I chose the title of this short reflection because my first encounter with Miroslav Válek took place on a deeply human level. It may sound overly sentimental, but Válek helped me at a time when I was in a difficult and complicated personal situation.
In 1970, after spending two years in France, I decided to return home. This was not an easy decision for me. My then-partner came to Bratislava to join me, and we wanted to get married. Since she was a French citizen, she needed a Czechoslovak visa. This also meant she had to go through the mandatory currency exchange process – if I recall correctly, it was 13 to 15 dollars per day. The exchange rate was extremely unfavorable – 13 crowns to the dollar. We were waiting for various documents and confirmations from France, and the process was taking too long. Eventually, we ran out of money, and the head of the regional visa office informed me that my partner would be deported. Let me add that I had been buying dollars on the black market in front of Tuzex for 40 crowns and then exchanging them at the official rate of 13. Our argument that we were going to get married was flatly rejected, and the authorities continued to treat us as tourists. I requested an audience with Minister of Culture Miroslav Válek. We had never met before. He received me within two days, and in a conversation with the minister of the interior, he managed to have the mandatory currency exchange requirement exceptionally waived. Without his help, my life might have taken a slightly different path.
A personal guarantee
In the summer of 1975, I was shooting a joint film project in Bulgaria and got into an unpleasant situation with the local police. Just before Christmas that same year, I was summoned to the police headquarters in Bratislava. Two young State Security officers showed me photos and statements from their Bulgarian counterparts. Over the following period, we met three more times. The outcome of these meetings was a ban on travel to the West. The only way to get around the ban was to sign a cooperation agreement with them. I started preparing documents for a housing swap with a friend, whom I wanted to help out of poor living conditions, and I decided to emigrate. It was not easy to leave my country again after five years. So I changed my mind and told them I refused to cooperate. Two days later, they confiscated my passport. I again requested an audience with the minister of culture and told him the whole story in detail. For several years thereafter, before every trip abroad, Miroslav Válek wrote a personal guarantee to the passport and visa office on my behalf. This was a condition set by the then-director. I can only repeat – with a slight alteration – that without this help, my life would have taken a markedly different path.
A word of thanks
I was once invited to a debate on “socialism with a human face.” At the time, I clearly rejected the reform movement within the Communist Party known as the Prague Spring of 1968. Script editor Albert Marenčin partly objected, arguing that despite the regime, sometimes a good script and a good film were produced. And that is what Dubček’s “human face” was. A few years later, Marenčin, actress Tonka Miklíková, and I hosted an evening of Miroslav Válek’s poetry. It was held at the Molière Poetry Theater in Paris. Válek was a poet of European stature, and I’m glad I was able to thank him for his help – for his human face – in French.
The author is an actor, former member of parliament, and erstwhile Slovak foreign minister.
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