'All of that's got to go absolutely!' said Halama irritably. As if the rest of it could stay.
He tried to spot the girl with the banner again and couldn't, but he noticed the young man in the check shirt holding his hands over his face. Truncheons thumped and thudded against bodies; there were shouts and curses. Someone behind him sobbed. He turned around, surprised. Halama's secretary was wiping her eyes. Then she quickly shook her head: 'It's nothing, it's nothing,' she apologized, as though she'd done something inappropriate.
A precisely aimed stream of water came pouring out of the water-cannon. More shouting and running, then a rather good close-up of a face streaming with water, hair drenched, eyes blinded.
Pavel looked at Halama, whose narrow lips were drawn tight, his grey face expressing distaste. Was this a response to what had happened? No: more likely to the fact that it had all been captured so clearly on tape. 'Don't even think of using any of this!' he said.
'Why do they do it?' whispered the secretary behind Pavel.
Her question was not directed at him, but it was one he had asked himself. Only now, when someone else asked it, did an answer occur to him. 'They want something different,' he said.
'But they won't get it that way.'
'Maybe they're not after anything in particular at all.'
He turned back to the monitor. He'd managed to take a wide shot of the fleeing crowd. The retreat was so well executed it looked staged.
Almost thirty years ago he too had wanted something different, wanted it so badly he had tried to escape from the country. It wasn't that they'd gone after him with truncheons, like this. Back then, it would have been futile to demonstrate; no one would have turned up. Why had he tried to get out? It was a question he still found hard to answer. Perhaps because his father had left his mother and
he couldn't stand living in a half-empty house. He had also wanted to travel. To see Indians, the Yucatan and the Mayan pyramids. He'd gone to the Mexican embassy and offered to work for them for nothing. They asked him what skills he had. He was good at photography and knew a little Spanish. Unfortunately there are many people like you, they said. If you were a doctor, we might consider you. So he decided to run away, and Peter decided to go with him.
He'd met Peter by chance. They were both taking pictures at the zoo, in the reptile pavilion, when they got talking. Pavel said he'd like to make films about wild animals — lions in the desert, tigers in the jungle, kangaroos in the bush, rattlesnakes or sand vipers sunning themselves on rocks. Peter was more interested in the snake as a symbol. 'The serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made,' he said, quoting the Bible. The snake had seduced man into curiosity, made him long for omniscience, and so it had become a symbol of evil and satanic will, though not everywhere and not to everyone. Peter loved to display his knowledge. Some Egyptian pharaohs wore bronze headbands representing a snake, which they believed would protect them from evil. Some African and Indian tribes thought of the snake as a divine being. Peter wanted to study theology. He was fascinated by every facet of the relationship between man and God, by anything which suggested superhuman power. There was something pontifical in his manner of speaking, as though he were always trying urgently to communicate something. His voice was unpleasantly shrill. It would be a handicap were he to become a preacher, but in the conversations he had with Pavel it didn't matter. The important thing was that he too longed to travel, to visit the Holy Land and Rome, Athens, Corinth, Ephesus and the temples in Luxor and Palenque. The very first time they met, they shared their secret wishes and tried to outdo each other with their knowledge. But neither of them had the slightest hope of seeing what they longed to see, or even of getting beyond the border, for the border was sealed with barbed wire. The wire was a symbol, like the snake. How could you possibly live your entire life,
learn anything, or achieve anything in a country fenced in with barbed wire?
They began to fashion plans to escape. At first it was a game, but gradually they surrendered to the allure of their own longings, those perfectly integrated steps that would take them to their goal. Who had been the instigator of this act that had changed the course of both their lives? He was the more pragmatic and had far more practical ideas. But he also had greater misgivings. Peter was more casual, and besides, he firmly believed, sacrilegiously perhaps, given the implications of what they were preparing to do, that the mercy and love of God would protect them. Peter had turned out to be wrong about divine protection, but his faith had made Pavel start to believe in something as well.
What had he actually believed in then?
That you must not live without purpose, that you must look to the consequences of your actions, live in a way that brings harm or pain to no one. And you must leave some trace of yourself behind, and that trace would be a work of art. At the time he hadn't been entirely sure what form it would take, but he knew he had the power to create it.
The final escape plan seemed brilliantly simple. They would cross the border in the north where there was no barbed wire, continue to the sea, then catch a boat. Stowing away seemed easier than cutting through wire, clambering over a wall or swimming across a heavily patrolled river. Unfortunately it wasn't as easy as they'd imagined. The God Peter thought of as their protector was clearly preoccupied with worries of cosmic dimensions in which the two of them had no place.
The tape was nearly over. All that remained at the scene were the victors, puddles of water and several men looking on from the pavement with professional interest. Pavel tried to fix their faces in his memory. Why? Just in case.
Halama stood up disdainfully. Someone behind him began to clap, and several others joined in. Were they applauding his professional achievement, the victors, the puddles of water or the enemy that had just been dissipated?
All of us applaud on demand, yet we fear everyone.
2
The boy was wearing a black jersey and yellow gym shorts — the colours of a jaguar. A proper goalkeeper's outfit. He was tall for his age but still too short to block a shot placed just below the crossbar.
Pavel stood behind the goal and asked him how they were doing.
'OK, but I've been lucky. They hit the post.' The boy gestured to his right. 'I still haven't had a touch. It's good you've come, Pavel. I never know when to move forward.'
'You have to make up your mind fast. When a sheep or a wild boar starts day-dreaming, it misses the right moment to run away, and the jaguar gets it.' He felt awkward with the boy; he was really talking about his own experience with Peter.
The play moved closer to the goal, and he was glad not to have to talk. When had he ever been able to act quickly, with resolve? They'd caught him once and locked him up, and since then he'd simply tried to keep out of their way. An animal might seem to know when his life or his freedom is threatened, but do people? They think they're running towards freedom when in fact they're rushing headlong into a trap.
'Now! Now!' he shouted at the boy in the black-and-yellow outfit. The boy charged out to meet the attacking players, managed to get to the ball and deflect it off his fist back into the field. He stood for a while at the edge of the box and looked at the retreating cluster of players.
'How was that?' he said when he came back.
'That was great, Robin, you got to the ball first.'
'I need you to stand there all the time and tell me when to move out,' said the boy.
He wanted to tell him that that would only ruin him as a goalie, but he stopped himself.
How old would his own son have been today? If indeed it had been a boy. Whenever he thought about the child, he thought about him as a son. How would he have treated him? Would he have been a good father?