The wind at the edge of the Vltava sweeps away the fallen leaves. But what is this young woman doing at the riverbank if she went out to buy a few bread rolls and half a dozen eggs for supper? When she realized her mistake, she laughed and started to walk, but in the opposite direction of home. She skipped like a little girl who can’t walk past a geometrical shape on the pavement without jumping over the corresponding paving stone. She was moving in the same direction as the river’s current, jumping and skipping like a frog, and after one especially long jump, her feet took off from the pavement. Without touching the ground, the woman glided, her feet grazing the fence along the river, until she was flying over the trees and could see everything that was happening on the first floors of all the houses. Before her appeared a green ravine in which sat an ancient sage with a thin white beard, jotting down his thoughts. She flew over the roofs of the houses, between the chimneys. She looked down into the twisted streets; the sage was sitting there in the shade. Then she, a svelte black figure with her hair blowing, stretched out a hand toward him, who put aside his pen, reached his hand out to her . . . and now the two of them were gliding together over the red roofs, between the spires of the chapel and church towers. As they flew above the bell towers and headed for Charles Bridge, she smoothed down her lace petticoats and her wide, pleated skirt, which the wind kept blowing upward, and the ancient sage kept his left hand on his beard, which flew and fluttered like a silver veil.
How to begin the biography of Božena, then called Betty? What do writers do when blank pages stare at them, immaculate, mocking, whispering, between grimaces: “You’ll manage it . . . or maybe you won’t!” I will start by describing a specific fact, for example, that it was autumn and the apples were ripe.
It was the beginning of autumn. A sixteen-year-old girl was sitting in front of her house, eating one apple after another, picking them straight from the tree. Her eyes never ceased wandering over the castle garden, where trees and bushes burned with yellow and red flames. The girl’s name was Betty. She was combing a doll, whose name was Wilhelmine, like the duchess who spent her summers at the castle. Betty imagined the doll was a princess, the most beautiful one in the world, who would one day be rescued by a prince from the dragon that was keeping her in thrall. The doll-princess was she herself; this miracle she dreamed of was supposed to happen to her. Suddenly, she heard footsteps. A tall, swarthy, uniformed man with big ears was approaching her at a military pace. She quickly hid the doll behind her back. The man tried to smile, but it came out as a grimace.
“Hello, little girl!” he said, or rather shouted, in a hoarse voice.
Which little girl was he referring to? The man went on.
“Don’t hide the doll; show it to me!”
That was when Betty got really frightened and ran off. She ran as fast as her legs could carry her until she got to a friend’s house. In the evening when she returned home, her mother told her that the arrogant, noisy man had come to ask for Betty’s hand in marriage, even though he was the same age as her mother. They had looked all over the park for her so that she could meet her future husband. Where had she been?
“At Pepinka’s house. Mama, I saw that man. I don’t want him for a husband.”
“Nonsense, Betty! You have to want him, because I like him. He’s highly eligible.”
“I don’t want him and that’s that.”
“Betty, we’re packed like sardines here, eight people in a small flat. Don’t you understand?”
“I want to earn my own money. I’ll work as a maid or a cook.”
“Have I made such an effort to turn you into Fräulein Betty, just for that? No, little lady. You will marry Officer Josef Němec.”
“Mama, I would much rather be a laundrywoman like you!”
“You will be Josef Němec’s wife. End of story.”
“No Mama, please, no! Anything, but not that! Please, I beg of you, please!”
“Don’t beg, it won’t get you anywhere. I have thought everything out. And you know perfectly well that I never go back on my word. Now, go to bed.”
On the morning of September the twelfth, four carriages with uniformed coachmen belonging to Duchess von Sagan waited in front of Betty’s house. A swarm of curious bystanders surrounded all this aristocratic splendor as they tried to guess the color of the bride’s dress, how the maids of honor would be dressed, who would stand as the witnesses for the bride and who for the bridegroom. The witnesses were already climbing the staircase from the basement apartment and behind them walked the bridesmaids, Helena and Josefa, in pink dresses, with their escorts. Betty’s father, the elegant Josef Pankl, climbed the staircase and turned to see Betty, his Betty, whom he had tried to liberate from the bridegroom, but could not override his wife. Betty walked slowly, making an effort and lowering her veil to conceal her tear-stained face. She stoped at each step; at the top of the staircase she turned, as if wanting to go back home. Her mother grabbed her by the arm and lead her to one of the carriages.
