The Ultimate Intimacy

by Ivan Klíma

  We walked (or in her case, limped) through a spacious lounge in which stood several flower pots containing miniature citrus trees as well as a fig tree that almost touched the ceiling.

  I certainly have had little occasion to visit houses of that kind, and I was taken aback by the luxuriousness of the Finnish furniture and the emotional vacuity of the abstract paintings intended to embellish the white walls. She noticed and asked whether I disliked modern art. I replied that I found some works disconcerting and had the impression that some of their creators had no wish other than to be original, whereas I was always looking for some message.

  You’re a pastor, she said, you have to look for a message in everything. It’s good enough for me if they make me happy or I enjoy the colours. Then she added that she accepted no responsibility for the furniture. Although she was an interior designer, the entire arrangement of the house, apart from her own room, had been Samuel’s choice, as he couldn’t bear to live in anything that was not organized according to his scheme of things.

  Then we arrived at her own room. I was fascinated by an enormous desk that took up the entire length of one wall. The desk-top, which rested on a steel base, was made up of smallish square wooden blocks. ‘That,’ she said, indicating the desk-top, ‘was once a floor in an old villa. They were going to lay linoleum on top of it, the philistines, so I bought it from them. They have linoleum on concrete and I have a splendid desk that even has a patina.’

  The room also contained a divan and an armchair, by which stood a steel standard lamp whose base, I noticed, was formed from the three spikes of a garden fork. You see, she said, a lamp like that has to be in here, Samuel can’t abide anything that’s slightly off-beat. She lay down, groaned and asked me to cover her with the rug that was lying on the armchair. I asked her if there was anything I could do for her, whether she was thirsty or hungry. She told me I wasn’t here to wait on her; no one had ever waited on her. All she wanted was for me to sit down and be with her now. If you hadn’t come, she said, I would be brooding on my powerlessness and death.

  We chatted for a while like close friends who don’t see each other often enough. I told her about Eva’s drug-taking. She reassured me that it was commonplace nowadays and didn’t mean anything. When she was eighteen she must have tried everything they forbade her, and in fact there was very little they did forbid her. She had felt such a need to set herself apart from the world she was forced to live in that in the end she had slashed her wrists.

  The telephone on her bedside table rang several times and she talked to people I didn’t know.

  At one moment she asked me to pass her a large black folder from the desk. It contained her latest set designs and several interiors. It was her first chance to display her work to me. She showed me her design for the interior of a country manse – a Catholic one, naturally. She explained that she had tried to make use of the old furniture that remained in the house, simply adding a number of small armchairs that could be built according to photographs of Schinkel’s armchairs from the beginning of the last century. I hadn’t a clue who Schinkel was, but I didn’t ask. I don’t understand furniture, and the furniture we have at home simply assembled over the years as we acquired it. Some things we bought, some we inherited, some were given to us. I was always of the view that the objects didn’t matter. They serve a purpose and they should not attract attention either by being in bad taste or enticingly unusual. But I realized she was waiting to hear what I’d say about her work, so I said I liked it, and also that I liked her desk and her idea for the lamp.

  Then the phone rang once more and she suddenly changed and became wary. ‘Is that you, my love? It’s nice of you to call.’ And she glanced at me in mute appeal.

  I realized it was her husband calling and I crept out of the room. I drifted around the spacious house until I ended up in the kitchen. I located a saucepan and found ketchup and milk in the fridge. Salt, sugar, rice and flour were in containers on the shelves. It was gone noon and it occurred to me that I might make some soup while she was on the phone.

  ‘Why are you so kind to me?’ she asked when I brought the bowls. ‘You are putting me to shame, for heaven’s sake. We could have easily had a sandwich.’ Then she said that her husband had called to say he’d finished his work and would be returning that same afternoon.

  I was about to get up and leave.

  ‘But it’ll take Musil at least two hours to get here.’ Then she asked reproachfully, ‘You would actually leave without making love to me?’

  I had a dream. Two men were leading me down a long passage. At the end of the passage was a hole, so narrow that a cat could scarcely have squeezed through it. Nevertheless the men stopped in front of the hole: this way!

  I stood nonplussed in front of the opening, until one of the men made it bigger with his heel while the other pushed me forward. I was falling through the opening. I don’t know how long I was falling but at last I found myself in a dismal office where no one was sitting; there was just an enormous mastiff lying in front of the door.

  ‘Take a seat,’ I was instructed by a voice from some unknown source. ‘You realize why you’re here?’

  I sat down in the seat opposite the desk and said I didn’t know. The mastiff raised its head and snarled.

  ‘A lying pastor.’

  I don’t know why I’m here,’ I repeated.

  ‘What about the scandal then?’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘You preach scandal. And in addition you went into the pulpit naked.’

  ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘But you had yourself photographed doing it.’

  I banged my fist on the desk. ‘That’s not true.’

  ‘And what about the little girls in Sunday school? What do you teach them?’

  ‘I teach them the word of God.’

