Ludvík Vaculík

A Czech Dreambook

Translated from the Czech by Gerald Turner

Published by Charles University,

Karolinum Press

Ovocný trh 5/560, Prague 1, Czech Republic

Cover and graphic design by Zdeněk Ziegler

Typesetting by Karolinum Press

First English edition.

First published in Czech as Český snář in 1981 by Edice Petlice, then by Sixty-Eight Publishers of Toronto, Canada, in 1983.

This English translation is based upon the fifth edition of Český snář, published in 2002, by Atlantis of Brno, Czech Republic. As the Iron Curtain was collapsing, Milan Heidenreich, a Swedish citizen of Czech origin, contributed to the English publication of A Czech Dreambook with a generous donation for its translation.

© Karolinum Press, 2019

Text © Ludvík Vaculík – heirs c/o Atlantis, 1981, 2019

Translation © Gerald Turner, 2019

Afterword: “How to Read A Czech Dreambook” © Jonathan Bolton, 2019

Photography © Ludvík Vaculík – heirs, 1981, 1983, 1990, 2002;

Oldřich Škácha – heirs (p. 67), 1981;

Dagmar Hochová – heirs (p. 187), 1981

ISBN 978-80-246-3889-8 (epub)

ISBN 978-80-246-3888-1 (mobi)

ISBN 978-80-246-3887-4 (pdf)

ISBN 978-80-246-3852-2 (print)

To Jiří Kolář

MONDAY, 22ND JANUARY 1979

Last night, I don’t know why, I couldn’t sleep. I got up about six times for a drink of beer or milk, thinking my restlessness to be of chemical origin. I felt excited and tense, not tired, as if I’d had a strong coffee late in the evening, although that happens to be one thing that helps me sleep better. Anyway I had had nothing of the kind, just a cup of tea at Eda Kriseová’s much earlier, during the afternoon. Then we all trooped along with our Hamburger to a mime performance which I very much enjoyed, and after it we went home at a very respectable hour. Next it occurred to me that my extreme distress might have been caused by the stroboscope which Hybner uses to such brutal effect in his performance.

The thought tossed around in my head the whole night and it struck me that one’s biology and neurology really do start to rebel against one – against me. I am not aware of exerting myself, yet I end up feeling exhausted. I am not afraid, yet I shiver as if I were. I speak German all day with no bother, but then at night all sorts of phrases come back to me over and over again clamouring for grammatical corrections, which only goes to show how much it exhausted me. Only three years ago I was able, at interrogations, to suppress the onset of an insidious gall-bladder attack by stubbornly cursing to myself and willing it away with all my strength, causing, to my shame, beads of cold sweat to appear on my forehead. I have felt this past year to be a turning point for my strength, my resources, my sanity and my time. And to outward gaze, even my own, nothing has changed. So there are ascertainable thresholds we have to cross one by one. It looks as if my fiftieth birthday has finally caught up with me after two years. Or something.

These are joyful days for Jiří Gruša. He has received the German edition of his Questionnaire, together with the Czech one from the Škvoreckýs. He is delightfully over the moon about it, as if it were his début, and I observe how all those around him wisely and generously wish him well. Ivan prophesies him not only a reputation but also money, although he refuses to predict whether it will be a quarter or half a million. We all chuckle. Jiří rubs his little hands, comically feigning belief in Ivan’s prophecy, and declares: “I can quit the housing co-op, at last.”

So last night I was obliged (you won’t catch me going to a psychiatrist) to do some investigation in this field too: Could I possibly be eaten up with envy? And once again I come up with the following conclusion: God be praised – Jirka at last has what we sort of promised him when we coaxed him along our “wicked path” to Jürgen’s publishing house, which then kept him waiting interminably. It was a bit like encouraging someone with promises of astounding views over the next hill. Then at last you get there and they are overwhelmed, and your only fear is whether they are sufficiently so.