The bystanders gossiped about it all; some said the bride, in her sky-blue dress and white veil, looked like an angel, while others repeated that blue was not a suitable color for a bride. One woman, who noticed the aversion to the bridegroom stamped on the bride’s face, concluded the debate with an old superstition: “A blue dress will never bring happiness to a marriage.”
These words were passed on in a trice. Everybody was now convinced of this truth, which sounded like nothing so much as a curse.
The carriage Betty was sitting in moved forward on the path lined with plane trees; she knew it like the back of her hand. She felt weary, having spent almost the entire night and the early morning crying. She would never have believed herself capable of crying for such a long time. She looked out at the scenery; now, in such changed circumstances, deep in a kind of desperation previously unknown to her, the familiar spots seemed strange to her. Some trees have begun to go yellow, which made her think of the crown of green branches that, according to custom, she had crafted with the help of her friend Josefa. As she made it, she said farewell to those ideals that she had been weaving together for seventeen years. Once the crown was ready, she threw it into the waters of the Úpa, together with her hopes. Now at this moment, she had just one tiny hope left: that some kind of miracle would take place that could separate her from the future, from that terrible time to be, lived by the side of the man to whom she had been allocated, from the future that she saw as an endless grey and windy November day.
They were now approaching the church. When walking from school to home she always used to think that this cheerful church looked splendid, with its steeple that had a huge onion on its top. Betty loved to look at the clock hung under the belfry, how its golden hands shone even on overcast days, and she liked to imagine that the saint in front of the church was making that gesture with his arm to say, “Goodbye for now, girl, see you tomorrow!” Now it was just the opposite: everything struck her as alien and hostile. The church was full of people who had come to the wedding, spreading out along the pews like a grey avalanche. She was aware only of two side altarpieces, baroque ones, their candles lit, and the altar that reached to the ceiling. She was afraid. That altar covered in ridiculous ornamentation, with two equally absurd puffy-cheeked cherubs that filled her with horror, as if in place of two playful angels the Pope of Rome himself was there, ready to cut off her head. Why the pope? She didn’t really know, in her anguish she could only see the stern papal mitre, a scream and the end. They led her over to the priest. For the first time in her life, she panicked. She lost track of everything that happened afterward . . .
Later, she was sitting at a table on the terrace of the White Lion restaurant next to that man. She couldn’t eat; she lowered her head down to hide the tears that fell, against her will, like heavy raindrops onto her plate. She glanced sideways at him. He didn’t look happy either. Poor Josef. Poor Josef, she would repeat to herself throughout the night.
The following day, the dahlia festival was held in the spacious room next to the restaurant. Some fifty growers exhibited their creations, magnificent dahlias of many different colors. There was a banquet, and prizes were given for the most beautiful flower, after which there was a ball. When the music began to play and the bridegroom offered her his arm, Betty started to dance in a vehement fashion—she led that man in the dance so that people should not notice that Josef, her husband, was someone also deserving of compassion. That it was not only she who was unhappy with him, but that he, too, would be unhappy with her. Betty, seemingly happy as a lark, spent the whole night dancing. She realized the extent to which she was exciting all the men present and to the joy of her uninhibited male partners, threw herself into each dance as if at least for that night she wanted to forget what was coming. When the time came for the Queen of the Festival to be elected, Betty was chosen.
She said goodbye to her parents as if she never wanted the farewell to end. Everybody else was turning to leave, only she stayed on until her mother gripped her arm and said firmly: “You have to go, daughter, you are no longer mine!”
She was looking through the window to see if the young doctor was on his way when a group of officers quarrelling in the street reminded her of her husband. On the evening when she came home flying—yes, she flew all the way into the main room, having left the ancient sage sitting on Petřín Mountain—her husband’s expression soon had her putting her feet down on the hard floor of the kitchen. She knew only too well what would follow: recriminations, shouts, fist banging, door banging. By this stage, she was almost indifferent to such scenes; the only thing that mattered to her at that moment was to keep intact the magic that filled her to the brim, that urged her to take flight once again. Her husband, his arms folded and a ferocious expression on his face, had placed himself firmly in front of the window. To get in my way, she thought with a smile.
