by Ivan Klíma
Boyish eyes open wide. It’s really nice here! Nervous shuffling. Where should I go while …
Turn your back!
A languid feline gesture. Arms raised. A bronze chain being undone.
Outside the window the city awakes. Dustmen. Milk cans.
Detail of a chair. The remaining items of underwear fall.
‘There you are then,’ he broke the silence. ‘We’ll be in Prague in a minute. A fat lot you’re going to tell me.’
By now he didn’t even want to hear anything. He just needed something to take his frustration out on. Frustration at the fact she’d constantly managed to evade him, that he had fallen for that mystique of hers. She had come with him so that he could fill her emptiness for one evening. But he wasn’t completely sure. If she were to look at him now, if she were to smile a little bit, he’d take it all back. But no, she remained silent, and he repeated to himself over and over again. An empty, ordinary, empty girl … ‘So you’re not going to tell me anything?’ he asked once more.
She tried desperately to find a single sentence, but a meaningless jumble of phrases and protestations swirled around in her head: the tenderest of banalities, the names of animals and flowers, jabbering words – my love, my precious, my darling, my valentine, my copperhead, my sweet boy, my one and only – long lingering glances seemed to pour out of the beer barrels along with the soft sound of kisses. There was nothing else. Nothing at all. She opened her mouth slightly, gulped and shook her head from side to side.
‘You … you!’
‘No,’ she said hastily, ‘please don’t!’
She shook her head stupidly. He clasped her face in his hands, for a short moment her eyes were very close and he was appalled at how motionless they were. ‘No,’ she said very quietly, ‘please don’t!’
Then they knelt there on the damp, grubby sacks and kissed.
He kissed her – my love, my precious, my darling, my Snow White, my beautiful, my fragrant, my Lingula, until at last the lorry started to jolt over the cobbles of the city and she whispered, ‘Stop it now! Stop it!’ And again they sat side by side with their knees under their chins, and his arm around her shoulders. With the stench of beer.
Through the hole in the tarpaulin she could see sooty fragments of walls and roofs and chimneys and her head was clear and she was utterly calm as always when she returned late from a night out.
‘Lingula,’ he said, ‘are you happy?’
Oh, God, back to work again. I’ll hardly have time to change and I’ll have bags under my eyes. ‘You know I am,’ she said with a voice that was clear and level.
The lorry pulled up in front of the Electricity Board. She jumped down first. He held her in his arms once more. Then they waited in front of the white-tiled building as a golden mist rose up from the river.
‘Shall we go?’
One of the old-style trams came rattling over the bridge. ‘I’ll take this one,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you’ll let me go now.’
He nodded. ‘And when will we see each other again?’
‘What for?’ she repeated.
She saw the amazement on his face and remorse began to well up in her too. She should have run across the street long ago. But she wanted to say at least something to him.
They faced each other in silence. ‘What’s “Lingula”?’ she remembered.
At last he could get his own back for all her silence.
‘Lingula? Stop that! Your tram’s about to leave!’
He watched her run across the wide, deserted road junction.
He couldn’t understand how she could leave just like that. Without a single word. Had it all really meant nothing to her? Could she really have felt nothing of what he had felt? For a moment pain gripped his mouth and throat and he was obliged to swallow several times to ease it slightly. He saw her leap into the open tram car as it started to pull away. It was time for him to go too but he waited. She was still standing on the steps of the tram. She could have turned her head at least.
She stood on the dirty steps. She was getting back very late again but it didn’t matter. It had been a remarkable night – a pity it couldn’t have lasted, a pity the lorry had turned up, a pity the morning had come, a pity he was like all the others …
Someone behind her shouted, ‘Climb aboard, miss!’
She moved to the top step and the tram screeched its way round the bend. Maybe he’s still standing there. She wanted to lean out and check, but she was being jostled into the car. She caught sight of an empty seat. At last she realized just how tired she was. The conductor clipped her ticket – the dark-coloured tram uniform – he smiled slightly, possibly at her, but more likely at the bronze coin – it felt out of place at this time of the morning.
She half closed her eyes and could suddenly see the dark silhouette and it occurred to her that even if she were to shut her eyes tight or run away from it as far as she could, she would still see it – motionless on the dark wall nearby. It was inside her. She could reach out and touch it, saying, Come with me, don’t leave, don’t struggle, stay by me, and he would be with her at last and never leave her. She took her ticket and smiled back.
The time on the large street clock was 5.30 a.m. He had to be in for his exam by eight-thirty. Nobody else will have prepared themselves in such a sensational fashion. An entire afternoon, evening and night. With her. And in the end she kissed me. They’re not going to believe that.
Lingula, he said to her in his mind, lingula, he recited silently, a genus of the order of brachiopods, the shells either open or closed in the anterior free part of the shell that has embedded bristles. Like this entire group of worms, the lingula is closely related to the order of phoronids …
(1962)
HEAVEN, HELL, PARADISE
He thought it best to park two blocks from her building. When he got out he looked around carefully, but there was too much traffic to work out whether there had been a car tailing him.
