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1

“Pour me some more slivovitz,” said Klara, and I wasn’t against it. It was hardly unusual for us to open a bottle, and this time there was a genuine excuse for it: that day I had received a nice fee from an art history review for a long essay.

Publishing the essay hadn’t been so easy—what I’d written was polemical and controversial. That’s why my essay had previously been rejected by Visual Arts, where the editors were old and cautious, and had then finally been published in a less important periodical, where the editors were younger and less reflective.

The mailman brought the payment to me at the university along with another letter, an unimportant letter; in the morning in the first flush of beatitude I had hardly read it. But now, at home, when it was approaching midnight and the bottle was nearly empty, I took it off the table to amuse us.

“Esteemed comrade and—if you will permit the expression—my colleague!” I read aloud to Klara. “Please excuse me, a man whom you have never met, for writing to you. I am turning to you with a request that you read the enclosed article. True, I do not know you, but I respect you as a man whose judgments, reflections, and conclusions astonish me by their agreement with the results of my own research; I am completely amazed by it….” There followed greater praise of my merits and then a request: Would I kindly write a review of his article—that is, a specialist’s evaluation—for Visual Arts, which had been underestimating and rejecting his article for more than six months. People had told him that my opinion would be decisive, so now I had become the writer’s only hope, a single light in otherwise total darkness.

We made fun of Mr. Zaturecky, whose aristocratic name fascinated us; but it was just fun, fun that meant no harm, for the praise he had lavished on me, along with the excellent slivovitz, softened me. It softened me so much that in those unforgettable moments I loved the whole world. And because at that moment I didn’t have anything to reward the world with, I rewarded Klara. At least with promises.

Klara was a twenty-year-old girl from a good family. What am I saying, from a good family? From an excellent family! Her father had been a bank manager, and around 1950, as a representative of the upper bourgeoisie, was exiled to the village of Celakovice, some distance from Prague. As a result his daughter’s party record was bad, and she had to work as a seamstress in a large Prague dressmaking establishment. I was now sitting opposite this beautiful seamstress and trying to make her like me more by telling her lightheartedly about the advantages of a job I’d promised to get her through connections. I assured her that it was absurd for such a pretty girl to lose her beauty at a sewing machine, and I decided that she should become a model.

Klara didn’t object, and we spent the night in happy understanding.

2

We pass through the present with our eyes blindfolded. We are permitted merely to sense and guess at what we are actually experiencing. Only later when the cloth is untied can we glance at the past and find out what we have experienced and what meaning it has.

That evening I thought I was drinking to my successes and didn’t in the least suspect that it was the prelude to my undoing.

And because I didn’t suspect anything I woke up the next day in a good mood, and while Klara was still breathing contentedly by my side, I took the article, which was attached to the letter, and skimmed through it with amused indifference.

It was called “Mikolas Ales, Master of Czech Drawing,” and it really wasn’t worth even the half hour of inattention I devoted to it. It was a collection of platitudes jumbled together with no sense of continuity and without the least intention of advancing through them some original thought.

Quite clearly it was pure nonsense. The very same day Dr. Kalousek, the editor of Visual Arts (in other respects an unusually unpleasant man), confirmed my opinion over the telephone; he called me at the university: “Say, did you get that treatise from the Zaturecky guy? Then review it. Five lecturers have already cut him to pieces, but he keeps on bugging us; he’s got it into his head that you’re the only genuine authority. Say in two sentences that it’s crap; you know how to do that, you know how to be really venomous; and then we’ll all have some peace.”

But something inside me protested: why should I have to be Mr. Zaturecky’s executioner? Was I the one receiving an editor’s salary for this? Besides, I remembered very well that they had refused my essay at Visual Arts out of overcautiousness; what’s more, Mr. Zaturecky’s name was firmly connected in my mind with Klara, slivovitz, and a beautiful evening. And finally, I won’t deny it, it’s human—I could have counted on one finger the people who think me “a genuine authority”: why should I lose this only one?

I closed the conversation with some clever vaguery, which Kalousek considered a promise and I an excuse. I put down the receiver firmly convinced that I would never write the piece on Mr. Zaturecky’s article.

Instead I took some paper out of the drawer and wrote a letter to Mr. Zaturecky, in which I avoided any kind of judgment of his work, excusing myself by saying that my opinions on nineteenth-century art were commonly considered devious and eccentric, and therefore my intercession—especially with the editors of Visual Arts—would harm rather than benefit his cause. At the same time I overwhelmed Mr. Zaturecky with friendly loquacity, from which it was impossible not to detect sympathy on my part.

As soon as I had put the letter in the mailbox I forgot Mr. Zaturecky. But Mr. Zaturecky did not forget me.

3

One day when I was about to end my lecture—I am an art history lecturer at the university—there was a knock at the door; it was our secretary, Marie, a kind elderly lady who occasionally prepares coffee for me and says I’m out when there are undesirable female voices on the telephone. She put her head in the doorway and said that a gentleman was looking for me.

I’m not afraid of gentlemen, and so I took leave of the students and went good-humoredly out into the corridor. A smallish man in a shabby black suit and a white shirt bowed to me. He very respectfully informed me that he was Zaturecky.

I invited the visitor into an empty room, offered him a chair, and began pleasantly discussing everything possible with him, for instance what a bad summer it was and what exhibitions were on in Prague. Mr. Zaturecky politely agreed with all my chatter, but he soon tried to apply every remark of mine to his article, which lay invisibly between us like an irresistible magnet.

“Nothing would make me happier than to write a review of your work,” I said finally, “but as I explained to you in the letter, I am not considered an expert on the Czech nineteenth century, and in addition I’m on bad terms with the editors of Visual Arts, who take me for a hardened modernist, so a positive review from me could only harm you.”

“Oh, you’re too modest,” said Mr. Zaturecky. “How can you, who are such an expert, judge your own standing so blackly! In the editorial office they told me that everything depends on your review. If you support my article they’ll publish it. You’re my only recourse. It’s the work of three years of study and three years of toil. Everything is now in your hands.”

