Love and Garbage

by Ivan Klíma

  I go out to the supermarket and then cook lunch for us.

  You’re so good to me, she says. When you have time! When you can fit me in.

  I want to wash up, but she asks me to leave everything and come to her. She’s lying down. I hold her hand. She looks at me, her eyes, as always, draw me into depths where there isn’t room for anything else, for anything except her.

  She asks what I’ve been doing all this time.

  I tell her about Dad, about my son, I try to explain what I’ve been writing about, but she wants to know if I’ve thought of her, if I thought of her every day.

  She’d left me in the middle of the night and she’d left me on my own in a strange hotel, and then for a few more weeks, so I should feel the hopelessness of living without her. I’m beginning to understand that she left me in order to push me, at long last, into making a decision.

  She asks: How can you live like this? How can you believe that you’ll write anything when all the time you’re living a lie?

  She regards me with anxious love. She’s hoping I will at last find the strength to live truthfully. That is, to stay with her according to the command of my heart. She believes that she understands me. She’s been appealing to me for so long to abandon my unworthy life of lies, and it hasn’t occurred to her that by doing so she is appealing to me to leave her. She is right, I must make up my mind to do it.

  On the little table by the bed lie a few books. I pick up the one on top – short stories by Borges. I read her one of them. It is about a young man who is crucified for an illicit love affair.

  The plot sounds outrageous to our ears, we’ve got used to the notion that there is no such thing as illicit love, or, more accurately, that all’s fair in love.

  She listens to me attentively. I ask her if she wants me to read another story.

  Better still, come to me!

  She isn’t thinking about her painful back, she presses herself to me and moans with pleasure: My darling, I love you so much, and you torture me! Why do you keep hurting me when you know that you’ll never feel so good with anyone else, that no one will ever love you as I do?

  I embrace her once more and then I have to hurry, her husband will be home shortly.

  Will you come again tomorrow?

  Her gentle fingers, her lips, her eyes: No one will ever love you as I do! No one will make love to you as I do! Why won’t you admit to yourself that you belong to me? Let’s go away somewhere together. We’ll make love till we die! Why do you resist when you know it’s bound to happen? Surely it couldn’t be so perfect if there was anything bad about it.

  She looks at me, I look at her face. She’s changed over the years, there is less tenderness and enchantment in her now, and there is more tiredness, or even bitterness. She has aged. Over the last few years she has aged at my side, in my arms, in her vain waiting, in bad dreams and in fits of crying. In sleepless nights more little lines have appeared in her face, and I have only been able to kiss them away temporarily.

  I was aware of a surge of regret or even pity, and promised to come the next day without fail.

  We were approaching the metro station. We watched the crowds of people who, out of a need to be transported as quickly as possible from one place to another, were voluntarily descending into an inhospitable underworld. Around the stations there is always an increase in litter, the grass is almost invisible under a multitude of bits of paper and rubbish, of course we don’t sweep the grass, even if it is totally covered with rubbish. I noticed the youngster falling behind, then stopping completely, leaning against a street lamp and turning motionless.

  I walked back to him. His pallid face had turned even whiter, and there were droplets of sweat on his forehead.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I asked.

  He looked at me without answering. In his right hand he was still holding the scraper, his left hand was pressing below his stomach.

  ‘Does it hurt there?’

  ‘It’s nothing. It catches me there now and then.’

  ‘Shouldn’t you see your doctor?’

  He said that mostly it passes by itself.

  But it didn’t look to me as if his pain was passing. I offered to accompany him to the doctor. The foreman let us go without objections. ‘If you finish in time, you know where to find us!’

  It didn’t take us more than twenty minutes to get to the hospital, but even so it seemed a long time to me. On the bus I made the youngster sit in the seat for disabled passengers. He was silent. From his postman’s bag he produced a dirty, army-khaki handerchief and wiped his forehead with it. Who does his laundry? I knew nothing about him, I could not picture the place where he slept.

  We got off in front of the hospital. I suggested he leant on me but he shook his head. He gritted his teeth but didn’t complain.

  The young nurse with whom we checked in was angry that we had no kind of personal papers with us, but in the end accepted the information the youngster gave her and sent us to the waiting room with its depressing atmosphere of silence and greyness. We sat down on a peeling bench. The sweat was trickling down his cheeks.

  ‘Probably got over-excited last night. At that concert.’

  ‘Not at all, that was quite fantastic.’ After a while he added: ‘I’ve always wanted to play in a decent band, but at the children’s home we had a director . . . well, he didn’t think music was a proper career, we each had to learn something proper, like working a pneumatic grinder or cutting out soles – he was a qualified shoemaker.’

  He took off his orange vest and put it on the seat beside him. ‘I never told the boys what I’m doing now. I mean this business.’

  ‘Do you have to do it?’

  ‘They’ve cut back my pension – any convict on costume jewellery gets more!’ He turned white as the pain gripped him.

  I am sure that at his age I’d have felt humiliated by having to be a street-sweeper. It would humiliate me even now if I had no other choice and if I had to be a regular sweeper like him.

