My Crazy Century

by Ivan Klíma

  We drove through several large cities which, unlike the freeway subculture, were gray, uninteresting, and usually featureless. The most depressing was Dallas, the embodiment of concrete vacuity, a city well suited to the recent presidential assassination.

  We reached Midland on Christmas Eve. Skyscrapers jutted up above the flat countryside; everything here was new and evidently constructed only recently (the city was not founded until the last quarter of the nineteenth century). We had already grown used to seeing skyscrapers, and there was nothing else here that struck us as exceptional. (I don’t wish to do the city an injustice; it had two theaters, a concert hall, and a museum.)

  We easily located the enormous church, an establishment that performed many functions. Besides rooms for rent, there was a kitchen, dining room, fitness room, and, of course, several rooms for congregational activities. We were welcomed, housed, and notified when the next religious service was to take place.

  At supper, we made the acquaintance of the other participants in this Christian Christmas; everyone did indeed appear younger than we did.

  Each evening, both the genuine and the spurious students were invited to the home of a different family. One evening, a minister of the congregation invited my wife and me to his home. We were treated to an enormous beefsteak, wine, and a cake. Afterward, when we were munching the Christmas cookies, it was time for conversation. Although we had already become accustomed to avoiding anything serious or controversial, we searched in vain for a topic of discussion. Our hosts were not interested in art, politics, or Europe. They knew nothing of such a small country as Czechoslovakia; the tragedy that had occurred would not be of interest to them. For a while we chatted about the flight of Apollo 11, the weather, potential day trips from Midland. Then—I don’t know what got into me—I started talking about marriage as an institution undergoing a crisis and that sometimes dissolving the marriage was more ethical than maintaining a strictly formal relationship in which two people persevere without love. Fortunately, my wife kicked me under the table, and only then did I register the horror, consternation, offense, and absolute disapprobation on the faces of our hosts.

  After four days in Midland, I could no longer stand it. We decided to take a trip to the nearest national park, Big Bend (only a couple of hundred miles away), and spend the night there. The next morning we set off on an exquisite and all but empty freeway through scenery that is so typical for a significant part of the United States—a landscape dominated by semideserts and very little vegetation. Every now and then we caught a glimpse in the distance of a herd of grazing horses or cows, but only rarely did we come across a farmhouse.

  In the park, we climbed along several hills covered with some sort of unfamiliar vegetation. For the first time in our lives, we saw cactus growing somewhere other than in a flowerpot and made it to a magnificent canyon formed from the erosion of the Rio Grande River. At our own risk, we boarded a ferryboat that transported us and a few other passengers illegally to Mexico so we could brag that we had stepped onto Mexican soil.

  We also joined an excursion to some caves, which, although in German transcription, were called Karlovy Vary, or Carlsbad. Max Frisch, even though he doesn’t call them by name, describes them beautifully in his novel I’m Not Stiller.

  After less than a week, we embarked on our return trip and finally made Michal’s wish to see real American Indians come true. We arrived just as the celebration was beginning. We fell in with a group of tourists who’d come for the same reason: to experience something of the life of the original inhabitants of the continent.

  The Indians—a number of them were only a little older than Michal—stood in a group. Some were partially naked, some were covered in buffalo skins that were old and had seen better days, just like their headdresses. Then drums and tambourines started up, and the dance began. Despite the cold weather, I noticed there was no smoke rising from most of the old-fashioned dwellings, and I realized that most of the dancers no longer lived here. They came as a folklore group to sell something of their former glory and make use of their decaying animal skins, which they had inherited. It was more sad than anything else, like a memorial celebration of a lost culture and its rituals.

  The next day we covered almost a thousand kilometers (Timoteus and I took turns driving). Outside Chicago, we were hit by a blizzard, and we could see only a few meters ahead of us. I happened to be driving just then, and I knew we should pull over, but I stubbornly wanted to get as far as we could, all the way to Ann Arbor, if possible. The highway was becoming more and more snowbound, and at one point, as I was passing an enormous truck, I was blinded by snow kicked up by its wheels. Fearing I would steer the car under the truck, I veered too much in the opposite direction, and we drove into a snowdrift in a ditch.

  The driver of the truck stopped and jumped out. I got out as well.

  An icy wind lashed my eyes and face. The driver looked over our snowbound automobile and said he wouldn’t be able to help, but he offered to drive one of us to the nearest gas station or repair shop.

  Timoteus got in with him, and I returned to our car, completely frozen after those few minutes outside. Fortunately, I’d left the engine running, and the heater was on. I can’t imagine what would have happened to us had the engine died. Timoteus’s wife—usually quiet and nearly silent—now burst into a paroxysm of hysteria and started screaming that she shouldn’t have gone anywhere; she shouldn’t have come to America, let alone on this trip. We were going to die here with the children, and no one would come to our rescue.

  On one account she was mistaken. As for the other, over the course of the next fifteen minutes, several cars halted to see if anyone was hurt or if we needed assistance. One driver even went to the edge of the freeway, in this dreadful storm, took a rope from his trunk, and, though I told him a friend had already gone for help, tried to pull us out. To no avail, of course.

