academic painter Helena Trösterová

"I remember as a child that feeling of security, the kind of security that a child needs. You're lying down, you can't sleep, and now you're like a little bit scared, and suddenly you see the American stove throwing these lights. It's lit under dad's door. Mom's typing in her room - because mom wrote a lot, she was a writer too, besides - so it was such a feeling of security and peace that, well, everything's all right because dad's lit, mom ,'s typing, and the stove's warm. So I remember that as a very early memory, because we shared a children´s room, three cots like in the Beetles (Broučci - czech fairytale) a little bit, so that's one of the first... one of my very first memories."

"We knew that dad was already making films, illustrating, he was busy - which I'll mention later - and so sometimes he wasn't at home because it was explained to us how to make a film, that when you cut and do sound afterwards, like post-synchro, that it just takes time, which was true. So for example, he wasn't home for a week and he would come home in the evening. We always waited by the window for the car to come and we knew that dad was home, so nothing seemed strange and we were a perfectly normal family that always met around the table once a day. Because we had a lot of... I mean, especially my mother was very particular about manners, so we really had to know how to eat with cutlery, wipe our mouths with a napkin, put a napkin on our knees, etc. Waiting for the eldest to start eating, just all the basics of manners, saying hello. I still remember how my mom would always hold our hands when we came to visit and squeeze that little hand to say hello and say hello so we wouldn't forget. And then goodbye. So it was a very strict upbringing in that respect. So we didn't know anything was wrong. My dad looked after us in an exemplary way, he was wonderful, he was great fun, he played with us. There were no problems. Well, I myself didn't find out about all this until I was sixteen, in high school, where my unloved classmate told me. Unloved partly because he was mean, and partly because he was a mathematician, which was a terrible combination for me. He started asking me about the house in Kampa and how we were living there. And I looked at him in amazement, because I had absolutely no idea that there was a house in Kampa and who would live there. So I came home in a huff. I can still see it, the scene when I went to the kitchen to my mother and said, 'Mom, please, is there a house in Kampa? What do you mean we live there? We don't live there.' Mum explained it all to me, how it was."