The Prague Orgy (3 page)
Authors: Philip Roth
“
Since Eva is no longer here, I can tell you. it
’
s another of my boring European stories. One of her favorites. In our town there was a Gestapo officer who loved to play chess. After the occupation began, he found out that my father was the chess master of the region, and so he had him to his house every night. My father was horribly shy of people, even of his students. But because he believed that my
mother and my brother would be
protected if he was courteous with the officer, he went whenever he was called. And they
were
protected. All the Jews in the town were huddled into the Jewish quarter. For the others things got a little worse every day. but not for my family. For more than a year nobody bothered them. My father could no longer teach at the high school, but he was now allowed to go around as a private tutor to earn some money. At night, after our dinner, he would leave the Jewish quarter and go to play chess with the Gestapo officer. Well, stationed in the town there was another Gestapo officer. He had a Jewish dentist whom
he
was protecting. The dentist was fixing all his teeth for him. His family too was left alone, and the dentist was allowed to continue with his practice. One Sunday, a Sunday probably much like today, the two Gestapo officers went out drinking together and they got drunk, much the way, thanks to your hospitality, we are getting nicely drunk here. They had an argument. They were good friends, so it must have been a terrible argument, because the one who played chess with my father was so angry that he walked over to the dentist
’
s house and got the dentist out of bed and shot him. This enraged the other Nazi so much that the next morning he came to our house and he shot my father, and my brother also, who was eight. When he was taken before the German commandant, my father
’
s murderer explained,
‘
He shot my Jew, so I shot his.
’
‘
But why did you shoot the child?
’
‘
That
’
s how God-damn angry I was, sir.
’
They were reprimanded and told not to do it again. That was all. But even that reprimand was something. There was no law in those days against shooting Jews in their houses, or even on the street.
”
“
And your mother?
”
“
My mother hid on a farm. There I was born, two months later. Neither of us looks like my father. Neither did my brother, but his short life was just bad luck. We two survived.
”
“
And why did your father, with an Aryan wife, write stories in Yiddish? Why not in Czech? He must have spoken Czech to the students at the high school.
”
“
Czech was for Czechs to write. He married my mother, but he never thought he was a real Czech. A Jew who marries a Jew is able at home to forget he
’
s a Jew. A Jew who marries an Aryan like my mother has her face there always to remind him.
”
“
He didn
’
t ever write in German?
”
“
We were not Sudeten Germans, you see, and we were not Prague Jews. Of course German was less foreign to him than Czech, because of Yiddish. Germa
n he insisted on for my brother
to be properly educated. He himself read Lessing, Herder, Goethe, and Schiller, but his own father had been, not even a town Jew like him, he had been a Jew in the farmlands, a village shopkeeper. To the Czechs such Jews spoke Czech, but in the family
t
hey spoke only Yiddish. All of this is in my father
’
s stories: homelessness beyond ho
m
elessness. One story is called
‘
Mother Tongue.
’
Three pages only, about a little Jewish boy who speaks bookish German, Czech without the native flavor, and the Yiddish of people simpler than himself. Kafka
’
s homelessness, if I may say so, was nothing beside my father
’
s. Kafka had at least the nineteenth century in his blood—all those Prague Jews did. Kafka belonged to literature, if nothing else. My father belonged to nothing. If he had lived, I think that i would have developed a great antagonism to my father. I would have thought.
‘
What is this man so lonely for? Why is he so sad and withdrawn? He should join the revolution—then he would not sit with his head in his hands, wondering where he belongs.
’”
“
Sons are famous the world over for generous thoughts about fathers.
”
“
When I came to New York and wrote my letter to you, I said to Eva,
‘
1 am a relative of this great man.
’
I
was thinking of my father and his stories. Since we have come from Europe, I have already read fifty American novels about Jews. In Prague I knew nothing about this incredible phenomenon and how vast it was. Between the wars in Czechoslovakia my father was a freak. Even had he wished to publish his stories, where would they have appeared? Even if he had published all two hundred of them, no one would have paid attention—not to that subject. But in America my father would have been a celebrated writer. Had he emigrated before I was bom, had he come to New York City in his thirties, he would have been discovered by some helpful person and published in the best magazines. He would be something more now than just another murdered Jew. For years I never thought of my father, now every minute i wonder what he would make of the America I am seeing. I wonder what America would have made of him. He would be seventy-two. I am obsessed now with this great Jewish writer that might have been.
