My Crazy Century
Page 13
The other one pointed out that they had my name, and if they ever caught me again at similar provocations, I wouldn’t get out of it so easily.
It occurred to me in the tram that nothing essential had changed so far. Academic freedom had certainly not begun to apply.
Essay: Dictators and Dictatorship, p. 467
9
I turned in my thesis on Karel Čapek; it was over two hundred pages and thus exceeded the required length severalfold and dismayed one of my young reviewers who worked at the Institute for Czech Literature. According to him, Čapek had been too connected to the “bourgeois republic,” something I had insufficiently criticized, and in his opinion I had overestimated the significance of Čapek’s work. But my defense speech was successful, and I received a degree in philology.
I left the department with my red diploma, boasted of it at home, and then put it in a box with other documents and never needed to pull it out again.
My field did not provide many opportunities to make a living. I wanted to write, and for this it seemed more appropriate to work as an editor for some journal. Not many were being published, however, except specialized journals for beekeepers, mushroom hunters, or different kinds of engineers. The political situation that arose after the ruling party—of which I was a member—publicly admitted, at least partially, that in some areas it had acted wrongfully worked to my advantage. Party functionaries realized they would have to curry favor a little with the citizens even in the intellectual sphere (if popular journals can be considered intellectual). In addition to Socialist platitudes, they would have to offer readers, in carefully scrutinized printed matter, some entertainment. This led to their decision to transform the weekly magazine Květy into a reader-friendly family magazine containing articles on fashion, chess, and stamp collecting, and a children’s corner as well as reportage from home and abroad. Květy was seeking young editors to help realize this goal.
One day I decided to stop by its editorial office. I knew no one there, not even a name, and I didn’t have anything to show except a single story that had been snubbed and a few newspaper articles. The editor I spoke with was ten years older than I was. He said he wanted the news section, which he was in charge of, to start writing about bona fide life problems, not just about how somewhere the five-year plan was being fulfilled. He believed Květy would stand behind even articles that were exceptionally critical. He told me he would take a look at my work and in the meantime I could fill out the necessary paperwork at the personnel office.
He called me a week later. He was pleased with both my story and my articles. When would it be convenient for me to start work?
And so I became an editor at Květy.
*
The editorial offices were housed in a newly constructed building called Rudého práva on Na Poříčí Street. Everything here was clean and tidy, and there was a bathroom with shower stalls at the end of the hallway. The secretary affixed my name on the door of my office—all this was a sign that I had finally become an adult and could earn a living.
I soon discovered that the tram took a roundabout way to my office, and I decided it would be quicker to run to work. I would cut across Vinohrady and run down along Žižkov Hill past the train station Praha-střed, and then I’d be at work. My daily jog took about fifteen minutes, and I always got to the editorial offices drenched in sweat. Since it wasn’t appropriate for an editor to work in shorts and a sweaty T-shirt, I filled one of my desk drawers with extra shirts and a pair of trousers. I would run to the office, take a shower, change into fresh clothes, and set to work.
My behavior, however, did not meet with understanding among the bosses of the editorial office. About three weeks later, the deputy editor in chief called me in for a discussion. He had nothing against me personally, but I had to realize that everywhere I went I was representing the magazine, that is, the publisher as well. It was not appropriate for thousands of people to see me hurtling along the streets of Prague every day carrying a briefcase. What if somebody recognized me? Then he would go around saying we employed a nutcase who didn’t even earn enough for a tram ticket. If I traveled like a normal person, that is, not running, it didn’t matter if I came by foot or by tram.
This was my first act of wrongdoing during the few months I was employed at Květy.
The editor in chief at the time, at least in name, was a bad writer whose only merit, besides membership in the party, was that he’d composed a novel in which he assiduously and mercilessly denigrated exploitation in Tomáš Bat’a’s factories. However, he never strayed into the offices; even his paycheck had to be sent to him by mail. In reality his deputy headed the magazine. He was a diminutive man of indeterminate age but somewhere under fifty, and was perpetually afraid an article that could be considered inaccurate or even provocative would leak into the magazine. Another class-conscious bigwig worked here, the venerable widow of the Communist writer Egon Ervín Kisch. This comrade likewise did little actual work; instead she watched over everything that went on in the editorial offices and apparently did not take kindly to the fact that youngish and insufficiently class-conscious people were employed there who, in her opinion, threatened the quality, but most of all the party mission, of the magazine. By her side stood the chairwoman of the party organization (she sometimes wrote as well on women’s issues, that is, mostly fashion), who was always prepared to call a party meeting and raise the issue of how something unseemly could happen. Among other worthy comrades was the foreign desk editor, who limited his reporting to articles on other friendly Socialist countries and telephone calls with opponents of Western imperialists and devotees of revolution throughout the rest of the world. I found myself for the first, and actually last, time in an environment ruled by prominent Communists, who were always resolved to advocate whatever the party leadership required. I was stunned by how the environment bubbled over with rancor, continual suspicion, malicious gossip, and personnel screening.
