She asked what opportunity awaited her.
No obvious answer came to mind except the fact that she would have the chance to live in a free country and, at least for a little while, escape an environment that was becoming more and more oppressive.
“And what if everything changes here, and we won’t be able to come back?”
“If it gets that bad, we’ll be glad we were gone.”
“You think I’d leave my mother and father here?”
“Then we’ll come back,” I said angrily (and presciently); “they’ll always let us in, just not out.”
*
There was more and more work at the editorial offices, and because so many experienced editors had emigrated, it seemed silly, or even indecent, to leave. Also, I was frightened by the idea that over the course of the next six months I would have to prepare, as responsibly as possible, at least forty two-hour lectures in English on a subject I had indeed studied, but for twelve years — with the exception of several months spent writing my monograph on Karel Čapek — had had nothing to do with.
On January 16 I took an unpaid vacation and promised that if the editors considered it necessary, I would be glad to write an article.
It only gradually dawned on me what sort of task I had taken on in Ann Arbor.
I studied at a time when all science and scholarship, including literary history and criticism, had become tarnished by Marxist exegetes. Instead of literary values, they appreciated revolution and class origin. They didn’t even mention our greatest Czech authors, or, if they did, it was only in order to censure them.
I also realized that many of the authors who were promoted held only local significance at best. During the period when Lope de Vega, Shakespeare, and Molière were writing, theater was practically nonexistent in the Czech lands. Only two centuries later did Václav Klicpera and Josef Tyl undertake their naive comedies, primarily for a rural audience who understood only Czech. It was the same in both poetry and prose. I decided to devote myself to a handful of figures in my lectures, for example, Jan Hus, Jan Amos Komenský, and, in the modern period, Karel Hynek Mácha, Božena Němcová, Karel Havlíček Borovský, Karel Jaromír Erben, and Jan Neruda.
From the interwar period, when Czech literature finally started to approach the level of other European literatures, I included Jaroslav Hašek, Karel Čapek, and Vladislav Vančura, as well as Franz Kafka. Although Kafka wrote in German, he was famously associated with Prague (about which he said, “This little mother has claws” because one cannot tear oneself away). Also, Kafka was the most famous of all the authors who had written in the Czech lands. There were several generations of extraordinary poets (more good poets, in fact, than prose writers), but poetry from a different country is always difficult. The translator’s abilities are much more crucial to reception.
I also planned to discuss the literature I thought would most interest my students — that is, the work of my contemporaries.
I prepared my lectures while corruption, which for the time being seemed far away, was slowly creeping into the country.
Allegedly, “healthy forces” (in Communist newspeak, those who welcomed the occupation) quickly came to power. The Communist Party chose Gustáv Husák as its head. Several years earlier he had belonged to a group of prisoners sentenced to life and had escaped the gallows only because he had refused to admit to fabricated crimes under torture (he was not prosecuted for his real crimes). Thus, some believed he would resist the pressure of the occupiers (as if allowing something like this were possible).
Our journal was once again proscribed, this time irrevocably, and I was once again kicked out of the party. Inasmuch as during the time after my ID card had been returned, I hadn’t paid dues or gone to meetings, my expulsion was so incontestable that I wasn’t even informed about it, nor did anyone demand I submit my party card.
*
Two days after we left for the United States — the penultimate day of August 1969—our government, which by then had been completely altered, tightened the rules regarding exit permits. The borders securely — or, rather, dangerously — closed behind us.
Once again we were greeted at the Detroit airport, this time by representatives of the department and Professor Matějka. During the drive to Ann Arbor, the professor explained how to proceed with the teaching of Czech and pointed out the building that housed our department. He also suggested I stop by and see the secretary, Mrs. Parrott, who would help me out and offer advice. Apparently she was the angel of the entire Slavic department.
Then we stopped in front of a large apartment building on Geddes Avenue. They had assumed we would want something fairly inexpensive, and this apartment was only three hundred dollars a month (about four times as much as our apartment in Prague and roughly the same size), but we would also have to pay a three-hundred-dollar deposit, which would be returned to us when we moved out. The apartment had the advantage of being close to the department, and I could easily walk to work. So at first I could get along without a car but, as I would discover, I would need one as soon as possible.
The apartment was on the second floor and had two bedrooms, a living room, a dining room with a kitchen corner, and a large bathroom containing two sinks. The bedroom windows looked out on the low walls of a cemetery across the street. I was surprised that instead of paths, there were little roads running between the individual graves. The living room looked out on an asphalt courtyard that primarily served as a parking lot. In the kitchen there was an electric stove and a large refrigerator. The cabinets were loaded with pots and pans.
While my wife unpacked and the children explored the apartment, I set off for the department. Immediately I was struck and amazed by an enormous and familiar symbol of communism: a hammer and sickle. Someone had painted it on the carriageway of a bridge I had to cross on the way to school.
I was greeted in the department by Mrs. Parrott, a young, slender, elegant, and helpful woman. She acquainted me with my teaching schedule and gave me a list of my students, some of whom had beautiful Czech names such as Janáček, Lišková, Jelínková (of course, without the diacritical marks). Then the secretary gave me lots of other good advice: which health insurance to choose, which schools would be best for our children, where the nearest grocery store and shopping center were. She also pointed out that the university operated a bus, which students and faculty could ride free, and that I would receive all necessary office supplies from her. Then she led me to my office, which, unlike all my previous workspaces, did not overlook a courtyard. It had a beautiful view of the tall tower, the dominating feature of the city. Then I noticed a bottle standing on my desk. The secretary informed me the dean had sent it as a welcoming gift. The bottle, which I immediately placed in a cabinet, contained an entire half gallon of sherry.
*
I had eight students. Some of them, despite their Czech names, knew not a word of Czech. Yet there was a student from a Czech community in Texas that had survived for over a hundred years. She’d brought with her an endearing archaic form of our native tongue.
Even during my own student days, I hated it when a professor simply read to the class what he could have handed out at the beginning and allowed the students to read at their leisure. But was my English good enough to allow me to improvise? In the end, at least for the first few lectures, I compromised: Some passages I read, and in between I would digress into history or touch upon the present day.
Certainly in part because their ancestors (if not they themselves) came from other countries and continents, Americans behave graciously and good-naturedly toward foreigners. From the very beginning, my colleagues invited Helena and me to parties and introduced us to another dozen or so colleagues and their wives, and they all told us to call them by their first names.