  All of a sudden it came to me how little in fact I had in common with what I pretended to be. What does my fate really have in common with the fate of those with whom I work? What was a desperate choice to the youngster was to me, at best, a rather grim game, which tested my perseverence, of which I was actually proud, and which moreover afforded entertaining and unexpected insights. I felt ashamed. I too took off my sweeper’s vest, rolled it up beside me and decided never again to put it on.

  He mopped his face again.

  ‘Aren’t you thirsty?’ it occurred to me to ask.

  ‘I wouldn’t mind a drink, that’s a fact.’

  I went off in search of a glass.

  Ten years ago I worked in the next block. I’d come in three times a week, and put on white trousers and a white jacket, on which as a rule at least one button was missing, but I never became a genuine hospital orderly.

  When does a person genuinely become what he otherwise only pretends to be? Most probably when he finds himself in a spot from which he cannot or doesn’t want to escape, the place of his torture. Genuineness is always associated with torture because it closes all doors of escape, because it leads a person to the edge of the precipice into which he can crash at any moment.

  The nurse in reception lent me a jam jar and herself filled it with water. But when I returned to the waiting room the youngster was already in the consulting room.

  I sat down and put the glass of water on the chair next to me.

  Even a person who manages to lie his way through his whole life cannot escape that one moment of truth, the moment from which there is no escape, from which he cannot lie or buy his way out.

  I recalled the day when I was sitting in another, similar, hospital waiting room. If I phoned you now, would you come again?

  You’re waiting at the hospital again? Has anything happened to your dad?’

  He’s not well, but now I’m here with someone else. We were sweeping together and he was taken il
l in the street.

  And you’ve taken him to hospital. You see what a good person you are? You haven’t changed at all over the years.

  He was really in need of help. His liver’s all gone. I’ve written abroad for some drug but so far it hasn’t arrived.

  I’ve often been ill. So ill I thought it was the end.

  I didn’t know.

  How could you have known? You’d have had to phone me, at least. But of course you had no time left for that while you were comforting the sick. Must be a great feeling to help others. Especially the poor and needy. That was your wife’s idea, about that drug?

  I’m sorry you were ill.

  No need for you to grieve. I was very ill, but you’re probably worse if you’ve taken up good deeds. What are you trying to make yourself believe about yourself? Doesn’t it seem a little cheap to lie your way out of everything?

  I’m not lying my way out of anything. You can’t simply judge me from your own viewpoint.

  So how am I to judge you? Do you remember sometimes what you used to say to me when we were together? I thought it also meant something to you, something real, something one can’t just walk away from. And now you’re trying to exchange me for a few good deeds! Why don’t you say something? Hasn’t it occurred to you at all that you’ve betrayed me?

  Kafka endeavoured to be honest in his writing, in his profession and in his love. At the same time he realised, or at least suspected, that a person who wants to live honestly chooses torture and renunciation, a monastic life devoted to a single God, and sacrifices everything for it. He could not, at the same time, be an honest writer and an honest lover, let alone husband, even though he longed to be both. For a very brief instant he was deluded into believing that he could manage both, and that was when he wrote most of his works. Every time, however, he saw through the illusion, he froze up, and stopped motionless in torment. He’d then either lay his manuscript aside and never return to it, or sever all his ties and ask his lovers to leave him.

  Only fools – with whom our revolutionary and non-monastic age abounds – believe they can combine anything with anything else, have a little of everything, take a small step back and still create something, experience something complete. These fools reassure each other, they even reward each other with decorations which are just as dishonest as they are themselves.

  I too have behaved foolishly in my life in order to relieve my own torture. I have been unable either to love honestly or to walk away or to devote myself entirely to my work. Perhaps I have wasted everything I’ve ever longed for in life, and on top of it I have betrayed the people I wanted to love.

  At last the youngster appeared in the door. ‘Have you been waiting for me with that water all this time?’ He’d had an injection and the doctor had ordered two days’ rest. I offered to see him home, but he declined. If I didn’t mind, he’d like to sit down for a little while, after which we might rejoin the others.

  ‘When I was a little boy,’ he reminisced, ‘my grannie would sometimes wait for me at the school. She’d always take me to the fast-food buffet, the Dukla in Libeň, a little way beyond the Sokol gym if you know the neighbourhood. She’d have a beer and I’d get an ice-cream. And if she had another one, I got another one too, she was fair all right. And how she could play the accordion!’ The youngster sighed. I preferred not to ask what had happened to her, it seemed to me that everything connected with him would be touched by tragedy.

  Outside, a fine rain had begun to fall. The youngster put on his orange vest but I, faithful to the vow I’d just taken, carried mine rolled up under my arm.

  Everything in life tends towards an end, and anyone rebelling against that end merely acts foolishly. The only question is what the end actually means, what change it makes in a world from which nothing can disappear, not a speck of dust, not a single surge of compassion or tenderness, not a single act of hatred or betrayal.

  I had to leave for the mountains, on doctor’s orders, and my lover also needed a break. Her work was tiring her out, she complained of being permanently exhausted. To work her material, often hammering into stone for hours on end, was enough to wear out even a strong man, but I knew that she had a different kind of weariness in mind. She reproaches me for her having to remain in the border region between love and betrayal, between meeting and partings, in a space which, she claims, I have set out for her and where strength is quickly consumed, exhausted by hopeless yearnings and pointless rebellion.

