by Ivan Klíma
Adam looked around him. Everything was in its place: shelves packed with books, the radio, the legs of his dark trousers projecting from the half-open wardrobe door. Was this his home?
Things had never interested him. They seemed to fill the emptiness but they didn’t really. He knew too well that they could be taken away from him at any moment. Things and people. And then what was left?
We never ever talked together about such things, you and I, little brother. We ate at the one table and played chess and tennis together, but we never talked about anything of that kind. There was never enough time, or maybe we had the feeling that it would only be empty talk anyway. It was I who was always doing the talking: about beauty and goodness, about the parallelism of the deity and humanity, about the knowability and non-knowability of the world, about liberty as loving obedience to eternal truths, about free will, about the one and only ethical doctrine for a virtuous and noble life, as well as about the moral imperative and the moral code. We would lie there in a hayloft or by a pond with a friend whom I have heard nothing of for twenty years or more; he disappeared into the world even more irretrievably than you, and with him went those categories and a way of thinking which struck me then as far too abstract. In real life, it seemed to me, other considerations prevailed. First they gaoled Father, then I had to go and take a judge’s post in the back of beyond, which meant handing down verdicts, attending meetings, fighting for peace, making speeches (agitation they called it in those days) and generally defending the interests of the Party. I had to be aware all the time who was the first, second and the last secretary, who had me under surveillance, who was reporting on me, who was vetting me; I had to consider very carefully whom I could talk to frankly, and who was best avoided, who was to be praised and who ignored, and think about how to get myself promoted to a better position in which it would be possible to do at least some of the things I wanted. Living like that, one forgets about abstract categories and high moral considerations; in fact moral considerations go out the window. Only from time to time, and mostly at night when one can’t get to sleep, there comes a feeling of regret or even dismay at how one has forgotten the old aspirations. One marries, of course, and has children. One maintains them and rears them, teaching them to speak the truth, not to steal, not to use bad language and to brush their teeth. One sends them to be taught to read and write, to play the piano and the guitar. One takes them for walks so that they get the chance of seeing a running deer, if only at a distance, or one of the last horses still grazing on a meadow. But in spite of it all, one knows that there is something else of importance that they ought to have, that one lacks a code to bring them up in, or to offer them, at least. But all the same, one loves them and does not want them to be no more than well-fed, well-dressed simpletons, happy because they have an electric train-set and a dolly that cries and drinks out of a bottle. One wants to share something profound with them, something they will retain for life, something they will be able to return to and cherish when things are hard, something that will foster their love and their capacity to relate to people.
Instead, dear bro, as happens in this life, my wife has found a lover and I a mistress. All the things I was sure of are falling apart; the things I regarded as shameful cloak me round like darkness at night. All I can ask is: what do I possess? What do I have left? Where is my home? Where is my universe?
He could hear familiar footsteps stumping up the stairs. The door slammed and the flat was immediately filled with shouting.
‘We telephoned several times,’ his mother-in-law announced, ‘but no one answered. We thought your phone was out of order.’
‘I expect there was no one home.’
‘Where’s Mummy?’ his daughter wanted to know.
‘She’s gone somewhere.’
‘Weren’t you together?’ his mother-in-law asked in surprise. She had sat down at the kitchen table. It would be proper at least to offer her a cup of coffee, but his mother-in-law always tended to irritate him and he wanted her to go as soon as possible.
‘Alena is so under the weather these days,’ she declared ‘Nothing bothering her, is there?’
‘We’ve all got something bothering us.’
‘It was just I thought she might be overdoing it. I know you’re a considerate chap, Adam, and help her as much as you can, but you’re always so hard at it yourself. You ought to persuade her to take a bit more care of herself.’
‘She takes care of herself, don’t worry.’
‘People are always in such a rush these days. They all want to get the most out of life and they end up wearing themselves out.’ At last she left.
The children were talking nineteen to the dozen, telling him all about television programmes whose inanity became increasingly apparent as they retold them. No doubt the mother-in-law had let them gawp at the television from morning to night, though he had asked her not to. But what right had he to be annoyed? He didn’t do anything to entertain them and had nothing better to offer.
He lay down in the lonely bedroom. There had been a time when he thought he knew. But what had he known? That it required assiduous and conscientious work if everyone was to be better off, that sacrifices had to be made for the general good! He had also known that he was not supposed to hanker after possessions, that it was his duty to watch out for enemies. He had known that he was not to believe in God but in science, or at least what purported to be science. He had known that out of the ruins of the temples and the ashes of the old world a new society would be born, a new humanity – a socialist world. Where selfishness, envy and meanness were once rife, friendship and comradely love would prevail.
That fanatical and infantile notion of friendship, a street in which an apathetic and hate-filled crowd was transformed into a throng of empathising and understanding companions, had captivated him so much that he believed he had answered the fundamental question, he believed he knew how to live.
