The Ultimate Intimacy

by Ivan Klíma

  Then some kind of bailiff came over and manacled me before leading me from the court. I was expecting to be led to a stake where I would be burnt, but that before then I would be given the opportunity to recant, even though I was no longer sure what I was to recant and what to proclaim. The fellow didn’t lead me to the stake but to some open space where two immense brewers’ dray horses stood. I was ordered to lie down between them so that my head was at the hindquarters of the one and my feet at the hindquarters of the other. Then they attached some kind of straps to me and harnessed them to the horses. I heard a shout and then the crack of a whip. The horses took the strain each in opposite directions – I was to be torn asunder. I could feel my muscles tautening, the tension was gradually transformed into unbearable pain.

  When I awoke, I realized that I really could feel a pain somewhere between my stomach and my heart. I wasn’t sure whether I was to attribute the pain to the dream or vice versa.

  I raised myself slightly. My wife was sleeping peacefully at my side. Her presence calmed me and the pain seemed to recede.

  It suddenly struck me: Is this still my wife?

  3

  Daniel announced to the elders his intention to relinquish his pastoral duties for a period of several months. The building of the diaconal centre was taking up too much of his time, in addition to which he would like to concentrate on preparing the exhibition of his carvings that was due to open at the end of spring. Neither of those reasons was the real one, but the elders received his request with understanding and accepted his proposal that Reverend Marie Hajková should stand in for him while he was on special leave.

  For his farewell sermon he chose his text from Paul’s letter to the Philippians:

  Therefore, my beloved, as you have always obeyed, so now, not only as in my presence but much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for God is at work in you, both to will and to work for his good pleasure. Do all things without grumbling or questioning, that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom you shine as lights in the world …

  Thus he took leave of them as a good and conscientious shepherd who leaves the flock entrusted to him, in the knowledge that it stands aside from the crooked and perverse world just as he himself does.

  Was such an exhortation, such a challenge, a sign of pride or simply of a yearning for a fairer world? Could anyone be denied that yearning?

  Those who yearned to become the children of God, he declared, often looked upon those around them as pitiable wretches, who regarded their stomachs as their god, whose thoughts were earth-bound, who took pride in things they should be ashamed of. In other words, they regarded the rest as a crooked and perverse generation. And when we also look at the world around us, it appears to be going to ruin, and that the whole of life is being increasingly transformed into a dance around the golden calf. But let us not be haughty or proud, let our hearts not be hardened by our severe assessment of our neighbours. It is not our task to condemn them, it is our task to do our best with our lives and realize that each of us will go astray. Our lives cannot be without blemish, but there is hope for us in that the Lord Jesus Christ will not forsake us, that in Him we have a light that will shine in the darkness and lead us back out of it.

  Daniel spoke and as in a mist he could make out familiar faces; he knew everyone gathered here, knew them by name, knew their life stories, their cares, their jobs, the names of their children.

  Large flakes of spring snow swirled outside the window. Like that time a year ago. All of a sudden that critical day came back to him: that is if it were possible to designate a particular day as a turning point. His mother was dying and he was endeavouring to rekindle his faith, to rekindle it or to beg for its return, for the return of his belief in the immortality of the human spirit. And at the very moment, when his thoughts were taking a completely different direction, into these confines stepped a woman who was destined and willing to transform his life utterly.

  His thoughts wandered to the past while his lips spoke of the importance of bringing light into the lives of others. Nothing in your life is more important than that. To be a light in the life of your neighbour means more than any wealth, more than any power.

  He didn’t say that for years he had striven for it, had tried to live that way, and perhaps he had indeed lived that way in spite of all his mistakes. Daniel felt a sudden pang of regret that something of importance in his life was coming to an end, something so important that it was as if his very life was ending. He struggled to control his voice, while at the same time he became aware of a real pain gripping his chest.

  He had survived the time of oppression but not the time of freedom.

  When the sermon ended, silence descended on the chapel. Had he announced that he was leaving his post for good, someone would most likely be rushing up with a bouquet and a speech of thanks, but he had kept his defection secret, so they all simply waited for him to introduce his replacement. He led her to his place and allowed her to say a prayer and the blessing.

  He did not go out into the street; the weather outside was too inclement. So he and Marie said goodbye to the congregation in the passage. People shook him by the hand and wished him all the best, voicing the hope that the building work would soon be successfully completed and that he would also enjoy success with his carvings. Everyone wanted to know the date of the exhibition and he promised to let them know in good time.

  He still had to go to his office where he and Marie received the money from today’s collection from Brother Kodet. Here he handed over to Marie various keys, promising that he would, of course, still attend the next elders’ meetings and the Bible study class. Then he went downstairs to his workshop.

  A half-finished carving sat on the small workbench: a man astride a small donkey. Jesus entering Jerusalem. How many artists, both renowned and unknown, had portrayed that event, which may never have happened?

  He took the gouges from their case and started to hone them on a small oilstone before sitting down to carve.

