Alice to Prague

by Tanya Heaslip

  My throat was dry. ‘The third thing?’

  ‘Yes. Learn the language while you’re there. It’s complex, similar grammar to Latin, but will enable you to talk to people and make the most of your time.’

  Yes, yes. I kept nodding. Books and talking—two of my favourite things. How hard could it be?

  There were, however, a few crucial facts about Peter Barr I hadn’t factored in.

  Peter was already fluent in many languages, including Latin. He enjoyed numerous international diplomatic connections. He was the Honorary Consul for Belgium. It didn’t occur to me to be concerned that I was fluent in no foreign languages, especially not Latin, and enjoyed no international connections, diplomatic or otherwise.

  Nor did it occur to me that Mrs Hodder from School of the Air and I spoke the same language, and that channelling her into Czech might be slightly tricky. No, instead I was filled with blind optimism. In 1989 I’d lugged around a trusty pink backpack and Let’s Go Europe as talisman and guide. That had worked then—why not now, in the East? After two gin and tonics, what seemed like an answer to a prayer meant that anything and everything seemed possible. In my mind’s eye I could see myself sweeping into a picturesque village nestled in rolling hills, arriving like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, full of hope and encouragement and even some song.

  Peter stood up, his linen suit crease-free, his Panama hat held loosely between his graceful fingers. ‘I’ll put in a call tomorrow for you. Then I’ll be in touch. Good luck!’

  I flew back to Alice, dizzy with excitement. Peter called me within a few days, confirming the school was happy to take me on in the new year and looking forward to my arrival. I resigned immediately and wrote off to Canberra for the relevant visas.

  Not everyone was as enthused. ‘What are we going to do with all your cases?’ my boss demanded. I apologised repeatedly, my face hot and pink (crushing eldest-child guilt invariably loomed large at those moments), but there was no turning back.

  Mum was horrified. ‘Please don’t go,’ she begged when I told her, crossing her arms with the conviction of one who’d lived through the Petrov Affair and ‘Reds under the Bed’. ‘Those Cold War countries are dangerous. They won’t have changed overnight.’

  The concerns of well-meaning friends and family poured in alongside hers, ranging from security and logistic issues—‘We’ve never even heard of this place; how do you even get there?’ and ‘You mean you can only be contacted via a fax at the school? No phone at all?’—through to concerns about my career: ‘You know this time you really will fall off the ladder and not be able to get back up. You know that, don’t you? You can’t keep running away from work for a year at a time, Tanya.’

  Oh, but there’s no such word as ‘can’t’, I thought, channelling Dad.

  Dad was slightly pacified by the fact I was at least going to work somewhere else. He was also curious about my destination. He was a self-taught historian with a huge interest in the world wars. It was in his Encyclopaedia Britannica that I found a small dot on a map that told me where Sedlčany was located: south of Prague. The paper of the map was smooth under my fingers; I doubted whether this page had ever been opened. I was proud to bring it to life. Dad nodded brusquely as I showed him and told me to keep good records. He even suggested I should visit Moscow, home of the Cold War, if I had the chance.

  I worked right up until the weekend before I left, finalising file notes and farewelling clients, so there was a complete lack of preparation for my trip (other than packing a bag and receiving my visas only two days before departure). But I didn’t care. There was nothing I could really do until I got there so I had to trust it would all work out.

  The exception was hunting down The Unbearable Lightness of Being, the book Peter had recommended. I couldn’t find the novel but borrowed the video. I put it on excitedly, keen to see the bohemian city of Prague that Peter had described.

  To my surprise the movie was about an oversexed surgeon named Tomáš, his long-suffering wife Tereza and his long-term mistress Sabina. As I was wondering what Peter Barr was getting me into, I saw the references to the Prague Spring, and thought it must be some sort of lovefest in the sunshine. Er—no. The movie included real footage of what was in fact an invasion: Russian tanks rolling into Wenceslas Square to crush innocent people. Massive steel tanks mowing down screaming students. Communist soldiers firing into the crowds. I could hardly believe my eyes. Terror trickled down my spine.