”
“
His stories are that good?
”
“
1 am not exaggerating his excellence. He was a deep and wonderful writer.
”
“
Like whom? Sholem Aleichem? Isaac Babel?
”
“
I can tell you only that h
e was elliptical, humble, self-
conscious, all in his own way. He could be passionate, he could be florid, he could be erudite—he could be anything. No, this is not the Yiddish of Sholem Aleichem. This is the Yiddish of Flaubert. His last work, ten little stories about Nazis and Jews, the saddest commentary
I
have ever read about the worst life has to offer. They are about the family of the Nazi commandant he played chess with at night. About his visits to the house and how charmed they all were. He called them
‘
Stories about Chess.
’”
“
What became of those stories?
”
“
They are with my books in Prague. And my books in Prague are with my wife. And my wife does not like me so much anymore. She has become a drank because of me. Our daughter has become crazy because of me and lives with her aunt because of me. The police will not leave my wife alone because of me. I don
’
t think I
’
ll ever see my father
’
s stories again. My mother goes to ask my wife for her husband
’
s stories and my wife recounts for her all of my infidelities. She shows my mother photographs of all my mistresses, unclothed. These too I unfortunately left behind with my books.
”
“
Will she destroy your father
’
s stories?
”
“
No, no. She couldn
’
t do it. Olga is a writer too. In Czechoslovakia she is very well known for her writing, for her drinking, and for showing everybody her cunt. You would like Olga. She was once very beautiful, with beautiful long legs and gray cat-eyes and her books were once beautiful too. She is a most compliant woman. It is I alone whom she opposes. Anything another man wants, Olga will do it. She will do it well. If you were to visit Prague, and you were to meet Olga and Olga were to fall in love with you, she would even give you my father
’
s stories, if you were to go about it the right way. She loves love. She does anything for love. An American writer, a famous, attractive, American genius who does not practice the American innocence to a shameless degree—if he were to ask for my father
’
s stories, Olga would give them to him. I am sure of it. The only thing is not to lay her too soon.
”
At
Klenek
’
s every Tuesday night, with or without Klenek in residence, there is a wonderful party to go to. Klenek is currently
directing a film in France. Because he is technically still married to a German baroness, he is by Czech law allowed to leave the
country half of each year, ostensibly to be with her. The Czech
Film industry is no longer open to him, but he continues to live
in his palazzo and is permitted to associate with his old friends,
many of whom the regime now honors as its leading enemies.
No one is sure why he is privileged—perhaps because Klenek
is useful propaganda, somebody the regime can hold up to its
foreign critics as an artist who lives as he wishes. Also, by letting
him work abroad, they can continue to tax his large foreign
earnings. And, explains Bolotka, Klenek may well be a spy.
“
Probably he tells them things,
”
says Bolotka.
“
Not that
it
mat
ters. Nobody tells him anything, and he knows nobody tells him
anything, and they know nobody tells him anything.
”
“
What
’
s the point then?
”
“
With Klenek the point is to spy not on politics but on sex.
The house is bugged everywhere. The secret police listen outside
and look in the windows. It
’
s their job. Sometimes they even
see something and get excited. This is a pleasant distraction from
the pettiness and viciousness of their regular work. It does them
good. It does everybody good. Fifteen-year-old girls come to
Klenek
’
s. They dress up like streetwalkers and come from as far away as a hundred miles. Everybody, even schoolchildren, is looking for fun. You like orgies, you come with me. Since the Russians, the best orgies in Europe are in Czechoslovakia. Less
liberty, better fucks. You can do whatever you want at Klenek
’
s.
No drugs, but plenty of whiskey. You can fuck, you can mas
turbate, you can look at dirty pictures, you can look at yourself
in the mirror, you can do nothing. All the best people are there. Also the worst. We are all comrades now. Come to the orgy,
Zuckerman—you will see the final stage of the revolution.
