Mrs. Polášková was my room teacher in those years, and she also taught botany. She was slim, gray-haired, and dressed always in black, with a serious expression that never seemed to change. I think she must have been in her fifties, though I could not say for certain. I have some memory of being told her husband had died in the war, but I was never sure of that either. Before what I am about to describe, she had never paid any particular attention to me. I was just another boy in her class.

There was a large ficus tree in our classroom, and once — I think it was eighth grade, though it might have been seventh — the class decorated it with real flowers. I do not remember what kind. It was a prank on Mrs. Polášková, since she was the one who taught us botany. When she walked in and saw it, she was surprised, and she exclaimed that the ficus was flowering. The whole class burst out laughing. She was embarrassed, because as the botany teacher she should have known better. I still think it was hysterically funny. Eva Muzikova and Alena, the principal’s daughter, still talk about that prank to this day.

One year — probably seventh grade, though I would not swear to it — her class took a trip by tram to a garden outside the city to plant vegetables. Mrs. Polášková came along with us. By the time we finished digging, all of us were filthy.

On the way back, three of us — I no longer remember who the other two boys were — stopped at a little store and bought three bottled drinks. Instead of leaving the empty deposit bottles the way we were supposed to, we took them with us. There was no plan to redeem them and no thought of the deposit money — it was simply a spur-of-the-moment prank, the kind of foolish thing boys do because it occurs to them to do it. At some point the three of us started running — I do not remember anymore what set that off — and we jumped onto a tram that was already pulling away.

A few days later, Mrs. Polášková called me into her office. There was a man there I had never seen before, a plainclothes detective. I was surprised to find him sitting there, but somehow I knew right away what it was about.

I had already decided, before he asked me a single question, that I would admit to nothing and that I would not give up the other two boys. He asked whether I had been one of the three at the store, or whether I knew anything about it. I told him no.

The other two were questioned afterward and admitted everything. That left me as the only one of the three still denying it. Nobody ever came back to question me a second time. I got a B in behavior for the term.

After the detective left, Mrs. Polášková spoke to me alone. I do not remember the whole conversation, but I remember her telling me, more or less, that she had sent the detective to me first because I was the good one, the one who did not lie. I told her I did not care what happened to me, but that I would never tell on my friends. I do not remember what she said to that, or how she took it. But after that day, she started paying more attention to me than she ever had before.

I do not remember how the subject of flying first came up between us. I had been fascinated with airplanes even before I knew her — I remember once, as a younger boy, designing my own airplane, something out of Jules Verne — but it had never gone beyond that kind of daydreaming.

Mrs. Polášková had a son who was a test pilot. To be a test pilot you had to be in the military, in the Air Force, and that was the only way I ever came to know anything about him — I never met him. Everything I knew came from her talking about him.

She lived alone, in a nice small apartment not far from where we lived, one of the ordinary apartment buildings in that part of Prague. She started lending me books about aviation — all kinds of books. Some were about different types of airplanes, how they were built, how to fly them, how to handle difficult situations that could lead to accidents. One I remember clearly was about sailplanes — gliders — flying cross-country, how a pilot found rising air to gain altitude and worked his way from one thermal to the next to stay up. There were also adventure books about flying; one was set in Iceland, though I no longer remember the title or much else about it.

I did not just get the books handed to me at school. I went to her apartment to return one and borrow the next. As far as I know, nobody at school knew I was doing this. It went on for a long time — I think all the way until I graduated from that school. Between the books and what she told me about her son, my old boyhood interest in airplanes turned into something a lot more serious.

At some point I put together an actual plan for my life: study aeronautical engineering, become a test pilot myself, and eventually design airplanes. I do not remember how the plan came together in my head, step by step — whether it was her son, or one of the books, or just something I worked out on my own. I only know that at some point I had it fully formed, and I brought it to my father.

There was a problem with the plan. A civilian could not study aeronautical engineering. You had to go into the military — the Air Force — to do it.

