Ivan Klima - No Saints or Angels

'What's up, Monika?' the therapist asks.

'I don't want to go on living,' she says, without looking at him.

'You'll get over it. And we'll talk about it this evening,' he promises.

'She's only been here two weeks,' he informs us when we have left the bedroom, as if to apologize for the fact that there is someone here who doesn't want to go on living. He needn't apologize to me. I've known the feeling so often that sometimes I'm amazed that I'm still alive.

When we return to his office, the therapist tells me that Jana can come here if we like, but the decision must be hers alone. No one will force her to stay here. 'We have a group therapy session with them every day,' he says, 'and everyone must work; it's part of the therapy. When they improve, they can attend school, but it's a fair distance from here and not easy to get to in winter.' He warns me that the routine is strict. 'Drugs are banned, of course, but alcohol and sex aren't allowed either. If they smoke, they may receive cigarettes. At first they have to stay here; during the first month we don't allow either letters or visits. Whoever breaks the rules has to leave the home. If anyone finds the regime too harsh, they may leave. If anyone runs away, they have to leave. And conditions tend to be harsh here, particularly in winter,' he says, once more recalling the winter conditions.

'Winter is quite far off yet,' I say, hoping he'll agree with me.

'Not as far off as you'd think.' And he adds, as if to destroy any false hopes I might have, 'From what you've told me about Jana, I wouldn't think she'd be home before winter. Cured, I mean.

You should definitely arrange for her to interrupt her studies.' He then goes on to say that half of those who manage to complete the entire course of therapy never go back to drugs. Finally he tells me how much I am to contribute each month. There are a lot of other things I'd like to ask about, but he makes his excuses as a group therapy session is due to start in a moment and he cannot invite us to it, unfortunately. But even if I stayed here longer, what else could he tell me? Everything will depend on Jana. I can't imagine her sawing wood or mucking out the pigs; I've spoilt her too much for that.

On the way home, Lida and I stop off at a village pub. She just has bread and cheese, while I have a bowl of goulash soup. I'm famished, not having had anything to eat since morning, but on top of that my stomach is churning at the thought of taking Jana off to some far-flung wilderness where I won't even be able to visit her.

'Don't worry,' my sister tells me. 'He'll help her. He's excellent. He knows how to find the cause, and that's the main thing.' She hesitates a moment before adding, 'He helped me too.'

'You?'

'Are you so surprised?'

'I didn't have a clue.'

'It was eight years ago and I attended him as an outpatient. I didn't tell you, or the old folks for that matter. It was nothing to do with you: it was my business. Mine above all.'

I'd like to ask her what she'd been taking, but I'd feel I was prying. So I simply ask her, 'And what cause did he find?'

'Emptiness. Despondency and emptiness.'

'I would never have thought it.'

'Because you always imagined I was so chuffed with myself. But it was only an act I put on for the rest of you. I travelled around with a band and sang on a couple of CDs, but there are thousands of bands like that, and millions more CDs. It makes no difference whether someone buys yours or not, because in a year's

time everyone will have forgotten it anyway. There's nothing worse than taking part in the sort of artistic activity that people couldn't give a monkey's about.' She adds that she envied me my job because it had some meaning — helping ease people's pain — whereas all she did was add to the din that surrounds us on all sides. People applauded her, but they applaud anyone who helps them to stop thinking for a moment about the sort of lives they lead.

'I didn't have a clue,' I say. 'It never occurred to me.'

'We know so very little about each other; we are both engrossed in our own troubles and put on an act for each other.'

'And how did he help you?' it occurs to me to ask.

'He helped me realize what I really feel. And come to terms with reality. To stop looking over the horizon and overestimating my powers.'

'And are you all right now?'

'It depends what you mean. I don't mainline any more. Once in a while I get drunk with my pals and then there are moments, such as after a concert, when instead of being happy I start to cry. I cry my eyes out and then I start to hiccup. And there are other moments when I go and find a boutique and buy myself a pile of useless clothes and end up giving them all away. But apart from that I'm OK.'

I drive my sister home. As we say goodbye we hug each other, for the first time in years.

5

We saw a lynx and in the sky a bird of prey that I identified as a buzzard, but Jirka maintained it was an eagle. Věra sided with me; the rest of them supported Jirka because he's in radio and everyone thinks that radio announcers can't be wrong, although the opposite is true.

I could have argued because Dad and I often observed buzzards, but I didn't feel the need to prove my point in respect of feathered predators.

We have been notching up about twenty kilometres a day We could have managed more but the route was fairly strenuous: through narrow ravines and sometimes up ladders or steep stone steps, and Jirka had to lug a hundredweight of excess fat in addition to a rucksack and a tent.

I expect it was sweltering at the peak but down here in the gorges the sun reached us only rarely and the nights were actually cold.

I didn't talk with Věra any more than with the rest. Once I helped her with her rucksack when we were having to scale ladders, and I would offer her my hand when we had to jump across a fast-flowing stream. Each time the touch of her hand thrilled me; when we used to sit in the cinema or the theatre we would always hold hands and also when I'd visit her at the student residence, where we were alone together. We would entwine our fingers and I would be aware of the blood pulsing through hers — it was a nice prelude to lovemaking.

I tried not to think about lovemaking or imagine us in a naked embrace when she retired alone to her tent each evening. Maybe she was expecting me to join her. If I'd have gone there, I expect she wouldn't have kicked me out. I tried to think about Kristýna, but she seemed so far away. She dwelt in the other world, the world of work and important issues, the world of directors, department heads, police chiefs and subordinates, not to mention files containing denunciations — and where the rotten so-and-sos who wrote them still walk about with impunity.

Here we followed deserted tracks. When we managed to find our way out of the forest we would sunbathe half-naked on the grass, cook on an open fire, sing songs after the meal and, towards evening, pitch our tents; people are bound together when they share something out of the ordinary. I have come to realize that

even suffering or persecution binds people together more than a humdrum existence of peaceful inactivity.

That is something I fear — I'd hate to live that way; I'm excited by everything that appears special or even eccentric. That's why I was attracted to poisonous snakes or the life stories of Hitler and Stalin, for instance. Theirs were destinies like tightened strings. The two of them scaled mountains whose peaks seemed hidden in the clouds, while the foothills were submerged in blood, into which they both eventually plunged.

I don't yearn for peaks reaching up to the sky; the fall from up there is usually fatal. I wouldn't want to stay at the summit for even a moment; it's always a lonely place. They left Stalin lying on the floor in his death agony for hours; they were afraid to climb to the heights where they still saw him, while he was already sprawled on the ground in a pool of his own urine. His greatest rival and also fellow traveller had come a cropper even before he did, falling right into an underground bunker, where in order to escape trial he let himself be shot by his own lackeys. He didn't even get a funeral that some of the millions who had Sieg Heil ed him might have attended. Finis coronat opus.