No Saints or Angels

CHAPTER THREE

1

I won't be with my daughter this evening anyway. Lucie called me this afternoon to say she's just back from the other side of the globe and wants to see me.

I call Jana, who is surprisingly at home, and mention warily that I'll be home a bit later this evening. She wants to know where I'm going but I don't go into details; I simply tell her to get on with her maths homework and warn her that I'll test her when I come in.

I have a rendezvous with Lucie at a wine restaurant just below the Castle. It's an expensive place, but Lady Bountiful is treating me. She's tanned because she's spent almost a month in California and seen the Pacific Ocean, which I'll never see. She says it's so cold that in those hot regions a cloud of mist rises from the surface and covers the sea and the shore. She takes a box of photographs out of the shoulder bag she always carries. They really do show houses and even the Golden Gate Bridge emerging in fairytale fashion out of the mist. The suspension cables of the bridge glisten with drops of condensed water like the threads of some monstrous spider's web. My friend has also been in the desert and warmed herself up at the hottest spot on the planet; she has brought back for her own benefit and mine pictures of coloured rocks and flowers that brighten the dunes for a single day and then perish in the heat. There are also photos of giant cacti, but they are from the botanical gardens at Berkeley, which I'll never see either.

I ask her what sort of a time she has had.

Fantastic. It's a fantastic country for a short stay, because of the entertainment. That's something that people there definitely worship more than what they go to church for, and entertainers have the best-paid jobs.

That's something I know without having to travel halfway round the world. I don't have to look too far, for that matter: my sister sings a couple of tear-jerkers a month and she's a rich woman compared to me, whose only job is to help rid people of pain.

'What about your poison-penfriend?' Lucie recalls.

'Mr Anonymous is about the only one who is at all faithful to me.'

Lucie wants to know if I suspect anyone in particular. I ought to be careful, she warns me, and report the letters to the police. And I should definitely carry Mace.

I don't intend to report it to the police. They'd just waste my time with typing up some statement. There's no chance they'll go looking for an unknown person who hasn't even attacked me yet. And I don't think I'd be likely to spray poison in someone's eyes.

I ask her whether she was on her own all the time. This is the question my friend has been waiting for. She pulls out a few photos showing her in a luxury convertible with some swarthy fellow with black curly hair, a Latin mostly likely. He's holding her round the waist, flashing his pearl-white teeth and displaying his biceps. He must be at least two divine blinks younger than her. But I'm sure that that didn't bother her. She has lots of other photos in the box. These don't feature the dark Romeo; instead they show skeletons with dark skin stretched over them, children with large eyes and swollen bellies who reach out for a hand holding a bowl with some kind of soup.

'Those are from Rwanda. They must have got mixed up with these,' she explains. She takes back the photos and stuffs them back in her bag. 'And how about you?' she asks.

In my mind's eye I immediately see a small book-filled room, a young man "who brings me roses running naked and barefoot for an ashtray after making tender love to me. I could mention him. I'd enjoy talking about him; but Lucie would certainly want to hear all the juicy details, of course. That was what we always used to talk about, and we'd make fun of the fellows who play the he-man and when it comes to displaying their virility they wilt, and all that's left of their pride is a little worm. But I don't feel like going into details; I'm ashamed that I succumbed and that my feelings are still getting the better of me.

I say nothing and she says, 'You wait, when that Indian-summer romance hits you.' And she goes on to tell me about the young dark fellow's sensuality. I listen to her and think of my own young man, who doesn't have biceps or curly black hair, but who loves me perhaps more than for just a short stay. He promised he'd be waiting for me tomorrow. Where will we go? I can hardly invite him home. Most likely we'll find a wine bar somewhere. And then what? We could go somewhere to a park — Petřín or Sarka, if it's fine. Twenty years ago I thought nothing of making love in the parks and woods around Prague. In those days I didn't stop to think whether it would be fine or not, but made love in the rain and even the snow. Interestingly enough, the snow didn't feel cold; my back was scorching, in fact. These days I'd be worried about my ovaries and kidneys. And I no longer feel like making love somewhere on grass covered in dog shit or having the feeling that someone's getting turned on by peeping at us from the bushes. We could go to my surgery, of course, and make love in the dentist s chair or on the bench in the waiting room.

The wine we are drinking is nice and heavy. It goes to my head and drives out all my worries.

I notice a man gesturing at me from the far corner of the restaurant. A familiar face that I'm unable to place — he's almost entirely bald, with just a bit of greying stubble at the sides. It could be one of my patients. Then the fellow stands up and walks

tipsily over to our table. 'Hello, Kristýna! You haven't changed in the least.'

I can't address him by name or tell him he hasn't changed either, as I don't recognize him. I simply say hello.

'I won't disturb you,' he promises. 'I simply wanted to say hello to my great love of long ago.'

'It's impolite to tell a lady that something was long ago,' Lucie chides him.

'No, it really was long ago,' I say, remembering now the man who first forced me to have an abortion. He's lost his black pigtail, as well as the rest of his hair, but on the other hand he's made a career for himself. I occasionally read something about him. He's a drugs specialist dealing with young people. But since the time he drove me to take an innocent life I've lost all interest in him.

He tells me once more that I'm still beautiful, even more beautiful than then, in fact. He moves a chair over to our table and, as was his wont, starts to undress me with his eyes, while announcing that he works at the ministry and lectures on the new anti-drugs legislation. He is against making drug possession a criminal offence; he's a liberal and wants to influence the young through education. As he blabbers on, my 'educationalist' strips me bare with his eyes.

'Do you have any children?' I interrupt him.

He nods. 'Why do you ask?'

The prat. He asks me why I ask. Some other girl didn't let him force her to go before the board, so he became a father.

'I've got two boys,' he declares, almost proudly. 'How about you?'

'I've a daughter,' I tell him. 'I could have had two, but the criminal who fathered the first didn't want me to have her.'

Offended, he gets up, says he had no intention of disturbing us and staggers off. But my mood is ruined anyway

'Men, they're all disgusting,' Lucie says in a show of solidarity. 'Spiders and men. Except that spiders are harmless.'

It is almost midnight when I emerge from the metro. I'm dreadful, abandoning my little girl again. I almost break into a run.

At the corner of our street a man emerges from the dim entrance to a block of flats and stands in my path, thrusting an arm towards me as if to throttle me. I freeze. 'Give us ten crowns, missus. I've got nowhere to sleep.' He is staggering so much he has to hold on to the wall. He's either drunk or high, but surprisingly I feel a sense of relief. This isn't my anonymous letter-writer wanting to kill me, but just some homeless bloke. I take out my purse and tip all my loose change into his palm.

He closes his palm and staggers off without a word of thanks.

When I reach the door of our block and try to unlock it, my hands are shaking and I'm unable to get the key into the lock. I fancy I can hear footsteps behind me and even someone breathing wheezily, but when I turn round there is no one there.

The flat is already dark and silent. I lock the door behind me and put on the safety chain, something I never do otherwise.

I open the door of Jana's room and hear noisy breathing. There's an odd smell: a mixture of joss sticks, eau de cologne and insect repellent. I don't know since when my daughter has been a fan of joss sticks, but that sweet, penetrating scent is more likely intended to cover some other smell. I'm familiar with that trick. I used to use it when I smoked a cigarette at home and didn't have time to ventilate the room and get rid of the smell before Dad got home. I feel like giving my daughter a good shake and asking her what she was up to here and what she was trying to conceal. But she'd only deny everything. There is a sheet of paper with writing on it lying on the table. I read the first sentence: 'A triangle is the plane figure formed by connecting three points not in a straight line by straight line segments.' It's not a message for me. Or maybe it is: see what a lousy mother you are; I sat here working diligently while you were living it up in a pub.

