Němcová has friends who are important scientists. She has close female friends who are ladies from rich and influential families, and who knows if some of these people might not also be lovers of hers. And with all of them she is scheming against the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Very well. People must either be coddled or thoroughly annihilated. They would take revenge if only slightly wounded, but would be unable to do so at all if wounded seriously, which is why the wound that we inflict on a person must be of the sort that prevents him from taking revenge. That’s what Machiavelli said. Accordingly, we shall put an end to Němcová’s friendships. She will have no more financial backers, nobody to give her enough change to buy a loaf of bread. Her lovers, if she has any, will abandon her. Her female friends will want nothing further to do with her. You have underestimated us, my dear. In fact, we don’t have to do anything except have the police keep a protective eye on you. We don’t have to lift so much as a little finger and your Czechs will end up helping us achieve our goals, the same Czechs for whom you always sacrifice yourself. Yes, the Czechs, those cowardly people! Nobody will be left, only this informer, she’ll be there for you! And for us, naturally. To achieve final victory, one must be implacable, that was Napoleon’s motto.
What a disagreeable creature, that Fräulein Zaleski. Had she been born in another era or into another family, she would not need to earn her living as a spy, and could dedicate herself entirely to culture and to writing, like Němcová. But she was born into a nation without a future, into an impoverished family. You only have to look at her, a glance even. A horrible sight. Like watching an insect squirming in a cobweb.
Why does she always blink nervously, look away, and shiver all over whenever she hears the word “lover?” It can’t just be envy. Clearly, she must be planning something.
I should get rid of her as soon as I can. Misfortune is as contagious as cholera.
The doctor is late. It is a full half hour since the appointed time. She had taken off her clothes, then put them back on again, and is now on the lookout for him, her forehead resting against the windowpane. Even the milk and the post have arrived. On the street there is a boy looking up at her window, as if he were searching for someone. He is carrying some sky-blue object, like a bunch of forget-me-nots, or a shawl given to him by a lady breathless from dancing at a society ball. That sky-blue paper in his hand troubles her. Yes, the boy enters her house, climbs the staircase, knocks at the door.
“Good morning. I am to give you this.”
She invites him in, but the boy doesn’t have time. He is already running down the stairs and she will never know who . . . what . . .
The blue envelope burns her fingers as if it were a lit match. She passes it from one hand to the other before placing it on the table.
She picks it up firmly and goes out, to throw it into the Vltava. She is in a hurry to get rid of it. She knows only too well what is in it. A message: the treatment is over. And a cold wish: stay healthy. Instead of a signature, two initials: H.J. They are so clear, as if printed in a cloud, with calligraphical ornamentation at the end. She is standing on a bridge, and inside her who knows what awakens . . . who knows what kind of animal. Yes, an animal that stretches its neck out of curiosity and whose paws reach for the letter. She doesn’t want to give it to the beast, but it grabs the envelope so fast that she doesn’t have time to protest. It removes a sheet of paper out of the envelope: the initials H.J. are the first thing she notices. The beast takes the sheet of paper in its claws, unfolds it, and against her will her eyes run over the lines. When she has finished reading, the beast looks at her sarcastically, as if to say: Can’t you see, you fool! It yawns, lazily stretches its limbs, and returns to its lair inside her.
She didn’t understand what she was reading, ignorant of the meaning of those long letters that leaned off to the left like cornstalks bent hard by a strong wind. But suddenly her surroundings lit up and she started to laugh. A few rays of sunlight made their way through the dense clouds, spreading light onto the golden tips of the bell towers and the Gothic steeples, among which she liked so much to fly in the company of the ancient sage. The leaves of the trees brightened with gold and purple, their dead flowers blossomed forth once more, giving off a sweet scent. Out from among the flowers stepped trumpeters, holding up their instruments: pah-pa-rah, pah-pa-rah! she heard. Between the snapping of the flags and the thunder of the trumpets, she could hear these words: I’ll be back . . . I’m going to the village to care for someone who is dying . . . how I look forward to seeing you again . . . an unusual, extraordinary woman . . .
