Stalin Ate My Homework (11 page)

As we
walked back down the path from the café, harried by the visibly nervous
functionary, my gaze was drawn to the parking area in front of the rustic
wooden administrative buildings. My eyes widened in astonishment, because
parked on the semicircle of gravel was a convoy of the most extraordinary
vehicles I had ever seen. They were cars, all identical, all black and all
shined to a high polish. Each had a large front windscreen, six big windows on
either side of the passenger compartment and a back window split at the centre
and curving around to the rear pillar. Large air scoops flared out from the
wings, the rear wheels were concealed by spats and across the curved front,
enclosed under a continuous one-piece glass panel, was a row of three enormous
circular headlights. These cars were nothing less than the future rendered in
metal and glass, and if they had been hovering three feet from the ground as
the vehicles did in ‘Dan Dare Pilot of the Future’ in the
Eagle
comic I
wouldn’t have been at all surprised. Beside these amazing automobiles stood a
group of men in suits and hats. The campsite manager, now sweating and very on
edge, urged us onwards. Though at the time we chose not to be aware of any of
this, a fleet of three black Tatra limousines, a car reserved solely for the
use of state officials, pulling up outside your campsite didn’t usually mean
anything good was going to happen.

As we
approached, a round-faced man in a dapper grey tweed suit detached himself from
the waiting group and came towards us. In perfect English he introduced
himself, saying that his name was Ladislav and he had been sent by his boss, a
man called Prukha, the Minister for Trade Union Affairs. Over the weekend he
said they had uncovered all of Joe’s letters to the ROH and, while obviously
the tents were a fine place to spend a vacation, perhaps the comrades from
England would like to come immediately to Prague, to stay in one of the best
hotels at the government’s expense and to accept a refund for the money they
had paid to stay at this no doubt excellent campsite. Within seconds our
mouse-nibbled luggage was brought and placed in the boot, which is to say the
front portion of the lead Tatra, while we climbed on to the leather bench seat
of the passenger compartment. The ministry driver climbed aboard, the man
called Ladislav took the passenger seat, the driver pressed a button and the
Tatra’s rear-mounted V8 engine rumbled into life. Looking around, I noticed
that all the switches and the steering wheel were in an elegant ivory plastic
unlike anything I had ever seen in Britain — though, to be fair, as I had only
ever been on the bus and in a taxi there wasn’t much to compare them with.

Our
fleet of limousines gathered speed, crunched across the gravel, turned into the
road and took us away from the rows of red tents and towards Prague, the city
known throughout Europe as ‘The Golden City of Spires’.

My parents’ faith in
Communism and the Communist Party had been vindicated in the most spectacular
fashion. When we had been at our lowest ebb, Communism had seen that we were
distressed and had sent Ladislav with his fleet of Marxist limousines to rescue
us and carry us off to a city of almost indescribable magic and mystery.

Of all
the heroes of that country and that city I don’t think they once mentioned
Franz Kafka to us. It’s not really likely that they would, but he wrote, ‘Prague
never lets you go … this dear little mother has sharp claws.’ He was right —
the city held us enthralled. It seemed like there really were a million golden
spires. There was an ancient castle, narrow medieval streets crammed with
taverns and coffee shops, and right by our hotel there was a famous cobbled
bridge, its balustrade lined with the life-sized statues of venerable saints,
all looking in the early morning mist like a row of eighteenth-century
ecclesiastical suicides.

A
decision had been made within the highest levels of the bureaucracy of the
government of Czechoslovakia that the Sayle family couldn’t be allowed to
languish in a tent. Like Kafka’s
Metamorphosis
but in reverse, we had
gone to sleep as insects and woken, in the very city where he had written that
story, as people. And not just ordinary people, but people of the highest
importance. Right to the end of our fortnight’s stay we had Ladislav, a Tatra
and a driver at our disposal night and day Every morning, dressed in a
different natty suit, Ladislav would be waiting for us and would then take us
around the sites of Prague and the surrounding countryside, pointing out
astonishing things in his punctilious English. In the evening there were formal
dinners hosted by Ladislav’s boss Prukha, a thinner, more watchful man, at
which we were constantly toasted as visiting comrades from Britain. And
wherever we went we were given gifts, vases of Bohemian glass, coffee sets and
folklorique woven things whose exact purpose we could never quite figure out.
You only had to look at something and people would give it to you.

After
their success in Brussels at Expo ‘58 the Magic Lantern Theatre had been given
their own purpose-built theatre right in the centre of Prague. We took in a
performance, now sitting in the best seats, and it felt like we were visiting
old friends.

Molly, Joe and Ladislav
got on really well together. I had never seen my parents make a new friend
before, so I found it compelling to watch. Ladislav had the same fascination
with terrible puns as Joe and he found Molly’s behaviour charming — I suppose
that, as there had been Jews in Prague for over a thousand years they were used
to her kind of carrying-on. But more than anybody else it was me who was the
centre of attention. Everywhere we went I was spoilt and flattered; I suppose I
was some sort of novelty, but whatever the reason I loved it.