That's something Dad forgot in that dream of mine. A rotten daughter, a lousy wife and a useless mother.

2

I fell asleep quickly, but my ex-husband wormed his way into my dream again. We were travelling together to some mountains where our accommodation was a wooden chalet. We were still young and had Jana with us, but we left her in the chalet and set off up a narrow track cut out of the rocks. At a certain moment we had to hold on to big loops of rope that hung above our heads in order to cross a ravine. I was afraid as I passed from one loop to another because the ropes were rotten. And then one of the loops broke and I was suspended above the chasm, only holding on by my right hand. I called to my husband for help. I called to him by name, but he had disappeared; he was no longer with me and I watched in horror as the screws that held the end of the rope gradually worked themselves loose from the rock. I kept on screaming, while thinking about Jana and wondering what would happen to her, who would take care of her when I plunged into the abyss.

It's four in the morning and it's still dark outside. My nightdress is soaked in sweat and my throat is dry.

I get up and go barefoot into the kitchen. The fridge is humming as I enter; it also judders; I ought to put a wedge under one side. There are lots of things I ought to do — things to repair and see to, but at this moment I just take out a bottle of wine and mix myself a spritzer.

When, at last, will my husband stop deserting me and disappearing just as I'm suspended above a chasm?

I go back to bed and try to think of something positive. Once when I was depressed I asked my husband what was the point of human life.

He looked at me in amazement, as if my question was evidence of my inferiority, but then he consented to reply. Fundamentally speaking we don't actually have any life, because the duration of our lives is so brief in comparison with cosmic time that in fact it

is unrecordable. And what can't be recorded virtually does not exist.

An interesting answer to my question. We live as if we actually didn't exist. If God did create this Universe, he knows nothing about us, only we think we know about him. We are too small to be measured and so we can do harm. We can also kill — which we do a lot, or at least men all over the world do.

But people want to leave something behind them. When my dad was young I'm sure he believed he was helping to plant a new Garden of Eden, though he forgot that the soil that life grows from is love. But his head gardener preached hatred and so instead of creating a garden Dad helped pave an execution yard. He never admitted it, but towards the end he must have had an inkling of how woefully wrong he had been. And he didn't build a house or even plant a tree that would yield something; he didn't have the time and it wasn't in his nature. But from time to time he would bring home some useless objects; I don't know where he came by them, most likely during confiscations he took part in. He brought home a box of angling flies even though he never went fishing. He brought books in languages he didn't understand and gave Mum a box stuffed with reels of grey thread. The thread was still there when he died. There is so much of it that if we tied all the lengths end to end I expect they'd stretch round the Equator.

What will I leave behind? Plenty of bridges, fillings and dentures, of course. And in fact, ever since I've been able to order any materials I please, they've been top-quality bridges, fillings and dentures. Also a daughter that I've not been very good at bringing up. But what can possibly remain after the tenth or even the hundredth blink of God's eye, when all the words are forgotten and there's no one left to remember what I looked like? Who then will look at the crumbling photos, if any remain somewhere?

Maybe deeds of love leave some trace behind — or at least their repercussions do. Maybe someone, some higher justice, is counting by how many drops one manages to lower the level of

pain in the world. That's one thing I've managed — in people's mouths, at least. Pain in the soul I can't do anything about, not even my own.

The darkness outside is disappearing. I glance out of the window. The streets are still empty; the metal bodies of the cars are damp. A lonely drunk staggers along the opposite pavement; it could be the one I gave that handful of change to.

I take out the box with Dad's notebooks and leaf through them. I'm looking to see if he didn't leave me some message after all.

But most of the entries are boringly inane: just a mass of words, clichés and references to everyday activities — what he ate, saw to or said in speeches. He bought himself new boots. He went to a football match. He had the wireless repaired. He was at the dentist's! He chaired a meeting at the Red Glow co-operative. There were only occasional references to people. Just as well, maybe.

But he did meet with his friend, Comrade P., with whom he spent two years in a concentration camp, and they reminisced together. The last days were the worst. There was no more food. They didn't even issue any bread. But the executions still went on and the SS went on organizing transports. We remembered how during those days we would look up at the sky, which by then was controlled by the Allies, but what good was it to us seeing that the Germans still ruled on the ground. And the hunger was awful. We'd already eaten the last of the bread and apart from water there was nothing to swallow. We no longer had the strength to get up out of our bunks and all we could think about was food and whether the Soviets would reach us before we were wiped out. We could also hear the thud of artillery shells coming nearer. They were already quite close.

I imagine that young man: my dad, in blue-and-white-striped camp clothes lying in some hideous barrack-room, emaciated and hungry, waiting. He knows that the next moments will decide whether he'll live or die. Like a patient on an operating table. Before he falls asleep a patient has the hope that he has entrusted

himself to people who want to save him. Dad was lying on a plank bed and his only source of hope was the thud of shells that would scare me to death.

Then the Soviets arrived, the windscreens of their trucks bearing photographs of Stalin, the Great Leader, and hammers and sickles. They came to the rescue, gave bread, smoked fish, a soup called shchi and vodka. They brought salvation and a vision, and it was as if that determined how things were to be for years to come. For him, for me, for my country and for the whole world.

I informed Comrade P. that Use Koch, that SS monster, has died. The fiend of Buchenwald, who collected gloves and book covers made from the skin of our comrades who were tortured to death, and who even had lampshades made of it, had hanged herself with her bedclothes a few days ago in her prison cell. A small satisfaction, at least, for all those she tortured. You see, a moment ago I was doing men an injustice: women commit murder too.

I recall Dad telling me about that pervert. In his eyes she was an SS monster. But the monster was only able to behave the way she did because a monstrous system had divided people into humans and subhumans. Subhumans could be jailed, tortured and poisoned — without trial and without mercy. How many monsters did similar things here in later years with Dad's approval or at least his tacit consent. How many people were tortured to death? They didn't make lampshades out of human skin, but lampshades weren't the essential issue.

What went through Use's mind when she was making a noose out of her bedclothes? Had she understood something about herself or did she simply have a sense of emptiness and of the hopelessness of her fate?

We all have a sense of hopelessness from time to time but we are not strong-minded enough.

I get up and look in on Jana. She's asleep, of course. I return to my own bedroom and Dad's notebooks. It crosses my mind to see whether he noted how I had broken what he considered a

valuable vase. How old was I then? I wasn't going to school yet, so I could have been five, or at most six years old.

It was a big vase and I found it beautiful. It was indigo blue and there was the figure of a nymph etched into the side of it. I never saw a single flower in the vase. It stood on the dresser and the nymph smiled at me from above and lured me to her. I stood a chair up against the dresser and looked at the room through the glass of the vase and saw how it turned dark like the evening sky.

Once, when I was alone at home, I got the idea of putting some water in the vase and seeing whether the water would be blue too.

I took down that beautiful glass object and held it firmly in my arms, the way Mummy held me when I cried or when a strange dog pestered me in the street. It was odd how the glass didn't feel cold, but instead gave out a warmth — a blue warmth, most likely.

I reached the kitchen and turned on the hot tap. The vase

slowly filled and the water in it really was blue and gave off steam.

Then there was an odd sound that I'd never heard before: the

sound of glass cracking. The vase broke in two in my arms. I can

still recall the terror I felt as I tried — in vain, of course — to put the

vase back together again.

First Dad interrogated me. Why had I taken the vase down? What was I intending to do with it? Why had I put hot water in it? Was I aware of the damage I'd done?

Then he gave me a good hiding. I screamed and promised to buy him a new vase when I was big; I'd buy him two beautiful vases.

When I started to earn money of my own I actually did do the rounds of a few antique shops until I eventually found a vase of a similar colour, at least, to the one I'd broken long before. But it had the image of a flying bird etched into its side, instead of a nymph.

