Letters of Insurgents - Yarostan's Eigth Letter

Link https://youtu.be/ffXunpvl3wQ

Yarostan’s eighth letter

Dear Sophia,

Your victory is complete. I never dreamed the passion you just described lay below the surface of the person I knew twenty years ago. I was wrong. My outlook didn’t allow me to see below the surface. I was near-sighted; I still am. Mirna, Yara, your letter, all the events taking place around me are making me suspect I’ve been viewing the world through opaque glass. The frame of reference I acquired from Titus and Luisa and from comrades I met during two long prison terms suddenly seems inadequate; real people seem to move outside its boundaries. More is breaking down and more is rising up than I’m able to take m. Perhaps I never dreamed of anything more than a different system of constraint. I had not envisioned the wealth of potentiality, the passion bursting out of individuals who suddenly lost their chains. Total lack of constraint appealed to me as a concept a motto. But the more Mirna and Yara, and you, make it a lived experience, the less able I feel to move towards it.

Mirna, Yara, as well as Jasna are on a journey. They’re exploring the possibilities available to them. Your previous letter convinced them working people were rising in every part of the globe. Everything seems to confirm this. A totally different activity seems to be on the horizon.

Yet for the first time in my life I find myself holding back. I didn’t accompany my three comrades on their journey; I chose to remain in the carton plant. My expectations seem to be considerably below the level of the activity taking place around me. I told-you that during my second prison term I rejected the outlook I had acquired from, Luisa; I told you that when I first met Mirna. she hungered for life and I was only able to offer her politics. I haven’t moved very far since then. I’m starting to Realize that I barely understand Mirna or Yara. I learned from Titus and Luisa to put my life at the service of politics. All I did during my second term was to modify my politics, perhaps even, to enrich my .political outlook; I didn’t enrich my life’s desires. My “theory” is still my dearest possession. Yet the genuine rebels in my life have been Jan and Mirna, and both of them have, had very “crude” theories by Luisa’s and Titus’ standards — as crude as mine was when Luisa first undertook to “educate” me. Despite his theoretical ”crudity” Jan was far less reconciled to the totality of repression than Luisa.

Luisa’s account of her activity as a delegate in the transport union confirms most of what Manuel told me during my first prison term. When Manuel returned from the front to the city he found former union militants working as supervisors and speed-up engineers, lubricating the production of weapons for a “popular army” whose guns were turned against the workers themselves. Luisa fails to clarify precisely what’s obscure. How could Nachalo, George Alberts and Titus Zabran all have fought on the same front? Why did Alberts return from the front completely transformed and “shell shocked?” Alberts had told Sabina his only military activity had been to serve on a firing squad which liquidated certain “infiltrators,” by which he meant revolutionaries who refused to place themselves under the orders of the “popular army.” Did he tell Luisa more immediately after this act than he told Sabina a decade later? According to Luisa, Alberts and Zabran “both joined Nachalo at the front.” What a strange way to put it! From Manuel and Sabina we’ve learned that the popular army brigade “joined” the militia unit only to liquidate it. Luisa fails to distinguish victims from executioners. The two are the same to her because they are both parts of “our organization.” The greatest crimes are virtues when committed by “our organization.” When “our militants” enter the state apparatus, in Luisa’s eyes they’re still union militants, not state functionaries. When “our ministers” give orders to an army, the army is no longer a state army but an extension of the class. It’s not by chance that she refers to the fascist army as the “rebel army” and to fascist generals as “insurgents.” Once her comrades were in the government, the aim of “our organization” became to maintain law and order, and all those who threatened it were insurgents. Forced labor in the service of the state apparatus became revolutionary activity; supervisors and foremen became militants fighting in the rear. I too remember having heard Luisa’s account before. But now I’m extremely puzzled about the friendship between Luisa, George Alberts and Titus Zabran. Titus never told me very much about his past activities, and I’m surprised to learn he was such a talkative “theorist” when Luisa met him. Was she exaggerating in order to compare him to your young friend Clesec, or have I never really known him? I’m not only puzzled by Luisa’s account; I’m very suspicious of it. Sabina told you that Alberts didn’t go to the front with workers and peasants fighting to liberate themselves; he went with a state army that repressed them. According to Luisa, Alberts left for the front after Titus convinced him that victory at the front was a prerequisite for meaningful accomplishments in the rear; at that point they both “joined Nachalo at the front.” This doesn’t make sense. According to Manuel the militia units were formed a few days after the street fighting ended. Manuel as well as Nachalo left for the front almost immediately after they had fought on the barricades. The “popular army” didn’t exist yet; the influential union militants were still trying to get into the state apparatus. It was only after the anti-state militants became state functionaries that the “popular army” was created. Luisa told you Titus was already in uniform when Alberts met him. It’s conceivable that it was Titus who convinced Alberts about the importance of victory at the front. But it’s not conceivable to me that Alberts “joined” either Nachalo or Titus at the front. Titus’ uniform must have been the militia uniform, and he must have been on leave from the militia’s front when he met Alberts; he probably couldn’t imagine the nature of the “popular army” being created in the rear. I’ll try to ask Titus; I haven’t seen him since we began our correspondence. The more I learn about that struggle, the more I suspect that my own life, as well as yours, have been affected by it. It seems to me that if Titus convinced Alberts to join the “popular army,” it was because Titus was unfamiliar with the nature of that organization. If they then “joined” each other at the same front, it wasn’t as allies. Titus returned to his militia unit — perhaps the very unit in the village described by Manuel. Alberts arrived later with an apparatus that was labelled “popular” — and he served on a firing squad that liquidated members of the militia unit after calling them “infiltrators.” Luisa visited Titus in a hospital after he was injured, probably defending his militia comrades. And Alberts returned “shell shocked” and “totally transformed” — why? What did he tell Luisa when he returned? That he had shot his own comrades? That he had taken Titus’ advice and “by mistake” had found himself on the opposite side of the firing line?

As for your “remembering” that Titus was with you at the time of your release twenty years ago, I can assure you that your memory is playing tricks on you. He didn’t stay behind in order to try to release the rest of us; he stayed behind because he was in jail like the rest of us. Titus had just been released when he met Jan’s father at the bus repair depot next door to the trade union building where Titus had just gotten his job back. When Luisa told you that story, she must have felt guilty for having abandoned her comrades; she must have known that her emigration did not illustrate the “solidarity and comradeship” she had preached. Only a few days ago Zdenek and Titus ran into each other, not quite by chance. On the day of the dance at her plant, Mirna took Zdenek to Titus’ house; she intended to invite Titus to the dance. Mirna was surprised to learn that Zdenek and Titus had known each other. Among other things, Zdenek told Mirna he had run into Titus in prison — during the time of my first prison term!

Mirna had invited Zdenek to the dance a their plant two weeks ago, while in the middle of an argument with him. I had timed down Mirna’s invitation because of my inability to dance, but Jasna had hired me into taking part in the event by: promising to give me another dancing lesson.

I wasn’t aware of all the work Mirna and Yara did to prepare for the event, because! spent my days in the carton plant. A week ago Monday all the workers at the plant listened to a debate on the radio. Jasna had told us about two weeks ago that Marc Glavni and Vera Krena were going to engage in this debate, but I had promptly forgotten about it. I learned at Mirna’s dance that Yara hadn’t only remembered the debate; she had a university friend of hers make a recording of the speeches, and re-broadcast excerpts of Glavni’s speech at the dance itself, with very dramatic effect. When I first heard the speeches I resented the fact that my fellow workers had dropped “everything to listen to them; it seemed to me that if the speeches of bureaucrats still mattered to us, then we hadn’t moved very far. If I’d known what use Yara was going to make of Comrade Glavni’s speech I would have listened with greater interest.

The following day I got a hint of what Mirna and Yara were preparing. I could barely recognize Yara. Her light hair had Been dyed pitch black, along with her eyebrows and eyelashes. Mirna explained that the dance was to be a masquerade: I gathered that Yara was going to play the devil. Mirna then dressed me in a peasant jacket, pants and boots of the type Jan used to wear. She proceeded to straighten my hair with wax, and to fasten a moustache above my lips.

Early Wednesday morning, when I was getting ready to leave for the carton plant, there was a knock at*our door. It was Jasna. She seemed as full of energy and mischief as the other two. “How glad I am you haven’t left for the plant yet,” she told me exuberantly. “You haven’t changed your mind about chaperoning me to the dance?”

