Prague Spring

by Simon Mawer

  * * *

  At dinner that evening they sat amongst workers who had exceeded their quotas, managers of farming collectives who had manipulated the figures to create an impression of surplus, factory managers who had passed their targets on paper if not in reality, party officials who had kissed the right arses. The men wore ill-fitting, shiny suits, their wives clumsy floral dresses. A pianist played Chopin remarkably well and a master of ceremonies commandeered the microphone to welcome a fraternal delegation from Poland to “our Bohemian beauty spot, in the hope that mutual respect and cooperation might always be the bond that ties our two peoples together.” There was scattered applause, but the Polish delegates really wanted to get on with the meal. Soup came and went, the usual thin broth with a dubious liver dumpling floating in it like a turd in a lavatory pan. It was followed by pork and duck weighed down with bread dumplings, each portion carefully defined in grams as though parsimony ruled in the kitchens and every ingredient had to be accounted for.

  It was as they were starting their main course that someone came over to their table from the Polish party. Sam half-rose from his seat but the man had eyes only for Lenka. “Lenička,” he called her. “My dear Lenička.”

  She looked surprised and faintly embarrassed at his attention, but she accepted a kiss on one cheek. “This is my friend, Samuel,” she said. There was a shaking of hands and an exchange of names. Pavel Rovnák, he said. He was slight of build with dark hair and a sallow complexion. He wore a mustache that might once have been a homage to Joseph Stalin but was now trimmed to suit the times. “I am an old family friend,” he explained, “but Lenka and I haven’t seen each other for some time. Isn’t it strange how even in a small country such as ours it is still possible to avoid someone”—he looked accusingly at Lenka—”and then to meet up in Mariánské Lázně of all places?” He paused, as though expecting some matching remark from her, perhaps an explanation of what she was doing there with this foreigner who appeared to speak such excellent Czech. “You look well,” he said to fill the void. “And your lovely mother? How is she?” And then when Lenka had offered scant information, he turned back to Sam. “You are American, perhaps?”

  “English. At the embassy.”

  “Ah, the embassy.” Rovnák pursed his lips—the mustache twitched—and looked again from one to the other as though searching for further clues. “You speak good Czech for a foreigner.”

  “Not as good as Lenka’s English.”

  “She has been studying the language at university. I’m glad you have done so well, zlato.”

  Lenka shrugged, as though it was of no account. “Are you staying in the hotel?” she asked.

  “Sadly I have to get back to Prague this evening. In fact”—he glanced round—”I must get back to my table. These Poles cannot be left on their own for too long. It has been good to meet you, Samuel. And Lenička, you must keep in touch.”

  Lenka said nothing and went back to her meal. An outburst of laughter greeted the man’s return to his table. Sam waited. Lenka drank some wine then carefully replaced her glass. “That’s him,” she said quietly. “I told you about him. The aparátník. Pavel Rovnák.”

  Sam had always perceived her as tough—smiling, delightful, but tough. Yet now it was as though he saw her through a magnifying lens. He could glimpse her insecurities, imagine her as a vulnerable young girl, a lumpish fifteen-year-old uncertain of the vagaries of her body, possessed only of a distant memory of her father and subject to a rancorous mother. And there was this man with his amiable and enticing ways, a guarantor of present comforts and future success.

  “I hated that mustache,” she said, reaching for her glass again.

  * * *

  Rovnák was as good as his word and left when the meal had more or less come to an end and toasts were being drunk. He passed their table on his way out and lifted Lenka’s hand to his lips, renewing his exhortation to keep in touch. But he was very sorry, he just had to be back in Prague by that evening. Otherwise he would have asked Lenka for a dance.

  “His wife keeps him on a tight lead,” she suggested when he had gone. It was difficult to interpret her tone. Was there some hint of regret there amidst the bitterness? The pianist had exhausted the possibilities of Chopin and begun to feel his way into a few popular numbers—”Smoke Gets in Your Eyes,” “The Continental,” that kind of thing. The Polish trades unionists and their wives took to the floor. Sam and Lenka followed. For a while they shuffled round amidst the insidious smell of sweet floral perfume and sour body odor that hung around the dancers before Sam suggested they take a breath of fresh air.

