by Ivan Klíma
Samuel doesn’t listen to her. ‘What about Aleš?’
‘I’ll phone Mum to bring him. Or should I go and pick him up in the car?’
‘Why didn’t you pick him up on the way?’
‘I wanted to get home as soon as possible. In case you came in early and had to wait here on your own.’
‘I did come in early and I did wait here on my own.’
‘I’m sorry about that, I really am,’ and she adopts an expression as if she really was sorry. ‘How did you make out?’
For the second time he says it went well, excellently, in fact.
‘I’m pleased. And most of all I’m pleased you’re home.’ She acts as if she really was pleased and waits for him to kiss her after all, but he would sooner give her a thrashing and get out of her where she really has been and how long she’s been carrying that bottle around in her handbag as an excuse and what those drops are really to prevent, that’s if the bottle contains drops for preventing anything. He turns on his heel and goes to his room.
‘Aren’t you going to eat?’ Bára calls after him.
‘There isn’t anything yet.’
‘I’ll make something straight away. But I’ll just call Mum first and ask her to bring Aleš.’
‘It’s too late,’ he says. ‘Surely you don’t want your mother dragging him home through the city in the dark?’
In his room he sits down at his enormous desk and switches on his computer, but he doesn’t feel like working. It occurs to him that he will never again create anything decent or original anyway. He’s getting on for sixty and there are other, younger and more ambitious fellows with much better opportunities than he ever had, with different backgrounds and happier homes, maybe. What he hasn’t managed to achieve so far, he never will.
He can feel the despondency growing in him, as well as anger with Bára. He had asked her where she had been for so long and he had accepted her excuse, not letting on that he totally disapproves of her dumping their son on his grandmother instead of taking care of him, and there is no way he can agree to her wandering off God knows where, with God knows who the moment his back is turned.
At that moment, the door of the flat bangs: it is his stepson coming in. As usual, he mistakes the front hall for some woods and is whistling some mind-numbing pop song.
Samuel rushes out of his den and gives Saša a ticking-off.
Saša looks offended and says he has hardly done anything terrible. He didn’t know his dear daddy was home, he was supposed to be away.
Samuel explains to him that one acts civilly at home even if one is on one’s own.
His stepson asks him what is so uncivil about someone whistling to himself at home when he is on his own.
Samuel starts to yell that he’s had enough of such rudeness and impertinence.
Bára peeps into the front hall and asks what he’s annoyed about.
Samuel, his voice faltering with annoyance, informs her that he has reason enough to be annoyed. He has come home to an empty flat. One of the children has been dumped on his grandmother and the other is out mooching around somewhere, and it’s no surprise seeing that his mother sets such a splendid example.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Bára asks.
‘That no home would be better than such a home as this.’
‘Nobody’s forcing you to stay here,’ Bára says.
‘Stop fighting,’ Saša begs them, afraid that a row is brewing between them. ‘After all, nothing so terrible has happened.’
‘Does that mean you want a divorce?’ Samuel asks.
‘You’re the one who doesn’t feel at home here.’
‘And are you trying to say this is a home?’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Bára shouts, ‘what’s a home supposed to be then? Am I supposed to sit at home like a slave even when my lord and master isn’t meant to be here?’
‘And what about the children?’
‘Children, children. The boy’s not even allowed to whistle in the front hall.’
‘Your son does too much whistling.’
‘My son is not allowed to whistle because he’s my son,’ Bára shouts. ‘If you loved me just a little bit you’d love him too.’
‘If you loved me just a little bit, you’d behave differently.’
‘If I behaved differently – it’s always me. I spend my time running around you like a maidservant and when did you last even say a kind word to me?’
‘If you were to behave differently I might say kind words to you.’
‘What is behaving differently supposed to mean?’
‘Not behaving like a tart!’
‘What did you say?’
Samuel can feel the blood rushing to his head and at the same time he feels a sharp pain in the region of his heart: she’ll actually cause him to have a heart attack.
Bára sobs and her son comforts her. Samuel turns on his heel and without a word locks himself in his room.
He feels like breaking something. He picks up the newspaper, crumples it up and throws it in the basket; then he kicks the basket, which overturns and scatters papers all around the room.
Coloured stars move around on the computer screen. He stares at them for a moment; he could throw the computer on the ground, but he knows that he won’t, he’ll just switch it off to stop it irritating him.
His anger gradually gives way to despair.
He opens the top drawer of his desk in which all his various medicines are neatly arranged and he takes two diazepam tablets to calm his nerves, although he knows that no tablets will help him. She’s the only one who can help him, that damned woman. If only she were to come and say: I love you, I don’t want to be with anyone, anyone, anyone but you because you’re the best man in the world. The best man of all – the way she used to repeat it when they first met, when she was fighting to win him and to get him to marry her.
