The Warsaw Pact invades Czechoslovakia, 1968Then came 1968. Though my life was full and demanding, I’d
been following the events in Czechoslovakia. Exciting things were happening there, a relaxing of some restrictions, a freer press, just as Uncle Paul had described. One evening, I was in my kitchen, preparing dinner. The television was on in the living room and the evening news came on. The word Prague – and I was on the floor, up close, staring at the grainy black and white images on my small screen. Crowds of people filled Wenceslas Square. The commentator was speaking words I could barely take in. Down the wide boulevard, between the throngs of people, rolled tank after tank. The faces in the crowd were masks of disbelief, rage, defiance, defeat. Another camera: a street lined with people, young, old, women, men. A close-up of a young woman, tears streaming down her face, both hands over her mouth. An old man shaking his cane in helpless rage, as the tanks trundled over the cobblestones. People stood bewildered. Others ran alongside, screaming. And then I saw a young couple. They stepped forward as a tank came to a stop in front of them. The young woman was carrying a bouquet of flowers. She took one and placed it into the barrel of a rifle a soldier held across his lap. The soldier looked confused. The tank rolled on. The Soviets and their allies had responded to Prague Spring by invading the country. Tears of grief and rage ran down my face, as Prague was stolen from me again. Prague Police Office: Applying for a Residence Permit, 1972Another shabby office. This time there were two men, both
in uniform, neither of whom I’d seen before. The older man with very short, iron-grey hair and pale eyes contemplated me blankly, while the younger man stood by the window flipping through my sheaf of papers. He tossed them on the desk, where they landed with a sharp slap. “This is not what we expected,” sneered the older man. “It’s useless.” “What? I filled in everything!” “We are not stupid. We know who your parents are. We have thick files on them. We know all about your father. A raving capitalist. A Nazi collaborator. An enemy of the people who deserted his country. He left illegally. If he tried to come back, he could be arrested. A traitor. And that applies to you too. Your leaving the country was against the law. I read no apology here.” He slapped the pages in front of him and sat back in his chair. I could feel the blood leave my face. My father, who’d been summoned to testify against the Nazis at the Nuremburg trials, labelled a Nazi collaborator. I was speechless with outrage. “So why should we let you into the country?” he drawled. “How are we to know you’re any different than your father?” I had to control myself. I used the only tool I had – being pretty and young, and in men’s eyes, naive. “I don’t know anything about that,” I said. “I’m not interested in politics. I want to live here for a while to learn about it. To get to know the country where I was born.” They gazed at me, derisive, skeptical, as though I’d said something hopelessly sentimental. “I was four years old!” I cried. My Prague, 1972One night I was walking home alone to my room on
Nosticova after an evening at Rubín. I was happy. It was a warm, soft night, late, with no one else on the street. As I crossed Maltézské Náměstí, I started to sing “Summertime,” a favourite of mine. Out of nowhere a car pulled up beside me and a couple of policemen leapt out, demanding my papers. Startled, I produced my Canadian passport. They were taken aback. Half saluting, they backed away, climbed into their car and drove off. What would they have done if I hadn’t had a foreign passport? I wondered. Was it illegal to sing? What had I done to draw their attention – express myself? Reveal some joie de vivre? Other absurdities occurred in this Kafkaesque environment. One day at the Malostranská Kavárna, I was sipping my coffee and reading a book at my favourite table overlooking the square when the waiter handed me a folded scrap of paper. Surprised, I opened it. There was a sentimental love poem scrawled on it, seven or eight lines about how desirable I was. I looked up at the waiter, who gestured at a dark-haired man, maybe forty, sitting alone at a table at the other end of the café. He smiled and waved at me, spread his hands as though to say, “What do you think?” Shaking my head, I crumpled the paper and went back to my reading. The man left soon after. Sometime later, I was in the police station on Bartolomějská sitting on one of those orange chairs, to request a return visa for a trip outside the country. The entrance door to that long hall opened, and to my surprise, I recognized my suitor from the café. He was carrying a briefcase. Another applicant for something, I thought. But no. Casting me a cursory glance, he opened one of the doors and disappeared. I was chilled. Were they keeping an eye on me? For the first time, I was learning what it is to live with fear, a nameless, all-pervasive fear that has no clear object. It was like a permanent condition, invisible but ever-present, like oxygen, but heavy and oppressive. It was so immanent that I was unaware of it most of the time. I only realized it on the occasions when I left the country. Each time, I experienced an enormous relief as I crossed the border, suddenly breathing more deeply, my body relaxing. When I returned, the fear gradually settled over me again. The Revolution, 1989It was 1989 and Europe was ablaze with change and