I blushed as I told her, “No, Jasna. I’m looking forward to it — very much.”

“You won’t recognize me,” she announced.

“Nor you me,” I said. “Mirna already told me it’s going to be a masquerade. She’s going to paste a moustache on my face and —”

“You won’t recognize me below the masquerade,” Jasna said cryptically, kissing my cheek. “Where are the two devils?”

“They’re still asleep,” I told her. “They spent half the night in Yara’s room hatching plots. Are you in on them?”

“Not yet, but I will be! May I wake them?”

Jasna woke Yara, who immediately shouted, “You’ll do it, Jasna! I knew you would’.” Then both ran excitedly to Mirna’s room. What I heard next made me extremely apprehensive for the rest of. the day. Mirna said, “You’re a real friend, Jasna!” Then Jasna shouted, “And you’re a real hypocrite, Mirna. You’re pushing me into this game only because you know I’ll never take him from you. He’d have to be crazy to let me! Look at the two of us, Yara! He’s not blind!” Yara shouted, “You;re beautiful, Jasna! All of us are beautiful, and he loves every one of us; you’ll see!” At this point Mirna shushed the other two so that I wouldn’t hear any more of their “plot.”

I didn’t go to work Thursday morning. Yara and her friend Julia were in and out of the house all morning long. They painted large signs which they didn’t let me see. Mirna was busy sewing more costumes. About two hours before the dance was to begin, Mirna made sure I wore every item of my costume, including the moustache, appropriately. Yara, with black hair hanging down to her shoulders and over her face, wore slacks and a work jacket. Mirna wore the dress she had worn when I’d first met her twenty years ago. Slobodan and an older boy came by for the signs, and Julia left with them. Then Mirna and Yara left carrying suitcases; Mirna explained they were going to “fix up” Jasna and Zdenek.

I walked to Jasna’s house in my funny clothes. Jasna was “fixed up” in clothes that were vaguely familiar to me. I asked her what the masquerade was going to mean.

“Don’t you recognize yourself, or me, or Yara?” she asked. I admitted I didn’t. “I’ll make you guess,” she told me provocatively.

As soon as Jasna and I reach the plant, the first thing I see is yet another illustration of the significance your letters have for us. You responded immediately to my “confession.” Yara responded just as immediately to your first description of the commune to which Tina accompanied you. Over the mam entrance to Mirna’s plant, covering the plant’s enormous name plaque, is one of the banners Yara and Julia painted; it contains a single word: LIBERATED. Inside the plant, the floor and walls are newly painted; there is no sign of the machinery, which has all been pushed against a wall and hidden away by a curtain. At one end of the vast room there’s a speakers’ platform; behind it there’s an enormous red flag with a picture of a tank in its center. There are streamers all over the ceiling. The two side walls contain enormous banners with slogans you’ll recognize; one says, “Everything is allowed”; the other, “Nothing is banned.”

Jasna and I are not among the first people to arrive; we seem to be among the last. Zdenek rushes to us and tells us, “I ran into your friend Zabran on the way here — a funny meeting.” Jasna and I are both amazed to learn this, but Zdenek tells us he’ll save the story until later; “I don’t want to miss any of the antics of those two,” he explains; “they’re both like ten-year old children, and I suspect Mirna is the younger of the two.”

The same thought had gone through my mind when Mirna had left the house wearing her elementary school dress. I myself feel like a ten-year old in this former factory which seems to have been decorated mainly by Yara, Julia and their ten-year old friend Mirna. I find your comparison of Tissie and of all of us to children profound and highly appropriate. Yes, the world is becoming for all of us what it is for Yara, what it may have been for us when we were children: unpredictable and fascinating because unknown. The machine-like routine, the knowledge that tomorrow will be like today, is gone. The world is becoming a field for the realization of our dreams, your dreams, all the dreams that reach us, all the imaginings of all the past dreamers we’ve been carrying inside ourselves. The world is no longer external to me, to any of us, but is beginning to be an externalization and reflection of ourselves; it is no longer a cold, hostile reality opposed to our “private,” personal, unreal dreams. Reality is starting to incorporate our dreams.

Music starts to play: a traditional folk melody. Everyone forms into a circle, which Jasna and I join, and we start to move in rhythm to the music. In the middle of the circle another dance begins. Zdenek is in the center dancing with an old, bent woman made up as a skeleton, or perhaps as death. The old woman spins him in circles, and then chases him around the circumference of the circle. Suddenly a beautiful “courtesan” approaches Zdenek and makes suggestive gestures. The courtesan’s eyes are covered by a mask below which I recognize Yara’s lips; she wears a short skirt, a wig of long blonde hair, a tight sweater over a padded chest, and high-heeled shoes. I whisper to Jasna, “This must have been rehearsed.”

“I suppose it was,” she tells me. “I wasn’t in on this part of it. I barely recognize her. Isn’t she fantastic?”

When the old “skeleton’s” back is turned, Zdenek accepts the courtesan’s invitation and dances with her on the inside of the circle. But when Zdenek’s back is turned, Yara throws the blonde wig and the shoes to Mirna, who places a black hairnet with horns over Yara’s dyed black hair, and throws a black cape over Yara’s shoulders. Then Yara, as the devil, continues to dance with the stunned Zdenek, while the old “skeleton” runs behind them with a broom. Suddenly the broom hits the devil, who vanishes through the circle. Zdenek is left alone, facing the old woman and her broom. He tries to run after the devil, but finds no way out of the circle of dancers. The peasant-girl Mirna leaves the circle, runs to Zdenek and dances with him. The old woman tries to hit them with the broom, but her broom only hits the ground; she seems unable to keep up with them.

Everyone laughs and applauds when Yara and Slobodan hang a sign below the “Everything is Allowed” banner. The sign contains the words “Daughter with Father.”

Another melody begins and Zdenek joins the outer circle of dancers. Mirna remains inside the circle. She moves from person to person and stops in front of me. I notice that another sign is being added below the previous one. The new sign says, “Brother with Sister.” Mirna pulls me inside the circle, guides me, pushes me, turns me. I grin and look awkwardly back toward abandoned Jasna. But there’s no smile on Mirna’s face; she looks determined, obsessed, almost possessed. While pressing and turning me, she kisses me and tells me, “Our love is possible now, Jan. From now on everything is possible. Tonight we’ll make love; tomorrow we’ll roam across the entire country, as free as birds; we’ll visit streams and caverns and other cities, and wherever we go we’ll find only friends; there won’t be any prying old women —”

Behind us I feel “death’s” broom hitting the ground, increasingly closer to us. Mirna continues, “everyone will beg us to join them in what they’re doing, and we won’t know which way to turn —” While she’s speaking, the skeleton removes Mirna’s arms from me and pulls her out of the circle, which breaks up because the dance ends. A sign on the speaker’s platform announces an “intermission.”

Couples move out to the dance floor. Mirna dances with Zdenek, turning gracefully around him, embracing him, kissing him. Jasna starts to give me my second lesson in dancing. She shows me foot motions, hand positions, bows and turns. She tells me, “Put your arm here, around my waist. Not so loose, Yarostan! Are you afraid of me?” I put both arms around her thin waist, kiss her and try to resume my foot motions, but Jasna prolongs the kiss. Then she guides me, still dancing, past the other couples and to the fresh air outside the plant.

Jasna, her arms around me, leans on the factory wall and smiles beautifully. “You’ve finally recognized me,” she sighs.

“You’re Jasna and you’re beautiful,” I tell her.

“You don’t know how happy you’re making me.” She kisses me passionately. “Hold me, Yarostan, press me, love me. I’ve never been loved in my entire life.” Suddenly she drops her arms and starts crying. “It’s all a lie,” she wails.

I try to kiss her again, and I assure her I meant what I said.

Jasna pulls me toward the light that shines out of a factory window. There are tears on her cheeks, but she’s still smiling. She tells me, “I’m not Jasna!”

“Don’t be foolish,” I tell her. “Do these clothes make me someone other than Yarostan?”

“We’ve known each other for twenty-three years, Yarostan, and you never kissed me until I tried to make myself look like Luisa Nachalo: her clothes, her hair, even her manners —”

“Luisa! But that’s ridiculous, Jasna! You’re no more like Luisa than I am like Jan.”