My father refused outright. I argued with him. My argument was that going to a communist school did not mean I believed in communism, and I did not see why joining the Air Force would be any different. He would not accept that. For him, volunteering for the communist military was a line I was not going to cross, whatever I said.

What he told me was that if I joined the communist Air Force, it would be the cause of his death. That was not the only time I heard something like that from him. When he was truly angry, in other arguments over the years, he could say the same thing — that I would be the cause of his death. I set it down here only as I remember it.

He did not change his mind. I was disappointed, and then I was resigned to it. I did not have anything else lined up to take its place, and I went on to high school without knowing what I wanted to do instead. But I did not stop being interested in flying. I kept reading the books Mrs. Polášková lent me.

Around this same general time — I could not tell you if it was before or after the argument about the Air Force — I started fencing, in eighth grade, not long before I went on to high school. I do not remember whose idea it was originally. What I do remember is that my father was all for it, and that he took me to a place in Prague where he knew the instructor.

I loved it.

My father had good reason to support it. He had been a serious sword fencer himself, on the fencing team in his own school years, and had won some tournaments in Vienna. It stayed with him the rest of his life. Even after he came back from prison, he kept practicing his old fencing positions. During the war, at the hunting lodge in Bohdalov, he had one whole wall done in mirrors just so he could watch himself do it. Later on he always carried a walking stick.

I saw what that was worth once, years afterward, somewhere around the main train station in Prague. A drunk man started bothering my parents — my mother especially. My father by then was old, sick, and not strong. He pinned that man down with the walking stick, seemingly with very little effort. I was standing right there and saw the whole thing.

There was another reason I liked going to fencing. There was a girl there about my age — blonde, green-eyed, already a good fencer — and I was completely taken with her. I never spoke to her. I never worked up the nerve. I did not know her name; to me she was simply the girl from fencing.

The fencing lasted about two months.

My teta Manci and strýc Lóňa were visiting from Slovakia around then, to talk to my father about their retirement. I came home from school one day with a bad grade — I do not remember the subject or what the grade actually was — and my father grounded me. I was to stay home and study. He then went out for the day with Manci and Lóňa.

I talked my mother into letting me go to the movies anyway, with my sister Jana. She knew perfectly well my father had grounded me. I do not remember how I talked her into it, but she said yes. I think now that she probably felt my father was being too hard on me, but that is only my own guess, all these years later — she never told me that.

The next day I came into the living room, where my father was sitting with Manci and Lóňa. I gave him the formal rukulíbám, the way I always did. He asked me, in an offhand way, what I had done the day before. I assumed he already knew about the movie — I do not know why, I just assumed it — so I told him the truth.

He had not known. He was furious. He started shouting about how I dared disobey him — I do not remember the rest of what he said — and right there, in front of everyone, he told me the fencing was finished. Not suspended. Finished.

Strýc Lóňa spoke up for me. He told my father he should at least be glad I had told him the truth. My father did not argue with him about it. It made no difference either. The fencing was over.

I was very unhappy about it, for two reasons. I loved the fencing itself. And I was not going to see that girl anymore.

There was also another convalescent stay at Vrchlabí during these school years, in eighth grade. It was not the same Vrchlabí stay from 1948. Once again the reason was that everyone thought I was too skinny and wanted to fatten me up. I do not have any strong episode from that stay. What stayed with me mainly is the coincidence that I had been sent to Vrchlabí twice for completely unrelated reasons.

I kept visiting Mrs. Polášková and borrowing her aviation books the whole time I was at that school. When I graduated, I simply stopped seeing her. There was no particular goodbye that I remember, and nothing after that. It just ended along with school.

About three years ago I ran into a woman I had gone to school with — the daughter of the principal of that same school. We got to talking about Mrs. Polášková, and I told her about going to the apartment, about all the books I used to borrow. She was surprised. She had never known that side of Mrs. Polášková at all.