They had been bright and beautiful youngsters when we left England. Now they were pale and listless. Deprived of their father and largely of their mother, the joy had gone out of their lives. School was dull and unimaginative. The education system had been re-modelled on Soviet lines with the emphasis on parrot learning. Conformity was the keyword. Self-expression, individual taste and judgement were discouraged. Sport was at a minimum. In short there was little outlet for boisterous spirits.
The boys attended school from 8.30 to 1.30, and spent the rest of their time at the day centre. The one near our villa had provided plenty of activities. When we moved, they were less lucky.
Zdeněk was suffering from an eye infection. After work I called at the day centre — a single room attached to the school — and asked the harassed woman in charge if she would administer the prescribed drops at midday. She refused point blank to lift a finger for ‘the son of a traitor’.
‘But children should not suffer for the sins of their fathers,’ I protested.
‘Mine did,’ she burst out unexpectedly. Her children had been denied secondary education and her husband had lost his job in 1948 because he was a member of a right-wing party. ‘My family suffered at the hands of the communists, people like your husband,’ she cried.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Truly sorry. But don’t you think we women should stand together against further injustice?’
The din in the room had grown to a crescendo. The woman shouted at the children to sit down and shut up. I said that they couldn’t be expected to keep still for hours on end. Why didn’t she arrange a programme? Why were there no creative materials? She told me that the local council didn’t provide any.
‘They would if you badgered them,’ I insisted, remembering my experience with Králík.
‘I’m not paid to do anything but mind the kids,’ she said. She hated the job but she couldn’t get anything else apart from factory work.
‘I’m sorry for you,’ I said as I left. ‘So much hatred in your heart.’
The next day I asked Mr Němec if I could go to the day centre at lunch time. He looked unhappy. The Party boss had noted my absences. (He was referring to the hours I spent waiting with one or the other of the boys at the doctors’ surgery.) Reluctantly he gave permission. When I reached the day centre, Zdeněk told me the minder had already given him his drops. I went over to her and took her hand:’ Thank you, I really appreciate what you have done.’
She smiled bleakly.
The following week Jan had a temperature. Mindful of Mr Němec’s heartfelt prayer: ‘I do hope your children will stay healthy for a while, Mrs Kavanová, our department is getting a bad name,’ I dosed him myself and left him in bed. After several days his temperature soared alarmingly and he had developed a hacking cough. I worried all the evening. I was sure he ought to see a doctor, but that would mean more trouble at the office. If only we had a granny. A granny was an indispensable adjunct to the Czech welfare state. Jan coughed and burned with fever all night. In the morning I phoned the health centre and asked for a doctor to call, but was told to wrap Jan up and bring him along. I took a taxi, which made a considerable hole in my budget. The doctor diagnosed pneumonia. Pneumonia! And I had left him unattended because kindly Mr Němec was afraid of his superiors. I obtained a certificate of absence for the statutory three days and on the fourth day I went to the Party chief, slammed the certificate down in front of him and accused him of responsibility for my delicate child’s illness.
‘Women form forty-six per cent of the work force; without us the economy would collapse. The country is underpopulated; it needs children. What is the use of progressive legislation if the comrades don’t support us?’ I demanded.
I threatened that if he uttered any more complaints about ‘absentee mothers’ I’d protest to the President, the Minister of Health, the Minister of Education and the Union of Women. Without realizing it I had raised my voice at each institution until on the word ‘Women’ I reached a veritable crescendo of wrath. Conscious of the thinness of the partitions between his room and the surrounding offices, the political boss assured me loudly that the Party appreciated working mothers’ difficulties and I was on no account to neglect my sick child.
‘You won’t object, then, if I take off a further three days, without pay?’ I asked in a loud bellow for the benefit of the listening ears beyond the partitions.
Trapped, he acquiesced.
*
Unhappily, the boys suffered more than I knew. Young as they were, they did not worry me with their troubles. Years later Jan told me of discrimination by heartless, politically zealous teachers, and of ill-treatment by schoolmates. In one instance a gang of bigger boys had beaten him up as ‘the son of a traitor’, knowing that the staff would not intervene. They had called Jan a dirty Jew and stood on his stomach. How could any one stand on a child’s stomach? Jan defended his father’s honour, puzzled as to why being a Jew (he had not even been aware of the fact that he was Jewish) should make him dirty.