  ‘No, you tell dirty stories. I have a pile of complaints here. In children’s handwriting.’

  All of a sudden a pile of envelopes appeared on the desk in front of me. ‘Read that one there, for instance.’

  I found in my hand a piece of paper that was indeed covered in children’s handwriting but I couldn’t decipher a single letter. But I knew that there could be nothing against me in the letters so long as they were genuine. Except that these were definitely not genuine.

  ‘So what do you say to that? Great, isn’t it? What do you think your missus will say when it’s published?’

  ‘What missus?’

  ‘You’ve got more than one?’

  I became uneasy. There was something out of order here, something bad had happened. After all, my wife was ill and dying. ‘You can’t do that,’ I shouted.

  ‘That depends on you.’

  ‘What do you want of me?’

  ‘You know full well! Take a leaf out of your father’s book. He understood the right way to behave.’

  All of a sudden the room was full of big fellows in grey clothes, each one identical, the same unfamiliar faces, but they seemed to be smiling in a friendly way and actually offering me a glass of wine. ‘We’ll reach a deal, though,’ said the one offering me the wine.

  ‘You scratch our backs, and We’ll scratch yours,’ said a fat, grey-haired man as he entered the room. He seemed to be their leader – I recognized him in fact. It was Berger, my old Secretary for Church Affairs.

  But there aren’t any Secretaries for Church Affairs any more, I remembered to my relief. we’re free again, it’s just that these chaps don’t know it and are threatening me and trying to bribe me with a glass of wine.

  I took the glass and smashed it on the ground. The wine spread all over the floor, blood red. And at that moment I realized that jitka, my good, gentle wife, had died long ago, and I had been left alone, and it made me sad.

  3

  Daniel generally took a holiday in the second half of August. Sometimes he would stay in Prague but usually he would set off with Hana and the children for a manse in
the country run by one of his friends or a former fellow student.

  This year, for the first time, they could afford a holiday that would depart from the normal routine.

  When he suggested to Hana that they might go abroad it occurred to him that it wasn’t so much foreign travel that appealed to him as the possibility of escaping somewhere a long way away. Escaping from the other woman? No, from himself, more likely. Except that there is no escaping oneself.

  Hana agreed that he should take a rest. It was necessary to renew one’s strength or one day it would run out. But why go on a foreign holiday and leave the children here? What if something happened to them?

  The children would be at Grandma’s and we don’t need to travel far. Just to the Alps, say.

  The Alps held no appeal for Hana. The Šumava Mountains seemed more feasible to her, besides which she could make herself understood there.

  Fine, we can drive to somewhere in Western Bohemia and maybe go on an excursion to Germany from there.

  While Hana was doing the packing he quickly sorted out his correspondence. When the phone rang, he felt a strange agitation and hesitated before picking up the receiver.

  ‘It’s me, Dan,’ said a familiar voice. ‘I’m calling from our castle in the country. Samuel has gone fishing and I thought I might still catch you.’

  ‘Your instinct was sound. We are about to leave any moment.’

  ‘And you don’t mind me calling?’

  ‘No, I’m pleased to hear you.’

  ‘And are you on your own there?’

  ‘My wife is packing.’

  ‘So go and give her a hand! I just wanted to tell you I’m thinking of you and that I’m missing you, that I wish I could be with you.’

  ‘I’m thinking of you too.’

  ‘Nice things or nasty?’

  ‘That’s not a proper thing to ask.’

  ‘I wanted to ask whether you’d forget me.’

  ‘It’s almost impossible to erase anything from my memory.’

  ‘And you’d be so vile as to want to erase me?’

  ‘I didn’t say anything of the sort. I only said I have a good memory. And I’ll never erase you from it.’

  ‘That’s good. I wish you lots of sunshine. And I don’t only mean the sort that comes from the sky. I mean the sunshine you have within you.’

  ‘I don’t know whether I ever had it within me, and even if I did, I fear it’s hidden behind the clouds now.’

  ‘Do you feel that I’m the clouds?’

  ‘No, if it’s possible to have sunshine within oneself then the clouds must also come from within.’

  ‘That’s true. And you have love within you and that sunshine. I’ll hang up now, you have to go and pack. And forgive me if I’ve hurt you.’

  ‘How could you have?’

  ‘It’s possible to hurt someone without wanting to, even someone you love.’

  ‘The person you can hurt most is yourself. And then those you love, of course.’

  ‘I know that. So I’ll say cheerio. And don’t forsake me.’

  He and Hana were staying in a new hotel near Domažlice. Their room had a bathroom and a colour television, and there was a telephone on each of the bedside tables.

  ‘Do you like it?’ he asked his wife.

  ‘It’s unnecessarily luxurious.’

  ‘We could make a trip over the border to Regensburg tomorrow.’

  ‘Why Regensburg?’

  ‘It’s only a short drive from here and it’s a beautiful city. With an old cathedral.’

  ‘If you like.’

  ‘I thought you’d like it too.’

  ‘I’m happy wherever we are together.’

