Posts
Ian Whitwham has given me permission to post this wonderful and wildly funny account of his three visits to Prague, the first in November/December 1987. I still can't stop laughing, even when I am occasionally the butt of some of his gentle mockery. He mocks himself more often, and the antics of the Czechoslovak Secret Police. He is not politically correct, but I guarantee he'll make you laugh. I had asked him to write an account of his first visit, from 24th November 1987 to 10th December 1987. This he did, and much, much more. I had planned to add it as an appendix to a book I had written about Czechoslovakia, which covered the years I lived and worked there, from April 1986-October/November 1989 (it also covered the years from 1948-1954, which I later researched).
The book may still be published (it needs some further corrections and restructuring), and it will certainly include Ian's hilariously witty account. But Ian's contribution shouldn't wait any longer to see the light of day. It could also probably benefit from some professional editing and improved layout/indentation, but I think many of you will enjoy the trip(s) as written, served still fresh and raw, as it were, even after all these years. I think it's a classic, not just of comic writing and social observation, but it's also a valuable testimony, that of an intelligent outsider's or visitor's perceptions of those dramatic times. I love Ian's style and distinctive voice. Over to Ian, one of the witnesses, with many thanks:
PRAGUE
by Ian Whitwham
(copyright Ian Whitwham)
November 1987
(Videos at end)
I’m going through the Iron Curtain. I’m smuggling a banned book for Jim. ‘Professional Foul’, by Tom Stoppard - about smuggling a banned book through the Iron Curtain - and getting into big trouble with the Czech Police.
They’re over there. Customs. Waiting for me. Grim and cheerless.
Jim’s behind them. Waving and smiling. Will I
get through?
I panic. I sweat. I hand over my baggage..
The dodgy tome is under a Saul Bellow.
Is he banned too? Literature is important
here.
I sweat some more. Is it the cell and
truncheons? I smile at hatchet faces. They do the Stare. I get a little
frisson. I feel Kafkaesque..
Why am I here?
I’m a teacher - Jim’s guest. I’m a wet liberal and lapsed socialist from Thatcher’s drear Britain Old Town
I seem to have slipped into a trance - into
some kind of Byzantium
Jim introduces me to his smiling staff. I see John Lennon.
He’s painted on a ceiling. I give him
Tom Stoppard. He laughs. Was he winding me up?
Not at all - things are serious here. Systems are crumbling. The Council is caught
in the crossfire - in much drama. Jim
takes me to his office. He briefs me. Don’t make waves. Keep your counsel. You
will be watched. They watch everyone. No big deal.
Beware of hidden mikes. They’re all over the
place. They’re in this room. Beware of women. With high cheekbones. Sirens who deal in danger. Don’t be a clot.
Don’t get seduced. Like that Englishman who got his legs broken....
And beware of men in leather jackets and
raincoats! I rather relish this.
‘You don’t need a weatherman to know which way
the wind blows’.
Otherwise Prague
It clearly is for many others. There’s a
regular traffic of, teachers, actors, dissidents, poets, drivers, diplomats
and, no doubt, the odd informer. I meet Markéta - a brilliant artist. I meet Magdalena - actress, singer and wit. I meet her singing
chum Jan. Jim seems to know half Prague
While he’s bringing down walls I’m wandering
down streets. I watch out for spies. There goes one - gazing from a pew in Charles University
3
I gaze on altars and
graves like broken teeth. I walk always with my Walkman on. I pass Nazi hospitals and pictures of Stalin
and Brezhnev and hear Marianne Faithful singing ‘Broken English’
‘Don’t speak to me in German.
Don’t speak to me in Russian.
Speak to me in Broken English’
And Leonard Cohen sings
‘And then we take Berlin
I wander into St Nicholas’ Church. A guide - with those cheekbones - ushers me
round. It’s all so baroque and roll.
‘Why so many candles?’ ‘It makes the Christs weep!’
‘Why so many writhing saints? So many pierced
Sebastians?’
‘Orgasms’ says the siren. ‘Repressive
Systems...’
I go down basements with bars all smoke and
mirrors. I drink Becherovka. Or is it absinthe. After a few hits anything can
happen. Golems and angels and mad alchemists can happen. Charles Bridge
‘Acid rain!’ says my companion. ‘Sulphur
Russian winds blow. I could be walking on air. I nearly am.
‘This bridge is built on eggshells!’
Perfect. I laugh at all this useless beauty.
