My Crazy Century

by Ivan Klíma

  She also possessed a special gift of transforming everything she saw or experienced into a thrilling and impassioned story. The border between her laughter and tears, between happiness and sorrow, was barely perceptible.

  She wrote short books in which her entire being was exposed, even if the stories were about other people and from an entirely different period.

  Both of us adored nature. I had been deprived of entire summers during childhood, and since then I’ve harbored the natural world in my thoughts like an articulated image in which forests merge with fields and fields with meadows and meadows with ponds. It abounds with nameless fragrant flowers, and anonymous birds warble around.

  For her everything was composed of concrete things that she could identify: She knew the name of every plant we encountered; she recognized any bird by its song and knew the name of every bush we later made love beneath.

  I believed neither her auguries nor her spells. It all seemed to me a tentative and noncommittal game, whether she was foretelling success and fame or rejoicing over my lengthy lifeline which, at least in this moment, she hoped we would spend together.

  In one letter, she wrote:

  My dear, my dearest, I am home alone and the snow is falling gently outside. My eyes are hurting me so much that I cannot read, I can’t distract myself with anything. So I close my eyes and feel that I love you, that it is not within my strength to offer any resistance. You have cast a spell over me, stung me, bewitched me so that I am able to think of nothing else but you. And I ask myself: How could I have let this happen? How did you become so close and so inevitable that I am afraid? . . . You say that I bewitch you, but you have been casting even more spells over me. You know this well enough yourself. You employ not only your feelings but also your mind, and I cannot resist.

  I wrote similar letters to her. At the same time, I was afraid of my feelings, of what I was hurtling myself toward, of what we were hurtling ourselves toward.

  I had no desire to prevaricate, so I told my wife about my outburst of passion.

  I think she was hurt. Then, for a long time, we scrutinized our lives, our mistakes, and our setbacks. She wanted to know how I planned to continue. What did I want? At no time did I consider staying with both of them. Finally, I promised to end it.

  But I do not intend to compose a chronicle of my love life and my infidelities. My wish is not to draw my loved ones into my tale; it’s enough that I drew them into real life.

  *

  The house in Hodkovičky in which we lived was a little more than forty years old, but it shared the unsettled and crazy history of our country.

  In the early thirties, the house was built by the owner of a barbershop. Today, Hodkovičky is one of the most expensive sections of Prague, but back then it was still provincial and modest. It was populated mostly by successful businessmen and craftsmen. There were a few other ostentatious homes on our street, which obviously belonged to people who were better off or at least could afford a decent architect to design their dwellings in a constructivist or cubist manner.

  Our apartment was ordinary but also practically designed—the living room windows faced south and north. The building had a basement apartment, but with the passage of time it became so damp that no one used it anymore. There were three-room apartments on the ground floor and first floor (where we lived), and at the top was a small two-room mansard rental, which the authorities refused to recognize as an apartment because the ceilings were too low.

  The only son of the owners—this was during the First Republic—rose to the top ranks of the police force relatively quickly. He even spent the years of the Nazi occupation with the police and he was not certain whether he would survive liberation. He fled across the ocean while life in his homeland trundled from abyss to abyss. In a quick series of events, (some) collaborationists were sentenced and deported along with the Germans they had served, willingly or otherwise. The government also announced nationalization, which at first did not concern the barbers’ trade or private homes, let alone small houses.

  Meanwhile, the son of our landlords had gotten his footing in the United States and was trying to contribute to his parents’ impecunious household. He sent them dollars, which his mother, like many people, exchanged for Tuzex crowns, which she then sold on the black market—but so openly that she was soon arrested and convicted. In addition to receiving a prison sentence, she had part of her property confiscated. Her husband claimed he had no knowledge of his wife’s activities, and the court surprisingly chose to believe him. Therefore, half the house was confiscated, and he kept the other half. But now that he was alone, he was obliged to move into the mansard apartment upstairs, and tenants were installed in the two lower floors—two families on the ground floor because the government was trying to resolve the housing crisis after the Soviet model by dividing the home in two, with the tenants sharing common facilities.

  This is the state in which we found the building in 1965 when we acquired an apartment in exchange for our cooperative apartment that we had been remodeling. The landlady was well into her seventies, but she played the part of a grande dame and covered herself so liberally with cheap Soviet perfume that whenever she walked down the stairs, the cloying scent hung in the air at least half the day. She had a subletter—a quiet, thin, old-world, and well-mannered waiter who sometimes played the accordion or trumpet. The neighbors claimed he was the old woman’s lover, and she provided his lodgings free of charge as well as cleaned his clothes and fed him. This seemed unlikely—a waiter could eat at his place of employment, even if it was just a pub, and taking on the task of sweetheart seemed even more unlikely. One day, however, the waiter disappeared along with his accordion and trumpet, and we never saw him again. A little while later, when I’d all but forgotten him, I received a postcard from him bearing a Danish stamp (it was surprising that the post office had even delivered it). On the card he had written: I’m doing wonderfully, I’m free. Please say hello to all the tenants, even my niggardly and perfumed old lady. Regards . . .

