Lovers for a Day

by Ivan Klíma

  He paid for the wine. The tip alone would have bought three lunches at the canteen. He had scarcely forty crowns left.

  ‘Now I hope you’ll let me go,’ she said at the bottom of the steps. But the question already contained the answer. After all, there was nothing to stop her leaving, there was no need to ask him. Now was the moment to come up with some brilliant subject. Or an anecdote. But he had spent the last days deep in worms.

  ‘I won’t,’ he said perfunctorily. Last winter he had almost perished in the mountains. Well, that was a bit of an exaggeration, but it had been quite an experience anyway. How could he tactfully steer the conversation towards winter? In the meantime he asked, ‘Do you go to the Semafor?’

  ‘As if you cared.’

  ‘That’s real modern music. It manages to cheer you up, even when you know the next moment could be your last.’ How was that for an ace conversational move! He glanced in her direction but her expression showed no trace of interest.

  So he started to describe the dreadful fog, the howling storm, the ice crystals whipping into his face, his breath freezing at his lips.

  She walked beside him, indifferent, concentrating on where she was placing her feet and staring straight ahead. It was four in the afternoon and the streets were starting to fill with people who swarmed into shops, hot and sweaty, gaping at shop windows, and barging into him. The queue in front of the ice-cream shop grew longer. Few things could seem as senseless at that moment as a howling storm, snow drifts and the danger of the mountains.

  He swallowed repeatedly in desperation as he tried to find a creditable way out of his bind. He described his feelings of total exhaustion.

  Some actress or other grinned at him from a poster. Behind her a red car was hurtling into an abyss. He had no idea what kind of film it was, but the poster promised an Italian comedy, so he told her he’d heard it was supposed to be splendid.

  She sneered slightly and he dashed off to buy tickets. The film had started long before, but fortunately this particular film didn’t seem to need any beginning. He couldn’t concentrate at all but tried to pretend he was enjoying himself, laughing loudly at the silliest jokes and looking round at her triumphantly. But she wasn’t laughing. Her face was oddly taut, her eyes were barely open, obviously registering nothing, and her mouth seemed to indicate she was in some kind of distress.

  There’s something strange about her, he said to himself. Maybe something has happened to her. Something I haven’t a clue about. Or to him maybe. That’s why he didn’t come to lunch and the whole time she’s been thinking about him. Some tragedy, he decided, that could be quite interesting. It’ll be a long while before she’s able to confide in me. We were still strangers yesterday but you can count on me!

  But it would call for some action, of course.

  But what sort of action could one possibly come up with in this absurd world?

  Short of taking the tram to Šarka, he thought to himself peevishly, and throwing myself off the cliff As proof of my love. Or chucking myself in the Vltava fully clothed. On the other hand, he thought, maybe I’ll make do with an ordinary bench and the sort of things that people don’t usually talk about. Such as the first time I fell in love, or how I discovered Dad was avoiding Mum, or how they bombed Prague when I was six months old. The house next door was hit. Can you believe it? I could have ceased to exist. If it had fallen a bit closer there could be an empty space sitting next to you.

  The film ended.

  ‘It was a bit tedious,’ he admitted. ‘I’m sorry if you found it boring.’

  ‘Why?’ she said in surprise. ‘Have you got something even worse up your sleeve?’

  ‘Like?’

  ‘Dancing,’ she said. ‘That’s the next invitation, isn’t it? Dinner followed by dancing. I reckon you’re the Shooters’ Island type. You’re not classy enough for the Café Vltava and they don’t serve alcohol at the Luxor. You’d be hard pressed to look even slightly debauched there. And at the Fučík Park they only have oompah.’

  A suicidal notion took hold of him. ‘But that’s precisely where I wanted to take you.’

  ‘Aha, you’re starting to be original.’ She’s bound never to have set foot in the place and be horrified of parks and daddies taking time out with their kiddies. ‘I’m sure it’ll be unforgettable,’ she said. ‘Will you buy me a balloon and some candy-floss?’

