Miriam Prokopová

„But what I witnessed in person, when they released Havel from prison, he made rounds visiting his friends and he dropped by in Stará Říše. And in Stará Říše, so, there were the Tatra 603 carps parked, for those who wouldn’t know, big black cars. And there were maybe five or six of them. And they stood by our house, they just stood there, and they went to have a swim so the cars stood by the Kladina pond, they [secret police] looked at them with the binoculars, how they’re bathing. So it was a memorable experience.”

„And now, Martin had his guests from Prague, and there was Egon Bondy and they had company and we were, like, fifteen, I was sixteen and my siblings were much younger. They let us sit there. We sat among those adults and they discussed politics. And it was like this in the villa of my grandfather. That the aunts and uncles would meet every Sunday afternoon, at around three, we would go to the villa. All the families met up there. And now, politics was discussed, they talked about religion, about everything. And this was the best school we could have. We knew artists, we knew operas, we knew painters. And then, more distant relatives or acquaintances would come. For example, to that villa up there, for those Sunday debates, Mrs and Mr. Reynek would come from Petrkov. ‘Oh, the Reyneks are coming!’ And, we would sit on such, in summer, on such a long bench, there were several benches and we would sit in the garden. Here, there was the wall of the house, the garden in front of us and that’s where we sat. Who did not want to be in the kitchen could sit on the bench and we chatted. I have a photograph where I am six months old, with my dad sitting along with [my?] siblings right on this bench. And Martin and Juliana would let us among them the same way. When we came, they would never say ‘Not now, we have visitors, come over later.’ No, they invited us to their table, we sat there with them.”