by Ivan Klíma
He took the letter and started to tear it into little bits. There were still a few lines at the end which he hadn’t bothered to read; he’d have to live without the knowledge of what they contained.
He stared at the small pile of white scraps for a moment before sweeping them into the waste-paper basket. If only he could do the same with the day, with his previous life. Make a clean break. But making a clean break with life meant to die – was there any other way for one to escape from one’s own life?
He tried dialling the number, at least, and waited for the connection.
‘I thought you’d call me ages ago,’ she said.
‘I’m calling you now.’
‘I’ve got visitors coming tonight. Unless you’d like to come as a visitor.’
‘Not much, no. Particularly if Oldřich is at home.’
‘I expect he will be. Why, aren’t you friends any more?’
‘We could take a trip together somewhere,’ he said, ignoring her impudence. ‘How about spending the weekend with me somewhere?’
‘Oh, I’d have to discuss it with Ruml,’ she said. ‘Or leave Lida with a friend. Where would we go, anyway?’
‘I don’t know yet. Does it really matter where?’
‘Not really,’ she admitted. ‘OK. I’ll try and fix it somehow.’
He still had to call his wife at the library.
‘Adam, I’m so glad it’s you. I tried calling you a moment ago, but your line was engaged.’
‘Did you want something?’
‘I was really miserable. I feel so lonely here. You didn’t give me a chance to explain it all to you. And you didn’t explain anything to me either.’
‘I will explain it to you some time when you are not so tired.’
‘I can’t stop thinking about it. What time will you be finished today?’
‘Very late.’
‘I’ll wait for you. Will you call for me?’
‘I doubt it. I think I’d sooner be alone.’
‘So you won’t be coming home at all?’
‘I don’t know. I expect I will. Some time during the night.’
‘But I wanted to talk to you!’
‘Some other time. We’ll explain everything to each other all in good time.’
‘I also wanted to hear everything about . . . her. If you and she . . . Adam, can you hear me?’
‘Of course I can; why?’
‘You’re reacting as if you couldn’t.’
‘I’m not reacting at all.’
‘That’s precisely the trouble. How can you not react when I’m talking to you about this? And last night you joked about it.’
‘I’m not joking any more.’
‘Come home early, Adam. I want to talk to you. I need you.’
‘You’ll tell me some other time.’
‘I love you, Adam. If you don’t come home you will hurt me.’
3
At four o’clock, Alice came in with an obvious need to get her day’s cases off her chest. So she regaled him with stories of marital infidelities, deceptions and dirty tricks. He was surprised to find himself listening to what she was telling him, and actually feeling a sense of relief; as if the sufferings and peccadilloes of these strangers, however banal, revealed him to himself as merely one among many, and helped distance him from his own sufferings and peccadilloes. Half an hour later, Alice left and he was alone once more.
The children were probably home already, and Alena too.
From time to time when they quarrelled he would sulk: deliberately staying longer at work and not telephoning home. The thought of them waiting for him, the children asking where he was and when he was coming, Alena quickly regretting how unfair she had been, used to give him a sense of satisfaction. But it had only been a game: it was playing at quarrelling, playing at sulking. He had had his own home, where he belonged. Where they used to wait for him. The realisation that this was no longer so, and never would be again, more likely than not, filled him with dismay.
It was drizzling outside. He wasn’t dressed for rain – even the weather had taken him by surprise. He could go to the cinema or visit his parents – he’d not been to see them in a long time. He could also go home. Back to his flat, he corrected himself. He could talk to the children. That is if he could manage to talk to the children on this particular evening.
He loved the children. He took care of them, played with them, took them on long walks sharing the little he knew about trees, flowers and birds, or continuing his ever extendable story about the hedgehog that travelled to see the world. He undoubtedly spent more time on them than his father had on him and he was pleased that they had a better childhood than he had had.
He stopped in front of a pub. It was one he passed almost every day, but he had never set foot inside. People who rushed to drown their senses at moments of affliction struck him as weak-willed. But he would have to shelter somewhere from the rain.
Inside it was crowded and the clientele had an unfriendly look so he remained in the tap-room. He ordered a small glass of beer, though he did not particularly like beer. He knew nobody here and nobody knew him. If he could summon up the courage to get drunk he would be able to unbosom himself by telling his story to a random listener. The trouble was, knowing himself, he would not get sufficiently drunk and would then end up having to listen to the stranger’s troubles instead. He ordered a cognac and settled up.
The telephone box at the street corner was empty and the telephone was working, amazingly enough.
‘Ruml here.’ Adam held the receiver, which was demanding to be told who was calling, at arm’s length. Only when the other hung up did he bring the receiver close to his mouth once more and say into it: ‘Dr Ruml, one of your friends is seeing your wife. Would you like me to describe him?’ He started and looked round quickly, but there was no one standing outside the box.
He went back into the pub, drank another cognac in the taproom and drove off to visit Matĕj, who was having one of his illicit breaks from water measuring.
His friend turned off the television. ‘An occupational disease,’ he said apologetically. ‘I stare at the thing and listen to the enormities they come up with, and then I go over them all again in the newspapers. It fascinates me how they do it.’