She went into her bedroom, closed the door, and turned the key in the lock. On the other side somebody started to bang on the wood of the door, but she took no notice; her room was immersed in the orange of a Bengal light, in which the long dying tones of that curious flute could be heard. She made a few movements, as if to dance to its rhythm, and when that shrill instrument went silent, she sat down at her table. She thought about the white-bearded old man, and how right he was that you can know the world without stepping out of your front door. She wrote down: “When I don’t have reality, let dreams make me happy! How many times have I satisfied my longing for the sea in dreams? How many times have I dreamed of joyful landscapes? Dreams have brought me people I love whom I will never see again; in dreams, I can live as I wish and be happy. Why complain about them being only dreams if these feelings will be with me for the rest of the day! I am grateful, deeply grateful for this kind of dream.” She wrote these words down in a notebook, but in fact she knew they were addressed to a specific person, somebody with whom she never ceased to converse in her mind. She wrote more and more, until six o’clock in the morning. She produced folktales because they allowed her to write about a certain type of happy love affair which can only be found in such stories.
Today she looks through the window to see if her doctor has arrived, but on the street she can see nothing but a few uncouth officers whacking at maids’ skirts and untying their aprons. Today, oddly enough, even this she finds amusing and thinks about a story or novella that could be set in this kind of environment. She goes off to jot down a few notes. Later she returns to the window so as not to miss the sight of him coming to her home. What must he look like when walking along the street? People probably look at him.
They weren’t looking at him. On the street, nobody took any notice of the moustachioed man who swung his cane with confidence as he walked. She, on the other hand, upon seeing him, thought that Neptune himself had made a hole in the dark grey sky, or rather several holes, so that the rays of the sun, like countless torches, could project their light on that broad-shouldered man with a cane.
“Let’s not waste time, Fräulein Zaleski. You visited Mrs. Němcová after she returned to Prague from Northern Hungary.”
“More than once, Herr von Päumann.”
“What comments did she make about her deportation to Northern Hungary?”
“She told me that when she arrived at Banská Bystrica, the city’s prefect, whose name was Zólom, told her that he had received an order from his superiors to the effect that she should return home at once. She answered: ‘Dear me, whatever must I have done for them to be so afraid of me!’ She was very sorry not to be able to finish her literary tasks in Slovakia.”
“Northern Hungary.”
“I’m sorry, I meant Northern Hungary. That evening on her way from Northern Hungary, after having reached Bratislava and gone to the house of some acquaintances to spend the night, the police went to fetch her. She had to go with the officers at once. At four in the morning, they put her on the first train back to Prague.”
“All of this confirms our own information. What else were you able to discover?”
“After coming back, I visited Mrs. Němcová several times . . . ”
“You already told us that, also in writing. I have it here: ‘I visited Mrs. Němcová more than once . . .’”
“Forgive me. I imagine you will be interested in her relationship with the Czech writer, journalist, and revolutionary Karel Havlíček, who was deported to the Tyrol.”
“We are certainly most interested in that!”
“The last time I saw her, Němcová declared that she had to go and see Havlíček’s wife because she hadn’t visited her for a long time.”
“I will make a note of that. You may go, I will summon you here again soon.”
What Němcová cannot possibly know is that Julie Havlíček is seriously ill. Tuberculosis, like that pathetic informer of ours. Mrs. Havlíček will die before her twenty-seventh birthday. And she will not see her husband again. Havlíček, that arrogant journalist who, despite our efforts, we could never get on our side. I don’t want to wish anyone any harm, but fate will pay him back for all the damage he has caused our empire.
We have managed to silence many of the ringleaders of the 1848 revolution. We removed Palacký from the ranks of our scientists, we obliged Rieger to emigrate abroad, we forced some, such as Tomek and several others, to come to our side. But Havlíček is a tough nut to crack. We banned his newspaper but he went on publishing it clandestinely until we were obliged to deport him to some remote corner, in this case the Tyrol.
Oh, this Czech nationalist movement is so absurd! We have managed to paint it into a corner. Only this Havlíček remains! Now that we have reduced him to powerlessness in the Tyrol, the Czechs have converted him into a symbol of all their suppressed attempts to keep going. Yes, Havlíček, you’ll get what’s coming to you. I’ll make sure of that personally! Just as we shall knock the stuffing out of that miserable witch Němcová!
