Stefan Heym

by The Eyes of Reason

  “Very good,” said Joseph, “very well put....” He had not listened too closely. “It’s got the Thomas Benda verve and the rhythm I love so much. But why read just this to me?”

  Thomas closed the folder and laid it on the small table next to him.

  “What do you want, Joseph?”

  “I want help.”

  “What kind of help?”

  “You know what’s going to come after this fire, Thomas—they’ll exploit it. They’ll blame me for it. They’ll gang up on me. And I stand all alone.”

  Even his voice was thin and stale. Thomas felt the fear in it and the isolation; he felt them deeply. He’d lived in fear and isolation while he wrote his book. And he would live in fear and isolation even after it was published and began to corrode the smug formulas and comfortable phrases which people had come to accept and relax in as they did in the old mattresses on their beds.

  “But you have a whole party in back of you,” he suggested, “and Dolezhal, and a string of newspapers.”

  Joseph spread his palms as if he wanted to show how empty his hands were. “Whatever they do, or say, will be done and said to protect themselves. You’re the only person I know who can speak up for me, for my sake....”

  Kitty brushed aside the thought that Thomas might resent her intrusion, and said, “You will do it, Thomas, won’t you? Why, we were all together, under the tree, in Rodnik, when the fire started in Martinice—”

  Thomas twisted in his chair. “I owe you my life, Joseph. I owe to you that I am a writer. But you’re as guilty of the destruction of the Hammer Works as if you had laid the fire yourself.”

  Joseph’s shoulders slumped. “Maybe you ought to get together with Karel and work out the details of that theory.”

  “Karel?” said Kitty. “But Karel doesn’t think—”

  “No, he doesn’t....It was just a sad joke about another Benda who’s failing me.” Joseph’s mouth was bitter. He had had no great illusions as to the value of a word from Thomas in a conflict which went to the very roots of people’s economic existence. It had been a sentimental thing. It would have broken the ring of events that were choking him. “I had to produce,” he said hopelessly. “What could I do?”

  “I wish I could tell you....” Thomas was thinking of the statement he had been made to write, and of the contract that had been handed him in return. “We all carry dirt on our hands and cannot complain if it gets into our food and galls it.”

  “I’m a simple man,” said Joseph, “with a simple belief in simple loyalties. And sometimes I cannot follow your philosophy. I’ll own up—I’m left with practically nothing of my beliefs.”

  The reproach cut, though it had been delivered softly. Thomas said heatedly, “You kept the Germans at Hammer because you thought it was a clever thing to do. You used them—some say for production, some say for the good of the country, and some, for yourself. But they are evil, and nothing can come from them but evil; and now it has come, and we are suffering for it—”

  “God damn it!” Joseph jumped up. “You nauseate me, you and your holier-than-thou attitude!”

  He stomped out, grabbing his coat and his hat. But as he walked down the path from the house to his car, his flurry of strength left him again; his feet slowed down, his body sagged.

  Kitty, her face constrained, stood at the window, looking after him. Thomas stepped next to her and took her hand. She withdrew it.

  “How could you be so callous!” she said.

  He saw his brother, an old man, trudge down the path. “I warned him about the Germans, didn’t I?” he defended himself.

  “Call him back!” she asked—and as she saw him shut up tight within himself, she said, “I don’t understand you....”

  “No,” he said sadly, “you don’t.” Whatever it was he had preserved made him no happier.

  CHAPTER THREE

  NOT ONLY food was short this winter, but coal was, too. The two old stoves in the corners of the Rodnik auditorium were cold, and the men sat huddled in their overcoats. A steady soft drumming persisted under the hum of voices as the workers pushed alternately the tips and the heels of their boots on the wooden floor to keep the circulation in their feet going. The drumming went on even as Kravat opened the meeting.