  So the landlady was left on her own. She was like an old tin can tossed out in the forest and quickly starting to rust. Sometimes she stopped by our apartment, especially if Helena was baking a cake (which wasn’t very often); the old woman knew she would get a piece to taste. Sometimes she even came to borrow a small amount of money, which she never returned. She began neglecting herself more and more and started to look like a witch—understandably in view of everything she’d lived through. But she was also mean. For years, we had a sparrows’ nest just inside the building’s front entrance, so we had to leave the door to the building open even at night (crime was not so bad then). One day she pulled down the nest with the chicks and threw it into the trash.

  Sometimes paranoia would get the better of her, and she would fly around the building looking everywhere for her passbook. Finally, she would call the police and say she’d been robbed. The police would come every time (explaining that they had to show up when someone called) and try to persuade the old woman that she’d simply mislaid the passbook; they assured her that they’d found no sign of a break-in, and this appeased her for a moment.

  One day Helena said she hadn’t seen the old woman lately. We hadn’t heard the usual sounds from the mansard apartment either, and I realized that it had been a while since I’d noticed the reek of her perfume. We asked the neighbors, but they also hadn’t seen her. This time we called the police. They arrived, pounded in vain on her door, then borrowed the stepladder in the garden and placed it on our terrace, and one of them climbed up and broke a window in the mansard. I still remember the police officer’s pale face as he climbed back down, took a seat on the stepladder, and stammered that the old woman was lying on the bed, and the room was filled with the stench of decaying corpse.

  Soon thereafter, new tenants moved into the mansard apartment— a corpulent fifty-year-old man with significantly thinning hair, his young and rather fetching wife, and their five-year-old son,
Jindříšek.

  A few days later, the head of the new household rang our door- bell to introduce himself. He presented me with a small painted box, which was trying to look like an antique, along with his business card. A doctor’s title preceded his pithy and memorable name. (I soon learned that this title was as fraudulent as everything he did. His wife told me that he worked at the sanatorium in Bohnice, of course not as a doctor but an orderly, and he held this position only for the stamp it provided his ID booklet. Otherwise, he supported himself by trading in antiques.)

  As soon as he opened his mouth, I realized I was standing face-to-face with a hero from a short story by O. Henry, Chekhov, Hašek, or Hrabal, or a story yet to be written—which I undertook a few months later. I changed his name and, as far as I remember, condensed several of his discourses into one.

  I was given to understand that he had been everywhere, knew everybody, and could procure or arrange just about anything. In the concentration camp, he had shared a bunk with Count Schwarzenberg. He was on a first-name basis with the prime minister’s brother. He was trying to obtain a set of silver platters for the Belgian delegate at the UN. He had rebuked the deputy interior minister by saying, “You needn’t think you can pull the wool over my eyes, I can see right through you!” When he visited Honza Schwarzenberg in Vienna the other day, he was introduced to Otto Hapsburg, a truly charming gentleman. An agent, of course. All those fine gentlemen were agents. Agents were in charge the world over—policemen of the world unite. Nixon and other clowns like him—he wouldn’t even bother to name ours—were just their lackeys. One of these days, when he had more time, he would tell me more about all this.

  After ten minutes, I was supposed to feel like a country bumpkin who had no idea about the big wide world out there. After twenty, I might begin to hope that despite all his knowledge and wide experience he might consider me worthy of his interest.

  This fellow certainly deserved to be immortalized along with his splendid monologues and remarkably shameless dealings. (He once offered me an oil painting, claiming it was an original Picasso.) I was eager to write about him, but I didn’t have a story yet. Then one morning I was home alone; the children were at school, and my wife was at work. I was sitting in my bedroom writing. Suddenly the door flew open, and in walked little Jindřich. His sudden appearance in our apartment, which no one could enter except as a thief, put me in such a state of shock that all I could do was stammer stupidly, “Jindříšek, where did you come from?”

  And the child explained: “I jumped.” He led me onto the terrace and pointed to an open window in the mansard above us.

  Jindřich’s butt and elbows were a little scraped, and while I was treating his wounds, I realized I had the story.

  *

  Sometime at the beginning of December 1976, Nanda’s homeroom teacher invited us in for a talk. Pretending to be crestfallen, she informed us that there was no way she could recommend our daughter for college. “You, Mr. Klíma,” she turned to me, “certainly understand why. We are all very sorry; your Hanička is such a sweet and industrious girl. Her drawings are excellent, and she even helps with the May Day decorations.” She advised us to send Hana to work at a factory for a year or two, then the factory could do what they at the school were not allowed to (she immediately corrected herself: what they couldn’t do), that is, recommend Hana for college.

  Soon thereafter, Helena’s colleague, Jiří Dienstbier, came to see us (I knew him from my time in Michigan, when he and his wife had stopped for a visit on their way north). Jirka was an unusually witty and clever observer. But I think at the time he was somewhat less skeptical than I was.

  His optimism was now quite apparent. He said that several of our friends were preparing the text of a petition that essentially repeated the fundamental principles of the Helsinki Accords. Among other things, it required the countries that had signed the treaty to uphold basic human rights, and, as I was well aware, our government had signed it. The petition demanded nothing more than that the government actually do what it promised when it signed this document. With almost gleeful joy, he added that he truly could not imagine what they might object to in such a petition. And he took out of his briefcase four typewritten pages for me to look over.

