Letters From Prague

by Sue Gee

  Dandelion seeds drifted on a summer breeze across the New Jewish Cemetery. Despite the breeze, it was warmer than when Harriet and Marsha had set out this morning, and the air smelt faintly of buttercups and hay as Harriet walked down the long path to the right of the entrance, following signs. The cemetery was large and quiet; untended and almost empty. Ivy tumbled over headstones, tall weeds grew amidst uncut grass; the walled acres stretched to right and left but there were few visitors and, indeed, few graves. Whole plots lay empty, and Harriet, walking along the path, hearing the birds in the trees, sensed, despite them, and despite her pleasure at the prospect of reunion with Karel, a deep sadness and desolation.

  There were almost no Jews left in Prague. The dates on the headstones faded out after the 1930s: these empty plots, these acres of undug earth and waving grass would have received the bodies of a whole generation who had perished, instead, in the camps. Rounded up from the Jewish quarter of Josefov, and from hiding places all over the city, they had been transported: to Auschwitz, Treblinka, Ravensbruck, or much closer to home – to the ‘model’ camp at Terezín, some fifty miles north of Prague, whose neat streets and windowboxes had fooled even Red Cross visitors.

  Harriet intended to visit Terezín, on the way to the site of Hugh’s power plant. She also intended to telephone Hugh, and tell him they had found Karel. Now, she walked past gravestones with worn Hebrew obscured by trailing ivy; past the unfilled acres: a whole generation missing, rising in a dark cloud of smoke to the sky above the crematorium.

  And after the war? After the war, anti-Semitism had driven the survivors away, as it had driven out survivors in Warsaw, in Budapest the Jews of Eastern Europe had fled again: to Israel, to Australia, to England and America, to the four corners of the earth. In Prague, now, less than two thousand remained: to worship at the synagogue in Josefov; to die, one by one, and be brought here, one by one, for burial.

  ‘What have I in common with the Jews …’ Tormented Kafka, suffering a fury of boredom in interminable childhood hours at his father’s side in the synagogue, grew up to hate both: his race, and his overbearing father, with whom he was buried.

  ‘I have scarcely anything in common with myself –’

  Harriet felt, all at once, that extraordinary evocation of a dislocated spirit possess her so powerfully that she almost spoke the words aloud. And realised, as she held them back, that they could have been uttered by Susanna. Or by Christopher.

  There’s a dark side to both of us – He was somewhere in Prague, but she wasn’t going to seek him out.

  I’m sure you won’t want to meet me, but you can leave a message –

  No. Whatever they had shared belonged to Berlin, to moments in a hotel dining room, in a city left behind.

  I thought: I’m the one who has been walled in. They have built a wall around me –

  The secret self. The forbidden room. Images that might have come from Kafka.

  Kafka had spent the last few months of his life in Berlin, coughing and growing thinner, too poor to buy a newspaper, meeting the last love of his life, a young Jewish girl called Dora. It was 1923, and people were taking their wages home in wheelbarrows. He and Dora rented a little apartment in a leafy suburb and could not pay the electricity bill. She heated ill-cooked vegetarian meals with a kerosene lamp; they read Hebrew to each other by candlelight; she worshipped and adored him. Tuberculosis ate him away; he came back to Prague a skeleton. He wrote his last story; he went, on a last, desperate journey, to a sanatorium in Vienna; he died with Dora beside him.

  ‘Put your hand on my forehead for a moment, to give me courage –’

  She followed his body back to Prague; when he was buried they had to hold her back from leaping into the grave.

  Dear God, what intensity, what grief and loss. Harriet, seeing ahead of her a little group with cameras, thought: perhaps I have made a mistake. These hours should be ones of pleasurable anticipation – why am I seeking out sadness?

  Well. I did not intend to seek it out. It has come upon me. My own dark side, perhaps; my shadow, or a warning.

  A warning of what?

  Cameras clicked in the morning sun. She joined the little group at the graveside.

  He died unpublished; for decades, under the communist regime; his name was reviled. Then, in 1963, a Writers’Union conference made a brave attempt to rehabilitate him. Such events began to change the climate: they made possible the spring of 1968.

