“You’re doing fine!” Karel told her after she had deposited the Limberk delegates at the refreshment table. “Looks like a very successful affair!”
She smiled at him busily, and he noticed something strange in her smile. It bothered him. His tongue ran over his new dentures. Of course! The silver cap on her tooth had been replaced by porcelain, and it did make her smile prettier. She moved with a poise that came from affluence and self-assurance and which was supported by her simple but rich dress.
“Very successful!” she said. “We’ll have dinner as soon as Joseph and Mr. Kravat and Ministerial Councilor Novak return from Martinice—”
“Jan Novak?” Karel’s heart began to act up, and he stood very still, trying to brake it.
Her bracelet jingled as she lightly tapped her left arm. “Jan Novak, yes. I almost forgot that you know him.”
“Casually,” he said, and was surprised at himself. What was he trying to hide?
Her eyes were leveled at him. “That’s not what he says. Should I have prepared you for his coming?”
“Oh, no!” he shrugged, his heart again under control. “When I was in Prague about my teeth, I heard somewhere that he was working in a Ministry.”
Lida considered asking him whether he had been to see Novak, but decided against it. All she wanted to know she would find out in the course of the evening. “The men went to Martinice to have a look at the Hammer Works.” She once more gave him her hostess smile. “Go over and speak to Elinor, will you? So few people here who can talk English...”
She swept off to continue mixing her guests. She was good at it, too. They began to thaw out; the conversation quickened and grew in volume.
“Uncle Karel!”
He took Petra into his arms and then stepped back and looked at her. “How lovely!” he said. “You’ve changed your hairdo?”
Petra blushed with pleasure. She had brushed her hair until her arms ached and until it fell softly to the back of her neck and curled into something like a chignon. Her eyes shone. “The dress is new, too,” she pointed out. “It was made here in Rodnik, but the seamstress followed a picture I cut out of a Paris magazine.”
Her dress softened some of her gawkiness; her white collar of handmade lace was pinned together with a gold brooch which had belonged to her grandmother Anna.
“You’re the best-looking girl here,” Karel said, “bar none! Come on, we’ll go visit.”
You couldn’t miss Elinor, particularly not today, with that fuchsia-colored Paris scarf tied smartly at her neck and setting off her silver-gray hair and the healthy tan of her face.
“Ah, the Doctor!” she welcomed. “It’s a historic day for your brother Joseph. How do you feel about it?”
“Will I be quoted?”
“Nonsense! Do you see a notebook? I came out from Prague just to help Joseph celebrate. They can’t keep a good man down, socialism or no. Right?”
“I suppose not.”
She patted Petra affectionately, but kept Karel in focus. “Lovely child he has! Have you always been so averse to committing yourself, or only since you started to work for the Government?”
“Always,” said Karel. “Picked up the habit in camp.”
“Well, hang on to it!” Her hand left Petra’s shoulder and swept over the room and the guests. “Unless you people do something to change the trend, this whole country will be just one large glorified concentration camp!”
“You’re going to report that to America?”
“Naturally! We have a free press! We have—”
He was no longer listening. He had seen Kitty at the chartreuse end of the room. Their eyes met and held for the fraction of a second; then she averted hers and turned to Thomas. By this time, Elinor had discovered Thomas and, like a snowplow opening the road for the cars behind it went straight toward him, followed by Karel and Petra.
“Thomas, darling!” she said, “you look magnificent! You’ve got color in your cheeks, and a light in your eyes!” In an aside, she gave Kitty a “How are you?” and returned immediately to Thomas. “I bet I know what gives you that sparkle. You’re working. You’ve started the Essay on Freedom!”
Thomas swallowed a sip of his drink and gagged and coughed.
“Don’t deny it!” Elinor laughed noisily. “It’s grand! It’s tremendous! It’s the best news I’ve had since Hiroshima.”
