Monday 28 October 2013

The Election


The opinion polls said it would happen, but no one could quite believe it when it did. Voting for them was like watching Nova TV, no one actually admitted doing it but numbers never lie. The communists had won enough votes for it to be impossible to form a government without them. Just a mere 24 years after the Velvet revolution the communists were back in government.

Now you might think that like in other ex Eastern Bloc members, the communists had reformed and become members of the mainstream with just moderate commie tendencies. You’d be wrong. These were unapologetic, unrepentant, die-hard commies who harked back to the good old days of Gottwald and Husak.

It wasn’t long before they were back to their old tricks, the minority party in the coalition they might have been, but that didn’t stop them from slicing off bits of power like salami, just as they had done in the immediate post-war years. They soon controlled the ministry of home affairs and the defence ministry, storm clouds were gathering.

I thought they were just silly rumours at first when people began to talk about disappearances; people being taken from their beds at night, people disappearing from shopping centres in broad daylight. It was when my boss disappeared without warning, without a trace that it began to get real.

The Party, as they were now known, were under pressure from international human rights to explain these disappearances. They put out a statement saying that a number of legal arrests had been made against people who had been found guilty of being enemies of the state. The wording and tone were ominous. They put out a further statement saying other traitors and foreigners would be rounded up in ‘due course’  There was a general feeling that ‘due course’ meant immediately. There were already rumours of international companies being closed down. I felt a heavy stone in my stomach; this country felt more like my home than anywhere else, but it was time for me to get out. Or was it? Should I stay and face the music like the others who had no choice. Was I a rat deserting a sinking ship? Take the good times, but leave as soon as the going gets tough.

The problem was I was a foreigner, an obvious enemy of the state, that meant I implicated everyone I spoke to. If things went the way they were heading, all my friends, my lovers and my colleagues could be arrested just for knowing me. I would be signing their jail sentences or even their death penalty. I had to go and I had to go now. I put as many things into a suitcase as I could and left my flat.

The streets had become a different place, they seemed to be greyer, grimmer. People went about their business with long faces and heavy hearts.  Heavily armed police were on all corners, checking papers and talking urgently into their radios. I scuttled towards the tram stop trying to look as inconspicuous as any man could when burdened down with luggage.

The train station was different too, the tramps and waifs and strays that called it their home had been cleared away, Burger King was closed due to ‘technical reasons’.  There were police everywhere. It had taken on an austere look, gone back in time. I bought my ticket in my best Czech, who knew who was who, who was listening, who was talking. A one way ticket to Vienna, from there who knew? I boarded the train looking at the ticket, promising myself that I would work from the outside to save the country I’d called my home for so long.
As we pulled out of the station I felt a sense of relief, a sense of guilty, a sense of sadness and a sense of anger; true mixed feelings I suppose. In a little under 3 and a half hours I’d be in Austria.

But just after Brno, the train guard’s voice came over the tannoy.
‘We inform you that the border to Austria is now closed. We will be terminating at Breclav. Please have your papers ready for full inspection.’

I closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose. This was bad. This was very bad. 

1 comment:

  1. people have very short memory... in Poland the post-communist part won the elections as early as in 1993 and the post-communist president came into power in 1995...

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