I look up at the Hradčany and Kafka’s Castle. There he goes
with his sharp suit and dandy ways and his dark laughter. I must find his
grave. I ask anyone. No one can tell me. He’s banned. Still. I get directions.
I follow them. He’s not there. Wrong graveyard. Perfect. I go to Nový
židovský hřbitov. There he is - under a plain headstone with conkers all around.
I see him again. A gaunt seer, off the Old Town Square
Most evenings Jim takes me to basements to hear
poets and singers. Or to Fringe Theatres
to see dissident plays. I meet Havel ’s wife
Olga. We see a hugely subversive ‘Measure for Measure’. We visit Markéta’s
father to see his paintings. Culture is
politics. Poetry is necessary here. Serious stuff. I meet many brave people.
Without these evenings Prague
I can’t work out the System. It’s everywhere
- a low level drizzle. It doesn’t seem to do fifties terror. It just seems to
impose a dulled acquiescence. I want to like it. I soon loathe it. It kills the spirit. It tries to kill the
soul. You see it everywhere....
A
very old woman hoovers the altars in St Mary of the Snows. She kneels before fonts and looks quite skeletal. She looks
about to meet her maker in whom she must not believe. Some dumpling women
sitting in a cellar at dawn. They’re just off the night shift and tuck into 3-tier cardiac-arrest cakes and doughnuts and sausages. They smoke fiercely and
take shots of Slivovitz. Shots of oblivion. At 6 am. Teenage Czech girls gazing
at Free West anorexics in Benetton. They queue for ice-cream. For ‘zmrzlina’ - it even sounds like being sick. Battered stoics queuing for soup while tourists
dine in the few plush restaurants. Just like me. Our holiday in their
misery. I feel a voyeur of rotten lives.
Resistance seems pointless. Get too stroppy, too dissident, too intellectual -
and it’s the bad schools, the baseball bats or the boiler room for you.
The Party is always having parties.
Celebrations of the Czechoslovakian Socialist
Republic Wenceslas Square
5
‘Holiday of
the Working People of the Whole World!’ says one.
‘The aim of the Communist Party: the Happiness
of Man’ says another.
Ah, but which man?
‘Mother Russia will take care of you for
ever!’ says one above Hotel Europa.
Presumably in the Al Pacino sense.
Some are extremely long.
‘They’re paid by the letter’
I’m a bit of a party animal and so pop down
next day to Wenceslas Square
Music occurs. Well, noise. Tinny and tuneless
and taped. Migraine music. Sergeant Husák’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. I rather
hope it could be Egon Bondy’s Happy Hearts Club Banned by the
Plastic People of the Universe. Fat chance - they’ve been squashed. Or the
Rolling Stones knocking out ‘Street Fightin’ Man’. (They will! they will!)... The din squawks to
a halt. The Czechs somehow keep straight faces. They don’t really hear it.
They’ve been not listening since 1968 .. or is it 1948?
Time for the porkers to unleash the porkies. A
Big Cheese with Brylcreem parting cracks the ‘annual smile’. And he’s off. He
drones on and on like a robot - a Czech word.
‘Things are jolly
good!’ translates Markéta. His reflections are mangled in the sound system.
It’s all static and shrieks and feedback. He sounds like he’s eating wasps. He
talks in tongues. Is it Russian, Czech or Moon language?
There is gunpoint applause. It only encourages
him. Off he goes again. For a few more hours. You grow old. You lose
the will to live. You must find it hilarious. Don’t laugh! They’ll
only photograph you and your children will get expelled and you’ll be cleaning
windows.
6
So the Czechs construct their faces in a grim
rictus of attention. The chasm between the party and the populace is total. It’s
hilarious and depressing. It’s like the London SWP times ten. A numbing NUT
meeting times fifty. I’ll tell those left wing loonies what it’s really like
when I get back to London
Jim arranges for me to visit a couple of
Prague Secondary Schools. Lovely teachers. Lovely children. I go into
classrooms and answer questions from the pupils who speak good English. I talk
of London
‘Have I ever met Princess Diana?’
I talk of my pupils and their music.
‘Do they like “Iron Maiden”? Black Sabbath”?’
Aren’t they banned? I’d ban them.
The pupils hang on to my every word. I
mention Dickens. Teachers smile. They like Dickens. And Shakespeare? Yes! And
Steinbeck? ‘Of Mice and Men?’ Yes! Books are important here. More so than in
the free West. My pupils throw them across the classroom in my London
‘And Orwell?’ No, not Orwell! Definitely not.
