He noticed Kravat going by in a group of men, who distributed themselves to apparently strategic spots throughout the hall. He became anxious. If Kravat was placing a claque, what was going to happen to the play of ideas?
Jovial shouts traveled down the aisle: “How are you, Doctor?” “Hello, Doctor!” “Good evening, Doctor!”
A quick move of Kitty’s head, a half-suppressed, “There’s Karel!”
For a moment, Thomas glanced at Kitty. There was on her face nothing but an expression of quiet welcome such as she might show to any relative or friend.
The people were bantering, “Have you taken the speakers’ blood pressure, Doctor?” and “When are you going to be a candidate?”
“Popular, isn’t he?” said Thomas contemptuously and, at the same time, a little enviously. Karel was nodding and waving in acknowledgment of the sallies; then he discovered Thomas and Kitty, and stopped. Thomas suddenly wanted to be with Karel, to have him near, to be protected by him when his statement would be hacked at, to tell him in so many words that it wasn’t his statement at all.
“Why don’t you sit here, Karel!” he called, and gestured to the two hefty women to move over. Dutifully, they shoved; the whole row of people came into motion, buckled, straightened out again,—and then there was a seat for Karel next to Kitty.
“Thanks!” said Karel, inching through to the seat. He smiled at Kitty and inquired how she was; then he sat down, carefully folding his topcoat and placing it on his lap so that his hands were busied holding it. “Looks like quite a show—” he remarked.
Kitty’s face had grown livelier. She caught her gloves and pocketbook just before they fell to the floor. “Very exciting,” she said, “the whole thing. And when I think of Joseph....”
“You’re probably more excited than he is,” Thomas corrected her. “When it comes to business, he’s cold as a pike, and just as sharp.”
“This isn’t business,” said Kitty.
“To him it is!” Thomas insisted. “How did you like my statement, Karel?”
“It certainly filled the hall.”
“But you didn’t like it?” Thomas took Kitty’s gloves and slapped them irritably against his palm.
Karel leaned forward to answer. Kitty was rearranging her gray beret. How can that little hat, he thought, hold down that tumble of curls? “Thomas, your statement was very good,” he said slowly, “but for another time.”
“What time?”
“When the Nazis were here....”
“It is possible that what I write is old hat to you,” Thomas said sarcastically.
“It’s not that. Before the liberation, such a general appeal was tremendously effective. Today, that kind of thing can be misused.”
Thomas’s lips set hard. “Well—if you approach it with ill will!”
“Look, Thomas—you asked me what I thought, and I told you. You can’t rush into print with a lot of fighting words and expect to get only cotton-balls thrown back at you.”
“Please, Karel!” said Kitty.
“Let him be specific!” Thomas demanded. “What’s wrong with my statement?”
Karel hesitated. “I can’t tell you exactly,” he began. “But the very fact that it’s open to debate—”
“Everything is open to debate!” Thomas became supercilious. “We might even learn something here.”
Kitty took her gloves away from Thomas. “You’re ruining them!” she said lightly.
“Ladies and gentlemen...” called the Reverend Trnka.
From the wings, the two disputants had come on the stage, Stanek first, moving with small, rapid steps to the chair on Trnka’s right. Joseph paused halfway on the stage, looked over his audience, and bowed to Lida and Petra in the front row. Then he went forward and eased himself into the seat at Trnka’s left.
People were craning their necks, and in the rear of the hall they were standing up to get a good view of the men on the stage.
Trnka was shouting again. “Ladies and gentlemen! Quiet, please! Order, please! If you can’t control the children, please take them out!”
Thomas heard the heads of several recalcitrant youngsters being slapped. The people in the rear sat down, and there was a hush of a kind.
