8502030866
DETROIT FREE PRESS
850825
Sunday, August 25, 1985
METRO FINAL
1F
Photo Color
MITCH ALBOM
Copyright (c) 1985, Detroit Free Press
KLIMA'S GOALS MAY HAVE LITTLE TO DO WITH THE NHL
Already some people are licking their chops at the thought of Petr Klima
coming to Detroit.
Klima is a hell of a hockey player -- maybe the best in Europe. Fast.
Strong. Gifted.
He is also 20 years old, alone, and in the middle of defecting from his
country, Czechoslovakia.
Early last week, he disappeared from a hotel in West Germany, where his
Czech team was training. The whispers began. He's doing it.
Immediately the Red Wings, who own Klima's NHL rights, got their people on
an overseas flight. Agents came out of the woodwork. The drama began; money,
secret negotiations, rumors.
Now some folks are counting the goals Klima will score in the NHL, how he
could lead Detroit to the playoffs. "The guy could be a superstar here" gushed
one Red Wings official.
But I think we are overlooking something.
The word "defected" is not one you find on sports pages, next to "traded"
or "waived."
In all likelihood, Petr Klima has just made the most gut- wrenching
decision of his life, and it has less to do with sticks and goals than with an
unforgiving itch in the belly of his soul.
Freedom.
'I want to live free'
Like most of you, I have never had to wrestle such a yearning. But I know
someone who has.
His name is Miroslav Zajonc. He, too, is Czechoslovakian and an athlete,
one of the top luge (ice sledding) racers in the world. Four years ago, in a
small restaurant in Vienna, he excused himself from a breakfast table of his
Czech colleagues, saying he needed to use the bathroom. He slipped out the
front door, ran to the nearest police station, stepped up to the desk, took a
deep breath, and recited the words in German he had memorized a dozen times
the sleepless night before.
"I want asylum."
His life has never been the same.
Like Klima, Zajonc was young (barely 21), single, and suddenly a criminal
in his home country. And like Klima, Zajonc never told his family of his
plans. Sometimes that is the safest way.
What he went through is, in many ways, undoubtedly what Klima is enduring
right now.
Let him tell the story:
"After I asked for asylum, the police took me to a refugee camp in
Austria. It was two days later that I called my mother on the telephone. I
told her, 'I am staying here. I am not coming back.'
"She started to cry. She said, 'Oh, my god. Oh, my god.' She was afraid
for me. She told me to come back quickly; I could still change my mind. I
said it was too late.
"Why did I do it? Because I wanted to live free. In Czechoslovakia, you
are locked inside. There is no freedom of speech. You cannot go places. You
are always under control.
"Many people there dream of America. They do not talk about it, because
there is trouble if you talk about it. But they are thinking it.
"Still, when I went to the police, I was shivering inside. You are never
sure you will do it (defect) until the very minute you do. I thought of my
family, what the government will do to them. My younger brother, they could
keep him from getting into school. Or they could keep my father from ever
getting a promotion. Or take his job.
"I thought about all that. But I still did it."
He really can't go home again
For his first months in the United States, Zajonc felt as disembodied as
a balloon on a tether. The simplest moments were overwhelming: going into a
supermarket, meeting strangers, understanding a joke.
Eventually he found his way back into his sport. He trained, regained his
form. Finally, in 1983, he won luge's world championship title at Lake Placid.
Members of his former Czech team were at that competition. They were told
not to talk to him.
"I can never go back," he says. "I know that. I would be put in prison.
But the whole country is a prison. I miss my family. The friends I grew up
with. It is the decision I make. I live with it."
A lot can be said for an NHL contract, the money, the attention, the new
world that awaits a Petr Klima. But it's not that simple. It cannot be.
In the movie "Moscow on the Hudson," there's a scene in which the new
immigrant, confused by the lifestyle here, laments that in Russia he was
miserable but, "at least it was my misery."
People such as Klima and Zajonc trade in all that is theirs for a one-way
promise because somewhere along the line, they looked into the eye of
America's promise and saw the light of their own reflection staring back at
them.
As hungry as we all are for a winning hockey team, I doubt Petr Klima is
thinking NHL right about now. There are more important things. It's easy to
forget that sometimes, here on the comfortable side of world.
COLUMN