The crowd spewed him out just as a swarthy, high-cheeked young man was mounting a news vendor’s chair and beginning to harangue, “Comrades...!”
Beyond the streetcar tracks, diagonally across the square, was the elaborate building which housed the editorial and business offices of Svobodné Slovo. Thomas, hoping for better luck there, treaded his way between honking automobiles and trams whose drivers kept hammering at their bells in an effort to get through the length of the square. When he reached the broad sidewalk in front of the newspaper office, he found another mass of people, another sound truck, and mounted at the windows of the second floor a motion-picture screen from which the head of President Benes was speaking inaudible words. A number of young men and girls, apparently students, were shouting, “Freedom! We want freedom! Long live President Benes!”—and the loud-speaker began to pour out “John Brown’s Body.”
Thomas couldn’t help himself-—he, too, hummed the melody. Freedom, he was thinking—they want freedom, everybody wants freedom, across the square they want it just the same. John Brown’s body...But his soul goes marching on...! They must have picked up the tune and the text when the Americans were in Pilsen. Elinor would find it very fitting. What a confusion—the people, the cars, the music! From the opposite side of the square came the competing rhythm: The International Soviet will free the human race...Freedom. The Essay should be in print, now! They should bring down piles of copies, hand them to the people, let me speak. I could tell them about freedom, and what it means. Do they think they will get it by shouting?...Oh, Vlasta!...If they shout loud enough...the walls of Jericho came down through noise, and look at the desert the victors made out of Canaan.
On both sides of the square, the music ended. But the din of voices continued. And then, suddenly—he didn’t know how it began—the nostalgic strains of the National Anthem came over, and people joined it everywhere, and the traffic policeman at the corner where Vodicek Street ran into the square stood at attention. They all sang it—Thomas, too: Where is my home...?
He could not get into the newspaper office. He turned and walked away, uphill, toward Vinohrady.
Over the section of the city through which he now went hung an oppressive quiet. The curtains in the windows of the stately houses were drawn, the shutters of most of the stores had come down, the wide glass panels of the coffeehouses yawned emptily.
He found the gate to the Declerques Institute locked; but after much ringing and knocking, it sprang open and he was permitted to enter. A quavering maid turned the key behind him, and he found himself faced by an old man in tails and a starched white shirt who brandished an unsheathed cavalry saber.
“Count Tolstoy, sir!” the old man said. “What do you wish?”
“Can I see Mademoiselle Declerques? And what in heaven’s name are you doing with that saber?”
The Count let his rheumy eyes wander over the visitor. “There’ll be a revolution, don’t you know?” He rolled his R’s. “I’ve felt it coming for days. I have quite some experience with revolutions. What’s your name?”
“Thomas Benda.”
Count Arkadij Tolstoy jammed his saber back into its rust-spotted scabbard. “Not much good, this thing,” he explained, “but it would frighten marauders.” He gave the maid an imperious nod. “Go, tell Mademoiselle!”
Thomas found the Count not as ludicrous as he had appeared at first glance. There was something touchingly quixotic about his readiness to fight the flood of time with an old cavalry saber.
“It’s better, of course,” said Tolstoy, “to have a regiment of Cossacks behind you. Would you believe that such a saber can sever the head from the trunk with one blow?” The Count’s eyes grew sad. “But in the end, my men simply dwindled away.”
“I don’t like killing,” said Thomas.
The Count shrugged. “Your brother, the Deputy, must be quite busy now? “
“He’s home, doing nothing.”
Arkadij Tolstoy frowned. “The men dwindled away....” he said. “Just like that.”
Mademoiselle stood at the head of the staircase. The lacework of her white collar was like a continuation of the wrinkles on her face and throat. Her small eyes darted about anxiously. “Please, do come up!” she called. Count Tolstoy should have let you through; but he always interprets my orders too literally. You see, I’m keeping all the girls in, today—”
“Forgive me—” Thomas began.
