The Devil Never Sleeps (13 page)

Read The Devil Never Sleeps Online

Authors: Andrei Codrescu

“And what,” bellowed the drunken Costica, “is the answer?”
“First,” replied the equally drunk American-Romanian poet, “The currency must be changed to reflect reality. The lion (leu) must be replaced by the mosquito (tintarul)! Second, volunteer brigades of conflict-resolution counselors must descend on this country at once. And third, Prozac in the water!”
“All doable!” shouted the can-do Costica, causing the banquet table to jump and take a sudden leap across an invisible barrier, “but we cannot change the lion into a mosquito overnight!”
“Even if the facts require it?”
“Especially
if the facts require it!”
This was progress. Originally, facts just simply didn't matter. Now they did because they had to be
defied
. Viva el progresso!
Ion V. never showed up.
My last night in Romania I dreamt that I was traveling on a narrow road between two crumbling, ancient walls. These walls were extremely close together, but the road between them was cozy, fast, and soft. Traveling with me along this road were all the country's fat cats, intelligentsia, and nomenclatura together. People outside the walls had no idea that this road existed. When I emerged outside, I told several people casually that I'd just gotten off the underground road. They shrugged uncomprehending. I even pointed out to them the place in the wall where one could enter, but still they did not believe me. And yet the road exists. I knew it in my dream and I know it now. Romania is a country tunneled through and through by the cushy underground road, which is how anybody who's anybody gets from one point to another. The rest of the folk, the so-called people, stand in line in the hot sun, scratching their heads. They know that something's wrong, but they can't quite identify the rumbling sound under their feet and all around them. They are waiting in line for NATO to do something.
At a party given by a Western advertising firm in a palace near Bucharest, among the tables laden with food and the sounds of an orchestra, the nouveaux riches mingled with politicos and writers. A group of us, which included two academicians who had landed on their feet throughout several changes of regime, their elegant young secretaries, and Radu Florescu, author of a book on Dracula, were taken across a field and shown the broken stones of a church demolished by Ceau
escu. It had been carted secretly and hidden here by cover of night. However, these sacred relics were not safe yet: some nouveaux riches were stealing the stones to bury them in the foundations of their new houses. Across the same field, lying on his back,
was the huge statue of Lenin torn from its pedestal at the center of Bucharest. Under him was the slightly smaller statue of Petru Groza, Romania's first communist prime minister. Some of the irreverent young climbed on top of Lenin for pictures. Here was the new Romania: surreal, absurd, ironic, elegant, and still awed by the recent past. The Writers' Union, once the country's chief center of dissidence, is surviving on the profits of a casino it runs on a fashionable boulevard. The fashionable boulevards, as well as the side streets, are overrun by gentle dogs that became homeless during Ceau
escu's orgy of demolition in the eighties. Originally, the homeless dogs had been marked for destruction but the citizens protested. A Swiss animal rights group is now sterilizing them and letting them run free. The people of Bucharest feed them. No one knows how many wild dogs run the streets, but estimates range from forty to one hundred thousand. Truly wild dogs befriend pets safely ensconced behind fences: The sight of two or three wild dogs lying on the sidewalk outside a gate fraternizing with the dogs inside is quite common. When the pampered pets are taken for a walk by their owners, the wild friends trail behind with an air of pride meant to telegraph to the truly homeless dogs hidden in the bushes that they have a family, even if it's a tenuous, temporary one. This self-appointed second column of self-deluded dogs resembles nothing more than the masses of Romanian people who believe that Europe will eventually accept them into the Union, if only they had that general air of belonging.
Not all the wild dogs were as agreeable as the friends of the pets. One night, returning to the eerie Elizabetha Palace with Nardi, we ran into a pack of canines living in the woods adjoining the Museum of the Peasant. Facing the growling pack, I had an inexplicable flashback to a time when I hadn't even been born, namely the 1930s when groups of drunken fascists would accost innocent citizens, looking for Jews to beat up. I faced the dogs firmly and said, quite incongruously: “This is 1997! You can't just bite us!” Amazingly, they obeyed, retreating into the bushes. To this day, I am convinced that these were indeed fascists and that, in the country where the werewolf originated, such transformations are not all that unusual.
At the beginning of my visit, a woman from radio fought with one from TV over an interview with me. And two other TV stations waited outside, while paparazzi flashed. To the question, “How do you find Romania now?” I answered, “Like a cat caught in a door, halfway in and halfway out.” I didn't know about the dogs yet.
 
