Miss Marple mischievously rubs her hands.

Naturally, someone also asked me: "And how was your wedding night?" I knew that question was coming, just as I knew someone would ask me if I was gay when I worked on television on screen. And when you know, you prepare – you find the right answer in advance (and the right one is the truthful one).

With Rajneesh I had the most wonderful wedding night I could have possibly had.

It was under his direction – and if you're asking how that can happen, ever since the days of profound mourning when "Aunt Betka from Slovakia" came to my aid in my darkest hour, I had been familiar with something like the psychological detachment of a personality.

Western man might label it schizophrenia because he fears any abnormal experience, even though schizophrenia does not consist of taking on different personalities, as many believe.

I call it the detachment of that part of the personality that wants to connect with the spiritual guide who has come to visit him.

If I didn't see (feel, perceive) Rajneesh in the taxi on Elizabeth Bridge because I was spiritually elsewhere, now I did.

It is similar to when the medium Oda Mae Brown in the film Ghost is possessed by the spirit of the dead Sam to deliver a message to his beloved Molly. The role of Oda Mae Brown won Whoopi Goldberg her first Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.

I could also mention one more example, which is James Franco's iconic scene for The New York Times YouTube channel in the "14 Actors Acting" series, where he kisses himself in the mirror.

Just as Rajneesh appeared and proposed, he spent the wedding night right along with me. And as I told my friends: "I'm still washing the bedsheets today." That's how intense it was.

*

Where would I wish for Rajneesh to be with me? Perhaps back when Sven met me. But Sven's story actually began four years earlier. During class at film school, the police came for me and took me in for questioning.

Why, you ask? Well, during the summer between my first and second year, a production student approached me about making a documentary on the Rumburk Loreta. And I thought it was a good idea. We contacted a cinematography student and set off in the summer for the agreed-upon scouting visits—during the first month, I wrote the script—and the management of the Loreta at the time provided us with a guide to walk us through the building.

"And here is where the statues should go, according to my script," I say.
And the guide says, "Well, the Loreta is currently undergoing renovation, so some things are in storage and so on."

I brushed it off, made a note in the script, the cameraman recorded the scouting footage—and that was the end of it. We said goodbye with the understanding that we would come back to shoot the documentary sometime in September.

What we didn't know was that five days after us, burglars came to break in.

And also no surprise to the reader, but truly one to me, when the police came for me in class – and once we sat down at the round table in the school principal's office (the principal's eyes were nearly popping out of his head back then) – the police officer looked at me and asked straight out: "Do you know Sven Hendrikson?" "No, but I know Hussein S.," I replied immediately, because to an equally absurd question, no more absurd answer came to my mind. That was the end of the school interrogation, and we moved on to the police station.

It was right around the time of the attacks on the twin towers in the USA, which made things worse for me – right down to the moment when I was sitting on a chair with that kind of little lamp shining right in my eyes. A cliché, but that's really how it was. I don't know if it was a coincidence that they didn't tilt it down.

In any case, I used to go to Hussein S. in Turnov for Persian lessons – and I had been to his place a total of two or three times, because he didn't enjoy teaching me. But at least I learned how to write my name.

As it turned out, the Rumburk Loreto was burgled a few days after our visit, and they suspected us of tipping off the thieves. However, the cameraman's preliminary footage and notes in the script clearly proved that the items had been stolen gradually – so by the time I inquired about the statues, they weren't in any depository, they were simply gone.

*

A month later, I'm driving home. In Desná, at the turnoff for Souš, the police pull me over. "Good evening, driver, license and registration please" – yeah right, license and registration, someone reported that they were going to poison the reservoir, and they were checking whether I was smuggling poisons – times were still tense because of what had been happening in the USA. A note in the records that I knew Hussein S. didn't help me much at that moment.

*

Several years later still, shortly before I found myself on the street out of my own laziness – mom had to kick me out of the house so I'd stand on my own two feet – I met Sven L. on a chat platform, we started talking, and over the course of a few nights, I fell in love with him from afar. I don't know why, but I laid tarot cards for him. The Devil lay in his throat chakra – and I didn't understand it at all.

I brushed it off.

