Father said with unexpected earnestness: It’s good that you’re getting to know everything you can there. You must realize that this will be your last opportunity for a long time to travel and teach.
When I considered that he was aware the telephones were bugged, it sounded as if he was telling me not to return, that prison awaited me or, I hoped, he meant just some sort of moderate form of persecution.
The thought of emigrating frightened me. I didn’t sleep properly for several days, and I kept going over different scenarios.
When I confided everything to Professor Matějka, he consoled me by saying I could take a librarian’s course and work in the library. I would make enough money to be able to live here decently. Professor Benešová called me from Bloomington, where I had recently lectured. She’d heard that I wouldn’t be able to go back to Prague and informed me she would be retiring and had spoken with the dean. She assured me I could work as a regular professor there in Indiana.
All of this consoling news was alarming — for me, the only meaningful work was writing, telling stories that were somehow connected to my life, and this was interwoven with my homeland. The thought of writing in a foreign country about things that deeply touched me but with which I had cut off all ties seemed foolish. To teach modern Czech literature, which I’d just abandoned, would definitely be a painful blow. I would forever be aware that I had voluntarily decided to call it quits with the only work I cared about.
One day, my students came to see me and very politely, almost humbly, asked for a favor. They were planning a trip to Washington to protest the Vietnam War, and the demonstration was scheduled for a day we had class. Would I be so kind as to reschedule it for another day?
Of course, I was glad to. They had rented a bus, and it occurred to me that Helena could go with them and find out at the embassy if, despite the new decrees, we could extend our stay, at least until the end of the spring semester. For several years, my wife reproached me that I had sent her instead of going myself. But I thought that if I were to show up, the embassy would be afraid to deal with me at all.
Two days later, the students returned. The demonstration had been excellent and, unlike that of a year ago, peaceful. Helena told me that after long deliberations, the embassy had agreed to extend our stay until the end of March.
I told the department that I would evidently have to cut short the semester because our offices refused to extend our visa, but I said I would do everything possible not to cheat my students out of anything I thought they should know. I don’t think anyone took my news very seriously. I wasn’t about to return to an occupied country whose authorities assumed the right to decide how long their citizens could stay abroad, was I?
*
I received a letter from my parents saying that they were looking forward to all of us being together again. Father had intended no hidden meaning in his assertions concerning my last possibility to travel. He was merely pointing out that as soon as I returned, I wouldn’t be allowed to leave. Even without Father’s warning, I knew this much from the newspapers.
I was relieved nonetheless. I was going home. I didn’t know what I would do, since our newspaper had been banned. Obviously they weren’t going to let me publish, but perhaps they could let me continue working at the publishing house as a copyreader. Helena hadn’t once considered emigration. She had her parents and sister at home, and she was certainly not going to abandon them. As far as the children were concerned, they considered it obvious that their real home was Prague, and they too looked forward to seeing their grandmother, grandfather, and friends.
Before long it was time to start thinking about saying goodbye. I invited all my students over. Everyone came bearing gifts and promises to come visit (almost every one of them came to Prague, two of them even for an entire year). We drank wine and bourbon, and then the students pulled out bags of marijuana and rolled joints, which they passed from person to person.
The chair of the department also organized a farewell party. He invited the members of the department as well as Mrs. Cisney, who had directed my Castle a year ago.
I remember that almost everyone expressed surprise that we had decided to go back to an unfree country; some even tried to talk me out of it. The director, who had the most experience with Soviet friendship, foretold that I would end up in a concentration camp in Siberia. She even knelt down before me (she had a theatrical sense of effect, but I’m convinced she was serious) and begged me to change my mind and not to go back to that concentration camp of a country.
They treated me very generously at the department and paid me for the next two months. Even our landlord returned our deposit, something he had a full right to keep because we’d broken the rental agreement. And we sold our Impala at the used-car lot. Besides the trip to the Mexican border, we’d driven to New York, Chicago, and several other places I don’t recall. Despite the mileage, I was offered seven hundred dollars. My former compatriot Zizala really did give me a special férst reyt prais.
In the last issue of Rudé právo that I read on the American continent, there was invective directed at the former chair of the Writers’ Union, Eduard Goldstücker:
The first thing he did in this capacity was to try to reinstate the membership of those who had been justifiably expelled from the party: A. J. Liehm, L. Vaculík, and I. Klíma. . It is interesting that even as recently as 1967, E. Goldstücker was trying to distance himself from these people. Less that a year later, when their opinions and activities were openly directed against the party, he is once again taking them under his patronage and creating conditions for further detrimental exploits.
Finally I called my aunt Ilonka and Josef Škvorecký in Toronto to inform them I was returning to Prague. My aunt admitted it was my decision; I knew what was happening in Prague better than she did. Father had returned from Switzerland, even though she had tried to talk him out of it. Perhaps we knew best what we were doing. My colleague Škvorecký asked me to pass on his regards to all his friends. He still wanted to finish the semester, and then he would go back too. (He didn’t return for a visit until twenty years later.)
As we were leaving for the airport, I felt a strange mixture of uncertainty, fear, and relief.
Essay: Life in Subjugation, p. 507
16
Surprisingly, we were allowed to walk through customs at the Prague airport without any inspection and thus were able to bring in the dollars we had saved, of which I carried some in my wallet and some, without a great amount of ingenuity, stuck between the pages of The History of Czech Literature.
Our apartment had been cleaned and aired out. My considerate mother-in-law had even prepared food for us and placed it in the refrigerator. On my desk lay a pile of letters and a recent newspaper.
I was home. I didn’t know what I was going to do — today, tomorrow, or next week.
I telephoned various friends. Most welcomed me home, but a few were taken aback to hear that I was calling from Prague. Their news about the current situation was depressing. A great many people who had worked in film, radio, television, or publishing or taught college or even high school had lost their jobs. The shooting of several films had been interrupted indefinitely, and others that were ready for release could not be shown. Our books had been removed from all bookstores, and newspapers were forbidden to publish any articles by those who were on a secret list of “flawed” writers. Who was on the list? Almost everyone. I also discovered that a meeting of the central committee of the Writers’ Union was to take place, and I was expected. Apparently, it would be the last meeting.