‘And Kafka?’ A cheap shot. No, not Kafka at all. Who he?
I tell them more about my pupils and suggest
they could be pen friends? They seem uncertain. They are polite, clever and
civil. They seem to have more proper knowledge than my pupils. They are more
disciplined and more literate. They seem to respect learning much more. Maybe
it’s all that Marxist Leninism. And yet...and yet... there’s more than a whiff
of Gradgrind about it all. And the fear.
I mention ‘Perestroika.’ It gets tense.
Discussion is squashed.
7
I go back into the
staffroom. The teachers are most open about things. I’m surprised. They smile
about Kafka. I apologise. They know what I think and they agree and it will get
better and these things can’t last for ever.
Oh .. and there are informers in
the class.
Do they inform my Nemesis? The Dominatrix.
Jim, as ever, is improving East-West
relations. To this end we will go horseriding in Bohemia
‘Have you ever been on a horse?’ says our
teacher Miss Strict with her riding crop. She looks a bit like Olive Oil. I
have never been near a horse. But I can’t say no. I don’t know the word. So I
mumble.
I am ordered up a ladder. I clamber up this
ladder. I perch on a beast as big as a barn. I feel dizzy. It eats grass. It leans over. I fall off.
Once more I go up the ladder. I am tied on. Our horses walk towards distant
horizons. I have not suggested to my horse to do this. I am very frightened. Is
this for laughing at the Party? Larking around with dissidents? Mentioning ‘Perestroika’ to those children? I experience pure terror. I try to suggest
that I’ve never been on a horse. Miss
Strict cares not a fig. She discusses
things equestrian with the Cultural Attaché. In Czech. Bohemia Bohemia Bohemia
8
I am possibly dead.
This affords Jim cheap mirth. He sits smug in the saddle. Giggling with little
dignity. But not La Whiplash - she goes rather ballistic. Cultural relations
have taken a turn for the worse. She yells
at Jim.
‘Are you responsible for this fuckwit?’ seems
the gist of her observations. Jim cannot wipe the smile off his face. We say
goodbye. We will not return. Never. He’s still laughing. I’m still in trauma.
Thank goodness there’s a party tonight at the
Council. Jim’s organised it. December 8. An evening of poetry, folk and rock ‘n’
roll. It’s terrific. Poets recite, Magda and Jan and Jim sing. Everyone gets on
and dances - secretaries and drivers and philosophers and lift attendants and
artists. I drink too much Becherovka. I tell Jim he’s doing a great job.
‘When the mode of the music changes the walls
come tumbling down!’
It’s late. I’m kidnapped by Magda and her
chums down empty moonless streets. We end up on a deserted Charles Bridge
(Listen to Ian's Prague song "Felice", as amended and arranged by Ron Kavana).
(Listen to Ian's Prague song "Felice", as amended and arranged by Ron Kavana).
I return at dawn. With
two legs. Jim and Maria smile. I must fly back to the Free West. I thank them
both for such a significant time. I must return to Prague
‘This little mother has
claws...’
9
October 1989
Through the Iron Curtain again. Through the
customs with some rock ‘n’ roll - some Clash, Pogues, Tom Waits.
I meet Markéta by the Vltava .
Raincoats skulk under the turning golden leaves. She tells me of impending
demonstrations, of ‘manifestations’ in the square. She has illustrated ‘Alice Havel ’ scratched on church walls. We hear angry jazz and poets
in basements.
Tonight it’s Jim’s turn. He’s reading his
verse, his lyrics, his rock ‘n’ roll. We
go through the bitter streets to a bookshop. It is chock-full with writers and
the odd raincoat. There’s a balcony full
of derelicts. Wrong ‘uns. Are they the Plastic People of the Universe? One introduces himself as an axe murderer. Is
that Havel ? Is he out of jail? I’m introduced
to Holub. Miroslav Holub! A real thrill. My pupils love his poetry - especially
‘History Lesson’ and ‘Fairy Tale.’ I
tell him. I quote him:
‘lone as an arctic
fox through the cold unending rain into the world.
He seems pleased.
He seems pleased.
