‘You never told me.’
‘It was obvious, wasn’t it? A Jewish father, you know that. Therefore Jewish grandparents. Therefore dead at Auschwitz or somewhere similar. That is what happened here.’
He left her side and walked over to the window. The strange medieval shadows of the bridge towers were a contrast to the clatter of keys behind him. He thought of what he didn’t know about Lenka, which was almost everything. And then wondered how much you need to know about someone before you fall in love. Probably, he supposed, almost nothing. What did Romeo know of Juliet? Just enough to get both of them killed in the most idiotic way imaginable.
What’s in a name?
At least those grandparents have a memorial of some kind, even if their ashes were scattered to the winds or blown away in a puff of smoke. But my father? After much complaint my mother was eventually given a death certificate by the authorities, and, this year, even a medal of some kind. The death certificate stated baldly the date on which he was killed, but there is no mention of what happened to his body. However, there’s a story going round that the ashes of all the principal victims were dumped secretly in a lake in the Sumava region.
Then there’s another story, that on the way to that lake, the car carrying the remains actually slid off the icy road some kilometres before reaching its destination. It was midwinter and everyone knows what a Tatra is like on slippery roads – it’s that rear engine that does it. So there they were, two members of the security service – let’s call them Švejk and Brouček – stuck in a snowdrift in the middle of the countryside in the middle of winter. It is getting late, the snow is coming down and the rear wheels are spinning uselessly. So Švejk (or was it Brouček?) has the brilliant idea of shovelling the ashes of the people’s enemies under the rear wheels to give some traction in the snow. Thus, in a cloud of flying bits and pieces did Slánský, Clementis, London and all the others, including my father, contribute to the extrication of two members of state security from a snowdrift.
Which story do you believe? The lake or the snowdrift? And which would you like to believe? And which – because this is the key to everything – sounds more perfectly Czech? What is certain is that the whole disposal was done in secret and is unlikely to be properly documented even in the archives of our beloved StB where they keep all the other files, including those of my mother and me… and, no doubt, you.
Except that I changed my name so that Lenka Vadinská would not be stigmatised by being denied access to a university education but instead Lenka Konečková would sail into the faculty of literature. Still – ask my boyfriend – I smell just as much of roses as if I were called Vadinská, or, as I’m sure the authorities would have it, just as much of shit.
He looked over her shoulder at what she had written so far and laughed. ‘Will they allow “shit”?’
She shrugged. ‘We’ll see.’ And went back to her typing while he went back to watching her. Her hunched figure of concentration over the typewriter. Her bare legs. The way her toes moved as though they had life of their own. Things like that.
And then the phone rang. He went out into the hallway to answer it and at first he didn’t recognise the voice on the other end. ‘Mr Samuel Wareham?’ it asked, almost whispering. He might not have known the identity of the caller but he did know the whisper. It was the natural instinct of someone who fears the line may be tapped, as though lowering the voice might make it less easily heard.
‘Sam Wareham here, yes.’
‘This is your pianist friend,’ the voice said. Suddenly the Russian accent was obvious. ‘I would like to meet, is that possible? Immediately. At Stalin?’
‘What is this all about?’
‘Just a meeting, Mr Wareham, at Stalin, you know? As soon as you can.’
It was there in the voice, an urgency and a sense of panic just beneath the surface calm. Sam said, ‘It’ll take me fifteen minutes or so. Is that all right?’
‘Of course.’ And then the line went dead.
He stood for a moment trying to make sense of the call. Stalin was clear enough, although Stalin was no longer there, hadn’t been ever since they blew him up in 1962. Until that moment he had been the largest monumental statue in Europe, a fifteen-metre granite representation of the great leader standing on the edge of the Letná escarpment overlooking the city. All that remained now was the massive stone plinth on which the monument had been erected, but they had called the place u Stalina, ‘at Stalin’, ever since. Tourists went there during the day for the view over the city; couples went there after dark when the view really didn’t matter very much.
‘I’m going to have to go out for a while,’ he told Lenka. ‘Half an hour maybe.’
The typing stopped. She looked round. ‘Now? On your own?’
He considered. Motives clashed against each other – loyalty and betrayal and some ridiculous sense of professional propriety, but also plain fear, fear for her and fear for himself. What if? What if this were all some complicated entrapment? Should he get hold of the SIS man, Harold Saumarez? Backup of some kind? But as far as Sam knew Harold didn’t have a team of heavies to give him help. He’d only panic.
‘On my own.’
She didn’t ask anything more, that was what impressed him. ‘Is it about the same dog as last time?’
He smiled. ‘It’s Egorkin. The conductor. He wants to meet me at Stalin.’
‘Letná Park? Is he a queer or something?’
He laughed, looking for a pen and scribbling Harold’s phone number on a scrap of paper. ‘If I’m not back by midnight, ring this number and tell him. He’s Harold.’
She looked at him. She appeared entirely composed, neither concerned nor fearful. ‘Why are you afraid?’
‘Not afraid, just cautious.’
She nodded. ‘I remember cutting a lecture to see Stalin being blown up. We watched from the other side of the river and we cheered when it went BOOM! The police tried to clear us away. People were meant to stay indoors.’
‘It won’t be as dramatic as that this evening.’
‘I hope not.’ She turned back to the typewriter.
What’s in a name? The man I was introducing myself to, using my original name for the first time, happened to be the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, Alexander Dubček. There’s a name with import, a sturdy Bohemian oak[1] (which is ironic because, as we all know, Comrade Dubček is actually Slovak). ‘You appear to know who I am, dear miss,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I might know to whom I am speaking?’ And so I told him.
Recognising my name, the Bohemian (and Slovak) oak seemed to sway in the wind for a moment…
34
The vast Letná parade ground, where the Party gathered to celebrate May Day, appeared deserted; across the road, the Sparta Prague stadium was a mass of darkness. Sam parked the car as inconspicuously as possible, hiding it beneath trees with its number plates masked by bushes. There were people around in the dusk, young lovers looking for somewhere to be alone, a group sitting in a circle on one of the lawns around an apology for a camp fire. A guitar was being strummed. There was laughter, some singing, the glow of cigarettes. A crescent moon was just rising – barely enough light to follow the paths through the trees towards the edge of the plateau where steps led down to a paved esplanade overlooking the river and the Old Town.