Of course, getting proper employment for a single day was impossible. Therefore, I had to look for someone who would employ me. I knew I would not be allowed to perform qualified work. I couldn’t publish my books; I couldn’t write reviews or work as a copyreader, so I tried to think up some kind of job that would be at least a little interesting and that I could actually perform.
Engineer František Kocina, who also regularly played Mariáš at Jaroslav Dietl’s, worked at the Institute of Geodesy. I recalled Kafka’s two characters who were the surveyor’s assistants, and the protagonist in my first novel who was a land surveyor. I went to see František at the institute and confided to him that I needed to be employed for at least a short time.
He told me that they took on externs, usually students, and he could get me a job if I wanted, but I would have to work at least two months. Then he tried to talk me out of it. We would be surveying in the fields, and not only would my job consist of holding the surveyor’s pole, but most likely I would have to do quite a bit of digging as well.
I told him I would get used to it and that I was counting on the job.
We agreed I would start at the beginning of September. Until then, he added, I could still change my mind.
I had found work but I was still uneasy. What if I got sick in September or didn’t get the job in the end?
After he finished college, Michal found a position at a computer technology firm and heard they were looking for a messenger. I did have, after all, some postal experience, and he suggested this would be much less hazardous.
And so, almost fifteen years after my time as an orderly, I once again found myself in a normal job, a Socialist job, I should add. When I had finished reading the newspaper or part of a book I had brought with me, I was politely asked to deliver a package to one of the offices. Sometimes it was a fairly large package of computer disks — their enormous computers were located in Vršovice, while my office was in South Town. The central office was in Old Town, where I sometimes took the regular mail. Nobody checked up on how long I spent on my errands, and sometimes when I came back, my amicable boss would say, “If you’re not having any fun here, you can go home. We won’t need you for anything else today.”
My “work” here was indeed quite pleasant — things were worse with my other, more risky postal work. Wolfgang’s replacement was much more careful, and he asked me to request his services only when it was truly important. He didn’t want to risk meeting unnecessarily and decided we would use a trash can in front of his house as a dead letter drop, something he’d unimaginatively come up with himself. I thought this much more risky than delivering the material in person. Fortunately, we met the American attaché, and it was to him that I would deliver the outgoing mail.
After two months, my official postal duties at Michal’s company came to an end. To bid my fond friends farewell, I cooked up an enormous pot of Russian borscht in honor of the auspicious perestroika under way in Russia.
Thus, I had ensured I would not be deprived of my miserable pension. But suddenly I was sorry that I had missed out on the opportunity to work as a surveyor’s lineman.
I went to see František and told him truthfully that I no longer needed the work, but I had made a promise, and I was here to announce that I was ready. František was astonished. He said this had made sense when I explained it was a matter of my pension, but now that I didn’t need it, he couldn’t understand why I was eager to take on such a difficult job, especially as someone unused to physical labor and for such poor pay. Of course, he was right. I was interested in the work precisely because I’d never done anything like it before. My friend again tried to talk me out of it but finally shrugged his shoulders, flipped through a batch of papers, and then said I should report on September 1 to Engineer Beránek in Městec Králová at 7 a.m. at the latest. The building was on the right corner of the square coming from Prague. That was where we would be staying, but as far as he was aware, we would have to obtain our own beds. He also said that Engineer Beránek was a decent fellow and would certainly understand my situation.
So on the appointed day, I became a surveyor’s assistant. František was not lying when he said the work would be exhausting. During the first week, I woke up every morning feeling that I wouldn’t be able to raise the pickax.
I also mailed off two letters to Kaiser, who had so brazenly disparaged my writing at a time when every government-approved graphomaniac was being insured. The first letter read:
Dear Director,
Because you doubted the character of the previous activity, which I and perhaps other people consider artistic, you certainly deserve to be informed that, at least for a time, I worked as a surveyor’s assistant. I consider it necessary to inform you of my activities, among other reasons, in order that your ignorance of this fact not afford you the opportunity to once again doubt my current activity.
Therefore, I am now informing you of my activities as a surveyor’s assistant: During the month of September, I sanded and later painted seventy-nine poles, excavated approximately eight cubic meters of earth, implanted twenty-seven concrete footers and five millstones. Into various walls, including mostly church and cemetery walls, I hewed out openings for five apex stones and assisted with measuring and associated work. Of course, I am aware that only with the approval of the authorities do facts become facts and activities activities, and I do not delude myself as to what I actually accomplished in the surveying field.
The second letter was somewhat more substantial.
Dear Director K.,
While meeting with my colleagues, I learned that you impugned the character of not only my work but theirs as well; you have determined their artistic endeavors to be undemonstrable. I have also learned that most of them have decided to defend themselves and are attempting to provide evidence of their artistic work. As proof, they are bringing in their books and news of productions of their plays on various world stages. Are you surprised that I did not undertake similar steps? I could simply claim that I do not consider such efforts to be dignified, but I would be lying if I pretended that it was not my wish for people such as yourself to disappear from the armchairs from which you conduct your contemptible work. The question is, how to make you truly disappear? It is only your armchair that provides you with your seeming power, raised high above, not only above the ground, but above all life, above humaneness — not to mention justice. Whoever undertakes a fight with you — I mean an honorable fight — not only cannot win, but also thereby recognizes your tyranny as legitimate; it raises even higher your armchair and affirms you in your feeling of superiority.
Your body, your entire being can certainly be exchanged and replaced. What cannot be exchanged and replaced, however, is the world that you and those who appointed you have created for yourselves, the artificial world that you proclaim the only real one, because only those laws apply which you have laid down, and truth is only that which you proclaim to be true. You can be struck only when a force appears that will destroy your sacrosanctity and your world and thereby hurl you back down among the people.