Silesian Station (2008) (16 page)
At eight that evening Russell's train pulled out of Anhalter Station. The last time he'd made this journey he'd been carrying a probable death sentence in a false-bottomed suitcase, and looking back he still had difficulty believing he could have taken such a risk. Today's journey, by contrast, seemed almost blissfully safe. He gazed out at the Saxon countryside for a couple of hours, stretched his limbs on the platform at Dresden, and took a nightcap in the dining car as the mountains loomed in the late evening dusk. The sleeping car attendant took his documents, thanked him profusely for the five-mark tip, and showed him to his first class bed. He lay there listening to the rattle of the wheels, enjoying the softness of the mattress. A change was as good as a rest, he thought. Even a change of cages.
R
ussell's train pulled in to Masaryk Station soon after seven in the morning. Or what had been Masaryk Station - the nameboards had been removed and not, as yet, replaced with something more suitable. In all other respects, the concourse looked much the same. There were no German soldiers on display, no leather-coated myrmidons. Russell walked out through the gabled glass facade and turned left. At the far end of a shadowed Hybernska Street the famous Powder Gate basked in the morning sunlight.
He headed down Dlazdena Street towards the centre of the New Town. The side streets, he noticed, all bore bilingual signs in Czech and German, save for Jerusalem Street, which had no sign at all. The large synagogue halfway down was still standing, which seemed a good omen. He would have to visit it before he left.
Jindoisska Street was festooned with swastikas of varying sizes, the largest reserved for the central post office. Something else was different too, but he only realized what it was when a large sign told him that 'Prague is now driving on the right'. In more ways than one, he thought.
Reaching the long sloping boulevard that the Czechs, for reasons best known to themselves, called Wenceslas Square, he turned left. The Hotel Europa was a hundred metres up the hill, a uniformed bellboy doing what looked like a tapdance on the pavement outside.
A French friend had recommended the Alcron Hotel on the dubious grounds that the Gestapo kept a large suite of rooms there, and that, in consequence, the hotel's telephone lines were less likely to be monitored. Since Russell had no intention of using a hotel telephone for anything more than ordering breakfast he felt able to forego the delight of swapping small-talk in the lifts with the local boys in black. He had, moreover, always wanted to stay at the Europa, an art nouveau masterpiece from the old Habsburg Empire days. The Habsburg civil service might have been less than successful at running a modern state and economy, but few ruling classes had been more single-minded when it came to indulging themselves. And given the choice, who would turn their back on a hotel facade crowned with gilded nymphs?
The bellboy tapped his foot one last time for luck and took Russell's bag. The receptionist was half-asleep, but managed to find Russell's reservation and key. A gilded lift took him and the bellboy up three floors, and a red-carpeted corridor brought them to a lovely high-ceilinged room at the front of the hotel. Russell handed over the few small coins he'd had since March, and asked if the hotel changed money. Yes, the boy said from the doorway, but the Thomas Cook on Na Poikopi offered a better rate. So much for loyalty.
Russell's appointment at the American legation was for ten o'clock, which gave him a couple of hours. He could walk to the Little Quarter, he thought. Through the Old Town and over the Charles Bridge. But first, breakfast. He could see from his window that most of the cafes on the Square were open for business, and sitting outside seemed preferable to the hotel restaurant, no matter how ornate the decoration.
A kiosk at the nearest intersection had a selection of Czech titles, yesterday's
Beobachter
, and a
Daily Express
from the previous Friday. He bought the latter, settled himself in the nearest cafe, and explored the world as seen from England over coffee and strudel. There was a society wedding in Mayfair, a thirty stone man crammed into the back of a Ford Prefect, and a spread of sepia photographs from the Indian Mutiny. The new League season was about to begin, and the paper's football correspondent was tipping Wolverhampton Wanderers to win the First Division title.
The cafe slowly filled around him, and the trams seemed to clank across the nearby intersection with increasing frequency. A trio of German officers walked by, slapping gloves against their thighs with alarming appropriateness, and Russell examined the faces of the Czechs they passed. Expressions of disdain, mostly. A touch of fear. No liking or love, that was certain.
He paid for his breakfast and walked down to Na Poikopi. Thomas Cook was next door to the Deutsches Haus, which was advertising a German Culture Week with several giant posters of aryan composers. The exchange desk was opening as Russell arrived, and the young Czech woman's demeanour switched from sullen hostility to warm friendliness the moment he showed his American passport.