  We could go somewhere together. I know that she wants to be with me completely just once in a while. I mention the possibility to her. She agrees, and a moment later I wonder if I really want that joint trip, if I wouldn’t have preferred to remain on my own. And suppose my wife offers to come with me? I am alarmed at the mere thought. What excuses, what lies would I invent? I am terrified like a habitual criminal who knows that he’s bound to be caught in the end.

  But my wife suggests nothing of the kind, she doesn’t suspect me. She says a stay in the mountains will do me good. Everybody needs a change of scene from time to time. She’ll visit Dad for me, I’m not to worry about him, he’s doing well now anyway.

  I know that my wife is immersed in her own world, which, as happens in work which brings one face to face with the sorrow and suffering produced by sick minds, is unlike the real world. In it no one wishes to hurt anyone else, evil appears in it only as suppressed, unawakened or misdirected good, and betrayal is as incomprehensible as murder.

  Who does she see in me when she lies down by my side, when she nestles up against me and whispers that she feels good with me? What justifies her reasserted and ever newly betrayed trust? Or does she believe that one day I will, after all, prove myself worthy of that trust?

  My lover observes my embarrassment: Do you actually want me to come with you?

  I don’t answer quickly enough, I don’t say yes convincingly enough, my uncertainty can be read in my eyes, and she cries. She suspected that I’d be scared at the last moment, she knows me now, I’ve lost the notion of freedom, I no longer have any self-respect, I’ve become a slave to the mirage of my despicable marriage, I can no longer manage without my yoke and now I’m trying to impose it on her. What am I trying to do to her, how dare I treat her like this, humiliate her like this.

  I try to placate her, but she’s crying more and more, she’s shaken by sobs, she can’t be comforted. This is the end, the absolute end, she’ll never go anywhere with me again, she never wants to see me again!

  I am conscious of relief and, simultaneously, of regret.

  Once more she looks up at me, her beautiful eyes, which always lured me into the depths, have turned bloodshot, as though the sun had just set in them. I kiss her swollen, now ugly, eyes, also her hands which have so often embraced me, which have so tenderly touched me: I don’t understand why she is crying, I do want her to come along with me, I’m begging her to.

  She’ll think it over, I should phone her from there.

  And here I am, alone, in the Lower Tatra. I walk through meadows fragrant with warmth. Above me, on the mountainsides, snow is still lying. At dinner I talk to an elderly doctor about yoga, he tells me about the remarkable properties of medicinal herbs. I walk along forest paths and enjoy the silence all round me, I recover in that solitude, even though I know it is short-lived, as is the relief I am feeling; the rack to which I have tied myself is waiting, it is within me.

  I gaze at the distant peaks. Mist rises above the lowlands. I look back to where the waves roll, where the surf roars, washing away my likeness moulded in sand, she bathes in abandoned rock-pools, the soil is black, the path is barred by an ever thicker tangle of roots, carrion crows fly darkly over the tree-tops. I walk with her among the rocks until we find ourselves in the middle of a snow-covered expanse of flat ground, I embrace her: is it possible we love each other so much?

  Nights descend, prison nights, nights as long as life, her face is above me, my wife is beside me, I am alone with my love, with
my betrayal. She bends down to me at night, she calls me to herself, she calls me to herself forever: We’ll go away together, darling, we’ll be happy. And I actually set out towards her, I run through cold streets, streets deserted and devoid of people, empty in a way not even the deepest night could make them, I drag myuself through the streets of the dead ice-bound city and an uneasiness rises up in me, suddenly I hear a voice within me, from the very bottom of my being, asking: What have you done? Halfway I stop in my flight and return to where I’ve come from, to the side of my wife. I act this way night after night, until suddenly I realise that I don’t want to leave, that I no longer want to walk through this dead city, at least not for the moment. I say: For the moment, and eventually I am overcome by the relief of sleep.

  She too is reconciled, for the moment, to having waited in vain, but after a while she starts asking again why I haven’t come, what has been happening to me? Didn’t I love her, weren’t we blissfully happy when we’re together, so why couldn’t I make up my mind? She seeks an explanation, she puts forward factual and plausible reasons for my behaviour and instantly rejects them, she’s angry with me, she cries, she’s in despair at my immobility, my obstinacy, my insensitivity and my philistinism. She assures me that there was no decision to make: I wouldn’t be leaving my wife now, I’d left her long ago, and I was only a burden to her. And the children were grown-up now, they’d remain my children wherever I was. I listen to her in silence, I do not argue with her. The voice which holds me back time and again isn’t, after all, a reason; it can’t even be broken down into reasons, it is above reasoning. Is it possible, I wonder, that she does not hear a similar voice within her, a voice of doubt if not of warning?

  Not even now, here amidst the mountains with no one urging me to do anything, can I break that voice down into separate reasons: into love for my wife or my children, or regret, or a sense of duty. But I know that if I hadn’t obeyed it I’d feel even worse than I do anyway.