Ivan Klima - No Saints or Angels

Maybe I do him an injustice; we simply had an awkward relationship.

In the last of his diaries I read how he made Jana a present for her fifth birthday.

I made her a little turbine. When you run water on it, it turns a bike dynamo and makes a little bulb light up. It took me more than a month to make it but I didn't get the impression that Jana was very pleased with it and Kristýna even said crossly, That's not very sensible is it, Dad? It's a toy for a little boy, not for a girl. In the eyes of my educated daughter I will always be a fool, and she's bringing up Jana to think it too. It made me feel miserable.

Dad wanted to give my little girl some pleasure, and maybe me too. He made a toy himself instead of buying one and I scorned him.

I wasn't good at being humble. I didn't know how to make peace with Dad or with my husband after he betrayed me, in the same way that I can't come to terms with my lover's peccadillo. I didn't manage to make it up with Dad even when he was dying. I couldn't make it up with him, just as I couldn't see my heavenly Father above me.

My head aches and I feel sick. I have a migraine on the way. I take a tablet but immediately throw it up.

The next day I had a date with Lucie. It was an effort to reach out for a friend: give me your hand; speak to me!

She has a new boyfriend. Apparently he's a tall young man who is deaf and dumb. When they are sitting together in a wine bar he writes messages to her on a little blackboard saying how happy he is, how he enjoys the wine and how he'd like to kiss her. He's living at her place now, although she told him to keep on his bedsitter so as to have somewhere to go back to. But so far he's still with her. She says he makes love with a passion she's never known and when he cries out you wouldn't even know he was deaf and dumb.

'And aren't you afraid of hurting him?' I asked her.

'Him? But he's happy with me.'

'And what about when he won't be with you any more?'

She laughed. She asked about Jan. 'Why don't the two of you live together if you love each other? Or is it all over?'

I didn't know what to reply. Lucie would regard one accidental — and admitted — infidelity as an inconsequential trifle. I just told her I was tired. Jana was at a drug treatment centre, my ex-husband

was dying, and my Mum's health wasn't good, although she put on a cheerful face.

'But I was asking about you.'

'I haven't enough energy for anything, let alone trying to live with someone.'

She couldn't understand. When she falls in love she has more energy than before.

I told her everyone was different. Maybe I wasn't in love any more. I was just disappointed.

'And what does he want? Does he love you?'

'I don't know what he wants. But he'll leave me one day anyway, even though he says he won't.'

'You're crazy. Why do you think about what might happen one day?'

'Because it will concern me. It already concerns me.'

'Kristýna, you need to take things easier. We're alive now, we don't know if we'll still be alive tomorrow.'

I go for a drink of water but I vomit it again.

5

I don't know what to do. I can't concentrate properly or think about anything apart from how to win Kristýna back. At work I stare at the screen or sit and look at one piece of paper after another without registering what's written on them.

I cancelled the evening when we were supposed to continue the game. Maybe partly because I didn't feel like meeting Věra but mostly because games are the last things on my mind at present.

Jirka is the only person I've confided in about what happened. He said to me, 'I never thought you'd do anything so stupid. Why did you blurt out to her something she couldn't have even an inkling of?'

I explained to him that I was afraid Věra would ring her and spill the beans.

Jirka doubted she'd ever do anything like that. 'That job of yours is making you paranoid. Everyone's a potential informer. And even if she did, you could always deny it. After all, that's what you spend all your day thinking about, and when you're playing games. You know very well that you should never admit anything, even if they torture you.'

I told him that this wasn't like any old interrogation. I thought it dishonourable to lie to Kristýna precisely because I love her.

'There are other ways to demonstrate your love, you idiot.'

So I'm an idiot and I don't know what to do.

I dreamed one night that I went to Kristýna and begged her to love me again.

She said, 'But you let me down.'

I promised I'd never let her down again. I'd do anything she asked.

'OK,' she agreed. 'Delete both of them then.'

I understood that she wanted me to find the files of her father and her ex-husband and destroy them. Her request gave me a scare, because in the dream we were both very important agents and destruction of my files could have wide-ranging consequences. But I yearned for her so much that I promised to do as she asked. 'Now can you love me again?' I asked.

She nodded and started to strip in a brazenly lewd fashion, like a porn star. Then we made frenzied love.

When I awoke I felt sad. As if one could win someone's love by deleting a few data from a computer's memory.

That morning I rang Kristýna and asked how she was.

Her answers were curt and cold. Jana was fine, she was feeling tired. She'd been reading an American novel in which a girl took Prozac. For politeness' sake, she asked how I was. I told her I was missing her. I suggested we might meet but she made excuses,

saying she wasn't in the mood and anyway she'd told me how overworked and tired she was.

Mum has asked me several times about Věra. I don't like her asking questions about my private life, but in a weak moment I told Mum we'd split up.

'You're going out with someone else?'

I nodded. I was ashamed to admit I wasn't going out with anyone at the moment.

Mum asked me to bring the new one home some time. She'd like to meet her.

I promised nothing. I couldn't anyway. When Mum tried to get more out of me I started to shout at her that I couldn't stand it when she interfered in my life.

Mum went into a huff and she's not talking to me at the moment.

At work there's a loud rumour going round that they're either going to close us down altogether or they'll find a way to make it impossible for us to operate. Only a few dyed-in-the-wool idealists are interested in the exposure of old crimes. And they are at best figures of fun for the rest. Ondřej told me he has decided to quit as our work seems pointless to him. It almost felt to me like betrayal. I don't know who they could replace him with, but I know I won't feel like working under someone I don't know.

The day before yesterday I was alone all day at work and spent the entire time doing my horoscope on the computer. Surprisingly enough I didn't turn up anything earth-shattering. As far as work was concerned, it made sense. I feel something similar to Ondřej and know I'm bound to leave sooner or later. But how am I to explain the calm constellation in respect of Kristýna? Either she'll come back to me and things will continue, or our relationship wasn't the cataclysmic event I took it to be. It started and came to an end in order to make way for what is yet to come.

Yesterday I bought a large bouquet of red roses and waited for Kristýna outside her surgery.

She was taken aback when she caught sight of me. I had the

feeling she'd sooner turn round and find somewhere to hide. But she came up to me and said hello. She refused the flowers and also refused to go and sit somewhere with me. So we walked a little way along the street together, with me holding a bouquet of flowers like a jilted suitor.

I tried to explain that I had had no intention of being unfaithful to her; it had just happened. Věra had come looking for me and I didn't have the strength at that moment to send her away. I'd never pretended to be a saint or a monk, I had simply succumbed to the moment. I agreed that I'd acted spinelessly; my father would have behaved much better in my place, but I promised I'd never behave that way again.