Ignorance (12 page)

She is lying on the bed alongside Gustaf; overexcited at the prospect of her rendezvous, she fears for her sleep; she already swallowed one sleeping tablet, she drowsed off and, waking in the middle of the night, she took another two, then out of despair, out of nervousness, she turned on a little radio beside her pillow. To get back to sleep she wants to hear a human voice, some talk that will seize her thoughts, carry her off to another place, calm her down, and put her to sleep; she switches from station to station, but only music pours out from everywhere, sewage-

water music, fragments of rock, of jazz, of opera, and it's a world where she can't talk to anybody because everybody's singing and yelling, a world where nobody talks to her because everybody's prancing around and dancing.

On the one side the sewage-water music, on the other a snore, and Irena, besieged, yearns for open space around her, a space to breathe, but she stumbles over the pale inert body that fate has dropped into her path like a sack of sludge. She is gripped by a fresh surge of hatred for Gustaf, not because his body is neglecting hers (Ah, no! she could never make love with him again!) but because his snores are keeping her awake and she's in danger of ruining the encounter of her life, the encounter that is to take place soon, in about eight hours, for morning is coming on, but sleep is not, and she knows she's going to be tired, edgy, her face made ugly and old.

Finally the intensity of her hatred acts as a narcotic, and she falls asleep. When she wakes, Gustaf has already gone out, while the little radio by her pillow is still emitting the music become noise. She has a headache and feels worn out. She would willingly stay in bed, but Milada said she

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would be coming by at ten o'clock. But why is she coming today? Irena hasn't the slightest desire to be with anyone at all!

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Built on a slope, the house showed just one of its stories at street level. When the door opened Josef was assailed by the amorous onslaught of a huge German shepherd. Only after a while did he catch sight of N., laughing as he quieted the dog and led Josef along a hallway and down a long stairway to a two-room garden apartment where he lived with his Wife; she was there, friendly, and she offered her hand.

"Upstairs," N. said, pointing to the ceiling, "the apartments are much roomier. My daughter and son live there with their families. The villa belongs to my son. He's a lawyer. Too bad he's not home. Listen," he said, dropping his voice, "if you want to come back here to live, he'll help you, he'll take care of things for you."

These words reminded Josef of the day forty

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years earlier when, in that same voice lowered to indicate secrecy, N. had offered his friendship and his help.

"I told them about you," N. went on, and he shouted toward the stairwell several names that must have belonged to his progeny; when Josef saw all those grandchildren and great-grandchildren coming down the stairs, he had no idea whose they were. Anyhow, they were all beautiful, stylish (Josef couldn't tear his eyes off a blond, the girlfriend of one of the grandsons, a German girl who spoke not a word of Czech), and all of them, even the girls, looked taller than N.; among them he was like a rabbit caught in a tangle of weeds visibly springing up around and above him.

Like fashion models strutting a runway, they smiled wordlessly until N. asked them to leave him alone with his friend. His wife stayed indoors, and the two men went out into the garden.

The dog followed them, and N. remarked: "I've never seen him so excited by a visitor. It's as if he knows what you do for a living." Then he showed Josef some fruit trees and described his labors laying out the grassy plots set off by narrow pathways, so that for some time the conversation

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stayed distant from the subjects Josef had vowed to raise; finally he managed to interrupt his friend's botanical lecture and ask him about his life during the twenty years they had not seen each other.

"Let's not talk about it," said N., and in answer to Josef's inquiring look, he laid an index finger on his heart. Josef did not understand the meaning of the gesture: was it that the political events had affected him so profoundly, "to the heart?" or had he gone through a serious love affair? or had a heart attack?

"Someday I'll tell you about it," he added, turning aside any discussion.

The conversation was not easy; whenever Josef stopped walking to shape a question better, the dog took it as permission to jump up and set his paws on Josef's belly.

"I remember what you always used to say," N. remarked. "That a person becomes a doctor because he's interested in diseases; he becomes a veterinarian out of love for animals."

