Love and Freedom

by Rosemary Kavan

  ‘We answered roll call for her so that she didn’t have to stand for hours morning and evening. We stole for her from the kitchen. Marie did not know whether her husband was alive or dead. We never mentioned him; it was our baby, for there was not one of us who had not risked her life for it. The time came for her delivery, and freedom was still round the corner. Marie was brave. Her labour was long — two days and two nights. During the day we had to leave her under our bunk covered with rags. She could not scream for that would have brought the kapo to the spot. The baby was delivered on a pile of newspapers. He never uttered a cry, as though he knew that his life depended upon silence. On3 May we were liberated. Marie and the baby survived, though his father did not. Today he is a fine boy with four teeth, and still he never cries.’

  She hugged me. ‘But enough of such talk. Your baby will be born in great style.’

  Pavel came in. ‘Hullo, Eva, hullo darling. Where’s supper?’

  Eva sprang to her feet. ‘I’ll get it. Rosemary must rest. From now on you must take great care of her.’

  ‘Why, she gone down with TB or something?’ Pavel asked conversationally.

  ‘No, she’s going to make you a happy man.’

  ‘She’s done that already,’ Pavel stated through a mouthful of biscuit.

  ‘She means I’m going to make you a daddy,’ I butted in. ‘You know, the man behind the pram.’

  ‘A father, eh! So I fixed it! What do you say to that?’ cried Pavel prancing up and down.

  ‘It’s not a particularly remarkable achievement.’ I tried to sound annoyed but Pavel looked so idiotically pleased that I had to laugh. Besides, I was already feeling more cheerful: if Marie could bring forth a bonny baby on scraps a dog would have spurned, Nature would doubtless manage on carbohydrate.

  ‘Ah, what a son he’ll be — with your looks and my brains! We’ll make a physician of him or an archaeologist. I always wanted to go in for archaeology but my uncle thought there was more future in digging up legal evidence than fossilized remains. How many did the doctor say?’

  ‘How many what?’

  ‘I mean, you couldn’t make it quads, or at least twins could you? Anglo–Czech quads — what a striking example of international solidarity that would be!’

  I had no such political ambitions. ‘One will be quite enough for me to start with,’ I said apologetically.

  ‘Oh well,’ Pavel magnanimously dropped the subject of numbers. As an afterthought he added: ‘How are you feeling? Okay? That’s right, the modern woman takes that sort of thing in her stride.’

  Eva returned with rolls, butter and salami on a tray in time to overhear this patently masculine remark.

  ‘That’s as may be, but she is to have some help in the flat. You must get her a char.’

  ‘I do what?’

  Eva immediately saw the impossibility of this suggestion. Pavel would sooner have found a four-leaf clover in the Antarctic than a char in Prague.

  ‘Well, Karel will. And you will see that Rosemary does not over-exert herself. You will carry the heavy shopping. And you must give her breakfast in bed to settle her morning sickness,’ Eva went on, resolutely rubbing the gilt off fatherhood. I was beginning to enjoy the situation. Pavel chewed his salami in reflective silence. After the meal he trotted tamely into the kitchen to help Eva with the washing up. I put my feet up on the couch and languidly reached for a novel.

  The brunt of Pavel’s fatherhood was borne by Karel, to whom he delegated his domestic responsibilities. On the excuse that Rosemary must be spared, Karel was ordered to take down the garbage, bring in the potatoes and run Pavel’s errands. Finally he was told: ‘I’m studying late at night. You can take over this early morning stunt; and make it for two.’

  At length Karel found a char; a triumph indeed. Private charring was frowned upon by the authorities and disdained by women, who were being enticed into industry with equal pay opportunities.

  ‘She’ll start tomorrow and will do the washing. She’ll require a meat lunch and snacks in the morning and afternoon, and you will pay her 40 crowns an hour, that’s roughly the salary of a high-ranking government official.’ (Far more than Pavel was earning!)

  At 7.45 a.m. the door bell rang. I opened it. A smartly dressed woman of about forty introduced herself as Miss Hertzigová. We descended to the laundry room, and Miss Hertzigová’s steely eye fell on my pile of sheets, pillowcases, towels and teaclothes.

