Under a Cruel Star

by Helen Epstein

  It was then I learned that Rudolf’s arrest had been staged like the climactic scene of a spy thriller. The whole street had been lit up by the headlights of black police cars positioned at strategic angles and manned by members of State Security. When Rudolf’s car had turned the corner, the police had blocked off all possible escape routes and, as he got out, several agents had surrounded him, had disarmed him by seizing his briefcase, and had pronounced him under arrest. This intrepid maneuver on the part of the secret police had awed the inhabitants of the entire neighborhood.

  My son was busy playing with his toy train in the living room. I sat beside him on the floor and watched him. Then, as casually as I could, I told him that his father had gone away on yet another one of his business trips. Ivan was used to that. He just nodded and then let out a screech as his train took a sharp curve. He was fully absorbed in his world.

  I put him to bed as early as I could and set out to see the Eislers. When I reached the streetcar stop, it occurred to me that I, too, probably had the secret police on my back. I looked around the traffic island. A few people were standing there but no one seemed to be paying particular attention to me. The streetcar came. I stood still while almost everyone else got on. Only when the car began to move did I jump aboard. Out of the corner of my eye I saw that a young man who had been leaning against a lamp post reading a newspaper jumped on at the other end of the car.

  Aha! I got off at the next stop. So did he. He went into a telephone booth. I got into another streetcar, headed away from the Eislers’ home, and he remained in the booth. At the next stop, I took a third car going in the opposite direction from the second and continued to switch until I decided that, if I had not eluded my pursuers, I had at least given them a run for their money. None of this mattered anyway, I thought, if State Security was keeping Pavel’s house under surveillance which, I later discovered, was the case. They kept a record of everyone who visited him and, because the Eislers were always willing to listen – they could not help; no one could – and give advice to the many wives and children of men who had been arrested, the agents nicknamed Pavel “the patron saint of widows and orphans.”

  I sat there long into the night, discussing what to do. Pavel’s advice was: do everything and expect nothing. Do not leave any stone unturned. See everyone you can think of. Write. Call. Do not allow them to silence you. If they do not return your calls, call again the next day. If they do not answer your letters, write again. Pester them like a guilty conscience. But be careful when you cross the street so that you don’t happen to get run over by one of their nicely-polished black limousines.

  Pavel helped me draft a letter to President Gottwald and to the Central Committee. I was afraid that, with my lack of political finesse, I might write something that would exacerbate Rudolf’s situation instead of improving it. We also agreed that I had to find a lawyer who would not be afraid of taking on Rudolf’s case.

  Then Pavel asked me, “Did you keep an eye on those men all the time they were in your apartment?”

  “I think so. Why?”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if they had bugged it.”

  “I don’t think they could have,” I began. “They didn’t have any opportunity to...” And then I remembered an episode that had taken place when Rudolf had been appointed Deputy Minister that had appeared trivial at the time. A “hot line” that connected our home to various offices had been installed in addition to our regular telephone. As the nice, elderly telephone man was leaving, he had said, “You know, I wouldn’t want a phone like this in my place for all the money in the world!”

  I had just laughed when he said that and had not given the matter a second thought. Now it dawned on me that the man had probably wanted to warn me that the telephone he had put in was bugged. And this was the telephone we kept in our bedroom, the room that was separated from the rest of the apartment, to which I liked to retreat with friends whenever we wished to talk freely! The regime had spied on us right from the start, from the moment it had entrusted Rudolf with an important official position.

  Late that night, when I finally got to bed, I allowed myself for the first time to think of Rudolf – what he might be feeling and thinking, what they might be doing to him. I lay there without moving, and the darkness pierced my heart like a black spike. I could at least hope that people were no longer subjected to torture during interrogations as they had been under the Nazis, that they were treated with minimal decency. But even if that were true, how terrible Rudolf must feel! I kept hearing him say, “I could not go on living... I would not want to.” No. He had to hold on, he could not give up. Maybe they would only question him and then let him go. Such things had been known to have happened. I heard the elevator startup in the hall below and my heart jumped. He was coming! Now the elevator would stop at our floor. I would hear his key in the lock, and the door would open... But the elevator passed by our floor without stopping.

  The following afternoon I was sitting in the office of the chairman of the Economic Commission of the Party, Ludvik Frejka. I knew him only slightly, but he had always seemed a kind man and vaguely reminded me of one of my uncles. In fact, he now received me as an older relative might, hunching despondently behind his huge desk. He had already heard about Rudolf’s arrest, and I had the feeling that he knew much more, none of it good. He sighed and said, “My dear girl, you have no idea how much I appreciate Rudolf and how much I would like to help both of you. Only a year ago, I might have been able to pull a few strings. Then I was still a deserving old Communist. Today they think of me only as a dirty Jew. I’m in no position to help you. I can’t even help myself.”

  A few weeks later, he, too, was arrested.

