Prague Spring

by Simon Mawer

  X

  44

  There’s a noise in the city, an undercurrent like the coming of a flood. And then the immediate fact of someone knocking on their door and calling them to wake up. The phone is ringing in the other room. James can hear Zdeněk answering, speaking rapidly in Czech to whoever’s on the line.

  “Something’s happening,” Jitka calls. She edges the door open. Her face, pale with anxiety, hangs in the shadow of the opening. Beside him Ellie emerges from the cocoon of her sleeping bag, looking confused. “What time is it?”

  “Early.”

  “What’s happening? What’s going on?”

  “The barbarians,” Jitka says. “The barbarians are coming.” Which seems uncommonly dramatic, poetic almost, words from the hand of Cavafy. But in Cavafy’s poem the barbarians didn’t come and everyone in the city was left in a kind of limbo, not knowing what to do. Here it is different. The barbarians have actually come and still no one knows what to do. “Russians,” Jitka explains more coherently. “They’ve invaded the country. Soldiers, thousands of them, tanks, planes.”

  In the next room Zdeněk puts the phone down, calls out something and leaves the flat, slamming the door behind him. James and Ellie are scrabbling for their clothes. Disaster is in the air, or in the ground, shaking the foundations. What do the tremors presage? Earthquake or tornado? Jitka is on the phone now. Rusi, she says to whoever is on the other end, rusi.

  Then she’s asking if they’re ready because she has to go—unless they want to stay here. Maybe that would be better. But no, they’ll go with her. So, barely understanding what the hell’s going on, they follow her downstairs and out through the main door onto the pavement.

  Dawn paints the street in the pallid colors of panic. There are people around, walking in the same direction, as though drawn to the epicenter of an earthquake, perhaps to rescue people from the rubble. Words are exchanged with passersby. The tone is an untidy mixture of panic and anger. They feel like children being barely tolerated by an adult.

  “Where are we going?” Ellie asks.

  Jitka is distracted by what she has heard and what’s rumored, saying things they half catch and don’t understand. “Václavské náměstí,” she says, and then, a concession to foreigners: “Wenceslas Square.”

  “But what the fuck’s going on?” James demands. Then, turning a corner, they discover what the fuck is going on because it is there, a presence across the end of the street, a metallic alien thing amongst the nineteenth-century façades of the New Town. A tank. James thinks of The War of the Worlds, of Martian tripods tramping through London streets. Another part of him thinks arthropod, then reptile turning its empty gaze (half blind, peering through small openings in the carapace) up the street and pointing its proboscis straight at them, the muzzle forming a perfect O. Then T-54, he thinks. This from another part of his mind, the part that used to play war games. Surely it is not about to fire. That would be ridiculous. But still he shouts “Move!,” grabs Jitka’s hand and pushes Ellie in the back. They run across the street and press themselves into a doorway while the turret turns and the proboscis shifts back and forth as though sniffing the air, perhaps even trying to work out where the humans have gone. Then a remarkable thing happens: a hatch on the top of the machine opens and a head emerges, cased in a black leather helmet. The head looks round at the buildings and the watching people, then takes a moment to consult a map before looking back at the buildings and then down to the map. The man, the arthropod itself, the reptile, the T-54 battle tank and all who travel in her, has lost its way.

  People gather, some just to watch in sullen silence, others to shout. The smell of diesel exhaust and despair fills the air. The figure in the turret takes no notice and after a moment drops back inside. With a roar and a cloud of black smoke the beast shifts, its tracks screeching on the tarmac and pavement. Figures emerge from a side street and run round it, like dogs at a bear-baiting. From somewhere out of sight a glass bottle arcs through the air and smashes against the flank of the beast. A blossom of flame erupts below the hull with a low wumph of exploding petrol. The machine bellows in anger, grinds curbstones to dust and roars out of sight.

