“I jumped from the window,” she said. “And I ran all the way.”
“Using the door was too simple?”
“I don’t feel like making jokes,” she said soberly. “I once came running to you, and it was a silly thing to have done. I’m older now.”
She was. The very fact that she could remind him of the episode and toss it off, proved it. And her face, too, even if you allowed for its being disturbed and peaked, had lost its childhood curves. He should have seen all this the moment she came in; after all, he knew her well, he knew when she was being peevish or hysterical. But if her coming to him was more than a childish escapade, if something serious had occurred or was about to occur...
She said, “I didn’t walk through the door because they would have noticed me and stopped me.”
“Stopped you—why?”
“They wouldn’t let me out of the house,” she answered evasively.
“Why?”
Again the blank wall.
“Were you being punished for something?”
“No.”
“Are you afraid of something?”
She hesitated.
“What are you afraid of?”
She was biting her nails, and between bites said, “I want to stay here. What’s so bad about that? Why do you ask questions?”
“Believe me, Petra, I don’t like to ask them. But if you want me to help you intelligently, you must give me an idea of what’s at the bottom of this!”
She sniffed the smell of the meat loaf. “You want to get rid of me...”
“No, I don’t!” he said with a protest too loud for his own taste. “Look here—it took you ten or fifteen minutes to get here. By now, your father and mother will have discovered that you’re gone, they’ll put two and two together and call up here or come in person to fetch you. And what am I to tell them?”
She had stopped nail-biting and sat stiff with fear. “You must tell them that I’m not here.”
“I will,” he said, wishing that he had a place for her and could park her there instead of having to put her through a third degree. But her place was with her parents, unless—“I will lie to them. I will keep you with me, if you can give me one good reason why I should. People leave their homes because they can’t live there any longer, or because they’ve been brutally treated, or because they’re afraid for their lives. None of that applies in your case, does it?”
She began to squirm in her seat. Her stockings were wrinkled from the running, and she knew she looked a fright. Why was he making this so difficult for her? Why was he driving her away?
“Is it that you’re lonely because Vlasta has had to go?”
“Vlasta!” her resentment broke through. “I’ve forgotten about her.”
“Oh, you have!”
She gave a tight little smile as if she knew he was barking up the wrong tree. Then she tried to correct it, to make it winning, and said, “We’ve always been close to one another, Karel, much closer than uncle and niece. We’ve had confidence in one another—”
“You don’t have much confidence in me tonight,” he said, and saying it, felt he was unfair. For a moment, he had thought that her old possessive coquettishness had returned; but it wasn’t that at all. Whatever her predicament, it became all the worse since she couldn’t talk about it. He would have to have patience. He would have to let her stay in the flat with Kitty, and find a bed for himself somewhere else. He only hoped that the piece of meat loaf would be enough to feed the three of them.
“Just one night,” she pleaded, “only tonight. After that I’ll leave you alone.”
“And why just one night? Things can’t be so desperate if you’re willing to go back tomorrow!”
“Tomorrow they’ll be gone.”
Her heart turned icy the moment she said it. She hadn’t wanted to say it, he had drawn it out of her; and what would he think now, what would he ask next?
“Gone?”
But there must be other people, she thought, strangers, who knew about it, too. If you went to a spa in the Tatras, to a village or town anywhere in the country, you had to buy tickets and the ticket sellers knew; you made reservations and the hotel clerks knew, you had to register in the new place, and the police knew.
“They’re going to the Tatras,” she said lightly, and to make it appear more trivial, added, “Uncle Thomas is traveling with them. Father says it’s his first vacation since he’s back from the war. But I don’t want to go. I want to stay here.” And, suddenly screaming, “I—don’t—want—to go!”
“All right, all right, Petra! Nobody is forcing you.” He sighed a little. Finally he was getting the story, and it was far less complicated than Petra had made him expect. He could visualize his brother’s house, the somber rooms, Lida reproaching Joseph, Joseph reproaching himself, the complete despair and depression to which the Revolution must have reduced them. That was the other side of the coin, the one you didn’t see so readily when you marched in with a committee of workers and took over or when you stood on Wenceslas Square and cheered. To have to live at this juncture with Joseph and Lida was anything but jolly; nor was greater joy to be had from being cooped up with them in a couple of hotel rooms in a mountain resort out of season. Thomas was making a mistake if he thought that a trip in their company would help him. And Petra would naturally want to escape that permanent pall of doom.
“Would you want me to talk to your father about it?” Karel suggested.
“No!”—horrified.
“But don’t you see—we must tell them! They feel responsible for you. They won’t leave unless they know you’re well taken care of.”
Petra rocked back in her chair. They wouldn’t leave without her. Of course, they wouldn’t....But then she heard the voices. Be packed tonight! We’re leaving tomorrow! Get packed! Get—packed!
“They will!” she said firmly, as if she had looked inside their minds.
Karel paused. The girl wasn’t dreaming that up! Why the haste? And why had they wanted to keep her in the house so that she had to jump from the window?
