by Ivan Klíma
About two weeks later, Fuks brought his manuscript in and proudly showed me the changes he’d made. They concerned the rose-colored dreams. He’d added two paragraphs, the first of which read:
He imagined that the boy had a beautiful, bright future in front of him, which was always connected with an enchanting image of fragile rose-colored china—everything was bathed in a curious fairy-tale rosy color. . . . Three years ago the Germans, however, had with a single kick smashed everything as if they’d all been empty ridiculous fantasies, porcelain figures, and then he stopped going to see the Sterns. But here the image would appear before him, swathing him in the beauty, splendor, and rosiness he had felt three years ago.
In another paragraph, one of the characters, named Frýda, performs a puppet theater version of Sleeping Beauty for the hero, where everything is rose-colored—the dresses, the props, not to mention the roses surrounding Sleeping Beauty. There was something gruesome in the way the author was willing to destroy his own text, and it occurred to me that his hero might even be willing to inhale coal fumes if someone thought it necessary. I asked him as emphatically as I could to cross out both passages immediately. Mr. Fuks insisted on keeping them because they seemed to him appropriate. I think he finally crossed out the Sleeping Beauty scene (I didn’t read the novel a third time, and a colleague edited the final version), but the passage about rosiness in this extraordinary work I undoubtedly have on my conscience.
*
My wife became pregnant less than a year after the wedding. We both looked forward to the child, but the only problem was that Helena was just finishing her degree.
The topic she had chosen for her dissertation (perhaps I had recommended it or she had chosen it because of me) was an analysis of literature about life in concentration camps. I read the books along with her so that we could discuss them.
Soon after the war, authors spewed out their jaw-dropping experiences, often artlessly but in great detail. It amounted to a sort of overview of torture, suffering, boundless cruelty, and attempts to resist by force.
They wrote about doctors who submerged prisoners in icy water until they nearly died; guards who tossed prisoners into stone quarries thirty meters below; mass executions where prisoners were forced to strip naked, climb down into a pit, which they had just been forced to dig, and lie down on still warm and bloody bodies that had been shot before them. They wrote about trucks and uniformed murderers who pumped exhaust fumes into the enclosed truck bed in which they had locked their victims. They wrote about starving to death, about people (called Mussulmen) who weren’t even people any longer, just skeletons slouching toward an early death. It was utterly inappropriate reading for such a delicate being as Helena and even more inappropriate for a pregnant woman, but such was life.
This dismal reading along with the fact we were expecting a child renewed my conviction that I had to do everything I could so that those I loved would never have to experience anything like this. I wrote several utopian or perhaps horror stories in which I tried to give shape to my idea of the impersonality of modern warfare as well as of contemporary relationships, which was affecting mankind and could transform us into instruments capable of almost anything. I called one of the stories “Fairy Tale Machine.” This was about a family who buy a robot to look after their daughter in the place of Grandma. It was supposed not only to look after the child but also to tell her fairy tales. The robot did actually keep an eye on the child and tell her stories, but one day it broke down and kept repeating the same sentence about a burning stove over and over. The girl was seized with fear. She didn’t know where to hide from the inhuman voice emanating from the machine. The robot was programmed not to let her leave the room. The story ended with Grandma coming home, turning off the robot, and consoling the child.
The story was published in the monthly Nový život. Several weeks later I received a letter typed on letterhead belonging to “Brothers in T-Shirts” and signed by someone named Mojžíš (Moses). Jiří Trnka had apparently liked my story and was wondering if we could meet.
To me, this was the highest honor. The famous artist and designer wanted to meet me; perhaps he even wanted to do something with my story.
Jiří Trnka received me in his film studio. Marvelous puppets were hanging all over the place, most from A Midsummer Night’s Dream along with the Good Soldier Švejk and Prince Bajaja. In the background on a little table was the scenery, and the animator was manipulating a puppet.
Trnka was sitting on a high chair (or perhaps my respect for him placed him so high in my memory) and said the basic idea of my story had intrigued him. I had said, figuratively and urgently, that no robot could take the place of a person. To have a machine supply the care for a child symbolized our contemporary degeneracy in a powerful way. “Many people even believe that machines will be our salvation, but I look upon all this with fear. You know,” he continued, “today everyone is busy with politics, but this is greater than they are, it’s greater than all systems. It threatens to deprive us of our humanity. I sense this fear in your story. We entrust everything into the hands of machines. They will think for us, watch over us, amuse us; they’ll write books and draw. And this fiddly job?” He pointed at the animator. “A machine will be able to do it a hundred times faster and better. But what’s the result? We do it to express our feelings, our fears, or ourselves. What or whom will a machine express?”
