Run through Prague

Running through Prague Ota Pavel

When the Communists became one of the leading parties after the war, my dad immediately joined. He took my mother and my brothers with him. Only I was too young for such things. He joined the Communist Party, enchanted like many by the Red Army, straight from the goat of the hairy Russian soldier who took him and his horse to Bushehrad. Daddy also believed that the true ones had finally come who would not divide people into whites and non-whites, Jews and non-Jews. At least that's what everyone promised in their books and speeches, starting with Lenin. After returning from the concentration camp, my parents enjoyed themselves. They went dancing at the Belvedere, Barbarina. Wine flowed as if to make up for years of hardship, poverty, humiliation.

Arnošt Lustig used to come to our house, studying and partying with my brother Jirka. Lustig liked to dance with our mother the most, he danced brilliantly, like a breeze floating over the dance floor, and my mother loved to dance with him, because my father stomped and panted like an elephant while dancing. My mother was a beauty, and Lustig was a little bit in love with her. One day, a handsome, fair-haired tall man came to get her, and Daddy nodded that Mummy could go on the dance floor with him. And the gentleman began to woo her and halfway through the dance he said to her: You're so beautiful, and he could have left his eyes on her. Mummy smiled, what woman wouldn't be pleased. And then the handsome gentleman added: I just wonder what's the matter with that Jew? Three children, said the mother, and she danced and sat down again beside her father.

My father met Johnny, an American, at the Belvedere. Johnny was as beautiful as a virgin and had paws like a bear. Daddy always said that when Czech girls see him, they undress immediately, but I was only fourteen at the time and I didn't know what that meant. And he was really cool, he flew a fighter plane at the Germans, took down a few of them before they shot him down and made him a bit of an invalid, landing a little on his left leg. But he kept his courage, everyone was running away as he drove around Prague in his Jeep Willys. Plus, he had a high position with UNRRA, which wanted to help the Czechs, and he was brimming with pockets of dollars, and he gave my dad gallons of gasoline, thousands of American cigarettes, sweaters, coffee, canned goods, and packs of chewing gum. Daddy took it as a party member and didn't even mind that it was from an American. Who else should take the American goods but the Jews who suffered the most. Johnny was a good guy. He told us that he had ancestors somewhere in the north of Bohemia and that they owned beautiful tenement houses and he would one day manage them, but he still didn't have time to go and see the houses.

The elections of '46 were coming up and Dad thought that our family had to do something to help communism win. His suggestion was that we run through Prague the evening before the election. We'd get the party numbers and predict how the election would turn out. Our mother said that only Daddy could come up with such a stupid proposal, but Daddy didn't fall for her talk. Thinking back on it today, I have to give Daddy credit, it was strange and wonderful. Daddy disappeared early in the morning with the idea of bringing Johnny along for the run, as such a thing has to be arranged by the military. They arrived late in the afternoon, Johnny didn't seem to want to hear about it. But Daddy did. I don't know how, but it was clear that if he could sell electric vacuum cleaners in villages where there was no electricity at all, he could convince Johnny. They arrived at our place on an autumn afternoon, I can't remember if the sun was shining or if it was under a cloud. All I know is that Johnny was a little greasy, had a bottle of whiskey under the steering wheel and was humming something. I walked up to him and heard clearly: 'May the mean old world perish'.

While we went to change into our shirts, Johnny practiced driving his Jeep around Farsky Street, one foot on the gas, the other on the fender, and smoking a cigar. He was wearing a brand-new U.S. Army colonel's uniform, and it looked great on him, and I thought, if

a woman walked in here, she'd strip right off. But he was waiting for us. There were three of us brothers, Daddy of course didn't run, it wasn't for him anymore and his legs were terribly into O. He got another boy to be the fourth in that run for Communism for a hundred American chewing gums from Johnny. Mummy was adding up the numbers and quietly scolding Daddy. But Daddy's eyes were burning, convinced that he was securing this run for the victory of communism in perpetuity. And he also thought the run would be a spectacular success.

