‘Only the best we have for you, English,’ said Stok. The Czech smiled a tight smile, fixed like a piece of sadistically applied sticking-plaster; the slightest relaxation might rip his ears off. Stok prised the tin open. ‘Beluga,’ he said, holding it out to me. ‘They sent me Ocietrova at first but I said, “This is for our special foreign guest. We must have Beluga”.’ Inside the tin were the light-grey veiny spheres of caviare, almost as big as a tiny pea. Stok opened a packet of small wafers and spooned a large portion on to each. He poured the vodka until the tiny glasses brimmed above the rim. Stok held up a glass. ‘To travellers,’ said Stok.
‘Let’s make it motorists,’ I said.
The Czech ripped the sticking-plaster smile off with a sudden unexpected jerk. He would do himself an injury doing that one day.
‘To motorists,’ said Stok, ‘all over the world.’ We all drank and as Stok refilled the glasses he said, ‘Here in Prague they say that although the traffic police are communists the drivers are fascists, which would be all right if it were not that the pedestrians are anarchists.’
Stok was bubbling over with gaiety. He prodded Harvey and said, ‘I tell you a joke. The factory workers say that it’s impossible to do anything right. If you arrive five minutes early you are a saboteur; if you arrive five minutes late you are betraying socialism; if you arrive on time they say, “Where did you get that watch?”’ Stok laughed and spilled his drink. The Czech officer looked at him in shy disbelief and offered round his packet of Memfis cigarettes.
‘Another,’ said Stok. ‘Capitalism is the exploitation of man by man. Yes? Well socialism is exactly the reverse.’
Everyone laughed and swilled down another drink. Harvey was getting quite merry. He said to Stok, ‘Where do you get all these gags—Reader’s Digest?’
Stok grinned. ‘No, no, no, no—from people. That one about capitalism and socialism—we arrested a man for telling that this morning.’ Stok laughed his booming baritone laugh till the tears came into his eyes.
Harvey said to me softly, ‘Is he kidding?’
‘Who knows?’ I said.
The Czech walked under the oil lamp. Beside the huge gasometer of Stok he looked like a walk-on for La Bohème. He had a pair of soft leather gloves. He dragged them on and smoothed the creases around the fingers and flapped the cuffs backwards and forwards as he walked.
‘Eat, drink,’ Stok roared. The Czech began to shovel the caviare down like an automaton. Stok’s word was law.
We munched into the caviare, spooning it on to the wafer biscuits.
‘To Henry Ford,’ said Harvey holding up his glass.
Stok was doubtful. ‘If Henry Ford had been born in the Soviet Union, he would be a name I could drink to.’
‘If Henry Ford had been born in the Soviet Union,’ said Harvey, ‘he would still be making bicycles.’ Stok laughed.
Harvey lifted his glass again. ‘Henry Ford, philanthropist.’ The Czech officer asked what the word meant and Stok translated it. Harvey belched and smiled. It angered Stok.
Stok said, ‘You Americans are generous and we Russians are not. This is what you wish to say. Well, it is true that we do not give other nations gifts and bribes. We do not give them nuclear weapons. We give them very little money and very few guns. What we give other nations is encouragement. Encouragement and ideas. No amount of guns can fight ideas. In China, Laos and Cuba you have discovered that.’ Stok nodded to emphasize the point.
‘In China,’ said Harvey, ‘you have discovered it too.’
There was a moment of tension. I proposed an old Russian toast, ‘To my wife and my girl friend and to the woman I have yet to meet. I carry gifts for all three.’
Stok slapped his thigh in delight. We drank.
Then there was a toast to sputniks, the inventor of vodka, detour signs wherever they may be found, Shakespeare, Howard Johnson’s ice cream (twentyeight different flavours), and that ‘famous English cathedral, St Pancras’. Then Stok held his glass up and proposed ‘Czechoslovakia’.
‘To Czechoslovakia,’ I said. ‘The best beer and animated films in the world. Where abortion is legal, homosexuality no offence and a divorce costs only ten pounds.’
‘I never know when you joke,’ said Stok.
‘Nor do I,’ I said. I downed the drink and so did the others. Stok refilled the glasses and said, ‘Death to the fascists.’
