Саймон Моуэр - Prague Spring

Reluctantly the conductor’s guardians edged aside to let them through to the great man. There was a shaking of hands. Lenka was introduced. Surprise was expressed at Sam’s fluent Russian and at Egorkin’s near-fluent English. ‘But my friends here do not like it when I speak in English. They fear I am saying dangerous things.’ He laughed, slipping back into Russian to the obvious relief of the escort. They discussed the performance, the emotional impact of the Dvořák, the technical difficulties of the Brahms. It was hard for a young violinist to perform the Double Concerto with a cellist of such standing as Frau Eckstein, but Nadezhda Nikolayevna had achieved it with brilliance, didn’t Mr Wareham agree?

Of course he did.

‘You must come to one of our recitals,’ Egorkin said. ‘I will accompany Nadezhda Nikolayevna on the piano. We play in Brno, of course, and Ostrava, but also Marienbad. Perhaps you will make it to Marienbad? It would be good to have a sympathetic ear in the audience.’ There was a sudden and surprising tone of pleading in his voice. ‘Please come. Perhaps there we can speak more freely. I will give you tickets so you cannot refuse.’ He glanced round and summoned the violinist from where she was talking with a journalist. She came obediently, more like a secretary than a principal performer. ‘We will have tickets for Marienbad sent to this gentleman. Mr…?’

‘Wareham.’

Further introductions were made. Hands were shaken. Pankova’s were small and slender but with a sharp grip. She wrote the name Wareham into a little notebook in careful Latin characters. ‘Mr Wareham is at the British embassy,’ Egorkin explained. He glanced at Lenka. ‘Two tickets, of course.’

‘Yes, but I’m not sure—’

‘You cannot be sure to come?’ The Russian made an expression of exaggerated disappointment. ‘But you must come, Mr Wareham. We will be playing the Kreutzer Sonata, which everyone knows, but particularly the Janáček, which no one knows but everyone should. Do you know it? It is very beautiful and deeply mysterious. Full of the soul of this wonderful country.’ And then one of the Russian embassy people had stepped in with an approximation of a smile and the suggestion that Comrade Egorkin and Comrade Pankova had other commitments to meet and could not spend too much time talking to just two guests.

‘I would be most sad if you cannot make it,’ Egorkin said, giving a jaunty salute as he and the violinist were encouraged away.

They wait while the diminutive grey figure of Birgit Eckstein sips mineral water and talks to someone from Czech Radio. James feels awkward and embarrassed but Ellie is determined. Jitka has managed to get them this far, into the room where Frau Eckstein sits and brings her mind back from Dvořák and Brahms to focus on the commonplace and the trivial. ‘We’ve come all this way in order to hear her,’ Ellie insists. ‘We can’t just walk away.’

When the interview is over Frau Eckstein looks round vaguely at the two of them, saying something in German. Even without knowing a word of the language, James can tell what she is saying. Who are these people? Are they students?

‘Hello, Frau Eckstein.’

She doesn’t recognise them.

‘Frau Eckstein,’ Ellie says. ‘It’s us. Eleanor and James. We stayed at your house a few days ago. We came to Prague, just as you said. To hear you play.’

A vague smile, as though she is tolerant of things the young will do, absurd things like cross the Iron Curtain on a whim. Somehow James expected more – an explosion of surprise, an embrace, a motherly welcome. ‘I remember. Yes, I remember.’

But perhaps she doesn’t even really remember them – just two hitchers picked up on the road and given a place to pitch their tent for the night. Nothing much. ‘The Bach,’ he says, as though to give her something on which to fix her memory. ‘You played that for us. In your music room.’

‘Of course I did. That is always my encore piece.’

Always my encore piece. Understanding dawns that, far from being spontaneous, an encore may be something practised, anticipated, given out like sweets to adoring children.

‘Ellie and I thought you played wonderfully.’

The woman shakes her head. She’s tired, bothered by all the fuss. ‘What do you know? I played poorly but only I know it.’ A bitter laugh. ‘I play poorly and the people applaud just the same. What do they know? Dvořák himself disliked the cello as a solo instrument, do they know that? He said the instrument’s middle register is fine but the upper voice squeaks and the lower voice growls. Did you know that? That maybe should be a lesson for you – it is quite possible for an artist not to understand his own art.’

She turns. There’s a photographer trying to get her to look his way. Flashes bounce around the room. She looks peeved. No she will not pose with her cello. The cello is for playing, not posing. ‘These people,’ she says, with a tired and colluding smile towards Ellie and James, ‘they are vulgar and they know nothing.’

Meetings in the embassy safe room are daily. Rumours abound, throughout the city, over the airwaves, from one embassy to another. Leaders from various Iron Curtain countries drop in on Prague without notice. Troops are reported to be gathering in Hungary, East Germany, Poland and Ukraine. There are stories of late-night phone calls between Prague and the Kremlin, between Brezhnev and Dubček.

‘The Czechoslovak leadership,’ Eric Whittaker said yet again, ‘is walking a knife-edge.’

Someone asked, ‘What’s our own position, Eric? If it should all go wrong, I mean. If the Soviets decide to move in. What the devil do we do?’

Eric winced. ‘Heaven forfend. Of course we just keep our heads below the parapet. Strictly their own affair. Just like Hungary in fifty-six. We’ll get everyone into the embassy and batten down the hatches.’

‘And HMG?’

‘The official government position is that any such escalation would be a strictly internal matter for the countries concerned – in this case, Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union.’

‘It seems like another betrayal, doesn’t it?’ Sam said. ‘Munich 1938 and now Prague 1968. Do you see the pattern? Nineteen eighteen the state is created. Nineteen thirty-eight it is betrayed by the Great Powers, 1948 the communists grab power. And now here we are in 1968. It looks ominous.’

‘I didn’t know you were a numerologist, Sam.’

‘Just a pessimist, Eric.’

‘Well, let’s have a bit of optimism. Hope for the best and prepare for the worst.’ Whittaker would have liked that lapidary sentence to be an end to the meeting, but someone – the head of consular services this time – was always there to ruin a good ending: ‘But are we preparing for the worst, Eric? What about the evacuation of British nationals in the event of an invasion? Since the place has become a magnet for every trendy socialist Tom, Dick and Harry we’ve got hundreds here. There’s even a bloody pop group due in a couple of days.’ He glanced at a typed sheet in front of him. ‘Apparently they call themselves The Moody Blues, although, God knows, it’s me that’s moody. And blue.’

Sam fell in beside Whittaker as they left the safe room. ‘I’ve just received this from the Russian embassy.’ He held out an envelope with his name written on it.

Whittaker glanced inside with a look of surprise. ‘Lucky you. That’d be a hot ticket in London.’

‘They’re from Gennady Egorkin himself. He seemed very insistent that I go.’

‘So what’s keeping you? Are you taking the young lady we saw you with? Madeleine was most intrigued. Found it better entertainment than the Brahms. I could barely drag her away at the end.’