“Mirna knows you much better than you know yourself,” she tells me. “Mirna and Yara started this game over a week ago, right after the last get-together we had at your house. When they came to my house, mischievous and conspiratorial, I was somewhat frightened, but I was excited. I suppose I was flattered that they wanted to include me in their mischief. They told me the dance would be a masquerade, and Yara asked if I could help make her look like Sabina —”

“Of course!” I exclaim, suddenly “recognizing” the gypsy with the long black hair. “She’s a perfect likeness.”

“But then Mirna insisted I make myself look like Luisa. I was offended and frightened. I reminded her you had loved Luisa, and asked if she wanted me to go to her dance with her husband as my lover. ‘You’d like nothing better; you’ve dreamed about it for twenty years,’ she told me. Mirna is absolutely shameless. And she’s wrong. I never wanted to trick you into loving me —”

“Your smile, your motions, your words aren’t tricks, Jasna. And if I did take you for someone I loved once, it would only be because I loved you —”

“That’s exactly what Mirna said, even in the same words! I asked her why she wanted to do this? She loves you; why did she want to make every one of us miserable? Yara told me Mirna wanted you to be exactly as you were when she first met you. That was when I realized Yara was stage-managing the whole performance, and I told her I refused to play one of her love games, not because I share Vesna’s fear — or at least no longer because of that — but because I was in love with someone else, with Titus Zabran.”

“Was that true?”

“Yes, Yarostan, I’ve loved Titus as long as I’ve loved you, and the poor man is all by himself; he needs me; you have Mirna as well as Yara. Let’s go “back. They wouldn’t want you to miss the second half.”

As soon as I re-enter the factory-dance hall with Jasna-Luisa, the “intermission” sign is removed from the speakers’ platform by Slobodan and Yara; they turn the sign around and hang it below the other signs on the wall ‘with the “Everything is Allowed” banner; the back of the “intermission” sign says, “The Devil with Each.”

The lights go out; only the center of the dance floor is lit. Yara, in the devil’s black cape and horns, pulls me away from Jasna toward the lit-up center of the floor. The devil starts to dance with me. I see Mirna’s hand reaching for me from outside the circle of light; then the old woman dressed as a skeleton pulls Mirna away from me. The old woman turns to me and sweeps near my feet, as if she were trying to sweep me out of the circle of light. Meanwhile the spotlight follows “black-haired, black-caped Yara as she begins to dance with Mirna behind the old woman’s back, while the old woman continues to sweep me away in the darkness. The audience laughs and applauds enthusiastically.

The spotlight continues following Yara and Mirna, who perform some sort of courtship dance. Mirna goads the devil, who dances gracefully toward her, but as soon as the devil reaches her, Mirna runs away. The sequence is repeated several times until the devil refuses to be goaded another time. The audience laughs. At this point the devil begins to goad Mirna; after brief hesitation, Mirna moves closer and closer until she’s an arm’s length away. The devil jumps and “captures” Mirna. The audience applauds. Exotic music plays. As the spotlight follows them, Mirna and the devil spin each other gracefully around the dance floor until a final, passionate embrace, followed by applause and embarrassed laughter from the audience.

Mirna and the devil remain locked in their erotic embrace when all the lights go on. The old woman stops sweeping behind me, turns around and sees Mirna in the devil’s grasp. She runs toward them and starts to hit the devil with her broom. The exotic music is replaced by familiar folk music; the audience starts to form into a circle again. Jasna pulls me and Zdenek into the circle. Mirna enters the circle between Zdenek and a young man in a peasant costume similar to mine. The old woman seems to have vanished. Suddenly Mirna pulls the bewildered young man next to her into the center of the circle and begins with him the erotic courtship dance she just completed with the devil. The young man seems apprehensive at first; gradually he gets into the spirit of it and repeats the motions of the devil in the previous dance. But when he tries to “capture” Mirna, she trips him and he falls to the floor. At that point Mirna pulls, me into the circle and spins me around the fallen peasant When he tries to get up, she bends me precariously over him and kisses me passionately. She continues to display her passion for me provocatively until the peasant breaks through the larger circle and runs away. Still possessed with passion, Mirna dances with me toward Zdenek and then toward Yara, who has removed her cape and horns and once again wears slacks and a work-jacket of a type Sabina wore to the carton plant twenty years ago. Mirna pulls both of them inside the circle. The four of us form a small circle which moves in the opposite direction from the large one, and several times faster. The old woman returns; the blows of her broom are aimed at Mirna. Yara pushes Mirna into the center; Zdenek, Yara and I protect Mirna from the blows by forming a tight, closed circle around her. Jasna breaks the circumference of the large circle, pulls the line of dancers between our small circle and the old woman, and re-forms another circle around our circle of three. The new circle tightens as the dancers grasp each others’ waists. The remaining dancers continue breaking the largest circle and creating smaller ones, each time forcing the old woman outside the new circumference until at last she’s excluded from all the circles. Each circle is tightly closed, each moves in the opposite direction from the next, and in the center of all the concentric circles Mirna, her hands lifted high, spins her body frenziedly against ours, in the opposite direction, so that the speed is dizzying. Another sign has been added below the banner; this one says, “Each with All.”

While the concentric circles turn like wheels within wheels, the music grows dimmer as it is gradually replaced by an alien sound that seems to come from the speakers’ platform. It’s the shrill voice of a politician, and it almost seems to emanate from the tank at the center of the red flag behind the platform. The voice blares, “The critique of the bureaucracy is justified, but it should not get out of control, it must not be allowed to slip into general and facile attacks against our entire social system...” I recognize the speech I had heard in the carton plant a few days earlier, as well as the voice of the Planning Commissioner, Marc Glavni.

The music stops altogether. The lights go out. There’s a spotlight on the speakers’ platform, the flag and the tank. The moment the lights go out, Mirna stops spinning and collapses into the arms of Yara and Zdenek. The concentric circles start to break up as the dancers shake their fists at the platform.

“The rightful demand of workers to play a larger role in our economic life,” the voice goes on, “must not be allowed to destroy all work discipline; it must not be allowed to create chaos in production. That is a false democracy.”

From behind the speakers’ platform appears the old skeleton-woman with her broom. The spotlight follows her as she leaves the platform and moves toward the dancers. Every time Glavni makes an emphatic statement, she makes a threatening gesture with her broom. Every one of her threatening gestures is accompanied by spontaneous applause and laughter among the dancers.

The voice behind the tank grows yet louder. “The situation must not be allowed to get out of control. What is the sense of all the calls for workers’ councils and other forms of uncontrolled participation? Does the present situation really justify the type of talk some comrades are engaged in? It is easy to launch a movement, but it is not easy to support its consequences! In the guise of reform and democratization, disruptive elements are destroying, not the deformations, but the achievements of the past twenty years! Such elements take into account neither the gravity of the hour, nor the elementary rules of democratic life, nor our international obligations. They are destroying the confidence of the working masses in their leaders —”

The skeleton-woman has started to herd people out of the factory with her broom. Her threats are met by taunts and laughter.

The speaker’s voice has become deafening. “The occupations, the work stoppages, the strikes, all represent forms of destruction of the social means of production; they are inadmissible forms of self-affirmation of the working class. Workers are presenting demands in the form of ultimatums, thus creating disorder and distrust and giving rise to uncontrolled, emotional movements. The comrades who support such demands are supporting an irrational undertaking which, while sometimes claiming to support the policy we’ve been following for the past months, in fact compromises and undermines our policy. The recourse to strikes is a recourse to a method completely unjustified in the present circumstances. What we need most urgently is order and discipline at work! Let us be conscious of our historic tasks!”

The skeleton continues sweeping and threatening until all the dancers leave the plant. She rages and waves her broom at the last three dancers to emerge: Yara and Zdenek carrying Mirna. The crowd gathers at the street light outside the plant. As soon as the last group joins them, Mirna jumps out of Yara’s and Zdenek’s arms, laughing joyfully, while the old woman dressed as a skeleton removes her costume and Yara’s friend Julia emerges from it. The audience applauds wildly and forms a circle around Yara and Julia in the street; near the street light inside the circle, the two friends repeat a fragment of the devil’s courtship dance.

