Ctibor Navrátil

"Do you remember what it was like when you first came to see Egon Bondy?" - "Exactly. It was in Nerudova Street and I was absolutely thrilled. For me he was a mythical figure... So I rang his doorbell, he opened the door and I was completely eh, eh... He invited me in and the very first sentence was that nothing could be kept secret with him. So he said in the very first sentence what everybody knew about him, that he was actually a weak person. And that if State Security men pressed him, he'd say anything. He admitted it himself immediately. In the very first sentence. He had a fishbowl, and the second sentence was if I'd like some tea. And if I don't mind if there are fish in it. I wondered if he was going to make tea out of the fish tank water. But by fish, he meant tea leaves floating in the tea. So that's how my conversation with Bondy began."

"Then, when I started studying physiotherapy at the school in Olomouc, I gradually began to get more and more into the sphere of dissent and the underground and I realized that I really didn't want to start the military service. So what was I supposed to do? Most people in that situation used to get locked up in a psychiatric ward. I stopped going to school, and when they started to wonder what was going on, I pretended I was completely stupid. I got locked up in a psychiatric clinic in Olomouc, I was hospitalized and I was looking forward to a blue book and something... But it was such hell there that after a while I started to say that I made it up. That I wasn't such an idiot. Told them to let me go. But they said no. That I was crazy. That I was schizophrenic. That I'm in so much trouble I have to stay in there until they fix me. And that was the last drop."