by Ivan Klíma
Jitka and I were in love with each other, body and soul. I love Hana and am grateful to her for always having shared the good and bad with me, and there were more bad, or at least difficult, times than good ones. Maybe it’s all inside me: maybe I’m incapable of awakening in her what is concealed in every human being… Or maybe I’m incapable of awakening it in myself. Maybe I lack experience of women. Jitka’s death took me unawares. It’s as if it thrust me into some enclosed space that I couldn’t get out of, not even when I met Hana, not even when I was already living with her. Maybe we got married before we had a chance to cross the barrier that separates people from each other, to discover true intimacy.
In the absence of intimacy – the ability to confide one’s most secret fears or the thoughts that scare one and that one is reluctant even to admit or put into words for oneself – love wastes away.
It looks as if they’ll be releasing Petr on probation next week. So his lawyer tells me, at least. Petr is in a state of agitation about it. The last time I visited him he promised me he would start a completely new life when he came out. Steal? Never again, Reverend. I am a different person since you baptized me. Whoever is in Christ is born anew… What is old has passed. That’s how you told me it, wasn’t it? He has a good memory for quotations and the ability to smile like a little boy. He looks the very picture of innocence. I praised him and told him I was pleased with him, and that Jesus was sure to be pleased with him also.
I am aware of being proud of having possibly turned one person aside from the path that led to self-destruction and evil in general. I remind myself that I am at best only the intermediary, but we’re not entirely responsible for our feelings. I even mentioned Petr on television when I was invited to do a religious broadcast. I gave him as an example of how one ought not to condemn anyone out of hand. Whenever we reject people on grounds of prejudice, as many reject not only those who have transgressed in some way, but also all Romanies solely because they are different, we banish them to where they can be the butt of our judgement and censure. Conversely, whenever we are able to accept and trust, and support what is good in people, we reduce the level of social evil.
An extremely vivid dream. I saw Dad standing as if in a pillory. He was naked and he had a barrel stuck on his head. The barrel was transparent so I could see that he was bleeding from the temple. Then a uniformed guard appeared and struck the barrel with a long stick. Dad started to sway and then fell down dead on the ground.
When I found his name on the list, I was determined to investigate all the circumstances. To find out whether it was a mistake, a police forgery or Dad’s attempt to ease his lot somehow. Only by then he was dead and apparently no one else has the right to check the facts of the case. Maybe I should have done a bit more investigating off my own bat, but it would have taken up too much time and I had so little of it to spare then. I was also afraid of what I might discover. Now it occurs to me that what I feared most was discovering the truth on account of Mum. Could I tell her at all? And could I keep on visiting her and not tell her? But now she’s dead it’s only myself I’d be sparing. I have asked Dr Wagner to advise me what action I might take in this matter. One is obliged to bury one’s relatives with all possible dignity, Antigone knew that a long time ago.
3
Daniel invited Petr to dinner the day after his release. Alois, whom he had also invited, welcomed Petr with a hug, Hana even kissed him. Yet whenever the conversation at table turned to prison she would quickly change the subject. She wanted to protect Magda at least from such talk. After dinner she preferred to take her out of the room.
After they had gone, Alois voiced a thought that he had apparently been mulling over for some time. ‘There’s a difference. Petr stole and they released him, Jesus was innocent and he was crucified.’
‘I’d rather not compare the two,’ Daniel interrupted him.
‘All the same, what you were saying in your sermon on Sunday about Pilate offering the Jews the release of Jesus, I found that a bit odd.’
‘What makes you think so?’
‘The way I see it, the kind who rule don’t ask people who they should release and who they should hang.’
‘Crucify.’
‘Whatever. But Pilate was in charge there. If he really did ask, it’d look as if he was frightened of the ones who were shouting.’
‘Maybe he was. There was always the threat of an uprising in Judah at that time. But otherwise it’s an interesting comment.’
Petr said, ‘But everything’s different these days compared to what it was then. Maybe Pilate suspected that it wasn’t a man standing in front of him but the Saviour. These days they try villains and nobody cares about them so why should anyone ask people who they should release. And, besides, they don’t hang people any more, they just lock them up until they go off their heads. But if anyone did ask the people, they’d say the best thing to do would be to hang all convicts straight off.’
‘You’re oversimplifying things a bit there, Petr,’ Daniel said, unhappy with the direction the conversation was heading in.
‘No way, Reverend. It’s very cunningly thought out. Everyone thinks that it’s all humane nowadays, but it could well be that things were better when they executed people straight off, than now when they just throw them in a dark hole to rot like old spuds or turnips.’
‘But surely where there’s life there’s hope,’ Eva spoke up.
