by Ivan Klíma
Helena did not look at me once the entire time, at least not when I was looking at her.
When I got home, I realized I wanted to see the redhead again. I rang up my former classmate and asked if she happened to have the telephone number of “that redheaded girl who had invited us for a soft drink.” She did, and all I needed now was an excuse to call her.
Fortunately, the lock to my briefcase was missing. It was unlikely that I’d lost it at the redhead’s apartment because I hadn’t opened it there, but perhaps it was a plausible pretext.
When she answered the phone, she assured me that she hadn’t found any lock.
When I finally managed to say that I’d like to see her anyway, I’m sure she assumed that I had simply invented the story about the lock, but she nevertheless admitted it might be possible.
I suggested that since she had hosted me, it was my turn. I pointed out that a trolley went from her place almost directly to my building. I’d wait for her at the stop just in case.
She hesitated before she finally agreed.
I waited impatiently. She arrived a half hour late, explaining that she could never keep track of time.
We met again several times; I even went to see her in Louny, where she spent her holidays with her aunt. We set out on a long trip to Mount Oblík in Slovakia. Right at the foot of the steep hill, a Gypsy woman (there were still no Romani living in Czechoslovakia at the time, only Gypsies) stopped us and said she would tell us our future. I saw that my companion was eager to hear about what lay ahead for us, so I consented. The Gypsy read our palms and foretold a beautiful and happy life together—a little boy and girl, a long journey (an illness, which would turn out okay; in fact, it would make us stronger)—and she finally told us we would be rich. In anticipation of enormous wealth and grateful for two children, I bestowed upon the clairvoyant a whole twenty-five crowns.
*
On one of our outings along the cliffs of nearby Beroun (on the way we held hands and talked), I wrote Helena a long-winded declaration, perhaps in the belief that my literary skill would win her over forever.
Monday morning, the last of September 1957
Just a single sentence,
A message:
to a hazelnut whose shell is judicious but whose heart yields life, and the shell, therefore, must burst, and I believe that only a great love is stronger than the will (Yours) and the shell;
and to the child in muddy slippers on the wet grass bending over an ear of corn, Your thoughts are like a mountain spring that cleanses me entirely; I will stay by Your side until night and rain and wind arrive; I will allow only the stars to come inside; to stay with you forever;
and to the girl with tender fingers that walk as she does along unfamiliar paths, at times slightly atremble
(my sweet little fingers) this is more than we can relinquish.
And to the star. The one and only arising above the earth and mirrored in the empyrean—I want to be the wind
the lamplighter and chase away the clouds that would dare sail in, the only thing reflected in the sky, your light is reflected everywhere around me;
and to the woman with hands more gentle than soft evening music—
the train was moving and you were already sleeping, sometimes quivering like the seashore as a wave breaks upon it. I want to be the sea within your strand, a sea of powerful waves and a silent surface. The sea is enormous and teeming with life; time and again it returns to its shore and never leaves; it is silent and strong and ever returns; I want to be the sea within your strand, to touch you in your sleep like a solitary wave rushing up to shore, to be the sea within your strand, always returning;
and to your eyes, afraid to see lest they lose the power of speech;
and your heart, which threatens to beat too hard,
only yesterday I understood You and I love You—let us walk together along high paths, ever higher where the earth fades away; but let us stay upon the earth, and it will tremble as the Gypsy foretold,
And to You—I call You Lenička, such an ordinary word, I call You my dear, I call You my dear, my dear, my dear, and it’s too little for me because words lack scent, breath, and hands for me
to touch,
and to love, do not destroy us, make us pure,
and to You— . . . I am afraid to say it lest the words grow commonplace,
and to You—gentle, pure, and beautiful;
to You—you have grown into my life, and to tear you out would bring death, but
I will never do that because we will stay together . . .
I’d gone out with a few girls in school; once I even thought about getting married when my beloved returned from a study trip to Romania. But then I learned she’d found a boyfriend there—at least for her time in Romania—and I no longer thought about a wedding.
I would always fall in love, but at the same time I would wonder whether my love was merely a delusion. This time, however, my new love instilled no fear.
Helena was different from me. She had no yearning to rescue anyone, but she was convinced that everyone had an obligation to help others, behave honorably, and never lie. She was a beautiful singer and loved music—naturally, different from the music I loved. I was enchanted by the Romantics: Beethoven and Dvořák. She preferred the spirituals: Bach and Janáček. She was shy and gentle, whereas I demonstrated my feelings in a flood of words. For her the words my dear meant just as much as my protracted declaration.
She was almost six years younger than I was, but she’d certainly read more books and seemed to understand them better.
She had absolutely no enthusiasm for my interest in politics. She recognized only moral authority, something that rarely appeared in contemporary politics.
