Diary 5

Diary 5

Prague Diary.

For LH and DF whose Prague diaries and poems took me back there.

It was 1994. I was 23. It was September and I was there. Prague.

Home was the top floor of an old hotel out past Budejovicka. This was
about 200 metro stops further than any self-inflicting tourist would
ever venture. The name of the hotel was Dum. It was pronounced like
this, Hotel Doom. Edgar Allan Poe eat your heart out I thought.

Sharing my suite (2 bedrooms and a communal bathroom and toilet) was
Heinz. Heinz was a stick-like creature from Germany. Every time I came
home I always seemed to catch him naked talking on the phone. Almost
naked I should say. He would stand like this; phone receiver held
against ear by left hand, towel pressed against buttocks with
right.

"It is my elderly mother," he would say to me half turning and holding
the phone against his chest. I wasn't sure if he meant this as an
explanation of his nudity or something else all together.

Heinz and I never hit it off. It wasn't the nudity, I could cope with
that. It was more his manner; he was so effete and precise there was
something sinister about him. I could imagining him pinning the wings
of butterflies night after night in his room. I sensed that he had left
Germany under a cloud. I mean, why come here? What was he hiding
from?

Dinner was a singular affair. I would go down to the restaurant alone
and order from the unchanging menu; fried cheese and chips, fried
mushroom and chips, fried fish and chips. Once I tried the cheese
salad. This was three pieces of thinly sliced cheese on a plate. The
next night I went back to the chips. I almost applauded the waitress as
she came through the swing doors of the kitchen.

Some things didn't change. Every night creased by my plate was one of
those Wordsworth Classics you can buy for a pound in this country. They
were all I could afford from the American bookshop with my Czech
salary.

In those first few months I got through 'The Woman in White', 'The
Moonstone', 'Crime and Punishment', 'Anna Karenina', 'The Riddle of the
Sands', 'The Thirty Nine Steps', any number of Sherlock Holmes stories.
I will forever associate that time with those books. As if I hadn't
only gone away but also back to an earlier date sometime in the
nineteenth century, early in the twentieth.

Before I'd arrived in Prague I had already decided that the American
bookshop would be the place for me. I'd heard about it; the haunt of
writers, a literary launch pad. It was the stuff of legend. Zeitgeist
could be bought there by the kilo.

The first time I went I risked a coffee and snuck it to a free table. I
heard a voice behind me, straight from California, loud and
sunny;

"It was my first lesson. I walked in the there. I told the students,
'I'm Pam. I'm from the USA. I want you to write what you think of me.
Where do I come from? What do I like? What is my home like? What sort
of clothes do I wear? Do I have any pets? If I do, what are
they?'"

I made a note in my notebook; Americans go to foreign countries to find
out about themselves not to discover the foreigners. This is what we
call inverted cultural imperialism.

In my head I was Henry James slowly turning my screw.

My job was in a new Czech university. On the first day the principal
took me round. He wore jeans and a beard in equal measure.

"We're very proud. This year we are operating to full capacity. Very
proud."

The building was the size of the Kremlin. By now I was lost in a maze
of rooms. Eventually we reached a long corridor and we stopped.

"This will be your room."

He opened a door. One of many doors that stretched out like
Kafka.

"How many students will I have?"

"You will be teaching the whole of the third year."

I'd read Orwell. I knew all about communists. This man had obviously
been one.

"How many?"

"Twelve," he said. "Or thirteen. It depends. Let me show you the
staff-room."

The staff-room was to be the base camp from which I assaulted my
students for the next year. It was as large as a school dining hall.
Rows and rows of chairs. And only me to sit on them. Day after day I
sat in a different chair to give the appearance of usage. I don't know
if I succeeded. Maybe I just pissed off the cleaners.

One day the principal appeared unannounced. He appeared very
proud.

"We have just published out prospectus. Look."

He old out a glossy A5 sized book turned to an appropriate page. I
scanned it quickly.

"The Library School boasts a full compliment of highly skilled English
teachers. We aim to become one of Europe's leading providers of
excellence in English."