We went out in front of the house. Johnny had already finished his bottle of whiskey. Hugo was the first to run, he had a beautiful chest, and his daddy had pinned a number one on his chest. The second was sent out by the daddy of the boy who ran for a hundred pieces of gum. He gave him number two, the Social Democrats would be second. The third one was Jiri, number three. He represented the People's Party. Daddy saved me for last. The National Socialists will be fourth. Daddy chose me on purpose because I was the best runner, and if anything happened, I could splash. I trained at Sparta with Father Jandera, I had strong thighs and a rebound. Father Jandera predicted a great future for me as a sprinter, but I didn't have the will to train. Athletics is hard work.

Daddy ordered me to limp a little, perhaps to put some distance between me and the others, and perhaps to show how miserable the National Socialist Party was. We ran from Strossmayer Square to the waterfront and from there to Příkopy. I didn't think it was bad. I ran almost alone through Prague, I was the centre of attention, the Communists were clapping, the National Socialists were whistling a little. No training, no hard work, it was a special race in which the order was set in advance by daddy. First Communists, last National Socialists. And so it went on and on, just no overtaking. Flags flying in the windows, people dressed festively and in good spirits. I even stopped limping, puffing out my chest and showing my strong legs bouncing off the cobblestones. It was a bit heady, with only Dad riding behind me with Johnny in the jeep, calling out and occasionally admonishing me: Good! It's good! Just limp more! Johnny was behind me. I looked at him three times as I was straightening my falling sock. He was in the best American fighting car that was said to have won the Second World War, an MB model, sixty horsepower, with a punch and fantastic speed in the first few metres. Jeeps were used as minehunters, as roadblock jammers, as stagecoaches, and now one to secure Communist elections. The jeep had beautiful white painted tires, an American star on the hood. It looked like a strange green and white fish with peepers. Johnny looked good on the jeep, smoking God knows how many cigars and humming something, probably the song my dad was taught when he was a kid by the miners at Bushrad, about the old mean world, to keep Grandma Malvina warm.

I don't know why my dad thought we would run across Wenceslas Square, where the National Socialists had their main tent at Melantrich's, for whom I actually ran and limped to fourth place. We turned up from Příkopy and from a distance I could see the huge crowd in front of Melantrich. As I approached, my soul began to shrink. And the alley I was about to run into was getting smaller. I looked back at my father, he was my last hope. But I knew my dad too well to trust that hope. He had some bad qualities, but he wasn't a fucking Jew, as they sometimes said about Jews. He never took any crap from anybody, and he'd beaten up a few guys who called him names or hurt him, and he'd had a few trials for it. The first Jew in the world for him was neither Mr. Einstein nor Mr. Chaplin, but the boxer Baer, who knocked out Schmeling. My dad had a ring set up in our apartment before the war and we had to box, I was seven years old at the time. We were taught by Mr. Hrabák and especially by Mr. Jenda Heřmánek, who had the silver Olympic medal from Amsterdam. But I knew that my experience from the time I was seven years old would be of no use to me now. There was only one option. Not to run at all. I did it. My legs stopped on their own. I stood still and the jeep braked too. Daddy could have called: Come on up here, buddy! where Johnny's uniform was, that wonderful car of his with the hitch, a real American Colt, Daddy's fists, but Daddy didn't do it. He loved that Baer, not Mr. Einstein. He leaned out of the car and told me to go! Go limp!

