Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City (85 page)
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Authors: Peter Demetz
BOOK: Prague in Black and Gold: Scenes from the Life of a European City
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K
r
(Prague suburban district) = Krch
r
(Prague suburban district) = KrchL
i
buše (the Ur-mother) = Libushe
i
buše (the Ur-mother) = Libushe
P
e
mysl (the king) = Pr/shemissle
emysl (the king) = Pr/shemissle
Trh (market) = trch (ch pronounced the German way)
Ú
jezd (street name, thoroughfare) = Oo-yezd
jezd (street name, thoroughfare) = Oo-yezd
MARX, ENGELS AND THE POETS
GERMAN POST-WAR LITERATURE:
A CRITICAL INTRODUCTION
AFTER THE FIRES: WRITINGS IN THE GERMANIES,
AUSTRIA AND SWITZERLAND
A DIFFICULT RETURN TO PRAGUE
“When the express train rolled over the Smichov bridge, which leads from the west into the main railway station of Prague, he stood at the corridor window and looked at the walls and the rocky slopes of the Vyšehrad. If I turn around now, he thought, and look through the compartment window, I am bound to see Hrad
any Castle. At that point the castle and St. Vitus Cathedral came into view, as always, but they were even darker and thinner than he had expected. The train passed the Vyšehrad suburban station, a ruin, and its wheels rolled through a tunnel into the big hall built of steel and glass. Suddenly it seemed shabby and bare to him.”
any Castle. At that point the castle and St. Vitus Cathedral came into view, as always, but they were even darker and thinner than he had expected. The train passed the Vyšehrad suburban station, a ruin, and its wheels rolled through a tunnel into the big hall built of steel and glass. Suddenly it seemed shabby and bare to him.”This is what I wrote on the evening of my return to Prague, in a thick notebook I had been careful to take along. By the next morning, however, I was already laughing at the way I had arranged my experience into dignified sentences that one might expect to find in a sentimental little novella. Literature for the last time! Crossing the border at Cheb (Eger) had been rather grotesque: a female passenger leaning against a window said, “I thought I’d have a stroke if I ever returned here,” and as though summoned by her words, a stocky nurse wearing a starched uniform and carrying a medical bag appeared by the track and walked up and down alongside the train as though she expected whole clusters of sick homecomers to come tumbling out. A battalion of border guards in green uniforms with wolfhound insignia fanned out to check the train. The grim-faced captain, a good officer, seeing the notation “Born in Czechoslovakia” in my U.S. passport, stamped my visa and left the compartment as if inwardly goose-stepping, whereupon a lieutenant in Adidas shoes with his uniform gave me a Švejk-like look, handed me a customs form, and said that all this wasn’t so important.
I had escaped in 1949 through the Bohemian Forest with the assistance of a knowledgeable Boy Scout (whose organization the Stalinists had already banned), in the company of H. and a group of students. I have dreamed about that journey for years. One of our group was wearing a new leather jacket that made crackling noises in the quiet forest, and at a crossroads we all had to lie flat in the underbrush because our Scout thought he heard border guards. Now, more than forty years later, I was crossing Wenceslas Square again. The March sun was shining, and even though I was in the midst of things, I saw everything as if through a glass wall. People looked so very different: passersby in shoddy jeans and leisure jackets, pale young girls with almost diaphanous skin, too many men with beer bellies hanging over their belts. My mother had always complained of agoraphobia, particularly when traveling, and that is what I felt now in the face of the incomprehensible strangeness of the people and houses, which, like the settings in an old UFA film, seemed to be crowding in upon me. I sought refuge in a hotel, the old Golden Goose, but I did not know what to say. In what idiom does one order a cup of coffee after forty years? The waiter, unmoved, recognized immediately that I came from the West, for I was wearing a jacket and tie, said
prosím
(please) and
d
kuji
(thank you), and desperately stirred the viscous coffee (ground beans and hot water), which, I learned later, was served that way throughout the republic.
prosím
(please) and
d
kuji(thank you), and desperately stirred the viscous coffee (ground beans and hot water), which, I learned later, was served that way throughout the republic.
Whenever I opened my mouth, I realized I also lacked the more modern vernacular intonations—a singsong that had earlier been characteristic in the suburbs and now, after the passing of the old bourgeoisie, had penetrated to the inner cities. Old women working as doorkeepers in the many old state institutions, sitting by their little iron stoves, were the only ones who responded in a friendly way when they heard me speak the antiquated language of
Gymnasium
students and solid citizens, an idiom untouched by their experience in the collective.
Gymnasium
students and solid citizens, an idiom untouched by their experience in the collective.
On my walks I told myself that it was high time for me to be moved, as homecomers are in works of fiction, and I caught myself watching for an opportunity to shed tears at last. The tears did come, but at a wholly unexpected and almost comical moment. I had climbed up to Hrad
any Castle in order to stand by the low wall on the castle square again and look out at the smoke curling over Prague’s rooftops, where it had always belonged. Only the television tower was new. Groups of tourists-Japanese and Italians as well as Slovak school groups—were flooding the inner courtyards of the castle. Suddenly the windows opened and revealed festively clad woodwind and brass players who seemed to be waiting for
a conductor. And then there was President Havel, wearing a blue suit and a reddish tie that matched his hair, along with his entourage, one of them in a leather jacket with an American flag on the back. While he made his way through the crowd to take up a position near the castle gate, plainclothesmen tried to clear a wider path, for it was high noon, time for a changing of the castle guards.
