THE FOURTH
And now, no Eva, summer, the work brigade in Nová hut’, steel blocks, furnaces, crane cables, petroleum jelly and oakum. But now, without that rambunctious brouhaha of apprentices. He felt himself growing poorly and thin. Stepping off the bus he didn’t want to go home — so soon to be abed, barricaded in half-slumber. From the time he started going out with Eva, the pleasure of home as a concealed retreat from the blackyellow world had paled somewhat. She had given him a sort of seclusion that he carried home with himself. A solitude which was dearer to him than security.
His mother saw it in his eyes, reading in each of his movements that the boy was, somehow, alone. The way he put on his jacket, the way he tied his boots. His tall, boyish frame, which until recently still mov
