An excerpted chapter.

This excerpt originally appeared in Running by Jean Echenoz. The novel relates the story of Emil Zatopek, the world’s greatest long-distance runner.

Chapter 11

rague where, in those days, everyone is afraid, every second, of everything and

everybody, everywhere. For the greater good of the Party, the overriding concern is to purge, demolish, crush, liquidate all hostile elements. The newspapers and radio speak of nothing else; the police and State Security Service take on the job. Anyone may at any moment be charged with treason as a spy, conspirator, saboteur, agent provocateur, or terrorist of the—pick one—Trotskyist, Titoist, Zionist, or Social-Democratic persuasion, reviled as a kulak or a bourgeois nationalist.

At any time, anybody can wind up in prison or a camp, usually without any idea why. People generally end up there not because of what they think but because they are in the way of someone powerful enough to send them there. Each day, from the four corners of the country, hundreds of letters arrive at the State Security Service Headquarters to obligingly and imaginatively draw official attention to this or that comrade, colleague, neighbor, relative, all denounced for plotting against the regime.

Here, then, we have reached that same point we’d already found ourselves in, with slight variations, not even ten years earlier. Fearful of speaking or listening to anybody, people systematically shun one another, even within the bosom of their families. The press is gagged as never before, and as before, listening to foreign radio broadcasts can lead to fearsome reprisals. Now that terror has settled comfortably into everyone’s consciousness, the choice is simple: silence

and resignation, or participation in the personality cult of President Gottwald and in the fanatical demonstrations supporting the regime. Another mainstay—or last hope—is to join the Party, which has grown in a few months by over a million new members, among whom, it must be said, is Emil.

One shouldn’t dismiss Emil as an opportunist. Two things are absolutely indisputable: that he sincerely believes in the virtues of Socialism and that in his position he could hardly do otherwise. He knows that certain intellectuals roaming the corridors of power have him in their sights as they eagerly consider whether his status as a great sports hero might—perhaps inevitably—be tainted by bourgeois individualism, since the unhealthy adoration of any athlete seriously betrays the Stakhanovite ideal.

Although his superiors cautiously prefer to keep him under wraps, claiming that he’s in poor form, tired, or even ill, Emil still doesn’t give an inch. When Heino emerges growling from his deep forests and retakes the world record for 10,000 meters, Emil takes it back from him fifty-two days later, leaving his competitors so deep in his dust that the second finisher comes in four laps behind. In the 5,000 and 10,000 meters, Emil definitely remains the fastest man in the world.

A few months later, in Finland, he breaks his own record so thoroughly that the audience, refusing to believe the first announcement of his time, remains silent.

When this winning time is confirmed, a storm of enthusiasm rages unabated for twenty-five minutes. When calm has been restored, Emil takes his little victory lap at the clip of a good 400-meter race, as if nothing has happened. And as always when people congratulate him, he insists that he really didn’t do much, that he won thanks to the excellence of the track and the ideal temperatures of Scandinavia. And in any case, he claims, individual exploits are not important. What counts is drawing the working masses to the stands. That’s what matters. Of course, Emil, of course. That bracing philosophy does you honor.

In other words, he keeps on winning almost every time: in rain, snow, icy winds, he leaves everyone in his wake, everywhere. Almost everywhere. Because for the Eastern European meets featuring the USSR and its satellite countries, for the huge Communist rallies in East Berlin, Budapest, Bucharest, Warsaw, or where he goes off to train in the Crimea, there, obviously, there’s no problem in letting him leave Prague. When he’s invited elsewhere, on the other hand, somewhere in the so-called Free World (enslaved by capitalism, naturally), where he is often invited since he’s in demand everywhere, forget it. And what’s more, it isn’t even Emil who replies. No thank you, it’s his federation. Which, what’s even more, given the Cold War, doesn’t deign to reply all that often.

Even the cross country run sponsored in Paris by the Communist paper L’ Humanite, an event with solid ideological underpinnings that attracts the best athletes of the Socialist Bloc—even that is off limits for Emil. The thing is, the higher-ups are wary, and for good reason. Let’s take for example one Bacigal, a young Czech student, an excellent middle-distance runner they’d allowed to go run that L’ Huma race. Imagine, he up and decided to skip returning to Prague by staying in Paris and asking for some kind of political asylum. Most unfortunate precedent. Lively irritation in the federation as well as in the corridors of power. Well, fine, they must have decided to keep their response low-key, to take measures and hire specialists, because that young Bacigal obtained a residence permit, joined the Racing Club de France, and that was the last anyone heard of him.

No such unpleasantness must ever occur with Emil, so he is closely attended, occasionally extracted from his lair to go on exhibit, even solo, in staged personal performances. On Czech Army Day, before an audience of fifty thousand watching a soccer tournament final in the Strahow stadium in Prague, he has to run all by himself during half-time. Immediately afterward, he disappears.

