When the Committee had finally finished deciding on its policies, he had gone home. Much as he tried to divert it, his mind kept buzzing around his problems like a fat green fly around a dung heap. Though he had said “Aye!” he felt the decision had been something apart from him, as had so many others in recent months. There was a momentum outside of him which was greater than his own. If it would only stop and give him a pause, a chance to catch up!
A man can go on by himself for just so long. He had come to the point where he needed Kitty. When the bell sounded into the half-tints of his thoughts, and when he found Kitty standing at the door, he was hardly surprised.
“I was thinking of you,” he said, and took her hand and led her into his flat.
“You were?” she asked with exaggerated brightness.
“My God!” he said, “what’s happened?” She was wearing a deeply cut, V-necked, clinging dress; her face was rouged, her eyelids shaded bluishly, her lashes mascaraed; but even the careful brushing of her hair had failed to give it luster. Her getup was like a coat of paint over a staggering grief.
“Thomas has left me,” she said. “So here I am.”
She’s ill, he thought, and checked himself from reaching for her pulse. She’s ill....He frowned. How long had he waited for this, for her to come to him, and for the news: Thomas has left me—and Dr. Benda was ready with his pills!
“He pretended he was going to Prague to ask Villner about the Essay; but he really went after Vlasta....” She slumped into the big chair and looked at him from feverish eyes. “I don’t know any more. I’ve reached the end.”
He started to say something; but she began to laugh, “Shall I wear a bell on my forehead and cry, Unclean? My husband has left me, you’ve kept away from me—” She stood up. “Tell me, Karel—I’m not ugly, am I? I’m young and healthy. I’m a desirable woman, wouldn’t you say?” She began to walk up and down, turning slowly. “I can cook, sew, keep house. I talk just as intelligently as the next one. I have breasts, hips, legs...”
All he would have to do was to carry her to his bed. “Kitty,” he said, “you know that I think you’re the most beautiful, the loveliest woman on earth.”
“I know.” She fell back on the chair and lowered her head. Her shoulders shook.
“And you know, too,” he went on, “that every day away from you had more hours than I thought a day could ever have.”
She nodded obediently.
“I want you, Kitty. The other day, up at your house—” he broke off.
“I am free,” she said.
“Are you?”
He caressed her hair. He loved her so much. And he told himself in the most explicit terms possible that, because he loved her so much, and because he needed her so much, the cut from Thomas would have to be clean; no pus, no raw edges, a perfect suture, even if the pain of it seemed to rise beyond endurance.
“Thomas will be back,” he said. “And then?”
Her tear-stained face came up. He wiped off the black traces of the mascara which had run down from her eyes. “Yes,” she said, “he may come back. I learned today, from Lida, what was the matter with Vlasta. She’s a Lesbian.”
Karel stood quite still. He thought of the night Vlasta and Petra and Thomas had come to his flat. He thought of the silver heart with the petrified piece of chewed bread inside. The unrobed nun, he thought.
As if Kitty, too, had her doubts, she said, “Lida told me Elinor Simpson discovered it....”
The abysmal, vicious stupidity of these small-minded burghers! And what they must have done to Petra, taking away from her the one person she loved and who gave her security!...“And you believed it, Kitty?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t know what to believe—about anything.”
Her bewilderment tore at him. If she accepted Lida’s and Elinor’s wisdom at face value, she had to assume that Thomas would come back to her more ill and more useless than ever. Where did that put her? Would she be able to say to Thomas: It’s time you learned about reality; I’m sick of being the buffer between you and the world—could she do that to him?
“I’m afraid,” he said, “Lida hasn’t the faintest idea of what homosexuality is and where to find it and how it manifests itself. No doubt, Elinor has more experience—but she’ll be as superficial in sexology as in politics.”
“Do you think, then—it is possible that Thomas—and Vlasta”...She halted. Then she said firmly, “I want him to be happy. That’s all I want for him.”
He did not answer. Perhaps it was better to let matters rest and not to parade before her what he knew and could diagnose or guess at.
“I loved Thomas as you love a helpless child,” she smiled sadly. “I’ve had to learn. It isn’t enough for a whole life. But you—I could curl up in your vest pocket if you wanted to bother with carrying me along.”
The temptation, now, was greater than when she had preened herself before him. All he would have to do was to say Yes.
But he said No, and the frustration of it sat on his shoulders like Sinbad’s old man, heavy and choking. He bore it; not for the good of Thomas—that consideration was no longer valid—but for Kitty’s sake and his own, and perhaps because of his cursed compulsion toward the remnants of his integrity.
“If Thomas should meet up with Vlasta,” he stated harshly, “he’ll come back defeated. He’ll come back feeling that he’s a failure as a man.”
Or he won’t come back, he added to himself, and we’ll find him in the morgue.
After a while, she said, “But you told me Vlasta was not—”
“Kitty! You and I and Vlasta and Thomas, even Lida and Joseph—we’ve all been branded by this war. The brand is different on each of us, but it was the same ugly flame. It destroyed your marriage. In Vlasta, it destroyed something which may be repaired by time, or by the right kind of man. Thomas isn’t that man.”
