THE SHIP, the Manhattan, set sail without my friend and his child. I had grown very fond of him, and so I dared one last attempt. I advised him to return the child to his parents. Perhaps it was fear of the voyage, so overwhelming in the eyes of a child, that had made Jaroslaus fall ill or compelled him to play his little games. If the lawful father got the child unharmed, he might be lenient. I hoped he would then allow the natural father to see the child from time to time, to give him presents and so forth. I reminded my friend he had destroyed the old man’s happiness. My friend had felt sorry for him even back in the days when he still had a wife and child. Now with his wife dead and his child gone, what was left for the poor, old, cuckolded husband but despair? None of this moved my friend. His love was unrelenting. He didn’t want to share. He couldn’t understand me and became even colder towards me. Once he swept the old, abandoned watch, the cause of our friendship, off my desk. Jaroslaus, polite as ever, bent down to pick it up, wiping the dust from its face, a dust-trap without the glass. His father ignored me. He was sleeping badly at night. The child was acting strangely. He refused to leave the apartment. If it was sunny he claimed it was too hot, if there was the slightest breeze, it was too cold. His father always let him have his way. He also didn’t want to leave the apartment, nor his beloved child. He had traded his tickets for a ship with a later departure date. Instead he busied himself with watch repairs that the concierge, eager-to-please, commissioned from the various lodgers in the building. His prices were very cheap and he worked very efficiently. His charming child looked over his shoulder with great interest and tried to follow everything his talented father did.
It was on one of those days when I was on my balcony that I saw a peculiar group approaching the building. Flanked by two policemen was a man who seemed familiar, but I was slow to recognise him. It was the old man, grey-haired no longer, but white, and his back even more crooked than in Prague. Yet his head with its thick white hair was thrust forward determinedly like a buffalo’s. Behind him and next to a well-dressed man in civilian garb, was his wife. I ran back to the room where my friend was fully immersed in his work and shook him by the shoulder. “You’ve got to leave right now,” I shouted at him. “The people from Prague are here. I saw them from the balcony: the old man, his wife, the police.” He looked at me, his expression vacant.
“That’s impossible,” he said, “No one knows I am here.”
“Damned fool,” I cried out passionately. “What are you waiting for? Run down the stairs, past the lot of them, pull your hat low over your face, they won’t recognise you, they haven’t seen you since the fire, wait for me, wait for me …”—I stopped myself for I’d noticed the child, his happy eyes observing us. I whispered an address into the ear of my friend, pushing money into his hand, pressing an old hat with a wide brim over his forehead. But he didn’t budge. He held tight to the table top. All my labours were in vain. There was a hammering at the door, the child darted out, opened it himself, and we heard his silvery voice, obviously beside himself with delight. Gone was the polite, muted ‘Non Kohoutek, oui Papa!’ Now from deep in his chest he cried: “Tatínek! Maminka! Father! Mother!” The lawful parents approached the natural father. The child was clinging to the neck of his father, the old, dried-up stepmother was patting him affectionately on his back. All three were crying. My friend could still have escaped. But he stayed. Perhaps he was right to for what was his life without Jarmila and his child? And yet I would have given anything to spare him the sight of the police officer holding the card his son had written in his beautiful school-boy’s script to the old man (obviously with the money I had given him for the ice-cream). It gave our address and his assurance that, come what may he would wait for Tatínek and Maminka and they shouldn’t worry about him. And he had waited. The old man was so happy to see the child again that he said nothing to Bedřich. He didn’t even look at him.
My friend was arrested. I was threatened with various charges. Supposedly I was an accomplice to kidnapping. My friend attempted to clear my name. In Czech he told the man in civilian clothes, a civil servant from the Czech consulate, that I was innocent and should be left in peace. I will never forget his look—directed not at me, nor at his child, nor at his former bride, nor at his old enemy—but at the wretched old watch. The woman took me to one side. I could see her happiness wasn’t as absolute as that of the old man and Jaroslaus. Perhaps some warm feelings remained for her old love. Later I heard that she had protected my friend as far as possible. She had prevented the old man from immediately pursuing Bedřich, correctly surmising that Jaroslaus felt a strong bond to them and would return. The police, of course, had been informed straight away, but had not been given any details. All that was known was a young man had collected the child from school. What made the child go with him? Why had the child betrayed his kidnapper? He seemed so open and honest, and yet his natural father hadn’t been able to read him!
The watchmaker held out his hand to me in farewell. I squeezed it tightly and promised I would help him. I knew someone who was friends with a famous defence lawyer. For someone with a stable temperament all would not have been lost. But for him it was. I must confess that even now I did not fully understand him. He appeared to be transfixed by the watch? I gave it to him. I was able to tell the police officer that its glass was missing—and so he was allowed to take it, for even a desperate prisoner awaiting trial needs some sort of tool to sever his arteries. As for the small sharp spring inside … well, that didn’t enter my thoughts.
I was given permission to see the unfortunate man’s corpse. And yet was he really that unfortunate? As long as he had been a man he had known love. Perhaps it was better to die of love than of gout.