'The long bus,' he said. 'To Vrsovice. But you don't have to wait, I'll ask for help.'
In Komořan, I got out at the last stop and savoured the view of the wooded hilltop, but I had to go in the opposite direction, down to the river. The asphalt was sticky in the heat and there wasn't a cool spot to be had anywhere. I walked across a large, sun-baked area and came to a bar, toyed for a moment with the idea of going in, but continued on along a street lined with villas. In the middle of the road, an enormous crane was lifting a steel pipe. Two men in overalls were looking on, a third was sitting in the shade of the machine, drinking beer. Without removing the bottle from his mouth, he signalled to me with his free hand to wait until the gigantic pipe had been set in place in the ditch.
I was standing outside a villa with a cherry tree laden with fruit just inside the fence. Several branches were overhanging the street, but not a cherry was left on them.
I smelled the cherries, at least, and watched while the crane operator skilfully manoevred his unstable load into position. When it was situated properly in the ditch, he turned off the engine and got out. All four men now looked into the hole with approval, then wandered over to a wooden caravan trailer. I could see a case of beer in the shade underneath it.
The institute was at the top of a small hill in a one-storey wooden structure that reminded me of the buildings the Germans constructed during the war for various emergency contingencies; some were used as field hospitals. It was old
and no longer smelled of wood inside, but rather of stale tobacco smoke and old paper, huge piles of which were stacked everywhere. Dr Myslivec's office was at the end of a long corridor lined with heaps of brochures, books and parcels. No one was in. The whole building seemed empty. After all, what would anyone be doing here in this heat? I took the parcel of print-outs from my bag, put it down next to the other bundles of paper in a place where, as far as I could determine, Dr Myslivec could not miss them. Then, one of the glass doors opened and a young woman in a light blouse and a denim skirt looked out.
I said hello.
'You're always smiling,' she said, 'even when you're dragging that heavy bag behind you.' She was rather pretty, though her hair was dyed several different colours.
'But my bag is on wheels,' I said. 'And why shouldn't I smile at you?'
'But you smile even when no one is looking at you.'
I couldn't understand how she could know what I did when no one was looking at me.
'I'll bet this heat is making you thirsty,' she said. 'Would you like me to make you a coffee?.'
'I can't put you to the trouble, not in this heat.'
'I'll have one too. Then you can tell me why you're always smiling.'
Her office looked like all the others. Three desks and a little table with a hotplate. She pointed to an empty chair. 'Won't you sit down?' On a cupboard among stacks of dusty papers there was a forgotten vase. Geraniums and cyclamens bloomed in the windows.
'Well, are you going to tell me?' She said, sitting down opposite me. 'Would it bother you if I smoked?'
'You're the one who's at home.'
'That'll be the day,' she said. 'I'm always surprised at anyone who can smile like that.'
'But you don't do yourself any good by looking glum.'
'Then why do most people look glum?' She stood up and began making the coffee.
'You didn't answer my question.'
'Maybe they don't like being in this world.'
'And do you?'
'Well, once you're here
She handed me the coffee. It was hot, but I swallowed it as quickly as I could to avoid this conversation.
'I would have said the same thing myself once, but since my first husband died, it's become harder and harder.'
'Did he die recently?'
'No, it was six years ago. But it was — awful.' She looked at me. Her eyes had the colour the sky above the city sometimes has. When I looked into them more closely, I realized that they shifted slightly back and forth, as though she couldn't keep them steady. 'He was dying for an awfully long time. It was Parkinson's Disease. They had a programme about it on TV not too long ago. Did you see it?'
'I don't have a television.'
'You don't have a television?' She was shocked at my poverty. How could someone who didn't even have a television smile?
I said, 'I don't want one. I've got a lot of books at home, and I'd rather read.'
'You're right about that. It does eat up your time. But what's a body to do all evening?' She finished her cigarette, pulled another out of the packet, then put it back. She had slender, pretty hands, but her fingers trembled slightly.
'Did you remarry?'
'Of course,' she said. 'And I'm not smiling any more.' She tried to smile. 'This certainly can't be your profession.'
'Why don't you think so?'
'If you did this all the time, you wouldn't smile.'
I said nothing.
'Also, you wouldn't be wearing shoes like that,' she said, pointing at my moccasins. 'You'd have tennis shoes.'
'Well,' I admitted, somewhat taken aback by this feminine logic, 'I have done other things in my life.'
'Yes, and so have I. And do you enjoy this work?'
'Why not? It's OK for a while.' I drank the coffee and stood up to go.
'Next time you come, stop by,' she suggested. 'Too bad you can't bring me something.'
'What would you like?'
She shrugged her shoulders. A body's always waiting for something. You know, some good news. Even though you know by now there's no point. I found that out when Karel died.' She took my coffee cup and went to rinse it out. She didn't offer me her hand to shake, but as she walked by me, she brushed me lightly with her hip.
There were three name-plates outside her door: Anna, Jiřina and Natasha something or other. The Russian name seemed to suit her best.
Outside the wooden caravan, the four workers were sitting in the sun, stripped to the waist and drinking beer. They seemed at least as content with their fate as I was. I walked across the gaping ditch they had dug on a tiny wooden bridge. My working day was over.
At home, I found the intersection of ninety-one east latitude and fifty-six north longitude. It was close to
Krasnojara, but there wasn't a trace of Arobidzhan, nor did it seem likely that there would be any Northern Lights. Summonses, warrants, sentences, perhaps. And snow. The harder the times, the more snow. You fall into a snowdrift and it's the last they hear of you.
Two
THE MAINFRAME COMPUTER in Strašnice is operating again. The Strašnice computer is located in the basement of a tall building belonging to an import-export company. I brought them three bags of blank tape and I'm supposed to pick up tapes with data for delivery. In an enormous subterranean vault, where the air-conditioning hums and smoking is strictly forbidden, the computer screens glow and men and women in white lab coats hurry to and fro. At one of the terminals I recognize the tall, gaunt figure of Mr Bauer. He doesn't see me; his dreamy eyes are fixed on the screen where numbers are marching up and down, aligning themselves into columns. Bauer is collating data on the atmospheric pollution above the Czech mountain ranges. I look over his shoulder. Aerosols and sulphur dioxide are recorded in micrograms; lead, cadmium, copper and zinc are in nanograms — but beyond that I can't make sense of the numbers.
The tapes are waiting for me on the small table beside the entrance. The top reel has a piece of white tape stuck to it with Šumava written across it with a ball-point pen. I stuff the destruction of the Šumava forest into my bag. Through the windows of the glass hallway I see that it's
begun raining heavily. I sit down in a soft chair and watch the traffic in the hall. At a small table next to me are two Arabs, gesticulating violently and talking to each other in loud voices, certain that no one can understand them.