I gave Dad the vase as a Christmas present. I got a ticking off. 'You're crazy. What am I supposed to do with a vase? Have you ever seen me buying flowers?' He'd long ago forgotten about the

broken vase. It hadn't interested him and he hadn't regretted it; he had just thought it right to let me know what a dreadful thing I'd done.

I leaf through the notebooks from the end of the fifties and am unable to find any reference to the vase. Either there isn't one, or I missed it. On the other hand I notice that some female Comrade W crops up repeatedly in his notes. It's probably the same person who is later referred to as W. Saw V. Talked to V. about flowers for International Women's Day. . We went to see Ballad of a Soldier. W. cried. . Repaired W.'s sewing machine. No more details. He was careful. He was well aware that what he wrote down could be used against him. Even so, I feel as if I'm prying as I read it. I ought to put the notebooks back in the box. Dad's dead; why do I need to know about his secrets and his sins?

Eventually I drop off to sleep for a while.

3

Outside, it's a fine May morning; it looks as if everything has burst into bloom. I rejoice in the scents that waft into my room from the nearby gardens. But I expect hayfever sufferers are desperate; my daughter also was complaining of sore eyes when she woke up this morning.

She's back at school. She took a maths test and got an E again. I asked her if she realized she'd fail. She said she did.

She wouldn't be earning her living from maths!

I asked her to kindly tell me what she'd be earning her living from. She didn't think she'd be living off me for the rest of her life, did she?

I wasn't to worry, she'd get by somehow. And probably a lot better than I had!

She's insolent, but what can I say in reply, seeing how badly I've coped with my own life? I tried to explain to her that if she didn't

manage to pass her leaving exam, at least, the best she could hope from life was to be a shop assistant or a hairdresser.

She told me defiantly that she'd happily train to be a hairdresser. It was her life, and it wasn't for me to worry about.

When I was sitting in the metro, two girls of Jana's age were standing opposite me. They struck me as being clean inside and out: no war paint, no rings in their noses or even their ears. Why can't mine look like them?

I'm tired from lack of sleep. Luckily I've only a short surgery today and when it's fine, like today, people don't feel like going to the dentist and I can have a doze from time to time in the X-ray room.

I can't go home after work anyway; I have to go to the stonemason's to order an inscription for the gravestone and buy an urn for Dad's ashes. Then I have to arrange at the cemetery office for their interment. All the beneficiaries have been summoned to the notary public next week so that he can share among us what Dad left. It's a pointless operation as all that remained are a few old clothes — including his People's Militia uniform — a bed and a box of his writings. As well as a portrait of Lenin, the great leader of the proletariat. My sister has to attend at the notary's too. Even though she won't deal with anything else, she'll be there to see the urn buried, so long as I sort everything out first.

Once, when my sister was sixteen, she came home from somewhere in an odd state. Nowadays I'd say she was high, but drugs were a rarity at that time, so she was probably just drunk. She donned the long, lacy dress she wore to dance classes and put on my Cream record with that long, impeccable drum solo. It was really sultry music and I'd made love to it several times. If I'd put the record on, Dad would definitely have protested, as it hadn't been vetted as politically correct. But he let my sister do what she liked because she was so frail and sickly. So she put on that sultry music and started squirming to it. It wasn't a dance, more of an ecstatic trance in which she started to prophesy our futures,

including the way we'd all die. Dad would die of cancer and Mum from a painless stroke. I was supposed to die by my own hand.

'How?' I asked in astonishment.

'By your own hand,' she repeated. 'That's all I know. But it will be bloodless. I see you lying there pale and beautiful, as if covered in hoarfrost. Maybe you're frozen. But you're lying on something green. Maybe it's a lawn or maybe just a carpet.'

'And what about you?' It struck me. 'You won't say anything about yourself?'

'I don't know. Prophetesses aren't able to prophesy about themselves. Maybe I'll never die.' She laughed.

Our parents were dumbfounded and said nothing. I told her she was drunk and embarrassing, but stopped short of telling her she was callous to everyone but herself.

Dad died of lung cancer. Mum's still alive but the doctors are hard-pressed to keep her blood pressure slighdy above normal. My sister, as she imagines, will never die and while I've considered suicide — self-extraction — on a couple of occasions, I've never had the determination to go through with it.

I don't feel like going to the stonemason's, the cemetery office or the notary. I hate dealing with officials, with anyone, in fact, who sits at a counter or behind a typewriter. Men should deal with arrangements: they're not reduced to tears by churlish petty bureaucrats. The most that women should take care of is shopping; but I'm a defective woman, I don't even like shopping. I hate supermarkets, where they offer me an alternative lifestyle full of junk and try to convince me with the help of sickly music that it's all I need for happiness. I dash through shops, toss the absolute minimum of things I need into a basket, and then flee. I choose shoes from window displays and either they suit me or I leave. The same goes for clothes. When they lure me with hundreds of garish outfits I have the feeling I'm looking at rows of people hanging from gallows. They hang there headless, as if their heads have been removed so as not to get in the way, because heads are totally

out of place in that particular world. Those gallows give me the horrors, and as usual I make myself scarce.

I don't have a husband; possibly I have a lover. When he last called, he asked me how I was fixed at the end of the week. I told him I'd probably be devoting myself to my daughter. He told me excitedly that he would be going to Brno to attend a seminar and was just finishing the paper he would deliver.

I asked him what it was about.

He said it was an attempt to explain how and why people subordinated themselves to criminals. He is proud to be delivering a paper. It bothers him that he didn't complete university and sometimes it strikes me that it's one reason he's attracted to me: being able to make love to a doctor. As if it particularly matters how many years one spends acquiring knowledge, which is mostly pointless.

Before the end of surgery I call home, but there is no reply. Where has she got to now, that creature who is fawning and stubborn by turns and is almost certainly pulling the wool over my eyes? I'm a gullible fool; it's obvious to everyone, and everyone eventually takes me for a ride. But there's no one I can complain to. We're each of us engineers of our own fate — to a certain extent, at least.

The stonemason's is just by the entrance to the cemetery. The lady behind the counter has an Art Nouveau look, which suits her line of business. She is also good-natured but with a gravity appropriate for dealing with the recently bereaved. She makes a computer record of Dad's name and the details to be inscribed on the headstone. Then she takes a deposit from me and prints me a receipt.

While I'm there I ask about urns and she shows me the five different types they offer, which differ more in price than in appearance. As if it matters what an urn looks like when it's going to be buried in the ground. I choose the cheapest, which is expensive anyway. I don't know what urns used to cost in the past,

but the price is bound to have gone up, like everything else, from the cradle to the grave. People now have to pay for dental treatment. If you have the talent and the determination you can now make enough to afford several urns at the end of your dental career.

'Would you also be interested in a lamp or a vase?'

I'm not interested in a lamp — but what about a vase? I recall the incident from my childhood and how I promised my father I'd buy him two vases; I have only half-fulfilled that promise. And one should keep one's promises, even belatedly.

I take a look at the heavy stone and metal vessels on display. They also have ordinary ceramic vases, the lady at the computer explains, but the massive ones are preferable. The lighter ones can easily fall over in the wind or be knocked over by birds. Thieves are also more likely to steal the ceramic and metal ones. The best thing is to put everything on a chain and padlock, but they don't sell chains here.

I don't know whether any of the vases resembles the one I broke. I've forgotten its shape; I can only recall its colour.

'Do you have a blue one?'

She brings me a vase that is more amethyst than blue, but the colour doesn't matter. Not even the brightest blue will please Dad now. I buy the amethyst vase and thereby fulfil a longstanding promise. A foolish promise and a foolish purchase.

