Stefan Heym Read online

  This edition is published by Muriwai Books – www.pp-publishing.com

  To join our mailing list for new titles or for issues with our books – [email protected]

  Or on Facebook

  Text originally published in 1951 under the same title.

  © Muriwai Books 2017, all rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted by any means, electrical, mechanical or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

  Publisher’s Note

  Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

  We have also made every effort to include all maps and illustrations of the original edition the limitations of formatting do not allow of including larger maps, we will upload as many of these maps as possible.

  THE EYES OF REASON

  A NOVEL

  BY

  STEFAN HEYM

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Contents

  TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

  DEDICATION 4

  First Book—GLASS 5

  CHAPTER ONE 5

  CHAPTER TWO 15

  CHAPTER THREE 29

  CHAPTER FOUR 45

  CHAPTER FIVE 62

  CHAPTER SIX 78

  CHAPTER SEVEN 91

  CHAPTER EIGHT 109

  CHAPTER NINE 121

  CHAPTER TEN 135

  CHAPTER ELEVEN 146

  CHAPTER TWELVE 161

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN 169

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN 181

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN 193

  Second Book—FREEDOM 202

  CHAPTER ONE 202

  CHAPTER TWO 216

  CHAPTER THREE 231

  CHAPTER FOUR 239

  CHAPTER FIVE 245

  CHAPTER SIX 253

  CHAPTER SEVEN 266

  CHAPTER EIGHT 276

  CHAPTER NINE 289

  CHAPTER TEN 299

  CHAPTER ELEVEN 312

  CHAPTER TWELVE 327

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN 346

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN 358

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN 375

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN 387

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN 402

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN 410

  REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 425

  DEDICATION

  To Valerie Stone

  for her selfless help, and

  criticism, and encouragement

  with thanks and love

  Man’s free will differs from every other force in that man is directly conscious of it, but in the eyes of reason it in no way differs from any other force. The forces of gravitation, electricity, or chemical affinity are only distinguished from one another in that they are differently defined by reason. Just so, the force of man’s free will is distinguished by reason from the other forces of nature only by the definition reason gives it. Freedom, apart from necessity, that is, apart from the laws of reason that define it, differs in no way from gravitation, or heat, or the force that makes things grow; for reason, it is only a momentary undefinable sensation of life.

  Leo Tolstoy: Second Epilogue to War and Peace

  First Book—GLASS

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE FAMILY would be together again.

  Everything had gone to pieces in the war—business, country, society, government. But as long as the family was intact, a foundation was left on which to build.

  It was a solid and happy thought. It was awesome, too—there was hardly a family in the whole of Czechoslovakia which had not lost someone in the camps or prisons, at Dunkirk or at Dukla Pass, or on the barricades of Prague. Joseph Benda knew: He was one of the five hundred men who had formed the Czech contingent of the Royal Air Force; he was one of the eighty-odd who had survived. Lower the flags, muffle the drums, silence!

  The dead had no business intruding today. Karel was alive, was coming home—the brother given up for lost, dead, buried in some mass grave. Yet, here was the family standing almost like mourners—Lida, her face set stiffly against her fatigue; his brother Thomas worn and peaked; Kitty forcing herself to remain composed. Petra was the only one with any buoyancy left. She was full of movement, and even at the moments when she stayed in one place, her body teetered on her thin legs.

  It was the heat, thought Joseph, three hours of it. The August sun became thick and sticky and rancid inside the hall of the station. People pushed and jostled each other into the dust patterns of the yellow, diagonal rays that fell through the large, dirty windows. People pushed and jostled him and his family.

  Perhaps Lida was right; they should have sat down in the waiting room restaurant. But coffee could not be had, nor beer; only lukewarm mineral water, opaque, and with a sickening sulphur smell. And they might miss the call announcing the arrival of the special train.

