Love and Garbage (28 page)

I don’t answer quickly enough, I don’t say yes convincingly enough, my uncertainty can be read in my eyes, and she cries. She suspected that I’d be scared at the last moment, she knows me now, I’ve lost the notion of freedom, I no longer have any self-respect, I’ve become a slave to the mirage of my despicable marriage, I can no longer manage without my yoke and now I’m trying to impose it on her. What am I trying to do to her, how dare I treat her like this, humiliate her like this.

I try to placate her, but she’s crying more and more, she’s shaken by sobs, she can’t be comforted. This is the end, the absolute end, she’ll never go anywhere with me again, she never wants to see me again!

I am conscious of relief and, simultaneously, of regret.

Once more she looks up at me, her beautiful eyes, which always lured me into the depths, have turned bloodshot, as though the sun had just set in them. I kiss her swollen, now ugly, eyes, also her hands which have so often embraced me, which have so tenderly touched me: I don’t understand why she is crying, I do want her to come along with me, I’m begging her to.

She’ll think it over, I should phone her from there.

And here I am, alone, in the Lower Tatra. I walk through meadows fragrant with warmth. Above me, on the mountainsides, snow is still lying. At dinner I talk to an elderly doctor about yoga, he tells me about the remarkable properties of medicinal herbs. I walk along forest paths and enjoy the silence all round me, I recover in that solitude, even though I know it is short-lived, as is the relief I am feeling; the rack to which I have tied myself is waiting, it is within me.

I gaze at the distant peaks. Mist rises above the lowlands. I look back to where the waves roll, where the surf roars, washing away my likeness moulded in sand, she bathes in abandoned rock-pools, the soil is black, the path is barred by an ever thicker tangle of roots, carrion crows fly darkly over the tree-tops. I walk with her among the rocks until we find ourselves in the middle of a snow-covered expanse of flat ground, I embrace her: is it possible we love each other so much?

Nights descend, prison nights, nights as long as life, her face is above me, my wife is beside me, I am alone with my love, with my betrayal. She bends down to me at night, she calls me to herself, she calls me to herself forever: We’ll go away together, darling, we’ll be happy. And I actually set out towards her, I run through cold streets, streets deserted and devoid of people, empty in a way not even the deepest night could make them, I drag myuself through the streets of the dead ice-bound city and an uneasiness rises up in me, suddenly I hear a voice within me, from the very bottom of my being, asking: What have you done? Halfway I stop in my flight and return to where I’ve come from, to the side of my wife. I act this way night after night, until suddenly I realise that I don’t want to leave, that I no longer want to walk through this dead city, at least not for the moment. I say: For the moment, and eventually I am overcome by the relief of sleep.

She too is reconciled, for the moment, to having waited in vain, but after a while she starts asking again why I haven’t come, what has been happening to me? Didn’t I love her, weren’t we blissfully happy when we’re together, so why couldn’t I make up my mind? She seeks an explanation, she puts forward factual and plausible reasons for my behaviour and instantly rejects them, she’s angry with me, she cries, she’s in despair at my immobility, my obstinacy, my insensitivity and my philistinism. She assures me that there was no decision to make: I wouldn’t be leaving my wife now, I’d left her long ago, and I was only a burden to her. And the children were grown-up now, they’d remain my children wherever I was. I listen to her in silence, I do not argue with her. The voice which holds me back time and again isn’t, after all, a reason; it can’t even be broken down into reasons, it is above reasoning. Is it possible, I wonder, that she does not hear a similar voice within her, a voice of doubt if not of warning?

Not even now, here amidst the mountains with no one urging me to do anything, can I break that voice down into separate reasons: into love for my wife or my children, or regret, or a sense of duty. But I know that if I hadn’t obeyed it I’d feel even worse than I do anyway.

Perhaps there is within us still, above everything else, some ancient law, a law beyond logic, that forbids us to abandon those near and dear to us. We are dimly aware of it but we pretend not to know about it, that it has long ceased to be valid and that we may therefore disregard it. And we dismiss the voice within us as foolish and reactionary, preventing us from tasting something of the bliss of paradise while we are still in this life.

