by Ivan Klíma
Uncle Karel had a professorial appearance: tall, dry and bespectacled – interestingly grey around the temples. He would always arrive in company with Auntie Anita. He would bring me books – almost invariably translations of Soviet novels. Auntie used to ask me about the plot of the book they brought last time and urge me to ponder on the fate of its heroes, following which she would go off to chat with the adults. She worked in some office or other concerned with resettling the frontier areas and would fume about people no better than bandits who stole carloads of valuables and others who misappropriated property they had only been given to administer; and my aunt would declare firmly that things must not be allowed to go on like this, that such people had to be moved against or they would soon be moving against us.
My aunt bore no resemblance to my mother. She was powerfully built – more like a man. She had a loud voice and whenever she spoke it sounded as if she was quarrelling. In those days she seemed to me like the heroines of the books I had just been reading. She was straightforward, active and undeniably selfsacrificing, working for people’s welfare like a good citizen while also taking good care of my uncle. He was not as loquacious as my aunt and kept his sentences short and to the point. He was a born minute-taker and drafter of resolutions, and I think that he had done exactly that on many occasions in his life.
I was excited at the thought that Uncle had been in the country that was so often spoken about with such enthusiasm here. I begged him to tell me about it, but he referred me to books. He brought me, indeed, a biography of Lenin and an illustrated brochure about Moscow. In it Red Army men paraded in spiked helmets and crop-eared Stakhanovites joyfully flashed their teeth.
I once asked my uncle if he had ever seen Stalin. He had. I was bowled over by the news. Where? At a meeting in Moscow. What had he been like? Wise and modest. I wanted to know more but my uncle changed the subject. And what had it been like in Moscow during the war? He replied that sometimes things had been very bad. Cold and hunger. And as if afraid of disclosing something unseemly he hastened to add that the Soviet people had behaved excellently. During the very first days of the war he realised that they could not lose because their will for victory was invincible. And he told me about the girl pioneer who was killed in action on the roof of their house. Though only ten years old, she had volunteered to man an anti-aircraft battery. And what about her parents? Her parents mourned her but were proud of her deed. That was what the Great Patriotic War was like. People understood what their duty was towards the motherland. And when the fascists drew close to their city, the workers went straight from work to the outskirts to dig trenches; some stayed there till morning and went straight back to work. When did they sleep? Those were days when nobody had the time to sleep. They would doze for a few minutes in the tram or by the fire when they came in for their midnight tea.
Even though he recounted these stories as if they were from his own experience, I realised later that he had actually gleaned them from newspaper reports or from the radio broadcasts on which he worked. They might well have been truthful as far individual events were concerned, but they were lies in so far as they purported to say something about the actual state of affairs and the people’s state of mind during that dreadful war.
Many years later (he always occupied some high post and lived in a very non-proletarian flat in a modern house on Letná Plain) my uncle called me to ask if I might like to come and pick anything I fancied from some books he was throwing out. The parcel that I came away with included a Russian translation of Spinoza’s Tractatus Politicus. When I opened the book back home, I discovered that the ninety-eight pages of preface had been cut out and that someone had taken a knife to the title-page, the contents and even the publishing details, carefully excising the name of the man who wrote the preface and edited the translation. Only then did I understand that when my uncle had been regaling me with his elegant stories about courage, consciousness and patriotism, couched in his meticulously turned phrases, he had also been aware of the reverse side of the reality: cars that drew up at dawn in front of people’s houses; names scratched from the covers of books and from people’s memories, the suffering of those taken away and the grief of those left abandoned; and his own fear. He had known it all, but his grave expression and perfect self-control hid everything. He betrayed nothing of that other reality in those frequent conversations when he entertained me with brightly coloured pictures of life, and gave me jovial advice to get well quickly because every communist would be needed as soon as possible. So he worked on my mind, they all did: my uncles and father alike and the comrades who visited us.
They constituted a singular brotherhood, each member of which could finish the sentence another had started. A choir in perfect unison, a colossal creature formed of countless bodies but having one head and one will alone. I craved to be like them, but I was too self-preoccupied to have been capable – even in spirit – of merging myself entirely with that unique creature.
4
I must have been a lot better already because I was not even lying in bed when the doorbell rang and an unfamiliar voice resounded in the front hall. My mother opened the door to my room and told me with some agitation in her voice and almost formally that I had callers. And then two unknown men stepped straight in. The second of them, a spindly fellow with white, pimply skin and thick spectacles, was really still a boy, scarcely older than myself.
Addressing me as ‘Brother Adam’, the older man told me he had heard about my illness and so, as minister of the congregation to which I belonged, had come to see me with Brother Filip Augusta. They wanted to know how they could help me. I was covered in confusion. I had never crossed the threshold of a church since the day of my christening. My brother and I were the only ones in our irreligious family to have been christened at all, and the two of us only because my parents had deluded themselves at the outbreak of war that it would strengthen our chances. Since, three hundred years earlier, Mother’s ancestors had been Protestants who converted to Judaism after the Catholic victory at White Mountain, deluding themselves that this would improve their chances, I was baptised forthwith by a Protestant minister: thus I became a sheep returned to Christ’s fold.
