9 April 1970
Dear friend,
I took a letter for you to the post office on April 6 and I had a letter from you waiting for me there. A lot has changed since then; that is to say, it was winter then and today it’s spring. I suspect it is the same where you are. I waited to read your letter at home, in peace. I don’t know if you really wrote that or if I just made it up, but it does seem as if our relationship has really become „deeper“; if I’m right then you know what I mean, and if I’m wrong then there is no point in elaborating.

I’m not terribly surprised that you’re not coming, when I consider how things have been looking. Although it is puzzling that some people are still able to travel along with their entire families; but what would be the point of dwelling on that. I just read Pekař’s edition of the reports by Rašín and Piccolomini. In the olden days, betrayals were done with flair and proper drama. And I must say that Piccolomini betrayed with much more literary elegance than the Czech did. Yesterday as we sat in the university cafeteria, one Czech divided everybody into two camps and then said that whoever was in neither camp was an outsider. I just gulped and said nothing, because I don’t even know which camp he counts himself in, but he also said he didn’t want to be an outsider. But who does? I certainly don’t – it used to bother me that I was. There was only one brief moment when you and I were not outsiders, for a couple of months, and possibly just by accident. It always bothered me, too, the way Zeyer used to moan about feeling left out, even though he got all of his writings published, and there sure was a lot. And he didn’t even get married, that’s the kind of a brute he was – he was all talk.
I’m sending you a poem. Please give my regards to your wife Jiřina.
Sincerely,
Yours,
Součková