No Saints or Angels

CHAPTER TWO

1

Today it was announced that we have a 25 per cent ozone deficit above our heads and I was summoned to my daughter's school. The school is less than fifteen minutes' walk away Some of the teachers and the principal herself are among my patients. Jana's class teacher isn't one of them, but fortunately she doesn't teach maths or chemistry. She teaches Czech. According to Jana she's known as 'the nun'. This lady in rather old-fashioned black clothes must be even older than I am. She has long hair, completely white, and a fine complexion, undamaged by smoking and possibly untouched by kisses. She really does have the spin-stery complexion of a nun. She gazes at me with mournfully reproachful eyes. 'I'm worried about Jana.'

'I know, so am I.'

'My colleagues complain about her. She has stopped studying and her marks have dropped in all subjects. In English and maths as much as two grades, in fact. And my experience with her is similar.'

I nod. I ought to say something in my own and Jana's defence. Or at least explain that I don't have enough time or energy what with my patients and my elderly mother. That my daughter is pubertal and enjoys loafing around at night and singing morbid songs. I can ban her from those but I can't make her want to study. 'Do you think there is any chance of improving things at the last moment?'

'Well, it's getting very close to the final call, so she'd have to get a move on,' she says with the sort of gravity employed when talking about an operation on a hopeless case. 'And then there are all her absences,' she says, continuing her indictment. 'Is she really ill so often these days?'

I flinch. 'What do you mean?'

She takes out the class register and reads to me from it. Over the past two months, once absent for three days, then for two days, three times for one day, and classes missed twice, either maths or chemistry. 'The excuse notes are all from you, Mrs Pilná. As you are in the medical profession I didn't ask for any other confirmation. But I'd simply like to reassure myself that Jana is really so sickly.'

A marvellous word, 'sickly'. Perfect for a language teacher with the appearance of a nun. I won't tell her that Jana is as fit as a fiddle. I wonder whether I ought to support Jana and her forged excuse notes and then give the minx a good hiding when she gets home, a whack on her bare backside for each signature she forged. 'She suffers from migraines,' I say hesitantly. 'She takes after me. And she also had the flu.'

'But those illnesses don't account for why she's so much weaker in all her subjects.'

I agree.

'Have you not noticed anything suspicious about her behaviour?'

I ask her what she means.

She tells me that there are twelve children in the school who are known to be taking drugs. One third-year boy is receiving treatment in the mental hospital at Bohnice. She says it is hard to say how many others there might be.

'That's dreadful,' I say. 'But I've not noticed anything.'

'They are past masters at concealing it,' she says, clearly unconvinced. 'That's something they are good at learning and the more they have to conceal the more resourceful they become.'

She goes on to quote statistics that I know anyway. 'You see, Mrs Pilná, dealers nowadays stand waiting right outside the school

gates.' She points towards the window, beyond which no one is to be seen. 'But there is nothing we can do. After all, we live in a free country and the pavement is a public area. Selling drugs is an apparently normal business activity. And often they don't even sell them; they let the children have free samples. Children are curious and they like to appear grown-up. Or rather, as bad as grown-ups.'

'I'm sure that Jana. .' I shake my head, trying to convince myself. 'She loafs around, I know, but she would be scared of drugs.'

'I hope so,' says her class teacher. I can't tell whether the tone in her voice is severe or conciliatory. 'Her father is a teacher and an athlete.'

'Her father's ill at present,' I say. 'Very ill. He has neither the time nor the energy for her. Besides, you are aware that. .'

Of course she's aware. Almost half the kids in her class are in the same boat. But fathers can exercise some influence, even when they live elsewhere. The teacher talks for a while about how parents pay insufficient attention to their children: at the age when they are at greatest risk children spend their time either in some gang or in front of the TV, where they gawp at serials about heroes who could only appeal to people in a trance or a drug-induced state.

That was how my dad used to speak. She hasn't yet got round to complaining that young people lack an ideal, a great goal for all to strive for. Except that my father's words were full of bitterness and imbued with the idea that the human herd has to be driven along a single road to a single destination, chosen for it by those who know where paradise is to unfold. The teacher is speaking about a problem she actually has to deal with, and her words fill me with alarm.

I simply say, although there is little point, that Jana doesn't watch television and actually disdains those who waste their time on it. Then I make the usual parental promise that I will talk to her. As if I didn't spend my time talking to her about the same thing.

'Please do. Together we'll come up with something, you'll see. After all, she's a clever and gifted girl,' she says in conclusion, although she really thinks she's a little brat. And she's right.

I leave the school building and all of a sudden I feel almost too tired to walk home. Maybe it's on account of that hole in the ozone layer, or maybe it's all too much for me. I spend eight hours a day in the dental surgery, half an hour to work and the same home, and the trip by dismal metro and packed bus is enough to sap all one's strength and undermine one's mental resolve. Not to mention what I have to do at home to keep us going. And if I give Jana a chore to do, the way she does it means I have to do it again after her.

There was a time when I used to read something or listen to music. These days I no longer do that for pleasure but from fear of leading an animal existence. Not long ago I fell asleep at a concert, and on the odd occasions I read a novel, by the time I get to the end I can't remember how the thing started.

For God's sake, why is everything up to me now?

I drag myself as far as the little square in front of Capek's villa. I can't resist sitting down on the low perimeter wall. No one notices me, apart from a dog in the house opposite who starts to bark. So I'm well, but just a bit pooped, my writer wrote to his dear Olga.

Not many people read Capek these days. He's not an American writer.

As I approach our house I notice the familiar figure of the thin young man with the red hair: Jan, I can't remember the rest of his name, that ex-student of my one and only husband. But his Christian name is like our daughter's. What is he doing here? He can't be waiting for me, surely.

Now he has noticed me and is walking to meet me.

But I have no time for him. I need to talk to my unruly daughter and discover how she's been spending her time while playing truant.

The young man makes a slight bow and apologizes for waylaying me: he simply wanted to ask how his old teacher was. He rang the bell of our flat but no one was home, so he decided to wait for a while.

'There was no one in?' I ask foolishly.

No one, he repeats.

I tell him that I don't know how my ex-husband is; I haven't spoken to him since the time I visited him in hospital. I offer to give the young man Karel's phone number, but he has it already. He doesn't want to ask him directly, only to know his actual state of health.

His interest surprises me. But it's true that my ex-husband was capable of arousing people's admiration — and even love, as I myself discovered to my cost.

I am standing with this young fellow out here on the pavement, though I have no reason to. Then he says, 'The thing is that I wanted to see you again.'

I don't say, Well, you're seeing me. I don't know how to reply. But I don't intend to stand here on the pavement with him, and for the time being it's inappropriate for me to invite him in. I notice the words 'for the time being' form themselves in my mind.

'If you happen to have a few moments to spare, I noticed there was a bistro round the corner. Maybe I could invite you for a drink. .

'I've been thinking of you ever since,' he adds.

