*
We started to realize that, in addition to foreign readers, Czechs should know what we were writing about.
Of course no journal here would publish even a single love poem by any of us without the permission of the party overseers. All modern means of textual reproduction were strictly controlled, and using them surreptitiously was considered an actionable offense.
We met with some lawyer friends who told us that an author could not be punished for a copy made on an ordinary typewriter.
We agreed to have new works typed up, in several copies. We would sign the copies to emphasize that these were our own private manuscripts. Then we would get them to readers one way or another.
But even this primitive method of distributing our works required someone to organize it. The laboriousness of the task was difficult to imagine; it was essentially doing the labor of several publishers. Ludvík Vaculík volunteered. He would take the manuscripts to his girlfriend, Zdena, who would be able, just barely, to make eight copies on her typewriter. For this, however, she worked ten hours a day.
Michal observed our somewhat childish activity. He was a technically adept and enterprising young man. Sometimes at a bazaar, he would find a broken tape recorder, buy it, and fiddle around with it until he got it running. Then he would sell it at a profit. Once he noticed a used but perfectly functioning and cheap electric typewriter. He convinced us that we’d be able to make up to fourteen copies on it. Bearing in mind that it was more than five hundred years after the goldsmith and printer Johannes Gutenberg’s revolutionary invention, this was not a breathtaking number. Nevertheless, we bought the typewriter and then searched around stationery stores for bundles of paper that was lightweight but of good quality. What we found was surprisingly inexpensive and well suited for duplication.
The first volumes of our manuscript series were quite appealing, and the best publishers in any free society would have expressed interest in them. Vaculík inaugurated the series with his novella, The Guinea Pigs, which had already come out in German translation. (Tomáš Řezáč, one of the most agile agents of State Security, had managed to penetrate Bucher’s publishing house in Switzerland and blatantly lied in one of his articles when he said that not a single copy had been published abroad.)
Among the first volumes of our typewritten series were verses by Jaroslav Seifert, Karel Šiktanc, and Jiří Gruša; Havel’s original version of The Beggar’s Opera; and novels by Pavel Kohout.
Ludvík started making the rounds of his friends, colleagues, and acquaintances (because of his long journalism career as well as his Wallachian gregariousness, he had a lot of them) and provided them with freshly copied works. At first, they looked more like official files clamped in three-ring binders. To make them more resemble books, Zdena cut the pieces of paper in half. When the book had been typed, Ludvík would take it to Tomos, the only legitimate bookbinding firm, and the books received a binding. We decided to place a warning on the title page: Further Copying of the Manuscript Expressly Forbidden. Thereby it was made clear to the authorities that the author’s intention was not to distribute the manuscript. Furthermore, the first letters of this phrase in Czech, which even the least astute State Security investigators could understand, spelled the word “Resistance.”
Vaculík sold the copies for the price of the paper and wages for the copier, who received five crowns per page. The authors received not a crown. Not only would this have increased the sale price, but it would have also exposed the author to accusations of publicizing his work illegally. For New Year’s Eve, Vaculík sent around a hand-painted postcard on which he’d sketched the initial works of the series. The names of the authors were listed on the spines of the books, and the entire bundle was enclosed in a large padlock. From this time on we called our series, which endured until the end of communism, Padlock.
*
At the beginning of the spring of 1974, Bohumil Hrabal — whom I considered the most remarkable Czech prose writer — was going to celebrate his sixtieth birthday. If the conditions in our country had been only a little more seemly, his birthday would unquestionably have been an occasion for newspaper articles and radio and television discussions, and thousands of his admirers and even government functionaries would have sent him their congratulations. If he’d belonged to the small group of collaborationist authors, he would probably have received the title of national artist. But he was classified among the prohibited writers and essentially did not exist for the current government and all publishing houses.
I was not among the circle of Hrabal’s close friends who regularly met at the Golden Tiger pub. But I knew Hrabal from our brief encounters when we were still members of the Writers’ Union. It struck me that we should render our colleague an appropriate honor, and my friends agreed. So we wrote up a sort of bull in archaic-sounding language in which Bohumil Hrabal was named Prince of Czech Letters with the right to wear a diamond crown. Saša Kliment secured a Latin translation of the text. We got an artist (I don’t remember who it was, but a little later Nanda created a similar document) to embellish the bull. We convinced the orientalist Oldřich Král, one of Hrabal’s friends, to sign the bull. (His first name had naturally preordained him for the task.) We didn’t have a diamond crown, but I pulled together a collection of contributions from other writers, and Ludvík arranged for it all to be recopied and superbly bound.
Hrabal was waiting for us in the street in front of his building. He greeted us somewhat awkwardly and suggested we not go inside because the whole building was bugged.
We explained that we needed to go upstairs because he was going to be presented with a document requiring a seal that had to be made of wax. We couldn’t do it on the street and, besides, the street was not sufficiently solemn. Hrabal acquiesced and led us up to his apartment.
There we presented him with the collection of articles along with the bull.
The Prince of Czech Letters was indeed moved. Several times he repeated, “This is wonderful, fellows, you didn’t have to do this.”
Then he opened the collection, which was titled: What I Would Write If I Had Somewhere to Publish It, So I’ll Write to You, Mr. Hrabal.
Then the prince signed copies for all of us who brought one: B. Hrabal received the original of this text on 28 March 1974.
Then we took a seat at a round table and affixed the seal. It was indeed a solemn occasion. I held the burning candle while Saša heated the sealing wax and dripped it on the bull. Then Saša pressed an old Swedish coin into it. Hrabal brought out a bottle of Egyptian cognac, poured us all a glass, and then began telling us about his childhood, about his mother and how he was conceived out of wedlock. When she revealed her condition at home, her father was going to shoot her, but his wife took the gun away from him and said, “Knock it off and come eat!” He told it so convincingly, it was as if he’d seen it with his own eyes.
*
Sometime later that spring, I received a message from Jürgen that the Munich publisher Blanvalet, which published children’s literature, was interested in a collection of fairy tales by prohibited Czech authors, but it needed the manuscripts by the summer. I asked Jürgen to thank Blanvalet for us and said I’d try to get the fairy tales as soon as I could.