by Ivan Klíma
‘Will you shut up, Honza! Stop saying things like that to me!’
‘Are you crying, Alena? On account of me? I love you for that. Oh, I love you, I’m madly in love with you, Alena. And then when I woke up – wait a sec while I wipe that tear from your cheek.’
‘Hush! Can’t you hear? It sounds like a car coming up the hill.’
‘I couldn’t say. I just want to hear you.’
‘It is. It’s Adam.’
‘But you said he wouldn’t be coming. After all it’s almost midnight.’
‘It can’t be anyone else. Oh, my God!’
When he entered the door, he stood staring at her companion for a few moments. He didn’t recognise him, obviously. ‘You’re not asleep yet?’ he observed with surprise.
‘Honza twisted his ankle,’ she said. ‘He was camping nearby. So I told him he could sleep in the upstairs room for the time being. He’s leaving tomorrow.’
‘Of course.’
‘Would you like some tea, as well?’
‘No, I don’t think so.’ He poured himself some water from the jug and took a few mouthfuls from the glass. Then he sat down at the table. ‘Children asleep?’ he asked pointlessly.
Someone should get up and leave; they couldn’t sit here all three together. Can’t he sense it? Doesn’t it occur to either of them? ‘Aren’t you hungry?’
‘No. I’d be ill if I ate this late. Anyway I’m pretty tired already, I haven’t had much sleep this week.’
Why did he have to talk about it? She hadn’t had much sleep either, but she didn’t complain, even though she was a woman.
‘What do you actually do?’ he asked, turning suddenly to Honza. ‘You’re still a student?’
‘No, I’ve finished,’ the other replied in a deeper voice than usual. ‘I’m now working in a library, like Alena.’
‘I shouldn’t think that’s the nicest of jobs at the present time.’
‘A lot nicer than sitting on the bench,’ said Honza with the obvious intention of offending.
‘You’re right there.’ He might not even have been listening. He only listened when he felt like it, and then only to people who interested him in some way. He was oblivious to the rest. He stood up again: ‘Shall we go to bed?’ Then he turned to Honza: ‘Would you like me to help you up the stairs?’
Probably he meant well, but the other took it as a churlish hint that he should leave.
‘No, thank you. I’ll manage myself!’ On his way out he gave her a look that terrified her. What if he swallowed some pills again upstairs?
Adam scooped some water into the wash-basin. ‘I brought some money to a woman who lives not far from here; her husband’s in prison.’ He took off his shirt. ‘I had to wait for her till eight thirty and then listen to her story.’ Instead of starting to wash, he squatted down on the stool and talked. ‘I managed to leave town by three o’clock. I was missing you and wanted to get here as early as possible, but I didn’t know whether this woman was in a hurry for the money. She’s extremely young.’ As usual when he was tired, he talked ramblingly about all sorts of unrelated things.
‘I don’t know who you’re talking about,’ she said.
‘About the woman I had to wait for.’ And he continued his incoherent narration, throwing in something about another woman in a run-down flat, and now that woman was the mother of a man on remand whose case he was going to try, but the mother had never set eyes on him. Her son. As if that could possibly be true. And his friend Oldřich was having an affair with Alice, and yesterday two people pretending to be lovers had apparently tailed him, and then he was back to the first woman again and about what she earned, as if it was the most interesting and important thing he could possibly say to her. Nevertheless she made an effort to attend, while straining her ears to hear what was happening in the rest of the house. Had he gone to bed yet? What if he heard them later? His bedroom was immediately overhead.
He came over to her and put his arms around her. ‘I’m glad I’m here with you.’
‘I’m glad too.’ She slipped out of his embrace. He was bulky, unfamiliar, almost alien. What was she to tell him, when it came down to it? The children would spill the beans anyway. ‘Are you still going to wash?’
‘Yes.’ He stood up. He plunged his hands in the water. The floor around him was instantly wet.
‘He tried to commit suicide three days ago!’
He soaped his chest and went on automatically to lean over the wash-basin and scoop up water in his palm, as if unable to postpone the planned gesture. In the end he asked: ‘Who?’
‘Honza, of course!’
He turned towards her. She saw that he was trying to recall who she could be talking about, but he asked: ‘Why?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said reluctantly. How could he possibly suspect nothing? Was it because he trusted her so much or because he had become so alienated from her? ‘I think he’s depressed about something.’
He reached for a towel. ‘Why should he be depressed?’
She was incapable of lying. She had never lied about a single bad mark when she was still at school. To live a lie seemed to her like living an illness. ‘I don’t know,’ she said in a whisper.
‘How did he do it?’
‘He took an overdose.’
‘But that’s a woman’s way.’ He picked up his shirt up from the chair. ‘I have to go and get my pyjamas.’
‘Aren’t you even going to ask how it turned out?’
‘OK by the look of it. He was calmly drinking tea when I arrived.’
There was one thing, though, she had never told him about: her night with Menachem. But oddly enough she didn’t feel it to be a lie, maybe because she had loved Menachem before she loved Adam; she had only been repaying a debt, albeit a debt to her own imagination. Moreover, Adam knew they were together that night and never asked what they had been doing. Had he asked she would have told him the truth, even though she wasn’t entirely sure herself what had really happened. They had been drinking wine together so that reality and her imagination had gradually blurred together and merged.
