On the odd occasion that they met by the lift in the hallway, she would hold the door open for him until he had manoeuvred himself in. As the lift went up, the old man would keep his gaze fixed on her. Several times she thought he was about to say something to her, but he apparently thought better of it or realized that he wouldn't manage to say all he wanted to by the time they reached his floor. Once she found him carrying a large box. When the lift stopped at the sixth floor, she helped him carry the parcel to the door of his flat. As soon as he opened his door, a mixture of organic and chemical smells wafted towards her. From inside the flat she could hear a parrot squawking and a fat tom-cat came and rubbed up against the old man's legs. The man started to thank her and she quickly said goodbye. As she was closing the door behind her she read his name on the door. It struck her that he must have been a very good-looking man in his youth. Everything about him was powerful, but most of all his hands, neck and chin. He still had a thick head of hair, even though it was nearly white. What had happened to him to make him need crutches? Then she stopped thinking about him.
The very next day she met him again in front of the flats as she was coming home from work. He greeted her and she smiled at him. She met him three more times that week — an odd coincidence, if it was a coincidence. On the third occasion, he was carrying a bunch of roses and as he was leaving the lift he handed them to her.
'But you can't have bought them for me!' she protested.
'Maybe I did,' he said and hobbled out of the lift.
The scent of the flowers filled her with a sense of vague expectation. When she put them into a vase she could not help smiling at her own feelings.
She baked some tarts for the weekend and set some aside, putting them in a chocolate box and then wrapping the box in tissue paper.
The old man lived in a single room that was more like a workshop or studio. Alongside a work bench stood a wooden press and a guillotine whose blade pointed upwards and made her feel queasy. Along the walls there were untidy heaps of books and papers. And the shelves and chairs were piled high with things too. The tom-cat was sleeping on the divan surrounded by a heap of discarded clothes. She noticed a number of unframed paintings — old-fashioned, romantic subjects that seemed out of keeping with the newness of the painting. Only then did she become aware of a painter's easel and on it a portrait in progress. She stared in consternation at the unfinished face. There could be no doubt: it was her own.
'I never studied painting,' she heard him say from behind her. He laid the box she had brought him on a table without opening it and hurriedly started to clear one of the chairs. 'I spent my whole life binding books. This is a new thing. I was attracted by the way you looked. You have so much noble beauty. Unfortunately I'm unable to capture it. There's something of our Slav forebears in you. .' The chair was now empty but she did not sit down. She apologized for arriving unannounced and quickly left.
Back in her own flat she rushed to the mirror and gazed at herself for a moment before realizing that in reality her eyes were much smaller than in the painting. She tried to open them as wide as she could and smiled at her reflection.
The next day she picked up her son from kindergarten in the early afternoon as usual. Matous talked incessantly. She
usually enjoyed his mixture of childish notions, make-believe and actual experience but today she found she was unable to concentrate. When in the distance she caught sight of the old bookbinder waiting in front of the flats she took her son to the sandpit so that she could go into the building on her own. He greeted her and hobbled after her into the lift. 'I tidied the place up today,' he announced to her as soon as the lift started to move. 'Wouldn't you like to drop in for a minute or two?'
Her portrait was now covered with a clean sheet and the clutter had disappeared from the chairs and the divan.
After all there was nothing wrong in visiting an old invalid who was obviously lonely. She sat down by the window in order to keep an eye on the sandpit — and also to conceal her embarrassment. She refused his offer of refreshments.
The bookbinder laid his crutches aside and sat down with difficulty. For a moment he gazed at her mutely, but then started to ask her questions. Was she happy with her life? What sort of childhood had she had? Had she chosen her profession because she enjoyed being with children? It was his belief that people who looked after children fulfilled a noble mission.
His language was slightly overblown but what impressed her most was his interest in her life. A sudden sense of intimacy filled her with alarm and she swiftly made her excuses and hurried off to find her son.
She would call on the old bookbinder from time to time and bring him some cakes she had baked. For his part he would present her with either books or flowers. She read the books but they meant little to her as their subject matter was too far removed from her usual reading. She never stayed longer than a few minutes in the bookbinder's flat, but those short moments increasingly began to fill her thoughts.
She now knew everything about the bookbinder's life that he considered important for her to know. He was sixty-five. He had moved there from a village where his sister still lived. Originally he was to have taken over his father's farm, but in the last days of the war his leg had been blown off by a mine and he had almost bled to death. At the age of twenty he had felt that his life was at an end. In time, however, he had come to realize that there were doors still open to him, in spite of his misfortune. Doors to knowledge and mystical experience. All he had to do was muster the strength to break free of the external world with its passions and strivings and start to open the door to a higher bliss, to the vision of God. One door did remain closed. He could never start a family of his own. As the years went by, he gradually lost those close to him and he lived out his days in solitude, only visiting his sister during the summer. He was usually away at this time of year.
'Why are you still here, then?' she asked.
'But you know perfectly well why,' he replied.
It sometimes occurred to her that he made rather too much of the tranquillity and contentment he had achieved. She had the feeling that the equanimity on which he laid such stress merely concealed a deep longing as well as the wounds he had suffered in the distant past. At other times, she found his statements completely baffling. She could not understand his enthusiasm for the religion of the ancient Aryans and the mores of their Slav forebears, nor why he suspected the Jews of conspiring against all other nations. She didn't know any Jews anyway, let alone any Indians, and the concerns or practices of the ancient Slavs were alien to her. None the less she listened attentively to the old man as if wanting to make up for all the years when no one had listened to him.
At the end of spring, her husband was due to leave Prague for a week on business: whenever she thought of his departure she felt a thrill, though she wasn't quite sure why. The evening after Jakub s departure, she waited until her son was asleep and then changed into her best clothes. She sat down in front of the mirror and gazed at her face for a long time. She tried to apply some eyeshadow but her hands trembled too much. Instead she went into the bedroom where her son was sleeping, kissed him on the forehead and then tiptoed out onto the landing. The noise of television sets was audible as she passed the other flats, but when she lightly pressed his doorbell it seemed as if the sound could be heard through all thirteen floors.