Alice to Prague

by Tanya Heaslip

  ‘Because I want more! I love you, Karel, and I want more!’

  37

  Tears

  Later that afternoon, I dragged myself away from Váňa, Oršula & Partners and sat looking over the river. The late hour brought mist but a thin trail of pale light glinted off the water. I sat hunched up against a wall, staring at strands of hair that had fallen loose over my shoulder, and then back at the river. At the worn cobblestones, at my hair, at the wan sunlight over the water, at my fingers turning blue in the chill.

  Several ducks swam to the edge, and a mother and daughter leant over them. The little girl pointed and chatted animatedly. Her mother smiled and encouraged her and they threw some bread. The ducks moved closer. I sat watching them as though they were a movie playing out frame by frame. Inside my bubble, I was paralysed and disconnected, while a toxic mixture of grief and paralysis spread through me, dark and heavy, like sludge.

  The recriminations in my head were like a battlefield.

  What had happened to the independent traveller I used to be? How had I got sidetracked? Why hadn’t I done something a year ago, or even six months ago, when it was clear that Karel and I were not ‘on the same board’?

  Anne had shown me what to do and I’d ignored all the signs.

  And then, across the water, as though it was written in the waves, the words came to me:

  Not to go is just to postpone the inevitable.

  The sky darkened, sending a trail of thin colour across the water, and eventually night enveloped me in its inky waves and extinguished the day.

  Hours later, I turned the key in the front door. The face reflected back to me in the hall mirror was blotchy and pale. Huge black rings under my eyes made me look like Morticia from The Addams Family. But I didn’t care. What did it matter?

  Karel sat at the kitchen table, head bowed and propped up by his hands, glasses pushed high on his head and an empty table before him. No papers that he would normally be working on, no beer bottles, nothing.

  ‘Where have you been?’ His voice was harsh. ‘Je mně špatné! (I am bad!’)

  ‘Co? Proč?’ What? Why?

  ‘Because I’ve been waiting and worried. I have been nearly out of my mind with worry.’

  Once those words would have made me feel wanted, hopeful. Now I felt empty.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said automatically, heading towards the stove to boil some water to make tea. I was freezing and hoped it would warm me up. ‘Actually, I’m not sorry. Why should you care?’

  He glared at me. ‘You think you can treat people like this?’

  I swung around, pulse pounding, voice heated. ‘How dare you?’

  ‘I dare because . . . because perhaps I love you more than you love me,’ he said finally.

  ‘What?’

  Silence. Long, gripping, heart-stopping silence.

  ‘What did you say?

  ‘Perhaps that is my truth too, deep inside. But I cannot love you, I must not, and you know that too.’

  ‘Are you trying to humiliate me even more?’ I banged down the saucepan, spilling water. ‘I don’t understand this, or you, or anything anymore.’

  I crumpled over the chair, exhausted, the fight draining out of me.

  He came to me, hands spread.

  ‘I’ve told you many times, I’m not interested in big words about making big plans for a life, because they are never the truth. They do not last. Táničko, I wish you could live with this moment that we have and enjoy it.’

  ‘Sorry, Karel,’ I said, looking away. ‘I can’t do this anymore. I can’t survive it, as you would say. I’m going back to Australia.’

  He blanched, pulled me against him. My tears blinded me, my hands pushed against his chest, but I couldn’t resist any longer. I caved, rage and despair and my hunger for him reasserting themselves, a driving heat through our hot mouths offering relief and release, postponing reality, if only for the moment. My body arched under his, and I cried for the sweat of the passion to dissolve my mind altogether. And then it was over.

  November 1995

  But how do you take the final steps to wrap up a life and a dream?

  I needed help, and Anne was gone.

  Some days later I blurted out to Mrs Wurstová that I needed advice—‘of a personal nature’—and asked if she knew anyone I could talk to.

  Mrs Wurstová’s eyes were wide with shock. ‘Have you—some baby inside?’

  ‘No, no!’ I almost laughed. ‘It’s more—psychological.’