'Journalist,' she murmured in English, reading it under occupation.
'Yes,' Russell agreed.
'You write about my country?'
'Yes.'
'And the Germans?'
'Yes.'
'That is good,' she said, as if the subject admitted of only one viewpoint.
The subject probably did, Russell thought, as he crossed Na Poikopi and took the nearest of the narrow streets burrowing into the Old Town. There were fewer people than he expected, and the main square was almost empty. Russell circled it slowly, reminding himself how beautiful the surrounding wall of buildings was, and trying to ignore the Culture Week posters that hung from many of the first floor windowsills. He discovered he was ten minutes too late for the hourly procession of apostles in the Town Hall clock.
The winding Karlova Street brought him to the river. Two bored-looking German soldiers stood sentry by the Bridge Tower, but the only traffic on the bridge was a single horse-drawn cart piled high with school desks. Above the far bank, the Little Quarter and its crowning castle rose to meet the blue sky.
Russell walked slowly out, examining the statues that lined both para-pets. The river hardly seemed to be flowing; the whole scene seemed bathed in slow-motion tranquillity. The tram gliding across the downstream bridge seemed a different machine from the one that clanked its way around the city. Even the castle looked almost benign.
Still, looking up, Russell could understand Kafka's anxiety. The sheer size of the place was intimidating. In the days following the occupation in March one English paper had carried a picture of Hitler peering anxiously out from one of the windows, as if he was worried that someone was out there with a hunting rifle. No such luck.
Russell resumed his walk. There were another two German guards at the far end of the bridge, and more German uniforms and vehicles on Kampa Island. With twenty minutes to spare, Russell downed another coffee on Mostecka Street before continuing up the hill to the American Legation. This was housed in the former Schoenborn Palace, a four-storey building in shades of beige halfway way up the southern side of Trziste Street. A stone portico surrounded the front doors, topped by the sort of balcony the Duce favoured for ranting. The large Stars and Stripes seemed exotic in such surroundings.
Russell had barely given his name to the receptionist when a young, be-spectacled man with short dark hair came almost tumbling down the stairs. 'Joseph Kenyon,' he said, shaking Russell's hand. 'I thought we might talk outside.'
'Outside' was a series of terraced gardens rising to an orchard. Beyond this, at the very top of the slope, sat an ornate pavilion. The two benches in front offered a wonderful view across the roofs of river and city.
Kenyon himself, as he explained on the walk up, was not so much a diplomat as a political observer, left behind with a skeleton staff now that the occupation had rendered a full embassy inappropriate. There were enough emigration requests to keep his colleagues busy, but not much new for him to observe. 'I can't say I've seen that many occupations, but I have a feeling they follow much the same pattern.'
'So how are the Germans behaving?'
'As you would expect. I can't imagine they anticipated any kind of welcome - well, maybe a few fools did - but it's been four months now, and they've made no real effort to win the Czechs over. Most of the time they seem hell-bent on antagonising them.' Kenyon recounted a story doing the rounds about a Czech from the Sudeten area in the north, which was now part of the Reich. The man's dying mother lived in the Sudeten area in the south - also part of the Reich - and he had asked permission to drive across the Protectorate to visit her. Since he couldn't produce her doctor's certificate, permission had been refused. The man had been forced to drive all the way around the Protectorate, about three times as far. 'I don't know if the story's true,' Kenyon said, 'but it sounds like it could be, and I'm sure most Czechs would believe it.'
The American pulled a packet of Chesterfields from his shirt pocket and offered it. 'Sensible man,' he said when Russell declined, but still lit one for himself with evident pleasure. 'They've really buggered up the language business. First off, they gave the impression everything would be in German, but soon realized that wouldn't fly - I think the ordinary Czechs' refusal to understand anything a German said to them was the crucial clue. So then they started pushing for what they call linguistic parity - everything in both languages with the German version on top. And that's not working either. The Germans have announced that eighteen terms - not seventeen or nineteen, you understand - are untranslatable from German to Czech. These include Fuhrer - which I suspect the Czechs can do without - and Bohmen und Mahren - which we call Bohemia and Moravia. So the Czechs are not allowed to refer to their own country in their own language. Nice, eh?
