Ivan Klima - Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light

Dear Comrade President,

As you requested, allow me to remind you that you wanted to see the director, Mr Fuka, whose film about the rattlesnake hunters in Mexico you enjoyed.

There was no signature, of course. Who could have

forged this? Who is leaving him messages like this without having the decency to sign them? Unless the person assumed he would recognize his handwriting, or remember asking for a memo. He does have a vague memory of something like that.

He opens the folder and finds another message.

Dear Comrade President,

If you'll allow me, it was your express wish that I remind you to consider the request for clemency submitted on behalf of the hijacker Bartoš.

Again, no signature. This is beginning to annoy him. Someone has infiltrated his study and forged these shabby little memos. Now that he thinks of it, though, he does have a dim recollection of a film about rattlesnakes. He remembers a scene in which some half-naked savage was holding a repulsive snake in his hands. As he watched he thought of his poor wife. She would certainly have been fascinated and would have wanted to invite that native to see her. But why was he expected to grant clemency to a director? Had the director stolen something? Or had the snake bitten him? Had he not come home, and then changed his mind and wanted to get back into the country? Such things happened. Hadn't a well-known singer had the same problem? He had simply telephoned him and told him all was forgiven. But then he remembered another criminal who had hijacked someone. He would never dream of pardoning him.

The memos were probably slipped into his papers by his mortal enemies to confuse him and then trap him.

He closes the folder again and then suddenly, he remembers. The valet! Yesterday evening his favourite valet was sitting here with him. But why would he be concerned about the life of some criminal elements? Evidently, he was only passing on someone else's request. All over the world, there was always a tremendous outcry whenever one of his sworn enemies ended up behind bars. How concerned they all were about who was in jail! They even protested when ordinary criminals and murderers were locked up. That's what really irritates him

about these self-righteous critics: they invoke the law in regard to those who have never hesitated to break it. He knows these criminals: he has shared prison cells with them and paced concrete prison courtyards with them. They can't tell him these people are innocent victims.

He's incensed. As if he didn't have other things to worry about besides the lives of a few nobodies. As if violence had never been perpetrated on others. As if they had never sentenced anyone to death themselves. And what do you have to say, gentlemen, about those sixty miners lost underground, or those five hundred women working in the aniline dye factory who are gradually dying of cancer? Someone should stand up for them. But what can he do when the world pays good money for those dyes? All his ministers and his bankers, all those people who are just waiting for him to make a wrong move, would pounce on him at once for depriving the state of the necessary dollars.

But they don't hesitate for a moment to bring him those poor wretches covered with white shrouds. Like those little babies: how many have they already brought him, and how many are yet to come? He doesn't know. In the northern coal basin, every eighth child is born dead, and soon it could be every fourth child. All those poor little creatures who died from inhaling that terrible smog saturated with poison. Who stood up for them? Who sent protests in their defence?

All these unfortunates could have submitted requests for clemency. They were the true innocents, but they didn't ask for a reprieve; they did their duty. They were simple working people, heroes, patriots, waiting silently for someone to stand up for them.

The learned minds in the Academy of Sciences are predicting a day when a sufficient supply of energy can no longer be guaranteed. A freezing day when the generators in the electrical plants give up, and the trucks that bring bread to the cities won't start, and people don't go to work and are trapped, imprisoned in their freezing homes with nothing to warm themselves with and nowhere to run to. All they will be able to do is put on their overcoats and rush into the streets, where they will loot the shops and

rampage through the cities in mad terror and rage until they come to the Castle, where he will still hold power, and they will demand that he feed them and give them warmth. He will live to see a time when he can no longer show himself to the people whose welfare he has desired, whom he has served for so many years, because he will have nothing to offer them but the end, nothing but slabs of wood on which to lay out their dead.

People everywhere are waiting for someone to stand up for them, to fulfil both their hidden desires and public demands, to fill their stomachs, house them, provide them with heat and light and water and air, grant them clemency and guarantee them a feeling of security forever, but his powers are only human, stretch them as he might. And he's surrounded by enemies, imprisoned among pretenders who doggedly wait for him to make the fatal mistake, wait for his fall, wait for his end.

And they dare bemoan the fate of a violent criminal!

Thank goodness there are still people to be found who can take his mind off these things. Like the fellow who made the film for him about hunting rattlesnakes. One of the rattlesnakes reared up and rattled and blinked its tiny eyes, just like his chancellor. He should command the chancellor to watch the film as well. Let him see it. Let him learn something.

The chancellor waddles into the room, little snake's eyes, the legs of a chicken, a leonine mane smoothed smoothly back, large protruding ears. 'I suggest we speed things up, Comrade,' he hisses with his snake's voice. 'We must depart soon, in an hour.' And he gestures vaguely towards the leather folders.

The chancellor carries on talking, dispensing advice and instructions. A walking textbook, this treacherous rattlesnake with the legs of a chicken. The capital city is Omba (or Bomba — he didn't quite catch it, and it's beneath his dignity to ask). They can offer us uranium, cocoa beans, cotton and copper; the prime minister studied law at Cambridge, even if he is black, from the Bantu tribe. Now be careful: the Bantus have an ancient culture, they even have their own literature, epic poetry. Avoid mentioning

law; talk about the economy instead. Remember they give us uranium, copper, cotton, cocoa beans. We give them trucks, cannons, tanks, chemicals. Don't say anything against God, avoid ecclesiastical politics, music is a possible, the prime minister plays the piano, is fond of the romantics — Grieg, Beethoven, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, Liszt. Stay away from modern painting in our own country. Advisable to talk about the struggle against colonialism. The prime minister has a special custom: once a month he has a complex court case presented to him, along with appeals and petitions for pardon. He summons the disputing parties, hears the case himself, offers his opinion or grants clemency as the case may be. This practice has won him acclaim both among his own people and abroad. He has suspended the death penalty, so it's advisable to avoid mention of our own practice.

And then there was the recent accident at the explosives factory. A while ago, when a whole building blew up, he had ordered the management to take strict measures to avoid a recurrence. Instead, they merely rebuilt the roofs so that when an explosion did occur, the roof would blow off and the walls would remain intact. Of course there was another explosion, and they all went through the new roof — the nitroglycerine mixers, the entire saltpetre section, eight fifteen-year-old apprentices, the warehouse workers and a car park full of lorries and drivers and drivers' mates — all of them lifted into the air in a single instant, transformed into ashes and smoke, atoms of human matter scattered in all directions by a whirlwind. Not a single recognizable particle of any of those people was ever found. The officials were refusing to issue death certificates, and the president would have to intervene personally, visit the place himself and put medals in the hate-filled hands of weeping widows and angry widowers and, in this way, confirm the deaths as heroic, the victims as heroes of labour, as warriors in a common cause, the cause of the people, of the most forward-looking system in history, for which so many have already laid down their lives.