2

My darling daughter turned up in time for supper. A new chain around her waist — new, that is, for her; otherwise it's covered in bits of rust. Goodness knows what animal she stole it from. A new hole in her jeans at knee level. Black platforms, the highest she could buy. For a long time I held out against those

dreadful clodhoppers, refusing the demagogic pressure that all the girls have them now, but in the end I gave in and gave her the two thousand crowns — mostly, I expect, because when I was her age my father didn't even allow me jeans and I wasn't permitted to use lipstick. My approved footwear was fit for an elderly collective farmer. And she's even worse off than I was. She has lost half her home because I wasn't able to hold on to it for her. Let her have some enjoyment at least, I tell myself, although I know full well that no manner of rags, clodhoppers or chains will make up for her loss. And it would be wrong if they did.

'Jana, where have you been for so long?'

'At Dad's, haven't I?'

'You went to see your dad? Why didn't you let me know?'

'It was your idea, wasn't it?'

'You went to see him dolled up like that?'

'Of course.'

'What did he say about your platforms?'

'He made me take them off.'

'And you spent the whole afternoon at your dad's?'

'I went and did some shopping for him.'

'That was good of you. How is he?'

'But you know anyway, Mum. He's got awfully thin and his hands shake. I told him I'd make him some pancakes. And he said, Go ahead. And then he only managed to eat one of them. And instead of those endless lectures he always used to give me, he just sat and looked at me without saying anything.'

My daughter sits and tells me about it while munching the bread and cheese I put in front of her. It doesn't look as if her father's suffering has spoilt her appetite.

And now to change the subject: 'I was in school today,' I announce.

'Jesus Christ.'

'Not only are you about to flunk your leaving exam, but you play truant and forge my signature.'

'Did you drop me in it?'

I say nothing.

'Mum, you're a gem. But when I wrote those excuse notes, I used the proper terminology. I found the Latin names in your manual.'

For God's sake, she's proud of what a great forger she is. 'That's going to stop. I'll call the school at least once a week to make sure you're there. And if you're off traipsing around somewhere, I'll call the police and have them find you. Where do you hang out, in fact, when you're not in school?'

'It's hard to say, Mum. When it's lovely out, it really is an awful bore to sit in class.'

'So where do you sit instead?'

'In a park, for instance.'

'A park?'

'Yeah. Grôbe Gardens or Rieger Park.'

'And the pub?'

'Hardly ever.'

'Who with?'

'What do you mean?' she says, playing for time.

'You hardly sit in a pub on your own!'

'I was only twice in a pub.'

'Or three times.'

She looks at me and shrugs. 'Mum, I really don't keep count. It's not important, is it?'

'Don't try telling me what's important. What do you drink there?'

'I dunno. Cola.'

'Jana. Don't lie to me, at least.'

'No, honestly, Mum!'

'You haven't told me yet who you loaf about with.'

'I don't loaf about!'

'So what is it you're doing, then?'

Most likely she's about to explain to me that it's life, or tell

me what life isn't about, but she stops herself in time and just shrugs.

'Well, do you mind telling me who you sit around with?'

'It depends.'

'Are they all girls or are there boys too?'

'Girls mostly.'

'But boys too.'

'Very, very rarely.'

'Older?'

'How am I supposed to know? They're all thick, anyway.'

'Why do you hang around with them then?'

'It's them who come creeping after us.'

'What do you smoke?'

'How do you mean?'

'I'm asking you what you smoke.'

'But we don't smoke.'

'Don't lie to me, Jana.'

Well, I've had a drag now and then. But then you smoke too. And how. Dad's always going on about you getting kippered lungs.'

'There's a difference between us. Between me and you, I mean.'

'I'm not saying anything, am I? But Dad never smoked.'

'Don't go dragging your dad into this. Have you tried grass?'

'What grass?'

'Jana, don't try it on me. If you'd said no, I might have believed you, but I'm hardly going to believe you've never heard of it.'

'Oh right, you mean hash.' She hesitates.

'How many times?'

'But Mum, cannabis is less dangerous than your fags.'

'Jana, stop lecturing me all the time and stand up!'

She stands up.

'Take off your T-shirt and come here.'

She adopts a hurt expression, but takes off her T-shirt and stands in front of me. She doesn't wear a bra. She has my breasts, but they are still firm, like two bells.

'Show me your arms.' I examine them as best I can. Her skin is smooth, clean and fresh, without any traces of injections. Thank God. 'Jana,' I say, 'what makes you do these things?'

'I don't do anything bad, do I?'

'No, you do nothing at all.'

'School's boring.'

'And what isn't?'

'I dunno. Sitting in the park with the girls.'

'But you can't spend all your time sitting in the park.'

'I don't know, really'

'Each of us has certain duties. And you're supposed to be studying. Enough to scrape through, at least.'

She shakes her head. 'But there's just no point in it.'

'In what?'

'In anything,' she says. 'But you know, anyway.'

'What do I know?'

'Grandpa died and look at the state Dad's in. What's the point of it?'

'Grandpa was old and your dad neglected a tumour.'

'I don't want to be old. And I don't want to get a tumour.'

'Nor do any of us. Well, how do you see your life, then?' I ask her — I who, at her age, had no wish to live at all.

3

I wake up feeling that I must have shouted something. But the dream wasn't about my daughter. It was my father who appeared to me. He was clinging on to my ex-husband and yelling at me: What have you done? You've driven him out. You're a rotten daughter and a lousy wife.

I got a fright because he'd no business to be there; he was dead; he'd died, was burnt in a furnace, descended into hell and on the third day he didn't rise from the dead; but now he stood

before me, untouched by the flames, my accuser, and meanwhile that hypocrite my ex-husband had a smirk on his face. I reached out as if to push my accuser back into the flames and started to scream in horror.

I stare into the darkness and shiver all over. I shudder again and again from fear. I get up and go into the kitchen, where I pour myself half a glass of wine. I fill the rest of the glass with water and return to the bedroom. I leave the light on. I'm afraid of the dark.

When I was a little girl — how old could I have been? scarcely five or six — my parents used to send me to Lipová to spend the summer at Grannie Marie's. Usually I'd spend the whole of September there too. I adored my grandmother. She rode horses and sang me songs. On Saturdays she baked kolaches and bread. She made her own noodles too. And she also liked a smoke.

At that time Aunt Venda still occupied a little room in the cottage. She had long, unkempt grey hair. She spent the whole time sewing away pn a Minerva treadle sewing machine. She wasn't allowed to smoke, because she couldn't be trusted with matches. She used to make up for it by drinking beer from first thing in the morning. It seemed to me that my aunt never left her room; Grannie would bring her beer and food. When I visited Auntie, she'd smile at me, displaying her crooked yellowy incisors, and say something I usually couldn't make out. But I did manage to understand that she couldn't go outside because she was just a receptacle, a vessel in which a fire was constantly smouldering. All it needed was a slight breeze or for the sun to shine on her, and she would burst into flame. It would happen anyway one day.

And doesn't the fire burn you, Auntie? I would ask her.

Oh it does, sweetheart. It gives me a terrible pain here, she'd say, indicating her breasts, neck and head.

And then one day it really did happen. I was playing out in the yard when the door of Auntie's room suddenly burst open unexpectedly and in the door frame there appeared a flaming figure

that started to run towards me. For a moment I couldn't understand anything and had the feeling that a fairytale apparition was coming to get me, but then I recognized my aunt.

