Love and Freedom

by Rosemary Kavan

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘Couldn’t you get him reinstated?’

  He looked at me suspiciously.

  ‘I’m not interested in him as a man or a class symbol. I just don’t like injustice.’

  Táborský waved his hand, gesturing at his many years in a patently unjust world. ‘I’m not risking a head-on clash with Králík after all these years,’ he replied.

  ‘But?’

  ‘You’re young, you’re new, you take everything a sight too seriously. I don’t know why I should bother but I’ll do this: I’ll speak to the supervisor in 420. That’s my other shop and that’s where Bek is sweeping now. The supervisor is reasonable; he can put Bek onto a machine there.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Ugh.’

  Just before lunch Táborský passed my machine. He nodded; he had kept his promise.

  At 2.15 p.m. the morning shift crowded into Králík’s office for the monthly trade union meeting. Králík opened with a critical attack on 620’s standards. Quality was being sacrificed to quantity. ‘Comrades, we are not going to build socialism on rejects,’ he cried. ‘Last year rejects cost our works two million crowns. This year there has been an improvement but it’s still not good enough. The youngsters are the worst offenders. You’ve had it easy,’ he thundered. ‘You’ve given up nothing to achieve power, working-class power. We old communists had to risk our lives and liberties for what is yours by right under the Constitution. Bullets, baton charges and the inside of a prison cell were the answers we got to demands for work and a living wage.’

  Luba muttered: ‘Here we go again. Bloody Wednesday and all that. We can’t help not having been born and shot at during the First Republic.’

  Pulkrábek, another turner, spoke up: ‘The Party can’t live on its past. We’ve got to solve present problems. We’re a long way from communism and reward according to need. In the meanwhile we’ve got families to feed. Instead of speechifying, why don’t you come up with some useful ideas for avoiding rejects? It’s not only the prestige of 620 and your bonus that are at stake, but our takings too. We don’t exactly jump for joy when we have to machine a second batch for nothing.’

  Železný put in: ‘All it wants is for every worker to be issued with a Vernier gauge.’

  ‘Where the hell will the money come from?’ Králík growled.

  ‘So he can check on his work periodically,’ Železný went on, unperturbed. ‘Or for you to go the rounds two or three times a shift.’

  ‘Are you telling me how to run my shop, you ink-blotter?’ Králík blustered.

  ‘It’s reasonable what Železný says,’ broke in fifteen-stone Tonda who operated four centre lathes. If there was one man whom Králík respected, it was Tonda. Other voices murmured approval.

  ‘Okay, okay, I’ll do my best.’ Králík could shift weight swiftly when the majority closed ranks against him. ‘Comrade Mastná, put down in the minutes: Comrade Králík: socialist pledge: to make several extra rounds of inspection per shift with a view to reducing rejects. Send a copy to the Works Committee.’

  Having adroitly turned the situation to his own advantage, Králík brought up the next item — delays in deliveries of material. The ball was kicked from Barton to Jarmila, the delivery girl, to Králík, from workshop to workshop, from factory to steel works and from there to the raw material suppliers and finally ended up at Ostrava waiting for vacant goods wagons.

  ‘We’ve been through all this umpteen times,’ a weary borer grumbled. Then someone else complained that workers were not paid for time lost through inefficient planning. This brought forth a tirade from Králík on production cost and lack of political consciousness. The situation was obviously aggravated by Králík’s inability to foresee and forestall hitches. No one accused him outright for, I gathered, he tended to revenge himself on his critics by allotting them the least profitable batches. The argument died down among angry shrugs.

  Králík announced a new check by the rate fixers. As this would inevitably lead to some hardening of norms, it met with resistance.

  ‘We’ll never increase productivity otherwise,’ said Králík. ‘Figures here show that the works as a whole wastes fifteen per cent of its working time. Workers don’t start promptly; they extend snack and lunch breaks and many are at the clocking machines, washed and ready to leave, at two p.m. Full utilization of your eight hours will counter-balance speeded-up operations.’