He came in. She melted in the shine of his smile. Then she lay face down, her muscles happily relaxed, lots of glass cups suctioned to her back. He went to the kitchen and brought out a steaming towel. When removing the glass cups he dropped the towel onto her back. The patient almost screamed, the burning fabric scalded her back so, but she imagined herself looking like a screaming pig and controlled herself. Afterward, he spread the burning towel over her entire back, pressing it down in various places: the nape, the waist, the thighs. Now the towel was warming her up agreeably.
“Turn onto your back.”
Betty Pankl signed the marriage certificate in her childlike, ornamental handwriting. Then her husband took the queen of the dahlia dance off to his prosaic, brutal, military world.
Červený Kostelec—a city both small and poor. A world of disappointment, misery, and suffering. Her husband’s coarse manners were better suited to the barracks. Betty got to know his habits well, without ever getting used to them. She never quite managed to tolerate Němec’s personality. From the start, fights broke out between husband and wife, leading to violent scenes: her husband was jealous of Betty’s admirers at society balls, he would haul her off mid-dance and at home he gave vent to anger befitting a military man. People said that one time he wanted to shoot his wife and that some day he might really do it.
Later came the journeys, those journeys that left Betty half-dead from exhaustion, those transfers from somewhere to somewhere else in Bohemia or Moravia. In this way, the Austro-Hungarian monarchy made Němec pay for his active participation in the Czech national movement. From Červený Kostelec they had to move to Josefov, and when Betty was seven months pregnant, they set off on a long journey along dusty, uneven roads to Litomyšl. From there they went to Polná, then back from the east to a place far in the west, to Domažlice, and then to Všeruby, a mountain village, and then all of a sudden off to the east again, to Nymburk, and when that was over they headed north, to Liberec. Over this period, Betty had four children, became chronically ill, met Czech patriots, and burned all the literary drafts that she had written in the German language.
Above all, when her husband was transferred to Prague, she got a chance to spend a long time in the city. She decided that it was there where she would put down roots. Not long after her twenty-third birthday she felt healthy enough to take part in social and cultural life. Prague made a deep impression on her. This young woman never missed a ball, or any operatic or theatrical performance, or any excursion or meeting organized by Czech writers.
It was Sunday, a lukewarm March day. Betty put on a new spring dress and a straw hat with a ribbon. I like to imagine that the ribbon was green, so it would match the color of her eyes. Writers, artists, students, and their girlfriends met up among the rocks and woods of Šárka. Spring was already in the air, even though the branches of the trees were still bare. She had always liked that time of year just before the arrival of spring; she called it the era of hope. The groups of friends headed toward the castle submerged in the Star Forest. Nebesky, the poet whose pseudonym was Celestial, approached Betty, whom he’d met a few days earlier on Sofia Island. In Šárka, the poet admired the wild-looking rocks; Betty looked at the emergent grass. The young poet picked a bunch of violets with which he decorated his friend’s hat. He talked to her about German philosophy and other things, but the main theme of the monologue was the role he believed the Czech nation would one day play. Celestial made an effort to impress her, this beauty from the provinces, and she listened to him attentively, but with reserve. The poet held forth more and more because he found this young woman had unusual intelligence and powers of understanding. On their way back, they reached Saint Margaret’s Chapel, where they broke away from the group to continue their walk to Strahov. Prague was at their feet, the dark blue ribbon of the Vltava dividing it in two. From up above, the river looked like a winding stream that crossed a few narrow walkways. Above the couple’s heads, the stars blinked and winked. Both felt that this moment was as unusual as it was unrepeatable.
Even now, a decade later, Božena still remembers that sudden sense of connection. She told me that the world opened out before her: her intoxicated mind immersed itself in the shadows of the universe and flew around its lights; in that labyrinth of the infinite there appeared before her a small but brightly lit place. As if ashamed of the grandiloquent words she was about to use, she whispered them into my ear: “my country.” Then and there she promised her new friends that at home she would write a poem about the ideas they had discussed. She wrote it down immediately when she got back, in the silence of the night. The title was: “To Czech women,” and she signed it: Božena Němcová. This is how Betty, who had expressed herself in German, turned overnight into Božena, a writer in the Czech language.