  The text, bearing the title Charter 77, did indeed refer to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which had come into effect a few months earlier. But in the third sentence it announced that the promulgation, however, serves as a powerful reminder of the extent to which basic human rights in our country exist, regrettably, on paper alone.

  The introduction itself would not please our comrades in power. Then, blow after blow followed, all of them well aimed:

  In violation of Article 13 of the second-mentioned covenant, guaranteeing everyone the right to education, countless young people are prevented from studying because of their own views or even their parents.’ . . . Freedom of public expression is inhibited. . . . No philosophical, political, or scientific view or artistic activity that departs ever so slightly from the narrow bounds of official ideology or aesthetics is allowed to be published; no open criticism can be made of abnormal social phenomena; no public defense is possible against false and insulting charges made in official propaganda. . . . Freedom of religious confession, emphatically guaranteed by Article 18 of the first covenant, is continually curtailed by arbitrary official action.

  In the enumeration of the regime’s violations, it was pointed out that there were no nonparty authorities; the Ministry of the Interior monitored the lives of its own citizens, tracked their every move, tapped telephones and apartments, intercepted their mail, and conducted house searches.

  In cases of prosecution on political grounds the investigative and judicial organs violate the rights of those charged and those defending them, as guaranteed by Article 14 of the first covenant and indeed by Czechoslovak law. The prison treatment of those sentenced in such cases is an affront to their human dignity and a menace to their health, aimed at breaking their morale.

  Finally, the text pointed out that Charter 77 was not an organization; it did not have any statutes. It sought only to serve the general good. It did not pretend to be a political organization but wanted only to introduce a constructive dialogue with the ruling power. It was represented by three spokesmen: Professor Jan Patočka, Václav Havel, and Professor Jiří Hájek.

  I said they couldn’t possibly expect our government to conduct a dialogue on these sensitive issues.

  What could they do? Jiří wanted to know my opinion.

  They’ll raise hell.

  But then they’d just be proving us right! He said the petition had already been signed by a lot of people and almost all of our friends.

  But no one will ever know about it, I objected. You say right here that they monitor every means of communication.

  I saw he was waiting to see if I would sign, but I said I would have to think it over. Even though I had no doubt, I added, that the proclamation was correct about everything, this was precisely what would infuriate the government the most.

  Certainly I was doing some shuffling because I kept hoping that Nanda might be accepted at art school and, unlike my friend and courier, I was certain that my signature would be carefully noted, and they would then consider an appropriate punishment.

  The police confiscated the final petition even before the three couriers managed to deliver it to the National Assembly, the government, and the Czechoslovak Press Agency. The charter had 242 signatories: writers, philosophers, journalists, priests, and scholars (some asked that their names not be revealed). Later, the number of signatories increased by almost a thousand (Helena was among them).

  State Security reacted more furiously than my friends had anticipated. Over the following hours, they began searching the flats of everyone who had signed the charter. They confiscated crates of printed matter and manuscripts and brought in s
ignatories for interrogation; some of the signers subsequently lost their jobs.

  For a few days nothing happened. Finally, Rudé právo came out with an article titled “Castaways and Usurpers.” Although I expected the official reaction to be harsh, this piece by the representatives of the journalist cesspool exceeded all expectations. The article was lengthier than the charter itself and cited not a word of the text. It noted among other things:

  The international forces of reaction will employ all means and seek out all allies. They corrupt anyone who can be corrupted, they bribe whomever they can bribe, they count on apostates and deserters from the enemy’s camp. They enlist emigrants but also castaways living in socialist countries, those who, for whatever reason—their class origin, their reactionary interests, their vanity, megalomania, apostasy, or notorious spinelessness—are willing to lend their names even to the devil. In their obdurate battle against progress, the international forces of reaction . . . often seek the impossible—to revive even political corpses, both from the ranks of emigrants from Socialist countries and from the ranks of class enemies, renegades, and even criminal elements. One of the forms of this pathetic cooperation is the fabrication of all manner of pamphlets, letters, protests, and other trivial calumny, passed off as the voice of “oppositional” individuals or groups, which are then, with great fanfare, disseminated throughout the world.

  Among these is the newest pamphlet, the so-called Charter 77, given to certain Western agencies by a group composed of individuals from the ranks of the bankrupt, reactionary Czechoslovak bourgeoisie as well as the bankrupt organizers of the 1968 counterrevolution upon the orders of anticommunist and Zionist head offices. It is an antistate, antisocialist, antipeople, and demagogic piece of libel that crudely and mendaciously slanders the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic. It is a colorful mix of human and political castaways. Among them are V. Havel, a man from a millionaire’s family; the obdurate antisocialist P. Kohout, the loyal servant of imperialism and his well-established agent, J. Hájek; the bankrupt politician who, under the slogan of neutrality, wanted to detach us from the society of socialist countries; and L. Vaculík, the author of the counterrevolutionary pamphlet “Two Thousand Words.”