  Karel had been held up by a case, and he and Thomas arrived late. Kravat, standing at the rim of the platform, was already in the middle of his opening. He nodded toward Karel, who was taking Thomas to a seat in the rear. As Works Doctor, Karel was part of the crew and had been invited as a matter of course—as had been Joseph, who sat conspicuously in front, arms folded, his head somewhat inclined toward the speaker.

  Thomas tried not to notice the critical glances that seemed to say: What does he want here? This is a glassworkers’ meeting, not a Benda family affair. “Thanks for taking me,” he whispered to Karel, and went on—about Joseph’s plea to him, and about why he felt that this meeting bore on his “Essay on Freedom.”

  Karel hissed, “Don’t thank me—thank Kravat. And keep quiet.” Karel wanted to listen and think. He was struck by the difference between this meeting and the pre-election shindig that had climaxed in Joseph’s goulash soup. The boisterousness, the cheer, the indulgence, the joviality, had disappeared. In their place had emerged a certain embittered concentration, a hardness, a consciousness of purpose. It could not be explained by saying that then it had been spring while now it was winter, or that then children and women had sat with their men while now only a few women were in the hall, and these members of the union. And although the agenda of the meeting affected the lives of all the men present, and the life of the town and the life of the industry, in itself it was not a sufficient reason for the new temper. The tensions that rent his family and his country, and that grew sharper with every passing day and event, had marked themselves on the faces and in the attitudes of the people.

  Karel was not sure whether to be glad of it or not. He sensed that even here in Rodnik, small as it was and far from the mainstream of the capital, matters were pressing toward an eruption which might clear the air; but there had been enough violence in his life to make him fear it.

  Only part of Kravat’s words had seeped through Karel’s reflections; with a start he discovered how closely Kravat’s speech paralleled his own thinking.

  “The fire at the Hammer Works,” Kravat was winding up, “was a political act, springing from political motives, and possible only through political mistakes, those of our own and those of others. Aside from the police measures which will have to be taken, it will have to be dealt with on a political level. However, and I want this clearly understood, this is not our task today.”

  He was no longer the man who had gone out pilfering with Karel and who had stated that he liked doing things on his own hook for the fun of it. It seemed to Karel that the fire had burned out not only buildings and machines, but also the remnants of the man’s vagaries.

  “When we took over the furnaces, we took over responsibilities. Ours were not only the benefits of common ownership—security in our jobs, a greater share in the profits, a voice in the production process—ours were its obligations.”

  Karel leaned over to Thomas. “Are you following him?”

  “What do you think I’m doing?”

  Karel wanted him to listen closely. Perhaps from here, from these unsmiling men, would come something which would have for Thomas more than a bearing on his essay—something more than an intellectual exercise.

  “And because of these obligations”—Kravat raised his voice—“the problem which the catastrophe of Martinice has placed before us cannot be left to the Government alone, or to the leadership of the industry, or to the men in the Works Council, or to the National Administrator. They are waiting to hear what we have to propose, so that they can base their actions on what we can do. It is a simple question of bread—bread for us, and bread for the country. We know that our glass is exported all over the world, and that we must exchange it for the whe
at that dried up on our fields. We must make up for the loss of production. And we must rebuild the Hammer Works. These, I think, are our points for tonight.”

  He sat down behind a table that had been placed on the platform.

  The soft tapping of the feet, which had lasted throughout Kravat’s programmatic talk, stopped. In the cold, bare hall, the oppressive weight of the task became tangible. And with it came the urge to throw it off; or if that was not possible, to throw the blame on someone for the grind and the privations ahead.

  A voice sounded from the dark recesses of the hall. “Make up for production—right! Rebuild—right! And throw out Joseph Benda!”

  Karel saw Joseph’s shoulders jerk. Stamping feet and clapping hands seconded the idea from several sides. The whole thing was highly irregular, and would become more so if Kravat didn’t step in and channel the meeting back into the constructive business he had outlined.

  Kravat knocked his knuckles on the table. “If anybody wishes the floor, I’ll recognize him after he raises his hand!”

