I don’t know what effect my speech had. But years later in a tram, a young man approached me and said, “You don’t know me, but after your speech in London I decided to come back.” That’s all he said, and I didn’t ask if he was reproaching or thanking me.
*
Even though only fourteen days had passed since that night of August 21, I felt time was passing unbearably slowly. I sat in the Baums’ guest room and read the documents that the appallingly naive Mr. Davies had been sending to Washington. I also read the Daily Telegraph, which kept putting news from Czechoslovakia on the front page. But I could not rid myself of the feeling that I was living here like a sponger who only took and had nothing to offer.
I at least bought a few sheets of paper and started to write. My host offered me the use of his typewriter (it was lacking diacritical marks, but had the é and á). I hoped to write the drama for which I’d received the generous advance, though in my state of mind, I couldn’t create more than an exceedingly transparent metaphor for what had happened at home.
A Bridegroom for Marcela was an extended dark anecdote, just long enough for a one-act play. The hero, whom I named Kliment, is called to an office and informed by an official that he would be glad to approve his request to marry a certain Marcela. Kliment is amazed because he knows the girl only by sight. At first confidently but then more and more desperately, he tries to explain that there’s been some misunderstanding. The official stands his ground and tells Kliment that he is simply helping him achieve happiness. It turns out that the truth has no relation to the actual facts, but rather relates to what the official claims. While trying to convince Kliment, the official employs everything the hero objects to and provides false witnesses. Finally he alleges that the girl is expecting a child by Kliment. The play ends with brutal coercion, and the hero breaks down and dies.
His two torturers lift up the corpse, and the official says, almost with sadness, You see, Mr. Kliment, you could have been happy if you’d only wanted to. . Sometimes I wonder if we’re doing all this in vain. People simply do not want to be happy. . But this does not relieve us of the responsibility to serve them.
Before I had time to take the play to the Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Neal returned from Prague. He had brought me my green Hubertus overcoat and told me all of my friends and loved ones, including my daughter, were safe. He added that in his opinion there was no threat of danger in the near future. They were not locking anyone up, and the same politicians who had led the renewal process were still in charge of the country and the party. During the first days, the Soviets had shot a few dozen people, but it had apparently not been upon any order from higher up. Considering it had been a violent invasion by an army of a hundred thousand, the number of victims was insignificant. Some Prague citizens had shown Neal bullet holes in the walls of the National Museum and the radio station as well as many placards and inscriptions, which of course he didn’t understand. They were all apparently demanding that the Russians leave immediately, and often they invoked Lenin, which seemed to him somewhat illogical.
When I asked him if he thought the Soviets would really withdraw, he smiled and said, Armies of superpowers obtain territory to stay there, not to abandon it again. You’ll have to reconcile yourself to this.
I thanked him for everything and said I was going back.
When I called Helena, she said we should have returned a long time ago. She suggested we meet in Vienna and gave me the name of a hotel where she hoped we could go over everything in peace.
*
As soon as I’d made the decision, I was relieved. I wouldn’t have to hand over my play, which I thought the director would find difficult to stage in the theater bearing the name of the great dramatist.
I still had to say goodbye to Janet and my colleague Hájek, who was still refusing to return. I also had to go see Olga, since I’d promised not to abandon her.
She was living in a tiny room at the bottom of a few steps, and if the window was open, anyone could crawl in from the street. We kissed, and she told me what it was like working as a waitress in a restaurant where only bankers smoked and drank whiskey and soda. They behaved quite genially, but they were more interested in the stock market reports than in her. Then she embraced me and said she’d missed me and hadn’t made love to anyone during these three whole weeks.
In the middle of September we set off on our return trip.
I was out of money, so we dozed for a while in the car. At daybreak we drove along a completely empty highway somewhere in eastern France. After a couple of weeks on an island, I was hurtling along on the left side of the road, and owing only to the presence of mind of an oncoming French driver we were not killed in a collision.
I arrived in Vienna alone. Olga had gotten out in Nuremburg and taken the train home. I met my wife at the reception desk of the hotel. Michal was rejoicing over our reunion and was eager to see his sister, grandmother, grandfather, and classmates. Helena introduced me to a young man named Jirka who was also returning from Israel to his home in Brno. He was certain I remembered him. He was one of the student leaders who’d been thrown out of school for political activity a couple of years ago. We had written about him in our newspaper. But I didn’t remember him.
Jirka had an interesting face, very serious but at the same time kindly, with something obstinate in his expression. Of course, I offered to take him to Brno.
Our hotel room was large. Besides an extra bed for our son, there was an enormous double bed. Helena and I lay beside each other almost as if in embarrassment. I embraced her and said I was exhausted. She said she was tired too and stretched out beside me, and we both fell fast asleep.
The next morning we got into the car and set off for our homeland. Michal, usually not very talkative, saw that the adults for some reason didn’t feel like talking and started telling me about the kibbutz school, various farmwork he’d participated in, and how everyone was devastated on learning what the Russians had done.
At the border we noticed many more cars leaving the republic than returning to it. The border guards were pleasant, almost friendly; they stamped our passports and wished us a pleasant journey.
At home, it was as if the fatigue and tension fell away. I took my daughter into my arms, listened to how good she had been and how much she had missed us. She had even drawn a picture in which we were all there together and in color.
No one was home at my parents’ house. My brother and his girlfriend were in Vienna and were hoping to get to England. Mother and Father had gone to Switzerland. They’d left me a message that Father had been offered a good position in a Swiss electrical engineering plant called Brown, Boveri — only for two months, but the contract would probably be extended.
I called my friends, who promised to come by straightaway. Over the next few days I heard almost identical stories. The invaders had occupied the radio station, but the broadcasters started transmitting from hidden sites and from transmitters that had been prepared in case of war or other such crises. I learned how my colleagues had printed a special edition of our newspaper and distributed it right beneath the eyes of the Soviet soldiers, who understood nothing. Our editorial offices, where the occupiers had first burst in, were now vacant, and it was up to us to decide whether or not to renew publishing the newspaper our readers were so keenly awaiting.