I clung to that. In ten years Pavel would be forty-eight. There would still be time to build a life together. But how were we going to maintain any meaningful contact for twenty-five, or even ten, years? Pavel was entitled to write a one-page letter every month but there were frequent unexplained gaps: his letters were censored. He could not describe the conditions under which he lived or his innermost thoughts. He usually referred to books he had read and the progress he was making in Russian, and requested Vitamin C tablets and further reading matter. He always pressed for details about our lives. I did my best to keep him abreast of the boys’ development and make him feel part of our lives, but there were so many subjects to avoid, or at least gloss over. The constant effort on both sides to write cheerfully about blatantly cheerless times made natural communication impossible.
I took out his old love letters and re-read them. I searched his prison letters for the odd personal line. In one he had written: ‘I have a lot of time to think here. I see now that I was not always good to you. You cannot imagine how sorry that makes me.’
How many times would we see each other in ten years? Nearly a year had passed since my last visit. I wrote yet another reminder to the authorities that I had received no reply to my last request for a visit.
In the meanwhile I set about lodging an appeal. With Karel’s help, I discovered the identity of Pavel’s ‘defence’ lawyer, and obtained an appointment to see him. I asked him why he had not contacted me before Pavel’s trial. He replied that he had been appointed by the court a few days prior to the trial and had seen Pavel’s dossier only a day before. He claimed to have done his best. The original sentence had been the rope. He had got it commuted to twenty-five years. His voice was cold and tired. If he doubted his client’s guilt, his face betrayed nothing. He had his own skin and his family to protect. He avoided my eyes. I urged him to appeal. He replied flatly that in cases of treason there was no appeal.
Karel and I composed our own letter of appeal. To no avail.
*
Now that Pavel had been sentenced, the Kytlice National Committee announced that they had officially confiscated half of the house (the other half, fortunately, was in my name), and that they would let it as soon as they found a tenant. For months I lived in dread of confiscation of our belongings, but time went by and the Smíchov National Committee men did not appear. I assumed they had ‘lost’ Pavel’s file, as promised.
Letters from Pavel had ceased. I worried that he was ill. Then I received a permit to visit prisoner No. 2645 at the Leopoldov prison in Slovakia.
I took the night train to Žilina. The compartment was freezing. I sat through the long night awake, but in a half dream. I had to wait a long time at Žilina for the local train. I was chilled to the bone with foreboding as well as the early morning freshness. I recalled the last time I had been here — the jovial company of the track workers, the deference with which the station master had treated the female ‘engineer’ from Prague. Now I was alone, the wife of prisoner No. 2645, allowed a second visit after nearly a year. The sun had warmed the air by the time the train came in. It had slatted wooden seats and was full of Slovak peasants carrying baskets with squawking ducks and other farm produce. Even on a warm day, the women wore scarves on their heads and long skirts with several petticoats. The men wore black hats and heavy black boots and clumped up and down the wooden floor like infantry recruits. A gypsy family ate and squabbled noisily in a corner.
The train coughed and chugged across the countryside. Leopoldov. The name had a formidable ring. I alighted and trudged in the direction indicated by the ticket collector. On the horizon, surrounded by a flat, lifeless plain rose a vast eighteenth-century fortress. The sun beat down and I was soon as hot as I had been cold in the night. The nearer I approached, the higher the wall grew. How hopelessly high it must have seemed to the men inside! The fortress was encircled by a moat. I crossed the bridge and rang the bell. The sentry glanced at my permit, told me to wait and closed the heavy door.
I waited for over an hour. I was beginning to feel faint: I had not eaten since the previous evening. At last the door opened again and I was admitted. The walls inside exuded a sinister chill.
