Tomáš Křivánek

“During the interrogations which followed the first one, they said: ‘Your wife out there is making trouble, so we arrested her and we’re going to send one of your sons to an orphan home in Aš, and the other to Košice. You know they’re at an age where later they won’t even know each other or you either. So you’ll be helping your wife and kids if you talk.’ They were constantly using these ways. Or they used this, that they took me from Ruzyně to Bartolomějská Street, there they stuck me in a cell, and without a single interrogation and ten hours later they took me back to Ruzyně. From the beginning there was an absolute, later a bit less so, censorship of my correspondence, not only did they black out texts, but they principally refused to accept letters with any sort of human encouragement whatsoever, from both my wife and other people. The pressure was constant, this, what we’re talking about, was the pressure of the investigators, the prosecutor, and then of course the pressure from the prison staff, from the guards. All’s quiet and then suddenly they started banging the metal doors with their batons, storm in with a dog, face the wall, two steps back, frisking. There were these metal drawers there where one had one’s let’s say tiny property, they would throw everything in them into one pile in the middle of the floor. Now the dog starts barking, when there was some salami there it slobbered all over it. Then they left. The law mandated that once a week we had the chance to go out for a walk, but I didn’t go. The first two, maybe three months I didn’t go on any so called outing. It meant in some corridor in the courtyard, watch towers overhead, and them staring at you holding machine guns, I didn’t go. The hygiene there was what it was, once every week they wouldn’t send you to the showers, saying: ‘The others were there too long, you’ll go next week.’ The conditions there were how they were.”

“Once a culture inspector came there and his eyes about popped out of his head: Jaroslav Jeroným Neduha was on stage, the band Extempore was playing, hair past his waist, hair to his bum, cigarette in his mouth, playing guitar. He stared at him and then started yelling at me: ‘What about the fire regulations?! For crying out loud, he’s smoking up there! End the concert at once!’ But I was ready for him, (the Prague) Jazz Days were long gone and everything always played out the same way. I said: ‘I won’t do it, go up there yourself, and tell him that you are ending the concert. Nothing doing. I like it, it’s fine with me, I’m not going to end anything.’ He called someone saying they were going to shut off the electric. My then wife and Alena had a certain foresight, so they locked up the circuit with our lock, the breaker. And I said: ‘Well, if you won’t have it any other way, alright then, let’s turn off the electric.’ We went to the breaker, we tugged at it, nothing happened. I’ll cut the chase: the concert went on to its end, but it was the last concert we had there.”

“Mom was worried about me then, she said: ‘They’ll kill you, those Russians, they’re savage.’ She worked as a mail carrier and she said: ‘I won’t let you, you’re coming with me for my rounds.’ She delivered mail in Hanspaulka nad Dejvicemi. Back then mail carriers wore a dark grey-black uniform with orange shoulder markings; they had caps and a huge leather satchel. I said: ‘I don’t want to, but I guess I’m coming with you on your rounds if you say so.’ Once we drove out to Hanspaulka, Mom was stuffing the mailboxes with letters, and suddenly a Russian jeep stopped by us, they swooped down on Mom, and tackled us to the ground, twenty centimeters away from my face I saw a machine gun aimed at me, and they started rifling through Mom’s bag. Later we realized that they hadn’t known who we were and had thought we were relaying something. Everything was flying around. In those times mail carriers delivered people’s pensions. They had a relatively big sum of money in those bags, during that time, eight to ten thousands crowns; it was all over the street. They didn’t take anything, hopped in their jeep, and left. I said to Mom: ‘See, how dangerous it is when I go on your rounds with you! If I had just delivered my newspapers nicely, everything would have been alright.”