“I can’t sit on this horrible sofa. I’m going to the cafe.”
He slammed the door on his way out.
Since then, this kind of scene has repeated itself often. What are you, Božena, if not his slave? You yourself wrote: “His image accompanied me wherever I went. I slept with it, and woke up with it. In front of him I kneeled as if he were God.” You, who is admired, proud, who fears neither slander nor the police. Is this happiness?
This is being in love. “Love is a sickness, but one doesn’t want to be cured of it.” You wrote that and you’ve proven it.
But you have your own world, which I do not have, nor does the doctor and nor does Němec. The other day a lamp with a white glass shade came in the post. You placed it on the table of your study, mad with joy. You looked like a little girl.
“Božena, how do you manage to be so jubilant in the middle of so much hardship and misfortune?” That’s what I wanted to know.
“In the evening I like to retire to my room, with a cup of tea on the table, and the oil lamp gilding everything. Then before my eyes appear invincible heroes and beautiful princesses, winged horses and terrifying dragons.”
That’s your prescription, that’s your secret.
That is your willow tree that nobody can cut down and destroy. Not the hardship, not your husband with his eternally vexed face, not the police, not even the doctor, the person you love most.
She jumped over the puddles of water. She would have liked to go flying off into the sky again. What a pity that when it rains, one cannot fly! The soles of her shoes were soaked through, as were her coat and large chenille head scarf with fringe, complaining in silence, longing for a heated, dry room. But she didn’t hear their protests; she had ears for nothing but her inner voice, which at this moment was singing an ode to joy backed by a twenty-five voice choir. The church bells were chiming, but she didn’t hear them either; the choir was singing too lustily. The streetlamps on Kampa Island glided in the air like Venetian lanterns, gilding the threads of rain. Then, in the darkness between the streetlamps, she couldn’t make out where a puddle ended and splash! She fell right into the water and burst out laughing.
A bell started chiming. This time she heard it and told herself that he must be in class. Poor boy, it’s hard work studying medicine. And she remembered how, the other day, he had arrived much later than the agreed time. He found her writing. He placed his bag on top of a half-written sentence and sighed. She went into the kitchen to make tea and he went after her like a cat. He took her in a brutal fashion, right there among the pots and pans. The massages, the philosophy, and the ointment were no longer of interest to him. When it was over, he watched as she smoothed the folds of her wrinkled skirt with the palm of her hand, how she buttoned up her blouse, and put a needle in place of the button that he had torn off.
“You’re tidying yourself up to go out, aren’t you?”
“I have an appointment with Pospíšil, my publisher.”
“And do you not have an appointment with me?”
“You got here two hours late, my love. I thought that—”
“Then stop thinking and do as you promised. You had an appointment with me and you shall keep it.”
“I have to talk with my publisher about the money he owes me, my love. I haven’t got a penny left to buy anything for the children’s supper. Please understand.”
“You are being unfair to me! I moved from Hybernská Street to be close to you. When I arrive a little late, despite wishing more than anything to get here earlier, you’re not even waiting for me. You are busy writing, as if we had arranged nothing. And finally, when we’ve been together for only a quarter of an hour, you’re already in a hurry to answer the call of literature, the only thing that matters to you. What do I mean to you? Tell me! I suppose I am only useful to you as an inspiration for words and more words and nothing else, the miserable spark that lights up a story.”
His protest seemed to her then to be an unfair accusation. Today, in that damp winter dusk, in the middle of a street in the rain, she saw things quite differently. She drew back the silvery curtain of rain and, quick as lightning, a sudden realization struck her: he had moved close to her home not to pester her but to be with her as often as possible. However for her the situation was different: she didn’t need his constant presence, she carried it within her and wrote about him. She transformed him into the paladins of her folktales and into the tender lovers of her novels. She wrote tirelessly, she slept only three or four hours a day, she ate little. She was nourished by a feeling of joy.