  She paused, looking right through me. ‘Is it your heart? Your Karel?’

  ‘Yes.’ My eyes were blurred with tears.

  ‘Tanya, my dear, you must see Doctor Jílek. He is a “modern-day” Czech psychologist and I think he will be very helpful. He speaks English.’

  Without missing a beat, Mrs Wurstová bustled me into her office.

  ‘We must use my telephone right now to call his secretary. I do not know if she speaks the English so I will help.’ Before I knew it, she had arranged an appointment for me the next day, and even offered me a room at one of the courts if I wanted ‘some space’.

  The next afternoon, I headed towards a western part of Prague and found my way up several flights of stairs and along to the end of a narrow corridor where a tall, thin man waited. He had a short goatee beard and wore a white jacket. For a moment I had visions of a Cold War science experiment but he was gentle and kind, and invited me to talk. Once I started, I couldn’t stop.

  Eventually, he responded.

  ‘You have to respect your needs, otherwise your partner won’t, and you will lose him anyway.’

  I rocked on his couch.

  ‘Yes, it is normal and right and proper to believe that a man and woman can share a common goal for a life together. If your current partner doesn’t or can’t, that does not mean there is something wrong with you—or that you are unworthy of love—or unlovable.’

  Tears: despairing, angry.

  Finally, there was the clincher.

  ‘Perhaps you could consider taking this step by step? Allow yourself to go away for a trial. Do not call leaving here “the end”, if that is too distressing for you. Do not make absolutes for yourself. Give yourself six months back in your country and allow all your feelings to bubble up and come out. Then you will have a better idea of what is right for you. Allow the body to help and give you the answers in its own time.’

  Ahhh.

  I breathed out.

  ‘The body always knows best, Tanya. But it cannot be rushed.’

  Yes, yes. Six months was manageable.

  Six months would take me up to Anne’s wedding, which had been set for May next year. If I went away, the wedding would give me a legitimate reason to come back.

  All I now had to do was find a way to explain my departure to my students and clients. I couldn’t bear for anyone to think that I was giving up on the language and the culture—and on them.

  In the end it was my beloved sister M’Lis who gave me the way out. M’Lis asked me to attend the birth of her second child (due in January) and I told everyone I wanted to be there. The family pull legitimised my departure. After all, family was what the Czechs knew best.

  I sat down and wrote a fax to M’Lis.

  Šárka’s eyes welled with tears when I told her and Radka I was leaving.

  ‘You know you have gone to his core,’ she said.

  ‘His core?’

  ‘Yes. But . . .’ She paused, and there it was again—the inevitable ‘but’.

  ‘But I don’t have the Czech “butterfly down”,’ I finished for her, not wanting to hear the words from anyone else. ‘I’m not his type. And I’m not a Czech girl.’ I wanted to cry.

  Šárka simply sighed again. ‘He is a fool. But what to do?’

  She shrugged, knowing her father would take no notice of her views either. Then she explained to Radka, whose big eyes grew wide and dark. Radka held out her arms, tears brimming, and we all hugged.


  Mrs Wurstová had the final word.

  ‘Simply because you love someone does not mean it is right to be with them forever,’ she said, with the wisdom of someone who had lived through more sadness than anyone else I could imagine. ‘Perhaps life in our country is not to be your path anymore. Everything is in the timing. You must trust that if you are meant to return, you will. We will always be here for you.’

  December 1995

  I spent my last day walking through the Old Town, soaking up images of the city, burning into my brain ‘mind photos’ to recall in later times. The day felt surreal. Christmas was just around the corner, the market stalls were bustling and everyone was in festive mode. Váňa, Oršula & Partners had given me a huge farewell party and I’d wept as I left them. My students and colleagues had been beautiful, sad, generous. They gave me gifts, hugged me, and wished me well for the birth of my sister’s baby. They all told me to come back soon. I’d spoken to my Sedlčany friends by phone and Kamila in particular was inconsolable. ‘But you love your Karel,’ she cried down the unreliable phone line. ‘Why you must leave?’ There were no good answers to give, especially to a young and beautiful teenager who still believed that love would conquer everything. We hung up, promising to write.