He entered the building and stood waiting, hidden behind the front door. He noticed the thumping of his heart but what worried him more than the thought of being followed was how he would be received, half a year on, by the woman he had returned for. He had no idea, the last time they parted, that it would be for so long. And it could have been for ever if he’d made the same decision as most people in his situation. He should have phoned her beforehand, except that phones couldn’t be trusted. He took a quick look into the street but there was no sign of anyone suspicious.
So he went up to the first floor, noticing the familiar odour of turpentine and thinner that escaped into the passage from inside the flat. There was the same painted plaque on the door: a couple lying on a bed with Jan and Milada Kaska inscribed in copperplate. He rang the bell.
For a moment there was no sound. She couldn’t be home, although – at least in the days when he’d had an interest in her timetable – she didn’t usually leave the house until the afternoon. Then came the sound of familiar footsteps and the rattle of the lock. She was wearing make-up and an unfamiliar outfit, apparently on her way out somewhere.
‘You’re here?’ To his surprise, she blushed. ‘You’re crazy, Doc! What if he was home?’
‘He’s got a job to go to.’ He stepped inside and kissed her.
‘You’re crazy, you’re crazy,’ she repeated. ‘What are you doing here? You were abroad!’
‘Yes, but you were here.’
‘These days everyone’s going in the opposite direction. Haven’t you heard?’
‘I couldn’t care less what other people do.’
‘You’re crazy. They’ll put you in jail, sooner or later. And if they don’t they’ll sort you out, so you won’t know where you are.’
‘I’ll be with you. There’s no point in trying to get me to change my mind now I’m here. Can you spare a moment?’
‘I had no idea you were coming. There’s no way I could have known.’
He tried to put his arms round her, but she broke fr
ee of him. ‘What do you think you’re doing? How do you know I want you?’
‘I can come some other time. I’ll be able to now.’
‘I would have thought that depended on me too – whether I feel like having you.’
‘I came because of you. I came because I wanted you so much I couldn’t bear it any longer.’
‘What nonsense are you talking?’ She finally retreated from the front hall into the living room and he followed her. The room was the same as when he was last there, apart from some new paintings on the walls which must have been her own work. She didn’t sit down or offer him a seat. ‘So you’ve come back for me?’ she said with a shrug. ‘It’s your business why you’ve returned – I hope you don’t think it’s mine?’ She was standing opposite him and staring at him as if he were a total stranger. As if she had forgotten all the days and nights they had spent together, when they’d exchanged endless protestations of love. ‘I wasn’t expecting you. You’re crazy. You take me by surprise like this and immediately fling yourself at me. I’d already forgotten about you. After all there was no point waiting for you once I realized I’d never see you again.’
‘I thought about you all the time!’
‘It’s your business if you thought about me.’ She started. Someone was stamping up the stairs. A dog barked on the other side of the wall.
She came up close to him. ‘You can’t stay here!’
‘Is he due back about now?’
‘You act as though he was the only person in the world. It so happens he’s gone off. He’s far away. All he left me were these,’ and she showed him two slim booklets. The green one was a savings book, the red one was clearly an identity card. ‘Everyone’s going off somewhere. I’m the only one hanging around.’
‘Did he go in the same direction?’
‘He went off on a business trip and it makes no difference what direction he went in. But a couple of dozen relatives have keys to this flat.’
‘We’ll take a trip somewhere. I’ve got my car here!’
‘You’re crazy, a complete nutcase. You’ve been away for about a hundred years and you turn up here expecting me to be ready and waiting with my nightdress and change of shoes in a suitcase …’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘that’s exactly what I expected. When’s he getting back?’
‘I’ve no idea. I didn’t ask. And anyway, people can return unexpectedly – didn’t you know?’
‘I suppose so, if they’re deeply in love,’ he conceded.
‘Or off their head. Just hang on for a moment. I have to make a phone call.’
The hotel had recently been renovated. The room was on the fifth floor at the very end of a corridor and was doing its best to look modern. The walls had been covered in blue wallpaper and the divans had been given colourful cretonne covers. The same material had been used to cover the armchairs and even the fixed-station radio receiver. On the glass-covered table top lay a bottle opener. However, instead of a bottle there was a telephone and a folder of writing paper.
‘Can you see that neon sign?’ she asked.
Immediately above their window shone a red and white fluorescent tube. The light from it came through the window onto their beds. ‘We’ve a room with neon,’ she laughed.
He put his arms round her. She let him kiss her and then pushed him away. ‘Wait. I’m all sticky from that car ride.’ She went into the bathroom, but as in the old days she left the door half open. Everything was like the old days, just as it ought to be. Up to this moment he still hadn’t been sure it was wise to have returned, but now he knew he had made the right decision. His place was here. His place was wherever he knew she was close by.
The window opened onto the square. In the centre was a church and a small park. Opposite was the bus station, without a single bus parked there. Instead two foreign military vehicles stood waiting. He wasn’t used to them yet. He wiped the sweat from his forehead. ‘It’s hot here,’ he said. ‘Don’t you think it’s hot in here?’
