Ivan Klima - No Saints or Angels

Really horrendous!

I never supposed that Dad was actually giving me therapy.

Mum really pissed me off shoving me in here. After all, she was always going on about everyone being the engineer of their own fate. That was when Dad used to go spare about her getting stoned on those drugs of hers.

I didn't begrudge her them. I was sorry for her more than anything else. She almost always had a downer 'cos she only got stoned on the legal drugs. Then she'd have the shakes in the morning, but she couldn't top it up 'cos she had to go and drill in people's gobs, as she put it. She couldn't even imagine what it's like when you're totally spaced out on a really great trip. So why didn't she leave me alone?

And she's got a bloke. That really knocked me out. Really thin: he looks like a piece of bloated string; I bet he took dope too, but he acted as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. Mum's completely nuts about him, I could see it straightaway, even though I was completely zonked at the time. I really wish her well; maybe she won't be so pissed off with life all the time and she'll get me out of here.

She came and visited me for the first time on Sunday, after I was let out of the detox. She brought me a cake, some oranges and a book of stories by Karel Čapek. She baked the cake herself, so it was a bit burnt. If only she'd brought me a box of roofies instead — but I couldn't expect that of her. She told me I definitely wouldn't be in for long but I had to make an effort. And she went on in a really inhuman way about having put me here for my own good, 'cos she loves me and doesn't want me to ruin my life.

I pretended to be taking it all in and promised I'd make a real effort to reform.

I'll make an effort to do a bunk out of here as soon as I can.

But I don't know where I'd make for. If I went home Mum would be bound to bring me back here again. Romana told me not to worry; she'd look after me.

But I'm fucked if I go with her; that's all I'd need: to spend my time sleeping around with some guys I don't even know!

And Gran came to see me too and told me how Mum is fretting on account of me and how she is too, because she knows what a clever girl I am and how she pins all her hopes on me 'cos I'm her only grandchild. And just afterwards that ginger-haired guy looks in, the one that hijacked me here with Mum. He brought me a flower, something purple. I expect it was an iris. That totally wiped me out. First he hauls me to this loony bin and then he rolls up with a flower. To have someone bring me a flower, that's something that's never happened to me before. But otherwise he steered clear of the educational claptrap. For a while he fed me with stories about how he keeps poisonous snakes.

Apparently one was so poisonous that if it had bitten him he'd have been a goner in an hour. I told him I hoped the snake had never bitten anyone. And he laughed so much that his John Lennon specs jumped up and down on his nose. He also told me he'd noticed I've got a drum kit at home and said he used to play an American Indian tom-tom. He'd learnt to send signals with drums, flags and smoke. He was always showing off so I told him that I was good at throwing letters into letterboxes and that I could remember all the phone numbers I need — about four, in other words.

Before he got up he started raving about Mum and how she's totally fantastic, totally nice and unique, and how she loves me.

I didn't argue with him. I don't have anything against Mum. I simply told him that if she's so nice, she ought to take me away from here before the vampire witch sucks me to death. And he laughed again. I like the way he's always laughing.

Yesterday the therapist went bananas again and we all had to repeat, We nevar want to take drugs again, we'll never take drugs again, we'll never use a syringe again. I said out loud, 'We don't want to be daft thickos, we want to be holy. We want wings to grow out of our bums so we can be angels.' So for a punishment I was booted back upstairs to the detox unit.

It looks as if Romana won't be taking care of me now; she tried to hang herself yesterday with the shower hose. It was horrendous. We were all in a state of shock. When they were carrying her out, I heard that nurse that looks like Eva mutter to herself: 'If Renata had done it. . But Romana. .?'

But it was obvious to me that Romana didn't do it. It was that vampire witch. She sucked her to death and then wound the shower hose round her neck to cover her tracks. It'll be my turn next and if I don't run away, I'll die the same way.

They say they'll manage to save Romana, but if they leave that reincarnated beanpole in here with us she'll do us all in.

I was too frightened to go to sleep last night. I noticed the old

witch creep out and soon two bats flew in and hung from the lamp, and the bigger one was her.

I got out of bed and ran to find the nurse, and she was really kind and came back with me. 'Look, there aren't any bats here,' she told me. 'Just take a good look.'

I took a good look and they really weren't hanging there any more — 'cos they'd just flown away, and the lamp was still swaying.

1

Everything in my life has seized up somehow. I've cancelled my leave and called off the trip to the seaside. My young man has gone off with his pals for a week to the Slovak Ore Mountains — with a tiny bivouac and a big rucksack. I would have gone with him if I could. I used to love Slovakia. We went there every summer in the years following my only wedding: canoeing, skiing or wandering the hills and valleys like Jan is now, listening to a language that was soft and melodious to my ears.

Czechoslovakia fell apart just before my marriage did. I wept for it, but I couldn't do anything to help it; I couldn't even do anything to help myself.

My Mickey Mouse speaks a bit of Slovak. He says to me: 'You have eyes the colour of veronika! Veronika is what the Slovaks call speedwell. I ask him whether he loves Kristýna or some Slovak Veronika?

'I'd love a Slovak Veronika if she had eyes like yours, breasts like yours and a nose like yours. And she'd have to be as wise and gentle and make love as well as you do. But there are none like that in Slovakia or anywhere else in the world.' He lays it on with a trowel, the liar, but he knows I like it.

He invited me to go with him, but I was afraid to leave while Jana is in hospital. What if something happened to her, or if she escaped, even? He also offered to stay in Prague, but I refused to

let him hang around here on my account. Before he went he told me he'd still have two weeks of leave left and asked me to go away with him somewhere.

There is a heatwave and the city is half-deserted, like my waiting room. Even Eva has taken leave. I'll cope with the few remaining patients perfectly well without her.

Most of the day I sit in the surgery smoking and drinking mineral water with a drop of wine in it. I have nothing on under my smock but my briefs, and even so I'm hot. But I'm glad I have the surgery to go to, because at home I feel uneasy. The flat is empty. I miss Jana's pandemonium. I miss having someone to care for. I miss Jana's calculating two-faced chumminess. I miss someone close to talk to.

'What makes you think, in fact, that you couldn't have a child?' Jan asked me out of the blue.

'Because I'm too old,' I replied.

'Is that the only reason?'

'It's a good enough reason.'

'You're not so old,' he said. 'One of Mum's friends had a baby when she was forty-seven.'

'I've no time to lose then,' I said, turning away so that he couldn't see the tears well up.

Maybe I could still have a child. Medical science does wonders. It came up with the test-tube baby, it managed to clone the extinct Tasmanian wolf and it won't be long before it manages to artificially inseminate an Egyptian mummy. But it's a matter not just of conceiving and having a baby, but also of rearing it. I don't know whether I'd still have the strength. Not now, but in five or ten years' time.