"Did I really say that?" Josef asked, amazed. He remembered that two days earlier he had told his sister-in-law that he'd chosen his profession as

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a rebellion against his family. So had he acted out of love, and not rebellion? In a single vague cloud he saw filing past him all the sick animals he had known; then he saw his veterinary clinic at the back of his brick house, where tomorrow (yes, in exactly twenty-four hours!) he would open the door to greet the day's first patient; a slow smile spread across his face.

He had to force himself back to the conversation barely begun: he asked whether N. had been attacked for his political past; N. said no; according to him, people knew he had always helped those the regime was giving trouble. "I don't doubt it," Josef said (he really didn't), but he pressed on: how did N. himself see his whole past life? As a mistake? As a defeat? N. shook his head, saying that it was neither the one nor the other. And finally Josef asked what N. thought of the very swift, harsh reestablishment of capitalism. Shrugging, N. replied that under the circumstances there was no other solution.

No, the conversation never managed to get going. Josef thought at first that N. found his questions indiscreet. Then he corrected himself: not so much indiscreet as outdated. If his sister-

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in-law's vindictive dream should come true and N. were indicted and tried in court, maybe he would reassess his Communist past to explain and defend it. But in the absence of any such trial, that past was remote from him these days. He didn't live there anymore.

Josef recalled a very old idea of his, which at the time he had considered to be blasphemous: that adherence to Communism has nothing to do with Marx and his theories; it was simply that the period gave people a way to fulfill the most diverse psychological needs: the need to look nonconformist; or the need to obey; or the need to punish the wicked; or the need to be useful; or the need to march forward into the future with youth; or the need to have a big family around you.

In good spirits, the dog barked and Josef said to himself: the reason people are quitting Communism today is not that their thinking has changed or undergone a shock, but that Communism no longer provides a way to look nonconformist or obey or punish the wicked or be useful or march forward with youth or have a big family around you. The Communist creed no longer answers any need. It has become so unusable that everyone drops it easily, never even noticing.

Still, the original goal of his visit was unfulfilled: to make it clear to N. that in some imaginary courtroom he, Josef, would defend him. To achieve this he would first show N. that he was not blindly enthusiastic about the world that had sprung up here since Communism, and he described the big advertisement on the square back in his hometown, in which an incomprehensible acronym-agency proposes its services to the Czechs by showing them a white hand and a black hand clasped together: "Tell me," he said. "Is this still our country?"

He expected to hear a sarcastic response about worldwide capitalism homogenizing the planet, but N. was silent. Josef went on: "The Soviet empire collapsed because it could no longer hold down the nations that wanted their independence. But those nations—they're less independent than ever now. They can't choose their own economy or their own foreign policy or even their own advertising slogans."

"National independence has been an illusion for a long time now," said N.

"But if a country is not independent and doesn't even want to be, will anyone still be willing to die for it?"

"Being willing to die isn't what I want for my children."

"I'll put it another way: does anyone still love this country?"

N. slowed his steps: "Josef," he said, touched. "How could you ever have emigrated? You're a patriot!" Then, very seriously: "Dying for your country—that's all finished. Maybe for you time stopped during your emigration. But they—they don't think like you anymore."

"Who?"

N. tipped his head toward the upper floors of the house, as if to indicate his brood. "They're somewhere else."

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During these remarks the two friends came to a halt; the dog took advantage of it: he reared up and set his paws on Josef, who petted him. N. contemplated this man-dog couple for a time, increasingly touched. As if he were only just now taking full account of the twenty years they hadn't seen each other: "Ah, I'm so happy you came!"

He tapped Josef on the shoulder and drew him over to sit beneath an apple tree. And at once Josef knew: the serious, important conversation he had come for would not take place. And to his surprise, that was a comfort, it was a liberation! After all, he hadn't come here to put his friend through an interrogation!