  ‘What? Are they not soaked?’ she exclaimed in horrified tones.

  ‘No,’ I replied in a small voice.

  ‘Good heavens, they should have been soaking in soda all night! How do you expect me to get them clean?’

  ‘They are going to be boiled.’

  ‘I am aware of that. Oh well, I’ll have to do the best I can, but have the goodness to soak them next time.’

  I slunk out of the laundry room and returned upstairs to my typewriter. A few minutes later the internal phone rang. ‘Madam, will you bring me some more soap, please.’

  An hour later it was: ‘You haven’t forgotten my mid-morning snack, have you?’

  I made tea, buttered three slices of bread and carried the tray down four floors. The lift was not working. No Czech lift ever works in an emergency. Foreigners, I was told, assumed the word ‘nejede’ to mean lift, when in fact it indicated ‘not working.’

  Half-an-hour later there was a request for a scrubbing brush. I took it down. Miss Hertzigová heaved the sheets out of the huge wooden sink, spread them on a large trestle table and administered a ruthless drubbing. I ventured to suggest that as they had been only slightly soiled in the first place, a good boil was surely enough. The good lady withered me with a glance and the words: ‘Madam, if you employ someone to wash your linen, they must assume you want it spotless.’

  Miss Hertzigová had a healthy appetite. At lunch she consumed ten potatoes, half a cauliflower and the meat ration for two for a week. I toyed with a lettuce that brought forth the comment: ‘You English don’t eat enough; that’s why you’re so thin.’

  My morning sickness showed no signs of abating: Miss Hertzigová remained a necessary tyranny. She was equally thorough about the cleaning. My vague instruction: ‘Just run a duster over the furniture and the cleaner over the carpet’ was treated with the contempt it deserved. The carpets must be rolled up and carried down into the yard; there they were slung over a wooden roller and belaboured with a bamboo beater. Dust flew up in clouds, doubtless settling on recumbent carpets in neighbouring flats, to be returned to us through the same process.

  Though excused from hard work, I was never free from the continual: ‘Madam, would you just pass, push, assist …’

  We were rescued by Mrs Panská. A pupil had cancelled a lesson and I was enjoying a walk in the sunny air. An enormous backside ahead of me suddenly doubled up in the pursuit of apricots escaping from a burst bag. I swiftly joined the hunt, forestalling a small boy. The owner of the backside straightened up. Her round, jolly face, purple from exertion, was cupped by three chins descending in geometric progression to a magnificently convex bosom which rested on a dome-like abdomen. All these separate bulges rolled from side to side as she moved.

  ‘Thank you very much Miss — er, young Missus’, she gasped, catching sight of the future Anglo–Czech archaeologist. ‘You’re a foreigner, aren’t you? You met your husband during the war?’

  ‘Yes, he was a soldier.’

  ‘Ttt, tt.’ Romantic cluckings greeted this confession.

  ‘And I see you will be nursing. Are you having any trouble?’

  ‘Only with my char: she eats me out of house and home.’

  ‘And you expecting! She ought to be ashamed of herself! I could do with a bit of extra money myself, my husband’s only a railway guard. I’ll willingly come and give you a hand. You don’t need to worry about feeding me. I’m too fat as it is!’

  On the appointed day Mrs Panská arrived with a bunch of sweet peas for the young missus and ten fresh eg
gs from her sister in the country for Kavan junior.

  ‘A land of extremes!’ I exclaimed. ‘Typified by you and Miss Hertzigová.’

  ‘Oh, there’s people and people all the world over.’ Mrs Panská waved an expansive hand.

  There was no mistaking Mrs Panská’s whereabouts. The floor shook and the glass and porcelain ornaments danced on their shelves as she walked. A series of grunts and squeaks brought me rushing into the room to find her standing on a chair dusting the book-case, looking like a circus elephant balanced on a wall.

  If she topples off, she’ll go clean through the floor, or two floors, I thought. ‘Mrs Panská, don’t do anything you can’t reach safely,’ I pleaded. ‘Karel can finish off.’