The dancers outside Mirna’s plant, who laughed at the railing bureaucrat, who laughed at the tank on the flag, who laughed at death sweeping them from the dance hall, are indeed out of control. They seem determined to extend their dance to the entire world. Glavni and his fellow bureaucrats can no longer reimpose that control. The domestic agencies of repression are out of commission. That’s why Glavni calls “us” to be “conscious of our historic tasks.” That consciousness is the final agent of repression; only that consciousness can reimpose order and work-discipline now. Accepting rules and obligations, confiding in “our leaders” — that’s the entire content of this “consciousness of our historic tasks.” Glavni’s speech contained a note of hysteria. He and his fellow bureaucrats no longer incarnate the social order; their definitions of society’s tasks are being met by strikes, by demonstrations, and by laughter. Former “workers” are losing their “historic consciousness,” they’re coming alive and defining their own tasks; the population is out of control. Before the gathering disperses, someone announces, “Don’t forget! Next Monday we set out on our exploration.” Work, order and discipline are gone from this former factory.

Unfortunately the people gathered in front of Mirna’s plant don’t typify the spirit of the rest of the population. Compared to them, Zdenek and I are “conscious,” “responsible,” and relatively orderly. Zdenek, in fact, rushes away from us, explaining that the “workers’ victory” at his plant was of a different nature than at Mirna’s plant, and that consequently he has to go to work the following morning.

After everyone disperses, Mirna tells Jasna, “We stopped at Titus’ house on our way to the dance. Why didn’t you tell us you had already invited him?”

Jasna seems embarrassed. “I didn’t want you to provide me with a lover, Mirna.”

“I wasn’t providing you with anything, Jasna. I was providing myself!”

“Don’t taunt me any more, Mirna,” Jasna begs. “I’ve asked Titus to marry me.”

“Is that why he acted so strange when he saw us?” Yara asks. The four of us start to walk home.

“Zdenek told us you stopped by his room,” Jasna fells them.

“You asked him to marry you?” Mirna asks.

“Yes, Mirna, twice. Do you remember when we read the letter in which Sophia described her experiences in Sabina’s garage? That evening you intimidated me so much —”

“I what?”

“You intimidated me, Mirna! You called me a coward, a spineless, frustrated old maid! Titus visited me several days after that evening — and I asked him to marry me.”

Yara asks, “Was that when you told me about Vera and Adrian? Why didn’t you tell me you’d proposed to him?”

“I was happy; Yara, and I didn’t want to spoil my happiness by telling you. I knew how you’ve hated him since Vesna died. You were on your outing to the mountains when he visited me. I was alone and terribly depressed after the argument with Mirna. I acted like a baby. I asked him Tissie’s pathetic question: ‘What’s wrong with me?’ He didn’t understand; he told me he had always admired my cool-headedness and my reserve. I broke down. I told him my cool-headedness was nothing but cowardice; I had never faced the smallest obstacles; I had led a horribly impoverished life. I contrasted myself to the women I had admired: Luisa Nachalo with all her lovers. Vera Neis with her two conquests, you, Mirna —”

Mirna asks, “Did he share your admiration for three such passionate —”

“No, Mirna, he didn’t. Poor man. He’s been so joyless for so many years! He told me awful things about Luisa and Vera.”

“And me?” Mirna asks.

“I’d rather not repeat them,” Jasna tells her; “I knew it was his loneliness that made him so bitter. I felt even sorrier for him than I’d felt for myself when he’d come. I thought there was no reason for him to remain so terribly alone; everything was changing; new possibilities were on everyone’s horizon. In the past he intimidated me, but suddenly I saw how alike we were. He never aspired to anything more than the small corner he occupies near the bottom of the social hierarchy. He’s so modest. He devoted his whole life to his dream of a better world, but he never sought anything for himself. I thought we’d make a nice couple in a quiet way, not passionate, but considerate and helpful. I asked him if he’d ever thought of marrying. He told me he had married the proletariat when he was eighteen. When I told him his present loneliness proved that his lifelong devotion has remained unrewarded and unrecognized, he told me the desire for rewards and recognition were alien to him. I asked him straight out if the thought of marrying me might ever cross his mind. Instead of answering, he told me he respected me far more than he respected the three women I admired. I was happy. I chose to interpret his answer as an affirmation. But I longed to talk to someone. I didn’t dare visit you, Mirna, right after you’d thrown all those painful accusations at me. I was even more afraid to pour my heart out to you, Yarostan, because I couldn’t have resisted — I would have melted —”

“You could have told me,” Yara insists. “I don’t hate you, but him.”

“I was overjoyed to see you, Yara, I felt like telling you everything. You told me about the love games you had played on mountain tops. I wondered what Titus might say about your ‘shameless individualism.’ But I didn’t want to talk about Vesna again. Only a few days earlier Mirna had reminded me that I had done nothing when Vesna was taken away. Besides, you were far more eager to learn the bucketfulls of secrets about Vera Krena that I had just learned from Titus. And I didn’t have much of a chance to talk to you after that. The very next morn-ing you came to tell me Yarostan was going to have Mirna taken to the hospital, for the same reasons Vesna had been taken away. I finally told both of you when you wanted me to make myself look like Luisa for Yarostan, but neither of you believed me —”

“Obviously not then,” Yara says; “We thought you were looking for an excuse to stay out of our game.”

“But the excuse happened to fit your plans perfectly, didn’t it?” Jasna asks. “Mirna threatened to invite Titus to the dance — for me, I thought; because I was unable to satisfy my desires on my own. I refused to play your game.”

I remind Jasna, “That’s what you told me before. Yet here you are, playing their game. Did you change your mind? Did Mirna and Yara force you?”

“A little of both, I suppose,” Jasna tells me, wrapping her arm around me. “Mirna made me positively miserable. She told me I’d never satisfy my desires on my own; I’d carry my unsatisfied desires to the grave. She asked if I’d ever held my body less than an arm’s length away from the two people I’ve loved for a quarter of a century. And she continued taunting me; she could drive a sane person out of her mind. ‘If you won’t let me bring Titus for you, will you at least let me bring him for myself?’ she asked. Then she told me she had been far closer to Titus than I was ever going to be. I called her a liar. So she told me that during your second prison term you had asked Titus to convince Mirna to divorce you, and when Titus had gone to her, she had tried to abandon herself to him. And she concluded her story by shouting, ‘Aren’t you human, Jasna? Don’t you want to get even with me by taking Yarostan from me? I held your Titus in my arms! I wanted him! I would have made myself Luisa for him!’ And Yara, the little devil, supported her! I couldn’t stand their taunts. Last Tuesday night I went to Titus’ room by myself. He seemed pleased to see me. He started explaining to me the political strategy that was necessary in the current situation, but I didn’t listen. I proposed to him, just like that. And I invited him to come to the dance. He turned down the invitation to the dance, just as Yarostan had done at first. I didn’t press him; I wanted his answer to my proposal. What he told me was that of all the women he knew, I was the only one he could imagine marrying. Then he became frightfully quiet. It was late and I wanted to spend the night in his room, but I was afraid to ask him. When I finally left, he accompanied me to the street telephone while I called for a taxi. I rode home feeling completely rejected. I didn’t care if Mirna brought him to the dance or even if she fornicated with him on the dance floor. I decided to become Luisa for you, Yarostan. Yesterday morning I made sure you hadn’t changed your mind about going to the dance with me. When I’d first invited you, I only had dancing in mind. But yesterday morning I had an altogether different dance in mind: Yara’s devil dance. I woke Yara and Mirna and told them I was ready to play their game, I was through with Titus, I was in love with you. I also told Mirna that I was insulted by the fact that she wasn’t the slightest bit afraid of me. Yara explained: ‘Of course she’s afraid of you! That’s the point of the game! But her fear isn’t part of your role.’ It was going to be the first time in my life that I reached out for someone. But as soon as we arrived Zdenek told us Mirna had tried to invite Titus. Mirna, if you had come to the dance with him, I would have begged Yarostan to take me to the end of the world. But he didn’t come, and I felt increasingly sorry for him.”

“Maybe he acted so strange because he felt guilty about making you ride home by taxi,” Yara says.

“Did he act strange when you saw him?” Jasna asks. We’ve reached Jasna’s street and walk toward her house.

Yara narrates, “After we left your house we took Zdenek his costume and made him look just like the photograph of grandfather. Zdenek and Mr. Zabran live in the same neighborhood, and Mirna wanted Mr. Zabran at the dance; she wanted everyone she’d ever played love games with. She also wanted to see if Mr. Zabran would think Zdenek looked like grandfather and if I looked like Sabina. When he answered his door he just stood in his doorway and turned pale, as if he were looking at ghosts. For a long time he just stared at Zdenek; then he looked at Mirna and me as if he’d never seen us before. Mirna asked Mr. Zabran if he recognized Zdenek. ‘He’s my father,’ she told him. He looked like he was going to slam the door in our faces. ‘What do you want?’ he asked us. I was scared. Mirna stopped smiling. She explained to him that we were on our way to the dance at her plant and asked if he wanted to come. He told us you had already invited him, and then he closed the door! It was only afterwards that Zdenek told us he and Mr. Zabran knew each other.”

