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

Fuka is flabbergasted, and can only shake his head. The little man with the big ears steps forward and whispers

something in the old man's ear. The old man nods. His eyes now appear to turn completely inward, searching for something in the depths. Then, aloud, he says something perhaps meant for himself, perhaps for the adviser or perhaps for everyone else: 'It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. The one about the snakes, I remember, yes, I remember. You delighted us all. Do you have children?'

He shakes his head.

'And a wife?'

He doesn't have a wife, not really.

'So why, who do you do it for?' asks the man on the throne, and Fuka's astonishment is now shared by everyone present. No one says a word, except for the slender interpreter, who leans over and whispers something to the black statesman in a semi-audible voice.

'I know what you all want.' The powerful old man is now speaking to the rest and has lost interest in Fuka. 'You want clemency, you want freedom and power, but for what purpose? So that you can evade your responsibilities. So that you can abandon the ship, which I, with all my powers, am still. . What do you think? Do you think I don't know, that I can't see, that I can't hear what you're rustling in your pockets, what you're clutching in your fingers, what you're whispering among yourselves? Who will dare to say that this is not so? Responsibilities!' he shouts. 'Responsibilities must be borne. Like me, like those wretched victims, who call out to me with piteous cries.' His glance shifts to his feet, where the stretcher is resting, but then immediately turns inward again. 'And they ask me to put an end to this, once and for all. No more special considerations!'

Absolute silence descends on the room like a curtain.

'I am the one who grants clemency here,' he bellows. And I'm the only one who knows, who acknowledges, my own responsibilities. And I will fulfil them. Let anyone who thinks he can stop me from. . with a single stroke of the pen. . ' And the head of state stands up, the black robe billowing around him. 'Who dares? No one? Good. Once again then, let everyone see, let everyone take note, that again and for the last time, as it once was, and is today,

may you receive what you request! I grant you clemency. The executioner may leave!' He stretches his arms toward Fuka as if to bless him, then he takes a large step to avoid the stretcher and, while someone applauds, he disappears into the adjoining room. Everyone pushes in after him, while the two men in uniform lift the stretcher holding someone who may or may not be dead and carry it out.

They can carry the dead away, Fuka thinks, but death will always be here, and all he will take away from this place is death's caress. He knows that he could and should leave, but he is transfixed, staring at the bare wall as though intoxicated, until the master of ceremonies appears and announces: 'The audience is over. Allow me to congratulate you, sir.'

1

The cobblestones were radiating heat and seemed to be shifting under Pavel's feet. This was happening to him more and more lately. Either he was drinking too much, or it took less than it used to.

He stbpped in front of a small bar. From a distance he could hear the sound of a loudspeaker, but the words were incomprehensible. They could have been in Spanish. Maybe any moment now a small child's hand would press a wilted flower on him, or from the bar a dark-eyed mestiza would beckon him with a nod. He was thirsty. He looked through the open door into the bar, but it was so crowded he did not go in. Everyone was drinking more these days.

As he approached the lower part of the square he began to make out individual words. He was in no hurry to see who the speaker was. They no longer sent him out to cover demonstrations; he'd done all that back when the police were still beating the participants. It would probably not be a good thing if those who had once been beaten were to see him behind a camera again.

The invisible speaker was warning against the new rulers who had cleverly disguised themselves as people who once opposed the old ones. We all know, he said to his audience, that ideals were the furthest thing from their minds. All they wanted was power.

The distant crowd applauded. He would not have applauded. Everything was more complicated than any speech could describe, and even in this partisan crowd there were certainly a good number of the very people the speaker was talking about.

Recently he'd begun to think that without even leaving the country he'd become an alien. It wasn't that all the familiar faces had disappeared; it was that from behind those faces different people had appeared. Butterflies had emerged from their unsightly cocoons and, with growing astonishment at their new appearance, were looking around for places to alight.

Even in the new advertising company of which he was part owner, he was surrounded by such aliens, apart from Sokol, of course. They smiled at him and talked about deals. They expressed confidence in his ideas though they'd never seen a single one of his films. They simply smelled business. The warehouse they had bought to turn into a studio stank not only of old hides but also of this strangeness. He wandered through the gloomy space and thought about how many sections they needed and where the dividers should go, where to put the lights and how to make the acoustics work, but he couldn't make any decisions and went out for a drink instead. When he got to Eva's that evening, she began screaming at him. He was a disgusting drunk, he would come to a bad end, she no longer wanted anything to do with him.

He said he could understood that. He drank because he didn't want anything to do with himself either.

'What kind of nonsense is that?'

That's something you'll never understand.'

'I know. As far as you're concerned I'm just a stupid cow who doesn't understand anything, but at least I don't drink like a fish.'

What could he say to her? She'd changed too. She no longer had anything in common with the past when she would come to him and want to make love to him.

'I thought you would finally stop drinking now.'

'Why now?'

'Because in those days it seemed to me there was

always something preying on your mind.'

'And what exactly did you think was preying on my mind?'

'Not being able to work the way you wanted to.'

'And you think I can work the way I want now?'

'Can't you?'

What could he say to her? Perhaps they would let him go on working, but his days were probably numbered. They were certainly going to watch him closely. Can you do what you want when you're being watched closely? And perhaps he didn't even know what he wanted. Perhaps he was his own worst enemy.

'You'll never sort anything out this way.'

She, on the other hand, had found a solution to her problems. She had decided to go back to her former husband. He at least cared for her; to him she was not just a woman to sleep with twice a week. It would be better for Robin as well. Kučera was his father, after all. She told Pavel that she wanted him to leave, but she wept as she said it. She wept because he had disappointed her, because she had wasted so much time with him, because he'd never expressed any gratitude to her. Sleeping with her twice a week had been all she was good for.

She wept even though her former husband would inherit a factory and almost certainly give her the money to buy a shop. Then she could believe that she was happy.

He should go back to Albina. If only he could. If only she existed. So instead, he went to see his mother, who still recognized him, though she sometimes confused him with his father.

He was a stranger, an alien. One of the many who were coming here to pillage, to set up in business, or merely as observers of the changing scene. Even the camera he still dragged around with him was a sign of his alien, observer status, a status that could not distinguish between what was essential and what was not, in which, for the most part, it was impossible to get excited about anything, regardless of the occasional need to pretend excitement. Indeed, it was with a growing coolness that he had recently filmed exhibitions, theatre rehearsals, interviews with artists and