Notes From Underground by Roger Scruton

Author:Roger Scruton [Scruton, Roger]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780825307287
Amazon: 0825307287
Barnesnoble: 0825307287
Publisher: Beaufort Books
Published: 2014-03-12T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 15

LITTLE BY LITTLE I came to understand that it was for each of us to sift the garbage in search of knowledge, freedom, and hope, and that there was no single formula, no set of rules or heroic postures, that would guarantee the outcome. Such was also Betka’s message to me, and she constantly guided me to experiences that would confirm it. She had entered my life as a liberating angel: more, she was my life, which had begun with her, and my underground days were like a chrysalis which had fallen away at her touch.

Of course, I had paid a price for this. Mother was constantly in my thoughts, and I several times took the bus to Ruzyně, in the days when she was on remand awaiting trial, in the hope of being admitted to her presence, only to be told that her case was in preparation and that I would be called to give evidence if either the prosecution or the defense required it. In fact I was never called. But, as I wrote, Bob Heilbronn did what was expected; Mother’s case was taken up by the “human rights machine,” as Betka called it. This poor dingy woman whom I loved and pitied became a symbol of the nation that had ignored her. So frequent were the mentions of her case, on Radio Free Europe and Voice of America, on the BBC World Service and Deutsche Welle, that she at last received the accolade of an editorial in Rudé právo, referring to the reactionary elements and Zionist conspiracies that had chosen her as their tool. I studied the editorial with Karel, to whom I had finally confessed my connection with his former publisher. He pointed to the word “tool”—nástroj. In Newspeak, he said, this indicated a part of the enemy machine that was not truly dangerous. And so it was. When the charge was finally laid it was not one of subversion in collaboration with foreign powers but the far lesser one of misuse of socialist property for private gain. Mother pleaded innocent, but her defense counsel confirmed her guilt and asked only that she be treated leniently on account of her confused state of mind, as proved by her crazy belief that she, who knew nothing of books, could turn herself into a publisher. She got nine months, with a five-year ban on the use of a typewriter. She smiled at me as they led her away, and there was, in that smile, a kind of triumph, as though she had at last done her duty to Dad. Like me, she had come up from underground to live in another way. And even if she had lost a life on my account, she wanted to tell me that she had also gained one. I tried my best to convince myself of this, but the image of Mother was now at the back of my mind, even in the intensest moments of my newfound happiness.

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