Prague Spring

by Simon Mawer

He puts the receiver back on the cradle. Ellie is staring at him. “How is she, James?”

  “She’s unconscious.”

  “Still unconscious? How serious is it, James? Didn’t you ask her?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t know how serious. She was in a hurry. Jitka, I mean. She was in a hurry because others wanted the phone. She didn’t say how serious.”

  “You should have asked!”

  “I didn’t have a chance. She rang off.”

  She screams, her face contorted as though with pain, “But you should have asked!”

  They’re trapped in a strange flat a thousand miles from home and familiarity, with people dying around them, and she’s screaming: Why didn’t you ask? Why didn’t you ask?

  48

  The nearest bridge was blocked to traffic by armored vehicles, but people on foot could pass. Across the river, Kampa island was an oasis of quiet, but there was more armor in the wider streets of the Malá Strana and tanks in the square around the church of Saint Nicholas. He wondered whether to check on Egorkin and Pankova but decided against it and instead crossed the square and made for the narrow road leading to the embassy.

  Little had changed there. The armored car still blocked the cul-de-sac, soldiers still stood on stolid duty, the grim-faced official from the interior ministry was still there, the Union Flag still flew over the gatehouse. One of the soldiers moved to block his way, but the Czech official muttered something and the Russian stood aside. At the end of the cul-de-sac the gates opened just as he reached them, as if someone had been watching his progress up the alleyway through a peephole. Inside the gate was the reliable face of Derrick, the security man.

  “You made it back.” He made it sound as though Sam had just been through the front lines of some kind of trench warfare. “What’s it like out there?”

  “Chaos. The Russians have come looking for a fight but all the Czechs want to do is argue. It’s a rather uneven contest.”

  “Who’s winning?”

  “The moral conflict or the military one?”

  Derrick sniffed. He was a straightforward sort of man. “Not much point in winning the moral one if you’ve lost the battle.”

  “I’m afraid you’re right.”

  In the courtyard there was activity round the embassy cars and talk of a convoy being organized to evacuate nonessential staff. A story was going round that the transport ministry was arranging a train to get foreign visitors out to Austria or Germany. Sam looked in at Whittaker’s office and gave a brief account of how things were in the Old Town. Eric listened with feigned patience. “You haven’t heard the latest,” he said when Sam had finished. “It seems the powers that be have finally pulled their fingers out.”

  “Out of what?”

  “Their arses, Sam, their arses. It seems they’re sending us a plane.”

  “A plane?”

  “Apparently it’s those bloody pop singers. The Moody Men or whatever.”

  “Blues.”

  “That’s right. The ministry of defense has got permission for an RAF aircraft to fly in to evacuate them along with our nonessential staff. Unbelievable, isn’t it? First they give the Beatles the MBE, then they lay on a special plane for this Moody Blues lot. Next thing they’ll give Cliff Richard a knighthood.”

  They laughed at the incongruity of it all. A plane, from a NATO air force, flying into a Warsaw Pact country in the middle of an invasion. It seemed absurd. “What about our musicians—Egorkin and Pankova? Can we get them out that way? Or by the road convoy?”

  “One way or another, I suppose we’ll have to try. We don’t really need an added complication, do we?”

  “But we’ve got one whether we like it or not.”

  He went to his office and rang the switchboard. Someone from the American embassy had called. A Mr. Harry Rose. And there had been a call from England. The telephonist couldn’t believe the system was still up and running, even for international calls. “Someone called Steffie,” she said. But surely she knew exactly who Steffie was. His affair with Stephanie was hardly secret. “She asked if you were all right and said she was thinking about you. I told her you were fine and awfully busy. She said, maybe you could give her a call back.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Oh, and there was a call from a Mr. Borthwick. I think that’s right. He said that Lenka told him to get in touch with you. I’m not quite sure what that means. It’s probably something consular, we’ve been snowed under this morning by that kind of call.”