We’ve reached Jasna’s house. “You’re so mean,” Jasna says to Mirna. “How did you think he’d respond if he’d thought Zdenek was your father? He’s known your father has been dead for ten years! Did you expect him to shake the ghost’s hand and invite him in? I doubt if anyone ever played a prank on him before. Poor man!” Jasna leaves us and goes into her house.

On our way home I ask Yara if Zdenek told them when he had known Titus.

“Zdenek almost didn’t tell us,” Yara says. “He was angry at Mirna and me for the same reason Jasna is. He told us we played with people’s fears as innocently as children set fires. Then he asked Mirna how she found out Mr. Zabran and Zdenek had once suspected each other of having done something terrible. Mirna told Zdenek he was the one playing with fears. She told him Mr. Zabran had worked with you and Jan and Jasna in the carton plant, had helped her father as well as her mother, and even that she had once loved him. I added that he was the man who had taken Vesna to the hospital. That was when Zdenek told us we had probably frightened the man to death by introducing Zdenek as Mirna’s father; he told us he and Mr. Zabran knew each other. They had known each other years ago when they both worked in the trade union building. They used to joke together about the emperor and his bodyguard. Suddenly Zdenek was arrested, and he was sure it was the fault of the person with whom he had joked so freely. But then he saw him in prison; that was during the time when you were in prison for the first time. Zdenek felt terrible about his suspicions; he knew Mr. Zabran must have had identical suspicions about Zdenek. And then they saw each other years later, at the club where former prisoners meet —”

“Titus attended a meeting of the prisoners’ club?” I ask with, surprise.

“Zdenek said one time he saw both of you at the same meeting, but you and Mr. Zabran didn’t see each other. And then Zdenek asked us how we thought Mr. Zabran must have felt when Mirna Introduced Zdenek as her father. He made us both feel bad all the way to the dance, but we forgot all about it as soon as the dance began.”

When we reach our house, Yara goes directly to bed, exhausted by the day’s events. But Mirna is wide awake. I ask her why she wanted to invite Titus for Jasna. “Surely that’s insulting, especially after Jasna herself tried to invite him. And why did you taunt Jasna by telling her you threw yourself at Titus?”

“I wasn’t inviting Titus for Jasna but for myself,” she tells me, as she’d earlier told Jasna. “I wanted to complete my tram, my cast of characters, my life’s lovers; I wanted my father, my brother, my husband, my devil and my friend. And I wasn’t taunting Jasna!”

“What were you doing then?”

“I was telling her the truth, Yarostan, and I’ve told it to you several times already. Do I have to describe the vivid details to you? It happened three years before your release —”

“Mirna, I’m asking about Jasna; I don’t want you to tell me what you did during the twelve years I spent in prison. You had every right to do whatever you pleased. I even asked you to divorce me so that you’d feel free to do whatever —”

“That was precisely what provoked me! Jan had disappeared; my father was dead; my mother was out of her mind. You were all I had left. And you had the nerve to send Titus on that mission —”

“At that time I thought I’d never come out again, Mirna; I thought that if you remained tied to me, you might as well have been tailed with me. What kind of a life was that for you? But you paid no attention to me. I thought you might pay more attention to Titus; Jasna is right; he’s such a reasonable man, and he’s always been so good to us.”

“Yes, Jasna is right,” Mirna says. “Titus certainly was a good man. It was precisely his goodness that killed Vesna!”

“Are we back to —”

“No, Yarostan, we’re not back to Vesna. We’re talking about my passion for Titus Zabran, the good Mr. Zabran. It so happens that Vesna had personal contact with that passion. That was when Vesna first exhibited that so-called illness of which she died.”

“I don’t understand —”

“I don’t either,” she tells me. “I only know what happened. I knew twelve years ago, at the time of the Magarna uprising, that two of the people in my life had a great deal in common: my mother and Titus Zabran. They both gave their lives to something higher, to God, only no one else could see that about Titus because he didn’t call it God. When the Magarna workers fought against tanks in the street, I knew and Jan knew that they were fighting for themselves, for a world in which they could fulfill their dreams and satisfy their desires; to me they were fighting alongside the devil. But Titus thought they were fighting for something else, something outside themselves; for God, and you stood somewhere between Titus and me. But when the tanks slaughtered the Magarna workers and they had to be buried in mass graves, and when you and Jan disappeared, I was ashamed and I felt guilty. I thought the devil had betrayed us. I was ashamed of my passion, my selfishness. And of course my mother made the most of my shame. She even tried to take Vesna away from me. And I convinced myself she was right. I looked frantically for Titus, not as a friend, not as someone I could love, but as someone who would help me find you and Jan. I left a message for him at the union building. When he came I told him you had both disappeared and my father had been fired from his job because of a letter that had come from abroad which they never received. He was furious about the arrests; he told me people couldn’t be arrested because of a letter they hadn’t even read. He even went to the police to argue with them. He helped my father get a pension from the union, and he helped me get a pass to visit you. And that was all Titus was to me, that was all anyone was to me: someone who helped with pensions and passes. Except you. My father’s death kept me from using my pass during the period stamped on it. When I went to the union building again, I learned that something had happened to Titus, but they wouldn’t tell me what. I managed to get his address. I found his room. One of his neighbors told me he’d been arrested. His neighbor referred to Titus the same way Jasna just did: such a quiet, modest man, kind to children, with no harm in him; poor man. I had no one left in the world, and I thought my mother had been right. I had sacrificed everyone I loved to the devil — to my passion, if you prefer that word, Titus’ visit after his release was like the beginning of spring. He became everything to me; Jan, you, my father. Vesna was six and still hadn’t started school. My mother was a shouting invalid who was turning Vesna against me. The sequence of tragedies couldn’t go on. I threw my arms around him hungrily as soon as he walked in. But he backed away from me. Vesna was looking at me, and. I felt ashamed, horribly ashamed before both of them. From that day on, Vesna grew as attached to Titus as to my mother. She worshipped the good man, she hated me, and she feared you. Poor Vesna didn’t have any reason to feel any other way toward us. From the time she was able to walk, she’d had nothing in her life but chores. She nursed Yara; she ministered to the sick old woman; she bought the groceries and cooked most of the meals. She was such a frail thing, she simply couldn’t do all that. One day she collapsed. I didn’t know what to do; I had never had anything to do with doctors. I took a bus to Titus’. He contacted a doctor and brought him to the house. The doctor said Vesna had a slight heart murmur, and said she had to rest all the time. Titus came to visit Vesna every day for a week. They liked each other and they were just like each other. Vesna got well in a week; I wasn’t able to force her to spend her days resting. It was to save Vesna the strain of carrying a package to you that I asked Titus to visit you. And that was when you sent Titus to me with that mission —”

“Mirna, everything you’re telling me convinces me that your loyalty to me, or whatever you’d like to call it, locked you into a prison many times worse than the one I was in —”