The poem, that Celestial reworked as best he could, soon appeared in the magazine Flowers, it was followed by other poems and in a short time the name Božena Němcová penetrated the consciousness of the Czech literati.
Then came the summer. Celestial went off on a holiday in the woods around Kokořín castle. Božena went to see him there. For one of their walks around that romantic castle, she wore the garnet necklace that her grandmother had bequeathed her, and told its story to her friend. Celestial wanted to have it as a token of her love for him. You gave him everything, Božena, you gave yourself to him unreservedly, despite the terrible scenes your husband made at home. And Celestial lorded over you, but he never managed to obtain your grandmother’s garnet necklace.
In the fall, Celestial left to work in Vienna. Božena sickened with sorrow. She was cared for by the doctor Čejka, one of her countless admirers. He brought her books on ancient Greece and spoke tenderly to her. He hoped that by reading the Iliad and the Odyssey, she would become interested in classical culture—that is to say, in him—and would distance herself from romantic literature—that is to say, from Celestial. Both men, Celestial in Vienna and Čejka in Prague, competed with each other by writing verses that spoke of you, Božena, and of their jealousy. Prague society had fun at your expenses. Since then you have never ceased to offer yourself up as a subject for gossip, for anecdotes recounted at the dinner parties of certain artistic circles in Prague. That has never bothered you one bit. But, for some reason, it saddens me.
You were forever curing yourself of lovesickness as if it were a contagious disease. Later, once the worst was over, you started to write. First poems, then folktales. When it comes down to it, everything you have written up to now has been fairy tales. In your novels and stories you write about the things you had dreamed of as a girl. Long ago, your grandmother told you all those Czech folktales that have happy endings, and you, ingenuous as you are, thought that life was like that too. Even now you still believe in dragons, witches, and Prince Charming, admit it! You’ve been looking for Prince Charming in the kind of men who more resemble dragons. You know this perfectly well, yet you go on searching, you dunce, you keep on trusting, so naively!
But . . . your quest for ideal love will be the end of you. I promise you that. I, Vítězka, whom none of you have ever taken into consideration, promise you that.
The doctor massaged her more attentively than ever. In fact, were his fingers moving above the surface of the corset or beneath it? Where did the doctor end and the man begin?
In the evening, she rejected her husband’s advances. She couldn’t stand him. Her head was full of the young doctor. She asked herself what good could come of it, unable as she was to allow herself any false hope. Even if he had taken a serious interest in her, how long could it last? Soon he would find a girl his own age, and Božena would be the one who suffered. Having thought it over for a while, she told herself: I will turn it all into literature. I will celebrate him through my stories and novels, that would be the greatest thing I could offer him. In this respect, no other woman can ever outdo me. But I will not let myself be deprived of reality. Let whatever has to happen, happen. I will experience it to the fullest, even if it costs me my life.
“Your medical treatment has a sweetness to it,” she told the doctor the following day. “Your methods are as gentle as the caress of a bird’s wing. In general, doctors tend to like the sight of blood. At the drop of a hat they bleed you or reach for their scalpels.”
“Yes, my methods are rather refined.”
“Everything can be cured with refined methods?”
“Curing somebody is like fighting against an enemy. If you can’t make headway with a subtle, painless method, you attack head on.”
“Why are you treating me? You are caring for me, a poor woman, free of charge. What do you get out of it?”
“A doctor’s mission is to help people. Our mutual friends told me that you, an admired and respected writer—I will not use the word ‘famous’ because it is not in my vocabulary—are being persecuted by society at large and perhaps even by the secret police. A moment ago, I said that refined people will defeat the vulgar ones. This is a truth difficult to deny, but it is just as difficult to make it fit into real life. I try to do just that: I am always on the side of the persecuted.”
“You’re treating me for free because you think I’m well-known, even though I am not well-regarded by most people.”
“Be careful with the business of fame: remember that the tallest trees are the ones that are felled.”
“Or perhaps you are treating me because I’m a Czech writer who defends everything that is ours, everything Czech, and tries to instill meaning in it all.”
“What interests me is the universe, not national questions. Although there is no doubt that you are right.”
“What do you mean, I’m right? What is truth?”
“Paradoxical, always.”
“What does that mean?”
“That you have to bend. If you don’t want to be broken, bend.”
“How can I bend when I have a goal? I feel that I should become a kind of educator. Or a writer who teaches.”