Jimi Potts - rock ‘n’ roll diplomat - gets up
to read. I think back to the time he
used to declaim Ginsberg in Wadham College, room 7 staircase 12. Off he goes - sometimes in Czech! This isn’t
a precious poetry club in Somerset
10
He does another (his First Impressions of Prague, from 16 Poems, launched the same evening)
‘Being above a
butcher’s shop
Makes Prague
Smoked Gothic,
Pork baroque;
Dvořák in a bloody apron’
More! He does. More applause. It is most
moving. It ends. The axe murderer pours
me a red wine. And another. I feel significant again. A woman approaches. She has the cheekbones.
She speaks in broken English.
‘Would you like to go for a coffee?’
I must be mature. I must not be a clot.
‘Yes!’
We traipse through rather romantic
murk. We enter a Communist ‘Happy
Eater’. ‘The Suicidal Eater’? All plastic and lit like a cop shop. We order
coffees. We smile at each other.
‘Did you like the poetry?’
‘But of course!’
‘Who are you?’
This is more like it! I tell her.
‘What are you doing here?’
Fabulous tensions. The coffees arrive. She sinks three sugars.
‘I have a sister. She owns a hotel!’ She
sinks two more sugar lumps. We seem to have slipped into bad Pinter.
‘I have been to Britain
‘I’m from Ladbroke Grove!’
It gets worse..
‘I am passionate about Britain Bangor - and Brushstrokes - and Bowie
11
We seem to be in the
realms of a florid schizophrenia. Has she been badly briefed or just bonkers on
the system? She sinks more sugars. I address each topic in turn. Bangor Bangor
And Bowie Bowie
A blank.
‘Or ‘Heroes’ - about cold war lovers?
More blanks. More sugars.
‘You’re spying on me, aren’t you?’ I don’t feel good. Our tryst conks out. We
smile. I pay. We leave. We say goodbye. I say good luck. What a job. Her bosses
are losing the plot. It must be over. I return to the Council. I talk to Markéta.
‘If we have our revolution,’ she says. ‘It’ll
take at least 40 years to recover from.’
I have a last coffee alone under chandeliers
in Hotel Europa. The waiter has a dirty collar and sleepless eyes and seems
bone-tired and bored of it all. The sky is pitch outside and snow falls thick.
I try to scribble something significant on a beer mat. I fail. I must leave to
get a plane. I cross an empty Wenceslas
Square Europe .
Palach did it over there. The snow swirls and falls hard. My long coat is quite
covered. You just know it’s over. I walk down by the Vltava .
All those towers and steeples and saints. There can be nowhere more beautiful
than this city in the falling snow. It does me in. I get on the plane and it’s
all gone.
12
Coda 1
Another month and the walls all fall down.
It’s over! The Velvet Revolution! Thousands and thousands in Wenceslas Square Havel on the balcony! Havel
on the balcony with Dubček! It gives you goosebumps. I watch it all on television. With Markéta. She’s staying with us in London. She feels wonderful. The Velvet Revolution!
The end of the Cold War. The end of all that suffering. All those show trials
and 4 am calls and beatings and buggings and interrogations and immolations and
suicides and files and photos and banned books. All those ruined lives. Forty
years of it! All gone. At a stroke. And what did it? The forces of history?
Kruschev? The Pope? Gorbachev? Coca Cola? The Voice of America
And the Rolling Stones played
Coda 2 - July 2006
Jim and I return to Prague
Summer rages. The sun blasts shadows off
the cobblestones. We wander into Wenceslas
Square Leicester Square London
13
We go to the old Town Square
All that useless
beauty.
It gets worse. Even Kafka - the banned Kafka,
the significant, dangerous, necessary Kafka has been marketed and spun.
Frankie’s gone to Hollywood
A man flogs jumping
beetles on a stick.
Gregor Samsor jumps
about the pavement.
And Kafka wanted his
work all burned.
All’s not lost. We meet Markéta. She’s doing
really well. She’s just illustrated ‘Metamorphosis’ and Paul Muldoon, who says
she is a genius. She designs the Czech Republic Havel .
She’s working with Tom Stoppard on ‘Rock’ n’ Roll’! She has reservations about that Velvet
Revolution.
‘We did it for Kafka and Chekhov - not just
for Tescos and KFC.’
We all end up at a Kentucky Fried Chicken. I order a ‘Twister’. Suddenly a poet passes -
as they used to do. A ghost of Old
Prague. Jim hails him. Jim still knows them all. He chases the poet down the
street. It is Pavel. A major poet! He introduces us to his Muse. She’s got the
cheekbones. We go down the backstreets and even wander across Charles Bridge
So much of Prague London
Ian and Jill Whitwham
No comments:
Post a Comment