[an excerpt from Under a Cruel Star]

Every year, at the end of winter, when the air is still cold but already tinged with the promise of spring, I spend an afternoon with myself alone. Springtime has always been a time for remembrance.

There were the springtimes in Hut before the war, when people came out of their houses and into their gardens, airing out stripped feather beds and turning the damp soil. Our neighbor, Grandfather Pleticha, never seemed to go back inside. Whenever I looked over into his garden I would see him standing there in an old short jacket, his hands in his pockets and a cloth cap above the weathered face of an old Czech puppet like the ones Matej Kopecky used to carve a century ago. I almost expected him to sink roots and start budding. From the corner window I had been used to seeing a bare slope covered with black trees. Then, one morning, I looked out and a green wind seemed to have blown through the forest. A few days later, the cobwebs of branches were hidden in a profusion of fresh, green leaves. People would stand outside their homes warming themselves in the sunshine and, year after year, they would say, "Isn't it beautiful?" as though they had never seen it before.

Then there were the springtimes in the Lodz Ghetto, where not a blade of grass would grow nor a single bird fly; the stench of quicklime used as disinfectant repelled all living things. But even in the Lodz Ghetto the wind would sometimes bring with it the smell of soil, of life. Far away somewhere, really just beyond the Ghetto wall, there were fields where the Germans grew wheat.

Our last spring in Lodz, my father volunteered to work in those fields, and I worried about him. One day, I no longer remember how, I wangled a free afternoon and a pass to go after him. The sun was shining, and I saw him ahead of me, walking slowly behind the plow, bent under the strain. I saw for the first time how terribly he had aged, how pale he was, and how withered by hunger and humiliation. We stood together for a moment in the sunshine, and then my father took off his cap and said, shyly, "Now, in spring, my heart feels so heavy..." It was only many years later that I understood why he had chosen to do this work which was far more strenuous than what he had been doing before. Each day he had to walk a long distance before reaching the fields. Then, from dawn to dusk, he had to drag himself behind the plow, the heavy clogs on his feet sticking in the clay. But there he was alone with what he loved most, the freshly-turned earth, the open sky, the clean breeze. On the eve of his death, he had returned to those things from which he had come.

Springtimes in Prague-who could forget them? Forsythias on the Letna Plain. The flowering hills of Strahov. The chestnuts of Zofin. The gulls on Jirasek Bridge. There is no other city like Prague. It is not only the beauty of the buildings, of the towers and bridges, though it is that too. They rise up from the slopes and riverbanks in such harmony that it seems nature created them alongside its trees and flowers. But what is unique about Prague is its relation between the city and its people. Prague is not an uncaring backdrop which stands impassive, ignoring happiness and suffering alike. Prague lives in the lives of her people and they repay her with the love we usually reserve for other human beings. Prague is not an aggregate of buildings where people are born, work, and die. She is alive, sad, and brave, and when she smiles with spring, her smile glistens like a tear.

The spring of 1948 began dismally, with the death of Foreign Minister Jan Masaryk. He was the song of the first Czechoslovak president, Thomas G. Masaryk and, like his father, a symbol of the cultural values and humanistic traditions of our country. Many people believed that his presence in the new government-headed by the Communists-indicated that our road toward socialism might not, after all, deviate too far from the principles on which our Republic had been founded.

During the Nazi Occupation, Jan Masaryk had been Foreign Minister of the Czechoslovak government-in-exile in London. He had earned great respect from the Allied leaders and was enormously popular at home. Throughout the war he gave regular radio talks that were broadcast by the BBC; he had a way of giving people new hope and courage in the darkest moments of their lives, and they never forgot it. Whenever he appeared in public, people rallied around him and he exchanged jokes with them as though they were old friends.

Now, one morning less than a month after the Communist coup, his dead body was found on the pavement below the windows of his apartment in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Without disclosing the results of the autopsy or official investigation, the government announced that Jan Masaryk had killed himself in a fit of depression. Few people believed he was a suicide. Rumors of murder began to circulate immediately, and there were many theories about his death.

