Stefan Heym

by The Eyes of Reason

  “This is for the overlay vases were blowing tomorrow,” Kravat said.

  “The base glass will be dark green, very nice color.”

  “I want to talk to you, Kravat.”

  “I’m listening.” Kravat dipped his shovel in the trough.

  “No—wait a minute with that.”

  Kravat let go of the shovel and sat down at the edge of the platform.

  “You’re no fool, Kravat. You know a lot more than you talk about. In fact I would say you’re the only one among the workers here with a brain of his own.”

  “I wouldn’t say that, Mr. Benda. Some of them are very intelligent fellows.”

  “There are brains and brains,” said Joseph.

  Kravat’s eyes were sarcastic again.

  “Why do you think I’m running for election?” Joseph asked after a pause. “I have a good job, and the campaign will be a strain on me, and if I should be elected, life won’t be any easier.”

  Kravat turned halfway toward Joseph. “You don’t like what’s going on in the country.”

  “You see—I told you you had brains. I suppose you know I’m not the only one who feels that way about things?”

  “I imagine there are a few others.”

  “A few....” Joseph smiled. “The businessmen and the farmers, those who have land and those who are going to get it and want to hold on to it. And the lawyers and doctors and teachers and what have you. And even the workers—you saw what happened there at the door....”

  “Why do you ask me, if you’re so sure?”

  Joseph hesitated. “I’m not what you call a reactionary,” he said, avoiding a direct answer. “When I settled with you over Blaha, you must have gotten an idea of where I stand. Live and let live. You men have your rights, and I’m the first one to back you up on that.”

  Kravat looked at his trough. He’d much rather be shoveling glass. He had to keep one jump ahead of Joseph Benda, but it was hard to predict where the guy was going to jump.

  “You’ve been with Benda a long time,” said Joseph. “I have a good deal of confidence in you. I’ll need a resident manager at the Hammer Works. I have you in mind for the job.”

  “To get me out of the Works Council here?” Kravat asked back.

  “Don’t be ridiculous! You know as well as I that this council of yours is a self-perpetuating setup. If you should have to leave it, you’ll appoint someone else just as disagreeable....” He laughed.

  “So what do you want me to do?” Kravat said bluntly. “Sell out?”

  Joseph felt he had the advantage. He now could bear down on Kravat with the full force of moral outrage. “Have I demanded anything from you? What kind of ass do you think I am—trying to bribe you so you can report it hot to your cronies on the Works Council and in the union! Do you want the job or don’t you?”

  “What are the strings?”

  “None.”

  Joseph stood, calmly observing Kravat’s horsy features, the dark, distinct shadows under the melter’s lower lip and chin.

  Kravat’s hands moved over the rim of the platform. It was an ultimatum all right, and they both knew it, and this knowledge kept distracting Kravat. If he pleaded for time to think it over, he would be making the first step toward acceptance, and Joseph would spread the word fast enough. But Joseph hadn’t demanded anything. He had only hinted that he and his Party might win the election, and that he was a decent fellow, and then he had made an offer.

  It was too easy. Kravat had worked for the Bendas a long time. He had started to work for them when Peter Benda still ruled the Works, and he had learned the making and the mixing and the melting of glass, and he had learned that any gain he and the workers ever made had had to be fought for, and fought for hard. Nothing was ever handed to workers.

  Resident manager of the Hammer Works. A little house of his own, a good wage, clean work, no sweat, and quite a bit of responsibility. There were others who could take over the Works Council, Blaha for instance; Blaha would be perfect. And what would they tell him, the men who sat around the table with the maroon-colored cloth at Stanek’s house? He could hear them weigh the problem and consider it politically and he guessed their conclusion: The more of our people in positions of responsibility, the better. They would tell him to accept.

  “Well, what do you say?” Joseph’s voice urged.

  Kravat got up on the platform and gripped the handle of the shovel. “I don’t want it, Mr. Benda.”