She wanted me to meet her friends and family because they were a part of her life much more than all the ideas I heaped on her. For her, the family was the most important thing in life, and she frightened me several times when she said she wanted seven children. She adored her parents and was an unusually obedient daughter for her age. She refused to stay out late because her mother would worry, and she didn’t want to cause her any concern.
Our amatory relations had gone no farther than kissing on the bank of the Vltava River or on anchored boats by Kampa Island. And before we’d had a chance to actually embrace, I had to leave to attend two months of military training in Domažlice, which would be followed by my obligatory military service.
Helena said the waiting would be unbearable and promised to visit me.
It seemed to me that Domažlice would play some sort of role in our relationship, the import of which, however, was unclear. But one thing was certain: I had to reserve accommodations at least one week in advance.
*
At the time, military service was compulsory for all young men if they didn’t manage to obtain a so-called blue book. The service lasted two years for most, but we lucky ones who had attended military training in college had to serve only two months. Later, the same graduates had to sign up for six months; for my brother it was two years. Although I was completely unprepared, I began at the rank of sergeant trainee and already had a platoon under my command.
In the train on the way to the recruiting station, I met another former classmate and my friend Jirka, who had been called up at the same time. Right away Jirka started bragging about all the philosophy books he’d brought with him to fill the time we’d be sitting around the parade ground.
As future commanders, we were greeted without the usual hazing. We were issued military uniforms and a bunk in the headquarters. They advised us to prepare for our duties by reading through the rules and regulations and introduced us to a pack of obstinate corporals and lance corporals who were to command the newly established squads. The arrival of the draftees was expected a few days later.
The commander of the company Jirka and I were assigned to was small and shriveled. Before his time as an officer in the People’s Army, he had been a cobbler, or, more
precisely, a worker in a shoe factory in Zlín. He stuttered a little and expressed more complicated phrases only with difficulty. Fortunately, oratorical skills were not in the job description of commander.
The day before the recruits arrived, all of us future platoon commanders (one was a genuine two-star officer and professional soldier) were called together and informed that it was now our task to transform “these civilians into class-conscious and disciplined soldiers who would vigilantly stand on guard and/or fight for our country.”
Shortly after the arrival of the afternoon train, half-drunken young men in civilian clothing began straggling into the garrison. What followed reminded me of my war years: shouting, cursing, and unjustly terrified young men reeling through the hallways wearing boots that were too big and uniforms that didn’t fit, driven into the uninviting expanse of the barracks, where bunks with straw mattresses awaited them. The confused bustling about, which we at first attributed to natural fear of a new unfriendly environment, however, had a different cause. The soldiers didn’t understand what was required of them. They came from southern Slovakia and were fluent only in Hungarian or an odd mixture of languages spoken by the local Gypsies.
The very first days, we noticed that our squad leaders were getting busy. Their triumphant shouting resounded throughout the barracks. Hardly had the recruits managed to put away the clothing and accessories they’d just been issued when they were driven into the bathrooms to fetch buckets of water. Then, to the incessant bellowing of the seasoned veterans, they scrubbed the hallways, while others worked on the floors and windows in the barracks. One Gypsy was even forced to bring out a ladder and clean the lightbulbs. Jirka and I looked on in a state of bewilderment, but since we were not acquainted with how things were done, we didn’t dare interfere. We permitted the squad leaders to act how they saw fit. In their turn, they were satisfied with our passivity, or, rather, our uninterest regarding any kind of military activity, and willingly filled in for us. They taught the recruits how to make their bunks, how to assemble their kit bags, how to leap up immediately upon reveille and go to the courtyard for morning drills, and primarily to keep in mind that military service required continual application. It was with the greatest pleasure that they would sound a nighttime alert and, when they were satisfied with how the frazzled recruits were packing their kit bags, would cancel it.
We witnessed a lot during those first few days. As commanders we were allowed to leave the barracks after our duties were finished and, especially at first, we took advantage of this opportunity to wander about the consolatory environs of the town. But despite the tranquil countryside, and most likely under the influence of having become active members of the army, we agreed that civilization was careening toward a tragic end and would perish, not like the brontosauruses, as a result of some cosmic catastrophe, but by our own self-destruction. The claim that we could survive an atomic explosion by lying down with our feet in the direction of the explosion (something we had to teach the new recruits), protected by our chemical suits, seemed like gallows humor.
Nevertheless, we practiced this and other such tomfoolery, and the recruits really did lie down with their feet facing the supposed explosion, but almost half of them, perhaps out of linguistic ignorance, weariness, or spite, lay down with their heads in the direction of the explosion. These were immediately pronounced dead and in punishment were ordered by the corporals to run around the training grounds in their gas masks.
One afternoon I stayed at the barracks and wrote a long letter to my beloved Helena. I broke the rules regarding military secrecy by describing the nonsensicalness of the training I was undergoing, but most of all I wanted to know when she was coming to see me, and I assured her how sad I was and how much I was looking forward to her visit.