But this time she had no doubts about what had happened, and was still happening, and she felt she had a duty to tell him everything herself, before he asked, the moment she joined him in the bedroom, in fact. Only she wouldn’t have the strength to do it this evening.
She had already had her wash and was rinsing out her underwear. Maybe Adam would fall asleep in the meantime and nothing would happen for the one upstairs to hear. The trouble was Adam wouldn’t fall asleep. He’d not seen her for almost a fortnight and would wait until she came and lay alongside him and he’d have a chance to cuddle her. But how was she to join him in bed with the other one’s voice still sounding in her ears, how was she to cuddle and caress him with hands covered in a stranger’s kisses?
He lay in bed reading by the light of the wall-lamp.
‘What are you reading?’ she asked in a whisper.
‘I’ve no idea; some book of Manda’s. Something about puppies. You were ages coming. I was afraid of falling asleep.’
‘There was no reason why you shouldn’t have. You must be tired.’
‘I am.’
She still didn’t get into bed. She opened the cupboard. On the uppermost shelf there lay a packet of cotton-wool. She reached for it. But there was no point. Had Adam been like other men and not thought about such things, she might have fooled him by that gesture. But he counted her days (as he counted everything) and he kept track better than she did herself.
‘How long has he been there?’ he asked.
‘Why?’
He pointed towards the ceiling.
‘About a week.’
‘Did it cause a big commotion when he took those pills?’
‘No, I took him to hospital. Fortunately Bob was here with his car.’
‘He might have found somewhere else to do it!’
‘Ssh!’ she admonished him. ‘He’s sleeping just abov
e!’
Just then, as if exactly cued by some invisible stage-manager: thump! thump! The plaster cast crashed on the floor several times and the door above creaked. The terrifying thought gripped her that he might come in, carrying a knife or wielding an axe, exclaim: My love! and then attack Adam or herself, or – even more likely – turn the weapon on himself.
Finally she lay down at his side and he drew her to himself in his usual manner. ‘No, not yet!’ she whispered. ‘I have to get used to you first.’
‘But it’s so late already!’
‘It’s not our last day, after all,’ she objected weakly.
‘I’ve been looking forward to you. The whole time.’
‘I know. I’ve been looking forward to you too. But everything can be heard here.’
‘It doesn’t matter. Anyway, everyone’s asleep.’
‘He isn’t,’ she said, pointing upwards. ‘I don’t want him to hear us.’
‘He won’t. Why should he?’
‘You didn’t even have a look at the children.’
‘I did. Before you came in!’
Thump. Thump. (Oh, goodness, why doesn’t either of them feel like sleeping?)
Thump!
‘Is he going to walk around like that all night long?’
‘I don’t know. How should I know?’
‘You brought him in here!’
‘That’s neither here nor there.’
Above them there was the sound of water running into a wash-basin or somewhere else. Thump. Thump. The bed.
‘I love you,’ he whispered.
‘Why?’ she asked wearily.
‘People sometimes depress me,’ he said. ‘I get the feeling that everyone is ready to betray his fellow or harm him somehow. I know you to be different.’ He pressed her to him and caressed her breasts with his fingertips.
She felt she was falling. It was an insistent awareness of falling through pure, empty space. She should cry out or try to catch on to something. But she remained silent even when she realised, painfully, that he was entering her body. Surprisingly she felt nothing: neither shame nor remorse, but no pleasure either; just a total emptiness that engulfed her and pervaded her.
He asked: ‘Didn’t you enjoy it?’
Before we drink from the waters of Lethe
1
If only I had a trace of my father’s singlemindedness. When he was only seven years old, he apparently connected some uninsulated wires to a lamp and used the electricity to drive a set of cog wheels. He could have killed himself in the process, or anyone else who touched the wires, but amazingly, nothing happened to him, and his little motor worked.
With his phenomenal memory for names, numbers and figures, my father knew what he wanted to achieve, and he knew he wanted to achieve more than anyone else. And achieving more, in his system of values, meant knowing more and working more.
But what about me? What was I good for? What was my ambition?
Right back at the time of my lengthy illness, my father bought me a (no doubt rare and expensive) set of miniature electrical devices. It included a number of resistances, a telegraph key, a buzzer, a rheostat and a DC motor. The components could be connected together in various different combinations. The telegraph key could be used to operate the buzzer, start the motor or ring the bell. Out of love and respect for my father, I made a conscientious effort to find some pleasure in building circuits, but to no avail.
I tried to find pleasure in mathematics, at least, and indeed I outshone the others and did get some enjoyment from working out a not-too-sophisticated cryptic solution to a school trigonometry exercise – but maths remained a foreign medium to me. I lacked the sort of imagination that enables one to transform the material world into numbers or (vice versa) see the world in them.
I had no idols of my own – only borrowed ones. I bought myself a small bust of Lenin; it was one of the first things bought with my pocket money, but up to that moment I had never read a single line of the man’s writings, I only knew I had to revere him if I believed in Father’s improved world order.