'I'm burning,' she shouted. 'I set myself alight!'

Her clothes were on fire and it seemed to me that smoke was coming out of her head. Terror rooted me to the spot as I watched the approach of that fiery vision. Then Auntie started to scream horribly and cry for help, and I ran away. Grannie rushed out of the house and when she saw what was happening, she snatched a sack that was hanging from a beam by the door and dashed over to Auntie with it.

She managed to douse the flames, but she couldn't save my aunt. They took her to hospital, where she died a few days later. I wanted to go and visit her, but they told me I couldn't any more because Auntie was gone. She was gone because she didn't want to be here any more. Auntie had burnt up and was gone and I cried.

That was my first encounter with death, and it was a haunting experience. That image of a burning figure has never left my memory, even though I have seen lots of other frightful pictures and photos of famine, murders and wars — there have been so many of them since then that I can hardly keep count, and apparently one soldier in five was still a child.

I've noticed that almost everyone I know was marked by at least one such shocking experience in their childhood. My husband's best friend froze to death in the mountains. When Lida was small, two cars crashed in front of her eyes and they had to cut the dead out of the wreckage with oxyacetylene torches. Not to mention Mum. Admittedly she didn't see what happened to her mother and her aunts and cousins, but the thought of what was done to them must have marked her for life.

While I was still at Lipová that time I started to wonder about the strange phenomenon that one moment someone could be there and the very next they could be gone, and it seemed to me

so sad that everything, absolutely everything, had to come to an end, including me. There was no escape. Death was the supreme ruler, and if he called you, you had to go and you never came back.

It was odd that they depicted that ruler as an old woman or a skeleton with a scythe.

But Grannie consoled me and sang me a song about death, from which I understood that death wasn't wicked. It wasn't a skeleton or even an old woman, it was a little girl like me. I can still recall the words of that song, though I don't sing it any more:

There once was an old woman And she had just one son. And he lay sick and dying For cool water he was crying. There was no one to go to the well So his old mother she went herself. On the way she met a young child A messenger from God so mild. I'm coming to fetch his dear soul To Paradise, his heavenly home.

From that I understood that death wasn't a stranger who comes between two people. A little girl or a little boy was sent by someone to carry the soul up to heaven, where life was more beautiful than on earth.

I didn't know what a soul was — I'd only heard of the sole of a shoe. When I asked them, they couldn't explain it.

When I was at Grannie's I could run around outside with the children, but quite often something would get into me and I wouldn't feel like seeing anyone. Behind the cottage in the far corner of the garden by the fence there grew an enormous walnut tree with a hollow trunk. There was just enough room for someone my size. I'd find refuge there in my own little house, where

I'd spend hours on end. What did I do there? I can't remember. I used to take my rag doll — my sister — along with me and a teddy bear. He was actually my first husband, though I don't count him any more. He was utterly reliable and had big, brown glass eyes. We'd all crouch down in that little cave full of the scent of wood and resin. Mist ahead of us, mist behind us. I would draw it like a curtain. No one could see us or hear us, only we could hear the horse whinnying in the stable and the ducks quacking in the yard.

One day after lunch they took the horse off to the slaughterhouse, the ducks had their throats slit, the doctor banned Grannie from smoking, we ate shop-bought noodles and the walnut tree breathed its last, falling asleep from old age. What happened to my teddy-bear husband? He disappeared somewhere. He's not here any more. That's the way it is with husbands: the day comes when they disappear and they're not around any more.

I light a cigarette. The first time I smoked I was two years younger than my daughter is now. I committed the crime in the little park just behind the school. I was seen, of course — by my civic studies teacher, a wrinkled old maid. She immediately denounced me to Dad. He gave me a hiding, walloping me until I perjured myself by swearing that that was the last time, that I'd never smoke again. But at that very moment I vowed to myself that I would smoke, drink and go out with boys just to spite him. Even if he beat me black and blue. I'd just be more careful and more cunning. What sort of an attitude is that, what sort of a temperament: being certain I know the truth and therefore have the right to judge others, take decisions for them, and ban anything I object to and don't agree with? That was how he tried to subjugate me, that's how he and his ilk tried to enslave the whole of mankind. Without people like that, no tyrant would manage to rule for even a minute. Anyway I didn't manage to stand up to him the way my mother had stood up to her father. I didn't leave home as a way of showing my contempt for everything he stood

for. All I managed to do was to harm myself and assert my right to harm myself irreparably if I felt like it.

Mum managed to stand up to her father, but it's as if that entirely exhausted any rebelliousness in her and she was no longer capable of standing up to her own husband. She even put up with his slaps round the face. Well, I did manage to stand up to my husband and his infidelity, for all the good it did me.

I know I won't get to sleep. By my bed there's a book that I've started reading and under it a few magazines, but instead I get up and open the door to the bedroom where my daughter lies sound asleep. She is uncovered and her nightdress has ridden up so that she lies there almost naked. She's not a little girl any more, she's a woman. Her bottom has broadened and her thighs have fattened; I'll have to keep an eye on what she eats: what liquids and solids she ingests, what she smokes and where she goes when she's out. All the care I've taken to stop her eating sugary things and whenever I gave in and let her have something, she had to brush her teeth straightaway. I've kept an eye on her teeth and she's totally free of caries, but what about the parts that aren't visible when you open your mouth to speak or smile?

I'd never want to act the policeman with her, the way my father did with me. It wouldn't be any use anyway. When they want to keep someone under surveillance, a squad of policemen are often not enough. What am I to tell her? How am I to convince her to change her ways? What did I neglect? Didn't I give her enough love, or, on the contrary, was I too kind?

After all, we got on well together. Often we'd be left on our own together, even before we were abandoned for good. Her father would be off at some tennis tournament — or at least so he said — and we would play with the Barbie dolls. We actually had three of them: one white, one black and one with almond eyes. And I used to tell a long story in episodes about a princess who was clever and brave. She could slay dragons that had defeated namby-pamby princes and outwit anyone who tried to deceive her. She

loved travel, climbing up hill and down dale, and she had a tame killer whale who carried her on its back through the warm seas.

And whenever my little girl was ill, I would always wake up a few seconds before she awoke and started to demand my assistance or at least my presence.

Then we were left to ourselves, and every summer I would stubbornly take her to the seaside. "We didn't catch sight of any killer whales, but spent our time in needlessly expensive hotels. I was equally stubborn about sending her to the mountains every winter. She had the very best in skis, boots and bindings. In that way I spoiled her and went without things myself so that she shouldn't have the feeling that she was denied something just because I wasn't able to hold on to her father. It's not long since we used to spend nice evenings together. We'd sit together in my room because it has the most space and play guitar and sing spirituals or songs from my younger days.

I lean over her and stroke her hair. The little-girl woman sighs and out of her sleep she brushes away my hand as if brushing away a midge.

I go back into my own room. The box with Dad's writings is still standing by the wardrobe.

Lucie once confided to me that whenever she picks up an encyclopaedia or book on photographers, she first looks to see if there's a mention of her. I don't look for myself in encyclopaedias. People need a dentist to repair their teeth, they don't need to idolize or read about them. But I'll check, at least, how my own father welcomed me into the world and how he spoke about me.