  Borthwick? He struggled to put a face to the name, and then he recalled the two hitchhikers. James, that was one of them. James Borthwick seemed likely—it had a Northern flavor to it. Or was it Scottish?

  “Did he leave a number?”

  “No, he didn’t. He seemed quite agitated but he insisted that he didn’t want consular assistance, just to talk to you. I gave him our standard message about staying safe and he rang off.”

  Sam thought for a moment, while possibilities and probabilities chased themselves through his brain. Missed calls were some kind of reproach—calls for help, cries for attention, pleas for understanding. But if the youth hadn’t left a number what was he meant to do? “If he calls again, make sure you get his number. In the meantime, can you get me Harry Rose at the American embassy? Counsellor Rose, that is.”

  It was a couple of minutes before the call came through and Harry’s familiar voice sounded in his ear. “Is that Sam? Good to hear from you. We’re burning all our classified documents at the moment. What are you doing?”

  “You’re joking.”

  “I’m as serious as Brezhnev himself. Aren’t you burning your stuff?”

  “We don’t think it’s that dangerous. Not yet, anyway.”

  “Typical British phlegm. I wish you could send a bucketload of it over here. We’re in need. Any news? Washington’s on the line asking what the hell’s going on, but the truth is they know more than we do.”

  “Dubček and the others have been arrested, that’s for sure. Černík, Smrkovský, Kriegel at least.”

  “We know that.”

  “Some reports say they’ve already been flown out.”

  “That too. What a fucking mess. They never saw it coming, that’s what’s incredible. These guys were good communists—didn’t they know the score? Tread on our toes and we’ll stamp on your face. That’s always the way. I’m mean, look at how we treat other countries, and we’re the nice guys. Jeez.” There was a moment’s silence while they contemplated the Harry Rose analysis of US foreign policy. “Hey, don’t go telling Ambassador Beam I said that.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “Good fellow. So, what’s our news? We’re getting a road convoy organized to get people out. I told you about the Hollywood crazies, didn’t I?”

  “The Man from Uncle?”

  “Napoleon Solo himself. And Shirley Temple. And a hundred participants at some damn conference.”

  “We can’t match Hollywood but we have got The Moody Blues.”

  “The whose?”

  “Some pop group. Sub-Beatles. Long hair and lacy shirts.”

  “Guys?”

  “So the girls inform me. Apparently we’re planning a road convoy too.” They discussed how they might coordinate operations for a convoy, the number of vehicles, the route out. And there was also the possibility of a train to Austria. At the moment one of Rose’s colleagues was talking with someone from the transport ministry and it looked as though that might happen. They’d keep each other informed of developments. “Nothing like an invasion,” said Rose, “to bring the diplomatic community together.”

  It was only when he hung up that Sam remembered. It was obvious really, but events had scrambled his mind: the hitchhikers—James Borthwick and Ellie whatever-her-name-was—were staying in Jitka’s flat. Lenka had given up her room for them. The fortuitous event that had ended up with Lenka in his flat, in his bed, in his whole world. He rang Jitka’s number that Lenka had
scribbled down, and when the youth answered he thought how stupid he’d been not to make the connection before.

  “It’s Sam Wareham here,” he said. “I believe you phoned earlier.”

  A small fragment of his mind wondered why Jitka or her husband hadn’t answered. What was his name? Zdeněk. He could imagine him out in the streets, confronting the tanks in that grim, fanatical manner that he had. The kind of fellow who would end up doing something foolish—throwing a Molotov cocktail or hitting a soldier with a brick or something.

  “Yeah. Look…”

  “Is everything all right with you? The best thing to do is just sit tight for the moment. I think you’ve been told that already. Don’t expect anything much until tomorrow, do you understand? Things are being organized to get foreign nationals out of the country, but it takes time. We have your number—I’ll make sure it has been passed on to the consular department—and they’ll get in touch. But for the moment it’s best to keep out of trouble and off the streets.”

