A Guided Tour Through the Museum of Communism (4 page)

Here in the museum we have a cinema where you could, if you had the time, see documentary films about the revolution. The velvet revolution is a well-documented event; even you, Hans, have heard of it. This perhaps is the reason why not that many visitors sit here and watch—they have already seen it somewhere. And here, in this cinema, is the end of the story about Communism. In the museum, I mean.

“What did the change bring me?” Milena says. “I've lost my job. I have less money. My husband drinks. Freedom? What freedom? We can't travel anywhere, we can't buy things. We don't even have a car now, can't afford to keep it,” she laments to Dáša, who can only share her feeling. I sometimes feel sorry for both of them; they are obviously among the losers. These two ladies are perhaps not the best advertisement for democracy and capitalism, I'd say. The change happened too late for them. Indeed, what a frustration it must be to finally live in an age of plenty but not to be able to enjoy it, don't you think, Hans?

It seems to me, judging from the little knowledge I acquired as a mouse in the Museum of Communism, that this frustration might be the reason why there is still something mean and suspicious, something hypocritical in people. Vestiges of former times, I suppose. As if people haven't changed
that
much, not in their minds. I will give you an example: Earlier I mentioned Milan Kundera. He is allegedly the most famous Czech writer; you might even have seen a film made in Hollywood adapted from his novel
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
? You know him? Well then, you also know that all his early novels deal with Communist repression in his country, like
The Joke
. In that book, Ludvik ends up in a labor camp, in a mine, just because he wrote a postcard to a former girlfriend: “Optimism is the opium of the masses! A healthy atmosphere stinks of stupidity! Long live Trotsky!” He meant it as a joke, but the police judged it as political text. Kundera left Czechoslovakia and went to France after the invasion in 1968 and never returned. After that he became one of the best-known dissidents from the Communist world, next to Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Suddenly, this same Kundera is in the middle of a scandal! I heard about it from a couple discussing it very loudly in this room just recently. In fact, they woke me up in the middle of my regular afternoon nap. What happened? In October 2008 a certain historian found a document that is taken as proof that Kundera is not what he seems to be. Not a moral man, but a
denouncer
no less. A document from 1950 is there to prove it. It is a police report, a short one. It states that Milan Kundera, at that time a student at the FAMU film academy and an ardent member of the CP, reported to the undersigned police inspector that there was a suspicious person staying in his dormitory. Following this, the police arrested Miroslav Dvoraček, a pilot and a spy for the American-supported Czech intelligence agency of that time. Dvoraček had illegally crossed the border back into Czechoslovakia and was on his way out again. Following Kundera's report, the man was arrested and sentenced to twenty-two years of hard labor. Dvoraček served his sentence mostly in uranium mines. Yet, in his writing and interviews, Kundera never mentioned this episode.

“Now, again, we are seeing the resurrection of the same old pattern of suspicion that nobody is what he claims to be,” I heard the woman say angrily, as if she personally had suffered the consequence of his betrayal. “A dissident is not a dissident but a fugitive from his not very honorable past; a moral person is in fact immoral. Falsehood is truth, and so on. Until yesterday you would have believed that Kundera was a symbol of morality.”

“Well,” the man said, rather calmly, “every normal person should ask himself, But is that report real and not a setup? How come the document was discovered only now and by what ‘coincidenceʹ? No one believes in coincidences; there were too many of them in the past. Moreover, what's the purpose of this ‘discovery' and of publishing it? In short—who benefits from it today? I tend to just dismiss such coincidences; we should know better. No, the problem lies elsewhere: You see, true or not, the real problem is that this whole devilish story is believable. Convincing. Everybody agrees that it could have happened. It could have been that Kundera saw reporting on Dvoraček as his patriotic duty: He was a party member, he himself was in danger of going to prison if he didn't report it, such were the times. It could have happened to anyone—or so the argument goes.”

