'And would you like one?'
'You used to sell them, didn't you?' she recalled. Then she said she had never thought of having one. She lived with her mother and they scarcely had enough money to buy the occasional bag of tomatoes. Last year she had planted a few tomato plants on the balcony but they had been attacked by mould and there had been nothing to harvest. She asked him if he liked tomatoes. She asked him the way he used to ask people if they liked caviar or whether they preferred oysters. He replied that he liked them, although in fact he couldn't recall whether he had ever enjoyed them.
He was about to ask her if she found her life depressing, but at that moment he had a sudden spasm of pain and the nurse ran off to find a doctor who gave him an injection that left him groggy.
When he began to come round that night, he realized for the first time, with absolute urgency, that he was likely to die in the next few days. He switched on the light above his bed, leaned over and took the box of slippers out of his bedside table. Underneath the rolled socks lay a fortune that could buy whole wagonloads of tomatoes.
He tidied it all away again and returned the box to the bedside table; the wealth that usually imbued him with a sense of satisfaction was suddenly becoming a burden.
Should he give it to some charity? Or to the hospital? Give it to the doctors who weren't even capable of helping him? Or
to his wife, so she could afford even more demanding lovers and go off skiing somewhere in the Rocky Mountains?
Then suddenly he could see the face of the nurse and hear the sound of her voice that so resembled his mother's. He wondered whether she would be on duty the next day and realized that he hoped she would.
She did come the next day and she brought him a tomato. It was large and firm and the colour of fresh blood. He thanked her. He bit into it and chewed the mouthful for a long time, but was unable to swallow it for fear of vomiting.
The nurse brought a stand over to his bed, attached a bottle and announced: 'We're going to have to feed you up a bit, Mr Burda. You're getting too weak.'
He nodded.
'Does your family visit you?' the nurse asked.
He ought to reply that he had no family, just a wife and three children, but instead he answered that it was a long time since anyone had visited him.
'They'll come soon,' the nurse said. 'That'll cheer you up.'
He closed his eyes.
She touched his forehead with her fingers. 'It's flowing now,' she said. 'God can 'work miracles and cure the sick as well as forgive the sinner. And He welcomes everyone with love.'
'Why?' he asked, and meant why was she telling him this, but she replied, 'Because God is love itself.'
In spite of the strong tablets they were giving him, he could not get off to sleep that night. He was thinking about the strange fact that the world would continue, that the sun would still go on rising, that cars would go on running, that they would go on dreaming up new types of car, that they would continue selling them in the showrooms that his wife would no
doubt get rid of, that new motorways and overpasses would be built, that the Petřín tunnel would be opened, but he would never hear about any of them. That realization was like an icy hand gripping him by the throat. He tried to fight it, to find someone to help him but he had no one to turn to. Then the face of the nurse who had sat by his bed appeared to him, saying that God can welcome anyone with love. God could do it, though he himself had never been able to. That was if God existed. If He did, then at least a little bit of love would reign on earth. He tried to remember those he had ever loved or who had ever loved him. But apart from his mother, who had been dead for thirty years, he couldn't think of anyone. Tomorrow he would ask the nurse where she had come by her belief in God, or in love, at least. Finally he fell asleep. When he woke up in the middle of the night, an absurd idea struck him: he would give the money to the nurse. For telling him those things about God and love. For stroking his forehead even though she knew he was going to die. She was aware of it just as all the others were, but they didn't stroke his forehead.
Then he tried to imagine how she would respond to unexpected wealth. Would she accept it? In his experience, people never refused money. Outwardly they hesitated, but eventually they succumbed. He couldn't just stuff several million into her pocket, though; he would have to ask her to call a notary. He would dictate his will and leave the money to her. What would she do with it?
The following day, instead of questioning her about her beliefs, he asked her 'whether she lived only with her mother, or if she was going out with someone.
She stared in surprise, but she answered him. Her boyfriend's name was Martin and he was a violinist. They had been at a
concert together the previous evening. It had been a performance of Beethoven s D Minor concerto. Did he know it? Did he like it?
He wasn't familiar with Beethoven, even though he must have heard the name some time. He had never had any time for music. There was always music playing in the showrooms, but it was pop music.
She went on to tell him that she and Martin were getting married in the autumn. 'Will you come to our wedding?' she asked.
'If you invite me.'
The next day nurse Věra was off duty, so he had a chance to reflect on whether he had thought things through clearly, and whether his decision hadn't been over-hasty. What if he got better? What if God were to perform a miracle or one of the medicines they were injecting into him restored his strength? Why else would the nurse have invited him to her wedding? She would hardly have been joking with a dying man.
Besides, the sum was disproportionately large, and there was the risk that his gift might make them suspect her of malpractice. But he could make her a gift of some of the money — at least that bundle of 1000-franc notes.
The next day his condition deteriorated but he was fully conscious of nurse Věra coming to him and putting some fresh flowers into a bottle of water, and then bringing over the stand and inserting a needle into his left leg.
'I'll make it up to you,' he said in an undertone.
'The way to make it up to me is by getting better,' she said. Then she opened the window and said, 'Can you smell it? The lime trees are in blossom already.'
He could smell nothing. He just felt an enormous weariness.
He ought to tell her to call the notary, but at that moment it occurred to him that the whole idea was ridiculous: he should simply put a few bank notes into the pocket of her overall. Even that would be a fortune as far as she was concerned.
The nurse stroked his forehead and went out of the room.
The next night Alois Burda died. Nurse Věra happened to be on duty and a few seconds before he took his last breath she came and sat near him and held his hand. By then it was unlikely that he even noticed.
Afterwards the nurse was given the job of removing the possessions from the dead man's bedside table and making a precise list of everything. She did so. The list had eighteen items; number eleven read: One pair of felt slippers with one pair of socks inside. The nurse was surprised at how heavy the slippers were and it occurred to her to take out the socks, list them separately and look inside the slippers, but she didn't as it would mean her adding another item to the list, and besides it seemed pointless to waste time on things that no one was likely to use any more.
When Burda's wife came to the hospital for the death certificate, they handed her a bag of the deceased's property and a list of its contents. His wife ran her eye down the list of things. In the last few years she had grown sick of her husband and the few pathetic items he had left behind sickened her even more. They handed her his wallet and the three hundred crowns. She took the bag and put it in the boot of her car. When she was driving away from the hospital she noticed an illegal rubbish tip. She pulled up in front of it and took a careful look around her. Then she opened the boot and tossed the bag onto the tip.