Then, dear bro, I realised I’d been wrong. But what conclusion did I draw? I went on living the same old way, fulfilling my duties. I continued to behave in a non-adult way. A child also does the jobs it is given without asking why, and if it does ask, it expects an answer to its question, as well as praise for having asked a question that was clever. And so one goes on, fulfilling one’s obligations and kidding oneself that one is a decent and upright person and worthy of affection. One has a family and a job and one judges others. And through inertia one goes on waiting for someone to come and explain at last what one is living for. And then one has a mistress as well (and one tries to live for her) and success (and one lives for it), and board and lodging and a car. Meanwhile time moves on and one’s thirtieth and fortieth birthdays come and go; all of a sudden one doesn’t have a wife, one doesn’t have children either; then the mistress goes and all that’s left is the success, the board and lodging, and the car, or not even them. But by then one has forgotten one’s former doubts and life just goes on through inertia, so one doesn’t even notice that the time for waiting is long past; one has been an adult for long enough and it is time to answer for oneself. But what is one to answer when one has never found sufficient freedom or courage, and one has allowed the light that maybe once burned within one to go out?
I now ask myself, bro, what difference there is between me and the fellow I’m supposed to convict for having gassed his landlady? What if the only difference is that I am too cautious, methodical and self-disciplined to have gassed anyone? There is a fundamental difference, certainly: one of us is a law-abiding judge with a wife, a position, children, and a mistress, who acts prudently in his emptiness, while the other is a recidivist who has neither wife nor position and in his emptiness imprudently pushes his children and his mistress to the edge of the abyss.
No one can deny this indisputable difference between my irreproachable behaviour and the behaviour of that desperado, in terms of the penally indictable nature of our actions. But as regards the emptiness into which we try to tempt
those nearest to us? In that emptiness, even the principled find their hands on gas taps that turn easily, and at that moment it matters little whether the gas escapes into a kitchen, a gas chamber or even into the motor of a rocket that will fire a ray and cut the earth in half.
As you can see, I’m a bit put out by it all – but I’m not desperate. I am better off than when I was satisfied at the way I fulfilled my obligations. At that time loving my wife was a duty like devotion to my work in court. But what can one create out of a sense of duty that is worthwhile? A home? Some relationship, or achievement, maybe? All you can do out of a sense of duty is to belong. To a home, or to a wife or to a mistress, say. Or to justice.
One should have the necessary freedom of spirit to define one’s place and one’s relationships; to be capable of leaving or staying if one wishes – however mad, inexplicable or ludicrous it might seem.
I don’t know whether I’ll prove equal to it. I’m over forty and I don’t know whether I’ll manage to find within myself what I have not found so far, or even looked for. I bet you think I should have a try, whether I succeed or not.
I feel as if I’m standing underneath a high tower looking at a narrow, darkening staircase that spirals upwards. There are those who promise me that from the top of the tower I will behold a land which I would never set eyes on otherwise, while others warn me that the depths beckon and many have already fallen. I, for my part, hope perhaps to meet her up there, and there, alone, on a wooden floor between earth and heaven to make love to her in total seclusion and solitude, in a silence broken only by the buzz of a stray fly – that would be freedom . . .
He woke before the alarm was due to go off. The neighbouring bed was empty. She’d not been in the whole night, then. It was remiss of her; what was he to tell the children?
Maybe he would not have to explain anything to the children from now on. The court would award custody of the children to his wife, and she would get the flat too.
He opened the window. Outside, a grey misty autumn day was breaking; a moth lay dead on the windowsill. He washed himself and went into the kitchen to get the children’s breakfast ready.
She was sitting on a chair with her head resting on the table, apparently asleep. The stink of gas hung in the air. Alarmed, he looked towards the gas stove, but the taps all seemed to be turned off.
‘Alena!’
Slowly she raised her head. Her usually pallid features were a greyish yellow and there were dark shadows under her eyes which were puffy and swollen. She seemed unable to unglue her eyelids. At last her eyes opened slightly and he could see that the whites were bloodshot. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked. ‘Why didn’t you come to bed?’
‘I couldn’t. I just couldn’t. You were there.’
‘I would have left if you’d told me it bothered you.’ He could still smell gas. He bent over the cooker and sniffed the burners.
‘I could-n’t,’ she repeated. ‘I couldn’t have told you to go if you were al-rea-dy there.’
‘Have you been drinking?’
‘I don’t know. I expect I had some tea. And some-thing else before that. But that’s ages ago. I called you but you weren’t home.’ She was still unable to open her eyes and spoke as if speaking to him from a dream. Her voice was hoarse.
‘Did you turn the gas on?’
‘It wasn’t me. He turned it on.’