Before I reach that illustrious day, I have to wade through the Great Events of those times. I pause for a moment at one of the most spectacular show trials, in which the revolutionaries were true to their predecessors and started to murder each other. Our own comrades betrayed us! It's not surprising that almost all of them were foreigners, Zionists, Jews in other words. That's how they repay our people's trust in them!

I wonder what he told Mum. And I wonder what Mum thought about it and whether she dared say anything out loud. Maybe her mind was more on me, who was already in her tummy by then. What idea could she have had of the world I would be born into?

I go on leafing through the exercise book. Yes, of course, here's the well-retouched face of the Generalissimo staring at me out of the page, framed in black. No pockmarks, but no kindly smile either: it wouldn't be appropriate at a moment made for mourning. Just below it a brief note. I convened a special remembrance meeting in the assembly shop. I said: One of the greatest geniuses of mankind is dead, a thinker, philosopher, military leader, revolutionary, saviour of our lives and liberator of our peoples, a man whose heart held enough love for all people. A giant acclaimed by poets the world over. I stressed that we would remain true to his legacy. At one moment I was overcome with emotion and couldn't continue my oration. I noticed that the people listening were moved too and the women were crying. Comrade V-ová came to see me after the meeting and was sobbing. Then she said: I thought he'd never die, that the Soviet doctors wouldn't let him die. I told her: Even he was mortal, but his achievements will last for ever.

My father, a fool. At least he didn't make grammatical mistakes. He had no education, but he was a pedant. No mention of me, of course. I turn the page. A mention at last: I have a daughter. I haven't seen her yet. The comrades suggested a celebration, but I refused. How could I celebrate at a moment when the entire progressive world is in mourning. It would be a human and a political mistake. I simply made a political mistake. It's not the done thing to come into the world at a moment when the vassals are groaning in pain at the loss of a tyrant.

Today's paper reports that the Soviet Union has the H-bomb too. Great news for all fighters for world peace!

I close the exercise book in disgust.

When I mentioned to the young man who invited me for a glass of wine the other day that I was born on the day of the

Soviet dictator's death, he declared almost triumphantly that it was a fateful coincidence. Fateful coincidence with what? — I didn't ask him.

I now know that he's called Jan Myšák. His pals mostly call him Myšák or Mickey Mouse. He strikes me as shy and a bit childish. He probably has a hang-up about not completing his studies. I expect that's why he stressed more than once how important his job is. Apparently he's not allowed to say much about it because it has to do with uncovering those who collaborated with the State Security during the previous regime.

He tried to tell me at breakneck speed all the main things about himself. He lives with his mum but claims that he refuses her attentions. I expect he's only kidding himself; he referred to her several times in passing: 'my mother thinks. . my mother says. . my mother doesn't like. .'

He also told me he regularly takes part in some kind of complicated parlour games, in which people play historical or imaginary characters: kings, jesters and so on, but also monsters, elves or aliens. As if he was ashamed about still playing games, he explained that he took part in them in order to forget what he encountered every day when reading the reports of police informers.

Then he talked about my ex-husband, who was apparently the one who aroused his interest in history, and why he started to study it at university.

I don't have much interest in history. Descriptions of battles and famous victories horrified me. I used to imagine the soldiers who were left lying dead on foreign fields and the anticipation of those they left behind. Women watching out for men who could never return, children who grew up without hearing a man's voice.

Soldiers mostly didn't have children yet, he pointed out. They used to recruit single men.

Even so, someone was waiting for those who were butchered, I said. And in the most recent major wars they recruited everyone whether they were twenty or fifty. When my beloved Karel Čapek

wrote The Mother before the last world war, he tried to see history through a woman's eyes. In the end he was unsuccessful, because he had her send her fifth and last surviving son to the war. That's something I'd never do. I told Jan I'd refuse to accept the laws of a man's world that demand bloodshed and tears.

He said he understood me and admitted that the world of men is essentially cruel. He couldn't imagine a woman devoting herself to wiping out entire nations, races or social classes as the dictators over the last century had done. Then he started to talk about revolutions, not omitting one of my one and only husband's lessons about the tyrants who changed the fate of Russia and set about changing the fate of the world.

He spoke with passion, but I couldn't concentrate on what he was saying: I was taken by his eyes. It's unusual to find a redhead with large, dark eyes. I don't ever recall loving anyone with eyes like that. I used to be attracted by blue or slate-grey eyes, like my first and only husbands, although his gaze was cold. But that young fellow looked at me almost imploringly.

I sat with him longer than was wise. I allowed him to order me three glasses of wine, even though he himself only drank some of that sweet muck that ruins teeth and health.

I worked out that he was almost fifteen years younger than me.

What lunacy am I being tempted into? It reminds me of some lines of Yesenin's that I once found moving:

Not sorry, not calling, not crying,

All will pass like smoke of white apple trees

Seized with the gold of autumn,

I will no longer be young.

He was twenty-six when he wrote that.

What about me, then? What sort of delusions are these? That lad who looked at me so imploringly could easily go out with my Jana.

Something makes me start. I put the lid back on the box and

quietly go back to the bedroom where my daughter is still lying exacdy as I left her a moment ago, her bare bottom thrust in my direction. I switch on her table lamp and shine the light towards her. I lean over her and like a detective I search that smooth skin, unmarked by time. All I lack is a magnifying glass. And sure enough, I find it, a tiny red spot, maybe left by a syringe. They are past masters at concealing it. That's something they are good at learning and the more they have to conceal the more resourceful they become. Perhaps she was bitten by a midge. Midges sometimes come in the window. Maybe she scratched herself. Best not to think about it. Best not to look. I'll tackle her about it tomorrow.

I go back to bed.

Please God, say it's not true.

I try to think which of my former colleagues might advise me.

It's nonsense. It's that nun in the guise of a Czech teacher who put the idea in my head. My daughter's hardly going to do anything as stupid as that.

That's just the point: she is my daughter. Her forebears include a crazy grandmother and great-grandparents who committed suicide: more cases of suicide in the family than is healthy. On top of that a depressive mother that no man could put up with, even when she knelt before him and hugged his legs.

You're so beautiful, so beautiful, said that fifteen-years-younger ex-pupil of my ex-husband, and gazed at me as if about to declare his love.

I ought to go and see my ex-husband. Tell him that our daughter, the only thing we'll have in common as long as we're alive, smokes cannabis and possibly does worse things than that. Maybe it won't interest him any more. His daughter never did interest him very much. He didn't just leave me, he left her too.

Please God, let all this I'm going through be just a dream.

No, not everything, after all, something has to remain part of my life. But there's so little that I'd like to retain as part of my actual waking life.

4

I oversleep. The alarm clock doesn't even wake me. And then Jana is standing over me, repaying me my nocturnal visit. 'Mummy, aren't you going to the surgery today?'

I leap out of bed. I have a splitting headache. I've no idea when I fell asleep. 'I've made you breakfast, Mum.' And sure enough, there's a cup of coffee on the table and she has even buttered some bread. She plants a kiss on my cheek; she's sprayed herself again with my Chanel, which I save for only very special occasions, and she's eager to be gone.

