Jan hopped about, crowing: ‘A real fire! Wait till I get to school. That’ll really be something to tell ’em!’
‘In that respect,’ I observed gravely, ‘your father will never fail you.’
The boys clamoured for a camp fire. I protested faintly that we’d had enough of the Promethean element for one day.
‘We’ll do it ourselves,’ Jan promised. ‘We learnt how to make a base to stop it from spreading at our Pioneer meetings. Tati was never a Pioneer,’ he excused his father kindly.
‘All right.’ I went indoors to wrestle with the stove which when fed with the self-same dry grass, produced only smouldering blackness. The chill had just about been taken off the room when the boys called me to supper. We sat on our haunches eating toasted sausages and all but incinerated potatoes. The meal, we all agreed, was indescribable.
I awoke in the middle of the night with my gastric juices in turmoil and prodded Pavel into consciousness.
‘Quick,’ I gulped with my hand to my mouth, ‘Pass me that vase.’
‘But it’s hand-painted!’ Pavel protested.
‘This is not the occasion for an appreciation of the arts.’ A momentous heave brought Pavel to my side without further argument. At the same time Zdenek burst into our room with the cheering news that he had puked all over his bed.
While I gathered up the soiled sheets and pillow-cases in the morning, I pondered the cause of the disturbance. It could not have been the sausages because Pavel, the only unafflicted one of us, had eaten some. But he had declined the potatoes. I asked him carefully what they had burnt on the fire.
‘Pine cones and wood,’ he replied. ‘Then I threw on some of the creosote paper from the roof. It made a lovely blaze.’
That explained it. The ash on the potatoes! Creosote! Coal tar! A mixture of phenols and their ethers. Phenol, commonly known as carbolic acid, was caustic poison!
‘A touch of arson, followed by attempted familicide! It’ll be a miracle if our children live to a ripe age,’ I teased him.
Still groggy from the nocturnal upheaval, I suggested an early departure. Pavel filled the tank from his reserve can and the Minx trundled happily downhill. At the road she came to a dead halt. I had an undeniable feeling of déjà vu. Pavel trudged off to the village and hauled the local mechanic out of the once-a-week cinema. After tinkering for hours he had not diagnosed the trouble. Stragglers returning home from the pub joined us. At length one more perspicacious than the others perceived that the tank did not contain petrol but diesel oil, to which the Minx’s British innards were not adapted.
‘All out and push!’ Pavel cried. This was another pre-jail slogan I could cheerfully have given a miss.
We pushed and rolled the car to the village where the National Committee chief obligingly got out of bed, in a long night shirt, and found us the only spare can of petrol in Kytlice.
We reached Prague at 3 a.m.
The old promise was still operative. Life with Pavel was anything but boring.
Chapter 17
‘Sit down, I have something to discuss with you,’ said Pavel grimly on the first evening of my return from a fortnight’s course of lectures to teachers of English. I probed my memory for some failing on my part.
He took a deep breath and announced: ‘I’ve lost my job.’
I sighed with relief: the fault was not mine. ‘Is that all?’
‘All?’ he squeaked. I poured some more coffee. ‘Don’t you want to know why?’ he demanded.
I hardly expected a concrete reason: I had put it down to the political weather vane.
‘For being drunk and seducing a married colleague in working hours!’ Pavel declared dramatically.
‘You? Oh, no, I don’t believe it! Darling, you haven’t been brainwashed again, have you?’
‘No, this time the charges are true,’ he admitted glumly.
The dear man certainly had a flair for unusual predicaments! ‘Tell me about it,’ I invited him, leaning comfortably against the cushions with the air of one about to plunge into a salacious novel.
‘You don’t sound the least bit scandalized,’ he grumbled.
Now he was shocked because I was not shocked. ‘Let me hear how it came about and, if you deserve it, I’ll throw a fit of righteous indignation.’
‘Well,’ Pavel swallowed hard. It sounded as though this confession was going to be harder than the one in court. ‘It happened on my birthday. I bragged about my capacity for alcohol in our diplomatic days, and the girls decided to test it. They mixed my drinks, poured me doubles and spiked my brandy with paprika. I had a blackout.’
‘Not surprising after four years of abstinence,’ I put in quickly.
Pavel went on. ‘I don’t remember a thing till the next morning when I woke up with a head full of church bells and a tongue like mouldy cheese. At work Prokopová told me that after the drinks a young woman and I had gone into a small, unused room which, unfortunately, could be viewed from across the yard. Some zealous soul had reported our activity to the Party CC, with the result that she was instructed to give us immediate notice.’
‘Normally such a thing would have been settled on the spot,’ I protested. ‘It’s nothing to do with the Central Committee. This is a clear case of political discrimination. What a chance, though, for the CC to wag a moral finger at a trial victim.’ I stifled a giggle.
‘I don’t see anything funny about it.’ Pavel sounded aggrieved.
‘I’m sorry, darling, it’s my distorted sense of humour. You, who never have time even to look at another woman, caught in flagrante by your lady boss, the formidable Prokopová! I only regret that having made such a colossal idiot of yourself, you didn’t get any fun out of it. But only Pavel Kavan could be sacked for seduction in a coma! Cheer up! We’ve survived tougher situations. I’ll tell you what, I’m rich at the moment. I’ll invite you out to dinner on my earnings, and then you can seduce me. How’s that?’
Pavel grinned in spite of himself. ‘All right, if that’s the way you feel.’
A mood of sadness seized me. From the back of the bathroom cupboard I took out the remains of my diplomatic cosmetics, I watched my face changing under an art as ancient as Egypt; lines and wrinkles faded, hollows filled, bloom returned, eyes widened and lips retrieved the fulness of untroubled youth. I studied the picture I had painted. Gratifying, but it wasn’t me. It was a deception, a gentle fraud. Would I dare to take it with me this evening? Defiantly I added a suspicion of eye shadow.
I went to my wardrobe and under an old maternity smock I found the shocking pink dress my sister had sent some years before. The neckline did not exactly plunge but it did reveal a few inches of chest bone and the skirt was slightly less severe than a Doric column.
‘Why darling, you look lovely!’ Pavel’s unfeigned surprise was hardly flattering. ‘Funny, I never thought of you as good looking. I took to you immediately we met but that was because of your honesty. And I knew you’d be a sticker. But I didn’t notice you had looks.’
‘I haven’t; it’s a genie out of the bottle,’ I said lightly.
Pavel selected a wine tavern he had known in his student days and to which he had taken me during my first year in Czechoslovakia. I rubbed my eyes. Where were the dark walls and ponderous furniture? Here was a harvest of colour! Opaque tear drops, suspended from a cobalt ceiling, cast diffused light on magenta wall panels. Elegant contemporary chairs splashed emerald, purple and black patches about the room. The women were dressed in Chinese brocade, flowered silk and billowing taffeta, flashing with Jablonec jewellery. Here and there tanned shoulders gleamed.
Pavel muttered something about encroachment by the West.
‘If you mean that only the West knows how to enjoy life, you’re wrong,’ I retorted. ‘By all accounts the Russians and even the Poles do. The Czechs are too strait-laced. They confuse gaiety with licentiousness and luxury with licence. Or is it only our generation of communists? These young people don’t look as though their
socialist consciences are suffering for a night out.’
I ordered an aperitif, a three-course meal and wine. The heady Tokaj gave our tongues a brilliance that startled us both. From the antiquity of our austere youth we dug up fragments of poetry. I quoted Byron’s Prometheus in English, Pavel recited his Sons of Greece in Czech. We contrasted the two humourists, Hašek, the Chaplin of literature, and Shaw, the intellectual clown. We were talking more freely than at any time since Pavel’s return. A barrier had been dissolved — Milan. The score was even. Pavel was able to forgive. I would never be able to forget but I pushed Milan’s memory onto a lower level of consciousness.