A good friend of ours, Pavel Kavan, was probably the last person to have seen Masaryk alive-except, possibly, for the unknown visitors who may have come later. Kavan, an official of the Foreign Ministry, said that Masaryk had seemed his usual self, neither unusually upset nor depressed, and had asked Kavan to return the next morning to pick up some documents. Another friend of ours, Stanislav Marek, who had known Masaryk for years, insisted that the Foreign Minister was prone to severe depressions, and that no one who really knew him well was surprised at his suicide.

The mystery of Jan Masaryk's death was never solved. But whether he had become too great an obstruction to Soviet plans and was consequently put out of their way by experts, or whether he took his own life out of despair over the future of his country, one thing was clear: the Communist coup or, as the Party came to call it, "Victorious February," was the cause of his death.

Three or four months later, over dinner one evening, Rudolf told me that he had been offered the position of cabinet chief in the Ministry of Foreign Trade. The prospect scared me. By that time we all realized that the coup had been a fundamental upheaval, with tremendous consequences for the whole country, a revolution that some people had met with cheers and others with dread. Many of our friends had left Czechoslovakia for lives abroad; others were staying but lived with a feeling of constant apprehension. Everything around us was falling apart or being torn down. I knew that the great change I had read about in those pamphlets had finally come, but I wondered whether it would be a change for the better.

I wanted Rudolf to wait a while before he said yes or no to the Ministry. What if things took a direction he could not support? What if all that idealism should fail in practice? As an ordinary Party member he could, perhaps, voice disagreement, resign or protest. But I knew enough about Party practice by then to realize that the people who occupied positions in the higher echelon of government or Party had little margin for dissent. "Whoever is not with us is against us," ran the slogan: either one belonged, body and soul, to the Party, or one was considered a traitor.

Luckily, Rudolf himself said he did not want the job. He was not suited for it. He was satisfied with what he was doing. He still had a lot to learn. He had already turned down the offer. He wondered why he had even been considered for such an important job-an inexperienced young man like himself, a recent Party member who had never held any political office or performed any Party function.

Two days later, we were expecting Otto and Milena for dinner, after which we were to go to the theater. Rudolf arrived at the last minute. He said that his refusal to take the job had been rejected. The Party had officially ordered him to accept. Party superiors had explained that his work at the Institute had been carefully watched, that his qualifications were outstanding, and that his knowledge of foreign languages was very useful. The Party needed him. The Party had decided.

Now the choice was simple, Rudolf said. He could either accept the position of cabinet chief in the Ministry of Foreign Trade or resign from the Party and turn his back on everything he believed in. I began to object to this line of reasoning, but Rudolf stopped me.

"You see?" he said. "That's just like us! As long as everything's on paper, in theory, we can get excited. But when the time comes to act, we lose our nerve! Who knows if it's the right thing to do? But don't ask me to step aside and spent the rest of my life blaming myself for cowardice. You can never get anywhere if you're afraid of making a mistake. I'm convinced we're capable of building a fairer and, in the end, a freer society. I have to accept the responsibility that goes along with that conviction. I know you think we'll have the same terror here as in Russia after the Revolution. But if you took the time to study these things, you'd see that the two countries offer entirely different conditions. Developments here will be totally different. Everything depends on getting good people in decisive positions so that we don't waste energy and resources and so that we don't hurt anyone."

I remember arguing that, as cabinet chief, Rudolf would be nothing more than the foreign minister's errand boy, forced to carry out policies made without his participation. "Experts like you will have no influence on actual decisions," I said. "But you'll be the scapegoat for anything that goes wrong. Don't you know it's always the second or third man down the line who makes the mistakes? It's only the top guy who gets the recognition for something that works!"

"I don't care about recognition," Rudolf said." "Besides, it's clear I'll only be there for the interim. I'm basically still a man of the old order. In a year or two, when enough young workers finish up their education, I'll be glad to give the job up and get back to the books. You know, that's probably my one real qualification for this job: I'm not interested in furthering my own career; I'll do honest work."

Suddenly I was overcome by all the tensions of the previous weeks and burst into tears. The doorbell rang just then, and Otto and Milena came in. Rudolf explained to them what was going on and Milena threw up her hands.

