No Saints or Angels, page 14
‘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.
CHAPTER FOUR
1
Dad acquired the burial plot years ago; it lies in a remote corner of Olšany Cemetery. His forebears remained in the country graveyard at Lipová; they have more light and flowers there, and a bell rings over them every day. They include Auntie Venda who burned to death and Grannie Marie. The ashes of my other grandmother were most likely washed away in the river Vistula or were tipped into some mass grave; her name, at least, is inscribed among thousands of others on a wall of the Pinkas synagogue in Prague. When I first saw it there, I found it strange, even unbelievable that my mother’s mother should have died that way, and I almost felt guilty about my own untroubled existence and the fact that no one was out to kill me.
At the foot of the grave there is a gaping small hole ready to take the urn and next to it a little heap of earth like a fresh molehill.
His nearest relatives have come: Mum, my sister Lída, Jana and I. We are waiting for the undertakers to arrive with the urn. Mum is wiping tears from her eyes, Jana is evidently bored and staring into the distance with a faraway expression. A gypsy funeral is taking place at the other end of the path and we can hear the sound of dance tunes intended to accompany the soul of the deceased to a happier and brighter world.
‘He could have still been here with us; after all he wasn’t all that old,’ Mum laments.
I refrain from pointing out that Dad was just a few weeks short of seventy-six, which is more than the average longevity of men in this country, nor do I say that how a man lives matters more than how long.
My sister can’t restrain herself, however: ‘He’d have had to smoke less and keep off the pork fat, the streaky bacon and the cheap smoked meats. I never saw him touch vegetables, apart from a bit of cabbage if it came with the goose or the roast pork.’
Mum senses a personal reproach, as she is the one who fed Dad all his life, and her sobs grow louder.
But now two fellows in shiny black suits emerge from one of the side paths. They are how I imagine the two court bailiffs in The Trial, whose author lies in the adjacent Jewish cemetery. All that’s missing is the knife. Instead, one of them is cradling in his arms the urn with the ashes while the other carries a garden trowel in place of a knife. They arrive at our grave, bow to us, and for a moment they both stand in feigned solemnity of mourning.
Then the first of them leans over the cavity and places the urn in it. The other man offers us the trowel and we sprinkle a bit of soil into the shallow hole, the pebbles rattling off the lid of the urn.
It is all so brief, there’s no time for even a flicker of God’s eyelid. Nobody sings anything, nobody plays anything; all we can hear are the strains of a passionate csardas from the gypsy burial. Just recently I saw on television some old woman in Moscow defiantly brandishing above her head a portrait of the tyrant who died on the day I was born. Maybe it would gratify Dad if I held a portrait like that now over his grave. But I don’t have one and I’d never take it in my hands anyway. I’d happily play the violin for Dad, even the ‘March of the Fallen Revolutionaries’, if he’d have let me continue learning the instrument.
The two men finish their job and come up to us to express their condolences and wait expectantly for a tip. They get a hundred-crown note each and depart from us at a dignified pace while we remain standing there for a little while longer. I don’t know what’s going through Mum’s head, or my sister’s. Mum has no inkling of Dad’s infidelities and will never learn about them now. Maybe she is recalling some nice moments; there must have been some. Maybe she’s thinking of the loneliness that will accompany her for the rest of her days.
Dad died at home. He was racked with pain during the final days. A doctor visited him from the clinic and gave him some injection that didn’t do much to relieve the pain. I didn’t ask what they gave him; most of the time I wasn’t around. I myself had a few ampoules of morphine that the thieving ward sister had brought me. I’d never used them but I could have injected them into Dad, all of them in one go even, and thus shortened his suffering. I could have done it; he was already under sentence of death anyway, but I didn’t. I couldn’t make up my mind to shorten his life and play Dr Death. I had no right to, had I? Or was I just making excuses? To do something like that you have to feel either great love or bitter hatred – I didn’t feel either. I didn’t have enough compassion for someone who had never shown much pity to others. Subconsciously I told myself that each of us has to put up with our fate right to the end, and that there was even some kind of justice in it, which we oughtn’t to interfere with.
‘Aren’t we going yet?’ Jana asked.
We took Mum home and I let my daughter go off to a girlfriend’s. My dear sister, who once prophesied my death at my own hand, decided to come back to my place for a chat.
Before we climb the stairs to the flat I check my mailbox and take out the only envelope it contains; by the writing I can tell immediately it’s another anonymous letter. I quickly slip it into my handbag before my sister has a chance to ask who’s writing to me.
I make a few open sandwiches but Lída refuses them; she’s found a new belief: healthy eating. She doesn’t touch smoked meats or even cheese. She’s not allowed tomatoes because they are toxic like potatoes and she refuses to eat peppers because they contain too much zinc or some dangerous metal or other, besides which they could be genetically modified. Thanks to her diet she has managed to rid her body of all toxins and noxious fluids; she has got rid of all her pains and lost her excess weight, and her eyes and voice have improved.
I pour myself a glass of wine and she takes out of her handbag a little bottle with some elixir or other.
