Jan Klos

“I was twice in the folk court, where all the students had to go up the hill three kilometers from school and they stood us there… His name was Hlavatý, a barber, the chairman of the district national committee. The state policemen brought in the rope-pulled tradesmen, traitors and theft of socialist property. And now they were yelling at them and judging them. In the eyes of the people, they condemned them to those jobs ... We could have had caps, and the prisoners had to take them off.”

“Immediately they began to engrave in the garden, immediately looking for seedlings and immediately using the neighbors´ septic for fertilizing. They had undergone the route through the Soviet Union or around the world, so they knew better. If they got food stamps, when they were employees, I don't know. There was a family in the old house. We had two rooms, there were two rooms upstairs, and the legionaries lived there, two families. Then, I don't know how long it was, someone knocked on the door at night, and that was my grandfather with my grandmother from Slovakia. They sold their business in 1947 and moved to the son-in-law. All the money they gave him, so he bought a stone quarry Pitzberk, Hanisberg. Pitzberk, it is near Žilina, in direction to Zvolen to the country. He built a beautiful wooden house there. I was there during the holidays… Suddenly, at night, my grandmother, my mom in a nightgown, stood by the gate, saying, 'Kazan, lie down!' Grandma said, 'Bělka, is that you?' - 'Mom, where did you come from?' - 'They moved us out there in Krupina. We could have a car, we have it somewhere at the train station. ‘Such a drnc drnc cililink. 'They were nice to us, but we have nowhere to go.' So mom opened up, moved us into her bed, and there my grandfather and grandmother laid down. But there was my mother´s sister with her boyfriend and a daughter behind the door.”

“Then we organized an exhibition in Brussels. I have a life experience when I saw Trnka with my own eyes. Although at the time I hated his illustrations, the exhibition was designed by Trnka. It was organized at this school because Fixl was his classmate. I was making big money there. I worked from three o'clock to midnight and I enjoyed it very much. It was one area of the city, the other a village, such big areas, and the composition of what it looked like when it was plowed, and tractors and horses and all that ... I had good results in material processing and form. I've always made a composition of what I imagined. The draft was sketches. One day I turned and heard such a creak of doors, typical, it's still there. And the old man came in, had such a stupid hat, and walked past the exposition. Suddenly he stopped, came back and started digging in my composition. He pushed things around. I was so pissed off, pardon me. He went back, talked to Fixl, then went through, checked it briefly... In a week he came back to consult or just visit, I don't know what it was called, and I had it rearranged again. He hit it, summed it up and straightened as he imagined it. When he left, I went to Fixl and said, 'Professor, there's an old man here and pisses me off.' And he says, 'Please don't be fooled, this is Trnka, the author.' "