Arrived at the Monday meeting just as they were finishing. Spoke to Misty, Karl, Ezra and Paula about rerecording the dialogues. Arrange to meet Milena at 2:00. Went to the Library. Got a book called Unfinished Quest by Karl Popper. Met Misty and Karl at the Karuna Automat to talk about the party. Kimberley was there filling stupid forms in for the Americans employing her as a camp counsellor. Met with Milena and discussed the Advanced Lessons. Decided it wasn’t worth going home to Barbora’s and then coming back to meet Veronika at 6:30. I went to the Praha 2 Hotel opposite the school I used to teach in, and had a couple of lemon teas and then a meal. Very disappointed by the Popper book. Not even going to finish it. Wrote some extra paragraphs for Babel. Met Veronika at the Saint Václav statue. Went to the opera house and eventually got a ticket to sit at the back. We saw an archetypal production of Don Giovanni. No great energy. Some okay singing. Very generous audience. Walked down Václavské Námestí and had some food at Jan’s Grill Bar. Saw Verunka1 into a taxi and took the Metro home.
Notes:
Prague is (still) a city of interesting smells. One wouldn’t say this of London, one would of New York. There are the rubbishy alleys, the klobása [sausage] stalls, the flower stalls, the cool of the ice-cream stalls, the smell of the blossom on the way back from Veronika’s the other night almost made me swoon to death. The Metro smells very funny, it smells old and musty, like an attic. The Czechs are quite happy to smell of sweat.
I have seen hardly any evidence of homosexuality. The odd piece of graffiti in a toilet. The only example is the man, very drunk, who got onto the train, sat down next to Tim and offered him a hundred crowns for a kiss. Tim pretended not to understand. It was so pathetic, like prewar London. There were certainly a number of homosexuals in my classes. One guy asked me to define ‘camp’. I found it impossible. “Karel Gott2 is camp. The Village People are camp. Camp is pink human beings. Transvestites.3”
Affectionate diminutive of Veronika.
Karel Gott (1939-2019) wasn’t the Czech Cliff Richard, but that’s as close as I can get to suggesting his centrality and ubiquity. He was voted the country’s best male singer in the annual Český slavík national music award 42 times, most recently in 2017. Most of his fans would not think Karel Gott was camp.
What would I say instead, if I could go back and say something else? Read Susan Sontag? I don’t know if there was a single copy of one of her books in Praha at this time.