Richard Pogoda

“I can still remember the day. It was in the Army House cellar, I was sat by the piano, and me, Jarda Gébl and some sound engineer were arguing whether the piano needed amplifying in such a small space, or whether a mike for the vocalist was enough. So, we were in the middle of this dispute, when the door opened and Pavel says, ‘What now?’ In the doorway, there was this fair-haired dwarf of a man who was asking after Pavel Dostál and the Dex Club people. That’s us, we said. And he says: ‘I’m a singer-songwriter, I’d like to play you something.’ He was wondering whether he could… And me and Pavel both puffed up with pride because by that point we had written some twenty cabaret songs which constituted two whole shows, and frankly, no one could do it better than us, we thought. So, Pavel says, ‘Go ahead, then.’ So, he got on stage, and he was still as short as if he was standing on the ground, but there was no one around, so it didn’t matter. He sang one of his funny songs, ‘The Dodo’s Wife’, a decent cabaret piece. Not bad, we thought. And he says: ‘You see, this is the kind of stuff I write for my friends’ amusement, but actually, my writing is more like this.’ And he sang ‘The Pieta’. And our jaws dropped, we’d never heard anything like that before. It was on the same level as Jiří Suchý’s ‘The Tulip’ or something along these lines. It was incredibly powerful. Then he sang another two songs and me and Pavel looked at each other thinking we’re done here as composers. He was… it wasn’t false modesty, but at the same time he wasn’t too full of himself. And Pavel Dostál says ‘How many have you got?’ And he goes ‘Don’t know, some twenty, thirty songs.’ He had this old, battered guitar which was out of tune, but his delivery had this incredible presence and vehemence. His tunes… He played A minor, E7, G7 and C major over and over again, and yet it was so powerful. And so there and then they agreed he would have his own show, which Pavel would direct, and his name would feature on the posters, as no one knew him there. I wasn’t there, but Pavel told me later. They were rehearsing, Kryl played three songs, Dostál only told him when to take breaks for some lines, and Pavel says: ‘Hey, don’t take this the wrong way, but the venue is empty, and still the backs of the chairs cover up half of your face. This way only the folks in the two front rows will be able to see you.’ So, one of the technicians went backstage and returned with a wooden banana crate. Kryl got on top of it and Pavel says ‘See? Now you’re visible.’ Apparently, Kryl played four or five pieces and he says ‘You know what, Pavel, don’t worry about any fancy direction. Aim a spotlight at the crate, and I won’t get down from it.’ The world as seen from two metres high is a whole different story than from his actual 153 centimetres, or whatever was his height. And Pavel says ‘You know what? You’re right.’ So, basically, they just arranged at which moments he’d tell a story, leaving the rest more or less improvised, but giving it some kind of gradation and structure, and that’s all Pavel did with it in terms of direction. The first night wasn’t bad; but after the second night, we already had him play three or four times a month. Jam-packed every time. And the word went that there was this short singer-songwriter who was tearing the communists a new arsehole.”

“From the 1930s until the year 1960, a certain Miss Mimi Schostalová was a tenant in our villa. She was partly, perhaps quarter-Jewish. And on the top floor, we had the Haases, a Jewish family, but they were not related to the famous actor Hugo Haas. Apparently, Haas is a very common surname among the Jews. My grandfather was a great friend of the Jewish community in Olomouc, as he used to live in their houses and regularly visit the synagogue. He was well-liked among them. Once it had all started crumbling, and they started to round up the Jews and intern them in concentration camps, he was actively trying to slow down the whole process. For example, when they decided that the Haases had to leave the luxurious bedsit in our beautiful villa and go live on the periphery, he said that the bedsit was freezing, that our central heating didn’t reach all the way up, so they had to use a wood stove, and above all, it was on the third floor, and who wanted to struggle up the stairs. He lied to the authorities as best he could. It didn’t help, they ended up in concentration camp, anyway. Actually, the Jewish authorities discovered where they had been dragged to. About three years ago, their grandchildren turned up in Olomouc and I showed them where their grandfather and grandmother used to live. Miss Mimi was staying in a room one floor below them. Throughout the war, she was dreading the arrival of transport call-up papers, and it just wasn’t coming. Either the famous German thoroughness failed in this case, or it was her mixed blood thanks to which her turn just hadn’t come quickly enough. Anyway, it was May, there were Russians everywhere, in our villa, in the park, and people were walking about with that feeling that it was finally over. She put on her most expensive jewellery, which was a Swiss watch hanging off a necklace like a pendant, and she went out into the park. It was May, a glorious day, and before she had walked twenty metres, what did she hear but ‘Davaj časy!’, that is ‘Give me your watch!’ She grabbed it and refused to give it up. The common soldier cocked his gun, he would have shot her down. She started moaning in German, as she didn’t know any Czech. By lucky coincidence, a Czech policeman was walking past, and he explained to her: ‘Ma’am, this common Russian has to hand everything over to his superiors, they’re collecting everything at the townhall, so go get it later.’ Well, what would you expect, until this day a giant nickel clock is sitting on my mantelpiece, which they had given to her in exchange for the watch which had gone missing. And this is how things were in 1945.”