Letters of Insurgents - Yarostan's Ninth Letter

Link https://youtu.be/jtlqJLfhNZ4

Yarostan’s ninth letter

Dear Sophia,

Your letter was as painful to read as it must have been to write. How can everything be over? How can workers without illusions about unions march back to work hailing their union’s “victories”? How can a population that just woke up be back asleep?

We’ve been hearing rumors of an imminent invasion, of tanks massing at our borders, but those rumors disturb us infinitely less than the knowledge that “normal” life has resumed in your part of the world. We had begun to take it for granted that our fellow human beings in other parts of the globe were engaged in acts similar to our own. The council office and the commune, the occupied research center, the spreading general strike, had all become part of the geography of our world. You couldn’t have shocked us more if you had told us a continent had sunk.

I was fascinated by Sabina’s accounts and interpretations, but I have to admit I was shocked by her attitude to Titus Zabran. She treats him as George Alberts’ confederate and as her enemy. When Mirna and Yara read your letter, they both acted as if their worst suspicions about Titus were confirmed, and they both subjected me to an extremely humiliating experience when I refused to join them in their condemnation of Titus. Both Jasna and I were so disturbed by Sabina’s and your suggestions that we felt compelled to confront Titus directly. We learned that many of the facts Sabina revealed are true, but both Jasna and I are convinced that Sabina’s totally negative attitude to the man is unjustified.

So much has happened here since Mirna and Yara returned from their excursion that I don’t really know where to begin. The eagerness with which they greeted Sabina’s “revelations” about Titus is due mainly to the fact that they seem to have argued with Jasna about Titus during their trip. Despite their enthusiasm about the excursion, the first thing Mirna and Yara talked about when they returned was Jasna’s determination to marry Titus. Mirna told me indignantly, “Jasna seems set on destroying herself. Can you imagine what that man told her when she expressed admiration for Luisa, Vera and me? Those three women, he told her, don’t deserve anyone’s admiration, and certainly not yours. He then called all three of us shameless individualists who put their own personal satisfaction above the interests of their class!”

“What was Jasna’s response?” I asked.

“She didn’t defend a single one of ‘those women.’ She proposed to him! She told Yara and me that Titus said such things only because he’s so lonely and isolated. She said as soon as she took him on an excursion like the one we were on, as soon as he saw what people were doing today, he’d stop being so bitter and contemptuous toward ‘those women.’ But I don’t believe it.”

“Mirna, are you sure you aren’t condemning Titus for having attitudes that you’ve only recently shed?” I asked. “During the first two years after my release all you ever told Yara was: ‘Stay out of trouble.’ Until your plant went on strike you seemed unable to imagine why anyone would want to go on strike. Zdenek even found reason to accuse you of being your own jailer. I’m sure Jasna is right. Titus will surely change when he realizes the extent of the changes taking place around him.”

“Why are you so defensive about him?” Mirna asked me. “Another thing he told Jasna was that Vera Krena isn’t really in love with that Povrshan man but with his wife.”

“That detail must have fascinated Yara.”

“It did,” Mirna told me, “But Titus didn’t tell Jasna that in order to fascinate Yara. He told it in order to prove that Vera wasn’t really a proletarian but a selfish individualist!”

Somewhat exasperated I shouted, “Vera Krena is not a proletarian; she’s one of the leading bureaucrats in this country! You seem determined on fitting whatever Titus said into Yara’s picture of him as Vesna’s murderer.”

Mirna’s response to my exasperation was, “An excursion would also do you a lot of good, Yarostan!”

The first result of my defense of Titus was that Yara and Mirna told me very little about their trip. I did learn that such excursions are not an isolated phenomenon. Mirna and her friends ran into other “workers’ delegations” wherever they went, and all of them seem to have been engaged in a similar search. Until your letter came, it seemed as if the human species were suddenly making a deliberate effort to discover itself, to explore the possibilities for starting anew. I also took part in this activity, although on a more limited scale, and my impressions were similar to theirs. I accompanied a delegation of carton plant workers to two other factories, and, contrary to what I told you in my last letter, the specifications for efficient carton production were neither my main interest nor that of my fellow “delegates.” The discussion of cartons was quickly displaced by questions about each other, our intentions, our analysis of our potentialities and our means. I also found certain things that disturbed me, both in Mirna’s and Yara’s brief account and among the workers I visited. I’ve often mentioned

Yara’s fascination with some of the leading bureaucrats. This seems to be extremely widespread. I met many workers who described reforms as enthusiastically as strikes comparable to the one that broke out at Mirna’s plant, and who praised reformist bureaucrats even while they were describing the possibilities for doing without them. This inability to distinguish the realization of one’s own desires from the “victory” of the representatives of “everyone’s desires” is particularly ominous in view of the disaster you’ve just described.

This willingness on the part of so many people to continue letting themselves be represented obviously allows the “representatives” of everyone’s liberation to remain at the “head” of a movement that seems to be on the verge of ending the history of representatives. Politicians with imagination, like our acquaintance Vera Krena, have been very agile, not only at keeping themselves from being dislodged, but at increasing their power. Krena has very successfully used an anti-political movement, a movement which is undermining the power of bureaucrats, to increase her own status and power. During the past week her “wing” of the bureaucracy accomplished a feat comparable to the puppet show in which you and I took part twenty years ago. A week ago today Vera Krena and several other members of the “reform” wing replaced several leading “conservatives” in important government posts. The hypocrisy of the slogans with which this “feat” was justified is comparable to that of the slogans we helped produce during the days you no longer remember so fondly. Vera was far less dishonest in the speech Jasna and I heard several months ago, when she had spoken of the need to democratize the bureaucracy by giving more power to people like herself. During last week’s events, when she finally acquired that power, she made public statements similar to those she had made during the radio broadcast I described to you. “It is not our aim to establish the iron dictatorship of a stratum of parasites, but to pave the way for the self-government of the producers,” she said, accepting a government portfolio. Among other “accomplishments” so far, the “new” bureaucrats have passed resolutions favoring the right to strike and the abolition of censorship, namely favoring activity that has been taking place for months. Another acquaintance of ours, Marc Glavni, has been demoted as a result of the recent “coup”, he is now a fourth secretary instead of a second secretary.

The day after Mirna and Yara returned from their trip, a vast demonstration took place, or rather a celebration of the “victory” of the reformist politicians. Almost all of the carton plant’s office workers and most of the production workers took part in this demonstration. Mirna and Yara went too. I stayed home. Your letter hadn’t come yet, but that day I already felt as if our former condition were being restored while we waved flags and shouted “victory.” The feeling was reinforced by what happened the following day. The radio announced that an “extraordinary session” of the heads of the military organizations of all the “fraternal countries” surrounding ours had been held. It was announced that the “fraternal countries” were surrounding ours with four million soldiers armed with the most modern weapons, including I forget how many tanks. This announcement is clearly a threat of invasion, an ultimatum: either reestablish authority in a situation which, in Glavni’s words, “threatens to get out of control,” or else authority will be reestablished by four million armed “brothers,” one for every three members of the population including children, old people, the disabled — probably a ratio of two armed “brothers” to every worker, a hundred tanks to every rifle ... Since we refused to heed Comrade Glavni’s counsel not to allow ourselves “to get out of control,” we will have to be “liberated” militarily for the second time by the same “liberators.” By demoting Glavni, the “reformers” seem to be more intelligent than he at implementing his own project. If this population is to be brought back “in control” without tanks and liberation armies, this can no longer be done “under the leadership” of comrades like Glavni, but it can still be done under the leadership of reformers whose slogans refer to the most radical acts. Apparently the “fraternal allies” fear that this population is so far “out of control” that neither the conservatives nor the reformers will be able to reinstitute order. Their fear is of course my hope. What I hope is that the demonstrations of “solidarity” with politicians like Vera Krena are not renunciations of the willingness to move further, but confused affirmations of the desire for a society that doesn’t need politicians. I still think my hope is more than an empty wish. Among the people I’ve spoken to, even those who were unreservedly enthusiastic about the reformers’ governmental “victory” looked forward to more than the reestablishment of “order” decorated by the slogans of a revolution that failed to take place. I’m still convinced that the people around me want more than the seizure of power by their “comrades,” their union, their revolutionary tribunes. Maybe I’m nursing an illusion, but I’m convinced that below the enthusiasm for revolutionary demagogues there’s an undercurrent of desires which are seeking gratification, desires which cannot be vicariously satisfied, which cannot be carried by politicians the way programs can be carried. My own “education” in political “schools” has not done much to help me understand this undercurrent, but Mirna’s and Yara’s “insane behavior,” as well as your letters, have recently made me suspect that more was happening than I was able to see. But if I’m right, if this population can no longer be controlled either by the Marc Glavnis or the Vera Krenas, then what? A population out of control within “national boundaries” is like an animal in a zoo — it’s caged, imprisoned by zoo keepers; it isn’t a free population. The military apparatus surrounding us is like the tamer of a wild beast. Freedom inside a cage is still slavery. Our acts lose their human significance; we become freaks, monkeys. Those four million soldiers are workers like ourselves, they’re victims of the same repression. Yet they fail to recognize their likes inside the cage; their species-solidarity has either been blunted or removed; what they see is wild beasts “out of control.” Mirna’s excursion didn’t go far enough. Communication did take place, and in a cage larger than a circle of friends or even a factory — but still a cage. “Out of control” will become “freedom” only when there are no more cages, of any size; when the free human being becomes the “normal” human being. Your two previous letters had given us grounds to hope that the largest of cages, the “national” cages, had started to be destroyed. The events those two letters described suggested that our “lunacy” had started to become the “norm,” and the very act of exchanging letters with you suggested that it was possible to communicate across the most impassable of barriers. That’s why your newest letter dismays me more than the “fraternal ultimatum” broadcast over the radio. Your defeat reduces a struggle for life to a struggle for survival.

