When Alice looked at the picture with the angel announcing to Mary that she was to be the Mother of God, it was immediately obvious to her that whatever weary, hunched medieval painter had created the image, he must have inquired of his beloved medieval wives, his lovers and the mothers of his children, what God’s grace actually was, and apparently he had been well informed, since how else could someone like him — a mere man — have drawn that rapturous bubble of God’s grace which she herself had felt. Alice knew nothing about the accounts of the medieval mystics; she knew nothing about their ecstasies, about radiant darkness and their mystical inability to distinguish between themselves and God’s glory stretching into the infinite universe. Maximilian noticed the change this expecting had caused in her, and being a mere man he tried merely to understand. Yet Alice didn’t know how to tell him. How to explain the state of pregnancy to someone she loved absolutely and with no reservations, how to explain something to him that he could never experience. She ran up against the barrier of language, the stone chasm suddenly stretching between them from top to bottom. And then, all of a sudden one day, right after waking up, it hit her: “Bliss, Maximilian. Carrying our child is bliss. I think that’s what it was like when people still believed in heaven. Though actually … it’s probably much better!” It was nine months in a bubble of God, and Alice wished it would never end. So when Maximilian handed her a medium-sized teaspoon as her index finger bore a mass of pungent orange-colored apricot jam to her mouth, she just cast an unconcerned look at his astonished face and with indifferent delight let the fragrant matter dissolve first on her tongue, then in her mouth, before letting its sweet taste with a touch of tart soak into her palate and swallowing, or, to be more precise, letting it slide gently and with visible pleasure down her throat. Maximilian stood before her, hand outstretched in a gesture of un-needed assistance. He stood watching his alluring wife, sitting there over her morning coffee not caring one iota what anyone thought of her, what anyone felt, just absolutely content with herself and her life. After swallowing the jam, she licked off her index finger with relish, making a sound with her mouth that could be classified either as satisfaction, pleasure, or a crude, somewhat apathetic smack. Maximilian was suddenly at a loss as to how to interpret the sound, or how it should be interpreted.
“So I guess you don’t want the spoon, huh?” he said when she was done. And in the time it took Alice to raise her eyes, he added, “How come?”
She replied: “I want to savor it with all my senses.” If later Maximilian had thought back on his life with Alice, if he had ever taken the time to consider their relationship, he would have arrived here, at this swallowing of the jam with a piercing smack that he didn’t understand, the moment in which Alice began to be lost to him. Snug inside the opium bubble of sweetness that was her pregnant existence, Alice gradually ceased to be a lover and became permanently and irrevocably a mother. The state of fatherhood certainly couldn’t compare, and that was the reality Maximilian feared. Like Alice, he didn’t hide his feelings much, and when he shared how he felt with his friend Honza, a design engineer of transistor radios and portable reel-to-reel tape players, a Christian, a father of firm morals and four children, his friend told him:
“You know, Max, every woman who gets pregnant and has a child is like a diode. I know it sounds strange, but I specialize in low-voltage electrotechnology, and there’s no better way for me to explain.” Maximilian didn’t know what the function of a diode was, so he asked his friend what he meant by this odd analogy.
“A diode conducts current in only one direction, and once a woman has a child she’s never the same again. From then on, you’ll always come second for her,” Honza said. “It’s normal, it’s fine. Get used to it, Max! The sooner you do, the sooner you’ll be able to take it easy.” Maximilian was so exhausted by his friend’s lengthy electro-ethical analogy that he gave up on even trying to understand, though he sensed that what he didn’t grasp would make loving it all the more difficult.
When the boy was born, for Alice it was an unpleasant awakening from nine long months of bliss. Suddenly she began to worry about the things Maximilian had been worrying about for months. She had terrifying dreams, a desire to leave her country forever, and was surprised at the most inconvenient moments by sudden bouts of prolonged arthritic pain. She wanted to leave, run away with her child and husband, and hide somewhere where there would be peace and quiet and no Russian soldiers. The problem was that when everybody had been trying to persuade her of that while she was pregnant, she persuaded them of the opposite, and nobody had the will or the energy left to do it anymore. The child was named Kryštof, and a few months after he was born, Alice got the urge to have another. It wasn’t a child she wanted; it was the state of pregnancy she missed. Her uncle Antonín the doctor, after sending her for a few tests and examinations, told her something about hormones and the levels of some substance or other in the blood, but it sounded too scholarly and too Latin to actually explain anything.
Alice was born in 1950, a few months before her father was arrested, convicted, and sent to prison. Alice didn’t remember any of it; she knew the whole thing only from the stories and recollections of her relatives. Her mother went to visit him every month. Sometimes Alice went with her, but they wouldn’t let her inside anyway, so she stayed with her aunt in the neighboring town. Then one day, after ten years, her father showed up at home. Alice knew him from stories and photographs. She received letters from him, which her mother read to her until she learned to read and could read them for herself. Although she did her best to hide it, her mother wasn’t glad to get his letters. Most of the time she cried and Alice knew it, even though her mother tried not to let her see. And then one day, after her tenth birthday had passed, they let her father out. Alice was looking forward to it. They were all looking forward, and they were all nervous and happy. When they first locked him up, her mother made the rounds of the offices, then various relatives and acquaintances increasingly visited them, together with her mother reading through heaps of papers, which they then filled out and which they discussed in a language Alice didn’t understand. Then one day her mother said she had a big surprise for her: her father would be coming home in two weeks. They were letting him out after ten years, instead of thirteen as the original sentence had called for, and he would be living with them again. Alice didn’t really understand when her mother said her father was coming back home, since as far as Alice remembered he had never lived with them. For her it couldn’t be a return since she had never seen him leave. Her father was due home from prison on a Thursday. The two weeks with her mother till then were unbearable. Alice couldn’t figure out what was wrong. If nothing else she was glad her dad was coming home, since they hadn’t been allowed to talk much about his being in prison. All Alice knew was that, as her uncle Antonín put it, her father was a brave man who had stood up to injustice, and that was why they had put him in jail. This regime, Uncle Antonín went on, were all just a bunch of criminals, you couldn’t expect anything good from them. Alice didn’t really understand what a regime was, but she figured it must be someone important like the school inspector, who not only her teacher Mrs. Svobodová feared, but even the principal of the school, Mrs. Krausová, and that was something. Alice also knew there were things she could talk about only at home, not at school or in shops or on the street. She was looking forward to her daddy coming home, even if her mother was constantly washing, tidying, rearranging things, and dusting. One day Alice overheard her asking Antonín whether or not she should repaint. He convinced her she shouldn’t, saying: