by Graham Swift
The question reverberates. Theatrical metaphors need to be applied with care to Czechoslovakia, where the theatre has traditionally involved itself very concretely in politics. It is no bizarre accident that the opposition movement was inaugurated by an actor (famous for his romantic leads), threw up as its protagonist a playwright, Václav Havel, and had its first headquarters in a theatre, the fantastically named ‘Laterna Magica’. Yet here was Kriseova testifying to the actual feeling, as the Civic Forum leaders met inside a theatre, that surely they were in a play. No doubt all remarkable events may seem at first unreal, especially when they have the weight of twenty years to deny their possibility. For me, too, these days in Prague had an unreal tinge. But surely people make history, they don’t act it (otherwise everything is excused). Nor do they run after it. Or do they?
Rapt as she seemed capable of being, Kriseova was full of earthy warmth and vitality, and she plainly had a bent for the practical. She described herself as Havel’s ‘fairy godmother’, making sure, amid everything, that he got his medicine for the lung problems he has had since contracting pneumonia in prison. She was also, one guessed, a courageous woman. She spoke of the demonstration on the night of the seventeenth, at which she, her daughter and some five thousand others had been caught in the trap formed by the police in Národní Street, preventing access to Wenceslas Square. All sorts of accounts were circulating about this night. Some said that the police had been specially drugged; that they had used nets to snare small clusters of people; that bodies were seen lying under covers (this apart from the publicized rumour, later proved false, that a student had been killed).
What seemed beyond dispute was the ferocity of the police attacks and that this was a premeditated plan, executed to prevent the escape of a mass of people from a confined space. A public investigation (that unprecedented thing) was currently being conducted into the brutality. A neurologist had testified that the cases of shock were similar to those he had seen in people who had experienced bombardment in the war. Others pointed out that from sheer weight of numbers and from crushing and confinement alone, fatalities would have been likely.
Absolutely beyond doubt is that 17 November was a turning-point in events and a colossal mistake by the authorities. The world changed overnight.
Like Vaculík, Kriseova had found herself stripped of hope in 1969. Formerly a successful journalist, she suddenly had nothing, and had to wrench herself from despair. She took work in a mental hospital, which she says saved her from going mad herself. She saw that the inmates were ‘free’ in a way those outside were not. Her first stories arose from her mental hospital experience. In the 1970s she came under scrutiny and threats from the security police, and, after refusing to ‘retract’, had established, like Vaculík, a regular ‘relationship’ with an investigator and was, of course, prevented from publishing.
How did she get involved in Civic Forum?
She had once presciently told Havel that if he ever got drawn into things so much that he needed help, he should call her. He called soon after.
Was she bitter about the ‘lost’ years and did she want retribution?
You had to remember, she said, that the worst time was in the 1950s. The generation that had known those years was conditioned by its terrible memories, numbed into submission. Even now many of them were sceptical. The generations of the 1960s and after had not lost their hope. And you had to get retribution into perspective: one woman who had recently been assaulted at night in the street was found screaming, ‘They are killing us now! They are going to kill us!’ Her assailant was a solitary molester, but the woman was a Party member and genuinely feared an opposition massacre.
The Prague streets did indeed seem a little darker after speaking to Kriseova. In the cafe the talk on the tram had been confirmed: Adamec had stepped down. But even as she hurried to a possible constitutional crisis, Kriseova was making arrangements to meet me again, to give me some of her stories. I must read them, we must discuss them. Writers!
At the hotel there were no messages about Wolf. I phoned Alžběta to tell her that we seemed to have a meeting with Wolf on Saturday. Could she possibly be there to interpret? I also told her what Kriseova had said and discussed the evening’s news. I could hear anxiety creeping into her voice. I could not tell if this arose from her own assessment of the situation or from my words, the garbled, intrusive words of a foreigner clumsily relaying inside information from one Czech to another. The palpable throb of rumour.
