Саймон Моуэр - Prague Spring

As always there was barely any traffic on the roads, and after Pilsen they entered a landscape almost empty of people, as though war was imminent and the inhabitants had been evacuated. Warnings were posted along the road.

Sam felt Lenka tense beside him. But the embassy car drove blithely on into the no-man’s-land that cut a swathe right through the centre of Europe. The first line of fencing appeared, running north and south away into the distance, over fields and through woods.

But they entered with sublime indifference, confident in their diplomatic plates, their diplomatic immunity from all interference. Watchtowers appeared on either side, marching above double fencing that was twice as tall as a man. Ahead was the checkpoint itself, with striped barriers like barbers’ poles. A few vehicles had collected against the gates like detritus in a stream. The Humber came to a halt in the reserved lane. Lenka’s grip tightened.

‘They know we’re coming,’ Sam assured her. ‘All diplomatic cars have to cross at this point. We inform them we’re crossing and more or less at what time. It’s all perfectly normal. They probably won’t even look at our papers.’

But they did. One of the guards, a mere child, leant in at the window and took the driver’s passport and diplomatic pass and called something out to his colleague behind him. Sam could hear Lenka’s sharp intake of breath, feel the tension in her body. She held her breath and waited. Sam got out of the car. ‘Is there a problem? Do you want to see the bags?’ The boot was opened and the guards peered in at canvas pouches with their diplomatic seals. Sam smiled, proffering documents. The senior guard refused the offer and told the younger one that he should have just waved them through. ‘No bother at all,’ Sam assured him. He reached into the boot, picked up a carton of two hundred cigarettes and proffered it to them. Players Please . ‘Here, split it among your mates.’

There were smiles all round now. Even laughter. One of them tried out his English. ‘Beatles, you like Beatles?’

‘Beatles are great,’ Sam assured him. ‘But Rolling Stones are better.’ More laughter. He got back into the car, then leant out of the window as though struck by a thought. ‘Just so you know,’ he told them, ‘we’ll be back tomorrow evening.’ The guards grinned and nodded. Derrick slipped the car into gear and allowed it to run forward, down the slope towards the bottom of the valley.

Lenka let her breath go. ‘Why,’ she asked in a whisper, ‘must I be afraid of them?’ And then a hint of panic came into her voice, like the fluttering of a warning flag in the wind: ‘I don’t have an exit stamp. They didn’t give me an exit stamp. If I don’t have an exit stamp they won’t let me back in.’

‘Of course they will. At the worst it’ll be another carton of cigarettes.’

‘Is that right?’

‘Of course it’s right.’

They crossed the bridge and drove up to the border post on the West German side. The black two-headed eagle flew in the warm breeze. There were more uniforms, a cursory glance at the driver’s documents and a salute from one of the guards. An American soldier watched from afar, leaning on the steering wheel of his jeep, chewing gum. The Iron Curtain had been crossed.

A day and a night in Munich. Their hotel was decked out in wood panelling and wrought iron and enough Gemütlichkeit to satisfy a multitude of American tourists. After they had settled in, they wandered through the narrow streets of the Altstadt. Sam suggested visiting the Frauenkirche and the Neues Rathaus, but Lenka demurred. ‘We have,’ she pointed out, ‘many grand buildings in Prague.’ Instead she wanted to see the shops, where she marvelled at the superabundance of goods on display. Sam followed her, trying to read her mood. It took him time to understand that the reason she looked but never considered buying was that she simply didn’t have the money. The few deutschmarks she had changed from Czechoslovak crowns were enough to buy little more than a few cups of coffee.

‘I’ll buy you a present,’ he suggested. ‘A dress. Is that what you’d like?’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘But I want to.’

She considered the matter as she considered many things, with a faint frown of concentration, as though she were facing some kind of political or moral dilemma. ‘All right,’ she said eventually. ‘But only because you want to.’

They decided on a department store on Marienplatz, a building from the 1930s that nestled, and nestles still, against the neo-Gothic absurdities of the Neues Rathaus. The interior was heady with perfume and lit by crystal chandeliers. It was as though they had wandered into a piece of elaborate and tasteless costume jewellery; amidst all the glitter Lenka seemed like an uncut diamond, plain of dress and manner but clearly more beautiful than any of the treasures on display. Beneath the obsequious eye of a shop assistant, she tried things on – skirts of varying shortness, dresses with differing necklines, trousers, trouser suits – finally settling on a halterneck dress printed in squares of primary colour.

Very Mondrian, the shop assistant told her, producing scarves, necklaces, handbags that involved further expenditure but would, she assured her hesitating client, bring the whole ensemble to some kind of perfection. ‘These things are very swinging London.’ A thoughtful pause. ‘Although Madam is not English, I think.’

‘Madam is Czech,’ Lenka said.

There was a moment’s hesitation in the woman’s flow of superlatives. ‘Czech is very interesting,’ she said.

Later they had lunch at a café and afterwards strolled in the English Garden. The afternoon seemed trance-like, suffused with sunshine and pollen and the strong scent of anticipation. The agonies and excitements of Prague were matters affecting other people on the far side of the world. ‘Can we stay here for ever?’ Lenka asked. She knew the answer but at that moment all things seemed possible. One might for ever stroll hand in hand over landscaped lawns and think only of the forthcoming evening and the intense and humid night to follow.

Next morning they shopped for those items that could accompany them as part of the diplomatic bag – deodorants, soap, all the things you couldn’t find on the other side. Stockings, silk underwear, an Hermès scarf. To Lenka it seemed both a subject of amusement – ‘That is the trouble with everyone in the West: they are obsessed with things ’ – and a source of bitterness – ‘Why is there so much, and yet we have so little? Didn’t Germany lose the war? and yet here they are, like victors.’

After lunch Sam left her at the hotel and took their haul to the consulate to pack it away in the boot of the Humber, sealed in those canvas bags inscribed with HBM DIPLOMATIC SERVICE. There was the feeling of end of holiday, of bathos, of anticlimax. With Derrick driving, he went back to collect Lenka. Derrick got out to put their luggage in the boot while Sam held the door open for Lenka to get in. There was that manoeuvre of long legs, a glimpse of thigh that reminded him of saying goodbye to Steffie. That moment seemed ages ago, part of another world that he had inhabited. In just a handful of days this woman had strolled into his life with her particular mixture of innocence and recklessness and taken it over. He could hear the tut-tutting from senior diplomats, smell the scorched odour of disapproval among the office staff, see outrage and betrayal in Steffie’s face. He wondered whether he cared and decided that he didn’t because – this was the disturbing thing – beside Lenka they all paled into insignificance.