  And in the winter of 1969 a young philosophy student set fire to himself in Wenceslas Square. He was buried near here, too, though not among the Jews. Harriet retraced her steps toward Karel’s apartment, walking outside the wall of the Jewish Cemetery and then along the Vinohradská boulevard. Here was the entrance to Olsanská, one of the largest cemeteries in the city, built for the victims of the Plague and crowded, now, with every kind of monument: elaborate tombs, marble obelisks, Russian Orthodox crucifixes, row upon row of the crosses of war graves. She walked through the main gates.

  The grass was cut, and the mower still moving along a distant plot. Flowers lay in cellophane on freshly dug graves, and here there were quite a number of visitors, walking along the paths beneath the trees Saturday morning was probably a good time to come and lay flowers, light candles, say a prayer. It was a long time since Harriet had said a prayer – that was Susanna’s territory, though who knew whether it brought her comfort?

  She was like a woman from the Middle Ages, praying for a child …

  It had not brought her a child.

  And why, wondered Harriet, looking about her, is Susanna so much with me today?

  She saw a uniformed attendant, walking amongst the graves.

  ‘Excuse me – do you speak English?’

  ‘Little only.’ He smiled at her from beneath his cap, a sweet-looking man with a frail moustache.

  She smiled back, feeling the loneliness of the neglected Jewish Cemetery evaporate a little.

  ‘The grave of Jan Palach?’

  He nodded – everyone must ask him where that was – and pointed to a path along the right, just inside the gates. She saw another little group, more cameras.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Today is anniversary,’ he said slowly.

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Anniversary,’ he repeated, and then, as an old woman in black approached him, he turned away.

  Harriet stood thinking. Palach had burned himself in winter, on a bitter January day. What anniversary? She looked at her watch, at the date. The dial showed 21.

  August 21 …

  A prickle of gooseflesh ran all over her. She was here twenty-five years to the day. She had not planned it – somehow, amidst all her reading and preparation, she had not even realised it would be so. Marsha’s birthday had been the key date on this journey. But here it was: the anniversary not just of Czechoslovakia’s invasion but of one of the most important days of her life. She had come downstairs to breakfast, still in her nightdress, still not quite awake, and seen her parents and brother listening intently to the kitchen radio. Tanks had crossed the border in darkness, they were moving through Prague –

  She had known even then that Karel was lost to her.

  And now he was found again. In a few minutes she would return to his street, she would ring the bell, she would climb the stone steps to his apartment –

  A rush of joy replaced the gooseflesh; melancholy disappeared.

  But first –

  A handful of tourists stood at a martyr’s grave. She went to join them.

  The headstone was unmarked; there was only a photograph, wrapped in cellophane. She stood gazing at it, as she had gazed at the Athena poster pinned above her desk, in the room of her childhood, all those years ago.

  ‘A good thing they’ve moved him back here, hey?’ said a young American behind her.

  She looked at him. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You know they dug him up? Back in the Seventies?’

  ‘No, no, I di
dn’t know that.’ Something else she had missed. ‘Tell me.’

  ‘Well, I guess it was because this place was becoming a kind of shrine, you know? Candlelit vigils and all that – could be trouble. So they dug him up and moved him to some place about forty miles outside the city, where he was born. He only came back after ’89.’

  Harriet shook her head. A few more people came to join them.

  ‘Been here long?’ he asked her, coming up alongside as she moved away.

  ‘This is day one.’ She followed the cobbled path towards the gates.

  ‘Terrific. You’ll love it. Have you done the Old Town yet? The medieval clock – the astronomy clock? It’s really something.’

  ‘Yes, I’ve seen pictures.’

  They had reached the gates. ‘Fancy a coffee?’ he asked her.

  She turned to look at him properly. He was tall and well-fed and shining and he hadn’t even been born when the tanks came in.

  ‘I’m old enough to be your mother,’ she said primly.

  ‘So? We’re talking coffee here, not a roll in the hay.’

  She laughed. He was okay, he was nice.