Harvey said ‘Fascists’, quietly. He looked around. ‘There is a deal of semantic confusion around that word. A sort of implied, inbuilt suggestion that there is a special counter-productive network of every bully, crook, swindler, rapist and short-order artist in the world confronting the gentle, honest, helpful, long-suffering, scholarly underpaid remainder.’ Harvey swayed slightly and tapped his chest violently. ‘Fascism is something in here. Right here in everyone in the world.’ Stok and the Czech officer were looking at Harvey in surprise.
Harvey held his glass of vodka and, drawing himself up to a position of attention, said in a slow, dignified voice, ‘We will drink to the death of fascism in Washington, in London…’ He waved his head at each town. ‘In Prague and in Moscow.’ He tapped the chests of each of us as he repeated the towns again. By a small error of judgement I got Prague and the Czech officer got London and Harvey had trouble finding a Washington chest until he remembered his own.
‘Yes,’ said Stok dully. It was a situation that well fitted the native land of Kafka and the Good Soldier Schweik. There were more toasts after that but Stok had lost a lot of his bounce.
‘Disadvantageous confrontation,’ Harvey pronounced when we were back in the car.
Two huge trucks rattled past towards the state factory, the huge painted registration numbers on their side almost obscured by dirt. I waited until the dust and dense black exhaust fumes drifted out of my headlight beams, then began the return trip to Prague.
‘Do you think he knew?’ Harvey kept asking me. ‘Is that what he meant by poputchik?’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ I said. He was dying to talk.
‘You are right,’ Harvey said and dozed lightly as we drove back to Prague.
There were still plenty of people around when I parked outside the hotel. Here and there were groups of people in heavy overcoats sitting on wicker chairs in sidewalk cafés and making like it was Paris. The fat man in the kiosk was selling hot dogs to hungry pedestrians who all had transistor radios or battered brief-cases; some had both. Through the trees, big red and green neon signs were flashing and making strange abstract patterns in the shiny sides of passing trams.
‘Coffee,’ said Harvey and I nodded, because I knew that he would burst if he didn’t say what I already knew but would pretend to be surprised about.
The hotel foyer was full of brown aspidistras and green silver, the floor was visible through the holes in the carpet, and a gnome-like clerk was turning the pages of a vast dusty ledger. In the centre of the foyer were twelve pieces of plaidpatterned matching luggage, two small children in bright yellow sweatshirts, a woman in a grey woollen dress with a large leather handbag and a frail-looking man in large spectacles and a golf jacket.
‘Cold, cold, froid, say, Janie—what’s the German for cold?’ He turned to us as we entered. ‘Hey, look, will you tell this guy that we got to bath the kids and we need hot water? The hot water tap in the bathroom just isn’t working at all. Will you tell him…’
Harvey looked faintly annoyed that he’d been so easily tagged as an American. He said in German to the man behind the desk, ‘He needs hot water.’ The clerk said, ‘By the time the idiot has his luggage upstairs the hot water will be running.’
The tourist said, ‘You tell him that back home the health authorities would close a place like this down—the whole place is filthy.’
Harvey said to the clerk. ‘The gentleman’s mother was born in Prague—he says it’s like coming home.’ To the American he said, ‘The management regret the counterproductive difficulty with the thermostat but if you return t
o your room the water will be running hot in a moment or so.’
‘And tell him not to ask for someone to carry his baggage,’ said the clerk. ‘He’s not in the land of slavery now.’
The tourist said, ‘We have just the same trouble with our furnace at home.’
Harvey said, ‘I’m afraid the baggage porter’s mother is sick. If you could possibly manage a flexible response in order not to escalate the difficulties.’
‘Sure,’ said the tourist and he began to explain the whole thing to his wife while I grappled with the controls of the ancient lift. The tourist’s wife said to Harvey, ‘What time do the stores close downtown?’
Harvey said, ‘I’m a stranger here.’ The lift began to ascend.
‘They are going to fire me,’ Harvey said when we were finally in my room.
I opened the bottle of Black Label that I had bought on the plane. Harvey bounced full length on the hard bed with a great rumble of straining metal, and sang a snatch of his song, ‘You’ve got to escalate or even quantify,’ but he was no longer really drunk.
‘Official?’ I asked.
