I refrain from pointing out that Dad was just a few weeks short of seventy-six, which is more than the average longevity of men in this country, nor do I say that how a man lives matters more than how long.
My sister can't restrain herself, however: 'He'd have had to smoke less and keep off the pork fat, the streaky bacon and the cheap smoked meats. I never saw him touch vegetables, apart from a bit of cabbage if it came with the goose or the roast pork.'
Mum senses a personal reproach, as she is the one who fed Dad all his life, and her sobs grow louder.
But now two fellows in shiny black suits emerge from one of the side paths. They are how I imagine the two court bailiffs in The Trial, whose author lies in the adjacent Jewish cemetery. All that's missing is the knife. Instead, one of them is cradling in his arms the urn with the ashes while the other carries a garden trowel in place of a knife. They arrive at our grave, bow to us, and for a moment they both stand in feigned solemnity of mourning.
Then the, first of them leans over the cavity and places the urn in it. The other man offers us the trowel and we sprinkle a bit of soil into the shallow hole, the pebbles rattling off the lid of the urn.
It is all so brief, there's no time for even a flicker of God's eyelid. Nobody sings anything, nobody plays anything; all we can hear are the strains of a passionate csardas from the gypsy burial. Just recently I saw on television some old woman in Moscow defiantly brandishing above her head a portrait of the tyrant who died on the day I was born. Maybe it would gratify Dad if I held a portrait like that now over his grave. But I don't have one and I'd never take it in my hands anyway. I'd happily play the violin for Dad, even the 'March of the Fallen Revolutionaries', if he'd have let me continue learning the instrument.
The two men finish their job and come up to us to express their condolences and wait expectantly for a tip. They get a hundred-crown note each and depart from us at a dignified pace
while we remain standing there for a little while longer. I don't know what's going through Mum's head, or my sister's. Mum has no inkling of Dad's infidelities and will never learn about them now. Maybe she is recalling some nice moments; there must have been some. Maybe she's thinking of the loneliness that will accompany her for the rest of her days.
Dad died at home. He was racked with pain during the final days. A doctor visited him from the clinic and gave him some injection that didn't do much to relieve the pain. I didn't ask what they gave him; most of the time I wasn't around. I myself had a few ampoules of morphine that the thieving ward sister had brought me. I'd never used them but I could have injected them into Dad, all of them in one go even, and thus shortened his suffering. I could have done it; he was already under sentence of death anyway, but I didn't. I couldn't make up my mind to shorten his life and play Dr Death. I had no right to, had I? Or was I just making excuses? To do something like that you have to feel either great love or bitter hatred — I didn't feel either. I didn't have enough compassion for someone who had never shown much pity to others. Subconsciously I told myself that each of us has to put up with our fate right to the end, and that there was even some kind of justice in it, which we oughtn't to interfere with.
'Aren't we going yet?' Jana asked.
We took Mum home and I let my daughter go off to a girlfriend's. My dear sister, who once prophesied my death at my own hand, decided to come back to my place for a chat.
Before we climb the stairs to the flat I check my mailbox and take out the only envelope it contains; by the writing I can tell immediately it's another anonymous letter. I quickly slip it into my handbag before my sister has a chance to ask who's writing to me.
I make a few open sandwiches but Lida refuses them; she's found a new belief: healthy eating. She doesn't touch smoked meats or even cheese. She's not allowed tomatoes because they are
toxic like potatoes and she refuses to eat peppers because they contain too much zinc or some dangerous metal or other, besides which they could be genetically modified. Thanks to her diet she has managed to rid her body of all toxins and noxious fluids; she has got rid of all her pains and lost her excess weight, and her eyes and voice have improved.
I pour myself a glass of wine and she takes out of her handbag a little bottle with some elixir or other.
I have neither wheat berries nor fermented vegetables. All I can offer is some rye bread which at her request I sprinkle with parsley and chives.
'You ought to adopt a healthier lifestyle too,' she tells me and heaves a deep sigh. Surprisingly she refrains from saying, as on previous occasions, that my flat is unbearably smoky, but even so she annoys me with her condescending self-assurance: she knows, as our father did, just what is right and healthy — for herself and the rest of humanity.
For a while she tells me all about her successful concerts and then offers to reimburse me all the funeral expenses.
'We'll go halves,' I say. Then for a while we say nothing: two sisters who have nothing to say to each other.
I recall Dad's diaries. When I was looking through them, I tell her, I discovered that Dad had a mistress.
My sister is not taken aback by the news but simply takes it in her stride. 'There's nothing odd in that: all blokes have mistresses. He wasn't the US President, so he could risk it.'
I tell her that he apparently had a child with his mistress. When I was last looking through his diaries I came across a death notice from ten years ago announcing the death of a certain Veronika Veselá. It was signed by just one person: her son, Václav Alois Veselý, and bore his address.
'You mean to say that the one who died was Dad's bit on the side? And this Václav bloke is something like our half-brother?'
'She gave him his second name after Dad.'
'So what? We didn't know anything about him — for how many years?'
I tell her he must be about two years older than her.
'We didn't know anything about him for forty years,' she calculates quickly, 'so why should we bother about him now. There wasn't any inheritance anyway. We haven't cheated him out of anything, so he's got nothing to fight with us over.'
'But it's not just a question of the inheritance.' Doesn't she find it strange that there's someone with the same father as ours who has been walking the earth for all this time without our knowing anything about him?
'That's typical of Dad. He was well trained in keeping mum about all sorts of highly secret matters. And where does this new relative of ours live?' she asks, suddenly curious after all.
'In Karlín. It must be somewhere near the river, to judge by the name of the street.'
'I might be singing at the theatre in Karlín, if things work out.'
'Mum has never suspected anything,' I say, ignoring the important news that she will be singing in Prague.
'Or perhaps she didn't want to. It would be better for her that way.'
'No, more likely she believed all his guff about a new morality.'
For a while we argue about what Mum believed in and what Dad did. And then my sister comments that every woman prefers to shut her eyes rather than see what is really going on. I was the one who had behaved stupidly.
'What's that supposed to mean?'
'You found out that Karel was betraying you and couldn't think of anything better to do than divorce him. What good did it do you? You were left on your own.'
I refrain from saying that I was left on my own because I wouldn't let myself be made a slave. Nor do I tell her that you have to act according to your feelings and do what you feel is right, and not what is most convenient. 'You're on your own too.'