The Reverend Trnka’s voice was now well-modulated. He stated the purpose of the meeting, told how it had come about, and praised it as proof of a living democracy. “To be absolutely impartial,” he announced, “I suggested that the speakers draw lots to decide who was to speak first. This was done, and fate smiled on Mr. Joseph Benda. I don’t think I have to introduce him. Every man, woman, and child of Rodnik knows him as a provider, a fighter for freedom and the rights of the people, and as a public-spirited citizen able to set the common weal over private interests—”
He broke off. There was only thin applause, and the Reverend feared that he might have gone too far.
He folded his hands as if before prayer, and concluded, “I did not have the pleasure of baptizing him, my late and lamented predecessor having performed this joyful duty. But I have confirmed him and married him to his charming and loyal wife, I have baptized his child, and I have seen him leave into exile and have welcomed him back home.
“Ladies and gentlemen: Regardless of where we may stand in the always distorting struggle of politics—our friend—Mr. Joseph Benda!”
The applause came stronger now, particularly from some sections of the audience. Thomas snorted—if Kravat had organized a claque for Stanek, Joseph had taken good care that he, too, had support from the floor.
Joseph rose and shook the Reverend Trnka’s hand. He glanced at Stanek who sat staring ahead and fingering his stringy tie. Then he faced the audience full, cleared his throat, waited for absolute silence, and began.
Only during the very first few minutes was there any trace of wavering or timidity; Joseph’s voice steadily gained in vitality and firmness, and he soon succeeded in establishing between himself and the audience that current which runs from mind to mind and without which the most beautifully chosen words would fall dead.
It was a new Joseph to Thomas. Up there on the stage, with the light centered on him, he was dignified, he was powerful. His words were simple, and he repeated some of his ideas several times; but this, too, seemed design rather than uncertainty.
He played a number of variations on the theme that freedom was inextricably tied to the unity of the people. Clever, thought Thomas; if Joseph was able to create and sufficiently deepen the impression that the people were all one, that no rifts to speak of went through the body politic, then the simpletons on the floor would conclude that they could vote for him even though they were poor and he was rich.
“What brought us victory in war?” demanded Joseph. “Unity! The unity expressed in our National Front Government in which all democratic parties are represented! The unity which guarantees that meetings like this can be held in freedom, that different opinions can be stated, and that you people can be free to make up your own minds. Do you want this unity? Do you want this freedom?”
He paused dramatically, his arms outstretched.
“Yes! Yes!” shouted the claque, and the shout was taken up by the audience, and people rose and applauded wildly. Thomas joined in, because he liked this kind of unity, and because he liked this kind of freedom; but he broke off and fell silent when he noticed that Karel was sitting tight, his hands motionless under his coat.
With a short, authoritative gesture, Joseph cut off the acclaim.
“But there are forces in this country,” he said, his voice dark with foreboding, “which try to break up this unity in order to make political hay out of strife and class warfare.”
He paused again. Thomas sensed that Joseph was skilfully heightening the expectation of an exposé.
But Joseph switched the subject.
“You will hear it said that I am nothing but a capitalist—despite the fact that I have given up the Benda Works which my grandfather founded and my father built up,
and which have given bread to many of you for generations.”
Thomas cleared his throat, nervously. Joseph was telling the truth, but only part of it.
“...A dirty capitalist despite the fact that I am no more than the Administrator in the people’s name of the people’s property.”
“Shame!” shouted someone, and Thomas felt the almost physical impact of an audience being swayed.
“Yes—I was a capitalist! How can I deny it? But there are capitalists and capitalists....” And the sly smile of all the Bendas who had been peasants spread over Joseph’s face. “There were those who sided with the Nazis—to the devil with them!”
“Bravo! Bravo!”
“I claim that it is possible—and necessary!—to be a Czech first, and a worker, or farmer, or carpenter, or doctor, or schoolteacher, or capitalist, second! I fought the Nazis! It would have been unseemly for me to wear my uniform and my ribbons tonight, unless my learned opponent wore the stripes of the concentration camp prisoner—and I’m sure he has not kept these....”