”
Klenek
’
s is a small seventeenth-century palazzo on the Kampa,
a little residential island we reach by descending a long wet
stairway from the Charles Bridge. Standing in the cobbled square
outside of Klenek
’
s, I hear the Vltava churning past the deep
stone embankment. I
’
ve walked with Bolotka from my hotel
through the maze of the ghetto, passing on the way the capsized tombstones of what he informs me is the oldest Jewish cemetery
left in Europe. Within the iron grating, the jumble of crooked, eroded markers looks less like a place of eternal rest than something a cyclone has tom apart. Twelve thousand Jews buried in
layers in what in New York would be a small parking lot. Drizzle
dampening the tombstones, ravens in the trees.
Klenek
’
s: large older women in dark rayon raincoats, young pretty women with jewels and long dresses, stout middle-aged men dressed in boxy suits and looking like postal clerks, elderly men with white hair, a few slight young men in American jeans— but no fifteen-year-old girls. Bolotka may be having some fun exaggerating for his visitor the depths of Prague depravity—a little cold water on free-world fantasies of virtuous political suffering.
Beside me on a sofa, Bolotka explains who is who and who likes what.
“
That one was a journalist till they fired him. He loves pornography. I saw him with my eyes fucking a girl from behind and reading a dirty book at the same time. That one, he is a terrible abstract painter. The best abstract painting he did was the day the Russians came. He went out and painted over all the street signs so the tanks wouldn
’
t know where they were. He has the longest prick in Prague. That one. the little clerk, that is Mr. Vodicka. He is a very good writer, an excellent writer, but everything scares him. If he sees a petition, he passes out. When you bring him to life again, he says he will sign it: he has ninety-eight percent reason to sign, and only two percent reason not to sign, and he has only to think about the two percent and he will sign. By the next day the two percent has grown to one hundred percent. Just this week Mr. Vodicka told the government that if he made bad politics he is sorry. He is hoping this way they will let him write again about his perversion.
”
“
Will they?
”
“
Of course not. They will tell him now to write a historical novel about Pilsen beer.
”
We are joined by a tall, slender woman, distinguished by a mass of hair dyed the color of a new penny and twisted down over her forehead in curls. Heavy white makeup encases her sharp, birdlike face. Her eyes are gray cat-eyes, her smile is beckoning.
“
I know who you are.
”
she whispers to me.
“
And you are who?
”
“
I don
’
t know.
I
don
’
t even feel I exist.
”
To Bolotka:
“
Do I exist?
”
“
This one is Olga.
”
Bolotka says.
“
She has the best legs in Prague. She is showing them to you. Otherwise she does not exist.
”
Mr. Vodicka approaches Olga, bows like a courtier, and takes her hand. He is a little, unobtrusive man of sixty, neatly dressed and wearing heavy spectacles. Olga pays him no attention.
“
My lover wants to kill me,
”
she says to me.
Mr. Vodicka is whispering in her ear. She waves him away,
but passionately he presses her hand to his cheek.
“
He wants to know if she has any boys for him,
”
Bolotka
explains.
“
Who is she?”
“
She was the most famous woman in the country. Olga wrote
our love stories. A man stood her up in a restaurant and she
wrote a love story, and the whole country talked about why he
stood her up. She had an abortion and she told the doctor it
could be one of eleven men, and the whole country debated
whether it could actually be so many. She went to bed with a woman and the whole country read the story and was guessing
who it was. She was seventeen, she already wrote a bestseller,
Touha.
Longing. Our Olga loves most the absent thing. She loves
the Bohemian countryside. She loves her childhood. But always
something is missing. Olga suffers the madness that follows after
loss. And this even
before
the Russians. Klenek saw her in a
café
a tall country girl, her heart full of
touha,
and he took her
here to live with him. This is over twenty years ago. For seven years Olga was married. She had a child. Poor child. Now her
husband runs off with the other famous woman in our country,
a beautiful Czech actress who he will destroy in America, and
Olga. Klenek looks after.
”
“
Why does she need looking after?
”
“
Why do you need looking after?
”
Bolotka
asks her.
“
This is awful,
”
she says.
“
I hear stories about myself tonight-
Stories about who I fuck. I would never fuck such people.