Kitty was pale and constrained. Her gaze was riveted to the knot of Thomas’s tie. Karel, aware of her every humor, was a little puzzled. Even if the comparison to an atomic explosion was some kind of Simpsonism Thomas’s decision to abandon the hopeless novel and to begin another serious work should be a source of joy to her. An essay on freedom, Elinor had said. Freedom, he thought. The gates of camp blown open. Novak leading him and a whole group of others to meet the Americans. And how would Thomas tackle the problem?
Thomas had gotten over his coughing spell. “I am working on something, he said crisply. “I’m trying to do the draft of an outline. And I’m doing some research. Kitty can tell you.”
“His work is going well,” Kitty stated, with effort.
Her face, as it now turned to Karel, was bare of emotion; and yet he was filled with the need to step in front of her and screen her from everyone’s view. He heard Elinor demand, “I want to see everything you do, Thomas!” He heard Thomas’s weak, evasive, “I’m afraid there’s nothing to show!” and Kitty’s polite, but too loud, “How are you doing in your new flat, Karel?”
“Fine, fine,” he said. “I’m all set up.”
“Did you get a charwoman to come in regularly?”
And then again Elinor’s dominating voice, “You know how much I love to see your work develop, Thomas darling—and I have a sort of parental interest in the Essay!”
The wires of tension emerged suddenly like the strings of muscles under the uplifted skin of a cadaver—from Kitty to Thomas to Elinor—and the question burrowed into Karel’s mind: What’s Thomas preparing to write? A Czech edition of Simpsonian platitudes?
Thomas was talking to him, no longer concealing his atrocious mood. “What’s the matter with you and Kitty? Are you trying to make it a formal afternoon?”
Silently, Kitty pleaded with Karel for help. He felt the wires of tension converge on him.
At this moment, Petra’s hand, hot and moist, slipped into his. Her eyes were swiveling between him and Kitty. He bent down to her and said, “Petra, will you be my girl for today? Will you do me the honor of sitting next to me at dinner?” But the child’s hand didn’t relax its pressure. “If you ladies will excuse us,” he bowed slightly, including Petra in his request, “I have some serious business with Thomas.” And taking Thomas aside, “I need a drink. And so do you. Several, in fact. Let’s go over there. Let’s drink to your essay.” He grasped Thomas’s elbow and propelled him to the table where the bottles were set up.
“Someday I’m going to kick that Simpson bitch in the teeth!” said Thomas.
“Forget it!”
Karel shoved a double whisky at Thomas. Thomas gulped it down.
“Give me another!”
There was a fresh commotion at the door. Joseph had arrived. The dignitaries pressed forward to greet and congratulate him.
“I don’t have to look at that, do I?” Thomas slammed down his glass and went to the opposite end of the room. Karel jovially toasted Joseph over the heads of the others and then, without drinking, lowered his arm. He had seen Novak, and Novak had seen him.
Lida had rushed to the door, all smiles, all welcome. The dignitaries, eager to pay their respects to the great man from Prague, lined up behind her. Karel watched Novak’s progress along the route to the refreshment table; Novak was so sure of himself, so polished, as if he’d been a Government official all his life and never had lain on that bunk in the barracks, writhing in the climax of animal pain, his arm smashed to pulp, his eyes burning, his right hand clawing his mouth at each cut of the scalpel. Karel tried to take his eyes off the
empty left sleeve. The old days were gone, the old ties were broken—or was he afraid that at a touch of Novak’s only hand they might be resurrected?
The hand now was stretched out to him and he had to take it. “Karel Benda,” said Novak, and again, with a warmth that dissolved Karel’s apprehensions, “Karel Benda.”
“I’m all right,” said Karel. “And you?”
The keel was even once more. Novak laughed. “Perfect. A little over-worked. Even on Sundays I inspect factories....You’ve got a good man, there, in your brother Joseph. He knows his glass.”
“He knows his glass; yes, certainly...” Karel stopped. Was Novak qualifying his opinion of Joseph? “Drink?”
