Yesterday the therapist went bananas again and we all had to repeat, We nevar want to take drugs again, we'll never take drugs again, we'll never use a syringe again. I said out loud, 'We don't want to be daft thickos, we want to be holy. We want wings to grow out of our bums so we can be angels.' So for a punishment I was booted back upstairs to the detox unit.
It looks as if Romana won't be taking care of me now; she tried to hang herself yesterday with the shower hose. It was horrendous. We were all in a state of shock. When they were carrying her out, I heard that nurse that looks like Eva mutter to herself: 'If Renata had done it. . But Romana. .?'
But it was obvious to me that Romana didn't do it. It was that vampire witch. She sucked her to death and then wound the shower hose round her neck to cover her tracks. It'll be my turn next and if I don't run away, I'll die the same way.
They say they'll manage to save Romana, but if they leave that reincarnated beanpole in here with us she'll do us all in.
I was too frightened to go to sleep last night. I noticed the old
witch creep out and soon two bats flew in and hung from the lamp, and the bigger one was her.
I got out of bed and ran to find the nurse, and she was really kind and came back with me. 'Look, there aren't any bats here,' she told me. 'Just take a good look.'
I took a good look and they really weren't hanging there any more — 'cos they'd just flown away, and the lamp was still swaying.
CHAPTER FIVE
1
Everything in my life has seized up somehow. I've cancelled my leave and called off the trip to the seaside. My young man has gone off with his pals for a week to the Slovak Ore Mountains — with a tiny bivouac and a big rucksack. I would have gone with him if I could. I used to love Slovakia. We went there every summer in the years following my only wedding: canoeing, skiing or wandering the hills and valleys like Jan is now, listening to a language that was soft and melodious to my ears.
Czechoslovakia fell apart just before my marriage did. I wept for it, but I couldn't do anything to help it; I couldn't even do anything to help myself.
My Mickey Mouse speaks a bit of Slovak. He says to me: 'You have eyes the colour of veronika! Veronika is what the Slovaks call speedwell. I ask him whether he loves Kristýna or some Slovak Veronika?
'I'd love a Slovak Veronika if she had eyes like yours, breasts like yours and a nose like yours. And she'd have to be as wise and gentle and make love as well as you do. But there are none like that in Slovakia or anywhere else in the world.' He lays it on with a trowel, the liar, but he knows I like it.
He invited me to go with him, but I was afraid to leave while Jana is in hospital. What if something happened to her, or if she escaped, even? He also offered to stay in Prague, but I refused to
let him hang around here on my account. Before he went he told me he'd still have two weeks of leave left and asked me to go away with him somewhere.
There is a heatwave and the city is half-deserted, like my waiting room. Even Eva has taken leave. I'll cope with the few remaining patients perfectly well without her.
Most of the day I sit in the surgery smoking and drinking mineral water with a drop of wine in it. I have nothing on under my smock but my briefs, and even so I'm hot. But I'm glad I have the surgery to go to, because at home I feel uneasy. The flat is empty. I miss Jana's pandemonium. I miss having someone to care for. I miss Jana's calculating two-faced chumminess. I miss someone close to talk to.
'What makes you think, in fact, that you couldn't have a child?' Jan asked me out of the blue.
'Because I'm too old,' I replied.
'Is that the only reason?'
'It's a good enough reason.'
'You're not so old,' he said. 'One of Mum's friends had a baby when she was forty-seven.'
'I've no time to lose then,' I said, turning away so that he couldn't see the tears well up.
Maybe I could still have a child. Medical science does wonders. It came up with the test-tube baby, it managed to clone the extinct Tasmanian wolf and it won't be long before it manages to artificially inseminate an Egyptian mummy. But it's a matter not just of conceiving and having a baby, but also of rearing it. I don't know whether I'd still have the strength. Not now, but in five or ten years' time.
If only I stopped damaging my health the way I do. I hate to think what I'll be like in ten years. And this boy who claims to love me now, what will happen to him in ten years' time when my face will be full of wrinkles and I might even be hobbling around with a stick? He'll vanish; he'll go and find someone
younger and I'll be left alone with my child in a world where the drug dealers will be hawking their wares from rucksacks in school corridors. And ultraviolet rain will fall through the hole in the ozone layer.
And what if I'm not around at all ten years from now — my tar-clogged lungs and the rest of me finally consumed by a tumour. I ought to give up smoking, at least. But if I give up I'll start to get even fatter and I'll end up a hideous ball of fat. That's unless I started to do some exercise as my first and only husband always insisted I should. In those days I used to exercise, but I still had the stamina.
In ten years' time Jana is fairly sure to have left home. At least there'd be someone waiting for me when I hobble home from the surgery. At least I'd have someone to look forward to.
'I'm sorry,' my lover said, when he saw I was about to cry. 'I just wanted to convince you that you're not old at all.'
One's as old as one feels, I didn't tell him, but tried to make fun of him instead.
Maybe I do him a disservice. I still tend to compare him with my ex-husband, even though I know he's different. He is gentle and he doesn't believe in reason alone.
I convince myself that he's different. But all men have a selfish streak, and a restless one too, which prevents them from staying with one woman. That's something I oughtn't to forget.
Father Kostka turns up at the surgery. He needs one of his few remaining teeth extracted. I give him an injection and assure him that it won't hurt. The tooth is so wobbly, I expect it wouldn't hurt even without an injection.
'I've no great fear of pain,' he says. As is his wont, he smiles at me with his eyes, and I feel guilty even though my Communist militiaman father is no longer alive.
He sits in the chair waiting for the injection to work. I make up my mind to tell him about the trouble I've been having with my daughter.
'My dear young lady' — this is how he usually addresses Eva and me — 'people expect a priest to put everything down to lack of belief. But belief isn't the only important thing. The apostle Paul spoke about faith, hope and love. And the greatest of the three, he said, was love. It's not easy to believe in the Bible message in this day and age, but young people don't just lack a belief— they lack love. I don't particularly have your daughter in mind, but there are a lot of young people who try to escape from a world in which they don't find any of those three things. I'd also add that we lack the will or the skill to come to terms with things. We are full of pride and are therefore unable to reconcile ourselves with our fate or the people around us, let alone recognize our Father in Heaven above us.'
By now his gums are numb and I prepare the instruments. Meanwhile he adds that children are simply mirrors of ourselves. We look into them and see their faults and shortcomings, but in reality they are our own faults and shortcomings.
It only takes me a few seconds to extract his wobbly tooth.
He spits out the blood, rinses his mouth and thanks me. 'But I expect you wanted to hear something quite different from me, young lady. Something specific.'