So they’re hiding him, he’s silent, then no one hears a thing about him anymore. He’s keeping quiet, keeping his head down these days, doesn’t seem to be running. People abroad are lost in conjecture: What could he be up to, what’s he doing; will he ever be allowed one day to finally go abroad outside of official competitions; is he secretly working on new records; is he lying low for reasons we don’t know; is he ill again; is he finished… Mystery. Always an excellent thing, mystery.

All that lasts for a while until out of nowhere, with both barrels, Emil breaks two new world records, for the 20,000 meters and the hour. He becomes the first in all of history to run more than twenty kilometers in one hour. And in the course of that exploit immediately hailed as legendary, his fastest kilometer proves to be the final one, a largesse attesting to his ample reserves and suggesting that he could yet do even better. This prodigious performance will not soon be eclipsed, warbles the press. In this expanding the norms of physical possibility, Emil becomes superhuman, inaccessible to us all, for no one has gone that far. Since those two records had previously been held by the eternal Heino, just imagine the ambience in the deep forests. There had already been talk of a decline, but

Andy Yelenak

now the light has dawned: Emil was preparing himself for distances he had never tackled before.

Meanwhile, no one has ever gone so far in the political theater of show trials, either. A massive spectacle, produced by the State Security Service, with the artistic collaboration of Soviet advisors on dramatic presentation, one-hundred-percent attendance by the accused, impeccable sets and costumes, a top-notch audience, lines flawlessly memorized by the entire cast—judges, prosecutors, lawyers, defendants—and the staging of each production worked out to the last detail: a perfect dramatic arc all the way to the show-stopping verdict, hangings galore, sustained applause, numerous curtain calls, long live President Gottwald.

It’s against that backdrop that a foreign journalist, a special correspondent from a sports daily, takes it into his head to come interview Emil. Why not; no problem. But before meeting him, one must obtain permission first from his commanding officer and then from the newspaper union and then from the ministry of information. Which represents quite a lot of preliminary interviews, questionnaires, forms to fill out in quadruplicate, with signatures and stamps. Breathless, the special correspondent finally arrives at Emil’s house. Number 8 Pujcovny Street, in a recently constructed building next to the main post office. The journalist rings, and it’s Dana who opens the door, smiling and simply dressed in a brown sweater and blue skirt.

Unfortunately Emil is not here, she explains most apologetically; he would have been so pleased to see you. The problem is that he must train hard every afternoon, and at the moment he’s very busy getting ready to go to Kiev, where he’ll be facing a new Soviet hope named Nicephore Popov. But no matter, come back this evening and you’ll see him. In the meantime, she says, do come in, I’ll show you around our home and then we’ll have tea. I’d love that, says the delighted special correspondent.

The two spacious rooms are prettily decorated: Dana’s guitar hangs on the wall among pictures and banners; books and knickknacks crowd the shelves; there are rugs, a framed portrait photo of Joseph Stalin, another of Klement Gottwald, a lamp shaped like a globe, and a large radio. Opening onto a handsome kitchen, these two rooms flank a wide vestibule where one may admire the equipment Emil uses daily for his limbering-up exercises, including a Swedish rib stall clamped to the wall amid countless trophies and medals. And the javelins, Dana points out. My javelins.

The house isn’t bad, but Dana is not alone. One of her good friends, actually, is staying there as well, a jovial home economics teacher, a woman who is extremely attentive, helpful, considerate, and who never leaves her side, even when the tea is made. So they busy themselves with the tea while Dana talks about her day-to-day life. Goodness, it’s nothing, really, they have a very simple life. She works as a filing clerk for the sports magazine Ruch, which occupies her days

while Emil carries out his duties as an officer over at the ministry. Then, in their spare time, she works with her javelin while he runs his daily quota of kilometers. Wonderful, says the captivated special correspondent, but you must have a few moments for leisure activities, I suppose.

Naturally, replies Dana. I must tell you first off that Emil insists on answering his mail himself: he receives lots of letters, it takes him quite a bit of time. Then, well, there’s reading, she says, gesturing toward the bookshelves. Yes, Emil is a great reader. Plus they do go out sometimes in the evening, plays and all that. And when they stay home, they listen to music or play it themselves; Emil has a very pleasant baritone and enjoys singing old national folksongs late of an afternoon, while Dana accompanies him on the guitar, she says, waving toward her instrument. Charming, says the enthusiastic special correspondent, forgetting what he’d thought he’d read one day regarding Emil’s vocal talents. Then, each evening, while he has a little glass of Moravian wine, Emil likes to do the cooking himself, what can you do, he loves that. Of course, who wouldn’t, gushes the special correspondent, doing his best not to recall the recent adoption of rationing coupons for bread, flour, and potatoes. And tell me, is he feeling fit these days?

Ah, says Dana, he’lI tell you more about that this evening but the fact is that for the moment he’s not in top condition. He’s been ill, you know, a nasty bout of