My Crazy Century

by Ivan Klíma

  I didn’t get very close to the other orderlies; only one of them had been doing this work for more than two years. He was a powerfully built man who worked in surgery, that is, during operations, where he brought the patients and then afterward transported them back to the intensive care unit. Because he actually did support himself with this job, he worked thirty-two-hour shifts, which were not difficult because most of the time he could sleep. My other colleague was a gangly asthenic with the movements and thoughts of a felon. If I overheard correctly, he had come here immediately after being released from prison. Both men were distinctive, and since I had decided to follow Gorky’s advice to go among the people, I tried to take firsthand notes as much as I could.

  Directly across from the orderlies’ room was the intensive care unit where, of course, the work was much more accountable, and the best nurses worked there. One of them was Soňa, and sometimes when she stepped out to have a smoke, we chatted a bit. She didn’t strike me as belonging to this environment; although it was certainly not professional, she always shared some of her patients’ pain. Once during a downpour, I drove her home to Kobylisy. Then I sat for more than an hour in her little room. She put on a piano concert by Paderewski and then told me the story of her life. She’d been in love with a doctor and fled with him to Germany after the Soviet occupation. She had come back, but he had stayed and told her that she would join him in Germany when he obtained a job. Perhaps they would have allowed her to go, but even if they didn’t, at least she would have known that some higher power had kept her from her great love. But she never heard from him again, and now she was alone, living with her father and a stepmother who hated her.

  She started asking about my writing and wanted to know if I’d write about things that were not supposed to be written or talked about. I assured her that if I thought there was something that needed to be discussed, I would not remain silent. The difficulty was that I wasn’t allowed to publish a line. She was surprised and almost in a whisper confided to me—I was sworn to secrecy (and I couldn’t mention her name if I wrote about it)—that upstairs, when they received a patient they assumed wouldn’t make it, they mixed a special cocktail of barbiturates. No one ever woke up afterward. “While down below,” she concluded, “we fuss to keep them from the worst.”

  I wanted to know if this sort of thing happened often. She refused to say anything more on the subject but added that it took place without the knowledge of the doctors.

  I realized that this was a Socialist version of euthanasia—it was done in the interests not of the suffering patient but of those who were assigned to him and who, at least according to the letter of the law, ruled the country.

  During my three-month stint as an orderly, I never harmed anyone, and I never accepted a single crown from a patient. However, one day I was transferring an ailing old woman to another ward (I knew she was being sent there to die), and while we were waiting for an examination, she asked if I would hold her hand. I took it—holding her cold, wasted, shaking hand was disagreeable. When we moved on, she tried to force a ten-crown piece on me and begged me to come see her in the ward because she didn’t have anyone left in the world. I didn’t take the money, but even today I am ashamed that I didn’t go and hold her hand. I only hope that some higher justice does not exact retribution when my turn comes.

  *

  No totalitarian regime can persist if it provides people with basic freedoms. There are always individuals or groups who attempt to acquire these freedoms, but the regime, no matter how charitable it pretends to be, can never debate with them; it cannot answer questions or criticisms. It must silence them and thereby instill fear in others who might be tempted to raise criticisms.

  The occupying regime in our country could not behave otherwise. As I’ve noted, the first arrests and subsequent trials took place when I was teaching in Ann Arbor.

  In our group of authors, whose works had been banned with particular thoroughness, it was Pavel Kohout who refused to accept the current state of affairs. Without overstepping any laws, he offered the occupying powers the opportunity to show their true character.

  And so just before Christmas of 1972, Kohout put together a petition to send to the president of the republic, General Svoboda. The petition expressed a reasonable and in no way antigovernment request that the president provide amnesty to political prisoners (there were more and more of them every year) or at the very least issue a directive allowing them to spend the Christmas holidays at home. Although the views of the undersigned differ widely on various fundamental questions, read the petition, we agree that magnanimity regarding political prisoners cannot in any way threaten the authority and capacity of the state’s power; quite the opposite, it will testify to its humanism.

  We rewrote the text several times and then divided up into pairs to go collect the signatures of other writers (both legal and banned).

  I was supposed to enter the hospital in a few days to undergo an operation on my gallbladder, but I didn’t see this as a reason to avoid these activities. Ludvík and I agreed on the text of the petition and then visited several writers. Some of them signed; others refused with a bit of embarrassment (because most of them are dead, I will not give their names).

  The following day I was called for, and my first involuntary “visit” took place at Bartolomějská Street, State Security headquarters. As soon as I came home, I carefully wrote down what had happened at the interrogation:

  They took me up to the third floor and down several hallways to a small office. They allowed me to take off my coat and then hung it (fortunately not me) up.

