Marina Velcova and the temptation of America - Albert Russo (essential books to read .TXT) 📗

Albert Russo
websites: www.albertrusso.eu - www.albertrusso.com www.authorsden.com/albertrusso

MARINA VELCOVA AND THE TEMPTATION OF AMERICA

by Albert Russo


PRAGUE, late spring 1968. Through the downy twigs of an apple tree beyond the grid of bridges the city lies aquiver under a silk veil. And dusk, in a last onslaught, lights up the Vltava with its sequined wand, sending between the river's banks ripples of diamonds. It is a glorious moment, a moment during which you feel as if you were the Creator contemplating the consummation of his efforts, but the ever mercurial lover retreats with not so much as a sigh, and before the distant lampposts begin to twinkle, the entire landscape is engulfed in a tide of India ink.
A bang suddenly shatters the idyl and instinctively the young woman next to you nestles against your chest, clawing at your chest with all her might. You then both burst into laughter, realizing that it was only a jet of the Armed Forces passing overhead. She releases the pressure of her nails and strokes your nape.
Your bodies cling most intimately as you wrap the flaps of your sheepskin jacket around her waist, savoring the warm and fruity perfume of her lips. You both want to cry for joy and have vowedthat your destinies will be forever united. This is the great era of
Alexander Dubcek where all hopes are allowed. A breeze of freedom is sweeping through the country, a dreadful weight has been lifted off the hearts of millions of Czechs. And you partake in this peaceful revolution in which socialism has cast its mask.

ASTORIA, Queens. February 1968. I had an umpteenth argument with Mother. “I managed to escape Czechoslovakia after the communists clamped down on the country, having suffered from disease and famine previously during die Nazi occupation, and then the humiliation of the Reds just because I happened to have a grandfather who was an aristocrat. And you want to go ‘visit the land of your forebears'! Do you realize that I left the country penniless and had to relinquish to the state our family jewels as well as the 18th century mansion we owned? I have buried my past, Francis, and now you want to bring its demons back into my life. (When she gets in these states, there are no tears, but her pupils ravage the irises and a network of fine carmine threads spread across the whites of her eyes. I am not without pathos, but I won’t let the heart overpower reason. “Oh do what you will, you're even more stubborn than your father was!" she retorts with a certain sadness.

PRAGUE, late spring 1968. Marina takes me along to discover allthose places the tourists see and those only the Prague citizens frequent. Before earning her Pb.D. in engineering from the Carolinum, one of the world's oldest universities, thanks to her knowledge of foreign languages she used to spend her summers guiding important visitors in the capital and also throughout the country.
The Old Town is now so familiar to me with its twin-spire Tyn church, the massive Powder Tower, the House at the the Minute which stands like a delectable candy-ornated gingerbread, the splendid astronomical clock and next to it the Renaissance window of the Old Town Hall, Melantrichova Street and its Gotic and Romanesque buildings, that I can cross it blindly whichever lane I choose to follow. When night falls, I stroll holding Marina by the waist, like any Prague lover, through the vaulted arccade in Havelska Street or along the lanes of the former Jesuit College.
The city by day is a symphony in pastels, ochres and grays but when the lampposts are lit, you enter a world of mystery and of ghostly shadows.
The following afternoon we take the tram and ride to Letna, beyond the cast-iron Hanava Pavilion. Marina and her parents live on the fourth floor in one of those drab collective housing complexes built in the late forties. It is a small one-bedroom apartment. The living room is cluttered with rustic furniture and trinkets and has floreated wallpaper yellowed by the years. The three-seater couch is where Marina sleeps. Her folks introduce themselves by their first names. They both seem happy to meet me.
Pavel's drawn features and wan smile reflect a tormented soul locked in resignation. Ekaterina, on the other hand, is stocky and her ruddy face reveals her peasant origins. Tall and fine boned like her father, Marina has her mother's complexion as well as that perennially mischievous twinkle in the eyes. Ekaterina seldom utters a sound, except to offer drinks and the delicious almond brownies she herself baked.
The tension has loosened around Pavel's jaws now that he trusts me. “You may be American," he remarks in his rugged English, “but you cannot deny the Czech half of you, a total stranger you are not!" Pavel leads the conversation, asking me to describe that mightiest of all nations, the United States of America, lamenting however the Allies' treachery in 1938 when France and Great Britain condoned the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia, and again at Yalta, when the U.S. gave in to Stalin. He wants to know how we really live, “for the Holywood movies must surely give a distorted view of America, with the gangsters on the one side and, on the other, those dream homes and lavish life style they make us believe are available to the majority of Americans. You are, of course, a free people. We were once ... a long long time ago," he adds, knitting his brows. "But things look very promising now," I claim, gleeful. “Maybe, maybe," he concludes with a sigh, then I notice how weary his stare has become suddenly.
On our way here, Marina spoke about her parents, but not once did she allude to the plight they, like many of her elder countrymen have lived through. On the contrary, though she undoubtedly loves her father, she still has at times heated arguments with him over the very principle of communism, for Marina believes in the magnanimity of the Great Soviet Liberators whose tongue she has mastered, besides English and German.
Her father keeps harping, "When I was your age I knew what true freedom meant. We were the most industrialized nation In Central Europe and look at us now; we're not much better off than some of those banana republics."
Marina calls him an inveterate pessimist, but since she does share with him a yearning for travel and adventure, she ends the discussion on a brighter note: "Soon, Papa, the borders will be wide open and we shall be able to discover the world and its treasures. Remember how you used to cycle all the way to Austria when you resided in Bratislava as a teenager?" He o'hums, unconvinced.
I have more than an Inkling that her thirst for discovery is stronger than her socialist ideals. She does not speak like a fanatic or echo the slogans which Radio Moscow beams daily to the four comers of the planet against Imperialism and its lackeys.
I recall Marina telling me that her father likes anything that smacks of the exotic and offer to treat them tomorrow to a Chinese dinner. Pavel gets up with a wide grin while Ekaterina stutters in a blush: “It's really too much, it will cost you a lot of money. Even though you're from the West, you're still a student." I kiss her on both cheeks as Marina and I stand on the threshold, about to leave.