The church bell started ringing again. She imagined herself embracing him as they walk under that streetlamp next to the oak tree. With each new chime she became aware of more details: his hat, always worn at a slight angle, his pitching walk, his cane swinging upward. She felt such a strong desire to really be with him that she even felt his coffee-laced breath on her cheek. No, he hadn’t appeared yet.
Again the bells chimed, as if there were an emergency. Are they tolling non-stop? Is it possible that I could have spent the last hour and a half in the rain? I’d better go back home. He’s probably been delayed somewhere and can’t get away. Poor man, he must be fretting; he must be thinking about me. She increased her pace. At home she would make a full pot of tea, in case he dropped by and was cold and hungry. She passed Archers’ Island, Sofia Island—not a soul anywhere, everything shining clean as a whistle, the rain had cleansed it all. Home wasn’t far now.
Suddenly, in the light of a streetlamp, she recognized the couple she had dreamed of a moment ago. A tall, broad-shouldered man, with a hat tipped to one side, swung his cane into the air. He was walking arm in arm with a woman who was fragile-looking and so stooped she might be a hunchback. They stopped in the darkness between the streetlamps, the woman’s face was transparent, her fingers, which now stretched out to the man’s hair, were translucent, like those of a corpse. He embraced her . . . He embraced her with that familiar movement of his right hand, with that mixture of possessive instinct and desire to defend. No, there was no doubting it, that was him. Now he was kissing the woman. She recognized the woman as her friend Antonia Zaleski, now called Vítězka.
With an effort, she walked back home. For a good while she struggled with the lock because she found it difficult to turn the key. Until she realized she was at the wrong house.
Božena will turn up any second now. She’s gone to the drugstore to buy a little tea,” Němec says disgruntled, as he continues to read his newspaper.
Alone in her room, I dare to take a look at her desk. There is a half-written letter but I can’t find the opening page, so I don’t know to whom it is addressed.
“ . . . this is good weather in which to die of desperation. When I look at the thick gray fog that crushes us like a nightmare, the naked trees from which all the leaves have fallen as our hopes are falling from us, when I see the empty, opaque atmosphere, sluggish and sad and suffocating us, I feel melancholy and desolate; I get the shivers and would like to have a pair of wings so as to fly to countries in which a warmer, freer air blows.”
I think she is talking not only of these sad winter days, but of the grayness of our country after a failed revolution, the grayness that, like mud at the bottom of a lake, has seeped into our lives.
Once more, with a column of light coming through the door, I go into the kitchen. Božena is sitting there, waiting for the water to boil to make tea. She wears a black dress and a white apron, and is sitting with her head bowed and her elegant coiffure combed upward. The nape of her neck suggests frailty, but also strength, exhaustion, and sadness. The water has boiled; she heads off with the cup and the teapot. Now she’s seen me, she moves her lips in a way that is barely visible, and gets another cup. In her room she puts my cup on the bedside table and without another word goes to her desk. I have the feeling she is so sad that she cannot speak. And that she is escaping into her writing so as not to have to think. She stands in front of the des
k, the tray in her hands. I observe her from behind and see that she is not reading what she has just written, that she is staring into space. One day she had told me: “Vítězka, you and I have to be strong because we are fragile.” The gray light falls from the window onto her shoulder, her arm, and a curl of hair that has freed itself from her coiffure. She sits down and adds words to her letter. Then she gets her coat and before going out, whispers to me: “Today I can’t give you any of my time, Vítězka. Finish your tea and go. Don’t ever come back.”
Her voice, always so smooth, has dealt me a hard blow. I cannot move. The sound of the door closing behind her is like a sigh.
What has she added to the letter?
“If I could choose, I would like to be reborn two hundred years from now or perhaps even later, when the world will be, if such a thing is possible, just as I would like it to be so as to able to live in it with pleasure.”
So yes, it was she who saw us embracing.
