Саймон Моуэр - Prague Spring

The engine of the jeep ticks as it cools. The tractor groans in the background, arguing with the heavy loam, while birds sing, as they will whatever the geopolitical circumstances. Far away the helicopter flies higher than most birds. Sergeant Chester reaches below the dashboard of the jeep, takes up a pair of binoculars and hands them to James. ‘Have a look. The Reds usually build the fences about a mile back from the actual border, but just here it comes closer. Something to do with the lie of the land, I guess. So we bring visitors here to have a look-see.’

James puts the binoculars to his eyes. The spider’s body leaps towards him as though he’s examining it under a microscope. The beast is peopled, two figures moving vaguely behind the windows, watching him watching them. He pans down the creature’s stick legs to the ground. In front of it there are two parallel lines of fencing, flattened together by foreshortening. He can pick out barbed wire coiled along the tops of both lines and guess at about fifty yards of cleared soil between the two. Beyond the watchtower is a parallel road to match the one that they are on.

Wordlessly, he hands the binoculars to Ellie.

‘The question is,’ Chester muses, ‘what’s it for? If it’s to keep us out then it sure ain’t gonna work. A Patton tank’d go through that like a tractor through a picket fence. They know that and we know that. So what’s it for?’ He glances round at his audience as though looking for an answer. ‘Easy, really. It’s to keep their people in. If you’ll excuse ma French, lady, you’re looking into the biggest fucking prison camp the world has ever seen.’

There’s a significant pause before Ellie summons an answer. ‘It’s not as simple as that. Look at what’s happening in Czechoslovakia at this very moment. There’s freedom. They’ve abandoned censorship. They’re allowing political meetings. And foreign travel.’

The soldier looks doubtful. ‘When you’re in the military you see the world through military eyes, ma’am. All I see is the Russkis just waitin’ on the borders to pay a fraternal visit to their Czechoslovakian brothers.’ He puts the jeep in gear and they move slowly along the track, away from the implacable gaze of the watchtower. ‘And when that happens, it’s game over.’

They reach the main road. Falk waits for a tourist coach to pass and then pulls out and turns left to follow the coach towards the border. The road dips down towards the bottom of the valley, but just before the stream there’s the German customs post. It has the look of a railway station about it, with most of the trains delayed or cancelled. There are barriers striped like barbers’ poles and German police standing around doing not very much. A concrete building flies the black, red and gold of the Federal Republic, while a signpost holds up a black eagle like a medieval shield on the end of a lance. In an adjacent car park are half a dozen cars and three lorries. Over to the right another building flies the stars and stripes and the union jack as well as the German flag. Beyond the border post the road dips down to the bottom of the valley, crosses a narrow bridge, then climbs up through the trees and disappears into the East.

‘There we are,’ the sergeant says. ‘I don’t go any further than here. Once you’re over the border Czechoslovak border control is about one K further up the road. So they tell me.’

James and Ellie climb out of the jeep. ‘You kids look after yourselves,’ the sergeant says, ‘and give my regards to Mr Dooby Check if you see him.’ He turns the jeep round, waves jauntily to the German border guards and drives off.

James and Ellie contemplate the possibilities. As they watch, a single car appears on the Czechoslovak side and crosses the bridge towards the West German barriers. A border guard examines the driver’s documents while his colleague walks round the car, inspecting it with scant respect.

‘A Škoda,’ James says.

‘What’s a Škoda?’

‘The car is. How can you tell a Škoda from a Jehovah’s Witness?’

‘No idea, but you’re going to tell me.’

‘You can close the door on a Jehovah’s Witness.’

Gratifyingly, she laughs. They watch the border guard complete his inspection and allow the car to clatter its way past them into the West. Then they sling their rucksacks onto their shoulders and walk down the slope to the barrier.

The German border guard is indifferent, taking their passports with barely a glance at the owners, flicking through the documents like a cardsharp before handing them back as though they are tainted. ‘You are to Czechoslovakia going? They will not let you pass – you have no visas.’

They haven’t thought of visas.

‘Don’t they issue them at the border?’

‘Who knows? At the moment anything is possible.’ He points up the hill on the other side. ‘Seven hundred metres, Czechoslovak control. Stay on the road or…’ He makes a gesture, a pistol firing.

‘This is stupid,’ James protests to Ellie. ‘You heard. We need visas. We haven’t got them so we’ll not be able to get in. We should turn round. There’s no point.’

‘Of course there’s a point. We’ll blag our way in. A bit of a smile, a bit of bullshit. It’ll be all right.’

The barrier – a barber’s pole, a jousting lance – rises for them and they walk down the slope towards the bridge, Ellie first, James half a pace behind. Notices are everywhere – warnings, exhortations, threats.

Across the hollow boards of the bridge the language changes into one that means even less to them:

Ellie leafs through the pocket Czech dictionary they bought off someone at the campsite in Regensburg. Probíhají doesn’t feature. ‘Looks like prohibition of some kind.’ Vodni tok is ‘stream’. Warning! she decides. State border. Forbidden to cross the stream. Which, despite James’s protests, is precisely what they have just done, and are now stumping up the slope beyond, into no-man’s-land, between ranks of silver birch that stand like sentinels forbidding trespass into the pine forest beyond. It’s a long walk in the afternoon sun. A few cars pass them going out, the passengers staring through the windows; more cars pass going in, Volkswagens, Borgwards, NSUs, loaded with camping equipment. The Czechoslovak border post approaches, shimmering out of the hot air from the tarmac. Signs shout at them.

Border guards observe their approach to the barrier with indifference. There’s a queue of cars warming up the summer air. Rows of parked cars to one side. Coaches drawn up like ships at a quayside. People line up at a concrete building with small windows whose blurred glass panes have never been cleaned. From the open door of an office music emerges as though from the throat of a tin man, something vaguely Beatles, vaguely Beach Boys.

One of the guards snaps his fingers. ‘ Pas ,’ he demands.

They hand over their passports. Ellie smiles. Smiles appear to be a newcomer to the border guard’s repertoire of expressions. He attempts one with scant success. He is no older than they, a pale youth with a prominent Adam’s apple and a scattering of acne pustules across his cheeks. He examines the documents with curiosity. ‘English,’ he says.

‘English,’ Ellie agrees. ‘Anglický.’

‘Beatles,’ he says. ‘Liverpool.’

But there’s a change in the music emerging from the transistor radio inside the office. No longer approximately Beatles, it is now plainly and excruciatingly ‘Puppet On A String’. In Czech. Ellie begins to sing along with the music, in English.