The next morning was bright and clear. There were no uniforms on the street and the trams were crossing the bridge over the Vltava as usual. I had to be at Alžběta’s office at ten thirty to meet Ivan Klíma. (Alžběta seemed to have abandoned normal work, but a revolution was a good excuse.) I phoned the Cultural Section to see if there was a definite time for Wolf.
We’re glad you phoned, I was told. You see, the thing is, there’s been a mistake. The man we spoke to phoned back and said that, after thinking it over, it seemed a little strange that you wanted to meet him. You see, the fact is, whoever he is, he’s the wrong man. He’s not Jiří Wolf.
I called Miloš. I let the enigma of the bogus Wolf go. It was Friday, Miloš’s free day. We were back to where we started. He was at my service. He would do some scouting while I went to see Klíma. I also called a number of contacts I had neglected to follow up, believing we had found Wolf. Those included a man called Hejda, a man called Freund and a man called Doruzka, a leading jazz figure (this a recommendation from Josef Škvorecký) who might put me on to a man called Srp [sic] who might know Wolf. Hejda did not know about Wolf, but suggested someone whom I had already tried without success. Freund was out, but his wife said she would pass on the message. Doruzka, in stylishly idiomatic English, sounded the keynote of my search so far: ‘No, I am afraid this man’s name does not ring any bells with me.’
Now that Wolf was once again a mystery, I could not resist indulging in dubious theories. Could it be that Wolf, on his release, had simply wished to disappear? Could it be that there was something about his personality that had kept him removed from the main circles of activists? Had he always been, perhaps, a little mad? Some of the names and phone numbers I had were copied directly from a typed information sheet on a window in Národní Street, giving details about Pavel Wonka, who had died in prison the previous year. It seemed extraordinary that, if such matters were now public, Wolf should be so elusive.
I told myself that my hypotheses were indeed indulgent. It was wrong to construct riddles merely out of my lack of luck in finding a man. I went to Alžběta’s office to see Klíma.
I had met Klíma on my previous visit. He is a tall, rather gangling man, with straggly dark hair, a sort of misshapen handsomeness and a crinkly smile. He has the air of a veteran from beatnik days and speaks good English. Popular at the time of the Prague Spring, mainly as a playwright, he now has a high reputation, both in and outside his country, as a novelist. Much of his work, though perhaps not the very best, has appeared in English. His untranslated Soudce z Milosti (‘A Judge on Trial’) is considered, along with Vaculík’s The Axe, to be one of the great Czechoslovak novels of recent times.
Comparatively speaking, Klíma has not been severely persecuted during the last twenty years, and I wondered whether for some this has slightly diminished his otherwise considerable standing. Despite the ban on his work at home, he has been able to survive on foreign royalties and to keep up a steady rate of production, and he emanated relative contentment. His life, on the other hand, has scarcely been easy. In 1969 he managed to visit an American university, leaving on the very day (31 August) before the borders were closed. His passport was confiscated on his return and he was not able to travel for eleven years, and then only within Eastern Europe. He ceased to write plays because of the impossibility of seeing them staged. He was harassed, his home searched, his telephone tampered with, but he was never arrested or imprisoned.
Klíma is neither complacent nor possesse
d of any false guilt at not being in the top league of the persecuted. He has a strong sense of his own individuality—I suspect that he shared Vaculík’s ‘secret wish’ not to be involved in politics—and even a rather gleeful sense of irony about how his case goes against the grain of some received Western ideas. He pointed out that he did not sign Charter 77, but, as many of his friends were signatories and he moved in Charter circles, he was nonetheless subject to scrutiny. He also implied that not signing Charter 77 might have been a tactical advantage: you could be active without advertising the fact. He was not snubbed for not signing. His position was that as an author he wished to sign only his own texts.
Unlike Vaculík, Klíma did not disdain manual work. Rather, he took the view that doing other, temporary jobs could be valuable for a writer; and he told a story which was a perfect explosion of the Western ‘myth’. A famous Czech author is seen cleaning the streets by a friend of his at the American Embassy. The American goes into a fit of outrage at how the authorities humiliate the country’s best minds. But the writer (could it be Klíma?) is doing the job voluntarily: it is research for a book.
