Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light

by Ivan Klíma

You can rule with a firm hand, or you can rule through consensus. Those with neither the strength for firmness nor the courage for consensus take refuge in the belief that they can remain somewhere in between. But that is an illusion.

‘I’m glad. I don’t like it when man thinks he’s superior to the animals.’

but poetry wasn’t his kind of reading. He couldn’t concentrate on the lines or look for hidden connections between the metaphors.

What was faith? Faith was a longing that pretended to be a conviction.

The new politicians had very little in common with the old ones, at least so far. Yet it was not his job to investigate what they were really like, but merely to capture their image, their gestures and their mimicry. Now and then he couldn’t resist the occasional malicious close-up of twitching fingers that testified to insecurity, or some clumsiness of dress. He didn’t do this to express an opinion, but merely to relieve the monotony and, unlike before, no one criticized him for doing this or cut them out of the broadcast. Was he unconsciously trying to give his new bosses an excuse for considering him unreliable? Or was he merely trying to persuade himself that this was now possible, that they had accepted him despite his recent past?

‘No. I persuaded you to do it. A child didn’t seem to fit into our plans. You weren’t even seventeen, and I… well, I thought I had to do a lot of things before I could allow myself the luxury of being a father. Now I know it was the worst thing I’ve ever done in my life. Everything else followed from that.’

The poet had gained official recognition by writing verses that expressed his love for women, the motherland and the Party. Now, anonymously, he wrote copy expressing his love of ever-sharp kitchen knives, ketchup and chewing-gum.