Three Thousand Metres Down

0:00 A Telephone Behind the Bookshop

0:04 Narrator: Prague, the autumn of nineteen ninety-two. The telephone rang in the cramped office behind my bookshop in Malá Strana; Antonín Zima answered it, and I went back to my newspaper.

0:22 Zima: Zima. ... Yes, the state insurer. Everyone in Prague has paid it something. A claim you won't pay, and someone who says you must. Who?

0:34 Zima: Don't feed the box on my account. Tomorrow, nine, at your office. Narrator: Insurance? You told me insurance is arithmetic in a hat.

0:45 Zima: She rang from a call box. The coins kept falling. An assessor who avoids her own telephone thinks someone above her is listening. It's about a ship, four months down.

0:57 Narrator: Then it's in here. They've run it four times, smaller every time. Zima: Have they.

1:04 Narrator: Denní hlas, page five. The inquiry into the freighter Kamenice, blown apart in the South Atlantic, sits again on Monday. Zima: Blown apart. A ship founders over hours. Blowing apart takes a second, and a cause.

1:21 Narrator: Six drowned. They print the names again. The bosun, a cook, two engine men, a steward...

1:29 Zima: And the youngest? Narrator: The deck boy. Nineteen years old. His first voyage.

1:36 Four Storeys Up Among the Filing Cabinets

1:40 Narrator: At nine next morning we sat across a steel desk from Matějů, the claims assessor, four storeys up among grey filing cabinets. Matějů: You came, Pan Zima. I'll read it once. I can't bear it twice. Claimant, Kolář. Twelve crates, sugar-refinery machinery, Prague to Singapore by way of Hamburg.

2:03 Matějů: Insured for two hundred and seventy million crowns. Present location, the South Atlantic, three thousand metres down. Narrator: Kolář? The confectioner, with the café across from the Finance Ministry?

2:16 Matějů: Cakes by day, export dealer by letterhead, and deep in debt by both. The state auctions his café next year. Zima: You read the depth like a line on an invoice, Matějů. You've already asked whether anyone could go down and—

2:29 Matějů: I asked. The salvage people in Hamburg laughed down the telephone. Zima: So nobody will ever open those crates. And yesterday you rang me from a call box.

2:41 Matějů: My director says pay. Someone has— someone has told my director to say pay. Zima: Someone with a name.

2:49 Matějů: Someone with an office. I'm summoned there at half past three. Come and hear it yourself.

2:55 Zima: I'll come. And the drowned men? What do their families get?

3:00 Matějů: The shipping line's scale. Thirty thousand crowns a man. I typed the letters myself.

3:06 Narrator: That's all? Matějů: Thirty thousand for a boy of nineteen, while I count the money for machines nobody will ever see— Narrator: Matějů—

3:16 Matějů: No, let me say it. I've done this sum every night for a month. The drowned men's families get less than one crate.

3:26 A Corner Office at the Finance Ministry

3:30 Narrator: The summons was for half past three, in a corner office of the Federal Finance Ministry; Matějů carried her file, Zima carried nothing, and the woman behind the desk did not rise. Matějů: Deputy Minister Jedličková. This is Zima. He advises the insurer.

3:49 Jedličková: Advises it to wait, I imagine. A confectioner has waited four months, Matějů. The West is watching whether a Czechoslovak policy is worth its paper. And we're asking them for credit.

4:03 Matějů: Two hundred and seventy million crowns, Deputy Minister, on a cargo nobody can inspect— Jedličková: The South Atlantic is inconvenient for inspection. That is why one insures.

4:14 Zima: Who surveyed the machinery before it was crated? Jedličková: Your insurer accepted the confectioner's invoices. Ask your insurer.

4:22 Zima: And who built them? Jedličková: A factory, Pan Zima. Machines are generally built in factories.

4:29 Narrator: The buyer in Singapore has lost his machines too. Has he written to— Jedličková: I'm not the post office for Singapore.

4:36 Zima: Twice you've called him the confectioner. Not the claimant, not the exporter. A minister who knows a man's trade knows the man.

