Alfréd Schubert

“You couldn’t just go travel wherever you wanted to, not even to the Soviet Union, only with the national travel agency, Čedok. In 1973 a close friend of mine was travelling around Ukraine with Cirkus Praga. He worked as a roustabout, which is the name for those who build the circus tent and help during the show. He sent me an invitation, it was false again, he had to lie that I was his cousin. I joined him in the city of Chernivtsi. I liked the circus, I didn’t want to go home after just a week. The boys from the circus knew a nurse at the hospital. She took a sheet of headed paper, wrote I had pneumonia, borrowed a stamp and added an illegible signature to it. I wrote to my work place in Prague that I had fallen ill and I would return as soon as I recovered. I stayed with the circus a whole month, I made friends with a bunch of roustabouts, I helped put the bars up when the tigers were to be on show, to lay out the carpets or put down the floorboards for the artistic cyclists.”

“One day Jack hinted mysteriously that he had something very interesting for me. I had to promise him I wouldn’t tell a word to anyone. When I promised that and we shook hands, he told me to come to Peace Square on Thursday, that he’d take me somewhere. We went to the number sixteen [tram] terminus at Zlíchov, where they still have a shipyard to this day. Back then the sign still read Sokol Shipyard, but soon afterwards it was renamed to SU [sports union] Stalingrad. We crossed over a small bridge and entered a wooden building. There were all sorts of boats on the ground floor and club rooms on the first floor. I suddenly found myself at the meeting of a Scout troop, which something amazing to me, I couldn’t imagine that there were still some Scout troops in existence. I had read about them in books, but I hadn’t dared dream that I myself could belong to a Scout troop. Jack introduced me, saying I was his good friend. It was a water troop, and so he presented me to the captain, who was nicknamed Windy. His name was Karel Vinecký. I don’t remember how Windy [used to] start the meeting, he would usually recall the anniversary of some interesting event. Then we played various Scout games, we learnt the Scout Law, and prepared for expeditions. When it was said there’d be an expedition, say he’d only signal by Morse code where we’d meet up. It was somehow understood as a matter of course that we mustn’t speak about it anywhere. It was taken for granted, that’s how much Windy trusted us. I think he didn’t even emphasise much that the activity was illegal.”