My brothers and the bubblegum boy are gone. First I walked and then I slowly ran in front of Melantrich. It was interesting that few people had noticed our running until then, but it was different on Wenceslas Square. They understood immediately what kind of agitation was going on, they were intellectuals. They were only silent in surprise that I had the audacity to make fun of them right in front of Melantrich. They gasped, roared, and rushed after me. Some race at Strahov was a rag against that. Suddenly I stopped limping, as my father advised me, and I started to follow Father Jandera's advice: get out! Lift your knees high! Don't look to the left! Don't look to the right! Burn! It was too late. The circle was narrowing and the alleys were closed with people. My brave brothers disappeared in the front and the jeep and its crew were left behind. Johnny blew his horn shrilly, but that was all. There was nowhere else to run and I stood and waited, my legs shaking, and if my heart could have, it would have leapt out of my body and made a separate run on the pavement to steady itself. They were standing quite close now. Then one of them leaned over and ripped off my number. The other slapped me so hard I fell to my knees. They started beating me. As I ducked and dodged, I could see their eyes. They were the eyes of clerks, doctors, engineers, businessmen, only the first one who hit me must have been a butcher, because it was a terrible blow.

I knew those eyes. They hammered me for my later half-truths and distorted radio reports and naive stories, they hammered me for the shenanigans and shenanigans we will commit when we win tomorrow. They beat me for the treason and murder we will commit. I chose it first. They tore off my shirt, my shorts, and I stood naked in Wenceslas Square, covering my lap. I was a pretty boy then, but I wasn't pretty enough to stand in the middle of mother Prague like that. I had blood running from my nose and face down my chest and thighs. Then Johnny's jeep showed up. When Johnny saw me bloody, he stopped, took out his Colt and walked slowly towards me in silence. But he didn't start shooting. He tucked the Colt in, took me in his arms and carried me to his jeep, blood soaking his beautiful uniform. Daddy sat in the other seat, clenching his fists and raging. Then Johnny drove like a madman through Prague. He carried me out to the apartment in the house where we were staying.

When my mother saw me, she wanted to go after Daddy first, who had come up with the grand idea. Daddy ran down the stairs screaming that he was running for the doctor. Dr. Birdie had big glasses and a lot of fake ones. He cleaned me up, taped me up like a tire and flipped me over. The next day I woke up late, everything hurt, I thought I was dying. Someone was waiting meekly in my room. Through the cracks between the sheets I saw my father, smiling at me, a red carnation in his lapel. He was saying something and I couldn't understand him. I shook my head and he leaned towards me and said something again. He wanted to please me somehow, maybe even give me something. I saw his delighted face, and at last I heard clearly: We have won. Johnny was standing behind him, nodding that we had won too, not even realizing that with this victory he had lost his beautiful tenements up north that he hadn't even been to see yet. Then my dad told me that he had talked to MP Hruby and that I would be accepted early the next year, at the age of seventeen, into the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. I was lying in that bed, with a headache, a swollen neck, a swollen bottom and a leg that had been kicked and which I then limped on for a long time without any encouragement from my father. I looked sadly at my dad and thought about whether I would ever be able to play hockey for Sparta again. Then, as if apologetically, Johnny pulled out of his bag the most gorgeous shirt I had ever seen. It was a real American officer's khaki shirt made of fine linen and had little lions and officer's stars sewn on it. It was something cuddly that I needed to put next to me in bed and play with like a little teddy bear or doll. I wanted to fall asleep and look forward to the shirt being there again, and wake up and go back to sleep knowing that no one would take it away from me. Then I slept for a long time as a future member of the Communist Party with an American shirt for the occasion, and when I was born, the Communists had the power they had wanted for decades and started to put this country in order. My daddy was also trying to get communism to overtake capitalism, like Joseph Stalin wanted. He tried his best, even though many Jews told him he was a meshugah.

They never gave him any big jobs, but at least made him chairman of some kind of entertainment committee, and he went around to businesses, the American Buick car was gone, and got plaster deer, midgets, and dolls that danced when they stretched for the raffle. When he helped me to join the Communist Party at that age of seventeen, I did it his way. It was touching at the time, but when I think back on it now, I realize that because of the meetings, raffles, rallies for friendship, plaster deer and midgets, I didn't learn to dance and had far fewer girls than the other boys, which I will regret for a long time.