Darkness had fallen some time ago and she went back home. Without thinking anything, she made dinner, patted her children’s heads, and quickly closed the door of her room behind her. Her husband was grumbling about something on the other side, but she couldn’t hear him because in the middle of the room, surrounded by Bengal lights, there was the flute player leading a train of followers. She sat at the table with a cup of tea and picked up her pencil.
She wrote nothing, not that evening, nor the day after. She took all kinds of old clothes out of the cupboard, tried them on in front of the mirror, which was too small to see herself full length in, and started to mend them. She decorated her hats with new ribbons and paid special attention to the undergarments, to which she added lace, both new as well as some that was still serviceable from old blouses. On the table she placed the garnet necklace, inherited from her grandmother, and the earrings that were a gift from the Duchess von Sagan. After a few days, when she was once more able to write, she would get up from time to time, look at herself in the mirror, and hold the jewels next to her face. She did not watch herself with her own eyes but with a masculine perspective. Her eyes were as lively as they were when she was little Miss Betty, and the mirror offered her the face of a beautiful and resplendent young woman.
A week went by, then another, then a third one. She spent whole nights writing, and when daylight spoiled her concentration, she stretched out on the sofa and took a nap. After which she prepared breakfast. She had fallen in love with a strong blend of black tea, taken with a little sugar.
To write a report on Božena’s lovers. On the prefect’s lips, the word smelled like a tiny, poorly ventilated room. For me, this word is beautiful. In themselves, words mean nothing; meaning is given to them by one’s own experience.
The first lover was Celestial. He showed her the way. In a professional sense, of course, but also in another way. He accompanied her through Šárka, and Betty, the forsaken dreamer, turned herself into a lady who knows what she wants, into a writer with talent and discerning of admiration. And into a passionate woman. Later came her friendship with young Doctor Čejka. And with Ivan, that man from Brno . . .
Yes, Ivan. I remember a pretty story that Božena once told me a pretty story about a very special night that she had spent with a man, with a lover, in the mountains. I would give my entire life for a night like that. But she is even admired by Ivan’s friends, Klácel and Hanuš. Both of them are jealous. I saw one of the scenes Hanuš made; he gasped, red-faced, and kicked the walls and the furniture with almost as much fury as Božena’s husband does. On another occasion I saw Hanuš, that ultrasensitive man, had puffy red eyes, just like me when I can’t sleep at night and cannot cope with the sadness of my useless existence.
Božena, I could ruin you, that is to say, your dreams, like Vítek when he cut down the willow tree! But I’m not going to do it, there’s no need. The police will take care of it.
You also received many passionate letters, often from men who you didn’t think much of. Not long ago, your husband showed me one of them. I had to make an effort not to burst out laughing when I saw the veins in his neck popping and those feet of his in worn-out house slippers. When he gave the wall a good kick he yelled ow ow ow ow! like a piglet and grabbed his big toe. I can imagine the scene he must have made with you when he found the letter. He reckons that that graceless letter was from one of your doctors, from Lambl, when in fact it was the work of that dolt from the beer factory who you keep at a distance. Lambl was a bright spot among the men with whom you became intimate, Božena. Were you aware of that? I suppose not, because even though you liked him, you didn’t feel the same passion for him that you did for some of the others who treated you badly.
Lambl helped and defended you. He invited you to meet his mother and then you went almost every day to their home on Saint Francis Quay and read aloud to them from your recent work: Slovak folktales; At the Castle, At the Village, a novel of which even George Sand, whom you admire so much, would have been proud.
Lambl clung to you more and more tightly while another man entered your life, the young doctor who is looking after you now, the one with the Oriental air about him. Johanna and Sophie were jealous of your relationship with Lambl; I envy you your new friend, though I do not envy you.
One morning, he was at the door. His eyes shone, his mouth was laughing. He said: “Strong as life, sweet as love, bitter as death and oblivion. What is it?”
She and Vítězka, who had opened the door, were having a cup of tea. She sat at a low table made from a drawer. She had wrapped herself in a dark blue velvet dressing gown tied with a wide sash. She wore her hair loose.
“What is it? Beautiful words, a poem. But I can’t guess the answer.”
