The Ultimate Intimacy

by Ivan Klíma

  ‘Straight up. I really do.’

  ‘If you really mean it, you oughtn’t to be considering such plans.’

  ‘I mean it seriously. But you yourself say nobody can be without sin.’

  ‘There are sins and sins, Petr. A preacher who sold drugs wouldn’t be a good preacher.’ A preacher who preaches the Ten Commandments and does not live by them can’t be a good preacher either.

  ‘But nobody would ever find out about it. There are things that nobody ever finds out about. Except the Lord, and he is merciful.’

  Daniel suddenly felt uncomfortable and the lad noticed. ‘No, straight up, Reverend, there’s much less risk in that than in what you’re doing. It’s run by fellows with experience. There are all sorts of fail-safe mechanisms.’

  ‘What do you mean? What risks am I taking?’

  ‘Preaching. It’s not so long ago that you had all sorts of hassles. With the police, I mean.’

  ‘They were a different sort of hassle. And the times were different.’

  ‘Except who helped you in those days? Nowadays if they catch a guy there’s always someone who’ll see to it they let him off.’

  ‘How do they “see to it”?’

  ‘Reverend, you’re such a saintly man; you know very, very little about life. Everything can be seen to, everything’s for sale if the money’s high enough.’

  ‘I’m not saintly. The opposite, more likely. And as far as big money is concerned, that’s definitely not your case, Petr.’

  ‘Exactly. And if I go on pushing a wheelbarrow I’ll spend my life paying off debts, and I’ll achieve … I won’t achieve anything.’

  ‘I’ll tell you something, Petr. To manage to lead a decent life is quite an achievement, believe me. And that applies to you and me alike.’

  ‘Reverend, I haven’t made any decision yet. But you know full well that I have to pay the bill for the time I was inside and I have just a month to clear out of my sister’s place. And even if you let me stay here, I can’t stay here for ever. I want to lead a decent and useful life. I’d like to see something of the world and help people who are in a bad spot like I was. Advise me, then, if you know of some other way of earning some money.’

  All of a sudden he was struck with alarm by a connection that hadn’t even occurred to him before. ‘Haven’t you in fact already started in a small way?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean selling drugs.’

  Petr gave a diplomatic answer: ‘Virtually no.’

  ‘And in reality?’

  ‘I don’t get what you mean?’

  ‘Eva, for instance. Did you sell her something?’

  ‘Oh, come on, Reverend, it’d be like selling something to you.’

  ‘And would you sell me it?’

  ‘No, never!’

  ‘Not even give it?’

  ‘That would depend on whether you wanted it.’

  ‘And Eva did?’

  Petr hesitated a moment. Then he said, ‘No, she didn’t.’

  ‘She didn’t even want to try it?’

  ‘But everyone wants to try it at least once.’

  ‘You louse.’ Daniel took a step forward and raised his fist. Petr flinched and shielded his face with his arm. ‘No, Reverend, don’t ever think that of me. I talked her out of it!’

  Daniel’s fist remained clenched but he did not strike him.

  ‘I really did talk her out of it, Reverend. I warned her off shooting speed. I gave her a bit of grass; that’s less harmful than an ordinary ciggy.’

  ‘And did you give any to Marek and Alois?’

  ‘No, no one else. I swear, Reverend. I didn’t offer it to anyone here. Eva asked me for it. She told me she’d already tripped on speed twice but she didn’t have any money to buy herself another trip. I told her to quit messing about with speed and I gave her the grass just so she’d have something at least. I reckon I did the right thing.’

  ‘Yes, a really good deed, Petr!’

  ‘Reverend, if I hadn’t given it her, someone else would have got it for her. They’d get her something harder that she’d end up hooked on, like me that time. You’ve no idea, Reverend, how quickly it takes a hold on you, and Eva doesn’t know yet.’

  ‘What a Good Samaritan you are, Petr.’ The world was full of deceit: big words and shameful deeds. He felt an unexpected pain in his chest and his breathing seemed to falter. ‘You’d better go, you louse. I don’t want to talk to you any more!’