  He would have to do something about it. His wife and his child and his brother and his brother’s wife expected him to do something; he was the head of the family, and his uniform singled him out for authority.

  Joseph straightened and felt the immediate discomfort of his blouse. It was getting tight around the armpits. He wished he had bought a new one, back in England; but the war had been coming to an end and he hadn’t wanted to spend the money. He should have worn a business suit.

  He let his shoulders slump again and said, “Just think of it! All of us together again—after all this time!”

  “Do you believe that train will ever get here?” asked Lida. “Couldn’t someone go somewhere and find out?

  Joseph, his cheery remark having fizzled, sighed in annoyance. Lida made a move as if to go herself, but he held her back. “I’ve been to the stationmaster’s—twice; nobody there knows a thing.”

  “I don’t understand it!” Lida dabbed at her high, sweated forehead. “His wire said eight in the morning.”

  Joseph was examining his wife. He experienced one of those attacks of lucidity frequent with him since his return from the war three months ago. In England, he had not remembered her mouth as so small and thin-lipped, her smile as so dour, her eyes as so wary. I don’t know her at all, he thought in sudden despondency; maybe I never knew her.

  “Anyhow, it was nice of him to add Love,” said Lida.

  Joseph said, “Thomas and I have waited more than six years to see Karel again. We can wait a few more minutes,” and was sorry immediately. He disliked being unkind, especially to his wife, especially today.

  Thomas stepped into the argument. “It’s not a scheduled train, Lida! And you know what the war did to the railroads here....”

  “Yes,” Lida said pointedly. “I was here and saw it.”

  Thomas’s mouth, full and sensuous over his rather small but finely shaped chin, closed sharply. Kitty knew this expression. She touched his sleeve and her hand spread reassuringly on his arm. “We didn’t like leaving the country!” she said.

  “But you went!” Lida observed.

  Thomas burst out, “It wasn’t exactly a pleasure trip! What would you have wanted me to do?”

  “Karel stayed,” said Lida.

  “Karel was not a public figure!” Joseph saw people turn and look at him and his family. He lowered his voice. “I don’t want these squabbles! Not today! And not at Wilson Station!”

  “You might have added: And not in front of my child,” Lida offered dryly.

  Joseph looked quickly at Petra. She was listening wide-eyed. He floundered for something harmless and kind to say to her.

  “What does he look like?” asked Petra.

  “Who?”

  “Uncle Karel. What does he look like?”

&n
bsp; Joseph relaxed. The implications of the unpleasantness apparently had passed the child by. “Your uncle Karel—well, you see....” He was stuck. Thomas should be able to describe Karel. Thomas could write up a man so that he almost reached out to you from the pages. But Thomas stood pinched-faced, his lips still moving in defense against Lida.

  Kitty had slipped her arm through his and was holding her pocketbook in front of the two of them like a shield. “You can’t use Karel as an exhibit against Thomas!” she challenged Lida.

  “Karel was an idealist,” Lida answered. Her smile flashed the silver tooth in her mouth. Bad dentistry, war dentistry. She had wanted to get away from Rodnik weeks ago and come to Prague to have a porcelain cap put on, but there was never any time. She noticed Kitty’s eyes fixed on that tooth; it infuriated her. “Very much of an idealist, I should say!”

  For an instant, Kitty was bewildered by Lida’s new role as the champion of Karel’s idealism. Then she said, “He was irresponsible—he was radical—he mixed with the wrong people—he got himself arrested and lost you the Benda Works—isn’t that what you used to claim?”

  “I don’t remember anything of the sort,” said Lida. She stared at her sister-in-law—pretty Kitty, with the fat of America still on her cheeks, with her eyes untouched by what other people had had to live through, with her American stockings that brought out the shape of her legs, and with those lips made up like a whore’s. “But I do remember that he was an idealist!” she said; then, without apparent relevancy, “He was the only Benda who stayed in the country!”