As if a lock had clicked open, their conversation took off, freely and agreeably, a chat between two old pals: a few scattered memories, news of mutual friends, funny comments, and paradoxes and jokes. It was as if a gentle, warm, powerful breeze had taken him up in its arms. Josef felt an irrepressible joy in talking. Ah, such an unexpected joy! For twenty years he had barely spoken Czech. Conversation with his wife was easy, Danish having turned into a private jargon for themselves. But with other people he was always conscious of choosing his words, constructing a sentence, watching his accent. It seemed to him that when Danes talked they were running nimbly, while he was trudging along behind, lugging a twenty-kilo load. Now, though, the words leaped from his mouth on their own, without his having to hunt for them, monitor them. Czech was no longer the unknown language with the

nasal timbre that had startled him at the hotel in his hometown. He recognized it now, and he savored it. Using it, he felt light, like after a diet. Talking was like flying, and for the first time in his visit he was happy in his homeland and felt that it was his.

Stimulated by the pleasure beaming from his friend, N. grew more and more relaxed; with a complicitous grin he mentioned his long-ago secret mistress and thanked Josef for having once served as an alibi for him with his wife. Josef did not recall the episode and was sure N. was confusing him with someone else. But the alibi story, which took N. a long time to tell, was so fine, so funny, that Josef ended up acquiescing in his supposed role as protagonist. He sat with his head tilted back, and through the leaves the sun lighted a beatific smile on his face.

It was in this state of well-being that N.'s wife surprised them: "You'll have lunch with us?"

He looked at his watch and stood up. "I've got an appointment in half an hour!"

"Then come back tonight! We'll have dinner together," N. urged warmly.

"Tonight I'll already be back home!"

"By 'back home' you mean—"

"In Denmark."

"It's so strange to hear you say that. So then this isn't home to you anymore?" asked N.'s wife.

"No. It's there."

There was a long silence and Josef expected questions: If Denmark really is your home, what's your life like there? And with whom? Tell about it! Tell us! Describe your house! Who's your wife? Are you happy? Tell us! Tell us!

But neither N. nor his wife asked any such question. For a moment, a low wooden fence and a fir tree flickered across Josef's mind.

"I must go," he said, and they all moved toward the stairs. As they climbed, they were quiet, and in that silence Josef was suddenly struck by his wife's absence; there was not a trace of her here. In the three days he'd spent in this country, no one had said a single word about her. He understood: if he stayed here, he would lose her. If he stayed here, she would vanish.

They stopped on the sidewalk outside, shook hands once again, and the dog leaned his paws on Josef's belly.

Then the three of them watched Josef move away until he vanished from their sight.

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When after so many years she saw Irena at the restaurant among other women, Milada was over -come by tenderness for her; one detail in particular enchanted her: Irena recited a verse by Jan Skacel. In the little land of Bohemia, it is an easy thing to meet and approach a poet. Milada had known Skacel, a thickset man with a hard face that looked chipped out of rock, and she had adored him with the naivete of a very young girl from another time. Now his collected poems have just been published in a single volume, and Milada has brought it as a gift to her friend.

Irena leafs through the book: "Do people still read poetry these days?"

"Hardly at all," says Milada, and then she recites a few lines by heart: " 'At noon, sometimes, you can see the night moving off toward the river....' Or listen to this: '. . . ponds, water laid flat on its back.' Or—there are some evenings, Skacel says, when the air is so soft and fragile that 'you can walk barefoot on broken glass.'"

Listening to her, Irena remembers sudden

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apparitions that used to spring without warning into her head during the early years of her emigration. They were fragments of that very landscape.

"Or this image: '.. . on horseback, death and a peacock ...'" Milada recited the words in a voice that trembled faintly: they always called up this vision: a horse moving across fields; on its back a skeleton with a scythe in hand, and behind, riding pillion, a peacock with tail unfurled, splendid and shimmering like vanity eternal.

Irena gazes gratefully at Milada, the one friend she has found in this country; she gazes at her round pretty face made rounder yet by her hairstyle; because Milada is silent now, lost in thought, her wrinkles have vanished in the immobility of her skin and she looks like a young woman; Irena hopes she will not speak, not recite poetry, will stay motionless and beautiful for a long while.