‘More or less,’ said Harvey. ‘The last time I went to see the Embassy Security Officer, he gave me a printed form called “The Foreign Service Retirement and Disability System”. What’s more they’ve got me working in the visa section with an FSO 83 leaning over my shoulder all day.’
‘And Jindriska?’ I said.
Harvey got to his feet and walked across to the wash basin. He selected a cake of soap from my open case. He sniffed at the soap. ‘Lemon,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ I said. He sniffed the soap again and then began to wash his hands. ‘She wants to stay here in some ways,’ Harvey said. ‘But she will do as I ask. There’s no point in my persuading her to go Stateside when there’s no slight chance of the State Department giving her a visa.’
‘You work in the visa department,’ I said.
‘That’s just what they are waiting for,’ said Harvey. He continued to wash his hands with Freudian preciseness. ‘…Hell, they’re right. I’m not complaining. I’m in the Political section, I’ve got no business falling in love with a Czechoslovak girl, but…’ He pulled a face at me in the mirror.
‘Maybe I should marry her,’ I said. ‘That would make her a British subject. Then you’ll have no trouble.’ Harvey wasn’t in a laughing mood. ‘Yeah,’ he said and continued to wash his hands until they had all but disappeared into great white boxinggloves of sudsy lather. ‘You see,’ he said quietly, ‘that’s why those two comedians tonight gave me the jitters. I don’t know what I’d do if I found that Jindriska was…working for…’
‘Harvey,’ I said sharply, ‘don’t get so maudlin. Just treat your work like a mistress: don’t tell your wife about it wherever she was born.’ Harvey grinned. I said, ‘Stop trying to wash your troubles away and come and have a drink.’ I was wondering where I would get another friendly contact in Prague half as good as Harvey.
He rinsed and dried his hands a little awkwardly, smiled and took his drink. Down the corridor I could hear the American tourist saying, ‘Jiminy, Jane, there are no darned curtains at the window. I wonder which room those two guys are in.’ We heard him walk down the corridor in our direction. He stopped, then he called, ‘Is there a fellow American hereabouts?’
We listened to him calling all along the corridor. Then I said to Harvey, ‘Where do I meet this second guy who was in Treblinka camp?’
‘Jan-im-Glück’s brother,’ said Harvey, ‘they hate each other.’ He went and stared through the dingy lace into Wenceslas Square. ‘But if you want to see the death of your guy in writing he’ll be in the Pinkas synagogue at ten thirty in the morning. That’s in the Staré Mesto near the Ghetto section. There are several synagogues there but Pinkas is where he’ll be.’
‘I’ll be there,’ I said. I poured Harvey another drink. ‘I wish I knew what Stok was thinking,’ said Harvey.
* * *
1 OBZ: Obranne Zpravodajestvi—security police of the army.
2 poputchik (Russian): fellow-traveller (lit. and fig.).
3 FSO 8: Foreign Service Officer, 8th Grade. Grades go from 1 to 8. 8 is lowest.
Chapter 34
COLONEL ALEXEYEVITCH OLEG STOK
Monday, October 21st
‘It’s not my job to think,’ said Stok. ‘I employ youngsters to do that; their minds aren’t so cluttered up with knowledge.’ He eased his boots off and flexed his toes in front of the stove. Stok could pick things up with his toes when he was a kid. It was a long time since he had demonstrated that. They had a different set of values nowadays and not only about prehensile toes.
‘Veal I’m having,’ said the Czech officer whose name was Vaclav.
‘Anything you have,’ said Stok. He wasn’t a fussy man. Something hot to eat, something cold to drink and a bed—with sheets if possible—and he wouldn’t complain.
‘Veal and strawberries,’ said Vaclav. Stok nodded.
‘They are tinned,’ said Vaclav.
‘Good God, man. I’m not Tsar Nicholas. Just heat it and bring it in.’ Stok wished he hadn’t said ‘God’; he’d probably given the wrong impression the other way now. Vaclav went out to the kitchen. Stok lit up. He relished the taste of Makhora. He made a point of smoking fancy things when he was talking to Westerners but the coarsest Russian tobacco was what he enjoyed most.