In the Tatra Mountains, summer of 1968. For the past week and a half I have been touring some of the country's loveliest regions, guided by the person who has become the woman of my life. Thanks to her, the ancient names of Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia and Slovakia are no longer just streaks of color on the world map, or mere historical references. We have ridden on trains with wooden seats, sturdy yet uncomfortable buses, as well as on the clanking streetcars of Prague and Bratislava. I had never visited a spa resort before discovering the eerie beauty of Marianske Lazne, the Marienbad rendered famous by royally and those who counted during the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and now mainly patronized by the working classes, the intelligentsia and the party cadres. I had a taste of the same tepid and slightly nauseating water which they seemed to savor as if it were an elixir and strained myself to follow the leisurely pace of another century, under Marina's amused gaze.
The days in the heart of the Tatras go by so swiftly, I already suffer from pangs of nostalgia. In a resin-scented clearing, Marina and I lie with the sun as our sole witness. She strokes the moist down of my chest and whispers: "This can only be a dream.” Frowning, I counter almost aggressively: "No, it isn't. I'll come back next year and in 1970 we will get married here; then, once I have found a job in my field of study, data processing - computers are what the future will depend on - we'll settle in a home of our own. It will be a modest place but with all the amenities we Americans are used to. As for you, with your linguistic and engineering skills, and your savoir-faire, there will be absolutely no problem.”
“But won't I miss Czechoslovakia?" she asks. "After all, I love my country and had no reason to leave it, that is, until we met."
"Don't worry," I reassure her, "if we can afford it, you'll be able to fly back and visit your folks every year. Later on, we could even send them a ticket and they'll come to us. I know how delighted Pavel would be."
There's a silence, and as I bring my lips to hers, Marina says, "But if it doesn't work that way, if..." I crush my mouth against hers and smother all her doubts in a long deep kiss. She responds most willingly. Neither of us can get enough of each other and I think, miracles are possible.

PRAGUE, mid-July 1968. This last week before my departure for the States has been so dense and hectic, what with revisiting certain of my favorite spots, meeting Marina's closest friends and university acquaintances, discussing politics and reforms on the Art Nouveau terrace of the Europa Hotel or in some of the Old Town's wine cellars and taverns, such as the Café at the Golden Serpent where an Armenian merchant resided in the early 18th century, spreading the fashion of coffee drinking among his fellow citizens.
The atmosphere is simply electrifying. I feel a vitality here that is comparable only to the one I experienced during my first year in Greenwich Village when I still was an undergraduate at New York University, with the difference that in Czechoslovakia a whole society is being reshaped, words and ideas hitherto taboo are being expressed in public.
This evening Marina takes me to the Vinohrady Theater where they are rehearsing a play about the French Revolution and introduces me to Petr, a jovial man in his forties who earns his living tuning pianos. When he finishes his scales, Petr turns to both of us, his teeth glittering amid his dark gypsy face and says, "Let's go to an ale house around the corner