hope. The revolution that many behind the Iron Curtain despaired would never come finally happened. Lech Walensa in Poland, Mikhail Gorbachev in the Soviet Union and Václav Havel in Czechoslovakia. I sat glued to the television day after day as events unfolded. Havel, the dishevelled dissident playwright who had spent years in prison, now led the movement in Czechoslovakia. I watched news footage of the streets of Prague jammed with students, and then thousands upon thousands of people lining the streets, filling Wenceslas Square. The crowds stayed despite violent confrontations. The future hung in the balance. And then it was over. Václav Havel, with whom I had sat drinking beer at U Tygra with Karel and Zlatá Praha, who had spent years in jail as a dissident, led the movement that finally toppled the communist regime and became president of the newly liberated country. There was wild rejoicing throughout the Czech community in Canada. I was sad for my father, who hadn’t lived to see this day. Forty years of terror and oppression were lifted and a nation released. And a poet and playwright in charge. Glorious! October 1974We lived in dread for the next two days. Then it was my
turn, and this time it was Karel waiting for me at U Medvídků. I entered that too familiar building once again, and waited in that long corridor, facing that row of closed doors, my feet wearing down the tired linoleum in front of my chair. Kafka came to mind yet again, the Czech writer of the absurd and sinister. A door opened. I sat on the chair facing the desk. Two uniformed men, one standing, one sitting at the desk, a file in front of him. I couldn’t remember if I’d seen these men before. “Pas,” barked the man at the desk. I handed over my passport. He opened it to an empty page and smoothed it flat against the desk with his fat fingers. He picked up a large stamp, pressed it against an inkpad, and without a word or a glance towards me, banged it on a page in my passport. He picked up a pen and bending over my passport, scribbled a few notes between the lines of the stamp. Then he pushed it back across the desk toward me and sat back in his chair. I looked from him to the man standing by the window. The man at the desk leaned forward and crossed his arms on the desk. “You are hereby charged with anti-State activities. This is a very serious crime. You have until midnight tonight to get out of the country. If you are here beyond midnight, you will be arrested.” I froze and my mind whirled, unable to take in what he was saying. He continued, “Your residence permit is void, and what is in your passport now is the charge against you and the requirement to be out of the country by midnight.” He sat back. Again I stared at him, and from one to the other. And then the enormity of what he was saying hit me like a rock. “But why?” I said, realizing I urgently needed to find my voice. “What do you think I have done?” He simply repeated the charge and the imperative that I leave the country. “But what are the charges?” “I have already told you. You are charged with anti- State activities.” “On what grounds? What is the charge based on?” “We are under no obligation to explain the charges to you.” “But I need to know! I am innocent. The charges are false, whatever they are! Tell me what they are and I will answer them!” He shook his head impatiently. “Be out of the country by midnight or you will be arrested.” My desperation made me indignant. “Surely the accused have the right to know what they’re being charged with, so they can defend themselves and explain! That must be protocol, if not law, in every country in the world! I have the right to know!” “Not at all,” he said acidly. “We are under no such requirement.” “But tell me what you think I have done, please! I haven’t done anything wrong, truly, and I don’t know why you think I have!” The man at the desk simply shook his head. The other stood leaning against the wall, his arms folded. I tried again and again. They refused to tell me anything. They said nothing to me of the things they had said to Karel two days before. I was unable to answer any charges because they gave me none. “I have been working. I pay my own way.” I told them of my translation work, told them the editors at Artia were happy with my contribution. “I swear I’m innocent of whatever charges someone has brought against me!” They were immovable. Until now they had looked bored; now they looked impatient. “There is nothing you can do or say. I’ve warned you several times already – if you’re here after midnight, we will come and arrest you.” The realization that I was powerless, that the situation was hopeless, gradually dawned on me. I sat paralyzed. The man started to get up from his chair. “I can’t leave before midnight!” I cried. “There’s only one flight to Toronto daily and it’s before noon.” I looked at my watch. “It’s almost noon now!” “That’s your problem. We don’t care where you go. Take the train, take a bus, anywhere beyond the border. Just as long as you get out.” Leaving Prague October 1974We were silent on the way to the airport. We needed days,
no, years, to say everything we wished we could say to one another, and we had said all that could be said for now. We sat in the back. Karel held my ice-cold hand. In the departure hall, I held on to Karel tight, tears coursing down my face. He pulled me away. They were announcing my flight. Boarding had begun. “You have to go,” he said. “I can’t!” “You have to!” I tried. I took my suitcases and walked toward the exit to the gates. I couldn’t do it. I dropped my suitcases and ran back to him. He had to pry my fingers off his arms. He was crying too. “Helenko, musíš. You have to. We’ll see each other again. We will.” I forced my feet to walk towards the gate. I looked back once to take him in one last time, then turned and walked through the door. Like an automaton, I produced my passport, checked my bags, hardly knowing what I was doing. Numbly I sat at the gate, waiting, then following the other passengers blindly, I walked onto the plane and let the stewardess point me to my seat. I had three seats to myself at the very back of the plane, and I wept all the way back to Canada. |