by John Lawton
Perhaps he really was a tractor salesman?
He drove back to his hotel at a stately twenty-five miles per hour.
He was, once more, staying at the Imperial Hotel, burdened, as it was, with a memory.
Vienna
§
Vienna, The Imperial Hotel: September 1955
It was clichéd in the extreme to tell himself “I need a drink,” but he did.
He closed the bathroom door—trailed the sweet, coppery smell of blood with him—flopped into an armchair, half-expecting a hammering on the door and half not.
There was no alcohol in the room. Just as well. It was only his body needing a drink, it wasn’t him.
He sat a minute or more listening to the unmusic of his own pulse. Then he looked at his right hand, still clutching the Browning.
He hadn’t anticipated the result. A 7.65 wasn’t a powerful pistol, it wasn’t known for its “stopping power” … but his hand must have shook … and what was aimed at the Russian’s forehead had entered his left eye, and—meeting little resistance—had ripped through his skull and splattered his brains across the tiles. And still his eyes were open … well, just the one.
VII
Beer and Sausages
§110
Prague: July 12th
A Warm Summer’s Friday
Wilderness had driven in from the south, from Vienna, via Břeclav. He had never been to Prague. In fact, East Berlin being the big exception, he had scarcely been behind the Iron Curtain. Burne-Jones wisely took the view that a field agent was currency to be spent carefully. Wilderness had been sent to Warsaw and to Estonia, in each case pretending to be an East German, but most of his career had been spent in the Curtain’s shadow, in places whose commitment might be dubious … Madrid, Lisbon … both as suspect now as they’d been in the thirties in the eyes of SIS, and, prior to the last trip, three or four visits to Finland to pick up and evaluate Soviet defectors.
This was different. He was Walter Hensel now.
On his first day he decided he might like Prague. Erdbahn had booked him into a faded glory called the Europa Hotel on Wenceslas Square. It was a beautiful, if dirty shade of yellow—the same Art Nouveau yellow that had been the sole memorable feature of his flat in Helsinki—and like much of Prague it was ornately finished off at sky-level with … not frescoes, they could not be frescoes surely? … perhaps they were friezes? Prague had never been bombed. It wasn’t Warsaw or Berlin. Its buildings had benefitted from Czechoslovakia falling to the Nazis before Britain had woken up to the threat. Saving Poland had destroyed Warsaw, who had ever tried to save Prague?
On the second day he decided he did not like Prague. Even trams and cobblestones could not make him like Prague. It hadn’t been destroyed, but it had been neglected. The dirt hit him first, the pollution second and then an all-pervasive sense that everything that could peel was peeling and everything that could crumble was crumbling. After twenty years of Communism the city needed a wash ’n’ brush-up. It needed a bloke to come round with a roll of wallpaper, a few pots of paint and a ladder.
On the third day he decided he needed to make more of an effort. Prague, he concluded, resembled a giant cake. An old giant Miss Havisham’s wedding cake of a cake. Peeling and crumbling … pink and yellow … and way too much icing. Cake would do—until he thought of something better.
§111
On the Monday Erdbahn’s Prague office opened for business, Wilderness met Helmut Kruger. The man might have been a carbon copy of Voigt, a small, pocket-sized edition, wispy red hair, a fondness for bow ties. But he was a cheerier soul, refrained from stating his anti-Communist principles and seemed in no hurry to pack Wilderness off on his way.
He showed Wilderness a printed invitation to a British Embassy reception being held for the representatives of “Foreign Trade & Culture in Czechoslovakia” …
His Excellency requests the pleasure and blah blah blah …
RSVP Janis Bell, First Secretary
So—her knees were under the table.
“We should both go,” Kruger added.
Of course.