  The movie depicted life after the invasion too: fear etched on people’s faces, ordinary men and women vanishing in the night never to be seen again, people’s occupations stripped from them. (Tomáš, refusing to bow to the regime, goes from being an acclaimed surgeon to a window washer. He still manages to have a lot of sex with the women whose windows he washes but I’m not sure it compensates for losing his brilliant career.) My skin crawled at the faceless men in low hats and long coats who moved in and out of shadows, directing people’s lives in some sort of Kafkaesque plot.

  After watching the movie I spent several days in high anxiety. Was I making a mistake? Peter had said the transition to freedom in the Czech Republic had been slow.

  But something deeper and unspoken was pushing me forward. It overrode my apprehension. And it wasn’t the fear of a political system. It was something worse. It was the fear of my own social system, my society’s expectations, the expectation that a woman of a certain age (say, thirty-one, for example) was expected to have both a ring on her finger and a bunch of children. All I had to show for my many years was a long list of unsuccessful relationships while all my friends were busily married, having babies, cooing and delighted.

  The unspoken text was ‘What is wrong with you?’

  At this rate I would be left on the shelf and run the risk of becoming a spinster (a word still bandied about in 1994, and the worst possible outcome for any young woman in my society, it appeared). I cringed every time someone raised an eyebrow at my lack of a suitable suitor, and every time someone tried to sound encouraging: ‘Oh, it will happen for you, it’s all in the timing!’ My beloved grandfather said mournfully, ‘It is a great pity a rose like you should be left on the vine’.

  Sure, I wanted love—didn’t everyone? But I was like a nervous filly, shy of being controlled, longing always for the openness of the plains. If anyone tried to tie me down, I was off, galloping wildly, nostrils flaring. I wasn’t sure of the cause of this unhelpful affliction but early years of bush freedom followed by teenage years of boarding school imprisonment were in the mix. As a result, good men didn’t stand a chance, while cads and commitment-phobes came and went in droves. Going to an unknown country would give me a chance to escape those scenarios and expectations I could not seem to fulfil, did not know how to fulfil—and a chance to start again.

  My sister M’Lis, my much-loved soulmate, was the one person who truly understood me. We went for a long horseride out through the hills before I left. We talked about our futures as our horses picked their way along the narrow trail.

  It was dusk when we returned and I took in the beautiful colours as they deepened into apricot and deep golden hues along the ridges of the ranges. ‘I’ll be back, Lis. This is my country, but I need to get away, to do this first.’ I stroked my horse’s mane and breathed in her sweet scent.

  M’Lis reached out and touched my hand. ‘I know you do.’

  ‘We’ll miss you terribly,’ Mum whispered to me at the airport, her eyes brimming with tears.

  I hugged her, struck by that same sickening feeling of being twelve years old again and saying goodbye to her at the boarding school gates.

  M’Lis held me tight and we clung together for a moment. Dad, Brett and Benny gave me a last hug. Then the flight was called.

  I headed across the tarmac. All around me were the huge blue skies of Central Australia. The sun shone hot on my bare shoulders and the light was intense. In the distance, the mountain ranges shimmered purple under the midday sun. Catching on
e last glimpse of my family standing close together at the gate, I swallowed down tears.

  But I knew there was more to life than what I was experiencing at home and I felt driven to discover what else was out there. A whole new world was waiting to be explored, and if I didn’t take the opportunity now, I might never do it. And I didn’t want to live with regrets.

  There would always be time to return and be a conventional girl later.

  Perhaps.

  Breathing in a last deep gulp of clean, fresh air, I waved my final goodbye. The scent of eucalyptus from the flowering gum trees lining our path drifted to me and felt like a good omen. Even with tears on my cheeks, I couldn’t wait to get on that plane.

  3

  Maruška and Zdeněk

  March 1994

  ‘Taaaarnya?’

  A young, slim woman with high cheekbones and short, dark curly hair disentangled herself from the crowd in the arrivals hall of Prague-Ruzyně International Airport.

  My legs wobbled and I was flooded with relief.

