Pevnost

The fortress in the setting of the landscape gives an impression of a den or a detention colony of Kafka's fiction. The watch-towers, barbed-wire-fencing, severe guarding, all that in all-prevailin feeling of strangeness and mystery provoke fear. Immediately, the question will arise, what is it that is so strictly guarded. We witness the absurdity as expressed by Franz Kafka, and the nonsensicality of the bureaucratic and the barracklike spiritlessness as ridiculed by Jaroslav Hasek in his soldier Svejk. The story takes place in the second half of the eighties. The regime of power is tired, but any changes are out of sight. Some people are trying to find their asylum in their privacy, some defect. Who is not willing to get adapted, lives at the outskirts of the society. So, for example, the forty-year old intellectual Ewald can not perform his profession, as he could not comply with requirements of the political regime. He earns his living just to sustain, and at the moment he is assigned to measure the capacity of water bore in the vicinity of the fortress. He lives in a caravan-trailer, measures the yield of the water source, and as a little boy enjoys the beauty of the nature and the life of a backwoodsman. He makes friends with a priest from a nearby parish and pals up with a local interesting eccentric, who enjoys freedom by being taken for a fool. Can a man be happy just playing his mouth-organ, enjoying the sky over his head, with barbed-wire fences in sight. It is even convincing and moving, just as his falling in love. People who are lonely attract each other. But can the passion of mature lovers make good for the prospects of life?
Ewald makes friends with the head officer of the fortress. Their friendship is a strange, unusual relation of two men of different characters, linked by a feeling of loneliness, need of sincerity and even a mutual respect, which stems from understanding each other. At last, Ewald finds out, that there is nothing to be guarded in the fortress. It is generally known or at least suspected, but nobody would dare to disclose this well-known secret. A hard pressure is exerted upon Ewald to become one of those who „know“ but keep silent. Ewald is not able to adapt and he does not want to. He has to be liquidated. The commander of the fortress finally shoots him, though reluctantly, but obeying orders of the superiors. For the public an accident is pretended - snakebite by vipers. (Verleiher-Text)