  Joseph shrugged. “I hope you’ll never be sorry for your decision.”

  “I am sorry. A better job means something to me. But I would have to stop being a worker. And the workers would stop listening to me.” Now he smiled. “I’d rather have them listen to me than to you....”

  “As you wish,” said Joseph. He couldn’t help admiring the man; but his admiration began to be mixed with active dislike.

  Christmas had brought no snow; New Year’s had gone by, but by Holy Three Kings, heavy clouds began to swirl around the tops of St. Peter, St. Anna, St. Maria, and St. Nepomuk. The clouds sank lower and lower, pressing in between the trees of the hills, and shrouding the world.

  Then snow fell. It fell on the boys of Rodnik who, dressed in nightshirts, golden paper crowns on their heads, their faces blackened with burnt cork, tore through the streets, scared the little girls, and knocked at house doors to beg for sweets and cake and coins for the Holy Three Kings. It fell on the wide lawn behind Joseph Benda’s house and formed a smooth white sheet and covered the tiny tracks of the birds as soon as they were made. It was soft, wet snow; it relieved the dull gray of the day a little; but it could not break Petra’s melancholy.

  She stood at the window staring out at the thick, whirling flakes. The boys with their golden paper crowns had come and gone, treated by the maid to cookies and a handful of homemade candy. The afternoon stretched unendingly, and the year was only beginning.

  Petra stuck her nose against the pane and breathed and watched the cloudy circle on the glass grow and disappear. She blew again, drew some initials on the frosted area, and wiped them out hastily.

  What if I did it? she asked herself for the tenth time that day. What can happen to me? She was not afraid of punishment; what she feared was rejection, the finality of it. What could she expect but rejection? They were of the same blood, and that was bad. Something would be wrong with the children. But in the first place, it was not a hard and fast rule; in the second place, people didn’t always have children; and in the third place, it would be a long time before he would want her to have children.

  At twelve o’clock on New Year’s night, she had raised her glass of champagne—thank Heavens, there had not been any question about her having the champagne. She had drunk to him with her eyes. He had seen it, he had also raised his glass, and smiled at her. And then, when everybody was kissing everybody, he had kissed her, too; his lips had been cool and light on her cheek, and she could still feel them.

  She knew his schedule. If she went to him now, he would not be at his home; this was his afternoon for visiting the sick. But that might be even better! She would slip into his flat—the landlady would let her in; nobody in Rodnik closed the door on a Benda. She would clean his house and his office and be gone long before he returned. He would come back and find everything clean and in place and would see the touch of her hand.

  Petra went to her closet and got out her boots and her overcoat and her kerchief. She dressed hurriedly, angry at the resistance her heels offered her boots. Then she tiptoed past the kitchen. The maid was reading the serial in the Limberk paper. Petra quietly let herself out of the house.

  The snow was still coming down, and the sound of her steps was swallowed up. When she was little, Karel had given her a fist-size glass ball, with tiny houses and trees inside it. When you shook the ball, it filled up with snow, and the snow would fall mutely for a minute or so. Now Petra felt as if she were moving within such a ball; everything around her was quiet, and ten steps ahead and i
n back and to the right and to the left of her, the visible world ended. This thought made her happy: Such a silent little world of her own; it would be nice to share it with the one person you loved. Or she could keep on walking, and soon there would be no more Rodnik around her, only the loneliness of the hills and the soft snow which would become deeper and deeper. She would sink in and she would not struggle and, as in Karel’s fairy tale, she would find her own tree, a tall, straight, young pine—because every human being had his own tree, the children small ones, and the grownups bigger ones.

  Actually, she watched the familiar houses and corners and unerringly made her way uphill and down, to the center of town, near which Karel had his flat. She could have found the house in her sleep, she had walked there so often in good weather and bad, arriving at the house without stopping and passing it without looking up at his windows or at the brass bell at the door or the shingle: MU Dr. Karel Benda.

  This time she stopped and turned the bell and listened anxiously to its echo inside the house.