  A large man around fifty years old, who vividly reminded me of Vítěslav Nezval, was sitting behind a table. Off to the side sat a lanky blond fellow. The man behind the table told me to sit down and prattled on that I was there according to paragraph such and such and then asked his first question.

  “What do you know about the meeting of the PEN Club in Berlin?”

  The question surprised me. I said truthfully I didn’t know anything.

  “Do you know what the PEN Club is?”

  “Yes. An international organization of writers. I am a member.”

  “Do you know who the chair is?”

  “Heinrich Böll.”

  Only later did I come to understand that the first questions are always supposed to appear innocent and that refusing to answer them would seem ridiculous and even indecent. But as soon as a person acknowledges something other than that these questions are, just like the entire interrogation itself, indecent, he acknowledges his position as the interrogated.

  “So you’re a member of the PEN Club! And as a member, you didn’t even know there was a meeting?”

  I tried to explain: “None of us were informed. I happened to overhear it from a German broadcast.” (That was a senselessly accommodating answer to a question that hadn’t been asked.)

  “And what did you hear in this broadcast?”

  “Nothing. That the meeting was taking place in Berlin.”

  “What was discussed at the meeting?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “So you don’t know that a special group of writers in exile was formed to assist persecuted writers?”

  I answered again truthfully that I didn’t.

  Nezval looked surprised and with exaggerated irony declared, “So, despite being a member, you don’t know. Do you at least know who was elected its head?”

  I had no idea.

  “Pavel Tigrid!” (He got up and started pacing behind the table to emphasize that his own loathsomeness excited him.) “Did you know that a resolution was passed with regard to Czech political prisoners and sent to Comrades Husák and Indra?”

  “How would I know that?”

  “What do you know about a letter sent to the president of the republic?”

  “What letter?” I asked to stall for time.

  “But you signed a letter to the president of the republic!”

 
; I hesitated for a moment, and he picked up a piece of paper from the table and waved it in front of me.

  “I did,” I admitted.

  “What kind of letter was it?”

  “It was a letter requesting amnesty for political prisoners.”

  “Who else signed this letter?”

  “I don’t remember!”

  “So, you don’t remember?” He was starting to shout. “Who brought you this letter?”

  I finally managed to bring myself to protest. “Look, I don’t actually know why I’m here. Nothing is being taken down—and that letter was absolutely legal according to the law concerning petitions. So I will not give evidence about it.”

  The blond fellow noted ironically, “Law concerning petitions! What’s that?”

  “It’s guaranteed in our constitution—everyone has the right to appeal to the representatives of the country with requests and complaints,” I explained. “We learned that in school.”

  “Yes, such a law does exist,” admitted Nezval. “But doesn’t it seem to you, after I told you about the meeting of the PEN Club, that your petition seems to be something else?”

  “No!”

  “They drew up a resolution, and you hurried to sign it.”

  “But I told you I didn’t know anything about that meeting.”

  “Perhaps not you, but we know the petition was prepared there.”

  As if we couldn’t come up with things like this ourselves. “I don’t believe it,” I announced.

  “You are either naive or at least pretending to be. We know who prepared the petition, we have proof. Who came to you with the resolution?”

  I repeated that I had no intention of giving a statement concerning a letter to the president authorized by law.

  “Then you won’t talk about it, since you think there’s nothing wrong with it?”

  “That’s precisely why.”

  “But we see it differently. We will prove that all this was not so naive. Why did you sign this letter?”

  “I myself have been locked up. I could imagine what those people are going through, and I felt sorry for them.” I was trying to play on their feelings, as if I thought they had any.

  “When were you locked up?”

  “During the war.”

  “During the war, innocent people were sentenced. Do you think innocent people are sentenced in our country?” asked Nezval threateningly.

  “We were asking for amnesty. This has nothing to do with guilt.”

  “So you were asking for amnesty for people who you admit have committed a crime.”

  I said I had nothing to say to that.

  “Do you have children?”

  I acknowledged that I did.

  “You have a daughter and a son?”

  “Yes.”

  “Imagine your daughter is walking home from school, and a drunk driver runs her over. He’s sent to prison. Would you also seek amnesty for him?”

  “But he wouldn’t be a political prisoner,” I objected.

  “Besides, what you’re requesting in your petition, some sort of Christmas vacation, where did you ever hear about prisoners going home for Christmas?”

  “In Sweden, prisoners are let out on Sunday, for example.”

  “Fine, I’m not saying our laws don’t allow for such cases. If a fellow’s in the lockup because he got drunk and got in a fight and then behaved well, let him go home for Christmas, but those who are there according to Chapter One are enemies. Do you understand? They won’t be released even a day early. So, who came to see you with this letter? Vaculík or Havel?”

  I said nothing.

  “Let me tell you something. You should hear what people working in factories think; you should know what the public’s opinion is. They write to us and demand that we finally deal once and for all with our enemies.”