  The spa gardens were beautiful at night, touched with a glimmer of their former glory. You could almost imagine the ghosts of the prewar demimonde encountering phantom crowned heads amongst the fountains and the colonnades. “I thought you might be angry to meet my first lover,” she said as they walked. “I have heard that Englishmen can be very jealous.”

  “Not at all. He seemed very polite.”

  “He was wondering if I have become a prostitute.”

  “Don’t be silly.”

  “I could see it in his eyes. And he was calculating what my price might be.”

  * * *

  It wasn’t particularly late when they returned to the hotel but the Polish group had gone and the dining room was shut. Only the disgruntled receptionist remained on duty in the foyer. As Sam took the room key the man handed over an envelope with grim ill will, as though even passing on a letter went far beyond the call of duty. Sam pocketed the envelope without giving the receptionist the satisfaction of seeing him open it. Through pools of feeble light they climbed the stairs to the first floor. Sam unlocked the door to the Chopin suite and pushed it open for Lenka to go through into the sitting room.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “Probably the bill. Just the kind of thing they’d do, in case we go off tomorrow morning without paying.”

  But the envelope did not contain the bill. It was a simple one-line note, written in English. Perhaps a stroll to the Kolonáda tomorrow morning? Eight o’clock? It was signed Egorkin.

  He smiled. In the more relaxed atmosphere of Mariánské Lázně the man clearly had a way of evading his escort. Lenka had gone into the bathroom. “It’s nothing,” he called to her. He went into the bedroom and looked round, as though hidden microphones might reveal themselves to his gaze. Hotels in which foreigners might stay were notorious for being bugged. You didn’t wonder about it, you assumed it. But all he saw was the broken plasterwork of the ceiling, the heavy velvet curtains, the wardrobe with its poorly silvered mirror, the chest of drawers whose veneer was lifting away at the corners. He waited for her to come from the bathroom, her face scrubbed of makeup and as vulnerable as a young girl’s, before handing her the note and putting his finger to his lips.

  She looked at him inquiringly. “You will go?”

  “I think so.”

  She reached behind her to unzip the dress, the outfit they had bought in Munich, and let it slide to the floor. Then she dropped her slip around her feet and stepped out of it as though stepping out of a pool of water, holding his eye and smiling. “Do you like what you see?”

  “Of course I do.”

  “And are you thinking of that man, Pavel Rovnák? Are you jealous of him?”

  “You asked me that already. I’m jealous of what he took from you. But more than that, I’m angry that he used you.”

  She unfastened her brassiere and dropped it as carelessly as a child discarding sweet papers. “And I used him. So it was on both sides. And it was a long time ago. The past.”

  But their love was entirely in the present, a slow, deliberate act, as though they had been lovers for years rather than weeks; at her climax convulsions racked her body in ways that couldn’t be contrived, couldn’t be anything but the ecstasy of the moment. He’d never known this with Steffie, never this intensity, never this incontinence. Anything else might be a lie, but this was not
. Yet in the aftermath he looked at her lying there, spent, damp with sweat, and wondered about the hard core of her, that part which had accepted, even welcomed, the attentions of Pavel Rovnák.

  * * *

  Things were different in the morning. The morning was fresh and cool—the town lies six hundred meters above sea level, out of the smog and heat of the lowlands—and Lenka was lying on her back in the chaos of sheets. Sunlight from the open windows caught the froth of dun-colored hair between her thighs and turned it the color of honey. She smiled at him, and seemed, with that smile, entirely and delightfully vulnerable—and part of him in a way that he had never imagined a woman might be.

  That moment could stand forever, preserved in the fixative of memory.

  * * *

  At breakfast she seemed put out at the idea of his meeting Egorkin. “Why does he have to steal our time?”