"For God's sake!" she said. "I've known you since first grade. I've lived through all kinds of horrors with you. And the first time I see you cry is when your husband makes it to the top! Have you gone crazy?"

We did go to the theater that evening and, for a short while, I pushed my worries aside. We did not talk about the job anymore after we returned home. We lay in bed in the dark for a long time, each listening to the other's breathing, each knowing that the other was wide awake. Finally, Rudolf said, "I know that the next few years won't be easy but, after that, if we do our job well, people will be happier and better off. Isn't that worth a try?"

I felt the tough of his fingers at the corners of my mouth.

"Please," he said. "Smile just a little."

What I remember most vividly from this period following the coup is a feeling of bewilderment, of groping in the dark that was doubly oppressive because the darkness was not only outside but inside me as well. How could we have been so credulous? So ignorant? It seems that once you decide to believe, your faith becomes more precious than truth, more real than reality.

My world began to change right away, the day the newspapers announced Rudolf's nomination to his new post in the Ministry of Foreign Trade. I went for my weekly appointment with the hairdresser. He was a fine fellow and I had always been casually friendly with him and his staff. While Mr. Oldrich dried my hair, one of his apprentices usually played with the baby or took him for a walk in his stroller. This time, no one greeted me with a joke or a smile. Instead, the entire staff stopped what they were doing and stood at attention. My hairdresser himself helped me off with my coat, hung it up, and started dancing around me, offering all kinds of essences and rinses-the same ones he used to dismiss, saying, "Stay away from that junk!" When I blurted out, "What's the matter with you?" he answered, "Nothing. But everything's the matter with you. You can't treat a highly-placed person like yourself as though you've herded geese with her all your life!"

That was the first indication of things to come. I had to become accustomed to the fact that, for everyone but a handful of my old friends, I ceased to be a human being. Instead, I became an object of envy, hate, suspicion, or obsequious deference. In the years that Rudolf would hold his job at the Ministry, I would not succeed in making a single friend among the comrades or their wives, and I think that fact illuminates the nature of that time. When ideology takes the front seat, human relations are pushed aside. When every action and though is geared to the building of a new society, there is little room left for feelings. Feelings are tricky anyway, hard to channel, hard to control: they are distractions from work and constructive effort, better avoided. The only feelings one can safely enjoy are love for the Party and hearty solidarity with one's comrades. Of course, even here caution is advisable; one should thoroughly examine a comrade before bestowing upon him one's trust. Only the Party is worthy of unquestioning devotion. I remember an actress, an outstanding artist, who declared to me that anyone whose eyes did not grow moist at the mention of Lenin's name was not worthy of standing on the stage of the National Theater.

At about that time, one of Rudolf's colleagues came to visit us and the conversation turned to precisely these matters. "Rudolf, you know how much I like you," the man said, "and that I consider you a good friend. But if I ever found out you had done anything to hurt the Party, I'd turn against you in a minute and do my best to make you pay for it."

I remembered his statement a few months later when this same man began to turn up at our home, terrified. He told us he was being followed everywhere by a black Tatra police limousine, and begged us to let him sit down and relax with us for a few moments. He was one of the first prominent Party members to be arrested, and I felt sorry for him, but since he had always seemed a bit enigmatic to me and capable of anything, I was prepared to believe that he might have been involved in some unsavory activities.

About two months after the coup, an older woman whom I did not know called at our apartment. She said she had heard that we wished to move. That was true. Our little hole in the wall had been bursting at the seams ever since the birth of our son. She offered me an apartment in her house in the Letna district which had been left vacant by some people who had emigrated. I liked the place ever though it was none too spacious and was quite expensive. The rooms were still filled with the belongings of their former tenants.

I found the family's former housekeeper in the kitchen. A fat, simple girl who was helping the landlady clean out the apartment, she was sitting over a cup of coffee as I came in. "Lady don't take this place," she whispered to me. "It's jinxed. First there were Jews here-they all died in the camps. The Germans who took the apartment from them got out in the nick of time-the neighbors would have lynched them! And now the people I worked for ran away with only their knapsacks on their backs. Nobody ever leaves this place in an ordinary way."

[From Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941-1968, pp. 75-82. Printed with the permission of translator/publisher Helen Epstein.]