Authors: Philip Roth
“
You are with the Writers
’
Union?
”
I
ask.
My ignorance ignites a glower of contempt. I dare to think of myself as an educated person and know nothing of the meaning of the Tatra 603? He says,
“
Ich bin der Kulturminister.
”
So he is the man who administers the culture of Czechoslovakia, whose job is to bring the aims of literature into line with the aims of society, to make literature less
inefficient,
from a
social point of view. You write, if you even can here, into the teeth of this.
“
Well,
”
I say,
“
it
’
s kind of you personally to see me out, Mr. Minister. This is the road to the airport? Frankly I don
’
t recognize it.
”
“
You should have taken the time to come to see me when you first arrived. It would have been worth your while. I would have made you realize what the common life is in Czechoslovakia. You would understand that the ordinary Czech citizen does not think like the sort of people you have chosen to meet. He does not behave like them and he does not admire them. The ordinary Czech is repelled by such people. Who are they? Sexual perverts. Alienated neurotics. Bitter egomaniacs. They seem to you courageous? You find it thrilling, the price they pay for their great art? Weil, the ordinary hardworking Czech who wants a better life for himself and his family is not so thrilled- He considers them malcontents and parasites and outcasts. At least their blessed Kafka knew he was a freak, recognized that he was a misfit who could never enter into a healthy, ordinary existence alongside his countrymen. But
these
people? Incorrigible deviants who propose to make their moral outlook the norm. The worst is that left to themselves, left to run free to do as they wish, these people would destroy this country. I don
’
t even speak of their moral degeneracy. With this they only make themselves and their families miserable, and destroy the lives of their children. I am thinking of their political stupidity. Do you know what Brezhnev told Dubcek when he flew our great reform leader to the Soviet Union back in
‘
68? Brezhnev sent several hundred thousand troops to Prague to get Mr. Dubcek to come to his senses about his great program of reforms. But to be on the safe side with this genius, he had him taken one evening from his office and flown to the Soviet Union for a little talk.
”
To the Soviet Union. Suppose they put me aboard Aeroflot, suppose that
’
s the next plane out of Prague. Suppose they keep me
here. As Nathan Zuckerman awoke one morning from uneasy dreams he found himself transformed in his bed into a sweeper of floors in a railway cafi. There are petitions for him to sign, or not to sign; there are questions for him to answer, or not to answer; there are enemies to despise, there are friends to con-sole, mail doesn
’
t reach him, a phone they withhold, there are informers, breakdowns, betrayals, threats, there is for him even a strange brand of freedom
—
invalidated by the authorities,
a
superfluous person with ho res
ponsibilities and nothing to do,
he has the kind of good times you have in Dante
’
s Inferno; and finally, to really break him on the rack of farce, there is Novak squatting over the face of culture: when he awakens in the morning, realizes where he is and remembers what he
’
s turned into, he begins to curse and doesn
’
t stop cursing.
I speak up.
“
1 am an American citizen. Mr. Minister. I want to know what
’
s going on here. Why these policemen? I have committed no crime.
”
‘“
You have committed several crimes, each punishable by sentences of up to twenty years in jail.
”
“
1 demand to be taken to the American Embassy.
”
“
Let me tell you what Brezhnev told Mr. Dub
èe
k that Mr. Bolotka neglected to say while elucidating on the size of his sexual organ. One. he would deport our Czech intelligentsia en masse to Siberia; two, he would turn Czechoslovakia into a Soviet republic: three, he would make Russian the language in the schools. In twenty years nobody would even remember that such a country as Czechoslovakia had ever existed. This is not the United States of America where every freakish thought is a fit subject for writing, where there is no such thing as propriety. decorum, or shame, nor a decent respect for the morality of the ordinary, hardworking citizen. This is a small country of fifteen million, dependent as it has always been upon the goodwill of a mighty neighbor. Those Czechs who inflame the anger of our mighty neighbor arc not patriots—
they are the enemy.
There is nothing praiseworthy about them. The men to praise in this
country are men like my own
little
father. You want to respect
somebody in Czechoslovakia? Respect my father! I admire my ok! father and with good reason.
I
am
proud
of this little man.
”
And your father, is he proud of you and does he think you are all you should be? Certainly Novak is all he thinks he should be—perceives perfectly what
everybody
should be. One conviction seems to follow from the other.
“
My father is a simple machinist, now long retired, and do you know how he has made his contribution to the survival of Czech culture and the Czech people and the Czech language— even of Czech literature? A contribution greater than your lesbian whore who when she opens her legs for an American writer represents to him the authentic Czech spirit. Do you know how my father has expressed his love of country all his life? In 1937 he praised Masaryk and the R
epublic, praised Masaryk as our
great national hero and saviour. When Hitler came in he praised Hitler. After the war he praised Benes when he was elected prime minister. When Stalin threw BeneS out, he praised Stalin and our great leader Gottwaid. Even when Dub
è
ek came in, for a few minutes he praised
Dub
è
ek
. But now (hat Dubcek and his great reform government are gone, he would not dream of praising them. Do you know what he tells me now? Do you want to hear the political philosophy of a true Czech patriot who has lived in this little country for eighty-six years, who made a decent and comfortable little home for his wife and his four children, and who lives now in dignified retirement, enjoying, as he has every right to enjoy, his pipe, and his grandchildren, and his pint of beer, and the company of his dear old friends? He says to me,
‘
Son, if someone called Jan Hus nothing but a dirty Jew, I would agree.
