The Empty Spaces of Prague

Chapter 3

            As we walked out to the street, I stopped to view my surroundings.  The buildings looked as if they had been built at the beginning of the century, but had been neglected for many years.  They were covered with soot and grime and though structurally beautiful, were marred by the dirt. She noticed my staring, said something about the first Czechoslovakian republic, but continued on to her car, parked just across the street.  It was a nondescript color, a Trabant, one that was made of cardboard during the Cold War.  It was the color of a dirty lampshade.  We got inside; Zdenka popped it into gear, and began to drive.

            She talked and drove.  Lighting up a cigarette, she smoked like it was her job, each time gesturing with her right hand and the cigarette in danger of ashing all over the car.  Often, it did.  I noticed it was unfiltered, and Zdenka had to stop midsentence to pick particles of tobacco off her tongue. The smell throughout the car was pungent, almost like pipe smoke.  Zdenka began to tell me about the job.  She told me of the school, on the outskirts of Prague, in the Northeast valley.  We passed by the city.  The castle loomed like an overlord on the tallest of Prague’s seven hills.  We drove along the Vlatava for a while, and I could see the Charles Bridge in the distance.  It all seemed a little hazy but it could have been from the smoky residue on the inside of the car windows. 

            Zdenka continued to talk.  I was to teach the students from grades seven through twelve.  I would be living in the school, with access to the home economics room for cooking and laundry.  There was a sink in the room, but no bathroom, that was next door in the girl’s locker room.  The cigarette bobbed up and down with each instruction.  My principal’s name was Petr Capek; he was recently reinstated his title because before he was a nonperson.

            I stopped her there.  “A nonperson?”  I asked.

            “Yes,” she replied with a long drag on the cigarette.  “Petr had just become the principal.  Then Prague Spring.  Soviet tanks rolled down the streets of Prague.  Everything changed.  Petr would not sign the oath of allegiance to the Communist Party in 1968. He spoke out against the changes.  And so…” she exhaled, flicked the cigarette and gave her words a moment of pause for gravity, “he lost his job, his wife lost her job, his children could not go to university, and he had to work as a janitor in a munitions factory.  His wife, a very beautiful and brilliant chemist, had to work on a dairy farm.”

            Maybe it was the jetlag, or it was lost in translation, but I couldn’t comprehend what she was saying.  A nonperson?  Just for speaking out against the government?  Was such a thing possible?  “Then what happened?” I asked.

            “After Velvet Revolution…” Zdenka replied, “Things went back to how they were.  His wife went back to work as a chemist.  Petr was reinstated as principal of the school.  But the school location was different.  Much worse than the other building.  It is in a bad place, a communist place.  You will see when we get there.”

            She stopped herself.  She realized that she had said more than she should.  She tried to redirect her voice softening, “Petr and I went to school together, to gymnasium. (She pronounced this word with a hard g sound.)  I know that he has a good heart and is a good man.  You will like him when you get to know him.  He is very wise and is forward thinking.  You are one of the first English teachers in all of Prague!” She says this last sentence with a triumphal, guttural laugh, deepened by her cigarette smoking.

            With that, something in the car popped, then sputtered, and quickly lost momentum.  We were on a dirt road, and we had to pull over.  I looked outside the window.  Directly to my right, there was a military base.  Jets were parked right on the other side of a chain link fence. It struck me that I’d never seen a jet that close to the road before unless it was for an air show.   Troops were drilling, so it didn’t take long for someone to notice us.  Within a few minutes, a jeep with two soldiers pulled up to our car.