454
PARTISAN REVIEW
the sewing machine.
Dear Mr. Presiden.t,
he wrote,
I receive only seven hundred crowns
a
month as an old-age pensioner. According to a recent report from the Ministry
of Finance the situation of old-age pensioners will not come up for review until
1970. I
have requested an explanation as to why my six years in the World
War and my six years under the Occupation have not bem counted towards
my
pension.
I
was a loyal soldier in the First World War and during the Second,
during the Occupation, our work was harder than ever:
I
had to serve two
masters: the Germans and the Czechs.
I
never forgot my own people.
They never found them. They even sent me into the kitchen. I told
Mrs. Hakl to open all the cupboards and drawers, but I didn't bother to
look.
In forty-two her husband kissed my hands and cried, You saved my
life! My whole family! People told him to stop his provocations, but he
kept beating his chest and saying he was a martyr.
So they threw him in jail for, they say, filching a side of beef and let him
rot there till the end because he was a Marxist.
During the Heydrich business I had a gun under every step to the
attic. My wife didn't know a thing. As they say: a gendarme knows only
as much as his wife tells him.
I had a way with people. I'd spend time with them, chew the fat
with them. They knew me. The men who came before me - they were
all uniform, all white gloves; they wouldn't give you the time of day. I
had a uniform too, of course, but I knew my beat. That came first.
After we were liberated by the Soviet Army,
I
was named chiif col1stable
again and continued to serve the people with all my heart and soul. But Hakl,
the teacher, who returned from prison alive and well, was the real power in the
district. He hadn't been home two weeks when he ordered me to arrest the post–
master.
I
rifused.
Look, you're not my boss, 1 said
to
him. Take him to court if
you've got something against him.
If you don't arrest him, somebody else will, he said, and went
straight to the Ministry.
He didn't get very far: the Ministry backed
me.
I won't let you be a dictator, I told him. I represent law and order.
Or so I thought. Because Hakl's sister worked at the Ministry and
got him a stamp with some bigwig's signature.
My children were growing up, and I put away all the money I
earned. I kept hoping for the day when we could have a roof of our
own over our heads.
Mr. President,
the gendarme wrote to the head of state - he was
corning to the worst period in his life and was at a loss to know how to
