After the rustling, oppressive stillness among the files and papers, his frazzled nerves were hit by the excited voices in the hallways and the quick, noisy steps on the stair wells. By now I should be accustomed to commotion and shouting, he frowned. He had become an expert on crowd psychology. There was hardly a gathering he hadn’t joined, a mob he hadn’t studied, a demonstration he hadn’t watched. All for nothing. He had placed ads in every paper, and they had been appearing since Monday; but these were the days when people read the headlines, not the classified pages. He had gone back to every coffeehouse he and Vlasta had ever sat in, every restaurant they had ever dined at during those few days they had shared in Prague. He had retraced their steps on the walks through the parks. He had been running, perhaps in circles; but as long as his feet kept moving, he had been able to quiet his brain.
Maybe I’m beaten, he thought, but how can I tell? The general in the field knows when he has lost, the businessman closing out his shop, the worker whose hands fail to obey him. I do not know.
He left the building and leaned against one of its pillars. He lit a cigarette and listened idly to the arguments between two groups of students. Some demonstration was shaping up; one group was vociferously against it; the other, equally clamorous, insisted on its purpose. Between them teetered the curious, the undecided, and those who tried to keep the two groups from coming to blows.
This kind of thing had grown to have a certain fascination for him which, at moments, almost overshadowed his rational aim of finding Vlasta. Denounced as a traitor by both Villner and Elinor, he no longer wish-dreamed that he could be the arbiter, nor even a spokesman, in the clash and surge of the crisis; he merely tagged along, getting a vicarious thrill out of a mass on the move, as if history were supplying him with generous if somewhat rough illustrations to his book which never would be printed.
A Czech flag, its red, white and blue pattern lively in the mild wind from the river, materialized from somewhere. A gangling boy with long, yellow hair grasped it and shouted, “Remember November Seventeenth!”
“November Seventeenth—in my eye!” said a dark-complexioned, tilt-nosed girl who, a pile of books clamped under her arm, had come to stand next to Thomas. Realizing that he had heard her, she turned to him and said sarcastically, “Sometimes I wonder if they really believe their own hokum....”
“November Seventeenth?” Thomas hesitantly questioned.
“1939!” The girl raised her brows significantly.
“Oh, yes,” he said. He now remembered the date—another demonstration of Prague students, and the Nazis firing into it, killing many, dispersing them, closing the universities. “I wasn’t in the country at the time,” he said defensively.
Perhaps Vlasta had been in that first demonstration. No, she was too young for that. But there was something wonderful in youth marching for its ideals.
“This isn’t the same thing,” said the girl. “Who d’you think pays their tuition? The workers! And this half-baked gang has the nerve to shout against them.”
“And what are they demonstrating for?” asked Thomas.
“Their old men’s hock shops, I suppose,” the girl replied.
“Freedom!” shouted the gangling youth with the yellow hair. “For Benes! For democracy!”
They moved off, straggling at first, forming themselves into ranks of four and picking up more students as they turned right over the Manes Bridge.
“I think I’ll go along,” said Thomas, and noticing the dark girl’s ironic glance as he pushed himself away from the pillar, he mumbled, “I’ve got to find somebody!”
He was half convinced that this time he would have better luck. Vlasta was a student, and she was a rebel; and this was a rebellious thing. Perhaps there would be shooting, as in November 1939—he had run away from the shooting once before and gone to America, and it had spoiled his whole life.
He caught up with the group at the other end of the bridge, as it moved into Prague’s Small Side, the left bank of the Möldau River. They were still not very numerous, but they said that other groups, coming from the Technical School, the Faculty of Law, and the Medical School, were going to meet them. Then they would march on Hradcany Hill, to the Presidential Palace, and offer the President their support and tell him to remain strong and to hold out.
