Stefan Heym

by The Eyes of Reason

  “Don’t you have anything to say?” asked Thomas.

  Joseph pulled himself together. “Yes, quite a lot. Me, with my systematic business mind, I was just trying to put Roman and Arabic numerals before my comments.”

  Thomas raised his glass. “Start with some sympathy!”

  “After the way you carried on with the Rehan girl? And she being slightly on the queer side!”

  “Lida has a cesspool for a heart,” Thomas announced. “You can quote me.”

  Joseph said agreeably, “Lida has her weaknesses. But she’s not as stupid as you think she is. She told me years ago that the thing between you and Kitty wouldn’t last. How did the end come?”

  Thomas regarded his brother from the side. Joseph was so much more pleasant since he had to give up the Benda Works; he was almost human again.

  “The end? Very quickly, very painlessly. I think I handled it quite well. I told her to go.”

  “And she went?”

  “To Karel’s. He’s always gathering strays. And she’s a nurse by training and by character. The two ought to make a swell pair.”

  The bluster was quite apparent; but Joseph kept his observations to himself. And you? he asked. “What are your plans?”

  Thomas shrugged.

  “A man usually has this or that in mind before he tells his wife to go to hell.”

  Thomas flared up, “I told her no such thing! We parted in friendship, and I like and respect her, and I’ll thank you to remember that!”

  “I was only trying to help you.”

  Thomas glanced skeptically at his brother. People, Joseph not excluded, had helped him—usually for reasons of their own—until he was nothing but a sucked-out shell.

  Since you have no plans,” said Joseph, “and since you are free—as free as I am, and even freer...I’m going to the Tatras tomorrow. Would you like to come along? I’ll pay the expenses-1 don’t want you to worry about that—what money I’ve got left I’m going to spend. A few weeks of this new Government, and my money won’t be worth the flatulence in my stomach....We might as well use it while we can.”

  The Tatras, thought Thomas. Jagged mountains without the softness of the hills hereabouts; clear, thin air; no people; his meals served for him, his room made up for him; and above all, a new perspective.

  “Lida coming along?”

  “Lida and Petra.”

  “No,” said Thomas. “The offer is very kind, I appreciate it. But not with Lida.”

  Joseph laughed. You won’t have to see her, not even at the dinner table. You can have your food brought up to your room. Besides—confidentially—since the Action Committee took away Vesely’s, she has become a very minor partner in the firm of Benda.” He chuckled at the witty way in which he had put the thought.

  “How long do we stay?” Thomas asked.

  “Oh—I don’t know. Ten days, two weeks, three—as long as the money holds out. And if you don’t like it, you can always go back. So what do you lose?”

  Thomas was tempted. It would be a period of grace-no responsibilities before he was ready to accept them; and time to get over the shocks administered to him by others and by himself. He shrugged again; but it meant. What else can I do? And Joseph understood him.

  They drank in silence, comfortably stretched, the fire warming their feet. Then Joseph said, “I’ll come for you tomorrow morning about eight. And we’re going to fly from Prague to Bratislava—I hate long trips. So limit your baggage. But I suggest you take along any manuscripts you’re working on, and whatever else you have that’s irreplaceable.”

  “For the Tatras?” Thomas asked idly. The suspicion that had been germinating in him ever since Joseph made his magnanimous offer, and belittled the objectionable company of Lida, took root and grew.

  “You know how it is,” said Joseph. “No one will be at your house, and with the new people in power, any respectable person and what he owns has become free game.”

  “And if you went on from the Tatras—somewhere else?”

  Joseph grabbed the poker and jabbed it into the coals so that the sparks flew up and the fire roared. “They’ve taken away our work—my furnaces and your book—right? Our homes will be next. Our money will go fast. The only thing they can’t take is what’s between you and me. Thomas, you and I have fought over little issues. They’re not essential. And now they’ve shrunk to zero. If we go on, as you call it, from the Tatras somewhere else, we’ll go together.”