  “Miss Benda!” said the landlady, opening the door a slit and then fully. “Why, you poor dear, you must be wet and chilled all the way through!”

  She brushed the snow off Petra’s shoulders and untied her kerchief and shook it out on the street. “You come right in and have a cup of tea. Do you want to see the doctor? He isn’t in; it’s a shame, you having walked all that distance. Is something wrong with you? You look pale. But all fine young ladies look pale nowadays. When I was your age I had cheeks like apples. Give me your coat, Miss Benda, and you come right into my little room and warm yourself up—”

  “No, thank you. I’ll wait upstairs.”

  “But nobody is upstairs! The doctor, God bless him, is out visiting the sick, and he won’t be back before six, he said—”

  “I know.”

  Petra was walking up the worn-down stairs, the landlady clambering behind her.

  “There’s no fire in his rooms. I was just about to go and light it so he would have it nice and warm when he came home—”

  “I’ll light it myself. Is there wood, yes? Then, please, show me where I can find a bucket and broom and a mop and dust rags!”

  “But the place is clean! The doctor had the charwoman in only a couple of days ago—”

  “Please!” said Petra.

  The landlady dropped back, despairingly muttering about how the times really had changed, and what were we coming to when young ladies like Miss Benda had to go and work with the mop and the bucket and the broom.

  Petra went through Karel’s flat. It was a wonderful flat and she saw the stamp of his personality everywhere. He would have an old-fashioned leather armchair with hand-embroidered doilies, and a table covered with wax cloth. He did not care for luxuries, he was not pretentious, his life was devoted to others.

  Carefully, she entered his office rooms. Here, all was functional, geared for work, gleaming in white and black and chromium. She looked at the orderly procession of his scissors and knives and scalpels and pincers and syringes on the glass shelves of his instrument cabinet. She touched the X-ray machine and hastily wiped off the imprint her finger had left on the shining metal. She picked a bit of gauze bandage off the floor and deposited it in the wastebasket which opened when she stepped on a lever.

  “Miss Benda!” said the landlady from somewhere behind her, “I’ve brought you the things out of the kitchen. But you shouldn’t have to do it. Let me give you a hand—”

  “No, thank you,” Petra said without looking around. She was opening a black box which held a collection of slides. She closed the box quickly. The slides were full of germs and bacteria, and he was handling them, disregarding the danger, every day. She wished she could help him. She would learn about germs and bacteria, and how to give injections and how to bandage wounds. She thought of Kitty who knew the whole field and who wasted her time in her fine house on St. Nepomuk while Karel fought disease and germs and bacteria singlehandedly.

  Petra sighed. Then she left the office, rolled up her sleeves, and went to work. It was hard work, because she was not accustomed to it, and she sweated freely. The wood in the little iron stove crackled, and she poured coals on top of the fire.

  For an hour or longer, she mopped the linoleum, dusted the furniture, wiped the vases and knickknacks and picture frames, cleaned the dishes in the kitchen, washed down the range, and polished the mirrors. She felt that by her work she was establishing a small claim to his things. When she could think of no more to do, when bucket and broom and mops had been deposited next to the sink, she scrubbed herself clean and combed her hair for a long time. Finally she had it the way she wanted it, the way she had worn it at the dinner party and at New Year’s, with the soft curls at the back of her neck forming a kind of chignon. She stepped back from the mirror and examined herself critically. Perhaps she wasn’t beautiful; but neither was she uninteresting. The deep brown of her hair brought out the fairness of her skin. She had the high cheekbones of her family; her eyes were a trifle too far apart, but they were dark and shining. She tried out several smiles—a smile of welcome; a shy smile which at any moment she could let melt into an expression of giving and forgiveness; a smile of delight and surprise. Then, suddenly, she broke into giggles. It was silly to rehearse for a something that would never be played. She stuck out her tongue at her reflection and fled from the mirror and fell, tired out, into the leather armchair with the doilies.