His teacher made him the scapegoat for every untoward happening in class. On one occasion he was unjustly accused of breaking a window. To his surprise another boy stood up and took the blame. Aleš2 was not the true culprit and his action was a public demonstration of support for a victim of the Establishment. This launched a lasting friendship. Jan learned that Aleš, on principle, took an anti-Establishment stand on every issue in defiance of his father, a highly-placed Party official. Later the situation was reversed. Aleš’ uncompromising attitude involved him in serious political trouble and Jan defended him.
On working days I left the house at 6.30 a.m. and returned at 6 p.m. (3 p.m. on Saturdays). Cooking on a broken-down stove, supervising the boys’ homework and mending their clothes took up most of the evening. Cleaning, washing and ironing were crammed into the weekends. From time to time, Slava procured some extra work for me to do at home. Strange stratagems were employed to combat the manpower shortage. Firms farmed out work to each other and fiddled the accounts to pay outside labour. This practice contravened the law, but to have paid their own employees overtime would have incurred heavy penalties. I needed the extra money, but I still feel bitter when I recall the little time I had left — perhaps half-an-hour each evening — for reading to or playing with the boys. I can still hear my impatient voice urging them to hurry up and finish their homework, get to bed, get to sleep, or get out of the way so that I could get on with the next chore.
Come what may, Sunday afternoon at least was for them. We would go to the park or to the open country on the periphery, to the children’s theatre or the cinema. Or, if the weather was bad, we would stay in and dress up and act fairy stories, or paint, model or play cards.
I tried to keep my spirits up for the boys ‘sake. For my own sake, too. I had learned the truth of the adage:’ Laugh, and the world laughs with you; weep, and you weep alone.’ And I knew that I had a long haul ahead of me. If I weakened at the beginning, I’d never make the end. I was not expected to weaken. ‘You have your British sense of humour,’ Czechs pointed out. ‘Ours is the humour of the gallows, of pessimism. Yours is the humour of optimism; it will pull you through hell unscorched.’
Not quite. There were times when I felt distinctly blackened round the edges; when despair and loneliness threatened to suffocate me. After Pavel’s arrest old friends had severed connections. My colleagues were friendly during working hours; outside the office they went their separate ways. Karel was immersed in his own emotional problems after the failure of his second marriage. I saw little of him. Eva was working outside Prague. She, too, had been caught up in the wave of anti-Semitism that had swept Czechoslovakia. On being told by the director of the bank that he was forced to demote her, she had declared: ‘I’ll not sit in the typing pool on sufferance as a superfluous Jew. I’ll go to the mines. There’s such a shortage of labour there that no one will give a damn about my race.’ She had walked straight out and gone to Ostrava, a mining t
own in northern Bohemia. My very dear friend and fellow Englishwoman, Yvonne, had been exiled with her Czech husband and family to an isolated place in the country. Heda and I were so busy we rarely saw each other. Worst of all, I had no family to turn to. My parents had been refused visas to visit Czechoslovakia.
Moments of weakness would creep upon me unawares, after the boys had gone to bed, usually when I was on the loo. Without warning I would burst into tears. The tears would flow and flow, as though from a leaking pipe. I didn’t even try to plumb it. Then suddenly I’d see myself, pants round my ankles, bottom freezing, eyes puffing up. A pathetic and ludicrous sight. I’d laugh. Literally, I cried until I laughed. Then I’d get up, haul up my pants and choose one of two restoratives: Shakespeare or dance. I’d read Shakespeare aloud in the bathroom. The drama dwarfed my own. Everything faded except the poetry of the language. My constricted soul expanded. I read myself out of all consciousness of time and place.
Or I would put on a record and dance. My favourites were Tchaikovsky’s Italian Capriccio and Janáček’s Symphonietta. I’d pile the chairs and tables on the sofa and improvise ballets. I’d whirl and leap and pirouette until I dropped, physically exhausted, spiritually renewed and able to go on.
