Even I could see that a green day was upon us..
Usually at this time of year, the small park in front of the St Ludmilla Church is empty, but now it was filled with men who, judging from their appearance, were obviously not regulars in the park. Corruption was in the air, and if you listened closely you could hear a quiet scraping sound — the noise of radio interference — like carborundum
sliding over a scythe blade or at least over hidden stilettoes. Soon we ran into the first group of friends, who announced that we would not get into the ball. When the people at the door realized we were not railway workers, they would give us our money back and turn us away.
As far as I was concerned, it made no sense to go any further, but my wife and daughter protested. They had finally managed to drag me out to a dance, so we should at least see for ourselves if it was impossible to get in.
My wife took me by one arm, my daughter by the other, and they would almost have persuaded me to pretend to be a railwayman (which, by the way, as a child I had always longed to be) had my friend Pavel not suddenly appeared in the park, supported by his wife.
My friend Pavel is one of those people who are plagued by the notion that they must tell others how to live in order to make the world a better place. That's why he's constantly getting mixed up in politics. He may well have been slightly more involved than others; that would explain why he was the only one who had suffered a blow to the head when, earlier, the mass expulsion of would-be ballroom dancers had taken place.
His driver's licence had long been confiscated, so he was looking for someone to take him to see a doctor.
I had always wanted to be an engine driver. When I was a child, there was nothing exceptional about this: there were almost no cars then, and truck drivers had not yet become an object of childhood dreams. I can no longer say exactly what it was about being an engine driver that attracted me: whether it was the desire to control the motion of an enormous hunk of metal, or the lure of faraway places. Whatever it was, I could stand by the kitchen
window for ages, staring down towards the tracks and waiting for a train to appear. Then, when I heard the puffing of the enormous machine in the distance and saw the approaching plume of smoke — and when it was dark outside the smoke was full of swirling sparks as tiny as stars in the sky that glowed and then died — I was gripped by a blissful sense of expectation, as though I were supposed to leave on that train, or as though I were expecting a visitor to arrive on it, perhaps from the heavens themselves, from where the train always seemed to emerge. At the time I did not know of those other freight trains that, on narrow, normal and wide-gauge tracks carried, and would continue to carry throughout most of my life, uncountable numbers of people whom She and her beaters and followers had singled out as victims.
The moment Pavel stepped into the car, he started telling us what had just happened to him, things that to him seemed incomprehensible. Then he stopped. It occurred to him that perhaps it might be better to remain silent about it all in front of my daughter. My daughter, in rather rough terms, reassured him that on the contrary, she found such experiences entertaining; at least they made up, in part, for the ruined evening. She unbuttoned her coat to reveal her ball gown.
I would like to have told my friend something of my wartime experiences, because they had helped me to understand many of the events that came later. I would like to have told him that I had learned how the persecution of a select sample of victims gave Her several advantages. Not only did it arouse fear among other innocent people, but it also gave those who were not included in the sample a sense of satisfaction that they were considered worthy of
trust. I would like to have mentioned how this even encouraged the most anxious of citizens to lend a hand, at least in the most inconspicuous of ways, to Her efforts so that with the passage of time remaining silent about Her work became second nature, an understandable and forgivable vice. I could have gone on to suggest that persecution of the innocent also satisfied a degenerate passion that circulates in the blood of many of Her assistants. However, the white and yellow car I could see behind us distracted me.
Before the war, the famous Helada company made soap. Into the long boxes containing their soap, they put pictures of steam and diesel locomotives. They issued an album with spaces into which you were supposed to stick the pictures. I owned the album and gradually filled the spaces in it. When I leafed through the book before going to sleep and saw locomotives in colours I'd never seen them in, locomotives with magnificent red wheels or with blue or green flanks, I was overwhelmed. And I imagined that I was the one who was allowed to move the rods and levers that controlled them.
I drove Pavel and his wife to the nearest health clinic. The yellow and white striped car that had followed us all the way like a faithful hyena parked by the curb behind me. Now that I was no longer distracted by driving, I could observe its crew. There were four of them. The man sitting next to the driver was saying something into his walkie-talkie. When he finished talking, he and the rest of them were obviously waiting for an answer. I imagined I could hear a hollow, loud-speaker voice coming from inside their car. Then one of the men got out, walked around my car and rapped on my window.
I opened it, and he asked to see my documents. My driver's licence was almost new, and the vehicle registration was in order, as was the car. He produced a breathalyser, and I blew into the tube, certain that not the tiniest drop of alcohol was circulating in my blood. He noted my innocence, even thanked me and said goodnight before returning to his car, from where he must have reported the results of his investigation by radio.
My collection was almost complete; I was only missing two cards, both of express-train locomotives. One was called The Mikado, the other was nicknamed Passepartout. Their stats were printed in my album, but I had no idea what noble shapes and outlines distinguished them from the rest. What good is an incomplete collection? Whenever I opened the album, I saw only those two empty spaces crying out to be filled. We had enough soap at home to last for at least three years. I couldn't get the missing pictures by trading for them at school, so I had already given up hope when our grocer invited me behind the counter and allowed me to open the soap boxes until I found the two missing engines.
The unusual pleasure of being behind a counter was even greater than the joy of at last finding the pictures I needed. I sensed, although I had no way of appreciating my discovery yet, that the man behind the counter, no matter how deeply he might bow to his customers, possessed the power to satisfy people's needs and desires. And anyone who has such power is like a king.
My first encounter with a real engine driver happened not long ago. He brought me a message from a friend of mine who lived outside Prague. The message vouched for its bearer, Martin B., and asked me to lend him something good to read.
Martin B. was not the kind of man I had imagined in my childhood commanding an enormous engine. He seemed too slight, too young, and moreover he was dressed in jeans.
We talked about folk singers. He was proud of his tape collection of protest songs by singers who were mostly silenced, and of his collection of books by banned authors. He or his friends copied out these books by themselves. I expressed surprise that someone so young would devote his time to copying out books by unknown authors.