  It was nearly time to go. Karel was due around six o’clock, and she should be back home for supper. But she had no watch with her and she didn’t want to ask the landlady, and the snow, still falling outside, made everything so dusky that perhaps it wasn’t near six at all. If Karel came home early and found her still in his flat, it would be fate. She heard the muffled sound of chimes from the old church; she tried to count the strokes, but the thickened air outside made the sounds run into one another like water colors.

  She must have dozed off. She came to with a start and knew that it was long past six, maybe seven, or even later. It was pitch dark; the snowfall had stopped, but the heavy clouds, still anchored in the valleys between the mountains, absorbed the light from the stars and the moon. The snow was a gray tinge on the ground instead of the crisp, fresh white which would have made every trunk and branch, every street lamp and roof and wall stand out sharply.

  The kettle of water she had placed on top of the stove was singing monotonously, had probably been singing a long while. Where was Karel? Why wasn’t he home? Had something happened to him? He had no car, he made his visits on foot, he might have slipped in the snow, broken something, be lying in some ditch, unconscious, or groaning for help. She wanted to run down to the landlady, ask her if Karel had ever been late before, but she could not face the woman, not just now. Her fingers dug into the soft wood of the window sill—she heard his steps and heard him come into the door and turned and ran to him and cried, “Why are you so late? Why didn’t you come on time?”

  Karel put his bag on a chair and threw his hat on top of it. He switched on the lamp that hung over the table.

  There had been so much possessiveness in her outcry that he curbed his questions. “I’ve had a couple of difficult cases, Petra,” he said. “A doctor can never be quite on time.”

  “I was so afraid for you.” She tried to smile, but no smile would come, neither those she had studied, nor any other.

  He took off his coat and carelessly dropped it over the back rest of the chair. Petra picked up the coat and hung it in the closet; she returned for the hat and placed that on the shelf.

  He watched her. There was some of Lida’s efficiency in her actions, although she was obviously busying herself to overcome her agitation. Then he saw that his house was in beautiful order; he was touched, except that her housewifeliness was so purposeful. Petra was moving through the room with a grace which was new; in the short months since she had met him at the Wilson Station in Prague, she had lost much of her ungainliness and had become a
lmost a woman. And now she was asserting herself, was seizing for herself a place that did not and could not exist: the child-wife, yielding and yet predatory.

  At the same time, his whole heart went out to her because he knew how miserable she was and that he must put a stop to this infatuation before she was seriously hurt.

  “You needn’t have hung my things, Petra. I’m going to take you home.”

  She was opening and closing her grandmother Anna’s brooch. “I don’t want to go home!” she said.

  He avoided her eyes. The worst of it was he no longer was sure what role he should play.

  “You’ve done a wonderful job with the house. I wish my charwoman could see it. But now I’ll take you home—your parents must be frantic—”

  “Let me stay a little longer,” she said softly. “I’ll always come and clean your house. I’ll help you in the office. I’ll cook for you. Mother says I can’t cook so well, but I can do the simple dishes all right....Karel—”

  “Uncle Karel!” he corrected her.

  “Karel—” she repeated, and this time she was able to smile.

  He was angry and embarrassed. The whole predicament was the result of the girl’s utter and desolate insecurity, and if Joseph weren’t such an egomaniac, he would give up his ambitions and look after his daughter.

  “I wonder, Petra,” he said, “if you remember the stories I used to tell you.”

  “Your fairy tales?” she asked patronizingly.

  “The one I want to tell you now is a true story. When I was in the concentration camp—what do men talk about at night, in a spot like that? About home, about their families, mostly about their children. So I told them about you, and sometimes they said to me: Karel, you’re very lucky to have such a child. And I said: She’s not my child, she’s my niece, but I love her as if she were my child.”

  “That’s the end of your story?” she asked.

  “Yes.”

  “It would have been nice to have been your child,” she admitted. “But now, I don’t want to be your child; you understand that, don’t you? And I don’t want you to feel that I am a child.”