He had spoken quietly. The appeal of his words went deep; yet they also stirred up in Karel’s mind questions of a quite different order—was this why Kravat had roped him into accepting the position as Works Doctor? Was this why he had been given the most lavish equipment, which he could never have afforded otherwise? Was this why he had been maneuvered into opposition to his own brother and to Lida? Was it all a plot they had laid out long ago and to which they were now putting the finishing touches?
“The doctor in a town like ours is an influential person,” Stanek was saying. “You may not realize it, but you have many friends among the people, from before the war. And the name of Benda has weight, around here.”
“He can do us a lot of good among the middle class,” Kravat added his own analysis. “The butcher and the candy store owner and the sexton of the church are more likely to listen to a Dr. Benda than to me.”
They considered him a means to an end. Perhaps their end was good. It was good that he had a fluoroscope, but the means by which it had been provided were not. They didn’t seem aware of the contradiction. They expected him to see that his help was necessary, so as to make sure that the Benda Works remained property of the people, so as to take a hotel in the mountains and send the workers there, so as to guarantee that there was a doctor twice a week in the dispensary of the Benda Works, and so on. They expected him to see all that and to act accordingly, regardless of his personal attachments, his limitations. And they had a right to expect it because he had been with them in the underground, and had treated the wounded man, and had stood up under the torture in the Gestapo prison and had revealed nothing. But those had been different times, and everything had been clear and unmistakable.
“Will you help us?” said Stanek.
The black ribbon dangling down from the pince-nez held an absurd fascination for Karel’s eyes. “Yes, I’ll support you,” he said, “in my way.”
“In your way”—Kravat’s face came up—“and what does that mean?”
“I haven’t started being a doctor yet. I’ll have my hands full. How can I tell you?”
Stanek waved off Kravat. And pushing back his cuffs, “I understand, Karel. I know what you’ve been through. You’re entitled to—”
“It’s not that I’m afraid!” Karel cut him off. “At least I hope not!” He felt the small beads of perspiration on his upper lip. “I’ve proved that I’m not afraid. I’ve seen death and sliced it in a hundred different ways, dead hearts and dead stomachs and dead livers and dead brains and dead eyes....”
They were sitting, now, like statues in the mild light of the green lamp. Karel wiped his lip. “Maybe I’m not yet equal to marching as fast as you!” he burst out. “Maybe I’m not equal to marching at all.”
The pince-nez glittered. “Well, think it over,” said Stanek. “I daresay there’ll be lots of drums.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Had any voice prophesied: Within the year after the war for liberation, you shall have to re-examine the principles for which you fought—it would have been drowned in derision. Yet today, man’s thought concerns itself once more with his freedom to speak and to act within the framework of civilized living alongside his fellow man. The liberal tenets accepted as absolute truths have become subject to doubt; truth itself and the search for it have been thrown on the scale of relativity. What has happened to the centuries-old postulate of our Master fan Hus, the first moulder of the philosophy of the Czech people, who preached: “Love each other, never let the righteous be oppressed, and grant everyone free access to the truth”?—From THOMAS BENDA: Essay on Freedom
ONCE started, the work grew on Thomas. His first need was to clear his own mind so as to enable himself to see the many aspects of the problem. It was like clearing wild land. Catch phrases and terms commonly used but rarely more than half understood were like stubborn roots and deeply imbedded rocks which had to be dug up and dragged aside before the plow could turn a clod.
And the plow had to cut deep because the surface was overgrown with weeds, colorful but useless. On no subject had so many brittle generalities been uttered as on this one. Freedom, the word itself, immediately conjured up a great variety of noble and heroic slogans, most of them meaningless. And when he studied some of the people who had coined the slogans, and investigated their motives and their story, the result was amazing and often embarrassing. He was both angered and amused by the discovery that so many advocates of the idea, while employing the word in its widest sense, meant only their own freedom, but never the other fellow’s.
It was necessary to find definitions, to ask the simple questions before progressing to the more complicated ones. What was it to be free? When were you free? How many different kinds of freedom existed?
Suppose a man wanted to go from Rodnik to Prague. He was obviously free to do so; no policeman, no Nazi guard stopped him now. But there was the railroad fare. If you had it, you were free. If not, you weren’t. So, lacking the cash, you were free theoretically, but practically you were not....
Though this seemed like primer stuff, it was unavoidable, and its perspective was surprising. How many such barriers existed! The plate glass of the shop window that kept you from taking the candy; the law that prevented you from doing a dozen things it might be pleasant to do; your own inhibitions that held you back from living as fully and recklessly and freely as you might wish....
We were not free because we were not alone. The absolute individual, perfectly free, could exist only outside the life of others, outside of society—a Robinson Crusoe.
None of us were Crusoes. We were all subject to a number of restrictions; which meant that freedom was no more than a commonly agreed upon point on a scale, like the fever point on the thermometer—below it, with only so many restrictions, you were free; above it, the restrictions becoming oppressive, you were not.
