We redesigned our second-floor apartment in the house, which had been built at the end of the 1920s. We turned the kitchen into a dining room and moved the kitchen into a little room originally intended for a maid. We also altered the heating system. I finally had my own study. Because it was impossible to get a proper desk, I bought a brand-new — and, most important, large — tabletop and placed it on a small cabinet on one side, which I’d used to store my shoes, and two pickax shafts on the other. It was far from a stylish desk such as you find in the well-kept studies of famous authors, but I could write well enough on it.
Helena and I liked arranging and fixing up the apartment, but at the same time we both had a lot of work, perhaps too much, and there wasn’t time for anything but the most important things.
I think Helena perceived the lack of time we could spend with our loved ones as inflicting more damage than I did. She started writing a series of articles concerning the harm we were doing our children in their upbringing; we were forcing upon them, especially in the cities, an unhealthy way of life. It was bad for children to spend time in different nurseries, preschools, or day-care centers where they were deprived of freedom of movement. She rejected the image that emancipating women from their children was supposed to lead to their greater overall freedom and equality with men. She believed that the contemporary concept of the care of children hinders the free development of the nascent individuals; it deprives them of movement, does not lead to creativity, and, at most, compels children to memorize often useless or dubious knowledge. Thus what we are raising is the relatively educated and cultivated — artistically disciplined and seemly — average. . Our children are not doing badly. They have it a little good and a little bad. When they grow up they will be a little kind. To us too.
Her articles aroused extraordinary interest among readers and were subsequently published in book form.
I was still perceived as a novice at the editorial offices, and I never got close to any of the older editors. My closest friends remained Ludvík Vaculík and Saša Kliment, who had both joined the editorial board. They were a little older, but because I had helped them publish their first books, they considered me more experienced or at least more worldly-wise in the area of literature, a place in which neither of them felt very comfortable. Our family became such good friends with Ludvík’s that we sometimes went on trips together. After I bought a car with the proceeds from my book advance, we took off on our first journey together, eight of us crammed into the little Renault. To demonstrate what a wonderful, although in truth quite inexperienced, driver I was, I almost collided with an oncoming car as I was overtaking another.
In Prague, Ludvík, Saša, and I mostly talked about politics (in this land of socialism, everything became a political topic) and speculated about what we could and should discuss or, as Ludvík would say, have our word about the situation. In our opinion it was not very satisfactory.
No one who had preserved even a little sense of reality could accept without shame the fact that we were living under a regime based on injustice and violence.
Saša and I, along with a historian who contributed to Literární noviny, were once invited to a radio talk show to discuss life values. The discussion was too abstract and wasn’t very successful, but Saša pronounced one brief sentence that made the discussion worthwhile and that the censor surprisingly allowed: “I admit that every day I wake up with a feeling of shame.”
Essay: Weary Dictators and Rebels, p. 496
13
Sometime in the middle of the 1960s, a dark BMW stopped in front of the house we had recently moved to. A short, burly young man stepped out and a moment later was buzzing at our door. He informed me, in good Czech, that his name was Ehrenfried Pospisil and he’d just come from Hannover — he was translating my Castle. He was quite talkative, and I soon learned he’d been transferred from the Sudetenland, entirely unjustly, since his native language was Czech. He was not sorry, however; what would have become of him had he stayed in Most or Chomutov? Could I imagine the horror? Not only were houses and churches disintegrating, but pubs as well, whereas in Hannover he was the owner of a prospering fur dealership. Of course, he mostly concerned himself with art. Each morning he stopped by his workshop for a couple of minutes, assigned tasks, and worked up a design, and then he could devote himself to his creative profession, which right now happened to be my Castle. Afterward his wife would look over the text to make sure it read well. She was an actress, and I wouldn’t have to worry in the least. He even suggested his translation would be better than the original and gave a loud cackle to inform me that although he was genuinely of this opinion, I wasn’t to take it altogether seriously.
I had no experience with translations, but the vocation of a furrier did not strike me as the best preparation for a translator. I did admit, however, that Mark Twain had been a riverboat pilot, Jack London had been a gold prospector, and Edison hadn’t even had any schooling. Perhaps the Hannover furrier would turn out to be an ingenious translator.
Then another German paid me a visit, this one thin and possessing the face of a brooding philosopher, Mr. Eric Spiess. He directed the theater division of a large music-publishing house, Bärenreiter, and informed me his firm was representing my play in Germany, just as it was representing Pavel Kohout’s plays. He told me that the premiere of The Castle would take place in January in the famous Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus. He assumed I’d heard of his stage director, Karl Heinz Stroux. I pretended I had.
Mr. Spiess praised my play, and I put his praise down to politeness. Nevertheless, neither the play nor the translation could be completely bad if it had pleased the famed stage director.
The German theater had decided to adopt the Czech production. Soon thereafter I received an official invitation and started to believe that my play would actually be performed on a stage somewhere in Germany.
Except for sojourns in countries proclaiming themselves Socialist, I had never in my thirty-three years been abroad. Now, at the insistence of my wife, I bought new shoes and a white shirt, packed my best suit, said goodbye to my family, and on a moderately cold January day boarded a train for Frankfurt.
The moment the train arrived at the sleek train station in Schirnding, I thought I had suddenly entered another world. There were no border guards with dogs or battered houses, just a vendor scampering along the platform offering beer and Coca-Cola.
I continued on to Düsseldorf, where I was welcomed by my translator and Mr. Spiess, who then drove me to my hotel, which to me seemed ridiculously opulent. I was in Germany. Instead of a gas chamber, I was led into a room with leather armchairs, a minibar, and a television set. Six towels were hung in the bathroom, and on a little table stood a vase with a large bouquet of flowers; next to the vase, a bottle of Riesling. A newspaper lay on the bed with an article highlighted in red about a young Czech writer who was attending the premiere of his play, The Castle, and so on.
The next day I walked around the city a little, looking into bookshop windows. I was amazed by the number of periodicals sold at the news kiosk. For a while I watched a young artist drawing on the sidewalk a picture of a woman and a guitar. On the same sidewalk he’d written, in beautiful calligraphic script and in different languages: Studentschüler auf Studienreise durch Europa, Student of art on a study trip through Europe, Beaux Arts. He had a small box inscribed with Danke, Thanks, Gracias, Merci.