’
These are our people who represent the true Czech spirit—
these are our realists
1
.
People who understand what
necessity
is. People who do not sneer at order and see only the worst in everything. People who know to distinguish between what remains possible in a little country like ours and what is a stupid, maniacal delusion—
people who know how to submit decently to their historical misfortune
’
. These
are the people to whom we owe the survival of our beloved land, and not to alienated, degenerate, egomaniacal artistes!
”
Customs a breeze—my possessions combed over so many times while still in the dresser at the hotel that my bags are put right on through at the weigh-in counter and I
’
m accompanied by the plainclothesmen straight to passport control. I have not been arrested, I will not be tried, convicted, and jailed;
Dub
è
ek
’
s fate isn
’
t to be mine, nor is Bolotka
’
s, Olga
’
s, or
Zdenek Sisovsky
’
s. I am to be placed on board the Swissair flight bound nonstop for Geneva, and from there I
’
ll catch a plane for New York.
Swissair. The most beautiful word in the English language.
Yet it makes you furious to be thrown out. once the fear has begun to subside.
“
What could entice me to this desolate country,
”
says K..,
“
except the wish to stay here?
”
—here where there
’
s no nonsense about purity and goodness, where the division is not that easy to discern between the heroic and the perverse, where every sort of repression foments a parody of freedom and the suffering of their historical misfortune engenders in its imaginative victims these clownish forms of human despair—here where they
’
re careful to remin
d the citizens (in case anybody
gets any screwy ideas)
“
the phenomenon of alienation is not approved of from above.
”
In this nation of narrators I
’
d only just begun hearing all their stories; I
’
d only just begun to sense myself shedding mv story. as wordlessly as possible snaking away from the narrative encasing me. Worst of all. I
’
ve lost that astonishingly real candy box stuffed with the stories I came to Prague to retrieve. Another Jewish writer who might have been is not going to be; his imagination won
’
t leave even the faintest imprint and no one else
’
s imagination will be imprinted on his, neither the policemen practicing literary criticism nor the meaning-mad students living only for art.
Of course my theatrical friend Olga. for whose routine I have been playing straight man. wasn
’
t necessarily making Prague mischief when she disclosed that the Yiddish author
’
s war was endured in a bathroom, surviving on cigarettes and whores, and that when he perished it was under a bus. And maybe it
was
Sisovsky
’
s plan to pretend in America that the father
’
s achievement was his. Yet even if Sisovsky
’
s stories, those told to me in New York, were tailored to exploit the listener
’
s sentiments, a strategically devised fiction to set me in motion, that still doesn
’
t mitigate the sense of extraneous irrelevancy I now feel. Another assault upon a world of significance degenerating into a personal fiasco, and this time in a record tony-eight hours! No, one
’
s story isn
’
t a skin to be shed—it
’
s inescapable, one
’
s body and blood. You go on pumping it out till you die. the story veined with the themes of your life, the ever-recurring story that
’
s at once your invention and the invention of you. To be transformed into a cultural eminence elevated by the literary deeds he performs would not seem to be my fate. A forty-minute valedictory from the Minister of Culture on artistic deviance and filial respect is all I have been given to carry home. They must have seen me coming.
I also have to wonder if Novak
’
s narrative is any less an invention than Sisovsky
’
s. The true Czech patriot to whom the land owes its survival may well be another character out of mock-autobiography, yet another fabricated father manufactured to serve the purposes of a storytelling son. As if the core of existence isn
’
t fantastic enough, still more fabulation to embellish the edges.
A sleek, well-groomed, dark-eyed man. slight, sultry, a Persian-looking fellow of about my own age, is standing back of the passport desk, alongside
the on-duty army officer whose
job is to process foreigners out of the country. His hourglass blue
suit looks to have been styled specially for him in Paris or
Rome—nothing like the suits I
’
ve seen around here, either in
the streets or at the orgies. A man of European sophistication,
no less a ladies
’
man. I would guess, than Novak
’
s whoremaster
Bolotka. Ostentatiously in English he asks to see the gentleman
’
s
papers.
I
pass them to the soldier, who in turn hands them to
him. He reads over the biographical details—to determine, you
see, if I am fiction or fact—then, sardonically, examining me
as though I am now utterly transparent, comes so close that I
smell the oil in his hair and the skin bracer that he
’
s used after
shaving.
“
Ah yes,
”
he says, his magnitude in the scheme of
things impressed upon me with that smile whose purpose is to
make one uneasy, the smile of power being benign,
“
Zuckerman
the Zionist agent,
”
he says, and returns my American passport.
“
An honor.
”
he informs me.
“
to have entertained you here, sir.
Now back to the little world around the corner.
”