We discussed Havel, who conforms in paramount fashion to the Western myth and who at that moment was being tipped for president. There were two possible views of Havel in my mind. One, that he was a man moving willingly to meet his destiny as a leader of the people; the other, that he was being sucked into events at some cost to himself, a writer uprooted from his true vocation.
But it seemed that Havel did not have the ‘secret wish’. Klíma said that Havel was, of course, exhausted right now, but underneath he was happy. He called him a ‘childish’ man (I think he meant ‘childlike’). He was happy to be the great citizen. He was a brave man, yes, but he had political ambitions—they were not thrust upon him. Klíma had always found Havel’s essays and political writings more impressive than his plays.
We spoke of other Czech writers, the exiles Kundera and Škvorecký. Klíma thought Kundera was a great writer but self-interested. He played up to Western preconceptions in terms of both his own position and his portrayal of Czechoslovakia, which Klíma found often superficial and too eager for symbols. The Unbearable Lightness of Being was not entirely liked in Czechoslovakia. Škvorecký, on the other hand, retained a strong following, particularly among the younger generation, and was seen as the exile with the greater integrity.
We turned to Czechoslovak writing generally and to what the future held. Both Vaculík and Kriseova had spoken forcibly about the discrediting of the Czech Writers’ Union, and Vaculík had wished to hold back even from the newly established free association of writers. Klíma seemed to be directly involved in the founding of this new association (Obec—‘Community’), but some of the harshest language of a generally gently spoken man was reserved for the old Union. He called it an ‘instrument of national treason’ which for twenty years had accepted without protest that hundreds of Czech writers were suppressed and persecuted, if not imprisoned. The Union, he said, was ‘covered in shame’. However, there should be no ‘craving for revenge’. Members of the old Union should be allowed, as individuals, to join the new Community. This was in accordance with the Community’s overriding commitment to freedom of expression. But there was to be no ‘fusion’ between the two bodies.
What of the Union’s money, its assets?
Klíma said, with some bitterness, that the Union had no assets, only tables and typewriters. Then he said there should be a calling to account for the ‘abuse of literary funds’.
I half appreciated what he meant. I knew that all writers, Union members or not, were obliged to pay a percentage of income to a Literary Fund. In effect, writers who were banned were forced to pay for the privileges of the approved.
From my visit of the year before, I had a graphic illustration of what these privileges might entail. I vividly remember being taken from Bratislava on a snowy day to a ‘castle’ in the Slovak countryside, which was owned by, or rather allocated to, the Slovak Writers’ Union. I have to say that those who took me did so in a spirit of hospitality but also with detectable unease.
The ‘castle’ was a grand country house, set in extensive grounds and approached along a magnificent avenue of poplars. I was told that for a very small payment writers could come here to work; though few of the many rooms seemed occupied. Nonetheless, we were greeted by a permanent staff and ushered into a building that was as warmly heated as it was immaculately decorated and furnished. I was given a brief tour and shown one of the best bedrooms—one of the most sumptuous and elegant guest-rooms I have ever seen. Brezhnev, I was told, once slept here.
For their small payment, writers were also fed. There were only four of us, and the place really did seem empty, but a table (dwarfed by the proportions of the room around it) was laid for lunch, complete with fine cutlery and glassware. While snow fell outside on noble trees, a waitress served us a meal worthy of any restaurant, in an atmosphere of Cinderella-like fantasy.
I asked Klíma what would become of such places and of the Literary Fund. He said the Literary Fund and all that it paid for—the ‘castles’, the Union buildings, offices, secretaries —all belonged to the Ministry of Culture. The Union owned nothing. He did not know what would happen now. He said that foreigners often overlooked the abuses in his country that were insidious and did not form neat or dramatic symbols. Of course individuals had been martyrs and suffered terribly and bravely, but the real damage was the gradual erosion of the self-respect of a whole people, the spread of corruption and the simultaneous ruination, by progressive mismanagement, of the economy and the environment.
