I performed my duties as 620’s safety officer assiduously, too assiduously for Králík with whom it was ‘everything for the worker’, bar anything that cost time, trouble or money. Our first clash was over duckboards. Why the hell was I ordering twenty new ones? Because the slats of the old ones were either broken or rotten. If an operative caught his foot, it could cause a serious accident.
‘D’you think a man with any sense can’t see a damn great hole under his nose?’ Králík exploded.
‘Of course he can, ‘I soothed him.’ But he’s supposed to be watching his machine, isn’t he?’
‘Where’s the dough to come from?’ was the next question. ‘If I take it out of 620’s wages fund and the bonuses are that much smaller, you’d better hire yourself a bodyguard.’
‘Then take it out of the shop’s social fund. I’ll get the Works Safety Commission to investigate, and if they think my demands would seriously deplete it, they can contribute from the works resources.’
‘All right,’ gritted Králík. ‘You’ll get your blasted duckboards.’ He added with heavy sarcasm: ‘I suppose you’ll be wanting bloody tiles on the floor next.’
‘No,’ I answered sweetly. ‘We’d skid on those, but I’d like the hollows filled in. Suds collect in them and there is never enough sawdust, so we’ll have to do the job properly with concrete.’
‘This isn’t a nursery school,’ roared Králík, leaping to his feet. ‘You’re a machinist, not a bloody nurse maid!’
I retreated and sought Jarmila. Jarmila persuaded the Youth League to put in a Saturday afternoon shift. We bought sand and cement from the extra earnings and transformed 620 from a map of the south Bohemian lake district into a smooth expanse you could have run a ballroom dance on.
My next tour of inspection brought me to the grinders.
‘How are the suction pipes working?’ I asked conversationally.
‘Look, woman, these pipes haven’t been sucking for a f——ing long time, ‘one of them replied. ‘All they do is get in the bloody way.’
‘I shall report it immediately.’
‘You can put it down in six reports, nothing’ll come of it,’ said another. ‘It never does.’
‘It will now.’
‘What’ll you bet?’ asked the first.
‘A bottle of brandy,’ I replied recklessly, adding: ‘Russian.’ One had to have the right affiliation even with booze.
A power press operator pointed out to me that his brake pin was wearing loose and likely to release the press at an unexpected moment. Táborský was off sick. I waylaid Králík just before two o’clock. He followed me reluctantly, gave the machine a cursory glance and roared that the damn part would last months yet, and that if things went on like this I’d bring production to a standstill.
Two days later the man was rushed to hospital with two fingers crushed. After that, the new suction pipes and one or two other improvements were plain sailing. We saved the brandy until the injured man returned to work and consumed it amicably together. He was put onto a brand new press.
Králík had not adjusted to the new era: in his mind the floor, whose battles he had previously fought, was naturally against the management, which he now represented. The whole shop grumbled — mostly off the record.
‘Grumbling,’ Luba snorted. ‘It’s a national pastime!’
‘Perhaps you don’t grumble in the right places,’ I suggested.
‘Where can we?’ she asked. ‘The trade union deals with complaints, but them top union functionaries are members of the Party. We’ll never shift Králík.’
Jarmila was not averse to a little subversion. Together we organised a secret ballot in 620 — an unheard-of move. The result was overwhelmingly for Králík’s ouster. Králík refused to recognise such ‘unconstitutional, capitalistic proceedings’ and swore he knew who was behind it. Then, to our surprise, he called an extraordinary union meeting to announce that he had been offered the position of deputy director in view of his service to the Party and industry.
Luba whispered caustically: ‘When a Party functionary is kicked out, he always gets kicked up!’
Jarmila had been doing some detective work. She confided to me that Králík had designed a jig that had turned out to be inaccurate. He’d taken the innovation money before it had been properly tested.
‘“Upstairs” didn’t want him to face the music here if it leaked out: that’s why they’ve removed him.’
