by John Lawton
“Does it have to mean anything?”
Nell felt it should.
“I can’t see the point if it doesn’t”
“OK, auntie—”
“Don’t call me that.”
“OK, Fräulein. Suggest something that does mean something.”
“How about … Man is born free, but is everywhere in chains.”
“Oh no—not Marx!”
“It’s Rousseau, you idiot.”
§142
Two days later a milestone in the history of dissent was published. “The Two Thousand Words” manifesto of Ludvík Vaculík. Seventy people signed, many of them writers and artists, including Jiří Menzel, Ivan Klíma, Josef Škvorecký, Milan Kundera and … Petr Jasny. It appeared simultaneously in four newspapers, all of which sold out.
Nell Burkhardt read it on the eve of publication, and thought it unnecessarily complicated and a far-from-easy read. She thought better of telling Petr this.
Janis Bell stuck a copy of Literarny Listy in the next diplomatic bag to be sent to London. Let London make of it what they would. It was an accusation, a catalogue of sins—it was not a call to arms, it was not a call to man barricades where there were no barricades, it was a call for more committees.
We do not want to cause anarchy.
But Jiří did.
Saturdays being much more “Saturday” than they had been for twenty years and more, citizens of Prague seemed to relax in a way they had all but forgotten about and could take a stroll on Václavské náměsti in much the same delightful and aimless way Italians would strut their stuff at passeggiata. On the following Saturday Petr and Nell walked through the heart of Prague.
Outside the Europa Hotel Jiří was selling Skři/Ška—more precisely he was giving it away. Part of Nell wondered what the boy had to say, part of her hoped Petr would not notice, but he did. Jiří thrust a copy at him with a grin. “Read all about it! Cheap at twice the price!”
Petr was still smiling as he accepted the paper. He stopped smiling as he turned to page two, and at page four he exploded.
“It’s blank! You asshole, it’s blank!”
Jiří pointed to the only words on the front page other than Skři/Ška. Quite literally, the small print:
Zero Word Manifesto
“You’re just taking the piss!”
“I don’t know about ‘just’ but yes, we are taking the piss. We are all of us piss-takers.”
“It’s only a matter of weeks since the lifting of censorship, and this is what you do? You waste paper on a prank? Blank fucking pages?”
“Which is the greater sin, to waste paper or to waste ink?”
“People die for freedoms like this!”
“Then I can count on you to defend my freedom to say nothing.”
Petr hit him.
Jiří did not hit back. He moved twenty feet down the street and carried on as if nothing had happened.
Walking home, the tide of anger scarcely ebbing, Petr said, “And where the hell did he get the paper?”
Nell said nothing.
§143
White Rabbit to Pussy-in-the-Well: July 1st
—Our man in Bonn is reporting that Pravda will print an attack on the West German Cultural Mission in Prague next week. Usual thing—‘encouraging anti-socialist forces.’ This is run by one of Brandt’s closest associates from his Berlin days, Nell Burkhardt. Omelette is asking if you’ve come across her.
Pussy-in-the-Well to White Rabbit: July 1st
—Oh yes.
White Rabbit to Pussy-in-the-Well: July 1st
—She is known to us. There is a connection, one Omelette would rather not see renewed. Diesel.
Pussy-in-the-Well to White Rabbit: July 1st
—I don’t think they’ve met.
§144
Malá Strana: July 2nd
Kruger needed Wilderness in Prague. The request came as music to his ears. Anywhere that wasn’t Mělník or Mladá Boleslav might have played the same tune to him.
Two nights back at the fading Europa Hotel, half a dozen mind-numbing meetings, but evenings to himself. Warm July evenings, evenings of pavement cafés and wonderfully pointless meanderings through the labyrinthine Prague streets. He could go to the theatre. He didn’t. He could go to any one of twenty jazz clubs. He didn’t. He could hear poets and novelists, unfettered by censorship, read in bars. He didn’t. He drifted. Hoping to get lost. To lose himself. To lose Mělník and if at all possible to lose Walter Hensel for a while.
He found himself at dusk in Kampa Park walking slowly along the river bank.
To his left the river islands and the Old Town, to his right the narrow end of the park and a high brick wall. Every wall in Prague seemed to be covered in slogans, and after the demonstration three nights ago the graffiti count seemed to have doubled. This stretch of wall was no exception.
IT’S NO USE GOING BACK TO YESTERDAY
Neat, stark, simple. He’d no idea what it meant. Did it have to mean something? In a country that seemed to relish the absurd, the fact of a graffito—if that were the singular—probably mattered more than the words. To spray was a protest, to go to the trouble of making a stencil was a considered protest.
What was it? A Beatle lyric? The back of a Bob Dylan LP?
“Oh Scheiße! Schon nochmal?”
(Oh shit. Not again.)
He looked around. A small, dark woman was reading the same slogan, just a few paces behind him. All but peering over his shoulder. And she’d spoken to herself in German.
She switched to English as soon as she saw his face.
“My God!”
It was clear the woman had recognised him, and for the merest moment he had failed to recognise her.