“Yes,” she said, “I understand. I should never have let him go to Prague without me.”
There it was, the whole picture, and the irony of it. A cut had to be made, and it had to be made clean, and he stood at the operating table and didn’t know where to start cutting. Wherever he started, it would end up with Kitty and himself going through the rest of their lives sick with guilt. If only there was some way of getting hold of Thomas and grabbing him by the collar, of forcing him to grow up, of stopping him from using his weakness as the suction cup with which he leeched on Kitty!
She looked at her watch. “We still can make the evening train to Prague. We can see Thomas and bring him back and make him well and then—”
“You’ll be free.” He said it for her...and knew there was no telling when Thomas ever would be well enough.
“Please, come with me,” she urged.
“There’s nothing I’d rather do.” His voice grated.
“You’re not angry at me? I can’t do it by myself. I couldn’t face him alone.”
He ran his hand over his forehead. The evening train would be half-empty. They would have a compartment to themselves. “I was elected to the Action Committee,” he said. “I have to stay here.”
The rouge on her face made it appear masklike.
Kravat was perfectly capable of handling the situation in Rodnik, he argued with himself....“You have your duty, Kitty. I have mine. If you want to go now, you’ll have to go alone.”
The mask lost its rigidity, her face seemed to shrink.
The likelihood was that they wouldn’t be able to find Thomas that late in the evening. They would stay over in a hotel, they would have a whole night....”It isn’t just belonging to the Committee,” he said. “It’s what the Committee will have to do, tomorrow.”
“If you love me at all, Karel—”
“You’ve got to trust me,” he pleaded. “This once, Kitty, you’ve got to.”
It was more than a test: it was a whole future in balance, hers and his. If she had no confidence in him, nothing would remain to be
salvaged out of the old life of the Bendas.
Her fingers groped along the doilies on the armrest. Then her eyes sought his, and she said, “I’ll wait.”
Outwardly, Monday morning in Rodnik looked like the beginning of any ordinary week. Having tramped through the darkness over the creaking snow, the glassworkers started on their accustomed routine at the furnace or at the grinding wheel at five o’clock sharp, as always. Perhaps there was a little more tension than on other days, the early morning curtness was a little less pronounced, and a few questions were asked about those who were missing because they had been elected yesterday to the Action Committee. But after half an hour the flurry had died down, and people were fully immersed in sweating out their work and earning their bread.
Daylight brought the newspapers from the district town of Limberk. Some changes must have taken place there, because the one paper which as late as Saturday had loudly supported Dolezhal’s stand was conspicuously silent on the resignation issue. In the dispensary of the Benda Works, Karel looked over the news. The Congress of Works Councils had met in Prague over Sunday and had passed a resolution demanding the nationalization of all enterprises employing more than fifty workers. The resolution stated that private enterprise had become a breeding ground of economic and political intrigues and had swallowed up billions of profits at a time of harvest failure and general poverty. The paper reported a call from the Central Headquarters of the trade unions for a one-hour general strike on Tuesday at noon. They were putting on the heat, thought Karel; if the strike demonstration came off solidly, it might convince the President to accept the resignation of the twelve Ministers and to end the legalistic deadlock. Then there were a great number of scattered items about action committees springing up in Limberk and in various communities of the district, but very little about what these committees had done, how they were being received, and how successful they had been.
With a sigh, he folded the paper, shoved it into his pocket, and went to the door to admit the next patient. But the door was opened from the outside by the flat-chested, timid creature who had been Joseph’s secretary.
“Mr. Kravat asks,” she said hastily, without looking at Karel, “if you could come to his office.” And before Karel could question her, she had run off.
“I’m sorry,” he explained to the two sick men waiting for him in the corridor. “This seems to be an emergency. You’ll have to see me when I come back.”
He took off his white coat and threw it over the back of his chair. He slipped on his jacket and reached for his overcoat and hat—and stopped. He had to sit down. Shaking his head, he leaned back and closed his eyes. Against the black inside of his lids, red and golden circles were whirring with great speed; his breath came in gasps; his hands were icy cold. After taking Kitty home, he’d had all night and all morning to prepare himself; he had chosen to shut the whole matter out of his mind; but now that the Committee’s decision had to be acted on, his heart, so nicely recovered and serviceable, caught up with him.
When his breath came more easily and the sharply colored whirring circles had changed to a slowly dancing, pale pattern, he opened his eyes and got up heavily. He poured himself a glass of water and drank it in careful sips; then he left the dispensary and, setting his feet firmly, walked over to Kravat’s office.
The office was as it had been in Joseph’s time, except that the large portrait of Peter Benda had been replaced by a white board with a network of squares, on which green and orange columns illustrated production and sales of the Benda Works. Kravat, wearing high boots, a much-used leather jacket, and a blue cap with a cracked shield, leaned against what had been Joseph’s desk; he was surrounded by most of the members of the Committee. “Good morning, Karel!” he said. “Come in!”
His cheerful tone was not quite genuine. Karel noticed the frown as Kravat stepped out of the group and came toward him and took him by the elbow. “You don’t have to come along,” Kravat said gently. “It won’t do anyone any good, it’s unnecessary, and we can deal with the thing just as well without you—”
Karel replied loudly, “I believe I told you already—either I am in this the whole way or not at all. Take your choice.”