  It was the same story with Pavel Kavan, Rudolf’s friend at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. He was fired shortly after I saw him and arrested a few months later.

  The only other official who agreed to see me was Bohumil Sucharda, then a deputy minister of finance. I knew he could do nothing for Rudolf but I was grateful to him for receiving me courageously in his office and for speaking of my husband with confidence and trust.

  Other doors remained firmly closed. Of all the high-ranking comrades who were my husband’s colleagues, the only one to pay me a visit was Ota Klicka, our Ambassador to Finland. One day he appeared at the door of our apartment, unexpectedly, and said, “I’ve known Rudolf since we went to school together and I will never believe he did anything dishonest. I’d stake my life on it. All this is utter nonsense!”

  By that time, I had become like a leper, to be avoided by anyone who valued his life. Even the most casual encounter with me could arouse suspicion and invite disaster. I understood that and could bear the isolation better than most people in the same situation. The war had inured me to it and, besides, I knew that I had no right to expose other people to danger. Why should anyone risk his job or the safety of his family or, perhaps, his freedom, just to talk to me? It is natural for people to think first of those for whom they are responsible. If everyone were a hero, what would courage be worth? And so it was largely without bitterness that I watched people suddenly cross the street when they saw me coming or, if they spotted me too late to cross, avert their eyes. To those few who insisted on continuing their acquaintance with me, I myself would say, “Don’t stop. Don’t talk to me. It makes no sense.”

  Several good friends, all people I had known for years, stood by me. They believed in Rudolf and it did not occur to them to condemn him, although none were Party members and none had ever agreed with his political views. Almost all of them had already lost their jobs and were living from one day to the next. So far, the parents of the children living in our building still allowed my child to play with theirs, so that he, at least, did not suffer from loneliness. State Security kept tabs on everyone I had met, and as a result some of these people – such as the family of the publisher for whom I had worked before the coup – were ruthlessly interrogated. Not to turn away from me required enormo
us courage.

  One afternoon a few months after Rudolf’s arrest, I was coming home from work and passed the house where Dr. Padovcova lived. She was a pediatrician who had taken care of my child from the time of his birth and who had become a friend. She was well-known for helping all kinds of outcasts. That day I felt such an overwhelming loneliness that I decided to visit with her for a few minutes even though I had never done anything as imprudent before. I took the elevator up to her floor and rang her bell. My friend opened the door, her face white. “No we don’t have the keys to the laundry room,” she said loudly. “Ask the people next door!”

  “Okay, okay,” I yelled in the coarsest voice I could muster and I turned around and ran down the stairs.

  I found out later that State Security had arrived at her apartment just a few minutes ahead of me, barging in on my friend and Magda Husakova, the wife of Gustav Husak who was to become President of the Republic after the Russian Occupation in 1968. But, at the time, he too was in jail. Had the secret police found me there as well, they would certainly have concluded that we were conspiring against the state, and would have arrested all three of us. As it was, they only turned the apartment upside down and left. This was everyday life in Czechoslovakia in 1952.

  When Pavel Kavan was arrested, I became close to his wife Rosemary, an Englishwoman who had two children about the same age as my son. She and I joined forces and would help each other out for years to come, often sharing our last ten-crown note or a bit of food for the children. Rosemary died a few years ago, but I can still see the look of concentration on her face as she tried to cut one hard-boiled egg into three equal parts: one piece for each child. The only bright side of our life at that time was that it forged such extraordinary human relationships, friendships of a kind that are rarely possible among free, untroubled people.

  A few days after Rudolf’s arrest, I found a lawyer who was said to have excellent connections at the highest level and who handled political cases. Dr. Bartos received me very formally, addressed me not as “Comrade” but as “My dear Mrs. Margolius,” in the old bourgeois style, and promised to defend Rudolf.

  We both knew, of course, that the legal practice of the time effectively prevented a counsel for the defense from doing much for his client. The presence of an attorney at a trial was sheer formality, the accused having been found guilty even before he stepped into the courtroom. Still, I wanted Rudolf to have the benefit of legal advice, whatever it was worth.

  I told Dr. Bartos that, at the moment, I was penniless but that State Security had confiscated our savings accounts which contained money I had inherited from my mother. Should he succeed in having them returned to me, I would be able to pay him for his services.

  About two weeks after his arrest, I received my first short letter from Rudolf. No matter how often I reread it, I could not discover anything more in it than the information that he was well and that he did not want me to worry.

  At that point, I was still not over my initial shock. I was still trying not to think, not to despair, trying to carry out all my duties at home and at work like a machine. Office in the morning. Useless attempts at talks with influential officials in the afternoon. In the evenings thinking up, then writing innumerable letters in which I swore that my husband was innocent, offered testimony of my own and that of his friends on his behalf, argued, pleaded, sometimes almost threatened. During the nights, which were worse than the days, I would lie in bed for hours unable to sleep, saying aloud into the deaf darkness, “Rudolf, hold on. Please, hold on. Resist.”