Perhaps what really exhausted me was the knowledge that Pavel was far worse off than me. I might be tired, worried and depressed, but at least I was at liberty. As long as I had my freedom, I would never succumb. Or so I thought.
*
It was ten o’clock at night. My leaden eyelids drooped and obscured the drawings I was working on. My worst enemy was sleep, or lack of it. Every night I was woken innumerable times by heavy lorries hurtling past the house and the screech of trams braking under our window. Worries that I suppressed in the daytime sprang to life and plagued me like gnats. After a few hours ‘interrupted sleep I often lay awake until morning. Consequently, by early evening I craved my bed. That night I struggled to concentrate through a thickening fog of fatigue. I shook my head to clear the haze. A stabbing pain in my side caused me to double up in agony. I waited, holding my breath. Another knifelike jab. I gritted my teeth and between increasingly frequent spasms finished the drawing before daybreak. By the morning I couldn’t move without pain. A scared Jan phoned the doctor who actually came. He prodded me indifferently and pronounced his diagnosis: ‘Žlučník.’ What the hell was that? I looked it up in the dictionary. Gall-bladder. That meant nothing to me. Insides had never been referred to in my healthy family.
I was outraged. How dared a portion of my anatomy behave so treacherously! I had believed in the ascendancy of mind over matter, convinced that my constitution could stand unlimited abuse. My assumption had been proved false. It was unfair. Protesting vehemently, I was packed off to hospital. Jan was despatched to Karel’s and Zdeněk to a distant cousin in Moravia. The consultant appended acute anaemia, murmuring to his assistant: ‘A bad case of malnutrition. Looks like an inmate of Belsen, poor thing.’
After the hospital, further treatment at a spa was recommended. The left hand of the state having reduced me to impotence, the right hand was sparing no expense to return me to circulation. My congenital resilience served me well. After three weeks of iron-flavoured water, mud packs and carbon dioxide baths at Karlovy Vary, I was eager to return to the fray.
First I re-visited old Prague. I went there alone, I always felt that Prague had a personal message for me which would be communicated only if I were alone. This communion unfailingly brought me peace. On that day the ancient stones assured me of the continuity of history. They reminded me that abiding values outlive historical disasters. They showed me the trials as a single contortion in the long human saga. I viewed our situation in the context of the whole, reminding myself that we were exceptional. Families, in which there were no Jews, Spanish war veterans, anti-fascist fighters, Catholics or ex-factory owners enjoyed a reasonably untroubled existence.
Charged with positive thinking, I called on Heda. I was appalled to find that she and Ivan had been moved into one dingy room with a handful of belongings; the rest had been confiscated. This brought home to me the fate that might yet befall us, and sent the negative scale plummeting again.
Weighing the pros and cons and baffling contradictions of life in Czechoslovakia was to remain the most permanent of my many occupations.
* Russian for paper,
† Draughtsmen.
1. Gertruda Sekaninová-Čakrtová is a former Deputy Foreign Minister and one of the five members of the Federal Assembly who voted against the treaty legalizing the stationing of Soviet troops in October 1968. She is a Charter 77 signatory and a member of VONS.
2. Aleš Macháček (1946–) worked as a drainage and irrigation expert in Southern Bohemia after graduating from agricultural college. He was arrested in 1977 and sentenced to three and a half years for distribution of literature from abroad and of Charter 77’s founding Declaration. He emigrated to England in May 1985.
Chapter 12
As far as the eye could see there were stationary trams.
‘All out and slog it!’ called the conductress with odious cheer.
I ran most of the way and arrived at the office panting and well overdue. ‘I’m sorry I’m late,’ I gasped. ‘There was no electric current on our line.’
‘Yes er — quite so.’ Mr Němec gave me a peculiar look. ‘I think you’d better have a look at this.’
He handed me a newspaper. It was Rudé Právo of 27 May 1953. I scanned the page — the usual stuff: Soviet Red Cross delegation in Prague, young miners pledging 2,500 extra tons of coal in honour of the coming Youth Festival in Budapest, etcetera. Then my eye was caught by a short paragraph in the middle of the page.