  ‘Thanks, but I have to get back. My daughter –’

  ‘Sure. Well –’ He held out his hand.

  ‘Don’t tell me,’ said Harriet, full of good humour. ‘Have a nice day.’

  He rolled his eyes. ‘She’s so English. Okay, so long. Have one anyway.’

  ‘And you.’ She watched him stride away, towards the endless crosses of the war graves.

  And then she was outside the gates, walking beneath the trees along the boulevard. Traffic went past; it was getting busier now. But where were the demonstrations, the celebrations – did August 21 go by unnoticed now?

  She turned the corner into Jindris˘ská, and walked up the hill; she waited at the traffic lights to cross; she tried to keep steady and calm but her stomach was churning.

  She came to Baranova, she made her way through the crowd of shoppers, she turned into the quiet, ordinary street where Karel had grown up, from where he had written to her.

  Please understand that things are rather difficult now –

  I think of you …

  Someone was walking ahead of her, towards his apartment building. He was tall and lean and dark, and swinging a briefcase.

  ‘Karel?’ She quickened her pace, passing the shop. A child coming out of it, unwrapping a bar of chocolate.

  ‘Karel?’

  He turned, he saw her.

  ‘Harriet?

  He was older, with grey in his hair. He hesitated, and everything seemed to stop: the summer clouds sailing over the tenement buildings, the passers-by on the narrow street, all the hopes of this journey, this moment.

  Then he smiled – that beautiful, heart-stopping smile – and came towards her.

  Chapter Three

  ‘Dobry den, Harriet.’

  ‘Hello, Karel.’

  He took her hand and kissed it; they stood there looking at each other. He shook his head.

  ‘This is a very great surprise.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Harriet, and could not stop smiling.

  A little boy went by with his mother. Somebody across the street was whistling, hammering a nail; a light, carefree sound which for Harriet had at that moment the quality of a lark.

  ‘So,’ said Karel. He took her arm, drawing her aside as two teenage girls went past laughing. ‘Welcome to Prague. You have had a good journey?’

  ‘Long,’ said Harriet, ‘especially for my daughter. We have visited Brussels. Berlin – we’ve been travelling for two weeks. But we are very glad to be here.’

  ‘And I am very glad to see you.’

  They were walking along to his door; he pulled out his key; he held the door open for her. They climbed the echoing stairs.

  ‘She is like you, your daughter?’ he asked.

  ‘I think so, a little. And Gabrielle looks so like you. She has been acting as our interpreter.’

  ‘Good girl.’

  They had reached the second landing. An elderly woman came out of her apartment with a shopping bag. She and Karel greeted each other; she looked at Harriet with curiosity as they went past.

  ‘You have lived here all your life?’ asked Harriet, as they went on up.

  ‘Always. And my mother also: she was born here. Her parents lived with us when I was young until they died; my wife lived here – until recently it has been so difficult to change jobs, or apartments or move to another city: there are many families like us. Gabrielle sleeps in my old room, which was my mother’s.’

  They had come to the top; Harriet was out of breath.

  ‘It keeps you fit,’ said Karel, unlocking the door.

  There was a rush of footsteps: Gabrielle and Marsha were in the corridor.

  He greeted Gabrielle in Czech, with a kiss, then turned to Marsha, smiling.

  ‘So. You are Marsha? My English friend?’ He held out his hand. ‘How do you do?’

  Marsha shook his hand, looking pleased and suddenly shy. ‘How do you do.’ She flashed a glance at Harriet – I like him, he’s nice – and then Hannah was behind them all, with a little wooden tray of glasses.

  ‘And now,’ said Karel, ‘we celebrate.’

  In the gloomy sitting room, with its plants, brown postwar furniture and modern rugs, he opened a bottle of wine.

  ‘Na zdravi. Cheers.’

  They raised their glasses; there was a general murmur of pleasantries and enquiries. The wine was sweet, and faintly fizzy. The girls, sitting next to each other on a couch, were polite, lapsing occasionally into giggles.

  ‘You are drunk already,’ said Karel. He caught Marsha’s inadvertent grimace as she sipped. ‘You do not like it? I am poisoning you?’

