I don't call out to him or run after him. I watch him shamble back to the house where he lives. What duty do I owe to a man I used to live with and who is unlikely to be among the living much longer?
He occupies my thoughts too much. Somewhere deep down in my soul there is a sense of guilt that cries out that I wasn't a good enough wife to him, which is why he left me, and also maybe why he neglected his illness — he had no one to care for him. I turn away and start walking to the tram stop.
5
I'll be thirty already at the end of November. I was a Prague Spring boy. In other words I was endowed with hope, or false hopes, more likely.
My mother was a primary-school teacher. She was thirty-five when I was born. She married late although she had known Dad since she was very young. But he was jailed before they could marry. Dad had been a Scout leader and wanted to remain one even after the Scouts were banned. Mum waited nine long years for him, for which I admired her. When he came back, Dad apparently told her she was the best woman in the world, but he didn't want children. He said there was no point in bringing new slaves into the world. And then came that brief period of hope that justice would be restored. All such hopes that justice will suddenly drop from heaven are mostly false, as I fairly soon discovered. But I was glad that twenty years later Dad lived to see the end of the regime that ruined his youth. Dad died seven years ago, when enthusiasm still reigned after that long-awaited and yet sudden end of Bolshevism.
In fact the end wasn't so sudden. I remember the second half of the 1980s; they were interesting times. The regime we detested was just about to pass away. It was no longer capable of arousing enough fear, particularly among us younger people. It wasn't able to jail all its opponents or drive them out of the country. It could no longer prevent our demonstrations, even though it sent its truncheon-wielders against us and used water cannon against
people it seemed to regard as worse than fire. For my part I always managed to extricate myself from such situations and I was only arrested once. But even that was an experience for me. When you're standing there defenceless against the wall of a police station with your hands above your head and they're yelling at you and you know that they have you in their power, you start to think the worst. I have to admit that like all people who find themselves in such a situation for the first time, I was afraid. I was afraid even though I knew that — unlike the time when my dad was in prison — they didn't murder people any more and in most cases they didn't even send them to prison. I knew that I risked being kicked out of university, and at the interrogation they shamelessly hinted as much, but they didn't manage to intimidate me that way. I was increasingly losing interest in the study of history — or rather the 'Marxist' version of it we were taught, which tried to formulate some firmly quantifiable and pathetically simplified laws to cover all phenomena.
And the dean actually did summon me a few days later and voiced profound disappointment that I had besmirched the good name of the faculty by my indiscreet behaviour. I was afraid he was going to ask me whether I at least regretted behaving rashly, at which I would either remain silent or say I had done nothing rash, but the dean preferred to avoid any such confrontation and dismissed me, saying that the faculty senate would deal with my case.
I waited for another summons or even a verdict in writing, but nothing happened. The patres minorum gentium who had been imposed on us as professors couldn't make up their minds to chuck me out, and even the regime's most dyed-in-the-wool supporters knew that its time was up. I gave up my course anyway, but I did so of my own free will.
The demonstrations weren't what held my interest most at that time. I couldn't help feeling I was part of a play and everything had already been written by someone else. History has probably
always looked like that. The soldiers move according to the generals' orders, the generals move according to the emperors' or other leaders' orders. And the latter move in accordance to some invisible forces, some Weltgeist.
In those days what interested me most were concerts of protest songs. Some of the protest singers had admittedly been forced to leave the country; but for every singer exiled, two appeared in his place. They used to come and perform for us from all over the republic and we in turn would travel to their concerts, every one of which seemed to me like a ceremony, a promise of future freedom.
It was also a time of debates. Sometimes we'd stay up all night in the hall of residence discussing everything we thought important: politics first, followed closely by sex, but also religion and the prospects of our civilization. These didn't seem very bright, although in our corner of the world news only reached us in mutilated form.
We were all agreed that communism was a perversion, but
there was less consensus on other matters. In fact it worried me that we had no ideals. We were against communism, but not so
much because it was criminal as because we wanted an easier life. Different food, a car and a villa with a swimming pool — or at least a country cabin with a vegetable patch. Except that when they asked me what I proposed instead, I didn't have much idea either. I'd just say something about freedom and a fully independent judiciary, or about how we'd miss the real point of life if we only set our eyes on material goals.
And then a revolution — or what was declared a revolution — descended from on high, and there was no more time for talk about ideals. In those days we'd go from factory to factory as representatives of the striking students and I even travelled as far as Ostrava to meet the coal miners. I went there in trepidation as I'd never been in that part of the world and from what I'd heard, I expected them to arrest us before we even left the station. Goodness knows where or how we'd end up.
We weren't arrested. The city was filthy and the air almost unbreathable, but the people seemed friendly and they listened to us with interest, even applauding our speeches and our promises which, as I later realized, had little in common with reality.
I don't know how those people are doing these days. Maybe they're worse off. Maybe they're sorry they didn't send us packing and instead march in ranks on rebellious Prague.
That was something else I grasped only later: that people almost always long for a change. As soon as the mood for change prevails, they are seized by enthusiasm and the ecstatic conviction that change will suddenly lend their lives some unexpected meaning. But because they expect that change only from outside, they generally end up disillusioned.
There are also moments in history when people strive for a change within themselves, but probably the last time that happened was during the Reformation.
When the period of strikes, demonstrations and speeches came to an end, I was so enthused by politics that I decided to abandon my studies. I was attracted by the idea of becoming part of history, of being a player in the major events that I used to read about with fascination and wonder. I started to write political commentaries for the press because I realized straightaway that the press and above all television were the best places to capture people's attention, and that they were a good stepping stone into politics. My political ambitions didn't please Vlasta, my then girlfriend. She maintained that I wasn't cut out for politics, that I was still a kid who enjoyed playing games. I wasn't hard or determined enough to be a politician, by which she meant I wasn't mature enough. But most of all she was afraid I wouldn't have enough time left for her.