been going on to me about it. It’s as if his life depended on it.
Yes, I shall destroy Božena. Materially, she is so badly off that things couldn’t get much worse for her. I will ensure that she loses what is left of her reputation. I remember what she said of my lost friend, František: “What is left of an enemy may come back to life, as happens with the remnants of diseases and fires. Which is why they must be exterminated altogether. One must never ignore an enemy, no matter how weak he might be. He can be dangerous at any given moment, like a spark in a haystack.”
Yes, I’d been wearing my dark brown coat with its back all covered in white. Božena lives precariously; she is even poorer than I am. Her husband’s madness has led her to this point. Is it worth having a husband like Božena’s? Whose solitude is more desolate: mine, living among five younger siblings who need to be fed; or hers, living in the company of someone with whom she has nothing in common?
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