How can she write in such an elegant way after having made a discovery of this kind? She wishes only to be reborn when the world will be a better place. A place in which there will not be people as mean as I am, I who have joined the police in their games designed to ruin other people’s lives. But what could you expect, Božena? I need the money, just as I need love, even if only for a moment, even if it is handed to me on a platter by the police.
“I am at your command, Herr von Päumann.”
“Fräulein Zaleski, how fares that campaign to isolate Božena Němcová from her friends and potential benefactors?”
“Mrs. Eliška Lambl, a friend of Božena’s, the sister of one of her doctors, told me yes, I have it here in writing: ‘There are many days when there is no food in her house. Nothing whatsoever. One day Božena complained to my brother that she had but one coin left and didn’t know what to buy with it; whether a little tea to keep her awake, a candle to write by all night, or a little ink, which was also nearly finished.’”
“Has she spoken to other people of interest?”
“Yes, to the poet Jan Neruda, who went to see her with his companion Hálek. Jan told me: ‘We visited her to ask for a contribution to the first issue of May magazine. We stared incredulously at the flaking walls and the shabby furniture; the tablecloth especially fascinated us, being half ripped and patched up, yet there on the table. I don’t mean to say that it was the first time we’d seen such poverty, but to find it in the home of a person who had become a celebrity thanks to a lifetime of work left us speechless and open mouthed.’”
“Does our writer continue to get help from her friends?”
“When she fell on hard times she was ashamed and didn’t want her friends to know anything about it. But her doctors let people know about the true nature of her situation, so that those who didn’t have any money borrowed some to buy her food. During the periods in which she was confined to her bed by the illness in her lungs, which sometimes lasted for months on end, her friends returned to her side, to try and keep her mind occupied. But when they realized she was under police surveillance, their attitude changed. I don’t know to what extent you have been informed about this.”
“Tell me everything you know.”
“Božena is obliged to ask for, and receives, hand outs. She can’t expect much from the great ladies of Prague because they’ve distanced themselves from her. They claim that Němcová has deserted her husband—something that she’s never done—and that instead of living like a humble serving woman, she frequents the company of peculiar young people. By which they mean, above all, that young friend of hers who’s a doctor, or rather, a student of medicine. Many others have the same opinion. And those who don’t believe it pretend that they do.”
“What about the behavior of her closest friends?”
“Johanna Rott told me that she is keeping her distance from Němcová and trying to persuade her sister Sophie to also avoid the writer’s company. Sophie confessed to me that Johanna had written to her in a letter: ‘I don’t like those people who have it said of them that they are kind hearted.’ Since then Sophie has been mulling over this sentence, but hasn’t managed to understand what it means. Němcová has noticed the coldness of the two sisters, but as she wants to keep her desperate plight under wraps, she behaves as if it was of no importance to her. One of her most faithful friends, Mr. Ivan Klácel, from Brno, said not long ago that he is ‘avoiding Němcová for political reasons.’ Božena has found out, of course. Her friends are afraid even to write to her. The poet Erben, who until recently was a firm supporter of her novels and had written highly of them in the newspapers, has now limited his relationship to the writer to chance meetings on the street. The only ones who are unconditionally loyal to her are Purkyně and Palacký.”
“So the Němec family doesn’t have enough food?”
“Sometimes they go for a whole day without eating. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Božena, sick in bed, sends her children with messages to friendly families: ‘Please, give me a little food.’”
“Has she sold all her jewels?”
“She has kept only the garnet necklace, as a memento of her grandmother.”
“She prefers to go hungry rather than pawn it?”
“Mrs. Němcová believes that her life is bound up with that necklace, and that if she gives up the necklace, a curse will fall upon her.”
“We will force her to sell it then. You are quite sure that Němcová’s friends have abandoned her?”