“An educator, a master? I would only accept the second meaning of the latter word: a good person is the master of a bad one.”
“I have set myself a goal, namely, to conquer ignorance.”
“You, conquer? What is victory? The most appropriate way of celebrating a victory is by organizing a funeral service, a sensible person would say.”
“Come down to my level. Although there is much I do not know, I know much more than most: I know Czech history, the Czech language, Czech culture. What I want to do, what I need to do, is share this knowledge of mine with other people, so that they may follow me if they wish.”
“Have more humility! Nobody knows anything, you included.”
He grabbed his cane and hat, and took a long look at her from the doorway, saying, “Recognize that too, dear friend, and you will be happy.”
She leaned back on the window frame and watched him leave. He didn’t swing his cane; the points of his mustache no longer pointed all the way up. Neptune did not illuminate him with torches. On the contrary, the light emanated from him, she thought.
“Fräulein Zaleski, we do not have enough information on the activity of the writer Němcová during the revolutionary upsets of 1848. Unfortunately, during that period we had not yet started to intercept correspondence. We have asked you for a minute description of this writer’s activity then. I do not need to add that this material is of the utmost importance to us. Do you have it?”
“In 1848, when Němcová was twenty-eight years old, her husband was transferred to Všeruby, a small mountain village on the border between Bohemia and Bavaria. The Němec family was billeted at the home of the pharmacist. The people in that area tended to speak the German language and prefer German culture. Once in the village, Němcová dedicated herself—as she had done wherever she moved—to bringing Czech culture to these people, to popularizing Czech culture, to spreading the use of the Czech language. She ordered Czech books from Prague booksellers, paid for them with her own money, and then set up a kind of mobile library and bookshop.”
“Have you any proof the writer was involved in these activities?”
“Of course. I have a copy of a letter of hers addressed to Pospíšil, a Prague publisher, dated April 17 1848: ‘Last year, during my stay in Prague, you and I decided that I could run a bookshop aimed at educating these country people. The people here know almost nothing about the world. I consider it most important, as would anybody concerned with the well-being of their nation, that country folk be better informed. For the time being, the only way to educate people is through reading. Which is why I have set all my hopes on the idea of a mobile library and bookshop, an enterprise that would prove to be of great value to ignorant people.’
“How did this enterprise fare?”
“As was to be expected, Němcová lost a lot of money with it. Not only that, but also the inhabitants of that geographical area, who had at first been indifferent toward the Němec couple, became openly hostile. This is natural enough: Němcová woke them up from their lethargy and somnolence. Should you require proof in writing, here is a note of hers dating from that period: ‘They’ve shown their true colors, these people from the villages and the town of Domažlice. My husband and I cannot so much as step out into the street, because they have threatened to beat us and throw us out by brute force. This churlishness instead of gratitude for our sincere concern for them.’”
“Could it be said that this writer launched a campaign of political agitation?”
“Yes, what she was doing was mobilizing the poor against the rich.”
“Have you proof of that?”
“Yes, a letter of hers dating from March 1848: ‘How human misery upsets me! Oh, Lotty, you have no idea of the poverty suffered by humble people. Believe me when I say that a wealthy man’s dog would not eat what the poor have to eat every day. How much money is wasted, how many fortunes are lost to gambling, or spent on clothes and other trifles, while all the time there are people who are dying of hunger! What justice, what Christian love! When I see all of this, I feel like walking among the poor to show them where to search for justice.’ That is literally what she says.”
“And what was Němcová’s realtionship then with the Catholic church, one of the mainstays of our empire?”
“Our writer published a few markedly anticlerical articles. On May 24, 1849, she wrote in Prague’s Afternoon Post, about an event in the district of Klatovy. The title of the article was ‘A Little Story about the Religious Beliefs of Jesuits.’ In it, she detailed how the Jesuits visited some dying people with a miraculous cross on which the crucified figure shook his head and moved his eyes. When they had left, a citizen of Klatovy got hold of the cross and saw that it was put together with wire: when one wire end was pulled, the crucified figure moved his head and eyes.”
“Thank you, Fräulein Zaleski. I am most pleased with your work today. Write a report about these educated ladies who are friends of Němcová: what they do and what they are like, what their relationship is with the writer and vice versa. We will see each other again shortly, Fräulein.”