I phone home but again there is no reply. There is a bus terminal nearby; one of those buses could take me to the part of town where my former and now terminally ill husband still lives.

Half an hour later I ring his doorbell. It takes a while before I hear the sound of shuffling footsteps.

The door opens and my nostrils are assailed by the stench of unaired rooms, sweat and urine.

He looks at me, my former, only and last husband, as if he doesn't recognize me. 'It's you, is it?'

'I can go away again if it's not convenient.'

'No, no, I'm glad you've come.' He is visibly moved. He's wearing the dark-blue dressing gown I bought him for Christmas years ago. In those days he still had broad shoulders and muscles; every morning he used to exercise with a chest-expander and go for a run around the walls of the New Jewish Cemetery. Now the dressing grown hangs on him like on a scarecrow. His hair has thinned and is matted into dirty grey tufts. He follows my gaze and says, 'Sorry, I look dreadful.'

The voice whose clear tones used to excite me with their colour and warmth is now thick and lifeless.

'No, you look better than at the hospital.'

He asks me to sit down and he shuffles to the dresser. I notice that the large pendulum clock that hangs alongside the dresser, one of the few things he asked to take from our joint household, has stopped. It shows precisely midday or midnight. I am surprised. He always made sure it kept the right time.

He registers my gaze. 'I stopped it. Its ticking got on my nerves.' He opens the dresser and takes out a bottle of cheap red wine. 'Someone brought me this, but I'm not allowed to drink. I'll open it for you.'

I shake my head. I don't feel like drinking in front of him. 'Have you had supper?'

'I haven't had lunch yet,' he says. 'I've no appetite and I've nothing to eat.'

'Would you like me to cook you something?' I go into the kitchen and open the fridge. There is nothing in it apart from a cube of processed cheese, a roll that has gone hard, and a few raw, shrivelled potatoes.

'I'll get you something from the shop.'

'Stay here. I don't feel like anything anyway.'

I sit down opposite him. 'How do you feel?'

He just shrugs. 'They've given me some tablets, but they make me feel rotten. What about Jana?' he asks.

'She told me she'd been to see you and made you some pancakes.'

'Did she?' He seems surprised. 'Oh, yes, that's right. She was here,' he recalls. 'She's turned into a real beauty.'

I tell him that the beauty will probably fail her exams, that she plays truant and hangs about with a bad crowd, and that she probably smokes cannabis.

He gazes at me wearily and then asks, 'What are you going to do about it?'

Yes — what will I do about it? For a moment the old bitterness wells up in me. That's what he'd always ask. Whenever our little girl ran a temperature, when he selfishly got me pregnant but definitely had no wish to be a father, when our flat was burgled one time, whenever there was a burst pipe in the upstairs neighbour's bathroom, he would ask me the same question: 'What are you going to do about it?' Not what he was going to do, or we were going to do. A modern man, I realized at the time. Latching on to a woman and clinging to her: a little boy at his mummy's breast, who stays there until he grows tired of it and fancies being suckled elsewhere.

I realized it too late, unfortunately.

No, I mustn't be callous. Whatever he was like before, he now sits here on this chair a poor, abandoned human being who suffers and fears the end. How could it have occurred to me to seek his advice or even expect any sign of interest?

I tell him I don't know what I'll do with our adolescent. I'll seek advice from someone who is better informed.

'Drugs. We didn't have that sort of thing when I was still teaching,' he says. 'Apart from smoking in the toilets. But you oughtn't to smoke. Not at home, anyway. You set a poor example.'

Whereas he always set a good example. He didn't smoke, he didn't drink, he did morning exercises, brushed his teeth and he took his shoes off when he came in. All he did was find a mistress and demonstrate to our little girl that deception and desertion are

part of life. 'How do you spend your day?' I ask, in order to switch the conversation back to the only person who still interests him.

'I sit here like this. Sometimes I read for a while. But what's the point? So most of the time I just sit here and wait and listen.'

'Do you listen to music?'

He shakes his head.

'What do you listen to?'

'The murmur of the universe. At night, when the street is free of cars, I can hear time rolling through motionless space. It's not nice. That's one reason why I stopped winding the clock. It was too much of a reminder of how time never stops rolling onwards.'

I don't know whether he is really recounting his own experience or trying to play on my emotions, or whether he is simply repeating something he read somewhere. 'Don't you sleep at night?'

'I sleep on and off, whether it's day or night.' Without looking at me he says, 'I'm scared of falling asleep. It's stupid because I won't escape the moment anyway; but I'd like to be awake.'

Father Kostka mentioned humility and reconciliation at the surgery the other day. I ought to have asked him what he had in mind. Maybe I could have said something comforting to give courage to my ex-husband, who maybe believes that he will outwit death, or even overcome it if he doesn't let it surprise him in his sleep.

'Don't think about it,' I say and it strikes me that it's not really the best way to finish my visit. So I ask him, 'Do you remember when I last visited you in hospital? There was a young man with you; you introduced him to me.'

'I don't recall.'

'You told me it was a former student of yours.'

'Oh, yes, now I remember. Why do you mention it?'

'He called me and asked how you were.'

'That was nice of him.'

'He seems like a nice person,' I say, trying to make my voice sound as disinterested as possible.

'Why not? Young people tend to be less spoiled. Some of them, at least. He was a quiet young fellow, a trifle erratic, but he was interested in history and the stars. We talked together about time. He once let on to me that he was interested in astrology and I tried to explain to him that it was obscurantism.'

'Maybe it isn't,' I countered in his defence.

'I know you believe in it too. I tried to explain to him that it was pseudo-science. I'm sorry to see that you as a doctor attach any importance to such heresies, but I'm hardly going to convince you now.'

'I'm glad you don't intend to convince me,' I say, and as I bid him goodbye I tell him I hope he'll get well soon.

But being a doctor, I don't fool myself that he'll ever get well.

4

Saturday morning. It was a hot night and I slept badly. I've been sleeping worse and worse lately. And yet I'm tired. I'm so tired that in the evening I collapse into insensibility. But no sooner do I overcome that deathly torpor than I'm awake again and trying in vain to get back to sleep. I am too weary to fall asleep; everything aches, my body, my back and my legs, as well as my thoughts. I need a rest. I need a seaside holiday.

The sea enthralled me from the very first moment I set eyes on it.

Water is my element.

Virginia Woolf loved water too. There one might have sat clock round lost in thought. Thought — to call it by a prouder name than it deserved — had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds. . she wrote. And she also ended her own life in water. The river was called the Ouse.

Nadya, the wife of the Soviet tyrant, shot herself. They say that

outside the room where they found her, a rose lay on the floor; it had just fallen from her hair.

Four years ago I went to the seaside with Charles the Second. We had a room booked in a pension and the sea was just beyond some low dunes. Our room was small and clean, with fresh flowers on the table and painted flowers on the walls. We lay down side by side and even made love. His treatment of me was as always kindly and loving, but I was obsessed with the thought that the way he treated me was the way he must have treated some other woman just a few days before, that he had no difficulty in declaring his love to two different women. When, one evening, he started to talk about our future and about how we'd get married, I finally broached the subject. But I did so in the hope that he would deny everything, that he'd tell me I was crazy and that he loved only me.

But instead he said, 'Eva's been spilling the beans, I see.'

I told him it didn't matter who told me.

He hung his head and without looking at me asked me if I wanted to know the details.

That was something I really didn't want.

He asked me if I could forgive him.

I told him I could forgive him, but I didn't want to live with him.

