from the way she’d imagined, also that what we had together couldn’t have been devoid of some meaning, that some part of it might cast a light into our future lives, that I would never hide that light in myself – but I felt that all words were pointless and in vain, that I was perhaps improperly comforting myself and her.
After two days I posted the letter. As the flap of the postbox dropped back I was conscious of the familiar old vertigo getting hold of me.
I knew that I’d never see her or hear her voice again. But from time to time, in the middle of the night I would start up from my sleep and with my fingertips touch her high forehead, and feel a strange distant pain enter into me, and then a soft snapping sound. My net was tearing, I had no idea how many threads were still left, but there couldn’t be many.
I should have liked to know if the man in the window experienced anything similar, whether he felt a sudden sense of relief from this unexpected meeting. I thought that he might step out of his frame, open the window and perhaps ask us in, or at least wave to us with his flower, but this would probably have disturbed something delicate and mysterious that was extending between us, between me and him, he would have crossed that invisible, barely perceptible boundary that divides art from mere tomfoolery, so that I was actually glad to see him remain motionless.
‘They don’t know what to think of next,’ was Mr Rada’s judgement on what he’d just seen.
His remark seemed unfair to me. Before beginning to judge and condemn one another, people should do more to understand one another.
We got back to the office. I thought that perhaps that little idiot Franta might already be inside, but it was the same woman as always. She accepted my vest from me, returned my ID card, and handed out my final pay to me.
‘You’re right,’ Mr Rada said to me in parting, ‘we’re not here to judge others.’ But I was sure he was thinking of his brother rather than of the strange artist.
I followed him with my eyes. He stopped at: the bus stop. He was a tall, well-built man, with just a slight stoop, as if he were carrying a load on his back. Even if he took on his burden for others he possibly took it on needlessly. Who can see into the soul of another person, even the one closest to him, even his own son or his brother who was like a son?
I might still have caught up with him, but just then the bus came along and he got on. I probably wouldn’t see him again, nor would I meet his brother, unless I found myself in his care.
It occurred to me that I might spend the banknote I’d just earned, my last swept-up fifty crowns, in some festive way, and so I walked down into Nusle, where there are lots of shops.
In a little market they were selling flowers. My daily wage was just sufficient for five chrysanthemums. I chose three butter-yellow ones and two amber ones, colours my wife was fond of. At home I put the bunch in a vase and placed it on her table. I picked up the shopping bag with my lunch, which she had prepared for me in the morning, and set out to visit Dad at the hospital.
He opened his eyes, saw me, slightly moved his lips in an attempted smile, and closed his eyes again. He’d hardly spoken these past few days, either it tired him out too much or else he didn’t think anything was sufficiently important for him to utter aloud. The last time he spoke to me he recalled that my mother used to reproach him for devoting too little attention to me, for not looking after my upbringing enough. But surely you didn’t expect any sermons? he asked. And I said hurriedly that he’d always been a model to me, the way he lived and, above all, the way he worked. After all, I stayed with you lot, Dad said. His eyes misted up with tears. I understood that hidden behind these few words was some long-past difficult decision, perhaps even a sacrifice.
I unscrewed the stopper of the thermos flask and put a little custard on a spoon. Without opening his eyes Dad swallowed a few mouthfuls. Then he said: I had a fall today and couldn’t get up. And the sister, the pretty one, shouted at me to get up at once, she wasn’t going to lift me up. Tell me, how can a woman be so wicked? Dad fell silent for a long time. Suddenly he opened his eyes: D’you remember that hat of mine flying off on that bridge? What a laugh that was! He again closed his eyes. I said I remembered, but he no longer heard me.
As I tidied his things in his bedside table I noticed his little notebook. Day after day he’d entered in it, in an increasingly shaky hand, his temperature and the medication he took. The last entry was three days old and I couldn’t make out the numbers. My throat was constricted by pity. I stroked Dad’s forehead and left the ward. Outside I didn’t make for the main gate but walked down a narrow path to the back entrance. The path wound between overgrown lawns, past the morgue. Immediately behind the morgue was a huge heap of broken bricks, rusty cans and shattered infusion bottles, also a rusting old electric motor, maybe one of those for which Dad had calculated the design. He’d spent whole days and evenings calculating motors. When I visited him I’d be afraid to disturb him in his work. And so we hurriedly covered what news there was in the world, and in our lives, but about the most important thing, about our sojourn here, we talked very little.
Round the bend in the path appeared an orderly, pushing the metal cart into which the dead were placed. I used to push that cart too. I gave him a wide berth, but I couldn’t get rid of the thought that he was making for that refuse heap in order to tip out his load there.
I returned to the wooden footbridge.
The train roared past beneath us, the hat flew off and jerkily sailed down in clouds of smoke.
Dad laughed and I felt happy. It was a moment of total proximity, a touch of something linking our lives, and nothing has effaced it or soiled it over all these years.
Dad was bending down low and fished out his hat, all black with soot and grime. He was not afraid to put it on his head, he gave me one more wave of his hand and walked away still laughing.
V
The alarm went off at six o’clock, my wife and my son had to get up to go to work. I ought to get up too. Dad died two days ago and I should go and see his pupils at the Academy and get one of those he was fond of to speak at his funeral. And yesterday afternoon I received a package with the drug I’d written off for some time ago for that youngster Stycha, I ought to give it to him as soon as possible. I hadn’t written off for any drug for Dad, there was probably no such thing.
By now it was too late to catch my mates in the changing room anyway. If I had any time left, I’d find them at the tavern during their mid-morning break.
On the final day of Dad’s life Peter and I left for the hospital first thing in the morning. It was a Sunday and there were only two nurses on duty in the department. One of them told me that ‘it could happen’ at any moment.
Dad was lying in his bed, his lips slightly open, breathing heavily. The pauses between breaths seemed to me incredibly long. His eyes were firmly shut. He hadn’t eaten or drunk anything for two days, his veins were so torn with punctures that they couldn’t feed him artificially any more. I tried to give him a spoonful of sweetened tea but at first he was unable to swallow it. When he finally managed it I could see that it had taken all his strength, and that another drop might make him choke. The last drop of hope had dried up, vanished in the dust. All I could do was to mop Dad’s lips and tongue with a piece of moistened cotton-wool. Then I sat down by his bed and took his hand, as he used to take mine when I was a little boy and he was taking me for a walk to the airfield. My grown-up son was standing in the door, crying.
Then suddenly Dad breathed out, but he didn’t breathe in again. I could see the terrible effort of his lungs, as they strained to catch another breath, his faced closed up in a grimace of such pain that it went right through me. What kind of son was I if I couldn’t even give him a tiny puff of breath?
I got up and in my mind begged: Lord, receive his soul, you know how good it was! Then I walked out in the corridor, deserted on a Sunday, and all around there were walls, and one more wall, quite thin, transparent but nonetheless impermeable, was slipping between that moment and everything that preceded it.
In the room next door my son was listening to the news. In Colombia, on the very day my father died, a volcano erupted. The red-hot lava melted the snow and ice in the neighbourhood of the crater. The water together with the ash produced a flow of mud which rushed downhill into the valley, where it engulfed human habitations. It was estimated that twenty thousand people remained buried under the mudslide.
