My young boss looked dissatisfied and widened the swathe to the fence with the machete. Then he ordered me to stay with the expensive equipment while he drove back around to the other side of the fence.
Left alone, I could hear the thud of distant explosions and the honking of yard engines, but otherwise it was silent. It was near the end of October and the birds, if any
survived here, weren't singing. A watery sun was beginning to force its way through the mist above the treetops. Occasionally, with a quiet plop, a toxic drop of dew would slip off the edge of a leaf.
Mystery is a direct insult to our self-assurance. If there were no longer any mystery, we imagine that a beautiful and safe sense of certainty would inhabit the world (even though we don't know what it would be certainty about). We have thus become accustomed to celebrating as giants those who have worked hardest to rid us of mystery. After all, they have led us out of darkness where, at any moment, we might have been assaulted by the inexplicable, where pestilence and witches lie in wait. It never occurs to us that they have also set us down here in the middle of a bland superhighway planted with signs. We pass our lives rushing from sign to sign.
One day we will come up against the limit of the tolerable and the possible. It seems to me that this day is already drawing near. Man, it would seem, cannot remain in one place. The moment he finds himself at a border he cannot go beyond, he must give up. But where could he return to now?
In the distance, I caught sight of the surveyor's rust-coloured sweater. For a while, it flitted here and there, then I heard the familiar voice calling to me to throw the tools over the fence. More branches and trunks were felled; I was now able to make out the legs of the tripod. Still, however, my boss could not see the two discs on the ends of the apparatus on my side of the fence.
Again and again, following his instructions, I lopped off branches that seemed to block his view, until he discovered that the real impediment was the trunk of a stately birch.
He came down the hill with his fellow surveyor and, for a while, across the fence, we discussed what we should do. The two of them decided they would have to cut the birch down.
I objected. We couldn't chop down such a magnificent tree simply because we wanted to.
The factory surveyor looked at me with contemptuous astonishment. 'Here?' he said, pointing up at the diseased treetops.
Later, I thought of what I should have said: 'That's exactly why we shouldn't.' Meanwhile, they had thrown me a saw over the barbed wire.
As a student, I had cut down trees infested with bark-beetles, and I even felt proud of being able to do such manly work, bringing down a fifteen-metre spruce right where I wanted it to fall. I tried to remember whether I'd felt any regret for the tree.
I walked over to the birch, which as yet knew nothing of its fate, and looked up into its crown. The sky had cleared, and the yellow leaves seemed to be radiating their own light. I remembered that the captive spirits of innocent maidens lived in birch trees. I could not have put my arms around it. The tree was at least two metres in diameter. I took the axe and drove it into the white bark to make a notch in the side I wanted it to fall towards, then I grasped the saw and began to cut. The saw bit into the wood, the white sawdust spilled out and I breathed in its smell.
As the saw cut deeper into the wood, the trunk resisted more and more. It was its only defence — to squeeze the blade tightly and not let it go. I decided to pull the saw out and start cutting from the opposite side. Sweat was running down my forehead. I took off my jacket and went on
working. The tree groaned and creaked silently. I could hear the terrified, astonished whispering of the leaves in the crown.
I pulled the saw out and rested a while. There were quiet footfalls, and when I looked in the direction they were coming from, I saw a soldier with a gun. He was approaching slowly along a path beside the fence. When he walked past, he looked at me without stopping or even slowing down.
The trunk, now full of desperate determination, was binding the saw blade on both sides.
I hated myself for getting forced into this job. What good is all our surveying? What was the use of us pounding through the corn? Why did I have to take the life of this pure, white tree? Those who obey contemptible orders are themselves contemptible.
But my regret, as often happens in life, had come too late. The tree was already dying.
They called over from the other side of the fence, wanting to know how far through I was, but I didn't answer. I pulled the saw out again, took the axe and began with a fury to widen the cut. Then I pushed against the tree to test its resistance. But the birch was still firm, as though its veins had not yet been cut.
Man has struggled with nature from the beginning, killing animals and clearing forests, but he took life so he himself could survive. We take life so we can erect the works of the age of engineering. We do not kill from an instinct to preserve life, but from an instinct that leads us to extinction.
Gradually, the desperate squeezing of the tree against the blade relaxed, and silently, desperately and for the last
time, the spirit of the tree groaned — then cracked. Its branches clutched at the surrounding trees but could not hang on. The yellowing leaves rained to the ground.
On the opposite slope the surveyors cheered. Now nothing blocked their view. I sat down on my coat while they gathered their measurements.
The soldier returned along the path between the fences. He must have seen the fallen tree, the branches that reached out to the fence, but he was not interested. Like other soldiers, who ignored fallen men and women with arms outstretched to other fences.
When the surveyor reappeared on my side of the fence, it was twenty-five to two. We packed up all the instruments and carried them back to the car. Then the surveyor went to inform the department of special projects of our departure.
He came back, smiling. It seems the factory surveyor had forgotten to tell the guards what we were up to. They wanted to know if there had been any unpleasantness.
I mentioned the soldier pacing up and down inside his wire cage as though drugged, without noticing me, without even registering my existence.
'Can you blame him?' asked the surveyor. 'If I were him, the only thing I'd feel like shooting at would be that fence.'
Mr. K.
Director
Office of Social Security
Prague
Dear Mr K.
In talking to my fellow writers, I have discovered that it is not only my work you have doubted, but theirs as well. I understand that most of them have decided to appeal against your decision and prove that they are artists. In evidence, they are bringing you books, clippings to show that their plays have been presented on various world stages, and even documentation of their literary prizes.
Perhaps you have wondered why I haven't done the same. I could simply declare that such behaviour seems undignified, or proclaim that I would rather accept my fate than rebel against it, and there would undeniably be some truth in that. But I would be lying if I pretended that it is not my wish for people like you to disappear from the positions you occupy in the castles where you ply your contemptible trade. It still remains unclear, however, what to do to make you disappear.
No one, as perhaps even you know, is immortal or invulnerable. Even the most magnificent heroes and demigods, when you take away their impregnable shields, their magic swords and tireless muscles, have their Achilles' heel, their need to touch the earth. Your shield and your sword are your position, raised high not only above the earth, but above all of life, above everything human — not to mention everything just.