  “Yeah. Look—sorry, my head’s buzzing—we were out earlier. You know, Wenceslas Square and that.”

  “Were you? Well, discretion’s the better part of valor at the moment. Just stay where you are—”

  “And we saw what happened. To Lenka, I mean.”

  “Lenka?” It was as though all the air had been sucked out of the room and he had to struggle against some kind of vacuum merely to breathe. “What happened to her?”

  “She was injured. At the radio station.”

  “Injured? How?”

  “I don’t really know. She fell. They took her off to hospital.”

  “Hospital, which hospital, do you know which hospital?”

  “Jitka told me. I was just going to phone the embassy when you called—”

  “Which hospital?”

  The youth hesitated. “Something like nafrantishkoo. I tried to write it down.”

  “It doesn’t matter. I know it. When was this? When did it happen?”

  “Couple of hours ago, I reckon. I’m not sure exactly—”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  Sam put the phone down. Overhead a jet aircraft tore through the sky, barely clearing the domes and spires. It passed away, reverberating round the ancient buildings, leaving behind only a distant murmur of its passage. He told the secretary that he was going out. “Tell Mr. Whittaker. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”

  Summer warmth greeted him in the courtyard. It should have been a pleasant sensation, but with it came something else, a sound, ill-defined and tuneless, as though the whole city was moaning with pain.

  49

  He walked as quickly as he could. He couldn’t take the car because the bridges had been blocked to traffic, but as he had discovered earlier, it was still possible to cross the river on foot. It took him twenty minutes to reach the hospital.

  The František Hospital was more reminiscent of a prison than a place of healing—a forbidding block of stone on the right bank of the river, with only a hint of Jugendstil decoration to alleviate its grim façade. Ambulances were coming and going. Sirens sounded. Soviet military vehicles provided the only elements of stasis as men in white overalls maneuvered stretchers in through the doors. Most people moved on the edge of panic while Russian soldiers looked on with sublime indifference.

  Sam pushed his way inside. In the entrance hall the familiar hospital stench of disinfectant papered over other smells—hints of ordure, the tang of blood, the scent of torn flesh and torn lives. At a desk he asked for Lenka by name but got nothing more than indifference. A passing nurse was more helpful, giving some sort of direction that he could try. He walked along corridors of institutional bleakness, past anonymous doors which gave an occasional glimpse of other lives, other problems, other disasters. Finally he knew that he had reached the right place when he saw a cluster of people gathered outside doors that said Neurologie.

  Doctors and nurses hurried in and out. Occasionally a stretcher was wheeled through. Jitka was there, and her husband, Zdeněk. The others he recognized from that evening after the concert, and the political meetings he’d witnessed. Jitka detached herself from the others and came towards him. She had been weeping. He could see scorched eyes and flushed cheeks.

  “How is she? Can I see her? What happened?” All questions that were easier to ask than to answer.

  She gave a sketchy account. The barricades outside the radio building. Tanks, soldiers, vehicles blocking the way. Was there a gunshot? There had been firing. One moment Lenka was pushing past a wrecked car, the next she was on the ground with blood coming from her head. It seemed no one really knew.

  A surgeon came out of the department, dressed in white and wearing an apron. Almost like a butcher. There was muttered discussion, talk of cranial trauma, of pressure on the brain. X-rays showed a foreign object—maybe a ricochet, maybe a shell fragment—lodged against the brain. After a while they were allowed in to see her, a few at a time, down the corridor into a bare room with two beds. Sam was next in line, after Jitka and Zdeněk.