Petr acknowledged that, but began to explain that bars weren’t the worst things about prison, and it was even possible to get on with the warders sometimes. What destroyed you was constantly being surrounded by the same nutcases and perverts that there was no escape from. The same cons and the same talk: who had done what before they were sent down; the stupid mistakes they had made to end up inside; where money and pills could be obtained without trouble; where they could get women and how many they had had. Everyone would boast about all the things they would pull off when they eventually got out. But of course they never did those things and anyway they would be back inside before long. ‘Thanks to you, my eyes were opened to that horror,’ Petr said, turning to Daniel. ‘I realized I was living in a world created by Satan.’ He got more and more worked up as he spoke. Nobody could imagine what people were capable of. They tied a man, while still alive, to a metal beam and threw him in a lake. They would catch a girl, rape her and then cut off her breasts. And the money that circulated down there where people couldn’t see! And when someone wanted to get rid of a guy they owed money to, they would just find a killer who would do him in for a couple of grand.
Petr was waving his hands as if trying to ward off the evil and shouting. His face underwent mild spasms and the scar on his cheek became livid. The lad felt a need to draw attention to himself and for that, like so many people, he needed evil. Either to practise it or to exorcise it. Daniel realized that the faces of his own children were unmarked in comparison – pure and childlike. As if the difference between Petr and Eva was not just a few years. If Petr was going to be coming here, and that would be desirable, there was going to be a new kind of authority in the house – certainly as far as Alois was concerned, and for his own children too, most likely. How could their life experiences compare with Petr s? Darkness was always tempting. The abyss, infidelity and sin were more attractive than the heights of fidelity and good works.
The best thing would be not to talk too much about Petr and let things return to their usual patterns as quickly as possible.
‘Have you played yet today?’ he asked Marek as soon as Petr left.
‘How could I when we had visitors?’ Marek said, shaking his head in astonishment at this question until his long blond hair hung over his face.
‘Well, go and play now then!’
‘Anyway my G string broke yesterday.’
‘Paganini was capable of finishing a concerto on a single string.’
‘I’m not Paganini, Dad.’
‘But you’ve got three strings left.�
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‘Dad, we were told in physics today,’ Marek said, changing the subject, ‘that they recently discovered a quasar that shines like a thousand galaxies. And each of those has a hundred billion stars.’
‘And you believe that?’
Marek shrugged. ‘That’s what the principal told us. He believes it. And each time he says “Just try to grasp how tiny we are!”’
‘And you know what quasars are?’
Marek was very interested in astronomy. Maybe he also liked to be posed questions he couldn’t answer. So that he could search in that infinite space for another God in place of the one who assumed human form.
‘They are quasi-stellar radio sources,’ his son informed him. ‘They are moving away from us at almost the speed of light.’
‘They must be a long way away already.’
At least twelve billion light years.’
Are you able to imagine that?’
‘There are loads of things that people are unable to imagine,’ Eva rose to her half-brother’s defence.
‘Is there anything else you want to know about quasars, Dad?’
‘No, thank you. I don’t know what use I’d have for the information.’ Perhaps Marek was indeed interested in something that seemed unimportant or – more accurately – inconceivable to Daniel, something one simply had to take on faith, and he already had his faith. ‘Or maybe some other time,’ he added.
‘Alois and I are going to make a telescope,’ Marek went on to inform him.
‘Where will you put it?’
‘In the attic, of course!’
‘Anyway, we haven’t got a mirror,’ Alois pointed out. ‘We haven’t got anything. Just two lenses and a plan of how to put it together.’
Then Eva wanted to know for her part whether Petr would be living with them like Alois, but Daniel said he had already arranged for Petr to stay at his older sister’s.
‘He’d be better off here,’ Eva objected. ‘His old gang could find him there.’
‘Evika, if he takes it into his head to return to his former associates, nothing will stop him.’
Eva merely shrugged and he registered a kind of subconscious anxiety. No, it would be better not to have that lad in the house.
That evening, Daniel and his wife went for a walk.
The street was deserted. The cars by the kerb shone dully in the light of the street lamps and the clusters of forsythia glowed yellow in people’s gardens. Hana linked her arm in his. ‘I was dying for some fresh air. I feel I’m constantly indoors somewhere, like that lad who was in prison. And it’s one problem after another at the hospital these days. There’s no money for medicines, or blood, or even for bandages.’ And then, as if she suddenly felt ashamed of complaining, she started to tell him again about the journalist who had a habit of visiting the nurses’ station and telling them stories about China and other exotic countries he had lived in. In spite of her years in the city, Hana had remained a country woman. She loved stories. She would watch television sometimes, but she would get upset at the cruelty of almost everything that was broadcast. ‘It must be interesting to see so many totally different countries and customs.’