They spoke to me at length. Both the minister and his young assistant, who was an officer of the youth fellowship, asked me searching questions about my illness, after which the minister declared with conviction that I would soon be well. He knew one brother who had suffered from the same complaint and he had recovered without any after-effects. But physical health, even though it was gratifying and joyous to have a healthy body, was not the only, nor even the most important health, and he asked me whether I read the Scriptures. I confessed, with sudden shame, that we had no Bible at home. At this, without any sign of annoyance, the minister took a black-bound book out of his briefcase and handed it to me. The young man at his side announced that he was looking forward to welcoming me among them as soon as I was well and confirmed. And compared with the minister, he said it severely.
After they had gone I got down to reading, and being a conscientious reader, I read the whole book from ‘In the beginning’ to ‘The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen.’ I didn’t even skip the distribution of the promised land among the tribes of Israel, or the enumeration of the house of Judah, or even the list of thirty-one kings who were trounced by Joshua. I read the Scriptures in the same way I read The Three Musketeers or The Pickwick Papers. I had not the slightest inkling of any hidden meanings, I read it chiefly as a self-assured, though often tragic, account of the journey of the chosen people and its God (whom I perceived as a fairy-tale figure because of His miracles, or as another among the many gods of legend) to power and government over a colourful tract of land. (The land was depicted on cards stuck in the back of the book). And since there are few books written with such a passion for a particular truth, such an unquestioning belief in being chosen, and such ill-will towards all enemies, I could not help falling for it
. I felt hatred along with the prophets and rejoiced along with the victors when the vanquished kings were impaled on spikes and captives put to the sword regardless of age or sex, I felt the satisfaction of the righteous when the pitiful thief or the plunderer of war booty was stoned to death with his entire family, and with the wretched people I waited for the Messiah. And because I was also at the age when one not only reads stories but also lives them, I became warrior-king, preacher and prophet speaking those lofty words to the misguided people: thy adultery, thy mockery, thy vile fornication in the hills and in the fields. I have seen thy abomination. Woe betide thee, Jerusalem!
I was saturated with the stories and longed to display my knowledge to someone, but the minister did not come. It was some while later that pimply Brother Augusta turned up again. He was even lankier than on his last visit – or that was my impression. He clearly felt more important at being able to represent the Church to me all on his own. He settled himself in the armchair and talked at length about the depravity loosed upon the world when the spirit was neglected in favour of carnal desires. We spent an afternoon examining and condemning every vice from jazz and the dances people did to it (I had never danced in my life), to the vile and disgusting films that starred the naked Rita Hayworth (whom I had never seen either in the flesh or on screen). I sensed that by displaying a responsible moral attitude I would rise in my own esteem and in the esteem of my companion.
I never dreamed that the condemnation of vice was one way of dwelling on its attractions, and was the path chosen by weak-willed, sick, invalid or timid individuals.
I asked my companion what, in his view, was the proper way to live. In fear of the Lord, he replied. I wanted to hear something more specific. He told me that he intended to deny himself all amusements until at least the age of twenty-five. He was going to study and learn languages, particularly Hebrew (he wanted to read the Old Testament in the original), Greek and Latin. He was going to travel, and chiefly to those countries still awaiting missionary activity.
I wanted to know what he would do if, before that age, he met a woman and made love to her. He shook his head to say that such a thing was out of the question and asked me whether I thought anything of the sort might happen to me.
I hesitated before replying. I was not sure what might happen, and above all, I could hardly wait for it to happen. This caused him to ask me in dismay whether something of the kind had not perhaps already befallen me, whether I had already done it. I did not understand the meaning of his question. He leaned towards me and asked me in a whisper whether I had already fornicated. Coming from his lips, that word exuded an evil stench which hung in the air long after he left. Then I got up and fetched a pile of illustrated magazines from the kitchen, leafing through them all until I finally discovered a photo of Rita Hayworth. She was lying on a couch with her hair loose about her, wearing only the briefest of swimming costumes and her magnificent breasts really were almost uncovered. I gazed at that piece of printed paper and felt a hot pang of delight rising from my genitals.
Brother Augusta appeared early the following Sunday and asked me if I was able to leave the house. I told him I was only allowed out on short, slow walks. He was overjoyed. In that case, he could invite me to divine services. I hesitated and even tried to find some excuse, but he assured me and my mother that in church I would be sitting down and that there was neither a hill nor a single step for me to negotiate on the way. As we neared the church, he told me that everyone was already looking forward to meeting me. That news was no comfort to me and I felt like turning tail and retreating while I still had the chance.