4:44 Jedličková: Everyone on this street knows his trade. Half this ministry drinks his coffee. So do I. Write it down, young man.

4:52 Narrator: Already have, Deputy Minister. Matějů: The inquiry sits again on Monday. Give me until its finding.

4:59 Jedličková: The inquiry may sit until its chairs give way. Matějů. Pay the confectioner by Friday.

5:06 Roasting Coffee at the Corner Table

5:10 Narrator: Half an hour later we crossed to the café facing the ministry, warm with roasting coffee; the owner was already pouring at a corner table, and the deputy minister came in behind us. Kolář: Close the door, please, the street gets into everything. You're from the insurer?

5:28 Jedličková: Kolář, this is Pan Zima. He thinks you ought to wait longer. Kolář: Then he's right, and I'll tell him why. Sit, please.

5:36 Zima: Her cup was poured before she reached the table, Kolář. Four o'clock isn't a visit. It's a habit.

5:43 Jedličková: Every afternoon. I hide nothing in this café. Zima: Clearly.

5:48 Kolář: I read those six names every time the paper prints them. Men on a ship carrying my crates. I'd give every crate I ever shipped to have those men back. So I've decided. I— I withdraw the claim. Whatever the insurer saves goes to the widows.

6:06 Narrator: Two hundred and seventy million crowns? To the— Jedličková: He will do nothing of the kind. Withdraw now and every newspaper in Prague prints that your claim was dirty, and that the state insurer was right to sit on it.

6:20 Kolář: Deputy Minister— Jedličková: No. The shipping line will see to the widows, properly. You will take what you're owed.

6:26 Zima: You've forbidden a man his conscience over a coffee cup, Deputy Minister. Jedličková: I have forbidden him a foolish gesture. It isn't the same. And you've never been here, so you don't know the truffles. Plum brandy, his own recipe; nobody else in Prague makes them.

6:44 Jedličková: He serves one with each coffee. You can't buy them, you cannot carry one home. I have tried.

6:51 Kolář: My father's slivovice, from three old trees in Moravia. One on every saucer today. For the six.

7:01 Dusk on the Quay, a Policeman Under a Crane

7:04 Narrator: Dusk was settling on the Holešovice port when we reached the quay, and a young policeman stood waiting under a crane with his collar turned up. Rys: Zima? Kapitán Rys, Criminal Police. The insurer says you're on my drownings now.

7:19 Zima: Your drownings, Kapitán. You said drownings. You've already decided it was no accident. Rys: Decided? No. I've— I've hoped I was wrong. Every week, for four months.

7:33 Rys: The old police called it an accident by telephone. Then the old police stopped existing. Narrator: Convenient.

7:41 Rys: That warehouse behind you was the last place those crates stood on home ground. Narrator: And the first place you'd look, if you didn't believe in accidents. Rys: Why does the insurer need a consultant for a ship on the—

7:52 Zima: Because the ministry wants it paid by Friday. The deputy minister set it herself. Rys: Herself?

7:59 Narrator: And at four o'clock the confectioner offered to drop his claim for the widows. She forbade it, across his own counter. Rys: Forbade him? A man tries to give money away and a minister stops him?

8:13 Zima: Over her afternoon coffee. She takes it there every day. Rys: Then it's a favour. I've smelled favours in this city since I was in short trousers.

8:23 Rys: So tell me, Zima. Why would a deputy minister stake her office on a confectioner?

8:29 Footsteps Down a Bare Concrete Bay

8:33 Narrator: The bay where the twelve crates had waited was bare concrete under a single hanging lamp, and Rys walked us down its length to the watchman. Rys: Šebek! Here's the insurer's man. Zima, this is Šebek, who keeps the nights.

8:48 Šebek: Evening, gentlemen. Mind the drain; it's swallowed better boots than yours. Zima: This is where they stood?

8:56 Šebek: Bay four. Twelve of them, two rows of six, stencilled for Singapore. Five nights, then the barge took them off on the morning tide.