  * * *

  Václavské nàměstí, Wenceslas Square, with dawn leaching between the buildings and flooding the space. The great sloping boulevard is filling with people. Trams are stopped, while crowds gather, talking, wondering what the hell is going on when what is going on is plain for all to see as tanks gouge their way up the slope and arrange themselves as though for battle. Saint Wenceslas dominates the scene from his pedestal in front of the museum at the top end of the square, but even he, at the moment of greatest need, when he is meant to emerge from the Blaník mountain, is powerless before the armor. There is the stench of diesel, clouds of black smoke as the tanks maneuver, the awful clangor of their tracks. A kiosk sells bread rolls and sausages while young men and women argue with soldiers.

  “Why have you come here?”

  “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Do you even know where you are?”

  The soldiers have stock answers to hand as though they’ve been on a language course and have painstakingly learned the phrases without a glimmer of comprehension:

  We are here to maintain order.

  We are here to suppress the counterrevolution.

  We are obeying orders.

  We come as friends.

  A whole litany of platitude.

  A youth appears with a sheet daubed with the slogan and manages to drape it on the rear of a tank. People cheer.

  “What does it mean?” asks Ellie.

  Jitka provides the translation. “Idite domoy. Go home. But they won’t, will they? They’re here for good.”

  The air is stained with sound and fumes. From somewhere comes a sharp burst of gunfire. The crowd utters a collective gasp, as though there is a sudden shortage of oxygen. Some people run, others stand still. Perhaps a moving target is easier to spot than a motionless one. But the shots aren’t repeated, just the grinding of the tanks and the gruff sound of their engines. Others come into the square bringing news, so Jitka says, of the Central Committee headquarters under siege, of leaders being rounded up, of Dubček himself being led away to be shot. Someone places a transistor radio on the ground and a small crowd gathers round to hear the news. Ellie and James stand to one side, not wishing to intrude. It’s like a traffic accident where you can feel the horror but don’t know any of the victims, a tragedy that belongs to other people. Lenka is there. They don’t see her arrive, but she’s there, talking with Jitka, talking with others, giving a distracted wave of acknowledgment to Ellie and James.

  More tanks appear, scouring the cobblestones up the slope towards the museum at the head, followed by a cry of “Radio!,” and people begin to move up the slope, fragile humans following the iron beasts. “The radio station is still broadcasting,” Jitka explains. “It’s on Vinohradská beyond the museum. Who knows what will happen?”

  There is noise from beyond the museum, the sound of metal, the rattle of machine-gun fire. A helicopter flies overhead, a great locust-like thing without markings but painted dun brown. Incongruously, the transistor radio on the ground nearby is broadcasting exactly the same sound—the gunfire, the clash of metal and the helicopter all sounding behind the calm voice of the announcer. Jitka attempts to translate—the studio is under attack and may be invaded but for the moment the staff will continue broadcasting the news as long as possible. When you hear unfamiliar voices on the radio, the announcer says, do not believe them!

  Lenka hurries over. She’s distracted, as though they are unexpected mourners appearing at a family funeral, irrelevant to the real drama. “You must go,” she tells them. “This is no place for you. People are killed.”

  “We want to show solidarity,” Ellie replies, and suddenly Lenka is angry, as though the wrong thing has been said at the funeral, the wrong friendship mentioned, a previous relationship referred to,
a hidden embarrassment exposed to the explicit light of day.

  “Just go! This is not student protest. Not banners outside the American embassy in London. Not even tear gas and throwing stones in Paris. This is rape and you must not be here. It is disgusting to watch. So now go. Go to your embassy and ask for safety. Go and speak with Sam Wareham and tell him Lenka sent you. But go!”

  She turns and hurries away, half-running towards the museum at the top of the square where the tanks are lined up, leaving Ellie smarting as though she has been suddenly and unaccountably struck in the face. As if to confirm the words of warning a battered lorry roars into the square from the direction of the river. The vehicle is crowded with young men and on the bonnet sits a youth holding aloft a flag, a Czechoslovak flag smeared with blood. The watchers make noise, something between a cry of despair and a shout of triumph, as though spilt blood is a catharsis of some kind.