He asked me to try to turn the story (originally only two pages) into a screenplay.
I worked on it as well as I could, took it to the director, listened to his comments, and continued writing. Then Mr. Trnka sent word that the screenplay was suitable, and he would see what he could do with it. Several months went by, and I stopped thinking about my Machine and, as far as I remember, I was certain Mr. Trnka had too. Then one day I received a letter from the Brothers in T-Shirts inviting me to a screening of The Cybernetic Grandmother. As far as the details go, not much was left of my screenplay. The story had been improved with a lot of new ideas and was longer than I thought it would be, but not only had Mr. Trnka preserved the basic idea; he had developed it in a wonderful way.
That was the last time I saw him alive. He asked me if I was satisfied and if I was bothered by the fact he’d changed the title. I said the film was wonderful and compelling, and as far as the title was concerned, he was the primary author, and the only thing that was important was that the title satisfy him.
Our son was born not long after, on a chilly January day. I wasn’t used to drinking to anything, not even the birth of a son, but when he was brought to me in the maternity ward, my joy knew no bounds. At home waited not only all our relatives but also an old-fashioned white wicker baby carriage, a gift from the Vaculíks, who told us their three sons had spent their first years in this friendly abode.
*
Shortly after my reports from eastern Slovakia were published in book form, a screenwriter from Barrandov Studios, Ivan Urban, wrote to tell me he found them fascinating and asked if I’d like to write a film narrative about those exotic surroundings.
At first I thought he had in mind a documentary film, but documentaries did not enjoy much popularity at the time, and Mr. Urban explained that a “suspenseful” story would be much more effective.
We got together many times. He was a friendly and pleasant man, a talented dramaturge, a witty screenwriter, and a wonderful storyteller. He told me the story of Hitchcock’s Psycho in such great detail and so suggestively that when I saw the film years later I was almost disappointed.
I gradually came up with a story about a land surveyor whose beloved dies in a concentration camp. He cannot remain in the region where he met her, or even continue his usual work, so he leaves for the other end of the republic, the lowlands along the Laborec River. The people here live in unimaginable poverty. He works at various jobs, lives in different lodgings, drinks, surveys land for a hospital, and sees how floods often destroy the already miserable crops. He decides to
design a series of dams to prevent the flooding. I wove into the story the balladic fortunes of the local residents and postwar life in a dilapidated country.
Over two months I put together the first version. The following month we composed the second version, but this one Urban gave back to me too. Apparently some of the characters were too indistinct, the establishment of the co-op was too drastic, and the way the countryside developed wasn’t emphasized enough.
My screenplay wasn’t approved even the third time around, and I decided to give up my efforts at film and try to write a novel instead.
I announced my intention at work, and my still nonexistent novel made its way into the publishing schedule. I had until September 30, 1962, to turn it in.
My editing work, however, demanded a lot of attention. I had no time for any sort of concentrated writing and no quiet environment in which to work. When I came home in the evening, I looked forward to playing with little Michal and hearing from my wife or mother-in-law what progress he’d made.
I usually wrote late at night for two or three hours and went to bed after midnight. Unfortunately, the windows of our Smíchov flat looked out on the street, where heavy trucks started rumbling through at five in the morning. The house seemed to shake to its very foundations, and I couldn’t fall back asleep. I went around in a continual state of fatigue.
I was convinced at the end of spring that I’d never write the novel under these conditions and went to share my fears with my supervisor. To my great surprise, he was happy to offer me an unpaid vacation (not until later did I realize he was only too glad to get me out of the office for a while). He just wanted to know if I could finish the novel on time. I thought this would be no problem under such wonderful circumstances.
The hero of my novel was still the land surveyor, and even though I had no intention of writing much about his job, my conscience bothered me because I hadn’t the slightest idea about land surveying. I happened to mention this to a colleague, who laughed and said her husband, if he could write, certainly wouldn’t have such problems. He was a land surveyor. If I had any questions, all I had to do was ask.
Her husband was indeed willing to help me out and said he would be surveying somewhere near Ledeč nad Sázavou on June 1. I could join him if I wanted. At least I would see with my own eyes how simple the job was.
My unpaid vacation was to begin on June 1, and I thought it would be a wonderful way to start work on my book.
