Jan Pecka

"So I came back from the army on the 21st of October. And my brother tells me that Václav Jakeš is hiding here. He had arrived sometime at the beginning of the month, so when I returned, he had already been here for a fortnight or so. He sometimes went for walks in the evening. But not far. Our land was around like this. He also walked to Lašovice, twice maybe. As a Catholic, he wanted to go to confession. It was hay day each day for him, so to speak. But then he would come by the house. He wove wicker baskets, from willow switches. Or when Mum was making something, he would help her out, say by coring apples. He helped us store corn in the barn, for a few days he would be there helping to remove the sheaves. We had to watch out that there was no one passing by. There was a path leading round here, the local secretary used to walk this way to Kosobudy - we were headed under Kosobudy - and he would walk that path maybe every day. He was a communist. One time, that was 1960, it happened there was this one chap from the manor house, Habart, and he was hauling corn, or some such resource. And his tractor capsized out back of the cottage, trailer and all. So he went up to our house. I happened to be away. He came to the house and Jakeš was here also. So Habart saw him. So I don't know - did he tell on him, did he not? But he did say that he had seen a strange man here... One Sunday soon after, we saw a car coming up our way. And Jakeš happened to be in the house again, so we said: 'Go hide yourself! There're some chaps coming along! They're coming this way.' So he climbed into the back, I had my bed there, so he climbed under the bed. Well, and one of the [electrician's - ed.] came in, the other waited outside. And he said they were just checking the electricity, to check on how we have it done. So he went through all the rooms, and he saw the bed was untidy, I hadn't made it when I'd goten up in the morning, I'd left it how it was. And he said: 'Who sleeps here?' I said: 'I do.' So he went through the whole house, checked the attic and the cellar too... Well this other time, Fort [?], he was a neighbour from uphill, he came to visit one evening and Jakeš happened to be in the sitting room, he'd been listening to the radio. The door was only on a latch, it wasn't locked, so the neighbour came along, tried the handle and knocked a few times, so we had to open the door to him. Jakeš didn't have time to escape, so he hid under the bench, and he was there for an hour or two. All broken up afterwards, from how he was scrunched up. I was sitting here at the table, it's the same one as it was then..."