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

Sokol, who was sitting beside the driver, turned to her. 'Too bad you didn't say that on camera.'

'Anyone will tell you that any time,' she said. 'Too bad it took you so long to come to us.'

'We would have come sooner, but they wouldn't have broadcast our footage. And maybe you wouldn't have spoken this way either.'

'Perhaps,' admitted the student. 'Everything in its own good time.'

The van drove out of the city, but they had to go slowly because the road was veiled in mist. The girl leaned her head on the boy's shoulder and closed her eyes.

'What are you studying?' Pavel asked the young man.

'As a matter of fact, just what you're doing. I mean I'm studying to be a cameraman.'

'That's good. You can take over from me, if necessary.'

'Why not?' he said. 'It would be more interesting.'

'What do you mean?'

'I couldn't stand your programmes, any of them. Whenever they turned the television on at home, I'd leave the room. Now here I am, riding in the same car as you.'

'Maybe we found it even more disgusting than you did,' said Sokol. 'We had even more reason to.'

'But you did it,' objected the student. 'Even so, you did it.'

'You went on studying too,' said Sokol, 'even though you knew they were poisoning you.'

'That's an interesting comparison. But it's not quite the same thing.'

'Maybe you'll be able to do everything better now, when you take over from us,' Pavel interjected.

'I hope so, otherwise I wouldn't want to touch it.'

That's what you say now, Pavel thought, when you have a hope that things will change. But he said nothing. He lit another cigarette and looked out into the impenetrable fog.

He too hoped that things would change. People like this student would come to replace him because he was one of the poisoners. And he would acquiesce because in the end, he too wanted everything to be done better. So this was what the beginning of freedom was like. If it would not be for him, then at least it would be for his unborn son.

2

The cameras were set up, the writing-desk lit. The old man held in his hand some sheets of paper from which to read. He seemed gaunt, tired and old. Nevertheless, his voice was as harsh and domineering as ever. 'Can we begin?' He clearly wanted to get this over with. A resignation forced upon him by popular demonstrations in the streets, by a people who now eagerly awaited his final humiliation.

'Two more minutes, Mr President.' Pavel also wanted to get it over with, even though no one would see him doing it. He had not wanted to see this man at close range again, though it would probably be for the last time. 'Who else but you?' they had said.

'Stand by, Mr President!'

The old man sat down, pulled out a handkerchief and blew his nose. He was obviously feeling very emotional. When they had elected him head of state years ago, he had been moved to tears. Many others across the country had no doubt wept too, from despair or shame. But most had looked on, as Pavel had, with merely curious or shocked indifference.

'Fifteen seconds! I'll give you the signal with my hand, Mr President.'

The paper, covered with words that had been enlarged several times so the half-blind man could read them, trembled. Pavel gave him the signal, and the old man began to deliver the last speech he would ever make before falling into the dark hole of utter forgetting.

Through the viewfinder, he saw the face he had filmed so often; the microphones captured the voice they had captured so many times before. The voice quavered, and the face looked even more gloomy and serious than usual. It seemed that not only had he written this speech himself, he had also invested it with some real feeling, and now was now trying to speak from the heart, to reach the people to whom he had so often delivered vacuous appeals, messages in which emptiness was wrapped up in grandiloquent nothingness.

This time he spoke with dry matter-of-factness. The people were calling for a new government and for the president's resignation, he said. He had received many letters on these matters, some supporting him, some critical. He thanked everyone for their views, positive or negative, for at least now he knew what people really thought. He had decided to appoint a new government and then resign.

'Ever since my youth, I have believed in the same bright ideals, and I continue to believe in them to this day.' He was speaking of his illusory faith from a dark hole, a drowning raven whose broken wings beat against the stormy waves that had finally engulfed him. 'There were certainly errors, but those errors were in people, not in the ideal, and therefore, I will remain faithful to the ideal as, I believe, will most of us.'

Pavel watched the morose face in his viewfinder with purely professional attention. He felt no emotion, not the slightest hint of compassion for the old man. He observed him as he would observe a slithering snake, an eviscerated rat or a warehouse full of toxic waste.

What would have happened had this ruler not emerged from the darkness into which he was now returning? Had he not appeared and defiled Pavel's life, defiled the life of everyone in this country? Would his life have been less tarnished? Would he now be standing on the brink of a dark hole that was about to swallow him up?

For the last time, the president wished everybody success in overcoming the present difficulties, and a quiet Christmas and a happy New Year.

His son would not have been born anyway.

The speech was over. The lighting technicians switched off the lights, the sound men put away the microphones.

The old man stepped up to him. He seemed to hesitate, as though he were afraid of being rebuffed, then he offered his hand and thanked him. Pavel returned the thanks and wished him well.

Who would take his place? And who would film the new president's speeches?

His mother was in hospital now. She had been careless about heating up some tea on the gas stove, and her

dressing-gown had caught fire. Surprisingly, she had managed to tear it off, but not before the flames had seared her left arm and hip.

'For a young person, this would be no more than a painful but minor setback,' a female doctor had told him. 'But at her age the skin sometimes refuses to heal.'

'I understand.' He was holding a bouquet that he had bought for his mother. It occurred to him that his mother wouldn't notice the flowers anyway, so he could give them to the doctor. But the right moment had passed, and besides, it was probably inappropriate to pay the doctor off with a handful of flowers.

'If you need medicine, or any other sort of help. . '

'Please, don't worry. We will do everything we can,' the doctor reassured him.

If he'd had a home of his own where his mother could have lived with him, this would probably not have happened. But the truth was, she was the reason he had not married. He could have spent far more time with her than he had, but he found her mental confusion repugnant. When he was with her, he thought mostly about how to get away again as quickly as possible.

She lay in a small room with three other women, her bandaged arm resting on the white counterpane, her eyes closed. The air in the room was overheated and stale, and he could smell the elderly bodies and some kind of disinfectant.

'The old lady sleeps a lot,' said the woman in the next bed. 'She moaned the whole of the first night, but it's better now.' The woman was young, and her face was apparently permanently scarred by burns.

He ran some water into a lemonade bottle and put the flowers into it, then sat down in a chair beside his mother's bed. 'Mother?'

Slowly she opened her eyes and looked at him. Her expression was blank.

'It's me, Mother.'

'Who's me?'