everything's going to be all right again. The touch of his mother's hand stroking his hair.
Matouš realizes that it is a long time since he visited either his mother's or his father's grave. That's bad. It is one's duty to pay respect to those who gave one life, and his mother was the only good woman he had met in his life. Then Matous's thoughts stray once more to another woman, to Nurse Hana, and he realizes that he misses her; he misses her voice and her smile, he misses a mother's love.
At last he gets up, opens the refrigerator and finds in it a piece of dry salami and gobbles it down. Then he opens a can of goulash and with his fingers he fishes out pieces of meat from the unpleasantly smelling sauce before throwing the can into the pedal bin which emits a swarm of flies the moment he opens the lid.
He takes a shower and puts on a clean shirt.
For weeks now his poems have lain waiting on the table in a black binder. He has chosen almost two hundred of them, precisely one hundred and eighty-seven of them, in fact: the ones he feels sure are successful. He resists the temptation to open the binder and read at least the best ones once more — he knows them by heart anyway.
He lifts the receiver and hesitates for a moment before dialling the number of the manse. Luckily enough, the minister's wife answers the telephone.
He announces himself, but apparently she cannot recall his name, as she says: 'I expect you want to speak to my husband. I'm afraid he's in hospital.'
The nurse's voice is unusually sad.
'Anything serious?' he asks.
A heart attack.'
'I hadn't heard. I'm sorry to hear it, Hana. And how is he?'
'Thank you. I think he has got over the worst of it.'
'I'm glad to hear it.' Nurse Hana is wrong, because she believes in some medical gadgetry and doesn't realize that her husband's life force is fading. She doesn't realize she will come into his wealth. It is unlikely she gives it a thought. He therefore says once more, 'I really am glad to hear it, you must have been very worried.'
'I expect you're calling about your poems,' the ministers wife recalls. 'You promised me them ages ago.'
'Only partly. I just had the feeling all of a sudden that something had happened to you, that something was troubling you and I ought to give you a ring.'
'Troubling me? Oh, yes, there's always something troubling one.' The minister's wife remains silent for a moment and he says: 'Everything will be all right again, you'll see.'
'Nothing will ever be the way it used to be,' says the minister's wife and Matouš makes out a quiet sob. Then that good woman forces herself to turn her thoughts from her own distress and ask him what his poems are about.
He says that it is impossible to say in a few words. They are attempts at capturing his moods, but he wouldn't like to bother her with them now, not unless his poems might bring her a little comfort.
Yes, that's something she would need at this moment. From the tone of her voice Matouš recognizes that Hana's thoughts are divorced from her words. None the less he tells her that poetry is there to console. Like music. Or meditation. Or prayer.
'If you like, and if you happen to be passing, you're welcome to drop by with them,' the minister's wife decides all of a sudden.
'Right away?'
'If you like. I have to visit my husband this afternoon.'
'Thank you, matron. I'll come in time to spend a little while with you. After all, you visited me when I was feeling low.'
Matouš is suddenly full of energy. He puts on his most expensive, pure silk tie — a golden Chinese dragon against a blue background — and carefully combs his thinning and already grizzled hair. Then he puts into his briefcase the black binder containing the one hundred and eighty-seven poems that will perhaps, be published after all, just as he might eventually hope to receive some love or at least understanding. At the kiosk by the tram stop he buys three white carnations.
The minister's wife opens the door and thanks him for the flowers before inviting him in. She is pale and her eyes are red, either from lack of sleep or crying. If Matouš were to be taken to the hospital, or if he actually died there, who would weep for him?
Matouš asks after her husband s health once again. Hana is making coffee and in the process she gives him some of the details in a succinct and matter-of-fact way. Her husband is getting better; if things continue the way they have gone so far, he could be home in two weeks.
He is being well looked after in the hospital and he is even in a side ward now, with a bedside telephone.
Matouš has the impression that her description of her husband is all a bit too professional, as if the sorrow in her face was related to something other than her husband s illness.
'So there's no point in upsetting yourself, Hana,' he says. 'In any case, you won't change fate by upsetting yourself.'
'Don't you think so? There are things I can't tell you, anyway.' The minister's wife pours the coffee into pink cups.
'All the more reason not to upset yourself,' Matouš repeats. 'We have to take life as it comes and realize that everything will pass away one day: pain and joy, and in the end ourselves too. Because what are we compared to the sky and the stars? Or even to a tree? At least within trees there is peace, whereas we just wriggle around in the throes of passion, rage, longing and betrayal.'
The matron sips her coffee. She looks away from him. Then she says: 'You're not like I thought you were.'
'In what way?'
'You're more serious.'
'We all have several faces. And we generally conceal the real one from other people.'
'I always thought there were people who didn't conceal anything.'
'And don't you think so any more?'
'I've never concealed anything,' she says, avoiding an answer.
'Everyone conceals something,' Matouš objects, 'we all have some secret or other.'
All right. I've never done anything I would have to conceal.'
Matouš is now convinced that the source of her distress is not merely her husband's illness. Some duplicity or other has shaken her faith in human goodness. 'I'm sure that you would be incapable of harming anyone,' he says. 'I have never deceived anyone either.'
He looks at the woman opposite; there is still sorrow in her face, but also kindness. All of a sudden it is as if he was transported back whole decades: his mother is waiting for him with his lunch and asking how things were in school and he is starting to speak, complaining about his fellow pupils for mocking him or even beating him up. Matouš starts to take the minister's wife into his confidence. He doesn't speak about his travels, or about his real or imagined experiences in foreign parts, he speaks about himself, how he was deceived by women he
loved, and most of all by the latest one, whom he took into his home and whom he divorced only yesterday.
Matouš starts to lament over his own goodness of heart and the ingratitude that has been his reward. He also talks about everything he had wanted to achieve in his life, but how he had managed almost none of it, because the world is not well disposed towards people like him, people who don't elbow their way through life, who lack both influence and property. The world is not wise — it respects strength, not decency and honesty. It's not interested in real values. People want to have a good time and live it up, regardless of what they destroy in the process.
The matron listens to him, the same way his mother used to. He has the feeling she agrees with him; subconsciously, Matouš is expecting this nice little lady, this good woman, to rise and come over to him, stroke his hair and say: Stop complaining, Mattie, and pull yourself together, everything's going to be all right again!