Stefan Heym

by The Eyes of Reason

  He grabbed his jacket and held it in front of him.

  “Don’t be silly!” she said. “Those are my pajamas. Sam and I had to put you to bed, last night. Very able fellow, this Sam—I must mention it to the ambassador.”

  He dropped his jacket guiltily. “I’m terribly sorry—all the trouble I made—I don’t recall a thing—”

  “You were awfully cute!” she said. “I never knew you were such a happy drunk! We laughed and laughed!”

  Thomas scowled.

  “Then you picked a fight with Pilubnik, the poet. I don’t know what it was about, because you were fighting in Czech. After that, you began to cry, and then you passed out.”

  He looked at her anxiously. “That was all?”

  She laughed and came over to him and tapped his arm. “Yes, darling, that was all.”

  He yawned. “I have my own bed in my hotel.”

  “I didn’t want to ship you there because you’d never have gotten up on time.”

  “On time for what?”

  “We have an appointment with Barsiny at eleven sharp.”

  He came to. “We? What appointment?”

  “I phoned Barsiny last night. Somebody’s got to take you in hand.”

  “I can handle my own business with my publisher.”

  “But you haven’t been handling it.”

  His scowl became openly antagonistic.

  “Barsiny made a point of my coming along,” she stressed.

  He was too furious and too exhausted to argue. He was trapped. “Barsiny did, huh?”

  “I don’t have to come! I’m fairly busy, you know!”

  “Oh, what’s the difference!” he said tiredly. At least she had taken the decision out of his hand... “Where’s the shower?”

  “In there! Don’t you remember?” she chuckled. “What a happy drunk you were!”

  He could still hear her chuckling to herself as he closed the bathroom door behind him.

  Barsiny received them as if he had known them for years. He treated Elinor with deference, Thomas with esteem and fatherliness. He explained how happy he was that Thomas had found his way back to Humanita, and with such an important project!

  “All my life,” he said, “I have been most concerned with the problem of freedom.” He rubbed his short-cropped wheat-colored hair and smiled, showing tobacco-stained teeth. “You see, I was here in the country during the occupation. That’s why I wouldn’t like to see a repetition of anything we had to suffer then.”

  “I understand, Dr. Barsiny, you wrote some very clever editorials in that time!” said Elinor.

  “I daresay I laid a number of cuckoo’s eggs in the Nazi nest!” Barsiny grinned. “They never were able to read between the lines! But that is no way to live! We want to say what we want when we want to! Right?”

  Thomas was silent. That Dr. Barsiny had been inside the country, while he had been living in America, elevated the publisher into the hero class. Yet there was something shocking in the fact that Barsiny had been permitted to write editorials in the German-controlled papers—the man was either very shrewd or a criminal. But it was impossible for him to hold his present position without having been cleared; so he was both shrewd and a hero, and would have to be told the truth.

  “Now, Mr. Benda, about your new book!” urged Barsiny.

  “My outline isn’t complete.”

  Barsiny waved grandly. “A man of your reputation is welcome with us on his say-so. But if you care to tell us something about it—”

  Thomas wished that his head didn’t ache. What he must tell had to be expressed clearly and concisely, but his mind seemed to buckle with all the contradictions he had uncovered in thinking about his theme. And Barsiny, in stating that he wanted to say what he wanted when he wanted to, had prejudiced the matter.

  “Are you sure you’re not buying a pig in a poke?” Thomas asked.

  Barsiny was a little taken aback. Thomas Benda didn’t appear as eager to sign a contract as Elinor Simpson had led him to believe. Several considerations went through the publisher’s head: Was Thomas trying to ease out because some competitor had snapped him up? And if so, what could be done to gain him back? Or was it simply that Benda was not certain about the book and therefore hesitated to commit himself? If that was the case, he had to be propped up, and fast. We need some programmatic literature, Dolezhal had said, and my Party does not finance a publishing house merely to make an investment.

