My Crazy Century

by Ivan Klíma

  I asked Mother to give the entire box to the schoolchildren when they came to collect paper. Thus like a coward I shrank back from carrying out this expurgatory act myself.

  *

  At the beginning of the war I had been baptized, but I didn’t realize this would entail any obligations at school. The vicar who taught religion in elementary school found out that although I was a member of the Evangelical Church of Czech Brethren, I simply went home during religion class. He called me in and criticized me as an immoral blaspheming hoodlum and hooky player.

  In the next class, unlike several of my evangelical classmates who considered religion class somewhere between school and the playground, I sat quietly like a model student and listened to the vicar’s enjoyable tale about how the Jews escaped from Israel. I couldn’t raise my hand because I knew absolutely nothing about this story, which, according to the vicar, was incontrovertibly true. The next time he was going over the material I raised my hand, and I soon became the teacher’s favorite pupil. Unfortunately, my education in God’s commandments and the tales of the ancient Israelites came to a premature end upon the decree that as a descendant of the aforementioned Israelites, I was banned from school.

  Mindful that it was a matter of duty and my own salvation, I never missed an hour of religion class after the war. Father, however, raised me in his rational world, where you were not allowed to believe in anything that could not be proved by experiment or at least rationally explained. Religion, though, was expounded through inexplicable natural phenomena; it offered a primitive cosmology at a time when the earth was still the center of the universe. What I heard in religion class I therefore saw as the entrance to a fairy-tale world where miracles took place: Whales swallowed and spat out prophets with whom God himself would then converse; one could walk on water, and the sea would part before a raised staff; water could be turned into wine; the dead were brought back to life (even though they died later anyway); the blind could see; and angels visited people as God’s messengers, while evil spirits entered unclean swine. Now I was suddenly supposed to believe all of this: Jesus was the true Son of God, the God who in six days created the heavens, stars, earth, water, and every living creature. At the same time, however, Jesus was the father as well, since he was both Father and Son in one person, even though he was conceived by the Holy Ghost, and that was why he along with the Father and Son formed a Trinitarian being, which could not be understood by reason but only believed in.

  Since childhood, I have been interested in the mystery of life, the inconceivability of eternity and infinitude, the inexplicability of the origin and eventual demise of the universe, the strange and abrupt divide between life and death. I had the firmest intention of penetrating the mysteries of being and without prejudice listening to all the conclusions people had hitherto arrived at. On Sundays I dutifully attended the church in Vinohrady and listened to the sermon. Even though it seemed removed from what I had experienced, I was all the more interested.

  I was included among the confirmands, went through all the exercises, and memorized the necessary responses. After my confirmation I began to attend the youth meetings of our church. At these gatherings, which were attended by around fifteen boys my age, we prayed together, learned songs, and listened to a brief lecture or sermon. Sometimes we would go on an excursion or to the cinema, and, as was common at that time, we went on brigade trips, where all the participants, unlike my nonevangelical classmates, worked hard because pretending to work was dishonest.

  Because I participated in these meetings and activities, and because I would pose interesting questions, the pastor suggested I become chair of our youth group.

  It was my first serious appointment, and I resolved to take it responsibly.

  Most of those who had been confirmed and came to the evangelical youth meetings had been raised in the faith. Since childhood they had attended Sunday school and church services, and they were used to praying. God, who sacrificed his Son to redeem humanity, was for them a given, and there was no need for speculation.

  I, however, was raised in neither the Christian nor the Jewish tradition, and so everything I was now learning, everything I repeated and proclaimed, awoke within me questions and doubts.

  I was fond of Greek mythology and had memorized entire passages retold in the Iliad, which would certainly have been blasphemous in the eyes of our vicar. There actually wasn’t any fundamental difference between the Greek image of the gods in human form and the image of a single God in human form, even though in the end, unlike the Greek gods, Jesus takes upon himself all of mankind’s powerlessness, and when he dies in torment calls out in the darkness that had gathered in the afternoon above the land of Israel: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

  Homer, however, had written of his own will; he had merely captured the tales or songs of his ancestors, whereas the writers of the biblical texts wrote not of their own will, but by God’s, and this guaranteed the veracity of their texts. This dogma did not convince me. Who was it who had claimed that the texts of the Bible arose from God’s will? Only their adherents.

  Essay: Utopias, p. 426

  3

  Even though after the war I assumed that the finest people were always doing their utmost to create an ideal society—one that would not wage war, would eradicate poverty, and would care for the ailing and the elderly—I never took the slightest interest in politics. In the tenth grade, a student who had been held back and was a member of the Communist Party joined our class. He had a steady girlfriend and the inauspicious fate of a student forbidden to advance to the next grade. He explained to us the meaning of political persecution. With an air of aloof independence, he pretended he’d been wronged and implied that he was the only adult among us. As a member of the party of the proletariat, he had found himself among the immature and unwitting dregs of the petite bourgeoisie and the offspring of the politically unreliable intelligentsia. Despite the fact that he obviously shared my conviction concerning mankind’s Communist future, I did not like him.