Thomas squirmed. It was too much. But the audience was eating it up and waiting tensely for Joseph to go on.
“I fought on the side of the people, for freedom! The freedom from foreign oppression, the freedom of you workers to organize and to make progress in all fields and to live a full and happy life. If you will forgive me, I would like to quote my famous brother, Thomas Benda, who, I’m glad to say, is among us tonight...”
Thomas reached for Kitty’s arm. He tried to make himself small. He was thankful they weren’t seated up front.
“Because my brother, during the war, was the Spokesman of our people and our hopes, and because he can put into words so much better than I what is in the hearts of all of us. We want a society in which everybody is guaranteed all the freedom he likes. That’s what I’m for! I challenge anyone to stand up and say that he is against this!”
Abruptly, he turned and sat down. The audience, agasp for a moment, suddenly realized that this was it, that Joseph had finished, and had thrown down the gauntlet. They were on their feet, filling the auditorium with the din of their approval. People pressed over toward Thomas, trying to reach him and shake his hand; before Kitty could think of what she should do, she and Karel were pushed aside; the children, making the most of the bedlam, broke loose and got between the legs of the grownups.
The Reverend Trnka, knocking his ring finger against an empty water glass, attempted to restore some semblance of order. Stanek got up and sat down again and then stood up once more and remained standing, holding his pince-nez between thumb and forefinger of his left hand and blinking at the audience. Thomas could hardly understand the introduction the Reverend Trnka gave to the Professor.
The introduction over, Stanek had no choice but to begin speaking, although Trnka still had not stemmed the unrest in the hall. Kravat’s men succeeded in enforcing some quiet.
To Thomas, the small, wispy man, with his thin white hair, who struggled to be heard was not at all ridiculous or pathetic; neither was his voice which sometimes rose to a high pitch and broke, nor the nervous gesturing with his pince-nez, nor the pushing back of the stiffly starched cuffs of his shirt. The lines on Stanek’s face had been drawn by the workings of his mind; he was not a man to hammer or repeat, and he shied away from the commonplace. The whole picture, as Thomas saw it, was that of a person with an idea world of his own, of an impractical man, perhaps, but also of one without the constant drive to apply his ideas immediately and under all circumstances and for his personal advantage.
The Professor gradually gained the attention of his listeners despite his uneven voice, his fuzzy movements, and his refusal to oversimplify the issues or to appeal to the emotions of the audience. He did not make a political speech, he gave a lecture covering the general situation of the country, its economy, its internal problems.
“Unity,” he said, “yes! But can we permit those who would like to deprive us of what we achieved through so much bitter work, so much sacrifice, so much blood, to hide behind the cloak of unity—or of freedom?”
The people were silent; they were thinking, pondering the question. Thomas didn’t dare to look at Karel.
The Professor lectured on. What was basic? he asked. What affected everyone’s life most deeply? It was the problem of who controlled the machines, and the furnaces, and the sources of raw material, and the financial institutions—and for whose benefit they were controlled. Now, by the Decrees of the President, the people had begun to control much of that; but a large share was remaining in private hands. It was to be hoped that the two sectors of economy could work together, under a plan which was necessary to raise everybody’s standard of living and to avoid economic anarchy—but human nature being what it was, the people had to be prepared for a struggle in which the lines would be drawn clearly: On the one side, the masses of workers and small farmers and mechanics; on the other, the remnants of the bourgeoisie and their hangers-on.
It was a disquieting speech to the majority of men and women in the hall. They had gone through the war, through the occupation, through the Revolution not yet a year old, and even if they did not say it, they felt they had earned a few years of peace and rest and quiet. Yet here was this old man with his nagging voice and his silly tie and old-fashioned collar, who told them that in all probability there would be no peace and that they would have to stand ready to defend once more the little they had gained and the little they wanted. They still were listening to him, but they wished he were not putting these things into words, and they wished they could forget about them.
