Ivan Klima - No Saints or Angels

when I almost ruined my life with dope. I also told her I realize now what a pain I was, but I really did hate school and there was nothing I enjoyed. Even at home it was horrendous sometimes.

Mum asked if I missed Dad that time, and I said I did at first but that she missed him more and for much longer, and that had really pissed me off.

We kept climbing upwards with the forest on our right. Two old lady mushroomers were coming out of it as we passed. There are loads of magic mushrooms around here and I never knew before you could trip on them, but Monika used to get stoned on them and she was so smashed on them that she thought she was a goner.

'Yes, I do admit,' Mum said, 'that I was fed up from time to time, but you have to realize that it's like an illness, sometimes I couldn't help it when I had a depression. And sometimes there was even a good reason.'

So I explained to her that she always saw the bad side of things most of all. Me and Radek talked about it. I said she probably didn't have positive thinking and before I started getting on her nerves, there was Dad and before him my granddad. And his opinion was that that explains lots of things to him, and he said she herself had told him that she was destroying herself, and how she had played up her father the way I'd played up Dad. It's really horrendous the way everything repeats itself, even the totally stupid things.

'You say really nice things about me, the two of you,' Mum says, 'but otherwise your analysis was very good.' She keeps looking as if she wants to tell me a secret, but in the end she just points to some old ruin in front of us and says, 'Do you see that chapel? I want you to see inside.'

When we reached it, the ruin looked even more pathetic. It was completely empty inside, even emptier than the church earlier; there was nothing inside at all except for a little table with crooked legs and on it two vases covered in bird crap or something. There

weren't even any flowers in them. I couldn't figure out what Mum wanted to show me there.

'Look,' says Mum. 'There are no saints or angels. Just two vases and nothing else.'

I could see that, but I still couldn't understand why she was showing it to me. Probably because it looked sad to her, all abandoned and ransacked.

But Mum said she was there the day before with Jan, and while she was there she realized that it isn't important what people built around themselves. In that place you could feel more than in some church full of pictures and sculptures. She said she now knew that it's up to people to learn how to hear everything that speaks to them and above all themselves; that was the most important thing. And she also said she knew she'd been awful and yelled at me, but in fact she wasn't yelling at me but at something inside her, because she couldn't come to terms with the fact that life is the way it is and she is the way she is.

That really knocked me out. Plus the fact she looked so cool. I wasn't used to that any more. I just wonder how long it's going to last.

We stood there for a few more moments and I remembered Dad. What would it be like if he was here with us too? Maybe he'd look cool too and be happy that he's here with us and not on his own, the way he was at the end, when he had nothing left, not even the little marble that made all things seen and unseen. It's really strange how people aren't able to stay together and are rotten to each other. I wanted to tell Mum I love her, but when I glanced at her she looked really moved and she was whispering something to herself, as if she was praying, only she never prays. Maybe she was singing something to herself, such as the song about the midge, which wasn't really about a midge at all but about how great it is to be alive. I didn't want to disturb her so I didn't say anything.