I didn’t know what to tell her. She kept walking with me as if expecting me to say something significant. We were no longer on the topic of changing majors. We talked about literature. She also liked Karel Čapek and Vladislav Vančura and had read a lot of poetry. She loved Pushkin and even recited something about Tatyana from Eugene Onegin. In class she was called Tatyana.
She confided to me that she had composed a few poems. Then we discovered that neither of us smoked or went to pubs, and then she told me that she sometimes felt very lonely. She used to go out with Tomáš, but they didn’t understand each other and broke up. When you’re with someone you don’t understand, it’s worse than being alone. We walked all the way to Letenský Park, where dogs and children dashed about. In the distance we could hear the jackhammers of the construction workers who were building the largest monument in the country, in Europe, and perhaps in the world (I had no idea of Jesus in Rio de Janeiro) — to Stalin. The acacias were already in bloom as well as the early roses. The air was filled with sweet aromas, and I tried desperately not to sneeze.
She said she loved flowers, roses most of all. A short distance from her house was a big park where she often studied.
I asked her where she lived, and she said all the way out in Líbeň. I didn’t have to walk her the whole way home, but of course that was precisely what she was suggesting. But I was afraid my allergies would start up and I would begin sneezing, so I accompanied her only to the tram. The little marketplace near the tram stop sold flowers, and I bought her a delicate little pink rose which, in view of my financial situation, seemed to me a magnanimous gift.
I could see gratitude in her eyes, which were similar in color to mine, and suddenly tears appeared. Her tram was approaching, and she quickly wiped away the tears and thanked me again for the rose. She wanted to talk with me again sometime.
So we started seeing each other. I learned that she almost didn’t remember her father, who had died when she was three, but she could still recall how she would wait for him in the evenings when he came home from work. He would pick her up and throw her into the air and catch her. Tears started flowing down her cheeks again as she told me about it. She told me how she fell in love with Tomáš in high school, and everyone in the class knew they belonged together, but they were actually very different. She was fond of poetry, whereas he preferred sports and engines. He was marvelous at basketball because he was almost two meters tall, and she could never even get the ball into the basket. Besides, such an activity seemed pointless. Why would you like running around a gym or basketball court?
Some days we just sat side by side in silence. At such moments she would peer, unblinking, into my eyes. She would stare at me so lovingly that it excited me more than words (we hadn’t even embraced yet, just held hands a couple of times). She wanted to know if I’d ever been in love, and she asked about my childhood. When I told her about Terezín, tears once again streamed down her cheeks even though I didn’t describe anything particularly brutal. The next day she told me she’d had a dream in which we were wandering down a long, dark tunnel with only a few intermittent flickering lanterns. We kept looking ahead waiting for light, but it never appeared. Then corpses were scattered over the tracks, and we had to step over them, but there wasn’t enough room, and they kept reaching out their chilly hands for us. It was terrifying.
She struck me as delicate, gentle, and poignantly diffident.
Of course, now we sat together in class. When it came time for exams, we studied together, usually in an empty lecture hall and sometimes outside in a park. Once we took a tram all the way to the edge of the city and lay in a meadow somewhere above Spořilov. We were studying for a while, and then she suddenly leaned over and began kissing me. She didn’t say so, but I’m sure she was thinking: since he’s never going to get around to it himself.
Then came summer vacation. She left on a brigade to Ostrava, while I stayed in Prague. We promised we would think about each other every evening at nine o’clock, and she believed our thoughts would meet halfway. We would write as well.
It was out of love for her that I started filling the gaps in my knowledge of poetry. I brought home from the library a bundle of poetry collections, as well as Vítěslav Nezval’s Manon Lescaut. The story of a great romantic love had me enthralled. I immediately identified with the couple from the narrative. Moreover, the rhythm of the verses penetrated into my mind, even my blood, like some rapidly proliferating microbe. For a while I lost my own voice. I wrote my sweetheart a romantic poem two pages long (I wrote it during class). A few of the verses still stick in my mind:
To die, I want to die for your love,
I long to go for a walk with you tomorrow
how distant is black Ostrava,
living without you is like an execution.
My love, my love till death,
now alone somewhere in the shadow of a smelter,
in my soul I stare into your soft eyes,
do something so my heart does not burst apart.
I rambled on about our love, which I compared to a mountain we were climbing together. There above, my dear, stands a castle with 365 rooms,
each created for a night and a day,
may our love be glorified
I was thrilled with my creation, and I was certain it would make an impression on my sweetheart as well. I waited impatiently for an answer.
It didn’t come for a long time. Then I received an unusually cold and curt letter. She assured me that she wasn’t at all lonely. She was experiencing marvelous and utterly new human relationships and didn’t understand how, during this time of labor and constructive activity, I could scribble poetry about some sort of castles in the air so distant from real people and real life. She hadn’t even wanted to mention my poetry, but she thought it only proper to say what she was thinking and feeling. Finally, she had lost the desire to continue corresponding with me.
The first time we were in the same class after vacation, she found a seat as far away from me as she could. She came over during the break to inform me that Tomáš too had been on the brigade, and she had realized she was still in love with him. I shouldn’t be angry. During the trip, she had grown up and come to understand that life is not just poetry but also labor and the happiness that comes from work fulfilled.
*
The accounting with members of the occupying offices, traitors, and collaborationists began immediately after the end of the war. Some of the trials were broadcast on the radio, and the larger ones were written about extensively. Most, however, were summarized in only a few lines that reported that a certain informer was sentenced to death, and the sentence was carried out immediately.
At first I followed the trials with unhealthy interest, but as traitors continued to be uncovered and incriminated in almost exhausting succession, I had stopped paying attention.
But suddenly an extensive and bewildering accusation appeared against a ring of conspirators whose members were leading Communist functionaries. At their head was the general secretary of the party, Rudolf Slánský. Almost all of the fourteen accused were Jews who were indicted of course not for their Jewish origins but for supporting and protecting the activities of Zionists, this reliable agency of American imperialism, for. . allowing the capitalist elements of Jewish origin to rob the Czechoslovak state on a large scale. They were also in league with traitorous elements abroad, which were sheltering Trotskyites. The charges alleged they were attempting to bring back capitalism, committing sabotage, and working with imperialist and Titoist agents. They were also accused of attempting to assassinate President Gottwald. The prosecutor’s speech took up several pages of the newspaper Rudé právo, which demonstrated the tremendous significance we were supposed to attribute to the trial.