  This was a very different picture from the propaganda in the official Czech press, which presented soaring productivity, exceeded targets and cosy concord between floor and management. The factory seemed to be divided into those who were driving themselves to the limits of endurance for what they believed in, and those who took advantage of the shortage of labour to do as little as possible for as much as possible.

  However, when Králík appealed for a Sunday shift to complete an order for the Soviet Union, which was behind schedule, there was no lack of volunteers. During the shift carping and discontent were forgotten.

  *

  When Mlýnek retired on a disability pension I was transferred to the permanent payroll. At the end of my second week as a full-blown driller, Pulkrábek came up to me with the words: ‘Bartoň says would you mind dashing this job off; it’s part of a batch that’s already gone forward. This box got forgotten.’

  The box was the standard type, with a green job card tucked down one side. But my early warning system was functioning. I glanced warily inside. A dark mass met my eye. An old trick! Fortunately, though a large spider will send me into hysterics, the genus rattus has never caused me to flutter. I pulled the dead rat out by its tail, and handed it and the job card back to Pulkrábek, saying: ‘Please return this to Comrade Barton and tell him the size of the hole hasn’t been specified.’

  The young man grinned. Stifled laughter echoed round the shop. I had passed my ordeal. Thereafter the shop addressed me by the familiar ‘thou’.

  Friday was pay day. On this particular Friday I unfolded my slip and read 1500 crowns. Impossible! I went to Barton and asked to see the job books.

  ‘Why?’ he growled suspiciously.

  ‘I think there’s been a mistake.’

  ‘If you’ve got too little, you’ll have to put more effort into it next week. I’ve been on this job twenty years and I’ve never forgotten to book a job.’

  I said gently: ‘Comrade Bartoň, I’ve been over-paid not underpaid.’

  His mouth dropped open as though his jaw had become dislocated.

  ‘Then what are you complaining about?’

  ‘I want to put the accounts right.’

  ‘You must be joking! Well, if you insist, it’s 102’s business.’

  The clerk there told me that no discrepancy had been discovered. He winked. ‘Have a drink on me and forget it.’

  I protested: ‘I don’t want to take socialist money I haven’t earned. If everyone took home a few hundred crowns that weren’t covered by goods produced, what would happen to the economy?’

  He burst out laughing. ‘My dear innocent, you shouldn’t worry your little head about a paltry couple of hundred, if you knew how much material people smuggle home every week. There’s hardly a man of them hasn’t put together a washing machine out of snaffled parts.’

  I couldn’t believe my ears. Workers stealing under socialism!

  I spotted a book labelled 620 and went through the items. Here was an error — a small batch of pins: 480 instead of 48, and farther down 25 plates for 300 instead of 30. There you are!’ I crossed off the offending noughts.

  ‘What are you doing to my books, young woman?’ he wailed. ‘I’ll have to recast my figures and it’s ten minutes to two.’ He was outraged at having to put in a few moments’ overtime on account of my eccentric integrity.

  I asked Tonda, who was a communist, whether it was true that parts were taken out of the factory, hoping he would deny it. But he confirmed that this was so.

  ‘But that’s stealing!’
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  Tonda scratched his head. ‘I doubt if the men see it like that. We own the means of production, don’t we? So we can’t steal what belongs to us?’

  ‘As far as appropriating parts is concerned, the factory belongs to the workers,’ I persisted, ‘But when it comes to decisions of management, they don’t feel it’s theirs?’

  Tonda was too honest to wriggle out of the question. ‘No, maybe they don’t — consciously. But they’d defend it with their lives if the capitalists tried to take it back.’ He changed the subject. ‘By the way, a party of us are going for a beer; we usually do on Fridays. Care to come along?’

  Never in my life had I managed to get through a whole pint of beer, but if he’d asked me to share a cup of hemlock, I wouldn’t have refused.

  It was a poky little pub with smoke-blackened walls and ceiling. The beer was served in litre tankards. And it wasn’t even gravity English bitter but a full-bodied ten. The waitress, of welterweight dimensions, wielded five full tankards in each hand. I needed two hands to lift one. ‘Do or die,’ I muttered and sent down half at one lift of the elbow.