  He put the poker aside and reached for his coat. “Tomorrow morning at eight? There’s no time to lose.” And as Thomas said nothing, he took his silence for acquiescence, and left.

  Thomas moved nearer to the stove. He held off closing its door. The ever-changing forms of the flames held his eyes. A flying witch with a high, pointed hat flickered into a church with two towers, which became a dragon that turned into a nestful of young eagles stretching their beaks toward imaginary food. Elinor had told him to come with her. Why was going with Joseph any different from going with Elinor? Only at that time he still had a wife and a home. The wife he had sent away, his home was falling to dust before his eyes. Perhaps Joseph was better than Elinor, better than Kitty. A man didn’t impose on you as women did. And a brother was a brother. Blood was thicker than water, and water killed fire. There was Lida, of course, but Lida was a very minor partner in the firm of Benda; and Petra would need attention now that Vlasta was gone. Poor Vlasta, no place, no home...He was some fool, sitting here, mourning over Vlasta’s having neither place nor home. Where was his place in the world, where was his home?

  He banged shut the door to the stove.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  PETRA had slept through Dolezhal’s night visit.

  In the morning, however, she was quick to notice the subtle change night had brought. Although the gloom, which had settled over the household since her father’s permanent return from Prague, was not dispelled, it seemed to have condensed and taken on a definite, tangible shape creating an excited motion, like people hurrying to secure doors and windows before a storm.

  Petra observed, sullenly, her mother whispering sharply as the door to the packing room was slammed closed; her father dragging papers and files and ledgers behind the house, piling them into a wire basket near the back fence, pouring gasoline out of a can over the collection, and setting fire to it.

  No one called on her to help, perhaps because both Lida and Joseph were too preoccupied to think in terms of child psychology, or because they felt that Petra’s help was not worth the trouble of breaking through her churlish manner. This sullenness was Petra’s defense and retreat; her sulky silences and abrupt snapping, her listless movements and her retirement, were her way of holding her parents under an indictment she did not dare to present openly. Her attitude was at once profitable and painful to her. It enabled her to cover up her own sense of guilt; at the same time it intensified all the injustices that had been and were being done to her.

  Even Vlasta was counted among those who had hurt her, and Petra’s feelings gradually veered from pity to resentment. Vlasta should not have left her; she should have stayed and fought back. As the days passed, Petra accepted the idea that Vlasta was as much at fault as her mother. And out of the recesses of her heart, she pulled the never quite forgotten infatuation for Karel, burnished it, and though it was a little battered at the edges, placed it on the empty mantelpiece of her affections.

  She was exceedingly serious about all these emotions and designs for behavior; she told herself they were the purgatory through which she had to go. But once or twice the thought occurred to her that she was posing and that the world did not center in the things she wanted and the trials she was undergoing; the thought was painful.

  These were the moments when her mind strayed outside the doors of her father’s house. In general terms, she knew what had happened, and Vlasta’s influence—even Thomas’s abstract and abstruse classroom discussions—had sharpened her intelligence. If her father was beate
n along with Minister Dolezhal and his patting hands, if Lida had been thrown out of Vesely’s by Karel and a bunch of roughneck workers, this was fine with her; it gave her a chance to gloat. But when she was tired of gloating, she continued to think about it and to ask herself: What is going to come of it?

  All of this Petra kept to herself. She became quite expert at being sullen. At lunch, which was late because Joseph had come late from St. Nepomuk, she petulantly dallied with her food. The menu was a haphazard conglomeration of leftovers; in view of tomorrow’s departure, Lida had not bothered to shop. Joseph made a pretense of enjoying his cold chicken wing which looked obscenely naked with the pimples where the feathers had been, and with little meat on it.

  Lida looked at Petra as if she had just discovered her, and then at Joseph, catching his eye, and then back at Petra with a grave, prodding nod.