“No, thanks.” Novak went on easily: “Your brother told me everything—the headaches he would have in getting the Hammer Works going, the raw materials he would need, the capital. He took me everywhere—the generator, the grinding room, the mixing shed, the storage bins, the furnace halls. He even made me stick my head into an annealing kiln and under a furnace. Looks like a giant waffle down there. That’s where the gas is piped in and distributed, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” nodded Karel, “that’s where the gas goes in.” Novak had sounded too glib, and Novak wasn’t the man to accept anyone on his own say-so; yet, Joseph could be an excellent salesman, and he must have pulled all the stops to sell himself. Should I say something? thought Karel.
“Councilor!” Lida called. “Dinner is served.”
She came over to them, Joseph at her side. They made a handsome host and hostess, Karel had to admit. They had an almost patrician air, although Joseph was now a patrician by appointment of the Government.
Lida offered Novak her arm. “Shall we...?” and led the way into the dining room. The long table was covered with fine damask linen; the ornate silver shone; the crystal goblets reflected and broke the light into thousands of prisms.
The family, the delegation from Limberk, Novak, and Elinor Simpson were seated near the head of the table; the local officials and Kravat and the other bourgeois-for-a-day workers and their wives filled the lower reaches.
Little was said during the first course. It was a clear bouillon in which swam light and fluffy dumplings with a taste of nuts. The second course—roast geese, their skin crisp, with a different kind of dumpling, sliced, and of heavier consistency—caused a great number of compliments for Lida.
She accepted them gracefully, and hinted that more and equally good things were to come. She was an expert cook, and while the drudgery had been done by the maid and help hired for the day, she had supervised the preparations from beginning to end and had personally salted and peppered and garlicked and paprikaed and basted the birds and mixed the sauce. She knew her people’s capacity for eating and their preferences, and she knew that a dinner of this kind would be talked about and that those who partook of it would nurture the memory of it for a long time, their stomachs generating the sympathy that Joseph would need in his work.
Petra was eating daintily and making conversation with Karel, selecting pseudo-mature subjects. They left his mind free to observe and to think. Too much had happened already, and as he looked at the faint shadows of worry around Joseph’s eyes, he knew that more was likely to come.
“Aren’t you enjoying the dinner, Joseph?” he asked.
“I always enjoy food,” said Joseph, “and this is tops.” He leaned behind Petra’s back to Karel and added, lowering his voice, “Quite a bit of tinder around the table.”
Karel wanted to laugh it off, but didn’t as he noticed Joseph’s momentary unconscious glance rest on Novak.
“Your friend Kravat, for instance,” Joseph continued, jocularly, and pointed at the alert long face above the shoddy blue serge, “he’s quite capable of exploding the whole class struggle over a dumpling. And I want harmony. There’ll be a lot of speeches, and a lot of courses to digest—”
His wary gaze traveled to Thomas.
Thomas was arguing with Novak. “And whom will you employ at the Hammer Works?” he was asking, his voice rising above the table talk.
Novak, slowed down by his one arm, was still eating the goose. He set his fork on his plate. “I guess we’ll have to use mostly Sudeten-German personnel. They’re still living in Martinice.”
“Government policy?”
“No, expediency.” Novak turned to Joseph. “We have to make glass, don’t we?”
Joseph grunted something. The hum at the lower end of the table died down. Elinor asked Kitty what Thomas was saying.
Thomas’s face was flushed. Perhaps the drinks Karel had forced on him were still working. “Why don’t you deport them?” he catechized. “The Government said we would! Why don’t we get rid of them once and for all?”
Karel feared that the trouble to Joseph would come from within the family rather than from the latent antagonism between the Works Council and the National Administrator. Why was the Martinice situation, of all things, so aggravating to Thomas? Well, it was the Germans who had driven him out, broken up the family and his old life, and forced him into Elinor Simpson’s hands, into everything which upset and disordered him.
“And you, Mr. Kravat!” Thomas called across the table, “do you know of this plan? What do you have to say about it, you and your Czech union?”
Kravat twirled the stem of his wineglass. Karel signaled him to keep his answer discreet. The melter, taking Karel’s slight shake of the head into consideration, said quietly, “I know about the plan. Everything’s been agreed on. The Germans will work only in subordinate jobs and only until they can be replaced by trained Czech men. There’s no reason to get excited....”