The new supervisor was a technician who knew his job. In consultation with the Shop Committee he achieved a balance between the floor’s demands and the needs of production. Productivity rose accordingly.
*
All factories were expected to make a special splash in honour of the October Revolution. Tatravagonka pledged to fulfil the year’s plan by that date. The whole factory went mad keeping its promise. The management, too, played a part in this production orgy: planning methods were re-evaluated and electric trolleys were purchased to keep material moving. We cut breaks to a minimum and absenteeism dropped.
We made it. On 7 November the main yard was decorated with flags, the works band played socialist pop songs and the employees assembled to watch the last product of the planned year leave the gates — a beautiful yellow and red new-type tram with sprung seats, rubber tyres and four powerful engines. Our director informed us that if this pace was maintained, Tatravagonka would exceed its annual plan by twenty-five per cent. Two-hundred-and-thirty other plants had taken up our challenge and would fulfil their plans before the end of the year too. He ended on a triumphal note, unfurling a banner for the ‘Best Prague Factory’, and the meeting concluded with the Red Flag.
My doubts were set to rest. There might be shortcomings but it was only a matter of time before they would be eliminated. When it came to the nitty-gritty, the workers were solidly behind the system. Jarmila, it seemed was solidly behind me. She informed me that I had been proposed as a candidate to the Party by 620’s young communists (which meant mainly Jarmila).
‘Me, a foreigner! They must be mad.’
I had intended to apply for membership when we returned to Prague from London. But after the influx of members in 1948, some at pistol point, as it were, the Party had closed its ranks. Now only the most trustworthy working-class cadres were considered, and they had to be nominated and serve a year’s candidature.
‘You’re not a foreigner, you’re one of us,’ Jarmila protested warmly.
Did I still wish to join the Party? I still supported its aims, but I could not now condone all its methods. As a member, though, I would have the chance to voice an opinion from within; this would carry more weight than criticism from without, which tended to be construed as ‘hostility toward the regime’. I was summoned for an interview by the works Party committee of the Youth league.
The chairman began: ‘Comrades Jarmila Fantlová and Jan Šmíd of 620 have proposed Comrade Kavanová as a Party candidate. They base their proposal on her work in her shop.’ He read out: ‘Shockworker, member of the shop committee, attendance at political school, work pledges in honour of 1 May, 28 October, 7 November, shift for Korea, ten voluntary brigade hours a month, current affairs talks. A commendable record. Does anyone wish to question Comrade Kavanová?’
I looked round. The serious young faces registered approval. Pryl, a draughtsman, cleared his throat. All eyes turned from me to him. He spoke slowly, letting the words sink in. ‘Yes, I do.’ He eyed me coldly across the table. ‘You have attended an institute of higher learning?’
‘Yes.’
‘You are British by birth and yet your husband was sent to the Czechoslovak Embassy in London in 1947.’ He looked round the table, fixing each face with a gimlet stare. No one knew what he was driving at, but his voice was censorious. Easily swayed, the others tucked away their friendly smiles and donned neutral expressions. ‘By the pre-February government, in which, no doubt, he had many friends, having spent six war years in England.’
; ‘In the army, fighting in France twice and decorated for bravery,’ I intervened.
‘Comrades, does it not strike you as strange that Comrade Kavan should have been sent to represent our Republic in his wife’s country where she would, of course, have contacts in imperialist circles?’
‘My contacts, as you put it, were on the British Left.’ My own tone had grown hostile in reciprocity. What was this, a People’s Court?
‘Nevertheless, you welcomed your husband’s appointment?’
‘I certainly did not. I should have preferred somewhere else. We were originally to have gone to Belgrade.’ I bit my lip. Tito was now the arch-enemy of the Cominform.
‘You would have preferred that?’ asked my opponent in the suave tones of a practised Public Prosecutor.
‘Were you a member of an Action Committee?’ I asked.
‘Yes.’ Surprised by my question, he had answered spontaneously. He recovered himself. ‘I believe I am putting the questions.’