Thomas, walking alongside them, joined the rhythm of their marching. Sometimes, they would begin to sing, but after a while, their song would die down. Then the yellow-haired boy would start chanting his slogan: “Freedom! Benes! Democracy!” The street was empty; it seemed that most of the people were elsewhere; finally, even the yellow-haired boy gave up. But they marched on doggedly. Where the street tapered off into a small, tunnel-like passageway, Thomas had to remain behind so as to let the column go through. He felt a little lost. Somehow, the buoyant excitement that had sparked him when he’d been swallowed up by the gray multitude in Old Town Square failed to grip him now. Was it then not the spirit but the size of the mass? Or were there various kinds of mass spirit?
Through the passageway he emerged on a fairly large plaza. He saw his little band in front of St. Nicholas’s Church. They looked puny against its mighty walls and high windows, its tall, rich gate, its rounded dome. They were waiting. Then came the far-off sound of voices, some high-pitched and shrill, some clear and young. A couple of policemen stood at the corner of Neruda Street, rifles slung over their shoulders.
Thomas went forward. Out of the direction of Charles Bridge he saw the first ranks of a long string of marchers emerge. His own group started to move, met the others, mingled with them; there was hallooing, boisterous laughing and shouting. When the noise abated, runners went down the column, passing the word to thin out for the steep ascent to Hradcany through the narrow Neruda Street. Somebody had attached a streamer of mourner’s crepe to the flag, and the yellow-haired boy was leading a chorus: “Freedom! Benes! Democracy!” One of the policemen was rubbing the back of his head, shoving his cap forward till it sat lopsided on his pate; the other was staring darkly ahead.
The tip of the column was pushing up Neruda Street, past the old courtiers’ houses that had already looked down at the plumed soldiers of the mad Emperor Rudolf and of Wallenstein, Duke of Friedland.
Thomas stood, watching the faces, watching for one face. His eyes ached from lack of sleep and from the intensity of effort. He tried to scan the procession to its hindmost row; there were perhaps twelve to fifteen hundred young men and girls. He tried to make out shapes and features, and as the tail end of the column came close, he still had not discovered her. But he would not believe it, not until he had made doubly sure. He pressed past the marchers on their way up Neruda Street; sticking close to the walls of the houses, he began to overtake one rank after the other. The steep grade of the hill and his own concentration made him pant; he heard the quick pumping of his heart over the shuffle of feet. The voluble head of the demonstration was still out of earshot; the students who were around him had pinched faces and kept their anxious questions to a whisper.
He went on as if driven. Some of the students glared at him; some called him to get in line; others thought he was carrying some message and moved aside for him. He told himself his mad dash was nonsense, and throttled that voice with: And if I overlooked her? But deep underneath, still another force, unclear, unpronounced, whipped him on. It came from the faces of the marchers, from the bravado with which they were trying to cover their apprehensions; it made him want to flee back, downhill, to the Church of St. Nicholas, to the river, anywhere; and he refused to flee: escape was tantamount to giving up Vlasta, giving up everything, accepting defeat.
Then he saw the flag, and the dense crowd around it.
The head of the column had stopped marching. It had reached the dead end of Neruda Street. A thin lane went farther ahead, skirting the hill. Directly facing the students was a flight of stairs leading straight up to the plateau of Hradcany Square where, framed between the Archbishop’s residence and
the mosaic-walled Schwarzenberg Palais, the wide vista of the Presidential Palace spread itself.
The top of the stairs was blocked by police.
But at a sharp angle from the foot of the stairs, another path spoked off to the right, leading steeply along the base of the Schwarzenberg Palais, and opening up on Hradcany Square where it was closest to the Presidential Palace. The vanguard of the students spilled into this walled-in footpath, only to meet, at its end, a second cordon. The police were holding their rifles at port; an elderly officer, pistol in the holster strapped to his belt, his lined face worried, was trying to argue. He had difficulty making himself heard; every few seconds he was outscreamed either by the students around him, who raised their demands, or by the crowd at the foot of the stairs which continued to grow as more and more of the demonstrators arrived at the dead end and jammed into it.
“Now go back home, boys!” he said.