That was the only thing 1 knew I wanted: an improved world order, my ideal state, to change reality to look like my island where reason held sway, where I ruled alone for the good of everyone, where I had eliminated all the inequality, depravity and immorality of the present-day world, along with want and unhappiness and all other untoward phenomena, and created a realm of love, trust, peace and happiness.
As soon as my friend Mirek had returned my manuscript I mentioned my exemplary composition to my father. Father had little spare time in those days and spent less and less time with the family, coming home only one day a week. So we scarcely saw each other. He took the exercise book containing my text from me, leafed through it – I couldn’t even tell whether he’d noticed the title – and then put it away in his briefcase.
I waited impatiently for his opinion, and would rush home from school each day, convinced that Father would let me know what he thought by letter.
The following week he arrived home, kissed Mother as usual, asked Hanuš and myself our news from school and then started to talk about his own affairs. They had entrusted him with setting up a new research factory. It was a grandiose project at a time when so many specialists had fled abroad, and of those who remained, some had been gaoled and others labelled as unreliable. Father complained that he had been assigned youngsters who were incapable, unwilling, insolent, ambitious, vain and only eager for power and money. He said they were hatching plots and forming cliques, in opposition to him and the handful of people who were capable of anything and wanted to get on with their work in peace.
After lunch I was unable to suppress my impatience any longer and I asked him about it. Father fetched his briefcase, took my exercise book out of it and said that many similar things had already been written. It might be better for me to concentrate on something more substantial. Most of all, I would be advised to read a lot and improve my mind.
So what should I concentrate on? What could be more substantial than reflecting on how best to organise human society?
He agreed, but told me that the organisation of society and politics were now a science. I would have to study a great deal. Gone were the days when people could just dream noncommittally about ideal societies. He did not want me to turn into a mere windbag like those youngsters he was surrounded with.
So what if I went on to study politics? He shrugged his shoulders. It was up to me what I wanted to study.
I had no difficulty in passing my interview for the political science faculty.
It was a strange sort of college. Most of the professors were not much older than myself. Their lectures were all impassioned affairs, irrespective of whether they were called atheism, Marxism-Leninism or logic, and at first I was enthralled. What a marvellously convincing picture of the world it presented us with. A weird and splendid lunar landscape. A sea of luminosity on the one side, the Mare tenebris on the other. Freezing cold craters and sun-warmed plains. One could not lose one’s way in such a landscape, nor hesitate which side to choose . . .
The way I see it nowadays, our teachers carefully concealed from us everything that had happened in the social sciences since the death of those they regarded as the unchallengeable authorities. We lived in the deep shadow of the idols of social revolution, they were our measure of everything. Trapped within the past century, we spoke their language and solved their extinct dilemmas.
There were at least a hundred of us studying ‘social sciences’ in our year, but we were divided up into several smaller groups within which we were supposed to fraternise, and assist each other with consciousness-raising and study. We would go as a group to the cinema and exhibitions, sing and chant slogans at the May Day rally, and at demonstrations against the Korean war we would yell ‘Go home!’ at the Americans (of whom we had none); we took part in labour brigades in the fields, we attended interminable meetings. And we would all address each other informally u
sing first names or alternatively ‘Comrade!’ I was entranced. I entered into the spirit I knew from literature – I saw myself as a member of a large family whose links were far stronger than any blood relationship. Even at moments of hardship in my life, all I needed to do was call out and a like-minded person would answer: a comrade, who was striving for the same noble goals as I. Could there be anything more noble in this life, could anyone feel happier than I?
Many of my fellow-students were already married. The older and more staid among them astounded me with their self-confidence and assurance. They didn’t hesitate to argue with our teachers for whom I had hitherto maintained a mandatory respect.
Outside college hours, I associated most of all with Plach. There have been many occasions in the intervening years when I thought I once more caught sight of his undistinguished pugilist’s face (with its snub nose, which none of his opponents had yet managed to break) but it has always turned out to be his double.
I would help him with the subjects he found difficult; amazingly enough, they were geography and history. I used to go to his flat in an old house not far from Smíchov Cemetery. He occupied a spacious garret that served him as bed-sitting room, kitchen and, later, as a workshop. (At that time I never even wondered what sort of factory would send a young stonemason to study social sciences.) He still had some of the statues he had carved, set out on a scarlet-painted table. I considered the bust of the president very successful, as it resembled all the other busts that littered the world of officialdom in those days. A sculpture of a metalworker struck me as rather daring, as its proportions were visibly distorted: the hands out of proportion with the head, and the hammer out of proportion with the hands.
Outside the realms of geographical or historical study, Plach held my respect. His opinions astounded me with their tenacity. I regarded his calm and deliberate manner of speaking as a sign of virility. Now and then he would tell me something about himself. During the war, he had belonged to some underground organisation, then during the Prague Uprising he had fought on the barricades and actually destroyed a tank single-handed. He had then received a stomach wound and spent the rest of that spring in hospital. He even showed me the livid scar. He commented that the pigs of doctors had let the wound fester and it was a wonder he survived.
