Czechmate

The few days I spent in Prague this summer were delightful.  It was a fascinating city to visit, populated by friendly people and well provided with good food and reasonable accommodations.  As a dutiful tourist, I visited as many of the expected places as time allowed, took lots of pictures, and made a point of trying as many recommended beers as feasible.  In short, my Prague experience was altogether commonplace.  Save for a singular encounter on my last day in the city.

While lunching alfresco at an out-of-the-way café, I struck up a conversation with an English-speaking gentleman at a nearby table.  He was an elderly resident of the city evidently with time on his hands and not at all reticent about sharing it with a total stranger.  Also evident was that whatever constraints he placed on his drinking habits, the time of day was not among them.

Whether it was my camera or the dozen other clues that marked me unmistakably as a tourist, his inevitable first question was directed at my impression of his city.  My response was, I suppose, as inevitable as his question.  I praised its river setting, its architecture, its transportation system, and its several other attributes that came easily to mind.  I then followed these remarks with a pleasantry regarding how complex the Czech language seemed to a foreigner.  My guide book noted that the only language to which Czech bore any resemblance was Finnish and, having been to Finland, I should have been forewarned.  But, I told my new acquaintance, even with this heads-up, I was not fully prepared for the improbably-long, multiple combinations of vowels and consonants that the Czech language seemed to throw together so haphazardly.

To my surprise, my formerly jovial acquaintance turned suddenly serious and asked how I had found out.  Then apparently mistaking my puzzled expression as evidence of caution, he said I had nothing to fear from him on account of my discovery.  Indeed, he was among those who had long advocated revealing the truth to the world.  Surely in a city that was becoming every day more cosmopolitan, there would be others like myself who stumbled on its secret.  Thus it was only a matter of time before the country’s ruse was exposed.  Faced with this prospect, many Czechs like himself argued that an early, forthcoming public confession would be less damaging to the nation’s reputation than a belated admission to a national embarrassment.  For now, the political conservatives held the upper hand and there was nothing the Honesty Now opposition could do.  Internally, that is.  However, should an outsider, like myself, take it upon himself to reveal the truth, the entire Czech Republic would be forever in his debt.  And why not me whose authorship of a blog—an admission I had allowed to slip out earlier in our conversation—enabled me undertake a leak that was potentially so beneficial to millions of people?

I told the old man I had to respectfully decline the assignment for several reasons—prominent among which was that I hadn’t the faintest idea what he was talking about.

This was not a problem, he said.  I had already uncovered the key elements; he would supply the background and fill in the details.  And before I could object, he proceeded to do so.  It had begun innocently enough, he began.  In the hardscrabble years immediately following WW2, the Czech people had all they could do to survive.  Fortunately, donor organizations came in, each of which naturally communicated in their country of origin.  Thus any Czech who could convey his needs directly to one of these nonprofits, deservedly or not, won a disproportionate share of its handouts.  Given this premium on linguistic skills, Czechs devoted more and more of their attention to the second languages with which they had already been introduced in school—tongues the country’s location in Central Europe made mandatory in any case.  So it was that French, German, Russian, and/or English gradually invaded their work places and homes as Czechs endeavored to improve their fluency.

To make a long story short, I was told, even after the country recovered economically, its citizenry clung to habits acquired in more difficult times as they drifted further and further away from their native language.  This trend, of course, alarmed the authorities for whom the preservation of their national culture was paramount.  But by the time the full extent of the erosion was officially recognized, it was too late.  There was no way to restore Czech as their lingua franca.

Eventually, a compromise was arrived at.  In their homes and local gatherings, people were free to communicate any way they wished.  However, as a face-saving measure, in any situation in which foreigners were liable to be present, Czech was to be spoken exclusively.  But even in this circumstance, an exception had to be grudgingly allowed.  Since by this time so many young people knew only sort of a pidgin Czech, called Czechish, they were allowed to substitute it on the grounds it sounded authentic enough for outsiders.