Once my colleague Kabíček and I set off on an assignment to southern Bohemia and instead of a photographer we took along a graphic artist, a woman who was approximately our age. We thought it would be interesting to have her drawings instead of photographs enliven our text.
This deed scandalized the reputable widow. At a meeting, she accused us of using editorial funds to organize a sex excursion, which had tarnished the magazine’s reputation. The artist burst into tears, and we tried in vain to convince everyone that we hadn’t touched her. We got off with a warning and instructions that similar excursions would not be approved in the future. From now on, only our photographers could accompany us on assignments.
All these petty affairs, however, faded in significance before the momentous events taking place on the international stage. The first thing we heard was the distant thunder of a workers’ strike in Poland, and then the Hungarians began to defy the Communist regime. At the same time the so-called Suez crisis broke out. Not a word was to be found about these events in our journal; in our editorial offices, however, the only thing people talked about was the situation in Hungary. The chairwoman of the party organization would call a meeting once a week to discuss the political situation. Worthy Communists cautiously (this was, after all, only a criticism of Soviet Communists) gave us to understand that the enormity of Stalin’s crimes had been exaggerated and could provoke all enemies of socialism. We were to avoid anything that could arouse sympathy for elements that might assume their moment had arrived. Apparently, these elements were prepared to attack the very foundations of Socialist society and the leading role of the party under the pretense of criticizing the cult of personality. At the end of October, the Czechoslovak and Soviet press agencies began reporting appalling news about Communist functionaries being hanged in Hungary, about insurgents murdering their own families, and about how those who had managed to escape from mutinous Budapest were seeking asylum here or even in capitalist Austria.
Father started listening to independent Hungarian radio broadcasts, and
when I came home he would change the station to Vienna, so I could listen to the latest news as well. If you didn’t know they were speaking about the same events, you would have assumed there were two different Hungarian republics. One broadcast would talk about counterrevolution, the other about a national uprising; one reported that insurgents had resolved to institute a reign of terror aimed at the people and were determined to do away with socialism, and the other reported that the great majority of Hungarians were enthusiastically greeting the renewal of democracy and freedom. But how could socialism be done away with? Did any kind of socialism ever exist anywhere? Hadn’t terror been used here on everyone who refused to submit?
Now armed militiamen stood in front of and inside our office building just to make it clear that no such insurrection would take place here. Our chairwoman read to us a proposed resolution in which she proclaimed, in the name of the entire editorial team, support for the powers of socialism to halt the orgy of Hungarian counterrevolution.
I did not like this resolution and fled the meeting before it was voted on.
The next day the chairwoman drily informed me that she had signed the resolution on my behalf, since I had obviously been in such a hurry that I couldn’t wait a few more minutes. She knew I would have signed it and assumed that I held the same opinion as she did concerning the events in Hungary. The end of her sentence sounded rather like a menacing question.
The next day—it was already the beginning of November—our deputy editor in chief left for a general factory meeting, and when he returned he told us that socialism in Hungary was under threat; insurgents had started taking control of more territory. They were murdering party members and were planning to occupy parts of Slovakia that were predominantly Hungarian. The situation was so grave that he had decided to do something about it and thus had enlisted the entire editorial staff into the People’s Militia.
I think most of the editors were astounded. I said that this would not do; he hadn’t even asked us. He answered that he’d had no doubts concerning our consent, and with that the meeting ended.
Five years earlier I had been accepted as a member of the party. At the time I was convinced that what we were taught about socialism being the most advanced arrangement of society was a fact. Then I began to understand that much of what was happening was the opposite of what was actually reported, and crimes were being concealed behind lofty words. If I had been consistent, I would have left the party the moment the first flagrant trials of political opponents had begun, or at the latest when they had locked up Father. It’s true that until then no one had asked anything definite of me, at least nothing I had found unpleasant. I had been able to write my thesis the way I’d wanted; I hadn’t been appointed to any party function; I wasn’t in charge of anything; I didn’t harm anyone, and I hadn’t allowed anyone to do it for me. Now, as a devoted comrade, I was supposed to go and stand guard somewhere with an automatic weapon to preserve the status quo, so that those in power would continue to rule. Now I was horrified by the idea that I would be trapped forever in a blue-gray uniform with a red armband, subjected to military discipline and an oath of loyalty from which there would be no way out.
I decided to leave the party and thereby resolve everything. I knew I would face much unpleasantness; I would lose my job, and it would be difficult to find another. But this all seemed more acceptable than promising to the end of my life that I would, with rifle in hand, fight for an ideal I would have no influence on. Much to my surprise, I was relieved.
In the morning, I pocketed my party card with the intention of turning it over to our chairwoman. I arrived just in time for the meeting, where the deputy editor in chief was saying that no collective enlistment in the militia would be accepted. Each of us had to enlist on his or her own. He had also been told that preference was being given to working-class staff members over editors, and some of us might be turned away. Nevertheless, he believed we would all go and try to enlist. Of course I didn’t (as far as I know, nobody from the editorial staff did), and I did not return my party card.