“Nell?”
“What do you look like? What are you doing here? What do you want? Who are you supposed to be?”
“So many questions. I’m working Nell. Need I say more?”
“Spying?”
“That’s what I do.”
“On … on …?”
“On the Russians. Who else?”
She shook her head, looked down at her feet, then up at him as though trying to detect the man she had known beneath the dyed mousy hair, behind the brown contact lenses.
“I cannot be seen with a spy. We are trying for diplomatic status.”
“We?”
“Germany.”
“I’m not spying on Germany. Are you a diplomat now?”
“I’m head of the Cultural Mission. What kind of a spy are you if you don’t know that?”
“As I said, I’m not spying on Germany.”
“All the same—”
“All the same … nothing. I am no risk to you. Nell, let’s sit down and have a drink. Our first in twenty years. We’ve met in corridors and on staircases. Let’s be comfortable this time.”
“No.”
And she turned to walk away in the direction of the Legií Bridge.
“Nell! What do you have to lose? I am a happily married man with two children. I cannot possibly be a threat to you.”
She stopped and turned.
The look in her eyes showed not a glimmer of belief or trust, but she said, “All right. One drink. Then I go. And you are not to utter nonsense such as ‘for old times’ sake’—old times are old times. I would prefer them to be forgotten. I would prefer to forget them myself.”
“But you can’t.”
“Do you want this drink or not, Joe?”
He fell into step with her, up the stone staircase to the next level, across the tramlines, across the square to the Café Savoy. She did not look at him until they reached the door.
“Happily?” she said, as though she had pondered that word and that alone for the last two minutes.
“Oh yes.”
“And before we go in, what do I call you?”
“Walter.”
“You don’t look like a Walter.”
“Does anyone?”
&n
bsp; §145
Nell hardly touched her martini. She felt the need for control and anything that loosened her grip loosened her grip on the conversation and on Wilderness. Talking to Wilderness was like building a house of cards. One huff, one puff.
Above all she would not mention Petr. Wilderness wasn’t entitled to know a thing about her life with any other man, from the day she’d walked out on him in 1948. She’d never tell him how ragged a life she had led, how work had come to substitute for almost anything and everything—until Petr.
Instead she probed him and found him surprisingly open.
“Did you want children? We never even talked about having children.”
“I suppose I did. Twins came as a bit of a surprise. But I like being someone’s father. I enjoy the … what can I call it? … the psychological spectacle of watching two physically identical girls manifest such different personalities.”
“What are they called?”
“Molly and Joan. We went for short and simple. Judy is Judith Frances Evelyn Burne-Jones. Too much of a mouthful.”
“Speaking as Christina Helène von Raeder Burkhardt I could relish a little simplicity myself.”
“Nell.”
He held up his glass to clink on her name.
She did not.
“Erno?” she said, tacking away from the surprising, sudden intimacy of her nickname and his ham-fisted gesture. “When did you last see Erno?”
“On my way out here nine months ago.”
“Did you meet Trudie?”
“Oh yes.”
“And?”
“Possessive. Pushy. She might just overdo the loving care and hasten Erno into his grave.”
“Oh God, you’re such a … such a man.”
“He hates fuss.”
“But he needs care.”
“When did you last see him?”
“Six weeks ago. Joe, he is not well. You must make the effort and get to Berlin.”
“I’ll try.”
Wilderness knocked back the last of his martini.
“One for the road?”
Then he noticed that she had only sipped at hers.
“Well. I’m having one.”
He went to the bar, not looking back at her. But she could read him easily at this moment. He was wondering if she’d still be there when he turned around.
She was.
She tacked away from the personal once more.
“What do you make of the Czechs?”
“Not a lot. I deal with farmers. There are three types—anachronistic peasants, who distrust everyone and always have done, and care for nothing but muck and money—apparatchiks at the Collectives who seem incapable of thinking for themselves and consult the rule book at every turn—and a hybrid of the two, the apparatchik who has never stopped being a peasant. All of them are usually out to rook you. They’re all on the fiddle. If they’re not trying to con the state, they’re trying to con me. And you?”
This would be as close as she would ever come to mentioning or describing Petr—and a body blow to Wilderness’s cynicism.
“The Czechs are remarkable. I deal with actors and film directors and playwrights. They are delightful, original, charming, funny optimists. They might be the funniest people in Europe were it not for you English.”
And then Nell paused. Wondering about the demands of truth. She owed Wilderness nothing. To whom did she owe truth? To herself? To Czechoslovakia?
“That’s on the outside,” she said. “On the inside they’re just waiting for the hammer to fall.”
§146
Outside the café. A darkness just penetrated by ancient streetlamps. The residual, heady warmth of a summer evening. A time and a place that might be loaded with potential for romance were it any other man and woman.
“Would you like to meet again?”
“What? Over dinner? A romantic tryst with sausages and dumplings?”
“Nell, it’s a simple enough question.”
“And a simple enough answer. No, Joe, I would not.”
“For old times’ sake?”