“But
this
is the false argument!” the woman interrupted him. “Kundera is in no way ‘one
of us
,' Kundera is—well, Kundera. What about his confession, then? People say, Why doesn't he confess now, when his big secret is out? He should get it off his chest. Nonsense! They say such nonsense, in my opinion, because if such a great writer and dissident had made such a terrible denunciation then our own denunciations and compromises would look comparatively much pettier. So what if Svoboda spied on Markus and he was transferred to a worse job? At least he did not wind up in prison.”

“I agree,” the man said. Now his voice sounded sad. “There is a certain malevolent triumph in the ‘fact' (or
the fact
, depending on how you look at it) that the best of us all could have failed. Even if it is not true but only a suspicion, only a possibility—it excites people. It makes heroes more human, petty like the rest of us. If he would only confess, they would immediately grant him forgiveness!”

“Ah, yes, forgiveness! My foot! They couldn't wait to take away his moral credibility—since they couldn't take away his talent and his fame,” the woman added, even more worked up now
.
“But he is a stubborn old man. And he also must know that his confession would only make it easier for such people, but not for himself. In a way, all these questions are unimportant and belated, because the seed of suspicion has been planted. If he is not guilty, however hard he tries, Kundera won't be able to wash himself clean of it. If he is guilty it is sad, but it doesn't annihilate his writing. If this is some consolation to him . .. ,” she concluded.

Why am I telling you about this particular case? Because—the way I understand Communism—it still belongs to the museum. Twenty years after its collapse, it illustrates the state of people's minds here.

My dear Hans, I can hear Milena coming, she will be back any moment now . . . unfortunately that means you have to go. It was nice of you to visit me. I told you, she is not scared of me, even if she is a woman, and we know how hysterical they can get when they see a mouse. But I am not sure how she would react to you; you rats are much bigger than mice. You could scare her. I have to protect her from shock, because she has a weak heart. I also have to protect myself, because who knows who would come here if she were to go? I am sure you understand what I mean.

I hope that you found the museum interesting. I am afraid that you probably find me not competent enough as a guide. But I couldn't tell how much you know about Communism and I wanted you to get a grasp of it. Remember, I am only an amateur guide! Anyway, Professor Perlík would say that what is important is what you do not see: fear, complicity, and the hypocrisy of life under Communism. However modest and superficial the museum might look to you, the importance of it is that it exists. That, in itself, is a miracle! Because, tell me, who would have ever thought, twenty years ago, that Communism would end up like this, in a museum? Or, for that matter, that you would visit me here, and that I would be your guide?

So long, and have a nice holiday in Paris!

A
nd who the fuck are you? Why are you staring at Koki? Have you never seen a talking parrot before? A singing parrot? A swearing parrot? Well, then you should visit a Web site called YouTube—there are lots of parrots there. One of Koki's favorites is Menino, singing the “Queen of the Night” aria from Mozart's
Magic Flute.
Menino's performance is absolutely outstanding, Koki feels very proud as he watches him on the computer in the lobby of the hotel. But Koki also enjoys watching people watching Menino and their astonishment at seeing the green bird sing Mozart. You think that monkeys are your closest relatives. But can they sing? The hell they can! They merely shriek; that's the closest they come to it. No, we parrots are the closest to you people for at least several reasons: First, we can sing and we can talk. Besides, you people often behave like parrots yourselves, especially here, in the presence of bigwigs. You imitate us, repeating whatever any of the dignitaries say as if it were sacrosanct. It is funny to see how some people from the president's various summer entourages here in the Croation president's summer residence listen to and repeat every word, as if they believe they can benefit from it. But I guess this is how every royal household functions, with its parrots and hawks, cats and dogs, cows and sheep—the entire menagerie. Sometimes Koki entertains himself by guessing who is what in that coterie—in the “court
camarilla
” as the Marshal, the former president of the former Yugoslavia, used to say with contempt. Although, where would the Marshal himself have been without his
camarilla
?

