Once, when my sister was sixteen, she came home from somewhere in an odd state. Nowadays I'd say she was high, but drugs were a rarity at that time, so she was probably just drunk. She donned the long, lacy dress she wore to dance classes and put on my Cream record with that long, impeccable drum solo. It was really sultry music and I'd made love to it several times. If I'd put the record on, Dad would definitely have protested, as it hadn't been vetted as politically correct. But he let my sister do what she liked because she was so frail and sickly. So she put on that sultry music and started squirming to it. It wasn't a dance, more of an ecstatic trance in which she started to prophesy our futures,
including the way we'd all die. Dad would die of cancer and Mum from a painless stroke. I was supposed to die by my own hand.
'How?' I asked in astonishment.
'By your own hand,' she repeated. 'That's all I know. But it will be bloodless. I see you lying there pale and beautiful, as if covered in hoarfrost. Maybe you're frozen. But you're lying on something green. Maybe it's a lawn or maybe just a carpet.'
'And what about you?' It struck me. 'You won't say anything about yourself?'
'I don't know. Prophetesses aren't able to prophesy about themselves. Maybe I'll never die.' She laughed.
Our parents were dumbfounded and said nothing. I told her she was drunk and embarrassing, but stopped short of telling her she was callous to everyone but herself.
Dad died of lung cancer. Mum's still alive but the doctors are hard-pressed to keep her blood pressure slighdy above normal. My sister, as she imagines, will never die and while I've considered suicide — self-extraction — on a couple of occasions, I've never had the determination to go through with it.
I don't feel like going to the stonemason's, the cemetery office or the notary. I hate dealing with officials, with anyone, in fact, who sits at a counter or behind a typewriter. Men should deal with arrangements: they're not reduced to tears by churlish petty bureaucrats. The most that women should take care of is shopping; but I'm a defective woman, I don't even like shopping. I hate supermarkets, where they offer me an alternative lifestyle full of junk and try to convince me with the help of sickly music that it's all I need for happiness. I dash through shops, toss the absolute minimum of things I need into a basket, and then flee. I choose shoes from window displays and either they suit me or I leave. The same goes for clothes. When they lure me with hundreds of garish outfits I have the feeling I'm looking at rows of people hanging from gallows. They hang there headless, as if their heads have been removed so as not to get in the way, because heads are totally
out of place in that particular world. Those gallows give me the horrors, and as usual I make myself scarce.
I don't have a husband; possibly I have a lover. When he last called, he asked me how I was fixed at the end of the week. I told him I'd probably be devoting myself to my daughter. He told me excitedly that he would be going to Brno to attend a seminar and was just finishing the paper he would deliver.
I asked him what it was about.
He said it was an attempt to explain how and why people subordinated themselves to criminals. He is proud to be delivering a paper. It bothers him that he didn't complete university and sometimes it strikes me that it's one reason he's attracted to me: being able to make love to a doctor. As if it particularly matters how many years one spends acquiring knowledge, which is mostly pointless.
Before the end of surgery I call home, but there is no reply. Where has she got to now, that creature who is fawning and stubborn by turns and is almost certainly pulling the wool over my eyes? I'm a gullible fool; it's obvious to everyone, and everyone eventually takes me for a ride. But there's no one I can complain to. We're each of us engineers of our own fate — to a certain extent, at least.
The stonemason's is just by the entrance to the cemetery. The lady behind the counter has an Art Nouveau look, which suits her line of business. She is also good-natured but with a gravity appropriate for dealing with the recently bereaved. She makes a computer record of Dad's name and the details to be inscribed on the headstone. Then she takes a deposit from me and prints me a receipt.
While I'm there I ask about urns and she shows me the five different types they offer, which differ more in price than in appearance. As if it matters what an urn looks like when it's going to be buried in the ground. I choose the cheapest, which is expensive anyway. I don't know what urns used to cost in the past,
but the price is bound to have gone up, like everything else, from the cradle to the grave. People now have to pay for dental treatment. If you have the talent and the determination you can now make enough to afford several urns at the end of your dental career.
'Would you also be interested in a lamp or a vase?'
I'm not interested in a lamp — but what about a vase? I recall the incident from my childhood and how I promised my father I'd buy him two vases; I have only half-fulfilled that promise. And one should keep one's promises, even belatedly.
I take a look at the heavy stone and metal vessels on display. They also have ordinary ceramic vases, the lady at the computer explains, but the massive ones are preferable. The lighter ones can easily fall over in the wind or be knocked over by birds. Thieves are also more likely to steal the ceramic and metal ones. The best thing is to put everything on a chain and padlock, but they don't sell chains here.
I don't know whether any of the vases resembles the one I broke. I've forgotten its shape; I can only recall its colour.
'Do you have a blue one?'
She brings me a vase that is more amethyst than blue, but the colour doesn't matter. Not even the brightest blue will please Dad now. I buy the amethyst vase and thereby fulfil a longstanding promise. A foolish promise and a foolish purchase.
I phone home but again there is no reply. There is a bus terminal nearby; one of those buses could take me to the part of town where my former and now terminally ill husband still lives.
Half an hour later I ring his doorbell. It takes a while before I hear the sound of shuffling footsteps.
The door opens and my nostrils are assailed by the stench of unaired rooms, sweat and urine.
He looks at me, my former, only and last husband, as if he doesn't recognize me. 'It's you, is it?'
'I can go away again if it's not convenient.'
'No, no, I'm glad you've come.' He is visibly moved. He's wearing the dark-blue dressing gown I bought him for Christmas years ago. In those days he still had broad shoulders and muscles; every morning he used to exercise with a chest-expander and go for a run around the walls of the New Jewish Cemetery. Now the dressing grown hangs on him like on a scarecrow. His hair has thinned and is matted into dirty grey tufts. He follows my gaze and says, 'Sorry, I look dreadful.'
The voice whose clear tones used to excite me with their colour and warmth is now thick and lifeless.
'No, you look better than at the hospital.'
He asks me to sit down and he shuffles to the dresser. I notice that the large pendulum clock that hangs alongside the dresser, one of the few things he asked to take from our joint household, has stopped. It shows precisely midday or midnight. I am surprised. He always made sure it kept the right time.
He registers my gaze. 'I stopped it. Its ticking got on my nerves.' He opens the dresser and takes out a bottle of cheap red wine. 'Someone brought me this, but I'm not allowed to drink. I'll open it for you.'
I shake my head. I don't feel like drinking in front of him. 'Have you had supper?'