He remained motionless for a moment, then got up and left the room. From the place where I sat I could see him climbing the dune. The sea was rough and a ban on bathing had been in force since that morning. Charles the Second was an epileptic and he hadn't taken his tablets yet that day. I don't know whether he reached the sea. Had it been a few years earlier, I might have thought he had simply taken the opportunity to stay in the West. But for the past five years there had no longer been any need to flee to freedom, he could only be fleeing from me. But why should he flee from me, seeing that I'd just told him I didn't want him? He could also have been fleeing from his conscience, from

despair or from loneliness. Or he was drawn by the sea and death. That's something I'd have understanding for. Whenever I've stood alone on some isolated spot overlooking the sea I have imagined myself swimming further and further from the shore until I don't have the strength to return. I found the thought of sinking to the bottom both terrifying and enticing. But anyway I know it won't be water that kills me, because I'm a Piscean. If I'm to perish or choose my own death, it will be a fiery one.

It's strange how they didn't find even his clothes on the shore. For a long time afterwards I had qualms about whether I'd been too severe with him. But then in the same way that he disappeared without trace, all traces of him started to disappear from my memory. It's possible that he's still alive and he just disappeared to spite me for rejecting him.

It looks as if Dad not only went out with V.V. alias W. but also had a child by her. W. refused to apply to the medical board or even see my friend Dr H. She got angry and told me she wasn't a rabbit. We had a row but she didn't change her mind. V.V. then left town and found a job in Chrudim. She virtually disappeared from Dad's life but not from the world. Years later he complained in his notebook that the regular monthly allowance he had to pay her to keep alive something that oughtn't to have been was draining him.

He always spoke about that child as 'it', so I can't tell whether it was a son or his third daughter.

I suddenly realized I might have another sibling — a half-brother or half-sister. It stunned me and I was staggered at the thought that something like that could happen without any of us suspecting: either Mum, my sister, or me. The deception that Dad practised on us all! And I stupidly believed that at least towards us he acted honourably.

I go and take a shower. I let it run full blast: maybe I'll manage to wash away all that nastiness, my fatigue and my sins real and imagined.

I find my daughter in the kitchen already dressed and already having had her breakfast.

'Are you planning to go somewhere?'

'We're going to an anti-racism demo on Old Town Square.'

I ask her who the 'we' consists of and she reels off a string of names that mean nothing to me.

I commend her concern for the fate of her fellow citizens but voice my doubt that they would be demonstrating so early in the morning.

No, the demonstration is planned for the afternoon but they have to make preparations and discuss a plan of action because there is likely to be an attack by the skinheads.

I imagine my little girl being beaten up by some enraged shaven-headed lout, but I quell my anxiety and refrain from asking her to stay home.

'What time are you intending to come home?'

She hesitates for a moment. 'I was thinking I might spend the night at Katya's cottage.'

'You said you were going to a demonstration.'

'Yeah, we are, but afterwards I'd. .'

'Afterwards you come home.'

'But Mum, it's so nice out. You can't really want me to moon around in Prague when the weather's so great.'

'I don't want you spending the night goodness knows where with goodness knows who.'

'But I told you I'll just be with Katya at her cottage.'

'And who else?'

'Her mum will be there too.'

'And no one else?'

'It's only a tiny cottage. Really teeny-weeny.'

'And you'll be going there with Katya's mum?'

'Of course. We're hardly going to kick her out.'

'And what about study?'

'But Mum, I can't study in this heat!'

'Whereas you could when it was cold.'

'Yeah, I did slack, I agree,' she concedes, 'but it's too late now anyway; I'll never catch up.'

'It's only too late when you're dead.'

'But the marks are already in. Really.'

I don't want to be a restrictive or repressive parent. I had enough of Dad's restrictions at home and I don't think I've got over them yet. But what will become of this child if I don't manage to arouse any sense of responsibility in her?

'You're not hiding anything from me?'

'Mummy. .!'

'Don't try to butter me up; I want an answer.'

'I'm not hiding anything from you.'

'Will you call me after the demonstration and tell me how you got on with the skinheads?'

'Of course. If the skins don't do me over I'll call you from the first phone box.'

'And if I let you go to Katya's, you're to be back by tomorrow afternoon at the latest.'

Instead of making promises she won't keep anyway, she flings her arms round my neck and tells me I'm a fantastic mother. Then she loads herself down with chains and rings of various kinds, daubs herself with war paint and makes her exit from the flat, and before she reaches the front door she has already forgotten about it and her mother.

The remains of the day now leer at me.

I water the rubber plant and remove two yellow leaves. I load the washing machine and give the windowledges above the radiators a wipe. I ought to cook something, but I don't enjoy cooking for myself alone. For a moment I consider going over to my ex-husband's and cooking him something at least, but I can't make up my mind to do it. I'm a lazy Samaritan. I call Mum to ask how she is. We talk for a while and Mum tells me her dreams. I listen to her patiently, knowing that these days dreams are

increasingly what affect her the most, now that life has little excitement or comfort to offer.

'What about Jana?' Mum wants to know.

I tell her she has gone to demonstrate against racism.

'And you let her go? She could get hurt.'

I try to explain to her that it is necessary to protest against evil, but I fail to convince her.

'It's no business of children,' she tells me. 'At least you should have gone with her.'

Maybe she's right, but the thought of festooning myself with chains and going to yell slogans makes me smile.

I switch on the news at midday to learn that the police have broken up a gang of traffickers, that strike action is planned by lorry drivers, teachers and state employees, that eight people have died from the heat, although I don't catch where, and that a locomotive caught fire on some railway line. No mention of any anti-racist demonstration. They either didn't know about it or they have no interest. They'd only be interested if there were violent clashes. Maybe there isn't any anti-racist demonstration today, and my daughter just made it up as a way of getting out of the house as soon as possible.

I can't help thinking she has deceived me.

People tell lies: Dad lied to us, my ex-husband lied to me, my long-lost lover lied to me. Why should my daughter be any better?

She didn't hesitate to forge my signature at school and even boasted about how well she did it. And I'd like so much to trust her, to trust everyone, or those people, at least, that matter to me.

I make myself a cheese roll and pour myself a glass of wine. I finish my lunch in five minutes and then make a dash for the metro.

It is boiling on Old Town Square. Tourists cluster around an ice-cream trolley. In front of the astronomical clock a crowd waits in the scorching heat for the apostles, who make their appearance come rain or shine. There is no one to ask where the anti-racist

demonstration will take place. If it were to take place here it would be drowned in waves of Coca-Cola and lost amidst the crowds of pagans, as tourists are described by my Mickey Myšák who has gone swanning off to Brno and left me at the mercy of the pagans.

There are too many people. Apparently there'll soon be six billion of us, I recently read.

While I was still at university I managed to visit London — thanks, no doubt, to Dad's unimpeachable political record. That was the first time I became aware of masses of people, a universe full of human beings whom I'll never know, never speak to and never understand. Ever since then I've been afraid of those masses, especially when I see people bunched together so tightly that they touch shoulders.

I can go and sit down on the steps by the Hus memorial and wait. I can go home and wait and wait — what for, who for, in fact?

We await salvation, which has departed from us. A line of verse crosses my mind, goodness knows where from, the Bible maybe. Perhaps I heard it some Sunday when I was attending church to spite my father.

The narrow lanes of the Old Town offer some shade at least and to my surprise I find an empty telephone booth.

I insert the phone card and hesitate before dialling the number.

A woman answers the phone. She's not particularly old by the sound of her voice; but then why should she be? His mother needn't be much older than I am, and my voice hasn't aged — or at least so I tell myself.

I overcome the temptation to hang up without saying anything; I introduce myself and ask after her son, my lover.

'Hold the line, please, Miss. I'll call him.'

It is stiflingly hot in the phone booth and his 'Miss' is bathed in sweat.

'It's me, Kristýna.'

'I recognize your voice, of course.'

'You haven't left yet?' I ask stupidly

'No, I'm leaving in an hour.'

