My Crazy Century

by Ivan Klíma

  He offered to take something out or bring something back in if we desired.

  In this way, I soon found myself behind an invisible counter of an invisible post office, and Wolfgang became a special courier who at least twice a month carried out letters and primarily manuscripts whose number was increasing with all the new samizdat series. On the way back, he would transport bags of Czech books and magazines that had been published abroad.

  Wolfgang had a rather good idea of what conspiracy involved. He was constantly on the lookout for cars tailing him, and when he was certain he wasn’t being followed (as far as one can be certain in this time of surveillance), he would drive to our home, where the gate and doors were always unlocked, run upstairs with two or three full bags, take from me a bag with outgoing mail, and be gone in less than a minute. On occasion, when he was not so certain, he would call to pass on regards from his wife or something along those lines. This meant that the bags were waiting at his place on Hradešínská Street.

  My amateur delivery service was fraught not only with dangers but also with difficulties. If I didn’t find someone at home, I couldn’t leave the package in the mailbox or with the neighbors. I also couldn’t call ahead of time. In many cases, the addressee’s telephone had been disconnected, and even if it worked, it would not be wise to announce my arrival beforehand.

  Of course, I wasn’t the only mail carrier. I saw only to writers’ consignments. During my postal activities, I was never caught, and I cannot say if the sentinels of the regime knew about what Wolfgang and other diplomats were hauling into and out of the country. Or perhaps they just told themselves that if I were not doing it, someone else would.

  It’s also possible that they were gradually beginning to realize that they had no idea what was going on.

  *

  Since Helena and I were in the position of persecuted dissidents against the reigning societal order, our children didn’t feel the need to rebel against us. On the contrary, they shared our fate and sympathized with us. At the same time, of course, they led their own lives.

  Nanda had barely turned eighteen when she got engaged. Unlike us, her fiancé was an Orthodox Jew. In 1981, for the first time in our family, a genuine Jewish wedding took place (including a ritual bath in the chilly Vltava). Michal constructed for them a hi-fi record player as a wedding gift. Our son-in-law had a small apartment in a housing development in the same quarter in which we lived (also near the forest). But as soon as Nanda moved out, our home suddenly felt empty. I missed her voice, her joy, her messy artsy room, her drawings and sketches strewn about. There was one fewer listener and narrator of everyday events, and one empty chair at the dining table. Suddenly I remembered all those times she used to sit beneath my desk and play while I was writing. Later—she might have been ten—we took a skiing trip to the Giant Mountains, something she had been excited about for a long time, and on the very first day Nanda came down with a sore throat. There was also our trip wandering around the Bohemian-Moravian Highlands and her almost nightly request that I tell her another installment of the unending story of the kitten and the puppy. Once she decided to give me a birthday present of my choosing, and we went to the stationery store, where I selected a magnifying glass to better examine the old maps that I collected. She poured from her purse all her coins and spent almost everything she’d saved up. I was touched by the love that lay behind the gesture. And there were the times I sat patiently while she drew my portrait.

  Michal was less communicative. He had no need to confide in us, or, if he did, he could never overcome his inhibitions. I was surprised to see him cry at Nanda’s wedding, even though her departure meant he would have their room to himself—something he’d been looking forward to. Unlike me, Michal was manually dexterous and was interested in contrivances he could fix or improve. He read a lot and was curious about politics, perhaps excessively so, considering his age (but understandably in view of the circumstances in which he grew up). Ever since childhood he had been a member of the water brigade, an organization that became popular after the scouts were banned. They tried to preserve something of the values and traditions of scouting. The brigade was governed very strictly with a semimilitary or, rather, seminaval hierarchy. Each member began as a seaman and received tasks that were often extremely difficult, and if they were not fulfilled, he could expect punishments. But everyone who was persistent and diligent advanced until the most dogged made it to the rank of captain, who saw to all the activities and made sure the age-old traditions were upheld. Michal was dedicated to his brigade and did indeed achieve the rank of captain.

  One of their traditions was that members would get together years after they had left the organization and help each other out in our society, which had been founded on oppression, self-criticism, and injustice.

  When Michal graduated from high school, he applied to study at the Czech Technical University in a new field to train executives (Socialist, of course). At the entrance interview, they did not even take into consideration his family’s doubtful history or the fact that he had not joined the Union of Socialist Youth.

  We saw him less and less at home now too, and soon after Nanda moved out, he managed to acquire the mansard above us. Our apartment had become orphaned.

  At the beginning of 1982, Nanda gave birth to a daughter, and they named her Anna. Naturally, she was beautiful.

  And so we became grandparents, and after a while, our home, at least from time to time, was brought back to life by the sobbing or prattling of a child.

  *

  Early in the morning, Radio Free Europe mentioned that a rumor was circulating in Moscow about the death of someone important. Then the television program changed, and the announcers were all wearing black. About an hour later, in the middle of the news, the station repeated the same thing, but then around 9:05, the announcer said, “Dear listeners, Radio Moscow has just announced that the chairman of the Highest Soviet and the general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev, has just passed away.” Except for the “dear listeners,” the news was read absolutely dispassionately (they must have thrust the report at him in the middle of his broadcast), and then he continued like a consummate professional, making me hesitate for a moment and wonder if my ears had deceived me.

