4 Time present, time past

What might have been is an abstraction

remaining a perpetual possibility

only in a world of speculation. 

(T S Eliot)

At the Malana Strana end of the Charles Bridge, on the west bank of the Vltava, a small, almond shaped island is created by an arm of the river called the Certovka, or Little Devil. This is Kampa Island, a leafy refuge from a relentless sun. I had time to spare, as I often did. Time waiting to meet or be met, time waiting to collect or deliver, time waiting to go. I was well practiced at using spare time, I inhabited that empty space comfortably enough, often enough.

But this was unused time, and left me restless. I was meant to have done something, and hadn't done it. This was not spare time but incomplete time.

I sat on the grass beneath a tree from where I could view the weir and listen to it's constant, soft rush. If a sound could be cooling, this seemed to be it. Small groups of red faced tourists passed along behind me on their guided tours, from East Germany, or Russia, or Bulgaria, or from whichever part of the great empire in their fetid smoke belching busloads they had been disgorged - to see 'the jewel in the crown of Europe'. Prague was jewel-like, it's red tiled roofs and domes and spires glowing and glittering in the sun. Kafka, I decided, must at sometime have sat on the same spot and considered likewise.

Prague's famous poet would, I decided, get his bottle of whisky at least.

3 Irish Whisky

  'He loves Irish Whisky, take him a bottle.'

The narrow lanes and passageways of the Mala Strana district on the west bank of the river weave intricately like lacework gathered around the foot of the Castle Hill and make even a short walk seem labyrinthine.
'We can call Seifert from here,' said Marta. The small office we were standing in was empty but for a desk and a few chairs. It was only a short walk from the cafe but it seemed we had double-backed before entering a side door and I was unsure, looking though the window onto a small shaded courtyard, from which direction the sun was spreading it's mid-morning light. To my surprise Marta told me we were in part of the Wallenstein Palace, a government building.
Marta dialed, the phone was answered by a woman's voice, and then a man's. Marta spoke in the comfortable and familiar tones of a family friend. After a few short minutes she replaced the receiver. 'He's feeling too unwell to meet and the house is being watched. He asked me to say to you that he is very sorry.'

I'd been told that that Seifert loved Irish Whisky. Walking through Prague after leaving Marta I felt the small flat bottle in my pocket and wondered if I should drink it myself. I felt like it. It seemed that I'd come for nothing. But the heat of the day was beginning to beat up from the cobblestones and gather in corners as if oven doors were being opened. I made for the pools of shade under the trees on the Kampa Island. I would buy a sausage and a beer, I would sit near a bandstand and listen to the Czech Army band play their Boosey & Hawkes instruments, and look at the girls in their loose tops. I would think again about Prague's famous poet and why I was being about as successful as Kafka's 'K' in reaching my own particular castle.

I've supped on potatoes and groats and am waiting to be sick. How about you?
I supped like the Lord in Heaven.
And what does the Lord in Heaven have for supper?
Nothing. 
(Jan Neruda)

2 The poet

In 1984 the Czech poet Jaroslav Seifert, who's work was frequently banned in his own country until 1981, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Due to ill health he was unable to attend the ceremony in Stockholm, and his son 'dissuaded'. He died in 1986. 

From the bridge, and so far as I could see, unattended, I made my way towards the foot of the hill, through narrow, silent streets and past the high blank walls of St Nicholas's Church. Ahead of me, as I walked beneath a low colonnade, a pub's light spread out across the cobbled pavement and glowed saffron across the arched ceiling above me. Two men, perhaps sent out, continued a heated discussion, prodding and tugging at each other and paying no attention to me as I, walking by, hoped their disagreement didn't suddenly escalate into something even more physical. It didn't, and I was able to pass by without any involvement. The men, having evidently made their point, slapped each other on the backs and returned to their beer.

I reached lower Nerudova, it's length before me rising up against the dark flank of the Castle hill, and climbed slowly. It was now pleasantly cool, the day having finally lifted it's thick warm and airless cloak.

'Time and the bell have buried the day...'

Half way up I waited again, as I had at the bridge. There were fewer people about than during the day, but the shadows were deeper and darker.

