I'd like to ask her what she'd been taking, but I'd feel I was prying. So I simply ask her, 'And what cause did he find?'
'Emptiness. Despondency and emptiness.'
'I would never have thought it.'
'Because you always imagined I was so chuffed with myself. But it was only an act I put on for the rest of you. I travelled around with a band and sang on a couple of CDs, but there are thousands of bands like that, and millions more CDs. It makes no difference whether someone buys yours or not, because in a year's
time everyone will have forgotten it anyway. There's nothing worse than taking part in the sort of artistic activity that people couldn't give a monkey's about.' She adds that she envied me my job because it had some meaning — helping ease people's pain — whereas all she did was add to the din that surrounds us on all sides. People applauded her, but they applaud anyone who helps them to stop thinking for a moment about the sort of lives they lead.
'I didn't have a clue,' I say. 'It never occurred to me.'
'We know so very little about each other; we are both engrossed in our own troubles and put on an act for each other.'
'And how did he help you?' it occurs to me to ask.
'He helped me realize what I really feel. And come to terms with reality. To stop looking over the horizon and overestimating my powers.'
'And are you all right now?'
'It depends what you mean. I don't mainline any more. Once in a while I get drunk with my pals and then there are moments, such as after a concert, when instead of being happy I start to cry. I cry my eyes out and then I start to hiccup. And there are other moments when I go and find a boutique and buy myself a pile of useless clothes and end up giving them all away. But apart from that I'm OK.'
I drive my sister home. As we say goodbye we hug each other, for the first time in years.
5
We saw a lynx and in the sky a bird of prey that I identified as a buzzard, but Jirka maintained it was an eagle. Věra sided with me; the rest of them supported Jirka because he's in radio and everyone thinks that radio announcers can't be wrong, although the opposite is true.
I could have argued because Dad and I often observed buzzards, but I didn't feel the need to prove my point in respect of feathered predators.
We have been notching up about twenty kilometres a day We could have managed more but the route was fairly strenuous: through narrow ravines and sometimes up ladders or steep stone steps, and Jirka had to lug a hundredweight of excess fat in addition to a rucksack and a tent.
I expect it was sweltering at the peak but down here in the gorges the sun reached us only rarely and the nights were actually cold.
I didn't talk with Věra any more than with the rest. Once I helped her with her rucksack when we were having to scale ladders, and I would offer her my hand when we had to jump across a fast-flowing stream. Each time the touch of her hand thrilled me; when we used to sit in the cinema or the theatre we would always hold hands and also when I'd visit her at the student residence, where we were alone together. We would entwine our fingers and I would be aware of the blood pulsing through hers — it was a nice prelude to lovemaking.
I tried not to think about lovemaking or imagine us in a naked embrace when she retired alone to her tent each evening. Maybe she was expecting me to join her. If I'd have gone there, I expect she wouldn't have kicked me out. I tried to think about Kristýna, but she seemed so far away. She dwelt in the other world, the world of work and important issues, the world of directors, department heads, police chiefs and subordinates, not to mention files containing denunciations — and where the rotten so-and-sos who wrote them still walk about with impunity.
Here we followed deserted tracks. When we managed to find our way out of the forest we would sunbathe half-naked on the grass, cook on an open fire, sing songs after the meal and, towards evening, pitch our tents; people are bound together when they share something out of the ordinary. I have come to realize that
even suffering or persecution binds people together more than a humdrum existence of peaceful inactivity.
That is something I fear — I'd hate to live that way; I'm excited by everything that appears special or even eccentric. That's why I was attracted to poisonous snakes or the life stories of Hitler and Stalin, for instance. Theirs were destinies like tightened strings. The two of them scaled mountains whose peaks seemed hidden in the clouds, while the foothills were submerged in blood, into which they both eventually plunged.
I don't yearn for peaks reaching up to the sky; the fall from up there is usually fatal. I wouldn't want to stay at the summit for even a moment; it's always a lonely place. They left Stalin lying on the floor in his death agony for hours; they were afraid to climb to the heights where they still saw him, while he was already sprawled on the ground in a pool of his own urine. His greatest rival and also fellow traveller had come a cropper even before he did, falling right into an underground bunker, where in order to escape trial he let himself be shot by his own lackeys. He didn't even get a funeral that some of the millions who had Sieg Heiled him might have attended. Finis coronat opus.
The only sort of fate I'd want would be one that raised me above mediocrity and the void from which death winks. The trouble is I don't know what I might do to achieve it. I generally end up indulging in pipe dreams.
Every moment I'm here I feel that I'm getting further and further away from the life I usually lead. These last few days I've had the feeling that my head is cleared somehow; at last I've been able to see in clear outline everything I've ever set eyes on in my life. I've even been able to see in clear outline what is yet to come.
I have come to realize that the work I do is poisoning my soul. It forces me to concern myself with the despicable dealings of the past to such an extent that I end up not seeing anything else. Each of us has some connection with them, either personally or
via our fathers or mothers. I got the impression that — like in Sodom — there wouldn't be ten just men to be found in our city.
Before I left Prague I tried to compile the city's horoscope for the next century. It predicted the city's downfall in the year 2006. I tried to work out whether this downfall would be due to war or flood, or to something from on high — although water also comes from above. But now it strikes me that it needn't be the sort of catastrophe that destroys buildings, it could equally be a moral downfall.
When I went to bed in my tent on the fifth day of our wanderings I couldn't get to sleep. I seemed to be seized by an inexplicable agitation, a foreboding that something inevitable was going to happen.
Suddenly my tent flap was lifted and I caught sight of Věra in the dim light of the moon.
'Is that you?' I asked, the way I used to ask her not so long ago when we made love, but now the question took on a new meaning.
'It's me,' she whispered. 'If Mickey Mouse won't come to the mountain, the mountain will have to come to Mickey Mouse.'
'I have plenty of mountains here,' I said. But she quickly slipped out of her tracksuit and lay down next to me.
The moon was shining, so a ray of pallid light fell on us through the fabric of the tent. I could hear the murmur of the stream, and close by, maybe right above us, a bird shrieked. We made love and she moaned more than she had ever done in the past; I don't know if it was due to ecstasy, a sense of victory or sadness.
'Do you love me?' she wanted to know. 'Tell me you still love me.'
But I remained silent.