Now I return to the story – or at least to the part of it that’s still accessible to my memory. Memory is a strange thing, no doubt – it does what it wants and plays all kinds of tricks on us, twisting and winding like a path through an unfamiliar forest. Trees everywhere, trees – the place feels uncanny and foreign, and one shudders involuntarily, reluctant to look around too much, clinging fearfully to the path, which at least offers some sense of security…

But does it really? I did everything I could to refresh my memory of that part of the story – I went through hundreds of photographs and video clips, all the things we had accumulated over the years like diligent little ants, click here, snap there – and the only result was a sadness so overwhelming that, had I not started tapping away at the keys (writing, my drug!), I would probably have curled up in a ball in bed and lain there through the night, staring at a single point, clinging to the vain hope that sleep might yet lay a hand over my eyes. But nooo, I’m not that young anymore – I know how such nights go…

Anyway, let’s try to follow the path…

The beginning felt almost unbelievably easy. Well, maybe not exactly easy – more like fascinating, full of discoveries that – after the horror and stupor of the previous year – now felt almost like adventures, like the exploration of entirely new worlds. I also felt a new and completely unknown sense of pride: pride in “women’s work,” in learning how to deal with the dozens, hundreds, maybe even more “little things” that fill the everyday life of any parent forced to care for their children alone – especially a father, for whom this isn’t something generally taken for granted.

The main current of my memories is tied to the ambition to become the best cook I could. I threw myself into the culinary arts with the same insatiable curiosity and energy that, fifteen years earlier, had turned me from a bookish boy lost in abstract thought into a practical man. I bought numerous cookbooks, buried myself in exotic recipes of all kinds, cooked something new and different nearly every day – although the kids weren’t particularly enthusiastic about any of it. They mostly wanted the things they already knew, but still, I managed to “sell” my meals to them somehow.

 

 

 

Of course, none of this was driven solely by selflessness and fatherly care. Doreen’s parents, understandably shaken by their daughter’s decision, were gripped by a kind of quiet panic. And although they never once withdrew the kindness, love, and support they had always offered me, they felt great fear and uncertainty at the thought that the children would “grow up without a mother.” I had to win their trust at all costs – to show them in every possible way that the children were safe in my care, that really, “not that much had changed,” that they were still wrapped in parental love just as they had always been. Poor fool – how little I realised just how insufficient my cooking efforts were. Luckily, Doreen was always around – and keeping watch.

So, the three of us began living in a kind of – I don’t know what to call it exactly – a dream, a reverie, or just some sort of waking dream. I put every effort I had into maintaining a sense of “normalcy”: I cleaned, I cooked, I tried to create an atmosphere of warmth and comfort, read bedtime stories, dropped off and picked up Lea from school… I did my best.

Now, realising just how inaccessible Lea’s inner world was to me – and perhaps Paul’s too – I sometimes wince under the weight of guilt and self-reproach. (I suppose that’s simply an expression of incurable narcissism, of excessive self-scrutiny, but such thoughts bring little relief.) Doreen, generous as ever, threw me a lifeline without which I might never have surfaced again: according to her, I did “reasonably well” at the job of being a caring parent, but “excelled” at the role of educator and provider of entertaining, enriching content – simply because that’s what I’ve always done and continue to do, first for myself, then for those around me. I was born with a hungry mind that can’t be satisfied by anything – this now seems a proven fact, something neither of us much doubts anymore.

So the house kept filling with more and more books, tapes, discs – for Paul, and for Lea, who spent all her time absorbed in some kind of Medienkonsum. The books would fall apart fairly quickly, the tapes, CDs, and the devices themselves rarely lasted more than six months to a year (she’d listen to the same bits over and over, which meant constantly hitting the “forward” and “back” buttons – and nothing can survive that kind of wear for long) – but hey, the kid kept her mind occupied, and I felt like I was on cloud nine. Thank God computers are my trade, so I fixed all the messes she left behind on them. I felt needed and useful – and that was almost enough to push the pain into the background, to keep it from choking me slowly and relentlessly.

Almost.

2006 passed – or rather, “has passed,” as my archives show – in a kind of almost obsessive race against time, in constant attempts to maintain the kind of dynamic that Doreen had always taken care of before. I made three full trips – one with little Pavel to Budapest, where we spent about ten days in April; then another in May, alone to Bulgaria, my traditional “literary trip” at the time (I still clung to the illusion back then that my children’s books might become some kind of mass literature, so I was running myself ragged doing readings in provincial cultural centres); finally, in summer, with both children – again to Bulgaria, this time in a rather complicated combination of different places, without realising how utterly exhausting and overwhelming it must have been for Lea. At home, I constantly invited guests, prepared dinners and feasts at least once a month. In general, I did everything in my power to maintain the lifestyle we had led before the separation.

 

 

But little by little, it started to get heavier.

 

I call all of this “the melody of the monotonous meat grinder.” Things seem to be happening – constantly, even – you supposedly don’t have much time for gloom and dark thoughts – the kids! – and you keep trying new things, but the feeling that the air around you is slowly thinning, becoming more and more used-up, more and more insufficient, more and more suffocating, keeps pressing down on you. And at some point (you can’t deceive yourself forever, can you?)… at some point, you just deflate like a punctured balloon and are overtaken by a kind of indifference – a weary indifference. You keep going, keep functioning, but only because you are an over-programmed machine. There is no more inner energy, no drive for growth, only the need to sleep – and so you sleep, and sleep, and sleep…

From 2007 there are almost no photos.

I see only the summer trip to Bulgaria – this time without little Pavel, just Lea and me – and some school celebration of hers, sometime in the autumn. And, of course, the children’s birthdays. That’s all.

But of course, I haven’t forgotten what played out during that year. I mean the stuff that lit a fire under my arse like gasoline. Two things: the first, and far less frightening, was my own bout of computer addiction (I spent several months in a state that I still can’t distinguish from drug dependency). I’ve written about that at length before – I won’t bore you again.

The second was that Lea narrowly escaped something very, very frightening.