'What will you be doing in the meantime?'

'I was making a few more notes.'

A moment's silence and then he asks, 'And what are you doing?'

'Walking around Prague.' And I'm miserable — I don't say.

'I thought you said you'd be with your daughter.'

'She's out. She told me she was going to some demonstration and then to some cottage with a girlfriend.'

'And you're home alone?'

'I'm not at home. I'm walking around Prague. I went to have a look at that demonstration but I couldn't find her. The place is so crowded it's impossible to find anybody, not even a demonstration.'

'Do you think we could meet for a short while?'

'But you'll be leaving soon.'

'Where are you now?'

I tell him truthfully that I'm in a phone booth.

He wants to know where I'll go after I hang up, but I don't know.

'So try and help me to find you.'

'You won't have time anyway'

'But I won't go to the seminar if I've got a chance to be with you.'

I'm touched by his words. I'm touched that he gives me precedence over something that's bound to be important for his career. For a moment I'm unable to speak, then I simply say, 'You're crazy. You'll only regret it if you stay here.'

We talk it over for a bit longer, then we agree to meet in an hour in front of the National Theatre. I hang up.

My hair is matted and my blouse is sodden with sweat. I didn't really put on any make-up. I'm wearing the old threadbare skirt I wear at home. I rushed out without changing into something

else. How did it ever occur to me to make a date with him looking like this? He's bound to be fed up that he didn't go on my account. Maybe he's already regretting it.

I'd make a bad violinist because my hand would shake when I performed, even though it's usually firm. I used to get butterflies when I started going out with my first and only husband. Before every date I'd be terrified he wouldn't turn up. I was afraid, even though I was still a beauty — or so fellows told me, and Karel assured me too. I was terrified of falling out of favour, as if it were my job to be anxious and fearful for our love. I never entirely rid myself of that fear, even though I knew I was stronger.

If I make a dash to the metro I'll still have time to get home, have a shower and change. I can take a taxi back. On the other hand I could phone my lover back and tell him to go to his seminar instead. Or I could invite him straight home.

5

According to my horoscope, Pluto is crossing the Sun — a fatal aspect that foretells a major upheaval in my life. It looks as if my work for the Institute is heading in that direction. That's unless the upheaval concerns my private life. Most likely it concerns my entire life.

There are too many people who feel threatened by the things I uncover. I'm not trying to say I'm particularly important. Thousands of others could do the work I've been doing. Anyone who took this work seriously and tried to discover the truth of what happened, instead of covering up the tracks, would be considered a threat. The previous director, who tried to prevent others blocking our work, was given the boot, with all honours. Now it's our turn and there won't be any honours.

On several occasions I have noticed that I was being tailed; mostly after I'd arranged a meeting with someone who could

supply interesting information. It was impossible to say whether I was being tailed by the former operatives or the present ones. Maybe it was the present ones after consulting the former ones.

They never stopped me. If I happened to have a rendezvous in a pub or a café they'd try to sit as close as possible to me. I made their work harder by choosing a place where all the adjacent tables were full. I don't know what listening equipment they used, but four years of reading about their activity has taught me that if they are determined to listen in to what I say, I'd have a hard job eluding them.

Nobody says anything to my face. Sometimes I get worried that I'm becoming paranoid.

The people whose reports I study are either dead or act as if they had nothing to do with that activity. And when they admit it, they insist that they never harmed anyone. And what about those for whom the reports were written? They've disappeared; the waters have closed over them; they have all been spirited away to some unknown destination. But occasionally a miracle occurs and the waters open once more — as happened just a few days ago. Ondřej came to ask me whether I'd ever come across a Captain Hádek in the files.

Ondřej is my immediate superior, but we're friends more than colleagues. We share a number of interests. We both like games. Ondřej is great at computer games and he's an excellent chess player, so we nicknamed him Alekhine. He's never kept snakes, but he has two tortoises at home. Maybe he's more of a realist than me. He scoffs at my belief in horoscopes. In his opinion, what can't be proved doesn't exist — that's probably the best approach in our line of work.

I couldn't recall any Hádek. In what connection might his name have arisen?

He explained that this man had been in charge of interrogating a number of Scout leaders, maybe even my dad. My friend and superior had managed to discover from one witness that the

captain — who was apparently promoted to Major afterwards — is still alive. His real name is Rukavička.

That name seized my attention. The first two letters made me think of the guy called Rubáš who dealt with Dad.

'He's really still alive?'

'He lives in some retirement home just outside Prague.' Ondřej shows me the place on the map that hangs on the wall of our office. Naturally the former interrogator is very old now — over eighty.

But Dad's interrogator operated under a different name.

That was possible, of course, Ondřej said. The files from Dad's trial have all disappeared. Ondřej told me he'd try to question Rukavička — Hádek as soon as possible. I could attend too, if I liked.

That reminder of Dad's fate provoked my return to a project I'd previously put to one side. About a month before, I'd been invited to a seminar in Brno, where they wanted me to talk about the beginnings of Communist terror in this country The seminar was to be attended by several well-known historians, as well as some politicians, so it would be an opportunity for me to say something about our work and voice my own opinions. At the same time I feared I wouldn't pass muster. That was why I hadn't written a single line so far.

So that very day I got down to it and continued writing my contribution every evening for the rest of that week.

I wanted to talk in more general terms, not simply to report on what emerged from my daily study of the files.

In the twentieth century, unlike in the previous one, so many people were murdered behind the front lines that you'd think mankind must have suddenly gone berserk. But the innocent have always been murdered. According to the Bible story, the Israelites slew the inhabitants of Ai in the field and in the wilderness to which they had pursued them. 'For Joshua did not draw back the hand that held out his javelin until he had destroyed all who lived in Ai,' it says in the book of the same name.

That's how things were and still are. Unlike animals, people think and feel, so they are aware of their victims' anxiety when they kill them. They are aware of their own desire to live and preserve their stock, and they can guess that those they kill have the same desires. In order to kill without remorse or fellow feeling but instead with a sense of a job well done, it is necessary to regard the victim as one of the damned, a lesser being, or as a lethal and treacherous foe. By destroying him and his descendants, the killers are serving the rest of mankind and protecting the faith or the great goals they espouse.

Why was it in the twentieth century that theories emerged about the damned that had to be wiped out in their millions and why did they receive massive support?

An explanation can be found in moral decay, or rather the decline of religion. During the almost two millennia that Christianity exercised a spiritual influence there was much cruelty of course. At the time of its supreme power, the Church demanded total obedience and discipline and cruelly punished apostasy, but gradually it established limits. The trouble is that in the twentieth century Christianity responded to the questions people were asking with diffidence or perplexity, and that must inevitably have affected their faith. They either lost it or it assumed nightmarish forms that had little in common with the original belief in Jesus as the Son of God, the Messiah. And the belief in a miracle that happened, or in a God who was concerned for the world, gradually dissipated.

But the majority of people needed to believe. They wanted saints to revere. They needed a God and rituals. The time was therefore ripe for latter-day, barbaric pagan religions which the great nonreligious movements started to revive. The Nazis and the Communists alike presented their leaders as gods, whose images must be present at every celebration, of which they invented untold numbers. Party congresses, secular holidays, anniversaries of their own victories, elections and even show trials with death

sentences were all transformed into ritual celebrations intended to fire the emotions of the faithful and stun and numb their reason.

These new faiths also demanded obedience and discipline, but they were devoid of mercy and did not establish any inviolable limits. They revived human sacrifice in proportions without precedent in human history.