Ever since the announcement of the ultimatum I’ve sensed a certain “play-acting” not only at home, where I’ve come to expect it, but also in the carton plant. Unlike a previous occasion when tank maneuvers were announced, most people seem to be ignoring the announcement, acting as if the tanks weren’t real. But not only the tanks; the creative explorations in which we’re still engaged also seem to have lost their reality. For example at the carton plant, “delegations” have been leaving the plant daily, without any specific purpose; there seems to be a determination to play out what is possible before the play ends. Mirna and Yara have carried this attitude to extremes; both seem determined to realize their wildest fantasies during a moment they already know to be finite. I have a feeling that the spirit has gone out of the exploratory activities, or rather that they are now being done in an altogether different spirit. We’re no longer taking steps toward the creation of a new mode of social existence; we’re acting as if we were on vacation from the old mode, as if we all knew, but didn’t want to remember, that we would soon have to return to “normal life.” For a population under continued military and police occupation for twenty-eight years, the tanks and occupation armies are “normal life”; the realization of desires is not part of “normal life”; dreams are realized only during vacations.

As if to confirm the fact that we were “only” on vacation, the city police have already started to act as if “normal” times were back. While reformist politicians are publicly calling for more “self-government,” the police, who are now under the orders of “reformist” politicians, are already acting on the principle that “our fraternal allies” will accept the “reformists” into their fraternity only if the social order remains unreformed. We had a visit from the police (or rather I did, since Mirna and Yara were visiting Jasna) only two days after the ultimatum was announced, and they no longer behaved as they had several months ago, when the activity of their comrades in the political police was suspended. The police had visited us several months ago to inform us that our neighbor, Mr. Ninovo, had reported me for having “instigated” the demonstration at Yara’s primary school; at that time they had apologized to me and had warned us about our neighbor. They weren’t nearly as polite this time. Two officials came to the house last Saturday. They lectured to me about the fact that there was enough disorder in this society, and that consequently people did not need to add to it by “provocations and pranks against their own neighbors.” They then told me two large snakes had been placed in Mr. Ninovos house several months ago. Mr. Ninovo had immediately informed the police, but at that time the police were too busy to remove them. Thinking the snakes were poisonous, Mr. Ninovo moved to a hotel. The police eventually removed the snakes, but Mr. Ninovo would not return to his house until the police determined the origin of the snakes and “punished the evildoers.” Mr. Ninovo told them he was certain “the Vochek girl and her criminal father” had placed the snakes in his house. The police told me they had recently traced the snakes to the Zoology Faculty of the university, but had not been able to determine how the snakes had gone from there to Mr. Ninovo’s house. I laughed and told them neither Yara nor I had access to the university’s snakes. Both policemen were offended by my laughter and told me the next time snakes were found in any of my neighbors’ houses both Yara and I would be questioned, not at home but at the police station, “until the matter of the snakes is cleared up once and for all.”

Your letter arrived last Saturday morning, about an hour before the police did. Yara and Mirna both rushed to Jasna’s to invite her to another reading session; they hadn’t seen Jasna since the three of them returned from their excursion. I read through most of your letter before lunch time, when the three joined me. Your harrowing arrest at Luisa’s plant, as well as Sabina’s comments about Luisa and Titus, were not in tune with the spirit in which Mirna and Yara returned from their excursion, but with the way I felt after the announcement of the ultimatum, and particularly after the unpleasant police visit about the snakes. Mirna and Yara both laughed when I recounted what the police had just told me, and Yara commented, “He deserved crocodiles.”

The police as well as the snakes are forgotten. As soon as Jasna arrives, she tells me exuberantly, “Titus and I are engaged. We’re going to celebrate our engagement two weeks from tomorrow, and I’m inviting all my friends. I hope by then you can talk Mirna and Yara out of their hostility toward him.” I congratulate her and promise to try.

Mirna plunges into your letter as soon as she’s back in the house. She reads while eating lunch and excitedly passes every sheet to Yara. Soon after she starts reading, Mirna exclaims, “Sabina didn’t even know about the strike at my plant until her strike was over! You’re talking about communication between continents, and Sophia isn’t even communicating with the person right next to her. How sad! She didn’t even know I was looking forward to art excursion across the sea. I wonder if she would have looked forward to seeing me.” Stopping at a later point in her reading, she tells me, “Sabina is right about that night we spent together. I’m the one who remembered it wrong. I’d think she could figure out why I changed it. I pretended to be Jan making love to Mirna, but what I remembered was the night when Jan made love to me, because that was the most wonderful night I spent with him.” Still later she tells Jasna, “You’ll smile less when you read the rest of this letter. You’re trying to convince yourself Titus is mean because he’s so isolated. Wait until you read what he was like when he wasn’t isolated.”

Jasna, who has also started reading your letter, is irritated by Mirna’s comment. “I can understand Yara’s hostility to him; it’s due to Titus’ misguided helpfulness in having Vesna taken to the hospital against Yara’s objections. But I can’t understand your hostility, Mirna. as anything more than jealousy. You loved him once, and that’s the only clue I have to your behavior. I should never have told you what he said about you, Vera and Luisa. He said those things only because he’s; isolated, lonely and unhappy. You know perfectly well unhappiness breeds bitterness toward other people’s happiness. As soon as I got back I described our trip to him, I told him about your strike and Yarostans strike, I told him he was isolated, removed from the experiences taking place and the people living them. I told him his goodness was turning into bitterness; he was becoming a spiteful hermit while I was becoming a spiteful old maid. And I told him I was sure that together we could find our way back into the stream of life. He responded by proposing to me. Don’t you see that his proposal is virtually a renunciation of what he’s become? He doesn’t want to be bitter and mean. He wants to rejoin us as our friend; lie wants to break out of his isolation. Why are you so set on destroying our happiness?”

Mirna says, “Titus was released twenty years ago while the rest of yon stayed in jail?”

“Zdenek saw him in jail twenty years ago,” I remind her. “He was told his arrest had been a mistake. It was undoubtedly his release that was a mistake. Maybe they let him out just to give the Nachalos the impression that all of us were being released.”

“Mirna, I’m not talking about things that happened twenty years ago,” Jasna pleads. “I’m talking about the happiness of two living people. Titus and I need each other, and we’re perfectly suited to each other; we’re both equally isolated; we’ve both sacrificed our lives for nothing.”

But Mirna is unmoved. “He wasn’t arrested with the rest of you eight years later either!”

‘That’s surely a coincidence,” I suggest. “On the earlier occasion he was temporarily released to create an impression; on the later occasion he was arrested a few weeks later than the rest of us. That doesn’t exactly make him an ogre.”

“I don’t believe in coincidences!” Mirna shouts. “Sophia asks why he didn’t tell yon about her letter when he visited you. She sent him a letter too, and even if he didn’t receive it he certainly knew about it because I told him it had caused your and Jan’s arrest.”

“Mirna, on that visit Titus told me about Yara’s birth, about Jan’s disappearance, about your mother’s hysteria and your father’s loss of his job,” I remind her. “Did you really expect him to remember to tell me about a letter none of us had ever seen?”

“Why do you want to Mil the joy of two people whose lives haven’t had much joy?” Jasna asks her. “Are you still playing that game yon played on Yara when she returned from her excursion to the mountains? If you are, then I agree with Zdenek: you have a morbid streak. Do you still now believe happiness can only lead to suffering and death? Or are you still determined to force me to share the burden you had to carry by yourself for so many years? I don’t understand you, Mirna. When I’m miserable you say, ‘Poor Jasna.’ Yet now that I’m not ‘Poor Jasna’ any more you seem set on making me miserable again! Why?”