But where was this point? And was not this point an entirely different one in different individuals, different classes, different nations, different periods of history?
And if mankind was driven forward by the Promethean element in us, by the creative rebelliousness against the rut of established conventions and laws and forms—what were the viewpoints and considerations under which Prometheus could, or must, be chained? And who was entitled to sit in judgment over him?
Thomas started in his chair. There it was again, the soft knock at the door. His thoughts, so carefully coaxed along and arranged, were jumbled in a hot wave of anger—didn’t she have any appreciation of what it meant to create? Did she think he was like a peasant who could say Whoa to the horse and halt his manure cart, or like a worker who could switch his machine on and off?
The apologetic knock sounded a third time. He shoved back the sheets on his work table and, with a few steps, was at the door.
“What is it, Kitty! The house on fire? What do you want? Money? Why didn’t you tell me at breakfast?”
“Joseph is calling.”
“Well, so what! Since when is he so important that you have to disrupt my work?”
She held her answer for a moment. Then she said placatingly, “I asked him to leave a message, or to phone back, but he insisted. He made it so urgent that I thought—”
“You thought!” His lips curled downward.
“All right! I’ll tell him you don’t want to talk with him.”
“That I can tell him myself.” He brushed by her and went to the telephone in the hall and gave his brother a cheerless, “Hello!”
He was answered by a battery of words so quick, so jubilant, that they were hard to keep apart and follow. Thomas clamped the receiver between his shoulder and his ear, lit a cigarette, and stood, his face immobile. Only occasionally did he offer a Yes, yes. With a last, reluctant Yes that sounded like a concession made under duress, he hung up.
He looked around for Kitty, but she was gone. His annoyance mounting, he listened for a sound from her; there was none. She was neither in the kitchen nor the dining room. He f
ound her finally in the living room, sewing.
She put her work aside. “Was it important?”
“Of course not!” he said accusingly. “Just that our Sunday evening is gone.”
She had not particularly looked forward to this Sunday evening, or to any other evening. And even though his tone showed that he expected her to be distressed, she couldn’t feel anything about it. She picked up the socks she was darning.
“He wants us for dinner, a big dinner—an affair of state, he calls it. The family, and all the prominent people of Rodnik, and some from Prague and from Limberk, and I’m his pièce de résistance, I presume.”
Karel would be there, she thought, and suppressed the thought immediately.
“Well,” he said, “you’ll have a chance to dress up. Aren’t you thrilled? Joseph is. He said I was the first to get the news. They enlarged his little empire and made him National Administrator of the Hammer Works, too. I can just see him spread himself over us and over the whole glass industry, like a bloated frog.”
“You don’t hate him that much,” she said appeasingly. “Suppose you had a new book coming out—how would you feel? I’m very glad for him.”
“Oh, Christ...”
She heard him bang shut the door to his study.
Kitty continued to sew. A lot of mending had to be done; things were wearing out, and it became difficult to replace them—there wasn’t much to be had in the stores, and her budget had become desperately small. If she went out and found a job....Karel might help her to get back into nursing. But her job was cut out for her; Thomas, alone for eight hours a day, would get caught on so many rough edges that the other two thirds of the day would be impossible.
He was getting harder and harder to handle, and his temper was growing more and more uncertain. She wondered if she was losing her touch. She understood him, every slightest vagary, but sometimes it was as if her senses were out of tune with his; this was new. She hadn’t shared his anger at the interruption. She could warm to Joseph’s success; it would be some balm for the nationalization of the Benda Works. She did like the idea of the dinner....Besides, it brought some change into her routine, and it might help to draw Joseph and Thomas a shade closer, and she knew that her life had been better when the two had been friends.
“Kitty!”
He was back, and frowning at the pile of socks next to her chair.
“I don’t know what it is....” His truculence was gone. “I beg of you, you must keep these extraneous things from me. And you mustn’t fight me.”
“I’m not fighting you, Thomas.” She smiled at him.
Her smile somehow calmed him. It highlighted the green tones in the hazel of her eyes. “Everything was clear this morning,” he said plaintively, “and now my thoughts are fuzzy and all I’ve got in my head is a mess of choppy, disconnected impressions. Do you want me to stop working altogether?”
“I’ve been waiting a long time for you to start working again on something you think is worthwhile.”
“This is worthwhile,” he said. “I have a feeling I’m on the track of a very big thing.”
She no longer was smiling. Her face was intent.
“It’s going to put me back where I belong, Kitty. It’s going to be a book, more important than the novel I gave up, much deeper, of far wider scope....”
She took his hands and laid her forehead against them. “Everything is going to be better, now.”
The emotion behind her words surprised him. Gently, he freed his hands. “I’m writing on Freedom—an essay. It has to be organized, of course, in my mind and on paper. But of this I’m sure: If I’m given half a chance, I can do it. And I don’t know how many men there are in this country, or in the world for that matter, who could do it.”
The world...That was the Elinor Simpson touch. “Does Elinor know of it?”