“That’s exactly what I’m trying to tell you,” she snaps. “You sent Titus on that mission because you wanted to escape from that worse prison. You didn’t want to share my load. You were wrong! Half that load was yours. If the devil was responsible for what had happened, if my selfishness, greed, desire had brought it all about, it was you and not Titus who had shared that desire with me. I was furious — at you, not at Titus. I knew every one of his words came from you. He told me I was still young and energetic; with a little care I could still be beautiful. He asked me if I had ever thought of divorcing you. I became hysterical. I asked him if you had told him to ask me that, or if he knew you were going to disappear like Jan had, if they had taken you from me forever. Vesna begged me not to scream at Titus, since it wasn’t he who had taken both of you from me. Titus picked Vesna up with tears in his eyes. He told me he wasn’t asking for you but for himself; he said he was fond of Vesna and of me; he said Vesna, Yara and I deserved more than the miserable drudgery we lived daily; he said he had hoped I would let him help us. Then he left. I knew he wasn’t speaking for himself. I knew you had convinced him I couldn’t function as a ‘conscious and combative proletarian’ because of the chain around my neck. I knew he wasn’t fond of me, but of his precious proletariat. But I was starved for love, and since his fondness came from you, I convinced myself I would be loving you. Passion stirred inside me for the first time since the Magarna rising. It came because I thought, or let myself imagine, that I was desired. It was the passion I had learned from Sabina, the devil’s passion, the passion I then thought had driven my father, my brother and you to hell. I was in a frenzy for two days. And I was happy. I took ‘a little care’ and made myself young again. Little Yara noticed; she said, ‘You look beautiful mommy.’ Vesna noticed too. She grew frightened, she cried, and she stayed away from me. She spoke to me only once; she told me she could see the devil in me, just as her grandmother had told her. She’d had no more joy in her life than my mother, and she wanted to kill it in me just as my mother did. Two days after his visit, I went to his room directly from work, so as to avoid Vesna’s reproachful, fearful eyes. I had to wait for him. As soon as he unlocked the door, I slipped into his room. It was bare, with nothing but a cot, a table, a few books and a cheap record player. I threw my arms around him. I told him, ‘I’m not only fond of you, Titus; I love you; I’m yours.’ I begged him to take me. But he backed away from me. His face was terror stricken. He looked at me as if I were a nightmare, as if I were reenacting some horrible event he’d experienced in his past. He saw the devil in me, the same devil Vesna had seen. His frightened eyes stared at my forehead as if the word ‘incest’ were stamped across it. Then he admitted you had put him up to the whole thing, you had asked him to talk to me about divorce, you had even suggested he try to repair the wasted youth, the wasted children. ‘But I have nothing to offer you,’ he told me. My whole body ached with shame, with the shame I’d felt when I’d embraced him after his release, with the shame I’d felt when I’d dragged myself to my mother’s house after your arrest. I became afraid of what he had seen in me; I was as terrified as he when I backed out of his room. I dragged myself home, sat in the kitchen and cried. Vesna joined me and cried with me. She stroked my hair, kissed me, consoled me. She hugged me and told me she was glad I hadn’t done what I’d set out to do; she was glad I had chased the devil out of me. She no longer hated me. When I returned to the joyless drudgery I became Vesna’s best friend, and I remained her best friend until I learned the date of your release. The first time I told Vesna about you I thought I saw a gleam in her eye, a gleam of anticipation, almost joy. It must have been there, since Yara saw Vesna kiss herself in the mirror. But the joy conflicted with something else that was already deeply embedded in Vesna, it conflicted with that God my mother had driven into her heart. She wanted to love you, but she knew she shouldn’t, because love is the devil; she killed her love for you just as my mother had killed her love for anyone other than her wooden Lord. It was that Lord, that morality, that sense of duty or whatever else people want to call it, that killed Vesna. Yes, killed her. Because that fearful Vesna wasn’t the real Vesna. I didn’t know it then but Yara knew. The real Vesna, the whole, natural and normal Vesna had passion inside her just as we did. She’d been twisted into something unnatural by my mother, by school, by the lives we led. She almost came with us the day Yara and I went to tell you prisoners would actually be released at the end of their terms. But she held herself back. She had been taught not to traffic with demons, counter-revolutionaries or saboteurs. Her desires conflicted with her moral duty. Yara’s boundless, unashamed joy almost infected her. Almost. Before that visit, Yara and I put on our best clothes; we fixed our hair; we didn’t stop smiling at each other. The devil lit fires inside both of us. I know we infected you with our joy. When we returned home my shame was gone; I burned with passion. It was I who taught Yara to play her love games that very afternoon. I told her that when you returned you’d make love to all three of us. I threw Yara On my bed and showed her how you’d touch us, embrace us, hug us, exactly as Sabina had once shown me Jan would embrace me. Yara had nothing but the devil inside her. She screamed with joy. Neither of us saw Vesna standing in the doorway. When Vesna demanded indignantly, ‘What are you two doing?’ she sounded just like my mother when she’d seen Jan and me before she chased him out of the house, or when she looked in on Sabina and me the first time you came to our house. I was furious. I wasn’t ready to be driven back to joyless drudgery, not by a living daughter who didn’t yet have the old woman’s dried up flesh. Yara and I both leaped at her and pulled her to bed. The devil drove both of us. We showed her what her father would do to her as soon as he returned. We both turned her and kissed her lips and hugged her until I felt a horrible paralysis flowing through her trembling, freezing body. Her face was a mask of death. She stared like an idiot. She’d become the old woman! I was terrified. All my shame returned. I tried to vomit the devil out of pie, but nothing came. I pleaded with Vesna. I, shrieked. Yara shook Vesna and scolded her for spoiling our happiness. But the idiot’s mask didn’t leave Vesna’s face: she was paralyzed. I didn’t know what to do and became hysterical. I had gone to Titus when she’d been sick before, but I couldn’t make myself go to him again. I asked Yara to go to him, but she insisted he’d only make Vesna worse; she insisted Vesna was playing with us. I didn’t believe her. But when I tried to carry Vesna to her bed, she kicked me and screamed; she ran to the old woman’s room, lay down next to her, and stared at the ceiling, paralyzed again. I knew Yara was right; Vesna was playing with us. But i didn’t know how to put an end to her game, I didn’t know how to reclaim her for you, for Yara and for me. I wasn’t strong enough. My mother and Titus claimed her; each of them had recognized Vesna as one of theirs from the moment they’d set eyes on her. Yara knew they were wrong; she knew Vesna was ours. But I wasn’t sure. I too had been turned into half an idiot by my mother and by the daily drudgery. I knew Yara had told the school authorities that Vesna was sick. But at that time I didn’t know Jasna had told Titus. I couldn’t imagine what had brought Titus to our house; I thought God must have told him his Vesna was sick again. I couldn’t talk to him. I couldn’t even look at him. I was filled with shame. I let Yara do all the protesting and pleading. Only once did I beg Titus to leave her where she was. He called hie a criminal for keeping Vesna in bed with an insane old woman. A criminal. My mother had told me I carried the devil’s sword. Yara insisted she knew her own sister and the doctors didn’t know her. Titus ridiculed Yara and me for acting as if Yara knew more about sickness than the doctors in the hospital. He had an ambulance come. Yara tried to stop them” from touching Vesna. Two nurses had to hold Yara while Vesna was carried away: ‘Mommy stop them!’ she screamed at me. ‘Don’t let them take her; they’ll kill our Vesna!’ The next day and several days after that, I didn’t go to work. For the first time since I’d been hired, I asked myself what all that work was for. Yara and I went to the hospital, but they didn’t let us past the front desk; they told us Vesna was in a coma and in critical condition. We begged them to let us take her home with us, but they treated us like dirt and had us wait outside the hospital, even when it rained: They were civil to us only on the day they told us, ‘Your daughter died at 1:20 this morning in an ambulance during transit to the mental hospital.’”

Yara had already told me how our Vesna had died, but my eyes fill with tears when Mirna gives me her account. I nevertheless manage to protest, “You can’t blame Titus for what he did. I wouldn’t have done anything different. In fact, when Yara visited me for the last time before my release, I insisted just as rigidly —”

“I know; we were all half-idiots,” she says, taking my hand and pulling me toward our bedroom. There aren’t any tears in Mirna’s eyes. “We were all deformed by a world of doctors, police and prying old women.’ Yara was the only one who knew that by killing the devil inside us, we killed our selves, and she couldn’t help but know because there was nothing inside her but the devil. She couldn’t help but know that the devil is not the assassin; that passion doesn’t kill, that the sword that kills isn’t the devil’s but God’s. God is the murderer. When I heard Yara tell you she’d seen Vesna kissing herself in the mirror, I knew my shame had been brought on by a lie. I knew it wasn’t the passion that had killed Vesna, I knew it hadn’t been the devil who had driven a sword through her. It’s only those who deny the devil who carry a sword! Vesna had passion inside her too, and it wasn’t the passion that killed her; that passion made her natural and healthy and beautiful. What killed her was the denial of her passion; what killed her was the God that had been driven into her by saintly old women and good, modest men. That was what possessed her, what stopped her from gratifying herself, what froze her organs, what killed her joy, what robbed her of pleasure. It was the goodness, the shame and the guilt, that possessed Vesna, that strangled what was in her. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

I’m half asleep. I try to repeat what she’s saying in my own words. “Yara convinced you your desires were natural, whereas the guilt, the shame, the denial of desires were alien to you and to Vesna as well. I’m not sure I agree —”

“I’m not trying to convince you. I’m explaining why I wanted Titus to come to the dance. I wanted him for my sake, not for Jasna’s. Yara and I both wanted to see what effect he’d have on me now, to see if my organs still fill up with shame and guilt — I wanted to know, because tomorrow we’re going to decide what steps to take next.”