“Because you’re both lying to yourselves,” Mirna answers. “Sabina asks why Yarostan is so defensive about Titus. That’s what I’d like to know. Read the letter to the end, Jasna! Titus wasn’t the hero you thought him. He fought in an army that killed people like Yarostan, Jan and Yara, people like Sophia’s and Sabina’s friends Ron and Jose and Sabina herself. Jasna, you’re lifting a burden you’ll never be able to carry!”

Jasna drops your letter and leaves the house shouting at Mirna, “Don’t bother coming to my celebration if you still feel this way two weeks from now!” She slams the door.

I turn angrily to Mirna. “You did this to her once before, when she expressed enthusiasm for one of Sophia’s letters. I’m convinced she’s right: your hostility to Titus wasn’t brought on by anything Jasna told you during your trip, and obviously not by what you’ve just learned from Sophia’s letter. You and Yara were already hostile to him three years ago when I was released. Even earlier. Yara’s face was a mask of hatred during her last visit to me, when she told me about Vesna’s death. And I don’t quite agree with Jasna about the justifiability of Yara’s unforgiving hatred. I don’t justify what Titus did with Vesna, but I’m convinced very few people, if any, would have paid attention to Yara at that moment. Yara is at least consistent; she doesn’t flit from blaming Titus to blaming herself and her devil and your mother; she blamed Titus for Vesna’s death from the moment Vesna died; she still blames him; she was disappointed with me when I was released because I didn’t immediately see the monstrosity of Titus’ deed —”

“That wasn’t all that disappointed her,” Mirna says sarcastically. “As soon as you came home she saw you had nothing in common with the Yarostan whose return Vesna had feared. Yara was disappointed because she saw that the passion with which I had frightened Vesna wasn’t in you; it was in me! Yara realized Vesna’s fear had been groundless; Vesna had played her game for nothing; there had been no reason for her to fear your release! Yara was disappointed, not only because you agreed with Titus, but also because you were as passionless as he! You weren’t the companion I had promised her.”

Yara, still reading, looks up and says, as if to defend me, “I didn’t compare him to Mr. Zabran. Even Sabina doesn’t say that.”

“And what if she did?” I ask Mirna. “I was even more like Titus before that prison term than after my release, yet you didn’t throw the comparison in my face then.” I’m not really sure that’s true, just as I’m not sure Sabina’s opposite picture of me is true. During my second prison term I reevaluated the theoretical insights I had learned from Luisa and from Titus, and I rejected many of those insights. But I didn’t reject the approach to life I had learned from them, and I think that’s what Mirna is pointing out. I was theoretically committed to the overthrow of the existing social order, and it had been Titus and Luisa who had taught me how to be theoretically committed. In this sense Mirna is probably right; I was more like Titus after my release than I had been before. Earlier I had made some kind of “synthesis” between my political goals and my personal desires; I’ve already told you Luisa and revolution were almost synonyms to me. It was precisely this “synthesis” that fell apart during my second prison term. After my second release I had some kind of theory and goal, but they were no longer linked to what Mirna calls my “passion.” I also felt terribly isolated. I had hoped to discuss my theoretical re-evaluations with Mirna and also with Titus, but at that time Mirna was in no mood to discuss anything, and after two short visits Titus stopped coming to our house because of the cold reception he received from both Mirna and Yara.

I try to remind Mirna of that period. “You’re being unfair, Mirna. You weren’t an ideal companion either when I returned home after eight years in prison. If anyone was bitter during those days, it wasn’t Titus Zabran but you. At that time you “blamed yourself for everything that had happened, not only to Vesna, but to me and Jan, to your father, to your mother. When did you start putting that blame on Titus? It wasn’t Titus’ bitterness that kept him from our house, but your and Yara’s hostility. The first time he visited, a few days after my release, I returned the two books he had lent me when he visited me in prison. And that was the only courtesy of which any of us were capable. It wasn’t he who was bitter during that visit, but we — all three of us. He thanked me for the books. He told us how sorry he was about Vesna’s death.”

“He was sorry the way someone is sorry about a hailstorm that destroys a year’s crops,” Mirna tells me. “He was sorry because Vesna died, not because he felt in any way responsible for her death. He had felt responsible for her health. But the doctors were responsible for her death, not he. If he hadn’t felt so responsible for her health she might still be alive today!”

“If you felt that way about him, why didn’t you tell me at that time?” I ask her. “I was full of gratitude toward him; was I a fool in your and Yara’s eyes? I thanked him for everything he’d done for us, including his trying to save Vesna. And then I proceeded to ask him for yet another favor, while you and Yara simply stood by. I told him I was marked again. I was unemployable; I asked him to find me another job. Why didn’t you tell me to be wary of any job Titus would find for me? On his second visit, when he came to tell us he hadn’t been able to find a job for me, you made him feel completely unwanted —”

“He didn’t even look for a job for you,” she says. “Don’t you remember what he told you? It wouldn’t do your health any good to have a job right then. It also wouldn’t do Yara’s or my health any good if you went off to work every day. We would all be healthier if you stayed home and helped Yara with the housework. He obviously knew more about our health than any of us did, just as he had known about Vesna’s.”

“When did you find all this out, Mirna? When did you figure out that by feeling responsible toward our health Titus was in fact responsible for our ills? You certainly didn’t know that when I first came home, nor for at least two years after that. My opinion of you during all that time was that you were a self-repressed slave. And you didn’t only repress yourself. You told Yara: ‘Stay out of trouble! Don’t take part in any mischief!’ Yara responded with ‘Yes, mommy,’ and ‘No, mommy,” carrying on her mischief behind our backs, telling neither of us anything until the day she came home wearing a sign. Then she described her demonstration to me, not to you. And Yara was perfectly right; if there had ever been mischief in you, it had completely disappeared. Your view then was that mischief, passion, life could only lead to suffering and death. When your mother died you became even quieter. Your mother had blamed you for everything that had happened; when she died you internalized all her “blame. That was the burden you’ve been carrying: your mother’s blame. You tried to become toward Yara what your mother had been to you: a censor. Stay out of trouble, repress passion, because you’ll cause Yarostan’s re-arrest, you’ll cause Mirna’s death, you’ll destroy everything you love.”

“That’s right, Yarostan, and when the police came to the house after Yara’s demonstration because Ninovo told them you had inspired it, I thought my mother had been right. I was sure the devil in me carried a sword and intended to destroy all of us. I remained convinced of that until the day when Yara told all of you there had been a devil inside Vesna too. That night Yara convinced me it wasn’t the devil that had killed Vesna, but the fear of the devil. It was the intrusion of the world Jan had hated, the world that makes our love impossible, Titus Zabran’s world, that killed Vesna. Yara showed me that what my mother had called the devil is what’s most natural in all of us, what we feel; it’s our desires and our passions; it’s what we are. No sword is needed to embed the devil in us; the devil is already there; it’s the removal of the devil that requires a sword. It was Zabran and my mother with their crystal palaces and heavens and gods that made Vesna fear her own self, her own desires, her devil.”

“That’s what you told me before you left on your excursion, Mirna. At that time it seemed like a fine justification for your excursion, for your strike, for your complete transformation since the day when you beat Yara for flaunting her love games. Vesna’s doctor succeeded in curing you. Was it also Yara who swung you to the opposite extreme, who shifted your hatred of yourself to a hatred of Titus and Jasna?”

Yara, who has been listening to our argument while trying to finish your letter, objects to my accusation. “I never shifted any blame to Jasna.”

“Am I right about Titus then?” I ask Mirna. “Until a few weeks ago you blamed yourself for Vesna’s death, as well as Jan’s, your father’s and your mother’s. You didn’t dream of missing a day of work, nor of going on strike; you were opposed to the gratification of desires, not only your own but Yara’s as well. Suddenly all the blame is on Titus Zabran’s head. All Yara can actually prove to you is that Titus took Vesna to the hospital against Yara’s wishes, and we all know that. Yet what you threw in Jasna’s face was the suggestion that you now blame Titus for everything. Suddenly Titus is a devil who carries a sword —”

“I’ve told you it’s not the devil who carries the sword!” Mirna insists. “It’s your friend Zabran and his friend Alberts! It’s those who suppress their own devil and set out to murder it in everyone else. It’s the ones building crystal palaces; the devil is in the way of such palaces; the devil loves trees and streams and sunshine —”

“I don’t think you understood Sabina’s point,” I tell Mirna, although I’m not sure of that even as I say it, and both Mirna and Yara are going to make me regret telling Mirna that she had misunderstood Sabina. I nevertheless go on, “Sabina was talking about industrialization, not about the repression of desires. People were in Alberts’ way. People are always in the way of industrial expansion. Sabina makes a great deal out of the fact that Alberts, as well as Titus, themselves took up arms against the human beings who stood in the way of their project. Now you’re telling me both Alberts and Titus had something in common with your mother, that what all of them really opposed was the realization of one’s desires, and that therefore your mother was ready to take up arms —”

“Yarostan!” Mirna shouts; “I’m going to force you and Jasna to decide which side you’re on, once and for all!”