I have neither wheat berries nor fermented vegetables. All I can offer is some rye bread which at her request I sprinkle with parsley and chives.
‘You ought to adopt a healthier lifestyle too,’ she tells me and heaves a deep sigh. Surprisingly she refrains from saying, as on previous occasions, that my flat is unbearably smoky, but even so she annoys me with her condescending self-assurance: she knows, as our father did, just what is right and healthy – for herself and the rest of humanity.
For a while she tells me all about her successful concerts and then offers to reimburse me all the funeral expenses.
‘We’ll go halves,’ I say. Then for a while we say nothing: two sisters who have nothing to say to each other.
I recall Dad’s diaries. When I was looking through them, I tell her, I discovered that Dad had a mistress.
My sister is not taken aback by the news but simply takes it in her stride. ‘There’s nothing odd in that: all blokes have mistresses. He wasn’t the US President, so he could risk it.’
I tell her that he apparently had a child with his mistress. When I was last looking through his diaries I came across a death notice from ten years ago announcing the death of a certain Veronika Veselá. It was signed by just one person: her son, Václav Alois Veselý, and bore his address.
‘You mean to say that the one who died was Dad’s bit on the side? And this Vaclav bloke is something like our half-brother?’
‘She gave him his second name after Dad.’
‘So what? We didn’t know anything about him – for how many years?’
I tell her he must be about two years older than her.
‘We didn’t know anything about him for forty years,’ she calculates quickly, ‘so why should we bother about him now. There wasn’t any inheritance anyway. We haven’t cheated him out of anything, so he’s got nothing to fight with us over.’
‘But it’s not just a question of the inheritance.’ Doesn’t she find it strange that there’s someone with the same father as ours who has been walking the earth for all this time without our knowing anything about him?
‘That’s typical of Dad. He was well trained in keeping mum about all sorts of highly secret matters. And where does this new relative of ours live?’ she asks, suddenly curious after all.
‘In Karlín. It must be somewhere near the river, to judge by the name of the street.’
‘I might be singing at the theatre in Karlín, if things work out.’
‘Mum has never suspected anything,’ I say, ignoring the important news that she will be singing in Prague.
‘Or perhaps she didn’t want to. It would be better for her that way.’
‘No, more likely she believed all his guff about a new morality.’
For a while we argue about what Mum believed in and what Dad did. And then my sister comments that every woman prefers to shut her eyes rather than see what is really going on. I was the one who had behaved stupidly.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You found out that Karel was betraying you and couldn’t think of anything better to do than divorce him. What good did it do you? You were left on your own.’
I refrain from saying that I was left on my own because I wouldn’t let myself be made a slave. Nor do I tell her that you have to act according to your feelings and do what you feel is right, and not what is most convenient. ‘You’re on your own too.’
‘That’s neither here nor there. I always have some bloke or other and I’m not saddled with a daughter.’
‘You’ve always got to be different. And as for Jana, I’m glad I have her.’
‘By the way, I don’t like the look of that girl of yours,’ she says.
‘Maybe she doesn’t care whether you like the look of her or not.’
‘There’s something strange about her eyes,’ she continues. ‘I noticed it there at the cemetery. People normally have one kind eye and one unkind one, but she doesn’t.’
‘Both your eyes are unkind,’ I tell her, ‘and I don’t think you’re not normal.’
‘My left eye’s kinder than the right one,’ she assures me, ‘but we’re not talking about me. Her eyes aren’t kind or unkind, they’re elsewhere, and that’s something you, as her mother, should notice.’
‘What are you trying to say?’
‘That girl of yours is on drugs,’ she declares. ‘I’d stake my life on it.’
‘Jana is not on drugs,’ I yell. ‘You’re trying to find a way to harm us!’
‘Kristýna,’ she says, putting her hand on my shoulder, ‘I’ve never wanted to do you any harm. You’re the one who always did yourself harm, by brooding on everything. But that dead expression and the dilated pupils is something I know only too well.’ She checks herself and then explains: ‘Two of the guys in the band were injecting piko and one was on heroin. If you ignore it, it’ll be the worse for your daughter. It’s no skin off my nose.’
‘I know it’s no skin off your nose. You never could give a damn about us.’ I don’t go on to tell her that her diet may have cleared the toxins out of her body, but they stayed in her mind.
When my sister leaves I remember the anonymous letter and take my tormentor’s latest message out of my handbag.
He tells me that he follows my every step and the moment is at hand when the gates of hell will close behind me.
2
Jan would like us to see each other every day. See each other and make love. He wants me to act his age. But I’m not twenty any more. When I get home from the surgery in the evening I’m aching all over: my legs, my back, my arms and my mind. But even if I felt like going to see him, I’m the mother of an adolescent girl that I’m very worried about.
Even though my sister never wastes an opportunity to tell me something unpleasant, I’m unable to get her warning out of my mind.
I watch Jana’s eyes. Does she have a fixed stare? Are her pupils dilated? Maybe I ought to check her all over each evening and look for track marks, but I’m ashamed to because it would be degrading for both of us.
‘Jana, where have you been all afternoon?’
