Jiří Anderle

“Once, Bohumil Hrabal was at our place; he used to come every Tuesday. Suddenly, a mailwoman showed up and brought a telegram. I read it, passed it to Bogan (Bohumil) and told him: ‚Somebody is probably kidding me. It is impossible that I would have won the Grand Prix at such an important biennale. Especially since Adriena Šimotová won here last year.‘ He replied: ‚Well, let’s go to the post office and ask whether it is possible to falsify a telegram.‘ We walked across the Hradčanské square, passing those canonical houses. I remember Bogan telling me: ‚Whenever I go this way past this gate and corner I have an angst, waiting for a leg to appear and kick me. You are in the same situation as me. My books get published... The King of England was published in Swedish and Italian. But nobody talks about it here. Remember that we live in a country which doesn’t forgive somebody’s success. We must learn to mute our gloss.‘ I remember these exact words. We entered this post office and he asked at the counter: ‚We’ve gotten this telegram, please check whether it is genuine or whether someone is just making fun of us.‘ It was this tiny office right across the entrance to St. Vitus cathedral. The lady had a look at it and said: ‚It all fits, it is genuine.‘ And he replied: ‚See, dude, congratulations!‘“

“Right at the beginning of the war, Pavlíkov suddenly filled up with an incredible amount of people since the Germans were throwing the Czechs out of the Sudetenland and the Czechs were moving inland. We’ve had so many new friends among those boys and girls. Pavlíkov was so crammed that those coming from the Sudetenland would have to live in pear drying rooms. But for us kids, this was fantastic because it broadened our game territory. Small kids, our friends were living in the pear drying rooms. In front of the rooms were fields, hop gardens, orchards… So we played with them in there. It was not for us to realize that it was a tragic consequence of war. Children have their own very intense world, filled mostly with children’s games.”

“Those were sad experiences. I was still going home for the weekend back then. In the end, it only took an hour by bus or an hour by train and fifteen minutes by bus from Prague. I saw those beloved cows being taken out of the barns and to the collective stabling. My grandpa, who was long retired by then, worked in the collective stable as a night guard. I often used to bring him coffee there. I saw my neighbors slowly gathering in there, visiting their beloved cows which they cared about greatly. They would always grab the cow’s head, weep and said: ‘Aren’t you homesick in here? Aren’t your feet cold? Would you fancy an apple?’ They would pull apples out of their pockets. Those were emotional scenes. ‘Don’t you want some bread? You used to love bread crusts so much!’ Now, those cow eyes… I will never forget it in my life. It was terrible.”