Vaclav came back with two plates of meat. He had prepared them himself; he hoped Stok would understand. There was no chance of getting servants, they were all working in the factories. The last one went back to the farm, could you imagine that?
‘Easily,’ said Stok. ‘The only place anyone gets a square meal in this country.’
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ said Vaclav but he relaxed into a smile.
‘You can say anything you want when I have my boots off,’ said Stok. ‘That’s what I tell all my people. Anything I hear while my boots are off is off the record, privileged you might say.’
Vaclav slipped his shoes off. He wasn’t sure if Comrade Colonel Stok expected him to do that but they were damp anyway. He turned them soles upwards near the stove. He didn’t want them to lose shape, for even in Czechoslovakia where shoes were a major industry—the Gottwaldov factory that used to be Bata turning out thousands of pairs—even here there was no excuse for waste. He stuffed the inside of the shoe with strips torn from Lidova Demokracie.
‘Don’t use that,’ Stok bellowed.
Vaclav looked down at the torn paper. He had torn Walther Ulbricht into two irregular halves.
‘Pravda is what I use,’ Stok boomed. ‘It’s best for boots, seems to draw the moisture out somehow.’ Vaclav smiled; he knew he was being teased.
Stok ate his veal and drank the whole of his lager in one go.
‘You don’t waste time,’ said Vaclav.
‘I had one knocked over once,’ Stok said, and roared with laughter.
Vaclav arranged the complicated system of dampers on the large white porcelain stove and the fire began to whine and crackle.
‘You should come up to Berlin,’ said Stok. ‘It’s damned comfortable up there, I can tell you. They know how to look after themselves, Vaclav, these Germans. Sometimes I wonder how we managed to beat them.’
‘The Nazis?’ said Vaclav.
‘Oh we still haven’t beaten them,’ said Stok. ‘The Germans I meant.’
Germans. What went wrong with Lenin’s dream of a marriage between the Russian and German proletariat? The same thing that went wrong with lesser marriages—the image of illusion is shattered by the hammer of reality. It was all very well extending the hand of friendship to the German proletariat until you found them in Wehrmacht uniform burning down your village. It went wrong then. Stok nodded to himself.
‘I hate Germans,’ said Vaclav, ‘I was in the RG1 at one time.’
Stok raised his eyebrows as though he hadn’t known. ‘We knew what to do with Germans,’ Vaclav went on. ‘The lucky ones took just
their hand-luggage and went across the border in cattle trucks. Three million of them. They were glad to go. That’s what to do with Germans.’
‘That’s what we did,’ said Stok. That’s what we did wrong, he thought to himself. Lenin would never have agreed to the forced shift of factories and populations. Stok looked at Vaclav’s pale eyes. He’s a Stalinist, Stok decided. They all are, the Czechs. Pushing the Germans across the border was a piece of pure Stalinism.
‘The Germans are the wild animals of Europe, whatever sort of flag they carry.’
‘Germans are more complex than that. I could give you a dozen examples.’ Stok pulled his fleshy chin. ‘I am faced with a problem at this moment, which is a matter of understanding the German character, and quite honestly, Vaclav, I don’t know whether I’m a fit man to do it.’
‘A man that stormed the Winter Palace?’ said Vaclav.
‘Ah,’ said Stok smiling, ‘the number of times I have stormed that Winter Palace. But it’s no good, my boy. We can’t go on storming our Winter Palaces for ever. We must storm new Palaces every day, for that’s how we are judged, upon last week’s desk work, not upon the night I had a little too much to drink and couldn’t see the danger involved in charging riflemen with a rake. We don’t want any more Winter Palaces, Vaclav, as I told that young fool tonight; ideas will infiltrate the most heavily fortified citadel.’ Stok nodded to himself and fingered the flesh under his chin as though trying to tear it free.
‘Ideas travel,’ Stok said. Both ways, he added to himself. He thought of the young tough that poor Major Bykovsky had for a son. He wore leather jackets and pointed shoes and sat in his room getting ancient American jazz records wordperfect. Some say he wrote to film stars in Hollywood. There should be a dossier on him, Stok thought, but he’d known Bykovsky since 1926; it would break his heart. When he got back to Berlin he would inquire into the whole business again. These sort of sloppy sentimental inefficiencies were a betrayal of all he believed in. But still…