We break the ancient laws which echo within us and we believe that we may do so with impunity. Surely man, on his road to greater freedom, on his road to his dreamed-of heaven, should be permitted everything. We are all, each for himself and all together, pursuing the notion of earthly bliss and, in doing so, are piling guilt upon ourselves, even though we refuse to admit it. But what bliss can a man attain with a soul weighed down by guilt? His only way out is to kill the soul within him, and join the crowd of those who roam the world in search of something to fill the void which yawns within them after their soul is dead. Man is no longer conscious of the connection between the way he lives his own life and the fate of the world, which he laments, of which he is afraid, because he suspects that together with the world he is entering the age of the Apocalypse.

The mist from the valley below me is rising and has almost reached me. I know that I must change my way of life, which piles guilt upon me, but I’m not leading it on my own. I feel fettered from all sides, I’ve let myself be chained to the rockface without having brought fire to anyone.

What was there left in my favour? What could I claim in my defence? What order, what honesty, what loyalty?

Suddenly from the mists a familiar figure emerges. I stiffen. From the mists her heavenly eyes look on me: You could give me up?

There is no reason that could stand up in her eyes. I might at best make some excuses, beg her to understand, beg for forgiveness or for punishment, but there’s no point in any of this, none of it will bring her relief.

I phoned her as I’d promised. She said she’d join me for ten days, she was looking forward to it. She added: We’ll have a lovely farewell holiday. But I didn’t believe that she meant it.

We found our companions in place – that is, in the tavern. The first to catch sight of us was the captain. He touched two fingers to his cap.

I joined him and noticed that the beermat before him already bore four marks.

‘I’m celebrating!’ he explained.

He didn’t look to me like a man celebrating, more like a man drowning his sorrows. Nevertheless I asked: ‘Has one of your inventions been accepted?’

‘Haven’t I told you? They’ve found the
Titanic
!’ He gave a short laugh and spat on the floor.

‘The
Titanic
?’

‘With everything she had on board. Only the people have gone.’

‘That a fact? So what happened to them?’ The youngster was no longer in pain and was therefore able to show interest in the pain or death of others.

‘Probably jumped overboard,’ the captain explained casually. ‘No one stays on a ship that’s going down. Everybody thinks he’ll save himself somehow.’

The foreman, evidently still preoccupied with the morning visit, decided to find out how things really stood; he’d ring the office. For a while he searched in his pockets, then he borrowed two one-crown pieces from Mr Rada and with a demonstratively self-assured gait made for the telephone.

‘That really must have been terrible, finding yourself in the water like that,’ the youngster reflected, ‘and nothing solid anywhere.’

‘That’s life,’ said the captain. ‘One moment you’re sailing, everyone saying Sir to you, and in your head maybe a whole academy of science, and suddenly you’re in the water. You go down – finish!’

The waiter brought more beer, and before the captain he also placed a tot of rum.

The captain took a sip: ‘And all your ideas, windmills, encyclopedias, end of the ice age – everything goes down with you.’ He got up and unsteadily walked over to the battered billiard table. From the sleeve of his black leather jacket projected his even blacker metal hook. With this he adroitly picked up a cue and played a shot.

I watched the ball moving precisely in the desired direction.

‘Do you know that I’ve written to her?’ he said to me when he got back to the table.

‘To whom?’

‘To Mary. Asking if she wanted to come back.’

‘And did you get a reply?’

‘Came back yesterday. Addressee unknown. So she’s unknown now!’

‘Probably moved away.’

‘Person’s here one moment, gone the next. All going to the bottom!’ The captain turned away from his glass; he muttered something to himself and softly uttered some figures. Perhaps some new and revolutionary invention, or the number of days he’d spent on his own. Or the number of tricks he’d scored in the round of cards he’d just finished. There was sadness in his features, maybe in his poetic mind some clear vision, perhaps his last one, was just then fading and disintegrating. Again I experienced a sense of shame at sitting there studying him. High time for me to get up and get away from all that street-sweeping. I looked around at the others, as if expecting that they’d read my thoughts, but they were all engrossed in their own troubles.