When I’d finished the letter, I left the activities room and saw a Gypsy whose squad leader had decided to pick on him. He was kneeling in the hallway and scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush. I ordered him to stop immediately and return to his quarters. Then I told his astonished tormentor I would brook no degradation of human dignity or even the assigning of senseless tasks. I could have disciplined him myself, but I decided to lodge a complaint with the company commander, who would punish him more severely.
So I complained to our cobbler. He was somewhat taken aback and informed me that this was how the recruits were usually treated. He admitted, however, that scrubbing the floor with a toothbrush was ineffective, was unhygienic, and did not contribute to improving the combat readiness of our army. He promised to attend the next education seminar and get it through their fucking heads.
He did actually come and speak to us. Because I still knew shorthand at the time, I transcribed his speech word for word owing to its illustrative nature.
We are living in the phase, comrade soldiers, when the general crisis of capitalism is deepening, when a third world war is the best fact, or rather the third phase, which is characterized by the emergence of socialism. This third phase to this day. We see on the one hand the decline of the revolutionary wave, we see the influence of the global gendarme, the United States, but a further aspect of this is our progressive worldwide body. And this is characterized by the Twentieth Congress of the Soviet Union. This is a characteristic of the era, that is, the influence of revisionism and the danger from the left and the right. But this final phase is different in that the world Socialist body has become the agent of history. Of course there are problems, for instance, in Africa, where we cannot say ahead of time how or which agent or chieftain will develop, but we have a moral duty with respect to it because people are still chewing away at each other over there, comrade solders. But we overdo it, even though that onus is upon us, and therefore such conversations must be undertaken, where the comrade president meets with African chieftains.
Then the commander posed a combat control question: Who was our president?
After a lengthy silence someone suggested Admiral Horthy; someone else came up with Jozef Tiso. I knew how these strange, rarely encountered words unsettled our commander. He looked at us trainees and all of a sudden asked me to tell the soldiers who their president and commander in chief was.
Since time immemorial, military service has combined drills, stupidity, and the unlimited suppression of any manifestation of intellectual ability, individuality, and freedom. The combination of this tradition with Russian brainlessness and Communist illiteracy, however, resulted in something that exceeded all imagination, not to mention common sense.
I conferred with the other trainees. We then summoned the squad leaders under our command and informed them that if we saw any kind of hazing, we would revoke their passes as punishment. The corporals took offense and stopped attending to military discipline, which immediately declined, as did the battle preparedness of our company. Our company, however, was to be sacrificed in the event of war anyway.
*
Father tried in vain to become legally rehabilitated. He secured the testimony of the foremost experts, who confirmed that if the motors had any flaws, the cause was not in the design but rather in the construction or in the negligent way they had been assembled. Witnesses who had testified against him were prepared to now testify that their confessions had been forced. The regional court in Uherské Hradiště, however, confirmed the original judgment with a remarkable explanation:
While the witnesses are now trying to characterize the activity of engineer Klíma in an entirely different way, the court considering the proposal to resume the legal action is not prepared to admit their new confessions. It is possible to explain the change to engineer Klíma’s advantage, in which the witnesses characterize him as properly looking after the enterprise of which he was the director, by the fact that witnesses, as experience has demonstrated, fashion their testimony in such a way as to be most favorable to the culprit after the passage of a longer period of time.
Father once again entered an appeal, and after four years the Supreme Court repealed the ve
rdict saying that Father’s guilt was not indubitable and returned the case to the regional court. The regional court, however, noted only that as a result of the president’s amnesty of January 12, 1957, the criminal proceedings have been halted. Thus his innocence was not confirmed; his guilt had merely been pardoned.
Father felt humiliated by the verdict. His honor had not been vindicated, even though it must have been obvious to any court. He decided to seek rehabilitation in a different way: He started clamoring to be readmitted to the Communist Party, which had expelled him immediately upon his arrest.
Since he considered me a better writer, he had me read over the petitions he had sent to various party offices. In my opinion, he was much too submissive in emphasizing his class consciousness and refuting the ridiculous accusations that he was in touch with Trotskyites or that he had studied at a German technical school instead of a Czech one. In his defense, he wrote that his scientific work had always held first place for him; nevertheless, he wrote, As a member of the party, I always fulfilled my party duties conscientiously and to the letter, and I believe I passed muster among my colleagues who always believed in me entirely.
I should have talked him out of these letters. Why should he beseech those who were in charge when he had been arrested? But it didn’t seem appropriate for me to tell him what to do. Besides, I was too occupied with my own affairs to concern myself with what was fettering his mind and guiding his actions.
When I was fired from Květy, I didn’t know how I was going to support myself. Was I a reporter, a journalist, a literary critic, or perhaps a budding writer?