How carelessly and from what bad masonry does a man build his excuses! I didn’t know how to answer Mr. Zaturecky. I involuntarily looked at his face and noticed there not only small, ancient, and innocent spectacles staring at me, but also a powerful, deep vertical wrinkle on his forehead. In a brief moment of clairvoyance a shiver shot down my spine: This wrinkle, concentrated and stubborn, betrayed not only the intellectual torment its owner had gone through over Mikolas Ales’s drawings, but also unusually strong willpower. I lost my presence of mind and failed to find any clever excuse. I knew that I wouldn’t write the review, but I also knew that I didn’t have the strength to say so to this pathetic little man’s face.

And then I began to smile and make vague promises. Mr. Zaturecky thanked me and said that he would come again soon. We parted smiling.

In a couple of days he did come. I cleverly avoided him, but the next day I was told that he was searching for me again at the university. I realized that bad times were on the way. I went quickly to Marie so as to take appropriate steps.

“Marie dear, I beg you, if that man should come looking for me again, say that I’ve gone to do some research in Germany and I’ll be back in a month. And you should know about this: I have, as you know, all my lectures on Tuesday and Wednesday. I’ll shift them secretly to Thursday and Friday. Only the students will know about this. Don’t tell anyone, and leave the schedule uncorrected. I’ll have to go underground.”

4

In fact Mr. Zaturecky did soon come back to look me up and was miserable when the secretary informed him that I’d suddenly gone off to Germany. “But this is not possible. The lecturer has to write a review about me. How could he go away like this?” “I don’t know,” said Marie. “However, he’ll be back in a month.” “Another month …,” moaned Mr. Zaturecky: “And you don’t know his address in Germany?” “I don’t,” said Marie.

And then I had a month of peace.

But the month passed more quickly than I expected, and Mr. Zaturecky stood once again in the office. “No, he still hasn’t returned,” said Marie, and when she met me later about something she asked me imploringly: “Your little man was here again, what in heaven’s name should I tell him?” “Tell him, Marie, that I got jaundice and I’m in the hospital in Jena.” “In the hospital!” cried Mr. Zaturecky, when Marie told him the story a few days later. “It’s not possible! Don’t you know that the lecturer has to write a review about me!” “Mr. Zaturecky,” said the secretary reproachfully, “the lecturer is lying in a hospital somewhere abroad seriously ill, and you think only about your review.” Mr. Zaturecky backed down and went away, but two weeks later he was once again in the office: “I sent a registered letter to the lecturer at the hospital in Jena. The letter came back to me!” “Your little man is driving me crazy,” said Marie to me the next day. “You mustn’t get angry with me, but what could I say? I told him that you’ve come back. You have to deal with him yourself now.”

I didn’t get angry with Marie. She had done what she could. Besides, I was far from considering myself beaten. I knew that I was not to be caught. I lived undercover all the time. I lectured secretly on Thursday and Friday, and every Tuesday and Wednesday, crouching in the doorway of a house opposite the art history faculty, I would rejoice at the sight of Mr. Zaturecky, who kept watch outside the faculty building waiting for me to come out. I longed to put on a bowler hat and a false beard. I felt like Sherlock Holmes, like Mr. Hyde, like the Invisible Man wending his way through the city; I felt like a little boy.

One day, however, Mr. Zaturecky finally got tired of keeping watch and pounced on Marie. “Where exactly does Comrade Lecturer lecture?”

“There’s the schedule,” said Marie, pointing to the wall, where the times of all the lectures were laid out in exemplary fashion in a large grid.

“I see that,” said Mr. Zaturecky, refusing to be put off. “Only Comrade Lecturer never lectures here on either Tuesday or Wednesday. Does he call in sick?”

“No,” said Marie hesitantly.

And then the little man turned again on Marie. He reproached her for the confusion in the schedule. He inquired ironically how it was that she didn’t know where every teacher was at a given time. He told her that he was going to complain about her. He shouted. He said that he was also going to complain about Comrade Lecturer, who wasn’t lecturing, although he was supposed to be. He asked if the dean was in.

Unfortunately the dean was in.

Mr. Zaturecky knocked on his door and went in. Ten minutes later he returned to Marie’s office and demanded my address.

“Twenty Skalnikova Street, in Litomysl,” said Marie.

“Litomysl?”

“The lecturer has only a temporary address in Prague, and he doesn’t want it disclosed—”

“I’m asking you to give me the address of the lecturer’s Prague apartment,” cried the little man in a trembling voice.

Somehow Marie lost her presence of mind. She gave him the address of my attic, my poor little refuge, my sweet den, in which I would be caught.

5

Yes, my permanent address is in Litomysl; there I have my mother and memories of my father; I flee from Prague as often as I can and write at home in my mother’s small apartment. So it happened that I kept my mother’s apartment as my permanent residence and in Prague didn’t manage to get myself a proper bachelor apartment, as you’re supposed to, but lived in lodgings, in a small, completely private attic, whose existence I concealed as much as possible in order to prevent unnecessary meetings between undesirable guests and my transient female visitors.

For precisely these reasons I didn’t enjoy the best reputation in the house. Also, during my stays in Litomysl I had several times lent my cozy little room to friends, who amused themselves only too well there, not allowing anyone in the house to get a wink of sleep. All this scandalized some of the tenants, who conducted a quiet war against me. Sometimes they had the local committee express unfavorable opinions of me, and they even handed in a complaint to the housing department.

At that time it was inconvenient for Klara to get to work from such a distance as Celakovice, and so she began to stay overnight at my place. At first she stayed timidly and as an exception, then she left one dress, then several dresses, and within a short time my two suits were crammed into a corner of the wardrobe, and my little room was transformed into a woman’s boudoir.