“You and your doctor!” I shout back.

Mirna gives her hand to Yara and says, “That’s right, me and my doctor! We’ll show you who it is that takes up arms, and why.”

“And in the process you’ll make at least two people miserable, two people who are desperately reaching for a little happiness —”

“One of those two isn’t reaching for happiness —” Mirna shouts, but I rush to the bedroom and slam the door shut, tired of hearing about Titus’ supposed guilt and responsibility. Mirna spends the night in Yara’s room.

Mirna has already left the house when I get up the following morning. Yara has breakfast ready for me and is suspiciously friendly. “Isn’t it a perfect day?” she asks, even though it’s dark and cloudy. She acts as if she hadn’t heard the previous day’s argument. “Mirna promised to take me to an outing today,” she tells me.

“Just you and she?” I ask.

“Oh no, it wouldn’t be complete without you and Zdenek,” she says.

“Where does she want to take us?”

“To the top of the mountain.” Yara’s tone tells me she’s in a very mischievous mood.

“Are you sure she wants to take me?” I ask. “We’re not exactly on the best of terms; yesterday she told me I wasn’t fit to be taken to the top of the mountain.”

“I’m taking you,” Yara says, “and I’ll show her she’s wrong. She’s taking Zdenek.”

“I’m not sure I’m willing to go to the top of the mountain, Yara.”

“You have to go,” she tells me, climbing on my lap and kissing my cheek. “If you don’t go you’ll prove I was wrong and she was right.”

“I wouldn’t want to do that, would I?”

“You’ll go then?” she asks, pulling me out of my chair and throwing her arms around me.

“How could I turn down your invitation, Yara?”

“I knew you weren’t what she said you were!” she shouts, running off to her room. A few minutes later she returns with her dyed black hair hanging loosely over her shoulders, and she wears the slacks and jacket that had made her look like Sabina at the dance at Mirna’s plant. “’You liked me like this, didn’t you Yarostan?” she asks me, extremely coquettishly.

“I like you even better as yourself, Yara,” I tell her, embarrassed by her question.

“I’m almost exactly as old as she was when Jan made love to her in your room.”

“But you’re not Sabina, and I’m twenty years older than I was then, Yara.”

“Up there years don’t matter,” she tells me.

Unfortunately the arrival of Mirna and Zdenek prevents me from pondering the significance of Yara’s last statement. Mirna and Zdenek come laden with food and wine all of which must have come from Zdenek’s apartment, since it’s Sunday and the stores are closed.

“He’s going! I told you he would!” Yara shouts to Mirna.

“Wonderful,” Mirna says to me.

“Your outing wouldn’t be complete without me,” I tell Mirna sarcastically. “Are you bringing Titus too?”

Mirna turns her back to me and starts repacking the food with Zdenek.

Yara asks me, “Why don’t you talk Jasna out of marrying that awful Mr. Zabran?”

“And what then, Yara?” I ask her. “Marry Jasna myself?”

“She loves you more than she loves him, and she’d listen to you,” Yara tells me. Mirna laughs, and. even Zdenek seems entertained by Yara’s “joke.”

“You’re almost as clever as your mother, Yara,” I tell her; she’ll make me regret that statement later. “Titus and Jasna are perfectly suited to each other, and I have nothing against Titus except what he did to you and Vesna —”

“Nothing?” Yara asks. “Not even after Sophia’s letter? Don’t you see —”

“I only see you and Mirna jumping to far-fetched conclusions. Titus is my friend; he was my first teacher, I like him, and I admit I have much in common with him.”

“That’s what Mirna says, but I don’t believe you have anything in common with him,” Yara says firmly, as if she were determined to make her statement true. “Please don’t be like him!”

“If the purpose of this excursion is to prove to me the villainy of Titus, then I think I’ll change my mind —”

“That’s not the purpose at all!” Yara shouts, embracing me again, her eyes begging. “It’s just that it’s such a perfect day for this outing.”

“Is it your idea that this is a perfect day for an outing?” I ask Zdenek.

Smiling sheepishly at me, Zdenek admits, “It’s not a perfect day at all; it looks like it’s going to rain any minute.”

Mirna places her arms around Zdenek’s neck and tells him, “You well know there hasn’t ever been a more perfect day.”

Of course at this point I figure out that Zdenek is “in” on the plot, but I still don’t know just what the plot is. The closest I come is to suspect Mirna of wanting to “get even” for the previous night’s argument by using Zdenek to, rouse my jealousy, and I’m surprised by Zdenek’s willingness to be used that way. “You’re not going to let rain stop you, are you Zdenek?” I ask him sarcastically.

“I’m not sure I know what I’m getting into; are you?” he asks me.

“Whatever it is, I’m looking forward to it,” I tell him.

Each of us carrying a basket filled with food and wine, we set out on the two-tram journey to Mirna’s and Jan’s former neighborhood. When we leave the end of the second tram line, we don’t head toward her parents’ former house, but to the clearing where Mirna took me twice before. It’s still as abandoned and as “private” as it was the last time Mirna and I came here twelve years ago; I couldn’t have found it by myself; perhaps it’s so undisturbed because no one else found it either. The sky grows increasingly dark, but Mirna beams with satisfaction, sets her basket down on the ground and stretches out on the grass as if the sun were shining. Yara throws a cloth on the ground and starts setting the food on it, as well as one after another bottle of wine.

“And now would the three of you mind telling me what it is we’re celebrating on this cloudy and dark Sunday?” I ask impatiently.

“We’re not celebrating an event but a place,” Yara says; there’s a wild, absent expression in her eyes; I’ve seen such an expression before, in Mirna’s eyes. “We’re celebrating my birthplace. Long before I was born country girls my age ran to this clearing on moonlit nights; they drank down bottles of wine and danced naked in the moonlight until the moon stopped still in the middle of the sky at midnight. Then the devil stepped out of the dark forest and made love to every one of them. By that act they all became sisters and they lived only for the night of the full moon when they returned to this clearing once a month.”

“Are we going to have to stay until midnight waiting for your devil?” I ask her naively.

“They waited for that night because nothing was possible for them during the day. That single night became their only day; that full moon became their only sun. But we don’t have to wait until midnight because for us everything is becoming possible during the daytime. Soon even the clouds will be gone and we’ll be able to do everything we want and love everyone we love in the light of the sun.”

“You amaze me, Yara. You sound exactly like Jan — and like Sabina,” I admit to her.

“If we hadn’t been properly introduced, I would have thought those two sisters,” Zdenek announces after guzzling from a bottle of wine; he shows signs of being slightly drunk.

Mirna sits up, helps herself to the sausages and salads Yara displayed on the ground, and clinks a bottle of wine against Zdenek’s. “Do you realize we failed to celebrate Sophia’s success with her philosopher Pat?” she asks. “Imagine! A boy young enough to be her son, the same age as Sabina’s daughter! And in spite of all her previous expectations, she enjoyed every minute of it. And she couldn’t have staged it more perfectly if Yara had been there to help!”

“Yet you just told me it’s all over for Sophia,” Zdenek observes. “Which only proves my point, Mirna. Perpetual dancing and lovemaking may be the goal, but to reach that goal something like a union is necessary.”

Mirna jumps up and pours the remainder of her bottle of wine directly over Zdenek’s head. “This is all you’ll ever get from your union, Zdenek! When we get back you can read Sophia’s newest letter and see just exactly what the union did to her and to Sabina and Tissie and thousands of others who wanted only to dance and make love.”

Trying to crawl away from the pouring wine, Zdenek shouts, “You don’t prove your point that way, Mirna! How could a union have soaked those workers? In her previous letter Sophia gave the impression all those workers rejected the union!”

“She was wrong,” Mirna tells him. “It turned out the majority of those workers were more committed to unions and trains like the one you described than you ever were. They locked themselves into windowless compartments and let themselves be driven right back to prison!”

“If it took them to prison it wasn’t the kind of union I had in mind,” Zdenek objects.

“You obviously think your own train is the exception, but you’ll see that Sabina was infinitely more honest than you are. She admitted that her own train, the one she devoted her whole life to, led nowhere except back. Tissie was the only one who knew exactly what she wanted.”

Zdenek asks, “And what was it Tissie wanted?”

“Sabina’s love, Sophia’s love, the love of all the women in the world. For Tissie the devil had the shape of a woman, a beautiful young witch, with whom she was alone in a forest by a pond, lying naked in the sun, making love.” Mirna, who is on her second or third wine bottle, seems as drunk as Zdenek.

“And how did Tissie hope to reach what she wanted?” Zdenek asks her.

