Someone next to me said that the filth were coming, but I couldn't give a shit; I don't feel like getting up. Let them come. I didn't have any stolen goods, not even a gram, or even a needle.
Now I could see them too, the whole pig pack. They had two Alsatians on leads specially trained to deal with us. They were already yelling that we were scum on the drinking water that ought to be strained out and chucked in the Vltava, that happens to have been flowing here for at least a thousand years, or since the time that followed the Big Bang.
'Hey, we'd better split,' Ruda said. 'They look really mean today.'
So I got up. Not far away there was a deserted cottage that we used to creep into through broken windows in the yard. To get into the yard you had to climb over a wall that was all gnawed by mice, rats or the teeth of time.
Half an hour later we were all back together again. There were about nine of us. I couldn't tell for sure. I was so wrecked I couldn't tell them apart. I didn't even know whether the ones I could see were really here. Fortunately it didn't matter, nothing mattered. I couldn't care about school or Mum; I promised to call her but I didn't and I felt completely free.
The cottage was cold even now in the summer. The floor was made of stones of some kind. The walls were piss-sodden. There was just an iron bedstead and some wrecked cupboards to lie on. There used to be blankets but some tramps took them away last winter. There's just a pile of old Yellow Pages in one corner. Last time we slept here the cold was so dire that Katya and I covered ourselves with the Yellow Pages. They were heavy but they gave some warmth. And there was hardly any oxygen. Ruda said
oxygen is poison. The straights who go to the mountains to breathe fresh air for their health don't realize there's less oxygen there because there's less oxygen the higher you go. But down here we are poisoned and if we didn't smoke from time to time we'd be goners.
I didn't even know how many girls there were and how many boys.
It was already dark. Someone lit a candle, but it hardly burnt. It was like being in the mountains, because fire, I knew from Dad, needs oxygen, and shadows leapt about the battered walls, and beetles as big as rabbits crawled over them.
Ruda snuggled up to me and wanted a fuck. Why not, it didn't matter. The cupboard creaked under us. I heard myself say, 'Be careful,' and he told me not to worry, it was made of good timber. That really freaked me out.
I'm made from good timber too. I don't creak but I take it. If he waters me maybe I'll grow leaves, maybe I'll flower. I imagined the colours of my flowers. I like orange like marigolds. Ruda had rolled off me but some other kid in a biker's jacket was groping me. He smelt strange and scratched me with his bristly chin. Hey, fuck off, you stink!
I pushed him off the cupboard but he'd already managed to come in me.
Someone started to play a guitar and sing some crappy song about love.
I already knew something about love. I figured it out when Dad pissed off with that beanpole of his. And loads of blokes taught me about love; I don't know how many because I don't know whether the ones that jumped on me were real or not. Maybe I only imagined it all. But I didn't imagine Ruda; he was the first one who offered me hash. That was ages ago, absolute aeons, two years ago at least, but maybe it was twenty years because I was already dreadfully old, wasn't I? at least a hundred years old. I was just beginning to feel moss growing on me.
A sewer rat was watching me from the corner by the door that goes nowhere. Who are you staring at, you creep? He was as big as a small dog and had eyes like a cat. Maybe it was a cat got up as a mouse. Tom dressed up as Jerry, or vice versa.
Maybe I was only imagining it alclass="underline" the moss, the mouse, the people here and this vile hole where everything stinks.
But I felt fantastic. I really liked the people here because they were like me and I was like them. We couldn't give a fuck about anything so we were still able to laugh. We were almost always laughing, especially after grass. Someone said, 'Hey it's Wednesday,' and it was Saturday and we were in stitches. I really liked laughing. It was hard to laugh at home. Mum had her downers and was always miserable over Dad totally doing the dirty on her and being alone — only having me, as she said, and that couldn't be enough because sometimes she didn't even have me, like now. I lay there and I felt better than at home and one day I'll stay here totally and the moss will grow all over me and I won't know about anything. And maybe I'll go off somewhere or fly away.
That creep kept on singing about love, as if it existed.
Maybe it does, but it was hiking in the mountains so it didn't get poisoned.
I used to go hiking in the mountains with Mum and Dad, and when my legs ached, Dad would give me a piggyback and Mum would walk behind us and every few minutes she'd say, 'Isn't she too heavy for you? I'll take her for a while.' And Mum would also sing:
'Don't you worry Jana That there's nothing left to eat We'll kill ourselves a juicy midge And cut it up for meat.'
I didn't want to stay here totally, I'd like to go hiking in the mountains.
Maybe I ought to let Mum know I'd like to go hiking in the mountains. With her and Dad.
Dad can hardly climb the stairs and he wouldn't go with Mum even if he could.
There were two sewer rats now. What are you staring at, you creeps?
When Ruda first gave me some grass I was really curious and I was also a bit afraid of what it would do, but it hardly did anything. I didn't know how to drag on it yet and anyway he only gave me a couple of puffs and kept asking me, 'What do you feel? Are you high yet?'
When I got home I was in total dread that Mum would be able to tell, but she wasn't able to tell anything; she happened to be dreadfully tired and miserable; she had a downer and a headache and was pissed off because I didn't do the washing-up.
How could I do the washing-up on a day like that? I wanted to really enjoy being happy and you can't be happy doing the washing-up.
Ruda crept up on to me again, if it was him, and started to touch me up. I didn't care; it turned me on.
Now I'd like to be hiking in the mountains, but not with you, you creep.
CHAPTER FOUR
1
Dad acquired the burial plot years ago; it lies in a remote corner of Olšany Cemetery. His forebears remained in the country graveyard at Lipová; they have more light and flowers there, and a bell rings over them every day. They include Auntie Venda who burned to death and Grannie Marie. The ashes of my other grandmother were most likely washed away in the river Vistula or were tipped into some mass grave; her name, at least, is inscribed among thousands of others on a wall of the Pinkas synagogue in Prague. When I first saw it there, I found it strange, even unbelievable that my mother's mother should have died that way, and I almost felt guilty about my own untroubled existence and the fact that no one was out to kill me.
At the foot of the grave there is a gaping small hole ready to take the urn and next to it a little heap of earth like a fresh molehill.
His nearest relatives have come: Mum, my sister Lida, Jana and I. We are waiting for the undertakers to arrive with the urn. Mum is wiping tears from her eyes, Jana is evidently bored and staring into the distance with a faraway expression. A gypsy funeral is taking place at the other end of the path and we can hear the sound of dance tunes intended to accompany the soul of the deceased to a happier and brighter world.
'He could have still been here with us; after all he wasn't all that old,' Mum laments.