I really liked Klara; she was beautiful; it pleased me that people turned their heads when we went out together; she was at least thirteen years younger than me, which increased the students’ respect for me; I had a thousand reasons for taking good care of her. But I didn’t want it to be known that she was living with me. I was afraid of rumors and gossip about us in the house; I was afraid that someone would start attacking my good old landlord, who was discreet and didn’t concern himself about me; I was afraid that one day he would come to me, unhappy and with a heavy heart, and ask me to send the young lady away for the sake of his good name.

Klara had strict orders not to open the door to anyone.

One day she was alone in the house. It was a sunny day and rather stuffy in the attic. She was lounging almost naked on my couch, occupying herself with an examination of the ceiling.

Suddenly there was a pounding on the door.

There was nothing alarming in this. I didn’t have a bell, so anyone who came had to knock. Klara wasn’t going to let herself be disturbed by the noise and didn’t stop examining the ceiling. But the pounding didn’t cease; on the contrary it went on with imperturbable persistence. Klara was getting nervous. She began to imagine a man standing behind the door, a man who slowly and significantly turns up the lapels of his jacket, and who will later pounce on her demanding why she hadn’t opened the door, what she was concealing, and whether she was registered at this address. A feeling of guilt seized her; she lowered her eyes from the ceiling and tried to think where she had left her dress. But the pounding continued so stubbornly that in the confusion she found nothing but my raincoat hanging in the hall. She put it on and opened the door.

Instead of an evil, querying face, she saw only a little man, who bowed. “Is the lecturer at home?”

“No, he isn’t.” “That’s a pity,” said the little man, and he apologized for having disturbed her. “The thing is that the lecturer has to write a review about me. He promised me, and it’s very urgent. If you would permit it, I could at least leave him a message.”

Klara gave him paper and pencil, and in the evening I read that the fate of the article about Mikolas Ales was in my hands alone, and that Mr. Zaturecky was waiting most respectfully for my review and would try to look me up again at the university.

6

The next day Marie told me how Mr. Zaturecky had threatened her, and how he had gone to complain about her; her voice trembled, and she was on the verge of tears; I flew into a rage. I realized that the secretary, who until now had been laughing at my game of hide-and-seek (though I would have bet anything that she did what she did out of kindness toward me, rather than simply from a sense of fun), was now feeling hurt and conceivably saw me as the cause of her troubles. When I also included the exposure of my attic, the ten-minute pounding on the door, and Klara’s fright—my anger grew to a frenzy.

As I was walking back and forth in Marie’s office, biting my lips, boiling with rage, and thinking about revenge, the door opened and Mr. Zaturecky appeared.

When he saw me a glimmer of happiness flashed over his face. He bowed and greeted me.

He had come a little prematurely, before I had managed to consider my revenge.

He asked if I had received his message yesterday.

I was silent.

He repeated his question.

“I received it,” I replied.

“And will you please write the review?”

I saw him in front of me: sickly, obstinate, beseeching; I saw the vertical wrinkle etched on his forehead, the line of a single passion; I examined this line and grasped that it was a straight line determined by two points: his article and my review; that beyond the vice of this maniacal straight line nothing existed in his life but saintly asceticism. And then a spiteful trick occurred to me.

“I hope you understand that after yesterday I can’t speak to you,” I said.

“I don’t understand you.”

“Don’t pretend; she told me everything. You don’t have to deny it.”

“I don’t understand you,” repeated the little man, this time more decidedly.

I assumed a genial, almost friendly tone. “Look here, Mr. Zaturecky, I don’t blame you. I am also a womanizer, and I understand you. In your position I would have tried to seduce a beautiful girl like that, if I’d found myself alone in an apartment with her and she’d been naked beneath a man’s raincoat.”

“This is an outrage!” The little man turned pale.

“No, it’s the truth, Mr. Zaturecky.”

“Did the lady tell you this?”

“She has no secrets from me.”

“Comrade Lecturer, this is an outrage! I’m a married man. I have a wife! I have children!” The little man took a step forward so that I had to step back.

“So much the worse for you, Mr. Zaturecky.”

“What do you mean, so much the worse?”

“I think being married is an aggravating circumstance for a womanizer.”

“Take that back!” said Mr. Zaturecky menacingly.

“Well, all right,” I conceded. “The matrimonial state need not always be an aggravating circumstance. Sometimes it can, on the contrary, excuse a womanizer. But it makes no difference. I’ve already told you that I’m not angry with you, and I understand you quite well. There’s only one thing I don’t understand. How can you still want a review from a man whose woman you’ve been trying to make?”

“Comrade Lecturer! Dr. Kalousek, the editor of the Academy of Sciences journal Visual Arts is asking you for this review. And you must write it!”

“The review or the woman. You can’t ask for both.”

“What kind of behavior is this, comrade?!” screamed Mr. Zaturecky in desperate anger.

The odd thing is that I suddenly felt that Mr. Zaturecky had really wanted to seduce Klara. Seething with rage, I shouted: “You have the audacity to tell me off? You, who should humbly apologize to me in front of my secretary.”

I turned my back on Mr. Zaturecky, and, confused, he staggered out.

“Well, then,” I sighed with relief, like a general after the victorious conclusion of a hard campaign, and I said to Marie: “Perhaps he won’t want a review by me anymore.”

Marie smiled and after a moment timidly asked: “Just why is it that you don’t want to write this review?”

“Because, Marie, my dear, what he’s written is the most awful crap.”

“Then why don’t you write in your review that it’s crap?”

“Why should I write that? Why do I have to antagonize people?”

Marie was looking at me with an indulgent smile; then the door opened, and there stood Mr. Zaturecky with his arm raised. “It’s not me! You’re the one who will have to apologize,” he shouted in a trembling voice and disappeared again.

7

I don’t remember exactly when, perhaps that same day or perhaps a few days later, we found an envelope without an address in my mailbox. Inside was a letter in a clumsy, almost primitive handwriting: “Dear Madame: Present yourself at my house on Sunday regarding the insult to my husband. I shall be at home all day. If you don’t present yourself, I shall be forced to take measures. Anna Zaturecky, 14 Dalimilova Street, Prague 3.”

