My Crazy Century

by Ivan Klíma

  So on the appointed day, I became a surveyor’s assistant. František was not lying when he said the work would be exhausting. During the first week, I woke up every morning feeling that I wouldn’t be able to raise the pickax.

  I also mailed off two letters to Kaiser, who had so brazenly disparaged my writing at a time when every government-approved graphomaniac was being insured. The first letter read:

  Dear Director,

  Because you doubted the character of the previous activity, which I and perhaps other people consider artistic, you certainly deserve to be informed that, at least for a time, I worked as a surveyor’s assistant. I consider it necessary to inform you of my activities, among other reasons, in order that your ignorance of this fact not afford you the opportunity to once again doubt my current activity.

  Therefore, I am now informing you of my activities as a surveyor’s assistant: During the month of September, I sanded and later painted seventy-nine poles, excavated approximately eight cubic meters of earth, implanted twenty-seven concrete footers and five millstones. Into various walls, including mostly church and cemetery walls, I hewed out openings for five apex stones and assisted with measuring and associated work. Of course, I am aware that only with the approval of the authorities do facts become facts and activities activities, and I do not delude myself as to what I actually accomplished in the surveying field.

  The second letter was somewhat more substantial.

  Dear Director K.,

  While meeting with my colleagues, I learned that you impugned the character of not only my work but theirs as well; you have determined their artistic endeavors to be undemonstrable. I have also learned that most of them have decided to defend themselves and are attempting to provide evidence of their artistic work. As proof, they are bringing in their books and news of productions of their plays on various world stages. Are you surprised that I did not undertake similar steps? I could simply claim that I do not consider such efforts to be dignified, but I would be lying if I pretended that it was not my wish for people such as yourself to disappear from the armchairs from which you conduct your contemptible work. The question is, how to make you truly disappear? It is only your armchair that provides you with your seeming power, raised high above, not only above the ground, but above all life, above humaneness—not to mention justice. Whoever undertakes a fight with you—I mean an honorable fight—not only cannot win, but also thereby recognizes your tyranny as legitimate; it raises even higher your armchair and affirms you in your feeling of superiority.

  Your body, your entire being can certainly be exchanged and replaced. What cannot be exchanged and replaced, however, is the world that you and those who appointed you have created for yourselves, the artificial world that you proclaim the only real one, because only those laws apply which you have laid down, and truth is only that which you proclaim to be true. You can be struck only when a force appears that will destroy your sacrosanctity and your world and thereby hurl you back down among the people.

  That force, Director, is the story. A story from the real world. You can toss a hundred requests into the wastebasket, but you will not silence a hundred stories. These stories, whatever they may tell, whether of love, suffering, or tenderness, will always be pointing a finger at your contemptible work. Finally they will smite you, and you will tumble from your seemingly unassailable heights, from your impregnable world, back to the void from which you arose. I want you to understand, at least during your fall, that these stories will outlive you.

  Sincerely,

  Surveyor’s Assistant Klíma

  The end of our surveying job was symbolic in a way that I couldn’t have imagined. In the enormous barn in which we’d been assigned to sleep, there was nothing when we got there except a sink and two coiled flags: the Czechoslovak flag and the one with the hammer and sickle.

  We gradually acquired two bunks and two chairs (which served as night tables), and my engineer got a small table that served as his worktable in the evenings.

  At the end of October, when we were preparing to leave our transient abode, we received an order from the city to hang out the flags because the anniversary of nationalization was approaching and, for all decent people, it was the birth of our not overly cheerful republic.

  The next day we were awakened by a curious clatter above our heads. When we went out to investigate, we saw roofers gradually removing the roof. They explained that this shack was going to be torn down. This shack was our country.

  *

  We grow old, and even if we’re still full of energy (at least that’s what we tell ourselves) we start to remember the children. Our granddaughter, Andula, just like our own children, demanded that I tell her stories of the kitten and the puppy. Michal started fixing up his mansard apartment above us because he was getting ready to marry. His intended was delicate, shy, and almost unsuitably bashful. Unlike Michal, who had graduated in enterprise management, his Jana graduated in the field of aesthetics in the school of humanities, which meant that their interests could be antithetical or, on the other hand, that they could be complementary. Fortunately, Michal was not a one-sided technocrat. He read a lot; loved music, especially folk music (he was acquainted with perhaps every folksinger in the country); and was also becoming more and more interested in political events. Certainly this was influenced not only by our fate but also by that of our friends whom he considered his friends, despite the difference in age. When Vlasta Chramostová decided to turn her apartment into a theater, Michal worked as the soundman as they privately filmed a performance of Shakespeare’s Macbeth.

  To our surprise, Michal received an exit permit for a business trip to Sweden. There he met with the publisher Adam Bromberg. Michal explained to him that I had recently lost my agent and was therefore “available.”