‘This way, you.’ The armed guard, a short man with a brutish face, walked beside me. He opened a door. My heart sank. We were in a large room divided down the middle by a wood and glass partition, sub-divided into small cubicles. The guard jerked his thumb and I entered a cubicle. On the other side of the partition Pavel was led in. His appearance shocked me. His hair was cropped short and his skin was pasty from lack of air and exercise. In grey, shapeless prison clothes he was a faded nonentity. Pavel, the irrepressible individualist, had become part of a uniform, dejected mass. The thought was unbearable. In the middle of the partition there was a grating. We stood to speak through this. A guard’s head was a few inches from Pavel’s; he was staring insolently into my face, conveying that I was the dregs of society, undeservedly on the free side of the partition. My guard stood close behind me, his weapon drawn.
We talked about the boys — the only safe subject — and their approaching vacation, three weeks of which would be spent with me in Kytlice and the rest at a pioneer camp. It was the strained, polite conversation of people who had been acquainted many years before and had met accidentally in an inconvenient place at an inconvenient time. Pavel had not been well but the pills I had sent had helped and he was working again. I showed him the latest photos of the boys through the glass.
‘They are growing and changing.’ He was thinking: How changed will they be by the time I see them again?
‘Once you’re transferred nearer Prague, I can bring them with me on a vis.’
‘Yes.’ He did not sound very hopeful. Suddenly he burst out: ‘I know you are very busy, but couldn’t you write at least a few lines?’
I was dumfounded. ‘But I’ve written every fortnight over the past months. The boys and Karel have written too.’
‘End of visit,’ announced Pavel’s guard, seizing his arm.
As he was dragged off, Pavel shouted: ‘Write to the central detention office and complain that letters are not being delivered. Insist on an explanation.’
As I stumbled back to the station, the way was blurred. I let the tears fall unheeded. A ten-hour journey for a ten-minute visit! I had found nothing to say of comfort. I was haunted by the hurt look on Pavel’s face when he reproached me for not writing. I imagined the gnawing doubts, the fears that he had been forgotten, that we no longer cared. To permit mail and then to withhold it was a monstrous kind of torture.
On the train back to Prague an old woman confided to her neighbour that her cousin and his wife had committed suicide after the recent currency reform (the second). They had lost virtually everything. ‘That’s something else Slánský and his gang have on their conscience,’ she concluded.
I felt too dispirited to argue that Slánský had been dead for several years and some of his ‘gang’ had been in prison for several years before the reform had been carried out. New, and presumably more reliable, cadres had had ample time to put the economy to rights. Strangely enough, no improvement had been noted after the ‘saboteurs’ had been disposed of.
*
Every now and then a new, unfailing remedy for the sick economy was announced. For example, centralization of small enterprises into large, more efficient units and, when that failed, decentralization into small, more efficient units. In one of the bouts of ministerial expansion, the Ministry of Transport’s lustful eye alighted on our little office, and we had to move into the vast Ministerial building overlooking the Vltava.
The Ministry, of course, filtered its takeover. Every new employee was always screened, even if he had already been screened and passed as an A1 citizen by six preceding enterprises. Dossiers were passed from one cadre officer to another; the subjects never learned their contents, never ascertained the source of libellous statements, of undemonstrable doubts or damaging suppositions.
‘They’ — the secretariat wallahs on the fifth floor — sent for Kavanová. Five of them were seated in a semi-circle wearing the incredulous expression of owls that have suffered a slight stroke. My dossier was open in front of them.
The chief cadre officer strained a thin squeak through his temporarily paralysed vocal cords: ‘How is it possible, Mrs Kavanová, that you, an Englishwoman with foreign relations and, moreover, a husband in jail, have been operating in a key enterprise?’ He fixed an accusing eye upon me as though I had seeped up between the floorboards.
‘I was signed on in the usual way, as you can see by my file,’ I answered.
‘This serious oversight must be rectified without delay.’ The other owls nodded as vigorously as their state of shock would permit. ‘Your employment at this Ministry will be terminated immediately. In lieu of notice, you will receive one month’s salary.’