Klara was scared and started to say something about my guilt. I waved my hand, declaring that the purpose of life is to give amusement, and if life is too lazy for this, there is nothing left but to help it along a little. Man must constantly saddle events, those swift mares without which he would be dragging his feet in the dust like a weary footslogger. When Klara said that she didn’t want to saddle any events, I assured her that she would never meet Mr. or Mrs. Zaturecky, and that I’d take care of the event into whose saddle I had jumped, with one hand tied behind my back.

In the morning, when we were leaving the house, the porter stopped us. The porter wasn’t an enemy. Prudently I had once bribed him with a fifty-crown bill, and I had lived until this time in the agreeable conviction that he’d learned not to know anything about me, and didn’t add fuel to the fire that my enemies in the house kept blazing.

“Some couple was here looking for you yesterday,” he said.

“What sort of couple?”

“A little guy with a woman.”

“What did the woman look like?”

“Two heads taller than him. Terribly energetic. A stern woman. She was asking about all sorts of things.” He turned to Klara. “Mainly about you. Who you are and what your name is.”

“Good heavens, what did you say to her?” exclaimed Klara.

“What could I say? How do I know who comes to see the lecturer? I told her that a different woman comes every evening.”

“Great!” I laughed and drew a ten-crown note from my pocket. “Just go on talking like that.”

“Don’t be afraid,” I then said to Klara. “You won’t go anywhere on Sunday, and nobody will find you.”

And Sunday came, and after Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday; nothing happened. “You see,” I said to Klara.

But then came Thursday. I was telling my students at my customary secret lecture about how feverishly and in what an atmosphere of unselfish camaraderie the young fauvists had liberated color from its former impressionistic character, when Marie opened the door and whispered to me, “The wife of that Zaturecky is here.” “But I’m not here,” I said. “Just show her the schedule!” But Marie shook her head. “I showed her, but she peeped into your office and saw your raincoat on the stand. So now she’s sitting in the corridor waiting.”

A blind alley is the place for my best inspirations. I said to my favorite student: “Be so kind as to do me a small favor. Run to my office, put on my raincoat, and go out of the building in it. Some woman will try to prove that you are me, and your task will be not to admit it at any price.”

The student went off and returned in about a quarter of an hour. He told me that the mission had been accomplished, the coast was clear, and the woman was out of the building.

This time then I had won.

But then came Friday, and in the afternoon Klara returned from work trembling almost like a leaf.

The polite gentleman who received customers in the tidy office of the dressmaking establishment had suddenly opened the door leading to the workshop, where Klara and fifteen other seamstresses were sitting over their sewing machines, and cried: “Does any one of you live at 5 Zamecka Street?”

Klara knew that it concerned her, because 5 Zamecka Street was my address. However, well-advised caution kept her quiet, for she knew that her living with me was a secret and that nobody knew anything about it.

“You see, that’s what I’ve been telling her,” said the polished gentleman when none of the seamstresses spoke up, and he went out again. Klara learned later that a strict female voice on the telephone had made him search through the directory of employees, and had talked for a quarter of an hour trying to convince him that one of the women must live at 5 Zamecka Street.

The shadow of Mrs. Zaturecky was cast over our idyllic room.

“But how could she have found out where you work? After all, here in the house nobody knows about you!” I yelled.

Yes, I was really convinced that nobody knew about us. I lived like an eccentric who thinks that he lives unobserved behind a high wall, while all the time one detail escapes him: The wall is made of transparent glass.

I had bribed the porter not to reveal that Klara lived with me; I had forced Klara into the most troublesome inconspicuousness and concealment and, meanwhile, the whole house knew about her. It was enough that once she had entered into an imprudent conversation with a woman on the second floor—and they got to know where Klara worked.

Without suspecting it we had been living exposed for quite some time. What remained concealed from our persecutors was merely Klara’s name. This was the final and only secret behind which, for the time being, we eluded Mrs. Zaturecky, who launched her attack so consistently and methodically that I was horror-struck.

I understood that it was going to be tough. The horse of my story was damnably saddled.

8

This was on Friday. And when Klara came back from work on Saturday, she was trembling again. Here is what had happened:

Mrs. Zaturecky had set out with her husband for the dressmaking establishment. She had called beforehand and asked the manager to allow her and her husband to visit the workshop, to look at the faces of the seamstresses. It’s true that this request astonished the Comrade Manager, but Mrs. Zaturecky put on such an air that it was impossible to refuse. She said something vague about an insult, about a ruined existence, and about court. Mr. Zaturecky stood beside her, frowned, and was silent.

They were shown into the workshop. The seamstresses raised their heads indifferently, and Klara recognized the little man; she turned pale and with conspicuous inconspicuousness quickly went on with her sewing.

“Here you are,” exclaimed the manager with ironic politeness to the stiff-looking pair. Mrs. Zaturecky realized that she must take the initiative and she urged her husband: “Well, look!” Mr. Zaturecky assumed a scowl and looked around. “Is it one of them?” whispered Mrs. Zaturecky.

Even with his glasses Mr. Zaturecky couldn’t see clearly enough to examine the large room, which in any case wasn’t easy to survey, filled as it was with piled-up junk, dresses hanging from long horizontal bars, and fidgety seamstresses, who didn’t sit neatly with their faces toward the door, but in various positions; they were turning around, getting up and sitting down, and involuntarily averting their faces. Therefore, Mr. Zaturecky had to step forward and try not to skip anyone.

When the women understood that they were being examined by someone, and in addition by someone so unsightly and unattractive, they felt vaguely insulted, and sneers and grumbling began to be heard. One of them, a robust young girl, impertinently burst out: “He’s searching all over Prague for the shrew who made him pregnant!”

