EDA KRISEOV
A
445
didn't serve them). And now I am forced to stand up for myself .
..
A cat leaped into the room, landing with a slight bounce, like a
balloon, on all fours. It brushed against the constable's leg and gave a
contented purr. Mr. Blaha took his hand off the keyboard and placed it
between the cat's ears.
"An old man needs a pet," he said
to
himself. He couldn't live
without one. You put a nose like the one on this cat here - you put a
nose like that on a cop, and nobody could beat him. Animals have it all
over people; people are the lowest of all animals.
Mr. Blaha stood, brushed the eraser bits off his trousers, and poured
out some milk in a saucer. The cat started licking at once, its tiny pink
tongue flicking in and out. Mr. Blaha looked on lovingly. Then he
turned and put on his round office glasses, twisting the wires finnly be–
hind his ears.
. . .
because there is no one to stand up for me. I always followed orders
a/ld made certain others did likewise. I never made trouble for anyone.
We were all in it together. They had their instructions; I had mine.
No point in making trouble, the constable had always thought. But
what I never understood was why I had to suffer for every new order,
new regime, new system.
The problem is my pension and the sale of my house in
K.
I have written
to all the agencies involved
-
the Municipal National Committee, the District
National Committee, the Presidium, the District Committee of the Czechoslo–
vak Communist Party, the Regional Committee of the Czechoslovak Commu–
/list Party, and the Central Committee of the Czechoslovak Communist Party.
Most of them failed to respond, and the ones that did respond told me they
would look into the matter. Nothing has ever come of it.
I realize you have more pressiltg affairs of state, both national and interna–
tional, but I turn to you as there is
110
institution to which I have not turned.
The chief constable was well equipped: he had a file on the win–
dowsill, its stiff black boards crammed with documents recording every
transaction he had made in connection with his person or his family
throughout his life and arranged with constabulary punctilio in strict
chronological order with an alphabetical index at the end so he could
locate his wife's GOLD TEETH just behind his GARDEN; he had a pile
of clean envelopes on the freshly wiped kitchen table, a stack of typing
paper, a pencil-case full of sharp pencils.
Before Cestmfr Blaha got down to work, he would pace up and
down the kitchen gathering his thoughts. In 1954 he paced for three
days.
The three oldest of us joined the gendarmerie. Our dad was a geltdarme too,
al1d he brought us up to love altd respect the profession. All four of us went to
war together, the Great War. Dad never returned; he died at the Italian front.
