by John Lawton
And it occurred to Wilderness that jackdaws had no discrimination and were as likely to pick up the tinfoil cap off a milk bottle as a gold sovereign.
§122
Prague, Malá Strana
On their third “date,” Nell slept with Petr.
Part way through one of his well-constructed, earnest lectures on Czech cinema, he cut himself short.
“Oh hell … I mean all of that or none of it … but right now it doesn’t matter a damn.”
“What does matter?”
“You do. Come home with me, Nell.”
Rarely had she been so bluntly propositioned.
She was not surprised. She was not offended.
She led off, forcing him to follow her.
“On the corner, you said? Where the trams go by?”
§123
Afterwards.
“You have not been with many men, I think.”
Nell was momentarily torn between outrage and curiosity at this remark.
“No. I haven’t. Does it show?”
“Only when you put the light out to get undressed.”
She wondered what to say and opted for truth.
“In my teens. In Berlin. Just after the war. I lived with an Englishman. He turned my life upside down. He was called Wilderness and that was what he left in his wake. Since then I have been … wary. I have turned out the light. An act that might be a metaphor. And I have preferred one-night stands. Does that sound awful? Does it sound promiscuous?”
“I’m male, how can I object to promiscuity? Besides it is the era of free love.”
It was that summer’s most overworked phrase … invoking girls in billowing dresses, young men with shoulder-length hair … it went with psychedelic rock, love-ins and flower power … with Haight-Ashbury not Malá Strana. And it certainly did not encompass or describe her private life in Berlin for the last twenty years—nothing was ever free. And she found his remark little short of infuriating.
“It might be the era of free love in the West. Not here. It might be in California, but … perhaps we are all just California dreaming.”
§124
Mělník
Homework. Wilderness was doing his homework.
Erdbahn made several different types of harrow.
None more interesting than the next.
All of them of no interest at all.
Wilderness stifled a yawn and pushed on.
The 24 tine Spring Tine Drag Harrow, also available to order with 36 tines. Better suited to drier, lighter soils. Width 3.65 meters.
Suitable for both the T52 and T64 models.
The photos also showed that it was available in red or blue. It was like looking at the world’s worst car show. Where was the scantily clad woman sprawled across the damn thing? Was there no Pirelli calendar for farm equipment?
So—be practical, he told himself—you need to be able to talk to the old bastards down on the farm—so, what does the bloody thing do? Dig, flatten, pummel? Roast, fry, simmer? Frap, flip and fricassee?
He never thought he’d think this, but right now he’d sooner be back in Lapland showing bawdy British films to drunken Finns.
If Finland had been a punishment posting, then what was Czechoslovakia … his own private circle in hell?
§125
Prague, Old Town: September
Prague seemed to Nell to have a theatre on every street. Petr took her to most of them in a matter of six weeks, to the Balustrade, to the Café Viola, to Laterna Magika, to the Semafor, to Činoherní Klub, to Papoušek Cécile and a dozen more—and she began to realise that for all that Czech film and theatre relished the absurd, hid in the obtuse, in the absence of free speech politics was art and art was politics.
She mentioned her brush-off at the Ministry of Culture.
“It’s easy,” Petr replied. “You just need to think like George Orwell. The Ministry of Culture is really the Ministry of Censorship. Extend the pattern logically and what does the Ministry of Justice become?”
“The Ministry of … Punishment?”
“Exactly. I think you might make a Czech after all.”
Petr, along with every other writer he introduced her to, belonged to the group Writers ’62—who dated themselves from the year the fifty-foot statue of Stalin, that had dominated Prague from a hillside on the north bank for seven years, had been demolished. It had been conceived in Stalin’s lifetime, completed two years after his death and blown up in 1962, reportedly on Khrushchev’s orders. It had been derided from the start by Prague-dwellers as “the bread queue,” a reference to the artisans and workers standing in line behind Stalin.
“It was the biggest bang any of us had ever seen, and we took it as our cue. The Khrushchev thaw had arrived—long overdue and almost too late for the man himself—but we felt braver now because of it. We gathered in the Golden Tiger that night and united over beer and books.”
He took her to the Golden Tiger, just a few doors away from the Blue Orange. It looked to Nell like a typical German beer hall, narrow, grubby, plain wooden tables under a vaulted ceiling—she found them depressing, but the Golden Tiger had one vital difference: writers stood and read from their works a couple of nights a week. The first time they went there it was poets hardly out of their teens she could not pretend to understand. The second time it was the well-known author of the newly filmed Closely Observed Trains, Bohumil Hrabal.
Hrabal read well. He seemed to have a taste for sentences as long as Henry James’s and a gift for imagery that was dizzying, but he was poignant, honest, witty and funny.
Applause did not last long—hands that are clapping cannot hold a litre of beer—and as it faded Nell caught Petr looking at her.
“What?”
“You almost laughed.”
“Stop it. Of course I laughed. What was that story called?”
“It’s a mouthful—Advertisement for a House I Do Not Wish to Live in Anymore.”
