‘Student.’
‘Ah, yes. Not very imaginative.’
‘The name of the paper or my articles?’
‘Oh no, your articles are very imaginative.’
‘We are all imagining a world where you may speak your mind, aren’t we?’
The man turned to Sam with a wry smile. ‘Your lady friend is very beautiful, Mr Wareham. But she bites. You must keep her on a tight lead.’
‘I’m not on anyone’s lead, thank you.’
Sam took her arm and eased her out of the crush. Lenka’s fury heightened the colour in her cheeks yet turned her eyes glacial. It was a disturbing combination. ‘I don’t think picking a fight with a senior functionary in the interior ministry is the best way of passing the evening,’ he said. ‘Let’s go and find ourselves something to drink.’
‘What is that man’s name?’
‘Kučera. Petr, Patrik? I can’t remember.’
‘How do you know him?’
‘You meet all sorts in my line of work.’
‘What a horrid job.’ She looked round the crowded room as though to get her bearings. ‘Now let’s go and speak to the First Secretary.’
‘The First Secretary? Don’t be daft. They won’t let you near him.’
‘Daft? What is daft?’
‘Silly, stupid.’
‘It is not silly. Or stupid. He is meant to represent the people, is he not? I am the people.’
‘Actually he represents the Communist Party, which is a very different thing.’ But she was already away across the room, pushing amongst the crowd to where the Czechoslovak and Romanian officials were making a little festive scrum. Sam hurried after her. He reached the edge of the group just as she achieved the middle.
‘Comrade Dubček,’ he heard her say. Someone tried to move her back but Dubček put up a hand to stop him. ‘I just wanted to tell you that we are all behind you,’ she said. ‘You are surrounded by all these officials who keep you from mixing with the ordinary people, so I thought you ought to know.’
He smiled benignly on her. ‘And what is your name, miss? You appear to know mine – I feel I ought to know yours.’
She hesitated. She was normally decisive, but this time she did hesitate. And Sam knew exactly what she was going to say before she even uttered a word.
‘I am Lenka Vadinská.’
There was a terrible stillness. The name sounded in the silence like a funeral bell. People shifted away as though leaving space at a graveside. Lenka and the awkward, smiling Dubček were left alone.
‘The daughter of Lukáš Vadinský,’ she added, just to make things clear.
If it had been a common name, a Novák or a Novotný, perhaps, maybe nothing much would have happened. Perhaps Lenka would have been forced to explain, and thus the potency of the name would have been dissipated among the words. But she didn’t have to explain. Vadinský is not a common name and Lukáš Vadinský was beyond any confusion or doubt.
Dubček spread his hands helplessly. ‘He was a good man. He didn’t deserve what happened. No one did. I want to ensure that such things will never happen again.’
‘No one doubts your sincerity, Comrade First Secretary. The question is, will the Russians let you?’ She waited for a moment as though for an answer, then turned away. People stood aside and let her through. Behind her there was a sudden outburst of talk, random things said about the splendour of the rooms in which they found themselves, the magnificent Flemish tapestries on the walls, the excellence of the food, the quality of the wine and, of course, the eternal friendship of the Czechoslovak and Romanian peoples. While the Russian ambassador watched impassively.
Sam caught up with her as she reached the door. He grabbed her by the arm. ‘What the devil was that all about?’
‘Did I offend your diplomatic sensibilities?’
‘You treated him as though he were to blame.’
‘He was to blame. They were all to blame. Dubček himself believed in the whole system. He used to think that Stalin was wonderful, the father of all working people.’
‘But he’s a man of goodwill, you know that. He wants things to change.’
She pulled away from him. They went down the stairs into the pillared entrance hall. Uniformed staff watched them go. Outside, where the fleet of diplomatic cars waited, she finally stopped and turned to him. ‘That’s the first time I’ve ever used my father’s name. The first time.’ Her expression hesitated between defiance and tears. He put his arms around her. The hard bones of her shoulders seemed suddenly fragile, as though they might snap if he squeezed too hard. ‘All my life I was made to feel ashamed and now I feel proud.’ She blinked tears away, looking directly into his eyes. ‘Will you get into trouble?’
‘For what?’
‘For introducing a subversive into the halls of power.’
He laughed softly, breathing in her scent, that mixture of things that he still couldn’t fathom. ‘The ambassador will probably summon me to his presence and give me a ticking off. Rocking the boat, he’ll warn me about rocking the boat. They don’t like people rocking the boat. Very nautical, the British.’
A policeman came over and told them to move on. The strange thing was, he did it politely, with a smile. That’s what had happened in the last few months. People had learned how to smile, how to be polite, how to be helpful. Service with a snarl, so characteristic of the past, had been given a facelift. They walked along towards the Hrad and then down the hill into the Malá Strana, into the soft glow of gas lamps and the weight of history that pervades the streets of the Little Quarter. That whole ancient part of the city seemed to have its breath held as they went down towards the river and the modest Renaissance building where his flat was.
Once safe inside, she asked if she could use his typewriter. ‘What is the expression? Make iron while it’s hot.’
‘You mean you’re going to write something?’
‘A fejeton for Literární listy. They’ll take this, I’m sure.’
Fejeton, feuilleton. He’d never taken her writing seriously, in fact he’d never seen her write and had only glanced at one or two pieces that appeared under her by-line in the student magazine. But now he watched her sitting at his portable, hammering at the keys, cursing when she couldn’t find diacritical marks and had to reach for a biro to ink them, and he found himself convinced by her energy.
WHAT’S IN A NAME? Lenka typed.
What’s in a name? Juliet wondered, seeing Montague as her enemy but Romeo as her love. That which we call a rose, she observed, by any other name would smell as sweet. These days we have other, less poetic concerns than Juliet of the Capulets. It is not so much a matter of whom can we love but how can we circumnavigate the obstacles of bureaucracy and oppression when burdened with a name that offends the powers that be. So for years my name – the one appended to this article, the one that I have employed throughout my school and university days, the one that my friends know me by – has not been my name but my mother’s maiden name, borrowed from her for the sake of convenience and deception. It was only today, for the first time in my conscious life, that I used the name that my father bequeathed me, a name that throughout my childhood and youth, like a deranged self-loathing Juliet, I attempted to cancel from my life just as surely as my father was cancelled from the life of the Czechoslovak Republic. That name is Vadinský. Lenka Konečková is really Lenka Vadinská.
What’s in a name?
When I was at university – always under my borrowed name of course – I spent some time in the archives of Terezin for my thesis on the role of the Party in the antifascist struggle. Within the sad lists of those admitted to the ghetto I found some thirty Vadinský/Vadinskás, all of whom died in the ghetto or were taken away in one of the transports, some to Treblinka, some to Auschwitz. Amongst them were my paternal grandparents whose names are even now to be found on the wall of the Pinkas synagogue in Josefov.