Looking back on it, he was glad she had rejected his offer of marriage before the war. He was constantly in meetings anyway, he wouldn’t have had time for a family. The only thing that still irked him a little was the fact that she had turned him down for Josef. She’d waited for him, for Josef, to speak up and ask for her hand, while Hynek had offered to marry her a whole year before. It had been awkward. Yes, awkward. Hynek was honest, he didn’t lie to her. He just … left some things out. Like the fact that his boys had given Josef a nice going-over. Not him! His boys. He also hadn’t made the mistake of contacting her first. He just waited for her to find him on her own. He had always known what was going on with Květa. He’d kept track. But the other way around? For her, the whole thing had ended before the war. For her!
If at least it hadn’t been his best friend, Josef, who never did understand women. Josef, his friend. His best friend, the klutz. If it had been anyone else but Josef, he could have stood the rejection.
As Květa walked away, she was glad Hynek hadn’t taken advantage of the situation to invite her out for a drink or lunch or coffee, so they could reminisce about old times before the war. He appeared to be completely reconciled to the fact that she was the wife of another man. Once upon a time, after all, the three of them had been friends.
After Květa left, after he opened the door for her and she walked out of his office into the hallway and he shut it behind her again, Hynek spread his arms wide and threw himself against the yellowed wooden paneling, trying to embrace it, hold it, and then, quietly, so that no one on the other side could hear, he sank to his knees. Then, no longer entirely in control of himself, he began stroking the chair Květa had been sitting in a moment before, running his fingers lovingly over the vase she had held in her hands. Over and over he caressed it, working himself into a state of thorough intoxication, of boundless bliss. You see, Květa, honey, he smiled to himself, everything’s going smoothly. Everything’s going just fine, and this time it’s going to be the way that I want it, sweetheart. This time it’s going my way.
Nowadays people were being locked up like they were on a conveyor belt, one after the other. Assembly line production, which debuted in the United States with Henry Ford’s introduction of the Model T automobile, had been greatly improved. Ford, a model capitalist and a master innovator, engineered the process to perfection, but the rainbow of pastels they painted the cars with dried too slowly, increasing production time, which made it more expensive, leading him to make the statement that capitalists adore with the same devotion that Zen Buddhists attach to the study of koans: “You can have your car painted any color you want, as long as it’s black.” Which goes to show that Henry attained a higher level of enlightenment than the disciples in the bamboo grove meditating on the sound of one hand clapping. The worshipers of capitalism bow down in amazement at Henry’s masterful insights into cost analysis, business margins, markets, advertising, and undreamed of curves of expenditures and profit; they bow down in amazement like Christians at the recounting of the legend of St. Francis and his sermon to the birds, and then clumsily try to spin a lacy web of theology in which to snare their Christian God, the same way they once netted larks with which to flavor their delicate French and Italian pâtés. Graceful, confident, and fierce, the monumental evolution of the East European mind culminated in the assembly line production of mass trials. The investigation means nothing, it’s all in the accusation. The spiritual tradition of torture, dating back to the dawn of Tsarist Russia, joined with classical German philosophy and the genius of Marxian analysis, meant the executions were already under way. The perpetual underestimation of small nations and their traditions. The perpetual underestimation of the Slavic element and its contribution to the building of a better world. All that energy and human ingenuity, all of it together combined to bring about the concentration camps and mass trials. So much unrecognized genius for the enrichment of the world.
Květa didn’t hear anything from Hynek for a month. As she waited, her mind gradually absorbed the fact of totalitarian power. Finally, she decided to contact him herself, but Hynek said he didn’t have time. Two weeks later he did. He told her there was going to be a trial; he told her Josef would be convicted for defending a man at his job and trying to shield him from justice. Josef had stood up for the former owner of a nationalized enterprise. Under the current circumstances that was sheer foolishness. Josef said the owner was a decent man. But how could that be when he was a capitalist! Hynek told her there was nothing he could do. Everyone investigated is convicted, that’s how it works. The accusation is everything. Hynek was telling the truth and had no intention of hiding it. He had far-reaching plans for her, but not now, not yet. For now, she would blame him, she would break down, throw a fit. For now, he had to leave her be. Leave her exalted demeanor and gracefully carried neck to relax. Her mind and her body, because he, Hynek, had his own plans for her.
Hynek Jánský owed his successful career not to hard work or talent, but to the humble fact that he realized the most important thing of all was dull, boring, tiresome, if not outright dreary patience. It was an insight so banal it was almost frightening. Most people were proud, and almost everyone, including Květa, thought they were special, exceptional, unique. But he, Hynek Jánský, doctor of both laws, knew and was proud of the fact — as proud as if he had discovered some timeless law of nature — that he was exactly the same as everyone else. He was proud not to be unique or exceptional, proud to be patient and utterly conformist. He won his tennis matches by avoiding risk, playing from the baseline, no crushing overheads or clever lobs, not him. Instead he waited to capitalize on his opponent’s errors, silently and sweatily chasing down every ball, for as long as his strength held up. His shots never skimmed the net or landed dangerously close to the line. He hit them three feet inside the court, and he was the one who won.
Květa’s behavior would be entirely predictable, entirely unexceptional, the same as that of all the other wives of the convicted men. It made no sense to expect anything original or out of the ordinary, for the simple reason that it made no sense to expect the impossible.
First, then, in a few weeks, Květa would turn desperate. She and her beautiful face, with her filly’s hips and her exalted stride, would fry in a hell of anxiety. At night, generally between two and four in the morning, she would wake and start sobbing, sobbing uncontrollably, until she understood that the thing she feared the most was in fact what was going to happen. She would swallow tears until her eyes dried out and the circles under her eyes smelled of sand, until her eyes were dry and bloodshot, like a mirage that refuses to disappear, like the neon signs that shine at night on every corner, and then she would see him everywhere, at every turn.
During that period, Hynek would avoid any contact with her. Perhaps a meeting or two in public, twenty or thirty minutes at most. It was important to give her hope, but he had to be noncommittal, he couldn’t compromise himself, and he definitely had to avoid getting into any situation where she threw her arms around his neck and started to sob. That would be foolish and asexual, reinforcing feelings of bonding and cohesion, in other words brotherly, which was the one direction he didn’t want it to go in. He would wait until after the worst of the pain had passed, and the weariness and bottomless heartache began to settle in … and along with them, naturally, rage at the one who had been arrested, locked up, and tortured, rage at the convicted man himself. Yes, Květa would get angry at her dear husband, Josef.