  ‘Whatever you fancy!’ He had only been there once himself and had a vague memory of hordes of people and unrelieved boredom. There’s nothing more tedious than organized fun.

  YOU ARE REQUIRED TO ENJOY YOURSELF! But maybe he’d find something there, something he could use as a starting point! An exhibition of artificial flowers, perhaps. Or a poetry evening. Do you like Holub? Or Morgenstern? Do you know the one about the worm?

  Hidden in its shell

  A most peculiar worm did dwell

  Do you know how the eunice viridis procreates? Ugh!

  They got on a tram and he bought tickets. He had 16 crowns 40 hellers left.

  The park gates were wide open and a man and woman emerged, tottering towards them. She had rumpled clothes and painted lips. Water flowed quietly from the beaks of china dabchicks. They veered to the right and circled the locked sports hall. Trampled paper cups lay scattered in front of empty stalls and a solitary sweeper was piling them into an untidy heap. As they passed, he looked up and nodded in the direction of the empty park benches lining the flower beds. ‘Things aren’t what they used to be. The lovers are all sitting at home watching telly’

  He was grateful for ‘the lovers.’ ‘Not all of them, as you see.’

  ‘Come on,’ she urged, impatiently. ‘There has to be something here somewhere!’

  There was a new layer of sand on the path and the dark buildings slumbered with their windows forbiddingly shuttered; the empty arena with its banks of seats, the amphitheatre and the great circular structure of the Circlorama. An abstract sculpture of shiny metal rose out of the grass.

  He stopped in front of it.

  ‘Anything but that,’ she said quickly. ‘I don’t want to talk about modern art. I’m not interested in Mirö or Klee. They don’t concern me in the slightest.’

  She turned towards him. Her hair shone red in the reflection of the setting sun. She was extremely beautiful at that moment and he forgot what he had intended to say. All he could think was that they might love each other.

  ‘And what does concern you?’ he asked.

  ‘Come on,’ she said, ‘there must be something happening here somewhere.’

  ‘There’s nothing happening here … So what does concern you?’

  ‘Not you, for sure,’ she snapped, ‘as you have to keep on asking.’

  ‘But you concern me! Because I love you.’

  ‘Stop it! Stop that talk!’

  ‘I’ve had a couple of girlfriends. One of them I really loved.’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘She left me … She was my first. I thought I’d never love anyone as much again. But I’ll love you more.’

  From a long way off came the sound of a brass band, the rattle of goods trucks at the railway station and the clang of a tram car. The sounds only deepened the silence. And the two of them were quite alone in this immense cemetery of entertainment.

  He stopped by one of the park benches. ‘Shall we sit down?’

  She placed her handbag between them and tried to pull her skirt down over her knees.

  ‘I’m serious,’ he said.

  She stroked the leather of her bag and touched his hand in the process, maybe intentionally. If he hesitated now she would be bound to think he was a beginner; he closed his hand over her fingers. He felt a momentary thrill at the touch. If she doesn’t take her hand away, I’ll put my arm around her. The thrill grew more intense while deeper inside lurked the fear that it had all been too easy, that she wasn’t so remarkable, inaccessible or refined after all, that she could be sitting here with anyone, that she was the same
as the rest of them.

  She withdrew her hand and placed both hands on her knees without looking at him. Her breath came slowly and calmly. He looked into her face; her features were no longer taut, just very tired.

  ‘Is nothing ever going to happen?’ she asked.

  ‘What kind of thing?’

  ‘Something big. Some movement. Will there never be any more revolutions?’

  ‘Revolutions? But we had one!’

  ‘That’s not the sort I meant,’ she said testily.

  ‘What sort then?’

  ‘Movement of some kind! Hue and cry. A theatre performance on an enormous staircase. In the open air.’

  ‘And that’s all?’