  At the beginning of 1948, the year of the putsch, my classmate Polívka came up with the idea of organizing an election. He brought to class an old margarine box, cut an opening in it, and gave everyone who wanted to vote four pieces of paper, each of which bore a stamp of one of the authorized political parties.

  I participated not only in the voting but also in the tallying of the votes. Unlike the actual parliament, the Communists in our class suffered a defeat that would have been described as “crushing” by the press. Apparently, our class was full of opponents of socialism.

  The election took place sometime around the middle of February. During recess we were expending our pent-up energy by playing soccer in the classroom, even though it was a breach of school rules. Instead of a ball, we kicked around chunks of coal. It was neither hygienic nor pragmatic because after every kick our ball would break into pieces, so after a while the front of the classroom was strewn with coal rubble. At the peak of our competitive frenzy and as fragments of heating fuel, which was then still in short supply, were whizzing through the air, the principal walked into the classroom and, as fate would have it, received a blow right in the face.

  The mere look from our walloped ruler, a man of venerable appearance and with a name worthy of a principal—Fořt—froze us on the spot. He undertook to write down the names of the culprits in the class register. When he finished he said he would consider our punishment. At best we would get the principal’s paddle and a C in behavior, at worst conditional expulsion.

  The prospect of such serious punishment devastated me. Even though the others claimed that such a triviality would result in a B in behavior at the worst, I couldn’t sleep for several days and lived in perpetual fear of retribution. I was completely unaware that elsewhere a fateful event was beginning to unfold, one that would utterly overshadow my petty deed.

  Like most of my wiser and more hard-bitten fellow citizens, I had no idea of the impending chan
ges. Whenever Father came home, he didn’t have much time to talk to me. But I knew that he disapproved of the national managers who thought of nothing but getting rich. Here he differed from those in charge of the recently nationalized businesses. He believed that the economy would begin to function only when all businesses were in the hands of the people.

  In the middle of the week, Father unexpectedly arrived to inform us that the day of reckoning with the reactionary forces was close at hand. The workers had had enough of the theft of property that belonged to everyone. He turned on the radio to listen to a broadcast from the trade union congress. Passionate and bombastic words blared from the radio along with even more enthusiastic applause and sloganeering.

  “Sons of the working class, sons of poverty and struggle, sons of unbearable suffering and heroic endeavors, at last you are declaring: No more!” bellowed the speaker.

  Excitement coursed through my body.

  Then another speaker declaimed: “The reactionaries would gladly drown your movement in blood. They have forgotten, however, that we are in Prague, not Athens or Madrid. We will not learn democracy from those who form public opinion with the assistance of the atom bomb.” To the ecstatic assent of the crowd, he went on to declare that when the workers in Paris demand bread, they are fired upon, but that this kind of democracy has come to an end here in Czechoslovakia. Our democracy was now under the protection of our big brother, faithful to the workers, our magnificent Slavic brother, our deliverer from the Fascist pestilence, the almighty Soviet Union, which was the guarantor that nobody would again ever fire upon the workers.

  “With the Soviet Union forever!”

  Father exulted, but Mother was frightened and asked if we could finally have peace and quiet and a normal life.

  “Only now,” explained Father, “will everything begin to move forward, when we have gotten rid of all those parasites who have bled us dry. And you shouldn’t forget,” he reminded her, “what your brothers gave their lives for!”

  Then everything came to pass that would ensure a Communist future for our country forever. Everything happened so quickly and without bloodshed that in my naïveté I succumbed to the illusion that this was merely the will of the majority being fulfilled. I even asked Father if I could borrow his Communist badge.

  He was surprised and wondered what I needed it for, but he finally lent me this metal talisman. The next morning, to show on whose side I stood at this historic moment, I pinned it to the lapel of my jacket, in fact just a little higher than where I’d previously been forced to wear the Star of David. For several days I proudly wore this metal badge bearing the letters KSČ until Mother rebuked me and told me not to pretend to be something I wasn’t.

  If someone had told me at the time that wearing the Communist Party badge was just as deplorable as wearing a swastika when the Reichstag was burning and Hitler was installing his dictatorship, I would have been astounded and offended by this base comparison.

  *

  It didn’t seem to me that any big changes were on the horizon during the first spring of Communist rule. Father looked satisfied; Mother cried because the foreign minister, Jan Masaryk, so the papers told us, had committed suicide by jumping from the window of his apartment in the Czernín Palace. “Why did he do it?” she asked.

  “I’m sure he accepted the new government,” declared Father. “He was a decent man of the people.” And he repeated what he’d most likely heard at a meeting or on the radio: that the sensitive minister was shattered by the reactionary forces and had taken the side of the workers.

  The principal who had threatened us with the dreadful punishment was removed, and a severe-looking woman took his place. She announced over the public-address system that a new era was at hand. As in the magnificent Soviet Union, we were creating a more just society. This required a new and progressive intelligentsia. She demanded that we devote even more diligence to our studies. It was no longer merely in our own interest, she pointed out, but in the interest of all working people who, through their Socialist endeavors, were making this possible for us.

