The Night of Wenceslas (8 page)

There had been more tea in the glass showrooms, and an enormous meal with several toasts to trade and peace, and by mid-afternoon I was comatose, my face stiff with intelligence and my hand cramped from writing in a notebook. This book was now half full with largely indecipherable nonsense about delivery dates and output over which I had nodded so vigorously that as I finally emerged into the sunlight I had a splitting headache.

I seemed to have collected a genie, a strapping young woman who had been driving me about all day, and as I came out on the pavement, I saw with some nervousness that she was waiting for me. She was, no doubt about it, a hand and brain. She was massive and tanned. She wore a white shirt and swept-back hair. She had a splendid bust and sturdy, though shapely, legs. She was studying English and had practised on me conscientiously.

She hopped out of the car when she saw me.

‘You will want the automobile again today?’

‘No, thanks. I’m only going back to the hotel.’

‘Ah, I have wait for you.’

‘I’m very sorry. I didn’t know.’

‘It is no trouble. You will require the automobile tomorrow?’

‘I’m going to Kralovsk. Will you be driving me?’

‘No. For longer distances is another service.’

‘Right. Well,’ I said, teetering in the hot, vigorous street. ‘Like a drink?’ This seemed only right after the immense creature had sweltered all afternoon in the car, but I made the offer diffidently and without enthusiasm.

‘Oh, thank you.’ Her teeth glinted. ‘I would like it.’

‘Fine. Let’s go to the hotel.’

She did not speak on the way, walking massive and solemn beside me. My head thumped abominably.

We found a place in the open-necked throng and she sat down, gazing about her with interest. ‘I do not come here often for myself,’ she said. ‘Here is very expensive.’

‘Yes, well. On business one travels on expenses.’

‘Ah, so. You travel to many places?’

‘Around and about.’

‘The work of a merchant must be very interesting.’

‘Very. What will you have?’

‘Tea, please. I should like to do such work myself.’

‘Ah.’ Her bust seemed to be on a level with my eyes. I removed my gaze and said in some desperation, ‘You’ve got a very nice tan. Been on your holidays?’

‘Yes. I have worked on a farm.’

‘Was it nice?’

‘It was very interesting. It must be interesting to see many different places.’

‘Ah, well, Prague is very interesting.’

‘You like Prague?’

‘It’s very pleasant.’

‘I hate it.’

I had been urging her mentally to stow it, to lap up her tea and leave the merchants in peace. But at this curious statement I stared at her with interest. She had high cheekbones, long grey eyes, a straight nose, no lipstick. Her shirt was clinging to her and her magnificent breasts stood out like bombs. It suddenly occurred to me that she could not be very much more than twenty.

I said, ‘What don’t you like about Prague?’

‘Oh, it is so dull here. The people are dull. It is very boring.’

‘Where would you sooner be?’

‘Anywhere. London, Paris, New York. Vienna even,’ she said glumly. ‘In Vienna also is the rock and roll.’

This statement from such an unlikely source struck me as so
grotesque that my eyes swivelled. ‘Are you keen on rock and roll?’

‘Not just the rock and roll. Everything.’

She had dropped her voice and was beginning to look about her in some embarrassment. My headache lifted quite suddenly. I wondered if I dare take this giant girl out. I said faintly, ‘Would you like to have dinner with me?’

‘Oh, that would be nice.’ Her teeth glinted again. ‘I would like it. Thank you.’

‘About seven-thirty, here?’

‘Ah, tonight is not possible. I go to evening classes for the English studies. Tomorrow I could come.’

‘All right.’

‘And it would be better if we did not meet here again. Somewhere else, perhaps.’

‘You say where.’

‘You know the Slavia kavarna? It is on the corner of the Narodni Trida, by the river.’

‘Slavia kavarna, seven-thirty tomorrow. Right. Well,’ I said. ‘You know my name. What’s yours?’

‘Vlasta. Vlasta Simenova,’ she said and stood up to go. I watched her leave with a somewhat mixed and fearful anticipation. She was certainly a lot of girl.

On the way up in the lift I suddenly remembered what else was going to happen tomorrow and my stomach turned over in a single paralysing movement. I had forgotten about that. I went in the room and tossed the Norstrund on the desk and flaked out on the chaise longue.

