The Ultimate Intimacy

by Ivan Klíma

  Daniel says nothing for a moment as is his wont, but she already knows that his silence does not simply mean silence. Daniel says nothing because he is in a quandary or is suffering a feeling of anxiety that he is departing more and more from his idea of how he ought to live. He is scared of the sin he is committing.

  ‘Will you come?’

  Daniel promises he will.

  All Souls’ Day is the following Wednesday. Immediately after lunch, Bára dashes to the hospital, stopping to buy Samuel not only fruit, but also a big bunch of asters. She brings with her a candlestick and a candle for her husband to light in memory of his dead, seeing that he is unable to visit their grave.

  Outside, the day is misty and damp, and the heavy sky oppresses even those who are in good health.

  Samuel is alone in a three-bed ward and doesn’t feel at all ill. He considers psychotherapy to be nonsense, and can see no good reason why he should talk about his relationship with his mother or about his first and second wives when his greatest pain – the wound from which his life has been draining away for years – is Bára. And he can’t understand why she has to visit him every day, when she only goes away again, leaving him at the mercy of loneliness and his doubts. Why isn’t she persuading him to come home straight away? Why isn’t she telling him that if he came home she would stay by him and take care of him and never wander off again? Why, instead of that, is she traipsing into the hospital with flowers and a candlestick as if the place wasn’t cluttered enough as it is? He scolds her for needlessly throwing money away on flowers.

  ‘I thought you’d be pleased,’ Bára says, stroking his forehead and telling him he looks really well today.

  Samuel can walk, of course, but now he deliberately lies on the bed and does not look in her direction. So Bára takes the vase and goes into the ugly bathroom to fetch some water in a battered bowl. As the water runs from the tap, Bára weeps. Then she puts the flowers in the vase, wipes her eyes and actually manages to force her mouth into something resembling a smile – since she is here to comfort, not to grieve. She returns to her husband and asks him if she should light the candle.

  Samuel says nothing. His silence does not mean mere silence or anxiety, instead it is the attempt of a powerless person to prove his superiority and his power. That power is now expressed solely in the ability to hurt – himself and her. So Bára lights the candle and gives him the news from the office. She also tells him she has bought Aleš some new shoes and helped him with his history homework and civic education. These future citizens are told about the unity of body and soul. Aleš had asked her what the soul was.

  Samuel stares at the ceiling. Maybe he isn’t listening, although it is quite likely he is but wants to demonstrate his lack of interest.

  ‘What is the soul?’ Bára asks him.

  And without looking in her direction, he says, ‘It’s what you lack.’ Eventually he looks towards her in order to see her reaction, so Bára says, ‘Thank you for the explanation, I’ll pass it on to Aleš.’ And she thinks of Daniel: Daniel wouldn’t have fobbed her off, he’d have tried to explain the soul, which he says is eternal. Daniel believes in something, something noble, unfathomable and mysterious, whereas her husband simply believes in his own strength and power, which is now gradually waning,

  She peels Samuel an orange, separating the segments and arranging them neatly on a saucer. Samuel displays no interest in the orange, because that would entail him showing interest in her, the source of everything bad in his life, including the fact he is lying here on a hospital bed and everyone stares at him as if he were a suicidal maniac.

  ‘Wouldn’t you like a bit of a walk?’ Bára suggests.

  To her astonishment, Samuel raises himself without a word and puts on his slippers. Then he walks out into the corridor at her side, shuffling his feet slightly. And Bára realizes that she is walking alongside an old man and she feels sorry for the man who is the father of her younger son, for the man she once loved more than anyone else, the man she once admired and revered, and whom, at the same time, she feared and whose love she longed most humbly to earn. She feels sorrow that Samuel never understood that love has to be gained through goodness of heart not through orders, that in spite of his horror of solitude he is driving himself into it because his harshness repels even his nearest and dearest.

