No Saints or Angels

'Now?'

'Yeah. No sweat. There's this guy there that's really big and shares it round.'

'That's great, really great.'

'Coming with us, then?'

'I'm not sure. How far is it?'

'It's no problem, we'll take you there.'

'I'm not sure. I promised Mum. .'

'Don't be a lemon; she's asleep long ago.'

'No she isn't. Really, she's waiting for me.'

'So what? She'll get over it.'

'Yeah, I know.' I can't stand it when people talk like that about my mum. I was coming down and I started to get a headache. I was heading for a downer and really needed a top-up. 'It's a fact. She's really dependent on me,' I say finally.

But I don't think they even noticed me. They were now totally smashed. Foxie's head just wobbled around as if it was badly wired on.

I shut my eyes for a moment too and it felt as if I was flying. It was really great because I didn't need any wings. I'd just launch myself, spread my arms and soar up like a balloon. There were

clouds below me like whipped cream. Really, it was just fantastic, floating and flying wherever I liked.

Then I had to open my eyes again and change trams. I said ciao to those two, but they weren't going to let anyone disturb their trip.

When I got off the tram here it was half past one. I started to feel really cold and a bit scared. Actually I was really scared that I'd meet some devil or werewolf, or see some vampire swaying from a lamppost.

I've often seen them hanging there, though I knew I was only imagining it.

CHAPTER TWO

1

Today it was announced that we have a 25 per cent ozone deficit above our heads and I was summoned to my daughter's school. The school is less than fifteen minutes' walk away Some of the teachers and the principal herself are among my patients. Jana's class teacher isn't one of them, but fortunately she doesn't teach maths or chemistry. She teaches Czech. According to Jana she's known as 'the nun'. This lady in rather old-fashioned black clothes must be even older than I am. She has long hair, completely white, and a fine complexion, undamaged by smoking and possibly untouched by kisses. She really does have the spin-stery complexion of a nun. She gazes at me with mournfully reproachful eyes. 'I'm worried about Jana.'

'I know, so am I.'

'My colleagues complain about her. She has stopped studying and her marks have dropped in all subjects. In English and maths as much as two grades, in fact. And my experience with her is similar.'

I nod. I ought to say something in my own and Jana's defence. Or at least explain that I don't have enough time or energy what with my patients and my elderly mother. That my daughter is pubertal and enjoys loafing around at night and singing morbid songs. I can ban her from those but I can't make her want to study. 'Do you think there is any chance of improving things at the last moment?'

'Well, it's getting very close to the final call, so she'd have to get a move on,' she says with the sort of gravity employed when talking about an operation on a hopeless case. 'And then there are all her absences,' she says, continuing her indictment. 'Is she really ill so often these days?'

I flinch. 'What do you mean?'

She takes out the class register and reads to me from it. Over the past two months, once absent for three days, then for two days, three times for one day, and classes missed twice, either maths or chemistry. 'The excuse notes are all from you, Mrs Pilná. As you are in the medical profession I didn't ask for any other confirmation. But I'd simply like to reassure myself that Jana is really so sickly.'

A marvellous word, 'sickly'. Perfect for a language teacher with the appearance of a nun. I won't tell her that Jana is as fit as a fiddle. I wonder whether I ought to support Jana and her forged excuse notes and then give the minx a good hiding when she gets home, a whack on her bare backside for each signature she forged. 'She suffers from migraines,' I say hesitantly. 'She takes after me. And she also had the flu.'

'But those illnesses don't account for why she's so much weaker in all her subjects.'

I agree.

'Have you not noticed anything suspicious about her behaviour?'

I ask her what she means.

She tells me that there are twelve children in the school who are known to be taking drugs. One third-year boy is receiving treatment in the mental hospital at Bohnice. She says it is hard to say how many others there might be.

'That's dreadful,' I say. 'But I've not noticed anything.'

'They are past masters at concealing it,' she says, clearly unconvinced. 'That's something they are good at learning and the more they have to conceal the more resourceful they become.'

She goes on to quote statistics that I know anyway. 'You see, Mrs Pilná, dealers nowadays stand waiting right outside the school

gates.' She points towards the window, beyond which no one is to be seen. 'But there is nothing we can do. After all, we live in a free country and the pavement is a public area. Selling drugs is an apparently normal business activity. And often they don't even sell them; they let the children have free samples. Children are curious and they like to appear grown-up. Or rather, as bad as grown-ups.'

'I'm sure that Jana. .' I shake my head, trying to convince myself. 'She loafs around, I know, but she would be scared of drugs.'

'I hope so,' says her class teacher. I can't tell whether the tone in her voice is severe or conciliatory. 'Her father is a teacher and an athlete.'

'Her father's ill at present,' I say. 'Very ill. He has neither the time nor the energy for her. Besides, you are aware that. .'

Of course she's aware. Almost half the kids in her class are in the same boat. But fathers can exercise some influence, even when they live elsewhere. The teacher talks for a while about how parents pay insufficient attention to their children: at the age when they are at greatest risk children spend their time either in some gang or in front of the TV, where they gawp at serials about heroes who could only appeal to people in a trance or a drug-induced state.

That was how my dad used to speak. She hasn't yet got round to complaining that young people lack an ideal, a great goal for all to strive for. Except that my father's words were full of bitterness and imbued with the idea that the human herd has to be driven along a single road to a single destination, chosen for it by those who know where paradise is to unfold. The teacher is speaking about a problem she actually has to deal with, and her words fill me with alarm.

I simply say, although there is little point, that Jana doesn't watch television and actually disdains those who waste their time on it. Then I make the usual parental promise that I will talk to her. As if I didn't spend my time talking to her about the same thing.

'Please do. Together we'll come up with something, you'll see. After all, she's a clever and gifted girl,' she says in conclusion, although she really thinks she's a little brat. And she's right.

I leave the school building and all of a sudden I feel almost too tired to walk home. Maybe it's on account of that hole in the ozone layer, or maybe it's all too much for me. I spend eight hours a day in the dental surgery, half an hour to work and the same home, and the trip by dismal metro and packed bus is enough to sap all one's strength and undermine one's mental resolve. Not to mention what I have to do at home to keep us going. And if I give Jana a chore to do, the way she does it means I have to do it again after her.