A friend whom we hadn’t seen since Pavel’s release joined us from another table; he had been in Bratislava. He raised his glass in belated congratulations.
‘Aren’t you proud of Rosemary and the way she managed while you were away?’
‘What? Oh, yes,’ muttered Pavel in confusion. It was obvious the thought had not occurred to him.
‘Well, dammit, it was harder for her than the other wives,’ his friend insisted. ‘She gave up family, country and decent code of behaviour for this madhouse. We are subconsciously conditioned to tragedy. The English are so normal they don’t even have a subconscious.’
‘Hmm.’ Pavel grew pensive. He seemed to be thinking this over.
On the way home, as I was dozing against his shoulder, he whispered: ‘Of all possible ways of spicing middle age, falling in love with your own wife is the most satisfying.’
Probably never again would the combination of wine and circumstance induce my unsentimental husband to articulate his feelings. That night was like picking up a well-loved book after many years and discovering that the pleasure was as deep as the first reading, or rather had deepened with the intervening experience of life.
*
Now that the label ‘family of a traitor’ had been removed, I was permitted to take the boys to England where they had a joyful reunion with their grandparents.
We came back refreshed and refuelled. But the flat was a scene of monumental disorder. Pavel had used up all the crockery, as well as his smalls and shirts, intending to have a good clear up before we arrived. Instead he had had a coronary, and he was only forty-three. I had been sure that once he was out of jail he would have no further trouble. He looked pale but his eyes were bright. Papers were strewn all over the floor, the chairs occupied by Klinger, Hronek and Arnošt Tauber.
‘He’s supposed to be resting,’ Evžen complained. ‘He’s got a heart attack because he thinks he can translate Ten Days That Shook the World in a month on cottee and cigarettes. When he is discharged, instead of obeying doctor’s orders, he comes up with …’
‘A political dictionary,’ Pavel burst in. ‘I’ve checked with the bookshops. There is an absolute dearth of comprehensive but concise reference books. We’ll supply one within a year.’
Hronek’s small, wary face cracked in a lopsided grin. ‘It’s a bloody nerve, really, four people taking on such a huge enterprise. Tauber is covering economics; Pavel diplomacy and foreign affairs; Evžen will do Slovakia; and I’ll be handling everything else. Pavel will compile and edit the whole thing as he’s unlikely to find regular employment in a hurry after his latest fiasco!’
Pavel flung himself into the work with renewed energy, stopping only to take a pill when his constitution protested. His output was high, but offset by emotional ups and downs. When he was in the depths, he would come to me, stating: ‘I’m depressed. Cheer me up.’ When he was out of the trough, riding the crests once more, he would resent his interim dependence upon me. So, he alternately clung to me and rejected me. This was unsettling though understandable; for he was haunted by his old fear that his life would be cut short before he had accomplished his aims. A less ambitious man would have attempted less, a more philosophical man would have suffered less.
Encompassing the whole political scene, however concisely, required space. Pavel spread the whole world round our flat which would have more comfortably accommodated one ageing person of limited interests. His reference books were piled on the floor or stacked in boxes. Not an inch of floor or furniture was free of paper.
‘Italy,’ Pavel roared with double strength, as befitted a two-tailed Czech lion, at eleven o’clock one night. ‘I’ve lost Italy.’
‘You’ll wake the house,’ I cautioned him. ‘And stop prowling, or you’ll tread on Trotsky or Khrushchev or somebody and they’ll go to press with footprints over them. I’ll find Italy for you. Go and make yourself some hot milk.’
I located Italy under ‘Abyssinia,’ one of the cross-references.
Lebensraum was now a most acute problem. We should have to acquire our rightful quota before we went beserk. The authorities were still passing the buck. Coercive action was indicated. Equipped with a thermos flask and blanket, I ensconced myself in the office of the housing manager of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
‘It’s positively disgusting,’ I told him. ‘A man has been unjustly imprisoned and he still can’t get justice. This Ministry owes us a decent flat.’
‘We have no flats available even for our own employees,’ the official stated. ‘May I point out that your husband no longer works for the Ministry.’