  ‘No.’ For a moment she spoke as though reciting from some strange text. ‘You could do whatever you liked. Join in the play – or not. Or play something else. Walk down that staircase and say nothing and take no notice of anything.’

  He didn’t understand her. Perhaps she wasn’t able to say precisely what she wanted; it was something one had to accept with women. But there was an excitingly wistful note in her voice that he understood. At this moment she seemed extremely close to him.

  ‘What am I to call you?’

  ‘What? Oh, that again …Will you stop!’

  ‘But I have to have to call you something!’

  ‘So make something up.’ Once more she was totally and haughtily impassive.

  Rancour overwhelmed him. ‘Okay. I’ve thought of one. How about Lingula.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Lingula!’

  ‘If you like,’ she said, unconcerned.

  A train moved along the embankment. She stared after it. Sparks and light from the windows. He noticed. ‘Lingula,’ he said, ‘there’s a station not far from here. We’ll take a train.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Who cares? … It’s movement.’

  She shrugged.

  They got up and walked back along the deserted path. I’ve only got 16 crowns left, he realized. But we’ll always manage to get home if we want to.

  No one was waiting at the booking office window. He tipped all his money out on the counter. ‘Two eightcrown-twenty tickets,’ he said.

  ‘What?’

  He caught sight of a spinsterish face and a bewildered look behind dark-framed spectacles.

  ‘Two eight-crown-twenty tickets,’ he repeated.

  ‘Where to?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘On the next train.’

  ‘You don’t know where you’re going?’

  ‘No!’

  ‘There’s no such ticket,’ the booking-office lady declared. ‘You can have one for seven-eighty or eight-forty.’

  She passed him two cardboard tickets. ‘Hurry up. Your train leaves in four minutes.’

  2

  The carriage swayed gently and the night flowed past the window. There were four workmen in the compartment, three playing cards while the fourth sat opposite her, watching her in silence and smoking.

  She couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken the train. Her recent boyfriends had always had cars. And always Spartaks. She’d liked the last one most of all – two-tone, red with a black roof. But apart from that he was the same as the rest, the same talk; a drive to the dam every Saturday – a divorcee. She wasn’t even really sure why she went with them. All those cabins on steep slopes. They were stifling hot inside, long into the night. But she had to survive the weekends somehow. She always managed to find someone. If only he hadn’t gone on the way he had, though. He was just an ordinary lawyer but with a passion for lyrical verse. Sweetheart, you have eyes like a goldfish and a head like a Madonna, I’d like to take you away with me – or just a little bit of you to put under the glass of my desktop. Those words would come back to her even in the dead of night when all was silent and she was trying desperately to get to sleep. The words would choke her and she would long for the morning to come. She longed for it so much that she would start to whisper out loud, ‘Dear God, if only it was morning!’

  This student she was travelling with had been telling her stories about some crazy professor or other while the workman kept on looking at her. She looked at him too, but not at his face: he had a thin sinewy neck like a strange landscape of rounded slopes and hollows. In one of the hollows lay a small seashell on a fine chain.

  She found it odd that he should wear such a trifle. Perhaps he had been at the seaside and wanted people to know it.

  He saw she was watching him and smiled slightly. She smiled too. Just as long as he doesn’t start to talk, she thought. She didn’t want to hear any talk. About herself, or him or about life.

  The train would stop and set off again and there would be the tramp of feet in the corridor. From time to time she could not help laughing at the stories. The workman stared at her intently: perhaps he had stood like that on the seashore, motionlessly scanning the waves, maybe that’s why he brought back that seashell, because he loved the sea and wanted to remember it. For a moment she glanced into his calm eyes and she realized that in fact he was unaware of her, he was just staring, looking at the sea or his daughter or some long lost object which he could see only through her.

  She smiled at him again. Maybe it wasn’t even a smile but an expression of satisfaction.

  The train started to brake. The workmen got up and the one opposite her put on his beret and nodded in her direction like an old acquaintance and she replied bye in a tone she kept reserved for her friends.

