334 Derrida 1963–1983
useful to them in their situation. At the end of the session, the con-
versation became more informal. Derrida alluded in veiled terms
to the way he had been tailed, before voicing his surprise that his
hosts expressed themselves so directly, despite the more than likely
presence of microphones.
Derrida was checked as he left the building, just after the seminar,
but this did not lead to anything further. ‘Kein Problem!’ the
policeman assured him as he handed back his passport. Feeling
increasingly uneasy, Derrida went to pick up a few things from the
hotel and then went to stay with one of Marguerite’s aunts, Jirina
Hlavaty; he decided that he would not give the second session
scheduled for the seminar. On Tuesday, 29 December, worried at
the lack of news, Professor Hejdánek tried in vain to reach him at
the Central Hotel. Then he contacted the French Embassy, where
he was assured that nothing unusual had been reported to them:
Derrida was to take the plane as planned, in the early afternoon on
the next day.^3
It was at the airport, at baggage control, that the trap closed
on Derrida. Just as he stepped forward, the customs offi cial gave
way to a ‘huge guy’ who emerged from behind a curtain. Derrida
was led into a little room where his bag was minutely examined:
a sniff er dog was brought in for the task. To begin with, Derrida
could not understand what was happening to him, thinking that
the customs offi cial was looking for manuscripts. As he later told
the journalist of Antenne 2: ‘I’d imagined every kind of possible
scenario: being questioned, deported [.. .], but never had I dreamed
of a machination of this kind, with drugs. And yet, from literature
and journalism, I was acquainted with this scenario.’^4 The customs
offi cer asked him to tear open the grey cloth lining of his bag.
Derrida himself pulled out four extremely suspicious-looking little
brown packets... Other customs offi cers arrived in the room, and
were soon joined by police, who informed him that he was under
arrest and took him to the nearest station.
Accused of ‘producing, traffi cking and transferring drugs’,
Derrida defended himself vehemently: why would a professor of
mature years come to Czechoslovakia to set up as a debutant traf-
fi cker? ‘I was told, fi rstly, that it was unlikely that the drug could get
into my case without my complicity, and secondly that it was well
known to all police services that drugs were often transported by
people who would not usually be suspected – diplomats, intellectu-
als, singers, etc.’^5 Had Paul McCartney not been arrested in Japan
two years earlier?
Even though the interrogation was in many respects just a piece
of make-believe, it dragged on for six or seven hours. And it was in
vain that Derrida repeatedly asked that his family be informed and
the French Embassy alerted.