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