And so I discovered yet again that I most likely lack the requisite ambition to be a writer. I appease the equally requisite sense of duty by listing all the different things I do. I feel fully employed. But at night something comes, from time to time, to torment me, and I get the agonizing urge – desire would be an inappropriate word! – to switch the light on, sit down and write – anything. It was back again last night. But I did not do it because it would have worried the family. Yes, it’s perfectly all right for me to sit down and write into the night or all night, for that matter. But to begin writing in the middle of the night, or before dawn, even – that’s abnormal! And I know it full well. That is why last night I made myself postpone the urge until this evening. So shall I really start keeping a diary like this? After resisting it for years!

I’ve received notification from the State Security, the StB, that my regular monthly “official discussion” is tomorrow. The best name for it without quotation marks would be intimidation. There is just no way of getting used to it and pretending it’s of no account.

The temperature was up a bit today, as if a thaw was on the way. And I had originally planned to write a feuilleton about this “dreadful winter.” – I mustn’t let Spring steal a march on me!

TUESDAY, 23RD JANUARY 1979

It’s a quarter past eleven and the boys are not in yet. So it’s hard to feel I am finally alone today. I will be disturbed. I can almost never achieve solitude; there’s always someone here. It’s my state of mind, no fault of theirs. When they see me at my typewriter, they tiptoe through the room with nary a word bar hello. Through the glass of two doors I can see that Madla is still reading in bed too. She is reading Karol’s odd, Jewish – almanac, I suppose.

Karol Sidon was here this morning and brought the almanac, which is for the first quarter of the year. I leafed through it and was unable to make out what was serious and what was for fun. In most cases the names of the various contributors are not given, or there are only initials. It is nothing but horoscopes, the Cabala, mysticism and such, alongside essays about anything and everything. “How many copies of it are you making?” I asked in pencil. He wrote me back a reply and chuckled at the paltriness of his output. I should like to send this curiosity to Šimečka in Bratislava, but also to keep one for myself, and I cannot get another copy. “You can write something for it too,” Karol said. “A simple soul like me?” I asked in surprise. “Precisely!” said Karol. “You’ll appear very exotic in such company!”

He told me that Dienstbier’s flat had been searched. Immediately I started sorting out what I had at home: Černý ready for binding, a parcel of author’s copies of The Crime of Rebellion for Jan Trefulka, several piles ready to be wrapped, in each of them a copy of Patočka’s essay “The Writer and his Cause.” And a number of manuscripts for reading, the most sensitive of which are Tatarka’s Jottings. And where will I hide this diary of mine every night?

It is midnight. Our Jan has come in. I ask him where he was. Helping the Administrator paint his flat. The Administrator of the Orfeus puppet theatre is convalescing after an illness and yesterday his heart acted up, exactly the way mine did, according to Jan, when I was doing the painting before Christmas. “How did you make out with the cops?” Jan asked. “The same old threats,” I said dismissively, and I will not talk or write about it here. I will reduce the whole business to insignificance. Jan will come back this way again – in pyjamas, with his pockets full of apples.

Madla has turned off her light. Every night she gets into bed with the comforting thought that she is another day nearer retirement. Today she came home from work angrier than usual, because on top of everything else she had had to clean the office. Some time ago the director came up with the idea that the institute’s employees should assume responsibility for cleaning the building. Madla refused, and just to be on the safe side, I specifically forbade her to. “Why doesn’t he want to take on a cleaning woman?” I asked. “How should I know?” she snapped. Then she said: “He wants to shore up his position at the top and his power-base below. At the top he can brag about how much he has saved on wages and below he can hand out bonuses.” – “But he’s still spending the same money.” – “No, he isn’t, that’s the point. The bonuses are supposed to differentiate the psychologists’ performance, but he uses the money for cleaning instead.” The older women refused, but the prissy young ninnies agreed to do the cleaning for four hundred crowns. And the building is filthy again. And why? Because the sort of things that a cleaning woman will do after a fashion you will scarcely find doctors doing, because they are too fastidious. And all you hear is how terribly tired they are, and they still complain about having no money. And they leave their dirty crockery behind them in the kitchenette – who for? The cleaner? The fridge is in a disgusting state and the ash-trays are always full. Who’s supposed to clean them – the cleaner? No, the person who can’t stand to look at it any longer. And so, ever since the employees started “doing their own cleaning,” those who are obliged to make up for them, by working harder at their real jobs in the institute, receive lower bonuses. “But I’ll bloody well make sure it all comes out when my time is up and I take my leave of them!” said Madla. – “Well, what did you do the cleaning for, then?” I asked in astonishment. – “Because she is doing a post-grad course, and she’s not very clever and really can’t cope, so she called in sick, and if she doesn’t do it, who will?” Madla spat the words out. “So you’re not too clever either, then,” I said.