The cavernous walls of Neruda Street reverberated with the students’ shouts: “Freedom! Benes! Democracy!”
“Go back to your schools....”
The yellow-haired, gangling boy was pushed against the officer. He held on to his flag and challenged shrilly, “We want to see the President!”
“The President!” The call was taken up. Thomas raised his voice with theirs. Why shouldn’t they see the President? The dark girl had said they were marching for their fathers’ hock shops; but the President was the President of the hock-shop owners, too.
Thomas was being shoved along the walled-in path. He now could see the police at close range, their stolid expressions, their bodies filling out their greatcoats. He was trying to keep his footing, and everything went so fast that he had no time to be afraid.
He heard the police officer say, “Now, you don’t have a permit to demonstrate—”
Somebody cried, “We didn’t get a permit from the Nazis, either!”
The crowd at the foot of the stairs, still growing, was getting into an angry mood. They had organized a chorus, “Long live the Security Police!” and they yelled it again and again, derisively.
Thomas was being jostled. Students thrust at him from behind and pressed past him. “Freedom! Benes! Democracy!” He did not want to be propelled against the officer; he threw his weight against the mass pushing him forward.
“A delegation!” the officer was saying. “If you’ll get together on that, we’ll let a delegation through....”
Some of the older students had joined Thomas in an attempt to press back the mass surging up the tight path. “A delegation!” they called. “There’ll be a delegation!”
But it was too late. Too many of the students had filtered past the officer and his men, had gained the top of the path, and were fanning out on the plateau. Other students, unwilling to wait at the end of Neruda Street, had broken through on the stairs, or had run ahead on the lane skirting the hill and, through houses and back stairs, had gained Loreto Street and doubled back. All of them arrived on Hradcany Square at the moment when Thomas, forced through the bottleneck of the path, was tumbled onto the open space of the square. The police, rifles still at port, finding themselves outmaneuvered, were falling back on their second line, flush to the fence of the Presidential Palace. Thomas saw the officer, walking backwards, gesticulating, still arguing with the men he considered leaders of the demonstration. By that time, the yellow-haired boy, swinging the flag, was far ahead. Groups of students galloped close behind him. The flag-bearer and the demonstrators appeared smaller, insignificant, spread out, as they were, against the line of police. The students not yet come up from Neruda Street were still shouting for freedom and twitting the police, who could no longer hear them; but on the plateau there were no shouts, only the police, retreating slowly, and the melee of students searching for an opening, some of them hardly more than an arm’s length from the nearest rifle.
And then the shot fell.
Somebody screamed. The flag disappeared. But a second later, Thomas saw it again. The yellow-haired boy was holding it; his other arm was supporting a figure that awkwardly dragged its feet. The police, rifles still at port, had stopped retreating a few yards before the fence. For a moment, the flag, the yellow-haired boy, and the wounded one stood out, still and alone. Behind them, the square was alive with students running back toward the footpath and the stairs, helter-skelter, falling over each other—then the flag retreated, too,, and was swallowed up.
An ambulance drove up and picked up the wounded boy, who had sunk to the pavement. At the other end of the square, at the gate of the Palace, the officer was conducting a delegation of five students into the courtyard. The line of police was no longer solid. A number of greatcoats were walking over the square, seeking out dazed students and talking to them.
A policeman came up to Thomas. “Why don’t you go back to school?” he said. “It’s over.”
“Yes, I guess it’s over,” said Thomas. He trudged off, down the stairs to Neruda Street, and down Neruda Street, following the students who were trooping along sullenly. He could have cried, not over the thwarted bravery—there had been little of that; not over what these boys and girls had marched for and what was now irretrievably lost—he didn’t know exactly what that was, and didn’t care much; but because the whole demonstration was so similar to everything else in his life: a spurt of enthusiasm, and then the meeting with reality.
The yellow-haired, gangling youngster was walking ahead of him, arms linked with some others. They were talking loudly, bragging of what they could have done if the police hadn’t opened fire on them, comparing themselves to the heroes of November, telling each other that tomorrow they would demonstrate again, in greater numbers, and how they would sweep the universities clean of Communists.