“Like this!” Mirna exclaims, reaching out for Yara. When Yara gets up to move toward Mirna I notice she’s drunk too; she swims toward Mirna, who pulls her down to the grass and falls on top of her. “How, Zdenek? Like this! It’s not a train, Zdenek. It’s mother with daughter, sister with sister, woman with woman. Is this position not included in your philosophy?” The two roll on the grass so that Yara is now on top of Mirna. “I couldn’t accept it into my philosophy either. Sabina told Sophia the truth. I carried my mother inside me. I distorted one of the most precious experiences of my life. I remembered it wrongly, I changed it so I wouldn’t offend my mother’s feelings. I told myself I let Sabina make love to me only because she pretended to be my brother. I lied to myself.” Saying this she rolls over again and presses Yara-Sabina to the ground. Zdenek and I stare, completely fascinated, at the intoxicated mother and daughter locked in a passionate embrace. “It was I who pretended to be Jan. I couldn’t bear to remember it that way, because I wanted to believe Jan had made love to me that night. Sabina told me Jan had showed her how he loved me, and I wanted to believe he loved me as a body, the way I loved him; the only way I could make myself believe it was if I remembered that Sabina pretended to be Jan and showed me how he had wanted to love me. I never knew he loved me that way until this letter came. When we’d slept together as children the initiative had all been mine. Jan would lie perfectly still, I’d put my cheek on his, just like this. Then I’d slide down, undo his shirt, and kiss his chest and his stomach. He stroked my hair but didn’t ever move on top of me. It was only from Sophia’s letter that I learned how free he was with Sabina and with other girls he pretended were me. If I’d known then, I would have been the one who lived in his room with him, I would have been Jan’s wife-sister until they came to separate us with rifles and tanks. Yes, I lied to myself about that night. I didn’t really believe Jan loved me the way I pretended he did.”

My dumb fascination turns to embarrassment when Mirna removes Yara’s jacket and shirt and lets her lips wander from Yara’s chest to her stomach.

“Sabina is right,” Mirna continues. “I did to her what I wanted Jan to do to me, what he never did to me until we were forever separated and he was forced to substitute me. And she’s right: it was beautiful exactly as it happened.” She slides her lips to Yara’s. “Every motion, every caress, every kiss I had ever dreamed of receiving from Jan I gave to Sabina, pretending she was I. I was as happy that night as I had ever been with Jan. That was all I wanted in life: the possibility to embrace those around me, all of them, to feel them, caress them, kiss them —” Mirna’s head dangles above Yara’s stomach and her hair sweeps across it in rhythmical strokes, like a broom. Drops of rain fall on Mirna’s naked back.

Yara is panting, her hands frantically press Mirna down toward her thighs; she begs, “Don’t stop Jan-Sabina-Yarostan —”

I turn my head away, confused, and I have to admit, disgusted. I announce, “It’s starting to rain.”

Mirna asks sarcastically, “Do you hear, Sabina? It’s the woman with the broom.” When I turn toward her angrily, she stops her stroking motions and pulls Yara up to sitting position. I’m afraid of the look in Yara’s eyes: she’s drunk, and stares wildly at me. “Yarostan thinks it’s raining,” Mirna continues. “We brought him with us so he’d make love to my mother who hadn’t touched a man since I’d been conceived. But he can’t go through with it because it’s raining. For Yarostan the revolution means getting out of the rain, back to the safety of the carton plant, back to the meetings, back to his teachers Luisa Nachalo and Titus Zabran.”

“He’s not at all like that,” Yara objects drunkenly. “I can see it in his eyes. He’s not like the old woman or like that stiff Mr. Zabran. Yarostan is one of us —”

Mirna places Yara on all fours like an animal and pushes her toward me, telling her provocatively, “Prove it, Yara! Show us he’s not like that.”

While Yara crawls toward me, Mirna crawls behind Zdenek and pulls him down to the ground by his hair. Zdenek lies on the ground as if he were asleep or dead. Mirna starts to unbutton Zdenek’s shirt and shouts to Yara, “Like this! Daughter with father! What could be more natural? What could be more beautiful? We’re waiting, Yara! Show us who your father is like!” The rain increases. Mirna, suspended over Zdenek like an awning, shields his face and chest from the rain.

Yara, now behind me, starts imitating Mirna and I lose track of Mirna and Zdenek. Yara pulls with all her strength but instead of letting myself be pulled down to the ground I place Yara on my lap and tell her, “You don’t know what you’re doing, Yara. You’re drunk.”

“I know what I’m doing,” she says drunkenly; “It’s the most natural thing in the world. Haven’t you ever seen how freely the animals do it? Rabbits, dogs, cats play love games whenever they feel the desire. Sister plays with brother, son with mother, daughter with father, always in each other’s company, without shame. Among animals it’s nothing to hide. Only people have shame, people like the old woman, people who don’t have desire, and you’re not like them!”

“I don’t know who I’m like, Yara.” My head is swimming.

“Earlier you said I was as clever as Mirna,” she remind me. “Were you lying? Don’t you like me?”

“I like you very much,” I tell her, kissing her playfully.

But Yara plunges her tongue into my mouth; her whole body writhes; she begs hungrily, “Open your mouth, father! Kiss me! Even Vesna could kiss!”

I turn my face away. “I don’t like you that way, Yara.”

“I love you, father!” she shouts, holding me with all her might; “Make love to me!”

“I can’t play your game, Yara.” I try to push her away.

“Yes you will!” Yara screams. She pushes me to the ground, tears my shirt open and throws her naked chest on mine. “You’ll play my game until it’s over! This is the revolution; it’s right here; there’s no other!”

I try to push her gently away from me. “Yara, stop, before I —”

But the more I push, the more hysterical Yara becomes. “Love games in every possible combination, every possible place and time, that’s the revolution! You read that in Sophia’s letter describing Sabina and her garage — and you toasted to Sabina and to Tissie! Why are you being such a hypocrite?”

Losing all my playfulness, I push Yara away from me and shout, “That’s enough, you hear? You’re drunk! You don’t know what you’re doing!”

Shouting hysterically, “I love you! Don’t be Vesna!” she throws herself at me and pushes me back down to the ground. You could not have felt more shocked when you found yourself under Tissie.

“Stop it!” I command, but she has the strength of a frustrated wild animal attacking her prey; the expression on her face is completely deranged. I use all my strength to try to restrain her, to hold her at a distance.

But she still reaches for me, forces herself on me, shouting, “I want you, father, I want you!”

Suddenly I’m pulled down from behind and my arms are pinned to the ground by Mirna, while my legs are pulled straight by Zdenek. My violent kicks and twists prevent Yara from staying on top of me, but provoke her to keep trying.

Mirna, her face upside-down above mine, as drunk as Yara, tells me, “This isn’t right, is it, Yarostan? It’s natural, but it isn’t right. What’s natural is gentle; it takes place through a kiss, a caress, an embrace. But what’s right requires shouting and kicking and beating! What’s right requires the broom and the gun and the tank —”

Yara, thrown off again, laughs as if I were playing a game with her. She dives at me again and clings to me with all her might.

I shout hysterically, “You’ve gone crazy, all three of you!” I pull one of my hands away from Mirna’s grasp, clench it into a fist and swing it into the side of Yara’s face. Then she flies off me, howling, covering her face with her hands. Zdenek lets go of my feet to examine Yara’s face, and I give him a kick. I get up shouting, “If this is your idea of enjoyment, then I agree with Titus. You need to be in the hospital, all three of you!” I put my shirt on and start to walk away from the “devil’s” clearing.

Mirna shouts after me, “My mother is watching and listening from her bed in the sky! Stop their games, she’s telling you! Kill them, she’s telling you! There’s no other way to stop their games, their passion, their desire to live! It’s not the devil who carries a sword, not I nor Yara nor Sabina. It’s she and you who carry it! It’s not passion that brings destruction, but the fear of passion! Lock the devil up, she’s telling you! Destroy the passion! Run from it! Or do what Vesna did: lock yourself up, destroy yourself —”

Link https://youtu.be/VMS3LWQA268

“Is this what the two of you did to Vesna?” I ask angrily, continuing to walk away from the clearing.

“You’re worse than the old woman, you’re worse than Zabran!” Yara shouts after me.

“Yes, Yarostan,” Mirna shouts. “This is what the two of us did to Vesna! And Vesna grew rigid, her face became twisted with fear, just like yours!”

I place the palms of my hands over my ears and run to the tram stop. The tram isn’t there, so I run to the next stop to wait for it. My heart thumps; my whole body is filled with outrage, with revulsion and, yes. with fear and shame of a passion I don’t allow myself to feel, a passion I tried to stop the only way

I knew how: by violence. The tram finally comes and I do what Mirna said: I run from the passion. On the ride back to the city, I remember Mirna’s threat, “I’m going to force you and Jasna to decide which side you’re on!” Apparently she and Yara had disagreed about that, and I had proved Yara wrong, I had proved I wasn’t on Jan’s side, on Sabina’s side, I had proved that for me there were bounds, there were limits, everything was not allowed.

