Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light

He could hear chanting down the square: 'We want truth! We want truth!'

The little boy shouted something too. His voice was lost in the swell of other sounds, but he seemed to be joining in the chant.

What was truth?

Sokol had now turned his microphone to a young man in blue overalls.

Until now the belief had been that truth was what you found in the pockets of workers' overalls, under miners' helmets and in the heavy gloves of steelworkers.

The young man announced that his workmates in the factory supported the students. He'd come here to demonstrate for genuine socialism.

What did he understand by that?

Justice, free elections. Not to have the police beating innocent people. The right to travel.

The demonstration was almost over. When he was carrying his camera to the car, he finally saw a familiar face, and smiled broadly. 'Alice, what are you doing here?'

'Surely you didn't think I'd be sitting at home at a time like this?'

They walked together down the square. The crowd was gradually thinning out.

'Do you remember that time, long ago, right here. . when we first met?'

'Yes. It was far more hopeless then. That was the beginning of the darkness.'

'Do you think the light is coming now?'

'You don't think it is?'

He shrugged. 'I have almost no time to think now. We're filming from early morning into the night. As a matter of fact, I haven't had a thing to eat since breakfast.'

She put her arm through his just as she had twenty-one years ago, except that then there were three of them.

They found an empty table in a small restaurant just below the square. A television in the corner of the room was still showing the demonstration. 'You've done a tremendous job,' she said, gesturing towards the television set. 'People who can't come to the city will learn what's really going on.'

'Did you leave Peter at the castle?'

'I haven't seen him for about three days. He simply vanished. He's in meetings somewhere.' She didn't seem anxious to talk about him.

'What about the children?'

'They're with their grandmother. We're taking turns. It's her turn to come here tomorrow.'

You're being very responsible about it.'

'But there's so much at stake,' she said. 'It's about how we're going to live from now on. If we lose now, we'll lose the opportunity for years to come. You don't see it that way?'

'I told you, I don't have time to think.'

You're making excuses, Pavel.'

You say "if we lose". Who are "we"?'

'"We" means all of us, doesn't it?'

'All the people can't lose all the time, and all the people can't win all the time either.'

'It would never occur to me to look at it that way.'

'I'm not looking at it any way. I'm only saying that usually some win and others lose. Sometimes it turns out that the ones who lose are those who thought they had won, and vice versa. '

You're being disgustingly objective about this, or at least you're pretending to be. Doesn't any of this concern you?'

The waiter put two glasses of wine on the table. 'Will you be leaving your castle now?' Pavel asked.

'Probably. If all this works out. But to tell you the truth, I can hardly imagine leaving. And anyway, I asked you a question: what about you?'

Why was she asking him? Was it out of interest in him? Or was it rather with a sense of malicious satisfaction that now it would be his turn to suffer for a change?

'It does concern me. Don't you think I want to work freely? What I don't know is: will I be able to work freely if things do turn out well?'

'Do you think you've lost the knack?'

'I hope not. But what if the winners decide to include me among the losers? What can I do then?'

'You're talking nonsense. You'd finally do what you do best and you'd do it the way you wanted to.'

Perhaps she was genuinely interested in him after all.

'If only. If only you were making the decisions.' He paused. 'It would be nice. But I can scarcely imagine it myself. I haven't even thought about it much. I'm not in the habit of thinking ahead. I've spent so long up to my neck in the present. It was like a spider's web with a lot of spiders in it, not just one. They lay in wait for you at every corner of the web. Once you got caught in it you couldn't get free. And they didn't suck your blood right away, they'd just very slowly wind you into their web: they'd approve this, censor that, come down on you for showing something that shouldn't be shown, or for not showing something that should have been shown. They'd involve you in meetings, briefings, political training sessions where you were told how to work by people who'd never done anything in their lives. If you told them what you thought of them, you'd be fired on the spot. Sometimes I thought I couldn't take it any longer.'

'But you took it.'

He nodded. He still wanted to find a way to vindicate himself in her eyes. He explained that the world could not be neatly and clearly divided by a line that separated good from evil, that separated him from her. 'When I was in Mexico we got to see a television studio,' he said, recalling an incident that had brought this truth home to him. 'They showed us their fantastic equipment. Their network is well

endowed and it's in a wealthy neighbourhood. We thought we might be able to find a spot nearby to get a view of Popocatepetl. So we walked up a hill past magnificent villas and luxurious haciendas and all of a sudden, it was as though we'd stepped over an invisible borderline. We found ourselves surrounded by shacks nailed together from old crates and sheet metal. The paving came to an abrupt end and the streets were a sea of mud with lots of children wading in it. Some of them shouted at us and begged for money; an adolescent mestiza invited us into a shack that didn't even have a door. Then a little girl in tattered rags ran up to us. She was barely four, and she held out a wilted flower, a chrysanthemum or something, and tried to sell it to us. That's when I thought that no matter where you are, you get tangled up in some kind of spider's web that you can't get free of.'

'Wait a minute, look at this,' she said, interrupting him.

They were now broadcasting a clip of the student demonstration that had started the whole thing. It showed the moments before the police attacked: a phalanx of men in uniforms with plastic shields protecting their faces, a crowd of students singing the national anthem, girls sticking flowers in the policemen's shields. There was no movement, each side waiting for the other to advance, young men and women sitting on the ground with burning candles set on the paving-stones in front of them, chanting: Our hands are empty! Then the phalanx of policemen began to shuffle forward. The first frenzied punches. Screams of pain, and then the noise of crunching blows, angry shouts, the pounding of boots on the pavement, the cries of the beaten.

Alice sobbed. There was absolute silence. Everyone was looking at the screen. Once it was over, Alice wiped her eyes. 'That was awful,' she said quietly, 'But the fact that you broadcast it, that's. . it's the beginning of freedom.' She embraced him. For a moment all he could see was the dark blue of her eyes, which were again full of tears.

Back at television headquarters he went straight into the garage, where a very emotional meeting was just winding up. They were discussing, as they had been constantly

over the past few days, whether future demonstrations should be broadcast live. The management were still refusing to allow this. Most of the technical staff, as Little Ivens told him when he sat down beside him, were making live broadcasts an unconditional demand, otherwise they were prepared to go on strike. 'Are you going to get up and say something?'

'I don't know what's already been said.'

'It's obvious we should do it live. After all, we broadcast every stupid hockey game live,' said Little Ivens.