  A few days earlier the gallery owner who had promised him the exhibition had visited him to ask how the preparations were coming along. He had also taken a look at the latest carvings and seemed to be delighted with them. He maintained that they were not just better from a technical point of view, they were also better in terms of expression, in the way that his figures, through each of their details, expressed a turmoil of mind and emotion that was almost tumultuous.

  The gallery owner’s praise had gratified him although he ought to have told him that the mental and emotional turmoil in the wood reflected a far more passionate and tumultuous agitation in his soul.

  He had preached today for the last time. He had told no one, not even himself, but he knew that he would never again return to the pulpit. Was it because of the woman who had entered the chapel unexpectedly and uninvited?

  No, he had brought it on himself; the woman simply stood at the end of a path he had embarked on a long time before she appeared. He had been guilty of deception before then, when he had concealed his doubts about the fundamentals, about the message he brought and about the Christ he proclaimed.

  His only excuse was that he had deceived himself too. He wanted so much to believe in everything he preached, to believe that God assumed human form, that He suffered, that He died on the cross, that He descended into a vague and unimaginable hell and on the third day rose again from the dead. That He ascended into a heaven that was situated in a vague and unimaginable space, and there sat down at the right hand of His Father, God Almighty, where He will remain until the day He returns to earth to judge the living and the dead. He wished to believe it and so he used to convince himself that everything was just the way he preached it, precisely because it was unbelievable and inconceivable. He wanted to believe it because if nothing he preached was true, then life would be no more than a meaningless cluster of
days between the beginning and the end, between the eternity that preceded it and the eternity that would come after.

  Previously he had trodden paths that people had followed for centuries and now all of a sudden he found himself in the middle of an immense plain devoid of paths. He could set off in any direction. Admittedly he could not see the end of the plain but he knew that whichever direction he took he would eventually confront an insurmountable, bottomless abyss.

  He had done what he could to dispel that image of an open space leading to an abyss that engulfed everything and everyone, but he had not succeeded.

  He was conscious of a cold panic, dizziness and gripping heart pain.

  He ought to get up and leave this tiny room, go and find his children, his wife, go and make love to Bára. He ought to kneel down here before this unfinished carving of Jesus on a donkey and beg for the gift of faith that alone could dispel the anxiety, bridge the abyss and offer the grace that is denied to all other life.

  He didn’t kneel down.

  The pain in his chest grew.

  He got up and walked over to the window. There was a sudden break in the clouds and the heavens were revealed. Beyond them an endless universe. Billions and billions of stars. An infinity of time and space. And astonishingly, there was no place in it any longer – no fitting place in it – for a God who had become man and watched over events on this insignificant planet.

  Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead and turned cold; Daniel realized he was beginning to fall. Everything started to rush away from him. And tomorrow he had a date with Bára; how would he get there? He groped around him for something to hold on to.

  4

  Hana

  This is Daniel’s fourth day in intensive care, so Hana returns to the hospital, this time as a volunteer nurse. The heart attack was fairly extensive, affecting almost a quarter of the cardiac muscle, but the doctors are satisfied with the progress of his recovery so far.

  Hana sits by Daniel’s bed holding his hand and trying to appear calm to boost his confidence and strength. Each day she tells him again how everyone is praying for him, at home and in the congregation, how people call the manse asking how he is. Hana smiles at Daniel, strokes his hand and tells him for what must be the hundredth time already that everything will be fine, his heart will have a little scar, but otherwise it will be back to normal and serve him for a long time to come, except that he’ll have to take care not to overdo things, and when he comes home he’ll have to have a proper rest. After all, he has scarcely had a holiday in recent years.

  Daniel gazes at her in silence. It’s as if old age has crept into his blue-grey eyes, or rather, as Hana has come to know so well during her thirty years in the hospital, it’s as if an intense weariness stared out of them.

  Hana then reports on how the rebuilding work at the manse is progressing; the potter’s wheel is already installed and the joiner is putting up shelving. Máša comes to the manse every other day; she has been looking out books and already has several boxes full, most of them for children.

  Daniel asks after Máša’s children.

  There will be a new court hearing next week and Dr Wagner believes Máša will get the children back. She will have to declare that the paper in which she relinquished the children was signed under pressure from her husband. Even a few weeks ago she would have been incapable of declaring anything of the sort, but at least now she has recovered somewhat from the shock of her husband’s abandoning her. Hana always makes a point of talking to her about it in order to give her encouragement.

  Finally, Hana tells him about Magda and Marek who can’t wait for Daniel to be moved on to the general ward where they will be able to visit him. Then she dries up. She is not sure what interests Daniel at this moment. She fears that her concerns may seem remote to him, that other people’s worries must seem preposterous, seeing that his body and particularly his soul are contending with the weariness that Hana can detect in his eyes. She ought to do something to cheer him up but she doesn’t know what. So she tells him how much she misses him. She says, ‘I love you, Dan. You’re the person I’m fondest of. When you come home I’ll take care of you and make sure everything’s all right. We’ll take a trip down to my folks perhaps, or anywhere you like.’