Daddy advocated communism everywhere. The main argument that we were going downhill and that we were catching up with capitalism was that you could get a coffee grinder in every shop. In intimate circles, he used to say that he was a communist before the Communist Party was founded. As a boy, he used to take muffins from the farm to the poor boys. On his escape from the Foreign Legion, he read their newspapers to illiterate Spanish Communists, even though he didn't speak Spanish. In Fernando Póo prison, he sang Avanti popolo. He had the SK Kladno footballers paint the railings and the fence. On the ship Tereza Taja, he was a lifeguard for Russian noblewomen fleeing the October Revolution, and he only gave them oilskins. When they fainted from the heat, he washed their beautiful breasts. They were irrefutable documents, although the last one did have a role in the October Revolution and the limited number of oilskins, but I didn't see the beautiful breasts of the noblewomen. But let it be, the fact is that my father was close to communism, he was often among bums, vagrants and poor people. And above all, he had a willing heart. When the Communists won in Bohemia, his close friend Heller, a factory worker, told him, "You're a fool. You're still helping them. Then Heller went to England and opened a fur factory, similar to the one in Bohemia.

My daddy didn't do business like he used to: he did what he could. We were always worse off, but the important thing for Daddy was that there was friendship, brotherhood and, above all, that equality of the races. That was worth all the money. My parents only had a little house near Prague. I went to see them once, I didn't see anyone. I walked in, afraid something had happened to them. They were in the back room. Mommy was lying on the couch, wrapped in a blanket and facing the wall, Daddy was sitting at the table in his underpants, crying. His hair was strewn across his forehead and his tears were dripping onto the newspaper. It was the Red Right, which he had subscribed to and which he couldn't go a day without. I leaned over him and took the hair off his forehead. For the first and last time in his life, he slumped into my arms, as children do. I was already a man. I held him and looked over his head at the Red Law where he had scribbled in red pencil: Rudolf Slánský, of Jewish descent Bedřich Geminder, of Jewish descent Ludvík Frejka, of Jewish descent Bedřich Reicin, of Jewish descent Rudolf Margolius, of Jewish descent The line of Jews went on and was blurred with tears. When he calmed down, he looked at me absently, as if he did not recognize me, and said. They need someone to blame again. Then he got up and hit the Red Law and screamed: I forgive murder. Even judicial ones. And political. But this Communist Red Law should never have had a Jewish origin! Communists divide people into Jews and non-Jews! And then he hit the Red Law again, and it splintered like it was made of winter's rotten leaves. An antique table with inlaid deer crumbled. He sat down and took a deep breath. We all knew he was thinking about how useless the banner demonstrations were, the talk of truth and justice, how useless the blood that dripped from me in Wenceslas Square was. He was also thinking about the fact that Johnny, such a wonderful boy, who later bought a ranch somewhere in Texas and raised cows, had come with us for nothing. The plaster deer for the raffle and the doll in the pink skirt that stretches out and then dances were also useless.

My daddy got up and went to the shed. There he got out the biggest axe to chop up the logs. I was scared of something, so I followed him. My mother begged me to leave him alone, she'd never seen him like that. It wasn't until a while later that I broke away from her and ran after him. I ran to the door he always painted five-pointed stars on for May Day. Today he'd carved two big stars. I stood and counted the points: one point two three four five six points I stood even closer, as if I couldn't believe my eyes. Daddy thought I was going to erase the Jewish stars, he held up his axe. But I didn't want to erase them, I understood him very well. At that gate, he stopped being a communist and became a Jew again. We looked at each other. He had something in his eyes that I had never seen in him before. In those eyes there was a terrible disappointment, the hopelessness and despair of a man who wanted to cross the solid bridge to the other side of the river, and the bridge wasn't really there. In those eyes, too, Slánský and Margoly were swinging on a rope. Birds were singing around in the evening and it was like the old Jewish psalms. He put down his axe and sat down in his underpants on the chair that was always there for newcomers who were tired of the journey or of life. He waited for them to come for him too. But no one came for him. He had no power and held no office. He was too small a lord. At that time, he only raised rabbits. When I looked out at night, he was still sitting in that chair. A golden star was falling and it was more beautiful and perhaps even fairer than all the stars on this strange earth.