No Saints or Angels

'That's neither here nor there. I always have some bloke or other and I'm not saddled with a daughter.'

'You've always got to be different. And as for Jana, I'm glad I have her.'

'By the way, I don't like the look of that girl of yours,' she says.

'Maybe she doesn't care whether you like the look of her or not.'

'There's something strange about her eyes,' she continues. 'I noticed it there at the cemetery. People normally have one kind eye and one unkind one, but she doesn't.'

'Both your eyes are unkind,' I tell her, 'and I don't think you're not normal.'

'My left eye's kinder than the right one,' she assures me, 'but we're not talking about me. Her eyes aren't kind or unkind, they're elsewhere, and that's something you, as her mother, should notice.'

'What are you trying to say?'

'That girl of yours is on drugs,' she declares. 'I'd stake my life on it.'

'Jana is not on drugs,' I yell. 'You're trying to find a way to harm us!'

'Kristýna,' she says, putting her hand on my shoulder, 'I've never wanted to do you any harm. You're the one who always did yourself harm, by brooding on everything. But that dead expression and the dilated pupils is something I know only too well.' She checks herself and then explains: 'Two of the guys in the band were injecting piko and one was on heroin. If you ignore it, it'll be the worse for your daughter. It's no skin off my nose.'

'I know it's no skin off your nose. You never could give a damn about us.' I don't go on to tell her that her diet may have cleared the toxins out of her body, but they stayed in her mind.

When my sister leaves I remember the anonymous letter and take my tormentor's latest message out of my handbag.

He tells me that he follows my every step and the moment is at hand when the gates of hell will close behind me.

2

Jan would like us to see each other every day. See each other and make love. He wants me to act his age. But I'm not twenty any more. When I get home from the surgery in the evening I'm aching all over: my legs, my back, my arms and my mind. But even if I felt like going to see him, I'm the mother of an adolescent girl that I'm very worried about.

Even though my sister never wastes an opportunity to tell me something unpleasant, I'm unable to get her warning out of my mind.

I watch Jana's eyes. Does she have a fixed stare? Are her pupils dilated? Maybe I ought to check her all over each evening and look for track marks, but I'm ashamed to because it would be degrading for both of us.

'Jana, where have you been all afternoon?'

'In the park, of course.'

'What do you go there for, all the time?'

'Nothing. There are cool people there.'

'What do you get up to there?'

'Mum, there's no point in you interrogating me all the time. You won't ever understand anyway.'

She acts more and more defiantly, convinced that her life is her own business; it's nothing to do with me how she spends her time, what she'll become or how she enjoys herself. Whenever I ask her straight out if she's shooting up she adopts a hurt expression: how could something so vile occur to me?

Jan called me twice today inviting me to some club or other where they play those hero games.

I didn't tell him that I'm already of an age when people don't usually have either the time or the inclination to play at heroes or even cowards. I asked him how long such games go on for and he told me that they often last several weeks.

'Nonstop?'

'With breaks,' he laughed. 'But they mostly go on till at least midnight.'

I'll persuade Mum to come and stay the night. Not so long ago I used to ask her to babysit more often but now I get the feeling that it bothers her to leave her flat. But she loves her only grandchild, and surprisingly enough my adolescent is less impudent when she is around.

Mum arrives after seven in the evening when I'm already getting dressed up. 'Off to the theatre?' she asks.

I shake my head in reply.

'Got a date?'

'Something like that.'

'It's about time too,' Mum says.

'But Mum, I didn't say who I have the date with.'

'I can tell it's with some bloke. Is it serious?'

'I always take everything seriously, Mum.'

'You tell him that, not me,' Mum says, sticking up for the man whose existence she has deduced.

I've no idea what clothes are appropriate to meet people who play at heroes; I've never experienced anything of the sort. Jeans, maybe, but I look better in a skirt. I'll wear the red short-sleeved blouse and a long cotton skirt — as black as my expectations in life. It comes halfway down my calves and at least hides the fact that my legs are already getting thinner. I shouldn't think jewellery is the thing, but I'll wear a thin gold chain so that my neck isn't so bare.

I open the drawer where I hide my valuables; the chain should be lying in a wristwatch box, but it isn't there. I open the other few jewellery cases I own but the chain isn't there either. And in the process I discover that the gold ring I inherited from Grannie Marie is missing. I grow agitated. I'm careful with my things and don't misplace a hankie or a sock, let alone a piece of gold jewellery. Even so I open all the other drawers and rummage in them.

'Looking for something?' Mum wants to know.

'No, not really.'

If a thief had got into the flat, he would definitely have taken something else as well, and we'd certainly have noticed there had been an intruder.

I go into Jana s room, tell her to turn down the racket and ask her whether she didn't borrow some of my jewellery.

I sense a momentary hesitation. 'But Mum, I'd never wear anything like that,' she says, trying to adopt a disdainful tone.

'And how about one of your pals?'

'Mum, what do you take them for?' She knows nothing about my jewellery. 'I'll lend you something if you like,' she suggests.

But I don't want any of her chains or rings.

The thought that my daughter might be capable of stealing from me appals me so much that I prefer not to go into it further.

I go to say goodbye to Mum.

'You're all in a tizzy,' she says, and wishes me a good time.

I'll have a good time, provided I manage to forget that my daughter's probably stealing from me.

Jan is waiting for me outside the Hradčanská metro station. He kisses me and says my outfit suits me. He's glad we'll be together the whole evening. He leads me through the villas of Bubeneč and tries to explain to me the sense of hero games. They are a bit childish, but he thinks that playing games is definitely better than gawking at the television screen, where rival gangs shoot it out, or at the computer screen, where you can make two other gangs shoot at each other. Here you can take part in everything in person; you can encounter dwarves, dragons, vampires, monsters; you can travel wherever you fancy, or go back in time and meet Edison, Jan Žižka or even Napoleon. Most of his friends prefer to be make-believe characters, such as medieval knights or princes, or fight with monsters.

As we're climbing the stairs in the house he has brought me to, he tells me I don't have to join in. I can just watch if I like and ask

questions as a way of getting to know the rules, of which there aren't too many anyway

I don't understand the game, even after it has started; there are too many distractions. It is a large room and the walls are covered in big pictures from which the faces of monsters from comics leer down at me. Quiet, meditational music is heard from hidden speakers. The light shines through a green filter so that we all look as if we are drowned. Apart from Jan and me there are also two girls, some youngster and a large-bellied young man who is introduced to me as Jirka, whom I possibly know by his voice, as he works for radio news. Unfortunately I only listen to Classic FM. One of the girls, who has a visionary gaze, squirrel teeth and long legs, is called Věra. She can't be more than twenty. I don't manage to catch the name of the other girl; recently I've been finding it increasingly difficult to remember people's names. But names aren't important. Anyway nobody here remains the person they are; instead they become someone they possibly want to be. It ought to appeal to me: I've always wanted to live a different life from the one I lived. Karel Čapek wrote a novel about it. People live only one of many possible lives and usually it is one that they are least happy with. The trouble is that the lives they offer me here don't attract me.