  Joseph separated the thin joints of the wing and seemed to study the mother-of-pearl white of the cartilage. “I’ve got the most wonderful news for you, Petra,” he said.

  Petra kept her eyes fixed on a grease spot on the tablecloth in front of her.

  “Don’t you want to know?” he asked cheerfully.

  “Yes,” she said, “of course.”

  Her tone of weariness made his fingertips tingle. Here he was trying to sell her something that other girls her age would go mad about, and she was acting as blasé as if she’d been to the ends of the world and back, with stop-overs at all the famous sights.

  “You could be a little more appreciative!” he said, throwing the bones on his plate.

  “But you haven’t told me,” she came back matter-of-factly.

  “Now, Petra!” Lida warned.

  Petra outlined the grease spot with one tooth of her dessert fork. The spot looked like the rear view of a rabbit, its two long ears sticking out clearly.

  “Keep your hands quiet when your father talks to you!”

  Petra dropped the fork, the expression of her face saying: Go ahead, punish me!

  Joseph reminded himself that the child had not had an easy time of it, either. He forced an encouraging smile into the corners of his eyes, as he said, “Were going on a trip, Petra. We have not had a vacation together since I’ve come back from the war. Oh, it’ll be great fun—damn it, what are you staring at? What’s wrong with the table?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Then stop looking that way!”

  “Yes, Father.”

  “Well, aren’t you glad? When I was your age—”

  “We’re leaving tomorrow morning,” said Lida. “I have no time to help you pack. You’re old enough now, you can do it yourself. There’s a suitcase for you in the cellar, your father will bring it up. You’ll pack everything you need for a long trip, all your good clothes, winter and summer. Tonight, I’ll have a look at your suitcase and see that you’ve skipped nothing.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “To the Tatras.”

  “So why do I need my summer clothes?”

  “Because I tell you so,” said Lida. “I’ve never yet seen a child so stubborn. It’s because of that Vlasta. Ever since—”

  “Your mother is right,” Joseph mediated carefully. He didn’t like the turn the conversation was taking. In fact, he liked nothing about the conversation. “You must not question what your parents tell you. But as it happens, we’ll be up quite high in the mountains, and you know it can get pretty hot there, even in winter, once you get above a certain range.”

  “Yes,” said Petra, “I guess so.” She buttered a slice of bread, dipped a tiny spoon into the crystal salt barrel, and with annoying slowness dropped grain by grain on the bread.

  “When I was your age...” Joseph said again. He was not satisfied. He was selling the kid a pack of lies, necessary lies, well-meant lies, lovely lies, and she should show some reaction, some pleasure. “...Your age,” he swallowed, “I’d have jumped to the ceiling if my father had offered me a trip like that.”

  Petra put the little spoon back into the salt barrel and glanced up at her father. Though her face was absolutely blank, it was obvious that she was laughing at him.

  “But you,” he said, “it seems—”

  “Are we taking along all the things Mother has packed—to the Tatras?”

  The sound of the question was familiar. Not like Thomas’s question, but like—like the questions the garage attendant had asked. Joseph reddened. Were they spying on him? Were they spying on him in his own house? His own child?

  His fist came down on the table, and the dishes clattered. “What do you mean, Petra?”

  A moment later, he had bridled himself. Petra was all right. The Vlasta thing had thrown her off balance. He couldn’t afford to let his imagination run wild. “We may be gone a good while,” he said. “We’ll take everything we need for a long trip. What made you ask?”

  What had made her ask? Petra frowned disconcertedly. It had something to do with Vlasta, with the sending away of Vlasta. Vlasta had been here when the silver and all the good things and the jewelry were being packed. Vlasta had known too much, that’s why she had been driven away. Now it was clear. They would be gone a long time, hiding somewhere in the mountains, under false names possibly, as people had done when the Nazis were in the country. She’d be living with shepherds and goats, she’d be climbing the rocks and the ridges—fleet, like a beautiful animal, her legs browned and muscular, her eyes sharp and always on the lookout....