When I reached home, I went straight to bed but couldn’t sleep. I tried to convince myself I couldn’t have acted any other way. I heard Mirna and Yara return. Both of them rushed to the bathroom. When I heard Yara cry out with pain, it dawned on me that I had hurt her face seriously with the blow of my fist; my hand had gotten slightly cut, and the blood next to the cut was apparently Yara’s. I grew concerned; my heart pounded with guilt. But I couldn’t make myself face either of them. Then they became quiet; Mirna apparently put Yara to bed.

Suddenly Mirna rushed into our bedroom and held a mirror in front of my face. She had never before been so drunk. “Do you know what dead people look like?” she shouted at me. “Their faces are pale, their bodies are contorted, there’s a horrid lifeless fear in their eyes. Some of them breathe, but their breath has no life, nothing stirs inside them, they’re not moved by their own passions and desires, their limbs and organs aren’t able to respond to the fire of life because no fire burns inside them —”

“Mirna, I couldn’t — not with Yara —”

She disregarded my interruption. “— Burned out themselves, they hit and beat and kill those whose bodies are on fire, putting out fires, healing, saving, jailing, sacrificing. Real people and real passions are in their way, they mess up their crystal palaces.” Working herself up into a drunken rage, Mirna throws the mirror on the floor and shatters it. “I’ve had enough God-worshippers in this house already! I won’t allow any more life to be sacrificed to gods! I built the shed for God’s priests and saints because I don’t want them stinking up my house with their purity! This is the devil’s house!”

I didn’t move to the shed. Mirna again spent the night in Yara’s room and left me “quarantined” in our bedroom. I didn’t sleep very much. I couldn’t make myself understand that Mirna had wanted me to go to the point of copulating with my own daughter. Surely that act is beyond the limits of the unrestricted freedom which had so attracted all of us when Sabina described it. Was I really what Yara had called me: a hypocrite who applauded at a great distance acts which I dared not undertake in my own home and neighborhood? Or was this whole episode to be explained as nothing more than a drunken spree?

I left the following morning before either Mirna or Yara were up. When I returned, they were both in the living room with Jasna. I immediately noticed a bandage around Yara’s jaw and started to walk toward her, but was stopped by a look of hatred identical to the expression on her face the last time she had visited me in prison. Yara stomped past me out of the house and slammed the front door so hard the whole house shook.

Jasna greeted me with surprise in her eyes and then turned to Mirna to ask, “Are you sure it was an accident?”

Mirna told her, “Yes, it was an accident.” She then asked me, with an incomprehensibly sweet tone, “Did you swing your elbow into Yara’s face intentionally?”

Her tone mystified me completely; it indicated that Mirna was already playing another game, a game with an altogether different point. But I have to admit I was relieved by her hypocritical sweetness. The previous night she’d threatened to ask me to leave the house and do what? Court Jasna? Mirna and Yara had apparently ascertained it no longer made any difference whether Titus or I courted Jasna, since they had proved Titus and I were “the same.” Yara’s door-slamming indicated she was still indignant about that “discovery,” but Mirna was apparently ready to move on to the next “scene.”

Jasna was too preoccupied with her own problems to be wary of Mirna’s new mood. “I just told Mirna I’ve confronted Titus with most of her suspicions,” she told me furiously. “Except for his brief period of military service, Titus never raised a hand against anyone. If you and Mirna and Yara are suspicious of him, confront him to his face, not behind his back! He’ll be glad to answer all your questions. He told me he was willing to answer history for all his acts. All his life he’s been devoted to something. Is that what you hold against him?”

“Yarostan holds nothing at all against him,” Mirna told her.

Jasna said angrily, “Last time I was here you accused him of having killed people like Yarostan and Yara and yourself! Why don’t you say that to his face? I know he served in an army; I’ve known it ever since I first met him. But that army’s task was to save democracy from fascism, not to kill people like you and Yarostan. You’re unjust, Mirna. His whole life was lived in the service of working people; he never wanted anything for himself. Whether he was jailed after the rest of us or before, the fact is that he was jailed both times. It was when he came to see me after our second arrest that I first learned about you and Vesna. Titus felt so sorry for you; he told me you worked like an automaton all day long, only to return to two children and a crazy old woman. He helped me find my teaching position in the school. He helped Vesna get medical care the first time she was sick, when her heart murmur was discovered. He never told me about his amorous experiences with you, Mirna. He must have been too embarrassed; you were only half his age. He’s obviously not the world’s most passionate person, but neither am I; maybe that’s why we’ve always been drawn to each other. But whatever he’s lacked in passion, he’s more than made up in solidarity and loyalty toward his friends. He’s helped almost every one of us find jobs, starting with Yarostan and Jan. He even helped Marc Glavni and Adrian Povrshan toward social positions much higher than Titus ever aspired to. I know he helped once too often; I know he shouldn’t have insisted Vesna be taken to the hospital the second time she got sick. But it was I who told him Vesna was ill again. And what was he to think when he found her in your mother’s bed, feverish and hysterical? He obviously couldn’t even imagine you held him responsible for Vesna’s death. He came to see you twice after Yarostan was released. Titus told me Yarostan had asked for help in finding another job, but Titus didn’t even try to find one; he told me Yarostan looked like a skeleton when he came out, and workplaces were so policed that Yarostan would have gone insane even if he’d withstood the physical strain. That was three years ago. He hasn’t offered his help to you or Yarostan or Yara since then. He knew you held something against him. Even his visits to me grew less frequent. It was only then that he became isolated, removed from events and from people. After a lifetime of helping the people around him, he was suddenly all alone. How could I turn against him now? How can you? If you suspect him of anything, tell him to his face!”

“You’re absolutely right, Jasna,” Mirna told her sweetly and contritely. “I have no reason to feel anything other than gratitude toward Titus. The first time I met him was after Jan’s release fifteen years ago, before Yarostan came to our house when he was released the first time. Titus got Jan the job in the bus repair depot, and my father invited him to visit us. I haven’t forgotten it was through Titus that Yarostan was hired as a driver, transferred to the depot and then hired in the steel plant after that fight with the foreman at the bus depot. I understand exactly how you feel, Jasna. Suspicion isn’t in my nature at all, and I’m more than willing to meet with Titus and discuss everything openly.”

“What if I tell him to expect us at his room tomorrow night?” Jasna asked.

“I’d like nothing better,” Mirna told her. “During the past three years I had thought the good man had stayed away from our house because of his hostility toward us. Did he really think Yara and I were hostile toward him?”

“Mirna, you’re —” Jasna began.

“You’ll come for us tomorrow night?” Mirna asked, accompanying Jasna to the door.

As soon as Jasna was gone, I tried to complete the sentence she’d begun: “Mirna, you’re a hypocrite, a liar, a faker —”

“What nasty names to throw at your beloved,” she told me.

“My beloved! Yesterday you were ready to put me in your mother’s shed until I died!”

“Your pretty young wife was drunk yesterday — on wine, on Sabina in Sophia’s letter, on life, and today she can’t remember what happened yesterday,” Mirna told me with the same hypocritical sweetness. “She’s forgotten every single detail, doesn’t even know where she spent the night —”

“What about Titus?” I asked her. “You weren’t drunk the day before yesterday, when you blamed him for everything that’s happened to us for the past twenty years. Did you forget that too? You hadn’t drunk a drop of wine then. When did he become the good man who mistakenly imagined you and Yara had something against him?”

Mirna’s response to my anger was to put her arms around me and tell me, “If I ever lie to you, Yarostan, it’ll be for one reason only: because I love you.”

“That’s not fair, Mirna,” I protested. “I don’t understand what happened yesterday. I don’t understand your new attitude toward Jasna. You and Yara are up to something, and I’d like to know what it is.”

“You’ll know, Yarostan, soon enough.” The following evening, Jasna was already at our house when I returned from the carton plant. The three of us took a tram toward the bus depot where I once worked. Yara had turned down Jasna’s invitation.

Titus and I hadn’t seen each other since the days immediately after my release from prison. We pumped each other’s hands warmly. I congratulated him on his engagement and told him I was looking forward to the celebration.

Titus apologized to Mirna for the way he had behaved when she and Zdenek had surprised him before Mirna’s dance. “I was a little stunned when you told me Tobarkin was your father; I didn’t understand —”

“The misunderstanding was all my fault,” Mirna told him. “I didn’t know you and Zdenek had met before.” Then Mirna went on with an irony that neither Titus nor Jasna seemed to notice, “My isolation in the present historical moment gave me a desire to surround myself with all the people who had ever been close to me: my father, brother, husband, friend —”

“Jasna clarified the meaning of your invitation,” Titus told her. “I obviously understand the need for this type of regroupment of revolutionaries at a time of upheaval such as the present. But I didn’t feel my presence at the dance would be a fruitful form of intervention. Perhaps I was wrong. The task of revolutionaries is to generalize understanding of the historical goals of the working class struggle at all times and in all situations.”