  The hospital corridor is not a long one; men in blue-and-white striped dressing-gowns sit here and there on benches and in the autumn gloom they seem to her like figures from a prison drama.

  Samuel is now holding forth to her about himself and his prospects, and the unlikelihood of his ever returning to work. He feels he has lost not just interest in life, but also his powers of imagination; maybe the pills he swallowed have affected his mind. An architect without imagination is like a woodcarver without arms, she surely must appreciate that.

  It’s odd that he should say woodcarver. After all, Daniel does wood-carving. Sam might equally have said that an architect without imagination is like a pastor without faith. At that moment, she would have been worried that Samuel suspected something. But he suspects nothing, he simply has one of his depressions that can’t be checked even by chemicals or psychotherapy; Samuel is too strong a personality for that: stubborn and unbending, even though his strength is already on the wane. So Bára comforts him: everything will sort itself out again and he will be home in a few days; he’ll be properly rested and as soon as he gets back to the office he’ll see that his head will be teeming with ideas.

  ‘I’m too old,’ Samuel says, ‘I can’t cope with it all any more. If you want to leave you’re welcome.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Just what I said. Leave for good.’

  Bára is weeping again. She’d no intention of ever leaving him, had she? Not unless she died first.

  When they say goodbye she kisses Samuel on the mouth and notices that his lips are dry and he himself is cold: he doesn’t put his arms around her or hug her. Samuel’s body may still be alive, but his soul is already dead.

  Bára promises that she will come tomorrow morning and she rushes away because she must drive Aleš to her mother’s. On her way out, the senior consultant stops her in the corridor and invites her into his consulting room to ask her a few questions about Samuel’s past, and how often he used to have depressions. He wants to know whether any of his forebears had suffered from mental illness. Bára recalls Samuel’s mother who refused to associate with her on the grounds that Bára had been invaded by some dark and destructive forces. At the time, Bára used to put those irrational theories down to her age. Samuel himself always said as little as possible about his mother, and when, shortly after their marriage, she died, he never spoke about her again. So Bára tells the psychiatrist that she knows of no mental illness in Samuel’s family. None the less, the consultant is of the view that Samuel is not entirely fit and may never be again. His mind is hampered by delusions that are clearly paranoid in character. It will require extraordinary patience from her because Samuel’s delusions centre on her; she is their focal point. And the psychiatrist goes on to say that people are reluctant to recognize mental illness as an illness, even though it is a disease like any other: the patient requires love and understanding. While he is speaking to her the consultant gazes fixedly at Bára as if wanting to discover whether Samuel is indeed suffering from delusions or whether his beautiful wife isn’t in fact a beauty with the soul of a monster. And Bára bursts into tears for the third time that day.

  Finally, the consultant promises her that he will release Samuel next week, even though, in his view, he should be under permanent psychiatric supervision in future.

  Afterwards Bára drives Aleš to her mother’s. They are scarcely on the road when the boy asks her what she’ll be doing in the evening. She fobs him off with a story about tickets for the theatre.

  Being not just her son but also his father’s, Aleš is naturally curious to know who she’s going with, seeing that Dad’s in h
ospital. Bára snaps at him not to be so nosy. Then, suddenly ashamed of her evasiveness, she tells him she’s going with a friend. Aleš offers to stay at home with his brother, or even on his own, but Bára gives him a hug and tells him it would spoil her evening because she’d have him on her mind.

  Bára has to spend a few moments with her mother and then do some shopping for her as she now finds it hard to use the stairs. She does her own shopping at the same time. She ought to cook something, a celebratory dinner, but she feels too tired all of a sudden. It’s late already and she wouldn’t have time to prepare things in advance. Besides, she’s hardly going to waste the precious time she could be with Daniel on cooking. So she just buys the necessary ingredients for a cold supper. She drops off her mother’s shopping and takes leave of her and of Aleš, who is scarcely aware of her any more, since he is gawping at a television programme which is demonstrating a new car. Oh God, she really is a terrible mother to leave him at the mercy of these pictures of dead objects.