  “Pig in a poke...” said Barsiny. “We know your work, Mr. Benda! We know your novel and the Liberator Appeals and what you wrote in America. I tell you how far we are willing to gamble on you! I have taken the liberty of discussing the plan of your ‘Essay on Freedom’ with my associates, and we agree that a work on this subject, written by you, is just what this country and this period need. We’re going to advertise it before you’ve even turned over the manuscript to us. We’re going to print brochures and send them to all our lists and have them distributed by all bookstores. Just give us a few hints of what you’re going to say, a few sentences we can quote! We’re going to treat this ‘Essay on Freedom’ as the most important book of the year! How do you like that?”

  “I think that’s magnificent!” said Elinor. “We couldn’t do it any better in America!”

  Thomas was impressed. The most important book of the year! His name before the eyes of every literate person in the country! Thomas Benda, the Spokesman...

  “But I don’t see...” He hesitated. A few sentences we can quote—how could the things which he had to say be said in a few sentences?

  “All right, you have no outline,” Barsiny broke into his thoughts, “but you can make a short statement for us to work with! By the time we’re through with our advance campaign, I promise you a minimum sale of fifty thousand copies!”

  “It’s not so simple!” pleaded Thomas. “I like freedom. You like freedom. All of us like freedom. We want a society in which everybody is guaranteed all the freedom he likes.”

  “That’s it! That’s it!” cried Barsiny. “Let me take that down!” He wrote furiously on a pad: “...in which everybody is guaranteed all the freedom he likes....”

  “It can’t be done this way! How can I explain it to you—it’s complicated, and I don’t know yet—”

  “Thomas!” said Elinor, “freedom is freedom, and you’ve experienced what it feels like to have it taken away!”

  “Wonderful!” said Barsiny. “D’you mind if I add this?” His pencil was flying again. “...I’ve experienced what it feels like to have it taken away....” He waved the pencil, “Don’t worry, Mr. Benda, we’ll edit it later.”

  Thomas blinked. The publisher’s energy took his breath away, and he struggled to speak. “But listen, Dr. Barsiny—permit me to bring up just one question—”

  “Anything! Anything!” Barsiny sat back and laid his freckled hands flat against one another. “A book of this kind needs discussion!”

  “Let us suppose,” Thomas began, trying to marshal at least one of his doubts, “let us suppose that this guaranteed freedom endangers, at a certain point, the structure of society—and I don’t care which kind of society. Does not that give society the right to restrict freedom?”

  “We’ve always had police,” grumbled Elinor. “You can’t let thieves and gangsters and murderers roam around free. That’s understood.”

  Thomas’s expression was pained. “I didn’t refer to that. The question is: At what point can society claim it is endangered? And how far can it be permitted, in self-defense, to curb freedom?”

  “Aren’t you getting a little off the road?” Barsiny asked quizzically.

  Thomas rubbed his forehead. “I’ll have to go off the road, Dr. Barsiny. That will be the whole value of my book!”

  “Naturally,” agreed Barsiny. “We would want you to do that. A Thomas Benda will have to do more than rehash old phrases.”

  The agreement came too easily. But Thomas went on, “I asked whether society could be permi
tted to curb freedom. But society doesn’t ask that question. It just goes ahead and does it. Do we then fight society?”

  “Yes, of course! We fought the Nazis, didn’t we?” said Barsiny.

  “If we had curbed the freedom of the Sudeten-Germans in time, as we should be eradicating them now, we might not have had to fight the Nazis.”

  “Yes,” said Barsiny, without enthusiasm. The resentment which any editor and publisher has against authors began to well up in him. Did they have to enjoy their intellectual stomach-aches so noisily? All he wanted was an advance statement that he could use for his promotion work, and that he could hand over to Dolezhal for the election campaign.

  Thomas, who believed that Barsiny was beginning to share his apprehensions, continued digging, “In other words, we must ask two questions: Whose freedom should be curbed, if necessary?” He saw Elinor’s frown. It egged him on. “And whose society, what kind of society, is entitled to protect itself at the cost of curbing freedom?”