Sadly, from the standpoint of traditionalists, each of the following generations interpreted this concession more liberally.  The content of legitimate Czech words in Czechish kept dropping with each passing year even as the number of those resorting to it grew. All of which devolved into today’s deplorable situation.  The cultural rot that had begun within a minority of Czech youth, had, by now, engulfed the entire population, my informant revealed sadly between long draughts of pilzner. For a time there remained a cohort of elders who used Czech in ordinary conversation, but they constituted a diminishing and, eventually, a disappearing minority.  The last true Czech speaker died some seven years before and now only a handful of academicians could painfully piece together native classic literature with frequent recourse to old Czech-German dictionaries.

But, I protested, with Czech a dead language, how did people communicate with one another—let’s say, a husband conversant with Russian and his wife, German.  Sign language, was the old man’s confident reply.  Everyone was proficient with it from their youngest days.  True, as in my example, a couple might find it somewhat cumbersome in bed, but this was more than made up for by the amicability it offered at the kitchen table where soundless spats seldom expanded into lasting quarrels.

As proof of his assertions, my informant returned to my own experience.  What I mistakenly interpreted as spoken Czech on the street and in trams was no more than a flow of inventive noises created at the spur of the moment.  Normally speakers took inspiration from a lone Czech word at the start, then improvised upon it much as Antonin Dvorak would do with a folk melody.  And what I had taken as good-natured banter between Czech interlocutors was actually gentle fun-making at the expense of their naïve listener.

My expression must have conveyed my displeasure over this last piece of news, for my informant quickly added that I need not take it personally.  Bandying gibberish about had become a national pastime engaged in more for its own sake than for discomfiting strangers—a bit of innocent fun that harmed no one.  Then finding me still dissatisfied, he sought to interject a more cheerful note by abruptly changing the subject.  Did I want to know what a chess player here said upon cornering his opponent’s king?

Not really, I said and started to leave.  But you will break the news? he shouted behind me.  You must!

From the restaurant, I made my way to the station where I was to catch my bus to Nuremberg.  The combination of fresh air, my bloodstream’s dissipated alcoholic content, and the snatches of perfectly normal conversation I heard on the street restored my rationality.  I pictured the old man chuckling as he waited for the next tourist to whom he could spin his yarn all over again.

And yet.  Arriving at the station a few minutes early, I found a bench distant enough from any gatherings to avoid contact but close enough to observe their comings and goings.  It may have been my imagination but it seemed that here and there individual Czechs went out of their way to glance furtively at the signage in English and German the station’s management had seen fit to distribute in out-of-the-way corners.  More significantly, I felt sure I saw a toddler raise his hands and begin to sign.  The observation was, however, a fleeting one for he had time for no more than a few gestures before he was caught in the act by his mother and promptly punished by having his hands slapped.  Swinging around to see who might have noticed this infraction, the woman stared at me intently for a moment, then, sniveling child in tow, turned her back and hurried off.  Then no sooner had I digested that incident when I noticed a young man approaching a nearby information desk.  He did not need the camcorder slung over his shoulder to establish himself as a tourist; his brightly patterned walking shorts and a mismatched, loud t-shirt would have done just as well.  Starting to address his question to the matron behind the desk in perfect, if slightly stilted, English, he hadn’t finished his first sentence when she flew into a rage and, with flailing arms, banished him from the desk. I was startled by the matron’s behavior—behavior that was, to say the least, uncharacteristic of what was normally a particularly sweet-tempered occupation—until I realized that the young man was not just obviously a tourist, he was too obviously a tourist.  Once more I was overwhelmed by suspicions as to the secrets behind the seemingly happy faces I was observing.  Could my conversation with the old man be entirely dismissed or was it a fortuitous, once-in-a-lifetime chance to be involved in something of national importance?

An hour or so into the bus trip I crossed into Germany and I felt the weight of the Czech Republic’s dark undercurrents lifted from my shoulders.  The old man could go to hell.  I owed him nothing.  Besides I’m not sure I really believed him anyway.