‘Would you like to see them too?’
‘No, not really. No, it just crossed my mind when I was listening to those stories in the nurses’ station.’
‘We could take a trip together as a family.’
‘Somewhere far away, you mean?’
‘Why not? You said yourself that it must be interesting.’
‘You’re talking about it because now we can afford it?’
‘And we’ve also the freedom to.’
‘We’d better not. It wouldn’t be deserved.’
‘What makes you think you wouldn’t have deserved it?’
‘I wouldn’t have done anything for it.’
‘It could be instead of a present, say. Your birthday’s coming up. And Eva’s sitting her leaving exams in a few days’ time. It would be an experience for the children too.’
‘But the children don’t even know their own country yet.’
‘One never gets to know everything. But it’s good for young people to get the chance at least once to take a look at their homeland from a distance.’
‘Dan, you’re crazy. You mean it seriously! Let the children go off when they’re old enough to organize it themselves.’
‘It needn’t be China. I’ve always wanted to have a look at Jerusalem.’
‘All right, Dan, if you think so, if you’d enjoy it, maybe yes, one day. But Eva hasn’t yet done her leaving exams and I might never see my fiftieth birthday.’
He realized that he was irritated by her down-to-earth attitude that resisted any dreaming, any deviation from the daily routine. He gave her a hug so as to banish the feeling of annoyance and she held him close to her for a moment before quickly slipping out of his embrace. ‘Not here on the street,’ she whispered. ‘What if someone saw us?’
4
Bára
Bára had gone to the church on the advice of her friend Ivana. She had been suffering from occasional bouts of depression. Although she had only just turned forty, she put it down to her age, as well as to her less-than-successful second marriage and the feeling that on the whole her life seemed an aimless slog.
The fact was she had suffered from mood swings and sporadic feelings of desperate hopelessness from early adolescence. When she was seventeen she slashed her right wrist in the bathroom at home. She didn’t do it because of an unhappy love affair or for any precisely definable reason. Fortunately, her sister Katka found her while she still had a drop of blood in her veins. When they asked her at the mental hospital why she had done it she was unable to reply. She simply could see no reason for living when life led nowhere but to death, and there was no way of attaining the things one believed worthwhile. What do you consider of greatest worth? the psychiatrist had asked her. She had wanted to reply ‘love’, but the word was so hackneyed, so devalued by pop songs of all kinds, that it no longer corresponded to her conception of it. So she said nothing. But she promised the doctors and her mother that she would never do anything like it again, and she kept her word. Another spell in mental hospital, she maintained, and she definitely would go mad.
She really made the promise only to the doctors and her mother; she promised nothing to her father. She had no love for her father and in the last years of his life she scarcely talked to him. She considered her father ordinary: he wore grey clothes, worked as an insurance clerk, told silly risqué jokes, and if he read anything at all, it was detective stories. When she was still small, his relationship with her alternated between two extremes: either bringing her chocolate bars and custard puffs, or using death to scare her. Death would come for Bára if she was naughty, if she didn’t clean her teeth, if she climbed on the window-sill, if she didn’t look both ways before crossing the road, or if she cried because she didn’t want to go to nursery.
‘What’s death?’
‘Death is like the darkness,’ her father explained. ‘When death comes for you, you’ll never see the sunrise again, the moon won’t shine for you, not even a single star.’
‘And can I really die?’
‘We must all die,’ her father said, visibly pleased that he had managed to frighten her.
‘But you’ll die before me,’ she had told him, ‘because you’re old.’ To her surprise, her prediction made her father laugh.
Apart from a feeling of aimlessness, Bára also suffered from a sense of her own inadequacy, and the paltriness of her pointless existence. There were no real reasons for her feelings: she was an exceptional woman to look at; her tall build and large breasts were the envy of most of her fellow pupils as far back as primary school. She had her father’s fine hair which was of a fairly restrained blonde hue, but which, when the light caught it, acquired a deep coppery tint. She had her mother’s eyes: set wide apart and the colour of forest honey. She had acting talent, a beautiful soprano voice
, wit and a distaste for anything that could be regarded as humdrum and ordinary, whether in conversation, dress or art. She adored whimsical and outlandish pranks, like the time when she and her friends dressed themselves up in winter clothes on a sweltering summer day and, with woollen bobble caps jammed on their heads, they paraded through Prague with skis over their shoulders to the astonishment of passers-by. The very next day they were sunbathing half-naked by the windows of the classroom. She also enjoyed drinking. When she was hard up she made do with beer; as soon as she could afford it she preferred cheap wine, such as Portugal or Kadárka.