  “Do you have the answers?” asked Barsiny.

  “Not yet,” said Thomas.

  “Do you think you can find valid answers?”

  “I wish I knew....” Thomas leaned forward, eagerly, “When I have those answers, don’t you see, I’ll have the book.”

  “But it’s as plain as daylight!” clamored Elinor. “Thomas, you’ve lived in the United States! What is it we say in America? The less government we have, the better! Not bad, from old Emerson....Just reword it: That society is best which grants the most freedom!”

  “And if that society should be threatened and, in order to protect itself, should have to cut down on freedom—does it cease to be the best of societies? According to your theory, it does. Now: if the restrictions it has to impose mean that it no longer is a good society, then it cannot be permitted to curb freedom, and must be changed one way or the other....Do you see the vicious circle in which you’re caught, Elinor? No—the criterion lies somewhere else. Only what is the criterion? Who determines it?”

  “Most fascinating,” said Barsiny. He wondered how much Elinor Simpson really knew about this book of Thomas’s, and with his sense for cuckoo’s eggs he felt that the work would need close supervision. “I like your spirit of objectivity, Mr. Benda. However, we must be practical. Right now, in Czechoslovakia, the threat to freedom does not come from society, nor from government, but from certain forces within both who would like to arrogate to themselves powers and controls detrimental to everybody else—” He shut up under the take-it-easy glance Elinor had shot him.

  Thomas dismissed Barsiny’s attempt to give him a line of policy. “You’re not stating anything new!” he said. “That’s been true throughout history.”

  “But you will take it into account—” Barsiny pressed.

  “I’m taking everything into account. But what I, for my part, would like to know is...”

  Then he stopped. His eyes went past Dr. Barsiny’s short-cropped, round skull to the wall, to the books that lined it, and back to Elinor. He had done all that could be expected of him. He had tried to tell Barsiny that the Essay had its pitfalls and that it was not a mere matter of Yes, Yes, No, No, with nothing in between.

  “What would you like to know?” Barsiny asked helpfully.

  “Will you publish the book even if it should not fit into any of the accepted grooves? If its conclusions should be attacked from every conceivable side?”

  There was a short interplay, too subtle to be noticed by any but the two between whom it took place—a raising of the brows by Barsiny, a faint nod from Elinor. Then Barsiny said, “Of course we will, Mr. Benda. The kind of freedom we pride ourselves on consists precisely in our ability and willingness to publish even the lonely voice, the out-of-the-way, the critique of the accepted. And this is the kind of freedom you’re going to endorse, too, I’m sure. So your Essay won’t be as difficult as all that!”

  Barsiny picked up the phone. “The contract for Mr. Benda, please!” And, replacing the receiver, he smilingly turned back to Thomas, “Let us proceed with your statement.”

  Thomas’s headache, forgotten in the heat of explaining himself, was back in full force. The thing was settled, and the fight was gone out of him, and he thought dully that one step now must follow the other. Besides, Dr. Barsiny was right—the freedom that permitted an author like himself to have the Essay published was the paramount freedom, the freedom of all freedoms, which must be maintained under any circumstances.

  “I like freedom. You like freedom. All of us like freedom,” he heard the publisher’s somewhat fatty voice. “We want a society in which everybody is guaranteed all the freedom he likes. I have experienced what it feels like to have it taken away....”

  Barsiny looked up, expectantly.

  “So have millions of my people,” dictated Thomas, and broke off. “Do I have to go on? Do we have to do this?”

  “It is necessary,” said Barsiny.

  Thomas became conscious of the change in Elinor’s face. She reminded him of a missionary—the same fervor, the same intolerance.

  “Now that we have it,” he said, turning back quickly to the publisher’s freckled hand which was moving along the page of the pad, “we are in danger of taking freedom for granted. We must never stop thinking of it, we must guard it, defend it....”

  He paused to consider. Until now, there was nothing in what he had said to which he couldn’t fully subscribe. He began to feel better, his words began to carry him, it was almost as if he were back in the days when the Nazis stood at the border and when he was outlining to Joseph the impassioned leaflets that subsequently went out as the Liberator Appeals. Disregarding Elinor, he slipped into Czech.