I had put off thinking seriously about this since my arrival, but now gave myself over to it in a daydream of much detailed terror. This was no time to be thinking of taking big girls out. I wondered if, by tomorrow evening, I would be free to take myself out. I thought of all the terrifying slip-ups that could occur.

Presently I dozed off into a confused and nightmarish dream and awoke to find the room in darkness. I thought someone
was there, and lay in panic for a minute, listening. But it was only the outer window rattling. It was raining outside. I got up and switched on the light and looked at my watch. It was a quarter to ten. There was a sour taste in my mouth.

I had a shower and went down for my dinner, but when it came I couldn’t eat it, and went back to my room again, sick with foreboding. I slept badly.

The foreboding was still there next morning. I ate no breakfast but drank two cups of coffee and had smoked three cigarettes by the time the car turned into the gates of the Zapotocky glassworks.

Vlcek, a small vulpine character with receding hair and a mania for statistics, accompanied me, pouring into my ear for the entire fifteen kilometres a ceaseless stream of data. He was still at it when we got out of the car.

Of course, ‘he said, as we entered the office block,’ I have given you the merest outline. Pan Galushka, the director will tell us much more. Pan Galushka is a brilliant man. He is the architect of the plan for our industry. He is not, perhaps,’ he said, and smiled uncertainly, ‘the easiest man to get on with.’

I stared at him uneasily.

Pan Galushka awaited us in his office, and the moment we entered I thought I should be sick on the spot The desk upon which I was discreetly to forget the Norstrund was one of the largest I had ever seen. It was also, except for an ashtray and a diary, totally bare.

Galushka walked over from his desk, hand outstretched. He was a spare man with small uneven eyes and a rather odd twisted smile. He said, ‘
Dobry den
, Pan Whistler.’

I shook hands numbly.

‘Pan Whistler has asked especially from England to see the Zapotocky works,’ Vlcek said in a rather ingratiating way. ‘I have explained a little of what you are doing, but naturally not in detail.’

Galushka had still retained my hand and was looking at me rather carefully. He suddenly revealed a line of uneven and discoloured teeth. ‘We are complimented,’ he said. ‘They still remember our lines in England, then, Pan Whistler?’

‘Very well,’ I said. I licked my lips. ‘They were very popular.’

He let go my hand. ‘I am glad to hear it. Sit down, sit down, Vlcek. Pan Whistler, a chair for you.’

There was a certain amount of kefuffle here while we were seated and while Galushka handed round cigarettes, and in the course of it, without any plan or intention to do so, I simply placed the Norstrund on the desk. I looked at it with cold fright.

‘Well,’ Galushka said, ‘I think I can assure you – Pan Vlcek will correct me if I do not speak the truth – the glass we turn out is as good as it ever was.’

‘It is so,’ said Vlcek, speaking to me behind his hand and clowning gruesomely. ‘But we will not give them swollen heads. Now we have to see,’ he said, smiling at Galushka, ‘if they can fulfil the plan for the year.’

‘Is our increase not enough for you in Prague?’

‘It is useful for a start,’ said Vlcek, winking at me and screwing his cigarette into a holder. ‘An increase of two hundred and thirty per cent in four years is certainly a useful start.’

This hearty joshing about percentages and output had gone on yesterday and seemed to be the form for commencing Discussions. Vlcek, however, appeared to be working overtime to show that it was all in fun. Galushka sat relaxed, smiling with his uneven eyes and his curious mouth. He wore a lightweight grey summer suit, sandals, and a dark blue celanese shirt, buttoned but tieless. This seemed to be the form for bosses; Svoboda, too, had worn sandals and a tieless shirt – although, it had seemed to me, somewhat apologetically. The acolytes were more formally attired.

Galushka was looking me over carefully. He said, ‘At any rate, you will find no change from the old Pavelka ware, except for the better. I sometimes have to remind myself that it’s not called that now. I worked in this factory for many years with
the old Pavelka, you know. I doubt if he would recognize the place now. We have grown. Of course it could have happened in his time if he had put the interests of the industry first.’

‘He was a good employer, quite a progressive manufacturer according to his lights,’ Vlcek said, screwing his cigarette in some embarrassment and glancing at me.

‘A paternalist,’ said Galushka.