Of course it would be possible to find economic and historical reasons for what happened. Consternation at the massacres of the First World War, anxiety due to the uncertainties associated with the industrial epoch, a longing for a better organization of society. Nevertheless, for people to become an enormous, unthinking and obedient mass ready to do anything their leaders ordered, it needed a boundless belief in something that seemed superhuman and redemptive. Its prophets knew that every new belief needs to define itself in terms of those who reject it, who are then declared damned. It was necessary to kill kulaks, Jews or counter-revolutionaries, shoot priests, behead kings, poison infants and execute more and more victims in order to validate the new religions.

It was only when I'd touched on the spiritual basis of terror that it seemed to me appropriate to give an account of what happened here and explain why so many members of the intellectual elite — poets, lawyers, journalists or academics — willingly supported the Communist terror. Finally in my contribution I would deal with what the seminar organizers no doubt particularly expected from me: the efforts to trace the ringleaders of the terror campaigns and bring them before our none-too-willing courts for judgement.

On Saturday I was packed and ready to leave for the bus when Kristýna called and I detected even more sadness in her voice than usual. So I said something that immediately flabbergasted me. I promised her I'd cancel my trip and come and meet her. What made me do it? Was it love for her or my subconscious fear that I wouldn't make the grade when confronted by all those experts?

6

I wake up. I'm lying in my own room on my own divan, but someone is breathing quietly at my side and someone else's hand is lying on my thigh. You're here with me, little boy. You said such lovely things to me as we were making love and when we were falling asleep.

It's a long time since anyone said 'my love' to me or called me their little girl, after all it's ages since I was a little girl; no one has touched me or stroked me until I fell asleep. I've been neglected.

The divan is too narrow and I'm afraid to move lest I wake him. I could get up and go and sleep in Jana's room but I don't want to leave him.

I wonder where my daughter is sleeping. I oughtn't to have let her go; I ought to keep an eye on her at night, at least. She promised to call me, but she didn't. Unless she called when I was wandering around Prague. I know she's beyond my control now. She needs a father. Maybe this young man next to me might help play that role, but I'm afraid to bother him with it, and also I can't be sure how my daughter would take it. Maybe she'd accept him as a pal or flirt with him, or maybe she'd refuse to have anything to do with him.

If I hadn't let Jana go, he wouldn't be lying alongside me now.

The yellowish light of the street lamp shines in the window. I raise myself slightly and study his face. It's peaceful and somehow childlike. It seems guileless to me, which is odd for someone in his line of activity. Maybe I'm projecting my own feelings, my own hopes, on to him. I have no son. Maybe I could have had one, or more than one, but I allowed them to be aborted. Maybe one of them would have looked like him.

I'll never have a son now — I'm too old. My lover could still have lots of sons or daughters, but not with me. He must realize that. I ought to ask him if he wants to have children, but what could he reply? If he said yes it will be tantamount to telling me

he'd have to find another woman. Maybe he doesn't hanker after children. My first and only husband didn't want a child. It was I who eventually persuaded him, no longer wanting to destroy the life that he had engendered in me.

There must have been a time when men longed to have heirs to whom they could pass on their land, their business or their estate — these days most of them don't have anything to pass on.

I'll ask my young man anyway.

I feel love for him and make believe that he loves me too. He lavishes more care on me than all the men I've ever known. He gave me an enormous rainbow shell that made a sound when he blew into it. A shell because I'm a Pisces. I happened to mention that I'd broken my sunglasses and he brought me a new pair the very next day. Admittedly they don't suit me, but I wear them anyway because they're from him. He brought me back a silk scarf from some official trip; it is sky blue and there is a skein of flying geese woven into each corner.

'Where are they flying to?' I asked him.

'To freedom.'

'Do you think one can fly to freedom?'

'People can't, only geese can.'

'If you were a goose, where would you fly to?'

'To you, of course!'

I love him for all of that. But at the same time I can't understand why he should love me — there is nothing unusual about me: an ageing woman who messes around in people's mouths, who has an almost adult daughter and suffers from early-morning depressions that she exorcizes with nicotine and a glass of wine. What have I to offer him? Maybe I resemble his mother or correspond to some other subconscious notion of his. Feelings are kindled in people without their being able to explain why and these feelings fizzle out just as inexplicably.

I search for an explanation and persuade myself that the lad next to me is different from other men — less selfish: kind and

accommodating. But even if he's like that, nothing will efface the fact that one day, maybe tomorrow, maybe in a months time, maybe in a year, his feelings will fizzle out. What will he do then?

He'll leave, of course.

And if he didn't we'd only have a hard time, both of us. My beloved Karel Capek wrote a novel about a woman who has a young lover. It's a tragic story that ends in a senseless murder. How will my story end?

Jan stirs and opens his eyes, which are completely dark in the gloom. 'You're not asleep?' he asks.

'I woke up and started to think about my worries.'

'What worries do you have?'

I was thinking about how you'll leave me one day, I don't tell him. 'Jana s playing up. She doesn't study properly, she plays truant, and she smokes marijuana.'

'You've never even shown her to me.'

'She doesn't know about you.'

'Are you ashamed of me?'

'You know I'm not.'

'I could maybe help you with her. Although I don't have any experience of marijuana.' He snuggles up to me for a moment. Then he realizes how little space he has left me and offers to sleep on the floor.

I tell him I want him to stay by me and it occurs to him that we could shift Jana's bed in here.

'Now, in the middle of the night?'

'I only ever shift beds in the middle of the night.'

At two o'clock in the morning we carry in Jana's divan. The two divans standing here side by side after such a long time are reminiscent of a marriage bed.

'That's given me a thirst,' he says. A half-empty bottle of wine stands on the table. But he doesn't want wine. He didn't even have any with me during the evening. Instead he goes to the kitchen to run himself a glass of the vile liquid from the tap.

'You're not hungry?' I ask him.

'I'm always hungry, because I almost never have time to have a proper meal.' And he adds that it seems to him like a waste of time to bother with food. I now know at least, why he's so slim.

I offer to butter him some bread, but he says he'd like to make some soup. So at two-fifteen in the morning I start to cook. He insists on cooking the potato soup himself. All I need to do is prepare the necessary ingredients.

I'm not accustomed to someone cooking for me at any hour of the day or night. I'm not used to sitting and simply looking on. 'Why are you so nice?'

'I'm not nice at all. When we get together to play hero games, I generally choose the role of the villain.'

'But there's no way you can tell what you're really like.'

'So why do you ask?'

We are eating the soup and he is telling me how in some game, whose rules are a mystery to me, he played a Chinese cook who was supposed to poison his emperor.

'And did you poison him?'

'Of course I did. I had high levels of skill and intelligence.'

'You haven't mixed anything into my soup, have you?'

'Why else do you think I cooked it?'

'So that's why you stayed in Prague. You don't mind too much that you weren't able to deliver your paper?'

At three in the morning, the only thing I mind is that it will soon be dawn.'

His reply disappoints me a little. He notices and says, 'I'll find an opportunity; give it some time,' thus consoling himself too.

When at last we lie down on our widened bed, he takes me in his arms. He caresses me again and says more tender things to me.

My little boy. What are you doing here with me at three in the morning? 'Don't go,' I whisper. 'Stay in me. You don't have to leave; I won't have any more children anyway.'

Silence. Lovemaking is over. 'You don't mind that I can't have children any more?'

He doesn't reply. Instead he says he loves me.

'But I asked you a question.'

'I answered you.'

'That wasn't an answer.'

'If you love someone, you love them just as they are.'

'And you'd like to have children?' I don't ask whether he'd like to have children with me.

'I don't know,' he says. 'I think my mother's the one who wants them. But it's not important.'

I oughtn't to have broached the subject. I don't want some other woman getting involved in what there is between us.

'Your mother called me Miss,' I recall.

'Mum thinks all the women who call me are Misses.'

'Do lots of Misses call you?'

