Dagmar Pokorná

“Well, because Martin Roubík had all kinds of friends there, especially Standa Makarov. And Standa Makarov, at that time such nylon bags were worn, and he simply packed the whole bag for us with books that he had at home, which were published by Škvorecký or I don't know where about they were published abroad. Most importantly, we had Václav Černý there. Well, we got on the train, so we took the ferry, we got there, then we changed trains somewhere in Berlin and got on the train. In addition, my friend and I agreed that he would come to Dresden, because he has a cottage not far from Děčín, that he would come to Dresden and that we would give him the books there if the customs inspection came, so that we would not have them on the train. Well, my friend didn't come to Dresden, so we just had this bag in Dresden, we probably had all the books in different backpacks. So we put it in this bag, where I covered it with a sweatshirt and we put it up onto the holders, and the children who were there at the time, little Marry was five, Ondřej was nine, so we told them that if anyone came, we would claim that the bag was not ours, that we would not be familiar with it. Fortunately, no inspection came, so we brought a bag full of books back.”

“After all, I was a bit naive at the time, yes, I did follow those things a bit, but maybe I didn't understand them. In Příbram, still in that high school, I was interested, as I said, my mother used to subscribe to Literary newspapers, and then I came to such magazines as Plamen and Host do domu. Then I moved to Prague and I went to the Czechoslovak writer to buy Guest for the House sometime in the fall and they looked at me as if I had fallen out of the clear blue, because it just did not get published for a real lone time. I simply did not figure certain things practically. It came to me sort of gradually.”