by Ivan Klíma
‘The day has gone by without incident or food. How much longer can I hold out? There are only two questions on people’s lips: What do they intend to do with us, and will they give us anything to eat at all?
‘Last night I was awakened by the drone of engines and heavy gunfire. I weighed up the situation quite calmly. Without food I’ll manage to survive another five or six days. That’s the limit of my strength. Either it all comes to an end by then or I will. Then I thought about the family. What will happen to them if I fail to return? It’ll be a bit like it was with me. Adam and Hanuš will be as old as Gustav and I were when our father was killed. But they’ll be bound to get some money for my patents, so they’ll be that much better off than we were. As I lie here, my bimotor calculations and the slide-rule in my pocket dig into me. The whole way, I’ve said to myself, either I’ll survive with them or not, it won’t be any help to throw them away anyway. What’s the point of a slide-rule now? I know that if I survive I’ll be able to buy another one, but even so I’ve decided not to take them out. What if someone were to steal them?
‘25.4. To my great astonishment I learned this afternoon that we’ll be getting something to eat. Our group leader is on his way back with a kilo of tinned meat. We are soon to witness the dramatic spectacle of a tin of meat being divided into one hundred portions.
‘But I’m really fortunate as I managed after all to trade the tin of coffee for a little bag of potatoes. G. and I decided we’d cook ourselves some soup. For reasons of economy, as well as to make the potatoes digestible, we cut them into thin slices and boiled them. At the end we added 20 gms. of meat and then we ate it, each taking a spoonful in turn. When we were half-way down the pot we exchanged spoons, since they weren’t exactly the same size.
‘L. came to see me. He’s a nice young fellow who was studying electrical engineering in Prague. Though a Slovene, he was arrested along with some Czech students. I explained a lot of points in electrical engineering to him in the course of our stay in the camp; in six years, the poor fellow had forgotten even the little he knew, although he loved engineering. I now gave him a large cooked potato. He didn’t want to take it and it took me ages to make him relent. Such a refusal requires a lot of fortitude. After all, he’d not eaten a thing for days. He told me that on the way here from the camp they had lost a hundred and fifty out of their original six hundred! Suddenly he took me aside and told me that the illegal revolutionary organisation of Yugoslavs and Russians was planning an uprising. After considering the situation and the imminent threat of our death by starvation or gassing, the leadership had decided to launch the uprising without delay before the members of the organisation were entirely exhausted. A delegation was negotiating with communists of other nations – particularly the Germans. At a given moment in the night-time, all the sentries were to be attacked simultaneously and disarmed, and the arms acquired were to be used to attack the hardcore SS. The numbers of SS were estimated at three thousand. It was therefore a bold plan, but what alternative was there? With beating heart, I pledged him my support and handed over my watch. The leadership needed as many watches as possible for its plan. I promised absolute silence and we parted.
‘Dusk was falling, everywhere could be seen bonfires, smoke, blanket tents and huddles of prisoners. At the command: Feuer aus! the fires started to go out one by one. Soon it was pitch dark and silent. No one would have credited that these woods concealed fifty thousand people trying to live with their last ounce of strength. Once more I slept out in the open. The thought crossed my mind: here I am out rambling again, like in my student days; but the conditions have changed rather! It was like a mad statistical experiment to find out what percentage of people were capable of surviving hunger, cold and exhaustion from long route-marches.
‘26.4. My first thought this morning is: Are we going to get something to eat? I’m not the only one. The same thought is on all our minds. We got nothing. We are scouring the ground for beech-nuts. They’re hard to find. I sit on the ground scrabbling among the leaves until I find one. I peel it: it tastes like a hazelnut. But most of them are already rotten. From time to time I crawl forward a little way. It strikes me that these leaves have been sifted through countless times already. First by animals, now by people. But I carefully rake over my patch, saving my energy and not moving needlessly. I’m terribly hungry; beechnuts are not at all filling. I can think of nothing else but food. I’m ashamed of it and annoyed with myself. So, I say to myself, life has given you an opportunity to prove you’re capable of more than the rest. This makes sitting and calculating the bimotor seem child’s play in comparison: a pastime. I must stop thinking about food and start acting level-headedly. I have decided to save my strength – I waste more energy looking for beech-nuts than I get back. So I’ll lie down (one uses less energy lying down) and only take three short walks each day, just to prevent my limbs seizing up.
‘I’m lying down. I think about freedom. How wonderful it would be to be free once more, not to go in fear of death. And to eat my fill. To be with my loved ones again. They’re waiting for me, they need me. That adds to my determination. I mustn’t give in! At this moment, I detest the system that is guilty of all this terrible misery and suffering. The financial magnates and industrialists whose endless speculation finally plunged the world into war. They are indifferent to all our suffering. All that matters to them is to preserve their power and their empire. The boards of management of the munitions firms – Metro-Vide, Imperial Chemical Trust, Krupp, they all created Hitler. Without their help he would have ended up in an asylum the first time he tried to seize power. But their insane hatred of socialism in the Soviet Union where the bosses were put to work, where ordinary working people were appointed in place of the rulers, that completely blinded them. Maybe all this suffering has been good for one thing at least: it has completely opened my eyes. If I live to see freedom, I’ll know who to thank for my life.