  While the children were enjoying our shipwreck and Timoteus’s wife was sobbing, I kept revving the engine to keep it going. After about half an hour, a tow truck arrived with Timoteus in the passenger’s seat, and a minute later, we were back on the road unscathed. We saw that we’d gotten stuck about a hundred meters from a small motel where we could spend the night.

  The next day around noon, we safely stepped out of the car in front of our transient home overlooking the cemetery.

  I realized that during our entire two-week trip, including a several-hour illegal stay in Mexico, we hadn’t had to show anyone our identity cards.

  *

  The sense of freedom in this country was strong. I could say anything I wanted in public or in my lectures; I could go wherever I wanted, and if I was just a little frugal, I could acquire anything I wanted. At the same time, I couldn’t rid myself of the feeling that the whole thing was inappropriate. I was enjoying freedom and prosperity I didn’t deserve, whereas I was needed at home, where one had to somehow fight for everything.

  I started subscribing to a newspaper with the paradoxical name Lidová demokracie (People’s Democracy). The department also received the Communist Party paper, Rudé právo. This was not encouraging reading. It appeared that everything was returning to the way it had been before the Prague Spring, and because it is impossible to go back in history, I assumed that everything would naturally be much worse than when I’d left a few months ago.

  I also saw that the Chamber Theater, which had staged my Jury, had removed the play from its repertory even though, I knew, the performances had been sold out.

  In my correspondence with friends and family, I was trying to find out something more, but their answers were either evasive or ambiguous because they knew they had to be careful.

  After the trip to Texas, I found a letter from our embassy informing me that as a result of new decrees concerning the residence of Czechoslovak citizens in capitalist countries, our exit permit would be revoked on December 31, and we would have to depart the United States as quickly as possible and return t
o Czechoslovakia. I immediately wrote back asking for an extension because I was teaching at the university until the end of the spring semester.

  I also called my parents (they had stayed in Switzerland only a few months; my mother refused to live abroad). First, I mentioned our trip to Texas and then I started to complain about the authorities who were apparently forbidding me to conclude my teaching duties.

  Father said with unexpected earnestness: It’s good that you’re getting to know everything you can there. You must realize that this will be your last opportunity for a long time to travel and teach.

  When I considered that he was aware the telephones were bugged, it sounded as if he was telling me not to return, that prison awaited me or, I hoped, he meant just some sort of moderate form of persecution.

  The thought of emigrating frightened me. I didn’t sleep properly for several days, and I kept going over different scenarios.

  When I confided everything to Professor Matějka, he consoled me by saying I could take a librarian’s course and work in the library. I would make enough money to be able to live here decently. Professor Benešová called me from Bloomington, where I had recently lectured. She’d heard that I wouldn’t be able to go back to Prague and informed me she would be retiring and had spoken with the dean. She assured me I could work as a regular professor there in Indiana.

  All of this consoling news was alarming—for me, the only meaningful work was writing, telling stories that were somehow connected to my life, and this was interwoven with my homeland. The thought of writing in a foreign country about things that deeply touched me but with which I had cut off all ties seemed foolish. To teach modern Czech literature, which I’d just abandoned, would definitely be a painful blow. I would forever be aware that I had voluntarily decided to call it quits with the only work I cared about.

  One day, my students came to see me and very politely, almost humbly, asked for a favor. They were planning a trip to Washington to protest the Vietnam War, and the demonstration was scheduled for a day we had class. Would I be so kind as to reschedule it for another day?

  Of course, I was glad to. They had rented a bus, and it occurred to me that Helena could go with them and find out at the embassy if, despite the new decrees, we could extend our stay, at least until the end of the spring semester. For several years, my wife reproached me that I had sent her instead of going myself. But I thought that if I were to show up, the embassy would be afraid to deal with me at all.

  Two days later, the students returned. The demonstration had been excellent and, unlike that of a year ago, peaceful. Helena told me that after long deliberations, the embassy had agreed to extend our stay until the end of March.

  I told the department that I would evidently have to cut short the semester because our offices refused to extend our visa, but I said I would do everything possible not to cheat my students out of anything I thought they should know. I don’t think anyone took my news very seriously. I wasn’t about to return to an occupied country whose authorities assumed the right to decide how long their citizens could stay abroad, was I?

  *

  I received a letter from my parents saying that they were looking forward to all of us being together again. Father had intended no hidden meaning in his assertions concerning my last possibility to travel. He was merely pointing out that as soon as I returned, I wouldn’t be allowed to leave. Even without Father’s warning, I knew this much from the newspapers.

  I was relieved nonetheless. I was going home. I didn’t know what I would do, since our newspaper had been banned. Obviously they weren’t going to let me publish, but perhaps they could let me continue working at the publishing house as a copyreader. Helena hadn’t once considered emigration. She had her parents and sister at home, and she was certainly not going to abandon them. As far as the children were concerned, they considered it obvious that their real home was Prague, and they too looked forward to seeing their grandmother, grandfather, and friends.

