Once I was quarrelling with a boy of my age — I must have been nine or ten at the time — and the boy hurled at me, 'Anyway, your dad's an old lag!' We had a fight over it, but that accusation stuck in my memory. It's true that Mum told me Dad was totally innocent and in fact he was a hero, but what if she was just saying it? And what if people around me didn't know?
Dad seldom talked about the camp, although on a couple of occasions he told me how cruelly he had been treated at interrogations. He only mentioned one of his torturers. He went by the
name of Rubáš, but no one knew what his real name was. This man was particularly cruel; he would wake my father up night after night, and while he was interrogating him he would beat my father on the hands, the soles of his feet and his back when he refused to divulge anything about his friends. He ordered Dad to be put in a punishment cell where it was close to freezing, and instead of a blanket he was given a stinking mouldy rag. 'Just so you know what you're worth,' was his reply when my father complained.
I wanted to know what had happened to the ruffian, but Dad had no idea. They all disappeared, he told me, and he definitely had no desire to meet them. But I imagined tracking the brute down one day. I would watch out for him on one of his walks and then tie him up, chloroform him and carry him back to Dad on my back, the way Bivoj brought home the wild boar in the legend. Then let Dad do with him what he liked.
I could tell Dad all my secrets as I knew he'd never try to interfere in my life.
When he was dying I used to sit with him at the hospital. The day before he died he said, 'Don't worry, I'll fight it.' He didn't moan although he was in pain and wanted to go on living. When it was all over I cried like a little boy, although I was almost twenty-three.
The moment I accepted the job at our Institute I thought about him. I'm sure he'd have been pleased that I want to do something about restoring justice to its rightful place in the world. I still had the same plan: to find those who landed him in prison and the ones who interrogated and tortured him. I'd imagine the moment when I'd perhaps stand face to face with them and demand that they explain and defend their behaviour.
It wasn't at all easy to fulfil that resolution. I wasn't the one who chose the individual cases I worked on — they were assigned to me. And the further one looked back into the past the more difficult it was to look for information; and even when I turned up names
in our files it didn't mean I would find the people they belonged to. It was as if they had disappeared from the face of the earth, or it was that the threads of their lives had been severed again and again. And even when I managed to retie some of them or root out new addresses and places of employment, I would discover that the thread had been severed for good, years before. And instead of meeting the scoundrel face to face, I'd find myself in a graveyard.
On the contrary, it was Mum who made demands on my life, particularly after Dad died, and I've resisted them. Only rarely have we spoken together about matters of importance. I didn't even tell her about breaking up with Věra, even though they knew each other and Mum was already sizing her up as a future daughter-in-law. I haven't even told her about my new love; I expect it would alarm her.
I find it impossible to say what attracts me to Kristýna. It's probably something subconscious. It's as if she reminded me of some encounter in the distant past, so distant, in fact, that it may not even have taken place in my present life. But it was an encounter that must have made an indelible impression on me.
We're poles apart in terms of age, profession and personality. She's educated — a dentist with an adolescent daughter — and she told me she suffers from depression. She warned me that she is insufferable when she's down. She smokes. She enjoys wine. I drink wine only rarely and I've never even tried smoking, probably on account of Dad.
I bring her roses.
'You're crazy,' she said the last time. 'Why should you offer me flowers?'
We were sitting in the wine bar again. We're still in the phase when we share important details about our lives. She told me about her father, who was a Party busybody whose activity she despised, and about her sister, who is a professional singer: apparently she predicted Kristýna would die by her own hand. She also
spoke without anger about her ex-husband, whom I esteem and she loved; I think she still loves him, although she won't admit it. I was also struck by her date of birth.
The thing is, I'm more and more convinced that the position of the planets is important for our lives, but I'm also beginning to penetrate the mystery that numbers have for us. When she mentioned that she was born on the day Stalin died, it struck me as an odd or even fateful coincidence.
The Soviet despot seems to me like some dreadful Titan: not one born from the blood of Uranus, but one constantly being reborn from the blood of his murdered victims. Although he died long before I was born, I am constantly being reminded of the crimes of some and the paltriness of others as I encounter them daily in the files I deal with. I'm convinced that his death reopened for part of mankind a door that was firmly locked against human dignity, tolerance, justice and compassion. To be born on the day of his death meant entering the world on one of the most mpmentous days of the twentieth century.
Kristýna also told me that her grandmother and all her relatives on that side of the family died in the gas chambers and that she was unable to reconcile herself with the fact that there were people who could poison others in their thousands, even babies and infants. I thought she would burst into tears as she was speaking about it; I could see she was crying inside over those murders of long ago and over the atrocities committed against her relations.
Was it possible to live in such a world? She had nothing to expect from life: she really expected nothing. From the way she assured me of this I sensed that, on the contrary, she still lives in expectation, she teeters on the borderline between expectation and despair. If despair prevails she could well put an end to herself. I think she is one of those who would not fear to take that step.
But she is afraid of me. She is afraid to come closer. We fear each other and yet we also attract one another.
But we have to live, I told her, in order to make discoveries, for
instance. To share them with others and pass them on. We have to strive so that justice doesn't disappear from the earth, or at least so that love should govern our lives.
'That's not a matter of at least,' she objected. 'But which of us is capable of it?'
She was expecting me to say that I could, that maybe together we both could, but I didn't, because she was right: I don't know anybody who could.
She has sunshiny hair almost down to her waist; it gives her a little-girl look, but her gaze is sad. She has the bearing of a queen. I find her sadness arousing. I longed to touch her, to caress, at least, those hands that radiated tenderness, but at the same time the thought seemed to me sinfully improper, as if it would mean crossing some barrier, breaking some taboo, whose violation would provoke divine retribution.
We drank a whole bottle of wine together, although I had only one glass. As we were saying goodbye she hesitated for a moment. I realized that she was waiting to see whether I might suggest we met again, or that she herself was about to make a similar suggestion. But we suppressed our urges and said nothing. I expect it would be more sensible never to see each other again.