The following day, last Friday, Mirna took Yara to her former factory at the hour when she used to go to work. She told me what “next steps” they had decided to take when I returned from the carton plant that night. The former workers of her plant decided, probably on Mirna’s suggestion, to take a “journey across the country,” to take bus excursions to other plants in other cities and regions, if possible to other countries. The purpose of the journey is to see what others are doing so as to explore what can be done. Mirna and Yara eagerly invited me to accompany them, but I turned down their invitation. A confrontation has just taken place in the carton plant; it’s the type of confrontation I had been looking forward to.

About two weeks ago, when Jasna had come to our house to celebrate the strike at Mirna’s plant and to read your previous letter, Jasna had speculated about the possibility that Marc Glavni had caused our arrest twelve years ago by reporting the arrival of your letter to the police. Jasna had also told us that Glavni and Vera Krena were going to hold a debate over the radio. The speech Glavni made during this debate was tape recorded by Yara’s university friend and re-broadcast at the dance.

I had forgotten about the coming debate as soon as Jasna had mentioned it. I didn’t think of it again until last Monday, when the radio announced the two speakers, listing as part of their background the fact that they had both been production workers at the carton plant “before the seizure of power by the working class.” My fellow workers were disappointingly eager to hear a debate between two of their predecessors who had risen so high. Several months ago the city’s main radio station had launched a policy of “complete and objective information” which had a great deal in common with your friend Hugh’s insistence that “two sides of every question” be presented. Debates between two bureaucrats seem to satisfy the radio station’s notion of “objectivity.”

The two speeches had not originally been given as part of a debate. Krena’s speech was given to an immense gathering of workers at a large factory. It was one of the most “radical” speeches I’ve yet heard from the mouth of a bureaucrat. She urged the gathered workers to take matters out of the hands of bureaucrats and into their own. Glavni’s speech, which I summarized earlier, was originally given in a studio of the radio station, and it was not intended as a direct attack on Krena but as a critique of “certain comrades.” Krena was certainly included among those “certain comrades,” but Glavni also included many of his own earlier positions among the positions he now opposed. As I mentioned earlier, he urged workers not to allow themselves to go “out of control” and to leave matters in the hands of the bureaucrats.

Jasna and I had attended a lecture given by Krena about two months ago. At that time Vera Krena had spoken about “leaders applying policies which will earn them their leading roles,” and had made statements like “We must earn our authority through our acts.” The speech I heard in the carton plant indicated that Glavni is not alone in having changed his mind recently. But Vera’s change of mind moves in the opposite direction from Glavni’s.

In the speech I heard last Monday Vera negated virtually everything she had said on the earlier occasion. “The execution of the policy we defended is no longer the affair of leading organs, but of the entire working population,” she shouted. “People cannot be active in any sector of their lives — neither on their jobs nor at their plant meetings nor in any of their social or economic relations — if they are not politically active. The working population cannot be politically active if it does not determine the content as well as the form of its social as well as economic activity. This is our policy! We condemn the current policy of certain comrades who have retreated incessantly in the face of external pressures.” (Vera’s reference to “certain comrades” is probably what made this speech suitable for a debate with one of those certain comrades.) “We condemn the deliberate suppression of information in response to external pressures! We condemn the fact that policies are still today defined not by the clearly expressed will of the working population but by a self-appointed bureaucracy that does nothing but transmit instructions and orders from abroad! We are ready to use all the means at our disposal — at the disposal of the entire working population — to put our program into effect. We will oppose the replacement of our program by all the weapons available to the working class, including the general strike!”

The workers at the plant where the speech had been given applauded wildly, as did moist of the workers at the carton plant. I was surprised that Glavni’s “law, order and discipline” speech, which followed Vera’s, also received some applause.

The speeches by our two “former fellow workers” were the main topic of conversation at the carton plant during the days when Mirna and Yara made the preparations for their dance. At least two “strikes” a day (one-hour long work stoppages for meetings) were called, usually by one of the office workers. The work crew at the plant now consists of eighteen production and thirty-two office workers. In the course of those meetings, the carton plant workers split into two “parties,” but the alignments in these parties could not easily be explained in terms of people’s “relation to the productive forces.” Thirty of the office workers became militant supporters of Vera’s “program.” Twelve of the eighteen production workers and the remaining two office workers were partisans of Glavni’s position. At first I couldn’t understand why anyone would support Glavni’s authoritarian, bureaucratic stand, but gradually the reasons became obvious to me. The two office workers who supported him are both union officials for whom Glavni is the direct gate for promotions to supervisory and managerial posts. Among the production workers who supported him, some aspire to follow Glavni’s own path to supervisory and managerial positions; others, like Mirna until very recently, are intimidated, I should say silenced, by the prospect of tanks, arrests; and military invasion.

Six production Workers, including myself, remained outside of either “party.” I also kept out of all the discussions. If Vera Krena were merely another member of the working population for whom she speaks, she would indeed be a popular tribune expressing what everyone feels and wants. But Vera is not a popular tribune. She’s a demagogue. She’s expressing what everyone feels and wants not because she feels it, not because she’s one of the working population, but because she and her clique are aiming to become the permanent institutional “voice” and “mind” of that working population. Vera’s “program” would be fulfilled if ruling bureaucrats justified their rule as the fulfillment of the working population’s aspirations and desires while that working population continued to engage daily in the same joyless drudgery.

At first the discussions that took place at the daily “strikes” were arguments about whether to Sign petitions in favor of Vera’s clique, or to demonstrate “as we did twenty years ago,” using the carton plant as a source for posters and placards.

But gradually a new and much more interesting element appeared. Ironically, it was one of the workers who had supported Glavni’s speech who introduced the “new” into the discussions. He objected to petitions as well as demonstrations with an argument very similar to that of a worker you had described in an earlier letter. He said petitions and demonstrations would only attract the attention of the police. He was naturally called a coward by other workers, especially by the office workers. He then said the point was not to make a display of our courage nor to be arrested; the point was to change the nature of our activity. He suggested something; very similar to Mirna’s “excursion,” though on a much more limited scale. Workers from the carton plant should directly contact workers in other plants in the same sphere of production and begin to explore ways of transforming our activity.

All the thirty office workers who had enthusiastically supported Vera’s radical speech opposed this worker’s suggestions, whereas fourteen of the eighteen production workers, including ten supporters of Glavni’s disciplinarianism, supported the suggestions. I mention the numbers because I think the alignments are revealing. The office workers know that the transformation envisaged by this worker will not increase the importance of their roles, but will on the contrary eliminate the need for office workers. By remaining staunch supporters of Vera Krena they demonstrate that they understand perfectly the real nature and content of Vera’s “radicalism.”

Unlike the office workers, the production workers didn’t call for meetings and they didn’t argue in favor of the new suggestions. At meetings called by office workers they continued to defend Glavni’s conservative positions. But in practice they started to implement, not Vera Krena’s real intentions, but what Vera had said: they began to take matters into their own hands. Last Wednesday, the day before Mirna’s dance, an informal “delegation” of carton plant workers decided to visit one of the paper factories which produces some of the materials we use. I wanted to accompany this “delegation” but they decided to make their visit on the day of the dance. Last Friday all the carton plant’s production workers gathered around the four ”delegates,” eager to learn about their visit. They told us the majority of the workers at the paper factory had welcomed them with open arms. The paper workers said they received instructions and specifications from supervisors and engineers and they never understood the significance of the instructions because they had no contact with those who used the paper they produced. And four days ago. this past Monday, a similar ”delegation” of paper workers arrived at the carton plant. They told us they had come to learn what was actually required by the workers who processed, their paper at the next stage; they wanted to find out how many of the instructions and specifications were nothing but impositions of arbitrary authority or academic rules taught to engineers in university courses, rules which served no practical purpose. Before they left, they eagerly told us that during the afternoon’s discussion they had figured out several ways to simplify production, eliminate waste, and do the required work at a fraction of the time it takes now.

The carton plant workers decided to create more informal “delegations” to visit food packaging plants and other users of cartons. I plan to take such a trip two days from now. That’s why I turned down Mirna’s invitation to accompany her on the “exploratory journey.”