I delay her. 'Jana, tell me: was it only the grass?'

'Mum, what's got into you again?'

'Answer me. Did you inject anything?'

'Mum, you must have been dreaming — either that or you're paranoid.'

'Yes or no?'

'Of course not! I'm not some stupid junkie, am I?' She swears that she's not lying. She looks the picture of health and full of energy, and I want to believe that she's perfectly all right and I'm just anxiety-prone.

I arrive at the surgery twenty minutes late.

Eva helps me into my white coat. I thank her and ask her to make me a strong coffee.

Eva and I have been together for eleven years already. We understand each other without the need for words. I don't have to tell her what to mix for me. If she's not sure, she asks. We're together every weekday and sometimes we even spend weekends together. When she married she became the owner of a little cabin on a rock above the Vltava just outside Prague. I don't own anything of the sort, and yet whenever I get out of town it's an enormous relief and my cares fall away.

So Jana and I sometimes take her up on her invitation and it strikes me that my daughter gets on better with Eva than with me.

Eva sometimes takes her to Mass at the village church. I don't join them. I only went to church or read the Bible to spite Dad. I didn't care whether the church was Protestant or Catholic. I even wandered into a synagogue once when I was in London; but none of it had any effect on my soul. But I think it does Jana good to make herself kneel before something from time to time.

Thanks to Eva, my patients include Father Kostka, who now sits in the chair waiting for me. At the time my father first donned militia uniform, Father Kostka was sent to Leopoldov Prison, so I feel guilty in front of him. But he doesn't know about it. He addresses me as 'young lady', and when he is unable to speak, he smiles at me with his eyes, at least. I ought to ask him what he would advise a non-Christian mother to do or say in order to help her sixteen-year-old offspring come to terms with life and find some meaning in it. I wonder what he'd say?

But at this moment Father Kostka has to clench his jaws and the waiting room is still full of people. I'll ask him next time.

'You're a bit down in the mouth today, Mrs Pilná,' he says as he gets up from the chair.

I don't tell him that I have little reason to be cheerful, but simply say that I slept badly. 'The nurse will fix you a new appointment.' I quickly finish my coffee.

But while she is leafing through the diary, Eva remarks, 'I couldn't make it on Sunday. What was your sermon about, Father?'

'You know me, nurse. I only have one theme.'

'Yes, I know. Love.'

'This time it was more about humility and reconciliation.'

'You really are a bit odd today,' Eva said when we were alone for a second.

'I'll tell you all about it when we get a moment.'

That moment doesn't arrive until lunch time.

'Don't get into a state over a bit of grass,' Eva said after listening to me. 'They almost all try it these days.'

I swallow my greasy goulash soup and would like to nod in agreement that nothing's wrong. She can talk. I bet her boys wouldn't do anything like that. 'And what about her truancy?'

'Did you like going to school?'

'I went, though.'

'Those were different times. Besides, your dad was a tartar.'

They were different times and my father behaved like a tartar. These are better times, or there's more freedom at least; my daughter's father isn't a tartar, he's just missing, he just went elsewhere.

Eva believes in something. There has to be something that transcends mankind, she says, or there'd be no sense to life. And that's how she brings up her boys. The trouble is I haven't managed to give my little girl any belief because I myself am not sure that life has any meaning.

As I'm coming out of the surgery at the end of the afternoon that young man, who is fifteen years my junior and thinks I'm beautiful, is standing there waiting for me. He is holding a bunch of flowers. He can't seriously be intending to offer me five white roses. Who has he mistaken me for?

5

When I was a little boy I had a terrific urge to go to Africa and take part in a snake hunt. I'd read about a snake hunter in South Africa who was bitten by a black mamba. He'd been bitten by lots of snakes before then, but never by a mamba, whose bite is supposed to kill you within five minutes. But that hunter was carrying a syringe with serum. He injected himself and managed to drive to hospital, where he still had the strength to ask them to put him on an artificial lung. Then he became paralysed. He was aware of everything and could hear everything, but was unable to show it. For six days he listened to the doctors talking

about him and discussing whether he'd survive. He did survive. I longed to experience something of the sort. I wanted to own a black mamba, except that a black mamba is very big: an adult can grow to four metres in length and we only had a small flat. Besides, where would I find a mamba?

But I did manage to make a terrarium and got a beautiful red-horned snake to put in it, as well as a rattlesnake, Sistrurus catenatum, that I used to catch frogs for. People regard the snake as a symbol of evil and cunning. It's not true. It's people who are cunning; a snake simply has to feed itself. When it's not hungry or doesn't feel threatened, it is harmless.

But Mum couldn't stand snakes or frogs and one day she declared it was either her or those 'monsters'. So I had to sell them. I don't have any snakes, but I still live with Mum.

These days I satisfy my thirst for adventure partly at work and partly in hero games. In those games you can have African war drums playing if you want to. Each player has a number of lives, so one can be a bit more reckless than in real life.

I met my last girlfriend, Věra, at one of those games. She played to perfection a rich girl captured by terrorists. She wasn't afraid of being killed or mistreated and she flirted fantastically with the nobody being played by me. We started going out together last autumn. We could have had a child together, which would definitely have pleased my mum, but Věra didn't want a child until she'd finished college, and I wasn't particularly keen either. We split up a month ago.

I think I hurt her when I suggested we break it off. She wanted to know what I had against her.

What could I tell her? That it annoys me how little she knows about life, that she knows nothing about what happened in the past, that she has no understanding of what's going on nowadays, and has no idea of the sort of life she'd like to live. Nothing terrifies or bothers her, but nothing excites her either. She just flirts with life.

I didn't find anything particularly wrong with her, nothing that could be put into words, nothing she would be able to understand. I simply realized once again that I was confronted by a void, that I was simply incapable of completing something that others would have completed. Or could it be, on the contrary, that I was able to put a speedy end to a relationship that would have ended anyway?

That dizzy sense of standing above a void meant that I am still single. On more than one occasion, the moment has loomed ominously that I might change my status and I'd probably never hear my war drums again, let alone set off in search of them, but suddenly they would start thundering so loud I'd have to run away. I'm a born tightrope walker who's scared of the wire, unless it's placed on the ground. That's an exaggeration. My present job, which has already become a routine for me, might be considered by many to be like balancing on a wire above the Grand Canyon. Maybe I really am dodging bullets and arrows and just can't hear their whistling; I simply refuse to believe it. I know facts that could ruin the careers of many people, so it wouldn't be surprising if one of them tried to cut my wire. Then when they find me with a broken neck, many people will heave sighs of relief and almost no one will shed a tear. I prefer not to talk to Mum about my work. I pretend to her and maybe to myself too that all I do is rummage in various insignificant documents about who attended what meeting and how many people took part in some stupid demonstration. I don't let on to anyone that I make copies of documents that one day, I suspect, and probably quite soon, some powerful individual is going to attempt to destroy for good. Not even good-natured tubby Jiří from the radio, who is my faithful companion in the hero games, has any idea what's on the diskettes that I'm storing at his place. Luckily my immediate superior Ondřej is doing the same thing; I know that for sure, and I assume the others are too. If they cut one of our wires it won't do them any good; the others will simply publish everything. That's how we protect ourselves.

