Ivan Klima - No Saints or Angels

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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