It is one o’clock. Ondřej is back. “What’s up?” I ask. He explains to me that his firm’s new director refused to sign a reference for his university application, even though the previous director had promised to do so when he took him on. “Why?” I asked. – “He says he doesn’t know me, and needs to get some background material on me.” – “Aha,” I said, “in other words he’s got plenty of material, but he needs to get some instructions.” – “A really vexatious case,” said Ondřej. “Good night.”

It is half past two, because I stopped writing. The thought of having to go everywhere sorting things out and the likely repercussions made me start tidying things up so they would not be here to be found. I had intended today to write a commentary to be included in Dear Classmates as a separate chapter, but I didn’t even start it. Apart from that I want to write a feuilleton about this winter that would mark a change of mood in my present series. But there is no way I’ll be able to consign this daily writing to a separate track where it won’t occupy my thoughts or distract me from more important work. It’s no joke.

WEDNESDAY, 24TH JANUARY 1979

Another afternoon gone to waste running around because of books. One package to take over to an author for him to sign the title pages, insert photographs and then take all the copies himself to be bound in such and such a place. I ask him when he will have it finished. Well… as soon as he has done the photos… I realize that the fellow can’t afford the supplies and I give him an advance of 600 Kčs. Then I take a tram to the other end of the city where I am supposed to pick up the bound almanacs today. A glance at the clock tells me I won’t make it in time, because I am supposed to be in front of the Rudolfinum presently to meet Zdena who is bringing me some more things she has finished transcribing.

I walk to the Rudolfinum – it is bitingly cold. I am walking up and down when a green car pulls up alongside with Zdena in it. “It crossed my mind that you might have some more errands to do, so I took the car.” Quite, and she means that the time saved will be for her. She’s wrong, at least for today. We drive through the centre of Prague. There is little traffic in the well-salted slush-covered streets, so I have no great difficulty keeping an eye on the cars behind us. “How did you make out?” I ask. Zdena took a day off work today for her doctors. She emits an expression of disgust and slaps the steering wheel. “I tell you what – we won’t talk about it. I’m alive!” she declares with enthusiasm, and points towards the traffic lights as if they were a flowering meadow. In her case, though, such outbursts of euphoria could easily give way in a matter of minutes to a sullen silence if I insisted on asking her: So what did they say? We are driving to the bookbinders’ for the almanacs. Zdena is just right for this particular job since R., who delivered them to the binders, for some unknown reason, gave the fictitious name and address of a woman. And if I, who am known to them, were to come to pick them up, such subterfuge might unsettle those innocent people.

We pulled up a short distance from the workshop. I gave Zdena the requisition slip and two hundred and fifty crowns, and off she went. I had a good look round: no other car had stopped anywhere nearby. The package was good and heavy, and worth over two thousand crowns – plus the two hundred and fifty. It would not be a good idea to take it home after yesterday’s warning!

We therefore stopped at M.’s, where I stored the package, and agreed that I would come tomorrow afternoon and M. and I would organize a handicraft session. Seeing how smoothly and quickly it all went, I now regret not having brought Černý’s My Years in Dijon with me for binding. Instead the copies are lying at home under my desk. But I was reluctant to handle two precious things at once. And I also thought it unwise to set the lady at the binders’ puzzling how it was that no matter whether the name given was Václav Černý or Alena Nováková, I’m the one who comes to collect everything.