They were stopped at St. Nicholas’s Church. Numbers of routed students already were lining the curb. Up the street came a formation of workers, about sixty of them, men and women, carbines slung over their shoulders.
The workers saw the students and halted. Their faces were hard, their fists closed around the slings of their carbines.
The yellow-haired boy drew in breath to shout a slogan, but his neighbor gripped his arm and hissed something at him. For a minute or two, the opposing forces measured one another in dead quiet.
Then the man in command of the workers ordered, “Forward—March!” The short train of workers turned into a side street and vanished. None of the students moved until the last echo of the workers’ footsteps had faded out.
“Jesus!” said the student next to the yellowy-haired boy. “I wasn’t scared of the Nazis in November ‘39. I wasn’t much scared up on the hill, either. But now I was scared.”
“Bastards, all of them,” said the yellow-haired boy.
Thomas felt a dry sob work its way up through his throat. He didn’t want to know whether it was from relief, or from sorrow.
It was dark when Kitty and Karel returned to the Hotel Aurora. Thomas had not yet come back.
“But there’s someone else waiting for him, too,” said the clerk. “The young lady over there!”
“Vlasta....” said Karel.
Vlasta was sitting in a deep chair, her coat carelessly thrown over the armrest, her eyes close to the pages of a book so as to overcome the bad light in the lobby. She turned a page and stared at it; her hand went over her eyes as if she wanted to blot out a picture; then she went on reading.
“Shall we talk to her?” said Karel.
Kitty was panicked. Yet she wanted to find out, once and for all, what it was about this woman that could move Thomas so radically. She was filled with resentment even as she told herself that Vlasta was no more than the catalyst in her life with Thomas. And then again, she was beset with horror and with curiosity. Whatever Karel had said in explanation of Vlasta, there was a possibility that Lida and Elinor were right. But on the chance that they were wrong, she felt pangs of conscience, even sympathy. There was also the condescension a woman has toward the successor who has accepted her hand
-me-down; she knows the shape of the shoe into which the other is stepping, she knows where the bunions will grow. Perhaps she had no right to indulge in this; it was not certain, or even likely, that Vlasta was the successor in question. Nothing was certain—and the uncertainty, combined with her concern for Thomas, outweighed everything.
“Yes,” she answered, “I want to talk to her.”
“It may hurt you,” Karel warned. “Perhaps I had better do it alone—”
“I’ve been hurt before,” Kitty cut him short. “I’ve got to know.”
She strode ahead. She reached Vlasta’s side and glanced at the book.
“A good novel, isn’t it, Miss Rehan?...My husband can write.”
Vlasta started, brushing her coat to the floor. She was off her defenses. She glanced from Kitty to Karel, surprise and chagrin and fear on her face.
Karel picked up the coat. Holding it out, he said pleasantly, “Thomas’s novel was quite the rage when it came out. The critics compared it to Maupassant and Kafka and Capek, but the critics are never happy unless they can dream up comparisons. You’ve never read it before?”
“I just got it from the library,” Vlasta answered. She was regaining her poise. Karel’s presence seemed to exclude a repetition by Kitty of the scene Lida had made. Accepting her coat from him, she said, “Thank you, Dr. Benda.”
“You mean Thomas never gave you a copy?” Kitty asked.
“No,” said Vlasta, “he didn’t. I never mentioned that I wanted one.”
Kitty sat down on a chair Karel had pushed up. “The book was dedicated to me,” she said dully.
“I’m sorry.” Vlasta kept looking at the book’s much-fingered cover. “I’m sorry about all of it. I wish I had never gone to Rodnik; or, once there, had left by the next train....”
“You’re waiting for Thomas, the clerk told us,” said Karel, feeling that the confessional could come later.
“Have you seen him since he came to Prague?” Kitty broke in. “How is he? Where is he now, do you know? We want to—to take him back with us—”
Stefan Heym Page 52
