Must You Go_ - Antonia Fraser [68]
That night at the theatre, Olga, more beautiful than ever, but looking less pained than in June, greets us instantly: ‘What things have happened!’ You couldn’t have put it better or more simply. Olga and Rita described the hideous state of the apartments at the Castle. ‘The Bolshevik had no taste’ is the local saying. She tells us that the police in the little wooden house outside the farm at Hradecek have in theory been replaced by another kind of security ‘because people come to stare’. But sometimes, says Olga, they recognize the same police faces. Rita Klimova is to be Ambassador in Washington: she tells me she felt like giggling when Václav handed her the insignia. She is tremendously excited although the Foreign Office have taken 20 per cent off her salary ‘because I don’t have a wife’. Then we met Havel himself, equally jolly, looking much healthier, in an open-necked check shirt. He’s longing to have his new play put on: not since 1968 … He was finally dragged away, very late, by Olga. ‘You see, I am still a prisoner. Now I am a prisoner to my wife.’
9 February
We had a moving experience of what Václav means to the young Czechs. It was now about 10.30 p.m. after a long cheerful dinner which Harold gave. Suddenly Václav made one of his swift moves: ‘Come on, come on, we must go to the Balustrade Theatre, which was my theatre you know, where Jane Fonda is making a speech. She has been trying to see me all week.’ Outside the restaurant were cars with flashing blue lights into which Olga, in her kindly way, piled Francis King and Diana Petre, part of English PEN, our guests. But we walked along with the President (thank God this time my heels weren’t too high!) across the Karl Bridge. Václav: ‘My first walk across the Karl Bridge since I am President.’ It was a full moon with racing clouds, the castle wonderfully lit up behind us. Václav: ‘We must look and see if the flag is still flying, it means that I am still President. If not, good, I can go back to the theatre. Ah, it is still flying. What a nuisance.’
A group of youths on the bridge call out a greeting and make V signs (Francis King told me that there were many V signs and cries of ‘Olga’ to the flashing cars: she’s already extremely popular and instantly recognizable with that lovely face and snow-white hair). At the end of the bridge, a group of youths stop us. They take out a guitar. They proceed to sing in harmony to Havel. The tune is the ‘Ode to Joy’ from Beethoven’s Ninth. The lighting: Havel’s face in profile with his dark coat, the faces of the men and girls, the large guitar, it was all like something directed by Ingmar Bergman. The idealism of the young faces, the tenderness of the older one. These were – all of them – the people who had made the Samet (Velvet) Revolution.
At the theatre, Jane Fonda is surrounded by a huge entourage of extremely amiable people brought from California: Jane’s personal photographer, etc. etc. Harold, who claimed to know her, embraced her warmly. She asks me: ‘Are you an actress too?’ When an aide tries to correct her, I reply with sincerity: ‘Don’t worry. I’m delighted to be taken for an actress. Who wants to look like a lady writer?’
10 February
Frantisek Fröhlich takes us up to the Cathedral which Harold is anxious to see in connection with his projected screenplay of The Trial. He points to the soldiers patrolling the Castle grounds as he drives us up the hill. ‘Before, they patrolled with big dogs. Now, no dogs, by order of the President.’
Like all our friends here, he emphasizes the dream-like quality of all that has happened. ‘No dogs’ seem to stand for a lot, that and the singing students.
11 February
We arrive in East Berlin from Czechoslovakia for a film festival: Margaret