Zdena asked me where I wanted to go now (at least 20 Kčs for petrol to add to the price of the almanac!) and I directed her to take me to Jiří Gruša’s at the Novodvorská housing estate. Jirka was reading his German book, of course, and looking for translation errors. There were apparently few serious ones, though a good number of minor slips. Zdena talked to Ivanka in the sitting room, with the dogs dashing all around and their little boy Václav – whom I have deliberately christened Walter (lest he become another Good King Wenceslas, as Jirka ambitiously plans for him) groping around the flat wreaking havoc: breaking the radio aerial, slopping tea onto the writing desk, etc. etc. Meanwhile Jirka and I completed some business, which we conducted, as far as most of the proper names, numbers and certain verbs were concerned, with pencil and paper; for the most part my friends mock me for acting this way but I have already managed to make them think twice. It was evening by now and I decided to pay one further call: to Otka Bednářová who lives almost opposite. But there was no one in. I have a feeling that Otka is annoyed with me, and I know why. I went back to Jiří’s for Zdena who then drove me home. Jiří wanted me to tell him what the StB had asked me about. I told him briefly and I ought to do the same here, but it’s the last thing I feel like doing.

Our Ondřej took his driving test today. It’ll be nothing unusual if he flunks it – they apparently fail half of the candidates – but it would hurt him rather more. Jan, for his part, was summoned to the director’s office for a talk. He was there with five other trainees who had passed the necessary exams and they were all treated most affably: they are to be recommended for university study and they will even receive a scholarship from their third year onwards if they agree to remain with the firm. The whole family is stupefied: we all fear we know something the firm doesn’t know – that they won’t be allowed to put Jan’s name forward.

THURSDAY, 25TH JANUARY 1979

We have a house in Dobřichovice, but we cannot live in it. A modest but fine house, it dates from the end of the last century, and would be comfortable were we allowed to reconstruct the interior to suit our needs. It has no bathroom, for instance. It has six rooms, but we have the right to only one of them. In the rest there are tenants. When we bought the house six years ago, we naturally gave them notice to leave, but that is meaningless unless the local authority is prepared to rehouse them. And since we cannot expect any favours from this state, our boys have started to build their own place as part of a self-help housing co-op. It entails putting in about a hundred and twenty hours’ work a month, Saturdays and Sundays. The idea we had was that as soon as the boys had their flat ready we would move there and swap the flat I am sitting in at this moment for some place in Dobřichovice for our old ladies. We have three old ladies: Mrs. Kopecká with her two cats, Mrs. Rohlenová with her scores of grandchildren from spring to autumn, and Mrs. Hermerková with her dog. There’s the rub: they may be just three persons but they are three separate households and they need three separate replacement flats. And that is bearing in mind that someone might die (me, for example), but when?

Some time at the beginning of this month I made up my mind to call a meeting to seek expert advice. The topics: (i) The feasibility of moving the old ladies to a single – minimum three-bedroomed – flat seeing that they now live in a family house that is divided into three flats in an equally notional fashion; (ii) whether the authorities might have a trick up their sleeves enabling them to take the boys’ flat away from them once they have built it; (iii) whether it might be advisable to have Jan or Madla registered as joint owners of the Dobřichovice house, which was bought in Ondřej’s name. My being the owner of anything is something inconceivable both to the state and our family. As experts I invited Jiří Gruša, who also works in a housing office and knows the sort of trickery that might be used, Pavel Rychetský, because he’s a lawyer in a similar co-operative, our lads, and Madla, of course, because she considers it possible that as soon as the boys have built the flat I will move into it with some woman or other.

The meeting took place at Pavel’s, and Jiří failed to show up. We are not allowed to move three old ladies into one flat, but taking the boys’ three-bedroom apartment and giving them a one-bedroom instead – if the boys are not married at the time of the final inspection – that’s allowed. The next day I asked Jiří why he had not come. He said it had slipped his mind, adding with a grin that it was a Freudian lapse of memory because he was cross with me.

Excerpt from the e-book

Table of Contents

Copyright

MONDAY, 22ND JANUARY 1979

TUESDAY, 23RD JANUARY 1979

WEDNESDAY, 24TH JANUARY 1979

THURSDAY, 25TH JANUARY 1979

AFTERWORD: HOW TO READ A CZECH DREAMBOOK