The door was opened softly.
Kitty came in. With the naturalness of someone who has moved into a place to stay she called out her “Hello!” from the door, went to the kitchen to deposit the pot, hung up her hat and coat in the foyer, and then entered the room.
“How nice of you to visit, Petra!” she said.
Petra stared from her to Karel, from Karel to her. Her lips clamped tight. She had to throw up and wouldn’t give in to herself. She sat, miserable, rubbing her cold-reddened knuckles, and knowing why Karel had asked those many questions, why he hadn’t dared to refuse her point-blank, and yet had closed her out as ruthlessly as if he had given her a simple, honest No.
She managed to get up. She managed to speak. “I’ll be going, I guess. You won’t see me again. Good-by, Karel. Good-by, Kitty.”
She stood forlornly.
“But, Petra!” said Kitty.
Karel frowned. What was in her mind—You won’t see me again....
“Petra, darling!” said Kitty. “I’ll make you a cup of hot tea. You look as if you could use it—”
Karel shook his head at Kitty. “Where are you planning to go, Petra?”
“Home,” she said with a voice that needed tears but could find none.
“I’ll walk you.”
“You stay with her!” Petra said. “Don’t worry about me. I’ll be getting out of your life without having to jump into the river. We’re all packed, silver, jewelry, everything. The papers are burned—”
Then she broke down. She covered her face with her dirty cold hands.
Karel tasted the salt. He had bitten his lips bloody. He gathered Petra into his arms and stroked her disheveled hair and let her cry. Then he led her to the bedroom and made her lie down and covered her and kissed her forehead and wet cheeks.
When he came out he said to Kitty, “I’ll have to go out, now. Don’t leave her alone, give her som
ething to eat in a little while. Don’t let anyone in. Don’t answer the phone. Lock the door.”
Kravat boarded with a glassworker’s family in one of the small houses near the Suska River. Kravat, with his native horse sense, his intuitive grasp of problems and personalities, would know what had to be done. It was to Kravat that Karel, without so much as a second thought, was turning.
Already the lights in the windows were being switched off one by one; people here got up early and worked hard and went to bed early; Rodnik was really a harsh and drab place to live in, and Karel wondered faintly what had made him grow so attached to it. He was walking at a fast clip, he had reached the market square with the onion-towered church of the Reverend Trnka, and with the post office at the corner. A solitary yellow bulb gleamed inside the dirty-white cubicle set against the post office wall—Rodnik’s only public pay phone.
Out of the dark, a tall uniformed figure materialized and with measured steps moved forward to cross Karel’s path.
“Good evening, Dr. Benda!” said Police Sergeant Ruziczka.
Karel, distracted, stopped and gave him a curt, “‘evening!”
“Out on a late call?” the man asked.
Karel suddenly realized that he was without his bag. “No—just walking.”
“That’s good,” said the policeman. “The air is fine tonight. The trouble with people is that we’re indoors too much. Me, for instance—I like being on night duty. I look up at the stars, and the sky’s a higher ceiling than we have in any house. That’s Cassiopeia up there, and over there, if you follow my finger, Castor and Pollux. Those old Greeks, they had imagination.” Ruziczka chuckled. “Know anything about stars?”
“Very little, I’m afraid,” said Karel.
“Well,” said Ruziczka, “then I’ll be saying good night.”
“Good night,” said Karel.
The policeman touched his cap and moved on and soon disappeared, and finally the sound of his boots was gone, too.
Karel walked on slowly. Gradually, his steps became more halting and in front of the church he stood still altogether. He was thinking of other nights, long ago, of other meetings with other policemen, when his heart had sat in his throat although he had talked to them with equal casualness, hiding behind it the destination and purpose of his visits. Now he had nothing to hide. He could talk to the police about stars, about anything, as one citizen talks to another. It was a new time.
For him it was.
He sighed. He brushed off a little snow that still clung to the bench next to the church door, and sat down. It was a horrible thing to have to live with people, to meet them, make conversation, work with them, and always be on your guard. After a while it began to affect you, however good your cause. There were the sudden hot rushes from your heart to the tips of your limbs; the uncanny sensation that made the hair on the back of your neck bristle; the cramp in the stomach at a knock at the door. Even sleep didn’t help when it came; the dreams were worse than the lying awake. He had lived that way for years; he knew....
He let his thoughts trail off before permitting them to reach the point toward which they were working.
Now take Petra, he started from a new angle. She was too young to have broken the problem down into its components, to have classified its ethics and measured them with whatever yardstick one applied in such cases. And though Joseph and Lida had done everything to frustrate the child and make her hate them, she had held out to the last and up to the end had not admitted, not even to herself, what was so patently clear....
He laughed wryly—Dr. Karel Benda, survivor of Buchenwald, worker and helper and healer, treader on the thin path of righteousness, taking his cues from a child!