  Before long it was time to start thinking about saying goodbye. I invited all my students over. Everyone came bearing gifts and promises to come visit (almost every one of them came to Prague, two of them even for an entire year). We drank wine and bourbon, and then the students pulled out bags of marijuana and rolled joints, which they passed from person to person.

  The chair of the department also organized a farewell party. He invited the members of the department as well as Mrs. Cisney, who had directed my Castle a year ago.

  I remember that almost everyone expressed surprise that we had decided to go back to an unfree country; some even tried to talk me out of it. The director, who had the most experience with Soviet friendship, foretold that I would end up in a concentration camp in Siberia. She even knelt down before me (she had a theatrical sense of effect, but I’m convinced she was serious) and begged me to change my mind and not to go back to that concentration camp of a country.

  They treated me very generously at the department and paid me for the next two months. Even our landlord returned our deposit, something he had a full right to keep because we’d broken the rental agreement. And we sold our Impala at the used-car lot. Besides the trip to the Mexican border, we’d driven to New York, Chicago, and several other places I don’t recall. Despite the mileage, I was offered seven hundred dollars. My former compatriot Zizala really did give me a special férst reyt prais.

  In the last issue of Rudé právo that I read on the American continent, there was invective directed at the former chair of the Writers’ Union, Eduard Goldstücker:

  The first thing he did in this capacity was to try to reinstate the membership of those who had been justifiably expelled from the party: A. J. Liehm, L. Vaculík, and I. Klíma. . . . It is interesting that even as recently as 1967, E. Goldstücker was trying to distance himself from these people. Less that a year later, when their opinions and activities were openly directed against the party, he is once again taking them under his patronage and creating conditions for further detrimental exploits.

  Finally I called my aunt Ilonka and Josef Škvorecký in Toronto to inform them I was returning to Prague. My aunt admitted it was my decision; I knew what was happening in Prague better than she did. Father had returned from Switzerland, even though she had tried to talk him out of it. Perhaps we knew best what we were doing. My colleague Škvorecký asked me to pass on his regards to all his friends. He still wanted to finish the semester, and then he would go back too. (He didn’t return for a visit until twenty years later.)

  As we were leaving for the airport, I felt a strange mixture of uncertainty, fear, and relief.

  Essay: Life in Subjugation, p. 507

  16

  Surprisingly, we were allowed to walk through customs at the Prague airport without any inspection and thus were able to bring in the dollars we had saved, of which I carried some in my wallet and some, without a great amount of ingenuity, stuck between the pages of The History of Czech Literature.

  Our apartment had been cleaned and aired out. My considerate mother-in-law had even prepared food for us and placed it in the refrigerator. On my desk lay a pile of letters and a recent newspaper.

  I was home. I didn’t know what I was going to do—today, tomorrow, or next week.

  I telephoned various friends. Most welcomed me home, but a few were taken aback to hear that I was calling from Prague. Their news about the current situation was depressing. A great many people who had worked in film, radio, television, or publishing or taught college or even high school had lost their jobs. The shooting of several films had been interrupted indefinitely, and others that were ready for release could not be shown. Our books had been removed from all bookstores, and newspapers were forbidden to publish any articles by those who were on a secret list of “flawed” writers. Who was on the list? Almost everyone. I also discovered that a meeting of the central committee of the Writers’ Union was to take place, and I was expected. Apparently, it would be the last meeting.

 
From the telephone booth on the corner of our street, I called Olga and told her I was back in Prague.

  “Klímka,” she said, “you can’t be serious! Have you gone insane?” She then added: “No, you’re still over there. For me, you left and remained there.”

  *

  I was waiting for the tram in front of the Mánes Gallery. Two boys and two girls were sitting on the sidewalk; all were wearing jeans and tennis shoes, and the boys were as hairy as forest people. One of them got up and walked over to me.

  Him: My friend, what sort of problems are you having?

  Me: The tram isn’t running.

  Him: You don’t have any other problems?

  Me: Not right now.

  Him: Strange. You’re not suffering?

  Me: No more than anyone else.

  Him: In that case, I can’t help you. Keep waiting for the tram. It might never come.

  From my diary, January 1970

  *

  I was received with astonishment at the writers’ meeting. To them, I seemed like an extraterrestrial standing right before their eyes. Then Jaroslav Seifert, who was chairing the meeting, welcomed me home. I think he was touched that at least one of his colleagues had decided to return from the free part of the world to our present misery. After the meeting, I went to see my former colleagues at the publishing house and learned that the entire print run of my last book of short stories had been confiscated and pulped. I asked if I could work for them as a freelance copyreader. They promised to look into it and during my next visit informed me that it was out of the question. Then I was asked, almost in a whisper, not to come back. The new director ordered everyone to tell me my visits were not welcome. Since I could no longer publish, the director would have to explain my visits not as work related but as social calls from someone who has shown himself to be an enemy of socialism. I soon learned that people who, in the eyes of the occupying power, committed an offense through their recent activities had no chance of securing any sort of professional work.