As he made no move to come up, she started to descend, taking one step at a time. “Has Mr. Joseph Benda sent you? How thoughtful of him, on a day like this! Will you stay here awhile? It would be such a relief for us, such a protection....”
“I’m sorry,” said Thomas. “I’m in a great hurry.”
“And how is Petra?” Mademoiselle had reached the bottom of the stairs and stretched out her frail hand to have it kissed.
Thomas obliged and said, “Fine, thank you. But that’s not what I came here for.”
“What do you wish?”
“Is Vlasta Rehan here?”
“Here?” said Mademoiselle, horrified.
“Or do you know where she might be?”
He saw Mademoiselle straighten. Her nostrils trembled. “Mr. Benda! I had hoped never again to hear that name! It’s persons like her who bring about all this uproar, this violence, this disorder—”
“Have you any idea as to where—”
“Have I? Oh, yes!”
He felt his heart suddenly distend and press against his windpipe. “Tell me—please!”
“Somewhere in the mob, that’s where she’ll be. Rioting, seducing, plundering, burning....Curse her! Curse all of them! Curse—”
Thomas fled.
The sky was overcast and the clouds hung pregnant with snow. He walked the streets, the direction of his mind and of his search frayed like the end of a much-used piece of string. Perhaps there had been some truth in what the Declerques woman in her hate had said: Somewhere among the masses of people congregating in the center of the city, among the groups gathering, the crowds milling, would be Vlasta.
He drifted back toward Wenceslas Square, but kept to the fringe of the commotion. As a child, he remembered, he had believed in the luck that came from finding a four-leaf clover, and he had searched a segment of field, strip by strip, and had found nothing. But when he had given up, tired and hot, and dragged his feet through the dust of the road home, not thinking, gazing emptily across the ditch which ran alongside the wagon tracks, he had picked up a four-leaf clover. There was a trick to finding what you were after; in the face of a jealous fate you must act as if you weren’t interested at all, but go about some business or other all the while, however, subtly helping your purpose along; you cannot force the hand of the goddess, but when you’ve lulled her asleep, and when you least expect it, the hand will open and shed what you prayed for.
He puzzled over the kind of decoy he might use. It had to be something fairly important, something which would occupy the surface of his mind. He had eaten nothing since morning; he was not hungry, but he told himself he was and stepped into a butcher shop and bought a pair of hot sausages. He surrendered his stamps for meat and bread; the mustard was free. He ate slowly, alternately dipping the sausage and the bread into the large yellow blob on his plate. He wiped his mouth on his handkerchief and decided that he could no longer think about food. And then he had the obvious idea, so obvious that he scolded himself for not having thought of it sooner. In fact, he told himself, he had thought of it all along—hadn’t he said to Kitty he was going to Prague to see about the Essay? Hadn’t he stood among the people who shouted for freedom, a spokesman without platform, an arbiter without mandate, and wished with every nerve that his book was out and could lend him the weight and the stature to guide their crude but honest impulses? The very turmoil in which they found themselves imposed on him the obligation to let nothing stop him from making his contribution; and, leading his logic to its conclusion, he felt that an effort at fulfilling h
is obligation would somehow pacify the Unnamed and Unnameable Forces and bring Vlasta to him.
He debated whether he should take a taxi to the offices of People’s Books, but chose to walk, on the chance that he might run into Vlasta. And though he didn’t, he arrived in good spirits and was ushered into the presence of Vaclav Villner.
Villner worked in a narrow room which had been formed by partitioning a bigger one. Its walls were densely hung with enlargements of profile and front views which the German police photographers had snapped of Czech writers, artists, and newspapermen who later had been executed or tortured or starved to death. Villner did not turn as Thomas entered, he stood hunched over a radio set, his narrow face screwed tight, his stubby fingers on the dial.
Then, as if surprised, he wheeled around. “This is it!” he said, “this is it!”
There was relief in his voice, as if a long-delayed climax had finally broken; anxiety, too, badly hidden.
“Please?” said Thomas.