Marta's apartment was on the third floor of a building opposite the Shwarzenberg palace and the castle steps.  The windows glowed with light. At last, there was some sign of life. I had tried twice before to find her during the day, wondering initially if it was the correct location, if perhaps I had misremembered the address, wondering if she may not be in Prague at all.

I looked up at the ochre colored building from across the street, looked again along the gloomy Nerudova sloping down and away, and crossed into the building.

Marta stared at me from the doorway with her large brown eyes. 'You are Zuzana's friend?' She looked again at the small note, written in Czech, that I had given her:  '...he is our friend - love from Zuzka'. 'You have come from London... to talk to Seifert?' A look, a mixture of bewilderment at this sudden, unexpected arrival from 'the West' and faint bemusement at the extent of his ambition, crossed her face. She opened the door to let me in. There, sitting comfortably with a coffee, was a man in his mid thirties, about Marta's own age, and a boy of about eight or nine in his pajamas, sitting at a table and leafing through a book. The man nodded.
'London?' he said. I detected a slight shake of the head at this evidently interesting fact.
'Yes' I said.
'Ok' he said. 'From London.'
Marta put a spoonful of tea leaves into a cup and poured boiling water. 'Sorry, Czech way, I know' she said apologetically. 'No tea bags.'
'Your husband and son?' I said.
'My friend and my son. You know Seifert is quite ill,' said Marta, 'and it will be difficult, he is watched all the time.'

We meet the following morning in the Little Town district, in a cafe near the Lichenstein Palace. An elderly, slightly stooping man in green overalls and carrying a broom crosses slowly in front of the old baroque palace building, which housed a school for Communism.  He enters it's courtyard and disappears from view.
'That man,' says Marta, 'he was very important member of government until recently. Now he sweeps their floors.'

'So' says Marta, ' you want to make interview with our famous poet.'
'A short film,' I say. 'An acceptance for Stockholm. He probably won't go, we know, like Walensa last year.'
'You made a film with Walensa?'
'In the crypt of a church in Gdansk,' I reply, 'though it was never shown, apparently.'
'But you have camera?'
I turn away from the other tables and take a small 8mm camera from my jacket pocket. She looks amused.
'On that? she said smiling, 'it looks like toy.'
'I hope so,' I said.

1 The Bridge

I am looking at an image of the crowds filling Prague's Charles Bridge and beyond as they followed, yesterday, the sleek black hearse containing the coffin of Vaclav Havel - propmaker, playwright, prisoner, president of his country who used a scooter to get around the castle, and godfather to a generation of dissidents, the man who articulated the restarting of 'the clock of history' in his atrophied, sullen and resentful portion of a rebellious Europe, son of an architect and the architect of the Velvet Revolution.
The crowd have gradually slowed to a stop behind the vehicle as it maneuvers to exit the bridge.  There are so many people on the bridge that it seems they might overflow the balustrades and cascade into the cold waters below.
Today it was Havel's funeral, the privately flown-in dutiful, politicians, princes, gathering in  contemplation of the tousled haired, Zappa-loving hero-poet-president, while his compatriots and their children, waiting outside in the damp chill in their thousands, planted fields of glittering candles and notes which simply said 'thank you'.

1984.

The bridge is empty. It's a warm, late evening in August, and for the third time that day I cross the Charles Bridge towards Marta's apartment on Nerudova, just below the Castle steps. The river flows peacefully and silently below, only the distant weir offering a murmuring  of sound.

I listen to my own footsteps.

The saints, looking down from the balustrades on either side, remain stonily mute. A man with a small dog is walking towards me, and though at that moment we are the only two people on the bridge he walks by without acknowledging my presence.  In the still and sultry air it seems that the whole city is either sleeping or has been abandoned altogether by it's citizens who have retreated to the cool lakes and trees and rivers of the countryside. It is August, the holiday month. Prague has been left to stew in it's own heat, it's light absorbed by the grey stone.

Once across the bridge I wait, leaning back against the balustrade, away from betraying lantern pools of light, looking back towards the Old Town and it's darkening shapes of dome and tower...looking for movement of dark on darkness.