  Petr got up and wished him good-night, but he stopped in the doorway and turned towards Daniel. ‘The room you mentioned – I don’t suppose the offer stands any more, does it?’

  ‘It still stands,’ he replied, resisting the temptation to agree with him, ‘even though I’d sooner see you a million miles away.’

  ‘Thank you, Reverend.’

  ‘It stands on condition, of course, that you don’t turn the manse into an opium den.’

  ‘You can count on me, Reverend. And I genuinely did talk Eva out of it.’

  4

  Hana

  The journalist who is being discharged that Friday brings Hana a bunch of purple irises. ‘Whatever possessed you? Besides, I won’t get a chance to enjoy them,’ she protests. ‘I’m off on holiday next week.’

  ‘So you can leave them at home, or give them to someone. Flowers are not for returning!’

  So Hana thanks him, and all of a sudden she realizes who the journalist reminds her of: a pity she has no photo. Little Joe has already been dead for thirty-five years but he too was a trifle stunted just like this journalist and would also tell her enthusiastically about far-off lands and their inhabitants. And he once picked her the same purple flowers: in those days they were most likely stolen, as they didn’t grow them in the garden at home.

  Past times rise up in front of Hana’s eyes: her first kiss, the people she would never see alive again. She puts the flowers in a vase, but she hasn’t time to enjoy them. Before she can leave she has a vast number of duties to perform, including drawing up the rotas for several weeks ahead and doing an inventory of the linen and medicines. Every year, at the beginning of the school holidays, she takes the children off to her mother’s, although in previous years she would only go for a few days, saving up her leave in order to spend some of it together with Daniel. She never did use it all up anyway, preferring to take payment in lieu. Times had been hard and every crown used to come in handy. This year, Daniel had persuaded her to take an extra four weeks unpaid leave; after all, they didn’t need the money and she needed a rest.

  However, it was he more than anyone who could do with a rest. He seemed somehow changed to Hana these past few weeks: frail, taciturn and preoccupied. She put this down to his not yet having got over his mother’s death, but maybe the work-load he has taken on himself is wearing him out: running his church, preaching every Sunday, travelling to visit prisoners, speaking on radio and television, writing newspaper articles, organizing special days for the congregation and on top of it all preparing for an exhibition of his carvings. It is a fact that he has had to wait till now to do all the things they wouldn’t let him do before.

  She’d love to help in some way, but doesn’t know how. She can never think of anything to talk to him about without delaying him, something to please him or interest him even. She suggested to him that he should take a holiday and make the trip with them. He admitted that he would like to go but didn’t have the time at the moment.

  Maybe he really didn’t have the time, or maybe it was just that he didn’t relish the thought of travelling with her. Hana has the impression that he has been avoiding her recently. Maybe he’s stopped loving her. Every love grows weary in time, that’s something she knows all too well. Besides, Daniel never did love her the way he did his first wife. It’s true he still washes the dishes or takes care of the shopping and urges her to buy herself new clothes. In the evening he sits and chats for a while with her and the children, but Hana senses that even at those mom
ents his thoughts are partly elsewhere. Sometimes it seems to her that although she was definitely a support for Daniel in the bad old days, he no longer has any need of her now, or if he does then it is only to cook his dinner or massage his aching back.

  The irises in the vase smell sweetly and she conjures up the day she returned from the maternity hospital with Marek. The whole manse was decked out in flowers. Daniel said to her that day: ‘I’ll never ever repay you for this.’ But that was a long time ago now. Much water had flowed under the bridge since Marek was a little boy and they moved from one manse to another, since the days when Daniel used to be called in for interrogations, and he was under permanent threat of losing his permit to preach, so that they would be shunted off to goodness knows where. Since then the bad times had become the good times but what did it mean as far as her life was concerned? It is possible to feel better in bad times than in the good kind. Tyranny binds people together whereas freedom distracts them by holding out opportunities to them.

