Impatiently, he tears the wrapping off the first parcel. A golden padlock tumbles out of the box. At first, it looks like an ordinary lock, but he cannot find the keyhole. He explores the lock carefully with his fingers. The box will certainly contain a set of instructions to help him find the opening mechanism, but he derives great satisfaction from discovering how these things work by himself.
Sometimes he imagines himself changing the locks of his residence during the night. Then he will summon the impostors that swarm around him — the doctors, the valets, the gardeners, the bodyguards, the ministers, the chauffeurs, the cooks, the secretaries and the waiters — and invite them all into one room. He will then excuse himself, leave the room and lock them in. He will also lock the door in the hall and the gate at the main entrance. Now, let them call for help, or telephone out, or shout through the window; let them break down the doors. But before they
manage to raise the alarm, he will have walked freely through the gate and vanished into the forest, and it will be a day or two before they find him.
He hears footsteps in the corridor and quickly puts the lock aside and looks guiltily at his hands. They are smeared with oil. He wipes them and then holds them behind his back.
The valet appears in the doorway. 'Comrade President, the Comrade Chancellor has arrived,' he says, his face expressionless.
'Let him wait.'
'In two hours, you must be at the airport. The Comrade Chancellor urges you. . '
'I know. Let him wait.'
They never give him a moment's peace. They have sophisticated ways of harassing him, of wearing him down. And just now, when he was ready to begin work. 'Let him wait!' he repeats. Let them all wait, including the nigger who doesn't care about meeting him anyway. All he's interested in is women, or what he might be able to squeeze out of them. They call it extending credit. Credit extended to eternity, and never otherwise. Everything we do here is forever, and meanwhile death knocks on the armour-plated gate.
He walks heavily up the side staircase.
In the library everything is spotless. Not a sign of yesterday evening. He remembers sitting here, but who was he with? They've done this to him deliberately. Whenever he drinks a little, they always remove the evidence of what he did, so he can never find out what happened, never know who he talked to, about what. On the writing-table they have arranged his briefing papers, as they always do. On top of the pile is a small note written in an unfamiliar but legible hand:
Dear Comrade President,
As you requested, allow me to remind you that you wanted to see the director, Mr Fuka, whose film about the rattlesnake hunters in Mexico you enjoyed.
There was no signature, of course. Who could have
forged this? Who is leaving him messages like this without having the decency to sign them? Unless the person assumed he would recognize his handwriting, or remember asking for a memo. He does have a vague memory of something like that.
He opens the folder and finds another message.
Dear Comrade President,
If you'll allow me, it was your express wish that I remind you to consider the request for clemency submitted on behalf of the hijacker Bartoš.
Again, no signature. This is beginning to annoy him. Someone has infiltrated his study and forged these shabby little memos. Now that he thinks of it, though, he does have a dim recollection of a film about rattlesnakes. He remembers a scene in which some half-naked savage was holding a repulsive snake in his hands. As he watched he thought of his poor wife. She would certainly have been fascinated and would have wanted to invite that native to see her. But why was he expected to grant clemency to a director? Had the director stolen something? Or had the snake bitten him? Had he not come home, and then changed his mind and wanted to get back into the country? Such things happened. Hadn't a well-known singer had the same problem? He had simply telephoned him and told him all was forgiven. But then he remembered another criminal who had hijacked someone. He would never dream of pardoning him.
The memos were probably slipped into his papers by his mortal enemies to confuse him and then trap him.
He closes the folder again and then suddenly, he remembers. The valet! Yesterday evening his favourite valet was sitting here with him. But why would he be concerned about the life of some criminal elements? Evidently, he was only passing on someone else's request. All over the world, there was always a tremendous outcry whenever one of his sworn enemies ended up behind bars. How concerned they all were about who was in jail! They even protested when ordinary criminals and murderers were locked up. That's what really irritates him
about these self-righteous critics: they invoke the law in regard to those who have never hesitated to break it. He knows these criminals: he has shared prison cells with them and paced concrete prison courtyards with them. They can't tell him these people are innocent victims.
He's incensed. As if he didn't have other things to worry about besides the lives of a few nobodies. As if violence had never been perpetrated on others. As if they had never sentenced anyone to death themselves. And what do you have to say, gentlemen, about those sixty miners lost underground, or those five hundred women working in the aniline dye factory who are gradually dying of cancer? Someone should stand up for them. But what can he do when the world pays good money for those dyes? All his ministers and his bankers, all those people who are just waiting for him to make a wrong move, would pounce on him at once for depriving the state of the necessary dollars.
But they don't hesitate for a moment to bring him those poor wretches covered with white shrouds. Like those little babies: how many have they already brought him, and how many are yet to come? He doesn't know. In the northern coal basin, every eighth child is born dead, and soon it could be every fourth child. All those poor little creatures who died from inhaling that terrible smog saturated with poison. Who stood up for them? Who sent protests in their defence?
All these unfortunates could have submitted requests for clemency. They were the true innocents, but they didn't ask for a reprieve; they did their duty. They were simple working people, heroes, patriots, waiting silently for someone to stand up for them.
The learned minds in the Academy of Sciences are predicting a day when a sufficient supply of energy can no longer be guaranteed. A freezing day when the generators in the electrical plants give up, and the trucks that bring bread to the cities won't start, and people don't go to work and are trapped, imprisoned in their freezing homes with nothing to warm themselves with and nowhere to run to. All they will be able to do is put on their overcoats and rush into the streets, where they will loot the shops and
rampage through the cities in mad terror and rage until they come to the Castle, where he will still hold power, and they will demand that he feed them and give them warmth. He will live to see a time when he can no longer show himself to the people whose welfare he has desired, whom he has served for so many years, because he will have nothing to offer them but the end, nothing but slabs of wood on which to lay out their dead.
People everywhere are waiting for someone to stand up for them, to fulfil both their hidden desires and public demands, to fill their stomachs, house them, provide them with heat and light and water and air, grant them clemency and guarantee them a feeling of security forever, but his powers are only human, stretch them as he might. And he's surrounded by enemies, imprisoned among pretenders who doggedly wait for him to make the fatal mistake, wait for his fall, wait for his end.