The room contained nothing but books and pictures, a writing desk with a chair, and an armchair under the window. He sat down on it and watched the sky darken behind the wet roof of the block of flats opposite.
‘Actually, I’m making excuses for myself too,’ Matĕj admitted. ‘I always imagined all the things I’d write if I had a bit of free time. Now I come back from the caravan and have plenty of free time but I don’t feel like writing – there’s no one to write for. Or maybe I’m making excuses again, to avoid admitting I’ve got nothing to write about. I would never have realised that in the past. Life was too hectic for me to notice there was nothing in my head. But now I have plenty of time in which to work out what would be important to tell people. I’m hardly going to go and add more redundant words to the enormous heap that’s engulfing us.’
The last time he had sat here had been with Alena. She was fond of Matěj, or at least she had always said so. But then she had said the same thing to him. Only in Matěj’s case there would have been no reason for her to lie; lying would have gained her no advantage.
‘I could, of course, console myself with the thought that I wouldn’t be poisoning people’s minds like them, but I think I’ve tried that one a bit too often. Telling myself I’m not the worst of the bunch, I mean. Two days ago, would you believe it, a German came out to the caravan to see me. A really nice guy. He expressed his sympathy and told me he wanted to record an interview about the situation I was in and the state of the world. He just couldn’t grasp that I had no great thoughts to share with him, and I don’t feel like just griping about things. Besides, what right have I to gripe, seeing that I was in on it back at the start . . .’ He stopped, puzzled. ‘Is there some
thing wrong, Adam? Problems at work?’
‘No, none there so far.’
‘I see. Wait a second.’
He was alone. One of the pictures on the wall seemed new. He tried to concentrate on it. Children’s voices could be heard through the open door, then the sound of a violin. He was able to make out a broad field, the brown of which was as mournfully autumnal as the grey of the sky above it. In the middle of the field stood a solitary, bare tree. From one of the branches hung a length of rope.
Matěj returned with a bottle and two glasses.
Now a rook had landed on the treetop, or was it a raven? He wasn’t very good at birds or wild flowers, not having made up for those five years when he had been kept out of the classroom and the woods. As far as flowers and birds were concerned he had never managed to make up the gap in his knowledge. And what about other areas? He had always thought that what he had failed to gain in knowledge he had made up for with his unique life experience. But what had that experience taught him? That it was possible to live even in degrading conditions, deprived of all rights; that one just had to go on living in order to survive the dismal present somehow, and see freedom in the end.
Matěj filled the glasses.
He drank his and said: ‘I think I’ve fallen in love.’
‘Does Alena know?’
‘I told her.’
‘Has she kicked you out?’
‘No. Nothing like that.’
‘Then why do you look so miserable?’
He shrugged.
‘When something like that happens, one ought to enjoy it at least.’
‘I’m enjoying it the best I know how.’
‘A real strong point of yours, that. Do you remember our first evening at Magdalena’s? We were singing away and the look on your face was as if you were giving us life sentences.’
He was incapable of enjoying himself. Nor was he capable of tenderness; concern was the most he could express. Alena longed for tenderness. Maybe that student, who was probably incapable of anything worthwhile, knew how to show tenderness. He felt a vague surge of remorse. He could see his wife in some half-forgotten green dress hanging out nappies in a country backyard, her back to him as he arrived; there was a little child toddling about her feet; and there was he, overawed at the miraculous truth that the child was his own daughter. Her fur coat turning white from the falling snow, snowflakes settling on the hair not covered by her hat. She leaning against a tree-trunk as he kissed her; her lips cold, her cheeks also – shivering all over. Your hands are so warm. You’re all warm, you’re my fire. You’re my sunshine. She standing on a footpath in the meadow, singing. I like the way you sing. I’m singing because I’m happy with you. I always wanted someone to be happy with me.
‘Is she pretty?’ Matěj asked with interest.
He nodded. ‘I’ve had something inside me since I was very small: the feeling that there are limits to what people are allowed. In that place I had to live, the ones in charge were allowed to do what they liked, but then they weren’t people as far as we were concerned.’
‘Surely that was a completely different situation.’
‘Maybe I was sure of it even earlier. My mother has always been morose; I can’t remember her ever showing any enjoyment, she’s always lived in a state of anxiety about what life might have lined up.’ He was starting to ramble but couldn’t stop himself. ‘In your caravan that time you talked about the inner voice that one should listen to. I’ve been making an effort to catch at least a few sensible words – but it’s no good. I don’t know whether I’ll ever manage. All I’ve managed so far is to find a mistress; if I hear anything in the silence, then it’s her voice.’
The crow at the top of the lonely tree had spread its wings ready to fly away. Beneath the tree there now sat a clown wearing a costume in the colours of the old Spanish kingdom, and he could tell that there was sorrow in the dark Jewish eyes. Outside the rain had stopped and the moon shone between scudding clouds. ‘It seems to me one should not desert another person,’ he said, ‘on top of everything else. But I don’t know whether it is my inner voice talking, or a voice from outside.’