  Maybe Daniel never had needed her, just a mother for Eva, and that was the reason he had taken her into his life. But his heart belonged to the one who had died. Hana recalls how, when she moved into the manse, she found traces of Jitka everywhere: her clothes in the wardrobes, two pairs of ladies’ shoes by the front door, her photograph in a frame on Daniel’s desk and above the child’s cot a paper dove whose wings flapped in the draught. ‘Jitka was already in hospital when she made that,’ Daniel had explained and was at a loss what to do with the clothes and shoes, as he could hardly throw away things that reminded him of the woman he had loved. So Hana had to live for a while with the effects of the departed and for the whole time with the memory of her. Daniel never spoke about Jitka and Eva called Hana ‘Mummy’. In fact, until she was eight, she had not known that her real mother was no longer alive.

  Now Eva was grown up and could cope without her; so could Daniel, in fact. Who needs you, when you are not even needed by your nearest and dearest? Probably nobody – and that’s a difficult realization to live with.

  It’s almost two o’clock and Hana quickly writes out the most urgent instructions for the afternoon shift. Feed Mr Lagrin!

  A week ago they had moved a Romany youth on to the ward. Skinheads had thrown him off the cliff at Šárka. He had survived the fall but had suffered multiple fractures and concussion. This morning they had taken him off artificial feeding on the grounds that he should be able to feed himself by now. When she went on to the ward she discovered he had not touched any of his food. She asked him why.

  ‘I cannot hold the spoon.’ And he showed her how his hands were shaking.

  ‘But we would have fed you.’

  ‘I did ask, but the sister she told me that on her wages she would not feed me.’

  Later she asked in the nurses’ station who had had the nerve to say such a thing, but naturally no one owned up. But even if the nurse had owned up she couldn’t throw her out, as she’d never find a replacement.

  Hana needs a holiday. She feels tired out. Not so much from work as from life in general. Her life admittedly has its regular routine but there is nothing in it that she really looks forward to. It doesn’t offer any enticing prospects. And the heavenly kingdom that Daniel so often talks about with such enthusiasm has never assumed any definite form in her mind and she has never imagined what might await her beyond its gates. She is almost ashamed of the fact and feels ordinary and down-to-earth compared to Daniel. Maybe she too would be capable of elevated thoughts and deeper contemplation about God and His plans, but how can you have elevated thoughts when two nurses this month have already handed in their notice. One of them she considered the best on the ward; now she has found a job as a hotel waitress.

  ‘And won’t you be sorry to be dashing around somewhere with dishes when here you could be doing a job for which only you are qualified?’

  ‘But they pay three times as much.’

  Where will she find new nurses now, with nothing to offer them? For the time being they will just have to share out the duties among themselves and that could well cause others to leave. What will happen then she prefers not to contemplate. This is a ward where the slightest neglect or inattention means death; and it can happen that several post-operative incidents or complications can easily occur at the same time. Now she is left with only one nurse for the night shift and she won’t manage everything even if she splits herself down the middle. And then there was the holiday; she probably shouldn’t have listened to Daniel and taken four weeks extra leave.

  It is already two thirty; Hana has finished taking stock of the medicines and is on her way to the changing room. She has not managed to account for all the analgesics and the ephedrine preparations; someone is stealing them for their own use or making some extra money by selling them. Everything comes down to money these days. Everyone wants to get rich quick and the essential things in life are ignored.

  What are the essential things in life?

  Faith, hope and love.

  Except that faith is dying and hope is therefore also on the decline. And what people now regard as love has little in common with it. It tends to be no more than a mutual encounter of bodies and at best a few trite saccharine phrases. She doesn’t know them from personal experience, but has picked them up from television serials or from listening to the girls in the nurses’ station.

  They often confide in Hana, perhaps on account of her motherly appearance, or because she’s a pastor’s wife, or simply because she’s a patient listener. She is unshockable, understanding and ready to give advice. She tends to advise patience and warn against excessive trustfulness and impulsive decisions guided by feelings rather than prudence.