  ‘Do you fancy a little walk before dinner?’

  ‘That’s a good idea. I’ll just have to change my shoes.’

  ‘It’s ages since we’ve been for a walk together, isn’t it?’ he said as they left the hotel.

  ‘It’s because we’ve had so little time. Whenever you had a spare moment you had to visit your mum. And apart from that, you’ve had so much on your plate.’

  He had the feeling they hadn’t done much walking even when his mother was still well. Sometimes he got the impression that his wife was afraid of being left alone with him. Maybe it was more shyness than fear. And now it was he who avoided talking to her.

  They set off along a path that led between meadows. The edge of the path was yellow with hawkweed and cat’s ear and a kestrel circled above the meadow.

  ‘I wonder what the children are doing,’ Hana said.

  ‘They’re rejoicing at having got rid of us for a while.’

  His conversation with Hana tended to be mostly about the children. And sometimes she would tell him about goings-on in the hospital and he would share with her his parish concerns. They almost never talked about books. Hana had no time to read, even if she had the inclination. They only rarely went to the theatre and he didn’t watch television. Whenever they had guests, which was at least once a week, she would worry about what they would eat or drink and see to it they had fresh bed linen, but she seldom took part in the conversation, which generally dealt with theological issues or the situation in the church.

  Also he did not talk to her about things that happened to be on his mind, and he would prepare his sermons without discussing them with her.

  She differed from his first wife in almost every way, both in character and appearance, and maybe that was the very reason why he had never managed to be completely intimate with her, even though, until just recently, he had had nothing to conceal from her.

  They reached a bush that was covered in blackberries. He bent down and picked a handful of them to offer his wife.

  ‘You’re so kind to me, Dan.’

  ‘But it’s nothing at all.’

  ‘It’s lovely here. A pity Magda isn’t here, at least.’

  ‘Magda’s fine at your parents.’

  ‘I know. It just struck me that it would be nice if we were all together.’

  He stroked her hair and then took her by the hand and they continued along the footpath towards a village some distance away. He couldn’t remember the last time they had walked along like that, holding hands. But that time it must have been from a sincere feeling, whereas now he was trying to atone for his offence in some way. That was why he had booked an expensive hotel room and thought up the trip to Regensburg. He would buy her some clothes there, anything she fancied – as if that would in any way change what had happened or make up for anything. At most it would delay the moment when he would find sufficient courage – or hard-heartedness maybe – to tell her at least something of what he was perpetrating.

  ‘And I’m a bit worried about Eva too,’ Hana said a moment later. ‘Once someone starts to experiment with drugs, there is always the temptation to return to them. We oughtn’t to leave her for a long time at home on her own.’

  ‘We wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on her all the time anyway. If someone really has a mind to do something, there’s no way you can watch them continuously. They don’t even manage to keep the inmates in prison under permanent surveillance. All you can do is explain, entreat, ask and trust.’

  ‘When someone’s eighteen and on their own it’s a temptation for them. Besides which, she’s attracted to Petr.’

  ‘You’ve noticed that too?’

  ‘It’s not good. Not for her, anyway.’

  ‘Don’t worry. When she gets to the Conservatoire and into a different environment, she’ll find other friends.’

  They had dinner together in the hotel dining room and he prevailed on his wife not to look at the prices and just have what she liked.

  That night they lay down beside each other as always. The blue reflections of the neon signs shone into the room. He got up and drew the curtains.

  Then Hana said, ‘It’s been a lovely day, Dan. Did you enjoy it too?’

  His wife quickly fell asleep. It had been a long time since he made love to her.
He knew it gave her no pleasure, so he had the feeling he was molesting her or taking physical advantage of her.

  He could not get to sleep. It was his custom to meditate last thing at night, turning over in his mind everything that had happened or pondering on what he had to do in the coming days. Now it was as if everything, both the past and the future, fixed him with a reproachful look. He tried to pray. To think about a sermon. On what text? Put off your old nature which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and put on the new nature, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness. Therefore, putting away falsehood, let everyone speak the truth with his neighbour, for we are members one of another.(Ephesians 4: 22-25)

  For a moment he tried to summon up the image of his first wife and recall the words he used to lavish on her. The tender words returned but not the image of his first wife, instead the image of the new one– the one who had come on the day of his mother’s death – forced itself upon his consciousness. What had brought her to him? What was she intended to recall? His mother’s love or her death? Why had she appeared that particular day? Who had sent her – what force?

  He strove to dispel the picture of her face, but instead her voice imposed itself on him: Don’t forsake me!

  How was it possible not to forsake a person one wasn’t with and oughtn’t to be with? Or was it the despairing cry of someone who feels forsaken? Forsaken by whom?

  My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?

  Suddenly the telephone rang on his bedside table. He snatched up the receiver and in spite of the absurdity expected to hear the voice of the woman he had been thinking about.

  ‘Reception here,’ said the voice on the telephone. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you, but I noticed the stamp of a Protestant church in your identity card and thought you might be a pastor.’