‘I think so too,’ his friend agreed. ‘I’m just not sure at what moment one deserts the other person. But it could well be before the actual moment of moving out.’
‘Yes, I know. But she, she . . .’ An icy wave swept up through his body, from his toes to the tips of his hair, ‘she always seemed to me so childlike . . . so innocent . . .’ He put his glass down with such force that it tipped over, rolled to the edge of the desk and dropped softly on to the carpet. He had to get up to retrieve it. His head was swimming and his forehead was still glacial. It was high time he went.
The pavement was wet and there was a smell of smoke in the air. He set off downhill from Košíře. It was too late to look in on his parents. He had nowhere to go; all he could do was wander the streets. Like Karel Kozlík, he recalled, though happily I’ve not killed anyone so far. And the weather seemed rather more suitable; the wind was almost warm. He could feel its gusts clearing his head and the iciness draining from his body.
Why did one have to be heading somewhere all the time, rushing off somewhere or to see someone? It was a long time since he’d been all alone; what hopes did he have of hearing his own inner voice, even if it spoke to him?
He was too apt to indulge in hand-wringing – it was something else he had in common with his mother. She had spent her life wringing her hands instead of living. At least Father had enjoyed his work and at Sunday lunch would tell stories and laugh at them; so would his brother Hanuš. Hanuš liked drinking, skiiing, playing billiards, ping-pong and tennis; he also cared about his appearance, had loads of girlfriends and did not think about the war. Or had he only pretended not to? He definitely had a more cheerful nature; he used to have fun tinkering with his crystal sets, and all in all had gone around more freely and lived more lightheartedly, without feeling responsibility for the fate of mankind. There was a time when they had gone off together on bikes in search of odd jobs; he missed those trying times. Not because they’d been difficult, of course, but because of the freedom they had had. In fact it was amazing he had felt so free in the prevailing conditions of unfreedom. Nothing depended so much on one’s state of mind as that feeling of freedom.
He arrived at one side of the Kinský Gardens. The benches were full of courting couples. He was courting too. He could invite her here for a cuddle on a bench.
It was not a good idea to think about her; better to enjoy being here alone; he found a vacant bench with a view of the city. The distant lights twinkled before his eyes and merged into blotches in the dark. Or he could telephone his brother. Today it’s me who’s drunk, would you believe? What if now we dropped everything right now, everything and everyone, got on our bikes and set off, we’d find a job somewhere, though maybe not as easily as in those days: who’d have any use for us? Don’t worry, I don’t intend to blather on; on the contrary I’ll be very much to the point. I can see things quite clearly now, not just the heart-warming silhouette of our native city, on whose roofs the rain has only just stopped falling, so that they still shine slightly, but I can also see clearly the frontier before which you hesitate, though I am unable to define or demarcate it – I lack your mathematical ability and knowledge, though one thing I do remember – Father was always drumming it into my head – that every progression has only one limit. Don’t mock me for being so woefully ignorant, I’m sad today and there is nothing I can see to cheer me up, apart from the thought of us getting on our bikes and going off somewhere in the hope of finding a bonfire to sit down by and listen to the gypsies singing. There are moments – you can’t tell when they’ll arrive: your wife is unfaithful to you or leaves you altogether; you don’t have the courage to believe in God and the things you once believed in have let you down; things don’t seem to matter to you any more, and what do you have left?
I know I haven’t mentioned the thing that Fat
her never stopped telling us was the most important thing of all: one’s work – wanting to do something, to achieve something so you can say you weren’t here in vain, that you’ve left behind some special winding or discovered an unknown wave motion in a crystal, or at least an oscillation within yourself, so that even when God has become distant and turned His face away from you and people have deserted you, something lasting remains: such as a passion for the truth.
I didn’t mention it, because it might easily happen that at the very moment your work starts to become crucial to your life, when the choice is between moving towards the light or becoming eternally bogged down, at that moment some snooper arrives on the scene, some officially sanctioned thicko, you might know him, or you might have never seen him before, and he’ll say No! and you’ll end up being bunged somewhere where the light can’t get in and where the light from inside you can’t get out either.
But I realise too that not even that need be the most important consideration. You’ve forgotten about the snoopers, and you’re missing the forests or the silhouette of your native city; maybe at this moment you too would like nothing better than for us to jump on our bikes and ride off anywhere, even though we don’t have bikes any more, the gypsies probably don’t sing but listen to the radio, and I know what you mean, although I’m sad and have the feeling I’ve nothing left, apart from the last hope: that I will at last fathom something about the strange urge for justice. But they’re even stifling that hope: I have the feeling – and this is precisely the absurdity of every barrier, every restriction – that everything is totally immaterial compared with some urge that emanates from the soul and is therefore incomprehensible to any outsider – it cannot be communicated or even defined in words, only through deeds: such as the urge to jump on a bike with someone you long for, and ride off somewhere, anywhere, taking a path you know or you’ve never been down before, with nothing at the end of it, or, on the contrary, a route whose end is foreshadowed by its very beginning, in other words, what people generally think of as one’s downfall, but despite it all you have to jump on and go, there’s no other way, you just get on and ride away, and therein lies your freedom and your chance to live.