The noisy, ribald mockery of the women overwhelmed the couple, who stood there timidly with a strange, obstinate dignity.

“Mama,” the impertinent girl yelled again at Mrs. Zaturecky, “you don’t know how to take care of your little boy! I’d never let such a pretty kid out of the house!”

“Look some more,” she whispered to her husband, and sullenly and timidly he went forward step by step as if he were running a gauntlet, but firmly all the same—and he didn’t miss a face.

All the time the manager was smiling noncommittally; he knew his women and he knew that you couldn’t do anything with them; and so he pretended not to hear their clamor, and he asked Mr. Zaturecky: “Now please tell me what did this woman look like?”

Mr. Zaturecky turned to the manager and spoke slowly and seriously: “She was beautiful…. She was very beautiful.”

Meanwhile Klara crouched in a corner, setting herself off from all the playful women by her agitation, her bent head, and her dogged activity. Oh, how badly she feigned her inconspicuousness and insignificance! And Mr. Zaturecky was now close to her; in a moment he would be looking right at her!

“That isn’t much, remembering only that she was beautiful,” said the polite manager to Mr. Zaturecky. “There are many beautiful women. Was she short or tall?”

“Tall,” said Mr. Zaturecky.

“Was she brunette or blonde?” Mr. Zaturecky thought a moment and said: “She was blonde.”

This part of the story could serve as a parable on the power of beauty. When Mr. Zaturecky had seen Klara for the first time at my place, he was so dazzled that he actually hadn’t seen her. Beauty created an opaque screen before her. A screen of light, behind which she was hidden as if behind a veil.

For Klara is neither tall nor blonde. Only the inner greatness of beauty lent her in Mr. Zaturecky’s eyes a semblance of great physical size. And the glow that emanates from beauty lent her hair the appearance of gold.

And so when the little man finally approached the corner where Klara, in a brown work smock, was huddled over a shirt, he didn’t recognize her, because he had never seen her.

9

When Klara had finished an incoherent and barely intelligible account of this event I said, “You see, we’re lucky.”

But amid sobs Klara said to me: “What kind of luck? If they didn’t find me today, they’ll find me tomorrow.”

“I’d like to know how.”

“They’ll come here for me, to your place.”

“I won’t let anyone in.”

“And what if they send the police?”

“Come on, I’ll make a joke of it. After all, it was just a joke and fun.”

“These days there’s no time for jokes; these days everything is serious. They’ll say I wanted to blacken his reputation. When they take a look at him, how could they ever believe that he’s capable of trying to seduce a woman?”

“You’re right, Klara,” I said. “They’ll probably lock you up.”

“Stop teasing,” said Klara. “You know it looks bad for me. I’ll have to go before the disciplinary committee and I’ll have it on my record and I’ll never get out of the workshop; anyway, I’d like to know what’s happening about the modeling job you promised me; I can’t sleep at your place anymore; I’ll always be afraid they’re coming for me; today I’m going back to Celakovice.”

This was the first conversation of the day.

And that afternoon after a departmental meeting I had a second.

The chairman of the department, a gray-haired art historian and a wise man, invited me into his office.

“I hope you know that you haven’t helped yourself with that study essay you’ve just published,” he said to me.

“Yes, I know,” I replied.

“Many of our professors think it applies to them, and the dean thinks it was an attack on his views.”

“What can be done about it?” I said.

“Nothing,” replied the professor, “but your three-year period as a lecturer has expired, and candidates will compete to fill the position. It’s customary for the committee to give the position to someone who has already taught in the faculty, but are you so sure that this custom will be upheld in your case? But that isn’t what I wanted to talk about. So far it has been in your favor that you lecture regularly, that you’re popular with the students, and that you’ve taught them something. But now you can no longer rely on this. The dean has informed me that for the last three months you haven’t lectured at all. And without any excuse. Well, that in itself would be enough for immediate dismissal.”

I explained to the professor that I hadn’t missed a single lecture, that it had all been a joke, and I told him the whole story about Mr. Zaturecky and Klara.

“Fine, I believe you,” said the professor, “but what does it matter if I believe you? Everyone in the entire faculty says that you don’t lecture and don’t do anything. It’s already been discussed at the union meeting, and yesterday they took the matter to the local committee.”

“But why didn’t they speak to me about it first?”

“What should they speak to you about? Everything is clear to them. Now they’re looking back over your whole past behavior, trying to find connections between your past and your present attitude.”

“What can they find bad in my past? You know yourself how much I like my work. I’ve never shirked. My conscience is clear.”

“Every human life has many aspects,” said the professor. “The past of each one of us can be just as easily arranged into the biography of a beloved statesman as into that of a criminal. Only look thoroughly at yourself. Nobody is denying that you like your work. But what if it served you above all as an opportunity for escape? You weren’t often seen at meetings, and when you did come, for the most part, you were silent. Nobody really knew what you thought. I myself remember that several times when a serious matter was being discussed you suddenly made a joke, which caused embarrassment. This embarrassment was of course immediately forgotten, but now, when it is retrieved from the past, it acquires a particular significance. Or remember how various women came looking for you at the university and how you refused to see them. Or else your most recent essay, which anyone who wishes can allege was written from suspicious premises. All these, of course, are isolated facts; but just look at them in the light of your present offense, and they suddenly unite into a totality of significant testimony about your character and attitude.”

“But what sort of offense! I’ll explain publicly what happened. If people are human they’ll have to laugh.”

“As you like. But you’ll learn either that people aren’t human or that you don’t know what humans are like. They won’t laugh. If you put before them everything as it happened, it will then appear that not only did you fail to fulfill your obligations as they were indicated on the schedule—that you did not do what you should have done—but on top of this, you lectured secretly—that is, you did what you shouldn’t have done. It will appear that you insulted a man who was asking for your help. It will appear that your private life is not in order, that you have some unregistered girl living with you, which will make a very unfavorable impression on the female chairman of the union. The issue will become confused, and God knows what further rumors will arise. Whatever they are they will certainly be useful to those who have been provoked by your views but were ashamed to be against you because of them.”

