No Saints or Angels

'The times you could have been here,' I tell her, 'you couldn't leave the house fast enough.'

'Because I was unhappy here,' she explains.

I hug her. I hold her tight. My little girl, what made you do it all; I loved you so much, after all; I didn't have anyone else; I don't have anyone else but you.

While we're getting changed she assures me that only now will she be able to appreciate me for what I am and appreciate being at home. She talks quickly, as is her wont, and with the same earnestness as when she asked a moment ago whether she should take a red ribbon instead of a black one.

We call in for my mother on the way. She notices that my eyes are red from weeping and comments that the man isn't worth my tears after ruining my life.

We ruined our own lives, I don't say to her.

At the crematorium the master of ceremonies sits the three of us in the first row of benches. Alongside the coffin, which I chose, there lie three wreaths. One is on Jana's behalf and one was sent by his old school. The label on the third one has curled up and I can't read it. Maybe someone loved him after all towards the end of his life and sent him a wreath.

The principal of the school, where my former husband, now in a coffin, taught until recently, steps up to the lectern. He makes a bow to the catafalque and then with fervour starts to declaim about a man who loved his profession and sacrificed his spare time to his pupils, who was always reliable and never harmed anyone.

My mind goes back to the last conversation I had with the man I once loved and admired and who strangely is now lying in a coffin that I chose; now he knows nothing about those of us who have been left here a divine blink longer — out of the kindness of passing time.

Did he discover something important at the end of his life that he wanted to share with me, something I could even tell our daughter? Time in place of God, Time that is eternal, infinite and incomprehensible. Does that mean we ought to pray to Time?

Except that time is indifferent to our fate. Time is awful but it is also the only just thing in the world. It lets us reach places like this where we are finally levelled. But before we end up here we can experience something and do something with our lives and it leaves it up to us what we do. It lets us ruin what we like. Time or God, it makes no difference what we call it.

The organist now plays the opening passage of Ryba's Christmas Mass — I had to bring a copy of it, because it's not in the usual funeral repertoire. I close my eyes and lean against the white wall of the Rožmitál cemetery. My one and only husband is standing next to me, alive and smiling at me: 'Why so sad, Kristýna?'

I'm not sad, I'm just dreadfully tired.

2

I'm already in bed when the phone rings. Mum asks with a frail voice whether she's woken me up. 'Are you all right, Mum?'

'I don't know,' Mum says. 'I've got one of those heavy nosebleeds again and it won't stop.'

I panic and tell her I'll be right over and in the same frail voice Mum apologizes for bothering me.

Blood is waiting for me as I open the door. It is on the front hall floor and on the carpet in the bedroom where Mum is sitting on her bed, deathly pale.

One oughtn't to treat one's relatives. I place some ice on the nape of her neck and tell her I'm taking her to hospital. Mum tells me she's not going to any hospital; if she's going to die, she'd sooner die at home.

'What are you talking about, Mum? People don't die from nosebleeds.'

'You can die from anything.'

'If you have a mind to.'

She tells me she doesn't have a mind to and says she's feeling better already. The nosebleed came on when she was asleep and she just panicked a bit when she saw all the blood around her. She is sorry she bothered me.

I know it would be hard to persuade her and anyway it really does look as if the bleeding is stopping. So I go and make her a cup of tea at least, and stir in a few spoonfuls of honey. Then I wipe the blood off the floor, change Mum's bed linen and help her into a clean nightdress.

'I'm not keeping you, am I?' she frets.

'No, don't worry, I didn't have any other plans.' I sit down by her and take her hand.

'Not even a date?'

'Not even a date.'

'But I expect you're wanting to get on with some work.'

'I've had enough work during the day. Now I'm going to stay here with you.'

'You don't have to. I'm better now.'

'I'd be on my own at home anyway.'

'I know,' Mum says. 'But what sort of company am I for you?'

'The best, Mum.'

'You don't have to pretend anything to me. But you oughtn't to be on your own all the time. Not now that Karel's gone.'

'Mum, you've forgotten that we've been apart for years.'

'I haven't forgotten. But you waited for him all the same.'

I don't feel like talking about it. I don't feel like talking about anything.

'It's a long time since I did.'

'Exactly. You've been on your own too long. Everything's on your shoulders and it's wearing you out.'

'I'd sooner be on my own than have someone hanging round my neck.'

'Do you mean that young man you told me about?'

'I didn't mean anyone in particular.'

'And what about him? Does he love you?'

'I don't know.'

'Can't you tell?'

'I think he still loves me, or at least he fancies he does, but he doesn't always act as if he did,' I say. 'But, Mum, you should be getting some rest and not worrying about me.'

'I have to worry now. I don't know how long I'll be around, do I?'

'You'll be around for a long time yet.' I go over and plump up her duvet. 'Lie down now and don't think about anything. Rest, you've lost lots of blood.'

'No, wait a minute. But you don't want to get married, do you?'

'Mum, marriage is the last thing on my mind. It's enough that one bloke left me.'

'You can't get that man out of your mind. But someone else wouldn't leave you, or if he did, he'd come back again, like your father.'

'What do you mean, like Dad?'

'Before he died he asked me to forgive him all his mistresses.'

'He told you he'd had mistresses?'

'I knew anyway. I even knew about that son of his. People came and told me about it.'

I remain silent. I don't know what to say. Then I ask her, 'Why didn't you tell us about it?'

'It was his business to tell you. Maybe it s just as well you didn't know, seeing that he stayed with us and didn't leave the home.'

'Maybe you should have left home.'

'I thought about it, but I was afraid to. Dad was a powerful man; I thought he would protect me.'

'Who from?'

'In case the Germans came back again.'

'Mum! The Germans weren't a threat any more. It was the Russians who came.'

'I wasn't scared of them.'

'And that's why you didn't leave?'

'And because of the two of you. Besides, I loved him. He could be nice.'

It strikes me that my mother has never known a nice man. Have I? Maybe nice men are figments of our imagination.

'Besides, I didn't want a divorce after what happened to my mother.'

'But they were different times.'

'I know. But people ought to stay together. Anyway it was your grannie who suggested the divorce. Or at least that's how my father told it. She knew what his business meant to him. She only pretended to move out; she stayed with us.' Mum starts to reminisce: 'I remember at home how they used to make beautiful flowers out of leather, cloth and wire. I used to sit there with Mum and she would talk to me and tell me Bible stories, for instance. She guessed we wouldn't be together much longer. After all, she'd studied law, so she must have known about those Nuremberg Laws.'