‘ “When a talk about trees is a crime, because it implies silence about so many horrors”,’ Russell quoted Brecht.
‘Yes, yes. That is what I mean.’
‘Well, these are the sort of questions I want to explore in my interviews,’ Russell told her. ‘How artists use their individual talents in the service of the community,’ he added glibly. ‘That’s what The Lampadary is all about.’
‘I shall look forward to reading it,’ she said, getting to her feet.
Which was more than he would, Russell thought, as he walked through the Old City in search of his restaurant. He found a building he thought he recognised, but the boards nailed across the ground-floor frontage offered no clue to its former use, and he had to settle for another establishment, a few metres farther along. This, like his hotel, seemed strangely empty, but it couldn’t be the menu to blame-Prague had suffered relatively little in the war, and if the dishes on offer at this restaurant were any guide, the economic situation was a lot better here than it was in Berlin or Vienna.
After eating, he ambled back to his hotel. The streets were subdued, as if Sunday had come a day early, and even with the window open, it was quiet enough for an early night.
He was up too early for a hotel breakfast, but a cafe was open just down the street. His first interview-with a female poet he’d never heard of-was scheduled for eleven A.M. at the Charles University, which he reckoned gave him enough time to visit the Soviet Embassy. A tram carried him north across the Stefanika Bridge, and a short walk down Pod Kastany brought him to the Embassy gates.
The preceding ten years-and Shchepkin’s patient tutoring over the past three-had vastly honed his skills when it came to dealing with Soviet officialdom, and he emerged only fifteen minutes later with the local MGB emergency number for Soviet agents in distress. After his tram dropped him at the eastern end of the Charles Bridge, he walked across the river and up the hill, arriving at the university with ten minutes to spare.
The poet, a woman in her fifties, was a delight. A lifelong communist with an apparently bottomless faith in human possibility, she had met and befriended several of the current government at university in the years following the First War. She cheerfully admitted that a few might succumb to megalomania, but insisted the others would sort them out. This, as she said with a laugh, wasn’t Poland; this was country with a long industrial history, and a politically conscious working class to prove it. As for the arts, there might be some temporary limits, but the eventual flowering would be more than worth it.
The conductor, whom he interviewed that afternoon in a well-appointed Old City apartment, was pleasant enough but far less interesting. His recent adherence to the Party, Russell quickly realised, had less to do with ideology than Soviet sponsorship of his chosen field. While the Nazis had belittled Smetana and Dvorak, the Soviets had presided over the post-war resurrection of these two Czechs in particular and classical music in general. The way this conductor talked, one could be forgiven for thinking that Stalin had personally driven a van-load of surplus violins all the way from Moscow.
Which, Russell supposed, was the point. Since classical music was, to most intents and purposes, politically neutral, the Soviets could pick up cultural brownie points from promoting it. And for people like this conductor, the future was set fair-as long as he kept any non-musical opinions to himself, he could expect a secure and privileged life. Russell didn’t like the man or his Habsburg furniture very much, but that was neither here nor there.
Walking back to the Europa, he wondered what Winterman and Co would do with these interviews. Just print them verbatim, he supposed. It would be good propaganda for the Soviets in the short run; but the CIA would be playing a long game, establishing the magazine’s reputation for political impartiality, so that when they eventually stuck in the knife, it would be that much more effective.
Sitting down to another excellent meal, Russell wondered how much easier his life would have been if he’d just done what he was told. Why hadn’t he? What had made him the pain in the arse that Winterman and others thought him? His father had been conventional to a fault, his mother more rebellious in spirit, although not when it really mattered. The First War had confirmed Russell’s belief that the status quo was a kind of freewheeling murderous cock-up that only served the rich, but he’d felt that since he was about fourteen. A born communist, except that when the time came, he had rejected the comrades as well.
What did it matter? He was who he was, approaching fifty with the same basic anger, a disgust that seemed to be deepening, and a lack of answers that was almost comical. The only trick, he suspected, was to look for love in the margins, but even they seemed narrower by the year.
Back in his room, he was preparing for bed when the softest of knocks sounded on his door.
A man was outside, middle-aged, with luxuriant iron-grey hair which flopped across his forehead. He was wearing what looked like two halves of different suits and a white shirt smeared with egg stains. He also had a finger raised to his lips.
Russell let the man in, and followed him into the bathroom. Once the tap was running, his visitor curtly offered the agreed password-‘spring is beautiful in Prague’-and introduced himself as Karel. He didn’t, however, have affidavits stuffed in his pockets. ‘They wouldn’t be safe in your room, and these days foreigners are often stopped and searched on the street, so we must hand them to you at the final moment. When do you leave?’
‘At six o’clock on Monday, from Wilson Station. The evening train to Vienna.’
‘Okay. You know where the National Museum is?’
‘Yes.’
‘There are two entrances, one at the top of the boulevard and a second on the far side, in the gardens. Get to the first at around three thirty P.M., check your suitcase as if you’re intent on touring the exhibits until it’s time to go to the station, then shake your shadow and leave by the back entrance. From that door you can see the end of Rimska Street, and there is a small cafe, with a dark-red awning, about fifty metres down. There’s no name outside, but should you need to ask, locals know it as the Galuska Cafe. Be there by five, and order a coffee. Within a few minutes a departing customer will offer you a newspaper that they’ve finished with, and the affidavits will be inside. Once you have them, go back to the museum, pick up your suitcase and shadow, and walk to the station. Understood?’
‘Understood.’
‘Good. And good luck.’ He gave Russell a reassuring pat on the shoulder, and headed for the outer door.
Russell reached to turn off the tap, then remembered he hadn’t yet brushed his teeth. ‘Some more cloak-and-dagger to look forward to,’ he told his reflection in the mirror.
Sunday morning was sunny, warm, and ideal for sightseeing, but Russell reluctantly decided that Lisa’s daughter Uschi had a prior claim on his time. Over breakfast he thought the matter through, and decided that there was no cause for subterfuge. The communist government had not, as far as he knew, introduced any new restrictions on the movements of foreigners, so a morning trip out to Kolin shouldn’t set any legal tripwires twanging. And unless the Czech Embassy in Berlin was keeping its business to itself, the authorities here in Prague would already know that Lisa Sundgren, the former Liesel Hausmann, was trying to track down her daughter Uschi. What could be more natural than her asking him to look up the girl while he was in the vicinity?
There seemed no reason why Uschi should suffer from the attention. The Czech authorities already knew who her parents were, and she couldn’t help the fact that her father had been a wealthy industrialist.
So he would go to Kolin that morning, and take his shadow along for the ride, because shaking him off would indeed look suspicious, and make him harder to ditch on Monday, when he really was doing something illicit.