  Daniel is waiting for her in front of the telephone booth where they met the time when she called him out at night. He has brought her roses: white roses with a red border. ‘You’re crazy,’ she tells him and gets him to sit in the back seat. Luckily it’s autumn and already dark, so no one will notice there’s someone in the car. She drives him in the luxury jalopy right up to her house and asks him to stay in the car while she opens the entrance to the garage. She then drives him right into the garage where he is again told not to get out until she has closed all the doors: they can gain entry into the house direct from the garage. Only when they are inside at last does she kiss him. His lips are hot and moist.

  Daniel puts his arms around her and hugs her to him. His body is alive and so is his soul: she must ask him what the soul is.

  ‘Welcome,’ Bára says when they enter the lounge, where one of the lemon trees is in blossom and filling the place with an overpowering scent. Oddly enough she feels it somewhat inappropriate that Daniel should spend the night with her; it is her and Samuel’s home, after all.

  It’s sad, everything is so sad. All her life she has longed for love and whenever she thinks she has found it, she turns out to be mistaken. Is she mistaken now?

  There are four enormous black armchairs in the lounge. She sits him in one of these and switches on just the small light above the drinks cabinet. She brings a bottle of wine and glasses and, for the second time today, goes to fill a vase with water. The bathroom is tiled with Italian tiles that fit together to form flower shapes. Samuel’s dressing-gown is hanging from a hook. In the corner, Samuel’s slippers await his return. Especially warm slippers, because Samuel usually suffers from the cold. People with cold hearts tend to have cold feet too. Samuel’s toothbrush is missing from its glass.

  And Samuel is missing from the flat. For a split second she is gripped with anxiety that he will turn up out of the blue, see the roses, see Daniel and hurl himself at her and kill her – kill them both.

  The water is already pouring over the edge of the vase and Bára thinks about how she used to love Samuel. All of a sudden, she conjures up past embraces, secret rendezvous, making love in borrowed flats, declarations of love and mutual reassurance. Will you ever leave me? Never. We’ll never leave each other! He hasn’t left her. Samuel has never gone back on his word.

  Before going to join Daniel, Bára glimpses herself in the mirror. She looks tired. She can’t ignore the wrinkles on her face. She is weary: she’s old and worn out. A vampire has been sitting on her back for years: not a real vampire, they kill you, just a little vampire bat that has slowly sucked her blood and drained her strength. Bára unties the ribbon holding back her hair and lets it fall about her face, concealing it slightly. It’s something she knows men like.

  She arranges the roses and returns to Daniel. ‘You’re always bringing me flowers,’ she says, ‘I bet you could never be nasty to me.’

  ‘Nobody could be nasty to you, could they?’

  They drink to each other. Then Daniel asks how her husband is. Bára answers that he is better and says he’ll be coming home next week.

  Daniel says it’s good news.

  ‘You were afraid he’d die and you’d be lumbered with me?’

  The question leaves Daniel flabbergasted, but before he has time to utter any rash assurances, Bára sidetracks her own question by saying she too is glad that Sam is better. It’s just that it’s impossible to envisage what their life will be like from now on. Samuel says he intends to stay at home, which means he’ll want her to spend all her free time with him and she won’t even have the tiny bit of freedom she managed to wrest for herself lately.

  ‘The amount of freedom one has depends on how much one wants it.’

  ‘I know but I’m not self-assertive enough,’ Bára admits. ‘I completely lack the will when it comes to my own needs.’ Then she mentions what the consultant told her today. Maybe he really does think that Bára has driven her husband to despair.

  She observes Daniel and notices that he has become a trifle uneasy. His clerical conscience has no doubt taken fright at that prospect and his own involvement. ‘Do you also believe I drove him to it?’ She doesn’t give him time to answer but shouts at him, ‘You’re like all the rest, you think it’s the woman’s place to put up with it all. And your commandments even give you a rod for her back.’

