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

His speeches were usually lacklustre and soporific; now his words were charged with emotion. If we continue to submit to the demands of the mob, soon no one will be able to stop the forces that have unleashed this whole campaign. They will sweep away the government, they will sweep away us, they will sweep away our whole system, they will set us back a century. Therefore, we must calm people down, not add petrol to the flames. It was a serious error to broadcast shots of the police action. Police intervene like that everywhere in the world.

Someone in the room shouted that everywhere else in the world, they show it the same day on television.

'Yes, they do,' admitted the boss, 'but everywhere else the viewers are more hardened. They're used to that sort of thing.'

Someone in the room began to whistle. Others joined in.

They oughtn't to whistle too loudly, Pavel thought. Halama's prediction was, after all, correct from his own point of view. He feared for the system that had enabled him to be boss, that had enabled them all to work where they were working. If that system collapsed, the television announcers and everyone who stood behind them would be the first to go. He remembered Alice, weeping over what they had broadcast. The beginning of freedom, she had said. But would any of them survive the kind of freedom that was in the air, the kind that he was trying to

support? Fortunately he was too tired to wonder whether he was building a cathedral of freedom, or merely digging his own grave. He tried to slip out of the room, but Sokol caught up with him in the hall and told him that the student strike committee was still in session and that they should go there now.

'They'll be in session again tomorrow.'

'Tomorrow might be too late. Don't forget, everything's at stake now.'.

He'd already heard that once today. And after all, he'd always longed to film freely what he saw, or rather, what was hidden behind what he saw. Why should he squander this opportunity now, when he might not have it much longer?

The drama faculty was housed in a street that bore the name of an old emperor who had left his mark on the city in the past — everything had been at stake then, too. Two students, acting as guards, were walking up and down in front of the building, and they had to wait until they let them go inside. Then they had to wait again until someone from the committee could give them an interview. Meanwhile the students brought them coffee and a tray full of sandwiches. Although it was late in the evening, the lights were still on in all the rooms. Young people were running busily up and down the corridors, computer terminals glowed in one of the lecture halls, and in another female students bent over large sheets of paper, making posters. As soon as the paint on the posters was dry, others would roll them up and take them away. Most of the benches had been removed from the large lecture hall, and a young man with glasses, whose face seemed familiar, probably from one of the demonstrations, was speaking. Students who were interested were sitting in a circle around him, while others had already crawled into sleeping-bags lining the wall at the far end of the room.

Several years ago, Pavel had been invited here to take part in a panel discussion. He had tried to explain, as best he could, not only the technique but also the philosophy behind his work. In the rat race of the present, when people no longer have time to look around them, we have to show

them what they miss every day. This means not always cutting rapidly from image to image, but lingering on things that might seem ordinary to us. Music videos, for example, are expressions of the neurosis that is engulfing us.

They had heard him out and then argued with him. They felt he was attacking music videos because they came from the world beyond the barbed wire. He had felt a veiled hostility in their responses: hostility towards himself and, even more, towards the world they believed he represented.

At last a pale and weary young man appeared, the one they were to interview. Pavel shot a close-up of his face, his moving lips, his reddish eyes. The words the young man spoke were no more than a distant drone. He talked about non-violence, about moral renewal, about the freedom to believe in anything you wanted to believe in, about how they had to grasp the historical opportunity that had just presented itself.

What was an historical opportunity?

Merely a moment when people believed they had managed to disrupt the flow of history and thus open up room for manoeuvre. Whether they had actually done so, or whether they had actually closed something off is a judgement that could only be passed by history itself.

The interview was over. The young man had to hurry back to his committee meeting. If they would like to wait, he said, the meeting would be over in about an hour. Then they would learn more.

Sokol looked uncertainly at his cameraman.

'Sure, we can stay here until morning, if you think it's useful. It's certainly more interesting here than at home in bed.'

He went back into the main lecture hall where the bespectacled young man was still talking. Meanwhile the number of sleepers on the floor had increased. He found a free spot by the wall, folded his coat to serve as a pillow and got ready to stretch out. A student who was lying to his left watched him. 'If you haven't got a blanket, go into number eight. They'll give you something there.' Her clear articulation and her resonant voice suggested that she was an aspiring actress.

'Thanks,' he said, 'but I won't be here long so it's hardly worth it.'

'Then you can have one of mine. I've got two.'

'Thank you, but I really don't need it. I'm warm enough.' She could have been his daughter. Everyone here could have been his child. What would his son have been doing now?

'Suit yourself,' said the girl, and she turned over to go back to sleep. An annoying light filled the room, and the air was acrid with the smell of tired human bodies. For a moment it reminded him of nights in his prison cell long ago, except for the girl beside him. And that strange, almost exultant mood that seemed to bring everyone, including him, closer together. This feeling of solidarity had surprised him. He wasn't prepared for it, and in fact he'd always resisted it — or certainly ever since he'd become aware of the laws that governed life in the prison.

Perhaps if he hadn't gone to prison he might have married and would now have children of his own. Not only did prison teach him that he always had to watch what he said and did in front of other people, but he was out of circulation at a time when his contemporaries were forming relationships, and he squandered the rest of that time when they released him. He'd been driven by a mixture of ambition, anger and guilt about his mother. He'd also been poor. He had wanted to go to university, but his prison record meant that was out of the question. He'd worked as a driver's mate and later got a job in a photography lab, and then was finally accepted on to a correspondence course. During that time, he'd met a lot of women and had made love to some of them, though he'd trusted no one. He hadn't wanted to start a family with any of them, and anyway, most of them already had children. In the end he lost the ability to tell whether he was genuinely fond of a woman he'd met or not. And his son remained unborn.

The door to the lecture hall kept opening and closing, and the sound of many voices mingled and overlapped. A telephone was constantly ringing on the other side of the wall, pulling him back from the brink of sleep.

The day before he flew off to Mexico, he went to his

studio with Albina. It was still afternoon, but they took their clothes off and lay on the couch and made love. Then they drank wine and coffee, made love again, drank more coffee, and she told his fortune from the grounds. She saw precipices and abysses that seemed impossible to scale or cross, and it made her sad. Fortunately, above that she thought she recognized a bird of prey with its wings spread wide. That might be him, and he might fly across the mountains and further still, but would he come back to her? Then she remembered that he had once mentioned a story he was working on and would like to film one day. She asked him to tell it to her.