  Now she was alone in the compartment except for that student. He sat opposite her with a sullen look on his face – like Belmondo. He had full lips too, and a straight nose. All he lacked was a bit of carnality.

  ‘You haven’t listened to a word I’ve been saying,’ he said, trying to look exasperated. ‘Did you know that guy?’

  ‘Yes.’ His eyes had none of that man’s serenity. She began to feel regret. Whatever possessed me? Where am I going? I don’t even know where we’ll sleep. But in the end that doesn’t matter. So long as there’s running water. And he doesn’t start talking drivel beforehand.

  He’s giving me a sheepish look. Why?

  He’s still only a boy, she realized. He must be younger than me. He’s just putting it on. Maybe he’ll still manage to like me, it occurred to her. But what’s the point, she rebuked herself. Why start all over again? It’s of no importance. Nothing’s important really. So long as it’s nice, a bit nice, at least. From beneath half-closed eyelids she could make out yellowish lights passing the window. ‘Come on,’ she heard him say. ‘We have to get off here.’

  It was a small station. Four lamps and beneath them tubs of pelargoniums and a sleepy stationmaster.

  ‘Do you know this place?’

  ‘Not in the slightest.’

  They followed the other people along a beaten path in the dark and arrived at a number of lights, one of which belonged to a pub.

  ‘Aren’t you going to invite me to dinner?’ she asked.

  ‘Naturally,’ he said. But he stood outside the door with a look of despair. Finally she recalled how he had tipped out his last coins at the booking office. She reached into her handbag, took out a small purse and handed it to him.

  There were just three foresters sitting in the bar-room. And a black hunting dog. The landlord squatted at their table. They seemed to have been drinking together; now they were all staring at her. ‘Bloody hell,’ one of them said under his breath.

  Four sausages and bread. They sat at a corner table covered in oil-cloth. Above their heads a full-antlered rutting stag on the banks of a blue river.

  The foresters raised their voices: ‘… he was belting along with his gob right near the ground when all of a sudden he stops dead in his tracks and his hair’s all standing up on end, and I couldn’t get him to move an inch …’

  She knew for certain that she had heard the very same thing before, in this exact pub – amazingly, here too everything repeated itself, those three fo
resters and the black dog. She knew that the dog had come across the tracks of a raging wild boar. When had she heard it, though? It must have been a long time ago. Yes, she remembered now, it was when her father was still alive, so it must have been during the war or the first year after it. They were walking along a track, though she couldn’t recall a thing about it. Then in the evening they reached this pub and three foresters were sitting just by the door with a dog and telling the story of the tusker.

  It’s very odd, she thought, that they should still be sitting here, that they haven’t grown tired of the story yet. On the other hand, don’t we all go on listening to the same handful of stories, over and over again?

  The landlord placed plates in front of them.

  They ate in silence. Suddenly he said, ‘Something sad happened to you, didn’t it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I met you,’ and she burst out laughing.

  ‘And what about him?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘You know who.’

  ‘Ah …’ She had completely forgotten him until that moment. As almost always happened when she wasn’t actually with him. No one had ever been so close to her that she would want to think about them all the time.

  ‘Do you love him?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘But you must know!’

  ‘Stop that sort of talk! At least over dinner.’

  One of the foresters came over to them with three small glasses. He was still young: a ruddy face and cunning eyes. ‘How about a toast? To the beauty of this young lady!’ He was unable to take his eyes off the bronze coin on the chain around her neck.

  He had come over that time too, she recalled. And forced me to drink. Then everyone had laughed. I expect I made a face.

  I was five at the time, she realized in alarm. Why had he done it? But she was sure she knew why he came.

  ‘So get it down you,’ the forester said irritably, ‘or else I’ll shoot you in the night. You and that boy. Through the door.’

  Laughter came from the other table.

  She knew he had come precisely for that laughter, and also so he could get a look at her and have a better idea of everything that was going to happen when he would no longer be able to see.