The conversation seemed to be taking a decidedly odd turn, and I sat frightened out of my life. I had no wish to discuss Pavelka. It was as much as I could do to keep my eyes away from the Norstrund. I had a sudden horrible suspicion that Galushka knew all about it, and was playing with me.

He was still smiling, however, as he said slowly, ‘I only raise the point to bring to your attention, Pan Whistler, that to make Pavelka ware one does not need a Pavelka. Many of the men who made it are still making it – a great deal more of it and the quality has not suffered. It is important to realize this and for us to understand each other in a friendly way.’

His eyes had been wandering over the Norstrund, but as he said the last words he looked up at me. There was nothing particularly friendly about his smile.

The Discussions then formally began. Cunliffe had supplied me with a list of questions and I asked them, shoving in a supplementary from time to time on information gleaned from yesterday’s Discussions. Galushka, fortunately, was a man obsessed with his subject, and the moment he began to talk about glass in its technical aspects appeared to undergo a personality change distinctly for the better.

He seemed to have some minor bee in his bonnet on the subject of plate glass – not included in my queries – and made frequent and fairly flattering references to a British factory which specialized in it, apparently at St Helens, Lanes. This seemed to please little Vlcek, who nodded encouragingly.

For myself I was obsessed only with the Norstrund lying screaming on the desk, and with Galushka’s roving eye. When once, to illustrate some obscure point of pliability, he picked the book up with both hands and began vigorously to bend it this
way and that, I thought my heart had stopped. But he threw the book casually down on the desk again.

After what seemed several hours, Vlcek became mildly restive, and Galushka, looking at his watch, apologized. ‘Pan Whistler asks questions, I must answer. But we’ve almost missed our lunch, my friends. Come, we can continue at table. I hope, at least, Pan Whistler, that you begin to have an idea now of how we work here.’

I said I had.

He stood up. We all stood up. The Norstrund remained screaming on the desk. We left the room. I thought,
Now go to
it, whoever you are. Go to it as quick as you like
.

We ate with three of the departmental managers who had been waiting for us at a round table in a secluded corner of the canteen. There were small crossed flags, British and Czech, as a decoration in the middle of the table. I found myself drinking even more than the previous day. It did nothing for my nerves but seemed, at least, to assist the food down my throat. I felt sick and light-headed. My legs were trembling under the table. Galushka dominated the conversation, returning again and again to his preoccupation with plate glass, no doubt as some obscure compliment to me.

It emerged that the firm in St Helens had recently installed new continuous rolling machinery which had excited lively admiration in the glass world. One of the departmental managers wanted to know if I had yet had the opportunity to inspect it.

I said, wistfully, that I hadn’t.

Galushka laid his hand jovially on my shoulder. ‘My friend,’ he said, ‘you should come and work with us. Here few things are secret. Here an aspirant can see and learn any process he wishes to master. I think,’ he said, looking joshingly at me, ‘you are not yourself interested so much in hollow ware. I could tell it as we talked. I’m right?’

I didn’t know how to answer this. Vlcek, who had been drinking cautiously, came to my assistance. ‘We are embarrassing Pan
Whistler. Hollow ware, after all, is his subject Can a man claim he isn’t interested in his own subject?’

Galushka nodded round the table. ‘Isn’t it a criticism of a form of society that a man is forced to specialize in a subject that doesn’t interest him? I think, Pan Whistler,’ he said to me shrewdly, ‘that if you worked here with us in Kralovsk, even though you are a specialist in hollow ware, you would not miss an opportunity to inspect the continuous rolling process with plate glass. Ah!’ he said, as I broke obediently into a sheepish smile and his delighted managers chortled round the table. ‘Ah! We’ll say no more about it. We won’t talk any more of plate glass, comrades. It’s a forbidden subject.’

I was very glad to hear it. It seemed to have put the company into the best of humours, however. When, later, the party broke up, there were hearty handshakes all round. The managers returned to their life’s work. Vlcek, Galushka, and I went round the factory.

Of this tour round Mr Pavelka’s old works very little remains in the mind. Glass-making is a noisy business. A great deal of the finished product manages to get itself broken. It is also conducted in enormous sheds, very hard on the feet, and in a variety of temperatures ranging from the merely tropical to the oven-like. It is enough to say that by half past four we had finished.