Then I was called before the doctors’ commission so my recommendation for a partial invalid stipend could be evaluated. The members did indeed treat me considerately and inquired about my stay in Terezín. When they learned I had spent three and a half years there, they admitted that my state of health could be attributed to that.
My partial disability pension was approved. It came to 630 crowns, which wasn’t something I could live on for more than a few days, but it was a legal income, which shielded me from charges of parasitism. I think the doctors knew what they were doing but pretended they had no idea who I was.
*
I soon finished the manuscript of my novel, or at least I thought so. I had never undertaken such an extensive work. I combined a great number of experiences I had lived through or heard secondhand or invented out of whole cloth.
However, I was still uncertain whether I was leading my characters to despair. What could they actually discover in a world that was still running wild and in which people were looking for a way to fill the void, a way to escape the hopelessness of their own destinies? On the final pages, I tried to show what my hero had discovered as an answer — an answer for both of us.
He also knew by now that one would never find freedom in this world if he didn’t find it in himself — however perfect were the laws and however great one’s control over the world and people. And nobody could endow someone with moral grandeur if it was not born in one’s soul, just as nobody could release someone from one’s bonds if one did not cast off the shackles of one’s own making.
I recognized that this was not particularly original; I was doubtless influenced by Karel Čapek (who had been influenced by Masaryk), who repeatedly tried to point out that if a person doesn’t know what to do with himself, he will long to change the world. But this had been my experience in life as welclass="underline" In the name of magnificent ideals, a person will lose himself, his conscience, and his freedom. If he pulls himself together and realizes this, he will never again dare to return to self-deception, no matter how merciful it pretends to be. If a person wants somehow to participate in the fate of the world, of society, of other people, he must first of all take responsibility for himself and his own actions.
I began to type up my handwritten novel, and when I was nearing page 950, I started to sense a childlike excitement. I drew out the last pages a little by adding a few nonessential sentences, and when I reached the final page, it was with a feeling of exhilaration that I wrote the number 1,000. I had fulfilled my promise and written a thousand pages. I had proved to myself that I was a “professional.” At the journal, when I was supposed to write an article of sixty lines, I wrote exactly sixty. This time I had promised a thousand pages and had written precisely a thousand. But I wasn’t able to think of a title. Finally, I chose a not very cheerful line from a song: There Stands a Gallows.
With both eagerness and impatience, I lent my copies to friends.
Apparently my manuscript preoccupied them a little too much, and they started discussing it, because once again, I received a summons for an interrogation at the dimly lit offices of State Security on Bartolomějská Street.
The interrogation began with the usual query: Did I know why I was here? Because my examiner already knew the answer, he immediately asked what I had recently published in samizdat.
I said I had no idea what he was talking about.
He meant the series we referred to as Padlock.
I said I knew of no such series, and unfortunately I was prohibited from publishing. My last novel had been a love story, which I’d proposed to several different publishers who had all replied in the same way: It didn’t fit into their publishing plans.
“On the other hand, it fit extraordinarily well into the plans of Mr. Braunschweiger abroad, isn’t that right?”
When I gave no answer, he posed another question. “What else are you planning to publish?”
I was now a little more experienced so I said I was not going to answer, since I did not consider him a representative of an enterprise that published imaginative literature.
Then he went straight to the point. “We have learned that you’ve composed a long novel possessing the character of antisocialist agitation. What do you have to say to that?”
I said I had nothing. Or rather: I have never occupied myself with agitation because I find it repellent.
He asked if that was true. I said it was.
“Fine, if that’s what you think. But you must admit that a reader might perceive your novel as an attack against our system!”
I said that I was not responsible for the perception of every reader, and novels were not written to attack anything. A novel is not propaganda, ideology, or agitation. A novel is an artistic work that can be good or bad. I had nothing more to say about it.
To my surprise, he recited the following monologue: “We are not here to judge the caliber of your work. It is apparently well written and of high quality. But its contents are antisocialist, and we are here to prevent the dissemination of such works. I am warning you that if you publicize this work of yours called There Stands a Gallows, either abroad or in so-called samizdat, you will be in contravention of our laws and must be prepared to accept the consequences that such an action would bring.”
Then he had me sign a document containing nothing more than this exhortation.
I said I would sign only with the addendum that I did not agree with such an evaluation of my novel. “Fine,” he said, “but I would like to point out that this addendum of yours will not help you in the least when it comes to considering your responsibility in this matter.”
After this warning, I decided to send the manuscript abroad as soon as I could and make as many copies as possible. My decision to secure copies, however, was somewhat hampered by the manuscript’s extensive size. I sent the manuscript to Jürgen through a Swedish diplomat who was generously assisting us smuggle out our manuscripts and in return bringing back freshly printed books. So that I not become too conceited, an urgent request arrived a few weeks later from Jürgen that should I shorten the novel by at least a third, or a half, at best. He wrote that readers wanted novels but not thick epics like mine. Furthermore, he thought the title was bad if only because no one abroad knew the song from which it had been taken. He suggested the title Judge on Trial.
*
A person enters adulthood with many resolutions, expectations, scruples, and prejudices. During the time I am recalling, almost everything in which one could place one’s expectations either had been made difficult or was forbidden. All higher goals had been degraded and disgraced. Surprisingly, it seemed that immorality, or at least insincerity within personal relationships, was acceptable to the reigning immoral authorities. So it was easy to persuade oneself that, at least in this area of life, one was not restricted any more than anywhere else in the world, perhaps even less. At least in one area of our lives we were free: Men and women took lovers. The government tolerated it just as it tolerated the battering of its citizens. The gremlins in the cadre offices cared more about relationships within the collective than their relationships to their own partners or children. Infidelity, therefore, was often limited only by material circumstances: a dearth of apartments or money.