Gottland: Mostly True Stories From Half of Czechoslovakia

by Mariusz Szczygieł

  She could say something of the kind, as Hrabal did, and she would probably be understood.

  But Jaroslava Moserová says: “If the Charter had come to me, I certainly would have signed it, but as it didn’t come, I didn’t go looking for it.

  “So I admit: I was being cautious.”

  At the suggestion of a rather overly self-confident journalist from Poland that a person is only what he pretends to be, and it’s impossible for her nowadays as a politician and diplomat never to have told a lie, Jaroslava Moserová replies that there are situations in which a politician cannot always tell the entire truth, but he should never tell a lie.

  At least in her opinion.

  As she’s always done—for decades—she goes to church.

  In the Senate, they say she is quite appalled by Klaus, who said a while back that for him the Church is the same sort of organization as a walking club.

  03

  Zdeněk Adamec is lying in a pool of water, doused by the firefighters, and the temperature is below freezing.

  People stand there helplessly. None of the curious onlookers calls an ambulance.

  Three doctors only come after a call from the firefighters. They carry him to an ambulance.

  He lives for another thirty minutes.

  03

  Jaroslava Moserová tells a friend that Milan, Tomáš and the grandchildren are the best things that have ever happened to her. She tells her family she has decided to stand as president of the country.

  She prepares a speech to give to parliament: “I know that dishonesty is what offends young people the most. And they blame us, the politicians, for the rise of immorality. In a way, they are right …”

  And she ends it like this: “In our country, politicians aren’t trusted. I hope this will change. Please have trust in me.”

  The serious press isn’t interested in her. Not a single analysis of her electoral chances or her views is published, and nobody does a major interview with her.

  But a journalist from a women’s glossy magazine tells a reporter from Poland that the candidate, as a plastic surgeon, could have far fewer wrinkles than she does.

  After all, an interview in her magazine has to have a really stunning picture to go with it!

  03

  Senator Jaroslava Moserová hears about the death of Zdeněk Adamec a month after losing the election.

  She is sitting in the conference room at Wiston House in Wilton Park, Great Britain. She’s taking part in a world anti-corruption conference.

  She opens her laptop, logs on to www.pochodnia2003.cz, and reads:

  My whole life has been a complete failure. I feel as if I don’t fit in with the times. As I am just another victim of the System, I have decided my suffering is going to end for good. I can’t go on anymore. Other people aren’t interested. They’re indifferent. And the politicians are like little lords who trample on ordinary people. I want everyone to stop and think about themselves and limit the evil they commit each day. You’ll find out the rest about me from the press afterwards.

  And the final sentence of the letter: “Don’t portray me as a madman.” Jaroslava Moserová closes her computer. The thought that occurs to her is that none of the countries here at the world anti-corruption conference has presented a sensible remedy for it.

  03

  The press notes that in his farewell letter the boy did not make a single mention of his parents.

  A famous writer points out that Zdeněk Adamec’s sacrifice is like a repetition of Jesus’ sacrifice.

  A famous bishop writes that, on reading Zdeněk’s statement, we would instantly like to label his story as “pathology.” Unfortunately, this is just the tip of the iceberg. The iceberg is a sense of pointlessness among the younger generation.

  Next day, people lay flowers and messages at the site of the suicide. They burn votive candles.

  They also lay flowers and light candles for Palach.

  Foreign tour groups line up to have both islands of flowers visible in their photographs.

  Unfortunately, there is some resulting confusion. At the site of Palach’s death, messages appear saying: “Zdeněk, you’re right!”

  03

  On the evening of the third day, there’s a gantry standing by the museum steps. A crew is fitting it with television spotlights.

  It’s as bright as day.

  The cameras are on standby.

  There’s a crowd of people. Right in the middle stand three men in smart black overcoats, who have just got out of a car. One of them is holding flowers.

  Everything is ringed with red-and-white tape. A policeman is keeping watch to make sure nobody crosses it.

  There’s an atmosphere of anticipation. “There’s going to be a broadcast about that boy,” the passers-by explain to each other, and each of them cranes his neck as high as possible.

  They ask the policeman for details. “Is it a ceremony? In honor of that Zdeněk guy from Humpolec?”

  “Zdeněk who, sir?” says the policeman. “They’re making a biopic about Hitler here. The Canadians are filming it.”

  “But this spot was covered in flowers and candles. What happened? Have they put out the vigil lights? Removed them? Three days after his death, that’s awful!”

  “Nobody put them out,” the policeman explains patiently. “Take a look over here, please—they’ve shielded the candles behind a car, so they won’t appear in the film. As you know, a contract’s a contract, this sort of movie can’t be called off. A movie’s a movie, sir. The movie has to be made.”

  * * *

  * The name of the site now is www.pochoden2003.nazory.cz. Pochodnia means “a torch.”

  METAMORPHOSIS

  It is March 27, 2003.

  The Komedia Theater in Prague (with the Tragedia Café inside it) presents Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis, directed by Arnošt Goldflam.

  In this staging, the main character’s problem is not that he has changed into an insect, but how he’s going to go to work in this state.

  GOTTLAND’S LIFE AFTER LIFE

  In 2007, when Gottland was published in the Czech Republic, someone demanded that it be pulped.

  It wasn’t the general public, or the authorities of course, but a representative of the Gottland museum.

  The Czech publisher received a summons to stop selling the book immediately and to withdraw it from bookstores. The Gottland museum sent letters to all the wholesalers in the Czech Republic, warning them that it was illegal to sell this book “because it’s against the principle of competition—the word Gottland is exclusively reserved for Karel Gott’s museum.”

  In the entire Czech Republic, this appeal only upset one bookseller in Ostrava, who hid the book in his storeroom, and on his website replaced the title Gottland with Gxxxxxxd.