  “Go,” Jitka says. “This is not safe. Go back to the flat and get your things. If they find English here…” She gestures helplessly and turns to follow Lenka.

  When Ellie moves to follow James grabs at her. She shakes him off. “I’m not fucking running away,” she yells. The moment of indecision is over: she hurries after the other women. James follows as well. Pushing through the crowd up the sloping boulevard, there is the sensation of things moving out of control, of chaos blundering onto the scene. Lenka is ahead of them, taller than others around her. From somewhere a shot rings out but no one falls, nothing happens, the people just move on up the square towards the national museum, whose soot-blackened façade is pitted with white scars. Tanks stand like boulders in the stream of people. There’s shouting. Stones are thrown. People are running around the side of the museum into Vinohradská. Further on, buses and lorries have been parked across the roadway as a barricade. Smoke and dust drift over the scene. Flags wave, a nation of flags, used to being called out in unison on patriotic parades but now jeering and derisive; the unison is in the chaos. A Soviet flag burns. Careless crowds confront tanks before the dull concrete building that bears its name across its façade: Československý Rozhlas.

  There’s Lenka, pushing past a bus. Jitka runs towards her, and Ellie and James follow, blindly, not knowing what to do. A tank grinds and turns, its tracks screeching on the paving stones, its gun sweeping in an arc. Lenka looks back at them, then falls. Jitka and Ellie don’t see it—they’re watching the tank—but James does. A moment acid-etched into his memory, cut into the neurons and the synapses even as the rest of the morning fades into a uniform blur of movement and noise. Lenka pushing between the bus and a car, then falling.

  There are screams. But there are screams everywhere. People huddle round. The tank moves forward and rams into the bus, like a spoilt child fed up with his toys. The smash and tear of armor against thin steel as the bus pitches over. People are lifting a figure out of the way, screaming at the smashing tank, scurrying with their burden to the side of the street to some kind of safety in the lee of a building. There are flames at the barricade now, a truck on fire, its fuel leaking out and blazing. Soldiers, civilians scatter away. A tank, engulfed in flames, smashes forward in some kind of animal panic, then reverses to back out of the fire. And Lenka lies on the pavement with people crowding round her and Jitka on her knees beside her and Ellie and James standing by helplessly.

  There’s blood. Someone tries to stanch a wound behind her ear. Someone else folds a coat and eases it beneath her head. Words fly around. James makes out ambulance and doktor. A siren sounds and someone appears with a stretcher. They bundle Lenka onto the stretcher and carry her down a side street to where an ambulance is waiting, its rear doors open. Jitka follows, turning to Ellie and James and shouting, “Go! Go back to the flat! I’ll telephone when I can.” She climbs in after the stretcher, the doors slam and the vehicle moves off, its siren wailing.

  * * *

  Ellie and James make their way through the city, a frightened city, a city with the air sucked out of it by the vacuum of Wenceslas Square and Vinohradská. They ask themselves pointless questions—Was she alive? How did it happen? Did she hit her head?—questions with no answer. The occasional car drives by with people waving flags from the open windows. People run, going nowhere in particular. The barbarians have actually come and nothing anyone has expected has come to pass. The occasional sign of normality—a man sweeping the pavement, two women arguing about something, a queue at a shop beneath a sign that says potraviny—lends an air of strangeness to the morning, as though all these people are playing a part in a film and merely waiting for the cameras to roll. From the queue someone shouts out to them. James spreads his hands helplessly. “Anglický,” he calls back.