I knew that the professor wasn’t trying to alarm or deceive me. In this matter, however, I considered him a crank and didn’t want to give myself up to his skepticism. The scandal with Mr. Zaturecky made me go cold all over, but it hadn’t tired me out yet. For I had saddled this horse myself, so I couldn’t let it tear the reins from my hands and carry me off wherever it wished. I was prepared to engage in a contest with it.

And the horse did not avoid the contest. When I reached home, there in the mailbox was a summons to a meeting of the local committee.

10

The local committee, which was in session in what had been a store, was seated around a long table. The members assumed a gloomy expression when I came in. A grizzled man with glasses and a receding chin pointed to a chair. I said thank you, sat down, and this man took the floor. He informed me that the local committee had been watching me for some time, that it knew very well that I led an irregular private life; that this did not produce a good impression in my neighborhood; that the tenants in my apartment house had already complained about me once, when they couldn’t sleep because of the uproar in my apartment; that all this was enough for the local committee to have formed a proper conception of me. And now, on top of all this, Comrade Mrs. Zaturecky, the wife of a scholar, had turned to them for help. Six months ago I should have written a review of her husband’s scholarly work, and I hadn’t done so, even though I well knew that the fate of the said work depended on my review.

“What do you mean by scientific work?” I interrupted the man with the little chin. “It’s a patchwork of plagiarized thoughts.”

“That is interesting, comrade.” A fashionably dressed blonde of about thirty now joined the discussion; on her face a beaming smile was permanently glued. “Permit me a question: What is your field?”

“I am an art historian.”

“And Comrade Zaturecky?”

“I don’t know. Perhaps he’s trying something similar.”

“You see,” the blonde turned enthusiastically to the other members, “Comrade Lecturer sees a worker in the same field as a competitor and not as a comrade. This is the way almost all our intellectuals think these days.”

“I shall continue,” said the man with the receding chin. “Comrade Mrs. Zaturecky told us that her husband visited your apartment and met a woman there. It is said that this woman accused Mr. Zaturecky of wanting to molest her sexually. Comrade Mrs. Zaturecky has in her hand documents that prove her husband is not capable of such a thing. She wants to know the name of this woman who accused her husband, and to transfer the matter to the disciplinary section of the people’s committee, because she claims this false accusation has damaged her husband’s good name.”

I tried again to cut this ridiculous affair short. “Look here, comrades,” I said, “it isn’t worth all the trouble. The work in question is so weak that no one else could recommend it either. And if some misunderstanding occurred between this woman and Mr. Zaturecky, it shouldn’t really be necessary to call a meeting.”

“Fortunately, it is not up to you to decide about our meetings, comrade,” replied the man with the receding chin. “And when you now assert that Comrade Zaturecky’s work is bad, then we must look upon this as revenge. Comrade Mrs. Zaturecky gave us a letter to read, which you wrote after reading her husband’s work.”

“Yes. Only in that letter I didn’t say a word about what the work is like.”

“That is true. But you did write that you would be glad to help him; in this letter it is clearly implied that you respect Comrade Zaturecky’s work. And now you declare that it’s a patchwork. Why didn’t you say it to his face?”

“Comrade Lecturer has two faces,” said the blonde.

At this moment an elderly woman with a permanent joined the discussion; she went at once to the heart of the matter. “We would need to know, comrade, who this woman is whom Mr. Zaturecky met at your home.”

I understood unmistakably that it wasn’t within my power to remove the senseless gravity from the whole affair, and that I could dispose of it in only one way: to blur the traces, to lure them away from Klara, to lead them away from her as the partridge leads the hound away from its nest, offering its own body for the sake of its young.

“Unfortunately I don’t remember her name,” I said.

“How is it that you don’t remember the name of the woman you live with?” questioned the woman with the permanent.

“Comrade Lecturer, you have an exemplary relationship with women,” said the blonde.

“Perhaps I could remember, but I’d have to think about it. Do you know when it was that Mr. Zaturecky visited me?”

“That was … wait a moment,” the man with the receding chin looked at his papers, “the fourteenth, on Wednesday afternoon.”

“On Wednesday … the fourteenth … wait …” I held my head in my hand and did some thinking. “Oh, I remember. That was Helena.” I saw that they were all hanging expectantly on my words.

“Helena who?”

“Who? I’m sorry, I don’t know. I didn’t want to ask her that. As a matter of fact, speaking frankly, I’m not even sure that her name is Helena. I only called her that because her husband is red-haired like Menelaus. But anyway, she very much liked being called that. On Tuesday evening I met her in a wineshop and managed to talk to her for a while, when her Menelaus went to the bar to drink a cognac. The next day she came to my place and was there the whole afternoon. Only I had to leave her in the evening for a couple of hours, I had a meeting at the university. When I returned she was disgusted because some little man had molested her and she thought that I had put him up to it. She took offense and didn’t want to know me anymore. And so, you see, I didn’t even manage to learn her correct name.”

“Comrade Lecturer, whether you are telling the truth or not,” the blonde went on, “it seems to me to be absolutely incomprehensible that a man like you can educate our youth. Does our life really inspire in you nothing but the desire to carouse and abuse women? Be assured, we shall transmit our opinion about this to the proper places.”

“The porter didn’t speak about any Helena,” broke in the elderly woman with the permanent, “but he did inform us that some unregistered girl from the dressmaking establishment has been living with you for a month. Don’t forget, comrade, that you are in lodgings. How can you imagine that someone can live with you like this? Do you think that your house is a brothel?”

There flashed before my eyes the ten crowns I’d given the porter a couple of days ago, and I understood that the encirclement was complete. And the woman from the local committee continued: “If you don’t want to tell us her name, the police will find it out.”