  ‘Now, you get back to your tapping and don’t go upsetting yourself on my account. In your state, my precious, you must stay as cool as a dog’s nose. I haven’t had a fall in my life.’

  Unconvinced, I obeyed and held my breath as I followed her progress along the bookshelves: Ugh, ugh, as she hoisted herself up, whoomph as she descended. Even when fairly statically employed, it was impossible to lose track of her for here Mrs Panská’s exuberant nature burst into song, or would have done, had the supply of wind sufficed. As it was, she was reduced to whistling which she did very tunefully. Her repertoire consisted mostly of arias from Czech operas, so it was a not unpleasing background to my activity.

  Mrs Panská left me her address. ‘If you should come over queer, or need anything special, just send your husband for me and I’ll be round as quick as I can stir my lazy bones.’

  That evening I sighed to Pavel: ‘What a pity pregnancy doesn’t last two years. I’m sure I’ll never receive such consideration again.’

  *

  Things were happening on the national scene, too. One was a currency reform to combat inflation. Every citizen had to hand in his cash and savings books, in exchange for 500 new crowns (about £2.10s); the rest was credited in frozen assets with no guarantee when the thaw would set in. My hard-earned remuneration from my English lessons became worthless overnight. The only consolation was that speculators were handing over much more for the same amount: one occasion when the have-nots had the laugh over the haves.

  The next event was Labour Day. I wasn’t feeling well enough to join the procession but I watched for hours from the pavement. The whole of Prague seemed to be on the move, cheering, singing and waving banners that endorsed nationalization and pledged millions of hours of voluntary labour. It was a spontaneous demonstration of unity and enthusiasm. The parade, in fact, epitomised the cheerful goodwill and optimism of the post-war period. Carried away, I too shouted: žije mír!’ (Long live peace) and žije socialismus!’

  The first post-war general elections followed soon after. Pavel, Karel and Eva were active in the advance campaign. On polling day I was violently sick but managed to get up towards evening. I cast my vote for Number One at five minutes before closing time, thereby assuming one 2,695,915th part of the responsibility for everything that was to come. We stayed up all night totting up the results as they were announced over the radio. The communists polled the largest vote, thirty-eight per cent. The combined communist and social democratic vote amounted to a majority.

  Eva cried with heartfelt relief: ‘Now we are really safe from the fascists!’ Like many Czechs, she saw the communist victory, together with the Czechoslovak–Soviet treaty of alliance, as a guarantee of no further betrayal of Czechoslovakia by its allies. We toasted this victory and the Party leader’s pledge that Czechoslovakia would follow her own road to socialism.

  The summer months of that year were the happiest in my marriage. I felt fit. The long days were sunny. Harmony reigned in the home. All three of us looked forward to the baby. We spent hours discussing names. In the end we chose the internationally pronounceable Marie for a girl and Jan for a boy.

  In October 1946 Czechoslovakia’s first economic plan and our first son saw the light of day. I did my best to fit in with the spirit of the times by producing Jan five weeks sooner than planned and cutting down delivery time to two hours. True to Eva’s prophecy, he was born in ‘great style’ — but in London. The Party had decided to post Pavel to the Court of St James on completion of his studies. I left earlier.

  Four months later Pavel gained his doctorate, ironically in the law that was to victimize him so cruelly. But that is looking ahead. The present was rosy. His appointment as Press Attaché at the Czechoslovak Embassy and our rapturous reunion after five months’ separation promised to be fruitful.

  Our second son, Zdeněk, was born at home, a month premature. After washing Jan’s nappies and giving him his tea, I barely had time to struggle upstairs before Zdeněk entered the world, unaided. He has shown an independent spirit ever since.

  Chapter 5

  Our three diplomatic years — from 1947 to 1950 — proved to be a period of fading promise and deterioration in relationships, both political and personal.

  The Cold War was damaging East–West relations. Wartime unity was disintegrating. The two camps, socialist and capitalist, were becoming implacably hostile; my two countries were on opposite sides. Our Czech alignment could be assessed from our engagements diary. Most of our invitations were issued by the countries of the Soviet bloc, some by the Scandinavian countries and a few by the Indian High Commission. Our English contacts were journalists, left-wing MPs and members of the British Communist Party.