  I called Father, who was surprised: “Really? Are you sure?” Then he added, “God knows what villain is going to come next. They’ve got warehouses of them over there.”

  From my diary, November 11, 1982

  *

  Why did they announce Brezhnev’s death a day late? They were waiting for Ilya Muromets whom they had sent to the West for magic water. But he didn’t come back.

  From my diary, November 13, 1982

  *

  Father went to see his sister for a few weeks in Canada, and when he came back, he was a little gaunt and had no appetite. We made him go see a doctor. He was told he had a tumor in his intestines and had to undergo an operation immediately. At this time, surgery, if undertaken in time, was the only chance of survival, albeit a small one. I accompanied Father when he went to receive the diagnosis. He told me about it as if he were informing me he had a cold. He was seventy-seven years old, but with his thick and only slightly graying hair, he looked at least ten years younger and was full of life. I couldn’t imagine he would soon be vanquished by death.

  They operated on him a few days later. The doctor said the tumor had been almost as big as a child’s head, but he hoped he’d managed to extract it all.

  When I spoke with Father, he was glad it was over with. The doctor had assured him everything had turned out fine. Then he added, “The main thing is that it wasn’t cancer.” I don’t know if this statement concealed anxiety, a conscious self-deception, or the successful suppression of grim reality, but I expressed my agreement. When Father was released from the hospital, he seemed once again to be full of energy. But his condition continued to weigh on me. My personal hardships paled in sign
ificance before the anticipated approach of death.

  I was at least somewhat distracted from my worries by a letter from Markéta Goetz-Stankiewicz, a professor of Germanic studies and translator from Czech. She was one of the fortunate ones who had managed to escape Hitler’s claws at the last moment. Although she had emigrated as a child, she never lost her connection with her native land, and now, since a new occupation had befallen Czechoslovakia, she was prepared to be of service. She wrote that the University of British Columbia was preparing a conference for the hundredth anniversary of Franz Kafka’s birth and wanted to know if I could contribute a talk.

  After I had written my Castle, I was considered to have an affinity for Kafka. This was not true: In addition to other things, I didn’t know much about him, and his works didn’t especially speak to me. Except for the title, my Castle had nothing in common with Kafka’s. I wrote back that I wouldn’t be able to attend the conference, even though I would have liked to, but I would try to prepare a contribution. I added that, unfortunately, few of Kafka’s works were available here and nothing at all about the writer himself. I gave the letter to Wolfgang, and soon thereafter he brought me a package from Markéta with the latest studies on Kafka in English and his recently published letters to Felice Bauer with an excellent and extensive introduction by Elias Canetti.

  I dutifully read through several monographs and even found something in the university library. It was Franz’s letters to Felice that interested me the most. From them I learned about his odd relationship to this woman he claimed to love. I found a similar relationship to Milena Jesenská in his letters to her. To my surprise, Kafka suddenly started to appear differently than he did to most scholars working on him (with perhaps the exception of Canetti). They searched his works for a symbolic expression of abstruse ideas about justice, human fate, society, man’s alienation, and even the future fate of the Jews. I was almost certain things were precisely the opposite.

  Literary theorists, critics, and historians are used to moving in a world of ideas, and they express generalizations and then force their abstract world onto the writer they’re studying. When they criticized the works of Franz Kafka, whose often dreamlike visions seduce one to ambiguous interpretations, a drastic discrepancy arose between Kafka’s ideas and theirs.

  In my opinion, Kafka was not interested in the world of ideas; even the world around him held little appeal. Kafka was concerned almost exclusively with himself. He wrote most of all about his imperfections, his inability to grow up—that is, to extricate himself from his father’s influence and become a mature man who builds a family. He was also shy and possessed the vision of an artist, and because his fantasy had greater significance than any kind of intellectual system, he expressed himself in apparently ambiguous and mysterious images.

  His inability to grow up expressed itself even in his inability to complete a more extensive work. However, even from those unfinished fragments and several prose pieces that he nevertheless finished, one can deduce, in my opinion, the source of his inspiration.

  As an example, I adduced the ostensibly indecipherable and bizarre story of one of the more extensive works he completed, “In the Penal Colony.” Kafka writes about a traveler who arrives on an island and meets with some sort of conservative officer. Most of the story is devoted to the officer’s explanation of the execution device, their traditional system of justice, and, finally, a demonstration of the device. Its mechanism is composed of a system of needles that slowly impale the body of the condemned man. The officer sets the device in motion. We learn about the prisoner, a man who looked so like a submissive dog that one might have thought he could be left to run free on the surrounding hills and would only need to be whistled for when the execution was due to begin. He has been convicted for an infraction that really wasn’t an infraction but just an unwillingness to be beaten. This seemingly incomprehensible, even absurd story has received bizarre interpretations. I was intrigued by Kafka’s diary entry about his first engagement to Felice, when he seemed tied hand and foot like a criminal. Furthermore, Kafka broke off the engagement after six weeks and journeyed with a friend to the seaside, where he composed the story.

