Notes From Underground (30 page)

That's what I would say now to Betka. And I would take her back to the day of our marriage, when two souls stood bare before each other, and the light of the world shone down on them from the place in which they could not believe.

Well, I already knew, before I visited Dr. Lopes in his office, that he was right to get rid of me. The only small qualification that I wanted to add was that he would have been even more right to get rid of himself. He received me with that remarkable American affableness, which can be turned on and off at will, and which is the lubricant of business. For the Americans have a way, which we central Europeans can never simulate, of respecting people as ends, so as to reduce them to means. The society that surrounds me, and of which I can never be a part, is built upon a single premise, which is that everything happens by agreement. And of course Dr. Lopes is a liberal, because only liberals can advance to the top of the academic pyramid in America. This does not mean that he subscribes to some
liberal philosophy. He subscribes to no philosophy at all. A great statue of Liberty stands above the open harbor of his mind, ushering every idea that might arrive into the riotous cavern of his body, where it disappears without trace. In all real conversation, it is Dr. Lopes's body that takes charge—a body that has floated of its own accord to the top, and which was now addressing me with smiles, handshakes, and polite, meaningless words, to tell me that it was time to move on, that with my talents and background I would be a credit to any department of Slavonic studies, but that, in the field of international relations, the witnesses to the end of communism are no longer needed.

As I left, he thrust a packet into my hand, telling me that Professor Palková had hoped to give it to me in person. I left with a curt bow and did not open the packet until I had boarded the Red Line to Friendship Heights. I like the Washington Metro. I like the smart female voice that tells you to step back, to allow customers to exit, and when boarding to move to the center of the car. I like the mixture of races, the faces with their iPods plugged to their ears, or locked to those new gadgets like mirrors, on which the tune of self can be constantly played with one finger. I like the fact that everyone seems to possess an unquestioned goal, and that no one sitting or standing in this thundering capsule could possibly imagine, in the person opposite, the secret life and the openness to love that I had imposed on my victims in those beautiful terrible days back home. I also like the fact that in so many places—Friendship Heights is one of them—the line runs deep underground, unlike the shallow metro of Prague, which mostly runs just beneath the life of the street as though to spy on it and collect its secrets.

But then, as I fumbled with the packet, I glanced up at the girl across from me, who lowered the book that she was reading and looked at me from still grey eyes. I tore away the cover addressed to Jan Reichl. Inside was another cover, which Betka had addressed in
Czech to “my mistake.” I stared at it for a while, before removing it. In my hands was the only surviving copy of
Rumors
by Soudruh AndroÅ¡. With the same feeling of necessity that had propelled us from the place of our marriage to our fate, my eyes were drawn to those all but invisible corrections, those little lines and marks that I had intended to guide the true, the future, publication, but which Betka had evidently failed to notice. The copy I held in my hand was the one that I had left on the bus at Divoká Šárka. Once before she had tried to give it back to me, and had I taken it, none of this story would have happened. I recalled her words as she had replaced the book in her bag. “There you are, back in my dream.” And now, over twenty years later, I understood what she meant.