Tomas ran the idea quickly through his mind. Amnesty to political prisoners? Would amnesty be granted because people jettisoned by the regime (and therefore themselves potential political prisoners) request it of the president? The only thing such a petition would accomplish was to keep political prisoners from being amnestied if there happened to be a plan afoot to do so!
His son interrupted his thoughts. The main thing is to make the point that there still are a handful of people in this country who are not afraid. And to show who stands where. Separate the wheat from the chaff.
True, true, thought Tomas, but what had that to do with political prisoners? Either you called for an amnesty or you separated the wheat from the chaff. The two were not identical.
On the fence? the editor asked.
Yes. He was on the fence. But he was afraid to say so. There was a picture on the wall, a picture of a soldier pointing a threatening finger at him and saying, Are you hesitating about joining the Red Army? or Haven't you signed the Two Thousand Words yet? or Have you too signed the Two Thousand Words? or You mean you don't want to sign the amnesty petition?! But no matter what the soldier said, it was a threat.
The editor had barely finished saying what he thought about people who agree that the political prisoners should be granted amnesty but come up with thousands of reasons against signing the petition. In his opinion, their reasons were just so many excuses and their excuses a smoke screen for cowardice. What could Tomas say?
At last he broke the silence with a laugh, and pointing to the poster on the wall, he said, With that soldier threatening me, asking whether I'm going to sign or not, I can't possibly think straight.
Then all three laughed for a while.
All right, said Tomas after the laughter had died down. I'll think it over. Can we get together again in the next few days?
Any time at all, said the editor, but unfortunately the petition can't wait. We plan to get it off to the president tomorrow.
Tomorrow? And suddenly Tomas recalled the portly policeman handing him the denunciation of none other than this tall editor with the big chin. Everyone was trying to make him sign statements he had not written himself.
There's nothing to think over anyway, said his son. Although his words were aggressive, his intonation bordered on the supplicatory. Now that they were looking each other in the eye, Tomas noticed that when concentrating the boy slightly raised the left side of his upper lip. It was an expression he saw on his own face whenever he peered into the mirror to determine whether it was clean-shaven. Discovering it on the face of another made him uneasy.
When parents live with their children through childhood, they grow accustomed to that kind of similarity; it seems trivial to them or, if they stop and think about it, amusing. But Tomas was talking to his son for the first time in his life! He was not used to sitting face to face with his own asymmetrical mouth!
Imagine having an arm amputated and implanted on someone else. Imagine that person sitting opposite you and gesticulating with it in your face. You would stare at that arm as at a ghost. Even though it was your own personal, beloved arm, you would be horrified at the possibility of its touching you!
Aren't you on the side of the persecuted? his son added, and Tomas suddenly saw that what was really at stake in this scene they were playing was not the amnesty of political prisoners; it was his relationship with his son. If he signed, their fates would be united and Tomas would be more or less obliged to befriend him; if he failed to sign, their relations would remain null as before, though now not so much by his own will as by the will of his son, who would renounce his father for his cowardice.
He was in the situation of a chess player who cannot avoid checkmate and is forced to resign. Whether he signed the petition or not made not the slightest difference. It would alter nothing in his own life or in the lives of the political prisoners.
Hand it over, he said, and took the sheet of paper.
14
As if rewarding him for his decision, the editor said, That was a fine piece you wrote about Oedipus.
Handing him a pen, his son added, Some ideas have the force of a bomb exploding.
Although the editor's words of praise pleased him, his son's metaphor struck him as forced and out of place. Unfortunately, I was the only casualty, he said. Thanks to those ideas, I can no longer operate on my patients.
It sounded cold, almost hostile.
Apparently hoping to counteract the discordant note, the editor said, by way of apology, But think of all the people your article helped!
From childhood, Tomas had associated the words helping people with one thing and one thing only: medicine. How could an article help people? What were these two trying to make him swallow, reducing his whole life to a single small idea about Oedipus or even less: to a single primitive no! in the face of the regime.
Maybe it helped people, maybe it didn't, he said (in a voice still cold, though he probably did not realize it), but as a surgeon I know I saved a few lives.
Another silence set in. Tomas's son broke it. Ideas can save lives, too.
Watching his own mouth in the boy's face, Tomas thought How strange to see one's own lips stammer.
You know the best thing about what you wrote? the boy went on, and Tomas could see the effort it cost him to speak. Your refusal to compromise. Your clear-cut sense of what's good and what's evil, something we're beginning to lose. We have no idea anymore what it means to feel guilty. The Communists have the excuse that Stalin misled them. Murderers have the excuse that their mothers didn't love them. And suddenly you come out and say: there is no excuse. No one could be more innocent, in his soul and conscience, than Oedipus. And yet he punished himself when he saw what he had done.
Tomas tore his eyes away from his son's mouth and tried to focus on the editor. He was irritated and felt like arguing with them. But it's all a misunderstanding! The border between good and evil is terribly fuzzy. I wasn't out to punish anyone, either. Punishing people who don't know what they've done is barbaric. The myth of Oedipus is a beautiful one, but treating it like this… He had more to say, but suddenly he remembered that the place might be bugged. He had not the slightest ambition to be quoted by historians of centuries to come. He was simply afraid of being quoted by the police. Wasn't that what they wanted from him, after all? A condemnation of the article? He did not like the idea of feeding it to them from his own lips. Besides, he knew that anything anyone in the country said could be broadcast over the radio at any time. He held his tongue.
I wonder what's made you change your mind, said the editor.
What I wonder is what made me write the thing in the first place, said Tomas, and just then he remembered: She had landed at his bedside like a child sent downstream in a bulrush basket. Yes, that was why he had picked up the book and gone back to the stories of Romulus, Moses, and Oedipus. And now she was with him again. He saw her pressing the crow wrapped in red to her breast. The image of her brought him peace. It seemed to tell him that Tereza was alive, that she was with him in the same city, and that nothing else counted.
This time, the editor broke the silence. I understand. I don't like the idea of punishment, either. After all, he added, smiling, we don't call for punishment to be inflicted; we call for it to cease.
I know, said Tomas. In the next few moments he would do something possibly noble but certainly, and totally, useless (because it would not help the political prisoners) and unpleasant to himself (because it took place under conditions the two of them had imposed on him).
It's your duty to sign, his son added, almost pleading.
Duty? His son reminding him of his duty? That was the worst word anyone could have used on him! Once more, the image of Tereza appeared before his eyes, Tereza holding the crow in her arms. Then he remembered that she had been accosted by an undercover agent the day before. Her hands had started trembling again. She had aged. She was all that mattered to him. She, born of six fortuities, she, the blossom sprung from the chief surgeon's sciatica, she, the reverse side of all his Es muss sein! -she was the only thing he cared about.