”
“
Why do you need looking after. Olga?
”
Bolotka asks again.
“
Because
I
’
m
shaking. Feel me shaking. I never stop shaking.
I am frightened of everything.
”
Points to me,
“
I am frightened
of him.
”
She flops down onto the sofa, in the space between Bolotka and me. I feel pressing against mine the best legs in
Prague. Also believe I feel the
touha.
“
You don
’
t act frightened,
”
I say.
“
Since I am frightened of everything it is as well to go in
one direction as the other. If I get into too much trouble, you
will come and marry me and take me to America. I will telegram
and you will come and save me.
’
’
She says to Bolotka,
“
Do you
know what Mr. Vodicka wants now? He has a boy who has never
seen a woman. He wants me to show it to him. He is going into
the street to get him.
”
Then, to me:
“
Why are you in Prague?
Are you looking for Kafka? The intellectuals all come here looking for Kafka. Kafka is dead. They should be looking for O
l
ga. Are you planning to make love to anybody in Prague? If so, you wilt let me know,
”
To Bolotka:
“
Kouba. There is Kouba! I cannot be in this house with that Kouba!
”
To me:
“
You want to know why I need looking after?
Because of stupid communists like Kouba!
”
She points to a short man with a bald head who is animatedly entertaining a circle of friends in the center of the milling crowd.
“
Kouba knew what the good life was for all of us. It has taken the Koubas twenty years to learn, and they
’
re
still
too stupid to leam. All brains and no intelligence.
None.
Kouba is one of our great communist heroes. It is surprising he is still in Prague. Not all of our great communist heroes who were in Italy with their girl friends when the Russians invaded have bothered to come back from their holiday yet. Do you know why? Because when the Russians occupied Prague, at last they were free of their wives. Some of our greatest communist heroes are now with their girl friends teaching Marxism-Leninism in New York. They are only sorry that the revolution fell into the wrong hands. Otherwise they are like Kouba—still one hundred percent sure they are right. So why do you come to Prague? You are not looking for Kafka, none of our heroes in New York sent you, and you don
’
t want to fuck. I love this word fuck. Why don
’
t we have this word, Rudolf?
”
To me again:
“
Teach me how to say fuck. This is a good fucking party. I was really fucked. Wonderful word. Teach me.
”
“
Shut the fuck up.
”
“
Beautiful word. Shut the fuck up. More.
”
“
Fuck it all. Fuck everything.
”
“
Yes, fuck it all. Fuck everything and fuck everybody. Fuck the world till it cannot fuck me anymore. See, I learn fast. In America
I
would be a famous writer like you. You are afraid to fuck me. Why is that? Why do you write this book about fucking that makes you so famous if you are afraid to fuck somebody? You hate fucking everybody or just me?
”
“
Everybody.
”
“
He is kind to you,
Olga
,
”
Bolotka says.
“
He is a gentleman, so he doesn
’
t tell you the truth because you are so hopeless.
”
“
Why am I hopeless?
”
“
Because in America the girls don
’
t talk to him like this.
”
“
What do they say in America? Teach me to be an American girl.
”
“
First you would take your hand off my prick.
”
“
I see. Okay. Now what?
”
“
We would talk to each other. We would try to get to know
each other first.
”
“
Why? I don
’
t understand this. Talk about what? The Indi
ans?
”
“
Yes, we would talk at length about the Indians.
”
“
And
then
I put my hand on your prick.
”
“
That
’
s right.
”
“
And then you fuck me.
”
“
That would be the way we would do it, yes
.”
“
It is a very strange country.
”
“
It
’
s one of them.
”
Mr. V
o
dicka, pink with excitement, is dragging the boy through
the room. Everything excites Mr. Vodicka: Olga dismissing him
like a bothersome child, Bolotka addressing him like a whipped
dog, the indifferent boy weary already of being so cravenly
desired. The stage-set splendors of Klenek
’
s drawing room—
velvet burgundy draperies, massive carved antiques, threadbare
Oriental carpets, tiers of dark romantic landscapes leaning from
the paneled oak walls—evoke no more from the boy than a mean
little smirk. Been everywhere already, seen the best in brothels
by the time he was twelve.