, and afterwards, he had lain awake, despising and cursing himself and listening to the rut-tut-tut-rut-tut-tut of the Pullman wheels.

  Kitty was ushering them into the living room, and Joseph was taking the bottles out of the cellaret and setting out the glasses.

  “So you’ve been in Buchenwald, Doctor,” Elinor was saying to Karel, her eyes appreciatively testing his still gaunt figure. “I’ve interviewed at least a dozen people who were there. Do you know Kurt Fleischer? He was a German Social-Democrat and he’s back in politics, now. He’ll go places, a human dynamo, strictly. I suppose you are interested in politics?”

  “Only to a very limited degree,” said Karel.

  “I wouldn’t be so modest,” Joseph countered with relish. “The ink wasn’t dry yet on the Nationalization Decrees, when the union gave him a job as Works doctor at Benda. As long as I owned the plant, I wouldn’t have dared to employ him. I know my workers. They would have said: He’s the boss’s brother, and even if you’re dying he’ll certify that you’re in blooming health just so as to get you back to the furnace.”

  Karel kept his face to studied neutrality.

  “Tell me, Doctor,” Elinor Simpson leaned forward, listening, observant, “what do you think of this new development here? What’s it going to lead to?”

  “Socialism,” he said.

  “Don’t you have to have a revolution for that?” she bristled.

  Karel said lightly, “It’s been quite peaceful until now—”

  “I tell you there is no such thing as socialism,” she stated firmly. “There is private capitalism and state capitalism. You can’t share and share alike, because people won’t work if they know that the next lazy fellow is going to get exactly the same as themselves. And if you have state capitalism, you only supplant one group of managers by another, and you lose your democracy to boot. So why go to all that trouble?”

  Karel tried to follow her. Before his mind could straighten one fallacy, she had passed on to the next. She was amazing, like a figure from Mars; she was overbearing and pompous; and he was sure that, once the novelty of her personality wore off, she could be quite boring. And what was she repressed about? He had expected something different, and he thought sadly: If that’s the person who, next to Joseph, has had the most influence on Thomas—no wonder!

  Kitty brought a tray of sandwiches. She passed them around, but only Joseph ate heartily, munching, and moistening the bites with sips of brandy.

  Kitty was silent. Karel suffered with her. Her anxious eyes told him the story—whatever was wrong between her and Thomas had its roots in America and this woman. Finally, Kitty said, “You’ll stay at our house, Elinor? We’ve been your guests so often....And it’s a beautiful room, isn’t it, Karel? With a lovely view of the mountains. Sometimes you look at them and they seem so close to you that you think you can touch them....”

  She was quoting Karel’s line, but was not conscious of it.

  Elinor said loudly, “I wouldn’t dream of it, child! All this is much too pretty up here in your little hide-out. Not a chance in the world! I’m staying at Joseph’s.”

  But Kitty didn’t seem relieved. After a moment or two, she asked, “How long are you planning to be in Rodnik? I mean—Thomas and I want you for dinner....”

  “How long? Child, I don’t know! A few days, a week, or I may come back once or twice. I have a job to do, here, and who can tell when it will be finished?” Elinor turned to Joseph, “You run along, now. You said you had to drive the doctor into town. And I must have a talk with Thomas—a very serious talk,” she added, jocularly.

  She stood up and adjusted the comb at the back of her upswept coiffure. “Where can we have some privacy, Thomas?”

  Thomas’s study was roughly furnished. There were the shelves with his books and papers, his work table, a straight-backed chair, and a couch with crumpled pillows. A blanket, shoved aside, showed that he’d been lying down and had had no time to fold it up. The one distinctive piece was a fine Venetian mirror, fairly large, and placed in such a way that Thomas could look at himself from his chair. Sometimes he would act out a scene he was writing, speaking the words in a tense whisper, and watching his expression while he spoke.

  Elinor settled comfortably on the couch, propping the pillows behind her. “What’s that in your typewriter?” she asked.

  “I’m working on something.”

  “Let me hear it—”

  He improvised a translation of his current article in his American Impressions series. Having to translate made him nervous. Words in one language never fitted exactly the words in another; what had been a clever paragraph, with the filigree of his style, sounded trite and blunt in English.

  After a while he broke off. She did not urge him to continue. He looked at her, expectant and apprehensive, and as she said nothing, he began to defend himself, “You understand—this is a first draft—and in translation...”

  She was shaking her head. “Thomas darling,” she said, “this is below your class.”

  He slammed down his manuscript.

  She raised her hand. “I’m sure that the way you said it is perfect. You’re a first-rate technician in your language and your craft; I wouldn’t bother with you if that weren’t so. It’s not the way you said it, it’s what you said.”

  “And you can point out where I’m wrong, I suppose!”

  “You aren’t wrong, Thomas darling! And even if you were, what difference would it make in a travelogue? Because that’s what this is—a travelogue!—and you’re too good for that kind of thing.”

  He gathered his papers, tapping the bottom of the sheets so that they fell evenly together, and put them in a folder. “They’re sold and paid for,” he said, “and I’ve got to earn money.”

  “You’ll earn money with whatever you write. That’s not the point. The point is that you have a reputation in your country, and I’ve made it worldwide, and you’re squandering
it. You live in the world’s most fascinating spot, you’re part of the farthest outpost of democracy, the decisions made here will affect all of Europe and us in America, too—and you write travelogues! Your country has just been liberated from Nazism, and it’s become the most exciting testing ground: Freedom versus another, even more vicious, kind of dictatorship—and you write about juke boxes and the flavorings in ice-cream sodas....”

  There had been times when he had spoken similarly to himself, and his face had sneered back at him from the mirror.

  “I wish,” he said, “that you’d get out of my life.”

  Elinor crossed her legs. She had beautiful legs, and her fine nylons, her expensive, high-heeled American shoes, did the most by them.

  “Suppose I did,” she countered. “Suppose I left you alone. You’d have to find your way anyhow, and it would be the way on which I shall push you. But it would take you a lot of time, and we can’t afford to lose time.”

  “I have the rest of my life.”

  She ignored his answer. “What other plans do you have?”

  “I wanted to write a novel.”

  “That sounds better! On what?”

  “I don’t think I’ll write it.”

  She grunted, as if she had expected this reply. Then she got up and placed herself between him and the mirror. “Now you listen to me! You’re still the Spokesman! You’ve forgotten that your words—”

  “Don’t hammer at me, Elinor. In America, I was the Spokesman, perhaps. But when I came back here, I found other realities, a different struggle, and the people had become different from what I thought they were. Maybe that’s my trouble....”

  “All the more reason to assert yourself! How can you hesitate! Don’t evade! Don’t pick little issues!...What is uppermost in the minds of people here?”

  They want to be left alone, he said to himself. They’re tired. After six years of beating against walls, they want to relax....Like Karel. Just like Karel.

  “Freedom!” she proclaimed. “Freedom, that’s what they’re worried about!”