  “I want to know what he’ll look like!” Petra was close to tears. “I haven’t seen him for so long. I’ve tried so hard to close my eyes and remember his face....”

  Lida turned to her child; her mouth grew soft. That questioning tone still cut into her. Sometimes she thought she preferred the brash aggressiveness Petra had developed. The child veered from one to the other; both were leftovers from the war, from the years when Petra had asked her for food that was not to be had, or had asked her for answers she couldn’t give because she, herself, was crazy with fear: the one police official bribed to protect them might be replaced or might grow impatient; they might be picked up like Karel and sent to Pankrac Prison or to Germany, to the camps.

  “But you have his picture, Petra....” she said.

  “I remember his hands.” Petra frowned and was suddenly quite still.

  Joseph felt curiously embarrassed. “Doctor’s hands,” he said.

  Lida prodded the child, “Then you remember his face, too.”

  “But I don’t,” Petra said, unhappily.

  Lida’s eye caught Joseph’s. “She had Karel’s picture with her, no matter where we had to live. I gave her one of you, too, but it got lost.”

  Joseph forced a smile. “Your uncle Karel was a very handsome man,” he said finally.

  Lida chimed in, “All the Bendas are good-looking men.” She touched the ribbons on Joseph’s chest. “You should be very proud of your father, Petra.”

  Joseph winced. But Lida went on, pointing out the ribbons, explaining the significance of each one. Petra listened politely. Joseph took off his cap and wiped the perspiration off the sweat band.

  Why did I wear the damned monkey suit? he thought. Must have been some kind of reflex action, like during the war. When the telegram came, last midnight, I just grabbed the uniform out of the closet. Quite natural.

  On the other hand, the telegram hadn’t been that much of a shock to him. Twice, there had been some sort of news—too hazy for real hope, too indirect for him to speak to Lida or Thomas about it. A worker had told of a man who had been in Buchenwald more than a year ago. That man was supposed to have known a Dr. Karel Benda from Rodnik who was doing menial work in the camp’s hospital. The story could not be traced. Then there was a letter from a business friend in Prague who had written that a friend of his had overheard an American officer speaking of the liberation of Buchenwald, of some prisoner doctors, of a Dr. Benda, if the business friend’s friend had heard right.

  It had been too vague. And now it was true. The war had ended; May, June, July had passed. Joseph squinted. Why had Karel failed to get in touch with him?

  He felt the pinch in his armpits. No, it hadn’t been reflex. He was dressed up and gaudy because the uniform made it possible for him to meet the brother whose features, he now realized, he could not recall, either.

  The rasping voice that came over the loud-speaker, announcing the departure and arrival of trains, cut through Thomas like a fingernail scratching a blackboard. A wave of garlic hit him, rising from an old porter who sat on a bag and alternately munched a piece of bread and gnawed at a chicken bone. Behind the old man, the age-spotted wall was splotched with large squares where the German markers had been painted out only a few months ago. Outside, the nerve-racking chatter of pneumatic drills was punctuated by the hammering of construction workers. They were clearing up the vicinity, the rubble from air and artillery bombardments and from the heavy fighting in the Prague streets, in May. The whistling of the engines, the clatter of cars being shunted on the tracks, the steady hum of people’s talk around him united in a discordant drone that battered at Thomas’s ears.

  If there had been silence, he knew he could not have stood it.

  He loved Karel, though he had not permitted himself to grieve when Karel’s death became a matter of acceptance. It was the first thing Joseph told him of on his return. “I only learned of it when I got back,” Joseph had said. Thomas felt that, in a way, he had lost Karel by going to America. Beyond that, he had not wanted to investigate his own feelings; he had kept away from Joseph, who gave himself to his mourning as intensively as he gave himself to any business he undertook. To Thomas, the shock had come last night when Joseph called up and said, “Get dressed, you and Kitty. We’re going to Prague to meet Karel. He’s alive! Yes, definitely! He’s coming home!”

