Free The Drowning Of A Goldfish by Lidmila; Sováková Page B

“keep a wife.”
    Once married, a man can live his life without being considerate and playing tiring games. He can let himself go and still have his self-respect. Marriage is a blissful haven, sheltering him from the winds of revolt. He wants to finish his life in the fluffy slippers of conjugal devotion. This is why he married me. For this he “keeps” me.
    I have what I have always wanted. I can study. I have all day and all night. What more could I desire?
    With heavy feet and rubbery legs, I roam along the embankment of the Vltava. The swollen, yellow river throws up, in nervous belches, its squalid water.
    I hang on to the railing; craving its reassuring hardness. I try to breathe deeply to calm my heart, which beats its panic-stricken wings against my panting throat.
    In a couple of minutes, I must gather all my courage and strength to climb the staircase of Charles University and engage in a lost fight.
    I do not aim at victory.
    I strive to survive.
    The very moment I give up fighting, they will blot me out.
    A crowd has been waiting in the corridor for one, two, three hours. It is part of THEIR suppressive tactics to degrade human beings, to turn them into faceless crowds, forgotten in dark hallways.
    The tension mounts. It is dense, palpable; nerves on edge, I writhe in spasms of increasing dread.
    Faces soften, revealing their decaying carcasses. Gazing with a dirty eye, one spies upon the other.
    The pack, its muzzle to the ground, sniffs out the beaten ones; bristling its spine, it gets ready to attack.
    Squeezed into a dark corner, I can hardly breathe … Oh, to pass unnoticed, to edge my way into the crowd, to share its chances! To become a drop of water which disappears, when mingled with the muddy stream! My existence weighs on me.
    The door opens. A cracking, lifeless voice shakes me like a rag doll and drags me out of my hiding place.
    â€œComrade Velenská, enter! It is your turn.”
    The room is as bare as only a Protestant temple or communist sanctuary can be, where art, individualist venture, offends the indignant authorities by contravening the precepts of submission to their will.
    Every aesthetic need of the herd must be satisfied by the gigantic portrait of the supreme master, the infallible leader, Father Stalin. Every year he smiles more viciously at his loyal vassal Klement Gottwald, President of the Czechoslovakian Republic, who reveals his blessed submission in a correspondingly modest dimension.
    The more humble the vassal, the more radiant the tyrant’s smile.
    At the far end of the examination room is the pulpit of sublime truth, surrounded by five chairs. From its height, five comrades instruct their faithful horde in their salutary teachings.
    I am standing by the door, waiting for permission to approach and “put my case into the people’s hands.”
    The tribunal, gathered at the table, hunch over my file. Their hissings pierce the silence with violent menace and malicious snubs.
    I am standing by the door, watching them, despising them. Scorn straightens my back, strengthens my legs, dries up my palms.
    Here am I, a human being, sovereign and unique … but subjected to their destruction.
    And they, they are an amorphous mass, formed by Power into its instrument, the den of a universal, omnipotent hatred.
    I am standing by the door. A soft, sickly, sweetish voice, tinged with a shrewd kindness, snaps me out of my stupor and asks me to pledge my case before the bar.
    â€œComrade Velenská, come close so that we can see you better.”
    â€œWell, well, is it not Daddy’s little girl who tries again to worm her way through our ranks?!”
    â€œYou don’t count with the PEOPLE, do you? Do you know that the cloth does not make a monk?!”
    â€œBut do sit down, Comrade. We shall take our time to discuss your problem. Open your heart to your comrades. And be sure that whatever we decide is for your own good … which, of