'It depends what you mean by lots.'

'In this particular case, lots is more than one.'

'Well lots' then.'

'I should have known.' I laugh while, outside, dawn is breaking. I laugh while jealousy and sadness well up inside me.

He lays his head on my breasts. After making love he wants to sleep.

And when they ask for you, your mother replies, Hold the line, please, I'll call him.' Because they're to her liking: they're young and she wants grandchildren, I don't add.

'What else is she supposed to say?'

'She's only supposed to say it when I call. She's to tell the others not to bother you.'

'I'll put her straight.' He laughs because he can't take my words seriously. Even I can't, although I wish that she'd do precisely that.

'Have you told her about me yet?'

'No, I don't talk to her about such things. I don't want her interfering in my life.'

'What's she like?' I ask.

'What do you think? She's a teacher. At her age, she had to learn how to deal with computers. But she's great, she coped with it.'

'Has she ever interfered in your life?'

'She's tried. She's my mother. What mothers don't try to?'

It crosses my mind that I've not told my mother about him either. Except that he hasn't because he's most likely ashamed of me, an ageing divorcee, whereas I haven't because I'm ashamed of myself.

7

We were lying on the grass chewing the fat. Everyone was chewing the fat but I was fed up that Katya isn't here. She's the only one who's really ace. We did everything together: we went to the flicks, borrowed each other's CDs, we went shopping together for threads and ornaments, preferably the same so we could be like two sisters. But when we were together at her cottage last weekend she came home as high as a kite. Her dad could tell she was high and gave her such a belting she couldn't go to school the next day. She told him it was a violation of human rights and that she'd totally clear out, but her dad put her nose out of joint by saying they'd totally kick her out if she tried the stuff again. And now she's not allowed to go anywhere, only to school and back, and when we're going home there's always someone from her family: her older brother, her mum, her dad or even her wrinkly grandma waiting for her at the school gates. A real bummer.

Sometimes Ruda is really ace, but sometimes he couldn't give a fuck about me. I really like the fact he's got a nose like Bono, or even a yard longer, and not a pug nose like mine. And also he's got really big, strong hands.

He just noticed I was pissed off and so he jacked me up with something, I didn't even ask what it was but it was stronger than usual, probably a mixture of piko and smack, but I started to feel great. I felt like a fuck but I also didn't feel like moving. I stared at the sky where horses cantered and flamingos were flying. It was an ace trip.

Someone next to me said that the filth were coming, but I couldn't give a shit; I don't feel like getting up. Let them come. I didn't have any stolen goods, not even a gram, or even a needle.

Now I could see them too, the whole pig pack. They had two Alsatians on leads specially trained to deal with us. They were already yelling that we were scum on the drinking water that ought to be strained out and chucked in the Vltava, that happens to have been flowing here for at least a thousand years, or since the time that followed the Big Bang.

'Hey, we'd better split,' Ruda said. 'They look really mean today.'

So I got up. Not far away there was a deserted cottage that we used to creep into through broken windows in the yard. To get into the yard you had to climb over a wall that was all gnawed by mice, rats or the teeth of time.

Half an hour later we were all back together again. There were about nine of us. I couldn't tell for sure. I was so wrecked I couldn't tell them apart. I didn't even know whether the ones I could see were really here. Fortunately it didn't matter, nothing mattered. I couldn't care about school or Mum; I promised to call her but I didn't and I felt completely free.

The cottage was cold even now in the summer. The floor was made of stones of some kind. The walls were piss-sodden. There was just an iron bedstead and some wrecked cupboards to lie on. There used to be blankets but some tramps took them away last winter. There's just a pile of old Yellow Pages in one corner. Last time we slept here the cold was so dire that Katya and I covered ourselves with the Yellow Pages. They were heavy but they gave some warmth. And there was hardly any oxygen. Ruda said

oxygen is poison. The straights who go to the mountains to breathe fresh air for their health don't realize there's less oxygen there because there's less oxygen the higher you go. But down here we are poisoned and if we didn't smoke from time to time we'd be goners.

I didn't even know how many girls there were and how many boys.

It was already dark. Someone lit a candle, but it hardly burnt. It was like being in the mountains, because fire, I knew from Dad, needs oxygen, and shadows leapt about the battered walls, and beetles as big as rabbits crawled over them.

Ruda snuggled up to me and wanted a fuck. Why not, it didn't matter. The cupboard creaked under us. I heard myself say, 'Be careful,' and he told me not to worry, it was made of good timber. That really freaked me out.

I'm made from good timber too. I don't creak but I take it. If he waters me maybe I'll grow leaves, maybe I'll flower. I imagined the colours of my flowers. I like orange like marigolds. Ruda had rolled off me but some other kid in a biker's jacket was groping me. He smelt strange and scratched me with his bristly chin. Hey, fuck off, you stink!

I pushed him off the cupboard but he'd already managed to come in me.

Someone started to play a guitar and sing some crappy song about love.

I already knew something about love. I figured it out when Dad pissed off with that beanpole of his. And loads of blokes taught me about love; I don't know how many because I don't know whether the ones that jumped on me were real or not. Maybe I only imagined it all. But I didn't imagine Ruda; he was the first one who offered me hash. That was ages ago, absolute aeons, two years ago at least, but maybe it was twenty years because I was already dreadfully old, wasn't I? at least a hundred years old. I was just beginning to feel moss growing on me.

A sewer rat was watching me from the corner by the door that goes nowhere. Who are you staring at, you creep? He was as big as a small dog and had eyes like a cat. Maybe it was a cat got up as a mouse. Tom dressed up as Jerry, or vice versa.

Maybe I was only imagining it all: the moss, the mouse, the people here and this vile hole where everything stinks.

But I felt fantastic. I really liked the people here because they were like me and I was like them. We couldn't give a fuck about anything so we were still able to laugh. We were almost always laughing, especially after grass. Someone said, 'Hey it's Wednesday,' and it was Saturday and we were in stitches. I really liked laughing. It was hard to laugh at home. Mum had her downers and was always miserable over Dad totally doing the dirty on her and being alone — only having me, as she said, and that couldn't be enough because sometimes she didn't even have me, like now. I lay there and I felt better than at home and one day I'll stay here totally and the moss will grow all over me and I won't know about anything. And maybe I'll go off somewhere or fly away.

That creep kept on singing about love, as if it existed.

Maybe it does, but it was hiking in the mountains so it didn't get poisoned.

I used to go hiking in the mountains with Mum and Dad, and when my legs ached, Dad would give me a piggyback and Mum would walk behind us and every few minutes she'd say, 'Isn't she too heavy for you? I'll take her for a while.' And Mum would also sing:

'Don't you worry Jana That there's nothing left to eat We'll kill ourselves a juicy midge And cut it up for meat.'

I didn't want to stay here totally, I'd like to go hiking in the mountains.

Maybe I ought to let Mum know I'd like to go hiking in the mountains. With her and Dad.

Dad can hardly climb the stairs and he wouldn't go with Mum even if he could.

There were two sewer rats now. What are you staring at, you creeps?

When Ruda first gave me some grass I was really curious and I was also a bit afraid of what it would do, but it hardly did anything. I didn't know how to drag on it yet and anyway he only gave me a couple of puffs and kept asking me, 'What do you feel? Are you high yet?'

When I got home I was in total dread that Mum would be able to tell, but she wasn't able to tell anything; she happened to be dreadfully tired and miserable; she had a downer and a headache and was pissed off because I didn't do the washing-up.

How could I do the washing-up on a day like that? I wanted to really enjoy being happy and you can't be happy doing the washing-up.

Ruda crept up on to me again, if it was him, and started to touch me up. I didn't care; it turned me on.

Now I'd like to be hiking in the mountains, but not with you, you creep.