  Lenka was in the bed by the window, lying on her back. Her body, beneath sheet or shroud (it was impossible to say which), was preternaturally still. What is the difference between life and death? It seemed a debatable point. She was somewhere on the borderline between the two states, neither one thing nor the other, neither the lovely living rusalka wading into the flow of the river Vltava, nor yet a cadaver ready for burial. Her head was bandaged and her features were familiar in the way that the features in an indifferent portrait may be familiar—her and yet not quite her, recognizable but not convincingly lifelike. A bottle hanging over her dispensed liquid parsimoniously down a narrow tube into a vein while another tube came out from under the sheet and drained pale yellow liquid into a bottle on the floor. Perhaps these two flows, of liquid in and liquid out, were a sign of animation. A wider tube, held between her lips by surgical tape, emerged from her mouth and disappeared into the mechanical ventilator beside the bed. Although her chest rose and fell faintly, that was only in response to the black rubber bellows of the machine, which opened and closed repeatedly like a concertina playing the same notes over and over. But no musical sound came out, just a succession of sighs, as though the constant movement was infinitely tedious.

  Sam stood beside the bed looking down on her and felt nothing. There’s no training for this, he thought. No experience, no guidance, no special knowledge. There was just the sight of her lying between a life and an end, and the vivid sensation of the fragility of the border itself which was nothing more than a narrow line over which one might step or be pushed in a moment. He thought probably that his heart was broken and that this is what it felt like—not overwhelming grief or anything like that, but just this void, this absence of feeling, as though the very part of him that might experience pain and misery was, in fact, broken.

  After a while he did some of those things that you do, pointless things that bring some kind of comfort to the visitor if not the patient. He called her name and saw no response, touched her hand and felt no answering movement. After a few minutes like that he turned away and went out.

  “We have to be patient,” another doctor was saying to the sorry little group outside in the corridor. He had other patients to attend to but she was being closely monitored, he could assure them of that. They were doing their very best for her. Now, if they would excuse him…

  Sam stood with the others for a while, but it was too much like a gathering of mourners at a funeral. He had to go. He had to do things, anything to get away from this feeling of helplessness. “Let me know,” he said to Jitka. “Any change at all. Do you have my number?” Just in case he took out one of his cards and wrote the telephone number of the flat on it below the number of the embassy.

  * * *

  When he got back to his apartment building the Tatra was still parked outside on the cobblestones. He stopped beside the car. A face peered out at him, like a creature inside an aquarium, something that li
ves on the bottom and grubs around in the detritus for food. He rapped on the glass and the man wound the window down. There was a release of rancid air, the smell of stale sweat and cigarette smoke.

  “Why don’t you fuck off?” Sam shouted. The man looked puzzled. “You heard me. People are dying thanks to your bloody Russian friends and all you do is sit in your car and obey orders. You’re just a couple of shits.” His Czech was approximate but the meaning was clear enough, yet the man’s expression didn’t change. He just turned to his companion and shrugged, then wound the window back up.

  In the flat, Egorkin was whining. This wasn’t right, that wasn’t right, he shouldn’t be cooped up like this, they shouldn’t be cooped up like this, they should have been taken to the embassy, the Americans would have done it better. Sam tried to focus on Egorkin in order not to think of Lenka. Egorkin he could deal with. His complaints he could deal with. “You don’t understand my importance in the world of music,” the man insisted. But Sam knew full well that the embassy, the ambassador, the whole pyramidal ziggurat of the British Foreign Office right the way up through the ranks to the Permanent Under Secretary (who might sound “under” and “secretary” but was in fact lord high everything and Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Michael and St. George to boot), no one in this great artefact of state would actually want Gennady Ivanovich Egorkin if they ever came to know of his existence. They wouldn’t give a shit. The only people who would want him, presumably, were those worthy souls who commanded the cultural life of the country and politicians who would make a bit of political capital out of it. And the journalists who would work it up into a story.

  “Listen,” he said to the man. “André Previn might think you’re the greatest thing since Toscanini, but at the moment, here in Prague, no one gives a toss about you. In fact, I’m the only friend you’ve got. So you’d better just shut up and play along to my tune.”

  Egorkin looked as though he had been struck across the face.