  “The peril to freedom lies in ourselves, in human complacency, in the willingness to accept someone else’s word without ever-renewed examination.”

  He rested his foot on the rung of the chair and leaned his elbow on his knee. “Freedom is truth, the search for truth, the fearless proclamation of truth. Only the truth makes us free, Jan Hus has taught us, and ever since, the Czech people have fought and bled and died for this lesson.”

  He saw the publisher’s cool, clever eyes grow wistful; Elinor’s eyes were on him, she was wetting her lips. “What is it you’re saying?” she asked tensely. “Tell me!”

  Barsiny translated. He was good at it; the words lost none of their strength.

  Thomas stood up. Flattening his hands on the publisher’s desk, he pronounced sharply, “And now we’re a mature nation, tested and hardened in fire. We will—we will...”

  The spirit left him. He felt as if something in him were collapsing.

  “What’s he saying? What’s he saying?” demanded Elinor.

  Again, Barsiny translated, up to the point where Thomas’s voice had petered out.

  “Go on, Thomas!” she dunned. “You’re great!”

  “Words, such a pile of words,” he said.

  “We will—” repeated Barsiny. “Please, Mr. Benda!”

  Thomas fended him off. “You finish it. I can’t.”

  “We will fight,” said Elinor, “as we fought the Germans, anyone who threatens our national or individual freedom.”

  Barsiny, who had taken down the line, looked questioningly at Thomas. Thomas nodded dispiritedly. He was beginning to realize what he had done. He had written a declaration of war. But in whose name? And against whom?

  Barsiny was closing his pad, slapping the cover down. He greeted a girl who had entered quietly, and took the sheaf of papers she handed him. Then he pulled a thick, green fountain pen out of his pocket, unscrewed it methodically, and held it out to Thomas.

  “Your contract, Mr. Benda!”

  Thomas signed.

  No, it was nothing like a declaration of war. It was an advertising blurb, full of hackneyed sentiments and melodramatic slogans, and Barsiny could have done better by himself, except that the publisher was too polite to say so. And in any case, what did it amount to? thought Thomas. What he would
write in his book was the essential item. No compromise there; but utter honesty with himself and with the issue, no matter what his conclusions would be, no matter whom and how many people he would antagonize, no matter whose illusions, his own included, he would have to destroy.

  Elinor embraced him and kissed him, and Barsiny shook his hand and congratulated him. It was an effort to bear up under that.

  Well, they wouldn’t be able to say he hadn’t warned them.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  AND NOW WE’RE A MATURE NATION—Joseph read—tested and hardened in fire. We will fight, as we fought the Germans, anyone who threatens our national and individual freedom.

  He placed the newspaper from the district town of Limberk flat on his desk, snapped open his penknife, and cut out of the front page Thomas’s prominently displayed statement. It was a masterpiece, a real little gem. It breathed spirit and forcefulness; the rhythm of its words was as unmistakable as had been that of the Liberator Appeals; its authorship would have been clear even if Thomas’s name had not been printed in block letters at its head; it was general enough to find favor with practically everybody; and yet it cannily gave support to one side in the contest—his side.

  He pushed back his office chair and, whistling to himself, stepped lightly to the wall cabinet which held his supplies of stationery. Out of the second drawer, he took a large Manila sheet of the size that fitted into his volume of Thomas’s collected works; out of the third, he fished a small bottle of good and rare rubber cement. Back at his desk, he pasted the clipping on its backing and smoothed it down with the heel of his hand and the fleshy part of his thumb.

  It really was amazing that Thomas could have been made to declare himself; it confirmed the fact that Thomas had not forgotten the ideals taught him in his formative years; and it proved, thought Joseph, that if he was unable to devote himself to Thomas for the time being, Elinor was a perfect substitute. People who knew what they wanted, combined with a publisher’s contract, made for a persuasive force that was hard to beat.