Fingers Pointing Somewhere Else by Daniela Fischerova, Neil Bermel

away the snow and covered the frozen girl with his own body. Somewhere up there the traildisappears. No one has ever conquered the Mountain of Mountains.

    In September Hana and I sit next to each other, but it’s awkward and futile. The wheel of friendship doesn’t spin round again. Fifth grade languidly and painlessly draws us apart.
    One day I’m rushing down the hallway at school. There’s a bulletin board there for the Young Communist Pioneers council. Suddenly something stops me in my tracks. “Dear President Eisenhower!” a tiny, familiar hand has written.
    For a while I can’t believe my eyes. Our letter has been in America for ages! After all, it was for President Eisenhower! Then finally the jolt hits me and in a flash I understand it all.
    That letter was never intended to be sent. There was no hope it would reach its addressee; it was just pretend. It too was a gesture that missed its mark — a finger that might point somewhere, but somewhere it will never touch.

Boarskin Dances Down the Tables
    The uneasy spirit of storytelling is forever glancing over its shoulder to see which slug-track, still slightly moist, we took to get where we are now. When I was sixteen, life brought me briefly into contact with a woman who could be my mother-in-law today, had that track led elsewhere. I had just run away from home after a major emotional storm and now I teetered at the very edge of my desire to survive it: I can still feel that almost intriguing sensation of vertigo. A fellow student offered me temporary asylum. Our relationship was unimportant. It was one of those brief, hazy bonds that leave behind only a shallow imprint, while what is essential (that segment of memory where the tidal wave incessantly pounds) is close at hand: in this instance, a spring morning when I’m weeding tulips with his mother. But more on that later.

    I hesitate to mention the causes of that storm, lest I divert my attention from the matter at hand. So, just briefly: at home we had had what in espionage is called a
breach
— a sudden flood of information from a carefully guarded reservoir of knowledge. It happened when we breached my father’s double life, which came complete with two apartments and two wives. He collapsed, sobbing piteously that he “couldn’t have done otherwise, it was stronger” than him. My shocked heart had to choose. I could either judge him responsible and hate him — or accept that he truly could not have done otherwise, that life is always stronger than us and that all our plans are battles lost in advance. I plumped for the second version, threw my keys in the mailbox and ran away from home. But the spirit of storytelling lost interest in this a long time ago. What is thistale about, then? Well, for a start, it’s about the word “taste.”

    My classmate’s mother said I could call her Milada, but I never used her name and still think of her as Mrs. P.
    Mrs. P. was over fifty and was a manager at a large savings bank. Her position carried significant responsibilities. Once I asked her what she did, and she said, “I work out savings plans for the following six-month period.” I didn’t understand this at all: was it really possible to plan an activity as random and absurdly capricious as the savings of thousands of unknown people? She smiled and said that it was.
    Mr. P. was absent: the couple had divorced long ago and the husband had fled to parts unknown.
    The son was predestined to devote his life to archaeology, which is what in fact happened. This plan too had been worked out by his mother. What lay behind it was not a romantic interest in the past, but rather an interest in the future, based on the annual reports of Charles University. The plan took into account a certain exclusivity (places were available only once every five years), the surprisingly low level of competition, and the field’s considerable social