She looked out the open window of the tram at a train as it passed over the bridge that crossed the Prague's Vltava River. The sky was blue. It was springtime. They got off and walked to the tower of Charles Bridge. Tourists were flooding through the archway on their way to the other side of the river and to the castle that stood out majestically on the edge of the hill just above the orchards and overlooked the steepled city.

"When I was a young girl, about the same age as you are now," she said, "I came here for the first time. I had just finished college. I was with a friend of mine, Angela. She was a crazy girl. We rented a snake from a pet shop and, right here, we used to take photos of the tourists, with our snake around their necks."

"What? And they paid you for it?" he said.

"Of course they paid for it. We had our own Polaroid camera. We had a queue of people waiting to have their photos taken, with the castle in the background and with a huge snake around their neck."

"How much did you charge, granny?"

"I forget now, but I remember that every photo was the equivalent to a day's wage in a Pub."

"Jes' that was a good job then."

"It was."

"And the pet shop man was OK about the snake?"

"So long as he got paid and so long as he got the snake back unharmed he was happy."

"Were you happy here, granny?"

"I was. I was very happy here; it was as though the city itself welcomed me with open arms. Everything fell into place for me here."

"Maybe I should move here; maybe things might work out for me here..."

"Do you think about her still?"

"Never."

"Then maybe you are OK where you are..."

"Do you think they catch anything?" he said, gazing off the side of the bridge to two fishermen sitting in a rowing boat in the middle of the river.

"I don't know. They were here when I was your age, too."

"Do you think they are the same two fishermen?"

"Yes."

"You do?"

"Yes, they are the same; they have rowed away from the same thing and they are still trying to catch the same thing; and they are both still trying to forget the same thing."

"You can't forget something when you are alone, when it is quiet."

"They don't want to forget it; they want to remember it. Trying to forget is the same thing as remembering; it is all looking back, especially when it is the mistakes we have made."

"I never look back to my mistakes."

"No?"

"No."

"Well, you can't say goodbye unless you wave. If you shut something out it will do anything to get back in."

"And you don't remember what happened to your nail?"

"No."

"Maybe one of those fishermen knows?" he said.

"Of course they know, they both know, and they can never forget it. They are out there fishing for it, like dream-fish that have turned into people, and all that remains of their fish-pasts is one hardened dead scale for a thumbnail, one memory that can't be remembered but yet won't go away."

NOTHING DELIVERS A LIFE

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