  To me the speech seemed appropriate during this epochal moment, but most of my classmates did not share this opinion, as they demonstrated by coughing and snorting. Toušek even whinnied (he could imitate a horse perfectly), and the end of the principal’s speech was drowned out by raucous laughter.

  Soon after that, our homeroom teacher informed me that I was to go immediately to the principal’s office.

  In light of my recent offense, this unexpected order frightened me.

  The principal, however, welcomed me and asked me to have a seat. For a moment she browsed through some papers and then she said, “I’ve heard you’re a good comrade.”

  I didn’t know what to say. No one had ever called me comrade before.

  “I heard,” she continued, “that you’re related to the Synek brothers.”

  I said they were my uncles.

  “They were genuine heroes. You must be proud of them.”

  I agreed.

  “And are your parents in the party?”

  I said that only my father was.

  “And you,” she said reproachfully, “aren’t even in the Union of Youth.”

  Then to my amazement she suggested I call her comrade. A new era had begun, after all, and everyone struggling to build socialism was equal. Teachers and students had to trust and help one another. She rose and offered me her hand. “I wanted to tell you, Comrade Ivan, that we’re counting on you. Apply for membership in the union.”

  Her trust and encouragement flattered me, but the prospect of joining any sort of organization was alarming. I made bold to object that it didn’t really make sense now at the end of the school year, but I would talk it over with my parents.

  Essay: The Victors and the Defeated, p. 433

  4

  The following school year did not start out well for me. When I entered the classroom and headed for my desk, I saw that the seat in front of mine, where Rost’a usually sat, was occupied by Richter. He didn’t dare take my seat but correctly assumed that Rost’a would offer no objection. Richter was truly the worst student in the class and also the biggest bully. It was only by a miracle that he hadn’t flunked (perhaps the February coup had a hand in it, since as the son of a house porter and a cleaning woman he had the best class origin of any of us). His seat used to be always assigned, usually in the first row where he didn’t dare demonstrate his boredom. Sometimes, however, he was placed in the back row so that his apathy would not depress the teachers. Rost’a’s seat in the very center of the third row was decidedly the most advantageous. He could copy from his classmates and at the same time hide behind those in front of him.

  I shouted at Richter to clear out of Rost’a’s seat. He replied that the seat belonged to him because it was the beginning of the year and he’d gotten there first. I told him he was behaving like an extortionist and furthermore a Nazi, which was the worst name I could think of. Then I tried to shove him out of the seat. We immediately started fighting. Because there wasn’t enough room in the aisles, we tussled our way up to the front of the classroom, and a crowd of onlookers gathered around us. One of the girls urged someone to tear us apart or we’d kill each other. No one did, and why would anyone? So we traded punches and Greco-Roman wrestling moves in which my opponent was more competent. A moment later I was on the ground with the victorious Richter kneeling on my chest and enthusiastically banging my head against the floor. But before he managed to batter the consciousness from my skull, his frenzy suddenly abated. He released me and calmly rose to his feet.

  I sensed a curious silence in the room.

  I stood up, wiped my bloody face, and only then looked around. Next to me stood an unfamiliar teacher, whose short plait of hair at the back of his head, like something worn by the Chinese in pictures I’d seen, held my attention. He spoke fluent Czech, however, and asked us our names, and then noted in the class register: “Richter and Klíma were
brawling like two mongrels and would not stop even in my presence.” In the meantime, Rost’a assumed his original seat, and before yet another fight broke out, a second unfamiliar man stepped into the classroom. (Our teachers were always changing now.) His appearance suggested one of those lightly graying gentlemen from British films that had until recently been playing in the theaters. He even addressed us in faultless English. When he concluded from our expressions that we understood not a word, he informed us in Czech that his name was Marek and, as we could see, not only would he be teaching us English but at the same time he would serve as our homeroom teacher, which, his colleagues had informed him, was the worst thing that could happen to him at this school. Then he opened the class register, examined it for a moment, and said, “Well, well. It seems my colleagues were not exaggerating. Considering the fact that school started five minutes ago, you really seem to be in a hurry. Klíma and Richter, stand up.” He looked us over. “I am obliged to punish you severely. But first, what have you to say in your defense?”

  Richter, as usual whenever he was asked anything, clammed up.

  “I wasn’t fighting,” I objected.

  “How am I to understand that?”

  “He started it,” I said.

  The teacher grimaced and told us both to sit down. Then he spoke at length in English, which seemed to us flawless even though we didn’t understand a word.

  Moments after taking his seat behind the desk during the following period, he confided to us, “You’ll never guess what I’ve been entrusted with. Mrs., that is, Comrade Principal has charged me with the collection of old paper, which most likely includes rags and bones. This was to be expected since I’m new here, and, through this politically beneficial activity I will have the opportunity to correct my contemptible efforts to propagate the language of imperialists, warmongers, and Shakespeare. I have no choice but to offer you the same opportunity to atone for the sin that you continuously commit by deciding to study.”