Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light

After work, he would drive to the still-unfinished studio and film mindless sequences in which beautiful models praised detergents they never used, new magazines that they'd never read and foreign cars they would love to drive but couldn't yet afford. They had plenty of commissions, and models as well. Sokol was convinced the models would love to get into riskier, more erotic things than what they had done so far, but Pavel felt that he had already sunk about as low as he was willing to sink.

They called their company Fusorek. Sokol claimed it sounded Japanese and would therefore evoke reliability. Pavel didn't care one way or the other.

At last he saw the speaker. A gaunt old man on an improvised platform was talking with great passion about how he had spent more than ten years in a prison camp, convicted on a trumped-up charge. The judge who had sentenced him was still on the bench today. What kind of justice, he asked, is meted out by those who once defiled the very name of justice? What kind of redress can we expect in a society where most of those who had a hand in the former crimes remain in their jobs? The revolution is not over, much is still to be done; it will not be complete until we cut out the

ulcers that continue to eat away at the body politic.

He saw Little Ivens, who was filming the demonstration.

He was making a short about how people participated in the former crimes, a report on how they were an ulcer that needed cutting. His short will be so good that it will reap praise from those who hold the scalpel in their hands.

2

His mother was lying on the bed with all her clothes on. She'd removed only her shoes. She didn't hear him when he came in.

'Mother!'

'Who's that?'

'It's me.'

'You, Pavel? Where have you been all this time?'

'I had work to do.'

'You're always so busy.' She closed her eyes again. 'And I'm here all alone.'

'Did you sleep?'

'Me? I haven't slept a wink. It's been at least a month, or a year; I don't remember when I last slept.'

He stood in the doorway. The room had not been aired for a long time: his mother was afraid of fresh air.

'Why don't you sit down?'

'Aren't you hungry?' he asked.

'No. That person was here again. Yesterday. He gave me food.'

'What did you have?'

'I don't know,' said his mother. 'I don't remember. I can't remember anything any more. Go on, sit down, but not in that armchair.'

'Why not?'

'There are worms in it.'

'Oh, Mother!'

'I saw them.'

'You must have been dreaming.'

'No, yesterday when that fellow was here to see me,

that do-gooder, he saw them too. He said the armchair should be thrown out.'

'I'll sit on this chair over here.'

His mother reached for the comb that lay on the bedside table and ran it through her thin hair. Recently, this had been practically her only activity. Step by step, reality was receding from her. She was even losing the power of speech and sometimes sought in vain for the most ordinary words. She put the comb down and closed her eyes.

After a while he had made up his mind to get Albina's address. She had moved to a small town and was working in an old people's home. It was comforting to know where he could find her if he wanted to see her. But he never went to visit and he never wrote to her.

Then he was filming a meeting in a large arms factory. When the work was done, he realized that he was close to the town where she lived, and that he could pass through it on his way back to the city without making a detour. The old people's home was situated in a small baroque château on the edge of town. He could have gone in and asked for her, but couldn't bring himself to do it. Next to the château was a park, so he went for a walk.

It was a warm, sunny autumn day and old men and women were sitting on the benches dressed in tracksuits and tartan slippers, their faces turned to the low sun. He found an empty bench, pulled a newspaper out of his pocket and pretended to read.

He didn't know whether Albina was on duty or even whether she was still working here. He should ask. Any one of these old people would have been glad to help. But instead, he sat and waited.

Then he saw her. She appeared in the rear gateway of the château pushing a wheelchair in which sat an old woman wrapped in a brightly coloured blanket. He recognized her petite figure at once, though her features were still obscured by the distance between them. She was walking along the pathway that would bring her to him. Was it an omen? She would certainly have said so.

He felt uncertain, then excited, as though he were waiting for a romantic encounter.

But she didn't come all the way to him. Instead she sat down on a bench and parked the wheelchair beside her. She bent over the old woman, rearranged her blanket and said something to her, but he was still too far away to hear her voice. Then she stood up straight and looked towards the roof of the old house, from which a flock of crows had just taken flight. She didn't glance in his direction at all. Was this an omen, the fact that she didn't even sense his presence, that nothing compelled her to turn in his direction so that she might see him? She would certainly have said so.

He could have walked over and spoken to her! 'Albina, I can't forget you. You are my only hope.'

But he didn't move, merely waited and watched her, and even at that distance he began to distinguish her features, still the same, still alluring. Occasionally an old man or an old woman would walk past and seem to greet her, because she always nodded her head, and he was certain that he recognized her familiar smile.

He had no idea how long they sat there, separated by no more than a few dozen paces. Then she got up, turned her back to him and pushed the wheelchair away in the opposite direction. He waited on his bench a while longer but he knew that he wouldn't see her again, that she would not return.

'Why are you always so silent?' said his mother suddenly. She reached again for her comb and ran it through her hair.

'What is there to talk about?'

'How should I know?'

'What are you interested in?'

'I'm interested in everything. In what you're doing.'

'Eva and I have split up.'

'Is she the one you found in the woods?'

'In the woods?'

'Well — you decided you'd run away from your mother, you went to the woods and that's where you found that German woman. Never a thought for me.'

He said nothing.

'Then you came and started doing — what do you call them? — pictures.'

'Films?'

'Yes, about that big do-gooder.'

'You mean the president?'

'Yes! And about those things that crawl. Is he still alive?'

'Who?'

'That fellow. Mr Do-good.'

'He's alive but he's not president any more.'

'I don't understand that.'

'There's another president now.'

'I don't understand, that he is and that he isn't any more. What are you going to do now that he isn't?'