Tram

On the Number 17 tram going north out of the center of Prague, an old man slouches on the single seat next to the doors. This is the seat reserved for the old or disabled, but this man is neither. He is just very, very drunk. His face is the red colour of the bricks on Prague’s renaissance palaces, and bloated, every pore wide open, clearly visible, like the cratered surface of Mars seen through a powerful telescope. The booze in his face makes it hard to tell how old he is, but he has grey hair, a white walrus moustache, square head, similar to the constantly infuriated officers in the Czech writer Havel’s great comic novel, The Good Soldier Svejk. As he looks woozily around, I notice that his left eye is made of glass, for it stays fixed and open while his good right eye darts from face to face. His head often drops, suddenly, as the alcohol drags him momentarily over the cliff of consciousness. When this happens, his right eye closes, but the left remains open, making his face seem even fiercer, and a little frightening. The glass eye stares like the eye of god in ancient religions, fixed, unmoving and unmoved, watching even during sleep, waiting until we awake so that it can reproach us for the follies of our existence.

Beggar

I see them where the crowds are thickest – around Old Town Square, in the narrow lanes that lead to the Charles Bridge, on the bridge itself. Men and women prostrated, knees on the ground, foreheads touching the cobblestones, arms stretched out in front, hands cupped in supplication. I am shocked, at least the first time I see them. I think I know what this is – ‘must be a beggar’ – but something in me recoils from the abject submission of this pose, the self-abasement, the humiliation. I am used to beggars walking up to me, trying to meet my eye, to say something entertaining or hectoring, anything to get some money out of me. How utterly different is this Czech begging. It seems to come from a pre-modern time, to have survived the passing of feudalism, the nationalist revival, the Communist era, the post-Communist flood of new money and tourism. I feel like I am looking at a medieval picture, though my feeling of shame on their behalf is not an aesthetic reaction. ‘How can you bring yourself so low?’ I say to myself – as I pass by like every other person, without dropping even one small coin into those upturned, sun-blistered hands.

Scowl

The Prague scowl is everywhere: old people, young people, men, women, children, on the faces of waiters, old women lumbering across the Old Town Square, on the trams, in the Potraviny, the corner stores. It looks like this: eyes cold, hard, staring straight ahead; the edges of the mouth drawn down; the flesh of the face set, immobile. Avoiding eye contact, they move quickly, not bothering to apologize or even acknowledge your existence if they bump into you. Older people have the scowl more than the young. Perhaps people who grew up after the Communist years aren’t so burdened by the past. They take part in the interchange of cultures that comes along with Prague’s status as the new Left Bank, see possibilities in it, a future. Perhaps older people learned that the best way to survive Communism was to keep to themselves, to hide their emotions, make themselves anonymous. Or maybe some of them are still true believers, who miss the good old days of law and order, and low crime, and no pornography on the news-stands. Whatever the reason, I am sometimes struck by the enormous difference between the heartbreaking beauty of the city, and the unfriendliness of its inhabitants. Maybe they should have a new tourist slogan purely for the locals: ‘Prague: It’s a great place, so just smile.’

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