‘Well, what has all this got to do with Ros — with Comrade Kavanová’s candidature?’ asked Jarmila bluntly.
‘Yes, would you come to the point.’ The chairman tried to assert his authority.
‘This committee is here to judge Comrade Kavanová’s suitability as a candidate to the Communist Party, the vanguard of the working class,’ Pryl reiterated.
‘If it interests you,’ I broke in, ‘an anti-Tito book by a Yugoslav diplomat who recently sought asylum here was written in collaboration with my husband.’
This drew no comment. He is indifferent to the truth, I thought. He is using words as a preamble to a foregone conclusion.
‘Comrades,’ he went on relentlessly, ‘is it not singular that Comrade Kavanová, a foreigner of higher education and bourgeois family, should have chosen to work in a factory, professing solidarity with the working class, while employing a working-class Czech girl to execute the household tasks that all our working women perform themselves.’ (There would have been no point in explaining that Květa, our last nanny-housekeeper in London, a marvellous girl who had become our friend, had remained with us because she had not yet found a job or lodgings to her liking.) ‘Why, I wonder, should Comrade Kavanová have taken such pains to worm her way into the confidence of the workers in her shop and then proceed to provoke disharmony between the floor and the supervisor? May I remind you that even before getting herself elected to the Shop Committee, she went out of her way to support a member of the reactionary forces striving to undermine our proletarian dictatorship in league with imperialism.’
‘Rubbish!’ Jarmila snorted.
The chairman and Šmíd looked unhappy. The rest were taking their cue from Pryl. Their faces were rigid with pride in their revolutionary vigilance. They had the makings of first-class professional functionaries: district and regional Party secretaries, permanent members of youth secretariats. Equating reason with individualism, conscience with sentimentality, they would become nameless echoes of a nameless dictatorship. I felt immeasurably sorry for them.
The vote was taken; only Jarmila and Šmíd were for, the rest were against.
‘May I say that my sincere desire to help your country build a just socialist society remains unaffected by your decision.’ I looked at each one as I spoke, they avoided my eye. ‘I regret not having gained this committee’s confidence.’
So much for expiating the sin of my origin. Clearly, Pavel and I would never live down our years in the West. Thousands of Czechs and hundreds of English wives had emigrated after February 1948, yet we had returned. Wasn’t that sufficient demonstration of loyalty? Naturally I was hurt at my rejection. But before long I ceased to regret it.
Chapter 7
Even high-ranking communists were now coming under fire. Rudolf Slánský1, a deputy prime minister and, until recently, the Party Secretary-General, and Vlado Clementis, Foreign Minister and a member of the Central Committee, had been arrested.
Pavel came home one day looking very shaken. The state security police had been to his office. They had questioned him about instructions he had been given by Slánský and Clementis when he was in London. They had also interrogated him on his report on the Anglo–Czechoslovak Trade Agreement, his press conference after Masaryk’s death and his activities in England during the war.
‘It’s old stuff. The police have access to all the archives. Why do they want this information from me all over again?’
‘It’s probably purely routine,’ I soothed him. ‘With all these spy scares they must be checking on everyone who has been in the West.’ (No wonder the young communists had made short shrift of me.)
Pavel was subjected to several more interrogations. These brought back symptoms of nervous strain. He was sleeping badly and smoking heavily. The house was rent with unpredictable storms. In the absence of tranquillisers, I swallowed aspirins and kept the boys out of Pavel’s way. He complained: ‘The situation is getting me down. Colleagues pass me in the corridor and pretend not to see me. I keep wondering if there was anything I overlooked in London or let slip through negligence.’
‘You neglect things all the time,’ I said lightly, ‘like bills and birthdays, but not things that might interest the secret police. You have a clear conscience: there is nothing to be afraid of.’
I spoke with a conviction I did not feel. I, too, was gripped by fear. Pavel had long since ceased to take an independent stand. But he did not suffer fools gladly. Had he incensed some of the new ministerial cadres of limited vision and intellect? What of the enemies he had incurred at the Embassy? Had they cast suspicions on him?