  I’d just endured three hours of wrong queues, wrong box offices, and interrogations by passport and immigration officials that I couldn’t understand—and undoubtedly never would. What had I been thinking? I’d had to sign documents I couldn’t read. (Nothing terrifies a lawyer more than signing documents they can’t read.) My head ached. Nothing in the previous three hours had made sense to me, not the signs covered in words made of letters with hooks on top of them and dashes either side, nor the officials barking instructions meaningless to my untrained ear. I’d had no expectation it would be this difficult. After all, when I’d travelled in 1989, the romantic-sounding languages of French, German, Italian and Spanish were filled with letters and words and phrases similar to those in English, and I could usually work out the gist of what was meant. Not here. I might as well have landed on Mars.

  What had I been thinking?

  There was something else equally confronting. My joyous memories of shared love and elation and freedom and dancing at the bottom of the Berlin Wall had vanished in seconds of landing. The airport shrieked ‘Cold War prison camp!’ to me. Barbed wire and chain-link fencing stretched across flat land. Soldiers with guns watched us silently as we crossed the tarmac. Then they barked orders inside. I’d never seen guns at an airport before. Maybe this country hadn’t moved on from the bad old days after all. I felt crumpled and dirty and exhausted, like a prisoner myself, my joie de vivre dissipating with each step.

  But now a woman smiled shyly and extended her hand.

  ‘I am Maruška, English teacher at Gymnázium Sedlčany, and this is Headmaster Zdeněk.’

  A swarthy, muscular man with a mat of light-brown hair pumped my hand. His face creased into a grin that lit his eyes as he thrust a cellophane-wrapped pink carnation at me. At this unprecedented show of welcome and graciousness, not to mention the pleasure at seeing a burst of colour in this sea of grey, my knees sagged. Swaying slightly, I gazed, stupefied, at the shiny wrapping around the carnation.

  Zdeněk said disarmingly, ‘I do not speak the English,’ picked up my bag and led us out of the building.

  ‘Welcome to Czech Republic!’ Maruška spoke softly and slowly as we walked, her English punctuated with rolled ‘r’s. ‘It is custom to give flowers to men and women at times of arrival, departure and celebration. We are happy to welcome you here today.’

  I was unbelievably grateful to Maruška and Zdeněk for turning up and saving me. Throughout the passport and immigration process I thought I’d end up being shipped off to a gulag in Siberia, or worse. I was equally grateful that Maruška explained things as we hurried through the icy afternoon towards the car park. She told me her name was pronounced Mar-oosh-ka, that the cars were Russian-style Ladas or Škodas, and that Zdeněk was here to collect me because he was one of the fortunate few at the school with a car. That was a sign of great status, although she did whisper that škoda meant ‘it’s a pity’.

  The Ladas and Škodas were teeny-tiny, like toy cars. They squatted around the car park like beetles, in shabby shades of brown and grey. There were even smaller toy cars too—Trabants, boxes on wheels run by two-stroke engines, like lawnmowers. The car park was full of smoke and the din of revving and vrooming, exhaust pipes blowing hard into the chilled air. In my jetlagged state, I had trouble remembering where I was.

  ‘Tak!’ Zdeněk shoved my case inside the bonnet. The bonnet? He slammed that down, walked to the back of the car, and opened the boot, revealing a tangle of wires and tubes. He checked something, shut the lid and shouted, ‘Tak, jdeme.’

  Baring teeth through a frozen face, I hopped into the back seat and we set off for my first back-to-front car ride. The engine throbbed under my bottom, sending painful vibrations up and down my spine. Derelict buildings, ringed with washing hung high, lined the airport road. Little old cars like Zdeněk’s puttered along, blowing smoke, occasionally overtaken by large black Mercedes and windowless cars.

  ‘Russian mafia.’ My hostess’s face contorted. ‘They have taken over from the communists.’

  Mafia? Peter Barr hadn’t mentioned anything about this. I thought the bad old days were over?

  But Maruška and Zdeněk had more pressing matters in mind. ‘So now, we would like to know—how is our Peter Barr?’

  Recovering, I quickly updated them as best I could.

  ‘We all loved Peter Barr,’ Maruška said.

