Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light

What did you tell them?'

'That it's a pretty decent piece. It's such a big piece of cloth it can't even be measured. They wrote that down. They can measure very exactly. They have special instruments. They measure it and they cut it. That's what they're there for.'

'Should I read you something?'

'I don't know. What time is it?'

He got up. His books were still in the bookshelf. There were some novels and even several volumes of poetry. He'd got those from Albina. She'd given him poetry, but poetry wasn't his kind of reading. He couldn't concentrate on the lines or look for hidden connections between the metaphors.

He picked up a book from the little table. It was last year's Protestant almanac. He leafed through it for a while, looking for an appropriate text, but nothing caught his eye and so he began to read poems at random.

Then he looked into his mother's face.

She was oblivious.

Where is your soul, your wretched soul, your light, Mother?

2

He stopped again at the studio to see his boss. Halama had already seen the tape. 'Good work,' he said. 'Obviously sympathetic. Maybe one day that will go down in your favour.'

'I just did it the way I always do. I can't control the expressions on people's faces.'

'It depends on who you shoot, and when.'

'There are faces you could look at for a year without ever seeing an intelligent expression.'

The boss laughed drily. 'Did you hand in all the tapes?'

He shrugged his shoulders.

'I know, it doesn't matter a damn. They had their own cameramen there anyway. I saw that video journal of theirs. Pretty soon we'll have two news broadcasts, two governments and two countries in one. Unfortunately, their video journal is better than ours. Not technically. But at least there's something to look at.'

'I could do that too.'

'Of course you could,' said the boss, 'if I didn't get in your way. Maybe you should work for them. It will count in your favour one day.'

'I don't need anyone to count anything in my favour,' he said angrily. 'Either I'm recognized for what I can do, or they can shove it.'

Halama had stopped listening. He rummaged through some papers for a while and then said, 'It looks as though they're going to loosen up, let us show more things now. Get some ideas together, put them on paper and we'll see.'

What is or is not allowed on television is mainly decided by Halama himself, Pavel thought. But he's only one card in a house of cards. Like me. One card goes and the whole house collapses. Doesn't he know that?

'I've got lots of ideas.'

'So, put them down on paper for me and submit them.'

'I think I'll wait a bit.'

'If you're sure they won't get stale.'

'Maybe just the opposite.'

'By the way, you're doing that meeting in the chemical factory. Think about what I've said. And if they get into a real discussion, try not to scare them. And since you're going to be there anyway, I've heard that people's lives are at risk in the aniline dye plant.'

'All our lives are at risk.'

In the flat he had been coming to for the past two years as if it were home, the woman to whom he behaved as though she were the mother of his son, although the real father lived behind the door next to their bedroom, was waiting impatiently for him. The boy was ill. He had a fever, and she couldn't get through to the emergency clinic on the phone.

'All right, I'll take him.'

'Are you sure you wouldn't mind? I don't know what else I can do.'

The boy lay in his room, his face flushed with fever. He tried to smile. 'We're supposed to be playing the last game of the season tomorrow.'

'You'll play in a lot of games yet,' he reassured him. 'What kind of an idea is this, to get so ill?'

'I must have got a chill during practice.'

'It's rotten weather,' Pavel said. 'And there's more crap in the air than a body can stand.'

As it turned out, the emergency clinic had a new telephone number (she might have thought of calling information), and the doctor had just gone out on her rounds. Robin's teeth were chattering with the fever, so he drove him to the hospital to save time. The hospital emergency ward was empty, and the nurse went to call a doctor. The boy sat leaning against his mother's shoulder. Eva stroked his damp hair. She clearly loved the boy, but what was her relationship with Pavel?

He was a man who slept with her and brought her money. He was a man who brought her money, and for that was allowed to sleep with her.

Whom did he love?

His father was dead and his mother was becoming a wooden puppet.

Where was Albina now? She might be only a few steps away. He'd have to walk over to the wing of the hospital where she worked. 'I'll wait in the car,' he said to Eva.

'You'll be cold.'

'I don't like hospital waiting-rooms. I'll turn the heat on in the car. Then at least we'll be warm on the way back.'

He would have time to go to the surgical wing. He would open the door, enter the brightly lit corridor and wait until the nurse came.

'Are you looking for someone?'

'I wanted to ask — a while ago there was a nurse working here, Valentová. Albina Valentová.'

'Albina? No, I can't say. I haven't been here long.'

'Of course, it was quite a few years ago. She must have left long ago. I just thought someone here might know where she was now.'

'Our matron might know. Or you could ask in the personnel department tomorrow. They should be able to help.'

'Thank you. I'll do that.'

Next day, in the cottage, it was still raining. 'I understand you,' she said suddenly over breakfast. 'When I was little and I'd done something wrong, Mother locked me in a cupboard in the basement.'

'Was that in India?'

'No, we were back home again by then. It was an

ordinary cupboard, but there were all sorts of bottles on the shelves and they seemed to be giving off light. I was terrified of those bottles. And I was afraid that a headless knight or some other ghost might burst into the room. I was too ashamed to shout but I cried and waved my arms to frighten the spirits away. Then I got the idea of closing my eyes and imagining that I'd escaped and was outside, in the garden, or the park.'

'It's good when you make up your mind to escape.'

'I could only do it in my head.'

'Could you do that now?'

'But I'm happy to be here with you.'

'We could run away together.'

'If you want. If it's too claustrophobic for you here.'

'What country would you choose?'

Eva and the boy came outside. 'It's pneumonia.' Eva looked terrified. 'We've got some antibiotics.'

'You'll be fine in a couple of days,' he said, stroking the boy's hair.

'You're so kind to us,' she said while he was driving back to the place he happened to be living in at the moment. 'We'll never forget this.'

3

One of the managing directors was waiting for them outside the main gate. The television vehicle couldn't go inside the factory grounds yet, he announced apologetically. The exhaust first had to be fitted with a protective wire mesh. Meanwhile, they could have a tour of the plant in his car. He could show them what they might eventually film, but he had to warn them that this amounted to practically nothing because practically everything was secret.

'We'll find something interesting,' Pavel said and he introduced his assistant, a man everyone called Little Ivens.

The iron gates were rusty, and a layer of white dust covered the ground. There was a sharp, acrid smell of ammonia in the cold air.

The manager opened the door of his car for them and warned the film crew that smoking was strictly forbidden throughout the plant. He hoped their cameras didn't give off sparks, he said with a dry laugh, and that their lamps would not explode. 'You know,' he said, waving his hand in the thick, stinking atmosphere they were breathing, 'sometimes all it takes is a spark.'