Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [64]
Chapter Eleven
MOON OVER PRAGUE
It was all very well attending protests in London and writing letters to imprisoned writers: but what about an actual visit behind the Iron Curtain? I had in fact visited Poland in 1969 but Harold had never been beyond Germany. In spite of several invitations to Russia, he said he had felt inhibited about accepting any kind of official invitation given the position of the Soviet Jews, although he had been part of initiatives to help people like Anatole Sharansky. June 1989 saw our first visit to Czechoslovakia, a country for which we both formed an enormous affection.
It was our close friend Diana Phipps, Czech by birth, who had first suggested the actual visit, and then arranged it, guided by her cousin Kari Schwarzenberg. But Harold had long been an admirer of the dissident Czech playwright Václav Havel and had corresponded with him (they were linked by their German agent Klaus Juncker). He had also acted in Havel’s plays in England in order to draw attention to them and persistently advocated his freedom from arrest. We were also frequently told about the value of Western protest to dissidents in the East.
8 June
We are driven through Moravia by Kari Schwarzenberg, a great handsome force of a man, to meet Mrs Jirous, wife of a prominent dissident. The border post was like a dreary English bus station, plus machine guns, but absolutely no feeling of menace. Masses of poppies decorate the fields on either side, also iris, lupines and peonies in front of the village houses, plenty of little chapels and shrines for this is a very Catholic part of the country. Mrs Jirous has taken refuge with her parents while her husband is in prison and we sit with her outside in the garden, possibly because it’s already very hot, more likely because you must expect every room indoors to be bugged. She tells us that her husband has been moved to a new prison, which is comparatively pleasant. And he has only one man with him in the cell – this is a prison where some cells house as many as twenty-five men. He is even allowed to play ping-pong! Mrs Jirous attributes this welcome change to the tremendous fuss made in the West at the time of his trial in March. Kari Schwarzenberg went to this trial as President of Helsinki Watch. If the West keeps up the fuss, the sentence may even be reduced.
Later in Prague, Kari introduces us to a select band of intellectuals: a low, rather airless room but tremendously friendly atmosphere. My most interesting discussion was with Jaroslav Koran and Zdenek Urbánek, translators of Frayn, Stoppard and Shakespeare, about the future of Czech PEN. Apparently it was currently dormant at its own request, and (as President of English PEN) I had been asked to find out whether there was a move to revive it. They reveal that there is a considerable potential split here between those who ‘will not sit down with the collaborators’ and those who think it must be possible to work out some kind of compromise of the ‘good’ with the ‘bad’. These problems eternally beset International PEN, by the very nature of its structure, as restrictive regimes come and go (not only in Eastern Europe but all over the world). Yet somehow it always manages to keep going, and keep supporting the vital principle of free expression. Harold makes a good, grave speech and drinks a lot of beer which has to be specially brought in. Naturally he pays for it, but then the Czechs insist on us taking the un-drunk bottles away; they are impressively dignified in their desire to seem like dissidents against the state regime, not like spongers.
9 June
Set out to stay with Václav Havel in convoy with Zdenek Urbánek and Rita Klimova. We drive and drive and drive and drive, me feeling fairly sick in the back of masterful Kari’s car (he is a very good but swaying driver).