‘In the park, of course.’
‘What do you go there for, all the time?’
‘Nothing. There are cool people there.’
‘What do you get up to there?’
‘Mum, there’s no point in you interrogating me all the time. You won’t ever understand anyway.’
She acts more and more defiantly, convinced that her life is her own business; it’s nothing to do with me how she spends her time, what she’ll become or how she enjoys herself. Whenever I ask her straight out if she’s shooting up she adopts a hurt expression: how could something so vile occur to me?
Jan called me twice today inviting me to some club or other where they play those hero games.
I didn’t tell him that I’m already of an age when people don’t usually have either the time or the inclination to play at heroes or even cowards. I asked him how long such games go on for and he told me that they often last several weeks.
‘Nonstop?’
‘With breaks,’ he laughed. ‘But they mostly go on till at least midnight.’
I’ll persuade Mum to come and stay the night. Not so long ago I used to ask her to babysit more often but now I get the feeling that it bothers her to leave her flat. But she loves her only grandchild, and surprisingly enough my adolescent is less impudent when she is around.
Mum arrives after seven in the evening when I’m already getting dressed up. ‘Off to the theatre?’ she asks.
I shake my head in reply.
‘Got a date?’
‘Something like that.’
‘It’s about time too,’ Mum says.
‘But Mum, I didn’t say who I have the date with.’
‘I can tell it’s with some bloke. Is it serious?’
‘I always take everything seriously, Mum.’
‘You tell him that, not me,’ Mum says, sticking up for the man whose existence she has deduced.
I’ve no idea what clothes are appropriate to meet people who play at heroes; I’ve never experienced anything of the sort. Jeans, maybe, but I look better in a skirt. I’ll wear the red short-sleeved blouse and a long cotton skirt – as black as my expectations in life. It comes halfway down my calves and at least hides the fact that my legs are already getting thinner. I shouldn’t think jewellery is the thing, but I’ll wear a thin gold chain so that my neck isn’t so bare.
I open the drawer where I hide my valuables; the chain should be lying in a wristwatch box, but it isn’t there. I open the other few jewellery cases I own but the chain isn’t there either. And in the process I discover that the gold ring I inherited from Grannie Marie is missing. I grow agitated. I’m careful with my things and don’t misplace a hankie or a sock, let alone a piece of gold jewellery. Even so I open all the other drawers and rummage in them.
‘Looking for something?’ Mum wants to know.
‘No, not really.’
If a thief had got into the flat, he would definitely have taken something else as well, and we’d certainly have noticed there had been an intruder.
I go into Jana’s room, tell her to turn down the racket and ask her whether she didn’t borrow some of my jewellery.
I sense a momentary hesitation. ‘But Mum, I’d never wear anything like that,’ she says, trying to adopt a disdainful tone.
‘And how about one of your pals?’
‘Mum, what do you take them for?’ She knows nothing about my jewellery. ‘I’ll lend you something if you like,’ she suggests.
But I don’t want any of her chains or rings.
The thought that my daughter might be capable of stealing from me appals me so much that I prefer not to go into it further.
I go to say goodbye to Mum.
‘You’re all in a tizzy,’ she says, and wishes me a good time.
I’ll have a good time, provided I manage to forget that my daughter’s probably stealing from me.
Jan is waiting for me outside the Hradčanská metro station. He kisses me and says my outfit suits me. He’s glad we’ll be together the whole evening. He leads me through the villas of Bubeneč and tries to explain to me the sense of hero games. They are a bit childish, but he thinks that playing games is definitely better than gawking at the television screen, where rival gangs shoot it out, or at the computer screen, where you can make two other gangs shoot at each other. Here you can take part in everything in person; you can encounter dwarves, dragons, vampires, monsters; you can travel wherever you fancy, or go back in time and meet Edison, Jan Žižka or even Napoleon. Most of his friends prefer to be make-believe characters, such as medieval knights or princes, or fight with monsters.
As we’re climbing the stairs in the house he has brought me to, he tells me I don’t have to join in. I can just watch if I like and ask questions as a way of getting to know the rules, of which there aren’t too many anyway.
I don’t understand the game, even after it has started; there are too many distractions. It is a large room and the walls are covered in big pictures from which the faces of monsters from comics leer down at me. Quiet, meditational music is heard from hidden speakers. The light shines through a green filter so that we all look as if we are drowned. Apart from Jan and me there are also two girls, some youngster and a large-bellied young man who is introduced to me as Jirka, whom I possibly know by his voice, as he works for radio news. Unfortunately I only listen to Classic FM. One of the girls, who has a visionary gaze, squirrel teeth and long legs, is called Věra. She can’t be more than twenty. I don’t manage to catch the name of the other girl; recently I’ve been finding it increasingly difficult to remember people’s names. But names aren’t important. Anyway nobody here remains the person they are; instead they become someone they possibly want to be. It ought to appeal to me: I’ve always wanted to live a different life from the one I lived. Karel Čapek wrote a novel about it. People live only one of many possible lives and usually it is one that they are least happy with. The trouble is that the lives they offer me here don’t attract me.