From the billiard table they were calling the captain again. For a moment he pretended not to hear them, then he rose, firmly gripped his chair, then the back of my chair, then he held on to the table and, moving along the wall, made it to the billiards. He picked up a cue with his hook and concentrated for a moment before imparting the right speed to his ball. I watched the red ball move over the green baize, passing the other balls without coming anywhere near them.

‘You’d better not drink any more,’ I said to him when he got back.

He turned his clouded eyes on me. ‘And why not?’ His question reminded me of my daughter’s classmate who’d put an end to his own life at the northern tip of Žofín island years ago.

By then the foreman was returning from the telephone. His face purple, as if he were near a stroke, he sat down heavily, picked up his glass, raised it to his lips and put it down again. ‘Well folks, we’ve got a new dispatcher!’

‘Would it be you?’ Mrs Venus guessed.

‘Don’t try to be funny with me, Zoulová, I’m not in the mood!’ He fell silent to give us time to go on guessing, then he announced: ‘It’s that fucking bastard!’

‘Franta? But he’s an idiot,’ Mrs Venus expressed surprise.

‘That’s just why,’ Mr Rada explained while the captain began to laugh, laughing softly and contentedly, as if something about that piece of news gave him particular pleasure. Maybe at that moment he gained a clearer understanding of that radiation which turns us all into sheep.

The foreman finally swallowed his first gulp of beer, then drained his glass, and finally announced: ‘If they think I’ll let that shit make out my work schedule for me they’ve got another think coming! This is the end of my work for his organisation!’

‘Don’t take on so,’ Mrs Venus tried to comfort him. ‘He isn’t going to stink up his office for long! He’ll grass on them too, and he’ll be kicked upstairs again!’

They were calling the captain again from the billiards, but he had difficulty getting up, he turned towards the corner of the room, waved his hand and sat down again.

‘No,’ said the foreman, ‘I’ve had it!’

‘It’s getting cold now anyway,’ the youngster piped up. ‘I think that’s what was behind my funny turn.’ This was evidently his way of announcing that he too intended to leave. I ought to join them as well, but I was still too much of a stranger to think it appropriate to emphasise my departure. As I got up a moment later I merely said to the foreman; ‘All the best, I’m sure we’ll meet again.’ But he got to his feet, ceremoniously shook hands with me, addressed me by my name, and said: ‘Thank you for your work!’

It was a long time since any superior of mine had thanked me for my work.

Mr Rada joined me as usual. ‘You see, the things they’ll fight over!’

He seemed dejected today. To cheer him up I enquired about his brother, whether he was about to go off to any foreign parts again.

‘Don’t talk to me about him,’ he said. ‘it’s all I can think about anyway. Just imagine, he’s joined the Party! So they can make him a chief surgeon. Would you believe it? A man who speaks twelve languages, and after all he’s seen in the world, after what he himself told me not so long ago!’

I suggested that perhaps it was a good thing that just such men should be chief surgeons. It wasn’t his fault that the post required a Party card.

‘A man isn’t responsible for the situation into which he is born,’ he proclaimed, ‘but he is responsible for his decisions and actions. When my mother heard about it she nearly had a stroke. Have you any idea what she’s already been through in her life because of those people? And I . . . I used to be proud of him, I thought that the Lord had endowed him with special grace . . . even if he didn’t acknowledge it, even if he acted as if he didn’t acknowledge Him . . . I believed that one day he’d see the truth.’

In his depression he began to reminisce about the years he’d spent in the forced labour camp. Among the prisoners there’d been so many unforgettable characters, who, even in those conditions, were aiming at higher things. Some of them had there, in the camp, received the sacrament of baptism, he himself had secretly baptised a few of them. Thinking back to those days it was clear to him that, in spite of all he’d been through, God’s love had not abandoned mankind. He believed, for just that reason, that he’d spent the best or at least the most meaningful years of his life there.

We’d reached the little street where our unknown artist lived and exhibited. I looked up curiously to his window, but this time it contained no artefact; instead a live person, presumably the artist himself, was standing in the window-frame, clad only in a narrow strip of sack-cloth. On his head was a fool’s cap with little bells, on top of this cap he’d placed a laurel wreath, and in his right hand he held a large bell-shaped blossom, I’d say of deadly nightshade.