By Mark Schapiro

The neighborhood around Legii Bridge in Prague is renowned for its art nouveau architecture, for its cobblestones, and for the romantic bridges spanning the Vltava River in either direction like glittering necklaces as the evening falls. The district, part of what has made Prague a global tourist attraction, bustles with Czechs and with tourists, there to indulge in some of the city's livelier restaurants, in the grand productions of the National Theatre, or to visit the famed Cafe Slavia, where nine years ago groups of Communist dissidents gathered to plot what would become the Velvet Revolution of 1989. It is here, in this stew of high and bohemian culture, where one can frequently find Hana Malinova striding through the streets on her twice-weekly rounds checking in with her "clients," most frequently perched brazenly at darkened street corners, wearing mini-skirts and knee-high boots: the prostitutes of Prague.

Starting at nine or ten in the evening, and finishing at three or four in the morning, she encounters up to twenty women in a night. Accompanied by a psychologist and a social worker, she offers packages of condoms and saliva H.I.V. test kits – essential ingredients of safer sex. She is often welcomed as a rare, friendly face: "We have a chat, talk about how things are going, who's back on the street (after trying to leave it), who's back on the needle: Its a way for me to keep track of what's happening." At times, they'll break into a bawdy skit right on the sidewalk, illustrating how to place a condom on a penis, to try through self-satiric humor to illustrate the essentials of safer sex. The women are encouraged to utilize the clinic's services in downtown Prague for more complete medical examinations.

Malinova runs the country's only independent effort to address the health and psychological needs of the nation's growing number of prostitutes. She estimates that there are some 3,000 working prostitutes in Prague, a number that has grown perhaps tenfold since the revolution of 1989. Along the highway to Germany, women line the roadway, only the most visible part of a growing trade in Czech sex tourism.

"Bliss Without Risk"

Across the street from Prague's main railway station is the headquarters of Malinova's operation, with the inspirational name, Bliss Without Risk (in Czech, Rozkos bez Rizika, or simply R-R). Shortly before 5 o'clock in the evening, women start lining up outside the clinic's doors. In a clean setting, with brash red tiles and subdued violet-colored walls, a volunteer doctor offers free gynecological exams, treatment for sexually transmitted diseases, and pregnancy tests.

There is also a resident psychologist to offer counseling, and a relaxed sitting room, with comfortable armchairs, where women (sometimes accompanied by their children) can take refuge from the harsh life of the streets. Twice weekly, from five until eight in the evening, the clinic serves some 200 women a year, in a safe, non-judgmental environment, run by Malinova and a handful of women assistants.

One of the provisions established by a foundation from which Bliss Without Risk received a grant, the Global Fund for Women, based in California, requires that no men be in "decision-making positions" at the clinic, and they abide by this stricture religiously. Not only because of the grant requirement, but, as Malinova put it, "Because many of these women hate men."

One-third of the women she serves are involved in abusive relationships with pimps, who keep them under control through violence and by supplying them with drugs; many of these are victims of the white slave trade, smuggled here from Romania, Ukraine and Russia. Safe sex literature is offered in those three languages, as well as in Czech.

Creative Talking Required

Prostitutes are not always inclined to make their way to the R-R clinic. "Sometimes, it takes some real creative talking to get them to come in here," Malinova says. "Its a migrating labor force; they'll be here one year, move somewhere else another year, or just disappear entirely, from physical or drug abuse."

Outside of Prague, Malinova decided if the women wouldn't come to her, she would go to them. In April, utilizing grants from the European Union and other sources, the group bought a fully equipped ambulance, capable of providing on-the-spot gynecological and H.I.V. examinations. Each week, she hits the road and travels up to Brno, two hundred kilometers from Prague, or to the travel corridors with Austria, Germany and Poland. Along these roadways, where prostitutes serve truck drivers and passing travelers, the need is even more acute, and her mobile clinic offers health check-ups to ten to twenty women a night.

A restless presence, with a raw kind of brassy energy, Malinova is the sort of personality it is hard to imagine restraining during the confined Communist era. She was a professor of sociology at Charles University – a hotbed of dissident activity during the Communist period-with a special interest in what she terms "deviant behavior." In 1988, she was asked by the Interior Ministry to conduct a rare survey of prostitutes. In a country in which it was required, by law, to be employed, prostitution was a deeply underground profession, "a kind of ghetto," restricted primarily to hotels serving foreigners. The women were subject to constant legal harassment, as anyone without the proper papers identifying her or his place of employment was considered a "social parasite," and quickly condemned to prison.