  My position at the publishing house became more and more unpleasant. No one spoke an unnecessary word to me. Conversations stopped and faces froze whenever I entered a room. These embarrassments, however, did not last very long. About a month after Rudolf’s arrest, my editor-in-chief called me into his office and, gently, explained that he had received instructions “from above” to fire me.

  I had, of course, been expecting to lose my job for some time but, until it happened, I had refused to worry about it. I knew that if I was to keep my sanity, I had to resolve problems as they came up, one by one, that I had to force myself to think no more than one day ahead. But now there could be no more stalling.

  The loss of my job meant not only being unable to support myself and my child. It also provided the police with an excuse to arrest me as a “parasite,” an individual who refused to contribute to the building of socialist society. In Czechoslovakia, as in all the Communist countries of Europe at the time, being unemployed was not merely unfortunate; it was illegal. But in a country where all jobs had become government jobs, who would employ an outcast like myself?

  I lived a few days of utter horror before help arrived, again through friends. Otto and Milena had managed to persuade the manager of a machine shop which already employed several people with questionable political profiles to give me a job. The wages were minuscule; they did not even suffice to pay my rent. But, at least, I was not unemployed.

  That evening, I sat down for a conference with Marenka. I told her that I would no longer be able to pay her wages. She was, however, welcome to continue living in the apartment and I would try to provide food for all three of us. In return, I asked her to help me take care of Ivan. My new job demanded that I alternate work shifts: one week, I would work from six in the morning until two in the afternoon; the next, from two in the afternoon until ten at night. I asked Marenka to take my son to his nursery school when I worked the morning shift; to pick him up, feed him supper, and put him to bed when I worked at night.

  Marenka agreed. A few days later, she found a good job in a bakery, which she liked very much and, often when things were the most difficult, she would bring Ivan a roll or a few cookies. She arranged her shifts to complement mine so that the child was never alone.

  The months that followed were like a merry-go-round gone berserk. I have an innate incompetence for anything mechanical. It has always seemed to me that a machine can tell from far away that I am afraid of it and that I don’t understand anything about it, and breaks down on the spot out of sheer self-preservation. In my new job, my relationship with machines took on the dimensions of a primordial conflict. I tried desperately just to reach a level of average productivity but never could, and no other machine broke down as often as mine. There was a productivity ladder which hung on the wall of our shop, on which all the workers were ranked in order of proficiency. My place was always second from the bottom. The last rung belonged permanently to a chubby blonde whose intellectual development seemed somewhat retarded. I often stayed at work long after everyone else had left in order to make up for what I had been unable to produce during working hours, but even so my output did not improve. Moreover, the deafening noise of the machines combined with my constant tension began to cause me unbearable headaches, which throbbed on for hours after I went home.

  My financial situation was an even bigger headache. I had to feed three people, pay an outrageous rent, and, most importantly, send a little money to Rudolf each month, not only to enable him to supplement his rations and buy cigarettes or other things, but to show him that we were all right, that he should not worry. I had to find some way of getting rid of my exorbitant rent, so I looked around until I found an inexpensive, small apartment whose occupants were eager to swap flats with me. I was getting ready to move, when I was officially notified that, in order to leave my old apartment, I would need written permission from the Ministry of Foreign Trade. I applied and, in answer to my application, the Ministry informed me that our apartment belonged not to Rudolf or me but to the Ministry itself. I could not move out until my husband’s case was “resolved.”

  I replied heatedly that I could not understand how an apartment that I myself had found and for which I had been paying rent could possibly belong to the Ministry and again requested permission to move. The correspondence dragged on for a year unresolved. Ours was a desirable apartment in a desirable neighborhood. As there was a critical shorta
ge of any kind of housing at all, the comrades at the Ministry were determined to hang on to it. If I moved, the apartment would no longer be under their control. If they managed to keep me there until my husband was convicted, they could throw me out into the street and the place would be theirs.

  There was no alternative but to find another source of income.

  Fortunately, at first, I managed to find enough work to keep my head above water. Using assumed names, I drew illustrations for children’s magazines and copied technical drawings. I did whatever work I could find. I worked my eight-hour shift at the machine and then at least six hours more at home. Often I walked back and forth from the shop in order to save the money I would have paid for the tram. At night I kept writing my stubborn missives to the ministries, to the Central Committee, to the President, to the Office of the Prime Minister, to any influential person I could think of.

  I never received any replies – except one from the Office of the President which informed me, drily, that my husband’s case would be “investigated.”

  Sometimes I slept only three or four hours a night, but I made it an iron rule never to work on Sunday afternoons and to make sure to save up enough money so that every week Ivan and I could take the streetcar to the outskirts of Prague and walk in the woods. In spring, we played in the grass and sailed little boats in the brook in the wooded valley just beyond the last stop of the streetcar.