  “I can’t very well ignore him. Maybe you should come as well. To offer your congratulations on his performance.”

  “I’ll wait for you here.”

  “You’re going to sulk.”

  “Sulk? What is sulk?”

  “What you’re doing now.” He made a face, pouting.

  She laughed. “Trucovat.” And her laughter meant that she wasn’t. So she went back to the room to wait, while Sam, with that morning’s copy of Rudé Právo tucked under his arm, took a stroll in the spa gardens. A few drab figures wandered the paths, but it was early for the crowds and the magnificent wrought-iron Kolonáda was almost empty, like an elaborate stage set waiting for players.

  What, he wondered, did the Russian want? Surely not just to thank him for coming all the way to his recital in Mariánské Lázně. He chose a bench and sat to read the paper, a task he had every morning at work, to deliver a digest of the morning’s news for Eric Whittaker to review. Today’s front page announced that the East German leader Walter Ulbricht was visiting Karlsbad with his sidekick Erich Honecker—an unforeseen event that stirred the commentators to a frenzy of speculation. Sam scanned the reports, pausing to read whatever caught his eye—in this case, Dubček meeting the unexpected guests at the airport and a young girl from the Pioneers dutifully presenting the East German leader with a bouquet of flowers and receiving an ill-aimed kiss on the neck in return. There had been a stony silence from the crowd that had gathered to watch. Ulbricht was hated in Czechoslovakia just as he was hated in his own country. But the question uppermost in Sam Wareham’s mind was, what was the man doing here? Leafing through the pages and loathing the newsprint that stained his fingers, he felt like a soothsayer trying to read the entrails of some sacrificial animal and thereby foretell the future. One thing he knew for sure: a visit from Ulbricht was like a knock on the door from the grim reaper himself.

  “Dobrý den.”

  He looked up with a start. Egorkin was standing over him. Seen close and in the clear light of morning he looked older than previously. There were hints of acne scars on his cheeks. He’d cut himself shaving and there was a dab of cotton wool on his neck. Sitting down, he glanced at Sam’s newspaper and said, in Russian, “It looks as though we made the right choice to come here rather than Karlsbad. Of course, I am joking. I have no choice in such matters. They decide for me.” He took out a silver cigarette case and held it out. “They’re American,” he said reassuringly.

  “Thanks, but I’m trying to give them up.”

  That seemed to amuse the man. “That is exactly what I am doing—converting to American cigarettes after a lifetime of Belomor is as good as giving up.” He blew smoke away towards the vaulted ironwork overhead.

  “The recital,” Sam said, “was wonderful. You played so well together.”

  Egorkin nodded. “We are, what do you say in English? In harmony. But I didn’t come here to talk about my music. What I want to do is to explain my situation.”

  Sam sat back on the bench and looked out across the gardens. He noticed inconsequential things. A woman walking a poodle. Two children running and laughing ahead of their parents. A fountain shattering sunlight into a thousand fragments. Quotidian events impressed on his retina and, perhaps, his memory. “Tell me.”

  Egorkin hesitated, as though he had not really thought this through. But he must have. Whatever it was, he must have thought about it long and hard. “You perhaps know something of me by reputation.”

  “I know something.”

  “For example, that I have been outspoken about matters in my homeland and so I have been forbidden to travel to the West. My being here in Czechoslovakia is considered a great concession, almost a prize for having accepted my fate with good grace.”

  “I’ve heard something about it.”

  Egorkin nodded. “And I am only here now because it is early morning and my escort is lazy. Like the whole Soviet system, they watch only when they know they are being watched.” He laughed. “It is not quite as simple as that, however.”

  “I didn’t think it would be.”

  “I expect you to act in an entirely professional manner over this.”

  “Of course I will.”

  “So. There is also the matter of Nadezhda Nikolayevna.” The Russian seemed to gather his thoughts, or perhaps, his courage. “She is, you understand, in love with me. And I”—he hesitated as though he were not so clear on the matter—”I am in love with her.”