*

When I was walking through Prague that winter, staying on the street from December to early February, I brightened up moments by meeting Sven. Sven L. worked for the criminal police, he had time for me mostly at night, only after he finished work, he introduced me to his colleagues – we even went to visit them at their homes – I remember to this day, I look at the wall and say: „Jesus, there was a shooting here.“ „Oh yeah, our weapon went off on the table.“ And they laughed.

Thanks to the kindness of my friends, I could spend the night somewhere every now and then, lay my head on a pillow and sleep in the warmth. Thanks go to Jarka, Maruška – I particularly didn't want to leave Maruška's place – she gave me a big duvet for the night... and also to Sabina H., who was one of the few to provide accommodation for both me and Sven, so we could spend the night together.

And so for the first time I saw the swastika tattoo on his leg: „Sven, what's that?“ „I have that for infiltrations.“ He had told me before how he infiltrates Prague neo-Nazis. So I just nodded.

The following morning, it was probably when we woke up, he answered an incoming phone call: „This is Sven. Yeah, yeah, I'll be right there,“ he hung up. „I have to go to work. I'll call in the afternoon.“ And when he left, I was sitting on the bed, remembering him telling me:

„If you wanted to rob a store and didn't want them to remember what you look like. What do you do? Well, you put a plaster on your nose. Everyone will remember that plaster, that stands to reason, but what you looked like – nobody will recall that anymore.“

And so I sit on the bed and think. After all, he has a different name on his ID card – we showed each other our ID cards when we talked about how I changed my first and last name – and he said he wanted that too, to have his father's name L. „But how come he can introduce himself on the phone with a name that's not on his ID card?“

Something flashed through my head, I sat down at my friend Sabina's computer, she left it turned on so I could use it before she went to work that morning – and I type his name and for a moment I was relieved when the website of the Police of the Czech Republic appeared, but right after that I'm looking at a composite sketch of Sven as a wanted person and other pictures – the faces of his work colleagues whom he had introduced me to quite recently.

„I was in shock“ is not quite the right expression. I started running around the room in confusion. If I said anything, I don't remember, it was such a great moment of darkness that gradually dissolved, and then I only remember calling the police and asking what to do.

So nothing. Do nothing. Act like everything is fine.

What was uncovered, and the fact that by that time I already had Achilles tendinitis and pneumonia, forced me to bow my head and call my father to ask if I could return to him—after my parents' divorce I had stayed with my mother—and now I was seeking the refuge that my father provided.

For half a year, Sven and I gradually broke up under the supervision of the police, who then arrested him around that time. He spent several years in prison, just like his accomplices.

*

A few more years passed while I am sitting at the computer and clicking through profiles on a dating site. I stumble upon a guy's profile, hmmmm, I liked him quite a bit—I click through the photos—when suddenly I see that guy in one of them hugging Sven.

Before I had time to think about anything—it was racing through my mind: should I write something to that guy? Does he know about his past? Is he playing him for a fool too?—a message arrived from him:

"Greetings. I'm sitting here with Sven. I'm supposed to say hello from him. He passes along that he's not mad. He told me about you."

At a time when the other person can see that you've viewed their profile—they see your photos—it turned out that he was aware of who I was. Maybe Sven had been showing him some pictures of us together.

Or else Sven was sitting there writing in his name. Either way. He wasn't mad.

*

The hardest part for me was breaking up with him, because regardless of the fact that he lied to me, that he pretended to be a criminal police officer, I loved him. I loved him even when I knew all of that later on.

I loved him even though I then had to visit all the friends we had stayed with, bow and apologize for the trouble caused that had to do with me and my poor judgment, and ask them if they would be so kind as to change their door locks just to be safe.

I loved him even after I knew he was a neo-Nazi. I made a big mistake by telling him about my friend Anna, whose father was on their list. They had killed his son shortly after the revolution and he has been speaking out against them ever since.

What a coincidence – her apartment was near where we used to go to see his colleagues, and with the same naivety I tell him about Anna, just like that Rumburk story as we walked down the snowy street in Malovanka:

"Say, Sven. I only knew one Sven. What was his last name again. Sven, I don't know – over the years I've forgotten his surname. I call him Hendrikson." And he looks me in the eyes, a gleam in them, and says: "Oh yeah, I know! I've heard about that."

And I take him by the arm and we walk further down the street in the dark, leaving footprints behind us in the snow.

Miss Marple mischievously rubs her hands.