It was perhaps the wrong moment, but I asked Klíma about Wolf.
No, Wolf’s case was not familiar to him.
I lunched with Alžběta. I had told her about Wolf proving not to be Wolf. She seemed in a low mood. I was not sure if this was because she had entered the spirit of the search and felt thwarted, or because she was anxious at the uncertainty still surrounding Adamec’s resignation. Klíma had a theory that Adamec had resigned with the hidden purpose of popping up again as president. The ultimatum of the general strike stood. The streets were still calm. I went back to the hotel and waited for a call from Miloš.
Miloš duly rang, in positive mood. He had inquired again at Civic Forum. No success. Then he had tracked down some VONS people and had been given an address for Wolf in Prague. No phone. He had gone to the address and found no one there. But he had left a note on the door, with a brief explanation, asking Wolf to call him or (if he spoke English) to call me at the hotel. So far, no replies. But we could only wait and see. I made a note of the address and we agreed to phone each other as soon as we heard anything.
I waited. The situation was a considerable improvement from the morning—at least I knew Wolf was in Prague. But, as time went by, I started to have doubts. Wolf did not have to be at the address at all. I also reflected on the wisdom of leaving notes on doors. Surely this was rash, even now. A forgotten fact came back to me: Wolf ’s sentence had included not only six years’ imprisonment, now served, but also three years’ ‘protective surveillance’.
Late that evening there was a knock on the door. Surely not? No, it was Eda Kriseova, eyes bloodshot with fatigue, but smiling, dressed in a trench coat and chic black hat and clutching a folder of papers. The scene was straight out of a spy movie.
Would she like a drink?
No, she was too tired; she had been all day with Civic Forum; she had to go and rest. But here were the stories and extracts from a novel she had promised to bring me. We talked for a moment in the corridor. She told me that Civic Forum had reached provisional agreement for a reformed government and that President Husak would resign that weekend. I hardly registered the full import of these quietly spoken words. I took the folder and wished her good night.
Two things struck me. That despite what was clearly an exhausting and historic day, she was still writer enough to find time to bring me her manuscripts
. Secondly, that this was one of Prague’s ‘international’ hotels, much used by Western visitors, and three weeks ago one might legitimately have feared bugs and the ears of informers. But here was Kriseova announcing her momentous news in one of its corridors. Thus you learn of the fall of tyrants.
I began reading Kriseova’s work immediately. The green light on my phone came on. Wolf? No. A message left by a Mr Freund, giving the same address for Wolf that Miloš had discovered.
It was snowing the next morning. I phoned Miloš, who had heard nothing and would be busy till four o’clock. I had an arrangement to meet Igor from Bratislava at two in the hotel lobby. Miloš said he could find time to call me around one-thirty. The morning was free and, though I was beginning to lose hope, I resolved to go to Wolf’s address myself on blind chance. Since this might have been fruitless anyway without someone who spoke Czech, I called Alžběta. If Kriseova was Havel’s fairy godmother, Alžběta was surely the fairy godmother of my search for Wolf. It was Saturday, I could hear a child in the background, but she agreed to come.
By a stroke of luck, the address given for Wolf was not far from where Alžběta herself lived, south of the centre of Prague, some three stops on the metro from Wenceslas Square. Alžběta met me at the station and, following a street map, we walked through the snow. Wolf ’s street was a quiet cul-de-sac (though all the streets seemed quiet), with family houses on one side and a run-down apartment block, where Wolf lived, on the other. A cold, gloomy landing. We knocked. No answer.
Jammed in the door frame was a pencil-written note on a scrap of paper, which, according to Alžběta, was to a woman and simply said, ‘Wait for me here.’ It seemed to have been written by Wolf himself and suggested he had been here recently. We knocked again, just in case, waited, considered; then knocked at a neighbour’s along the landing. A burly man in a check shirt appeared, who did not seem unduly suspicious of us.
