making a night-time foray. Matouš turns away in disgust. He no longer has the feeling of treading the familiar pavement of pink and slate-blue paving blocks, but is instead groping along a narrow jungle path and has even left his machete behind; maybe the fellow in front will hack a way through, but the fellow suddenly disappears underground and Matouš becomes entangled in some sort of creeper from which he can't extricate himself. He sits down on the ground to take a little rest, but then he is horrified to see, dropping down from the branch above him, a gold-coloured snake. The boiga drops on to his chest and strikes. The searing pain forces him to rise from the ground. He shakes off the snake; he ought to run away and get first aid or, instead, just lie down here on the ground and wait for death. To be born is to begin to die! Why resist?
Nevertheless he raises himself up and drags himself through the jungle burdened with pain and the weight of his own body.
Back home he takes a few tablets to ease the pain. The tablets make him drowsy but the pain remains and sleep refuses to come, even though the exhaustion which now seizes him is almost too much to bear.
The solitude in which he spends his life and the purposelessness of everything weigh on his chest and burn more than the snakebite. When he wakes up the next morning after a brief sleep he doesn't get up but goes on lying there in his bed, with linen that has not been changed in weeks. He stares up at the ceiling, listening to the din of the cars and trams outside the window, and it occurs to him that he will never again get up, never again write a single line. Besides, everything has already been written and everything wise has been said long ago, and anyone left striving for wisdom prefers to remain silent.
At midday he eats a piece of stale bread and goes back to bed. At last he falls asleep for a while and when he awakes he remembers his mother who has been dead for eight years and he bursts into tears and cannot tell whether from pain or hopelessness.
He writes:
Autumn approaches
The softness of the snow attends
missing tenderness.
It then occurs to him that in fact he should be feeling liberated: that frightful woman with whom he rashly encumbered his life, that
creature who hadn't the first idea about anything that enlivened the spirit, and was solely interested in the pleasures of the flesh, had finally disappeared from his life.
He brews himself a pot of very strong Malabar from Java, takes out the seven tangram dice of yellowing ivory and makes them into a figure carrying a cup of tea. Is it the figure of a man or a woman?
It is a woman, and her features come into focus before his eyes. Dark hair and dark eyes: that matron has something exotic about her, something brought from far, far away. He recalls the kindly smiles of the Chinese women who welcomed him into the humblest of shacks.
Matous is already drinking his fourth cup; his stomach pain is still there, but instead of dwelling on it he thinks that fate may have sent that foreign-looking yet motherly nurse his way. Alternatively, fate has sent him her way because her husband was coming to the end of his life's journey and the matron would be left on her own.
Matous once more dons the white shirt that he wore so briefly yes-lerday that he didn't have time to dirty it, then puts on a tie, and sets off for the hospital.
At the hospital, they examine him and give him a prescription for some new medicines, reassuring him that the findings are negative and it is just the scar that is hurting. They advise him not to overdo it and to avoid everything that might over-excite him.
Matous then glances into the room where the nursing officer sits. The pastor's wife is there, tidying something in the medicine cup-hoard. When she sees him she smiles and invites him in.
The surroundings are far from intimate. Moreover, the door is open and he hasn't the courage to close it behind him. Still, he sits down opposite her and when she asks him the reason for his visit, he tells her how yesterday he was overcome by pain and today by despair, but since then his hope has been renewed. 'Good fortune follows upon disaster, disaster lurks within good fortune,' he says, without betraying the source of his wisdom.
'You certainly do look a bit poorly,' Hana comments and she too advises him to take care of himself. Then she adds, 'Whenever you're feeling downhearted like that you're welcome to call us or just drop by. My husband might help raise your spirits.'
'I'd sooner come to visit you, Matron. And talking about visits, it's your turn to visit me, isn't it?'
'Take a seat then.' It looks as if both his attempt at flattery and his
invitation have passed unheeded. She asks him if he'd like a cup of tea and when he accepts her offer, Hana takes two cups from the metal cupboard, and after apologizing that she only has ordinary teabags she goes off somewhere. For a moment, Matouš looks around the room in which everything is coldly white; the refrigerator hums quietly and specks of dust swirl in the rays of sunlight. He then takes out his notebook and spends a moment composing a three-liner.
The pastors wife returns with the small teapot from which steam now rises and asks him if he is already back at work.
He explains to her that his work consists of writing something and taking it to an editor. He also tells her that he doesn't really enjoy journalism and has never particularly enjoyed it.
'What would you enjoy doing, then?'
He says he once spent a lot of time studying Chinese philosophy. He found it a source of reassurance when the Communists were in power. Things were bad in China too during the rule of the first emperor of the Ching dynasty. For the first time in history they burned books and ownership of them was actually punishable by death. But the emperor died and ying — the spirit of conciliation and love — was restored. He has also translated and written verse, he tells her. He would like to publish his poems, but whereas in the past it wasn't possible because his poetry was not sufficiently optimistic or politically committed, nowadays no one's interested in publishing poems, unless he pays them to. He opens his notebook and reads out his newly written tercet:
Even the river
will melt when over the waves
flash flocks of black coots.
Matron Hana nods. She is unlikely to see anything poetical in the statement, let alone realize he wrote the lines to impress her. She used to read poetry, she says, but it was a long time ago, these days she doesn't have the time.
'These days nobody has the time,' Matouš says. 'Either for poetry or for living. Life rushes on and from the emptiness one knows one falls into the emptiness one doesn't. And what will one leave behind here? You will leave behind children. But what will remain after me? A bed, a couple of dictionaries and books and a few tattered clothes.'
'Everyone leaves something behind,' Hana disagrees, 'providing they've lived decently. And those poems of yours,' she recalls, 'I'd like to read them now I know you.'
'I'll bring them to you, or I'll show them to you when you visit me.'
At that moment, some nurses burst into the office and Hana no longer has any time for him, nor, clearly, can she pay him attention.
So Matouš gets up and as he is leaving suggests that he might wait lor Hana at the gate.
'But I won't be finished for nearly an hour,' Hana objects. But that is not the sort of objection that would put him off.
But just for a moment,' Hana says when they meet. 'You know they're waiting for me at home.'