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