  Then she added, in devout homage, ‘Peter was a wonderful teacher. He played football with all our men and students in Sedlčany. He made all the girls laugh. He learned our language. Became fluent in Czech. Very difficult language, of course, but he was so clever. He walked around with Walkman and headphones listening to Pavarotti. Very cultured man.’

  I sat in silence, swallowing hard. There was not a chance I would meet that standard. As I was contemplating this new dilemma, blocks of identical grey concrete buildings came into view. The effect was of one enormous prison that stretched for miles, obliterating the horizon.

  ‘Oh my God!’ The words burst out of me as one anxiety was quickly replaced by another. What were they used for? Torture chambers, factories? Why were there so many of them?

  Maruška pointed out, matter-of-factly, that I was looking at one of communism’s enduring architectural legacies: the paneláky. ‘Housing estates for hundreds of people.’

  ‘People live in them?’ Australia was a country of bungalows and backyards, with seemingly endless space for people to live and move in. I’d never seen a housing estate before, not like this anyway; I didn’t even know such things existed. Why hadn’t Peter Barr given me the heads-up, suggested I steel myself?

  Maruška set me straight. ‘You are lucky—you will have own panelák apartment and will not have to share with anyone. Peter Barr had to live with families when he was here.’

  I quickly tried to look grateful, and in an effort to distract myself started gabbling. ‘Peter told me Prague was beautiful. Will we see it today?’

  ‘Yes, of course! We call Prague the city of one hundred spires. Survived all wars. It is the most beautiful city in Europe. Wonderful concerts where you can listen to our famous musicians.’

  My spirits lifted again, emotions yo-yoing through me like I was a hormonal teenager.

  Maruška then tapped the windowpane and pointed. ‘Below you can see our River Vltava, and in it the colours of the Old City.’

  A river twisted away below us like a serpent, swathed in ribbons of shimmering silver and gold, curving between the hills.

  Maruška told me the river was so famous it was celebrated by all Czech composers. ‘Smetana, Dvořák and Suk. Do you know them?’

  I did not and cursed Peter Barr, yet again, for not briefing me. Fortunately, I was saved from answering as Zdeněk swerved around a corner; fortunately, I also caught my first glimpse of the fabled city, far below.

  A jumble of turrets and towers and spires filled the sky. I glimpsed an ancient bridge, then another one. Fairytale
palaces and red-roofed shapes crowded down to the riverbanks. Presiding over it all was a huge castle, Gothic and grand, with even more spires rising up high into the clouds. Ohhhhh, it was so beautiful.

  ‘Is that where your President Havel lives?’ I burst out.

  Maruška smiled, nodded, and I pressed my eyes with my fingers, blinked, and looked again, to make sure the scene was real. Three days ago I was in Central Australia. Now I was in Central Europe. Three days ago I was surrounded by the ancient lands of the Southern Hemisphere and now I’d arrived in the ancient lands of the Northern Hemisphere. So similar, so utterly different. The word surreal kept buzzing through my brain.

  Vaguely, I heard Zdeněk changing gears, turning a corner. A large hill loomed, and as quickly as Prague had arrived, Prague was gone. For one terrible moment, I wondered if it had been a figment of my imagination. All I could now see was a wide highway overflowing with smoky trucks and little cars hooting and chugging. I cricked my neck looking back, feeling like a child whose birthday present had been ripped away. There was a hollow crater where my stomach had been.

  Maruška lapsed into silence too. Perhaps she felt the same sense of loss.

  Zdeněk drove and drove and drove. The little car strained its way along roads increasingly pitted with holes and surface cracks. Each time we went up a hill Zdeněk changed into first gear to ensure we made it to the top. On the way down, he slipped into neutral and slid down the other side. When I asked about this, Maruška explained, wearily, that the neutral-gear approach was ‘special-Czech-petrol-saving-device’. Zdeněk put it back into first as we hit the bottom and chugged away again.

  Small villages started to emerge like cut-outs before us. Crumbling buildings lined the road, drab in the late evening drizzle, all signposted with strings of consonants I couldn’t imagine ever being able to pronounce, just like the names of those three Czech composers Maruška had mentioned. I’d already forgotten all of them.