11

The ground was slipping away beneath my feet. At the university I began to sense the malicious atmosphere the professor had told me about. For the time being I wasn’t summoned for questioning again, but here and there I caught an allusion, and now and then Marie let something out, for the teachers drank coffee in her office and didn’t watch their tongues. In a couple of days the selection committee, which was collecting evidence on all sides, was to meet. I imagined that its members had read the report of the local committee, a report about which I knew only that it was secret and that I couldn’t refer to it.

There are moments in life when a man retreats defensively, when he must give ground, when he must surrender less important positions in order to protect the more important ones. It seemed to me that this single, most important position was my love. Yes, in those troubled days I suddenly began to realize that I loved my fragile and unfortunate seamstress, that I really loved her.

That day I met Klara in a church. No, not at home. Do you think that home was still home? Is home a room with glass walls? A room observed through binoculars? A room where you must keep your beloved more carefully hidden than contraband?

Home was not home. There we felt like housebreakers who might be caught at any minute; footsteps in the corridor made us nervous; we kept expecting someone to start pounding on the door. Klara was commuting from Celakovice and we didn’t feel like meeting in our alienated home for even a short while. So I had asked an artist friend to lend me his studio at night. That day I had the key for the first time.

And so we found ourselves beneath a high roof, in an enormous room with one small couch and a huge, slanting window, from which we could see all the lights of Prague; amid the many paintings propped against the walls, the untidiness, and the carefree artist’s squalor, a blessed feeling of freedom returned to me. I sprawled on the couch, pushed in the corkscrew, and opened a bottle of wine. I chattered gaily and freely, and was looking forward to a beautiful evening and night.

However, the pressure, which I no longer felt, had fallen with its full weight on Klara.

I have already mentioned that Klara without any scruples and with the greatest naturalness had lived at one time in my attic. But now, when we found ourselves for a short time in someone else’s studio, she felt put out. More than put out: “It’s humiliating,” she said.

“What’s humiliating?” I asked her.

“That we have to borrow an apartment.”

“Why is it humiliating that we have to borrow an apartment?”

“Because there’s something humiliating about it,” she replied.

“But we couldn’t do anything else.”

“I guess so,” she replied, “but in a borrowed apartment I feel like a whore.”

“Good God, why should you feel like a whore in a borrowed apartment? Whores mostly operate in their own apartments, not in borrowed ones.”

It was futile to attack with reason the stout wall of irrational feelings that, as is known, is the stuff of which the female soul is made. From the beginning our conversation was ill-omened.

I told Klara what the professor had said, I told her what had happened at the local committee, and I was trying to convince her that in the end we would win if we loved each other and were together.

Klara was silent for a while, and then she said that I myself was responsible for everything.

“Will you at least help me get away from those seamstresses?”

I told her that this would have to be, at least temporarily, a time of forbearance.

“You see,” said Klara, “you promised, and in the end you do nothing. I won’t be able to get out, even if somebody else wants to help me, because my reputation will be ruined because of you.”

I gave Klara my word that the incident with Mr. Zaturecky couldn’t harm her.

“I also don’t understand,” said Klara, “why you won’t write the review. If you’d write it, then there’d be peace at once.”

“It’s too late, Klara,” I said. “If I write this review they’ll say that I’m condemning the work out of revenge and they’ll be still more furious.”

“And why do you have to condemn it? Write a favorable review!”

“I can’t, Klara. This article is thoroughly absurd.”

“So what? Why are you being truthful all of a sudden? Wasn’t it a lie when you told the little man that they don’t think much of you at Visual Arts? And wasn’t it a lie when you told the little man that he had tried to seduce me? And wasn’t it a lie when you invented Helena? When you’ve told so many lies, what does it matter if you tell one more and praise him in the review? That’s the only way you can smooth things out.”

“You see, Klara,” I said, “you think that a lie is a lie, and it would seem that you’re right. But you aren’t. I can invent anything, make a fool of someone, carry out hoaxes and practical jokes—and I don’t feel like a liar and I don’t have a bad conscience. These lies, if you want to call them that, represent me as I really am. With such lies I’m not simulating anything, with such lies I’m in fact speaking the truth. But there are things I can’t lie about. There are things I’ve penetrated, whose meaning I’ve grasped, that I love and take seriously. I can’t joke about these things. If I did I’d humiliate myself. It’s impossible, don’t ask me to do it, I can’t.”

We didn’t understand each other.

But I really loved Klara, and I was determined to do all I could so that she would have nothing to reproach me for. The following day I wrote a letter to Mrs. Zaturecky, saying that I would expect her in my office the day after tomorrow at two o’clock.

12

True to her terrifying thoroughness, Mrs. Zaturecky knocked precisely at the appointed time. I opened the door and asked her in.

Then I finally saw her. She was a tall woman, very tall with a thin peasant face and pale blue eyes. “Take off your things,” I said, and with awkward movements she took off a long, dark coat, narrow at the waist and oddly styled, a coat that God knows why evoked the image of an old military greatcoat.

I didn’t want to attack at once; I wanted my adversary to show me her cards first. After Mrs. Zaturecky sat down, I got her to speak by making a remark or two.

“Lecturer,” she said in a serious voice, but without any aggressiveness, “you know why I was looking for you. My husband has always respected you very much as a specialist and as a man of character. Everything depended on your review, and you didn’t want to do it for him. It took my husband three years to write this article. His life has been harder than yours. He was a teacher, he commuted every day sixty kilometers away from Prague. Last year I forced him to stop that and devote himself to research.”

“Mr. Zaturecky isn’t employed?” I asked.

“No.”

“What does he live on?”

“For the time being I have to work hard myself. This research, Lecturer, is my husband’s passion. If you only knew how much he’s studied. If you only knew how many pages he’s rewritten. He always says that a real scholar must write three hundred pages so as to keep thirty. And on top of it, this woman. Believe me, Lecturer, I know him; I’m sure he didn’t do it, so why did this woman accuse him? I don’t believe it. Let her say it before me and before him. I know women, perhaps she likes you very much and you don’t care for her. Perhaps she wanted to make you jealous. But you can believe me, Lecturer, my husband would never have dared!”

