Sometimes paranoia would get the better of her, and she would fly around the building looking everywhere for her passbook. Finally, she would call the police and say she’d been robbed. The police would come every time (explaining that they had to show up when someone called) and try to persuade the old woman that she’d simply mislaid the passbook; they assured her that they’d found no sign of a break-in, and this appeased her for a moment.
One day Helena said she hadn’t seen the old woman lately. We hadn’t heard the usual sounds from the mansard apartment either, and I realized that it had been a while since I’d noticed the reek of her perfume. We asked the neighbors, but they also hadn’t seen her. This time we called the police. They arrived, pounded in vain on her door, then borrowed the stepladder in the garden and placed it on our terrace, and one of them climbed up and broke a window in the mansard. I still remember the police officer’s pale face as he climbed back down, took a seat on the stepladder, and stammered that the old woman was lying on the bed, and the room was filled with the stench of decaying corpse.
Soon thereafter, new tenants moved into the mansard apartment— a corpulent fifty-year-old man with significantly thinning hair, his young and rather fetching wife, and their five-year-old son, Jindříšek.
A few days later, the head of the new household rang our door- bell to introduce himself. He presented me with a small painted box, which was trying to look like an antique, along with his business card. A doctor’s title preceded his pithy and memorable name. (I soon learned that this title was as fraudulent as everything he did. His wife told me that he worked at the sanatorium in Bohnice, of course not as a doctor but an orderly, and he held this position only for the stamp it provided his ID booklet. Otherwise, he supported himself by trading in antiques.)
As soon as he opened his mouth, I realized I was standing face-to-face with a hero from a short story by O. Henry, Chekhov, Hašek, or Hrabal, or a story yet to be written — which I undertook a few months later. I changed his name and, as far as I remember, condensed several of his discourses into one.
I was given to understand that he had been everywhere, knew everybody, and could procure or arrange just about anything. In the concentration camp, he had shared a bunk with Count Schwarzenberg. He was on a first-name basis with the prime minister’s brother. He was trying to obtain a set of silver platters for the Belgian delegate at the UN. He had rebuked the deputy interior minister by saying, “You needn’t think you can pull the wool over my eyes, I can see right through you!” When he visited Honza Schwarzenberg in Vienna the other day, he was introduced to Otto Hapsburg, a truly charming gentleman. An agent, of course. All those fine gentlemen were agents. Agents were in charge the world over — policemen of the world unite. Nixon and other clowns like him — he wouldn’t even bother to name ours — were just their lackeys. One of these days, when he had more time, he would tell me more about all this.
After ten minutes, I was supposed to feel like a country bumpkin who had no idea about the big wide world out there. After twenty, I might begin to hope that despite all his knowledge and wide experience he might consider me worthy of his interest.
This fellow certainly deserved to be immortalized along with his splendid monologues and remarkably shameless dealings. (He once offered me an oil painting, claiming it was an original Picasso.) I was eager to write about him, but I didn’t have a story yet. Then one morning I was home alone; the children were at school, and my wife was at work. I was sitting in my bedroom writing. Suddenly the door flew open, and in walked little Jindřich. His sudden appearance in our apartment, which no one could enter except as a thief, put me in such a state of shock that all I could do was stammer stupidly, “Jindříšek, where did you come from?”
And the child explained: “I jumped.” He led me onto the terrace and pointed to an open window in the mansard above us.
Jindřich’s butt and elbows were a little scraped, and while I was treating his wounds, I realized I had the story.
*
Sometime at the beginning of December 1976, Nanda’s homeroom teacher invited us in for a talk. Pretending to be crestfallen, she informed us that there was no way she could recommend our daughter for college. “You, Mr. Klíma,” she turned to me, “certainly understand why. We are all very sorry; your Hanička is such a sweet and industrious girl. Her drawings are excellent, and she even helps with the May Day decorations.” She advised us to send Hana to work at a factory for a year or two, then the factory could do what they at the school were not allowed to (she immediately corrected herself: what they couldn’t do), that is, recommend Hana for college.
Soon thereafter, Helena’s colleague, Jiří Dienstbier, came to see us (I knew him from my time in Michigan, when he and his wife had stopped for a visit on their way north). Jirka was an unusually witty and clever observer. But I think at the time he was somewhat less skeptical than I was.
His optimism was now quite apparent. He said that several of our friends were preparing the text of a petition that essentially repeated the fundamental principles of the Helsinki Accords. Among other things, it required the countries that had signed the treaty to uphold basic human rights, and, as I was well aware, our government had signed it. The petition demanded nothing more than that the government actually do what it promised when it signed this document. With almost gleeful joy, he added that he truly could not imagine what they might object to in such a petition. And he took out of his briefcase four typewritten pages for me to look over.
The text, bearing the title Charter 77, did indeed refer to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which had come into effect a few months earlier. But in the third sentence it announced that the promulgation, however, serves as a powerful reminder of the extent to which basic human rights in our country exist, regrettably, on paper alone.
The introduction itself would not please our comrades in power. Then, blow after blow followed, all of them well aimed:
In violation of Article 13 of the second-mentioned covenant, guaranteeing everyone the right to education, countless young people are prevented from studying because of their own views or even their parents.’. . Freedom of public expression is inhibited. . No philosophical, political, or scientific view or artistic activity that departs ever so slightly from the narrow bounds of official ideology or aesthetics is allowed to be published; no open criticism can be made of abnormal social phenomena; no public defense is possible against false and insulting charges made in official propaganda. . Freedom of religious confession, emphatically guaranteed by Article 18 of the first covenant, is continually curtailed by arbitrary official action.
In the enumeration of the regime’s violations, it was pointed out that there were no nonparty authorities; the Ministry of the Interior monitored the lives of its own citizens, tracked their every move, tapped telephones and apartments, intercepted their mail, and conducted house searches.