“Especially during a period that seems to have so much in common with the excitement we lived through twelve years ago, at the time of the Magarna uprising,” Mirna said to him, intentionally winding him up.

“There are certainly similarities between the two periods,” Titus said excitedly. “The proletariat is once again regaining its own project, it is once again carrying its own historical task. The self-organization of the class, the exercise of power by the class as a whole, are once again on the agenda. Not since Magarna has it been so urgent for revolutionaries to rejoin the stream of history.”

“You’ve put my innermost thoughts into the most perfect words,” Mirna told him with a sarcasm I considered completely unprovoked, but which neither Jasna nor Titus noticed. “The proletariat is regaining its project and revolutionaries are rejoining the stream of history. What a perfect way to describe my hopes twelve years ago and my activity today. You say it with such conviction that you boost my confidence. Only a few days ago Yarostan and I asked Jasna if you had also been infected by the activity unfolding around us, and I can see that you have. Your desire to rejoin the stream of history must be as intense as it was at the time of the Magarna rising.”

Jasna interceded, “Titus told me it wasn’t only the social situations that were similar, but also his personal relationship to them. During the years before the Magarna rising Titus had become a functionary in the trade union apparatus, a simple cog. The work was repetitious and bureaucratic; there seemed to be no point to it other than to reproduce the bureaucratic apparatus.”

“For me the autonomy of the class has always constituted the indispensable condition for its revolutionary activity,” Titus added. “The trade union council was not an instrument of that autonomy. The work wasn’t only repetitious; it had no historical significance; that apparatus did not carry any part of the proletarian project. Instead of being an instrument of class action, the apparatus had substituted itself for the class and tried to move history by itself and in the face of the proletariat’s opposition. But revolution cannot be made against the masses. The Magarna rising was a fresh wind —”

“Was it the proletarian project the Magarna workers were carrying?” Mirna asked, pretending naivete about Titus’ meaning. “The authorities accused them all of being agents of foreign reactionary circles —”

“I remain convinced the strikes and the councils were genuine attempts of the proletariat to regain its project,” Titus told Mirna. “Workers conscious of their own historical mission are immune to such influences.”

“What about Yarostan and Jan?” Mirna asked. “Were they arrested for carrying the proletarian project, for rejoining the stream of history? Why were they arrested before other workers who had engaged in class activity? Why were they arrested a year before you were?”

“They weren’t arrested because of the political activities in which they were engaged,” Titus told her, “but because of a police bungle with a letter that supposedly came from a foreign spy ring.”

“Oh yes, that letter; I had forgotten about it. Was that really the reason Yarostan and Jan were arrested?” Mirna asked. Her shameless lie — she’s thought about that letter every day for the past twelve years — made me jittery, and I forgot to ask Titus the question you had asked in your postscript, namely why he hadn’t told me about that letter when he’d visited me in prison.

Jasna responded to Mirna’s hypocritical question. “I’ve asked Titus all about that letter, Mirna. The first time he ever heard of anyone being arrested because of it was when he visited you after you left a message for him at his office. He immediately went to the police to try to see if Yarostan and Jan could be released, since he was convinced they had been arrested by mistake, but he got no further than to provoke them to arrest him.”

“I spent hours arguing with the police right after you told me about the arrests,” Titus told Mirna, “but to no avail. They tried to deal with questions of consciousness by means of arrest and imprisonment. They completely failed to understand that the consciousness of a minority, no matter how clear, is not sufficient for the realization of the proletariat’s historical task, which requires the constant participation and creative activity of all members, of the class as a whole. Generalized consciousness is the sole guarantee of the victory of the workers’ councils. It’s obvious that the class must use violence to reach its goal, but violence by a minority separate from the general movement is absolutely foreign to the methods of the class and constitutes a manifestation of petty-bourgeois despair; this diminishes the confidence of the class in itself and impedes the road to its self-emancipation. Those arrests were a mistake, a major bungle.”

“Isn’t it amazing,” Mirna asked with mock astonishment, “that the bungling of the police had similar consequences for Jan as the bungling of the doctors had for Vesna?”

Jasna and I were startled, and we both looked at Mirna suspiciously.

But Mirna went on, “Of course your intentions were pure both times. You tried to do what was best for Vesna, and for Jan, and for the proletariat. You’re really a very generous person. Yarostan told me that once, long ago, all your comrades were arrested and charged with having connections with a notorious spy, and that apparently your arguments convinced the police to release the spy himself. Were the police more receptive to your arguments at that time than they were at the time of the Magarna rising?”

“What are you driving at?” Jasna asked Mirna with undisguised hostility.

But Titus turned to Mirna calmly and told her, “Oh yes, you’re referring to George Alberts’ release. Jasna has given me a summary of Yarostan’s correspondence with Alberts’ stepdaughter. The fact is that those arrests were motivated by the same erroneous conception. Of course I urged them to release Alberts; we had been comrades several years earlier. Alberts had become a reactionary, but he was not a spy. The point was to isolate his position, not to arrest him.”

What was it about his position that had to be isolated?” Mirna asked.

“Jasna hasn’t told me exactly what Sophia has written you,” Titus said. “Alberts was a revolutionary when I first met him; he was completely committed to the proletarian project. But certain influences made him turn against the organization necessary for the realization of the project, and by turning against the organization he turned against the project itself. This happened during the war, and especially after the war. He failed to see that there were only two alternatives: the naked rule of capital, or the victory of an organizational form that, no matter how deformed, still carried the kernel of the proletarian project. I tried to help Alberts understand that the point was not to side with capital, but to give reality to the organizational form, to infuse it with spontaneity, to help create the autonomous movement which was capable of realizing the historical task of the proletariat. But the police obviously made no effort to help anyone understand anything. He was treated with unbelievable cynicism and brutality. During the war the resistance organization recruited him to do certain scientific work abroad. After the war the same organization attacked him for having done this work abroad; they labelled him a spy and even accused his so-called family of being his collaborators. This was highly incorrect, but it wasn’t the incorrectness or the hypocrisy that convinced the police to release him. Retaining him in prison would have created an international incident.”

“But why did they arrest the rest of us?” I asked. “We didn’t have anything to do with Alberts.”

“Because the police substituted itself for the class,” he told me emphatically; “because a minority gained precedence over the class as a whole, that’s why. As I said, the point was to isolate a position, not to arrest a section of the working class! The working class is a historical class and cannot be replaced. The organization of a part of the class is insufficient. Only the entire proletariat can undertake the revolutionary transformation of society. The police is not the agent of the historical project of the proletariat. We have to absorb that lesson. Our task as revolutionaries is to help the class understand its own interests, to help it carry its own project with its own energy, to raise ourselves to a clear understanding of the line of march, the conditions and the ultimate results of the proletarian movement. The point is not to incapacitate the class by jailing its most combative elements, as was done when the entire production group of the carton plant was arrested. It is the class in and of itself that is revolutionary; without it there’s no revolution. What makes this class revolutionary is its position at the heart of the production process; only this position makes the class capable of resolving the contradictions of capitalism.”

I was surprised by the way he ended that statement, although I don’t think I would have noticed this earlier. “You say the task of the proletariat is to resolve the contradictions of capitalism?”

“Precisely, and this is what you and Jan Sedlak never understood,” he said excitedly. “Capitalist social relations become a fetter to the further development of the productive forces capitalism itself created. Those relations become an obstacle to the further development of social capital. This is what makes proletarian revolution inevitable. The historical task of the proletariat is to remove those fetters and to make possible the further development of the productive forces. This is the general interest as well as the final goal of the movement.”

My head started swimming. I remembered Sabina’s comments about the contradiction between my friendship with Jan and my admiration for Titus. “And is this what you’ve devoted your life to?” I asked him. “To remove the obstacles to the development of objects? What do those objects have to do with your own life?”

“That’s a funny way to put it,” Jasna said with some annoyance. “If Titus devoted his life to the development of objects, he certainly doesn’t have much to show for it. Ever since I’ve known him he’s wanted no personal power, no wealth, no high posts in the government. He always considered himself as nothing more than a humble servant of history, he’s always been single-mindedly devoted to the working class — to you, Jan, Luisa. His pay has never been larger than that of any factory worker; he’s a lowly functionary, a cog in an enormous apparatus; he files repetitious, bureaucratic reports day ill and day out —”

“I didn’t mean to accuse Titus of seeking personal gain,” I told her with embarrassment.

