He notices that her shoulders are trembling as if she is on the verge of tears. Are you all right?'
'Yes. It's OK. I'm just cold. I got chilled to the bone there. Feel.' She is now holding the steering wheel with her left hand and stretching out her right to him. He notices a long reddish scar on her wrist. Petr has a similar one. He noticed it the first time he met him in prison. Petr's was redder, being more recent no doubt.
How did it happen?
Life wasn't fun any more.
Life isn't simply fun.
I thought it could be. And what's the point of living if it's not fun?
The simplest questions are the hardest to answer.
But Petr lived. And this one is still living. He touches her hand. It really is cold.
'You could try warming it up,' she suggests. 'I can manage to drive with my left hand.'
She is clearly used to company of a different kind and doesn't realize that it is inappropriate for him to hold hands with a woman he doesn't really know. But he has no intention of refusing her request and so he holds her hand in his for a moment.
'Maybe I'm stupid,' the woman says, 'and you'll explain to me some time how it is that I will die, that my body will be burned to ashes or chewed to the bone by the larvae of some horrible beedes, but that one day it will be renewed and join with my soul which will never die. Have I got it right?'
'Yes and no.' He lets go of her hand but it is as if he can still feel the touch of her in his hand. 'It's not a question of resurrection of the body in material form. Not even Christ when he appeared to the Apostles had a material form, just a spiritual one.'
'You always manage to come up with some explanation,' she says. 'You preachers, I mean. Perhaps it's because you're wiser than the rest of us.'
'We certainly aren't.' He should never have travelled with this woman, and having accepted the lift should never have touched her at all.
2
Diary excerpts
The money from the house has come. Grandad built the house, Dad inherited it, but they took it away from him. And then when they jailed Dad, we lived in poverty. I remember at the time finding a crown coin in the street and thinking to myself that I could buy myself an ice-cream. It was an awful temptation. I even went as far as the sweet shop, but then I resisted and gave the crown to Mummy. It was enough for three bread rolls.
The interest on the sum in the bank amounts to more than ten times my pay. I've sent 50,000 to the Jerome Fund and Bosnia. I've also sent a contribution towards the children's oncology unit. Cancer took Jitka from me and made Eva lose her mummy. People in my family used to die of heart failure. That's how Grandad and Dad died anyway, they were still young at the time. I scarcely remember my grandfather. He was a master violin-maker. We used to have a violin at home that Dad would play when he had the time and wasn't in prison. I probably have Grandad to thank for my musical ear. They say he also used to play beautifully, but they didn't have tape recorders in those days and gramophone recordings would only be made of the greats: Hubermann, Szigeti or Kubelik.
The voices of the people and the violin sounds of those days have been engulfed by silence. These days everything can be preserved but will be forgotten anyway, like the tracts of the Middle Ages. Only those who have become symbols of their times will escape oblivion. But even they won't survive. And besides, what memory preserves are only gross distortions of reality.
I felt nothing when I sold the house, but I think it meant a lot to Grandad An ordinary craftsman from a little village near Karlovy Vary, he had given his only son an education and left him a house in Prague. What will I leave my children?
From the memoirs of Colonel F. about an interrogation at the beginning of the fifties:
Once they drove me somewhere away from Dejvice. It might have been Ruzyně or somewhere else on the Prague outskirts. They staged a partisan trial' with me. They led me there as a 'spy with a bag over my head and my hands tied. . They put a noose around my neck and told me they'd hang me if I didn't confess. I didn't have anything to confess. They put a revolver to my temple. They'd shoot me if I didn't confess. I had nothing to confess. They fired, but it was only a signal pistol and I survived. It lasted several hours. I could hardly stand and was thirsty and probably had a fever. I asked them for water but they ignored my requests.
Dad almost never talked about what he went through when the Communists jailed him. He used to say it wasn't for the ears of women or children. But they used to jail women too, and they even executed one who was entirely innocent. Maybe Dad didn't want us to regard him as a hero or a victim. Maybe he found it painful to think back on it. And maybe he had other reasons.
Magda's class teacher called me in. Apparently Magda and her pal Zuzana had climbed up on to the window-sill during break and poured water on passers-by. She told me she would never have expected it of Magda as she'd always been such a quiet child and she suggested she ought to find another friend.
I asked Magda what sort of fun she thought it was to pour water over people. She said she hadn't poured water on anyone, that she'd only thrown spiders out of the window, and anyway they didn't fall on anyone as they got caught somewhere on the way down.
But you watched Zuzana tipping water on people.
She didn't tip it on people, just on some old woman who's always swearing at us for making a racket in the street.
And some old woman isn't a human being?
But Daddy, she only poured it from a tiny little tablet bottle.
And she started to giggle as she remembered.
I've realized that I've hardly been paying any attention to the children recently. And the times I'm with them I'm either talking, praying or telling them off. It's more of a routine. I don't share their troubles and joys any more the way I still managed to do when Eva was small. I've taken on too many responsibilities and I've also spent a lot of time with Mummy, but there's no point in looking for external reasons, when it's more likely to be as a result of something happening inside me.
If there ever was any flame burning inside me, and I believe there was, it's going out now. I ought to do something about myself and I definitely ought to pay greater attention to the children.
Not long ago I was reflecting on my capacity for intimacy. I'm incapable of taking even my nearest and dearest into my confidence and then all of a sudden I'm telling some strange woman about my
father. I'm telling her things I wouldn't even tell Hana. Did I talk about them out of gratitude for the lift? Or because she reminded me of Jitka?
There was a moment when I was going to say that Dad lived long enough for me to make Hana's acquaintance at his hospital, but I stopped myself. Out of fear of taking her into my confidence, or because I didn't want to mention my wife?
I feel a need to talk about Dad ever since I found his name on the list. I was astounded when I read his name and date of birth among those of informers. My immediate reaction was that it had to be a mistake. How many people who found their close relatives or friends on it thought the same? What do we know of the private distress even of those who are closest to us? I believe he never consciously did anything dishonourable, not in that respect, at least, but I'm not sure that the others share my conviction. I have this idée fixe that they all know about it, that they read the list, noticed his name and are now looking at me and waiting for some explanation. It's up to me to defend him. But what am I supposed to tell them, when I myself hadn't suspected anything at all?