Ivan Klima - No Saints or Angels

That dream is generally interpreted as a memory of one's own birth, but it was more a dream about my situation. I'm shut inside my solitude and I'd like to break out, but I've shrunk the exit and can't. And maybe it's an image of myself, I'm no longer as slim or supple as I used to be. I'm getting fat; I can't get into clothes I used to wear two years ago. How could anyone still enjoy looking at me, let alone make love to me?

In the morning Jan and I have breakfast together. He has to leave for work even before me.

'You don't want me here, do you?' he asks.

I don't know whether I want him here or not. I'm frightened of taking any decision. I'm afraid of the disappointment that might result. I wasn't able to hold on to a man who was a divine blink older than I was and with whom I had a child. However could I hold on to this young fellow with whom I haven't conceived a child — and won't now?

He waits for my reply, so I tell him he ought to go back home. I don't want us to regret in a few days' time that we acted hastily.

He points out that he isn't acting in haste. He knows he loves me and he believed, still believes that he can convince me of it, if I manage to forgive him.

I say nothing and he says he'll move in with a friend for the time being.

He picks up his case and as he is going out the door I give him a kiss after all.

Maybe he won't come back again. In any case, the day would come when he wouldn't come back, even if I told him I forgave him. Everything comes to an end one day, including life itself.

I briefly collapse into an armchair. From where I am sitting I can't see into the street; all I can see are the roofs of the houses opposite and the sky which is beginning to cloud over again. The clouds are splendid, like dolphins hurling themselves up out of grey water. Rain is on the way.

If it starts to rain, that boy and his suitcase will get soaked again.

4

At night I have oppressive dreams. In them I'm searching for Jana, who has run away somewhere in the middle of a blizzard. I am looking for her on skis and getting hopelessly lost in snowdrifts. I know I'll freeze to death but I don't care; the only thing that terrifies me is that I won't find my daughter. I dream

about my late husband; in the dream he is alive and in love with me; he holds me in his arms and assures me that he'd die without me, he loves me so much. In the dream, I'm happy to hear him say it, although I wake up feeling wretched. I'm even visited by the grandmother that I only know from photos, the one who was gassed: she is amazed that I don't recognize her. 'Just imagine,' she says, 'they took pity on me and let me come back again.'

Back again means back to life. I can understand that.

But the little messenger never lets anyone come back to life.

And where am I, in fact?

I've aged five years in the past six months.

I'm intolerant and don't like myself. I started snapping at Eva in the surgery because I had the feeling she was taking her time every time I needed something from her.

I feel like my ex-husband when he was stricken with a terminal illness. Maybe my soul is being eaten away by a tumour.

Maybe I'm my own illness.

I baked Jana some heart-shaped biscuits; I borrowed the mould from Mum and wrote my daughter a long letter in which I told her I was sure things would be fine between us when she came home. We have to discover together why it's good to be alive.

She called me two days later: 'Hi Mum, it's me.'

'I can tell.'

'How are you?'

'Not bad. And how about you?'

'Thanks for the biscuits, Mum. They took a rise out of me, saying they were better for me than purple hearts. But they were great, and they weren't even slightly burnt. We've already scoffed the lot.'

'I'm glad you liked them.'

'We shared them out. Slávek said you must be great. Most of the people here have parents who couldn't give a damn about them.'

'Thanks for the appreciation. What news do you have for me otherwise?'

'I'm fairly used to it here now, Mum. Sometimes we even have great fun. Really. There's something rather special about looking after a goat, for instance, and drinking its milk, even though it tastes horrible. And Radek said he was pleased with me too and said you could already come on a visit.' She talks a little while more about the merits of life at Sunnyside and then gets alarmed that her call has already cost a lot of money; so she quickly wishes me all the best and asks me again to come and visit her, and to my amazement suggests I bring 'that ginger man' of mine along.

I promise to come and ignore the reference to my ginger man.

I've also had a phone call from the man I had discovered to be my half-brother. He asked me whether he could come and see me; he had something for me. I told him he could and asked if I should drive over for him.

No, he would get here under his own steam. All he needed to know was what floor I live on and whether there is a lift in the building.

'I live on the third floor and there's a lift which works most of the time.'

So he turned up on Saturday afternoon. Some elderly lady brought him; I asked her in but she said she had something to attend to in the meantime.

My brother cruised around the flat as if he'd been doing it for years. 'You've got a nice place,' he said. 'Plenty of room. I like the rubber plant. I can tell you look after it. I expect the drum kit belongs to your girl, doesn't it?' He peeped into Jana's room. 'Where are you hiding her?' he asks.

'She's out of Prague.'

'A pity, I'd like to meet her. After all, she's my niece, isn't she? I don't have any relatives on my mother's side. I haven't met your sister yet either. When it comes down to it, I've never known what it is to have a family. Mum was almost always out and she scarcely said anything when she was home.'

I offered him some wine, but he said he'd sooner have tea with a drop of rum, or preferably a hot toddy.

I went into the kitchen to make the toddy and he followed me in. 'I've brought you something,' he announced. He rummaged in his wheelchair and drew out quite a large object wrapped in paper. 'I painted you a picture,' he explained. 'When you came to see me, I said some stupid things; I'm a bit strange sometimes. But I didn't want you thinking I'm like that all the time. Aren't you going to open it?'

The painting is a portrait of me; I can't tell what sort of a likeness it is; I'm not used to lip-reading my image in the language of colours. What caught my attention most was that in the picture I am surrounded by flames.

'You've committed me to the flames like a witch.'

'No,' he said, 'not at all. Those flames signify passion. You seemed passionate to me — full of energy that could burn up everything around you.'

Good gracious, I thought, this weary old woman?

I thanked him for the painting and told him it was interesting. I poured the hot water on the rum and then told him about the aunt who burnt herself to death. After all, she was his aunt too.

Afterwards he talked to me about his youth and how his mother was indomitable and went on loving my father and never lived with anyone else. My half-brother was once in love too. She was a student nurse. Then came his fateful dive. She used to visit him in hospital and afterwards, when he was back home. She stood by him for several years until eventually he told her not to waste her life.

My half-brother told me in a faltering voice the story of his accident, no doubt for the hundredth time: all about the single dive that changed his life for ever. Then he asked me if I had some photos of his father; his mother had just one, and it had been taken forty years ago.

I took out the box of photographs and selected some with Dad

on them, both alone and with us. Dad as a young man and in old age; Dad in a blue shirt and red scarf wielding a pickaxe on some socialist labour brigade; Dad at the rostrum; Dad at some celebration where the Comrade President pinned on him a medal for services to the Communists' betrayal; Dad just before his death.