“It’s tea. It has to be that way, according to an Arabic proverb. I would have a cup of it with you ladies, if you would allow me to do so.”
“Well, I . . . I’m going to fix my hair; I look a fright.”
“Don’t go anywhere. Yes, it’s true you look a fright. A beautiful one. Too beautiful.”
Božena didn’t know how to react. She shook her head. How he’s changed! Is it him? What’s happened to him?
Suddenly the animal lurking inside her emerged, bristling.
“Do have a cup of tea, friend. My friend Vítězka will keep you company,” she told him, icily. “Unfortunately, I have to go. I’m late.”
He was bewildered.
“I was joking. If you want to fix your hair, please do so. If you want to tidy yourself up, tidy yourself up, and I will happily wait for you. I have come back several days early, just for you,”
The strange beast opened its mouth to bite.
“I cannot possibly stay. I have a meeting with my publisher. But Vítězka is excellent company.”
No, those words were not hers. That wasn’t she.
But it wasn’t he, either.
While she changed clothes and combed her hair restlessly, the beast still squirmed.
Later, hurrying along the street as fast as she could go, as if fleeing from something, she felt a touch of satisfaction blended in with her desperation. But this satisfied sense of pride grew weaker and weaker, until it disappeared altogether, and despair occupied all the available space on the throne.
Guten Tag, Fräulein Zaleski. Do you know who Father Štulc is?”
“Of course. The priest who writes patriotic verse with a strong Catholic bent.”
“What are his verses like?”
“Dull, superficial, rhetorical.”
“Who does this priest see?”
“I know, above all, who he can’t stand: Frič and the revolutionary’s circle of young literati.”
“That is to say, the same circle that is also frequented by Němcová, even though she is older?”
“That’s right. Father Štulc has admonished her bitterly.”
“What is there between them, exactly? All Prague is talking about it, but it seems that nobody can say for sure what’s going on.”
“Somebody showed Father Štulc one of Němcová’s letters, addressed to one of the members of their circle.”
“Who?”
“To Mr. Jurenka, a student of medicine.”
“Do you know what was in the letter?”
“I have made a copy. It is a love letter.”
“Ach so! And what else happened?”
“Father Štulc used the letter to put moral pressure on the writer. He upbraided her time and again. And that isn’t all. The Father tried to oblige Němcová to accompany him publicly in an open carriage, all the way across Prague, to confess at the castle.”
“Like a heretic?”
“Precisely. To make a show of her failings and of her shame before the inhabitants of Prague.”
“Father Štulc’s intentions were excellent. Němcová is a kind of heretic. Of the same type as that dog Havlíček. I see that the Catholic Church has not altogether forgotten its inquisitorial past. Fortunately, the Catholic Church is on our side, and our regime depends to quite an extent on its support. What else happened?”
“Father Štulc threatened to make public the contents of Němcová’s letter if she didn’t ride with him in an open carriage to make her confession and show that she was renouncing the vanities of this world for ever more.”
“And Němcová?”
“She refused.”
“She wasn’t afraid of the threat?”
“She was certainly afraid of it, as anybody would have been.
But she refused to give in.”
“I will now read your copy of the letter in question. It is addressed to that young man who is soon to be a doctor. Wait for a while in the lobby, Fräulein. If I need you again, I shall call for you.”
The following day the young doctor ordered her to undress and untie her corset. He had always helped her. This day, however, he was distant. He cleaned the glass cups coolly. And so the days passed. She didn’t dare to so much as open her mouth; he remained stubbornly silent, as his palms and fingers moved with the same professional skill over her body.
I like to dream that we will go to some place together, to the mountains, for example,” says the difficult-to-read copy that Fräulein Zaleski made of Němcová’s letter to her man friend, “to spend a few happy days together. But as reality is not within my grasp, I take pleasure in my dreams.” Can this be of any importance to the police? I shall read a little more. “When I don’t have reality, let me dream! 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 only being dreams, if these feelings will be with me for the rest of my days! I am grateful, deeply grateful for this kind of dream.”
No, I am ashamed to read on. I do not wish to eavesdrop. But I am a defender of our Austro-Hungarian fatherland. How many enemies it has!