  ‘But I broke them with you, just as you did with me.’

  ‘Why do you think such vile things about me, then?’

  ‘I don’t!’

  ‘Fifteen years I was faithful to him and scarcely glanced at any other men, but he used to bully me long before I knew you existed, before I knew that someone like you could actually exist.’

  ‘I believe that you loved him.’

  ‘First he courted me, then he started to educate me. After that he started to regard me as his servant, then as his enemy and now as some kind of monster that deceives him every moment of the day and night. He’s got hold of a revolver – as protection against criminals, he says. But I’m the greatest criminal of all, aren’t I! How am I supposed to put up with this to the end of my days?’

  ‘I don’t accuse you of anything.’

  ‘But you do think I’ve hurt him.’

  ‘People hurt each other when they live together without love.’

  ‘I looked after him the whole of that time. You know yourself. I almost never had a moment left for you.’

  ‘I know you to be someone who wouldn’t want to hurt anyone else.’

  ‘If you thought I would, I wouldn’t be sitting here with you.’ She stretches out her hand to him and he kisses it. Then Bára gets up to go and fix them something to eat, but first she takes a video-cassette out of a cupboard, puts it in the video-player and suggests that in the meantime he should watch a film in which she played one of her bit parts. She abandons him to coloured shadows of herself.

  No sooner does she get to the kitchen than the phone rings. It is Vondra, her office colleague, asking her to have a look with him at a project from the National Savings Bank for the reconstruction of a building. It’s a splendid contract worth several million. She tells him she’ll take a look at it tomorrow.

  And how’s Samuel making out? What is she doing with herself? Isn’t she feeling lonely all on her own with the nights closing in?

  As if she were necessarily on her own just because her husband has swallowed some pills. Or because that young Casanova hasn’t yet invited her for a glass of wine. She peeps into the lounge, where Daniel is dutifully watching the screen, but even though he has his back to her, Bára senses that he is not taking in anything that is happening on the screen. Daniel is still unsettled by her presence, he is still burdened by the awareness of committing something that conflicts with his faith and the commands he accepted long ago. Daniel is a big, superannuated child. He had definitely not had many women – probably only the two he had lawfully married – and had not been unfaithful to either of them.

  Neverth
eless he comes to her and is here now, which means that he loves her more than his principles and his vocation, more than peace of mind and a clear conscience. He loves her more than his wife, but he would still never leave his wife. He wouldn’t even do it on her account. He is more likely to leave Bára. He’ll leave her as soon as his infatuation passes and she will remain alone once more with a half-crazed Samuel who hates her and sucks her strength.

  The phone rings once more. This time it is Samuel himself asking her if she is saving all the bills, as they will be needed for claiming tax relief. Bára reassures him that she is, even though she knows full well that at this moment Samuel has not the slightest interest in the bills. He merely wants to find out whether she’s home. She asks Sam how he is and he snaps back, ‘What makes you so interested all of a sudden?’

  ‘I’ll come and see you again in the morning,’ Bára promises. ‘Now go and get some rest. Don’t think about the bills any more, think of something pleasant.’

  ‘Like what, for instance?’ and this time there is a note of genuine, unfeigned despair in Samuel’s voice. And she realizes that this man, her husband, truly doesn’t know of anything pleasant to think about, and she has no advice to give him, nor has she the strength, at this moment, to reassure him of her love. She brings the call to an end, then quickly slices some bread and prepares a cold supper. There is the sound of the piano from the lounge; the video must have finished. Those phone calls have taken up too much of Bára’s time. For a moment she remains in the doorway listening to Daniel’s playing.

  Then she enters the lounge and starts to set out the plates and cutlery. ‘What was that you were playing?’ she asks.

  ‘Nothing much, just some tunes that come to me when I’m thinking about you.’

  ‘You think about me when you’re at home?’