‘That’s not his fault. The Ministry turned us out of our original flat. I’m not leaving until you’ve found us equivalent accommodation.’
*
He shrugged and returned to his work. After an hour I poured myself some coffee. The official fidgeted but said nothing. Another hour passed. I poured another cup. The official had been chewing gum steadily since I arrived.
‘I should have thought this country could have imported more useful commodities from America than chewing gum,’ I remarked conversationally.
He snorted as though bitten by a persistent horsefly. Surreptitiously, under cover of blowing his nose, he removed the gum. I took out my knitting, dropping a needle on the floor with a clatter every few minutes. With a groan, the man suddenly reached for a sheet of paper. I watched with bated breath while he wrote a statement authorizing our re-housing. He signed it and handed it to me: ‘Now go away.’
Two years after Pavel’s release from prison, we moved into a three-roomed flat in a panel block on the outskirts of Prague. Work on the dictionary proceeded more smoothly after that. It was completed within a year. Its authors were exhausted but satisfied. Experts reviewed it and recommended publication. The publishers were about to hand it to the printers when the wheels ground to a halt. Pavel Auersperg1 of the Central Committee had sharply criticized the dictionary’s political concept.
‘It’s strange that none of the other political authorities discovered these shortcomings. Auersperg’s reservations are directed not at the dictionary but at its authors. It’s enough that the name Kavan is among them,’ Pavel exclaimed bitterly.
I sighed. It was clear that until the truth about the show trials was published and the socialist bloc made up its mind about Yugoslavia, Pavel’s position would remain precarious. Neither prospect looked hopeful. The two commissions had been wound up, a few cases had been reviewed and re-tried. The activity of Slánský and his co-defendants had been redefined as anti-Party rather than anti-state. All the blame for inadmissible police methods was laid on Doubek and one other investigator who were then tried and convicted, and released after serving a few months. The cover-up was complete; both the Party rank and file and the general public were left in the dark. Titoism — now re-christened revisionism — was again a term of political abuse.
My own recent experience had confirmed that the name of Kavan was no asset when job-hunting. Artia had a vacancy for a representative to deal with the English publishers of books printed in Czechoslovakia. My Czech was almost faultless, I could claim to understand the English. I seemed perfect for the job and the job for me. I was turned down as a security risk. Why? On account of your husband. But he’s been rehabilitated. That makes you an obvious recruit for the British Secret
Service. English wife of wrongfully jailed Czech; bound to be bitter. Not true. We know but …
‘In any case,’ I interrupted impatiently. ‘The Secret Service would suss out in a moment that I’m far too transparent to be of any use. I couldn’t fool anyone.’
The director shook his head regretfully. ‘We cannot be too careful.’
Pavel came in angry and strained. ‘The publishers refuse to publish the dictionary,’ he stated flatly. ‘Of course they’re too cowardly to give the reason.’
The crushing weight of his disappointment bore down upon me. I sank on to a kitchen chair and dropped my head on my hands. After all that work, to break their contract; it was too cruel.
Pavel declined supper and said he would go to bed early. Suddenly he doubled up in agony; his face was grey and sweaty. I phoned for an ambulance. ‘Please hurry, it’s a coronary. I know the symptoms.’
The voice at the other end asked for details: name, date of birth, description of symptoms, dates of previous attacks.
‘Can’t you complete the form later and just send the ambulance,’ I pleaded. ‘My husband’s life is at stake.’
I paced the room between Pavel’s divan and the window for half an hour. I phoned again and was told sharply that as soon as an ambulance was available it would be sent. Another agonizing half hour passed.
‘My husband’s a heart case, he might have died before you got here,’ I reproached the big ambulance man.
‘Sorry lady, all the hospitals are short of ambulances,’ he apologized awkwardly.
I held Pavel’s hand all the way. ‘You’ll be all right. People have four or five coronaries and get over them. There are statistics to prove it.’ I was telling myself as much as Pavel.
Love and Freedom Page 23