“Yes, and not only them. Her husband is also disassociating himself from her. I have here a document that he wrote and signed:
It is my wish that my wife, Božena Němcová, abandon my apartment and live as she pleases, always bearing in mind that she has no right to expect any kind of maintenance from me. The causes that have led me to take this step are as follows:
1. The aversion that my wife feels toward me.
2. The violent arguments with which the aforementioned woman confronts me.
3. A difference of opinions regarding the education of our children.
4. The negligent way in which my wife looks after our home.
“Thank you, Fräulein Zaleski. That is all for today. You will receive your payment in a few days’ time. From now on we will almost certainly be dispensing with your services as regards the Němcová case. Once you have completed Němcová’s biography, have it sent to us at once. Auf Wiedersehen, Fräulein.”
“From now on we will be dispensing with your services.” Very nice. He won’t see Božena’s latest letter, that hopeless dolt! “Fräulein Zaleski, please stop talking about yourself.” “Fräulein Zaleski, don’t waste my time!” “Fräulein Zaleski, such useless whining, so typical of women, does not interest me at all!” “Concentrate on what I ask of you, Fräulein Zaleski, we will only pay you if your work for us is of any use.” Scoundrel! I shall read Božena’s letter by myself. She at least has wonderful memories, enough of them to build a cathedral with. The only memory that has stayed with me is the brilliance of the ring on the finger of my fiancée. And my romantic dreams about good-looking young men, about doctors and sensual cures.
No, I’m not going to read Božena’s letter. It would hurt me too much. I have persecuted an unhappy and defenseless woman, as defenseless and unhappy as I am myself. With one huge difference: my legacy to posterity will be a few police reports, whereas Božena’s work will always be read. Maybe they’ll even be reading her stories a hundred years from now or more. No matter how much they spy on you, Božena, no matter how much hunger and misery they subject you to, and how much they distance you from your friends, people will always admire and respect you. You are important for the simple reason that they pay you such attention, that they create these piles of paper full of reports about your life, that you merit the cost of informers and spies like myself. What will happen when I am gone? Why, look, there will be a burial attended by my father and siblings and nobody else. Afterward they’ll have lunch in a restaurant and will rais
e a toast, perhaps, to the memory of poor, unhappy Vítězka, who reveled in her fifteen minutes of glory when she worked as a police informer. Maybe somebody will shed a tear. Then they’ll go back home, and the next day everything will be as before and Vítězka? Vítězka will gradually be forgotten.
And how about for you, Božena? Your readers will organize a funeral worthy of a queen. Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people will turn up to say their farewells. They will mourn you for months on end, publicly and in private. Later, they’ll write books about you, they will delve into your parents’ lives and will take such an interest in you that you could well be a planet spinning in the universe. Perhaps someday one of those shining stars will even bear your name. For men and women both, you will always be Mnemosyne, an untouchable goddess, mother of the muses, the most beautiful statue in the ancient world. That is the difference between we two wretched women: I am common, banal; and you, surprising, prodigious, unique.
Deep down, are you as unhappy as you seem? No. You have dreams that you believe in with an obstinacy made of steel. In the letter now in my hand, you write to your sister, I suppose about this most recent doctor and lover of yours: “Although he has hurt me, I believe in him. I believe in him, even though it might all be nothing but a sham. Don’t break up my dream, don’t spoil my poetry.”
Yes, Božena, you have your dream world, full of beauty, love, and poetry, which nobody can take from you. Your dream world, as attractive as the real one is ugly, gives you strength to keep going. You are not afraid of human evil or police harassment. Like the girl in your folktale who gets her strength from the fantastical world hidden in a willow tree, your folktales are full of supernatural powers that bring harmony and justice to the world. You, in turn, give sweetness and consolation to the world, but above all you give it to yourself! I, too, dream. And I dream of love, but do I know any men except those who are already your admirers, Božena? Do I have any other choice but to imagine myself with your devotees? Do I have any other possibility beyond that of projecting myself onto you, of projecting you onto me? Of an attempt to become you? And to write about. . . about your lovers, about my lovers?
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