George Held, After the Revolution (story)

I worried that being forced to explain myself this way made me sound evasive, and I wondered what, if anything, Mlada was driving at. “I’ve always been open about my reasons for being in Czechoslovakia. Do people at the university doubt my motives?” “Well, Paul, there are some who say that you are too open and that perhaps you are here for some other reason.” “Okay, I confess. I’m really C.I.A. They sent me to teach at Charles University to infiltrate what’s left of the Prague School of Linguistics.” Mlada pulled her head back and said, “Paul, you are C.I.A.!” I looked at her and laughed. “If I were, would I be telling you about it?” “Oh, Paul, you should not make jokes about such things. But if you were C.I.A., wouldn’t you trust me enough to tell me?” I was growing so uneasy at this line of questioning that I said, “Let’s go. We don’t want to miss your curfew at Vĕtrník.” After that, Mlada and I had just one more date before I left Czechoslovakia. She urged me to take her to Mirko’s restaurant, where I had never eaten because it was too expensive for me. She assured me that Mirko would see to it that we were served only the best the house had to offer. I didn’t really want to go, but Mlada implored me so strongly that I felt obliged to accommodate her. So on a warm night in June we went to Strahov to dine at the restaurant by the monastery. Mirko greeted us effusively and marshaled a platoon of waiters to serve us, as though we were a touring nabob and his wife. But we were only a guest lecturer at the local university and the girlfriend of the maitre d’ himself. And the maitre d’ recommended the most expensive items, from the Russian beluga caviar through the chateaubriand and the Linzer torte, accompanied by the priciest wines. The result was that the most compelling memory of Mlada I carried away with me from Czechoslovakia was the 900-crown bill for that meal, the equivalent, I was painfully aware, of half the average Czech worker’s monthly salary. Throughout the meal Mlada seconded all of Mirko’s expensive motions, acting as an accomplice in his rip-off of the “rich” American, as almost every American was known in Czechoslovakia in those days. Maybe part of Mirko’s motivation for taking me to the cleaners was revenge for my failure to deal in black-market currency with him. Shortly after Mlada and I had become friends, she introduced me to Mirko at a café in Malá Strana. An hour later, while she went to the ladies’ room, he suggested that I might want to exchange some of my excess dollars for crowns. He assumed, incorrectly, that my salary from Charles University was insufficient to meet my needs in Czechoslovakia and that I needed to exchange dollars for crowns. “I understand your problem,” Mirko said. “You don’t want to waste your dollars on crowns at the established rate of exchange. On the Czech side are many persons who earn more crowns than they can spend on what is available here, and of course, the crown is not convertible. So they trade crowns for Western money to spend at TUZEX.” At TUZEX, the state-controlled outlet for luxury items from the West—scotch whiskey, Swiss chocolates and watches, English cardigans and pullovers, and Levis—only Western currency could purchase the scrip to buy such goods. The official rate of exchange might be nine or ten crowns to the dollar, but on the black market one might get 24 or 25. Mirko said that he could get me 20 crowns to the dollar. That would leave him, I figured, a 20-25% profit when he resold my dollars to Czechs. Or he could buy items at TUZEX and resell them at a big mark-up to people who had no access to Western money or goods. Mirko was content to be a millionaire in crowns, living the good life Czech-style. I declined his offer, as politely as possible, saying that I lived frugally and earned enough to be comfortable. Mainly, I didn’t want to take a chance on violating the strict laws against black-market currency exchange, about which my Embassy supervisor had warned me. If caught—and enforcement was stringent—at a minimum I would be expelled from the country and at worst I might end up in prison for a couple of years. Also, I distrusted Mirko. His smugness and his forwardness in propositioning me just after we’d met put me off, and how did I know if he wasn’t entrapping me? “My goodness, you are a silent one,” Mlada says. “What are you thinking about?” “I was wondering whatever happened to Mirko. When I left Prague, I thought you two would end up married.” “So did I. In fact, not long after you left I moved in with Mirko at his family’s flat. His parents treated me like a daughter. But in other ways my life was a bit more complicated. You see, Mirko was working for StB, the secret police, and he forced me to spy on people they were interested in, particularly in the travel bureau where I got a job after university.” “You were a špion?” “No, Mirko was špion, I was only his helper, you should say.” “And I suppose I was one of the people of interest to StB?” “Paul, I swear to you I couldn’t help it. They—StB officials—they knew everything about me and my family, and they threatened me.” “How? What did they say they’d do to you?” “They said I must follow their orders or I would be sorry. They never told me exactly how they would punish me, but every Czech knew StB could ruin your life or your family’s if they wanted to.” “Yes, I remember how afraid of them everyone was. But how did you get involved with Mirko in the first place?” “I didn’t know he was working for StB until we were seeing each other steadily. He was older and had connections through his work at the restaurant and he could do things for me that boys my own age could not, so yes, I went out with him for not the best of reasons. Besides, Mirko treated me nicely at first. Even when he asked me to get information for him, he did it gently, and neither of us ever mentioned StB. But now I can see that we both understood that StB was behind everything. We just lived as well as we could without examining things too closely.” “The Czechs had no monopoly on that. But what did Mirko want to know about me?” “I’m sure you know. Do you remember that night by Vltava, when you joked about being C.I.A.?”