Pavel Kuneš

"We started using Czech immediately and I began talking with children as I had done before. Firstly, there was just one child, then six, twenty, thirty ones, and step by step, the Sunday 9 o´clock mass became a frequently visited one. Later, when the possibility of the so-called parish councils was discussed, we immediately set up one. It involved about ten people, mostly families... The parish council was an advisory body of the priest and was supposed to shape the life of the church. So we met and talked about how to make the church life more valuable for us. I actually didn´t have any missionary goals. I just thought that if we would feel well in the church, do something to make us happy there, we can pass this pleasure on in many ways... I also tried to add all sorts of things to the mass. Once a week, like in Pilsen before, I didn´t leave for sacristy, but went between the pews, told people something and said: ´What questions do you have?´ People asked me some questions and I answered them... I felt it was my duty to respond to any activities which people were doing, to any signs of their church cooperation. For example, I started going to church choir rehearsals - there was a great choir (in St. Ignatius Church) - and I always told them something. We talked about the Second Vatican documents because it wasn´t easy for church singers to put up with change in the liturgy. They were used to singing for another way of mass celebration... And since I could sing many new songs, the modern ones which came up then, I sang them with the young and they liked it. They took the guitar, and soon, ´a circle´ came out which sang these songs in their meetings. And I told them: ´Why don´t you sing them also in church?´ So, they tried them in an ordinary weekday mass as an insert. Those six or ten children, about 16 or 17 year old, came to the altar with a guitar, played one song and it was appreciated so much that the parish council said: ´Let´s make it a whole mass. We can all learn it, after all!´ Everything was reproduced on a typewriter at that time, using carbon paper etc. But the songs were handed out over the pews and everybody learned them. It was awesome. Eventually, the whole church sang these songs´.

"I went there and said to myself: ´I´ll show them they can go hang!´So, I bought some bread roll, entered the gate and was still eating it. I was 19 then... I was eating that bread roll even in the police office, when they were explaining to me in a few hours conversation that they had a ´considerable´ interest in very good relationships between the church and the state. However, to make it possible, it is necessary for them to know what´s going on in the church to prevent anything bad from happening, and to channel it, help some person etc. I was listening with horror and repeating that as soon as I hear anything like that, I´ll report it to the rector or spiritual adviser of the seminary. But they said: ´Well, we might see each other here or there, somewhere in a café, for example, just to have a word...´ I did my best to ward it off all the time, and it was really difficult because I came there with the fact that I won´t answer at all, that I´ll say: ´Yes, no, yes, no.´ But it wasn´t really possible because they started the conversation like this: ´You know, I have difficulties when I´m looking at some paintings. I like the realistic ones but I can´t understand the painters like Václava Špála... How would you explain this to a layman like me?´ So, what could I do? I started explaining how he stylized colors etc. until I talked myself out so much that it was suddenly impossible to say: ´Yes, yes´and ´No, no´... But it turned out well in the end. I said: ´Don´t worry, gentlemen. I definitely wouldn´t like any conflicts and I´ll let my rector or spiritual adviser know about everything´. So, they said: ´OK, put it down on a piece of paper.´ They got me a piece of paper and a pencil, so I started writing what they were dictating, but the horror was that, though I pretended I was absolutely calm and sure about everything, I suddenly wasn´t able to make a straight line. My hand was shaking so terribly when I was writing: ´I confirm that I won´t disclose anything about this meeting nor tell anyone...´, that it was absolutely illegible... I´m used to drawing a straight line but I couldn´t keep my hand this time. I was interrogated many times after that, under various circumstances, but it had never been so horrible as this first moment when they defeated me by making me speak like this. They took turns repeatedly, the old one left, the young one stayed, the young was kind, the old told me off that I can´t behave like this when I´m speaking with them... So, I am grateful to the Lord because there were lots of people who didn´t manage it.

I was approached by two other soldiers, who were already going to leave the army, but they had to stay because of the Berlin Crisis. These were Pavel Pecháček, later the director of the Radio Free Europe, and his friend Jiří Malášek who emigrated and worked for the Radio Free Europe. They were a part of another battery but we lived in the same barracks. They had a puppet theatre there and invited me to their performance. I had been a member of the Říše loutek (The Realm of Puppets ensemble in Prague) since 1948, where I really acted, illuminated the scene and helped with various things. And since I have always loved puppets, I took to it right away and became the agent of puppet events. When my two predecessors left, I started seeking other people. It was really difficult because the soldier guys didn´t lean to it by themselves. However, I managed to persuade a few in the end. Two of them had already had something with the clink, one had been convicted of thieving, I think, but I put it together later, when I looked back on it. So we made a puppet theatre together, we even went to play in nearby schools twice a year. We acted with the puppets first but I started to make marionettes later, which were very difficult to make in these military conditions because I had to use only the material which was available. But when the officers saw how many things we were doing, they offered one room for us, where we had all our things stored and where I made the marionettes. I painted the scenery that was easily transported and manipulated in many different ways, we made a new stage where we also made black theatre performances and travelled with it on various places. There also was the so-called Military Art Creativity Competition (ASUT) then, so we went to Hořovice and took part with the Král Lávra shadow play´.