Then he remembers how they spent a holiday in the firm’s chalet in the Western Tatras three years after their marriage. She was already expecting Aleš and couldn’t go on hikes. So he and two of his colleagues set off on a long hike to Ostrý Rohá via Baníkov. When they set out in the morning it looked like the start of a sunny summer day, but on the return journey the weather changed completely and a storm arrived with hail, fog and cold. They were obliged to shelter for some time beneath a rocky cliff, and instead of returning at dusk they didn’t get back until late at night.
When at last they arrived totally exhausted, she threw herself on him, hugging him and kissing him and helping him out of his wet clothes and rubbing his frozen feet, all the while repeating over and over again how she had been afraid for him, and had actually prayed for him to return safe and sound, and how happy she now was that he was back with her again. Then all of a sudden she burst into tears. He asked her why she was crying and she said, ‘because I love you so much and couldn’t live without you’.
It occurs to Samuel that if he had died that night he would have died happy, because he was loved. Still young and loved. He won’t ever manage that now, he has lost his chance to die young and loved. His chest tightens more and more with self-pity and he notices that his face is wet. Now it is he who is crying; he is crying because if he were to die now Bára would not even shed a tear, instead she would probably heave a sigh of relief.
If only he had the strength to leave this hell, this insecurity. If only he had sufficient determination to be alone. If only he had just one pillar to lean on. Samuel sits crumpled up in his armchair. He listens to the movements in the flat. But his stepson isn’t whistling any more and Bára has most likely locked herself in her bedroom. He would wait in vain for her to come and ask him to forgive her.
It strikes Samuel that he should buy himself a dog to share his dog’s life with him.
5
First thing in the morning, Dr Wagner rushed into the parish office and informed Daniel that he had some important news for him about his father. He had managed to find a man in the minis
try who had access to the secret police files and he was willing to let him have a look at them. ‘I needed it in connection with something else but as I was there I asked him whether I might not take a look at your father’s file too, if it existed. He brought it to me and I discovered that it contained no agreement signed by your father.’
Wagner then started to explain that State Security classified their collaborators into several categories. At the lowest level were the ‘confidants’ who were often unaware what they were being used for. For instance, it was enough to persuade a doctor to send someone for spa treatment or clinical examination and that would allow their agents to enter his flat undisturbed in order to install a bugging device or photograph something.
‘The doctor would have to have been willing to do what they wanted,’ Daniel commented.
‘But they wouldn’t introduce themselves as secret policemen, would they? They would pretend to be someone who was concerned about the health of one of his subordinates. Or as the chairman of the trade union branch. On other occasions, they would pretend to be investigating some crime or other.’
‘Do you think they merely took advantage of my father, then?’
‘Definitely.’
‘For how long?’
‘That’s the second piece of good news. Less than two years. Then your father, as is clear from the report of his controlling officer, started to suspect they were playing some game with him and began talking to his friends about it, and that fact was reported by one of the secret police agents working in the hospital. So they terminated the connection.’
‘When did all this happen?’
‘Shortly after your father’s release from prison. Inter alia they classified him as a ‘has-been’, on account of that house of your grandfather’s.’
‘Poor old Dad. They would stick a label on people and shove them into a category from which there was no escape.’
‘But your father did escape, as you can see.’
Yes, the best way of escaping them was by departing from this world. Dad managed that seventeen years ago.
‘Thank you very much, I’m extremely grateful.’ He ought to make a greater show of gratitude and pleasure, even though, as he noted to his surprise, he felt nothing of the kind. He was too aware of his own burden to feel any real sense of relief at that moment. None the less he said, ‘I am in your debt, very much so.’ Then the thought struck him: ‘Figuratively and literally. I expect that information must have cost you something, not to mention the time that you have spent on obtaining it.’
‘But Reverend, I did it on account of your father’s good name. Moreover, as I explained to you, I got in contact with that fellow in connection with another matter.’
Dr Wagner took his leave and it struck Daniel that it was possible that the file the lawyer had seen had also contained details about his father’s private life. The thought that a member of his congregation might know about his father’s peccadilloes, and perhaps even the names of his mistresses, did not cheer him.
Fortunately no one was keeping a file on him any more, or so Daniel hoped.
However, if they weren’t keeping a file on him, he was keeping one himself by storing Bára’s letters. It would be more sensible to get rid of them, but they seemed to him so special, so full of love, that he could not bring himself to destroy a single one. But he ought to do something with them, all the same. Take them to his mother’s flat and transcribe them in a secret code, or translate them into a little-known language like Hebrew and then discard the originals.
When, after supper, he shared Wagner’s news about his father with Hana, she said, ‘There you are. And all the torment you had.’
‘Only for a while. Then I said to myself that it was already outside the statute of limitations whether it happened or not. Still, I’m glad that Dad didn’t lead some secret life,’ he quickly added.
‘There’s something I was wanting to tell you too,’ his wife said in such a serious tone that it made him jump.