I kissed him. ‘You’re working too hard. You need something to take your mind off the Ministry and the secret police.’
He soon found a distraction. With his usual lack of prior intimation, Pavel burst in on a Thursday with the news that he had acquired a chata and that we were going to see it on the coming Saturday.
*
A chata was a holiday shack, and the latest craze. It might be anything from an inverted hat-box to a converted cowshed. A family might decide to build one with material bought over long periods from the government, or pilfered from building sites, or might purchase a ruin from the local National Committee and inject new life into its bones. Pavel had elected the latter course.
We left the boys with Karel, and Pavel collected me from the factory at two o’clock. He was in high spirits as always when new vistas loomed ahead. We drove north-west from Prague. The countryside was neat and orderly. The scattered holdings had been combined to form extensive collective farms (not, we discovered later, without some coercion). The result was a patchwork quilt of large symmetrical pieces and almost invisible seams, for there were no hedges, and the old dividing strips of grass had been ploughed up. We passed through the Mělník wine-growing district with its platoons of vine sticks scaling the terraces. The undulating plain gave way to rounded hills. The valley opened and closed. Bohemian cottages, red-roofed and with white, pink, blue or green walls clustered in groups near the roadway.
We reached the former Sudetenland, and then the scenery changed. Volcanic pine-clad cones perched on the plateaux. Here and there red bulged from splits in the green like stuffing from a cushion. The brown-and-white striped German houses looked as sober and virtuous as Puritan maids.
The road twisted and turned, climbing steadily. We reached Nový Bor, a grey, unostentatious little town, and swept through the vast, deserted square. The serrated skyline grew higher and blacker, clouds began to roll down the mountain sides and encircle us. Pavel suddenly turned right along a path that cut through the heart of a forest and mist swirled around us. The Minx stumbled along the path for nearly a mile, then emerged, plunged down a short incline and came to a halt beside a grim, desolate edifice — the chata of Pavel’s dreams. Not a diminutive nestling cottage, as I had pictured, but a barn-like two-storey house, built of timber and concrete; half of the roof and most of the windows were missing. It was one of the many buildings in th
e district that had fallen into disrepair since the German minority was expelled from Czechoslovakia.
Pavel was saying: ‘We own an acre and a half of virgin soil to make fruitful with nothing but our bare hands! That’s real life: a battle with nature and the elements! We’ll enjoy transforming this heap of rubble into a dignified country residence.’
It was certainly going to require enough effort to take Pavel’s mind off political shadows. I opened the front door, which hung askew on one hinge, and looked aghast at the sagging floorboards, peeling paint, seatless chairs and a couch with its upholstery ripped out.
With wilting spirits I was about to peck at the edge of the disorder when Messrs Nový, Šimák and Procházka arrived from the village with sacks of sand, lime and cement. Pavel had either performed some economic miracle, or made some fantastic promises. He immediately commanded me to make tea. After about an hour, during which I trudged fifteen times to the well for water for cleaning and mixing purposes, the water on the sullen stove was hot enough to make the tea which I poured into an assortment of chipped mugs.
Work progressed: rotten timber was carried out onto the field; new floorboards were sawn; cardboard was put into empty frames. Pavel rushed about revelling in the pioneering spirit and deferring to his collaborators. ‘What do you suggest here, Mr Procházka?’ ‘Oh, certainly, Mr Nový.’ ‘Whatever you think, Mr Šimák.’ He whispered to me: ‘You have to be careful with these country folk. They are naturally suspicious of the city nobs. If they think you’re taking their services for granted, they’ll down tools and quit.’ Their requirements were then transmitted downwards: ‘Darling, mix some cement! Take some planks up to Mr Procházka! Find the nails! Bring the step ladder over here!’ Then: ‘Make a note that Mr Nový would like half-a-kilo of coffee beans from Prague next time we come, and Mr Procházka an alarm clock.’
Love and Freedom Page 10