He drew back. “She doesn’t. Nobody does. I told you only because—I could have told you sooner, perhaps—”
“I wish you had. It means so much to me—” She looked up at him, her eyes bright. “To us.”
“But you have no idea of how I’m handling it!”
“Oh, I know it’ll be a great book. I know you. I remember when you started on your first book, I remember it, exactly, and how it grew, and how beautiful everything was—”
“You’re very ambitious for me.”
She became wary. He didn’t seem to resent her enthusiasm, but she must measure the dose. “You’re working again,” she said, “that’s the main thing. You’re getting your teeth into a book.”
“Why does it mean that much to you?”
“I’m your wife!”
“You never got much reflected glory. Do you want that?” A slight, puzzled frown showed around his eyes.
“Lord, no!” How could she express herself without irritating him and confusing matters? “When you write something big and important, Thomas, I feel that our life has a purpose—your life and mine—”
“And if I didn’t write an important book, there would be no purpose to our life?”
“Please, don’t twist my words.” Her lips trembled.
He sighed. “I’m pretty difficult, am I not?”
“Sometimes.”
“I don’t intend to be, Kitty. It just happens.”
There had been a time when she would have known exactly what to do and what to say at his moments of gentleness. Now, she was afraid her knack was failing her.
“Tell me more about the Essay,” she said.
“It’s—it’s very complicated.” He sensed she was using the subject to evade him. “When I’ve part of the draft completed, I’ll let you type it. Let’s stop talking literature.”
“What do you want to talk about?”
“You and me, for instance.”
“Why? What’s wrong?”
“Does there have to be something wrong?” He stared at her. Her breasts were round and firm, her lips full and soft, and she was miles away. “That’s the trouble with people. They look at their relationship to one another only when it has started to fall apart.”
Kitty felt the pit of her stomach constrict.
“I’m different,” he went on. “I look at us, the two of us, in our house. We should be happier, now. You can’t have a stranger in the house for long, even your own brother.”
Karel....Her needle went faster. Not a thing of his was left in the house, and he had kept away.
“I see your care and your love and devotion—I’m not insensitive—” He hesitated. It was the light. It gave her throat a suppleness and put shadows under her eyes. “But I lock myself in my study. I have to—don’t you see?”
“Don’t apologize, Thomas.”
“The other day, in the middle of writing, I thought of you. You’ve got time on your hands. There’s not much satisfaction in this housework”—he picked up a rolled-up pair of socks—“or in making things do. If we had children, perhaps—”
He stopped.
The years rushed in on her, the nights she had lain at his side. We have no home, he had always said. Put another victim into this world? he had asked. But these had been excuses. A child would have tied him down and clipped his wings.
“Kitty, do you want to have a child?”
She got up and took the socks away from him and stroked a strand of his hair off his forehead.
“Do you, Kitty?”
He moved toward her as if he wanted to take her into his arms.
“After you’ve finished the book,” she said, her voice small. “Now, a child would be like a stranger in the house and disturb you.”
“You’re too concerned about the book.”
“I’m concerned about you.”
“Yes,” he said, “that’s true.” He turned.
At the door she caught up with him. “Forgive me, Thomas—” She was close to tears. “I’m in a vile mood.”
“Mood—” He shrugged. “You never had moods. That was a great help to me. I guess it’
s my fault.”
Her mind swirled with words, all of them wrong.
“Well, I told you I was sorry!” He clapped his hands in exasperation. “What more do you want of a man?”
He walked out.
Kitty went back into the room. She tried her sewing and dropped it again. She wished she could go after him into his study, and show him that she loved him, caress his lids and his temples, and smooth away the petulance of his mouth. She didn’t know whether it was the right thing to do. And she had been told never to enter his study, not for anything.
It was late afternoon when Karel arrived at Joseph’s house—the house in which he was born and spent his childhood and adolescent years. The Bendas were tradition-bound: the oldest inherited the family home. Karel didn’t begrudge Joseph the double-winged mausoleum; but he did mind Lida’s taste, which now was stamped on every room and distorted the images of his youth.
The large sliding door between the salon and the game room was pushed back into the wall. The overall effect was that of a good-sized funeral parlor paneled dark at one end and wallpapered chartreuse at the other. The dull spread of the rooms was enlivened somewhat by the crowd of guests who stood in groups or circulated, holding their plates of canapés and balancing their drinks.
Karel recognized many of them. They were the people who, in one way or another, shaped the making of glass in and around Rodnik and Martinice and who, along with it, might shape Joseph’s fortunes. They were a cross section of this changing society—local dignitaries who had outlasted the war and who were at ease in their dark, shiny-seated suits; those who wore their new clothes as if they didn’t trust their seams; and those who had come up so recently that they had not yet acquired the wardrobe for the occasion. The women chatted circumspectly, careful of years-old and freshly arisen sensitivities. There were the head bookkeepers and the foremen of the various departments of the Benda Works and of Vesely’s. A four-man delegation from the District National Committee in Limberk, representing each of the four major political parties, was being greeted by Lida as Karel moved into the room.
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