“You’re kidding.”
“No—one day Hrabal will write a title longer than the story that follows it. He’s working on a film script of it right now … he and Menzel have a better title, Larks on a String. But I think they’re up against it.”
“Meaning?”
“It screams out to be banned.”
§126
Later, In Between the Sheets
“In 1956 I was teaching at the university. I was twenty-six. Young, precocious, fortunate. My brother Tomáš taught in the same department. He was eight years older than me, and a full professor. A man with a sound critical reputation. He had translated Dante into Czech. After the invasion of Hungary he published a pamphlet, privately, illegally, denouncing the Russians. It came to the attention of the state—why would it not? He lost everything—home, wife, son, life.”
“Life?”
“He died in prison. I’ve no idea whether he was just worn out or took a bullet to the back of the head. There was no body, there is no grave. But … the contagion spread. He saved his wife Magda by telling the secret police he was divorcing her. All the same she withstood weeks of interrogation. He could not save me. Guilt by association. I served a year in prison. Still … they had a marvellous library, everything you could ever want by Marx, Engels or Lenin. I rather enjoyed Engels … if there’s anything you need to know about the condition of the working class in Manchester in the 1840s, I’m your man.”
Nell said nothing. Silently willing him to go on.
“Of course, I could not return to the university. I took to writing. First magazines—we are allowed magazines that are subscription only, a small concession—then script editing for short films at Barrandov Studios, and then a full-length film in ’65. As both writer and director. Hiding in Plain Sight was immediately suppressed. There is, after all, no such thing as an unhappy childhood in a state that provides everything from cradle to grave, including hot and cold running happiness. The copy you saw in Berlin last year was smuggled out. Not without notice. I was cha
rged with parasitism—that is, no obvious means of support … writing was not a recognised job in my case, so I got another four months, which is why I never got to Berlin. I was sent to a light engineering factory in Mladá Boleslav making parts for Škoda car doors, on a hand press—the process took four seconds, repeated ten hours a day. I’ve never complained of being bored since. It could have been worse. The scrapyards Forman and I joke about are real enough. I got out just after Christmas.”
§127
November 1st
Wilderness had not been allowed to choose his own codename. Not that “Diesel” bothered him.
Alice Pettifer and Janis Bell had—they were, respectively, White Rabbit and Pussy-in-the-Well. Burne-Jones was, whether he liked it or not, Omelette, as it was the only dish Alice had ever known him to cook.
Pussy-in-the-Well to White Rabbit
— Much to report. First, Dubček has shown his hand. According to narks and leaks—i.e. not a word has made the papers—he went up against Novotny yesterday afternoon and challenged him to separate party and state. There’s a real movement for reform, an opposition-party-within-the party taking shape around him. I can’t believe Brezhnev will let this happen. If Khrushchev could crush Hungary what might Brezhnev do to Czechoslovakia?
Predictably, you stop the average Prague citizen in the street and they have no idea who Dubček is. He has emerged from Slovakia as if from nowhere. Imagine if a bloke from Basingstoke suddenly stepped up to challenge Wilson or Heath.
Coincidentally—do we believe in coincidence?—the lights went out last night. I mean that literally. Hardest hit were the student flats. No light, no work. An honesty my generation would not have admitted to. We’d have just got drunk and made babies. But this lot—about fifteen hundred or so—took to the streets. Heading for the castle. They got as far as Nerudova, only yards from the embassy, so I went down there to see for myself. They were chanting “We want Light. We want Light.” Poetic as well as literal. I don’t know what started it but the police laid into those kids with truncheons, tear gas, you name it. As long as I’ve been here—OK that’s not so long really—Czechs have been telling me how much easier things are getting. Well, this looked like one step forward, two steps back. I’ve been on student demos and, yes, the English coppers can be pigs, but I’d not seen violence on this scale. There’s word that the injured filled an entire ward in the Petřin hospital. “We want light.” Czechoslovakia wants light.
And I have a new bit of Czech slang for you, make of it what you will: Radish/Ředkev. Geddit?
White Rabbit to Pussy-in-the-Well
—Red on the outside. White on the inside?
Pussy-in-the-Well to White Rabbit
—Yep.
§128
The Night Before
October 31st
Petr all but kicked the door open, something long and loose slung across his shoulder
“Hot water, Nell! Put a kettle on.”
He hurled his package onto the sofa. A scrawny, long-haired teenage boy with blood pouring from his forehead.
“What? Who?”
“My nephew, Jiří. My brother’s son.”
The flame popped under the kettle. She ran to the bathroom for a clean flannel.
“How did this happen?”
The boy’s eyes flickered open.
“How do all these things happen? Coppers.”
He swung his legs off the sofa, one hand still pressing the flannel to his head.
Nell took the flannel from him, wiped at the cut to see if it needed stitching. It didn’t.
“You were lucky.”
“Lucky I was there,” said Petr.
“Do I seem ungrateful?”
“Jiří, you’ve never been grateful for a fucking thing in your whole life.”
“Petr!”