I was listening to Mrs. Zaturecky, and all at once something strange happened to me: I ceased being aware that this was the woman for whose sake I would have to leave the university, and that this was the woman who caused the tension between me and Klara, and for whose sake I’d wasted so many days in anger and unpleasantness. The connection between her and the incident, in which we’d both played a sad role, suddenly seemed vague, arbitrary, accidental, and not our fault. All at once I understood that it had only been my illusion that we ourselves saddle events and control their course; the truth is that they aren’t our stories at all, that they are foisted on us from somewhere outside; that in no way do they represent us; that we are not to blame for the strange paths they follow; that they are themselves directed from who knows where by who knows what strange forces.

When I looked at Mrs. Zaturecky’s eyes it seemed to me that these eyes couldn’t see the consequences of my actions, that these eyes weren’t seeing at all, that they were merely swimming in her face; that they were only stuck on.

“Perhaps you’re right, Mrs. Zaturecky,” I said in a conciliatory tone. “Perhaps my girl didn’t speak the truth, but you know how it is when a man’s jealous; I believed her and was carried away. That can happen to anyone.”

“Yes, certainly,” said Mrs. Zaturecky, and it was evident that a weight had been lifted from her heart. “When you yourself see it, it’s good. We were afraid that you believed her. This woman could have ruined my husband’s whole life. I’m not even speaking about the shadow this casts upon him from the moral point of view. We could handle that. But my husband is relying on your review. The editors assured him that it depended on you. My husband is convinced that if his article were published he would finally be allowed to do scholarly work. I ask you, now that everything has been cleared up, will you write this review for him? And can you do it quickly?”

Now came the moment to avenge myself on everything and appease my rage, only at this moment I didn’t feel any rage, and when I spoke it was only because there was no escaping it: “Mrs. Zaturecky, there is some difficulty regarding the review. I shall confess to you how it all happened. I don’t like to say unpleasant things to people’s faces. This is my weakness. I avoided Mr. Zaturecky, and I thought that he would figure out why I was avoiding him. His paper is weak. It has no scholarly value. Do you believe me?”

“I find it hard to believe. I can’t believe you,” said Mrs. Zaturecky.

“Above all, this work is not original. Do you understand? A scholar must always arrive at something new; a scholar can’t copy what we already know, what others have written.”

“My husband definitely didn’t copy.”

“Mrs. Zaturecky, you’ve surely read this article—” I wanted to continue, but Mrs. Zaturecky interrupted me: “No, I haven’t.”

I was surprised. “Read it, then.”

“My eyes are bad,” said Mrs. Zaturecky. “I haven’t read a single line for five years, but I don’t need to read to know if my husband’s honest or not. That can be recognized in other ways. I know my husband as a mother knows her children, I know everything about him. And I know that what he does is always honest.”

I had to undergo worse. I read aloud to Mrs. Zaturecky paragraphs from various authors whose thoughts and formulations Mr. Zaturecky had taken over. It wasn’t a question of willful plagiarism, but rather an unconscious submission to those authorities who inspired in Mr. Zaturecky a feeling of sincere and inordinate respect. It was obvious that no serious scholarly journal could publish Mr. Zaturecky’s work.

I don’t know how much Mrs. Zaturecky concentrated on my exposition, how much of it she followed and understood; she sat humbly in the armchair, humbly and obediently like a soldier who knows that he may not leave his post. It took about half an hour for us to finish. Mrs. Zaturecky got up from the armchair, fixed her transparent eyes upon me, and in a dull voice begged my pardon; but I knew that she hadn’t lost faith in her husband and she didn’t reproach anyone except herself for not knowing how to resist my arguments, which seemed obscure and unintelligible to her. She put on her military greatcoat, and I understood that this woman was a soldier in body and spirit, a sad and loyal soldier, a soldier tired from long marches, a soldier who doesn’t understand the sense of an order and yet carries it out without objections, a soldier who goes away defeated but without dishonor.

13

“So now you don’t have to be afraid of anything,” I said to Klara, when later in the Dalmatia Tavern I repeated to her my conversation with Mrs. Zaturecky.

“I didn’t have anything to fear anyhow,” replied Klara with a self-assurance that astonished me.

“What do you mean, you didn’t? If it weren’t for you I wouldn’t have met with Mrs. Zaturecky at all.”

“It’s good that you did meet with her, because what you did to them was unnecessary. Dr. Kalousek said that it’s hard for a sensible man to understand it.”

“When did you see Kalousek?”

“I saw him,” said Klara.

“And did you tell him everything?”

“What? Is it a secret, perhaps? Now I know exactly what you are.”

“Really?”

“May I tell you what you are?”

“Please.”

“A stereotypical cynic.”

“You got that from Kalousek.”

“Why from Kalousek? Do you think that I can’t figure it out for myself? You actually think I’m not capable of forming an opinion about you. You like to lead people by the nose. You promised Mr. Zaturecky a review.”

“I didn’t promise him a review.”

“And you promised me a job. You used me as an excuse to Mr. Zaturecky, and you used Mr. Zaturecky as an excuse to me. But you may be sure that I’ll get that job.”

“Through Kalousek?” I tried to be scornful.

“Certainly not through you! You’ve gambled so much away, and you don’t even know yourself how much.”

“And do you know?”

“Yes. Your contract won’t be renewed, and you’ll be glad if they’ll let you into some little provincial gallery as a clerk. But you must realize that all this was only your own mistake. If I can give you some advice: another time be honest and don’t lie, because a man who lies can’t be respected by any woman.”

She got up, gave me (clearly for the last time) her hand, turned, and left.

Only after a while did it occur to me (in spite of the chilly silence that surrounded me) that my story was not of the tragic sort, but rather of the comic variety.

That afforded me some comfort.