Authors: Philip Roth
Here where the literary culture is held hostage, the art of narration flourishes by mouth. In Prague, stories aren
’
t simply stories; it
’
s what they have instead of life. Here they have become their stories, in lieu of being permitted to be anything else. Storytelling is the form their resistance has taken against the coercion of the powers-that-be.
I say nothing to Bolotka of the sentiments stirred up by my circuitous escape route, or the association it
’
s inspired between my ancestors
’
Poland, his Prague tenement, and the Jewish Atlantis of an American childhood dream. I only explain why I
’
m late.
“
1 was followed from the train station onto the trolley. I shook him before I got here. I hope
I
wasn
’
t wrong to come anyway.
”
I describe the student Hrobek and show Bolotka his note.
“
The note was given to me by a hotel clerk who
I
think is a cop.
”
After reading it twice he says,
“
Don
’
t
worry, they were only frightening him and his teacher.
”
“
If so, they succeeded. In frightening me too.
”
“
Whatever the reason, it is not to build a case against you. They do this to everyone. It is one of the laws of power, the spreading of general distrust. It is one of several basic techniques of
adjusting
people. But they cannot touch you. That would be pointless, even by Prague standards. A regime can only be so stupid, and then the other side comes back into power. Here
you
frighten
them.
A student should understand that. He is not enrolled in the right courses.
”
“
Coming to the hotel then, he made things worse for himself—for his teacher too, if all this is true.
”
“
I can
’
t say. There is probably more about this boy that we don
’
t know. The student and his teacher are who they are interested in, not you. You are not responsible for the boy
’
s bad judgment.
”
“
He was young. He wanted to help.
”
“
Don
’
t be tender about his martyr complex. And don
’
t credit the secret police with so much. Of course the hotel clerk is a cop. Everybody is in that hotel. But the police are like literary critics—of what little they see, they get most wrong anyway. They
are
the literary critics. Our literary criticism is police criticism. As for the boy, he is right now back in his room with his pants off. boasting to his girt friend about saving your life.
”
Bolotka is padded out beneath his overalls with a scruffy, repulsive reddish fur vest that could be the hair off his own thick hide, and consequently looks even more barbarous, more feral, at work than he did at play. He looks, in
this
enclosure, like one of the zoo
’
s larger beasts, a bison or a bear. We are in a freezing storage room about twice as big as an ordinary clothes closet and a third the size of his living quarters. Both of us are sipping slivovitz-larded tea from his mug, I to calm down and Bolotka
to warm up. The cartons stacked to the ceiling contain his cleanser,
his toilet tissue, his floor polish, his lye; ranged along the walls are the janitor
’
s buffing machine, ladder, and collection of brooms. In one corner, the corner Bolotka calls
“
my office,
”
are a low stool, a gooseneck lamp, and the electric kettle to boil the water into which to dip his tea bag and pour the brandy. He reads here, writes, hides, sleeps, here on a scrap of carpet between the push broom and the buffer he entertains sixteen girls, though never, he informs me, in so tiny a space, all of them at one time.
“
More than two girls and there
’
s no room for my prick.
”
“
And there
’
s nothing to be done about this boy
’
s warning? I
’
m relying on you, Rudolf. When you come to New York I
’
ll see you
’
re not mugged in Central Park by going to take a leak there at 3 a.m.
I
expect the same consideration from you here. Am I in danger?
”
“
I was once briefly in jail, waiting to stand trial, Nathan. Before the trial began, they released me. It was too ridiculous even for them. They told me I had committed a crime against the state: in my theater, the heroes were always laughing when they should be crying, and this was a crime. I was an ideological saboteur. Stalinist
criticism, which once existed in this country until it became a laughingstock, always reproached characters for not being moral and setting a good example. When a hero
’
s wife died on the stage, which was often happening in my theater, he had to sob a lot to please Stalin. And Stalin of course knew quite well what it was when one
’
s wife died. He himself killed three wives and in killing them he was always sobbing. Well, when I was in jail, you realized when you woke up where you were, and you began cursing. You could hear them cursing in their cells, all the professional criminals, all the pimps and murderers and thieves. I was only a young man, but I began cursing too. The thing I learned was not to stop cursing, never to stop cursing, not when you are in a prison. Forget this note. To hell with these people and their warnings. Anything you want to do in Prague, anything you want to see in Prague, anyone you want to fuck in Prague, you tell me and I arrange it. There is still some pleasure for a stranger in
Mitteleuropa.
I hesitate to say
P
rague is
‘
gay,
’
but sometimes these days it can be very amusing.
”
Afternoon. Olga
’
s garret atop Klenek
’
s palazzo. A pinnacle of Prague
’
s castle blurrily visible through the leaded window. Olga in her robe on the bed. W itchy, very whitish, even without the makeup. I pace, wearing my coat, wondering why these stories must be retrieved. Why am I forcing the issue? What
’
s the motive here? Is this a passionate struggle for those marvelous stories or a renewal of the struggle toward self-caricature? Still the son, still the child, in strenuous pursuit of the father
’
s loving response? {Even when the father is Sisovsky
’
s?) Suppose the stories aren
’
t even marvelous, that I only long for that
—
the form taken by
my touha.
Why am I saying to myself,
“
Do not let yourself be stopped
”
?
Why be drawn further along, the larger
the obstacles? That
’
s okay writing a book, that
’
s what it
is
to write a book, but would it be so hard to convince myself that I am stupidly endowing these stories with a significance that they can
’
t begin to have? How consequential can they be? If their genius could really astound its they would somehow have surfaced long ago. The author
’
s purpose wasn
’
t to be read anyway. but to write for no necessity other than his own. Why not let him have it his way. rather than yours or Sisovsky
’
s? Think of all that his stories will be spared if instead of wrenching his fiction out of oblivion, you just turn around and go…Yet I stay. In the old parables about the spiritual life, the hero searches for a kind of holiness, or holy object, or transcendence, boning up on magic practices as he goes off hunting after his higher being, getting help from crones and soothsayers, donning masks
—
well, this is the mockery of that parable. that parable the idealization of this farce. The soul sinking into ridiculousness even while it strives to be saved. Enter Zuckerman. a serious person.