But at this moment Father Kostka has to clench his jaws and the waiting room is still full of people. I'll ask him next time.
'You're a bit down in the mouth today, Mrs Pilná,' he says as he gets up from the chair.
I don't tell him that I have little reason to be cheerful, but simply say that I slept badly. 'The nurse will fix you a new appointment.' I quickly finish my coffee.
But while she is leafing through the diary, Eva remarks, 'I couldn't make it on Sunday. What was your sermon about, Father?'
'You know me, nurse. I only have one theme.'
'Yes, I know. Love.'
'This time it was more about humility and reconciliation.'
'You really are a bit odd today,' Eva said when we were alone for a second.
'I'll tell you all about it when we get a moment.'
That moment doesn't arrive until lunch time.
'Don't get into a state over a bit of grass,' Eva said after listening to me. 'They almost all try it these days.'
I swallow my greasy goulash soup and would like to nod in agreement that nothing's wrong. She can talk. I bet her boys wouldn't do anything like that. 'And what about her truancy?'
'Did you like going to school?'
'I went, though.'
'Those were different times. Besides, your dad was a tartar.'
They were different times and my father behaved like a tartar. These are better times, or there's more freedom at least; my daughter's father isn't a tartar, he's just missing, he just went elsewhere.
Eva believes in something. There has to be something that transcends mankind, she says, or there'd be no sense to life. And that's how she brings up her boys. The trouble is I haven't managed to give my little girl any belief because I myself am not sure that life has any meaning.
As I'm coming out of the surgery at the end of the afternoon that young man, who is fifteen years my junior and thinks I'm beautiful, is standing there waiting for me. He is holding a bunch of flowers. He can't seriously be intending to offer me five white roses. Who has he mistaken me for?
5
When I was a little boy I had a terrific urge to go to Africa and take part in a snake hunt. I'd read about a snake hunter in South Africa who was bitten by a black mamba. He'd been bitten by lots of snakes before then, but never by a mamba, whose bite is supposed to kill you within five minutes. But that hunter was carrying a syringe with serum. He injected himself and managed to drive to hospital, where he still had the strength to ask them to put him on an artificial lung. Then he became paralysed. He was aware of everything and could hear everything, but was unable to show it. For six days he listened to the doctors talking
about him and discussing whether he'd survive. He did survive. I longed to experience something of the sort. I wanted to own a black mamba, except that a black mamba is very big: an adult can grow to four metres in length and we only had a small flat. Besides, where would I find a mamba?
But I did manage to make a terrarium and got a beautiful red-horned snake to put in it, as well as a rattlesnake, Sistrurus catenatum, that I used to catch frogs for. People regard the snake as a symbol of evil and cunning. It's not true. It's people who are cunning; a snake simply has to feed itself. When it's not hungry or doesn't feel threatened, it is harmless.
But Mum couldn't stand snakes or frogs and one day she declared it was either her or those 'monsters'. So I had to sell them. I don't have any snakes, but I still live with Mum.
These days I satisfy my thirst for adventure partly at work and partly in hero games. In those games you can have African war drums playing if you want to. Each player has a number of lives, so one can be a bit more reckless than in real life.
I met my last girlfriend, Věra, at one of those games. She played to perfection a rich girl captured by terrorists. She wasn't afraid of being killed or mistreated and she flirted fantastically with the nobody being played by me. We started going out together last autumn. We could have had a child together, which would definitely have pleased my mum, but Věra didn't want a child until she'd finished college, and I wasn't particularly keen either. We split up a month ago.
I think I hurt her when I suggested we break it off. She wanted to know what I had against her.
What could I tell her? That it annoys me how little she knows about life, that she knows nothing about what happened in the past, that she has no understanding of what's going on nowadays, and has no idea of the sort of life she'd like to live. Nothing terrifies or bothers her, but nothing excites her either. She just flirts with life.
I didn't find anything particularly wrong with her, nothing that could be put into words, nothing she would be able to understand. I simply realized once again that I was confronted by a void, that I was simply incapable of completing something that others would have completed. Or could it be, on the contrary, that I was able to put a speedy end to a relationship that would have ended anyway?
That dizzy sense of standing above a void meant that I am still single. On more than one occasion, the moment has loomed ominously that I might change my status and I'd probably never hear my war drums again, let alone set off in search of them, but suddenly they would start thundering so loud I'd have to run away. I'm a born tightrope walker who's scared of the wire, unless it's placed on the ground. That's an exaggeration. My present job, which has already become a routine for me, might be considered by many to be like balancing on a wire above the Grand Canyon. Maybe I really am dodging bullets and arrows and just can't hear their whistling; I simply refuse to believe it. I know facts that could ruin the careers of many people, so it wouldn't be surprising if one of them tried to cut my wire. Then when they find me with a broken neck, many people will heave sighs of relief and almost no one will shed a tear. I prefer not to talk to Mum about my work. I pretend to her and maybe to myself too that all I do is rummage in various insignificant documents about who attended what meeting and how many people took part in some stupid demonstration. I don't let on to anyone that I make copies of documents that one day, I suspect, and probably quite soon, some powerful individual is going to attempt to destroy for good. Not even good-natured tubby Jiří from the radio, who is my faithful companion in the hero games, has any idea what's on the diskettes that I'm storing at his place. Luckily my immediate superior Ondřej is doing the same thing; I know that for sure, and I assume the others are too. If they cut one of our wires it won't do them any good; the others will simply publish everything. That's how we protect ourselves.
Mum sometimes makes pointed remarks about her contemporaries who already have grandchildren. The way she sees it, grandchildren are a source of great pleasure.
I'd love to give my mother some pleasure; she hasn't had much of it in her life. First of all she waited almost nine years for Dad and when he was released they didn't have a flat or any money. She spent her whole life in jobs that required abject obedience. I can't tell how much it took out of her, but her position filled her with bitterness.
I tended to be sorry for my mother, but I idolized my father. He embodied for me courage and integrity. He was forced to work in the uranium mines for five years, and when he was finally released from the camp the only job he was allowed to take was as a warehouseman, even though he had studied maths and spoke five languages. That's how things were in those days. But he didn't complain. He maintained that they had already ruined enough of his life, so "why should he ruin it even more by fretting?
When I was small he used to read me stories from the Tales of Old Bohemia and later he helped me with maths, Latin and English. He also taught me woodcraft: how to make fire without matches, how to distinguish different animal tracks and, of course, how to put up a tent and not leave the tiniest bit of litter behind in the countryside. He would also tell me about the Red Indians and he carved me a beautiful totem, which I still have hanging above my bed. He also made me a little tom-tom and taught me how to play it.