Change in Law Lures More to Streets

In 1990, the law against "social parasitism" was cancelled by the country's first democratically-elected government. The move unleashed what Malinova laughingly calls a "whore boom." Having studied prostitutes from afar, she tired of the academic distance – "the theoretical work is grey, and green, you know, is the tree of life," she says with an exuberant laugh – and began offering medical and psychological counseling from her apartment in 1993. She was in on a boom market.

From 1990 to 1998, the number of prostitutes in the Czech Republic skyrocketed, for several reasons. For one, prostitution became legal, though street solicitation is not. Borders opened to the West, meaning that Germans and Austrians could simply drive across the border and find far less expensive sex than in their own countries. At the same time, the tumultuous changes in the nation's economic and social life-employment was no longer guaranteed and the social safety net was dramatically reduced-threw many young women into lives of financial uncertainty. Today, the highest rate of unemployment in the country – two to three times higher than the average – is among young women under age 25; perceiving themselves as having few other options, many turn to prostitution.

One Benefit of Communism

There was one benefit from the fifty years of relative isolation under the Communist regime: a relatively low incidence of H.I.V. and AIDS. The draconian environment limited those factors that contribute to the spread of the AIDS virus: homosexuality was deeply in the closet, indictable heroin was practically unobtainable, and prostitution was limited primarily to foreigners. The Czech Republic had one of the lowest incidences of AIDS in Europe before 1989. According to Malinova, there are 380 AIDS victims in the country today, a nearly twenty-fold increase from a decade ago (though there may be others never treated, and thus not registered).

As a result, Bliss Without Risk was in an ideal position to practice preventive measures to prevent the spread or appearance of AIDS – a fact that was noted by a group of Swiss doctors, active in a medical group working for H.I.V. prevention, the Czech, Swiss and Slovak Healthcare Society.

"They saw that we were under a glass bowl under the Communism," says Malinova. "It was like a perfect control group for testing means of secondary AIDS prevention."

In contrast to the Czech Republic, Switzerland, a country with roughly equal population – of about 10 million people – and, like the Czech Republic, landlocked in the center of Europe, the incidence of AIDS had ballooned to over 20,000. "They felt they had a historical chance to prove that AIDS prevention was important." The society used Bliss Without Risk as their testing ground, providing Malinova with 100,000 crowns (about $30,000) in 1994, enabling her to move the operation out of her apartment and into the R-R center in 1995. Since that time, she has received grants from a number of West European and U.S. foundations, including Ashoka, which made Malinova a fellow last year.

Like People Without Heads

In addition to providing basic social and health services, Malinova, who plays the bass, has organized theatre and musical performances by users of the R-R, as a self-expressive form of therapy. The Center puts on about five shows a year – generally for conferences of health professionals, doctors and social workers (not for the general public, as she guarantees the players anonymity), in which clients of the clinic sing, dance and basically celebrate their lifestyle with humor. Lately, they've been practicing what she calls Living Pictures – "putting together a picture with living beings." In this way, she plays off the prejudices many people have against prostitution, by placing them in everything from famous paintings to manger scenes, in which the three kings might be played by women or transvestites.

In many cases, they sing songs written by Malinova for the occasion. A piano sits in the R-R waiting room, which is frequently filled with the impulsive playing of those waiting for a check-up. Some of the songs play off the awkward discomfort of the general public with the nature of their profession." Nobody pays attention to the human needs of prostitutes," she says. "They're like blind people without eyes, like people without heads. They make everybody uncomfortable."

The aim of the theatre productions is to encourage the women to find means of expression other than the self-destructive means on the street, which generally means drugs and alcohol. "I am not doing fine art here," says Malinova, showing off an uproarious picture of campily dressed 'actor'/prostitutes in a recent production. "My idea is to look, through theatre, to another source of euphoria that is not drugs."

At times, she does tire of the non-stop travelling, of dealing with the repetitious patterns of self-destruction that she has witnessed. "I can't say that I am not longing sometimes for the academic work. To sit in a library, and prepare my lectures. To simply write and think. But now, I am in the practice, and I'm working with the live material. And there are some very nice moments, when you see someone taking care of themselves, taking power over their lives, then, it really works."