About Němcová: she is a sensitive woman. How must I go about destroying her? It isn’t easy. When her son Hynek was dying in a Prague hospital, while she was on a trip to Hungary, we re-routed the letter from the doctor that was meant to inform the mother of her son’s critical condition. We were hoping that the son would die without his mother being able to take her leave of him. But at the last moment she found out about him, rushed to Prague, and during his last forty-eight hours she held her son in her arms. Fräulein Zaleski gave me a report about Němcová’s period of mourning. But even that wasn’t enough to crush her spirit. She goes on writing; her novels and stories continue to be published, and people like them. I see that Fräulein Zaleski has marked a passage in one of them: “The ignorance of woman is a whip that she entwines in order to hurt herself. Until women are aware of the tremendous importance of their mission, men will not be able to build the future on a solid foundation either. If this building process is to succeed, women must work together with men. Women have to raise themselves up and sit on the throne, governing side by side with men.”
Time and again, I can see that this woman is a danger to everyone. To annihilate her, we will have to seize everything that is of value from her, everything that she treasures, that she loves. First of all, her children. Those who are still around will be crushed by misery. Second, the man she loves. What is his profession? Fräulein Zaleski says that he has just qualified as a doctor of medicine. Excellent! We will send him to Galicia, to deal with cholera there. If only everything were so simple! As far as her husband is concerned, she isn’t at all close to him, but just in case we’ll send him to the Tyrol. That only leaves her friends. Here we need more detailed information for this campaign I am in the process of launching. Fritz, send in the informer!
The door was opened by Božena’s daughter Dora, who was in the kitchen doing the dishes. She pointed to the bedroom; her mother had locked herself in. I could hear her voice and that of a man, low and coarse. Lord only knows who that was. Dora made such a racket with the pots and pans that I couldn’t make out a single word. I decided to wait.
My eyes wandered over the different colored glasses and bowls standing on the kitchen shelf, inexpensive objects that Božena valued greatly nonetheless. Every day she dusted them and rearranged them differently, depending on her mood. The blue vase was usually placed at the back. Today, however, it all but hid the gray and cream-colored bowls and glasses, standing apart from the rest as if shouting, “Look at me and nothing else!” The sight of the collection of glasses strengthened my conviction that Božena was upset, that in her agitation she had played with her favorite objects without bearing in mind the aesthetic impression caused by their arrangement.
Finally Dora stopped washing the dishes; the voices coming from Božena’s room could now be heard clearly enough. The man’s voice was Němec’s, saying: “What are we going to do to get winter clothing for the children? Haven’t you noticed they’re trembling from the cold? The only winter coat we have, the brown one, is worn by me. I don’t have anything else, and even then I look like a straw man. My underclothes are falling apart; nobody darns them. You’re the one who does the least of all. You wander about the place with your head in the clouds.”
She replied: “When you were off in Hungary and I was alone with the children, I felt very lonely and even got to the stage of desiring you, but I learned to do without a lot of things.”
“I keep having the most terrible dreams,” he broke in which was when I realized that her husband wasn’t listening to her. “The other day I dreamt that I’d died and that the coffin you’d had made for me was made of our beds.”
“Since I was a young girl,” Božena said, without knowing what he had just said, “I have yearned to learn, felt a desire for something higher and better than what I found around me, and felt an aversion to everything coarse and commonplace. That is the reason why we do not succeed as a couple, and the reason behind my misfortune.”
“What does this studying, what do books, papers, and pens offer you? Nothing. They don’t even provide you with enough to eat. You’d be better off forgetting about all that silly nonsense and start learning how to be a good housewife.”
She replied, “Few women have had so much respect for the dignity of the institution of marriage as I had and continue to have, but I was soon obliged to lose my faith in it. How could I have done otherwise? All I see around me are lies, cheating, gilded servitude, obligations; that is to say, vulgarity. You have had my body, but my desires are always elsewhere.”
Then something fell to the floor and broke. The mirror? A glass? The medical cups? It was as if Božena’s words had been validated. I put the blue vase behind the light-colored glasses. Then I left.
She summoned up her courage and complained to the doctor: “For weeks I’ve had a pain here at the foot of the spinal column.”
