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With my mother we came back to live in Prague, and moved several times, as I grew up and went to school. Late in 1962 I was called into the army for the compulsory service, only a couple of months before the Cuban crises came. Fortunately for me, I had landed smoothly and in a cushy position, as a singer with the army entertainment unit, which travelled the country and performed for the troops as well as for the civilians. There I met a number of young talented Czech performers, actors, singers, musicians, even future directors and composers. Most of them were several years older than myself and many have since made it to the top in their professions. It was a stimulating experience, despite some chores that were not much to my liking. It is impossible to resist printing here at least part of the lyrics of a propagandist song, a real gem within its genre, which was my ordeal to sing almost every night for the duration of the Cuban crises and for many months to come (my translation):

I sing my song of Havana

With Soviets the Cubans are one

Together they laugh while they’re watching

Kennedy’s troops on the run

With hammer and sickle now forming their sign

Seeing the cosmonauts fly into yonder

The Cubans are saying, there’s no end to wonder

Over Havana the red star will shine!

And it still shines, doesn't it, though not so brightly any more. Though the red star of the Soviets went out rather ingloriously. There were other songs, some by the top lyricists and composed by the best composers of the period, which no doubt were much better than this song. But it was so typical of the time and the place that it is impossible to forget. What I will never forget either, is the feeling I had while standing in front of the microphone and singing, with the Glen Miller style big band and its saxophones, trombones, trumpets and percussion thundering and swinging behind my back. Even now just writing about it gives me the goose bumps.

After the two year long compulsory army service I continued my involvement with the performing arts, combining singing with acting, but what I really wanted to do was go to the Prague University and seriously study the operatic singing. By then in my mid-twenties, I was already a private student of one of the professors, who urged me before the forthcoming auditions to shave off the beard I had been cultivating for some time. I ignored her warnings only to my peril. My performance was apparently well received by the committee members, but not so enthusiastically by the chairman, who was very well known for his allegiance to the Communist Party, but not particularly so for his singing abilities. He vetoed my acceptance, declaring that the “beatniks" with beards were unwanted elements at the Prague Academy of the Arts”! These turned out to be the prophetic words, as I soon proved him right by becoming a member of the gang of undesirables, who attempted to create an opposition party to the Communists during the Dubcek’s era, which was to end in 1968 with the Soviet invasion and occupation of the country. I had made up my mind there and then that I was definitely going to keep my beard, but that I would forever say goodbye to the totalitarians!

        With my status as “British born” I had not anticipated any major problems on part of the British authorities with my moving to London, though I had to endure a tedious process involving a lot of bureaucratic red-tape, while getting the necessary travel documents to enable me to leave the occupied country. Eventually getting to London (with only a few days to spare before the Czechoslovak authorities closed the border hermetically, as it turned out), naturally, I had to earn a living somehow, and the opportunities were limited. I was 26, and the last time I had made any serious attempts at speaking English was when I was about two, with the words such as "gaga, mama, dada". Many of the Czech expatriates I came to know in London went to the language schools to help them learn English as fast as possible. I chose a different route, remembering my father's legendary method of learning languages (he spoke about a dozen). It consisted of going alone to a strange country and immediately losing himself among the natives, moving with the crowds the whole day every day, while reading the newspapers and listening to the radio in the evening. After about a month of leading such anonymous existence with the strenuous activities, my father would emerge from his hideout thoroughly enlightened, with another language added to his portfolio. 

Finding a job at the building site as a labourer was relatively simple matter for me, but mixing with the natives proved a major problem, as there weren't many to be found near the centre of London, at least not at the building site where I worked. The accents that I was hearing there were Scottish, Irish, Yorkshire, West Indies, etc., with only a couple of true Englishmen about, inevitably the Cockneys, who with their way of swallowing parts of the words were even harder to understand than the rest of them. Though I could soon form the basic sentences, my ears were not used to all those colourful accents that surrounded me. I kept asking people to speak slowly, and I listened. During the breaks at work and in the evenings I read the newspapers, and tried to make some sense out of various articles, with the help of a pocket dictionary that I carried with me everywhere. And I listened to the BBC. After a time I attempted to read my first book in English. I cannot remember what it was, probably a murder mystery, possibly by Agatha Christie.

I had tried to continue my singing career, appearing in a few minor operatic productions as a “basso profondo”. It did not lead to any significant contracts for singing the opera. The only major contract I had signed at the time was the one sealing my marriage to another Czech refugee, whom I had invited to one of the performances of Rossini's La Cenerentola (Cinderella), where I sung Alidoro. The London bed-sitters were cramped and exceedingly cold, so longing for more open spaces and for a warmer climate, we decided to migrate to Australia and start a new life there. We sailed from Southampton to Sydney early in February 1973, with seven large trunks in the under deck, five of them containing books, most of which we had bought in London, around the Portobello Road. Interestingly, I had celebrated my 30th birthday on the same day I had crossed the equator for the first time in my life. After the full month spent on sea, having sailed through one major storm that had sent most of the passengers, including my wife, into their sick beds, we reached the Promised Land. From Sydney where the ship disgorged us we immediately went on train to Brisbane, where we have now been living for about 35 years. We have a son, who is now 23, and who has recently finished his studies of journalism at the University of Queensland and works as an editor of a motoring magazine. 

I had abandoned my singing/acting career. Well, perhaps not so entirely, as in 1983 I had played the leading role in Ubu the King by Alfred Jarry, the father of the Theatre of the Absurd, in a local production. I went through several jobs as a public servant, salesman and interpreter/translator. I gradually moved to painting and to teaching the visual arts. I held about a dozen one man shows, at various venues, in the 1980s and the 90s. During the 90s I was involved in the public radio, both as a broadcaster-moderator and as an administrator.  I wrote several radio plays in English, one, a comedy on a Faustian theme, was produced by a local radio station, another, about the Russian philosopher Ouspensky and Gurdjieff was translated into the Japanese (this is what it looks like). I also translated some television programs for the Czech National TV, including a whole series on the history of dance and, recently, a couple of stage plays by Karel Čapek (the book can be ordered here). I wrote a novel, in Czech, my mother's tongue, and it was accepted by a Czech publisher. Some of my other writings can be accessed here. The novel, now also published in English, can be ordered HERE. More writings and translations are hopefully to come.

In the more recent times I had decided to make yet another career move and become an online bookseller, starting with the collection of books my wife and I have accumulated over the years and expanding it further to more than 30,000, two thirds of which have been listed at the time of writing this blog. No doubt, many more books will be finding their way to our house, though it is getting a little crowded here.

I still proudly carry that same beard, though its once lively brown colours inexorably are being invaded by the streaks of grey. I am now convinced that the most important decision I had ever made in my entire life came when I made up my mind about not shaving it off my face, on the eve of that memorable singing audition. Who knows what might have otherwise happened? Perhaps I would have been accepted to the Academy, and perhaps I might have carved out some sort of a career as a singer or a teacher, in the stifling atmosphere behind the now defunct Iron Curtain. Instead, I was able to embark on an entirely different career and, most importantly, keep developing as a person, while living the life of freedom in this wonderful country, Australia. 

Occasionally I ask myself the following question: Do I have anything to regret? The answer has always been: No, I don't!

The Bearded Eternal Pilgrim, by Voyen Koreis