  Anne had already sent me plans for the wedding and I imagined it all while I drank my last coffee near Jan Hus’s statue. The wedding ceremony was to be held in the Old Town Square, inside the beautiful Town Hall that boasted the Astronomical Clock. That was the place where several years before I’d first met Míša and Jarda and fallen in love with the city. The wedding party was later to walk along Charles Bridge and we would celebrate with champagne in an ancient hall under the castle. Karel would be invited as my partner, of course.

  The wind whipped around my ankles as I clutched Mrs Wurstová’s coat tight. The pain in my heart was savage, like it wanted to rip its way out of me, claw its way into the fresh air so it could breathe, so it could escape, so it could explode.

  But there was nowhere for that pain to go and no release from its burn.

  On my last night Karel took me to Petřín Hill—well, where else would we go? We climbed the huge hill to Karel Mácha’s monument. The poet of love looked down upon us solemnly, only too aware of the fickleness of love. Late twilight blanketed the city of spires and turrets with its soft web. Before long it had turned into a black velvet cushion studded as though with glittering diamonds. Prague Castle was floodlit, and the evening bells from St Vitus Cathedral pealed across the city.

  My heart ached so badly it felt bruised and battered. Such an odd contradiction—so much beauty around me, so much pain inside me. To paraphrase Kafka: ‘Prague has claws and does not let go.’ He was right. My love for Karel and his city would last forever, no matter what followed over the years.

  Karel cupped my chin and gazed with his intense blue eyes into mine.

  ‘You must know I think you are most precious person I’ve ever met, Táničko,’ he said. ‘So I will say something to you because it is important and I don’t think you always understand me. Tomorrow you will go, so now is the time to tell you before it’s too late.’

  Too late? Too late for what?

  He smiled gently.

  ‘Be glad of your life because there’s always the other side, můj miláčku.’

  Below us the lights spread out below like a jewelled necklace around the River Vltava.

  ‘When you gain, you lose. When you lose, you gain. As we say in Czech, beware of something nice because it always has a sting. If you were married and had children with me, you could not live the life you are about to live. And you will see so much more of the world and live so much because you are courageous.’

  My vision blurred with tears.

  ‘To Czech friendship—the highest form of love. It never dies, Táničko. It lives always.’

  Was that the lesson I’d come here to learn in the first place, the lesson that had taken me so long to understand?

  There were no words left to say. My dream had dissolved with my last day in the Czech Republic. I’d done what I’d come to do.

  38

  2002

  ‘Ahoj, Táničko. Here is Jarda, and I also have with me Míša.’

  My heart leapt at hearing the gentle, lilting tones of my two Czech-Australian friends. It had been a while since I’d spoken to them. My life in Australia was busy.

  Jarda got straight to the point.

  ‘Táničko, I have bad news.’

  Karel was dying.

  Cancer.

  He had cut off contact with everyone and it was only a matter of time.

  Leaning over the desk, barely holding the phone up, I tried to keep my voice steady, but the words punched my stomach: hard, visceral. It couldn’t be true.

  I’d been back for Anne’s magical wedding, and numerous times since. Karel and I had both managed to move on in our lives but I’d never stopped loving everything Czech.

  Momentarily, selfishly, I felt cheated. I’d left Prague and Karel many times before but I’d always been able to return. They’d always been there.

  After Jarda’s phone call, I frantically scrabbled for numbers in my messy ‘travelling’ drawer and miraculously found what I was looking for: a slip of paper, stuck between my last two Prague plane tickets and a coffee receipt from the Old Town Square. On it was a mobile phone number. Karel had given it to me when I last visited. Would it still work? Tentatively, I dialled, praying Karel would answer, and praying I’d know what to say if he did.

  I held my breath. The phone rang and rang. Would it ring out?

  Finally, ‘Ano.’

  I’d recognise that gentle, accented voice anywhere.

  ‘Karel,’ I cried. ‘It’s me, Tanya.’