  Tears suddenly appear in Daniel’s eyes and his lips move silently.

  ‘Were you wanting to say something?’ Hana asks. She wipes away the tears and hands him a glass of tea to moisten his lips.

  Daniel asks, for the first time, ‘How did it happen?’

  And Hana tells him how he was a long time coming to lunch and how she went down to the workshop and found him lying by the window, groaning.

  ‘I got an awful fright,’ Hana says. Her immediate thought was that it might be his heart so she called the emergency services. ‘They brought you here and you’ve been here ever since.’

  ‘That’s what I thought,’ Daniel says and closes his eyes.

  ‘I was at your side all the first night, but you didn’t know anything about it.’

  Before going, Hana pours fresh tea into his glass and changes the water in the vase containing roses that Daniel probably doesn’t even notice.

  Then she gives Daniel a kiss and promises to come again in the afternoon.

  ‘What’s the time now?’ Daniel asks her.

  Hana says it is nearly noon. She just wants to check that Magda is safely home from school and give the workmen something to eat.

  ‘You don’t have to come,’ Daniel says. ‘They are taking good care of me here and I’m getting better, aren’t I? You said so yourself.’

  ‘No, I want to be with you!’

  At home she finds everything as it should be. Magda is chatting with the joiner, who is having a beer. Magda is scarcely aware of her mother as she tells the joiner how two boys in her class lay down in the middle of the street and were almost run over by a lorry. ‘The driver leapt out of the cab …’

  ‘Aren’t you even going to ask how Dad is?’

  ‘I can tell he’s better,’ Magda says.

  ‘How can you tell?’

  ‘You’d be crying otherwise. And what did Dad say?’

  ‘He said he was looking forward to seeing you all.’

  ‘So are we,’ she says and gets ready to finish her story.

  The joiner is looking for some drawings that he was talking to Daniel about, but Daniel hadn’t had a chance to give them to him.

  Hana promises to try and find them. She goes to Daniel’s office; the desk is locked and there is nothing resembling drawings or plans lying on it or on the shelves. Then it dawns on her that Daniel would probably have taken all his things home, since he had handed the office over to Marie on the very Sunday that it happened.

  So Hana goes up to Daniel’s room. Here too the desk is locked, but a bunch of his keys remains in the flat. One by one Hana unlocks the drawers in which there are stacked dozens of labelled files. Hana has no idea what the drawings are supposed to look like so she looks for a file with a label saying something like DIACONAL CENTRE, but finds nothing of the sort. The best thing will be to ask Daniel in the afternoon.

  In the very bottom drawer, beneath all the files, lies a black notebook without a label. Hana opens it almost involuntarily and recognizes Daniel’s handwriting, and her eye just happens to fall on her own name. She cannot resist the temptation even though she’s in a hurry, and she reads how Daniel could not relate his dreams to her. Then she turns over several pages at random and discovers an unfamiliar woman’s name.

  Hana sits down at the desk and reads Daniel’s diary, all about her husband making love to some unknown female. Hana’s heart thumps so hard that she feels she is about to suffocate. She tries to persuade herself that Daniel was writing some sort of story, that he had dreamt up a fictional account to use in some article or other, or in a sermon, but as she reads on there can be no doubt that this is Daniel’s record of his own life: an incredible double life led behind her back, behind the
backs of their children and everyone who trusted him. Hana closes the notebook and puts it back where she found it. She is at a loss as to what to do next. How is she to go to the hospital, how is she to speak to Daniel knowing something that she obviously wasn’t supposed to know: that he lied, even to the children, that he had concealed a whole part of his life, possibly the most important part?

  Somehow she couldn’t grasp the extent of what had happened, as if what she had seen on paper hadn’t yet become reality.

  Could it really have happened? Could the man she trusted most of all have deceived her? How could he have done it while preaching to others how they should live? If it really had happened, what or whom would she ever dare believe again? Perhaps it was all just a terrible misunderstanding. She needed to talk to Daniel about it.

  Tears run down Hana’s face. She feels defiled, the way she did the time when that unknown man raped her not far from Písek.

  It occurs to her that she should have heeded her conscience and gone off to Bosnia to help the wounded, perhaps a bullet would have found her and she wouldn’t have had to live through this moment.

  And she was such a fool that she had actually had qualms of conscience on the few occasions she had nostalgically recalled the lonely journalist who liked telling stories about China.

  How is she now to behave towards a man who has deceived her, with whom she has children and who at this moment is balancing between life and death?

  And suddenly it strikes her that Daniel’s heart gave way precisely because he was not equipped for a life of duplicity. After all, Daniel was almost childlike – neither disloyal, nor deceitful. He was defenceless, more than anything else, in a world in which everyone was out for himself. Anyone could pull the wool over his eyes with fine words. He had believed Petr and apparently he believed some unscrupulous tart who had muddled his head and then latched on to him the way such women know how, and Daniel was unable to shake her off; he wasn’t able to abandon his home or abandon the other one and in his desperation he let himself be dragged along almost to his death.