He piled me into his all-terrain vehicle along with his theodolite, his surveying poles, and his assistant, and on the way kept assuring me his job was nothing mysterious. Kafka certainly knew no more about land surveying than that it required assistants, and look what a wonderful novel he had written. We arrived at a meadow, where he unpacked his equipment and we could begin. It was a beautiful sunny late spring day, and the meadow was in furious bloom. The air was filled with scents and clouds of pollen. He set up his theodolite and sent his assistant where he needed her, then he called me over to his side. I suddenly began to sneeze. I sneezed almost constantly the whole time, but I pretended that it was my usual expression of enthusiastic interest—they of course couldn’t keep themselves from laughing. After he’d explained how the measuring apparatuses worked, he sent me with a surveyor’s pole to a corner of the plot. I tried to stop sneezing just for a moment so the pole I was holding would stop wobbling. The friendly land surveyor waved to me with his hands to take a few steps back. I heard something that sounded like cracking rotten wood, but it was too late: I plunged into a cesspool up to my waist, still clutching the surveyor’s pole.
When I finally scrambled out, the engineer and his assistant couldn’t hold back their laughter.
My trousers were soaked through with brownish liquid manure and stank so horribly that I was no longer fit for any activity among people. I ran into town, crept into the river with my pants, and rinsed them for a long while, but it was no use. In a clothing store, people stepped aside as I approached. I had enough money for only the cheapest shorts. My wife washed my pants at home, then I took them to the cleaners, and finally we pronounced them unusable.
My experience was also unusable because my hero was supposed to be capable of managing complicated situations, and it would be quite unbecoming of him to fall into a cesspool.
*
Michal was three years old, and we were still living with Helena’s parents. The wait for an apartment “allocation” in Prague was around fifteen years. If you joined the co-op and had around thirty thousand crowns (my total salary for almost two years), you might be able to get an apartment four or five years earlier. Another way to get an apartment was through an exchange, but the number of people who wanted to exchange one large flat for two smaller ones was much greater than vice versa.
Because I was on a special (creative) vacation to finish my novel, I had more time to play with Michal. He was at a tender age and unlike me was manually dexterous. He could build elaborate structures out of blocks, and although he sometimes received toys that were too complicated for his age, such as Lego or Merkur construction toys, he always worked with them tenaciously. We often sat for hours fashioning buildings and simple gadgets. Every evening Michal wanted to hear a fairy tale, an oral story rather than a written one if possible.
I invented never-ending tales whose heroes were an awkward and clumsy little puppy, a wise and skillful kitten, and a good-natured horse named Vašek upon whom the pair traveled around the world. The fairy tale continued for a number of years, comprising several thousand installments (not only did my daughter experience them, but also my oldest granddaughter; if I’d written them down, they would have filled more volumes than the celebrated Harry Potter series). Much to my surprise, I managed to think up ever new and usually humorous situations.
The Smíchov Embankment where we lived was ostentatious, but it was not an ideal environment for children. On Sundays, however, we would hike up Petřín Hill. I would take a ball, which we would kick from goal to goal along the way. I kept saying I was making a soccer player out of Michal, but I didn’t mean it seriously. I just loved watching the little fellow try to kick the ball. Helena, however, was not keen on the prospect of her son growing up to be a soccer player and tried to talk me out of my plans.
Only in hindsight does one come to understand that the time spent with one’s children is unique and unrepeatable—one of the most powerful experiences life has to offer. But this time of life is often overshadowed by many other interests and obligations—making money, hunting down things (an apartment), debating, celebrating various anniversaries or successes with friends, traveling (at least in our own country, since we couldn’t go abroad), and finally reaching the misguided conclusion that our children are actually holding us back, and we look for some sort of replacement for ourselves (grandparents in the best case, some sort of apparatus or contrivance in the worst). Before the invention of the computer, the Internet, and the virtual world, I tried to depict this in “The Fairy Tale Machine” and the screenplay Cybernetic Grandmother.
I was no different in my relationship with my offspring and reproached myself for neglecting my novel. The time off I’d been given to finish it was speedily passing by, and I realized I’d never be able to concentrate on my work at home. I started to fear my vacation would run out and I wouldn’t have anything to show for it.
*
I decided to ask the Literary Fund if I could spend at least a month in one of its accommodation facilities.
The people at the fund gladly offered me a room in Dobříš Castle.
Living in a castle seemed a little much to me, but I was assured I would have a pleasant and peaceful environment for my work. The rooms were furnished austerely, and the garden, as everyone pointed out, was a wonderful place for contemplation. The staff quoted a certain poet who’d said that the spirit here hovers low over the paths.
So I packed some clothes, a few notebooks containing notes from my eastern Slovak travels, a book of Hem
ingway’s short stories (also in Slovak), a bundle of paper containing the first five chapters of my novel, a packet of clean white paper for the rest of it, and a fountain pen along with a bottle of green ink, and headed for the castle.