I had taken a hell of a lot of trouble to learn my job; now that I had got the hang of it, no one was going to throw me out. If they did, it would have to be bodily, from the fifth floor! I drew a deep breath and rattled off:
‘I have been working on the electrification of your railways for three years. I have had access to all your secret plans and blueprints. I have photographed every design and every inch of your railway network, all your stations, tunnels and installations in the vicinity of the tracks. I have sold these photos to the Americans for vast sums which I have stashed away in Swiss banks. You can sack me but the harm has already been done. You will have to re-lay and re-route your entire network!’
Not an eyelid batted, not a lip twitched, but the barb had gone home.
‘Hmm.’ To fill the embarrassed silence, the chief owl turned over the papers in my file. ‘Engineer Němec evaluates your services highly. Under the circumstances and with regard to the importance of the work you are engaged in, I think my colleagues will agree to waive our original decision and retain you on the staff; but,’ he added sternly, ‘you will not be permitted to work on the tracks. Your activity will be confined to the Ministry. You will kindly hand in your railway pass card.’
This was a blow for it meant no more cheap travel. On the way home I dozed; the jogging tram took the form of a train compartment; the passengers dissolved into Slovak peasants. Superimposed upon them was the figure of Pavel in his prison rags.
Our mail box contained a single slip of paper — a money order for ten crowns from Pavel. The equivalent of a few shillings, it nevertheless represented many hours of labour. At least it meant that Pavel was working. I bought the boys a slice of ham each to celebrate, and wrote to Pavel to spend any money he earned on extras in the prison shop. Heaven knew he needed them. The infrequent parcels I was allowed to send were limited in scope and weight, and there was no guarantee of delivery.
The money order was the last news of Pavel for some time. Again I was concerned for his health. When at last a letter came, it was from a different prison. It confirmed my fears: he had suffered a heart attack. I was stunned. He had served only two years of his sentence, and already he was seriously ill. He would not survive ten years.
In desperation I wrote to President Zápotocký2 appealing to him to save Pavel’s life by granting clemency. It was hard to plead for pardon for uncommitted crimes, but, I thought, once Pavel is out he can fight to clear his name.
I took the letter to the Castle, intending to deliver it to the President in person. I slipped past the first sentry and tiptoed up the stairs but was caught at the next floor and bundled unceremoniously downstairs to a small office where I was instructed to leave the letter. Like all my previous communications, it was ignored.
Pavel’s new prison was nearer to Prague. At the next visit Karel took Zdeněk to see his father. Jan, as usual, was ill in bed. Father and son had not seen each other for three years. Zdeněk reported wonderingly: ‘Tati cried.’ He had been immeasurably shocked by his father’s tears.
Nevertheless, as Pavel’s next letter showed, he had been immensely cheered by Zdeněk’s visit. He now felt much better and was working out of doors.
1. Karel Dufek was sentenced to 25 years with Kavan in 1953 and released in 1955. He was made Ambassador to Brazil in 1969.
2. Antonin Zápotocký (1884–1957) became a member of the Politburo in 1929. He was in Oranienburg concentration camp throughout the war. From 1948 to 1953 he was Prime Minister of Czechoslovakia and then from 1953 to 1957, President of the Republic.
Chapter 13
‘You must have some relaxation. Nothing but the office, household chores and preserving the lives and limbs of two boys for the next umpteen years will drive you up the pole,’ said Hanka, the girl friend of one of my colleagues.
So, to postpone the onset of insanity, I accepted her invitation to go to a dance with the two of them. Several young people joined our table and the wine bottles emptied rapidly. The talk was cheerful and inconsequential. Politics faded. Hanka, pink from the dance floor, led a young man to our table. ‘Look who’s here,’ she cried. ‘Milan!’ Hanka introduced us. He said he was delighted to meet me in a low, musical voice. I studied the owner. He was at least six years younger than me. His fresh complexion spoke of winds and forests. The clear, golden-brown eyes held the deep calm of solitude. It was a sensitive face, overlaid with a charming simplicity. He asked me to dance. Only dimly aware of the music and the other couples, I responded effortlessly to my young partner.