§112
Prague: July 12th
A Warm Summer’s Friday
Nell had come in by train from the north, from Lichtenberger Station in East Berlin, via Dresden. She had never been to Prague. The Foreign Ministry had found her a flat in Malá Strana; Malostranské nábřeží, on the west bank of the Vltava, by the Legií Bridge—an art nouveau building with faded friezes of Greek gods and warriors complete with tin hats—a top-floor flat with dazzling views over Prague. It was a far, far better flat than she had ever had, better than the tatty attic she had shared with Joe Wilderness just after the war, better than the flat she had moved to in Charlottenburg and better than the up-to-date soulless concrete box that had been her home in Bonn until a week ago.
Growing up on the endless plains of Prussia, Nell had never known hills. Prague was wrapped in hills. They seemed to burrow into the city, and the city into them. They came right across the street to knock on doors and peer in the windows of the upper storeys. She decided she liked hills. She decided she liked Prague.
She reckoned she could walk across the bridge to work, as the Ministry had rented an office for the Cultural Mission at the far end of Národní in Jungmannovo náměstí, a square that was in fact a triangle, and an office that was in fact a shop. Prague wasn’t Berlin. No distance in Prague seemed far.
The Ministry of Culture being also in Malá Strana, on her first Monday morning Nell duly presented her credentials, expecting to be given an appointment with the minister, perhaps tomorrow or the day after. The clerk took an inordinate length of time, then he handed back the two heavy, cream pages of Bundesrepublik-crested paper to her with, “Try again next week.”
It felt as though she had offered him two sheets of bog roll.
“Next week? The minister cannot see me until next week?”
“Minister? If you’re lucky you’ll get to see the deputy minister’s assistant’s assistant.”
And she began to wonder if Brandt had not sent her chasing wild geese. If his “undercurrent” was not so far under as to be indiscernible.
But—walking across the Legií bridge into New Town none of that seemed to matter. She was falling in love again, this time with a city.
She soon reached the office. Her assistant, Clara Wieck, had been there a week already. When Nell arrived a painter was scraping letters off the big front window. It might, she thought, mean working in a goldfish bowl, but the size of the window bothered her less than the disappearing text:
ZÁPADONEMECKÁ KULTURNÍ MISE
Clara rushed into the square, hands spread wide in a placatory gesture.
“He’s fixing it, honestly. By lunchtime it’ll all be fine.”
“West German Cultural Mission? Brandt will have us shot. How long was it up there?”
“Since Thursday.”
“And how many Czechs have seen this travesty?”
Clara led Nell inside and pointed to a pile of letters on her desk.
“Not one of them addressed to West Germany—and only one that appears urgent.
It was a printed invitation to a British Embassy reception being held for the representatives of “Foreign Trade & Culture in Czechoslovakia” … His Excellency requests the pleasure and blah blah blah …
RSVP Janis Bell, First Secretary
“OK,” Nell said. “We accept, of course.”
“And this.”
Clara handed her a telephone message she had jotted down herself.
“Petr Jasny. Says you know him.”
“Young men forget. He forgets. We were supposed to meet at the East Berlin Film Festival last year. He never showed up.”
“Well … he seemed very keen you should attend a preview of plays he’s putting on at the Blue Orange Theatre.”
“What plays?”
“He didn’t say. Does it matter?”
“I suppose
not. We’re here to spread culture. I suppose that means we’re here to be spread upon as well.”
“I’m sure that’s not half as rude as it sounds. Shall I accept?”
§113
Mělník
Rudolf Hahn broke the Erdbahn mould. He was at least ten years younger than his bosses and did not favour bow ties. Perhaps this was the rural Erdbahn? … open-collared, soft-shoed … if he’d been English he would be wearing corduroy, Hush Puppies and one of those hideous, saggy, waxy jackets that Wilderness’s mother-in-law kept solely for dog walking in the London parks.
But—he was a pragmatist.