He didn’t seem to have heard her, although even she had spoken quite clearly and in a raised voice.
The next day, the doctor carried something in his left hand that looked like a wrapped plate. He left his medical bag on the floor, untied the string, and indeed, it was a plate, deep and full of ointment.
“I prepared it for you. It’s the best medicine for bones and muscles.”
She was so surprised she didn’t even say thank you. He turned his back to look for something in his bag and then took out a book: Stories by Božena Němcová.
“Would you be so kind as to sign this book for me?”
With her face practically touching the pages, she wrote a most sincere dedication.
“My handwriting is like an old lady’s! The truth is I’m not used to writing in this position.”
They both laughed and he moved his chair closer to her and told her how, many years ago, he had helped his grandfather, a village doctor, to write prescriptions. Instead of a doctor’s unintelligible handwriting, the prescriptions were written in a child’s clumsy scrawl.
One or two weeks went by. He brought her plates of ointment, and sat next to her, not taking his eyes off her. Only from time to time did his gaze slip across her shoulders, her lips. He takes care of me as if I were a newborn baby, Božena told herself. The beast began to rouse its limbs, shake off its sleepiness, and howl. She made an effort not to pay it any attention. Stubbornly, she repeated to herself: like a newborn baby.
One day, when he was applying the salve, she noticed that his hands were trembling. He decided to leave off with the ointment and sit next to her, his eyes on her. Today his eyes are full of fine red veins, Božena told herself, and are more moist than usual. He looked at her for a long while and his hands didn’t stop trembling. The beast inside her yawned, got up on all fours, and started to sniff. Then it gave out a strident, protracted howl. A white membrane covered the doctor’s eyes.
You sent all your admirers packing because of this one . . . Oh, Božena! A student of medicine, eleven years younger than you! You clung to him with the desperation of a woman who is aware that this is her last chance to be happy, or rather, the last opportunity to dream of happiness. Not long ago you wrote in a letter about that young man, good-looking but haughty, empty, and common: “For you, he is nothing special, but for me he is unique, I would rank him before any one of you all. I would like to weave a crown of stars to place on his head so that everybody might appreciate his brilliance. I do not seek to know if he deserves it or not, because I love him. Perhaps in the future, more than one woman will love him, but none with such sincerity, such devotion as I. I suppose that one day he will know how I loved him, although he will never know the depths of my suffering.”
Yes, he is a conceited, superficial, and a coarse man. But despite everything, do I not like to dream of him, too?
The student of medicine became a frequent visitor. She is happy. Her inner bliss is written all over her face; she seems younger and more beautiful. In the afternoon, she shares the leftovers of a frugal lunch with her young friend; at the table in her study, adorned with flowers, she offers him biscuits to go with tea. She has taken pains to tidy up the small, damp apartment, and those of us who visit her are so dazzled by her enthusiasm that her beaming smile blinds us to her poverty and hardship.
The doctor usually sits at her table, clumsily handling her treasures with his peasant’s fingers—a little bust of Goethe, which Purkyně gave her; a framed portrait of George Sand, from Doctor Čejka—and keeps helping himself to biscuits until he’s full to bursting. As he now lives close by, he waits to see when Němec heads off, then invites himself into Božena’s home. If there’s something to eat, that cheers him up at once. She watches him eating, adoring him as if he were a deity.
Her happiness has lasted for two months. For two months this apprentice doctor has been proud of the attentions of this woman whom his friends adore and who enjoys such tremendous prestige in Czech cultural circles. The fool who has concocted a story about knowing the Orient, has moved to a place close to the block of apartments in which the Němecs live and has turned their marriage into hell. Němec, always sensitive, always jealous, has sneaking suspicions about the relationship. The inhabitants of Prague really have something to talk about now. But she doesn’t give a hoot for their gossip. She trembles at the thought of losing her happiness.
One day, when I was also present, the young man appeared and said: “Why don’t you put a different dress on? Doesn’t it bother you that I’ve seen you like this so often?”
She answered that outward appearance was not the most important thing. Then she spent entire nights mending her old blouses.