Her words made no sense to him. She had clearly been drinking. He assumed she had been getting drunk somewhere and come home late for that reason.
‘I turned it off afterwards,’ she said.
She looked so wretched and helpless that he suddenly felt sorry for her. ‘You ought to go and lie down.’
‘I can’t! I’ve got to go – you know – to the library.’
She didn’t seem to him capable of any activity at all. ‘Give them a call to excuse yourself. Tell them you’re going to the doctor’s.’
‘But I’m not going to the doctor’s.’
He took the milk out of the refrigerator and poured some into a saucepan.
‘Where have you been these past two days, Adam?’
He put the pan on the stove. He hesitated a moment before striking a match. ‘But I told you where I was going, didn’t I? You oughtn’t to go to work. I’ll call them myself if you like.’
‘Were you there with her?’
He turned away. Yes, of course he was there with her. Why did she have to ask? After all she hadn’t been drinking on her own, either.
‘Why don’t you answer, Adam?’
But there was something wrong with her; something had happened that was troubling her. What point was there in hurting her even more? ‘No,’ he said.
‘You weren’t there with her?’
‘No!’
‘You were there on your own?’
‘Who was I supposed to be with?’ Shame overwhelmed him. He was lying brazenly like a false witness.
‘You’re not lying to me, are you, Adam?’
‘No!’ He took a loaf of staleish bread out of the bread-bin and cut some slices, trying to make them as thin as possible.
He buttered the bread and topped each slice with a round of salami and some tomato. ‘I have to go and wake the children,’ he said. ‘Or do you want to wake them yourself?’
She made no move, so he put the plate on the table. As he passed her he noticed that the odd smell of gas was coming from her. It was in her hair and her clothes. He bent over her. ‘Did you try to gas yourself?’
‘No, he did it,’ she said. ‘Adam! Oh, Adam!’ she sobbed.
He straightened up again. He knew he ought to comfort her in some way. Or to speak to her tenderly. And indeed for a moment he was gripped by an agonising sympathy and searched for the right word. He could also have hugged her or stroked her acrid hair.
But at the same time a paralysing feeling of disgust started to well up in him. Something about her disgusted him. He couldn’t tell whether it was the senselessness of what she had done or the other person with whom she had obviously done it. Or maybe just the vile stench of gas.
‘I have to go and wake the children,’ was all he said. ‘They’ll be late for school otherwise.’
2
He left the house with the children. He had made Alena leave the kitchen before they came in for their breakfast. She had gone to the bedroom promising to sleep it off. He had promised to excuse her at work. And to be home soon. He had not promised to ‘talk it all over’ although she had begged him to insistently. He accompanied the children to the end of the block. They ran off immediately after saying goodbye. His daughter was wearing a short brown coat and her hair flew about her head as she ran, while the little chap’s bag leaped up and down on his back.
At their age he hadn’t gone to school. That was not exactly true: he’d attended for the first two years. Then the authorities had banned him from going. Anyway he couldn’t recall having mixed with his peers back in those days or played with them. His childhood peers had been the ones who ended up in the gas chamber. That fact occluded anything that had happened earlier.
What if Alena was to try to gas herself again?
It was not a good idea to leave her on her own. He turned and hurried back home. Someone had just gone up in the lift but he was still capable of beating the lift up to the second floor. He reached there at the moment two men were getting out of the lift. They glanced quickly along the passage and then came over to him. After reading the name on the door they asked: ‘Are you Dr Kindl?’ They didn’t even have to show their passes. He knew all too well who they were.
‘Yes, that’s me.’
‘We have something we would like to ask you.’
‘Well?’ He was unable to contain his agitation. ‘Would you like to come inside?’
‘We would sooner you came along with us for a moment. After all, you’ve no hearing right now.’
He shrugged.
‘Were you just on your way home?’
‘I was co
ming back for something I’d forgotten.’
‘You may go and fetch it.’ One of the men stood in the doorway, preventing him from closing the door. They did not enter the flat, however.
Alena was lying half-clothed on the couch, covered with a green blanket, her face thrust into the pillow. She was asleep. He wrote her a note: If I’m slightly delayed, don’t worry. He couldn’t concentrate. He added: Never do anything like that again!
The grey Volga saloon was parked round the corner, which explained why he’d not noticed it on his way back. They sat him in the back between the two of them and didn’t utter a word the whole way. The car pulled up eventually in the narrow lane off Národní Avenue.
They passed the porter’s lodge and took the lift up to the second floor. Then they proceeded down a long corridor until, at last, they opened one of the many doors and entered. At a desk sat a man with a broad, puffy face. The man stood up. It was impossible to tell his age but he was certainly the elder of them. ‘I could caution you, but I don’t think it will be necessary in your case.’
