My mother’s first cousin, teta Maruška — Maria Chalupníková, born Knihová — lived in Tvrdošín. Her son was Milan. I was there more than once. My mother sometimes needed somebody else to take care of me for a while. She sometimes had very bad eczema on her arms and had to spend a few weeks in the hospital for treatment, and I do not know whether that was the reason for any particular stay in Tvrdošín.

I cannot tell any more which of these things belong to which stay. One of the stays was three or four weeks, but I do not know which one.

The family lived in a corner house on the main square and they had a bakery. The store was in front, there was a bedroom on the side, and in the back was where they made the dough and did the baking, with the ovens. There was a large garden with trees, and behind that was the Váh.

I loved the fresh baked goods. There were two men working in the bakery who were friendly to me and let me eat things once they had cooled off.

I had an air gun there and I tried to shoot birds with it, and I had a bicycle and rode around the town. I went with Milan to watch the fly-fishing for trout. I remember a soccer game on a Sunday. There was a bridge across the river, and on the other side of the bridge they were resurfacing the road. The man driving the steamroller let me and a local boy my age ride in the cab with him, back and forth.

Peter had taught me a silly bet in Výčapky, where I wrote down something impossible on a piece of paper and then stood on the paper and said I had done it. I used it on the bakers in Tvrdošín and got ten crowns out of them.

One time the bakers put me on the big wooden peel they used for the bread and pretended they were going to put me into the oven. I yelled and teta Maruška came and stopped it. They were not going to do anything to me.

At the beginning it felt to me like I was being sent away, but I liked being in Tvrdošín, and I went back there again later. I was homesick the whole time anyway. The only thing that was missing was my mother.

In between, Jana and I stayed with relatives in Žilina. I never found out exactly how those people were related to us, and I do not remember how long we were there.

We both went to school in Žilina while we stayed there. I do not remember the name of the school, and when I looked for it later in the school papers I still have, it was not there.

The husband in that family managed a small old gas station. His wife and their child took Jana and me skiing in the mountains, and we stayed overnight at the top of a ski lift, in a room with a number of strangers in it. I had an ear infection and it hurt, and I remember crying.

After that we went back to Prague. A photograph from that ski trip was made into a postcard and it was sent from Prague to my father at Ilava, and I still have it. It is postmarked Prague, April 10, 1951, and it is addressed to him as Jan Pliczka, Ilava, Trestnica pre mužov. What is written on it is about the trip and about my ear.

After Žilina I was in Tvrdošín again.

Somewhere in Slovakia I cut my left thumb while I was cutting an apple, and the knife went right through the skin. I do not know any more which place I was in when it happened. My mother bandaged it, the bleeding stopped, and nobody worried about it.

Dr. Zdeněk Vahala had known me since I was little. Before the thumb accident he had already been trying to find out why I was so skinny. More than once he made me drink an awful white liquid and stand in front of an X-ray machine while he watched. I do not remember any pictures being taken. What I remember him saying was that my stomach was small and that I had a lot of gas in it.

About three months after I cut my thumb I showed my mother, as a kind of trick, “Look what I can do,” because I could bend it totally the other way. I did not think anything was wrong. She immediately realized that something was wrong and took me to Vahala.

Vahala found that I had cut the tendon through, and after three months the tendon had pulled back. They operated and reattached it, and I had a lot of therapy on it, so the thumb sits naturally with a slight bend in it, but the last joint has never moved since.

My hand was in a plaster cast after the operation, and I stayed in the hospital for a few days. I do not remember how many. What I remember most is the strong, obnoxious smell of the anesthetic gas and how much it hurt. Later an older man was brought into the bed next to me after a serious operation. He was exhaling the same gas, and the smell in the room became much stronger. My mother came to see me. I do not remember whether she was there when I woke up.

Vahala later recommended a dětská ozdravovna, a convalescent home for undernourished children, at Zlaté Hory in the Jeseníky. I think it was at one of my follow-up visits, but I do not remember which one. The stay was for two months.

The place itself was very nice and the people taking care of us were kind and the country around it was beautiful. I did not dislike it there. I just felt that I should be at home.

I slept on the second floor in a large, nice dormitory. There were many ordinary beds, not bunk beds. I would guess there were about ten to fifteen children in my room, and there was more than one children’s bedroom on that floor. There was a dining room downstairs, but I do not remember much about the meals.

Before bedtime, in the bedroom, I was given a spoon of fish oil, which I hated, and egg yolk whipped up with sugar in a cup, which I loved. Not every child got them, and I do not know why. Before lights-out they played Spejbl and Hurvínek stories over the loudspeakers, and when the stories finished we were expected to be quiet.

We went on organized hikes in the mountains with the staff. The children walked in pairs, and most of the time I had the same partner. I do not remember his name or where he came from. I only remember that he was one of the stronger children. There were rivers and beautiful old fir forests where the ground was covered with soft needles that were good to walk on and to play on. I think we collected the new growth off the fir trees. I also remember drinking tea made from new fir growth, but I do not know whether what we collected was what they used for the tea.

At the end of the two months my father and my mother and Jana came. I was sure I was leaving and going home that day. They took me outside and around the corner, where there was a tower-like part of the building. I have never forgotten what that building looked like. There they told me that the place had recommended that I stay another two months.

I was devastated and I wanted to go home. But it did not matter.

After the first two months all the other children left and a new group came. I was the only one staying four months, and I had to make a whole new set of friends. The first two months were the summer, and school had started during the second two months.

I told my regular walking partner that an American cowboy was coming to get me and take me to America. Or a spy — I do not remember exactly. It was some combination of the two. I almost made myself believe it.