  Tonda produced an accordion and we all burst into song. Czech folk songs are so delightfully tuneful that not even hectolitres of flowing hops and malt can drown their inherent musicality. The repertoire is inexhaustible: if you were to ride round the world on a penny-farthing bicycle, singing non-stop, you would still have some over for an encore.

  Further tankards appeared before me; my new status as a member of the labouring fraternity precluded refusal. Summoning the remnants of my willpower, which were floating in Pilsen’s famous liquid, I downed several more.

  ‘That’s my girl!’ Tonda rumbled.

  ‘I dunno so much about that,’ Železný grinned, looking me up and down in my usual slacks and sloppy sweater. ‘Looks like they ran short of material when they assembled Ros: if it weren’t for her nose, you couldn’t tell whether she was coming or going.’

  This raised a general laugh. In another land at another time, I might have made a fortune as a predecessor of Twiggy; as it was, I had to stand up to some good-natured teasing, for the average Czech man likes his pound of flesh.

  When I stood up to go home, the pub tilted like a boat on the Mácha lake in a squall.

  ‘I’ll see you home, nipper,’ Tonda offered.

  He delivered me to my doorstep and rang the bell. Pavel appeared.

  ‘Your wife, Comrade Doctor,’ Tonda announced. ‘She’ll be all right after a good sleep.’

  I endeavoured to draw myself up to a dignified height and step over my threshold. Instead, deprived of my support, I collapsed into Pavel’s arms and blissful slumber.

  *

  Besides our regular pay-day celebrations, there were periodical ones to honour fulfilment of the monthly and quarterly plans.

  I rejoiced at my own contribution. The woman at the drill behind me left and Králík let me take over her machine in addition to my own. By dint of drilling slow heavy pieces on one machine and small quick pieces on the other, I kept them both operating without loss of time. I had become a Stakhanovite of a very modest order.

  My sons, too, were proud of my prowess. Whenever we entered a tram, they would enquire loudly: ‘Did you make this one, Mama?’

  Remote from higher politics, the factory gave me peace of mind. While I was there, engrossed in its problems, I forgot the phantoms that were stalking the land.

  Since the rat business Jarmila had attached herself to me. She was an ardent communist and a functionary of the Youth League. She had left school at fifteen, become pregnant at sixteen, married at seventeen, divorced at eighteen and married for the second time at nineteen. She had three children, exuberant energy and boundless optimism. She had been born during the great depression, which had hit industrial Czechoslovakia severely. Jarmila desperately wanted the socialists to win the race. Aware that information on Britain and the West was slanted in the Czech media, she questioned me closely on conditions in England. She was disconsolate to learn that the British were ahead in some respects, for instance, that they worked only a forty-two-hour week.

  ‘Many do overtime to make ends meet, and women’s wages are only two-thirds or half of men’s,’ I consoled her. ‘Czechoslovakia wins hands down on full employment, length of paid holidays and maternity leave. Why, you get marriage and confinement grants besides children’s allowances, and you already have a graduated pension scheme.’

  As a result of our chats I found myself a regular contributor to the desetiminutovky — ten-minute talks on current affairs held twice a week at the end of the morning shift.

  Jarmila dropped a box of pieces beside my machine. ‘Hey, Ros, seen the notice board?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Well, take a look.’

  Intrigued, I slipped round to view it. The retiring Shop Committee had pinned up a list of proposed candidates for the shop election. Most of them were the retiring committee, but four new names had been added, the last being Rosemary Kavanová. I felt absurdly elated. It was a mark of trust.

  I was duly elected and appointed safety officer.

  I, too, had succumbed to the theory, subscribed to by the dedicated proportion of the population, that you were only half alive if you were not working yourself to death. I, too, had been persuaded that I was not justifying my existence unless I was doing my utmost to drive myself out of it. Apart from joining the Youth League and trade union (inescapable) and the Czechoslovak-Soviet Friendship Society (escapable but advisable), I also attended meetings of the Women’s Union, and was a part-time translator. Now, at last, I had a function! This, of course, involved yet more meetings — of the works’ safety officers.

