Stanek slapped the back of his thin hand against the pages. “He’s gifted, that boy! I taught him. If I could have taught him more! If I could teach him now!...But he will learn!”
“I hope so,” said Karel, with a sinking feeling in his heart.
“In his way, he’s a genius,” Stanek resumed. “Genius is a very precious grain. We must treat it tenderly to bring it to fruition, so that some of its riches can spill over to all of the people.”
He closed the volume and saw Karel’s worried face. For a moment, he blinked thoughtfully. He had wanted to be kind, he had wanted to show Karel that he understood some of Thomas’s handicaps. But matters between the Benda brothers seemed to be more complicated than a surface view revealed. So he switched to what he thought was a less touchy subject and said, “I hear your brother Joseph resigned as National Administrator of the Benda Works—”
“Yes, he did,” confirmed Karel.
“Already?” Novak asked sharply, and his sudden forward motion brought his empty sleeve flapping out of its pocket. But his voice returned quickly enough to its normal tone as he said, “These District National Committees take their time reporting to us!”
“Heard it in the Assembly,” said Stanek.
Novak’s Already? had startled Karel. “Did you know in advance that Joseph would resign?” he said, disturbed.
Novak was evasive. “I never thought very much of the idea that a former owner should administer his old property for the people. And I never made a secret of my opinion, to the Minister or anybody else. Tell me—when did it happen?”
“Monday a week ago.”
“All of a sudden?”
“Yes.”
“No struggle? No compulsion? Nothing?”
Karel shook his head. “That’s what’s been bothering me, too. Of course, there was the fire at the Hammer Works, at Christmas....”
“Yes,” said Novak, “that’s been in the papers.” He tucked his sleeve back into his pocket and was silent for a moment.
“And then,” Karel went on, “there was the workers’ meeting in which the men got violent against Joseph—but that was stopped. And then I went to him and told him to resign. He refused point-blank.”
“So the resignation was a complete about-face?” said Novak.
Stanek asked, “Well, why shouldn’t be resign?”
“The question is, why did he?” said Novak. “Who’s taken his place?”
“Frantishek Kravat.”
“Why should a close pal of Dolezhal’s hand over such a position to us, unless he wants to create a certain impression?” Novak failed to make clear whether the he referred to Dolezhal or to Joseph.
“What impression?” said Stanek.
“That they are weak, that they’re willing to co-operate with us, that we can count on concessions—”
“Well, they are weak!” Stanek put in. “They’ll have to give in on the nationalization measure, and they know it.”
A small light had cropped up in the back of Novak’s eyes, and his fingers were awkward as he tried his trick of lighting a match with his one hand. “What’s your brother really like, Karel?” he said.
Karel hesitated. “What do you want to know?” The horrible suspicion arose in him that unless he told something to help them against Joseph, they would do nothing for Thomas—for Thomas, for Kitty, for himself....”I haven’t been close to Joseph since I came back from camp.”
“Did he give you any reason for his resignation?” asked Novak.
“No.”
“Could you take a guess?”
“What’s the use of guessing?”
“The Benda Works were very much part of his life, weren’t they?”
Karel considered this. If he said Yes, they would believe the resignation was a sham, part of a plot, local or national, as they had suspected Joseph of having some part in the fire at the Hammer Works....They could be right, they could be wrong....He was sick at the thought of their wanting him to put his finger on Joseph. Did he have to betray both of his brothers?...If he said No, if he told them that old Peter Benda had pushed Joseph into the business, that Joseph hankered after a different life, an opportunity to do more creative work—then the resignation might appear logical, an act long delayed from which no dangerous conclusions could be drawn. And perhaps it was close enough to the truth. But suppose there was a plot? Suppose that Joseph’s easy surrender of his last tenuous foothold in the Works indicated an ambition that reached far beyond any National Administratorship? How ruthless had Joseph become?
Karel felt Novak’s eyes seeking him out; he saw Stanek shove back his cuffs. “Joseph never wanted the Works,” he said tonelessly. “He was forced by our father to take them over. Joseph was the oldest, you see, and he had to do it.”
“I see,” said Novak. He made no further comment, and Karel wondered whether Novak’s reserve was a sign of disappointment or not. Novak reached for a cigarette.
Karel didn’t want him to repeat the painful procedure of lighting his own match, and offered him a light.
Novak did not seem to see it. “You know what your information involves, Karel, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t!” Karel said sharply. “And unless you stop talking in riddles and tell me openly—”
Novak dropped the cigarette, unlit. “I wish I could tell you,” he said impatiently. “I wish there were enough to tell!”
Stanek shook his head and smiled, “Help the student to find the answer. You’re not being a good teacher, Novak!”
“And I’m not a student!” The match had burned down to Karel’s finger tips and he threw it away.
“My dear Karel,” said Stanek, “as a doctor, you must be something of a psychologist. You must know that a contradiction between a man’s character and his actions cannot exist. Are you sure that you did not adjust your brother’s character to his actions? Because if you did...”
“Yes—if I did?”