Titus himself added, “Neither personal gain nor historical significance. Only the class can remove those fetters, Yarostan. I’ve devoted my life, not to removing the fetters, but to a much more modest work of theoretical reflection and elaboration, a work which permits the proletariat’s activity to be based on an understanding of its past experience and future course. But it is only the class itself that undertakes the historical task. Without the activity of the class, my own activity amounts to nothing more than the reproduction of an empty shell, an apparatus that only stands in the way of the proletariat’s task.”

I agreed with Jasna’s description of the modesty of Titus’ own engagement, and I hesitated before asking him, “Why did you and George Alberts enlist in the so-called popular army during that uprising Luisa romanticized for all of us?”

“I know exactly what you’re driving at, and it’s an experience I don’t like to remember,” he told me. “At the time of that uprising I was a second-year university student. I was already committed to the task of contributing to the generalization of understanding of the goals of the working class struggle, to making the proletariat’s historical lessons explicit. Those workers seemed to be attacking the entire established order, not merely locally but on a world scale. The fascists received international support, and it was urgent for the workers to receive it in far greater measure, since the proletariat is an international class; its struggle can ultimately be victorious only on an international level. Out of the chaos of political groupings reflecting the isolation and the divisions of the petty bourgeoisie, I finally found revolutionaries who understood the fundamental aspects of the struggle of the proletariat: the importance of political priorities, the importance of organization, as well as the unitary character of the revolutionary struggle of the class.”

“Was George Alberts one of those revolutionaries?” I asked him. “Was the popular army the organization you found?”

“Only in appearance,” he said, “but appearances are often misleading, and practice is the only test of the truth of appearances. I believed that the self-organization of the class struggle and the exercise of power by the class as a whole was the only historical road of the proletarian struggle. But I also believed that denying the need for organization and intervention by revolutionaries condemned one to non-existence, turned one into an agent of a withering of class consciousness. In other words, I saw the need for clear programmatic intervention in the proletarian struggle. In appearance the popular army seemed to be an organization which put forward the general interests of the class and the final goals of the movement, and to be an integral part of that struggle. I thought I was among revolutionaries who had not only raised themselves to a clear understanding of the line of march, the conditions and the ultimate general results of the proletarian movement, but who also participated in the struggle of the class and distinguished themselves by being the most determined and combative elements in those struggles.”

“But that military machine was obviously —” I started.

“It was not a revolutionary organization,” he said abruptly.

“When did you figure that out?” I asked him.

“I was as aware then as I am now that the historical task of the proletariat cannot be carried out by a conscious minority,” he told me. “Generalized consciousness is the sole guarantee of the victory of the revolution. The activity of the class cannot be replaced by an apparatus. I’ve never identified the dictatorship of the proletariat with the dictatorship of an army, a party or a union. As a part of the class, revolutionaries can at no time substitute themselves for the class, neither in its struggles within capitalism nor in the exercise of power.”

“If that was what you thought, then your activity in that military apparatus becomes even more incomprehensible to me,” I said.

“I told you I had to learn the truth from practice. I saw that the popular army had a substitutionist character as soon as we reached the front. The revolutionary minority was given precedence over the class as a whole. This tended to diminish the confidence of the class in itself and as a result impeded the road to its self-emancipation.”

“Couldn’t you see right at the start that such an organization would inevitably ‘take precedence over the class as a whole’?” I asked him.

“No, Yarostan, I couldn’t see that, and I still can’t,” he told me. “That’s something Luisa learned from her first husband, and she communicated it to you and to Jan Sedlak even though she herself never believed it. You’ve never understood that unlike other classes, the proletariat has no basis of power in capitalist society; its only material strength is its organization; the organization is the decisive and fundamental condition for the proletariat’s very existence.”

“I had thought the point of the struggle wasn’t the proletariat’s existence but its disappearance, its replacement by a human community,” I objected.

“The class struggle for the emancipation of the proletariat will mean the emancipation of all humanity only when the organization of the proletariat is adequate to that task, and this requires an organization which is politically coherent, which has a clear orientation; this requires a proletarian consciousness which grasps reality without distortions. Only such consciousness enables the proletariat to liberate all of society from exploitation. The popular army was a mistake, Yarostan, but not in and of itself, not as an organization, but because of the social and political situation in which it arose. The emerging movement in which it arose was characterized by immaturity of consciousness and insufficient understanding of the needs of the class struggle.”

“Yet it was that movement, it was those workers who built the barricades, fought in the streets, and defeated the fascist army in a single day,” I reminded him.

“I don’t deny that,” he insisted. “Those workers were people like you and Jan; they were workers whose actions reflected the class’s implaccable hatred of capital, its will to struggle against the entire bourgeois order, its repudiation of class collaboration. What I’m saying is that what guided those workers was class instinct and not proletarian theory. And instinct is not enough for the proletariat. In order to liberate itself and to emancipate humanity, the proletariat requires organization and consciousness. The popular army did not fill that need. The organization of the proletariat has to be a secretion of the class itself; it cannot be imported from outside as the popular army was. That’s why those workers and their organization remained separate; that’s why the organization substituted itself for the class, that’s why the organization ultimately opposed itself to the class and destroyed its most profound, most combative elements.”

At this point Mirna reentered the conversation. “I think I caught the drift of what you’ve been saying, Titus, although I didn’t understand all the intricacies. Do you think the same thing is happening today? Are the most combative workers being guided by instinct instead of being guided by proletarian theory?”

“I certainly do,” he told her. “If that weren’t the case, there wouldn’t be such a drastic separation between the combative sectors and the conscious elements of the proletariat; revolutionaries would not be so cut off from the class, so isolated.”

Mirna simulated great interest in what Titus was saying. “That sounds extremely important to me, Titus. I have several friends who I’m sure would want to learn about that separation, especially if you have suggestions about how it can be overcome. Do you suppose you might find the time to meet with them?”

Jasna carelessly suggested, “Why don’t you bring those friends to my house? We could combine it with a meal; I could easily entertain ten or twelve people.”

Even Titus was interested. “How about combining it with the celebration we’re going to hold two weeks from now? We could transform a trivial event into a fruitful political meeting.”

“Wonderful!” Mirna exclaimed. “I’ll invite several people who are at least as eager as you and I to rejoin the stream of history. They’ll all want to share your profound political insights.”

At this point Jasna heard the sarcasm in Mirna’s tone, but Mirna got up to leave, and Titus shook her hand very cordially; it was obvious he hadn’t heard the sarcasm.

Jasna left with us. On the tram she asked Mirna, “What are you up to? Another prank? Why did you tell that lie about having forgotten the letter Sophia sent us at the time of the Magarna rising?”

“Did I lie?” Mirna asked. “I must have gotten confused. When I had first told Titus about those arrests twelve years ago, he had assured me that neither Jan nor Yarostan could have been arrested because of a letter they didn’t receive. So when he said they were only arrested because of that letter, I got confused —”

“I thought he explained those arrests very clearly!” Jasna said definitively.

I agreed with Jasna. I told Mirna, “I don’t agree with him. Or I should say, I no longer agree with most of what he has to say. But I certainly don’t find him suspicious in any way.”

Mirna didn’t respond, and we rode the rest of the trip in silence. I could tell that Jasna was suspicious of Mirna. afraid of her next prank.

At home I asked Mirna what she had in mind with the so-called interested friends she intended to invite to Jasna’s and Titus’ celebration.

Instead of answering, she asked me, “Did you see the expression in his eyes whenever he spoke of history and the proletarian project?”

I repeated my question angrily, “What pranks do you have in mind, Mirna?”

“Didn’t you recognize that expression?” she asked me. “It’s the same expression that covered my mother’s face whenever she spoke of her Lord! And the tone with which he described workers guided by instinct! She spoke the same way about people possessed by the devil!”

“Mirna, what are your intentions? If you’re planning to destroy Jasna’s and Titus’ happiness because of the superficial similarities you think you see —”

“Remember when Jan and Sabina asked you to make love to the Queen of the Peasants?” she asked.

“I don’t see what connection —”

“Remember the revolution Jan expected to result from your lovemaking? Morality, the family, the peasant village were all going to disintegrate, the revolution was going to begin.”

“So that’s what you have in mind!” I exclaimed. “Something similar to what you and Yara did to me in your clearing! Mirna, If you do anything like that to —”

“Similar, Yarostan, but not the same,” she told me; “and I’m not going to do anything at all. I’m only going to bring a few Mends, very old friends, to the celebration — not my friends but yours and Jasna’s and Titus’. If any games or pranks result, it won’t be because of me. Titus and his own Mends will make them happen. If Yara and I are right about Titus, then morality, history and the proletarian project are going to disintegrate all by themselves, and you’ll see what a revolution you might have made if you’d gone through with Jan’s and Sabina’s prank and made love to the Queen.”

“Whom do you intend to Invite?” I asked her.

“His whole train, Yarostan: the passengers, the ticket-takers as well as the engineers.”

Maybe I should have waited two weeks before writing you.

Yarostan.