'And there's the usual cultural bias - Beethoven and Wagner are God's gift, Dvorak and Smetana not fit to tie their shoelaces, etcetera, etcetera. Plus the more serious stuff. The Gestapo have set themselves up in the old Petschek Palace on Bredauer Street, complete with special courts and guards in black. It's rumoured that the basement and top floor are both used for torture, but no one's emerged in one piece to confirm it.'
'There is resistance then?'
'Some, and it'll grow. The Czechs are still getting a kick out of booing Hitler in cinema newsreels and passing Germans their
Beobachter
face down, but they'll graduate to higher things.'
'What about the local Nazis?'
Kenyon made a dismissive gesture. 'Several groups joined together and called for wholehearted collaboration, but not even the Germans took much notice. The Gestapo did fund one bunch of Moravian fascists. Mostly criminals, led by a Brno brothel-keeper. Turned out the only thing they were good at was beating up Jews.'
'Not a talent the Gestapo dismisses.'
'No, I guess not. But maybe they like their monopoly.'
'How are the Jews doing?'
'It could be worse.' About five thousand Jews had been detained in a special camp outside Prague, and the screw was slowly being tightened on the other fifty thousand. The Jews were being pushed out of business, forced to declare their assets - 'all the stuff that happened in Germany a few years ago.' But there was no reign of terror, not yet at least. An SS Hauptsturmfuhrer named Eichmann had been put in charge. He had arrived a few weeks earlier and set himself up in a confiscated Jewish villa in Stresovice. 'But he hasn't shown his hand yet,' Kenyon said, carefully flicking the ash from his cigarette onto the gravel path. 'Last month the Gestapo organized an exhibition at the Deutsches Haus, 'The Jews as Humanity's Enemy' or something like that, and issued unrefusable invitations to the local schools and factories. All the usual garbage - oily Jews counting their shekels, ravishing aryan virgins, baking their Passover bread with the blood of Christian children.' Kenyon shook his head, and stubbed the cigarette out with a twist of his heel. 'Do any of them really believe it, do you think?'
'Those that aren't stupid enough are twisted enough. How are the rest of the Czechs dealing with it?'
'Better than the rest of the Germans, I'd say.' It was a mixed picture, though. The Czech administration was trying to soften the blow by drafting much weaker anti-Semitic legislation than the Germans wanted. It was confiscating Jewish property, but mostly as a means of keeping it out of German hands. 'Ordinary Czechs, it's hard to tell. There are more segregation laws coming in August, and it'll be interesting to see how they react. It could be wishful thinking, but I suspect that ordinary Czechs will try and ignore them. Anti-Semitism has never been much of a force in this country, and supporting the Jews will be another way of holding a finger up to the Germans.'
'Gestures won't help the Jews.'
'Not in the long run, no. But what's happening here is good news as well as bad. The Nazis had a choice when they came in - win the Czechs over or really frighten them to death. They've fallen between two stools so far, but that wasn't an accident. The plain truth is, both options are beyond them. They've got nothing real to offer the Czechs; the only way they can win them over is to give them their country back. They can try frightening them to death, but that won't work for long - it never does. There's already passive resistance, and it'll get more active. Not tomorrow, but eventually. The Czechs know they can't drive the Germans out on their own, so they'll wait until Hitler has his hands full elsewhere. The Czechs can't wait for a European war, and who can blame them?'
No one, Russell thought, though the millions doomed to die might want a say in the matter. He now realized the reason - and wondered how he could have missed it - for Cummins's insistence on his coming to Prague. His editor had realized, consciously or otherwise, that this was the template for what was to come. 'I'm seeing the German spokesman at three,' he said. 'I think I'll ask him what conquerors have to offer their conquests.'
'If you're looking for official responses, I can probably get you an interview with a member of the Czech government.'
'I am - it's what officials don't say that's usually so revealing.'
They walked back down through the gardens and in through the back door of the Legation. Kenyon's office was on the first floor, overlooking the street. He picked up the phone, tried a few words of Czech and quickly reverted to English. 'Two o'clock?' he asked Russell, who nodded. 'In the Cabinet Room. He'll be there.' He hung up. 'Karel Mares - he's the Acting Prime Minister - will give you ten minutes. Do you know where the Cabinet Room is?'