‘You are so light, it’s like dancing with a flower,’ he said. ‘Hanka’s spoken about you,’ he added, smiling into my eyes with affection as though we were old friends. I knew nothing of his background — family, education, status, politics — but I knew everything of the intrinsic man: good, gentle, incapable of an unkind thought or deed, with an innocence that sprang not from ignorance of the world but from purity of spirit. There was pleasure in our physical contact, but his embrace was protective rather than sensual. His light brown hair smelt of pine needles and his hands were strong and firm.
He was a biologist, concerned with optimal conditions for tree cultivation. Czechoslovakia’s chronic wood and paper shortage made this priority research, but Milan himself was interested in natural, not industrial growth. Besides his work, music was his great love. His family illustrated the adage ‘every Czech a musician’.
‘We all play an instrument,’ he said. ‘I play the piano, my father plays the violin, my elder brother the oboe and my younger brother the French horn, while my mother sings. The whole family meets at home at weekends for musical evenings. I should like to take you to our village some time. Perhaps when we hold the next fête. Someone kills a pig. The villagers turn out in national costume and perform south Bohemian folk songs and dances.’
I mused: The people of a small nation, insecure in their boundaries and sovereignty, lacking material comforts, cling to what is permanent: the soil, tradition, folklore. Folk songs and dances live on naturally; they do not have to be fostered by enthusiastic cranks.
Milan was saying: ‘The scenery’s just wind-blown peat moors, mists and silence; not the picture postcard kind, but I love it. It may be dank and desolate, but a man comes to grips with his soul there.’
I wanted the night to last for ever, but three o’clock drew on relentlessly. Milan would say goodnight. Tomorrow morning he would be a glowing memory of a few hours’ brightness. He took possession of me and called a cab. The driver, revelling in the empty roads, sped round the curves and corners so that we were pressed close together. I exerted all my strength to control my long dormant need as it was stirred into acute awareness. Dignity had to be preserved if the evening were not to turn to bitter ashes in my mouth. Milan shook hands at the street door, then he turned my hand and gently kissed the palm. I trembled at the unexpected tenderness. He was immediately concerned.
‘You’re cold. You must go in. It’s late and you’re tired. You could easily catch a chill. Drink some hot milk before you go to bed. Promise?’
I nodded dumbly, whispered g
oodnight and turned abruptly. My eyelids were pricking. Somebody cared whether I was tired.
‘I’ll phone you at your office at two tomorrow,’ he called as he left.
I fumbled for my keys with shaking hands. I staggered up our five flights. I pulled off my dress and dropped into bed in my slip, too exhausted by my turbulent feelings to undress.
At two o’clock in the afternoon the phone rang. My heart thumped so loudly I could hardly gasp out: ‘Hullo, Kavanová.’
‘Milan here. How are you? Have you thrown off your cold?’
Even over the phone I felt the comfort of his presence.
‘Yes, thanks, I’m fine.’
‘Good, so when can you be free this evening?’
This evening! My eyelids had been drooping all morning. I had anticipated crawling into bed as soon as I had got the boys under the covers. But without hesitation my voice was saying: ‘Eight o’clock.’
‘All right, see you at the Three Bears at 8.30.’
I had to buy coffee on the way home and make myself three cups. But by the time I had bathed and changed, my fatigue had fled. In the tram going back to town I hugged myself to still the excitement bubbling under my skin. Then a chill struck me, like a thick cloud passing over a blazing sun. Wine and oaks might improve with age, but not me. I was thirty-one and careworn; delicate crowsfeet fanned out from the corners of my eyes. The dance hall had been discreetly lit; I had been flushed with wine and the thrill of my first evening out. Now I had pale blue shadows under my eyes. Milan would spell out the years. He would make polite conversation and then, showing the utmost tact, would suggest that we leave early so that I might get some rest. The next day, he would return to his tests and I would lick my injured pride. I stood up to leave the tram and return home with my vanity intact. At the exit I told myself that would be cowardly. I would see it through. I would be nonchalant and cheerful, and bring the evening to an end with calm finality.
Love and Freedom Page 18