  Kitty had had to knot his tie and to button the cuffs of his shirt. He had been unequal to anything. He had been incoherent, laughing and talking in short, incomplete, disconnected sentences. He had poured himself several drinks and was quite high when Joseph drove up and Kitty helped him into the car. He had slept fitfully most of the way from Rodnik to Prague, and now, over the din of the station, there was the persistent, cricket-like ring of his headache.

  Thomas tried to channel his thoughts back to Karel. He hoped that his brother’s homecoming would be happier than his own. Karel would probably manage all right.

  Better than himself. Better than Joseph. He saw how ill-at-ease Joseph was in his uniform. Why should Joseph feel ill-at-ease? Joseph had something to show for the years of war—ribbons, citations, a tangible share in victory and the liberation of the country. As for himself—despite all the official recognition given him on his return, despite all the fine words mouthed about the Great Writer, about the Spokesman of the Czech People, Thomas knew that he could throw on the scales only the torturous hours at his typewriter and the lectures held at ladies’ clubs in Omaha or Poughkeepsie. After he was through lecturing his heart out, the ladies would come up to his dais and shake his hand and say, “I enjoyed it so much, Mr. Benda!”

  Perhaps, one day, he could talk about that with Karel. He had tried, with Joseph; but Joseph had let him down, Joseph had conveniently forgotten his fine letters from England. How often Joseph had written him about their need for the pattern they had established for themselves before the war and their exile—the evenings spent in discussing the world and the country and its people, Descartes and Comenius and Thomas Masaryk, and the mystic tales which the lonely wood-charrers had invented in the recesses of the Krkonosh Mountains. Only now that he was back, these evenings had failed to materialize.

  He and Joseph were estranged. They had lived so long with an ocean between them. No, even the ocean could be bridged. Joseph was too busy rebuilding a business. He was making a religion of it, a crude and stupid religion. There would be a clash one of these days
.

  Thomas grew rigid. He felt Kitty’s concern for him, her nearness, the soft urging. He took in her body whose every curve he knew, on whose every hollow he had rested his head. Yes, if he could talk to her! She was willing to listen, always willing to listen and to help, so willing and so devoted that his skin itched at the thought of it. He knew what she would say and he knew the feel of her—her body always cool to the touch, quite deliciously cool and protecting and slightly aseptic and incapable of releasing him from his tensions.

  “Petra,” he said suddenly, “if you want to know what your Uncle Karel was like...His looks didn’t matter. But I’ll tell you what mattered: He was the only one of us who stood up to your grandfather Benda!”

  Joseph started to object, but Thomas, a fixed smile directed at Petra, continued imperviously, “Karel was not yet your age when he cut up your grandfather’s tail coat.”

  There was a glint in Petra’s eyes. “Why?”

  “Why?” said Thomas. “So your grandfather couldn’t go in style to a funeral—old Matjey’s funeral.”

  “There’s nothing so wonderful about cutting up a perfectly good suit!” said Lida. “I wish you wouldn’t tell the child—”

  “I’m not that much of a child!” said Petra. “Who was old Matjey?”

  “Oh, nobody!” Joseph said grudgingly. “A worker who died in the plant, in an accident. Karel was stubborn, all right, but what he did with the coat was just spite. I don’t want you ever to be spiteful, Petra!”

  “Why did he do it?” said Petra.

  Thomas took her hand. “I guess it was because he liked old Matjey. Karel was the type that picks up strays....”

  The family chewed on that one. Kitty broke the lull. “There are people lining up at that gate. Don’t you think we should see the stationmaster?”

  The line might have been waiting to make a suburban train. Nevertheless, both Joseph and Thomas, as if relieved, turned to go, then stopped.

  “Well, go ahead!” Lida supported Kitty. The men went obediently; Petra followed after them. Lida pulled out her compact and powdered her nose. “Have you reached the saturation point, too?” she said to her sister-in-law.