She went out onto the street and had the sensation again that the wind was lifting her and taking her over the city, over the river. “Dear friend,” echoed his voice in her ears. She was flying fast, gaining height. Today she was heading for the steeple of Saint Vito’s Cathedral. “More humility . . . ” Everything was whirling around in her brain. She looked down and in front of the cathedral she saw a beggar. She descended in order to approach him with a few coins in her hand, all that she had. But that’s not a beggar! she realized. The old sage was half-kneeling, hands joined under the wide sleeves of the worn kimono he wore. He looked at her as she came zigzagging down toward him, but he did not see her.
Like the last time, she reached out to the old man, to take hold of him and bring him flying into the air, up to the furthest heights of happiness. He looked beyond her, through her, to where he had been before he was born and to where he would return after death.
Seeing him so concentrated, she left him there and took flight once more. Her hair was loose and she wanted to share the happiness she felt with the castles of clouds and the networks of sunbeams, with each and every ribbon of smoke from the chimneys.
Then she flew in the direction of her room. She sat at her table and started to write a folktale. The title she chose was: “The Willow Tree and the Maiden.”
A dangerous woman, whichever way you look at her. She thinks logically, like a man. Everything she does has something to do with forwarding the cause of women’s emancipation. She has reached the conclusion that customs and social prejudices should not stand in the way of women and defends their equality vis-àvis men. She is convinced of it, and as if that weren’t bad enough, she even puts it in writing. She must be destroyed. Not in a violent or underhanded way. In that case, the Czechs would have a martyr, like their beloved Havlíček, whom we have imprisoned far from Prague and who continues his attacks against us even so. Fräulein Zaleski is taking her task as an informer to heart. I do believe that the envy and jealousy that she feels toward this other woman are greater by far than any admiration she might feel. She leaves no stone unturned in search of material that can do her harm, and I wouldn’t be surprised if she weren’t preparing some kind of surprise for us, some revelation that we have not asked her for, simply out of spite. I would swear that she is probing into the most private corners of Němcová’s life in order to sabotage her. I imagine that Zaleski wouldn’t balk at the need to invent something, or at the pleasure of inventing it, even if it comes to her in a dream; she, all of whose amorous advances must surely have been spurned.
For years we have been humiliating Němcová’s husband and we will go on doing so. Mrs. Němcová, we will make a beggar of you. We will let you die of hunger. Alone, friendless, you will be an example so that people will fear all suspects under police surveillance, as if they had the plague.
After a few hours of writing, she looked out of the window and saw the day’s first light. The most appropriate way of celebrating a victory is by organizing a funeral service, she thought again. She crossed out the title “The Willow Tree and the Maiden” and in its place wrote “Victoria.” Yes, it has be Victoria, Victory, she told herself, and went on writing:
A man and his wife had been living together for quite a time already, when one night, Vítek woke up. A full moon was lighting up the fields as if it were day. With indescribable pleasure he watched his wife as she slept peacefully, and bent forward gently to kiss the black curls that twisted their way down the length of her body, over the pillow and the white sheets. He looked at the sleeper’s beautiful face, when suddenly startled, he moved closer: it seemed to him that this beautiful woman was no longer breathing. He placed a hand over her heart: it wasn’t beating. Her hand was cold, his beloved lay lifeless, like a flower fallen from an apple tree. Desperate, Vítek jumped out of bed and called his mother-in-law for help. “Do not fret, my son,” she answered him, “because there can be no good reason for your fright.”
Together they entered the bedroom. Lo and behold, Victoria had revived and, surprised by the commotion, asked what the matter was. Full of joy, Vítek took her in his arms and told her about his shock. “Listen, Vítek, and I’ll tell you about my dreams: on clear moonlit nights I dream I hear the tempting voice of the willow tree calling me. I open the window, the willow tree bends in my direction, and I cannot help but throw myself into its arms. But then it is no longer just a willow, but a great lady, a noble lady who leads me through her palace toward a resplendent golden throne. As far as the eye can see, there stretches a magnificent, perfumed garden. Everything is alive, blooming. The trees, the flowers, bend toward each other like lovers, telling each other secret legends in silvery voices, and I understand their language. Then from the rivers and the fountains, from the cliffs and the mountains arise nymphs dressed in white. They dance amorously, sing and laugh, and invite me to join them. I understand what they say; I hasten to revel in their embraces; I too sing and dance and have such fun with them. The queen, this eternally young and splendorous queen, is delighted with her daughters. When I have to leave my friends, I can still hear their seductive voices in my heart, and when a long time passes without the queen calling for me, I feel sad,” said Victoria, finally.