  But then she saw her mother and her father, and she couldn’t quite imagine them as mountaineers—or rather, she could picture them, and herself, locked up in some hut, day after day, month after month, her mother counting the silverware, and her father trying to be pleasant; and she hated them suddenly, both of them.

  “Do I have to go?”

  The few simple words fell like drops of hot lead into water. They seemed to sizzle.

  “I never...!” Lida said flatly.

  “Of course you’ll come with us!” Joseph’s worry nearly broke through his fatherly tone. “We’re a family. Wherever we go, we go together! Your Uncle Thomas is coming along, too.”

  Thomas was distinctly not the man to live as a mountain recluse. So it was probably some boring spa or other, and the silver was only packed away because no one would be in the house.

  “Uncle Karel, too?”

  “No,” Lida said grimly, “your Uncle Karel hasn’t been nice enough recently for us to treat him to a vacation trip.”

  “But I like him!” Petra pouted.

  Joseph folded his napkin, apparently lost in thought. Then his shrewd, good-natured peasant smile spread over his broad face, and he said, “Petra dear, you’re nearly grown up. I think I can afford to tell you the truth. My brother Karel unfortunately has associated with the wrong kind of people, people who have destroyed my business and your mother’s business, and who are out to ruin our whole country. What would you think of someone who came into your room and took away everything you have—would you still like him?”

  “Mother came into my room and took away Vlasta!”

  Joseph picked up the chicken bone and cracked it. It made an ugly sound.

  “I want to stay in Rodnik,” said Petra.

  “Alone?”

  “I’m alone most of the time anyhow.”

  “Get packed,” said Joseph.

  “Get packed!” said Lida.

  Petra said nothing. She rose from the table and walked out.

  “You’d better not let her out of the house,” said Joseph.

  “No,” said Lida, “I’d better not. I don’t know what has gotten into her. It’s terrible. They even spoil your children.”

  Joseph flexed his hands. He should have beaten the kid, beaten her soundly. The trouble was he had not been around when she was at the age where other children have respect for their parents beaten into their hides.

  The last patient had been treated and sent on his way home. Karel threw his white coat, no longer so white, into the laundry bi
n. He was humming a melody which sounded clear and bright in his mind but which refused to translate itself into a proper tune.

  Kitty, he thought, Kitty, Kitty. She had baked a meat loaf and put half of it in a pot and carried it up to St. Nepomuk. That’s how she was. The other half of the meat stood warm on the stove in the kitchen. It would be his first meal with Kitty in his own house. He should have wine, real, good wine with it.

  The tired doorbell shrilled excitedly. It was too early for Kitty to be back. Dear God, he mumbled, don’t let it be another emergency call, let me have this evening in peace, will You?

  The landlady downstairs was letting go with a swill of welcome. There were quick steps, not the slow, dragging feet of a late patient. The ever open door to his flat creaked.

  “Petra!”

  She flopped into a chair, out of breath, her hair awry. She wore no coat, no overshoes, and the mud of the streets had splashed her stockings.

  “I ran all the way—” She was still gasping for words. “All the way. Let me stay, please, you must let me stay here, Karel. You’re the only one I have. No place else, nowheres.” Her eyes grew misty and her hand, clammy, grasped his. “Say that you’ll let me—”

  He sat down facing her. This was one evening when he definitely would not permit himself to be the butt of Petra’s vagaries. She was troubled; but she was always troubled; damn Lida.

  “I can’t say anything or do anything unless you tell me—”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” she said defiantly.

  “Then why did you come running to me?”

  Her face wrinkled with effort. She should be able to talk like the grownups, saying only as much as was necessary. But what could she tell him? And how much? Karel, her father had said, associated with the wrong kind of people. They were not wrong for Karel or for her, but wrong for her father, and she wasn’t sure what would be wrong for them to know about her father.