On that day in the park, after the incident at the pond, Wanda put Petra in the pusher-this was a striped canvas affair and was actually designed for a doll, so that it was a bit on the small side for a three-year-old girl. Petra accepted it, knowing no better, and she enjoyed being pushed around the streets by Wanda. She adored Wanda. Wanda didn't think much of Petra, believe me. When Wanda would have liked to loiter on street corners talking to young men on bicycles, she had to be Petra's nursemaid instead. She was very angry and frustrated, and on more than one occasion she took her hand off the pusher and let it roll down the hill. Of course I was there to intervene and so the child came to no real harm. Then Wanda started to turn her rage upon herself; she became fixated on her hair, which was a long, shining, red‚gold mane. First she chopped at it with blunt scissors; then she took to tearing it out; then she had a phase of striking a match and seeing how close she could get to it without setting it on fire -- and it did catch alight a few times. Wanda would scream and grab a towel or a blanket or rush to the nearest tap.
You may wonder where her guardian had got to: Wanda's guardian was one of those careless ones who leave at the first sign of trouble and hang out with others of their kind in disused factories and warehouses and so forth, sitting around playing cards and smoking and waiting for their person to die so they can get on with some other more cushy and interesting assignment. I have even heard rumours of guardian angels who have gone feral and who inhabit the wild extremities of the planet, snarling and spitting and generally behaving in a most uncharacteristic and unbecoming way. And I have known guardians who, instead of pulling children back from the edges of cliffs, will quietly tip them over. If you look carefully at paintings of children with their guardians, you can sometimes tell that the angel is about to push the baby into the river. Personally I prefer to work; the harder the job, the better, perhaps. I never abandoned Petra, even though she was the most difficult case I have ever had, and that's saying something.

 
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