Kravat shrugged and hooked the thumbs of his strong, hairy hands in his belt. “All right! Then let’s all go.”
The Committee trooped out of the office. They crossed the yard of the Works, stumbling over the rutted ground, slipping on the ice. The sun, crawling up through the gap between Mount St. Peter and Mount St. Anna, cast its feeble rays on a pile of discarded overlay vases. The pinks and blues of their inner glass shone through the white outer layer; the snow frozen on top of them added its own brilliant reflection to the work of man. Black and sharply etched against the still wintry air, the men marched in loose file onto the bridge over the Suska River; looking neither right at the small houses lining its bank and wafting shimmering clouds of thin smoke to the sky, nor left at the trickle of dark water sluggishly fighting its way between promontories of ice, they strode forward, into the town. The silence was broken only by short appeals to the Saints, or the Devil, when the sole of someone’s foot failed to grip and the man slid back on the uphill road.
Where the road straightened stood the old-fashioned three-storied house with its black-shingled roof and the gold-painted sign running underneath the center windows of the second floor: Vesely’s Cut Glass. A brass handle was suspended from a wire leading to a bell. Kravat walked up to the stoop in front of the door and pulled the handle. The bell tinkled thinly.
There was no immediate answer. Kravat pressed the doorknob; the door swung easily; a cold dim hallway, its tiled floor muddied with melted snow, yawned in their faces. Kravat cleaned his boots thoroughly on the wet foot-mat beyond the sill; the other men followed his example; with Karel bringing up the rear, they finally groped to the end of the corridor, to another door through which the clacking of a typewriter could be heard.
They were in the anteroom to Lida’s office. The girl at the typewriter let her hands drop from the keys. The men shuffled past her to the door marked Private. Kravat knocked.
“Enter!” said a man’s voice.
Karel did not recognize it, although it was Joseph’s. Joseph stood with his back to the potbellied stove, his broad face creased in a pleasant smile, his hands hidden in the pockets of his pants. Lida was settled behind her desk; but its top was bare, and it was clear that neither of them had done any work this morning. They had been waiting.
“Mr. Kravat!” said Joseph, “Karel! And you, gentlemen! Good morning!
The men of the Committee had taken off their caps and hats and were huddling just inside the door.
“I regret we don’t have enough chairs for so large an invasion, said Joseph. His voice was weary, but he was obviously determined to carry this through in good form.
“Good morning, Mr. Benda, and Mrs. Benda,” said Kravat. “We can stand. We won’t take much of your time.”
“I can have some benches brought in,” suggested Lida.
“Thank you, madame, it won’t be necessary.”
She was staring at Karel out of a gray face. Her bone structure stuck out; her eyes, her temples, her cheeks had caved in like the earth on top of an old mine. Karel felt the tragedy of this face deeply. He had never liked her very much; she had been too grasping, too self-centered, too smug, but had she deserved what now was coming to her?
“I am glad that the two of you are here,” Kravat was saying. “Though Vesely’s is owned by you, madame, your husband, naturally, has a certain interest in the enterprise.”
“What do you want?” Joseph said gruffly. “Come to the point.”
“I will,” said Kravat. He had opened his leather jacket and was moving forward, into the center of the room. “My friends and I have been named by the people of Rodnik as an Action Committee to safeguard the property of the people and to take the necessary steps in the protection of our People’s Democratic Republic.”
&n
bsp; “My brother Karel, too?” asked Joseph.
“Dr. Karel Benda is a member of the Action Committee,” confirmed Kravat.
“Is that so!” Joseph said. “I thought you brought the doctor along in case something happened.”
Kravat scratched his head. “Frankly, Mr. Benda, I don’t expect we’ll need medical aid.”
Joseph was still standing close to the stove. He must be getting uncomfortably warm—it went through Karel’s mind—and he wondered at the ridiculous things people think of at such moments. Then he saw the heavy poker in the coalbin at Joseph’s feet. Joseph wasn’t going to run amuck...?
“Let’s get this over with!” a man was grumbling behind Kravat. “We haven’t got all day—”
“Yes,” said Joseph, “let’s get this over with. Vesely’s is not property of the people, neither am I, nor my wife, a threat to what you call the People’s Democratic Republic.”
Kravat looked at him and slowly shook his head. “You’re wrong,” he said; and, turning to Lida, “Madame, if you’ll kindly hand over the keys to your safe and to the office files...As of now, and until we receive further directives, Vesely’s Cut Glass is property of the people.”
Joseph took his hands out of his pockets. Involuntarily, they formed into fists. “By what authority, Mr. Kravat?”
“By authority of the people, by authority of the Action Committee.”
“And if I don’t recognize this authority?”
“Don’t be a fool, Joseph!” said Karel.
“You keep out of this!” Joseph’s eyes stung with hate. His shoulders were hunched bullishly as he advanced from the stove and pushed up against Kravat. “We have a President! We have courts of law! We have a Parliament, of which I am a member! To hell with your authority!”
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