now she feels completely empty. She doesn’t want to even think about writing. Her health has deteriorated; she is coughing and spitting blood. Aside from her cough, there is nothing else left inside her. Not a single thing to look forward to, not a trace of joy when she sees something beautiful. Not even hope.
She passes the lit windows of the cafe frequented by her friends. Perhaps through the glass she will see the face of somebody to whom she can explain her sorrow. She is empty but the weight of her sadness has not left her, she’s aware of that. Only to speak, to let herself go! But what can she tell them? I have lost love? I have lost everything? I have lost life? All of them, absolutely everybody, would laugh at that. She knows that they don’t care for her lover and consider him a charlatan and a fraud. Those who would listen to her would be running off to share this latest gossip with their friends a moment later. This has happened to her before. But what does she care? She needs to speak, to get rid of the weight pressing down on her, to hold someone’s hand and tell them. Tell them what, really? Tell them her life is over.
That woman sitting over there isn’t. Indeed, it is Vítězka. She approaches her window. Vítězka is sitting among some friends who are in the middle of an animated discussion, but she doesn’t seem to understand their words. Her eyes are frightened, big brown eyes like . . . Like a deer’s, like a wild goat’s. . . No, like a little donkey’s. Vítězka is like a tender, timid donkey who was born to be used by others. Vítězka is made of that same stuff, as are all those who have to hide their suffering in order to give the impression they are getting ahead in life, in order to make the world look like a happy place.
She taps the glass, close to Vítězka’s ear. The young woman who seems so distracted looks through the glass out into the street and Božena realizes, suddenly, that Vítězka looks somewhat frightened and perhaps a little compassionate.
She leans on Vítězka, who had come out to say hello, and took her over to the Vltava. There, next to the water, she looked at her sideways. Yes, with those big, innocent, sad eyes she looked like a little kind-hearted donkey. For the first time in a long while, Božena saw tears in the other’s eyes and she put her arms around the neck of that little donkey looking about without understanding a thing, her big eyes blinking. With her head on this young woman’s shoulder, eyes bright with tears, she began to let herself go, saying she had lost love . . . that she had lost everything, that she had lost life. She spoke and sobbed, and her words fell like drops of slow autumn rain.
Vítězka was about to open her mouth to say: “But your lover hasn’t left you! He doesn’t want anybody else! His love is sincere. What he couldn’t stand, and I find hard to put up with too, is that you are so great and famous, as well as being so beautiful, whereas he is just a mediocre student, one of many. It also riled him that you could escape from him, that you fled into the books you were writing, into your willow tree. And he couldn’t cut it down like Vítek does in the folktale. That’s why he ran off with other women, not with the most stunning ones, but with the ones who were easy to ditch, the ones who had nothing memorable about them, who could feel nothing but uncritical admiration for him. Once he had filled his cup of self-esteem with them, he came back to you. Then one day he definitely did not come back because the secret police, who were after you, moved him away from Prague. They sent him far from the capital to a practice in a distant place, and they did that because they didn’t need him anymore. Your wise Czech friends had already distanced themselves from you, shocked by your relationship with him, and by getting him out of the way the police did you additional harm. They were afraid of you because you dared to proclaim in public that you are Czech. You are proud of it, you do as you please, and, on top