Ladislav Szalay

"When the next year, the editors didn't want me, but they couldn't let me go. So, like that, I wasn't doing anything. But I couldn't find a job once I was laid off for three months. Wherever I applied, I was rejected. They weren't going to employ another right-wing opportunist from Rohac. I was even trying to arrange at my former workplace in the academy, where I had a lot of acquaintances, I worked there for three years, so I fit in with that collective of my peers who stayed there. And they say: "Come join us, we're setting up this encyclopaedic institute. You look around; you understand everything from sports to economics. Come." They arranged it with the party's chairman, the union chairman, and the academy's director. "You can join us. Come." Comrade, Bilak's son-in-law, who was in charge of science at the Central Committee, disapproved. When he discovered I wanted to go there, he said that would never happen. With an exclamation point, he showed me. So that's how I ended up. So I was forced to rest somehow, and then when I didn't find anything for those three months, I had unpaid leave for three months, so they had to find a place for me, and they found me a place with them in the accounting department, where I was crunching numbers from left to right. And I had the lowest salary in the accounting office. Because there was one worker with a high school diploma, that was the boss, and three girls, women, older ladies who had - the boss had a high school diploma, those three had an eight-year burgher school and some other vocational schools, the others had elementary education. I had the lowest salary because they wrote down experience: 0. So a college degree is unnecessary where I was forced to work."

"Three professors judged it. I knew all three of them. I greatly respected a professional, and two were party exponents. And the man I respected published a magazine that was not an imitation, but a ghost, something like Tigrid in Prague used to publish their - what's the name of it... Well, I'll figure it out right away. After '48, it was banned (Obzory, Tigrid's Obzory). I was buying them, but one issue was missing. I was in the editorial office at the Palisades, and there he, this professor, gave me one copy you don't have to pay. Well, thank you. I've known him ever since. And coincidentally, at the first students' ball of our faculty, I was picked to go, and you're going to go, and you're going for that lady, for that lady, to keep it organised, that is, for the opening dance. And I danced with his wife. She was young; I was five years older. But a nice lady. So, that was the kind of relationship I had with this professor. And I considered him the only one who was an expert. These two other ...now - the first one said, that, "Comrade, you have proved the opposite of what you should have proved." I was surprised, "How come I was supposed to prove something? I was supposed to do research." Well, that, "Okay, but you were supposed to confirm what you didn't confirm." I say: "What was I supposed to confirm?" "That life is getting better in Slovakia." "Life was improving," I say, "You know, the numbers gave me were like that." The other one said, "That's just it, comrade; you should have evaluated the source of the numbers. Those were bourgeois statistics, you should have criticised that. And not to write here that the economy is now worse." Those were the two. And the third one, who was an expert, he didn't say a word about the content. He excused himself very well and said: "In eighty-eight pages, you quote Comrade Stalin only thirteen times. That is not a good calling card."