“Prosím Vás, lidi
ky
,
couvn
te, tady se bude cvi
it”
(Please, folks, we need a little room, we have to have exercise here), said one of the officers—and now my eyes finally filled with tears, not out of patriotism, but because I understood his tone, that of a policeman a bit embarrassed at being the guardian of order who wanted to do his duty without abridging people’s right to rubberneck. I remembered other times and other policemen. In February 1948, on the day of the Communist putsch, I was among the two thousand students who marched to the castle to prevent President Eduard Beneš from accepting the Communist regime, but because we were foolish enough to march up narrow Neruda Street, we found ourselves caught between the police and the goons of the party’s workers’ militia. Today it was all different; a new chapter of Bohemian history was beginning here and now, and I wiped my eyes dry. The castle guards came marching along, and it turned out that this was only a dress rehearsal. President Havel, an experienced theatrical director, had had new uniforms designed by Theodor Pišt
k, Jr. (whose father had once been a famous movie actor, playing father roles), and the young men looked as if they had stepped out of
The Music Man.
any Castle in order to stand by the low wall on the castle square again and look out at the smoke curling over Prague’s rooftops, where it had always belonged. Only the television tower was new. Groups of tourists-Japanese and Italians as well as Slovak school groups—were flooding the inner courtyards of the castle. Suddenly the windows opened and revealed festively clad woodwind and brass players who seemed to be waiting fora conductor. And then there was President Havel, wearing a blue suit and a reddish tie that matched his hair, along with his entourage, one of them in a leather jacket with an American flag on the back. While he made his way through the crowd to take up a position near the castle gate, plainclothesmen tried to clear a wider path, for it was high noon, time for a changing of the castle guards.
“Prosím Vás, lidi
ky,
couvn
te, tady se bude cviit”(Please, folks, we need a little room, we have to have exercise here), said one of the officers—and now my eyes finally filled with tears, not out of patriotism, but because I understood his tone, that of a policeman a bit embarrassed at being the guardian of order who wanted to do his duty without abridging people’s right to rubberneck. I remembered other times and other policemen. In February 1948, on the day of the Communist putsch, I was among the two thousand students who marched to the castle to prevent President Eduard Beneš from accepting the Communist regime, but because we were foolish enough to march up narrow Neruda Street, we found ourselves caught between the police and the goons of the party’s workers’ militia. Today it was all different; a new chapter of Bohemian history was beginning here and now, and I wiped my eyes dry. The castle guards came marching along, and it turned out that this was only a dress rehearsal. President Havel, an experienced theatrical director, had had new uniforms designed by Theodor Pišt
k, Jr. (whose father had once been a famous movie actor, playing father roles), and the young men looked as if they had stepped out ofThe Music Man.
So they restored the Royal Road, which Bohemia’s rulers ascended when they came from the Old Town via the Charles Bridge to Hrad
any Castle, and this is now the route taken by tourists and foreign currency. Everything is spic-and-span architecturally, but on the right and the left, to the north and the south, Prague is crumbling: on entire streets people move under primitive wooden boards that catch falling plaster and fragments from window ledges. The
sidlišt
,
the mighty housing developments on the city outskirts, precisely where the first Bronze Age people lived in the Prague area, were built with cheap prefabricated parts; the balconies are decaying and the nameplates disintegrating. The tenants call these bedroom communities, once the pride of the working class, their “rabbit hutches.” What comes as a surprise is that the facades of Prague’s houses, whether prefab or Renaissance, reveal nothing about their interiors. The exteriors may rot, but the rooms and apartments are clean and ingenious. People have furnished them individually, preserving and defending their own taste—older people with bric-a-brac and old carpets,
the younger ones with bookshelves, artwork, and electronic gear obtained in one way or another.
any Castle, and this is now the route taken by tourists and foreign currency. Everything is spic-and-span architecturally, but on the right and the left, to the north and the south, Prague is crumbling: on entire streets people move under primitive wooden boards that catch falling plaster and fragments from window ledges. Thesidlišt
,the mighty housing developments on the city outskirts, precisely where the first Bronze Age people lived in the Prague area, were built with cheap prefabricated parts; the balconies are decaying and the nameplates disintegrating. The tenants call these bedroom communities, once the pride of the working class, their “rabbit hutches.” What comes as a surprise is that the facades of Prague’s houses, whether prefab or Renaissance, reveal nothing about their interiors. The exteriors may rot, but the rooms and apartments are clean and ingenious. People have furnished them individually, preserving and defending their own taste—older people with bric-a-brac and old carpets,
the younger ones with bookshelves, artwork, and electronic gear obtained in one way or another.
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