IN PRAGUE RECENTLY FOR A journalism course, I made a point of conversing with locals over many pints of pivo (Czech for beer) so as to expand my knowledge of the ancient capital of a young democracy. As luck would have it, the program that sent me to Franz Kafka’s hometown also proffered an introduction to a fellow named Oldrich Cerny, once a film dubber, then for much of the 1990s director of Czech foreign intelligence. Drinking with “Olda,” a self-deprecating man who punctuates his talk with chuckles, I learned that he is a buddy of Václav Havel and knows the Dalai Lama. So, stein in hand, I was primed to gain insights into the Velvet Revolution and all it has wrought.
But instead of discussing Cerny’s work as reformer of an intelligence structure formerly rife with Soviet agents or his present duties as director of the Prague Security Studies Institute, we did what Cerny said Czechs do in pubs: complain about sports, women, and politics.
“The Czechs are complaining and whining all the time,” Cerny told me, sipping not pivo but Moravian red wine. “They never had it better. Salaries are getting higher and higher every month. Still the Czechs are whining and complaining!”
An English ex-pat drinking with us chimed in to diagnose why Czechs are wont to grouse.
“Our biggest problem is that people are still discovering that democracy is not perfect. They are ridiculous, asking, ‘Why not?'” His answer: “Well, ’cause that’s life!”
For my part, I found it hard to fathom how anyone could dwell on grievance in such a vibrant city, with its red-tiled roofs rising over cobblestone streets, its deliciously crisp golden pilsner, and its abundance of beautiful women we dubbed “Czechlinas.” And to think all this languished under communism just over 15 years ago. I asked if the beer halls used to be full back when Cerny’s not-so-esteemed predecessors in the intelligence business haunted the already-eerie medieval streets.
“I can assure you,” Cerny said merrily, “that I spent far more time in the pubs before 1989 than after 1989. That was the place where you made the deals.”
The enterprising Czechs initiated a barter system over steins of pivo and glasses of Becherovka, a robust cinnamon-flavored herbal liqueur, rather than queue endlessly for toilet paper and cheese. In the words of the English chap, “It was a parallel economy lubricated by beer.”
But perhaps their most valuable time was spent away from the bars. According to Cerny, in the years before the 1989 student-inspired overthrow of the Communist regime, patrons would sneak out of the pubs at ten to nine every evening to listen to the Voice of America and Radio Free Europe, hungry to learn the names of those no longer afraid to say “no” to communism. One evening, Radio Free Europe told listeners that police had killed a student, Martin Smid, during the previous day’s demonstration. Though this report was incorrect, Smid’s “martyrdom” inspired many to overcome their fear and join the demonstrations.
“We thought, ‘If these people have stopped being afraid, then what are we doing here, still scared to death? You know, there’s no need,” Cerny said.
Although Cerny spends less time in watering holes than before the revolution, he still has his favorite hangouts.
When the summer tourists descend upon Prague, he goes with his son to a dive in one of the outer districts.
“It’s a typical ugly village pub, but good beer, good service,” he said.
And in old-town Prague, he likes U Dvou Kocek, or “The Two Cats,” where a few nights before–over a beer with the same name as, but a much better taste than, a certain American brand (let’s call it Budweiser)–I’d heard an octogenarian play on his accordion a tune I recognized as “Auld Lang Syne,” but which the Czechs know as a lugubrious dirge about boys gone to war never to return.
One night in the 1960s, Cerny told us, his father walked out of The Two Cats and was grabbed by a couple of men in trench coats, who shoved him into a car that sped away into the labyrinth of twisted streets.
“We never saw him again,” Cerny said. Yet he says he thinks fondly of the place–as the site of his father’s last enjoyable, pivo-complemented meal.
“When I see Two Cats, I always remember my father walking out feeling great, after great lunch.” Olda chuckled. “And then these two men in trench coats . . . ”
I remembered how wonderful I’d felt, nights before, walking out of The Two Cats–where they say Mozart once drank–sated with culture and malty pivo. Listening to Olda I could almost imagine living and dying in Prague.
– Joseph Lindsley
