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British Czech and Slovak Association
The Laugh Is On Me by Zuzana DemčákováMy only release back then in the communist prison was laughter. What else could I have done to stop myself from becoming a lunatic? Because a communist prison in former Czechoslovakia was nothing but an absolute madhouse. And it was brutal. Can you imagine that any normal person, working as a cook, would masturbate into dumpling dough and then serve it to his comrades? Or that someone sane would order six men to line up against a wall, with their foreheads and hands pressed against it, their underpants down and their legs apart, and that he would then poke his fingers into the men’s anuses to check that they had not eaten a bit more fat than the prescribed norm the day before? As if that was not enough, right after this humiliating procedure, the prison warder who did this to me and my five fellow prisoners grabbed a sausage with the same fingers and made us watch him eat it while laughing right into our faces. I can tell you, even though we were hungry (not even a baby could have eaten its fill from the breakfast we had had half an hour earlier), we thought we would vomit at any second. And indeed I did, the first time I experienced this ‘examination’, as they called it. But only that one time, because the next time I made myself avoid the punishment that followed my vomiting like a devil avoids a cross. Right there on the spot that day though, I was given a lesson for polluting the public area first by being beaten, then by being made to clean up after myself, and finally by being put into solitary confinement for a week; into the dark, cold dungeon of the medieval castle in which our prison was situated.In addition, the prison warders were so stupid and absurd that they did not believe that it was not I, a political prisoner and thus especially dangerous, who informed Radio Free Europe about these and other atrocities that they subjected us political prisoners to. And so when Free Europe reported that we were being locked in a tower with no running water or heating, or that we slept under thin blankets and two inches of snow in winter (snow that would blow in through crevices between the iron plate covering our window and the window bars), the warders believed that some fairies had brought me paper and pencil (as political prisoners were not allowed either of these in their cell), and that I then wrote a letter to Free Europe and sent it off by post pigeon-post. It did not occur to them that it could have been they themselves who had leaked this information, by bragging in their favourite Prague pub (where there was always someone ready to overhear their conversation and keen to report on our sufferings later) about looking after the famous Vladimir S., 'the President’s prisoner' as I was called (due to my being sent to prison for saying that Antonín Novotný, the former president of Czechoslovakia, was an asshole). Instead, when a panic in the prison was caused by this news being on the radio, I was summoned, charged with a first-degree crime, and sentenced to two weeks in solitary confinement. I was very happy that the world had heard of our torment, but less happy about spending another week (eighteen months altogether during my five year sentence) in a damp, tiny hole under the castle. There, in confinement, the pressure on my nerves was so big, especially as I have suffered from claustrophobia since childhood, that I simply started laughing one day. And to my surprise, it made me feel better. Incredible what laughter can do! I have decided to practise this simple exercise of empowerment ever since. When I jumped up and down, up and down in one place (it was impossible to do anything else in such a narrow space), each time I challenged myself to do it one thousand eight hundred and sixty times, and I imagined that I was stamping the warders and all communists into the ground. And then, after I had served this solitary sentence and returned to my cell in the tower, together with my fellow prisoners I developed a whole new prison vocabulary; funny names for everyone and everything in the prison. Thus the special examination of our anuses became 'filcování' (a humorous invention made from the German word ‘filzen’, meaning to frisk), and the officers who performed it metamorphosed into 'komando indiánskych stařen', meaning 'a gang of frisking officers with the haggard faces of old crones'. When the regular Saturday cleaning took place, during which all one thousand five hundred prisoners varnished the floors instead of washing them, because there was a plentiful supply of varnish in the prison stores, but no water (the only water available in the prison was brought to us in cisterns and we had to go to a prison cloister and fetch it ourselves everyday), we named the prison a Potemkin village. On other days, we would make up jokes about our favourite tyrants; the communists. For example; 'What is a communist?' 