It was disquieting to Thomas, too, because Stanek, like himself, was working in the medium of ideas. But with a difference, he thought; I build on top of other ideas, Stanek bases himself on such disagreeably tangible items as means of production, control of banks and furnaces, supply of raw materials, planned housing, planned everything.
“Which brings me to the question of freedom!” Stanek waved his pince-nez through the air. “The freedom on which my opponent was harping. Freedom for whom? Freedom for those who want to shove us back to the years of the First Republic when wages were not enough to feed the children, when the unemployed were standing in line for a handout, when strikes had to be called for even the most modest demands? Freedom to lead us into another Munich? Freedom to take away from us the mines and the steel mills and the glass factories?”
He patted his cuffs back into place and rubbed the inflamed saddle of his nose.
“Frankly, ladies and gentlemen, I am against granting such freedoms....” His tone was serene and dispassionate, almost as if he were reading from a textbook. “It is my considered opinion that we should muzzle the dogs of reaction and chain the hands of those who would take our bread from our mouths—”
A loud rattling interrupted him. It came from the back of the hall; metal screeched over metal. Somebody cursed and complained angrily, “Why did you have to pour it over my pants?”
A man laughed. “Bread? Who’s talking of bread? This is goulash soup!”
Everyone turned. On the long table in the rear steamed three giant kettles, permeating the close air with the pungent, spicy, meaty smell of the hot soup. The children, suppressed only with the greatest difficulty during Stanek’s scholarly speech, now wiggled out from between their parents, crawled off, pushed against knees, and finally reached the freedom of the aisle. Their heavy boots thumped toward the kettles. A number of grownups, especially in the hindmost rows, stealthily got up and sidled over to the soup.
Stanek continued stubbornly. There were things he had to say, and he was going to say them. He talked on, about the meaning of economic freedom, about the necessity of maintaining the National Front Government, about...
Even Thomas, who was trying hard, could understand him no longer as chairs were shuffled, benches were moved, and as the whispering rose to a low murmur and, in the end, to loud, impatient remarks.
Stanek fought the uproar down to his final wor
d. Thomas, Kravat and his men, and Karel applauded, but their applause was not taken up, except by a few polite souls.
“This is unforgivable!” said Kitty. “The old gentleman is shaking like a leaf. Why couldn’t they wait with those kettles?”
“Yes, why couldn’t they,” Karel said dryly.
Thomas saw the Reverend Trnka confer with Joseph and Stanek. He expected Trnka to declare the meeting ended, or at least to permit an intermission for soup and beer. But apparently the three men on the stage decided that it would be impossible to call the meeting to order again after the refreshments had been served, for Trnka knocked long and energetically against his empty water glass and shouted, “Rebuttal! Rebuttal! Ladies and gentlemen—there must be a rebuttal! Will you please sit down? No soup will be served until I say so! Keep those children quiet! Rebuttal!—Mr. Joseph Benda!”
After Stanek, Joseph seemed to fill the whole stage with his tall figure and broad shoulders. His face was genial and understanding. He was obviously the favorite, if for no other reason than that his speech had been short and had not had to compete with the increasingly tantalizing odor of the soup. More than ever the boss, he could command silence, and he did.
“I would not think of taking up your time to answer all the points my learned opponent made,” he said.
There was laughter, and some appreciative bravos. Of course, thought Thomas, of course he wouldn’t answer.
“But I want to show you that perhaps he sees the situation too blackly, and I want to prove to you what I had to say about unity, and that a man should be a Czech first and only afterwards consider his class and party interests.”
Joseph was talking easily, he was taking his audience into his confidence and indicating by his voice and facial expression that he had something up his sleeve. This captured the attention, and for a moment the soup was forgotten.
“Now you all know that Professor Stanek is not really the important man in the Party opposing me. The important man here in Rodnik is someone else, and I know him very well, and I’ve worked with him very closely both before and after the war.”
Stefan Heym Page 22