9:05 Zima: There's no tide on the Vltava, Pan Šebek. Only a man who's been to sea says tide. Šebek: Ha. Caught. Twenty years with the Czechoslovak line, out of Szczecin. Three voyages on the Kamenice herself.

9:20 Rys: Four months I've talked to you, and you never— Šebek: You asked about locks, Kapitán. Locks I told you. Rys: Hmph.

9:27 Narrator: Then you knew the six. Šebek: The bosun taught me to splice. The cook kept a sausage in the bread for whoever had the middle watch. The boy I never met. Nineteen. Somebody should have kept that boy on a river...

9:43 Narrator: And here you walk rounds all night? Šebek: Every hour, and every round in the book, hour and minute. You don't lose a ship's habits.

9:52 Zima: A man who logs to the minute doesn't drift ashore after twenty years. So why did you— Šebek: Leave? Hear this chest? Salt and diesel, in every breath.

10:03 Rys: There's diesel on this quay. Šebek: Less of it, Kapitán. Less of it. Zima: Is that so.

10:11 Šebek: I left the sea for my health. Ask anyone.

10:15 The Policy, Read Out Like a Sentence

10:19 Narrator: Matějů had the policy out of its drawer before we were through her door, and she read it to us standing, like a sentence passed in court. Matějů: You want the policy, Pan Zima. Every condition, as written, and whether it was met. One: goods crated under customs seal. Met. Two: goods stored at Holešovice, bay four. Met.

10:43 Matějů: Three: a logged night watch on the goods in store, at the insured's own request. Met. Four: barged under seal to Hamburg. Five: loaded only on a Czechoslovak hull. Met and met.

10:57 Zima: You didn't look down for the last two, Matějů. You know it by heart. Matějů: I've read it every night looking for a hole. There isn't one. It's the cleanest paper in this building.

11:09 Narrator: The paper's not what worries me. It's the hand on top of it. Matějů: Then you saw the hand, Pan Hruška. Friday, she said. She never once asked what was in the crates.

11:21 Zima: And since there's no hole in the paper, you've decided— Matějů: That it's the ministry, yes. A deputy minister doesn't sweat for a confectioner's machines. She sweats for herself. I can't fight a ministry, Pan Zima. I can sign or be sacked. You can fight it.

11:39 Matějů: Prove it's her, and not a crown leaves this building.

11:45 A Plank Hut and a Paraffin Heater

11:43 Zima: We'll see.

11:49 Narrator: The watchman's hut stood at the far end of the quay, a plank box with a paraffin heater roaring; Rys took an upturned bucket, and Šebek kept his stool. Rys: Tell him about the last night, Šebek. What you told me.

12:04 Šebek: The crates' last night. Barge due at six. River fog, and my chest like a bellows. About two I see a glow down the bay. Low, among the crates. I go— I go down. Nothing. Dark.

12:23 Zima: From this hut to bay four is a long walk on those— Šebek: Lungs, yes. Five minutes, end to end. So I... so I wrote it down as my own lamp on the tin. All quiet.

12:35 Narrator: You didn't believe a word of that. Šebek: I believed I wanted my tea. Then I come back in here, and somebody's left chocolates on my stool.

12:46 Narrator: Left by whom? Šebek: White box, string round it, no card, no shop's name. Rys: He told me. Nobody else. Not the old police.

12:57 Zima: And what was— Šebek: Nobody gives a night watchman chocolates, Pan Zima. Not unless he's meant to forget something.

13:04 Zima: Or meant to know that somebody knows. You told one policeman and no one else. You thought that box came from your old life.

13:13 Šebek: I thought nothing. Rys: Šebek. All those years at sea, and you gave it up for a cough?

13:20 Šebek: All these years I've told this quay... I've told everyone. I left for my health. Hamburg. They put me ashore with my sea bag and a paper from the line, stamped. Dismissed.

13:36 Narrator: Dismissed for what? Šebek: Something under my bunk, for my brother-in-law's kiosk. The bosun stood up for me, he did, and now he's... down there. Four cartons of Western cigarettes. That was my health.

