Pavel nodded. He listened for a while to the passionate speeches, speeches that he would have found entirely persuasive and reasonable were they not being delivered by the very same people who, only a few days before, had been willing to say the exact opposite. During the day, when he had been running from faculty to faculty and freezing on the square, the course of events had apparently shifted so radically that the trend now seemed almost irreversible. That was why everyone was scurrying over to the side of the victors before it was too late.
But who' would testify on their behalf should they all be considered the losers?
We have no witnesses, we have no one to appeal to and our work will be used against us.
He dialled a familiar number. 'Is that you, Ali? You're not asleep yet?'
'No, not yet. I'm reading. I don't even know what time it is. Has something happened?'
'No, nothing. It's just that I can't get to sleep.'
'I'm glad you called.'
'I've been lying here for an hour staring at the ceiling. I see beetles swarming about up there. They're having races. I'm watching them and betting on this angry beetle who's losing and biting the leg of the one in front of him. Then I realized they're not beetles, they're people. I can even recognize their faces.'
'Darling, is something wrong?'
'No, nothing, it's just those beetles. They're closing in on me.'
'Have you been drinking?'
'It's beetles I'm seeing, not white mice.'
'Should I come over?'
'It's too late.'
'But I'm used to that. You know I'm used to night shifts.'
"That's different. But I'd like to see you. I'll drive over and pick you up. At least you'll see I haven't been drinking.'
'You don't have to come for me. I'll take a taxi.'
She was there in half an hour. She kissed him standing in the doorway. 'Aren't you feeling well?'
'Why do you think that?'
'I can tell'
'I'm a lot better now. I suddenly felt I couldn't breathe, but it was just a brief sensation.'
'Should I call a doctor?'
'I can't stand doctors. Only someone afraid to take his own life will put himself in the hands of doctors.'
'Then you should lie down at least.' She made him swallow a pill, then put a cold compress on the left side of his chest.
'The work's been piling up on me,' he said. 'I have to finish everything before I go, and there's so little time left.'
'Don't talk to me about your work, or about going!' She put her hand on his forehead. Her hand was soft and warm and smelt of leaves.
'When I come back, we'll get married,' he said.
'I know. But we don't have to get married. It's not important.'
'Fine. Come and lie down with me.'
'I'd rather sit beside you.'
'Lie down with me. I want you to be as close to me as possible.'
'You want me as close as possible, and yet you're going away to the other side of the world.'
He watched her undress. 'I'll only be gone a month, but if you don't want me to go, I won't.'
'No, I don't want anything of the kind. I just feel anxious. But it's no big deal. It's my condition.'
'There's nothing to be afraid of. I'll come back whenever you want.'
'It's not you who decides when you come back. You
can't just go and leave the rest of them there.'
'I've always made my own decisions.'
'Don't be so arrogant. No one ever makes decisions about himself alone.'
'So who makes them, then?'
'God, or the angels.'
His boss, Halama, was warning them not to get caught up in the mood of the crowds. Of course, we're all trying to improve living and working conditions and achieve greater freedom, but at this moment in time the very foundations of our system are in danger — everything that generations have worked for, that people have not hesitated to give their lives for.
His speeches were usually lacklustre and soporific; now his words were charged with emotion. If we continue to submit to the demands of the mob, soon no one will be able to stop the forces that have unleashed this whole campaign. They will sweep away the government, they will sweep away us, they will sweep away our whole system, they will set us back a century. Therefore, we must calm people down, not add petrol to the flames. It was a serious error to broadcast shots of the police action. Police intervene like that everywhere in the world.
Someone in the room shouted that everywhere else in the world, they show it the same day on television.
'Yes, they do,' admitted the boss, 'but everywhere else the viewers are more hardened. They're used to that sort of thing.'
Someone in the room began to whistle. Others joined in.
They oughtn't to whistle too loudly, Pavel thought. Halama's prediction was, after all, correct from his own point of view. He feared for the system that had enabled him to be boss, that had enabled them all to work where they were working. If that system collapsed, the television announcers and everyone who stood behind them would be the first to go. He remembered Alice, weeping over what they had broadcast. The beginning of freedom, she had said. But would any of them survive the kind of freedom that was in the air, the kind that he was trying to
support? Fortunately he was too tired to wonder whether he was building a cathedral of freedom, or merely digging his own grave. He tried to slip out of the room, but Sokol caught up with him in the hall and told him that the student strike committee was still in session and that they should go there now.
'They'll be in session again tomorrow.'
'Tomorrow might be too late. Don't forget, everything's at stake now.'.
He'd already heard that once today. And after all, he'd always longed to film freely what he saw, or rather, what was hidden behind what he saw. Why should he squander this opportunity now, when he might not have it much longer?
The drama faculty was housed in a street that bore the name of an old emperor who had left his mark on the city in the past — everything had been at stake then, too. Two students, acting as guards, were walking up and down in front of the building, and they had to wait until they let them go inside. Then they had to wait again until someone from the committee could give them an interview. Meanwhile the students brought them coffee and a tray full of sandwiches. Although it was late in the evening, the lights were still on in all the rooms. Young people were running busily up and down the corridors, computer terminals glowed in one of the lecture halls, and in another female students bent over large sheets of paper, making posters. As soon as the paint on the posters was dry, others would roll them up and take them away. Most of the benches had been removed from the large lecture hall, and a young man with glasses, whose face seemed familiar, probably from one of the demonstrations, was speaking. Students who were interested were sitting in a circle around him, while others had already crawled into sleeping-bags lining the wall at the far end of the room.
Several years ago, Pavel had been invited here to take part in a panel discussion. He had tried to explain, as best he could, not only the technique but also the philosophy behind his work. In the rat race of the present, when people no longer have time to look around them, we have to show
them what they miss every day. This means not always cutting rapidly from image to image, but lingering on things that might seem ordinary to us. Music videos, for example, are expressions of the neurosis that is engulfing us.
They had heard him out and then argued with him. They felt he was attacking music videos because they came from the world beyond the barbed wire. He had felt a veiled hostility in their responses: hostility towards himself and, even more, towards the world they believed he represented.