She didn’t reply; maybe she hadn’t heard him. There were a few pensioners sitting in the little park as well as some man who happened to be staring into the hotel windows at that moment.
On his way back the frontier crossing had been conspicuously deserted, although it was only seven in the evening. ‘Doctor Sláma,’ a man in uniform read in his passport. ‘Sláma.’ The fellow checked through some list for a moment, while he himself looked to see where a Soviet soldier might be hiding or an enemy machine gun poking out. But neither of them found anything suspicious. Amazingly enough he wasn’t on the list. Or more likely they hadn’t received the proper list yet. The frontier guard returned his passport. ‘Drive on.’ It was quite easy to get in. But that was true about all traps. He had no doubt he was entering a trap, he even realized that he had set the bait himself. But he belonged here. He belonged where she was.
He wiped his forehead again.
‘That guy at reception,’ she said, behind him. ‘I didn’t like the way he looked at us.’ She had already taken off her clothes and was wearing only a short nightdress and a lot of make-up. If her face had been as perfect as her figure she wouldn’t have to use make-up at all. He gazed at her. He gazed at the woman for whom he had walked into the trap.
‘He wasn’t sitting there so you could like the way he looked at you.’
‘I didn’t like the way he looked at you.’
‘Maybe he just envied me.’
‘Maybe,’ she conceded, ‘but you know the way things are these days. I wouldn’t want anybody particularly noticing that I’ve been here. That I’ve been here with you. Did you shout something at me when I was in the bathroom?’
‘No. I just said how hot it is in here.’
‘I’m glad. I like the heat. If I’d had my way I would have been born somewhere in Africa.’
‘You were born in just the right place. Just where I had a chance of meeting you.’ He hugged her and this time she let him lead her to the couch.
‘Or in Brazil,’ she added. ‘It’s hot in Brazil too. And they dance there as well. That’s where they have that famous carnival, isn’t it? Or isn’t it?’
He undressed quickly.
‘I know you’re not interested in carnivals. It’s not the sort of sophisticated entertainment you go in for. What if I were to find us some music?’ she suggested and reached out for the radio.
There was a man’s voice speaking in ingratiating tones, They have remained quite openly where basically they always were: on the side of counter-revolution.
‘I don’t want that!’ she said interrupting the voice. ‘They go on like that all the time now. Do you know that you’ve already been mentioned? I heard it one day by chance. I put on music when I’m drawing, and they mix that sort of rubbish in with the music. Just in little drops. And before you can reach the knob to switch it off they’re playing music again.’
He would have liked to ask her what they had said about him, but he realized there would be no point asking. She had registered his name, but the rest of the message had escaped her. Her concerns were her drawing, love and perhaps travel still. At most she was willing to listen to interesting stories. As long as they had nothing to do with politics, illness or anything serious.
He lay down by her.
‘I’m at your side again, darling. Every night of those six months I imagined this moment.’
‘You imagined me? It lasted you a good while, just imagining me.’
‘But now I’m here.’
‘Yes. Now you’re here. And you’re shivering all over. You’re shivering despite the heat in here.’
‘It’s you making me shiver.’
‘I’ve given you a fever! Shiver more! More! Even more!’ She breathed quickly. She closed her eyes, while he continued to look at her. He knew every feature of her face. The artificial shadows under her eyes. The bluish green make-up on her eyelids. Then he too closed his eyes. Now all he could hear was her moaning. ‘You’re my love.’
‘More than my life. More than anything. More than everything. That’s why I came. Really.’
‘Why do you love me so much?’
‘I don’t know. I really don’t know.’
‘Really, really,’ she repeated. ‘Did we really make love just now?’
‘Yes. For the first time in ages I knew I really existed. Over there it was just a bad dream. I used to walk along the street and see you everywhere in those foreign towns where you couldn’t be. I saw you in every woman with long hair.’
‘In every woman with long hair? Did it matter whether she was dark or blonde?’
‘She had to have hair like yours.’
‘She had to have black hair, short legs and a threadbare skirt. And did you make love to them when you saw me in them?’
‘You know I didn’t. Every day without you was pointless. I couldn’t bear it any longer.’
‘You bore it for quite a while,’ she said, ‘and I’m glad you bore it.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I can’t stand the feeling that someone can’t bear to be without me, that I have to be with him just because he can’t stand to be without me.’
‘You’re with me because you like being with me.’
‘Yes, that’s the only reason I was with you. What’s the time?’
‘I don’t know. My watch stopped at the border. It couldn’t handle the stress.’
‘The watch didn’t want to go with you. It had more sense than you had.’
‘It had no one to come back to,’ he said. ‘Should I phone for the time?’
‘No. It makes no difference what time it is, anyway.’
‘We’ve only been here a little while,’ he said. ‘I’m hardly twelve hours back. In this country. Back home.’
‘You don’t feel at home yet?’
‘I used to dream about it almost every night. I used to dream about you. I would be calling you from a phone booth but I’d never manage to dial the right number. Or I’d be waiting for you somewhere round the corner from your street, but you never came.’