  “But I think the people . . .”

  The blond got up behind me and interrupted: “Do you mean to say you know a different public opinion?”

  “I’m sort of interested in it because of what I write. Public opinion does not always have to be entirely one-sided.”

  “So you’re writing something. For the desk drawer or for somebody else?”

  “I write for myself.”

  “Have you written anything lately?”

  “I’ve written a novel. A love story.” (Once again, owing to inexperience, I jabbered too much about things they didn’t ask and perhaps even didn’t know.)

  “And what’s going to happen to it? Is this one for the desk drawer? Or is anyone publishing it?”

  “It will be published in Switzerland.”

  “So you do have outside contacts, after all, since you sent them your novel.”

  “I sent it by mail.”

  “Do you have connections with a publisher or not?”

  “I acted in accordance with a contract.”

  “What sort of contract?”

  “Dilia has been shut down here. It’s an official literary agency,” I added.

  The blond behind me spoke up, as if very well informed: “Yes, you have a contract with a Swiss publisher and according to Swiss law. It’s interesting that you, a Czechoslovak citizen, have a contract based on Swiss law.”

  “Lawyers from Dilia secured the contract.”

  “How much are the Swiss paying you?”

  “Whatever they pay authors all over the world.”

  “We’re interested in how much you’re getting.”

  I started to realize the absurdity of this line of questioning. They forbid me to publish, try to deprive me of all my money, and then reproach me for publishing a book somewhere. “I don’t know. Ask someone from Dilia.”

  “You’re getting enough to live on. At least for now. Does your wife work?” The blond was getting worked up.

  “Yes.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Come on, you’re trying to tell me you don’t know where your own wife works?”

  “Even if I did, I don’t have to tell you anything. I don’t think that’s why you called me in here.”

  Nezval once again joined in: “Yes, it seems we’ve gotten a little off track.” He was shouting again. “Now, for the last time, tell us who came to see you with this piece of paper. Was it Vaculík? Havel? Kliment?”

  I remained silent.

  “What were you talking with Kliment about yesterday? You think we don’t know you were at his place?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “What don’t you remember?”

  I said nothing.

  “You were elaborating—what were you talking about?”

  “I don’t remember exactly.”

  “You really do have a bad memory.”

  The blond: “Isn’t it instead, Mr. Klíma, that you don’t want to remember? Who else signed this letter?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you sign the first or the second page?”

  “The second, I think.”

  “And whose signature was above yours?”

  “I don’t know. I didn’t notice.”

  “Let me help you. Adolf Hoffmeister signed on the first page with a felt-tip pen. Do you remember?”

  “No, not at all.”

  “Where were you last employed?” I didn’t understand why they were suddenly changing the subject, but I answered nevertheless. “I taught at a university in America.”

  “Fine, fine, but here.”

  “For three months I worked as an orderly.”

  “So who came to see you: Kohout? Vaculík?”

  They were angry; Nezval was shouting. But it was clear they had no idea that I was one of those who had had been collecting signatures. The informer knew only about Vaculík. I remained silent.

  Then another agent entered the room, apparently a superior because Nezval reported to him: “Mr. Klíma has decided not to tell us anything.” The new arrival merely said at the door, “You are naive, Mr. Klíma
; your friends Vaculík, Kliment, and Havel have already told us everything anyway. They’ll be laughing at you later. And what are you so worried about? It was all within the law, wasn’t it? You assumed well enough that we wouldn’t lock you up for it.” He must have given a signal to release me because Nezval then said, “Since you’re not going to tell us much, we’ll bring this to an end in order to detain neither you nor ourselves.”

  He called in a typist. When she’d taken her seat behind the typewriter, Nezval leaned over to me and, with feigned friendship, suggested, “You know what? Dictate it yourself. How did this letter come to you, who came to see you?”

  I must have looked astonished because he immediately added, “We won’t even put your name down, if you don’t want us to.”

  He finally dictated several meaningless sentences with the concluding formula: “I have read everything and agree.”

  Thirty-four writers had signed the letter before State Security found out about it. Several more signed after Vaculík was arrested with the text in his possession.

  Essay: Occupation, Collaboration, and Intellectual Riffraff, p. 511

  17

  At the beginning of the 1970s, the foremost international, especially American, writers started coming to Prague (the Czech government was still graciously granting them visas).

  One of the first to arrive was Arthur Miller, at that time, along with Dürrenmatt and Beckett, one of the most famous living dramatists, and a recent president of the PEN Club. Miller traveled to Prague as a private citizen and, to the dismay of the official Writers’ Union, was interested in meeting with only proscribed authors.

  I first met him in the Alcron hotel, showed him around Prague, and the following afternoon invited him and several of my friends to our apartment in Hodkovičky.