Kitty laid her hand on Thomas’s. She had been afraid of this. His anger at having been obliged to attend, his having been caught in his lie to her, his resentment against Elinor’s claim to parental rights over the Essay, all the restlessness that was in him, and his revolt against being back in his father’s house, had found an outlet and a cause to espouse.
Karel saw Thomas push her hand aside. Challenging Joseph, Thomas demanded, “Are you ashamed of nothing at all, as long as you’re making money? Don’t any of you have any principles? What was the war about? What have I been writing for?”
Joseph kept his tone in check. “You talk as if I owned the Hammer Works. I don’t even own Benda’s, you know! What profits we make will go to the Government.”
Elinor nudged Kitty for a translation. But either Kitty chose the wrong quotes, or Elinor’s mind was far ahead of her and working in another direction—whatever the cause, she addressed Karel loudly: “What did I tell you? Today they’re dictating to your brother Joseph what workers he has to employ; tomorrow, they’ll dictate to your brother Thomas what to write. You cannot have half freedom, half dictatorship—”
“That’s not quite the issue,” said Karel.
Thomas slapped at the new gadfly. “No one’s going to tell me what to write, Elinor. I write what I like, I protest when I like, and I’m protesting now!”
“Bravo!” said Elinor. She wanted to say more, but she was hemmed in by one maid serving her strudel and another pouring her coffee.
“Well, Thomas—” Karel edged in, not so much for the sake of Joseph who was scratching his brows, but so as to spare Kitty—“Councilor Novak, and Kravat here, and myself—all three of us saw the Germans at very close range and were imprisoned by them. If we can get over our aversion and see the necessity of using them for a while to help us produce and rebuild—”
“I know, I know! I’m not in your class. I should keep my mouth shut....” Thomas sat back. The sharp line of his lips looked odd above his soft, delicate chin.
“I hate the Germans, too!” Petra asserted. “I wanted to kill the German commander!”
Karel had completely forgotten her presence, and her unexpected declaration fell heavily. He read on Thomas’s face: Even the child outclasses me! Damn the whole dinner, he thought, his eyes seeking Kitty’s. She was staring at her coffee cup. If on
ly he could tell her that the body blow he had delivered to Thomas had been anything but intentional! He felt for Thomas. He felt for Joseph, too, whose great evening was falling to pieces. And most of all, he felt for Kitty.
He saw a movement above the fuchsia scarf. He saw narrowed pupils assay Novak. At the lower end of the table, they were talking about small matters, again. He wondered whether she would now tangle with Novak on socialism. This he must hear.
“I take it you’re against the capitalistic system, Councilor,” Elinor began.
Novak’s lines folded themselves into pleasant agreement.
“But without it,” she said, “we’d still burn candles instead of electric lights, and ride around in oxcarts instead of automobiles.”
“Certainly.”
“So it’s been pretty good, after all?” she inquired lightly.
“Yes.”
“Well?” she pounced.
“If you break your foot, Miss Simpson, your doctor will put on a plaster cast. Am I right, Karel?”
Karel nodded.
Elinor said, “I don’t see what that has to do—”
“One moment, Miss Simpson. The plaster cast helps your bones to mend and protects your foot, doesn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“So the plaster cast has been pretty good, after all?”
“Yes....”
Karel grinned. It was the old Novak, the old game of dialectics they had played when they both were sitting in Buchenwald.
“But there comes a day,” said Novak, “when you cut it off and are very glad to be rid of it, isn’t that so?”
“You’re facetious, Councilor!”
“You’re inconsistent, Miss Simpson,” he smiled.
“Now wait a minute!” Elinor objected.
Karel was aware that those who spoke English were enjoying the repartee, with the exception of Joseph, whose heavy lids didn’t hide his concern, and of Lida, who looked as if she were comparing notes on himself and Novak.
Elinor’s hackles were up. “Wait a minute, Councilor! You must admit that the human progress achieved under the capitalistic system is due to the private initiative of the individual.”
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