'A communist is someone who lays down your life for his own sake.' I could not emigrate physically once I was locked behind heavy bars, so I chose an inner emigration; I fled into laughter. Later I chose an external emigration and left my country to come and live here in England. I fully understand now what it means to emigrate. Fortunately, I took my humour with me, just in case. As you will see later, I very much need it here too. First, however, let me tell you why I moved to England. People here keep asking me, 'Why are you here? You've got democracy now in Czechoslovakia, you don’t have to be an immigrant,' and I do not know how to explain that yes, we do have democracy in Czechoslovakia, but we have no truth. And one without the other, in my opinion, is just another form of captivity. Right after the Velvet Revolution, when people were still excited about having their freedom back, they started using it in unbelievable ways. Contemptuous letters started arriving in my letterbox. Some journalists had found out that my name was on the list of those who had collaborated with the Communists, and that during one interrogation by the secret police, in the prison, I allegedly betrayed and informed against Anna P., Peter V. and Honza D. The journalists also believed that I should be spat at. The years of torture and humiliation I survived made no difference for them; no will to hear my version of events guided their actions; they were simply after a sensational story for their newspapers. If I really had agreed to cooperate with the secret police back then in prison, would they have kept me there for so long? Would they not have released me, and used me outside the prison where I could have done them more good? Unfortunately, the journalists could not see the truth, as no clear reason guided them. I tried to laugh at the new stupidity that engulfed me, and I was quite successful in doing this, but my poor wife became so saddened and disillusioned by it that one day she finally suggested that we emigrate from the Czech Republic. She saw no hope any more in a country, in a nation, which rejected the truth when it finally could be found. She had somehow accepted her fellow countrymen not seeking the truth when it had meant that they would be persecuted. But when the same people accepted lies as a new form of truth, without any critical assessment, she wondered what kind of life there could be among such people. I did not want to leave my homeland, but knowing that my wife was a sensitive, kind-hearted soul, and seeing how the new disappointment was contributing to her already ill health, I agreed, even though we both knew that the accusations were lies made up by prison warders under pressure from their communist superiors. And so, when my wife’s brother who immigrated to England sometime in the sixties, found jobs for us here, we emigrated. It was in June 1992. We now live in a house with an elderly lady; my wife cooks for her and keeps her company and I look after her garden. You probably wonder if we miss our country, or whether perhaps the English countryside and the city of London make up for Czech hills, meadows and towns, and even for the Czech language. The answer is no. No other language, not even noble English, can substitute your own; no meadows or hills can replace those that surrounded you for most of your life. We do miss all that. Their absence here haunts us. I can admire the grandeur of English cathedrals and gardens for a few hours, but the rest of my time is filled with not understanding the blur of sounds and syllables around me, or the smells of Indian curry and Arab kebabs (are we not in England?), or pondering why I get dizzy from walking against the stream of hundreds of people in the street? It is as if a revolution happens in the streets of England every day; just another madness, I laugh. Another source of laughter for me here in England is the English language. I have learned a few words, and so from time to time I can conduct a decent conversation with a shopkeeper or a waitress. One day I went to buy some fruit and vegetables at a market. There was a nice English lady behind the stall, and I felt encouraged by her kind approach, so I decided to exchange a sentence or two in order to practise my English. However, I became puzzled when the lady burst out laughing after I had asked if the oranges on the stall were 'saucy'. I tried to understand it all the way home, but in vain. My host lady eventually explained it to me. She had a good laugh too, and then showed me the saucy word in my dictionary. Understanding dawned on me, and we both started to laugh, her with new energy, and me in intervals and with rising intensity. On another occasion, my host lady, who has dentures as do many of her age, asked my wife if she would not mind bringing two teas for her and her elderly visitor friend. My wife looked at her in a puzzled way, but without a word she left to carry out the task. After a while she came back with one set of false teeth, and embarrassment on her face. She showed the teeth to the lady and confessed with guilt she could not find her 'two teeth' (pronouncing it as "teas"), only this. You can imagine what followed. Well, well. I guess that even if we find ourselves in eternal emigration we have to laugh. (This story is fiction: the ‘Translation of a fictive letter by Vladimir Škutina to a friend, based on real stories from his book “In the Castle Full of Fools”) |
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Last updated 15 January 2012. Copyright British Czech and Slovak Association. Registered charity 1049411
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