The following day the student arrived, sat on her old patched-up sofa, smoked a cigarette, and got up to go. Božena looked at him, completely at a loss. When he had his hand on the doorknob ready to leave, she finally brought herself to ask where he was going.
“I can’t sit on this horrible sofa. I’m going to the cafe.”
He slammed the door on his way out.
Since then, this kind of scene has repeated itself often. What are you, Božena, if not his slave? You yourself wrote: “His image accompanied me wherever I went. I slept with it, and woke up with it. In front of him I kneeled as if he were God.” You, who is admired, proud, who fears neither slander nor the police. Is this happiness?
This is being in love. “Love is a sickness, but one doesn’t want to be cured of it.” You wrote that and you’ve proven it.
But you have your own world, which I do not have, nor does the doctor and nor does Němec. The other day a lamp with a white glass shade came in the post. You placed it on the table of your study, mad with joy. You looked like a little girl.
“Božena, how do you manage to be so jubilant in the middle of so much hardship and misfortune?” That’s what I wanted to know.
“In the evening I like to retire to my room, with a cup of tea on the table, and the oil lamp gilding everything. Then before my eyes appear invincible heroes and beautiful princesses, winged horses and terrifying dragons.”
That’s your prescription, that’s your secret.
That is your willow tree that nobody can cut down and destroy. Not the hardship, not your husband with his eternally vexed face, not the police, not even the doctor, the person you love most.
She jumped over the puddles of water. She would have liked to go flying off into the sky again. What a pity that when it rains, one cannot fly! The soles of her shoes were soaked through, as were her coat and large chenille head scarf with fringe, complaining in silence, longing for a heated, dry room. But she didn’t hear their protests; she had ears for nothing but her inner voice, which at this moment was singing an ode to joy backed by a twenty-five voice choir. The church bells were chiming, but she didn’t hear them either; the choir was singing too lustily. The streetlamps on Kampa Island glided in the air like Venetian lanterns, gilding the threads of rain. Then, in the darkness between the streetlamps, she couldn’t make out where a puddle ended and splash! She fell right into the water and burst out laughing.
A bell started chiming. This time she heard it and told herself that he must be in class. Poor boy, it’s hard work studying medicine. And she remembered how, the other day, he had arrived much later than the agreed time. He found her writing. He placed his bag on top of a half-written sentence and sighed. She went into the kitchen to make tea and he went after her like a cat. He took her in a brutal fashion, right there among the pots and pans. The massages, the philosophy, and the ointment were no longer of interest to him. When it was over, he watched as she smoothed the folds of her wrinkled skirt with the palm of her hand, how she buttoned up her blouse, and put a needle in place of the button that he had torn off.
“You’re tidying yourself up to go out, aren’t you?”
“I have an appointment with Pospíšil, my publisher.”
“And do you not have an appointment with me?”
“You got here two hours late, my love. I thought that—”
“Then stop thinking and do as you promised. You had an appointment with me and you shall keep it.”
“I have to talk with my publisher about the money he owes me, my love. I haven’t got a penny left to buy anything for the children’s supper. Please understand.”
“You are being unfair to me! I moved from Hybernská Street to be close to you. When I arrive a little late, despite wishing more than anything to get here earlier, you’re not even waiting for me. You are busy writing, as if we had arranged nothing. And finally, when we’ve been together for only a quarter of an hour, you’re already in a hurry to answer the call of literature, the only thing that matters to you. What do I mean to you? Tell me! I suppose I am only useful to you as an inspiration for words and more words and nothing else, the miserable spark that lights up a story.”
His protest seemed to her then to be an unfair accusation. Today, in that damp winter dusk, in the middle of a street in the rain, she saw things quite differently. She drew back the silvery curtain of rain and, quick as lightning, a sudden realization struck her: he had moved close to her home not to pester her but to be with her as often as possible. However for her the situation was different: she didn’t need his constant presence, she carried it within her and wrote about him. She transformed him into the paladins of her folktales and into the tender lovers of her novels. She wrote tirelessly, she slept only three or four hours a day, she ate little. She was nourished by a feeling of joy.