A few days later, Soviet troops brutally suppressed the Hungarian revolution. When the news came that Soviet tanks were rolling through the streets of Budapest, the old good and worthy comrades on the editorial board starting hugging and kissing one another as if they’d just learned they had been saved and redeemed forever. Someone opened a bottle of vodka, and the foreign desk editor shouted effusively, Venceremos!
*
The only thing I truly enjoyed was writing. Lounging about the office, ordering and editing articles, seemed like a waste of time.
I had just finished my studies when the Writers’ Union, in addition to its well-established journals, was allowed to publish Květen, which was supposed to serve primarily as an outlet for the poetry of young authors. In the Czech lands, it was mostly poetry that was considered literature. In the first issue Květen published about sixty poems of would-be versifiers. I was not among those who ventured to write verse, but I still tried to write, using the form of the short story. “Blossom” was sentimental and moralistic. I wanted to discredit the belief that today all painful conflicts were disappearing from human relations. I thought up a story of a girl who falls in love with a handsome young scoundrel who abandons her when she gets pregnant. My heroine’s eyes are opened in the end. It is only in books that everything works itself out. Only there are pain and suffering cleared away as a housewife clears away dirt when she’s expecting guests.
At the editorial offices, besides two well-known authors, was a decrepit, obviously long-retired “professor” who was supposed to oversee the grammar and sometimes the stylistic quality of manuscripts.
I brought in “Blossom,” which I was justifiably proud of, since it differed from stories that were currently being published. The professor called me in a few days later, and I saw my typed copy on his desk desecrated with dozens of corrections in garish red ink. The number of corrections would have earned me an F in school.
I heard the professor out. My story wasn’t bad, but it was sloppily written. I had to rework it and eliminate all the literary clichés.
Offended, I replied that they didn’t have to publish my story at all if they didn’t want to. The professor said it was up to me and handed me my manuscript.
I came back a week later with the rewritten story and humbly submitted it again.
Although literary theory bored me and I avoided literary discussions, my story satisfied the requirements that my fellow poets and literary critics were to designate only a few weeks later as literature or poetry of the everyday.
Květen was subject to somewhat less supervision because of its small circulation, and a collection of authors, heterogeneous in both their opinions and their ages, gathered there.
Because I had already published several short stories, I was seen as a young prose writer and thus appointed to the editorial board.
It soon got around that I was participating in the publication of a literary monthly.
Despite their similar names, Květy and Květen offered two different views of the world, and these two magazines were like two islands separated by an ocean. It became obvious that I could not work for both of them for long. This conflict was soon resolved. I wrote and published in Květen a lengthy essay titled “Cadre Critique of Karel Čapek, Czech Writer.”
I began the article with a quotation from Čapek’s article “What Is Culture?” published in Přítomnost in February 1934: “In my opinion, all education has at least one common end: to teach something about the experiences, knowledge, and values humanity has thus far produced and not lose or fall beneath them.” I continued:
What a modest request! Nevertheless, it has recently been compromised. Our education has run wild and our thinking has ossified. We have clipped the wings of our own spirit; we have eradicated from the world of philosophy, literature, and art everything that does not correspond to the compartment in which the world was supposed to fit.
Thus ended my editorship at Květy after less than a year. Květen was banned two years later.
Essay: The Betrayal of the Intellectuals, p. 475
10
I met my future life companion all but symbolically on a bridge. It was a very hot day, and I was coming back from Smíchov. I saw a former classmate walking toward me, a member of our singing trio, accompanied by a redhead whose pale skin was flushed from the heat. I greeted my classmate and learned that the redhead was named Helena. She was in her first year studying Czech and was also a marvelous singer.
Without even glancing at me, the redhead said she sang only in the University Art Ensemble and that we had met once already. I had already graduated and was accompanying her to the cafeteria, but because there was a long line, I had sneaked my way to the front and forgotten about her. She’d been quite offended.
I recalled no such event. Surely she’d confused me with someone else.
Standing in the oppressive heat was unpleasant, and since I wasn’t in any hurry, I offered to walk with them.
At one point, Helena stopped before an ostentatious building and invited us inside to her apartment where we could cool off a little.
She lived on the fifth floor of this magnificent structure from the beginning of the century.
Inside, she brought out a large jug of water sweetened with syrup. We sat at a square black table and talked about the department and our professors. Helena didn’t do a lot of talking. I, on the other hand, discoursed expansively on how my longest prose work to date had been published in the magazine Nový život, but the censors had confiscated it because I wrote about the student May Day celebration. It was unfortunate I didn’t have the text with me or I would have gladly read at least a few passages from it. I thought the story quite compelling and heaped praise on my writing to make it clear that I would someday be a writer, the most admirable vocation I could imagine.