“Cheap perhaps, but undeniably logical.”
“But surely you can’t reduce God to some shaky logical argument?”
“Whenever you ask about something truly basic, like how God created the universe or where God lives or is, people who believe always say you’re asking the wrong question and that your arguments aren’t deep enough. Even if I asked a simple question, like how come there aren’t any brontosaurs on Noah’s Ark in the Bible, they would all say I’m asking the wrong thing.”
“I’m not saying I know the answers, I’m just trying to ask.”
“Then you’re better off than most.”
There was the sound of a cat meowing from outside. The rain had stopped. The cat began meowing louder, only now it seemed to be coming from the kitchen. Antonín ordered two coffees and for himself a large cognac. He gave Jiří an apologetic look. “Fasting.” He lit a cigarette and sucked in the smoke, repeating the action several times. Inhale, exhale. Jiří shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He probably didn’t want to disturb Antonín. Again: inhale, exhale. After another moment or two, Antonín said:
“That cat meowing, I suppose that was from the river. At any rate let’s hope,” he added. “Let’s hope it isn’t in the kitchen.”
“It was probably attracted by the smell of fish.”
“Probably,” Antonín said.
“It wouldn’t be the only one.”
“Probably not,” said Antonín. Just then, there was a sound of shattering glass in the kitchen and the guests in the restaurant fell silent. The waiter at the bar flashed an embarrassed grin, uncertain whether to go see what happened or pretend everything was all right. After a moment or two, he decided not to go anywhere. There was the sound of quick steps from the kitchen and agitated voices.
“It must be like opium for cats,” Jiří said.
His companion stared out the window at the wet cobblestones on the street.
“What’s like opium for cats?” he asked.
“The fish.”
“Fish are like opium?”
“I’m saying for cats it’s like opium.”
“Uh-huh,” Antonín said. Along with most of the other guests, he was listening to the voices arguing in the kitchen. Another voice had joined in. The waiter had given up trying to pretend and was now listening with unconcealed interest. Suddenly a new sound erupted from the jumble, like a long, narrowly modulated meow.
“So it is in the kitchen.”
“What is?” Jiří asked.
“The cat,” Antonín said. “That doesn’t bode well for their hygienic practices.”
“Well, as I was saying,” Jiří said, “it’s like opium for them.”
The kitchen door flew open and two men, one in a T-shirt and corduroys, the other in a suit, burst into the dining room. The man in the T-shirt was shouting at the man in the suit. Meanwhile they were both trying to catch a bird that was zigzagging back and forth between them, meowing nonstop.
“It’s a peacock,” Antonín said, but before Jiří could reply, the peacock disappeared under a table at the other end of the dining room and the guests nervously sprang from their seats.
“You’re the one who wanted it for brains and tongue,” shouted the man in the suit.
“No, I didn’t. It just escaped from the castle and came over here.”
“The castle, right. I’ll give you the castle,” the man in the suit shouted, shaking his fist. “If you harm so much as a feather on him, not only are you gonna pay, but I’m gonna knock your teeth in.” Suddenly there was a squeal and the peacock shot out from under the table, through the legs of the guests and its pursuers. Whether guided by animal instinct or operating purely at random, it headed for the glass front door, which at that very moment a middle-aged man was opening for his female companion, who on seeing the bird sprang back with a startled shriek. The peacock let out a wail and dashed out into the streets of the Renaissance city. The man in the T-shirt glanced back at the woman as he ran out the door, shouting: “Are you stupid? You know how much that bird’s worth?” and went chasing after the peacock. The man in the suit paused to offer a grimace of apology, then joined in the chase, shouting at the man in the T-shirt: “It’s a coincidence, Mirek! Just a coincidence!” A group of guests at the two long tables in the corner of the restaurant applauded and belted out some sort of cry three times.
“They must be foreigners,” said Antonín.
“I’m a foreigner too,” said Jiří. “Sort of.”
“No, you’re not. You speak Czech.”
“Oh, right,” said Jiří. “I didn’t think of that.”
The waiter looked as if he were about to deliver a long speech, but then instead just asked if anyone wanted to settle their check. Jiří said: “I thought it was a cat, that whole time, till I saw it.”
“Me too,” said Antonín.
“Talk about out of thin air.”
“Right, exactly, but let’s not even talk about what plans they might have had for it in the kitchen.”
“Plans? In the kitchen?”
“Yeah.”
“No, I agree, let’s not.” After a pause, Jiří went on. “So tell me, how did things end up with, you know, what’s her name, Klára?”
“Klára?” Antonín said. “How did things end up with Klára?”
“How did you finally meet her?”
“Well, sometimes she was better, sometimes worse. Eventually she started going under on us. Her depressions were very deep.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Jiří, “after what she went through.”
“Of course, and then she underwent shocks, electroshock treatment.”
“There was nothing else you could do?”
“There was — leucotomy — but that’s even worse.”
“What’s that?”
“The term by which most laypeople know it is lobotomy. The separation of the frontal lobes from the rest of the brain.”
“My God, that’s barbaric.”
“It’s an irreversible operation.”
“It’s barbaric.”
“Seeing as you’re a layperson, I’m not going to discuss it with you, but the whole principle of treatment is based on the degree of knowledge available or accessible to us at any given moment.”
“Does that apply to logic, too?”
“I don’t know.”
“Didn’t that seem strange to you, just cutting up somebody’s brain?”
“It wasn’t just cutting up a brain.”
“But afterwards the people weren’t themselves anymore.”
“They were, to some extent, and we hoped it was the better part, the part that wasn’t harmful.”
“To some extent?”
“Yes, though it’s true sometimes we couldn’t say if it was more or less.”
“Didn’t you care?”
“Of course we cared.”
“Then how could you do it?”
“We were trying to help the patients. We just wanted to help.”
“It never occurred to you that you might be harming them?”
“Without a little harm there wouldn’t be any medicine.”
“A little harm. You call that a little harm?”
“Don’t pick apart my words.”
“You’re the one who said it.”
“It was used only in extreme cases.”
“Could you still have fallen in love with her after that?”
“You seem pretty worked up all of a sudden.”
“Could you still have loved her after that?”
“One thing at a time.”
“Well, could you?”
“One thing at a time, please, if you don’t mind. I don’t know. How could I? And besides, in the end we didn’t do it.”
“Not to her, you didn’t.”
“Of course it was performed on other patients, and at the time I was trying to focus on other things.”
“So you never had any doubts?”
“Of course I did. But I also believed. Not because it was absurd, but so I could understand. I tried to understand, and I did. At least back then I thought I did. I thought we were all in God’s hands, to some extent.”