Mirna and Yara had also invited Zdenek to accompany them on their excursion, but he told them he couldn’t imagine leaving his plant for a whole week, now that it’s run “by the workers themselves.” When we had discussed your letter two weeks ago and Zdenek had defended unions against your attacks, Mirna had characterized him as “conservative.” That characterization conflicted with my original impressions of Zdenek. When I first met him in prison, I was deeply impressed by his determined opposition to anyone or anything that stood between the workers and their world. I was also deeply impressed by the strike that broke out at Zdenek’s plant, when all posts were occupied by elected workers. But I’m starting to realize I’m still applying a standard I learned from Luisa almost a quarter of a century ago. Mirna is applying a significantly different standard. I don’t know if she learned it from Jan or if she rediscovered it on her own, but I do know that her attitudes are very similar to Jan’s. The only questions she asks are: Is it for us, the living? Is it for our desires, our passions, our dreams?

When I ask myself Mirna’s questions, I lose half of my enthusiasm for Zdenek’s strike, and for my own present activity as well. Zdenek’s fellow workers have not appropriated the world as a field for possibilities, as a field for projects, as a non-existent which is to be created by us. Zdenek and his comrades reached Luisa’s goal: they created a “genuine workers’ union.” I don’t agree with your friend Clesec’s suggestion that nothing at all changes when the workers themselves take charge of the existing production apparatus. But I do agree that such an act does not create a new form of human activity, since what is appropriated is precisely the old activity, the existing world. And this existing world is not a field for the realization of projects, but a negation of the very possibility of projects. It is not this activity, even if appropriated and managed by us, that we’re glimpsing on the horizon because it is at the very center of our present lives. It is what surrounds us now, what we inherited. It wasn’t projected by us but by the history of capital. Jan knew that we could never appropriate this activity because it appropriates us. Mirna knows that Zdenek’s commitment is not to satisfy his own desires, but to satisfy the needs of the productive forces. For Zdenek, as for Luisa, the repression that was unacceptable when managers and union representatives were imposed from outside becomes acceptable when workers themselves assume the roles of managers and union representatives. Zdenek has told me several times that he has worked-much harder and has been far more “responsible” at his job since the strike at his plant took place. Zdenek’s daily activity remains drudgery; it isn’t there that he expects to satisfy desires or realize dreams; the desires and dreams are not part of his “work”, but part of his “politics,” and he “realizes” them by attending meetings of the club of former political prisoners.

I’m having a hard time convincing myself that I turned down Mirna’s invitation to her journey for better reasons than Zdenek’s. At the carton plant we’re no longer creating a “genuine union” so as to replace the managers and foremen with elected managers and foremen. But we still observe limits that the former workers of Mirna’s plant no longer observe; we’re still committed to a world we ourselves did not create, a world which we inherited; to borrow your image, we’re still stepping into a house that’s already completely built, furnished and decorated. The delegation of paper workers who came to the carton plant asked what was required at the next stage of the production process; they did not ask if this production process was required. The delegations that leave from the carton plant are asking what is required of us at the next stage of the process; they are not asking whether or not cartons are required. We’re not asking Mirna’s questions. We may ultimately desire cartons. But why do we begin with the desire for cartons? Is it the desire for cartons that’s been repressed by capital and the state? Is it the desire for cartons that we’re struggling to satisfy? Is that really a place to begin?

I think that my attitude to my activity is similar to Sabina’s attitude to her activity in the fascinating research center you described. I’m excited about what’s happening in the carton plant, but I have numerous reservations about its significance, especially when I compare it to Mirna’s present activity. The purpose of Mirna’s excursion is to meet fellow human beings, to find out who they are and what they desire, and above all to learn to communicate with them about the present and about all the possible futures. The purpose of the “delegations” setting out from the carton plant is much more limited. Their purpose too is to meet and communicate with fellow human beings, but only within the realm of paper and cartons. In other words, we’re seeking contacts with each other within the walled-in realm we’re at present locked into, without first destroying the walls that separate us from; each other. We’re not going out to meet human beings but paper producers and. carton users; we’re talking to them about specifications for simplified paper and carton production before learning who they are or what they desire. We’re not learning to communicate about our desires and possibilities because such communication has never been tried, it may be slow and difficult to begin, and we lack the patience and the time for that because our tasks are far too; pressing, the cartons are waiting, we’re still their servants.

I was full of admiration for Sabina, Tissie and Ted when I read your description of the technological “toys” to which they’ve given themselves access. But I have,the same reservations about those “toys” as I have about the delegations leaving the carton plant. If I’m not able to communicate with the people who presently surround me, people whose language and experiences I share, why would I want to fly to every corner of the globe at lightning speed? Wouldn’t such activity remove us yet further from what you’ve described as your life’s goal: communication with our contemporaries, human community? In what sense would my experience in such a vehicle differ from the vehicle’s own “experience”? The prospect of a world of beings buzzing through the air at lightning speed frightens me. The fact that the meteors won’t collide with each other doesn’t console me. The reduction of human beings to self-propelled capsules, the reduction of the wealth of human qualities to the two most quantifiable qualities, direction and speed, strikes me as the final impoverishment of the species short of complete annihilation. Sabina herself expressed some reservations to you. What Surprises me is that she expressed them so hesitantly. I find that her present activity conflicts irreconcilably with her own goals. When you joined her in the garage ten years ago she told you, very much in the spirit of Jan and Mirna, that her axioms were “my life, my desires, my capacities” Like Jan and Mirna she fought for a world where the development of these “axioms” Was possible. Has she reduced her life’s axioms to one: velocity? Are the buzzing Vehicles a fulfillment of her life or its absolute negation? She Wants Tissie alongside her while she engages in her “research”; she even begged you to stay with her. Sabina of all people knows that her life, her desires, her capacities cannot develop outside a human world, a community of human beings she can talk to, touch, embrace, love. Yet she’s enthusiastically designing a plastic armor that would separate each from all. The condition Sabina’s research is helping create is not a new human condition. In prison it’s known as solitary confinement. It’s one of the worst forms of torture.

I have to admit I don’t understand Sabina. The few times she expressed her life’s goals to you, she sounded like Jan or Mirna. Yet her project has nothing in common with theirs: it has everything in common with the life project of a person she seems to despise: George Alberts. Isn’t it Alberts’ life project that she’s carrying on, during a time when “everything is possible” Why? What illusions does she still retain about that project? Perhaps several centuries ago it was possible to think that industrialization would create an environment hospitable to human life, to the realization of human desires, to the development of human capacities. It was possible to think this before the process began; such a belief was illusory as soon as industrialization started. Human life was immediately impoverished; the wealth of human activities was reduced to the one single activity: wage labor, or Mirna’s words, joyless drudgery; human desires were sacrificed to the needs of the productive apparatus; human capacities were blocked, stunted, frozen and eventually removed from life and relegated to the realm of Utopian dreams. Is Sabina’s present project what has to be born or what has to die? Sabina told you the ruling order suppressed the development of her plastic vehicle. Maybe it did. But did Sabina oppose that ruling order because it suppressed the development of plastic vehicles? Jan opposed the ruling order because it suppressed us, the living, not because it suppressed vehicles or cartons, or even because it kept “the workers themselves” from developing the vehicles and cartons. It’s always been “the workers themselves” who developed the vehicles and cartons! They poured their whole lives, all their desires and capacities, into the cartons and vehicles!

Undoubtedly Sabina, like Zdenek and I, would have been far too involved in pressing tasks to accompany Mirna and Yara on their excursion, their roaming across the country as free as birds, their visits to other cities in which they expect to find only friends. They’re not interested in freeing the productive forces, in eliminating fetters to their development. They’re looking for human beings eliminating fetters to their own development. If I were to summarize their “guiding axioms,” I couldn’t find better words than: “my life, my desires, my capacities.”

I don’t want to exaggerate the lucidity of my two comrades. They convinced Jasna to accompany them on their trip. Before they left, Yara told me, with unreserved enthusiasm, that she couldn’t wait to ask Jasna more details about Vera Krena’s relations with her husband and her lover; apparently Titus recently told Jasna things she hadn’t known. Yara is on a quest for a world without bureaucrats, yet she remains fascinated by the private lives of those whose social activity stifles her own life.

I expect them back in two or three days. Yara is right: I love all three of them. I miss them terribly. If they intend to visit your part of the world on their next journey, or on the one after that, I won’t turn down their invitation. I know you only from your letters, Sophia, and I would like very much to see you, to talk to you, to hold you in my arms. If you’re still able to say “I love you, Yarostan,” even if only because that phrase has become your “life’s motto,” then I can no longer keep myself from feeling, and saying,

I love you, Sophia,
Yarostan.