‘Lenka. What about her?’
‘Is she with you? You see, it seems they’re keeping their own nationals from seeking refuge in foreign embassies. They must have been planning this for months. Why the hell didn’t we know? Anyway, the point is, you can’t bring her with you, Sam. They won’t let her through. Sorry about that, but that’s how it is, old chap. Look, I must go. Place is in an uproar.’
Sam put the phone down and stood for a while, not knowing what to think, not even knowing how to think. He went back to the bedroom. Lenka was sitting up in bed, prepared for disaster, her face sketched in chalk against the dark frame of the headboard. ‘What is it?’
‘They’re invading,’ he told her. No need to say who.
She got out of bed and began to pull on her clothes. ‘The radio, turn on the radio.’
He fiddled with the tuning to find the state radio. Recorded music was playing, the Czechoslovak national anthem, which was the separate Czech and Slovak anthems jammed untidily together just like the country itself. And then the music ceased and there was an announcement in solemn tones addressed ‘To all people of the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic’.
Lenka stood still, her jeans pulled halfway up.
On Tuesday, 20 August 1968, at approximately 11 p.m. the armies of the Soviet Union, the Polish People’s Republic, the German Democratic Republic, the Hungarian People’s Republic and the Bulgarian People’s Republic crossed—
Then the thing went silent. Just the rush of static. He looked round. Lenka pulled her jeans up and fastened them, then grabbed an old shirt, yesterday’s shirt, the first thing to hand. ‘That was Vladimír Fišer,’ she said. ‘I know his voice, I know him. Try another frequency.’
He turned the tuning knob, but there was nothing from any of the state radio frequencies, only at 210 metres a different voice announcing Radio Vltava and explaining that ‘personalities of the Czechoslovak Communist Party requested military aid from the Soviet Union because our republic was threatened by counter-revolution and anti-socialist elements…’
‘Radio Vltava? I’ve never heard of it. And the voice – it’s not Czech, not native, I mean. It’s Russian or Ukrainian, something like that.’ Lenka’s tone was contemptuous, but there was despair in her eyes like the first symptoms of a terminal disease. ‘It’s true, isn’t it?’ she said, as though, hope against hope, it might have been a gigantic hoax. ‘Are they here already?’
‘Apparently some units have already landed at the airport.’
‘What will happen?’
‘You’re asking questions that I can’t answer.’
‘Will there be fighting?’
‘I shouldn’t think so. What would be the point? Eric – that was Eric Whittaker on the phone – says that Svoboda has called for the army not to resist, but maybe some hotheads—’
Sam went through into the sitting room and opened the curtains a fraction. The tiny square outside was barely illuminated by a single street lamp, just enough to show a lone car parked there, a black Tatra lying like a shark in the depths of a pool. He went back to Lenka. ‘They want me at the embassy.’
Then he went to the spare room and knocked on the door. There was movement inside, hurried whispering and a call to come in. Egorkin was sitting on the side of the bed in pyjamas. Nadia had the sheet drawn up to her chin, looking wide-eyed. ‘What’s happening?’ Egorkin asked.
‘Your lot are invading the country, that’s what’s happening.’ For a moment he felt anger. It was an untidy emotion that could encompass almost anything, even Egorkin and his woman. But the Russian seemed confused, as though the whole world was suddenly not working to his command. ‘What will happen now?’
‘God knows. For the moment you’d better just stay as you are. I have to report to the embassy.’
‘Will this mean war?’
‘Of course it won’t. No NATO country is involved. It’ll be treated as an internal affair of the Soviet Bloc.’
‘And what about us? What about me and Nadezhda Nikolayevna? Your people will say, we don’t want to be making trouble with the Soviets at this delicate moment, so get rid of them. Let them – what is the English expression? – stew in their own juice, is that it?’
Sam drew a calming breath. The instinct of a diplomat: think before you argue; never commit to anything you cannot deliver; choose, out of the large range of evasive expressions at your disposal, the appropriate one. Not exactly what he has done in his private life. ‘That remains to be seen. For the moment, may I suggest you are even more careful than before about keeping quiet? We are being watched outside and apparently they’ve tightened things up at all embassies. It is in your best interests to keep as low a profile as possible.’
Low profile. A good phrase just then starting to worm its way into the lexicon of the diplomatic world.
‘I will,’ he assured the Russian pair, ‘keep you informed.’
While Sam showered and shaved, Lenka spent most of the time on the phone – someone she knew in radio, her mother, Jitka, other friends. The phones were still working, which seemed a miracle, and rumour diffused through the wires faster than if it were shouted from the rooftops: the airport had been occupied, tanks were on the move from Hungary, from Ukraine, from East Germany; the country was being crushed in the jaws of the Russian bear just as it was crushed in the jaws of the German wolf thirty years ago.
There’s a pattern in Czechoslovak history: 1918, 1938, 1948, 1968.
The phone rang again and once again it was Eric wondering where the hell he was.
‘I’m coming, I’m coming. I’ve got to sort things out here first.’ He turned to Lenka, knowing there was no point in trying to keep her there. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’ll try and find Jitka. Find out what’s happening. Maybe go to the radio station, I don’t really know.’
‘Listen.’ Sam wanted to keep her for a moment longer. ‘How will we keep in touch?’
‘I’ll phone.’
‘I’ll probably be at the embassy.’
‘If you want to find me you can try Jitka’s. You have her number?’ Hastily she scribbled it and the address on a scrap of paper beside the telephone. Then they embraced, wordlessly, except that he said, ‘Be careful’, that useless advice you give people when you don’t know what else to say. And then she had gone, closing the front door behind her, her footsteps sounding on the stairs as she ran down. He went to the window to see that she was safely past the Tatra and part of him hoped that she might look up and see him watching her, wanting to watch over her but helpless to do anything. She didn’t. She passed the car unimpeded and turned the corner that led to the bridge and went out of sight.
X
44
There’s a noise in the city, an undercurrent like the coming of a flood. And then the immediate fact of someone knocking on their door and calling them to wake up. The phone is ringing in the other room. James can hear Zdeněk answering, speaking rapidly in Czech to whoever’s on the line.
‘Something’s happening,’ Jitka calls. She edges the door open. Her face, pale with anxiety, hangs in the shadow of the opening. Beside him Ellie emerges from the cocoon of her sleeping bag, looking confused. ‘What time is it?’
‘Early.’
‘What’s happening? What’s going on?’
‘The barbarians,’ Jitka says. ‘The barbarians are coming.’ Which seems uncommonly dramatic, poetic almost, words from the hand of Cavafy. But in Cavafy’s poem the barbarians didn’t come and everyone in the city was left in a kind of limbo, not knowing what to do. Here it is different. The barbarians have actually come and still no one knows what to do. ‘Russians,’ Jitka explains more coherently. ‘They’ve invaded the country. Soldiers, thousands of them, tanks, planes.’