Philip Roth - The Prague Orgy

Yours most respectfully, Oldrich Hrobek

The guests already taking breakfast watch over the rims of their coffee cups while Olga vigorously declines to sit at the corner table to which we have been shown by the headwaiter. She points to a table beside the glass doors to the lobby. In English the headwaiter explains to me that this table is reserved.

“For breakfast?” she replies. “That is a fucking lie.”

We are seated at the table by the lobby doors. I say, “What now, Olga? Tel! me what’s coming next.”

“Please don’t ask me about these things. They are just stupidities. I want eggs, please. Poached eggs. Nothing in life is as pure as a poached egg. If I don’t eat I will faint,”

“Tell me what was wrong with the first table.”

“Bugged. Probably this table they bug too; probably all are bugged. Fuck it, I am too weak. Fuck the whole thing. Fuck it all. Teach me another one. I need this morning one that is really good.”

“Where have you been all night?”

“You would not have me so I found some people who would, Call the waiter, please, or I will faint. I am going to faint. I am feeling sick. I am going to the loo to be sick.”

I follow after her as she runs from the table, but when I reach the dining-room door, my way is blocked by a young man with a tiny chin beard; he is in a toggled loden coat and carrying a heavy briefcase. “Please,” he says, his face only inches from mine — a face taut with panic and dreadful concern — ”! have tried to reach you just now in your room. I am Oldrich Hrobek. You have received my note?”

“Only this minute.” I say, watching Olga rush through the lobby to the ladies’ room.

“You must leave Prague as soon as possible. You must not stay here. If you do not leave immediately, the authorities will harm you.”

“Me? How do you know this?”‘

“Because they are building a case. I’m at Charles University. They questioned my professor, they questioned me.”

“But I just got here. What case?”

‘They told me you were on an espionage mission and to stay away from you. They said they wilt put you in jail for what you are doing here.”

“For espionage?”

“Plotting against the Czech people. Plotting with troublemakers against the socialist system. You are an ideological saboteur — you must leave today.”

“I’m an American citizen.” I touch the billfold that holds not only my passport but my membership card in the American PEN Club, signed by the president, Jerzy Kosinski.

“Recently an American got off the train in Bratislava and was immediately put into jail for two months because he was mistaken for somebody else. He wasn’t even the right person and that didn’t get him out. An Austrian was taken from his hotel to prison a week ago and is to stand trial for anti-Czech activities. A West German journalist they drowned in the river. They said he was fishing and fell in. There are hard-line people who want to make an impression on the country. With you they can make an impression. This is what the police have told me. Many, many arrests are going to be made.”

I hear very clearly the sound of the river splashing against the steep stone embankment outside of Klenek’s palazzo.

“Because of me.”

“Including you.”

“Maybe they are just frightening you,” I say, my heart galloping. galloping to burst.

“Mr. Zuckerman, I should not be in here. I must not be in here — but i am afraid to miss you. There is more. If you will walk to the railway station I will meet you there in five minutes. It is at the top of the main street — just to the left. You will see it. I will pretend to run into you outside the big station cafe. Please, they told my girl friend the same thing. They questioned her at her job — about you.”

“About me. You sure of all this?”

The student takes my hand and begins to pump it with exaggerated vigor. “It is an honor to meet you!” He speaks up so that all in the dining room who wish to can hear. “I am sorry I interrupted but I had to meet you. I can’t help it if I am a silly fan! Goodbye, sir!”

Olga returns looking even worse than when she left. She also smells. “What a country.” She falls heavily into her chair. “You cannot even throw up in the loo that someone does not write a report about it. There is a man waiting outside the cubicle when I am finished. He is listening to me from there all the time. ‘Did you leave it clean?’ he asks me. ‘Yes.’ I said, ‘yes, I left it clean.’ ‘You shout, you scream, you have no respect for anything,’ he tells me. ‘Someone will come in after you and see your mess and blame it on me.’ ‘Go in then, go check,’ I told him. And he did it. A man in a suit who can reason and think! He went in and inspected.”

“Has anyone else bothered you?”

“They won’t. They won’t dare. Not if I am having breakfast with you. You are an international writer. They do not want to make trouble in the presence of an international writer.”

“Then why did he bother about your identity card?”

“Because he is afraid not to. Everybody is afraid. I want to have my breakfast now with my international writer. I am hungry.”

“Why don’t we go somewhere else? I want to talk to you about something serious.”

“You want to marry me. When?”

“Not quite yet. Come, let’s go.”

“No, we must not move. You must show them always that you are not afraid.” When she picks up the menu I see she is trembling. “You must not leave,” she says. “You must sit here and enjoy your breakfast and drink many cups of coffee, and then you must smoke a cigar. If they see you smoking a cigar, they will leave you alone.”

“You put great stock in a single cigar.”

“I know these Czech police — blow a little smoke in then-faces and you’ll see how brave they are. Last night I was in the pub. because you would not fuck me, and I am talking to the bartender about the hockey game and two men come in and sit down and begin to buy me drinks. Outside is parked a state limousine. We drink, they make loud jokes with the bartender, and then they show me the big car. They say to me, ‘How would you like to take a ride in that? Not to question you, but to have a good time. We’ll drink some more vodka and have a good time.’ I thought. ‘Don’t be afraid, don’t show them you are afraid.’ So they drive me to an office building and we go inside and everything is dark, and when I say I can’t see where I’m going one of them says they cannot turn the lights on. ‘Everything,’ he says, “is observed where the lights are on.’ You see, he is afraid. Now I know he is afraid too. Probably they should not even have the car, it belongs to their boss — something is wrong here. They open a door and we sit in a dark room and the two of them pour vodka for me, but they cannot even wait for me to drink, one of them takes out his prick and tries to pull me down on it. I feel him with my hand and I say to him, ‘But it is technically impossible with this. You could never come with something so soft. Let me try his. No, his is technically impossible even more. I want to go. There is no fun here, and I can’t even see anything. I want to go!’ I begin to shout…”

The waiter returns to take the order. Poached eggs for two — as pure a thing as life has to offer.

After my three cups of coffee, Olga orders me a Cuban cigar and, at 8:30 a.m. Central European Time, i, who smoke a cigar once every decade and afterwards always wonder why, oblige her and light up.

“You must finish the cigar, Zuckerman. When freedom returns to Czechoslovakia, you will be made an honorary citizen for finishing that cigar. They will put a plaque outside this hotel about Zuckerman and his cigar.”