‘L. came and told me that the German communists have made contact with our gaolers and received an assurance that our camp is to be taken over by the Red Cross. After lengthy debate it has been decided to postpone the uprising. My only fear is that we might be letting ourselves be taken in by some tall story from the SS. I go to bed early. My legs are so weak that it hurts even to think about getting up and walking a few steps, and I’m immediately aware of the pain in my legs. From time to time I feel I’m about to faint but I overcome it. All the misery that’s been caused by property, people’s acquisitiveness, the will to get rich, to have more than other people. As soon as someone acquires property he starts to block the path of progress, sometimes with force of arms. Surely it can be changed! Do humans have to go on slaughtering each other in wars? Is it a law of nature? No, I refuse to believe it! When the world is ruled by those who work, there will be no more reason to conquer the world. Working people will come to an agreement, and under a planned economy they will enforce shorter working hours, and it will be the end of unemployment and crises. There will be work for all, which will create high purchasing power and production and result in prosperity. What reason for wars then? Only if we take it into our hands will we show the world how beautiful and safe it can be and without any fear for the future.
‘I’ve decided not to write any more. It wastes too much energy.
‘27.4. This morning I have decided I must take better care of myself. Total neglect of one’s appearance weakens one. It is a sign that one cares about nothing any more. I shaved. But I couldn’t look at my reflection. It was as if my own corpse was staring at me from that splinter of mirror that someone lent me. I’m an ugly, emaciated corpse. Only my thoughts are alive.
‘The morning passed without any sign of food, but towards noon I suddenly heard wild cheering. What had happened? For a second it occurred to me that the Russians had arrived. I got up and walked in the direction of the cheers. There stood a row of white vehicles with red crosses. About twenty of them. I learned that they had brought us food parcels.
I said to myself that the SS wouldn’t let us have them anyway, but a miracle happened (the Red Army really can’t be far away after all) and towards evening we actually received a five-kilo parcel among three of us. In the afternoon G. and I had cut down a tree (the very thought of receiving a parcel gave us the extra energy) and built a three-man tent using one blanket. We shared out the parcel. G. ordered us to economise. We spread ourselves one cracker each, ate a piece of chocolate and that was that. That’s got to last us at least a week, G. said. We don’t know when we will get something next. We have hidden the parcel under a pile of leaves and are sleeping on it.’
We were waiting for him in the middle of a hot June day. I recall lorries covered in flags and full of people in a pitiful state. There were several lorries and I didn’t know which of them he’d be getting off. Then I saw my mother – though she too was clearly unsure – taking some steps towards one of the men.
I didn’t recognise him, He was dressed in civilian clothes that hung from him oddly and he was carrying a woollen blanket over his shoulder. His head was shaved. There was nothing familiar left in his features apart from the eyes. He was crying.
Apart from the woollen blanket (which Mother later unravelled to knit us some socks so thick that I’ve not managed to wear them out yet), Father had brought us two sections of tent, a number of army plates and pots (which he would never let anyone throw out), a large tin of meat and three bars of the chocolate from the last parcel they had been given for the journey.
That very evening, the whole family congregated – the surviving members. Father, for whom it was impossible to find any clothes which didn’t make him look like a scarecrow, sat at the head of the table dressed in a white shirt of his older brother’s and some dark trousers. Fresh from the bath, his ears suddenly conspicuous and cheeks sunken, he told us his story: all about that first death march in the winter and the second death march which had actually continued right to that very moment, since some of his companions had died even after the camp was liberated and two hadn’t survived the homeward journey.
Death was the main protagonist in Father’s stories. It was ubiquitous and so unrestrained that it lost all particular meaning and it scarcely aroused horror any more, but rather a weariness. Then Father started to preach about the coming world order. He had no doubts that the future belonged to the new social order he called socialist. Socialism would liberate people from wars, poverty and unemployment.
I don’t know whether the others agreed with him. Most likely they had no view one way or the other, and didn’t understand what he was talking about. But everyone nodded and my cousin actually sketched a picture of the scene: my shaven-headed father preaching at the white-covered table about a better global future. I sat at the end of the big table, which was covered with plates, glasses and dishes of food, my stomach uncomfortably distended, listening in adoration, elated that my father was sitting there opposite me, that he had come home, that he was right as always, and he had proved it by returning. And for me, his return meant that the war had finally ended.
Little did I suspect that for me, as for many others, the war would never end. I would carry it within me even when I’d forgotten about it, even when it no longer came back to me in dreams.
I’ll never get into the habit of throwing away a crust of bread or believing that anything that is can’t be done away with in the blink of an eye. I don’t know whether such an outlook is closer to reality; I don’t seek to evaluate it, but that constant subconscious anxiety about a sudden cataclysm, and the entrenched assumption that the main purpose of one’s life is to prevent it, pushed me in a direction I would scarcely have taken otherwise. Convinced I had to do something to ensure that people never again lost their freedom, so that they should never again find themselves in hermetically sealed surroundings with no chance of escape, ruled solely by butchers’ knives, I prepared to become a foot-soldier of the revolution, a hobby horse for a new generation of butchers to mount, and wielding their cleavers drive the scattered human herd into rebuilt enclosures, and set to with their knives to carve out the splendid future.