13:55 A Tin Stove Among the Unsold Books

13:53 Narrator: Oh...

13:59 Narrator: Late that night, back among my unsold books, Zima fed the tin stove while I laid my notes along the counter like patience cards. Card one. A minister who wants a claim paid by Friday.

14:14 Zima: Card two. The same minister, forbidding the man to give it away. Narrator: Three, a clause that wants a watchman's book. Four, a watchman with twenty years to hide.

14:27 Zima: And five, a white box with no name on it. Narrator: Anyone can buy a white box of chocolates on Národní. That card's worth nothing.

14:37 Zima: Not at two in the morning, to a stool at the end of a quay. Whoever left it knew the hut was empty. They watched him walk away from it.

14:46 Narrator: Five cards, and they won't lie down in a row. Zima: They will. Leave them out. The stove can have the rest of the night.

14:55 Narrator: A sailor threw away his whole life for four cartons. A minister's staking her chair on... Whose favour is worth two hundred and seventy million crowns?

15:07 One Desk by a Cracked Window

15:12 Narrator: Criminal Police headquarters had given Rys one desk by a cracked window, and he read us the old file with his coat still on. Rys: Freighter Kamenice, lost with six. Accidental explosion at sea, cause unknown. Enquiries in Prague: none required. Watchman's statement, one line. Rounds hourly, all quiet. Eleven pages, Zima, typed in one afternoon.

15:39 Zima: Eleven pages, and the box isn't on any of them. Rys: No. I kept it out of the file and out of the papers. Nobody's heard of that box but us.

15:49 Narrator: You hid evidence from your own police? Rys: Half the men who typed this are still in the building. I don't know yet whose coffee they drink.

15:58 Zima: Where's it now? Rys: The laboratory, string still on, sealed as he gave it to me, logged under a number: one box, confectionery. They'll open it for fingerprints when they reach it. They're three months behind.

16:10 Zima: And the claim's paid on Friday. The laboratory won't hurry, and she won't wait. His book says nothing happened, yet he told you about a light and a box. He trusts you more than paper, Kapitán.

16:24 Rys: Then let's stop being polite. It's her, Zima. She hurries the claim, she gags the confectioner, she's at his table every afternoon at four, she—

16:34 Narrator: Three things a guilty woman does. Also three things a stubborn one does. Rys: Stubborn ones don't need watchmen to forget things.

16:43 Zima: Then I'll put it to her myself, over her coffee.

16:48 A Cup Already Steaming at Four

16:47 Rys: Good.

16:52 Narrator: Kolář was wiping his counter when we came in at four the following afternoon, and Jedličková's cup already steamed at her place. Kolář: Pan Zima, twice in a week. Sit, I'll bring—

17:04 Zima: No coffee today, Kolář. I've something to say to the deputy minister, and I'd rather say it dry. Jedličková: Then say it. I have twenty minutes and no patience.

17:15 Zima: You found a confectioner with crates going to sea. You saw to it that they never arrived. And you mean to take your share of what the insurer pays.

17:24 Kolář: Pan Zima, she's a customer of mine— Jedličková: Let him finish, Kolář. Zima: He tried to give the money to the widows. You stopped him, because part of it was never his to give. One thing more. The watchman at Holešovice remembers the crates' last night.

17:39 Jedličková: Does he. Zima: You didn't ask what he remembers, Deputy Minister. Anyone with nothing to fear asks.

17:47 Kolář: Because it's nonsense! What's the poor man to remember, a minister in her good coat tiptoeing round my crates? Next you'll tell me she crept in and left truffles on his stool.

17:59 Narrator: If there's nothing in it, Deputy Minister, Monday's inquiry— Jedličková: I don't wait for Mondays to clear me, young man. Kolář. The telephone.

18:16 Jedličková: Jedličková, for the director. ... Director. I said pay the confectioner by Friday. I now say today. Because your consultant has just accused me, over a coffee cup, of drowning six men. Today.

18:34 Jedličková: Two hundred and seventy million crowns goes out today, Pan Zima. And you, young man, may write that down too.