 
I
spent a whole month in Prague observing the decade-old consuming appetites of post-communism. The Berlin Wall is becoming the Berlin Mall and there is no stopping it. I have observed the Czechs begin to submit slowly but willingly to the lures of advertising, the seduction of credit, and the pleasures of carting home objects they never knew they needed and that they have little use for. The victory of capitalism began in 1989 with the occupation of Prague's most significant corners by Coca Cola and McDonald's, our advance guard companies in all new markets. These companies underwent favorable mutations in the new territories because, unlike their American counterparts, they are the height of fashion. Young Czechs find it chic to be seen at McDonald's eating french fries that cost twice as much as the local equivalent. McDonald's is not cheap because, like blue jeans, it is still more of a religion than a restaurant, signifying membership in the (capitalist) future. Coca Cola has, of course, staked the skies and there is no looking up without seeing the logo. The skies in this case begin at the very top of your head because every café umbrella is Coke-scripted. Local attempts at capitalism are thriving, though the most successful ones distribute American or Asian clothes and electronics and serve purely as outlets for the raging river of goods flowing from across the ocean. To Czechs (and to Europeans in general) style is everything, so you won't quite find the ease of
Wal-Mart here because shopping hasn't yet become relaxation. To be observed shopping, to display your purchases, and to gloat over your possessions is part of the experience. The quintessential symbol of all these qualities is the cell phone, or should I say The Cell Phone in capital letters. Eastern Europeans have taken to the Cell Phone with the fervor that must have attended their religious conversions in history. To be slim, tailored, freshly barbered or coiffed, walking under the Coca Cola skies on your way to McDonald's, with the Cell Phone glued to your ear, speaking to your friends, is the Peak of Glam (as in Glamour). And what you are talking about to your friends or (best of all) to your country cousins is the fact that you are walking under the Coca Cola skies freshly barbered or coiffed on your way to … etc. Most likely you will be talking about this with other Cell Phone holders walking under similar Coke skies to … etc. And when you meet your date for the evening, she or he will be also holding a Cell Phone and you will munch your fries and drink your Coke while continuing to speak to others as fortunate as you (or not). The trouble is that not everyone is as fortunate as the Cell Phoners. In fact, few people can afford a cell phone, or even fries. The living wage in the Czech Republic is about one-twentieth that of Americans. A doctor makes about a hundred dollars a month, so you can be sure that such status symbols are the result of sacrifice and hard work. People on pensions can't even dream of such conveniences (if this is what they are) and you can see them scurrying to cheap markets holding plastic bags inscribed with advertising for things they will never have.
The only limit to the triumph of capitalism is transportation. Happily, public transportation still prevails over automobiles. In Prague, buses, subways, and electric trams do a superb job of carrying weary shoppers home. This civilized service is a legacy of deceased socialism and, while people take it for granted, they would be miserable without it. The beauty of public transport is that you cannot haul more goods home than you can carry. Therefore, you cannot shop until you drop. People with cars have more room to carry things and, while some people have small cars, few of them have station wagons or trucks. Americans could take home the material contents of entire Czech villages if ever they happened upon them. Luckily, they haven't yet, but you can be sure that a river of station wagons and trucks is massing quietly outside the borders of Eastern Europe, waiting for just the right moment to invade. Small European countries are hypersensitive
about their history, which consists mostly of invasions and takeovers. In the past, these invasions were easy to spot because the enemy wore uniforms and their cars had machine guns mounted on them. The new occupation forces are friendly though, and give you (seemingly) pleasure instead of pain. So far, the population is welcoming the invaders with flowers and excitement. What they will do when they wake up poor, in debt, and laden with defunct electronics cannot yet be guessed. There is no known antidote to consumerism yet. This invasion may be permanent.
 