“I don’t like your dreams, Victoria.” her husband said. “I fear that you will forget about me in that realm of beauty, and that one day you will remain there.”
“Do not be afraid, Vítek. It is only for a very short while that I am allowed to visit the fairy queen and that palace I love so much. I always know I have to come back.”
Even so, Vítek did not like her dreams, as they came back again and again after that night. He feared for the life of his beloved and wanted to free her from that mysterious power. He told himself that the best way to do it would be to cut down the willow tree. But he didn’t want to do so without Victoria’s consent. So one day, while she was basket weaving by the window, he said to his wife:
“That willow tree is blocking the light. Maybe I should cut it down.”
“No, Vítek, you should do no such thing,” Victoria implored. “I love that willow tree too much. If you love me, do not do it. You never know, you may regret it afterward.”
But the man could find no peace. He didn’t want his wife to disappear into a world that he could not enter. One night, when Victoria was sleeping, showing no apparent signs of life, he went out with an axe and a single goal in mind. With four well-placed blows he felled the willow tree and a cry of pain shot through his soul. He threw the axe away and went into the house. In her mother’s arms, Victoria was dead. The blows of the axe, which had destroyed the willow tree, had put an end to Victoria’s life.
They have asked me for a report on Božena’s female friends. That means writing about Johanna and Sophie Rott. Sophie told me delightedly about her first meeting with Němcová. It took place a few years after Božena’s definitive return to Prague. Johanna’s husband, who was then her fiancé, spoke to the two sisters about the writer Božena with admiring enthusiasm. Johanna agreed to meet her although she had reservations: the sisters were from an aristocratic family and had been educated in a private school for noble young ladies. Johanna had turned into a proud and unapproachable woman. For Sophie, who was younger, the idea of meeting the famous writer filled her with panic.
The girls awaited her arrival in the sitting room of their home, an ancient mansion furnished in a style that was equally ancient. Both sisters wore navy blue dresses. I imagine them with their dresses buttoned up tightly and the tension showing on their faces. All of a sudden, Božena appeared: smiling, fresh faced, in a comfortable sand-colored dress with a pleated skirt and a pale hat over her black hair. At thirty, she looked as youthful as a girl of nineteen. Her overall appearance had something of a classical air, her features and dark hair bound at the nape in a Greek chignon, her big green eyes, her slender neck, her long, fine fingers. The writer’s appearance alone captivated the two girls.
After she left, the sisters talked about her excitedly and so began the friendship among the three women.
At least you, Božena, at least you have friends with whom you can share your secrets. But I, what have I got?
I’ve got you. You are the only one who will listen to me. What a twist of fate! And then there is Herr von Päumann, he’s interested in me as well, he needs me too. I shall now write to the police and tell them about your slipups and your sins both great and small. The police will keep you under surveillance, they will persecute you, they will harm you. Yes, that is what they will do. But, even so, you will have lived better than I have; your life will always be more meaningful than mine.
Do not cease to watch Němcová’s every step, and every meeting.”
“With scientists and men of letters too?”
“Naturally!”
“She has many admirers . . .”
“Her readers and literary admirers do not interest me at all; they are a shameless crowd and a bunch of idiots, that’s what they are, to admire a woman who writes in Czech. Czech, a dead language!”
“Do you think so, Herr von Päumann?”
“I most certainly do, and if it hasn’t died off altogether, we will take the necessary measures to make sure it does so soon. You would not, surely, be comparing Czech to the greatness of the German language?”
“Jawohl, Herr von Päumann, natürlich. Without a doubt. Now, then, is there anybody else I have to keep an eye on?”
“You have talked of her admirers. Is it possible that she has any lovers?”
“Bitte?”
“Do you know anything about this writer’s possible lovers?”
“Well, I’m not altogether sure. Even though . . . I would say . . . ”
“You must clear up this doubt. It is essential. Quickly.”
“You know . . . In fact, I . . . ”
“Auf Wiedersehen, Fräulein.”