  The man paused, smoking and looking out of the colonnade. The woman with the poodle had gone, so too the children. An ancient couple, who perhaps had come to the spa to find the key to eternal life, walked past. They looked at Egorkin as though they recognized him.

  Sam asked, “What does this admittedly awkward state of affairs have to do with a British diplomat?”

  Egorkin nodded thoughtfully. Finally he said, “I would like your advice. You see”—another draw on his cigarette—”I want your assistance in getting us to the West. We wish to claim political asylum.”

  “You and Nadezhda Nikolayevna?”

  “Exactly. Does that surprise you?”

  “Not entirely. But I don’t see how I can help you. The very best you could expect is to gain entry to one of the Western embassies. You might be granted asylum of some kind, but that might mean the two of you becoming prisoners in the embassy itself. Like Cardinal Mindszenty in Budapest. Twelve years so far. Unless the Czechs would agree to your leaving.”

  The man frowned. Dark eyebrows, pockmarked skin, a mouth clamped into a line of disapprobation, as though he had heard discord in the strings. “Did you know that the London Symphony Orchestra offered me the post of principal conductor when they got rid of Kertész? I was not able to take the post because my country did not allow it. That is what I have to deal with.” He fidgeted another cigarette from his case, snapped at the lighter, drew sharply in. Sam continued, dredging up his knowledge of consular affairs.

  “Whether an embassy would give you shelter is entirely at the discretion of the ambassador. You understand that, don’t you? Most countries, including my own, do not recognize the legality of what is known as diplomatic asylum—sanctuary in one of its embassies. Legally a refugee cannot apply for political asylum until he is actually in the receiving country’s territory.”

  “But isn’t an embassy—?”

  “—an extraterritorial possession? That’s a popular misconception. Under international law an embassy remains the territory of the host nation. It’s just that the agents of the host nation may not enter the embassy without the express permission of the ambassador. So you, or anyone else seeking refuge, would be relying on the goodwill of the ambassador. His job would be to consider what risks you might run if he were to insist that you leave his embassy, but above all he would have to consider the best interests of his own country. I’m afraid I’m beginning to sound like a textbook. Or a lawyer. Maybe I will have one of your cigarettes.”

  There was a pause for the little ritual of lighting up. Sam attempted a smile. “There go my best intentions. Up in smoke.” He glanced at his watch and wondered
when he could politely extricate himself from this conversation. It wasn’t difficult to feel sympathy for Egorkin, a talent put at the mercy of the Soviet state, but the matter was hardly his concern. “In your case there would be a further complication because the host country in this case—Czechoslovakia—is not hostile to you, so it is difficult to see what danger you would be in if you were asked to leave the embassy. In Moscow you would clearly be in jeopardy, but here, as things are at the moment…” He shrugged.

  The man digested these unpleasant facts, smoking and looking out across the gardens. Suddenly he seemed very vulnerable, crushed by the situation. Sam thought of Russia and what it did to its children. The largest country in the world, yet as claustrophobic as a prison cell; lives trapped and stifled; genius smothered. And how the contagion spread to its neighbors. He thought of Lenka, orphaned and shamed by the state, trading her body for the hope of education. He thought of hope itself, the violinist’s name, Nadezhda, and how for the moment hope flourished here in Czechoslovakia, at least. Hope against hope.

  “I can have a word with people in the embassy but I can’t promise anything.”

  Egorkin nodded, as though weasel words were only to be expected. “Tell me, Mr. Wareham, how is it that you speak Russian so well?”

  It was a relief to shift the conversation on to firmer ground. “Two years of intensive Russian during my national service, followed by a three-year degree.”

  “So you loved our language.”

  Was it a question? “I still do. The poetry and the prose. But particularly the poetry.”

  “And you will know that our writers have had their creative lives crushed. Pasternak unpublished in his own country and forced to refuse the Nobel Prize. Mandelstam killed in the gulag. Akhmatova banned for decades. Soul-destroying, Mr. Wareham. Surely you understand that. Surely you feel it.”