  Mr. Bromberg immediately telephoned and asked if I had any interest in accepting his services. I was overwhelmed by his interest and said of course I was interested. He said he had been counting on that and had reserved a plane ticket to Prague for tomorrow so we could agree on a contract.

  We negotiated for half a day. He assured me that he was connected with the best publishing houses in the entire cultured world; he represented two Nobel laureates, and I could be certain that in a few years, and owing to his services, I would become a world-famous author. I didn’t understand at the time how great a role a literary agent played in the life (and celebrity) of an author, and I attributed even less significance to such avowals, which seemed implausible. But it was high time; my fiftieth birthday had passed some time ago.

  *

  At our meeting on the first summer day of 1987, we argued at length over what should be done now. Should we too invoke Gorbachev’s democratizing socialism or aspire for a democracy in our own tradition, that is, should we strive for a society entirely free of the dogmas of Soviet socialism as created by the single ruling and irrevocable party? Finally we agreed that our country had a future only if it succeeded in linking up with our prewar democracy. This would most likely be achieved through small steps; for us, the most natural step would be to work for the freedom of art and speech in general.

  Most of my friends and colleagues had signed Charter 77, which demanded the same thing, but the government still refused to deal with its representatives. Although I had no illusions that they would behave differently with me (my letters were always either ignored or passed on to the secret police, who called me in for interrogation), I offered to write a letter to the prime minister and then give it to the others for their signature. Among other things, I wrote:

  Dear Mr. Prime Minister,

  It was with satisfaction that we received the recent announcement by our institutional functionaries calling for changes that should be under way in our country. We expect that these changes will also affect policies in the area of culture. After all, the number of artists, thinkers, researchers, and journalists who have been silenced and are prohibited from carrying out their jobs totals s
everal hundred. . . .

  For seventeen years, the practice has continued whereby any writer who participated in (or was influenced by) the reform movement is not allowed to publish. More than half of Czech writers have been affected by this prohibition, which is in contravention of constitutional laws and with international conventions our republic has entered, not to mention the entirety of our cultural tradition. During this period, nearly a thousand books, poems, essays, memoirs, and theater plays have come into being, many of which have achieved world renown. In our country, however, they may not be made public. With every passing year, this state of affairs is becoming more and more unjustifiable. It currently persists only because it brings personal advantage to several official writers who have been relieved of all literary competition.

  I went on to say that the perpetuation of the current state of affairs would have tragic consequences for the morality of society and would harm the reputation of our country abroad. I also noted that a great number of our colleagues had been expelled and that not only were Czech authors on this list but so were the best foreign authors.

  We demand that this list be destroyed and that readers here be given back the opportunity of acquainting themselves with the values of world literature as well as Czech and Slovak.

  I wrote the letter, insofar as I was able, if not in a respectful at least in a decorous tone. My friends corrected a few things and improved others. Finally, the letter was signed by twenty-nine writers and journalists.

  I received not a single sentence in reply and wasn’t even called into interrogation for it.

  But slowly there began to appear signs of change. The secretary of the Central Committee’s ideological department—a boozy, half-educated man beneath whose auspices the destruction of Czech culture had proceeded—was replaced, as was the secretary of the official Writers’ Union. Both were replaced by younger functionaries who had the reputation of being more moderate.

  Several of my silenced colleagues began something heretofore unthinkable. They decided to publish Lidové noviny (for now as a monthly), and not as a samizdat journal but as a legal periodical with a print run of a thousand copies. The two editors in chief endorsed the newspaper and approached the Federal Press and Information Office to request a publisher (this was a requirement in order to publish any periodical). Although they were refused, more and more authors began to contribute to Lidové noviny, and the circle of readers became much wider than it would have been for any typewritten journals. Meanwhile, the names of the editorial board were published, and most authors signed their articles. All along, they also managed to conceal the location where the journal was reproduced.

  *

  Helena saw to it that the entire family (our children, her parents and sister, and my mother) got together now and then. We celebrated birthdays and of course Christmas. Even though our children were grown up, we still decorated the Christmas tree.

  After a time, you forget the gifts you have received unless they are truly exceptional, but one present, although it was only promised, was among the most unforgettable. Michal and Jana informed us that their gift would be ready at the beginning of the summer.

  Her name was Manka, and during this Christmas we foretold, or at least promised, she would be born in a better world, a free society —but this kept vanishing into the distance.

  Soon after the holidays, I stopped by Michal and Jana’s upstairs apartment and was surprised to see bundles of pages of Lidové noviny. They had been tasked with compiling individual issues, something they’d been doing for several months, but they hadn’t told me because they didn’t want me to worry.

  I said it wasn’t a matter of my worrying, but this building was probably not the most appropriate place for such activity.

