Echoes of 1968 - Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia

Contemporary Review, Nov, 1993 by Robin Varcoe

It's summer. Early August. A poor summer, cold and wet. Grey clouds swirl over the orchards and, in the fruit fields, the rows of blackcurrant bushes fade into a misty wash of hedgerow, tree and cloud. The leaves on the bushes drip with rain and glistening spiders' webs brush against my face and hands, wet from picking. The slippery yellow clay is stained red where berries have fallen from numb fingers and where, crouching, I have trodden them into the ground.

As I pick, I dream. A rhapsody of love and rebellion. Daydreams, utopian and omnipotent, nourished by television images of a wet May: the student demonstrators, linked arms and running; red flags, black flags; the singing of the ~Internationale', the cries of ~ouvriers ... etudiants ... unite!'

In May, excited and impassioned by the news from Paris, I had lain awake in the safety of my bed at midnight, listening to the live commentary from the Boulevard St. Michel, my transistor turned down low so as not to disturb the rest of the family. I had imagined streets of cobbles torn and piled up, helmeted police in long black shiny PVC macs clambering over barricades in the darkness, their batons and circular shields held before them like ancient combatants. I had heard the sudden sound of short explosions and imagined the tear gas, the water cannon, the running figures in the dark rainy streets.

These are the events which feed my dreams, the grandiose dreams of a schoolboy in the school holidays in August, picking blackcurrants with numbed fingers! My parents are far away, touring in their two-tone cream and grey Wolseley somewhere between Vienna and Prague. I have been left behind, alone at home for one month, alone in the large redbrick house on the hill, scary and creaking at night.

Alone in the large redbrick house, I invite school friends to stay overnight. Fruitpickers by day, in the evening we descend on the village pub in colourful, self-conscious clothes, velvets and silks, long hair growing longer with the times. Late at night back at the house, we inhabit the lounge floor, lying, sprawling on the carpet or sitting crosslegged and barefoot, backs against armchairs, drinking bottles of brown beer and smoking Gauloises ~Disque Bleu' (it was not just the events of May in France with which we intoxicated ourselves. We were Francophiles, reading Camus and Sartre rather than Golding or Graham Greene). We puzzle over cryptic notes on LP sleeves in the light of candles and listen to the singer on the record-player calling us:

~... tales of brave Ulysses

How his naked ears were tortured

By the siren sweetly sing-ing.'

Inside the dimly lit room, the lingering perfume of French tobacco pungent and harsh in our throats, we float and drift to the rippling of cymbals and the loud, sweet and rasping base notes of the guitar, descending into turquoise, purple and crimson dreams:

~... and her footprints make you follow

Where the sky loves the sea ...'

Were we lucky to grow up in the sixties, siren voices calling us, nurtured on the optimism of the times, the gush of historical possibility? No wonder we were utopian and felt omnipotent. For the first time in history a whole generation, not just a few poets, ascetics, philosophers or revolutionaries, were rejecting the everyday, crying out for other realities, mystical or political. ~Tune in, turn on, drop out!', ~Be realistic, demand the impossible!', ~Playpower!' Phrases straining against reality, encapsulated the meaning of the times and having no conceptual place today, resonate only in memory, in the wash of history.

A Saturday morning. No fruit-picking. My friends have gone home and I am alone in the house. My father is faraway in Central Europe and I sit at his desk in his study wearing a khaki safari jacket from the Army Surplus store, onto which I have stitched red felt patches bearing the words, painstakingly embroidered in gold on crimson, ~Anarchy' and ~Love'. Outside, the sun momentarily breaks through the grey August clouds, lighting up the dance of dust motes across the desk.

A pile of post for my absent parents lies in the sun's rays, and amongst the circulars from Book Clubs, the subscription renewal forms, the bills and final reminders in red, is a court summons addressed to my father for non-possession of a valid railway season ticket. Although I am surprised, even shocked, I feel also a curious pleasure. How often had my father, although a member of the Liberal Party, declared that he was ~emotionally, an anarchist'. I had wanted to believe him but had not. Now here was living proof; my father was not only cheating British Railways but he had also been caught and would have to go to court. Was he a criminal? Was he an anarchist? Somehow I fancied this court summons drew us closer together in rebellion, emotionally and politically.

I sit at my father's desk and write an urgent letter to him faraway in Central Europe, care of an address in Vienna. I write to tell him about the final reminders in red and the court summons but also to tell him he shouldn't worry, to reassure him, to welcome him as a comrade. I write about the coming revolution, telling him that we are in the last stages of capitalism, that I have it on good authority that capitalism can only last about another six months and that perhaps it will be over by Christmas! I extol the socialist future where public transport will be free, where private property will cease to exist and mortgage arrears will be annulled, with everyone granted their own home by the State, ~from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'.