“The very phrase I asked you not to use. Shall I tell you why? Shall I? For a long time all I had was old times. I nurtured them, I treasured them and then I got over them. Why would I add to them now only to deplete them?”
“I see,” said Wilderness not seeing.
“Besides, each time we would meet the risk would go up. If I were to be seen consorting with a British spy Brandt’s Ostpolitik would be set back ten years. No one in the East would ever trust him again.”
“Consorting?”
“That’s it, Joe. Seize on the least important word in the sentence.”
§147
“I met my old lover on the street last night.”
“What?”
“The Englishman I told you about.”
“He’s here? What’s he doing here?”
Nell had no wish to lie to Petr. What Wilderness had told her was undoubtedly a lie, or if not a lie a fiction—but she repeated what he had told her.
“He’s selling tractors.”
“British tractors?”
“He didn’t say. It hardly matters, does it?”
“Was it pleasant?”
“Disturbing. Joe Wilderness could enrage a saint and make the Pope spit.”
Petr rolled onto his side, one arm on the pillow, one arm around her, pulling her closer.
“But he did not disturb me half as much as I disturbed myself.”
A pause, a minute of silence interrupted only by the rattle of a tram passing the window.
“Tell me.”
“I asked what he made of Czechoslovakia, what he thought of Czechs. His reply was callous, but probably accurate. He deals with farmers, after all. I countered by telling him just a little about you … and Forman … and Hrabal … and Writers ’62. I mentioned no names, just that you were creative and outgoing and … optimistic.”
“That’s OK. I know how to take a compliment.”
“Then—and I don’t know why I said this and I wish I hadn’t—I said that beneath that optimism you were all waiting for the hammer to fall. I don’t know that I know that. It just came to me. Intuition, I suppose. More likely repression. Not sure how well the phrase translates.”
“Oh, its meaning is obvious. And you are right. I cannot speak for Forman or Hrabal, but, yes, I am waiting for the hammer to fall.”
She rolled onto her side, chest to chest, face to face, her finger to his lips willing him to say no more.
But he did.
“Of course, I may not wait for the hammer to fall.”
VIII
Jam Roly-Poly
§148
Mimram, Hertfordshire, England: Late August, 1968—Probably the 24th or 25th
Sunshine with Occasional Clouds
Temperature: 72° F
No Prospect of Rain
It had been a good year for spuds. Troy and the Fat Man had beaten blight with a hefty dose of copper sulphate. Troy always liked the look of potato plants when healthy green leaves glistened with speckles of the purple mixture—iridescent might be the word, although if one were to believe the newspapers, “psychedelic’ ” was the vogue term for such things. He wasn’t wholly certain what “psychedelic” meant.
They’d put off lunch to take the muck cart to the muck heap at the farm a mile or so down the road. On the Fat Man’s advice Troy had bought a 1946 Ferguson TE20 tractor, known to anyone in farming as the “Little Grey Fergie”—a delightfully crude beast by modern standards with a mere two-litre engine, but it would run on paraffin, haul anything that needed hauling and, in all probability, run for ever and ever.
He was not allowed to drive it.
“I seen the way you drives yer Bentley, cock. You best leave tractors to them as knows.”
“And I suppose that means you?”
“Yus. You have no idea what you don’t know about what I know about tractors.”
Troy could
not find anything approaching sense in that sentence, and so had never attempted to usurp the Fat Man from his rightful place on the metal seat. They looked most uncomfortable anyway—like something a giant might use to strain a giant’s spaghetti in the kitchen at the top of the beanstalk. Half an hour on that seat and you’d have rings on your backside the size of florins.
So today he followed a wagonload of manure from Home Farm back to Mimram, in no way finding it unpleasant or symbolic to be stuck behind the muck cart.
A few yards from Troy’s gateway the tractor stopped. Troy looked around the cart. A uniformed copper was speaking to the Fat Man. Not a copper he knew. Ever since old Trubshawe had retired three years ago village bobbies had come and gone with the regularity of one-hit teen idols.
“You can’t bring that in here!”
The Fat Man turned off the engine.
“Eh?”
“I said you can’t bring that in here.”
“Tell you what, cock. Why don’t you ask his nibs?”
A thumb over the shoulder gesturing at Troy.
“Are you responsible for this?”
“Guilty as charged,” said Troy.
“Eh?”
“Yes. I own the load of manure and I also own the house behind you and I’m also getting fed up with this rigmarole.”
Ever since his brother had become Home Secretary in 1964, Troy had had to get used to his weekend visits and the occasional presence of a guardian in the shape of a policeman—or two. The least they could do, he thought, was remember who he was.
A second copper appeared. Plain clothes. A Special Branch officer. One Troy had known in his days at the Yard, Chief Inspector Ernie Leadbetter.
“Sorry about this, Mr. Troy. It’s just that today’s a bit different.”
“Different enough for me to be denied access to my own property, Ernie?”
“Of course not, but if you’d allow me, I will just call your brother from the squad car.”
“Be my guest.”
Thirty seconds later, Ernie was back.