Yes, it was easy to stand jammed in a mass of people and to hail with them their own strength and to welcome with them the new era when the hundred-year-old prophecy of the two bearded German gentlemen was coming true. But that was not the end of it. The trouble had just started. It was relatively easy, yet, to join in confiscating your own brother’s possessions—after all, you didn’t take them for yourself, although you realized that in taking them you cut the marrow out of his bones.
Kravat would have no such compunctions. The beatings you got in life gave different people different educations. Kravat would act. Kravat would make sure that a possible enemy of the state would stay where he was supposed to stay and not skip around the country or out of it. Happy Kravat, who saw first things first and only those first things which mattered to him and to the people to whom he belonged!
But it was ridiculous to type Joseph with as solemn a phrase as Enemy of the State. While he had the Benda Works and controlled the making of glass around Rodnik, he was dangerous; now he was only a paper cut-out of his former self, stripped of substance and power. So he went across the border, to England or to America or any place where they specialized in coddling has-beens. What damage could he do? How long would it take until his audiences grew bored with his repeating the empty slogans of an extinct order? His money would give out, and the charitable contributions would decrease, and in the end, he and Lida would start some little glass business, or something. In fact, it was better to have such people out of the country.
And yet, Joseph had his capabilities. As he had used his position as National Administrator, as he had finagled his election, as he had resigned with a purpose, so he would work on, wherever he was, to gain back the Benda Works—like a squirrel in a cage. Joseph had the capabilities; but what chance did he have? No chance at all, just the compulsion that came from the Works. The Works were Joseph’s life, the Works were his country, his home, his reason for being. Which made him the Enemy—my brother, the Enemy.
My brother, whose every emotion I know, whose naked skin I saw trembling before my eyes, whose heartbeat I listened to. My brother who stood at my side when the Nazis knocked at the gate—yes, that’s when we made the mistake. That’s when we were given the wrong precepts. That’s when we learned that nothing is more despicable than the man who informs on his brother.
God, how low can you sink? But there is no God, thank God. If there were, He would raise His gentle brows considerably over Dr. Karel Benda, adulterer and informer, all in the family, of course.
He knew he was doing the wrong thing right when, instead of continuing toward the river, he crossed the square and entered the phone booth. He dropped a coin in the box and demanded Joseph’s number.
“Karel!” he heard the tinny voice at the other end of the wire. “Finally! We’ve been trying to reach you for well over an hour. Is Petra with you?”
“Yes.”
“That damned kid! Running out on us like that, and it’s not the first time. I’ve been telling Lida not to worry, I knew she’d be at your place. Will you bring her back here, right away—no, never mind. I’ll come over myself.”
“No need for that, Joseph.”
“But you’re a busy person and work hard. Why should you have to bother? “
“She is not going back to you.”
There was a slight pause, then, “Listen, Karel, Petra has her moods; all right—maybe we were a little strict with her. But you can’t side with her against her own parents—”
Karel said nothing.
“Are you there, Karel?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll be over in ten minutes.”
“I wouldn’t trouble if I were you. I have her in a safe place. She’s going to stay in Rodnik.”
Again a pause. Then Joseph’s voice came back, its panic audible despite the distorted sound of the overaged phone. “What are you trying to do? What are you nationalizing now—my child? I’ll call the police—”
“You’re leaving tomorrow, aren’t you?”
“We’re—we’re going to the Tatras.”
“So I heard.”
The panic changed to sweet reasonableness. “That’s why I’m so insistent. At any other time I wouldn’t mind her staying with you....God knows, after what happened her
e it’s difficult for us to give her the fun she’s entitled to...”
“Well, then—if you’ll let her be with me for a night, what’s the objection to having her be with me for two or three weeks or as long as you plan to visit the Tatras?”
“Because I’m her father! Because you can’t take her from me! Because—”
“You’re not coming back?”
There was a heavy, rattling breath. The “We’ll be back all right!” that followed it sounded almost normal.
“Petra will be here for you when you return.”
“Karel?”
“Yes?”
“There’ll be a time when I pay you back for this, pay all of you....”
He seemed to be sobbing in a paroxysm of fury or in pain.
The sweat was stinging in the corners of Karel’s eyes. He clamped his free hand around the doorknob of the booth; the knob was the only firm thing in a swaying world.
“Karel?”
“Yes—”
“You won’t even let me say good-by to her?”
“It’s better you don’t. She’s asleep.”
“Is she well-covered? Did you tuck her in?”
“Yes.”
“She throws herself around in her sleep. You must watch that.”
“I will.”
“Karel?”
“Yes, Joseph?”
“Let me see her....”
“I have no time. I have to go up to Thomas’s. Good-by, Joseph. Good luck!”
“Karel...”
He hung up.
For a minute, he leaned against the planking of the booth, staring at the numbers and filthy words and doodlings penciled there. Then he buttoned his coat and stepped out into the cold. He ran most of the way to St. Nepomuk.
“Why do you want to leave the country, Thomas?”
Thomas’s pajamas had grown too wide for him; there was a button missing at the top, and the few meager hairs on his bony chest stuck out pitifully. He pulled up a pillow and, half-sitting, reclined against it.
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