“Most farming is collectivised. Run by committees and apparatchiks. Which is to say scarcely run at all. Czechoslovakia is one of the most inefficient countries in Europe. Their agriculture is chaos and their manufactured goods rubbish. And we, of course, operate on the cusp of the two. In the fifties we would never have been allowed near the Collectives, all decision-making would be centralised, but they want our technology … they simply cannot make enough tractors … so we can now visit both the few privately owned farms and the Collectives—the private farmers are strapped for cash, and Collectives are bound up in layers of bureaucracy that go up and up and up. All the same … we do sell, eventually … and what we sell is better by far than any Czech-manufactured equipment.”
Wilderness said, “What’s the difference between a Škoda and a Jehovah’s Witness?”
“What?”
“It’s an English joke.”
“I don’t know. What’s the difference?”
“You can close the door on a Jehovah’s Witness.”
“And what’s a Jehovah’s Witness?”
§114
Erdbahn lodged him in the centre of Mělník. His stout-bodied landlady introduced herself polysyllabically and all Wilderness caught was “Fudge.” He doubted that could be accurate but soon found a mnemonic for the old lady.
She baked her own bread, brewed her own beer and, as the widow of the local butcher, still made her own sausages—so she was Mrs. Homemade, who served him sausages for breakfast and beer with every meal.
He liked Mělník on sight. Mostly because there was not much to it. A couple of churches, a château and a handful of bars. It lay roughly where the Elbe met the Vltava, perched on a hill above a wide plain. He had a pleasant room, nicer than he’d had in Helsinki or Dublin, but it had no river view.
In the mornings, après sausage, he liked to take a cup of coffee out to the walls of the château and look down upon the river and the far-from-endless plain stretching into the České Středohoří. It was peaceful. Watching the river flow, so still as not to seem to flow—watching the traffic lights on the canal lock turn from red to green to red. He’d never seen traffic lights on a canal before. Watching the queue of barges, stacked with massive tree trunks, backed up waiting for the lift to the next level. That was peaceful too. It was all peaceful, the distant mountains were peaceful, even the flat fields of wheat were peaceful … no doubt ploughed, harrowed and soon to be harvested by his future customers.
Then on the fourth or fifth morning in Mělník it came to him. The greatest mistake an agent could make had always been to forget his cover … to think he was Joe Holderness rather than Walter Hensel. But now it seemed the greatest mistake might be to forget he was a spy at all.
He wished he could write novels. He had a couple of great titles at his fingertips: The Spy Who Forgot He Was A Spy and The Spy Who Came In From … from what? What else did spies come in from besides the soddin’ cold? The Spy Who Came In From … Mowing The Lawn? No—The Spy Who Came In From … Selling Fucking Tractors!
It was so peaceful.
Why did he feel like screaming?
§115
Prague
The Blue Orange Theatre was on Husova, a narrow street of Prague Old Town. For reasons best known to itself, it had chosen to have its sign in French—L’Orange Bleu. This heightened the Magrittean absurdity of an orange, with its chicken pox texture and crisp green leaves, depicted in viridian blue.
Beneath the sign Petr Jasny waited. He would not know Nell, but she knew him from photographs—a handsome six foot two, dark-haired with the first hints of grey appearing, and cheeks and chin permanently in five o’clock shadow. He was a playwright and screenwriter with one directing credit to his name, Hiding in Plain Sight, which had first shown outside Czechoslovakia at the East Berlin Film Festival in 1966.
In the twelve months since the festival, Nell had come to think better of it, and unless pressed, would not now dream of telling him that it was far too derivative of Truffaut’s Les quatre cent coups, which is what she would have said had he kept their appointment—but, then, all these young Turks of Mittel-European film worshipped Truffaut … or Godard … or Chabrol.
“Mr. Jasny?”
“Nell!”
A double-cheeked, continental kiss to freeze her to the spot.
“Come, we are late. We don’t have a curtain but if we did it would go up in thirty seconds.”
They slipped into two empty seats on the end of a row, eight or nine back from the stage.
There were no programmes. She had no idea what play might be about to reveal itself.
