Ladislav Kukla

"A friend of mine who had a head nurse in Bohnice and her superior saw my works in Mánes when I had an exhibition there in the seventy-first year. So when she confided in him that I had been fired from everything, they really did have a bit of a repository there, even of the dissidents. So he offered to take me on for a year, that I would get a label that I was just nuts. And he said, 'Here we have art therapy, yeah, you'll have your own room here, you can paint. Once a month we'll send you home to your wife and kid for three days and then we'll see. I thought, I'll take it now. But the house was broken, smashed, now I said, I'll have some disability pension, my wife will stay alone, but for painting I'll do it. So I walked down the corridor in Bohnice to see the chief and he was at the end. And now there were these open walls of glass and now there were these various fools, even in the corridor there were these kinder fools. And if you'll excuse me if I show you, when I went in there, one was looking at me like this, the other one was looking at me like this, so I went to the chief medical officer with the sign, I was about to knock and I don't know why, such an impulse, so I turned around and I went home, and by then I had decided I was done with my life."

"One day four relatively young boys came to us. I don't think they even had a warrant for some kind of home visit, but they didn't give a damn then. And they called my mother in and said that every dentist still had some gold stashed away - it was mandated that all dental gold had to be given to the state for free. So dad certainly gave some things away, but some things, especially the gold plates, as they were, they made gold crowns, and even platinum teeth. Whoever had the money had some gold and platinum stashed away, buried. And when the four young State Security officers came, they told my mother that they would leave my father alone, that he would continue to go to the Health House, and they would let me finish my studies. I still had a younger brother who was healthy, he didn't have a spine like me - and they would let him go too if he told them where dad kept the dental gold. And mom told them if the officer would give her the officer's word of honor on that, and he said he would give her the officer's word of honor. And there were no metal detectors back then, so it was buried somewhere in the basement, so mom showed it to them. They dug it up and I was about 16, so they invited me. They smelled of some of that vodka. And now they're showing me this platinum and they're like, 'Do you know what this is?' And I'm being stupid. It's funny, I saw that it was platinum, maybe dad had talked about it before, so mom had some family jewelry - and I'll talk about grandpa on mom's side - dad had some coins, and they took it all and they charged dad and he got three years."