  “On the contrary,” explained my son. “This is the perfect place because the secret police think just the way you do.” Besides, they were trying to publish the journal legally. As far as the first point was concerned, Michal was right—the secret police had never entered his apartment.

  January 16, 1989, was the twentieth anniversary of the death of Jan Palach. A humanities student at Charles University, Palach had set himself on fire in front of the National Museum in 1969. He’d done it to protest the Soviet invasion, or, more precisely, as he said later when they took him to the hospital mortally wounded, to protest everything that was happening here at that time.

  I had wanted to buy some flowers, but none of the flower shops had even a sprig of anything left. Slowly and dutifully for almost an entire afternoon, Helena and I had moved forward in the column on Old Town Square in the direction of the Karolinum. The air in the hall where the coffin stood had been redolent with the aroma of flowers, and everything was silent, just the sound of soft footsteps and intermittent sobs.

  For several years, the anniversary had been celebrated with a quiet gathering at the statue of Saint Wenceslaus. The police usually dispersed the people; this time, however, it was the twentieth anniversary, which especially unsettled the reigning power. The police were waiting with truncheons and water cannons for those who wanted to pay tribute to Palach.

  During the demonstration, Václav Havel was arrested again, but something had changed. Many prominent people, who had previously put up with police despotism, decided to lodge a protest against the arrest.

  *

  After the demonstration, when we had been driven from Wenceslaus Square with water cannons, I and a few others dropped into a pub on Vodičkova Street. The waiter briskly sat us down at a table and then said to me (because I was obviously the oldest): “This is the fourth day in a row we’ve had such an unexpected rush. I say: A wet Czech is a good Czech. There’s nothing seditious about that.” After a while, he came over again: “Yesterday a woman showed up at the demonstration and told the police she wasn’t there to protest, she was just going to the cinema. Then she showed them her ticket. They seized it and said, ‘Sure you were.’” I don’t know if I inspired his trust or if he was simply trying to get something out of me, but he came over a moment later and said, “You know, I apprenticed across the street at the Hotel Šroubek.” He pointed in the direction of the square. “Whoever studied the best was sent abroad for a year. I was in London and learned English for a year, not like those who stuff a couple of words into their heads. Foreigners walk in, order some beef, and they bring out a beer. And there were worse things. Those idiotic riot police sprayed water in here until all the chairs were soaked. Once we had a Dutch woman come in. She went to the toilet, flushed, and the entire toilet collapsed on her. A week earlier, we’d had the place painted, and the painters had scraped the walls. Now the Dutch woman was covered with plaster. So we wrapped her in a tablecloth and called a taxi. She showed up a half hour later wanting supper. Of course we had to give it to her gratis. And they want us to be self-supporting? How can anyone prosper under such conditions?”

  From my diary, January 1989

  *

  My agent Bromberg was keeping busy. The last issue of Svědectví in 1988 arrived a little late, and there I saw that my Love and Garbage had been published in England and Holland. I also saw my first review:

  In his latest novel, Ivan Klíma has once again demonstrated that he is heir to masters of Czech prose such as Karel Čapek and Egon Hostovský. He is able to endow a simple sentence with the poetic charge of artistic conviction, amazing and enrapturing the reader. He induces that magnificent, blissful feeling that we experience whenever we come across a genuine artistic work. In reading Klíma’s novel, the conviction grows in the reader, from page to page, that one has encountered a Czech author on a world-class level. And this conviction deservedly arouses pride.

  I was still not permitted to publish a single line at home.

  *

  Michal brought me an instruction manual for operating WordPerfect and told me this was a new era of computers, and whoever didn’t know how to use them was finished as an intellectual.

  I looked at the instructions
and saw an image of a keyboard with many incomprehensible designations such as F1 to F12 along with mysterious abbreviations such as Ins, Del, Home, Alt, and Ctrl. From time to time, Michal would quiz me on cutting and pasting or how to save a new text, and he was usually not satisfied with my answers. He nearly exploded when I called the Ctrl key the central key. (It didn’t matter whether the key was called central, control, or casserole; what was important was its function, which seemed incomprehensible.) All the same, a few months later, he brought me a brand-new and, most important, portable computer as a gift and once again quizzed me on its operations.

  Over the next few days, I became addicted to this new device. In the morning, I couldn’t sleep and was at the miraculous keyboard at six o’clock. Not only could I write a new text, but I could even print the whole thing out on the attached printer, and the lines were perfectly aligned as if they had come from a real printing press. Until then I had to rewrite each page several times, cut the pages up, paste them together, type a clean copy, and then correct it again. Now my work flowed astonishingly quickly. During the next few weeks, I completed My Golden Trades and printed out twenty copies to share with my friends. But this amazing device could not alter my situation—I could print more copies, which looked nicer, but they were still only typewritten facsimiles.