During my three-month stint as an orderly, I never harmed anyone, and I never accepted a single crown from a patient. However, one day I was transferring an ailing old woman to another ward (I knew she was being sent there to die), and while we were waiting for an examination, she asked if I would hold her hand. I took it — holding her cold, wasted, shaking hand was disagreeable. When we moved on, she tried to force a ten-crown piece on me and begged me to come see her in the ward because she didn’t have anyone left in the world. I didn’t take the money, but even today I am ashamed that I didn’t go and hold her hand. I only hope that some higher justice does not exact retribution when my turn comes.
*
No totalitarian regime can persist if it provides people with basic freedoms. There are always individuals or groups who attempt to acquire these freedoms, but the regime, no matter how charitable it pretends to be, can never debate with them; it cannot answer questions or criticisms. It must silence them and thereby instill fear in others who might be tempted to raise criticisms.
The occupying regime in our country could not behave otherwise. As I’ve noted, the first arrests and subsequent trials took place when I was teaching in Ann Arbor.
In our group of authors, whose works had been banned with particular thoroughness, it was Pavel Kohout who refused to accept the current state of affairs. Without overstepping any laws, he offered the occupying powers the opportunity to show their true character.
And so just before Christmas of 1972, Kohout put together a petition to send to the president of the republic, General Svoboda. The petition expressed a reasonable and in no way antigovernment request that the president provide amnesty to political prisoners (there were more and more of them every year) or at the very least issue a directive allowing them to spend the Christmas holidays at home. Although the views of the undersigned differ widely on various fundamental questions, read the petition, we agree that magnanimity regarding political prisoners cannot in any way threaten the authority and capacity of the state’s power; quite the opposite, it will testify to its humanism.
We rewrote the text several times and then divided up into pairs to go collect the signatures of other writers (both legal and banned).
I was supposed to enter the hospital in a few days to undergo an operation on my gallbladder, but I didn’t see this as a reason to avoid these activities. Ludvík and I agreed on the text of the petition and then visited several writers. Some of them signed; others refused with a bit of embarrassment (because most of them are dead, I will not give their names).
The following day I was called for, and my first involuntary “visit” took place at Bartolomějská Street, State Security headquarters. As soon as I came home, I carefully wrote down what had happened at the interrogation:
They took me up to the third floor and down several hallways to a small office. They allowed me to take off my coat and then hung it (fortunately not me) up.
A large man around fifty years old, who vividly reminded me of Vítěslav Nezval, was sitting behind a table. Off to the side sat a lanky blond fellow. The man behind the table told me to sit down and prattled on that I was there according to paragraph such and such and then asked his first question.
“What do you know about the meeting of the PEN Club in Berlin?”
The question surprised me. I said truthfully I didn’t know anything.
“Do you know what the PEN Club is?”
“Yes. An international organization of writers. I am a member.”
“Do you know who the chair is?”
“Heinrich Böll.”
Only later did I come to understand that the first questions are always supposed to appear innocent and that refusing to answer them would seem ridiculous and even indecent. But as soon as a person acknowledges something other than that these questions are, just like the entire interrogation itself, indecent, he acknowledges his position as the interrogated.
“So you’re a member of the PEN Club! And as a member, you didn’t even know there was a meeting?”
I tried to explain: “None of us were informed. I happened to overhear it from a German broadcast.” (That was a senselessly accommodating answer to a question that hadn’t been asked.)
“And what did you hear in this broadcast?”
“Nothing. That the meeting was taking place in Berlin.”
“What was discussed at the meeting?”
“I have no idea.”
“So you don’t know that a special group of writers in exile was formed to assist persecuted writers?”
I answered again truthfully that I didn’t.
Nezval looked surprised and with exaggerated irony declared, “So, despite being a member, you don’t know. Do you at least know who was elected its head?”
I had no idea.
“Pavel Tigrid!” (He got up and started pacing behind the table to emphasize that his own loathsomeness excited him.) “Did you know that a resolution was passed with regard to Czech political prisoners and sent to Comrades Husák and Indra?”
“How would I know that?”
“What do you know about a letter sent to the president of the republic?”
“What letter?” I asked to stall for time.
“But you signed a letter to the president of the republic!”
I hesitated for a moment, and he picked up a piece of paper from the table and waved it in front of me.
“I did,” I admitted.
“What kind of letter was it?”
“It was a letter requesting amnesty for political prisoners.”
“Who else signed this letter?”
“I don’t remember!”
“So, you don’t remember?” He was starting to shout. “Who brought you this letter?”
I finally managed to bring myself to protest. “Look, I don’t actually know why I’m here. Nothing is being taken down — and that letter was absolutely legal according to the law concerning petitions. So I will not give evidence about it.”
The blond fellow noted ironically, “Law concerning petitions! What’s that?”
“It’s guaranteed in our constitution — everyone has the right to appeal to the representatives of the country with requests and complaints,” I explained. “We learned that in school.”
“Yes, such a law does exist,” admitted Nezval. “But doesn’t it seem to you, after I told you about the meeting of the PEN Club, that your petition seems to be something else?”
“No!”
“They drew up a resolution, and you hurried to sign it.”
“But I told you I didn’t know anything about that meeting.”
“Perhaps not you, but we know the petition was prepared there.”
As if we couldn’t come up with things like this ourselves. “I don’t believe it,” I announced.
“You are either naive or at least pretending to be. We know who prepared the petition, we have proof. Who came to you with the resolution?”
I repeated that I had no intention of giving a statement concerning a letter to the president authorized by law.
“Then you won’t talk about it, since you think there’s nothing wrong with it?”
“That’s precisely why.”
“But we see it differently. We will prove that all this was not so naive. Why did you sign this letter?”
“I myself have been locked up. I could imagine what those people are going through, and I felt sorry for them.” I was trying to play on their feelings, as if I thought they had any.
“When were you locked up?”
“During the war.”