“What is it?” she asked as the lights came up to show a middle-aged couple and a young man. The young man appeared to be playing himself at chess.
“The Garden Party. Václav Havel. We are committed to new work for the theatre. This is the exception. A revival. A double bill with Pinter’s The Dumb Waiter.”
She had heard of both and seen neither.
As soon as the interval began Petr was gone—backstage with the notes he had been scribbling throughout. Nell looked past the empty seat to the man who had been on the far side of Petr, but he too was scribbling.
Then they watched the Pinter, a two-hander that Petr had translated into Czech himself. It was kitchen sink, complete with a real kitchen sink, being set, as it was, in a kitchen.
She understood it more than the Havel. The Havel was repetitive, nonsensical and absurd. The Garden Party was obviously the Communist Party (or was it?) and its absurdities the absurdities of infinite layers of state bureaucracy (or were they?), a department for everything … a department of winding up and a department for the winding up of the department of winding up. She did not like it. The only way it would have worked was if the cast had taken it at the speed of Vaudeville, the speed of Marx Brothers patter. But they hadn’t.
The Dumb Waiter was arguably more fun, but was no fun at all. Corny to think it, she thought, cornier still in Prague, but it was Kafkaesque. Dark, oppressive, inexplicable.
Only when the Pinter had finished were introductions offered.
Petr introduced the man on his left.
“Miloš Forman—if you really are putting on a film festival in Berlin next year, this is the man you need. He’s probably the best film director in the country.”
“Which means I’ll be banned any day now,” Forman said with a grin.
Petr was about to leave her on the steps. His indecision manifested in one foot up and one foot down, torn between work and woman.
“I’d love to know what you think.”
No, you really wouldn’t.
“I’d love to buy you a beer, but I must get back to my cast. Look … Forman is screening a rough cut of his new film here on Saturday. Let’s meet then.”
Nell felt she had been picked up, twirled around and dropped back on her feet. A fifteen-year-old at a school dance.
She walked home. Depressed by the plays. Impressed by the man.
§116
The “rough cut” was of The Fireman’s Ball. Nell was baffled and almost bored by the film. Fortunately Miloš Forman was surrounded by people who thought otherwise and he could not have fought his way through his fans to ask an opinion of Petr or herself.
She had found the final moments touching, symbolic. An old man who has lost everything in a blaze climbs into his br
ass bed in the middle of a field, as snow begins to settle on the counterpane. But symbolic of what?
On the theatre steps again.
If Petr Jasny wanted an opinion, he wasn’t asking—yet. “Where do you live? May I walk you home?”
“Malostranské nábřeži.”
“Really? Then I’m just round the corner from you. I have an apartment at the far end of Vítězná—the trams go right by my window.”
“Let’s walk … as you said. It’s a pleasant evening.”
“Well?” he asked as they crossed the bridge into Malá Strana. “Your verdict?”
She would disappoint him, she knew, but that would hardly deter her from answering honestly.
“I suppose I ought to admire the representation of the present day. Your cinema … Czech cinema … has avoided representing the present—it has done for years. You’re at your best depicting the last war. But you must show day-to-day life as it is now.”
“We can’t do that. Everything is grey. Most Czechs could describe the colour of depression to you—that too is grey. Czechoslovakia is a hundred shades of grey—but pick the wrong shade of grey and your work is banned and you find yourself working in a scrapyard. A film accurately depicting life in 1967 would be banned. Forman was making a joke with far too hard a truth to it—he may well find himself banned. At least with films about World War II, black is ostensibly black and white is ostensibly white. Surely the same is true in Germany?”
“No. And it’s for that very reason we do not make films about the war.”
“Our films are part of our resistance. You need to watch for the subtleties, Nell. Nothing is overt. You’ve seen Closely Observed Trains. It drips subtlety.”
“Subtleties such as printing on a girl’s bare bottom with railway station rubber stamps?”