“The time for laughing off a kettle of goulash soup is past.” Stanek had ceased being a genial old man with funny habits. “We’re back where we were when I came to your house with a wounded man. You’ve got to make up your mind!”
“Joseph never wanted the Works,” Karel restated, each word an effort. “That’s the holy truth. But the moment he took them over, he changed. The life he wanted to lead had been blocked, and he could never go back to it. He had married, he had gotten into the rut of the industry. So the life he had to lead became his obsession. He had been punished by our father, and he turned the punishment into a compensation.”
“Go on!” demanded Novak, as if digging spurs into him.
“The Benda Works became his whipping post, and he, himself, was lashed to it. He had to make a success of the Works; that was the only meaning left to his life. And then they were taken away by Herr Aloysius Hammer of Martinice. Joseph fought a war, and he got them back. But hardly had he built them up again, when they were nationalized.”
He stopped. He had dissected his brother and thrown the cadaver on the table for the whole world to see. It was worse than murder.
“Tragic, isn’t it?” said Stanek. “But Blaha’s death was tragic, too.”
Karel buried his face in his hands. He wanted to ask questions, big questions—his time and his country and his people were breaking up, and something new was emerging, like Mrs. Flicek’s baby which had finally been born. But why did he have to attend, and be torn to pieces in the struggle?
He didn’t ask, because there could be no answer; because a man lives in his time, and that’s the only life he has.
He heard Novak say something. He looked up.
“I said I was glad you told us the story.” There was compassion in Novak’s voice. “I’ve known part of it since the time Joseph came to the Ministry to plead for full title to the Works. I didn’t know quite how deep it went....”
Because a man lives in his time—it went through Karel’s mind and chooses his stand, and must try to form the wor
ld in his image.
“Is it all right if I take the afternoon train back to Rodnik?” he said after a while. “I believe we’ve settled everything.”
“I think we have,” said Stanek, picking up the manuscript. “I’ll read this overnight, and we’ll see some results on it.”
Novak merely nodded. He thought of the call he would have to put through to the Security Section of the Ministry of Interior; and he thought of his arm, which Karel had had to cut off; and he thought that, if he could help it, there would never again be a fascist concentration camp.
CHAPTER TEN
Any class striving for power must justify its aspirations. It cannot base its struggle on bread-and-butter issues alone; it must acquire an ideology. It must speak and act in the name of its ideals. In the early days of its career, while the battle for power is still undecided, it holds high its shield and goes out on its mission with the zeal of the pure; but the sons and grandsons soon learn that the ideals of their revolutionary fathers can become an embarrassment. And at the end of its time, when it is faced by a new class demanding admission, its decadent and frightened heirs will find the shield too heavy and will secretly curse the great words written on it.
The feudal lords conquered their world in the sign of Christianity, but ultimately, the Christian principles sounded hollow from the lips of the barons who mouthed them to hold down their serfs. The bourgeoisie called for freedom and equality of man; but today, it has to scrap its own words whenever and wherever they are put to test.
Viewed objectively, neither love for thy fellow man, which is Christianity, nor freedom and equality are ideas to be discarded lightly. It took centuries to create them, and they are worth more than an occasional Sunday sermon.
The gulf between what we believe in, objectively, and what we do about it, subjectively, is deep and menacing. It invites political suicide on the part of the class which does not live up to its original premises. It swallows integrity. It provokes moral—and sometimes physical—suicide of the individual who is unable to overcome the conflict between what he should do and what he does do.
In his book Suicide as a Phenomenon of Modern Civilization, Thomas G. Masaryk touches on this when he writes: “It may be said that modern man takes upon his own shoulders the whole guilt of life, he reproaches himself; but it may also be said that his suicide is, as it were, a delirium of subjectivity, an annihilation of objectivity, as though he were destroying the object that irritated him.”
But wherein are we guilty? Who has placed this terrible burden on us? Is self-destruction the only means of destroying the objective circumstances which have created the insoluble conflict? If we have to choose between maintaining the rule of a class and upholding the ideals it proclaimed, can there be any question of where the decision must lie?
Perhaps I am unrealistic. Perhaps one cannot order a whole class, hypocritical, played-out, and rotten though it may be, to resign and step off the stage of history. Nor does a whole class commit physical suicide; it will try to live on, a horrible caricature of its own youthful image; it will still celebrate the revolutions which brought it to power, but it will have perverted their meaning....—FROM THOMAS BENDA: Essay on Freedom
JOSEPH’S CABLE to Elinor had found her half-prepared for a quick junket to Prague. It had come on top of a number of disquieting reports, some from diplomatic sources in Washington and New York, others from Czechoslovakia—from small-time newspapermen, professional coffeehouse sitters, and other gossip mongers who earned their American food packages by supplying Elinor Simpson with what she referred to as “inside information.”
And it coincided with another, personal development.
Elinor was getting stale. She had hung on to her vitality as well or better than the next person; she had refused to acknowledge the years. But one morning realization was there, with the suddenness of catastrophe. Her thinking, always so secure, so conscious of will and purpose, was becoming fuzzy and tinged by a sadness which disgusted her and which she could not overcome.