Mum sometimes makes pointed remarks about her contemporaries who already have grandchildren. The way she sees it, grandchildren are a source of great pleasure.

I'd love to give my mother some pleasure; she hasn't had much of it in her life. First of all she waited almost nine years for Dad and when he was released they didn't have a flat or any money. She spent her whole life in jobs that required abject obedience. I can't tell how much it took out of her, but her position filled her with bitterness.

I tended to be sorry for my mother, but I idolized my father. He embodied for me courage and integrity. He was forced to work in the uranium mines for five years, and when he was finally released from the camp the only job he was allowed to take was as a warehouseman, even though he had studied maths and spoke five languages. That's how things were in those days. But he didn't complain. He maintained that they had already ruined enough of his life, so "why should he ruin it even more by fretting?

When I was small he used to read me stories from the Tales of Old Bohemia and later he helped me with maths, Latin and English. He also taught me woodcraft: how to make fire without matches, how to distinguish different animal tracks and, of course, how to put up a tent and not leave the tiniest bit of litter behind in the countryside. He would also tell me about the Red Indians and he carved me a beautiful totem, which I still have hanging above my bed. He also made me a little tom-tom and taught me how to play it.

Once I was quarrelling with a boy of my age — I must have been nine or ten at the time — and the boy hurled at me, 'Anyway, your dad's an old lag!' We had a fight over it, but that accusation stuck in my memory. It's true that Mum told me Dad was totally innocent and in fact he was a hero, but what if she was just saying it? And what if people around me didn't know?

Dad seldom talked about the camp, although on a couple of occasions he told me how cruelly he had been treated at interrogations. He only mentioned one of his torturers. He went by the

name of Rubáš, but no one knew what his real name was. This man was particularly cruel; he would wake my father up night after night, and while he was interrogating him he would beat my father on the hands, the soles of his feet and his back when he refused to divulge anything about his friends. He ordered Dad to be put in a punishment cell where it was close to freezing, and instead of a blanket he was given a stinking mouldy rag. 'Just so you know what you're worth,' was his reply when my father complained.

I wanted to know what had happened to the ruffian, but Dad had no idea. They all disappeared, he told me, and he definitely had no desire to meet them. But I imagined tracking the brute down one day. I would watch out for him on one of his walks and then tie him up, chloroform him and carry him back to Dad on my back, the way Bivoj brought home the wild boar in the legend. Then let Dad do with him what he liked.

I could tell Dad all my secrets as I knew he'd never try to interfere in my life.

When he was dying I used to sit with him at the hospital. The day before he died he said, 'Don't worry, I'll fight it.' He didn't moan although he was in pain and wanted to go on living. When it was all over I cried like a little boy, although I was almost twenty-three.

The moment I accepted the job at our Institute I thought about him. I'm sure he'd have been pleased that I want to do something about restoring justice to its rightful place in the world. I still had the same plan: to find those who landed him in prison and the ones who interrogated and tortured him. I'd imagine the moment when I'd perhaps stand face to face with them and demand that they explain and defend their behaviour.

It wasn't at all easy to fulfil that resolution. I wasn't the one who chose the individual cases I worked on — they were assigned to me. And the further one looked back into the past the more difficult it was to look for information; and even when I turned up names

in our files it didn't mean I would find the people they belonged to. It was as if they had disappeared from the face of the earth, or it was that the threads of their lives had been severed again and again. And even when I managed to retie some of them or root out new addresses and places of employment, I would discover that the thread had been severed for good, years before. And instead of meeting the scoundrel face to face, I'd find myself in a graveyard.

On the contrary, it was Mum who made demands on my life, particularly after Dad died, and I've resisted them. Only rarely have we spoken together about matters of importance. I didn't even tell her about breaking up with Věra, even though they knew each other and Mum was already sizing her up as a future daughter-in-law. I haven't even told her about my new love; I expect it would alarm her.

I find it impossible to say what attracts me to Kristýna. It's probably something subconscious. It's as if she reminded me of some encounter in the distant past, so distant, in fact, that it may not even have taken place in my present life. But it was an encounter that must have made an indelible impression on me.

We're poles apart in terms of age, profession and personality. She's educated — a dentist with an adolescent daughter — and she told me she suffers from depression. She warned me that she is insufferable when she's down. She smokes. She enjoys wine. I drink wine only rarely and I've never even tried smoking, probably on account of Dad.

I bring her roses.

'You're crazy,' she said the last time. 'Why should you offer me flowers?'

We were sitting in the wine bar again. We're still in the phase when we share important details about our lives. She told me about her father, who was a Party busybody whose activity she despised, and about her sister, who is a professional singer: apparently she predicted Kristýna would die by her own hand. She also

spoke without anger about her ex-husband, whom I esteem and she loved; I think she still loves him, although she won't admit it. I was also struck by her date of birth.

The thing is, I'm more and more convinced that the position of the planets is important for our lives, but I'm also beginning to penetrate the mystery that numbers have for us. When she mentioned that she was born on the day Stalin died, it struck me as an odd or even fateful coincidence.

The Soviet despot seems to me like some dreadful Titan: not one born from the blood of Uranus, but one constantly being reborn from the blood of his murdered victims. Although he died long before I was born, I am constantly being reminded of the crimes of some and the paltriness of others as I encounter them daily in the files I deal with. I'm convinced that his death reopened for part of mankind a door that was firmly locked against human dignity, tolerance, justice and compassion. To be born on the day of his death meant entering the world on one of the most mpmentous days of the twentieth century.

Kristýna also told me that her grandmother and all her relatives on that side of the family died in the gas chambers and that she was unable to reconcile herself with the fact that there were people who could poison others in their thousands, even babies and infants. I thought she would burst into tears as she was speaking about it; I could see she was crying inside over those murders of long ago and over the atrocities committed against her relations.

Was it possible to live in such a world? She had nothing to expect from life: she really expected nothing. From the way she assured me of this I sensed that, on the contrary, she still lives in expectation, she teeters on the borderline between expectation and despair. If despair prevails she could well put an end to herself. I think she is one of those who would not fear to take that step.

But she is afraid of me. She is afraid to come closer. We fear each other and yet we also attract one another.

But we have to live, I told her, in order to make discoveries, for

instance. To share them with others and pass them on. We have to strive so that justice doesn't disappear from the earth, or at least so that love should govern our lives.

'That's not a matter of at least,' she objected. 'But which of us is capable of it?'

She was expecting me to say that I could, that maybe together we both could, but I didn't, because she was right: I don't know anybody who could.

She has sunshiny hair almost down to her waist; it gives her a little-girl look, but her gaze is sad. She has the bearing of a queen. I find her sadness arousing. I longed to touch her, to caress, at least, those hands that radiated tenderness, but at the same time the thought seemed to me sinfully improper, as if it would mean crossing some barrier, breaking some taboo, whose violation would provoke divine retribution.

We drank a whole bottle of wine together, although I had only one glass. As we were saying goodbye she hesitated for a moment. I realized that she was waiting to see whether I might suggest we met again, or that she herself was about to make a similar suggestion. But we suppressed our urges and said nothing. I expect it would be more sensible never to see each other again.

