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Pavel Kohout: Bílá kniha (White Book
The laws of men are changeable and are frequently changed.. However, the laws of physics are immutable., At least till Adam Juráček, in this book shows otherwise.
Adam Juráček, was the son of a railway conductor. He and his parents had a small flat overlooking a station platform and young Adam loved looking out of the window watching what was going on. When staying with an elderly relative he eagerly devoured all the books the relative had on railways. And then it all went wrong. What exactly happened we do not know, but we do know Josefa, Adam’s mother insisted her husband was not to blame. However, the railway company insisted that he was drunk. In any case there was an accident and Adam’s father died. Mother and son had to leave their flat and Josefa got a job as a cleaner at a hotel where they had a small room but with no view of a railway.
This had a profound effect on Adam and he did badly at school and was teased and bullied. He did not seem to grow properly and eventually the authorities wanted to put him in a school for retarded children. His mother managed to resist this.
He went to camp there again he was teased and bullied. One day was so bad he was in tears, but the angelic daughter of the camp cook came up to him and said , I am going to marry you, then you can beat them all up. She was Katenina Horova and she inspired him. The next day there was a cross country run and he was expected to come last. He came first. Things suddenly improved at school and his physical appearance improved dramatically. Indeed, he did so well that he was held up as a model pupil by the school. Thw authorities were very disappointed when all he wanted to do. was to be a a drawing and physical education instructor, but they accepted his decision and at the beginning of the book that is just what he is.
He still lived with his mother and is a devoted son. He did not smoke or drink and because of what happened to his father he refuses to use any mechanical means of transport even walking as far as Prague.
One day his mother brings his breakfast to his room as usual and drops the tray in shock. Her son is walking on the ceiling, feeling and head and arms hanging down. He explains that he has found a way to overcome the law of gravity.
Eventually, when he challenges his colleagues about whether the laws of physics are immutable and then, to their surprise , proves that ihey are not, chaos ensues. The school authorities. and then the local authorities are at a loss to know what to do. Quite simply you cannot go around breaking the law of gravity. He is expressly forbidden from.doing so.
Of course this book is aimed at mocking communist doctrine and how their laws are immutable. The various authorities, and there seem to be quite a few, struggle with what to do. Some of coursinsist you cannot break the law while others insist that this is a great breakthrough in science and will bring fame both to the local town of K . and the country as a whole.
Commissions, committees, working groups and so on are formed to look into the question and of course go round in circles, now taking one point of view, now another.
As for our hero, he has been told to stay at home and so he does.
He has neglectedKatenina Hodrova for the past three months while he worked on his gravity experiment. Actually, she is not happy about this and when he tries to renew relations with her, he is firmly and permanently rejected.
Of course, as some people point out Einstein and his successors did rewrite the laws of physics so it is therefore perfectly legitimate for Adam to do the same. However, not only is the government opposed to this so is the church for whom laws are also immutable.
We get a lot of discussion by various authorities of the legitimacy of breaking the laws of gravity. The news gets out and spreads abroad and is even under discussion in Switzerlandand in Britain by King Charles III though this book was published more than fifty years before Charles ascended the throne following the death of his mother.
There is a massive show trial which ends in disaster for the government as Adam calmly walks on the ceiling. They even called in some special experts on the subject who take complicated measurements and check very carefully to see whether he has hidden aids and conclude that there is no doubt that he has managed to break the laws of gravity. One man later says that hedid not see him breaking the laws of gravity even though he did because it is impossible to break the laws of gravity therefore it did not happen. Some of his colleagues are persuaded to say that they imagined his walking on the ceiling and did not actually see it.
Adam himself goes somewhat off the rails. He had lost his girlfriend he now turns to drink even though he had never drunk alcohol before in his life and he goes on a ten day binge which costs him a lot of money which he does not have.
The authorities come up with a host of laws they think he may have broken and can be charged with but hesitate which ones to apply. have
The final part is perhaps a bit too long winded as the authorities try numerous ways to deal with the problem. They lock him up in prison but he manages to win the guards over and continues to sleep on the ceiling. One investigator tries to replicate Adam’s experiment and ends up with fifty-three fractures. Psychiatrist are involved, including an American one from the wittily namedSmith Wesson Institute.
It is all very cleverly done and gives our author the opportunity to mock the authorities who do not come out well and who all too often are made to look like fools, which, no doubt they were. The way Adam outsmarts the authorities, investigators and psychiatrist is is particularly clever andwhile perhaps a little too long it makes for a very good read.
Publishing history
First published in German in 1970 by Verlag C. J. Buchen as Weissbuch
First published in English in 1976 by George Braziller,
Translated by Alex Page