Chapter Two
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1
ADAM HAD NEVER had an office of his own, but this was the first time he had ever shared one with a woman. Dr Alice Richterová might have been young and single (why would a woman rush into wedlock who so early in her career as a judge had already dissolved hundreds of marriages, and had heard so much evidence proving that married life is composed of deceptions, infidelities, backbiting and fakery, sexual nastiness and disputes over the washing-up and the car?) but she was definitely neither beautiful nor likeable. Her voice was raucous and too loud, and it always seemed to him to have the tone of argument or admonition. He also disliked her reverent attitude to the dignity of her profession. There was no humour there, and clearly no understanding of the extent to which that dignity had been undermined by external circumstances. Moreover, he was ignorant of her attitude to those circumstances. Admittedly she made a pretence of sympathy for his victimised friends, and she seemed to have no objection to the opinions he used to proclaim in the days when people were able to proclaim opinions publicly, but as far as he knew she was in the Party and had actually joined it at the time he left. Why had she been assigned to his office at all? Had she been given the job of keeping an eye on him and reporting back to them?
‘Did you know that Obensdorfová’s son is an army officer?’ she asked. She was just taking off her gown, beneath which she wore a yellow sports shirt and a short white skirt and looked as if she was on her way to the tennis courts. ‘Perhaps there was some other motive involved.’
Why her interest in his case?
‘If all he wanted was to take revenge on the old woman, or he was only after the money, surely he’d have chosen another moment,’ she said. ‘Not the very time the kid was there.’
‘It’s possible he didn’t know about the kid.’
‘Or he deliberately waited for it to be there.’
‘What makes you think so?’
‘He might have hated the whole family. Criminal types tend to be full of hatred.’
‘They got taught at school that hate’s important, some kinds at any rate. Maybe he got the wrong end of the stick.’
‘People like him don’t need lessons!’ She had raised her voice; she was speaking loud enough to be heard in the corridor. Why had he got into an argument with her? He still hadn’t learned it was better to say nothing. At least to say nothing if one didn’t feel like agreeing at high volume with everything said around one. He opened the file with the case history, but added in a conciliatory way, ‘Don’t worry, we’ll get to the bottom of it.’
Then I walked about the streets until first light. Then I made my way immediately to my common-law wife’s, Libuše Körnerová, as by then she was alone at home and didn’t go on shift till the afternoon. I asked her for a tablet for my headache which had come back very bad and some money which I promised to let her have back. I told her nothing about what I had done. Then I was arrested. I wish to add that I no longer know what streets I walked along nor did I meet anyone I knew. I visited no one that night and telephoned no one, since there was no one I could.
I have nothing more to add to this statement.
Statement completed the fifth of April.
He read a few more pages of additional testimony which in fact added nothing.
He realised she was staring at him. When he raised his eyes she quickly looked down and started taking things out of her desk and putting them away in her handbag. ‘Adam,’ she said, ‘I think I forgot to give you a message. Oldfich Ruml called you yesterday. You’re to get in touch with him.’
He thanked her for the message.
‘Do you know him well?’
‘Hard to say.’ Her inquisitiveness aroused his suspicion. What is she after this time? ‘We used to share the same office once upon a time. Like you and me now. But it’s ages ag
o.’ It occurred to him that Oldřich would be able to advise him over Magdalena’s business. He always had plenty of useful contacts and acquaintances.
‘Do you know his wife?’ she asked. ‘He is married, isn’t he?’
Actually he had been married longer than Adam. They had been practically newly-weds, though, ‘ages ago’, and Alexandra looked about sixteen. She used to use a lot of make-up, which didn’t appeal to him. ‘Ages ago’ meant ten years back – no more – when Adam returned to Prague and Oldřich introduced him into society. ‘I’ve not seen her for a long time. I think she used to paint quite well,’ he said, as it seemed a fairly bland piece of information, ‘but I don’t know for certain. Then they had a daughter.’
She snapped her handbag shut but she was not leaving. She waited. Most likely she wanted to hear something more, but he could see no reason why he should tell her anything. ‘Are you going to lunch?’ he asked.
‘I don’t think so.’ She lingered a moment, but as he said nothing else, she left the office.
In response to your enquiry we notify you that the patient Karel Kozlík received both somatic and neurological examination in our department. He was also subjected to several basic tests (Minnesota, Rohrschach, etc.). In general, the patient’s personality displayed certain pathogenic characteristics (chiefly paranoid and schizophrenic). Karel K.’s mental attainments were good, although somewhat neurotically impaired. He is emotionally immature, egocentric and infantile with a tendency towards moodiness. Neurotic features – a negative mater imago (Weiss, shock) and castration anxiety. Most likely other pathol. characteristics such as sensitive egocentricity, narcissism.
The patient was recommended for out-patient treatment, but failed to attend the first appointment.