6

He is lying next to me, naked. His skin is smooth, clean and fresh like Jana's. I wasn't the one who invited him home. I didn't seduce him; he asked me to pay him a call; he was alone at home as his mother was out of town.

He led me to his small room. Two of the walls are lined with bookshelves. Amidst the books an old couch, wide enough for one, maybe wide enough for two to make love, but not wide enough for two to sleep on. He has no pictures. Above the bed there hangs an American Indian totem, a little painted drum and

a mandolin. A computer stands on a small battered table. Alongside the windows there are two black loudspeakers. The window looks out on a yard; I noticed that even though the curtains are drawn.

He promised to show me some old prints. He promised me Beethoven, Chopin and Tchaikovsky and kept telling me I was the most beautiful and interesting woman he'd ever met. I didn't say I knew he had other intentions apart from showing me old prints. I didn't say that although his mother is out of town I'm also a mother, that he was simply looking at the world through some sort of hallucinatory spectacles. All I said was, 'Don't be silly, you can't mean it when you say I'm beautiful.'

He can't mean it seriously, but here he is lying next to me, caressing my breasts. He has long fingers; he could weave spells with them, not just play the mandolin or leaf through documents. His tongue is slightly rough and damp. When we were making love a moment ago he was patient and tender. Dear God, how long is it since a man was patient and tender with me? When was the last time I met a fellow who'd care about what I feel? He told me that he had only ever gone out with younger girls. He didn't add that he also wanted to try it for once with a woman who was old enough to be his mother. He just said, 'I want you to feel good with me.'

'I do feel good with you.' My toyboy put on some music but then forgot to change the CD.

'You're special,' he said.

'Special in what way?'

'As a person.'

'How can you know?'

'It's not a matter of knowing. I feel it. The way I feel you're often sad.'

'I'm not sad now.'

'Yes you are, even now.'

'Yes, maybe I am.'

'Why?'

'Because I feel good with you. Because I know it's only for a moment.' I don't say: I know you'll leave me.

'It won't be just for a moment.'

'Everything is just for a moment. We are all of us here only for a moment.' I don't say that according to my husband we're only here for two blinks of God's eye, then the sea of cosmic time closes over us and we can't even hear its murmur.

'I'd like to spend a lifetime with you.'

'Mine or yours?'

'Ours.'

'But I'll die before you. I'm old.'

He tries to convince me that I'm not old, and anyway none of us knows when we'll die. He then asks me a surprising question: 'Are you in love with anyone?'

'Yes: with you, of course.'

'With someone else, I mean.'

'How can you ask me like that? I wouldn't be here with you otherwise, would I?'

'Forgive me. But you were in love?'

'That's ages ago.'

'Your husband. .'

'Don't talk about him now.'

He goes on caressing me. I rest my head on his chest. It's covered in almost invisibly fine blond hairs — my husband's was covered in a thick, dark growth. I used to tell him he was like a chimpanzee. He hurt me. People mostly hurt those nearest to them, and I fear that this boy will hurt me too one day. I wish I could tell him so, beg him not to hurt me!

I feel like crying. 'Look at me.'

'But I am looking at you.'

'Why don't you say anything to me?'

'I don't want to say the things people always say.'

'But I want to hear them.'

'It's lovely to be with you.'

'You don't regret it?'

I want him to say he loves me, that my age doesn't bother him, that he really doesn't find me old. But his thoughts are elsewhere; he's thinking about how to make love to me again. But it's time I went. It's starting to get dark outside and I have a daughter at home. That's if she's at home and didn't make herself scarce when she discovered her mother was enjoying herself somewhere. He asks, 'What do you fear most in life?'

'Betrayal,' I say; I don't have to think twice.

'No, I meant whether you fear something in particular.'

'Fire, I expect,' I said.

'That's because you're a Pisces.'

'I saw someone on fire,' I tell him. 'It was my aunt. She set herself alight. But I don't want to think about it now. I'd just like to light a cigarette. May I?'

He gets up and runs naked to fetch me an ashtray. At that moment he reminds me of my first love of long ago: the same narrow shoulders. I was in love with Psycho in those days, madly. I wonder if anything like that will ever happen to me again.

He returns. This household does not own such a thing as an ashtray, so he thrusts some kind of saucer at me instead. He asks whether I'm thirsty.

He has narrow wrists; in fact his arms are almost girlish, like my daughter's. Suddenly I see her arm and also the syringe, the needle she punctures it with; my little girl is out gallivanting somewhere while I selfishly lie here having a smoke in a strange bedroom on a strange couch.

'A penny for your thoughts,' he says.

'I have to go.'

'Don't go yet.'

'I have to, my daughter's waiting for me.' I gather up my clothes and make for the bathroom, which is also unfamiliar. There is nothing here of mine; I don't even know which is the hot tap.

'I'll bring you a clean towel,' he calls after me. Then he opens the door a chink and puts a towel into my outstretched hand. I'm glad he didn't have it here ready; he wasn't sure I'd ever come in here.

I have a quick shower and get dressed. I put on a bit of eye make-up. Heavens, what am I doing here?

The roses he bought me are standing in a vase. This time they are red. I take them with me.

He sees me to the metro station. He wants to descend to the depths with me but I tell him he'd better not.

OK, he'll be waiting for me again tomorrow.

'But I've got a long surgery tomorrow.'

'I know.'

'How could you know?'

'I read it on the surgery door.'

'Don't come, I have to be at home in the evening. Because of my daughter.'

'You weren't home this evening.'

'That's the point.'

'And what if I went home with you?'

I can't bring this boy home, can I? Unless I said, Jana, I've brought you a new friend: his name is Jan; he's going to give you some coaching. In what? Everything. The trouble is it's too late for coaching.

He doesn't ask me why I don't want to invite him. He'll wait for me the day after tomorrow, then. He gives me a hug and a quick kiss.

'Thank you,' I say.

'For what?'

'For everything. And these roses.'

On the steps I turn and look back: he's still standing and waving me goodbye. Why didn't I make up my mind to stay there till morning? I could have called Jana; I could have told her I'd be coming a bit later and sent her to bed. No, next time, maybe. It'll be better next time: if there'll be a next time.

I tremble at the thought I might never see him again. It will all end one day; the question is how many days are left before it does. If we didn't anticipate the end how could we value what we still have left?

I unlock the street door and check my mailbox. One letter from goodness knows who, the Journal of the Stomatological Association and — the handwriting gives it away — a letter from my anonymous correspondent. I ought to tear it up and chuck it in the dustbin. But the dustbin is in front of the house and I don't feel like going out again. This time Mr Anon doesn't call me names, he just issues threats. He warns me not to venture outdoors in the evening because the Hour of Reckoning is Nigh.

I venture out, nevertheless, in order to open the stinking dustbin, tear up the letter and toss the pieces into the rotting garbage.

7

I had to go and see Dad and make him those pancakes, seeing I'd blabbed about them to Mum. That was a fantastic performance. I really managed to tug her heartstrings. The thought of me taking care of my poor ailing dad, who left us in the shit. I haven't been to see him for at least a month. The last time was in hospital with Mum.

