No Saints or Angels

despair or from loneliness. Or he was drawn by the sea and death. That's something I'd have understanding for. Whenever I've stood alone on some isolated spot overlooking the sea I have imagined myself swimming further and further from the shore until I don't have the strength to return. I found the thought of sinking to the bottom both terrifying and enticing. But anyway I know it won't be water that kills me, because I'm a Piscean. If I'm to perish or choose my own death, it will be a fiery one.

It's strange how they didn't find even his clothes on the shore. For a long time afterwards I had qualms about whether I'd been too severe with him. But then in the same way that he disappeared without trace, all traces of him started to disappear from my memory. It's possible that he's still alive and he just disappeared to spite me for rejecting him.

It looks as if Dad not only went out with V.V. alias W. but also had a child by her. W. refused to apply to the medical board or even see my friend Dr H. She got angry and told me she wasn't a rabbit. We had a row but she didn't change her mind. V.V. then left town and found a job in Chrudim. She virtually disappeared from Dad's life but not from the world. Years later he complained in his notebook that the regular monthly allowance he had to pay her to keep alive something that oughtn't to have been was draining him.

He always spoke about that child as 'it', so I can't tell whether it was a son or his third daughter.

I suddenly realized I might have another sibling — a half-brother or half-sister. It stunned me and I was staggered at the thought that something like that could happen without any of us suspecting: either Mum, my sister, or me. The deception that Dad practised on us all! And I stupidly believed that at least towards us he acted honourably.

I go and take a shower. I let it run full blast: maybe I'll manage to wash away all that nastiness, my fatigue and my sins real and imagined.

I find my daughter in the kitchen already dressed and already having had her breakfast.

'Are you planning to go somewhere?'

'We're going to an anti-racism demo on Old Town Square.'

I ask her who the 'we' consists of and she reels off a string of names that mean nothing to me.

I commend her concern for the fate of her fellow citizens but voice my doubt that they would be demonstrating so early in the morning.

No, the demonstration is planned for the afternoon but they have to make preparations and discuss a plan of action because there is likely to be an attack by the skinheads.

I imagine my little girl being beaten up by some enraged shaven-headed lout, but I quell my anxiety and refrain from asking her to stay home.

'What time are you intending to come home?'

She hesitates for a moment. 'I was thinking I might spend the night at Katya's cottage.'

'You said you were going to a demonstration.'

'Yeah, we are, but afterwards I'd. .'

'Afterwards you come home.'

'But Mum, it's so nice out. You can't really want me to moon around in Prague when the weather's so great.'

'I don't want you spending the night goodness knows where with goodness knows who.'

'But I told you I'll just be with Katya at her cottage.'

'And who else?'

'Her mum will be there too.'

'And no one else?'

'It's only a tiny cottage. Really teeny-weeny.'

'And you'll be going there with Katya's mum?'

'Of course. We're hardly going to kick her out.'

'And what about study?'

'But Mum, I can't study in this heat!'

'Whereas you could when it was cold.'

'Yeah, I did slack, I agree,' she concedes, 'but it's too late now anyway; I'll never catch up.'

'It's only too late when you're dead.'

'But the marks are already in. Really.'

I don't want to be a restrictive or repressive parent. I had enough of Dad's restrictions at home and I don't think I've got over them yet. But what will become of this child if I don't manage to arouse any sense of responsibility in her?

'You're not hiding anything from me?'

'Mummy. .!'

'Don't try to butter me up; I want an answer.'

'I'm not hiding anything from you.'

'Will you call me after the demonstration and tell me how you got on with the skinheads?'

'Of course. If the skins don't do me over I'll call you from the first phone box.'

'And if I let you go to Katya's, you're to be back by tomorrow afternoon at the latest.'

Instead of making promises she won't keep anyway, she flings her arms round my neck and tells me I'm a fantastic mother. Then she loads herself down with chains and rings of various kinds, daubs herself with war paint and makes her exit from the flat, and before she reaches the front door she has already forgotten about it and her mother.

The remains of the day now leer at me.

I water the rubber plant and remove two yellow leaves. I load the washing machine and give the windowledges above the radiators a wipe. I ought to cook something, but I don't enjoy cooking for myself alone. For a moment I consider going over to my ex-husband's and cooking him something at least, but I can't make up my mind to do it. I'm a lazy Samaritan. I call Mum to ask how she is. We talk for a while and Mum tells me her dreams. I listen to her patiently, knowing that these days dreams are

increasingly what affect her the most, now that life has little excitement or comfort to offer.

'What about Jana?' Mum wants to know.

I tell her she has gone to demonstrate against racism.

'And you let her go? She could get hurt.'

I try to explain to her that it is necessary to protest against evil, but I fail to convince her.

'It's no business of children,' she tells me. 'At least you should have gone with her.'

Maybe she's right, but the thought of festooning myself with chains and going to yell slogans makes me smile.

I switch on the news at midday to learn that the police have broken up a gang of traffickers, that strike action is planned by lorry drivers, teachers and state employees, that eight people have died from the heat, although I don't catch where, and that a locomotive caught fire on some railway line. No mention of any anti-racist demonstration. They either didn't know about it or they have no interest. They'd only be interested if there were violent clashes. Maybe there isn't any anti-racist demonstration today, and my daughter just made it up as a way of getting out of the house as soon as possible.

I can't help thinking she has deceived me.

People tell lies: Dad lied to us, my ex-husband lied to me, my long-lost lover lied to me. Why should my daughter be any better?

She didn't hesitate to forge my signature at school and even boasted about how well she did it. And I'd like so much to trust her, to trust everyone, or those people, at least, that matter to me.

I make myself a cheese roll and pour myself a glass of wine. I finish my lunch in five minutes and then make a dash for the metro.

It is boiling on Old Town Square. Tourists cluster around an ice-cream trolley. In front of the astronomical clock a crowd waits in the scorching heat for the apostles, who make their appearance come rain or shine. There is no one to ask where the anti-racist

demonstration will take place. If it were to take place here it would be drowned in waves of Coca-Cola and lost amidst the crowds of pagans, as tourists are described by my Mickey Myšák who has gone swanning off to Brno and left me at the mercy of the pagans.

There are too many people. Apparently there'll soon be six billion of us, I recently read.