Ruth Kopecká

At the visits it was always that he sat on a wooden box in the middle between two prison guards. And on the other side of this barrier sat the families of the prisoners, of the inmates. That barrier was always between us, it was always from wall to wall, so it wasn’t even possible to walk between them. We couldn’t get to the prisoners, and they couldn’t get to us. We were separated. Somewhere in the middle of the barrier there was a wire net that went all the way to the ceiling, sometimes there was glass which had the wire inside, and sometimes there was only a really low panel. It was obvious that it depended on the current political situation, if it was intensifying or loosening up. The way that Mom and Dad touched and kissed despite all of those barriers is probably the worst thing I experienced during all my childhood. I knew Dad from photographs, he was a very handsome, elegant, and always very well-groomed man. Sometimes before the visit he wasn’t allowed to shave, once he even came with a week’s worth of stubble on his face, but his head was freshly shaven and was wearing an old army uniform and he looked more like Babinský than my father. And when there was a favorable political situation and some nice guards perhaps, Dad could even have me sit on his lap. I had a panic-inducing fear of him. You can see that my childhood experiences from Mírov are a lot of fear and anxiety. But these prison visits had their moments of lightness too. Like I was talking about the packages. Mom always had a carefully prepared package full of good things to eat. With chocolate, bananas, honey. Always ready in case she would able to give it to him. But it was only for the chance of it happening. Often she wasn’t allowed to. Or, rather, most of the time she wasn’t. Then I’d hardly be able to wait for when I’d finally be able to eat that banana.

So, the ninth of May was a state holiday. It was the fifteenth anniversary of the liberation. We were still in bed with Mom in the morning, when our neighbor, Mr. Lébl, rung our bell, and had the newspaper with him. On the front page there was a huge headline that President Novotný had announced political amnesty for political prisoners. Well that created a huge amount of havoc at home, Mom went to take out pajamas and slippers for Dad, which she had had already prepared anyway, truth be told, in case he happened to return. Only that, well, he didn’t come back. On May 9 he didn’t come home. So we waited the next day and still no. So we went to sleep. But after the last bus from Prague had come, someone tapped on the window around midnight. I’d been lying in bed for a long time, I wasn’t even being all that quiet. But in the morning I couldn’t stand it any longer and started to let it be known that I was already awake. Mom came and told me go to the bed to see Dad. But I just couldn’t do it, he was a total stranger to me. But in the morning he took us to school, and I was very proud of him.

Sometime at the turn of the twentieth century, when my great grandfather was the mayor of Řitka, orphans were brought to the village to be divided among the families. Tonča, who then was six years old, was one of them. She was tiny, neglected, she didn’t have any hair, she had wounds all over her head, she couldn’t speak, she acted almost like an animal. She was afraid of everyone, she slid into the corner or under the table and of course nobody wanted to take her in. So my great grandfather took her. And my grandmother was eighteen-years-old then and started to take care of Tonča. She started to look after her, started to take care of all of her wounds and maladies, to teach her to speak and she worked so hard with her that in two years Tonča was able to go to school and learn how to write. She learned how to read. Only that she acted a bit differently than the other kids. Thus she stayed in the family, she helped out, helped in the fields, and she didn’t talk much. But she was happy when someone came over and Tomáš and I always got into lots of trouble with her. So that’s the story of Tonča. Maybe I should add that she was inherited from generation to generation, and sometimes Vláďa and I would say that we’d get her one day, but my mom took care of her and Tonča died in her care, in Řitka, calm and happy to be home.

We always awaited this permission slip with great impatience. Before going to work in the morning, Mom would run to post office to see it hadn’t happened to come yet, because she was afraid that she would miss the date, because replacement ones weren’t given. She prepared a lot for the visit, and always carefully prepared a package. She looked for the right food and for something to pack it with. It was such that Mom wanted Dad to get things that he would be missing in jail. That meant something good to eat, like maybe some chocolate, some vitamins, which meant some oranges or bananas, but you couldn’t get them anywhere then, as kids we didn’t even really know of them. Packaging was also important because if it happened that was able to give him something, the weight of the food was really important. So when she wanted to bring some lard or honey, the weight of glass it was in really mattered, so she tried to get a hold of those plastic cups, which at the time were really quite rare. But I remember that you could get them from our butcher’s shop, and he set them aside and gave them to her so she could use them. Then there was no plastic packaging, no plastic cups or boxes. And she always took care to make sure they had something new in them, so Dad could see that we were doing well and had everything we needed.