  English? What are English doing here? People in the queue stare after them as they hurry past, Fando and Lis hurrying through the streets of Tar, trying to make sense of it all. Somewhere they take a wrong turning and emerge onto the embankment of the river, into sudden sunlight with a view across the water to the Malá Strana and the wooded hill of Petřín. A convoy of army lorries grinds past, filled with soldiers. Their features are vaguely Mongol, as though they might have come from the further reaches of the Soviet empire, the endless steppe of central Asia rather than the crowded buildings of a European city. Passersby shout abuse but they take no notice. Further on three armored personnel carriers are parked on the pavement surrounded by a group of young men, arguing with the crew members. A tram rattles by, passengers staring out at the parked armored vehicles and the arguments while Ellie and James stand on the other side of the road, on the other side of the gulf of language, understanding nothing. But they understand well enough when the argument round the armored car becomes heated, a protester climbing on the front of the vehicle and gesturing with his fist. A Russian soldier lowers his rifle and points it at his tormentor’s head. Is it an empty threat, a piece of absurd bravado? Theater, perhaps, the one actor shaking his fist, the other pointing his weapon. And then these things happen. They seem to happen simultaneously, although logic says that there is a sequence of cause and effect. But still they appear simultaneous: the report of the gun, a deafening crack close to James and Ellie, the sting of stone beside James’s head, a scream, people scattering away from the shooter. James grabs Ellie’s hand and pulls her round the corner into the cover of the buildings. He feels a sense of detachment, as though none of this is happening to him. Yet when he touches the side of his face his hand comes away with blood on it.

  Ellie gives a cry of alarm. “God almighty. Are you all right?” Her voice sounds muffled to him, as though she is speaking underwater.

  “What the fuck’s happening?” he asks, bewildered. He’s shivering now, as though with cold. First Lenka and now him. Ellie’s being motherly, reaching up and moving his hand away so she can see better, producing a handkerchief and dabbing at his cheek. “It’s just a graze. A bit of stone or something.”

  His right ear sings in protest at whatever has been done to it. In the distance there’s more gunfire, the rapid rattle of a machine gun, while out of sight round the corner the armored cars have started their engines and are driving away, people shouting after them.

  She takes his arm. “Come on, let’s get back to the flat.”

  45

  The embassy was in an uproar. Phones rang incessantly. Teleprinters chuttered out reams of paper. Secretaries scurried from office to office with flimsies to be read, to be acted on, to be contradicted within minutes. Meetings were called one moment, to be canceled the next. London wanted to know everything when there was nothing to know beyond what Czechoslovak radio reported. Furthermore—insult heaped upon injury—the embassy lay at the head of a short cul-de-sac and access was now blocked by a Russian armored car lying across the entrance like a beached boat across the mouth of a harbor.

  “This sort of behavior is intolerable,” the ambassador decided, on being told of the offending vehicle, and ordered the Head of Chancery to demand that they leave at once.

 
Eric Whittaker put his head round the door and cut short Sam’s efforts to write a situation report for London. “Do be a dear and go and tell them that they aren’t really welcome. H.E. feels a point must be made and you’re so much better with the languages than anyone else.”

  “You mean he asked for me by name? How flattering.”

  “Not exactly. But you did seem the perfect man for the job.”

  So Sam went down into the courtyard, duly had the gates opened and stepped out from the enclave of Britishness onto the cobblestones of the Malá Strana. Under the iron gaze of Russian guns he walked down the cul-de-sac to the armored car.

  There were two soldiers sitting on top of the vehicle. They wore no identifying insignia and neither did their vehicle, but it was plain enough what they were.

  “Chto zdes’ proiskhodit?” he asked.

  They showed no surprise at being addressed in their own language, just watched him with a gaze as indifferent as the stare of the assault rifles they leveled at him. Like a puppet appearing onstage, a grim-faced official from the interior ministry came round the vehicle. What did the Englishman want?

  The Englishman smiled. He wanted to know what was going on here. It appeared that the embassy was under some kind of siege by the Russian army, and Her Majesty’s ambassador would like to see matters revert to how they had been before. It was the duty of the Czechoslovak authorities to protect diplomatic premises in their country.