  Sometimes, when she sees that passion, that total surrender to expectations of love, or when she detects the unconcealable tremor in the voice, she realizes that deep down in her there is also a hidden longing or perhaps an anticipation of some vague change, some action that will carry her out of this current that sweeps her along monotonously between the same banks.

  It could well be that when she is giving her young subordinates a talking-to and warning them against foolish outbursts, she is addressing and rebuking herself too. She warns others against imprudence, never having been aware of imprudence under her own roof. Thanks to her job, she has heard more about drug addiction than Daniel. In this country every other person is a drug addict without knowing it. Grandparents are used to swallowing a whole tube of tablets each day, unable to imagine life without them. They would die of anxiety at the emptiness. They don’t have a god so they stuff themselves with anadin, Valium and anti-depressants. Maybe that’s permissible at the end of a life, but what will happen to the ones who start it at age eighteen? Her step-daughter is at risk and Daniel is too good-hearted – naive, she’d say – to give Eva a proper talking-to, let alone punish her. He believes she’ll come to her senses on her own. But how many drug addicts ever came to their senses on their own? The only outcome of such a kindly and understanding approach to child-rearing would be that Marek and Magda would end up being tempted too. Marek seems to be sensible enough but Magda is attracted by anything she sees as forbidden or sinful. Not long ago Hana found a box of matches in her school bag. ‘What are you carrying matches around with you for?’

  ‘No particular reason. In case I needed to see something when it gets dark.’

  ‘So long as you’re not thinking of smoking.’

  ‘Oh, Mummy, whatever makes you say such a thing?’

  Her astonishment did not sound in the least convincing.

  Those two young criminals that Daniel was so proud of reforming, and that he spoiled more than his own children, wouldn’t come into the house if Hana had her way. Even if they have been baptized and they feign piety, there is no reason for them to be friendly with their children.

  If only Daniel had more time for them to talk together. If only he would find a moment to tell her he loves her.

  Hana leaves the hospital in a
bad mood. Outside the front entrance she bumps into the journalist who has just given her a bunch of flowers and so reminded her of her first love. His name is Volek. He greets her with a rather unconventional bow. She had mentioned she was going on her holiday. It occurred to him he would probably not see her again so he would like to thank her for all the care he has received and invite her for a coffee, at least.

  ‘No, thank you. I have to get home. My husband and children are expecting me.’

  ‘How old are your children?’

  ‘Twelve and fourteen.’

  ‘You can’t be serious, Matron!’

  ‘I also have a step-daughter who is eighteen. Why do you ask?’

  ‘I just wondered whether they might cope for a while without you.’

  ‘That’s not the point. You’ve already given me these flowers. It wouldn’t be right for me to accept an invitation from you as well.’

  ‘But I’m only inviting you for a coffee.’

  Hana cannot understand the reason for the invitation but it will help take her mind off things. He is an entertaining man, and in spite of his profession he seems quite trustworthy.

  The little bar is right next door to the hospital. There are only a few people seated at the small round tables, but the background music is a bit too loud. She doesn’t feel at all at ease but she will have to put up with it, having accepted the invitation.

  The journalist orders two Turkish coffees.

  ‘That’s not really the best thing for your stomach,’ she scolds him.

  ‘There you go; I didn’t realize you knew my case notes.’

  ‘People mostly take the advice we give them with a pinch of salt. We discharge them and they’re back in a twinkling.’

  ‘Actually I don’t like coffee,’ he admits. ‘At home I only drink tea, but real tea, not the sort of thing they offer you in a pub here. When you go into a tea-house out east,’ he says, indicating with his arm somewhere a long way off, ‘it is not just a ceremony, but something else as well, something for you to taste and smell and see. For instance, they can drop in your teapot a small ball that some dear little Chinese ladies have woven from tea leaves up on some plantation in the mountains. And that ball starts to swell and turn into a flower that unfolds while at the same time imparting to the water the taste and scent of tea, such as you’ll never encounter here. Whenever I’m abroad I stock up on teas. Should you ever happen to have the time or inclination to call on me, I would make you Dragon’s Fountain, say, or Snowflake.’