18:43 Back at the Insurer Within the Hour

18:47 Narrator: We came back to the insurer within the hour and found Matějů at her desk with a pen in her fist, putting her name to the order. Matějů: Under protest. I've written it in the margin, in capitals. Much good capitals do... Two hundred and seventy million crowns, to the confectioner's account. It leaves tonight. Once he draws on it, only a court brings it back.

19:12 Zima: And until he draws on it, one telephone call could still— Matějů: Her telephone, not mine. What did you say to her, Pan Zima?

19:21 Zima: That she sank the Kamenice. Matějů: You— you told her that? So she paid faster. Wonderful.

19:29 Rys: Zima. They said— downstairs, they said you'd be up here. Her ministry record.

19:35 Zima: Nobody runs up four storeys to agree with me, Kapitán. Rys: Policy written six months ago. Crates barged five months ago. Ship down four months ago. And all that time she ran the State Bank branch in Brno. Still in Brno the week the Kamenice sank. She took office here ten weeks ago.

19:54 Zima: Did she, now. Matějů: People in Brno have telephones. Rys: To ring a man she'd never met? Her secretary keeps her diary. The café first appears in her second week here. He sent a cake across to welcome her.

20:09 Narrator: After. She found him after the six were drowned. Matějů: Then why does she bully me for him?

20:16 Zima: Because she believes his claim. She wants the West to see it honoured. She's stubborn, that's all. Whoever chose those crates chose them before she ever sat at his table.

20:28 Matějů: And the money goes tonight regardless. Zima: Then I've accused the wrong woman...

20:34 Rys With His Coat Buttoned Wrong

20:38 Narrator: Jedličková received us early, Rys at my elbow with his coat buttoned wrong, in the room where she had first set her deadline. Jedličková: Pan Zima, and a policeman. Have you come to arrest me, or to apologise?

20:53 Zima: To apologise. You were still in Brno when those crates were insured. I accused you of a sinking before your time.

21:01 Jedličková: Across a café table, nothing more. I had never heard his name until a cake came across the street with his compliments. Rys: Then freeze the two hundred and seventy million crowns, Deputy Minister. One call. It's sitting in his account, and—

21:14 Jedličková: Until nine tomorrow, when his bank opens. He means to draw it then. Why should he not?

21:20 Zima: You asked him when he'd draw it. A woman with no doubts doesn't— Jedličková: He told me, Pan Zima. I didn't ask. Yesterday you were certain. Today you're not.

21:30 Narrator: What do you know of him, Deputy Minister, besides his coffee? Jedličková: At dawn, before his shutters go up, he makes the truffles himself, alone. Enough for one with each coffee and not one over. Not even his waiter is let near that plum brandy. I made the insurer jump once for his claim. I won't make myself a fool twice in a week.

21:55 Tea Nobody Asked For

21:53 Jedličková: Bring me proof.

21:59 Narrator: By noon we were crowded into Šebek's hut with Rys, and the watchman was pouring tea nobody had asked for. Zima: In this hut I began a question, Pan Šebek, and you cut me off. I let you. That was careless.

22:15 Šebek: What question was that? Zima: What was in the box. You said nobody gives a watchman chocolates. So you knew they were chocolates. You looked.

22:26 Šebek: I— lifted the lid by the lamp. One minute. A dozen round ones, in cocoa dust.

22:34 Rys: He gave it to me tied, string and all. I sealed it for prints and never lifted the lid. Narrator: Was there a shop's name inside? Every chocolate box in Prague comes from Orion, and says so.

22:46 Šebek: No paper, Pan Hruška. Only the smell. The hut reeked of slivovice, like a Moravian wedding.

22:54 Rys: Well, well. Zima: And you told the Kapitán chocolates, and not one word about the— Šebek: Five months I've called them chocolates on my stool and left it at that. Say more, and somebody asks why a sacked sailor looks worth buying. I've not even told my wife. She thinks it's a cough.

23:13 Šebek: Plum brandy, every one. I never touched them.