“They have resigned, Dolezhal and the others, a whole dozen of them—twelve Ministers!”
“Well,” said Thomas with equanimity, “so the President will name a dozen others in their place.”
Villner shook his head over so much naïveté. “But don’t you see what it means? This is the stroke they’ve been preparing, this is the declaration of war!”
“I’m Thomas Benda, Mr. Villner. I’m the author of the ‘Essay on Freedom.’”
Villner waved impatiently. “I know, I know! You were announced. Take a seat. Excuse me....”
He turned back to the radio and shifted the dial. There were shreds of music. “No more news,” he said, more to himself than to Thomas. “I’m going to leave the radio on, if you don’t mind. I’m sure they’ll interrupt this damned music in a minute....Well, Mr. Benda, I suppose you have come—”
“About the Essay,” Thomas finished the sentence.
Villner pulled down his crumpled vest and frowned. His black, tense eyes glanced along his picture gallery. “They’ve left us a difficult bequest,” he said. “Must live up to them, you know....”
Thomas swallowed. He had not expected to find in Villner a kindred mind who felt the inferiority of the living, as he did.
“I’ve tried,” said Thomas.
“Have you?” Villner looked up quizzically. “Mr. Benda, you’ve come at a bad time. I should have instructed my secretary to tell you that I wasn’t in. But then I thought I might as well see you.”
“I’m very grateful.”
“They’ve resigned,” said Villner. “Now what’s going to happen? The President will insist that a cabinet in which two of the parties of the National Front are not represented is no cabinet at all. The bolters want to force the Prime Minister’s hand, they want to force him and the rest of the Cabinet to resign, too. And with the National Front split up, there will be no working majority in Parliament. The President will name an emergency cabinet of non-party officials and specialists—and good-by nationalization, good-by social insurance, good-by everything the people won in 1945. It’s plain as the nose on your face!”
The radio was playing something from “Schwanda the Bagpiper”; it sounded frivolous as an accompaniment to Villner’s worried analysis.
“What do you think, Mr. Benda?”
“I really couldn’t say. How can anyone say what the politicians will do?” Villner was again pulling at his vest. “You’ve written a political book, Mr. Benda! You must have some opinions!”
Thomas began to feel ill-at-ease. “I’ve come at a bad time, as you said. Perhaps I should see you tomorrow?”
“Tomorrow will be worse. Tomorrow we may not be here in this office. You don’t understand at all, Mr. Benda! This is no longer a matter for politicians sitting around a table; this will be fought out in the factories and on the streets.”
Thomas thought of the people on the square. He had not been able to see any direction there, any decision, anything to warrant Villner’s prediction.
“But I forgot,” said Villner—“According to your book, you do not always trust the people.”
“Do you?”
Villner’s face flushed in an angry red. “Yes, I do!” he stated.
Then why was Villner afraid? thought Thomas. He compared the editor of People’s Books with Barsiny. Barsiny had been smooth, imperturbable. Villner was worn much too raw to hide anything. And yet, there was in both the same kind of fear, even though each of them might fear something different.
He should never have come here. He should have waited till they sent back his manuscript with a note regretting that...et cetera, et cetera. The recognition of the rejection did not even hurt, perhaps because the book was at this moment to Thomas only a means to an end, an offering to fate, so that he might meet Vlasta again.
But Villner wasn’t willing to let it go at saying, Mr. Benda, we don’t want your book, good day! Villner’s own apprehensions were seeking an outlet, and he believed he had found it. Furthermore, Villner was of the opinion that an author must be helped intellectually.
“You either believe in people, or you are a cynic. You are either on the side of the people, or on the side of their enemies,” Villner began.
The music broke off. A voice said in measured tones:
“This is Radio Prague. We interrupt our scheduled program for a special announcement.