She had to accept the fact that her columns were turning out gabby, diffused, shrewish, complaining, hysterical. The irony, the superiority, the old mastery were gone. She tried to imitate the form and style she herself had developed; but cancellations from editors kept coming in to the feature service which syndicated her articles to American newspapers throughout the country.
She thought of going to a psychoanalyst; but she knew it would take two or three years before a doctor could make her adjust to what had happened, and even the best of the Freudians could not undo the ravages of time.
She thought of her life as it had been, and tried to re-evaluate it. She picked out the men who, she believed, had had meaning in it. She saw some of them over cocktails, others at dinner, others, again, at night in her home. They were like ghosts. There was only one who remained alive to her, because he was not around to disprove her sentiments: Thomas Benda.
If only something would come along to give new content to her work and her life! And there it was—Joseph’s cable, indicating at least the possibility that the great and exciting days of Munich might repeat themselves—days when her every dispatch, her every analysis, had been gobbled up by millions of readers, when every happening had confirmed her prophecies, when life had been full.
Elinor Simpson needed a crisis in Czechoslovakia, and she set out to find it.
Her hostess gown hid her girdle and bulges. She lay on the settee in her suite at the Alcron, while Joseph paced up and down, gesticulating.
“The crisis is unavoidable!” he was saying. “It is a question of initiative. Until now, they have had it, always. They have made demands, and we have made concessions; but we’ve reached the point where any further concession is suicidal.” He stopped pacing. “We must regain the initiative! And we’re prepared, we’re organized. We’re prepared to defend this democracy of ours, if necessary, with our lives.”
She put down her recently acquired long black-and-gold holder through which she had been smoking, and reached for a delicate antique pillbox that stood on the table next to her. She swallowed a pill, made a clucking sound with her tongue, and asked, “What about the Russians?”
“Forget about the Russians! The Russians have their own problems, and they’re not going to march in here, because if they did, it would mean war, and they can’t afford it.”
Her chin sagged. “In America—” she said.
“Yes, I know, in America! For America, you can write about the Russians. But we’re here, quite close to them. Do you think Dolezhal would dare make a move if there were any chance of the Red Army’s interfering? Thank God, we have to deal only with our own workers, and I think we can manage that.”
I’m talking too much, he thought. Why am I talking so much?
“A crisis...” he said, “a crisis has to be started. It doesn’t come by itself.”
“It will come!” he said still confidently, but with more deliberation. “This Assembly has only a few more months to go, and it’s deadlocked over the Constitution. Time works against them!” After a pause, he added, “But if they don’t move, we will. Nothing is worse than to be ready for battle, and dally.”
He sat down, facing her. Her fatigue depressed him. She had always struck him as the epitome of Western womanhood—perennial, well-groomed, cultivated, self-reliant. He thought that he, too, must have aged and become tired and dispirited.
“All right, all right,” she said; “until now, everything sounds fine. But concretely, what are you going to do?”
It was difficult to explain. He had told Dolezhal that Elinor Simpson was coming from America and should receive some sort of briefing, if her abilities and her influence were to be used. But Dolezhal had given him little to go by; Dolezhal was a careful man; and he, himself, knew only his end of the plan and, in the most general terms, its objective.
“We’re organized, we’re prepared,” he said. He had said that before. “We have the widest backing—farmers,
tradespeople, students, part of the workers, Slovaks, Catholics. We have our key men in the police, generals in the Army. I, myself—” He broke off, but then decided to go on. It was necessary to impress Elinor with the thoroughness of the preparations. “I, myself, have had a small part in this. Of course, there won’t be any open fighting, any bloodshed. That won’t be needed.”
“No?” she said. “How can you tell?”
“Once the Communists see they’re through—well, it will be as in France, in Italy. They’re through and they’re out of the government and that’s what we want. We’ll have a new kind of government, at least as a stopgap measure—a government of civil servants, of specialists in their fields, men above reproach, men not identified with any party. They’ll do away with the excesses of the past years, and it won’t take long till the country is back on a safe and sane and orderly and democratic basis. So you see, it won’t be a Putsch or anything of that sort; it’ll be a—a recovery of our national reason...
“It doesn’t sound bad to me—” Her spongy skin seemed to have regained some of its elasticity. “In fact, it sounds damned good! I’ve always liked you Czechs; you’re a sensible people. I hate extremists! Though I shouldn’t, because they make good copy....” She laughed, but grew immediately serious. “You’re sure you can carry it through?”
Joseph was beginning to relax. A second visit to Duchinsky had found the General more amenable. A third would no doubt bring a firm commitment; and now his business with Elinor was proceeding at a good, smooth pace.
“Nothing is foolproof,” he smiled. “But I think we’ll be able to carry it through.” His large hands were clasped on his lap like a peasant’s hands after a day’s work; he felt his own strength and the strength of the machine of which he was a cog. “I have a lot at stake, you know, Elinor—I should hardly have risked it if I didn’t believe we can win....” And he added suddenly, with a loud laugh, “And if it does go wrong—my God, you can always get me a visa to the States, can’t you?”
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