  But he failed to proclaim that this was not a gathering to depose Joseph.

  A hand went up, and a gray-haired man rose. It was Viteslav Czerny, the team master. Czerny loosened his muffler, and said, “I remember Blaha. Most of us do. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve been thinking ever since about him dying there, and the whys and wherefores of it.”

  The shuffling feet were quiet. Somebody coughed long and hollowly and spat.

  “And now we had the fire, and this time it isn’t just a man who was burned, but the livelihood of a couple of hundred people. I imagine that none of this would have happened if the furnaces were still privately owned. The owner would have made damned sure that he wouldn’t have to pay indemnities, and that his property remained intact and in tiptop shape.”

  Czerny stuck his hands into his pockets and raised his chin in a defiant gesture.

  “Now, do I say that we should return the furnaces to Mr. Benda? Am I crazy in the head? I don’t think so. But I do say we never took them away from him! You don’t use the fox who stole and killed your chickens as Administrator of your chicken coop, do you?”

  There were shouts of “No!” and some laughs.

  “This is nothing against Mr. Benda personally. He’s a great specialist in glass, and I’ve seen him make glass with his own hands. I even voted for him when he wanted to be elected for Parliament. But let him stay in Prague, in the Assembly, and let him help give us a decent Constitution—and let him keep out of our factories!”

  With a self-righteous nod, he sat down. Karel saw Kravat glance in Joseph’s direction. But Joseph’s arms remained folded; perhaps he felt that the attack was so unjust that it defeated itself; or he could be waiting for more of the same and would answer all of it at once—or maybe he was so dejected that he had decided to let it rain down on him, to leave them to their futile recriminations.

  Kravat didn’t consider the recriminations futile—Karel was certain of that. Kravat was building up to something, probably a grand blow to finish Joseph once and for all; Kravat would have to have the patience of a donkey and the forbearance of an angel to forget what Joseph had accused him of on the night of the fire. And yet, Kravat was wrong. Kravat had staked out the competence of the meeting. No plan for production would come from a symposium of denunciations; not a single nail would be driven into a scaffold at the Hammer Works by permitting the men to vent their spleen on Joseph.

  “Yes—the man over there in the ninth row!” Kravat pointed. “You, Blatnik!”

  Blatnik got up slowly. He was heavy-set and dark-haired, with a pronounced jaw. He was a worker who had not spent the major part of his life with the Bendas, but had come to Rodnik and been hired by Joseph after the war.

  Blatnik said, “I don’t like to correct an older and more experienced fellow worker. But this is a grave matter and we must know what we’re talking about. Master Czerny told us that we took the furnaces and gave them right back to Joseph Benda. Well, we took them, but we didn’t really give them back—we just kept Joseph Benda around and kind of dangled them before his nose.”

  Karel could see Blatnik’s profile—a determined face, realistic, with an uncompromising intelligence. In his few words, Blatnik had described Joseph’s exact quandary.

  “What did you expect the man to do—drool his heart out and be big about it? Of course he would try to get them back, this way or that—I don’t know, I don’t know the ways of the capitalists—but they’re like you and me when it comes to money. The Works were nationalized, when—October 1945? And in a few days it will be 1948: Over two years of having to live with what’s yours without being able to get at it...”

  What was Blatnik trying to do? Take Czerny’s words, the words of a man disappointed in his belief in another, and set them straight and prove by the application of a little common sense that Joseph should be relieved of his job? It might be the best and most humane way of settling the question, thought Karel, because it was obvious that there was no longer much confidence in Joseph. And it might be the quickest way to close the touchy subject and to force Kravat to get down to the business on hand.

  “Two years,” said Blatnik, “a long time. Enough time for even a capitalist to learn that he’s out and that what he once owned or wanted to own has changed hands—has changed into our hands. What do you expect the man to do—submit himself to the new conditions? Is that possible?”