23:18 Fog Over the Letná Plain

23:22 Narrator: Zima chose to walk home over the Letná plain, and the fog rose off the river so thick that I read my notebook under the lamps. Zima: Read me Rys again. Headquarters, the box.

23:35 Narrator: Held back from the file and the press. Known to him, the watchman, and us. Zima: And at noon we learned there were truffles under that lid, and Šebek has told no one.

23:47 Narrator: Then Kolář, yesterday at four. You'd said only that the watchman remembers the last night. Zima: Yes.

23:56 Narrator: And he laughs. Next you'll have her creeping round his crates, he says, with truffles for the watchman's stool. Zima: Not chocolates, not a parcel. Truffles, and a stool.

24:09 Narrator: A confectioner says truffles the way a butcher says sausage. Couldn't it be a joke that landed by luck? Zima: Perhaps. But then the same joke landed twice in one sentence.

24:21 Narrator: And nobody on the quay to tell him, so... Zima: Nobody at all. So how did the confectioner know?

24:29 Ministry Overcoats at the Café

24:34 Narrator: At four the café was crowded with ministry overcoats; Jedličková sat at her corner, Rys kept the door, and Kolář came round with his tray. Kolář: Kapitán, Pan Zima. The deputy minister says you've come to apologise.

24:49 Zima: Not quite, Kolář. Yesterday I said the watchman remembers the last night the crates were there. Nothing more. And you answered with truffles on his stool.

25:00 Kolář: Did I? A joke, Pan Zima. It was— a confectioner's joke, that's all.

25:05 Rys: There was a box on that stool. Nobody's heard of that box outside my laboratory and that hut. Never filed, never printed.

25:14 Kolář: Then the deputy minister— she told me. She hears everything in that building. Jedličková: I knew of no box. Until this minute I knew of no box.

25:24 Zima: And the watchman told no one, not even his wife. One man knew what sat on that stool. The man who left it there.

25:33 Kolář: Pan Zima, a box of sweets— Rys: The laboratory cut the string at two. A dozen truffles. Plum brandy.

25:40 Jedličková: His. He wouldn't box one for my mother... You let me shout down the insurer for you. You let me forbid you your widows—

25:49 Zima: He offered the widows his claim in front of the one woman certain to forbid it. Jedličková: Six men, Kolář! And a boy of nineteen! And I sat at this table every day and called you—

26:00 Kolář: Kapitán. Let me— let me take my apron off first. Rys: Kolář, you're under arrest for the loss of the Kamenice and her six men.

26:18 Jedličková: Jedličková, for the director. Stop the payment. Freeze every crown before he can touch it.

26:25 That Evening at the Bookshop Counter

26:29 Narrator: Matějů climbed to my bookshop that evening with the policy under her arm, and laid it open on the counter among the unsold Hrabals. Matějů: Frozen at ten to five. He never drew a crown. All two hundred and seventy million crowns come home. And I've read this again. Condition three. He asked us himself for a logged night watch.

26:52 Matějů: Nobody asks to be watched, Pan Zima. He wanted a book that'd swear his crates sat untouched in Prague. Zima: So the inquiry would look only at the sea, where nobody can look.

27:04 Narrator: Then why leave the box at all? He was clear away. Zima: That glow at two was his torch, Pan Hruška. Semtex and a timer, packed into one crate, set for open sea. Šebek's lamp was coming down the bay toward him. The box asked the watchman to keep writing all quiet.

27:24 Zima: And yesterday, told only that the watchman remembered, he answered for his own box before anyone mentioned one. Matějů: The shipping line still pays thirty thousand crowns a man. So I'll be typing those letters again...

27:39 Narrator: Not the same letters. Matějů: No. These will say why. Zima: He counted every truffle he ever made. The one night he gave a dozen away, he signed his name.

27:51 Narrator: Rys rang at six. Kolář had talked: the crates held scrap iron, bought by the bargeload. He was buried in export debts, and needed a fortune to buy his café when the state auctioned it. He is charged with fraud, and with six drownings. Listen. The castle bells, through the fog.