“We have learned from authoritative sources that the President has asked the Prime Minister, Mr. Klement Gottwald, to visit him for a special conference on the cabinet crisis. As previously reported, the crisis broke when the Minister of Interior refused to revoke his order to replace eight high officials of the security police in Prague. The non-Communist Ministers boycotted this morning’s cabinet meeting. For four hours, the Communist Ministers sat and waited alone. By four o’clock in the afternoon, twelve Ministers of the other parties tendered their resignation. The Social-Democratic Ministers have not yet made any decision, pending a meeting of the executive committee of their Party tonight.
“We now resume our concert music....”
Villner jumped up. “What did I tell you?”
Thomas said, “Perhaps you are nervous because you look at history in too narrow a perspective....”
“Too narrow?” Villner’s hands swept over the pictures on his wall. “Here is my perspective! And let me tell you about your book—” With an impatient motion of his head Villner shook back his long, thin hair. “It is precisely because I look at your book in a historical perspective that I am throwing it back at you. There were periods when what you have to say would have been acceptable; and there are others when your ideas turn into weapons for those who at this minute are trying to shackle our people once more....”
The thin-chested, hawk-faced little editor exuded a hatred which Thomas felt physically. And with frightening lucidity he saw how unbearable it would be for him if men like Villner ever took full power. Yet the nationalization, the social insurance, the things which Villner and his kind had won and wanted, were good and useful things, and it was bad to try to deprive the people of them.
Thomas threw up his hands. “I know my essay is not a Marxist book; my brother told me so. But the truth is the truth, Marxist or not!”
“That’s, where you’re wrong!” cried Villner. “There is no such thing as an absolute truth—as you yourself, Mr. Benda, came pretty close to saying in your book. Your truth is different from mine; what the twelve Ministers who resigned consider as truth is not the truth for the people who will march to defend themselves and their rights and their country.”
The tune of the polka that came from the radio joined with the uncompromising tone of Villner’s voice and jumbled Thomas’s thoughts.
“What is your book, Mr. Benda? You look at this side and that, with an impartiality which in reality does not exist, and you throw doubts on everything. In another time, in a society which is firmly established and not threatened from anywhere, we could afford to print a thing like that. But tod
ay, of all days? When all we fought for, all these men died for, stands in jeopardy? Do you throw doubt into the heart and the mind of a soldier who goes into battle? Do you throw acid into his eyes? This, Mr. Benda, would be treason. This, Mr. Benda, is what you have committed!”
Thomas chuckled. Only a short while ago, he had dreamed of being the guide, the arbiter, the interpreter, of the muddled, mute desire of his people; now he was being accused of betraying them.
“What do you laugh at?” said Villner irritably. “Was there anything funny in what I said?”
“Not at all! No!” said Thomas. “I was laughing at myself.” He bent his head and stared at the faded linoleum between his feet. “You know, Mr. Villner, I, who used to be the Spokesman of Czechoslovakia, am coming to feel that I have no place in this country.”
The polka had ended, there was a short silence.
“I’m sorry,” said Villner. “I didn’t mean to—”
The announcer had begun to speak again. The President, he declared, had as yet refused to accept the resignation of the twelve Ministers. As far as the Head of the State was concerned, the Cabinet as constituted was still in office.
The lobby, the whole ground floor of the Hotel Alcron was overflowing with people this teatime. It was as if this headquarters of the rich and the prominent, with its marble, its plush, its elaborate chandeliers, its chromium, its mirrors, had been turned into a refuge for fur-coated, nylon-stockinged women and men with paunchy, worried faces who were hoping to outsit the storm. They were talking in suppressed voices; the heavy hush was cut through only by the tinkling of silver pots and chinaware as the waiters maneuvered silently between the tables, or by the occasional hysterical giggling of girls for whom the doom of the hour had become too much to bear. Every so often, a news vendor would come through the revolving door with the latest extras; men would raise a finger commandingly and pass him a coin and devour the headlines. The crown tumbled under the table; dollars, pounds sterling, French francs, guilders, were in heavy if whispered demand; and even such trash as the Allied Occupation mark rose steeply in value.
Stefan Heym Page 47