The
most famous, indeed the only famous Czech at the time was the athlete Emil
Zátopek, also known as the ‘Flying Czech’ because he was so fast or ‘Emil the
Terrible’ due to his ugly running style. Zátopek first came to the world’s
attention at the 1948 Olympics in London, from out of nowhere winning the ten
thousand metres and finishing second in the five thousand. At the 1952
Olympics in Helsinki he amazingly won gold in both the five thousand and ten
thousand metre races. We were already aware of Zátopek, who was particularly
admired in our house because in the five thousand metres at Helsinki he had
beaten a great British hero, Christopher Chataway. Chataway, an ex-public
schoolboy and a bit of a Young Tory, was second, but after being overtaken by
Zátopek he tripped and fell. We especially liked that.

Though
not universal, it was instinctual amongst a great many British Communists to be
noisily unpatriotic. It was not a matter of party policy but a way of thinking
that had grown up, a prejudice that had formed like barnacles beneath the
waterline of a ship. They assumed that taking pride in any kind of British
achievement, in science or the arts or particularly sporting achievement, meant
you were somehow taking pride in the excesses of the British Empire. To my
parents and their friends it was as if by cheering on the English football team,
the cricket team or Britain’s runners you were somehow revelling in slavery,
the Amritsar Massacre, the suppression of the Irish or the Opium Wars.

Very
early on I sensed that this anti-nationalism was not a good thing to flaunt in
front of other children. It might be all right to make fun of the Milk
Marketing Board or go on and on about the many achievements of the Soviet
Union, but it was not okay to deride the England football team for being beaten
6—3 by Communist Hungary in 1953. If I felt any of this unpatriotism I didn’t
voice it, and in fact slowly I came to question this attitude in my parents. At
the very least, as well as risking getting hit in the playground it seemed
ungrateful and ungracious to deride this country that gave us free milk and
rail travel. But I kept all these thoughts to myself and it was perhaps the
beginning of a certain secretiveness, an internal, critical but unexpressed
mulling-over of what was said to me.

At any
rate, Emil Zátopek, unlike his British rival on the running track, was
considered impeccably proletarian because of his background and because he
would train in any weather, including snow, and would often do so while wearing
heavy work boots as opposed to special running shoes. I don’t know if they
thought I was good at running or were just flattering me, but Ladislav and the
driver and then everybody else took to calling me ‘Little Zátopek’, saying that
one day I too would be a great runner and compete in the Olympics. I loved this
attention and did not see any reason to develop a critical attitude to the
idea, which sounded perfectly plausible. I already had the feeling that there
was something special about me, so why shouldn’t I win gold at the Olympics,
possibly as early as 1966?

The return trip from Czechoslovakia
was a very sad experience. Ladislav and the driver waved us off from Prague
Station, and suddenly as the train headed west we became just ordinary people
again — though admittedly ordinary people who were loaded down with Bohemian
glass, dolls and folklorique woven things. One way to try and keep the special
feeling alive was to tell all the kids in the street and all the kids at school
about my adventures, and initially it seemed to work. I would talk about Prague
and become the centre of attention as my classmates listened in rapt, enchanted
silence. But then some other kid would tell a story about how their cat could
drive and the same children would listen to that in fascinated silence. My
classmates accepted that everything I said was true, but then they were at an
age where they accepted that everything was true. I wanted to shout at them, ‘Look,
this isn’t like your imaginary friend Gerald who wets the bed! I really have
been in a car that looks like a spaceship. I really did meet the Minister for
Trade Union Affairs. I really did walk across a bridge lined with statues.’ But
it wouldn’t have made any difference. Truth was trumped by a good story any day.

In the early autumn of the
year that we returned from our first visit to the East, Joe attended a weekend
conference of the National Union of Railwaymen at a place called Earlstown in Cheshire,
an important railway town possessing a huge wagon works. Me and Molly came
along too. The days were bright and sunny and to entertain the families the
union put on a sports day It was mostly for the older children, but there was a
very informal hundred yards dash organised for the seven-, eight- and
nine-year-olds such as me. On the starting line, poised in an anticipatory
crouch, my heart was bursting with confidence, eager to fulfil my destiny
because I was Little Zátopek.

Of
course I won! My prize was a magnificent clockwork motor yacht presented to me
by a senior union official. Made of polished wood and metal, the fitments
meticulously rendered in minute detail, it was the most elegant toy I had ever
owned, the sort of thing that the son of a press baron or a property developer
might have. But the yacht was only the physical symbol of other things.
Firstly, it seemed to prove the ideological superiority of Communism. Some
people in Prague had said I was going to be a great runner, and it turned out
to be true. But, more than that, it was my first experience of winning
something and I found it sublime. The attention, the feeling of being special,
the sensation of beating other kids, proving yourself better than them, was all
brilliant with no apparent downside. Back at school on the Monday I told all
the kids over and over again that I was now the NUR Under Ten National Hundred
Yards Dash Champion.