Above the text was a picture of a full classroom and a middle-aged
teacher in a shirt and tie standing in front of a blackboard. Through
an open window I could make out what I thought was the peak
district.

"We have strong links with the Netherlands," he said and then he
went.

I was still holding the baby. I was glad that he had gone. I hadn't
been sure what I was expected to say. At the time I had been wearing a
snow hat my best friend had given me, a pair of sheepskin mittens and
these army shoes and trousers I had had since university. These were my
usual teaching clothes. I wasn't at all sure what the Dutch would make
of them. Although physically similar to the Czechs in my experience
they are an all together different race.

There was one other English teacher. She was Czech and didn't speak any
English. I think this embarrassed her and she kept herself to herself.
She inhabited another equally huge staff-room which was joined to mine
by a heavy wooden door. Sometimes I would knock and go in.

"Do you have any scissors I can use?" I made a scissor-like movement
with my hand and she would nod and blush and hold out the offending
article.

Once I went in to borrow a rubber and came back with a very small
Bunsen burner. This is true and to this day I don't know how it
happened.

I quickly settled into a routine and just as quickly the days
diminished and the snows came. I had never seen snow like it. Thick and
zestful like diced spaghetti.

Monday to Friday was university during the day, Wordsworth classics at
night. Only Friday night was different. On Friday night I would go
out.

I can't remember now where I found out about Riviera Club I can only
remember that first time pacing up and down in front of its doors.
Perhaps that first time I went home without entering but at some point
I must have bitten the bullet and gone in. I always think that it is
easier to do the brave things than the cowardly ones. You are braver
than I if you can face your last days and look back at all the things
you didn't do.

The clientele of Rivera was mixed. There were Czech rent boys at the
bar. Old fat Germans on the dance floor showing us all how it wasn't
done. And me.

Behind a curtain was a darkroom. Every so often the curtain would
twitch and a new face would come out or one would go in. I was at home.
Like my father frequenting those prostitute dens in Greece.

"I have a brandy or two. Or three. Or four. Doucement mon brave.
Doucement."

This is how he talked to me.

Eventually I made friends. These came from an evening class I taught.
One of my students was a famous female Czech movie star, another a
presenter on Czech tv, another the editor of a magazine, yet another
worked in a snuff factory.

"Snuff?" I said.

"Yes, snuff," she said and held a pinched forefinger and thumb up to
her nose and sniffed. "Snuff."

She was extremely extremely beautiful, the kind of looks that would
have made Greta Garbo want to be together alone.

"I have a brother," she said.

"Why don't you bring him to the lesson?" I said.

She never did.

But Lubos was my favourite.

We first got to know each other at the end of the first term. I had
been teaching them the future tense when Yitka announced, 'we will go
out together, yes?'.

Everyone agreed and then couldn't decide where to go. We ended up
spending the night on a tram. Bottles of Slivovitsa were produced from
deep pockets and we went backwards and forwards on this red and yellow
impromptu party boat all night, Prague castle appearing and
disappearing from view like one of those scenes you shake up in a glass
sphere. Eventually the tram driver got upset and threw us off in the
middle of nowhere.

"What did he say?" I asked.

Lubos shrugged. "Get off my tram."

We laughed.

"Don't worry," said Katka, the movie star, "I will solve problem." And
then, I will never forget this, without pause she walked out in the
middle of the road and stood with hand out and stopped the oncoming
traffic to the screeching of tires.

"Come on," she said, pressing her face against the windscreen of a
stopped car and putting her tongue out. "Get in. We have ride."

That was the funniest thing. How she talked with her tongue poking
between her lips. I found out later that this was a scene from one of
her movies. A most famous scene.

By Spring Lubos and I were best friends. The area of Prague he was from
was called Prosek and now I spent more and more of my time there. Our
favourite place was a hill in a park that overlooked Prague. We would
lie on our backs and talk to the sky and only sit up to go and piss in
the bushes or to drink beer from the bottles we had brought.

We had this routine. Every time one of us came back from the bushes we
would ask, "How were the facilities?"

The other would answer, "Very fresh. No smell at all."

It always cracked us up and yet looking at it now it isn't funny at
all. That's what the passing of time does to you. Make no mistake.