As if she had cued him, Petr got up and left the room. She had learnt that his most frequent reaction to any confrontation was absence. She did not judge him, telling herself she had not been through what he had been through.
The kettle whistled.
“I’m going to clean the wound.”
“Go ahead. I’m Jiří, by the way.”
“And I am Nell.”
“German?”
“Is it that obvious?”
“Just guessing. You and my uncle are …?”
“Yes. We are.”
“Congratulations.”
“Meaning?”
“I have better luck with women than he does.”
“Keep still.”
“Ouch!”
“I said keep still. And try to be less arrogant. Your ego is just feeding the pain.”
This seemed to work. The boy shut up and let her bathe the cut. When she’d finished she found the first-aid box and taped a thick dressing across his forehead. He was good-looking, but nothing like Petr. He was no more than five foot six, less than sixty kilos, blond and bony. Perhaps he took after his mother. “Tea? Something hot?”
“No. Thank you. If the streets are clear I should go home.”
“Where do you live?”
“Bartolomějská. Old Town. With my mother, Magda.”
“Not that far then?”
“No.”
“You could stay. It might be best.”
“He wouldn’t thank you for that.”
§129
Later, In Between the Sheets
Petr wrapped himself around her.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You probably saved his life.”
“It’s not that I don’t like Jiří. My brother’s only son. He just irritates the shit out of me. He is … careless … he takes risks … he never thinks. He has no idea of … the consequences. Czechoslovakia is a country of consequences. For every action a reaction.”
§130
Prague, New Town: A Few Days Later
Nell looked up from her desk. Someone was tapping, banging, on the huge plate glass window.
There was Jiří Jasny, peering in between the N and the E of NEMEC.
She opened the door.
“Shouldn’t you be at the university?”
“No lectures today.”
He was lying and she knew it. Petr had told her that Jiří was an inveterate skiver who drove his mother to despair.
“I was wondering,” Jiří said, “if you would like to come out this evening.”
“What?”
“Petr is in an edit at Barrandov. He often works all night, doesn’t he?”
“Yes, but—”
“Then come to a meeting of the Žolíky.”
“The what?”
“Just a bunch of students. We call ourselves Žolíky. Spaßvögel.”
“Ah … the Jokers.”
“Pranksters … we prefer Pranksters.”
“And what pranks do you get up to?”
“Oh … music and poetry … you know.”
“So, it’s like a meeting of Writers ’62?”
“No. Not all like that. Come and see for yourself. My pal Mopslík. His dad has a warehouse just down the street from my mother’s apartment. The top floor’s been empty for years. He lets us have it for nothing as a … sort of … youth club.”
A youth club? Nell could see no harm in that.
“We’re all supposed to be in the youth league—Svazek—but … none of us give a damn about the youth league. We have better ideas. Will you come?”
“Yes. I think I will.”
§131
Bartolomějská
Nell had no idea Prague had hippies. Perhaps that was not the right term, but she could think of no other to describe skinny girls with flowers in their hair and diaphanous dresses, and boys in flared jeans with paisley and velvet inserts sewn in below the knee to fluff them out to fifty centimetres. Every footstep set their jeans flapping around their ankles.
“I thought you meant it would be just boys.”
“It’s OK, Nell. We won’t be fucking on the floorboar
ds. Not tonight anyway.”
Nell thought she should take that as a warning, but curiosity got the better of her. Jiří was a joker, perhaps that was one of his jokes? Jiří was a prankster. She hoped fucking on the floor was not one of his pranks.
There were no chairs. Everyone sat on the floorboards, getting covered in ancient dust. The light was dim, half a dozen unshaded bulbs dotted around the high ceiling. On the far wall myriad colours swirled across the brickwork as one of the boys fed projector slides with drops of tinted oil which boiled and bubbled on contact.
A record played faintly in the background … something about chasing rabbits.
A boy in thick spectacles got up to read, standing in the window, where a streetlamp lit him up as though in limelight.
“When the days are grey,
The rain is purple.
I sit at the feet of the stone Buddha
And try to kiss the sky.”
Nell had no idea what to make of it. “Nonsense” might be a reasonable reaction.
“The curlew flies at sunset
Into night’s black mouth.
I wait for starlight.
And in the morning,
The rainbow has frozen.”
Nell looked at Jiří for a sign of comprehension. He was pulling on a roll-up cigarette. It stank. He passed it to her.
“I do not smoke tobacco.”
“S’OK. It isn’t just tobacco. It’s a good Red Leb.”
“What?”
“Oh Nell … where have you been the last year? … Red Leb. Hashish from Lebanon.”
Fed up with waiting, the girl next to her took the joint from her fingers and inhaled.
And when she breathed out, the smell of hash seemed to Nell like a Berlin mist enveloping her. Foul and all-pervasive.
A second poet got up to read, a third, a fourth and a fifth.
Nell had had enough, but then so had everyone else, it seemed.
Mopslík produced an LP in a vivid cardboard sleeve. Jiří opened two windows and placed a loudspeaker in each.