The church bell started ringing again. She imagined herself embracing him as they walk under that streetlamp next to the oak tree. With each new chime she became aware of more details: his hat, always worn at a slight angle, his pitching walk, his cane swinging upward. She felt such a strong desire to really be with him that she even felt his coffee-laced breath on her cheek. No, he hadn’t appeared yet.
Again the bells chimed, as if there were an emergency. Are they tolling non-stop? Is it possible that I could have spent the last hour and a half in the rain? I’d better go back home. He’s probably been delayed somewhere and can’t get away. Poor man, he must be fretting; he must be thinking about me. She increased her pace. At home she would make a full pot of tea, in case he dropped by and was cold and hungry. She passed Archers’ Island, Sofia Island—not a soul anywhere, everything shining clean as a whistle, the rain had cleansed it all. Home wasn’t far now.
Suddenly, in the light of a streetlamp, she recognized the couple she had dreamed of a moment ago. A tall, broad-shouldered man, with a hat tipped to one side, swung his cane into the air. He was walking arm in arm with a woman who was fragile-looking and so stooped she might be a hunchback. They stopped in the darkness between the streetlamps, the woman’s face was transparent, her fingers, which now stretched out to the man’s hair, were translucent, like those of a corpse. He embraced her . . . He embraced her with that familiar movement of his right hand, with that mixture of possessive instinct and desire to defend. No, there was no doubting it, that was him. Now he was kissing the woman. She recognized the woman as her friend Antonia Zaleski, now called Vítězka.
With an effort, she walked back home. For a good while she struggled with the lock because she found it difficult to turn the key. Until she realized she was at the wrong house.
Božena will turn up any second now. She’s gone to the drugstore to buy a little tea,” Němec says disgruntled, as he continues to read his newspaper.
Alone in her room, I dare to take a look at her desk. There is a half-written letter but I can’t find the opening page, so I don’t know to whom it is addressed.
“ . . . this is good weather in which to die of desperation. When I look at the thick gray fog that crushes us like a nightmare, the naked trees from which all the leaves have fallen as our hopes are falling from us, when I see the empty, opaque atmosphere, sluggish and sad and suffocating us, I feel melancholy and desolate; I get the shivers and would like to have a pair of wings so as to fly to countries in which a warmer, freer air blows.”
I think she is talking not only of these sad winter days, but of the grayness of our country after a failed revolution, the grayness that, like mud at the bottom of a lake, has seeped into our lives.
Once more, with a column of light coming through the door, I go into the kitchen. Božena is sitting there, waiting for the water to boil to make tea. She wears a black dress and a white apron, and is sitting with her head bowed and her elegant coiffure combed upward. The nape of her neck suggests frailty, but also strength, exhaustion, and sadness. The water has boiled; she heads off with the cup and the teapot. Now she’s seen me, she moves her lips in a way that is barely visible, and gets another cup. In her room she puts my cup on the bedside table and without another word goes to her desk. I have the feeling she is so sad that she cannot speak. And that she is escaping into her writing so as not to have to think. She stands in front of the desk, the tray in her hands. I observe her from behind and see that she is not reading what she has just written, that she is staring into space. One day she had told me: “Vítězka, you and I have to be strong because we are fragile.” The gray light falls from the window onto her shoulder, her arm, and a curl of hair that has freed itself from her coiffure. She sits down and adds words to her letter. Then she gets her coat and before going out, whispers to me: “Today I can’t give you any of my time, Vítězka. Finish your tea and go. Don’t ever come back.”
Her voice, always so smooth, has dealt me a hard blow. I cannot move. The sound of the door closing behind her is like a sigh.
What has she added to the letter?
“If I could choose, I would like to be reborn two hundred years from now or perhaps even later, when the world will be, if such a thing is possible, just as I would like it to be so as to able to live in it with pleasure.”
So yes, it was she who saw us embracing.
How can she write in such an elegant way after having made a discovery of this kind? She wishes only to be reborn when the world will be a better place. A place in which there will not be people as mean as I am, I who have joined the police in their games designed to ruin other people’s lives. But what could you expect, Božena? I need the money, just as I need love, even if only for a moment, even if it is handed to me on a platter by the police.
“I am at your command, Herr von Päumann.”