  Socialist zeal had produced an epidemic of meetingitis affecting most of the population. Apart from Party and trade union meetings, and meetings of all the other unions, there were Fighters against Fascism meetings, Defenders of Peace meetings, auxiliary Fire Brigade meetings, tenants’ meetings, street and local affairs meetings, parent-teacher and Friends of the School meetings — all taking place once a week or once a month.

  No meetings out of working hours began on time — either because people were coming from a previous meeting that had ended late or were coming from home and knew that half of the members would arrive late anyway. It was considered bad form to end a meeting on time or be the first to leave. The subjects of many meetings coincided, but presence at one did not excuse absence from another, identical meeting. In any case, we kept scores as a scale of our political enthusiasm. Sometimes people turned up to the wrong meeting, or lecturers brought the wrong notes, or made their appearance on the wrong day, or at the wrong place. But they always found an audience of some sort hanging around, so no harm was done.

  At one evening meeting — the umpteenth on the Korean War — held by our local Women’s Union, I tried my socialist best to concentrate on our leader’s passionate address. I had already sacrificed two Saturday afternoons to ‘agitating’ (urging) our local inhabitants to join a protest march against American barbarism — apart from contributing the earnings of one shift to the Korean cause. This evening, therefore, I found my attention wandering off the subject and on to the earnest but exhausted faces round the table.

  Having answered the call, women were struggling heroically against heavy odds. A 48-hour week, plus two hours ‘commuting, two hours’ shopping and five hours’ housework per day, was not resulting in the picture of fulfilled womanhood that might have been expected under a system that offered freedom from exploitation by man (except husbands), emancipation (from everything except child-bearing, home-running and the need to take up gainful employment because a man’s salary could not support a family), and victory in the fight for equal rights and equal pay (by taking the less lucrative jobs the men were only too happy to leave).

  True, the standard of living had risen since 1945 but it was partly concealed in low rents, free social welfare and health schemes. The women’s standard was maintained at a low level
by erratic distribution, and a labour shortage in the retail trade and public services. The new family and divorce laws had improved women’s status in society, but it was still a man’s world, and the women were a long way from full freedom.

  We’d built up the capital goods sector. But when, I wondered, were we going to start thinking of the consumer? When would we have a broader selection of labour-saving devices? When were we going to improve quality so that a cotton dress wouldn’t shrink from mother to daughter dimensions after two washings? So that handles would not fly off implements, and housewives off the handle? So that the male population wouldn’t look like rogues on account of the razors not razing? So that the ‘constant hot water’ would not be constantly off because of constantly bursting mains? When were we going to manufacture fewer shoes for giants and pygmies and more for average-sized adults and children? Why wasn’t the money that went into bunting invested in a detergent that would wash dirt out rather than in? I was fascinated to learn that we were producing our own ball-bearings instead of importing them from the Swedes (served them right for pinching our art treasures during the Thirty Years’ War), but who was going to help the women bear their double/triple burden?

  Proud of my affiliation with the toiling masses, I had discarded make-up, wore only my oldest clothes and preferred to freeze in 20 degrees Celsius below zero in an old-fashioned cloth coat rather than admit the possession of a fur. I gloated over my broken nails and scarred fingers and I did not regret having read no book and visited no art gallery since we left London. I wanted humbly to belong, not splendidly to stand apart.

  Now, seeing thirty colourless women, dedicated but joyless, indispensable but uncherished, I suddenly rebelled. This was not what we had fought for. No wonder the pubs and the divorce courts were full. My next demonstration was going to be against the oppression of Czech women.

  The voice droned on … casualties … hunger … disease … mutilation … There were tears in these good women’s eyes. In mine too, for the evil, senseless destruction on one side of the world and the well-intentioned, slow self-destruction on the other side. My eyes were leaden. Only three hours’ sleep last night, translating the Trial of the Vatican Agents. My head was lolling; I longed to get up and leave, but I could not confess to mere sleepiness in the face of suffering humanity. I stuck it out. The meeting ended with an appeal for volunteers to help at the local nursery school during the summer vacation. I stumbled home and dropped dreamless into bed.