Water dripped from the concrete beams onto the dirt floor. Papier-maché grotesques, huge murals, metal sculptures, and mobiles of standard SoHo design sprawled through these dark catacombs, lit by bare, hanging bulbs. Whether the works were interesting or not, Margaret could not tell because there, underground in Stalin's abandoned legacy of a bunker, they were more than interesting—they were inspired. This was a celebration. The kids lounged against piles of cement rubble, and in spite of being dressed in generic European semipunk style, they did not look like German or French youth, angry and disgusted, posturing selfconsciously. They weren't angry or disgusted. They were delighted.
Margaret stood beside a sculpture—boots and catsup bottles hanging from ribbons and wires. She began to feel more comfortable, that she somehow belonged here, that there existed a certain affinity, not so much between her and the students as between her and their exhibits. With a flood of relief, Margaret realized that she was expected not so much to instruct her betters as to be another colorful part of the celebration. Her talk, which she had worried would be irrelevant and trivial, an offense to the real business of democratic revolution that was taking place, was important simply because it was possible for it to be given. Oh, thank God, Margaret thought. I'm just part of the fun, an example of Western culture to be freely displayed. Ich bin eine catsup bottle.
She was an American abroad, and no one minded. In Prague, people liked Americans. Intellectuals liked Americans. Intellectuals in America didn't like Americans. And there was Anna, an authentically revolutionary student, carrying in the pocket of her black leather jacket a Penguin edition of The Princess Casamassima. Margaret gazed at the sculptures and listened to the crude Euro-rock coming from the stage. The Enlightenment lived.
The lecture went smoothly. She talked, they listened, and Margaret was relieved. She read from Rameau's Niece, then spoke, carefully reading her notecards, on which she had written every single word she would say, underlining those she ought to stress.
Was Rameau's Niece a libertine novel? she asked them. Or was it a philosophical tract exploring empiricism? Or was it both? In the eighteenth century the desire to know was wedded to desire itself. In order to fool customs officials, smugglers placed pages of Beneath the Naughty Nun's Nightgown between pages of geography books or the Gospels. This interlarding was called "marrying," an amusing and rather suggestive name, Margaret said.
Pornography was used to discredit the clergy and aristocracy as decadent, perverted, impotent, and scrofulous. Philosophical, political, and pornographic works were lumped together by the book trade, which called them all "philosophical books." Why? Because empiricism and philosophy itself are both sensuous and sensual. The desire to know is desire.
Her audience, about fifty students and writers, seemed satisfied but rushed immediately off to a reading by Allen Ginsberg which had been inadvertently scheduled to overlap with Margaret's talk. Margaret sighed with relief that her performance was over. What nice, well-mannered revolutionary young people, she thought, watching the students file out. And she went alone to lunch in a kosher restaurant, the only one in Prague, located in what was once a synagogue. Above the doorway was a framed photograph of Barbra Streisand.
MARGARET SAT at breakfast and consulted her Baedeker's and planned her day of sightseeing. She loved guidebooks. Even the idea of a guidebook appealed to her: a vade mecum, so sure of itself, so accommodating and considerate. Come with me and I will reveal to you the house that Jack built, the house that Jack slept in, the house from which Jack was expelled by a rival political faction, the house where Jack died a violent and untimely death. I will tell you the architectural significance of the house of Jack's mistress. I will tell you where you are, and I will tell you why you are there.
It was her last day in Prague, and she planned to use it wisely. First she would go to the Castle, which lay on the other side of the Vltava, then back again across the Charles Bridge to the Old Town. Margaret had not been sightseeing like this in years, and she thought again what a strange and strangely satisfying activity it was, superficial yet intense. She turned down corners of the guidebook's pages; she marked different buildings with a red pen. She studied maps in anticipation of studying the city. It was true that information never lingered for long in her mind, but every fact, all knowledge, was welcome for a visit. Sightseeing was a pure, sensual encounter, a subtle, deeply moving flirtation with a stranger.
She got into a taxi, which backed up at dizzying speed for two blocks, then shot off down a side street in what seemed to be the wrong direction, twisted and turned past beautiful, run-down buildings, baroque palaces, and turn-of-the-century apartment houses, then across the river to a wooded park and up a long hill toward the Gothic spires of St. Vitus's, the huge cathedral within the Castle walls. In the square, she got put, paid, and stood looking around her at the palaces, large and damp in the gray morning.
"Excuse me," said a man, coming up beside her. "I noticed your guidebook there. Are you American? Can you tell me what this is? Sorry to bother you, but I'm from New Jersey."