It took me a long time to find some clobber to put on, 'cos when I'm visiting Dad I have to wear something that wouldn't be an affront to decent people. The trouble is I didn't have anything that wouldn't make Dad go spare. If I put on some ordinary Levis he'd start going on about the cost of them and telling me not to buy things like that when I'm not earning and he has to pay maintenance for me. But my old jeans had three ginormous holes in them and I was afraid he wouldn't survive the shock. In the end I got out an old dress I made myself when I was about twelve. It was impossibly crude and the colour of dog shit, in fact it looked

like an upside-down trash can without a bottom, but it wouldn't be an affront to decent people.

Dad was the last person I fancied seeing.

I never liked visiting him even when I was forced to every week, which was something they dreamt up at some stupid court or other. Dad was fairly OK when he was living with us. I remember him calling me Jankie-pankie and bringing me Mole colouring books. And he'd tell me how we'd fly to Mars in a rocket ship. I thought he was talking about the chocolate bar. Why not if the moon can be made of cheese?

Dad said he learnt tidiness when he was doing military service. And he was really proud of being better at folding his blankets and clothes than any of the other cretins. He'd really knock me out when he demonstrated to me how to stack clothes.

And he used to take me to the planetarium and the observatory. He had some pals there. Stars were his big thing. Most of all he wanted to shock me with Saturn's rings, the moons around Jupiter, the black holes and the Big Bang. He loved the Big Bang 'cos that's how everything is supposed to have started. He used to tell me how in the beginning all there was was a tiny little marble, smaller than a tomato but ever so heavy 'cos it contained all the stars we can see and even those we can't. A real pain. And that poor guy believed it and I bet he even told those morons in his school about it. And they'd have to repeat it after him: the stars we can see and even those we can't. That was his favourite: repeat after me. Repeat after me: I am not to laugh at the teachers! Repeat after me: before dinner well-mannered people wash their hands! Repeat after me: only louts fail to greet older people! And I used to repeat it otherwise I'd immediately get a clout and ever since then I've hated washing my hands and now and again I shout to some poor old pensioner: Ciao! or Hi!

Mum didn't have to repeat things after him, but even so she was more scared of Dad than I was. If she was a quarter of an hour late with lunch on a Sunday, Dad would look at his watch and say the

time out loud. 'It's five past twelve. . it's ten past twelve' and on and on. And Mum would apologize and be full of excuses, such as the meat was tough, instead of telling him to get lost or go to the pub.

Dad also explained to me that everything we can see, as well as what we can't see, just happened. It wasn't created by some god, 'cos he'd have to be so big he wouldn't fit into heaven and he'd have to be so incredibly old that he wouldn't be even able to survive it himself. I didn't understand that bit anyway. Sometimes I used to go to church with Mum's Eva. I quite enjoyed it, especially the singing and the saints with their eyes rolled upwards as if they'd been chewing loads of dope or had seen something that totally knocked them out. Maybe they were looking at the tiny little marble that made the Big Bang. And also I didn't understand why angels needed to have wings like geese or swans, when they could fly just like that, like when I dream about flying; that's why they're angels, after all. There was also a ginger-haired server I fancied.

Whenever we went out for the day, Dad always used to be testing our knowledge of flowers and trees and songbirds, not to mention the battles that were fought in that particular spot. That's a pasqueflower, that's an alpine currant, that's a cinquefoil and that's a wood warbler. Can you hear it singing tweet-tweet? Well I certainly couldn't hear it, but Mum made an effort and said, 'Oh, yes, tweet-tweet. You're great, Karel. How do you manage to remember all those things?' And I think she might have really meant it. And he believed her, 'cos the next thing he said was, 'Well you had to memorize the human anatomy.' Horrendous.

Mum was really nuts about him. I realized that, and even though he looked old enough to be her father she must have really loved him 'cos she still thinks about him all the time even though she pretends she couldn't give a toss about him. She really takes it to heart that he's in such a bad way.

Then when I was at least in third year they started to fight like total loonies. They'd always shut themselves in the bedroom or the kitchen and yell at each other as if I couldn't hear. At first I thought it was because of me, because Dad thought I was disobedient, untidy and lazy and that I would come to a sticky end, but then Dad stopped coming home in time for dinner and soon he didn't come home at all; and Mum would sit with the TV on and cry her eyes out, even when Camera Capers was on. I'd wake up sometimes in the night and she'd be sitting in the kitchen reading or just staring at the wall and I realized they'd probably get divorced.

Dad moved in with some bird who worked in a bank. She was tall and lanky and totally flat-chested. She had really ugly teeth, a bit like a vampire; perhaps she was one, 'cos Dad became really ill and whenever she said anything to me it was obvious that she was totally brain-dead. I don't know what Dad saw in her; maybe he just ran away from me because I started to get bolshie. And he also caught me with a ciggie, but they were already getting divorced by then anyway

Dad has the sort of eyes that put fear into people. He can stand and look at someone for ages without blinking. I never knew why he stared like that. I just knew he wasn't pleased with me and that I'd done something wrong and I could expect some punishment. He was a real genius at dreaming up punishments. If I didn't finish my lunch, for instance, Mum would have to cook me the same thing for the rest of the week. One time I didn't want to wear this vile flowery frock that Grandma must have found on a rubbish tip somewhere or dug out of Auntie Lida's things. Mum split on me so Dad gave me a good hiding and then I had to wear that frock to school every day until I managed to pour some tomato soup with noodles down the front of it in the school canteen.

When he left us, he wasn't able to punish me any more. I expect he didn't feel like it any more; he wasn't bothered, he was already soppy about his beanpole. He just kept on trying to

explain that it wasn't his fault but Mum's 'cos she hadn't looked after him properly and was always having those black moods of hers that he just couldn't cope with. And on top of that she smoked. He told me he needed a bit of peace, fresh air and some enjoyment out of life. And at least a hint of attention. We both needed it, he explained, but my mother would often leave us in the lurch and go off with some pals after surgery instead of coming home. Apparently he used to have to cook me something for dinner at the last minute, but I was too young to remember, according to him. He said Mum had no sense of order and he couldn't understand how someone like that could repair people's teeth properly. Apart from that their interests were completely different. Mum didn't even enjoy tennis or skiing — surely I must have noticed how she was like an elephant on skis — and she wasn't interested in history. He's told me loads of times that it wasn't a home but a place of weeping and wailing. 'Her hysteria even started to rub off on me and you were being affected too. In fact you're going to spend your life trying to recover from it.'

At first I used to try to say something interesting. I even told him I missed him. But then I realized he'd been really vile to Mum and me and I'd try to do a bunk as soon as I could. That beanpole left him last year too. It struck me he might come back to us, but he didn't.

So now he's been ill. Mum reckons he's in a bad way. He doesn't stare as much as he used to, but he still scares me. That's why I dolled myself up like Pippie Longstocking and didn't put any eyeliner round my puffy eyes. I was so sober I almost staggered climbing the stairs up to his flat; I was chewing some mint gum so he wouldn't know I'd had a last ciggie in front of the house.

I hadn't bought him any roses or even stolen any for him in the park. Why should I?

'Hi, Dad,' I said when he opened the door. 'I've come to make you pancakes.'