Oh, Koki can see that you are a tourist and he can guess that you are here because of the Marshal. And you expect Koki to tell you stories about him, yes? Yes. Koki used to be part of the Marshal's zoo here on one of the fourteen islands in the Brioni archipelago that he used as his summer residence during his reign. At that time, of course, Koki did not need to entertain people like you. Oh, no! You bloody tourists could not get anywhere near this place. Koki must say that he performed for a very different kind of public then—for heads of state, aristocrats, and movie stars, no less. To give you an idea, suffice it to say that the Marshal received here Eleanor Roosevelt and Queen Elizabeth, as well as Jacqueline Kennedy, Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, Haile Selassie and Indira Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru and Nikita Khrushchev, Josephine Baker and Princess Margaret—not to mention Hollywood film stars! And in the times before Tito, the archipelago was visited by Archduke Franz Ferdinand and Kaiser Wilhelm II, along with aristocrats from Vienna and Budapest, Munich and Berlin. Those were the days . . .

But now, although the presidential residence is still here, and every new president comes regularly to enjoy it (that has not changed), the country has somehow shrunk, and there are not many such distinguished visitors coming here anymore. Either the last two presidents were not as fascinating as the old one, or the shrunken country is no longer very important, Koki can't tell. He only knows that, because the new shrunken country has a democracy instead of a dictatorship now, tourists can visit and stare at Koki, expecting to be entertained. Nowadays, Koki is just a tourist worker, and he makes his living by chatting in five languages. But he is not stupid! In the last twenty years Koki, too, has changed: It is one thing to be a spoiled clown—another to be a tourist attraction. Koki politely greets visitors and Koki politely swears, yes, that's true. But if they want more, Koki wants more food in return! It is called bribery, but corruption is a very popular, recognized, and even rewarded way of making your living in this new state. Ah, I see that I have to explain this: We also had corruption in the former Yugoslavia, but it was indirect; it had to do with who knew whom, while now the new, additional element is money.

So, if you feed Koki some nuts (which you are not supposed to do) he might decide to tell you a story or two. Agreed? Well, then we are all set.

You must have read a few things about the Marshal, at least in your guidebooks. There are over a thousand books written about him—too many, and not too good, I hear. And what can you read in them? That he was one of the greatest historical persons? Or perhaps a dictator in Yugoslavia, a country ruled by the Communist Party, which collapsed some twenty years ago in a spate of bloody wars? Why, you ask? Because every little nation wanted to have its own little nation-state! Imagine, if there had been more than one parrot on this island—Perhaps we, too, could have asked for independence? Terrible that these wars in the nineties took so many lives, some two hundred thousand, they say—but that is another story. As is the Marshal's historical role in all of it. About which Koki, naturally, knows too little, because he is just a little birdie.

Let Koki save you the trouble and simplify what is usually written about the Marshal in guidebooks, textbooks, history books, and the like: It is said that he was a locksmith by profession; he was born into a poor peasant family; and he ended up as a prisoner in Russia during World War I. He became a member of the Communist Party in Yugoslavia in the thirties and fought his way up—fought against fascism as commander of the partisan army, when Yugoslavia was occupied by the Germans and Italians during World War II. Afterward, he finally became president—once he had carried out a Communist revolution, of course—and, in the best tradition of such states, at the same time held the highest position in the army as well. The Marshal also founded the so-called nonaligned movement in the sixties. All these African and Arab countries, offended by their colonizers, they loved him, yes they did. At the time one could take for granted that his own people loved him too, even though he was an autocratic ruler. But that is not so certain any longer; many dispute that belief. Mind you, all this you can see at the museum building nearby; there is an exhibition of photos in his glory! But Koki doesn't like this museum; it is a bit morbid. The whole ground floor is filled with stuffed animals! Poor souls were given to him and died soon after arrival . . . Ah, life is a whore and then you die.

But to all this, Koki says that facts are very boring! They tell you nothing about his character, his habits and passions, his five (or more?) wives. How shrewd he was, how very intelligent, and also how very cruel. How terribly vain and deluded, too. Yes, there are so many more things to know about such a person.