1257th day
I look out from the balcony at the crows. They flew in about a week ago and
took over the field behind the bus loop. Or is it a meadow? No, it's not a
meadow, just an old untilled field. A rubbish tip, to be precise…
A crack has formed on the bathroom wall. It looks like a black talon coming at
you from the skylight. Like something painted up in a rock club.
1258th day
Martin came back from Brussels. He's been training there for three days. He
brought the girls some presents, an absurd amount, absurdly expensive. Lego and
cuddly toys and sweets. I told him to hide them away until Christmas. Apart
from the sweets.
I'm annoyed at the huge number of gifts and little presents that the girls keep
getting from all their grandmothers, grandfathers and other relatives. The less
time people have for them, the more presents they buy. Just like in some stupid
handbook on how to bring up children. They don't play at all with most of these
things, it wouldn't even be physically possible.
Once I filled an entire bag from the heap of coloured plastic with the best
preserved, actually the completely untouched things, and I wanted to take them
to some children's home. I phoned round some five of them, but nobody wanted
anything.
Okay, I shouldn't have said anything to him, maybe I was a spoilsport. Maybe
I'm being horrid. And all in all, I don't know if I welcomed him properly,
I mean, cheerfully enough. Maybe I didn't and yet I so looked forward to
seeing him. He was jubilant that he was back home and he grumbled about Brussels
being an awful city and how all these trips abroad were driving him round the
bend. He definitely thinks that for real. But naturally I couldn't put up with
that and again I started explaining how I would be happy if I could go
anywhere, even Česká Třebová, never mind abroad.
It's a song that's been sung many times. There's no point talking about it,
I know that very well. But I couldn't help it. Every trade fair, every
consultation, every extremely boring training session in the most extremely
stupid backwater – I envy him like a little child.
1260th day
Vendula has a cold, she's sniffling and snuffling like an old man, so we
brought Julinka and her cot into our room. It's definitely going to be
pointless all the same. Julinka is already crawling, she can stand up in her cot
and babble a little.
Our relatives are jubilant. We already have a precocious child and the second
obvious genius might only be able to say „bebebe, hehehe“ so far, but there
aren't the slightest doubts about her now. I can't stand all this stupid
speculation and forecasting over my children, and something I hear particularly
often – comparisons of their intelligence and beauty with the hopeless
gormlessness of other children.
Yes, I also think that the girls are clever, thank goodness, but is that to
anybody's bloody credit? And if the neighbour's little Johnny is a little
moron, is he to blame?
Sometimes I get goose pimples from all that shameless blaspheming and bragging.
I take no pleasure from that exaggerated admiration and praise. Quite the
reverse, it frightens me. The more I realize how amazing they are, the more
I fear for them. Nothing good, nothing fine comes as a matter of course, least
of all this. So if I don't know how to answer this well-intended nonsense
without being rude, it is with gratitude that I resort to the good old one
hundred percent true „just so long as they're in good health“.
And there's another side to this thing that I don't mention at all. When
I was expecting both Vendulka and Julinka, both times I thought they would be
boys. That's what I thought because that's what I probably wanted. And
that's what I wanted because I thought I wouldn't have a clue how to bring
girls up.
Some things come of their own accord, but this is always the case to some
extent. What on earth am I to do with such an exceptionally intelligent little
girl? Should I encourage her to develop and make use of all her abilities, to
study, not to stop educating herself all her life and to fully devote herself to
the work that she will choose one day? And not to have children? Or should
I prepare her throughout her childhood for a woman's role, which no matter how
intelligent and educated she is, means motherhood first and foremost, and
motherhood is no joke – it needs a whole man? And if she is going to want to
really and truly and properly care for her children then she will have almost no
time for anything else. Or perhaps with a little good will it is possible to
manage the two – both bringing up your children in an exemplary manner and
performing your own intellectually demanding profession one hundred percent
efficiently? (I just realized, I'd forgotten the celebrated art of being a
marvellous lover, a good friend and if possible something of a mother for your
man.) Can you manage to do all that splendidly with a smile on your face and in
fine fettle, while maintaining an attractive appearance, but also while having
to be able to somehow always muddle your way through life?
Oh it's nothing, they're not even in the first form yet. But that's the way it
is – to understate the case, it is a problem.