  She blushed, and tried again. ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘She’s not really used to wine,’ said Harriet.

  ‘No? In Czechoslovakia the children are all alcoholics, even from the cradle.’ He translated to the others. ‘Tell them that this is true, Gaby.’

  Gabrielle looked at Harriet. ‘We drink only on special times.’

  ‘Special occasions,’ Karel corrected. ‘But I think we can find something else for Marsha. You like Coke? Mineral water?’

  ‘Coke, please,’ said Marsha, and as Gabrielle went to fetch it, she said ‘Everyone drinks mineral water here, don’t they? Because of the bad water.’

  ‘This is true. Prague is a very polluted city – the water, the air. Like much of Eastern Europe.’

  ‘Yes. My uncle in Brussels is trying to help.’

  ‘He is? That is kind of him.’

  Harriet explained a little, as Gabrielle returned. ‘I’m hoping to visit the plant,’ she said. ‘There’s so much I want to see.’

  ‘But this is very interesting. I am a supporter of the Green Party, you know – the environment issues have been important here for a long time, as part of the political opposition. And the European Bank is funding some useful projects. You must tell me more about your brother.’

  ‘He’s lovely,’ said Marsha, drinking her Coke.

  ‘I am sure.’ He turned to Harriet. ‘I did not meet him?’

  ‘You did – don’t you remember? He had a summer holiday job, like me, but he was at home sometimes. He was at home at the time of the invasion –’

  He frowned. ‘I think I remember.’

  Hannah rose. They followed her down the corridor.

  Lunch in the cramped tiled kitchen was cold roast pork, steaming dumplings, sauerkraut. A thick plum tart stood on an enamel-topped cupboard. Karel refilled glasses, dishes were passed. Marsha tucked in with a will, leaving the sauerkraut.

  ‘You like dumplings?’ Karel asked her, seeing them disappear.

  ‘They’re yummy.’

  ‘They are what? What is this yummy?’

  The girls were off again. He shook his head in despair.

  ‘It means they’re delicious,’ said Harriet, laughing too. ‘It means she likes them.�
��

  ‘That is good. She will see a lot of them in Prague.’ He drank. ‘And what else have you seen in Prague? You are fulfilling your duties as tourist?’

  ‘There hasn’t been much time yet. We’re staying in Malá Strana, the Little Quarter –’

  ‘It is charming there. And so convenient for the President.’

  ‘Quite. Last night we went to the Charles Bridge, of course, and today I’ve visited the cemeteries. Somehow I hadn’t realised that it was the anniversary –’ she broke off, suddenly, recalling his earlier frown at her reference to the invasion. Perhaps she should be careful, not tumble over herself with references to a past they had shared so briefly.

  ‘You are hesitating?’

  ‘I – I think I must have expected some sort of celebration, something to mark the end of that time.’

  He refilled her glass, his mother’s glass. ‘Celebration? If you had been here in 1990, yes – you would have seen something then. Cars turned over, everyone out on the street … Now? Now we are getting on with living again. Rebuilding.’ He turned to his mother, translating. She nodded. ‘You see,’ he said to Harriet, ‘my mother has been through a great deal. She and my father hoped for so much after the war – they had been communists since the early days. They suffered in the war, and then afterwards – they suffered in ways they had not expected. Now, sadly, my father is no longer with us, and my mother she looks for the good life at last, though without him it will never be the same. Still –’ He smiled at her. ‘All this is part of many conversations. I ask you about tourism.’

  ‘I’ve told you, I visited Kafka’s grave –’ And walked into a well of sadness, but this she could not talk about, yet, either. Not the past of twenty-five years ago, nor the more recent past of this journey.

  ‘We haven’t come all this way to see the sights,’ said Marsha all of a sudden. ‘We’ve come to see you.’

  He bowed towards the end of the table. ‘That is a charming thing to say.’

  ‘It’s true. We didn’t know if we’d find you, but I thought we would, and as soon as I saw you I thought –’

  ‘Marsha –’ said Harriet firmly.

  ‘What?’ She turned to Harriet, flushing. ‘Can’t I say what I want?’