*
Trial of Accomplices of the Anti-State Conspiratorial Centre from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Eduard Goldstücker, Pavel Kavan, Karel Dufek and Richard Slánský were tried before a Tribunal of the Supreme Court on 25 and 26 May. The charges were treason and, with the exception of Karel Dufek, espionage.
As accomplices of the anti-State conspiracy led by Rudolf Slánský, the defendants conducted large-scale subversion in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on instructions issued by Geminder and Clementis.
Witnesses and documents testified against the defendants who confessed to the crimes in the indictment. They were found guilty and sentenced: Eduard Goldstücker and Richard Slánský to life imprisonment, Pavel Kavan and Karel Dufek1 to twenty-five years. All four defendants were sentenced to forfeiture of property and loss of civil rights.
*
I slumped against the filing cupboard. Gripping its sides for support, I found myself whispering, ‘But he hasn’t done anything.’ I clenched my teeth to hold back further words. With a supreme effort of will I straightened up and handed Mr Němec his paper. With a murmured thanks, I turned to leave the room. Mr Němec suggested I take the day off. I replied that I had a lot to get through before our deadline and that sitting at home alone would be worse than occupying myself with work. I was thinking: Twenty-five years for putting three sealed letters into the diplomatic bag. Did ever a postman’s job cost a man so dear? Was this the end of our dream? For Pavel twenty-five years in prison, for me twenty-five years’ loyalty to a dead love? Twenty-five years was only five years short of my whole life — an eternity. I could not conceive of eternity.
Concentrating hard on not breaking down, I went into my own office. An uneasy silence prevailed. For once there was no leg-pulling. I started the last job of the month. My brain functioned independently: it was still plugged into a power source; the rest of me was a tangle of disconnected wires.
At lunch in the canteen Mirek talked shop as the safest noise to make. We returned to the office. Again a hush descended, like a sudden fall of snow. My eye fell on my pile of finished drawings. I goggled: thick black tongues like an oil slick had spread over them. Franta started to splutter: ‘I’m terribly sorry, Rosemary, I knocked over my bottle of India ink. The top wasn’t screwed on properl
y.’
At that moment a thunderbolt exploded in my head, my whole body convulsed as though struck by lightning. A voice that I couldn’t believe was my own screamed abuse: ‘You flaming idiot! You lousy, blundering ox! All you’re good for is boozing and screwing! When the hell did you turn in a decent job? Not content with doing bugger all yourself, you’ve gone and loused up my month’s work.’
Tears of rage and grief stung my eyes. I rushed out of the room, locked myself in the lavatory and sobbed hysterically. The tears were for Pavel, the grief was for his terrible fate. The control I had exercised all the morning had been shattered by a bottle of ink. The storm eventually spent itself. I wiped my face with my handkerchief. What now? The longer I stayed in this wretched lavatory, the worse fool I’d look when I emerged. I walked out and along the corridor and opened the office door. Tactfully, no one glanced up. I slipped into my place next to Franta, muttering:
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean all those things I said. You should have picked a better day.’
‘That’s all right,’ he replied awkwardly. ‘We’ve shared out the ruined drawings. We’ll all stay behind and re-do them. You’ll be able to hand them in tomorrow as scheduled.’
‘Thanks.’ I tried to sound grateful, but at that moment I didn’t care whether I ever saw a drawing again. I felt unutterably weary. ‘I think I’ll go home after all,’ I mumbled and tottered out of the room. A strong arm took mine outside the door. It was Mirek.
‘Come on, I’ll get you a taxi.’
‘But —’
‘Don’t argue, here’s the fare.’ He stuffed some notes into my pocket.
I told the boys I had flu and went to bed, unable to focus on the future or the present. In the evening Heda phoned her sympathy and support. Eva, too, phoned condolence and comfort from Ostrava. She assured me the political sentences would be halved eventually; there could be a two-year remission for good conduct. Pavel might be out in ten years.
Love and Freedom Page 17