“Fräulein Zaleski, how fares that campaign to isolate Božena Němcová from her friends and potential benefactors?”
“Mrs. Eliška Lambl, a friend of Božena’s, the sister of one of her doctors, told me yes, I have it here in writing: ‘There are many days when there is no food in her house. Nothing whatsoever. One day Božena complained to my brother that she had but one coin left and didn’t know what to buy with it; whether a little tea to keep her awake, a candle to write by all night, or a little ink, which was also nearly finished.’”
“Has she spoken to other people of interest?”
“Yes, to the poet Jan Neruda, who went to see her with his companion Hálek. Jan told me: ‘We visited her to ask for a contribution to the first issue of May magazine. We stared incredulously at the flaking walls and the shabby furniture; the tablecloth especially fascinated us, being half ripped and patched up, yet there on the table. I don’t mean to say that it was the first time we’d seen such poverty, but to find it in the home of a person who had become a celebrity thanks to a lifetime of work left us speechless and open mouthed.’”
“Does our writer continue to get help from her friends?”
“When she fell on hard times she was ashamed and didn’t want her friends to know anything about it. But her doctors let people know about the true nature of her situation, so that those who didn’t have any money borrowed some to buy her food. During the periods in which she was confined to her bed by the illness in her lungs, which sometimes lasted for months on end, her friends returned to her side, to try and keep her mind occupied. But when they realized she was under police surveillance, their attitude changed. I don’t know to what extent you have been informed about this.”
“Tell me everything you know.”
“Božena is obliged to ask for, and receives, hand outs. She can’t expect much from the great ladies of Prague because they’ve distanced themselves from her. They claim that Němcová has deserted her husband—something that she’s never done—and that instead of living like a humble serving woman, she frequents the company of peculiar young people. By which they mean, above all, that young friend of hers who’s a doctor, or rather, a student of medicine. Many others have the same opinion. And those who don’t believe it pretend that they do.”
“What about the behavior of her closest friends?”
“Johanna Rott told me that she is keeping her distance from Němcová and trying to persuade her sister Sophie to also avoid the writer’s company. Sophie confessed to me that Johanna had written to her in a letter: ‘I don’t like those people who have it said of them that they are kind hearted.’ Since then Sophie has been mulling over this sentence, but hasn’t managed to understand what it means. Němcová has noticed the coldness of the two sisters, but as she wants to keep her desperate plight under wraps, she behaves as if it was of no importance to her. One of her most faithful friends, Mr. Ivan Klácel, from Brno, said not long ago that he is ‘avoiding Němcová for political reasons.’ Božena has found out, of course. Her friends are afraid even to write to her. The poet Erben, who until recently was a firm supporter of her novels and had written highly of them in the newspapers, has now limited his relationship to the writer to chance meetings on the street. The only ones who are unconditionally loyal to her are Purkyně and Palacký.”
“So the Němec family doesn’t have enough food?”
“Sometimes they go for a whole day without eating. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Božena, sick in bed, sends her children with messages to friendly families: ‘Please, give me a little food.’”
“Has she sold all her jewels?”
“She has kept only the garnet necklace, as a memento of her grandmother.”
“She prefers to go hungry rather than pawn it?”
“Mrs. Němcová believes that her life is bound up with that necklace, and that if she gives up the necklace, a curse will fall upon her.”
“We will force her to sell it then. You are quite sure that Němcová’s friends have abandoned her?”
“Yes, and not only them. Her husband is also disassociating himself from her. I have here a document that he wrote and signed:
It is my wish that my wife, Božena Němcová, abandon my apartment and live as she pleases, always bearing in mind that she has no right to expect any kind of maintenance from me. The causes that have led me to take this step are as follows:
1. The aversion that my wife feels toward me.
2. The violent arguments with which the aforementioned woman confronts me.
3. A difference of opinions regarding the education of our children.
4. The negligent way in which my wife looks after our home.
“Thank you, Fräulein Zaleski. That is all for today. You will receive your payment in a few days’ time. From now on we will almost certainly be dispensing with your services as regards the Němcová case. Once you have completed Němcová’s biography, have it sent to us at once. Auf Wiedersehen, Fräulein.”