  The Czech and Polish publishers declared that they weren’t going to change the title, and decided to continue selling the book. For although you can patent a trademark, nobody can impose a ban on words used in literature. The book’s title is a part of literature, which has to be free.

  Faced with the publishers’ uncompromising attitude, the museum withdrew its claims.

  The bookseller in Ostrava put the book back on his shelves.

  In August 2008, the owner of the Gottland museum, a businessman called Jan Mot’ovský, who also owned the Gott restaurant, went missing while on a business trip to France.

  In November 2009, after less than three years in operation, following a decision by the wife of the owner, who still hadn’t been found, the Gottland museum was closed.

  Souvenirs from the former museum can be bought on the website www.gottland.cz.

  In 2006, the Czech president, Václav Klaus, did something for Karel Gott that perhaps no Polish president would ever agree to do for any artist. Out of admiration, he wrote the foreword for Gott’s autobiography.

  But that’s nothing.

  In his foreword, the president commented on Gott’s sexuality. “I’m not d
isappointed as far as Karel Gott’s potency is concerned,” wrote Václav Klaus.

  On an Internet chat site, the star once confessed to having had sex with 462 women (as of February 24, 2002). “And I had no desire to get married to all of them,” he added.

  When the president was due to award state decorations “For Merit,” a group of parliamentary deputies across the political spectrum signed a petition calling on him to decorate Gott too, for “excellent representation of the Czech Republic worldwide.”

  The right-wing vice-chairman of parliament said that he didn’t listen to Gott’s music, but whenever he saw him, he simply had to take his hat off to him.

  The left-wing minister of finance explained his signature on the petition in a single sentence: “He’s my mom’s favorite singer.”

  (However, I have a different explanation for the petition signed by deputies of all parties: I think that, subconsciously, each of them respects Gott for his model sex life. Gott is a god to women, and in the Czech Republic even the men who don’t like him respect him for this.)

  In fall 2009, Karel Gott was awarded the “For Merit” medal.

  Some Czech reviewers and readers have written to me or told me in person that the title Gottland is unfair to their country. They don’t think of it as the land of Gott, and it’s hard for them to swallow this piece of provocation.

  So I started explaining at public events that Gottland can also be understood as God’s land, which is best typified by a quotation from a poem by the Czech poet Vladimír Holan:

  I don’t know who does the Gods’ laundry

  I do know it’s we who drink the dirty water

  And that this should have been the book’s motto, but I forgot to add it.

  Strangely, I’ve noticed that this explanation reassures people who object to the title.

  In 2002, Václav Neckář suffered a stroke. After several years of rehab, he managed to learn the words to some of his songs again.

  In view of this, a decision was made to reunite the Golden Kids pop group.

  Marta Kubišová, Helena Vondráčková and Václav Neckář got ready for a concert tour to mark the fortieth anniversary of the group’s formation. The concerts were brought to a halt by a legal dispute between Vondráčková and Kubišová. According to the press, Kubišová wasn’t able to accept all the ideas proposed by Vondráčková’s management, and as there was no written contract between them, she withdrew from preparations for the tour.

  Helena Vondráčková’s husband, who is her manager, demanded 1.3 million crowns (about U.S. $70,000) from Kubišová in compensation for the resulting losses, but after a court case, which went on for several years, the plaintiffs lost.

  As somebody said, what matters is that communism failed to drive a wedge between the first lady of song and the national icon.

  A reader from the Czech Republic wrote to tell me that the Czechs have been making beer for several hundred years, but they’ve forgotten that it’s meant to have a bitter taste, and thanks me for reminding them about it with this book.

  Patrik Ohera, a reader from Slovakia, informed me that there’s a mistake in the book. The assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, was not carried out by two Czechs, but by Jan Kubiš—a Czech from Dolní Vilémovice, and Jozef Gabčík—a Slovak from Poluvsie.

  I replied that I had received several hundred emails from Czech readers, but not one of them had pointed this out to me.

  “I don’t want to look like a Slovak nationalist, but the fact that nobody has drawn your attention to this illustrates the relationship between Czechs and Slovaks. I have noticed that all sorts of things from the days of Czechoslovakia are described as Czech, though they were not,” he wrote back.

  Some readers from Chełmek, in southern Poland, who belong to a Bata fan club protested that I had only described the company on Czech terrain. Bata was active in Chełmek, where it built its own factories and housing, so they ask me to write my next book about Chełmek.

  Despite this oversight, this book has its own monument in Chełmek. Or rather mini-monument, in the form of some concrete paving stones, which an artist called Magdalena Magdziarz has imprinted with text from the first chapter.

  When efforts were being made for Gottland to appear on the French market, I heard that there were fears that it might not attract any readers. It wasn’t certain if anyone in the West would be interested in what a Pole has to say about the Czechs. I could understand that—a representative of one marginal nation writing about another marginal nation is unlikely to be a success.

  Yet Margot Carlier, the French translator, had faith in this book and was tenacious, for which I am extremely grateful to her.

  So when Gottland won the 2009 Europe Book Prize, I said in my speech: “I’m pleased that a book by a Pole about the Czechs has been recognized as a European’s book about Europe.”

  And that in the “prose” category (including fiction and nonfiction), fact had won over fabrication.

  Besides, I get the impression that in today’s world there’s so much happening that there’s no need to fabricate anything anymore.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My thanks are due to my Czech friends and colleagues for their support, namely Tomáš Blahut, Václav Burian, Roman Chměl, Viola Fischerová, Adam Georgijev, Michal Ginter, Joanna Hornik, Pavel Janáček, Mirra Korytová, Alexej Kusák, Michal Nikodem, Štěpánka Radostná, Martin Skyba, Helena Stachová, Dalibor Statník and Pavel Trojan.

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