One of the men started shouting at me not to start pontificating. Who was I pretending to be?
A man in a hat.
They started to shriek that if I was trying to make fools of them, this would all end unpleasantly.
I probably wanted to look like a farmer, I explained.
Why? Did I have a farmer’s background?
I said nothing.
Why had I shouted antistate slogans?
I said that I didn’t shout anything because I don’t shout slogans on principle.
Then who was shouting antistate slogans if not you?
I said I hadn’t heard anyone shouting any slogans.
Two more detained students were brought in, two of my classmates dressed in Moravian folk costumes.
My two men were obviously in a hurry to move on. The one who had been asking the questions now emphatically warned me not to think that the time had come for any sort of counterrevolutionary activity. The working class had made it possible for us to study so that we might become useful members of a Socialist society, not so that we could walk around the streets shouting antistate slogans.
The other one pointed out that they had my name, and if they ever caught me again at similar provocations, I wouldn’t get out of it so easily.
It occurred to me in the tram that nothing essential had changed so far. Academic freedom had certainly not begun to apply.
Essay: Dictators and Dictatorship, p. 467
9
I turned in my thesis on Karel Čapek; it was over two hundred pages and thus exceeded the required length severalfold and dismayed one of my young reviewers who worked at the Institute for Czech Literature. According to him, Čapek had been too connected to the “bourgeois republic,” something I had insufficiently criticized, and in his opinion I had overestimated the significance of Čapek’s work. But my defense speech was successful, and I received a degree in philology.
I left the department with my red diploma, boasted of it at home, and then put it in a box with other documents and never needed to pull it out again.
My field did not provide many opportunities to make a living. I wanted to write, and for this it seemed more appropriate to work as an editor for some journal. Not many were being published, however, except specialized journals for beekeepers, mushroom hunters, or different kinds of engineers. The political situation that arose after the ruling party — of which I was a member — publicly admitted, at least partially, that in some areas it had acted wrongfully worked to my advantage. Party functionaries realized they would have to curry favor a little with the citizens even in the intellectual sphere (if popular journals can be considered intellectual). In addition to Socialist platitudes, they would have to offer readers, in carefully scrutinized printed matter, some entertainment. This led to their decision to transform the weekly magazine Květy into a reader-friendly family magazine containing articles on fashion, chess, and stamp collecting, and a children’s corner as well as reportage from home and abroad. Květy was seeking young editors to help realize this goal.
One day I decided to stop by its editorial office. I knew no one there, not even a name, and I didn’t have anything to show except a single story that had been snubbed and a few newspaper articles. The editor I spoke with was ten years older than I was. He said he wanted the news section, which he was in charge of, to start writing about bona fide life problems, not just about how somewhere the five-year plan was being fulfilled. He believed Květy would stand behind even articles that were exceptionally critical. He told me he would take a look at my work and in the meantime I could fill out the necessary paperwork at the personnel office.
He called me a week later. He was pleased with both my story and my articles. When would it be convenient for me to start work?
And so I became an editor at Květy.
*
The editorial offices were housed in a newly constructed building called Rudého práva on Na Poříčí Street. Everything here was clean and tidy, and there was a bathroom with shower stalls at the end of the hallway. The secretary affixed my name on the door of my office — all this was a sign that I had finally become an adult and could earn a living.
I soon discovered that the tram took a roundabout way to my office, and I decided it would be quicker to run to work. I would cut across Vinohrady and run down along Žižkov Hill past the train station Praha-střed, and then I’d be at work. My daily jog took about fifteen minutes, and I always got to the editorial offices drenched in sweat. Since it wasn’t appropriate for an editor to work in shorts and a sweaty T-shirt, I filled one of my desk drawers with extra shirts and a pair of trousers. I would run to the office, take a shower, change into fresh clothes, and set to work.
My behavior, however, did not meet with understanding among the bosses of the editorial office. About three weeks later, the deputy editor in chief called me in for a discussion. He had nothing against me personally, but I had to realize that everywhere I went I was representing the magazine, that is, the publisher as well. It was not appropriate for thousands of people to see me hurtling along the streets of Prague every day carrying a briefcase. What if somebody recognized me? Then he would go around saying we employed a nutcase who didn’t even earn enough for a tram ticket. If I traveled like a normal person, that is, not running, it didn’t matter if I came by foot or by tram.
This was my first act of wrongdoing during the few months I was employed at Květy.
The editor in chief at the time, at least in name, was a bad writer whose only merit, besides membership in the party, was that he’d composed a novel in which he assiduously and mercilessly denigrated exploitation in Tomáš Bat’a’s factories. However, he never strayed into the offices; even his paycheck had to be sent to him by mail. In reality his deputy headed the magazine. He was a diminutive man of indeterminate age but somewhere under fifty, and was perpetually afraid an article that could be considered inaccurate or even provocative would leak into the magazine. Another class-conscious bigwig worked here, the venerable widow of the Communist writer Egon Ervín Kisch. This comrade likewise did little actual work; instead she watched over everything that went on in the editorial offices and apparently did not take kindly to the fact that youngish and insufficiently class-conscious people were employed there who, in her opinion, threatened the quality, but most of all the party mission, of the magazine. By her side stood the chairwoman of the party organization (she sometimes wrote as well on women’s issues, that is, mostly fashion), who was always prepared to call a party meeting and raise the issue of how something unseemly could happen. Among other worthy comrades was the foreign desk editor, who limited his reporting to articles on other friendly Socialist countries and telephone calls with opponents of Western imperialists and devotees of revolution throughout the rest of the world. I found myself for the first, and actually last, time in an environment ruled by prominent Communists, who were always resolved to advocate whatever the party leadership required. I was stunned by how the environment bubbled over with rancor, continual suspicion, malicious gossip, and personnel screening.
Once my colleague Kabíček and I set off on an assignment to southern Bohemia and instead of a photographer we took along a graphic artist, a woman who was approximately our age. We thought it would be interesting to have her drawings instead of photographs enliven our text.
This deed scandalized the reputable widow. At a meeting, she accused us of using editorial funds to organize a sex excursion, which had tarnished the magazine’s reputation. The artist burst into tears, and we tried in vain to convince everyone that we hadn’t touched her. We got off with a warning and instructions that similar excursions would not be approved in the future. From now on, only our photographers could accompany us on assignments.