Even after that first visit, when the minister himself actually shook me by the hand as I was leaving and my patron introduced me to his parents and several other members of the congregation, whose names I was too agitated to register, I could still have said no and admitted that my belief in God and Jesus Christ came second to my belief in science, progress, reason and socialism. But I kept it entirely to myself, out of shame and a reluctance to offend. So the following week there I was attending confirmation classes and mouthing the hymns (I was unable to sing). And because I did not have the patience to sit in silence and had just finished reading the Bible from cover to cover – probably the only one of the assembled youngsters to have done so – I readily demonstrated my newfound knowledge, raising instances of God’s mercy, about which I had my doubts, and mentioning miracles which I myself regarded as fables.
My efforts were soon rewarded. I became the minister’s pride and favourite. Maybe I also attracted him because my background was such an unusual one for the Church – because I had surfaced from the depths of catastrophe. He invited me to his house, so that he could help me prepare a biblical essay, and lent me books which he emphasised he would lend to no one else in my group as the others were not yet capable of understanding their message. That indirect tribute to my maturity and my capacities so gratified my vanity that it reconciled me with the books, even though they dealt with concepts and problems as abstruse as the essence of God, predestination and incarnation. For a long time I felt those books had nothing to say to me, until the day the thought struck me suddenly that even if Jesus were not born of a virgin as the son of God, even if He was only a man, what a man He was! What a personality! He gave the world the idea of a way of life that people have tried to follow for centuries. Single-handed, He had changed and influenced the entire course of history more than any ruler, warrior or philosopher.
And there, in front of me, loomed my own future, my life’s mission: I would be a missionary, preacher, teacher and judge, and guide my neighbours to a better life. I would teach them to live in real love. I would teach them continence, modesty and kindness.
Shortly after my confirmation, I was elected chairman of the youth fellowship and took a seat alongside the minister at the head of the table – a long table made up of several shorter tables pushed together. I felt as if I was at the Last Supper as I knew it from Leonardo reproductions. The minister spoke of my piety, my knowledge of Scripture and my sincerity, which stood as an example to everyone else, and I listened in amazement to this improbable depiction of myself, beneath the stern gaze of John Hus and John Calvin and the rather more charitable eyes of the last bishop of the Unitas Fratrum, the three of whom looked down at me from their portraits on the walls. But they had all believed. I felt a sense of shame and disgust with myself for having let myself be elected. Then it occurred to me that I might well differ little from the rest. None of those around the table could be sure of their faith in God, not even the minister. It was inconceivable that anyone could believe fables about Samson killing hundreds of enemies solo, or believe in a God of universal proportions who created billions of stars and then transformed Himself into a gaunt, bearded Jew solely in order to be nailed to a cross and suffer all the pain, horror and despair of dying. (Though how could He have despaired, seeing that He was omniscient and knew He was God and therefore immortal and inviolable, and in a few hours’ time would once more be flying through the universe or wherever His kingly seat was to be found?) Hence it must just be a game, an unspoken agreement not to think about one’s doubts or talk about them, but to talk instead about faith.
If I were now to voice the things I felt, they would tell me that the Lord was testing my faith. Even the Saviour had been visited by the Devil in order to be tempted, and they would all pray that I stood the test. And they might actually have prayed on my behalf to a God whom they doubted, moving their lips and staring into the void. It was maddening; everything would have gone on undisturbed, everything would have been all right, everything was all right. The election was over. I thanked them for their trust, announced we would be meeting again the following Thursday and asked everyone to be sure to be there.
5
It was mid-spring when Brother Filip Augusta brought his cousin Anna to the youth fellowship. By then I ran the meetings like an experienced chairman: as is the way with those who really preside
in order to assert their own importance, I excelled at devising activities that seemed to express my deep commitment but actually screened the shallowness of my intentions. Quite a few youngsters attended. The one I best recall was a corpulent young man who used to wear an ex-US Army uniform, complete with a forage cap with the words US Army sewn on to it. To my annoyance and the others’ satisfaction he would sit down at the harmonium before the meetings started and play the Farewell Waltz, Roll Out the Barrel, Chatanooga Choo Choo and many other hits which I considered out of keeping with the surroundings.
A full hall gave me enormous satisfaction. I tried hard to imitate the sincere interest with which the minister welcomed guests. I was only too pleased to shake people’s hands as every handshake confirmed my pre-eminence. I also welcomed Brother Augusta’s cousin and told her how pleased I was to see her there. She said she had moved to Prague a week earlier and was living at her uncle’s while she attended college, and was glad she could join us. She went over to the clothes hooks and took off her threadbare winter coat to reveal a fiery red sweater underneath. When she returned to the table at which I presided, I was astounded to note that she had lasciviously magnificent breasts that wobbled at every step she took. She sat down at the table and the room went silent. It was the moment for me to start the meeting and say the opening prayer.