  Events inside Czechoslovakia in 1948 heightened tension between my two countries. Not being on the spot, Pavel and I could not form our own opinion. We had only the official version to go by. According to this, twelve right-wing ministers had provoked a government crisis in order to forestall further socialist legislation. Spontaneous mass meetings throughout the country urged Beneš1 to form a government without the ministers who had tendered their resignations, then to complete nationalization and enact a land reform. The discovery of extensive sabotage and preparations for an armed plot was reported. The ugly words ‘civil war’ were uttered at the Embassy. I thought anxiously of Karel who would be involved and Pavel who would chaff at being out of it.

  To our great relief the opposition crumpled at the sight of the Workers’ Militia, formed and armed to meet the emergency. Not a single shot was fired. Beneš formed a new government of communists and progressive non-communists under the communist leader Klement Gottwald.2

  The crisis caused an epidemic of resignations at Czechoslovak embassies and consulates. In London eight non-communist diplomats asked for asylum. Their motives varied and were not always crystal clear. One of them had collaborated with the Germans; another had accumulated money abroad and went to Chile to spend it. (Jan Masaryk3, the Czechoslovak Foreign Minister, said of him: ‘He is an ardent numismatist, especially of new coins.’) The Military Attaché appropriated official funds as ‘compensation for the property he had left in Czechoslovakia’.

  The resignations cast a shadow over the Embassy; nevertheless, the rest of us threw a party to celebrate the victory of the left and sang old revolutionary favourites and new militant songs with inspiring words like ‘Now we’ve got what we wanted!’ and ‘Hey rup! Hole hey! Roll up your sleeves and get down to work!’ We predicted that the wheels of progress would revolve at double speed, now that the lost capitalist spokes had been removed.

  It was only in 1968, when press censorship was lifted, that the public learned of communist manipulations behind the scenes. At the time Pavel and I suspected nothing. We refuted Thoreau’s confession: ‘If I could not doubt, I would not believe.’ For us the opposite was true: ‘If I doubted, I could not believe.’

  We had hardly recovered from the shock of the diplomatic defections when the shattering news of Jan Masaryk’s death came. He was reported to have committed suicide by jumping out of the bathroom window of his Foreign Ministry flat.

  *

  Jan Masaryk, the son of the President of the First Republic, was a universally popular man. Pavel had known him well duri
ng the war, as Foreign Minister in the exiled Czechoslovak government and as the best-loved broadcaster to Czechoslovakia. Pavel used to say Masaryk chatted to his audience as though they were not separated from him by nearly a thousand miles and a death sentence if caught listening. Pavel had described to me with affection Masaryk’s breezy manner and pithy humour, and had related numerous anecdotes of which Masaryk was either the narrator or the subject. Masaryk lugubriously defined himself as more of a clown than a statesman, a view that reflected his modesty rather than his ability, for he was highly esteemed by Allies and compatriots alike. I had seen him only once, at a small party. He appeared very much at ease with everyone and entertained us effortlessly with his sparkling wit and renderings of Czech and Slovak folk songs.

  Pavel was one of the last people to speak to Masaryk. A Czech emigré went so far as to assert that Kavan had been summoned to Prague for the express purpose of defenestrating his chief. In fact, Pavel had gone to Prague for a briefing. He flew back immediately after the tragedy to report to the Embassy. When he arrived home, he dropped into an armchair, saying: ‘I was talking to him at seven in the evening and the next morning he was dead.’

  I asked if Pavel had suspected that anything was wrong. He replied that at six in the evening Masaryk was already in bed, flushed and in low spirits. He complained of insomnia and failing concentration. His mother had suffered from a mental illness. He was known to be subject to extreme moods and he was haunted by the fear of insanity. He told Pavel that he was depressed at international developments and the growing tension between the U.S.A. and the Soviet Union.

  ‘His dream of a world fraternity was severely shaken,’ Pavel concluded.

  I observed that some British papers had described Masaryk’s death as a protest against Gottwald’s government.