Liberation Movements Read Free

district, where the university lecture halls were scattered. Some walls still commanded the Russians, in red paint, to go home, while others were coated in fresh layers of white. Soldiers wandered the streets, Kalashnikovs slung over their shoulders, watching him pass. Some were Russian, others Polish or Hungarian, and more races he could not immediately identify. The length and breadth of the Warsaw Pact—excepting, of course, the Romanians, who had refused to take part in the invasion. It was because of people like these—the devoted members of the socialist neighborhood—that his life had changed so radically in the past couple of months. Before, he’d been a mild student examining the fluid structures and semantics of musical forms. There had been nothing hanging over his head, no question of the political landscape, no weight of guilt.
    He stopped in the Torpédo, a small, smoky bar just around the corner from Republic Square, on Celetná, and bought a half liter of lukewarm Budvar. He took the beer to a cool corner and settled at a scarred wooden table half in darkness. In other corners large men in dirty workers’ coveralls sipped glasses of brandy. Though the bar was nearly full, it was silent, like a film that had lost its sound track.
    Peter used a fingernail on the tabletop, scratching out a rough star with bowed lines. He remembered that field outsideeské Budjovice, the chopped, knee-high cornstalks, and running. Then he looked up at the sound of boots clattering up the steps outside. The door opened.
    The soldier was large, with a round, generous face, and his fatigue-green jacket put Peter’s grimy pinstripes to shame. A rifle hung from his shoulder. In the doorway he judged the situation, then stepped over to the bar and asked for a beer.
    The bartender got to it immediately.
    The soldier leaned back against the counter and looked over the crowd, casually, as if he were not part of an invading army. Peter didn’t meet his eyes at first, staring instead at his scratched star, but then raised his head. The soldier noticed, smiled, and turned to pay for the beer. He wandered with his glass over to Peter’s table.
    “Is okay?” he said in stilted Czech.
    Peter shrugged; the soldier sat down and sipped his beer. Then he pulled his lips tight over his teeth.
    “Mmm. Is good. That.” He pointed at Peter’s glass. “You like, too?”
    The soldier’s cheeks, pinked by the cold outside, were chubby; his eyes were wet. He had a face not unlike Peter’s but without a student’s gauntness; the invader was well fed. Peter spoke in the soldier’s language: “You don’t have to speak Czech. I grew up in Encs, just on our side of the border.”
    The soldier laughed. “That’s a relief! Try starting conversations when you don’t know how to speak. No one wants to talk to me.”
    “It’s not because of the language.”
    The soldier considered that. “You get conscripted into the army, and six months later you find yourself in Prague. But you’re as far from a tourist as you can be. And the whole city hates you.” He shrugged. “It’s the injustice of the world.”
    Peter agreed.
    “Listen, I’m Stanislav. Stanislav Klym. I’m only here two more days—my captain gave me my discharge papers today—and I want to celebrate. Can you afford to be seen with me?”
    “Are you buying?”
    Stanislav winked. “I’m buying.”
    So Peter let the foreign soldier buy him Budweiser Budvar; and while Peter said little, Stanislav spoke like a nostalgic old man, describing his life back in his hometown, his plans for becoming an engineer, and his girlfriend, Katja Uher.
    “She’s young—seventeen—but I’ve known her most of my life. We’re from the same village, Pácin. Once I get back we’re going to move into my apartment in the Capital. I can absolutely not wait.”
    “You have your own apartment?”
    “Used to be my grandfather’s. When he died, my grandmother moved back to Pácin so I could take