  Then I noticed in a letter to Milena a remarkable passage concerning Kafka’s idea of marriage.

  You know, if I want to write something about [our engagement,] swords slowly begin to circle around me and approach my body, it’s the most complete torture; when they begin to graze me it’s already so terrible that at the first scream I betray you, myself, everything.

  This was a condensed description of the execution device from “In the Penal Colony” from his Selected Short Stories, and, if I understood the motifs that inspired Kafka, he saw himself in the man condemned to lie on the bed beneath the approaching needles. I was almost certain that in two of Kafka’s last unfinished novels I saw an image of his self-tormenting relationship to women. He tried to draw close to them, but owing to his inability to consummate any sort of relationship, he was condemned and punished like a criminal. For him, women became an impenetrable castle, and when they finally accepted him into their beds, he was overcome with weariness, anxiety, and his own indecisiveness and could not avail himself of the opportunity and could not accept their favors.

  He could not effectuate any substantive relationship, just as he could not complete any extensive work. Finally, death was the only resolution for him, and he accepted his tuberculosis.

  My talk was too long for someone to read at the conference; nevertheless, I took it to Wolfgang to send to Vancouver.

  Markéta translated and read part of my paper at the conference. The text then came out in an English edition of my essays and later in many languages, even Chinese.

  I once again applied for my passport. To my surprise, I received it. Although it didn’t allow me to go to Vancouver, I could travel to the so-called people’s democracies.

  *

  Helena’s fearless colleague, Dr. Lukavský, offered her a part-time job in his marriage counseling office, but she had to travel all the way to Mělník. The trip across Prague and then farther by bus was tiring, so Helena slept there once or twice a week. In her free time, she attended secret psychoanalysis training (psychoanalysis was forbidden).

  Alone at home, I was depressed. Time seemed to me unfilled and directionless. The most varied images started coming into my mind. What was love: blindness, passion?

  The opposite of love seemed to me to be refuse: garbage—not only real garbage, but emotional and intellectual as well. Images of garbage and love alternated through my thoughts. But I knew nothing of garbage with the exception of when I burned it during my short tenure as a hospital orderly.

  What kind of people came into contact with real garbage most often? Those who stood only on the lowest rungs of the social and economic ladder—street sweepers. I still wasn’t sure if I could somehow lay out these thoughts and string them together into a story, but it couldn’t hurt to get acquainted with the job of a street sweeper.

  Street sweeping seemed to me to be a job requiring so few qualifications that whoever applied would not be asked if he’d ever held a broom before; if he’d previously been a priest, a university professor, or a writer; if he’d just been let out of prison; or if he was a student or retiree who needed a few more crowns.

  One morning I presented my identity card to the work center in our district and was issued an orange vest and a broom. A permanent employee of the sanitation department formed us into a group and distributed more valuable equipment such as a wheelbarrow and shovels. Then we set off at a sluggish pace to the location we were supposed to clean.

  All types of people imaginable worked as street sweepers. I soon learned that their efforts were applied not to cleaning streets but to waiting out—as effortlessly and unperturbed as possible—the necessary time between starting work and collecting the day’s pay. After two hours of work, we sat for a long while in a pub and then dawdled away another couple of hours, since all
we had left to do was finish cleaning a street that had previously been scrubbed with a street-sweeping machine.

  I listened to some of the workers’ stories and gossip, but everything I heard was drowned out by thoughts of Father’s illness. His health had suddenly taken a turn for the worse and he was seized by bouts of fever. His temperature would suddenly rise to forty-two degrees Celsius over the course of two hours, as if he had malaria, and then a few hours later it would come back down to normal. This happened every day, and the doctor had no explanation. Father obediently submitted himself to ice packs and swallowed pills to lower his temperature, but it seemed that this peculiar illness was not responding to any external stimuli; it had its own rules. Father grew weak, and his usually clear mind became confused. When he awoke from a feverish state, he would lose all sense of time. In the evening, he thought it was morning, and when I tried to convince him otherwise (as if it was important to him), he would obediently admit that he believed me, since I, as a healthy person, maintained it.

  After several weeks, when his condition improved and then worsened again, he was taken to the hospital and placed in a room with two other patients. The doctors were able to reduce his fever, but I was told his fever was coupled with the cancer, which had spread to his kidneys and other parts of his body. We had to assume he had only a few days left. Nevertheless, especially after a transfusion, Father felt better and, suddenly lucid, said he was looking forward to going home and seeing Mother and—something more enticing—his computer. He mentioned the poor fellow in the next bed who coughed throughout the night and was probably on his last legs. Then Father’s state worsened and he started complaining that he couldn’t sleep because of his neighbor’s cough.