A tram in summer
(Translated
by James Naughton)
A peculiar inner event
happened to me. Wherever I move and
whenever, all the time I’m relating myself navigationally to things I’m intent
on doing, fixing or finding out today or this year, things I’m supposed to or
have to do, things I’m going to postpone or cancel. I don’t really move about amidst material objects, but amongst my
own mental blocks of masonry. I move
along with a back-pack of interests, relations, assessments and
intentions. And so, with my invisible
back-pack, I boarded the number seventeen tram at Braník. At that moment it started to pour. The world vanished from sight. The tram, hollow transparent body, projected
itself with great force through its environment: this could have been water,
thin earth, some unknown material. But
a moment later, at Podolí we popped out of it, and there was the sun! The world glistened, so you couldn’t even
look at it. This abrupt cut in sensory
perception shook my mental grasp: it was as if two separate worlds had been
revealed to me, one rapidly after the other, and I had to decide which was
truly ours, mine.
At that moment the tram
swept rockingly, with flexible slow-motion, through the hole in the Vyšehrad
rock, revealing to me – I saw from the rear car through the front one to the
lines ahead to the immediate future – a dazzling, unknown view of a familiar
freeze of houses and trees. Meanwhile
from the river to the left warm vapour spiralled skyward. On the jetty of Rowers Island someone was
trying to tip water out of a partly hauled up kayak, clumsily: the breasts
tipped out of the swimsuit. Beyond the
railway bridge a red-and-white steamer was manoeuvring, setting course for
somewhere. People on deck leaned
casually over the rails. I could, had I
come sooner, have been amongst them.
When I came to Prague
forty-one years ago, in the autumn, I rode in from Libeň, where I used to spend
the night, to lectures in Smíchov. In
fog and foul weather there I swayed along with the full weight of an
overwrought set of four-wheeled cars, with scraping of brakes and screeching of
wheels on tottering tramlines, right across town, without seeing a bit of
it. But I was full of respect for
everything: I was in Prague!
The tram was just
arriving at Jirásek Square. It opened
its door so alluringly, that without further ado I quickly got out. It rode off, and I found myself somewhere I
had no business to be. I looked about
me. To the left, beyond Radotín, black
thunder rumbled, to the right, bright-coloured glitters and motions flashed in
the sun. The roof parapet of the
National Theatre glittered with genuine gold!
I walked along the high embankment wall, amidst fluttering skirts,
clicking heels, ice-cream cones, resisting nothing, imposing on myself nothing,
for the mental back-pack had stayed behind in the tram. I stopped, where many others were, and took
a look over the rails into the water: some swans were floating there in a
huddle, guzzling out of people’s hands like ducks for roasting. Slav Island, look at it! Slavdom’s in hell and the shrine above the
Vltava has evolved into a lazy mausoleum, they’re doing a performance of Duck
Lake.
I jerked myself away from
this, and crossed the crossroads so that I too could take an ordinary stroll
just once down the nicely mended stone embankment beneath under the youthful
linden trees. That stunning, heraldic
image of Prague Castle! I stopped, and
tried to size it up without prejudice: I succeeded: no, I’m really not
particularly enamoured of Prague. Once
upon a time something more might have been made of our acquaintance. I arrived prejudiced in its favour: it was
the capital of the country, then, the centre of the nation’s spiritual
strength, a treasure-house of rare works.
I walked on again. The gleam of
water, wheeling of birds, distant noise of the weir, breath of restiveness,
dashing of youngsters like me.
I was close to the place
where we used to have our editorial office.
Never at this spot, word of honour, do I feel any regret, sorrow, or
other feeling of any sort, But here, today, in this distracted state, a
particular incident came to mind. It
was a time like this, in the summer of 1968, I’d left the office at midday to
go off somewhere. And here, right at
this patriotic observation post, I experienced a lapse from one reality into
another. A sudden, beguiling feeling,
that maybe it was actually possible: to pluck yourself out of the dark
gravitational force of an uncouth, backward great power and restore a
cultivated, autonomous human state. To
limit, indeed very much cut down on one’s material needs, but be freely that
which we know how to be in our better moments.
This may sound pretty odd
to some: on what basis, they may say, on whose account were you acting up till
then? I was one of that group who for
years, week after week, in page after page, harnessed themselves to that trend
which came to merge in the final six months with a general will. That will sizzled in the air like the electricity
of today’s lightening. Culprits who
still had a conscience made public confession.
Murderers with insufficient evidence against them feared the night in
the day and the days to come in the night.
Old republicans gave their jewellery to the Fund for the Republic. Of course, I did – we did only what was
feasible. Europe around us was highly
sceptical! I couldn’t deceive myself even
in secret, nor was I deceived about the dangers. But there was no sense in being governed by them. The point was to equip ourselves with the
instruments before they were struck out of our hands.
That moment, on the spot
where I’m now standing, when the beguiling possibility that this was true made
me nearly stagger, it convicted me in front of myself: this was merely a
possibility! I soared above the surface
of reality, and fell back into it in the knowledge that it would be just too
beautiful! I also felt a kind of
indifference whether misfortune would come.
It was decided, one virtue is always possible: to hold out against
everything! I don’t know when and if
other people have experienced like a peak of enthusiasm or trust in their civic
humanity; I did then. By the time the
moment passed, and I moved on to some now forgotten business, I was older and
more condemned. But it moved me,
unconsciously, closer to personal freedom.
The chance to make use of it subsequently lasted a damnably long time.
I came to Prague, a young
man. Prague didn’t corrupt me
much. I’m just not so timid and
respectful. No devoutness and
looking-up-to-things. I can do what I
decide. Those stones of the embankment,
reassembled again and again after some calamity, they remain. What else is left.
(July 1987)