  “No!” from various parts of the floor.

  “No!” repeated Blatnik. “Of course not. So what is his natural feeling? This: If I can’t have it, the bastards who took it away from me shouldn’t have it either.”

  Kravat sat leaning over the table, scratching his cheek. It was clear to Karel that Kravat knew the drift—and yet he wasn’t stopping it.

  “So there is your fire!” Blatnik’s jaw was shoved forward, hard, challenging. “Of course he wouldn’t do the dirty work himself—the Nazis were good enough for that. And whether he fixed it with them, or whether he just figured that they would do something like it before we kicked them out of the country—who knows? I say, before we talk about production and rebuilding, let’s watch out that the Benda Works don’t burn down, too!”

  Karel saw Thomas’s hand clamp the edge of his seat. Thomas’s eyes were fixed on Blatnik and he kept whispering, more to himself than to Karel, “Freedom...That’s their freedom...”

  Blatnik had ended. In the interval of silence that followed, the men were weighing the charge and being swayed between the speaker’s logic and their own hesitations. No criminals themselves, they were reluctant to see a criminal in another man—a man whom they had known so long and for whom they had worked.

  But the reluctance grew tenuous. Karel still hoped that Kravat would say something to reverse the trend. Even if Joseph had wanted to hold men like Ebbing, and even if Ebbing was one of the arsonists—which could not be proved—it was utter nonsense to think of Joseph as an active participant in such a plot. The recriminations solved nothing. Kindling the mob spirit solved nothing. Violence against Joseph solved nothing—and Kravat, of all the men present, certainly knew it.

  Kravat seemed to be waiting. Joseph stayed pasted to his bench while the slow anger of the men brewed and thickened and clotted around him.

  Then came the first cries.

  “Joseph Benda! What about it?” “Come on, show us your face!” “Blaha wasn’t enough, was he?” “Arsonist, eh?”

  These were the men who had eaten his bread.

  “Hey, Deputy, lost your tongue?” “Burn our furnaces and grow rich on it!” “How did you arrange it? Give us the details!”

  These were the men who had shaken his hand.

  “Saboteur!”

  “Murderer!”

  These were the men who had smiled at him when he was knee-high. Kravat leaped out of his chair. He raised his hands for order. “Mr. Benda!” he shouted over the noise. “Do you want to reply?”

  Joseph got up. It took h
im a second or two before his voice would come, and then it rumbled hoarsely from his chest, difficult to understand.

  “Whatever I have done—or not done—”

  His hand reached for support, found none, fell.

  “I have not sunk as low as you have!” He gritted his teeth in an effort to control himself. Some of his color returned; his words were more distinct when he spoke again. “I choose not to defend myself—before a mob!”

  The men were on their feet.

  Joseph climbed on his bench so as to keep his shoulders and head above them. He looked around contemptuously and stared them into a moment’s quiet. Then he turned toward the platform, “As for you, Kravat—you will hear from the Ministry!”

  The men let go. “Ministry—hell!” “So we’re a mob!” “He doesn’t choose to defend himself!”

  Blatnik, too, had mounted a bench and was shouting something. Kravat was pounding the table, “Order! Order! Order!”

  Then Karel was on the stage, next to Kravat. His hat had been lost in the struggle to get up there, his gray hair was disarrayed, his gaunt face, usually calm, was livid.

  “Order!” shouted Kravat. “Quiet for the doctor!”

  The men saw Karel. They had never seen him like this. They had seen him in their homes, at their bedsides, or at the bedsides of their wives and children. They had seen him in the infirmary at Benda, they had stood before him, holding out their wrists, or watching him as he listened to the mysterious sounds in their chests. They had felt the touch of his long, thin hands which were now lifted against them and their inordinate outbreak.

  The men started to move back to their places.

  “Blatnik—you sit down, too!” Karel commanded. And to Joseph who seemed undecided what to do, “You stay. We’ll need you.”