However, what she was wanting to tell him had nothing to do with the concealed part of his life, but concerned her work. She had more and more worries in the hospital; sometimes she came home completely exhausted. And now that her salary was no longed needed, it had been occurring to her that she could find some other work for which she could be her own boss, to a small degree at least. What if she were to try and set up a diaconal centre here in the house? She would enjoy being involved in its work. But she immediately added, as if she was suddenly startled at daring to make such a radical proposal, that she didn’t want to add to Daniel’s worries, and she realized how much effort it would require.
But her idea appealed to Daniel. If he could get fully involved in that kind of work, he could excuse himself from his other duties, for a time at least. Caring for the handicapped was not the same as preaching about the Son of God or officiating at the Lord’s Supper while entertaining doubts about himself and the institution.
Furthermore, in establishing a diaconal centre he could find a use for the money that he still felt ashamed of possessing, or rather he was ashamed of the way he had used it so far.
He promised that he would speak with the moderator of presbytery and the director of Diakonia. Hana could definitely quit the hospital as soon as it was possible.
As he was passing the children’s room, he overheard Magda screeching. He went in and discovered Marek fighting over some object with his sister.
‘Tell him to leave me alone, Daddy,’ Magda begged, ‘he’s taking my things!’
‘Look, Dad,’ Marek said accusingly, ‘she buys these stupid sprays that are full of CFCs.’ He manages to wrest two metal containers from Magda’s hands and displays them to Daniel triumphantly.
‘Why are you taking them from her?’
‘But that’s what I’m telling you: they’re full of CFCs.’
‘What do you need them for, Magda?’
‘Nothing. But they’re mine. I bought them.’
‘What does she need them for? To spray stupid signs on walls.’
‘Is that true, Magda?’
‘It’s none of his business.’ Magda had tears in her eyes. ‘He’s got no right to boss me about.’
‘And what do you write?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Magda!’
‘Love, for instance,’ Magda said.
‘And what else?’
‘Nothing else. Just that. And once I sprayed a bird. A flamingo.’
‘I think Marek’s right. There’s nothing nice about spraying things on walls.’
‘Love is nice, and so are flamingos.’
‘That’s precisely why you shouldn’t spray them on walls.’
‘The others do it.’
‘That doesn’t make it any cleverer.’
‘So make him give me back the sprays.’
‘Give them back to her, Marek. And don’t you spray anywhere with them.’
Marek stood the tins up on the top of her wardrobe, out of Magda’s reach, and left without a word.
‘First you tip things on passers-by from the window and throw spiders at them, and now you’re writing nonsense on walls.’
‘What am I supposed to do then, Daddy?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘To have a bit of fun.’
He was about to tell her that having fun wasn’t the only purpose of living, but at that moment the phone rang in the next room.
‘Daniel, I’m sorry to be calling like this but something terrible has happened. Sam has gone and swallowed a whole lot of his pills.’
Something like this had to happen, naturally. What they had done could not go unpunished. He feared the answer when he asked, ‘Is he alive?’
‘Yes.’ Bára hurriedly explained how she had woken up in the night and heard strange noises. She had found Samuel in his room. The noise had been his choking. On the bedside table, he had left two empty tubes of his anti-depressant tablets. And a farewell note. The first thing s
he did was call an ambulance. She had been in the hospital until Sam revived a short while ago.
‘What did the note say?’
‘What notes like that usually say. That he’s old and has nothing to look forward to, that he’s just a burden on everyone and on me in particular. That he feels I yearn for freedom and so he is giving it to me.’
‘I’ll come and see you.’
‘No, not now. I have to go back to the hospital, he needs me there. I just had to tell you, that’s all.’
‘I’d like to help you somehow.’
‘I don’t know what you could do to help. There is one thing, though. Tell me you’re not cross with me for always adding to your worries, and tell me you won’t forsake me!’
6
Bára
Bára now divides her time between visits to the psychiatric hospital where they continue to hold her husband and work in the office where she is obliged to stand in for Samuel. She feels sorry for Samuel’s suffering. At the same time, however, she feels a long-forgotten sense of freedom, with no one to watch over her, no one to tell her off for coming in late, no one demanding that she create the semblance of a home by her constant presence, care and tenderness. Daniel calls her each morning and sometimes in the evening and they usually talk about Samuel and how his action will affect her life. Daniel is a good listener who isn’t trying to catch her out all the time and tell her off in order to demonstrate his male superiority. Bára has the feeling that Daniel shares all her worries, anxieties and doubts, so it is easy to talk to him.
She can’t make the trip to lay a wreath on the grave of her grandparents since she has to visit Samuel every day in hospital, but she is loath to lose the opportunity of spending at least one night with Daniel. She suggests that they could spend it in her flat. There’s no chance of Samuel being discharged at night and she won’t be visiting him then either. She’ll send Aleš to his grandmother’s for the night and Saša can sleep at a friend’s place.