 
P
rague is a before it left behind some mighty structures. Knowing their kingdoms before it left behind some mighty structures. Knowing their history puts a certain edge on their ornaments since it consists mainly of bloody episodes. For a thousand years, people were regularly thrown out of windows for political reasons in Prague, a process known as “defenestration,” and if the cobblestones were not spattered by falling bodies, there were plenty of hangings, burnings, and barricade-making to mark them. Today's tourists think that they are in Disneyland because the restoration of Prague has gone to fairy-tale colors, and fairy tales, as everyone knows, have happy endings. In fairy tales, the bad dragons get their heads chopped off and the hero gets to live with the heroine in a castle. The tourists may not know it, but there are still some bad dragons in the Czech Republic today and some of them reside right in the castle, which is ruled by Kafka's ghost and President Havel's reputation.
The situation of the Gypsies or Romanys is one of the quiet demons stalking the Czech fairy tale. During the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia, thousands of them were deported to a concentration camp at Leti where brutal guards murdered most of them. They drowned babies in the lake and shot pregnant women and children. The Czechs have long maintained that German nazis had run the Leti camp. But it turns out that the butchers of
Leti were Czech, not German, and nobody in the Republic, including the president, wants to wake up that ghost.
Paul Polanski, a Czech-American who lives in Prague, has made it his life mission to draw attention to that horror and to interview the Leti survivors. Unfortunately, the Leti massacres are not just relevant history, but a direct link to the situation of Czech gypsies today. Over thirty Gypsies have been murdered by skinheads since 1989, with only one conviction to date. There have been hundreds of attacks with injuries by racists and neo-Nazis. Graffiti with messages like “Send Gypsies to the camps,” appear regularly.
Paul Polanski has lived with Czech Gypsy families and knows their misery firsthand. Unemployed, shunned, and poor, these proud people have a complex and rich culture, marked by living generously, delighting in storytelling, music, and fine craftsmanship. Their chief crime is their skin color. Polanski boiled down their long and intricate stories to a series of brisk, factual poems that speak tersely of an entire culture. The publication of his book was greeted with criticism and disbelief in the Czech Republic. The message from the castle was: shut up! The Leti camp received an official monument thanks to Polanski's efforts, but he was not invited to the opening ceremonies.
Prague is indeed a mighty city, but the shadows of her aesthetic delights are long and deep.
 
I was eating my first salad in Eastern Europe at Kampa Park under the Charles Bridge in Prague, when a gaggle of Secret Service agents burst into the restaurant escorting Madeleine Albright. “Thank you,” I heard her say, “for finding a place so late.” Next day, I read in the
Herald
-
Tribune
that she'd been in St. Petersburg earlier and was in the Czech Republic to receive a medal from President Havel in gratitude for her role in bringing NATO to the Czechs. Meanwhile, the waiter was grinning from ear to ear: “She's Czech, you know.” “I know. She's also Jewish,” I said. “Yes, yes,” said the waiter, “but she didn't know it.”
I threw some bread to the oversized swans in the Vltava River and looked at the lights of Prague, this amazing jumble of Gothic, baroque, Cubist and commie buildings, which is now the new Paris of Europe and, thanks to NATO, the new border of Western Europe. When the Iron Curtain lifted, Prague was the gleaming jewel that sat in the debris pile of Eastern European cities. The commies didn't have the money, or perhaps the heart, to wreck it.
Next day I went to the old Jewish Quarter, five hundred years of ghetto history crowded in the stones of a small cemetery. The remains of the Golem, a human being created and then destroyed by Rabbi Leow in the sixteenth century, lay under lock and key in the attic of the Old Synagogue. Legend has it that the rabbi made the Golem to defend the Jews from their persecutors. The Nazis so enjoyed this tale, they planned to transform the Jewish Quarter into what they called “The Museum of an Extinct Race.” They didn't finish the job, so the Jew Franz Kafka is now the city's most visible citizen. And the Jews who comprised the famed Prague Circle in the 1920s are among the world's best-known philosophers. I sat in the Franz Kafka café, across from the house where he was born, and watched some of the twenty thousand expatriate writers who, I was told, live in Prague now, strut by with alchemical incunabula under their arms. Some of them were doubtlessly Jews, giving Central Europe back its missing spirit, though they probably didn't know it. It is said that the number of expats is equal to the number of sexy, recently degrimed gargoyles that stare down from Prague's gleaming new façades. The ancient alchemists of Rudolf the Second were just as numerous before Rudolf threw them into the castle moat, where they were eaten by bears. The expats are safer, though, with a playwright in the castle, the Republic in NATO, and the dollar worth about thirty five crowns, which will buy your starving artist two glasses of flaming absinthe and a plate of boar stew in a
pivnice.
I mean, it's a fine day when bohemians can actually live in Bohemia.
Still, there was something all too perfect about the fairy-tale city around me. Two saints with freshly painted halos that looked like helicopter blades stared at me from atop the Charles Bridge. They were, I supposed, the first NATO-ready Czechs. Below them, English-speaking buskers strummed Dylan tunes on battered guitars. Michael Kaufman, who edits a local journal, may have put his finger on it when he said, “Prague is a Potemkin Village built by tourist money. The Czech economy is in shambles. They have no money for F-16s.”
Be that as it may, you can't get absinthe legally anywhere else, and the je ne sais quoi—how do you say that in Czech?—necessary to inspire an artist, still gushes bountifully from the nymph by the New Town Hall.

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