Eye on cameras

Dagmar, who married 61-year-old Havel in January 1997, has had to get used to her husband’s health problems. He has been hospitalised six times in 18 months.

She has also had to get used to the fairly cool reception she got from many Czechs when she wed their national hero, less than a year after his first wife Olga died tragically of cancer.

Her blonde good looks did not impress some supporters of the former dissident playwright-turned-world statesman.

Then there were reports that she had once signed a petition against Charter 77, the 1977 movement spearheaded by Havel which paved the way for the country’s 1989 VelvetRevolution.

But the latest health crisis has won her some cautious praise for an impressive performance.

“The President’s wife has behaved very professionally,” said the Prague daily, Lidove Noviny, on Thursday, two days after Havel was rushed to Innsbruck after falling ill in their holiday home in the Tyrol.

On Tuesday night, reports said Dagmar was utterly devastated when she arrived at the Innsbruck University Clinic, in the centre of the Tyrolean capital flanked on all sides by snow-capped peaks.

“At first I could not recognise her, she was in a complete state,” said a Czech journalist who saw her waiting during the three-and-a-half hour operation which doctors say saved the President’s life.

But since then she has appeared a model of calm composure, accompanying the doctors at their daily press conference with obliging smiles for the cameras and tit-bits for the press.

On Wednesday morning, she recounted how she had been called to Havel’s room shortly after midnight, barely four hoursafter he came off the operating table.

“He could not speak because he had a tube in his mouth,” she said, “but he wrote things down on bits of paper.” Asked what he wrote, she replied coyly: “They were very private messages.”

True, there has been some veiled criticism over why Dagmar did not take her husband to a doctor earlier, after he complained of stomach pains and a fever on Monday.

She said she gave him aspirin and paracetamol to try to lower his temperature. Professor Ernst Bodner said Havel’s condition would not have been so life-threatening if he had been admitted to hospital earlier.

She even had to angrily deny reports that she had summoned a faith healer. “That is not true. I have asked for doctors to treat him, not a healer,” she said.

But overall she appears to be impressing many by her fortitude in trying circumstances.

Krafl said she was bearing up despite the pressure. “She sees the President whenever she wants, and she can go for short walks to get some fresh air, but itis difficult,” he said.