  A painful silence crackled through the phone.

  Then, in a disbelieving tone, he asked, ‘Táničko? Is it really you?’

  We exchanged an awkward, confused rush of words.

  ‘Is it true, Karel?’ I whispered.

  There was a long silence. I’d caught him off guard and he seemed to have lost his sense of control. It was as though hearing me released a well of pent-up grief. Finally, he blurted out some words, disjointed and angry.

  ‘Yes, Táničko, it is like some bad theatre. I do not believe it myself. Je to špatné.’ (‘It is bad’.)

  I didn’t know what to say. I wanted to help, to go to say goodbye, but my words became tangled. Mercifully, having recovered his own composure, he interrupted.

  ‘So what is with you, Táničko? Are you yet married and do you yet have children?’

  I was silent for a second.

  ‘Yes, I am married. And’—I paused, wanting him to know—‘I am very happy. After I last saw you, I met someone in England. We live in Margaret River, a wine-growing region. My husband is in the wine industry and . . .’ I stopped. I was babbling. ‘But no children.’

  There was a short laugh.

  ‘You see, moje Táničko, I was right all along. Children or no, you always had your destiny in your own country and you are now living it.’

  A long silence.

  ‘Now, I will tell you something, Táničko,’ he said. ‘You are married and I am dying and I can now tell you this.’

  He paused.

  ‘I have always loved you.’

  My world spun dizzily in front of me. I thought my heart would stop beating.

  ‘And you know very well why I could not tell you at the time.’ A scream rose within my chest, like a trapped bird flapping frantically—a mad, hunted, grief-stricken scream. Tears streaked down my face, wretched tears, full of frustration and despair.

  ‘Yes, I know it is hard for you to hear this now when you wanted me to say it all those years ago,’ he said softly. ‘And I am so sorry for all the pain I caused you, but as you know, I always did what I thought was best.’

  He finished quietly.

  ‘I was in love with you from the day you arrived in Prague and you knew it pretty well. Ev
en though I fought it and I would not say it to you. But I could not follow you to Australia and let my daughters alone. Talking about friendship was very easy and talking about love was nearly impossible.’

  It was Jarda on the phone again. His voice sounded a long way away.

  As Karel would have said himself: ‘Vymalováno.’ ‘It is painted.’

  Epilogue

  Czech friendship

  It is still hard to believe the man with the bright blue eyes has gone, swallowed up by one of those tiny, twisting alleyways overhung with lanterns and shadows and gabled roofs that he took me through on my first day in Prague. Taken far beyond the struggles he’d endured during decades of occupation by foreigners who captured his beloved soil by force, a repressive regime that stole his friends and much of his soul. He’d known only fourteen years of freedom.

  I was lucky to be part of that time. In total it amounted to not more than about two years of my life but the impact that Karel and Prague had on me felt more like a century’s worth of experience. Karel had made the Czech Republic possible for me—in every way.

  When I first left, the grief at losing both Karel and his country felt too big for my body; it threatened to flatten me, extinguish my own breath, and I thought I’d never recover.

  But Karel was right.

  Home is not just where the heart is but where a person can live and work and love fully and openly. Returning to Australia wasn’t the end but rather the beginning of a newer and more precious life for me. Building on all I’d learnt over those years, I finally found the work and love I was longing for, without the fear of being trapped or losing my independence—my own ‘happily ever after’. The Czech world will be forever intertwined in my own world as a girl from the outback, making it forever bolder, brighter and more beautiful.

  The Czech spirit continues to live on in my life, too, like an eternal flame.

  I keep in contact with my Czech and English friends; my beloved Šárka and Radka; Kamila, Nad’a, Pavel, Maruška from Sedlčany; Headmistress Anne, Czech Richard, Czech-English Vera, English Alistair, Canadian Carolyn from English House; Networking Irena and German Alyson; the wonderful judges, Romana and my adored Mrs Wurstová. Mr Svoboda and I have even exchanged emails! He remains as inspiring as ever, reminding me, ‘we cannot give up our readiness to make our world better.’