by Ivan Klíma
‘I expect I was somewhere with Jan. I have to be with him sometimes, since he’s my husband,’ she said. ‘You realize I’m married, don’t you?’
‘But now you’re with me,’ he said as he embraced her.
‘Do you want to do that again already?’
‘We’ve so much lost time to make up for.’
She laughed. ‘And then what will we do?’
He remembered he hadn’t eaten a thing since morning. ‘Then we’ll go downstairs,’ he suggested. ‘There’s a restaurant. A little one. It used to be good. Ten years ago.’
‘Did you come here then?’
‘Yes.’
‘With some girl?’
‘Yes, at that time you were … you were barely fifteen.’
‘And you were twenty-six. Did you make love that time?’
‘It’s not important. I didn’t know you in those days.’
‘True,’ she admitted. ‘But you shouldn’t repeat things.’
‘Do you mean making love?’
‘I mean everything.’
‘We won’t order the same dish.’
‘No, we’ll have tomato soup. You didn’t have tomato soup that time?’
‘I don’t think so.’ He tried to recall the name of that girl. He wanted to say that he couldn’t remember the name of the girl he was with, let alone what they had had to eat, but he was afraid she would feel humiliated, seeing it as a premonition of how he would forget her one day, and at that moment he suddenly remembered they had eaten toast with a very hot sauce and the girl’s name was Dora. They had also drunk red wine and eaten liver with pineapple and he had spent almost all his month’s money, but that was how he lived in those days. They had both got drunk and then gone back to the hotel room, which didn’t have blue wallpaper yet, of course, and where the beds were old and creaked. They had made love to the accompaniment of springs creaking and laughed about it.
‘And then something absolutely ordinary,’ she said, ‘like dumplings fried with egg and a cucumber salad. Do you think they’ll have a cucumber salad? And then we’ll go to the cinema.’
‘I’ll let you have whatever you want, my love.’
She curled around him and he had the blissful feeling he always had when she touched him. She excited him even when he was dog tired, even when they had made love many times already. ‘Darling.’
‘What’s the time?’ she asked afterwards. ‘Whatever can the time be?’
‘I don’t know. I never know when I’m with you. But there is one thing I do know.’
‘And what’s that?’
‘That it’s lovely to be with you. I don’t want to leave this room. I hate the thought of your having to get dressed.’
‘Aha,’ she said. ‘We’re going to stay in this bedroom for ever. And we’ll just go on doing those things. But you promised me dinner.’
‘That’s true.’ He sat up. If he craned his neck a bit he could see right down into the square. Pedestrians were hurrying past the park. It was only just evening. He turned back to her once more. ‘It’s so long since I’ve seen you. It’s so long since I’ve been with you.’
‘That light above your head,’ she said. ‘You look like a saint or an icon. But I expect saints weren’t suppose to do things like this all the time.’ She reached out for him. ‘Why are you getting up then?’ Her hand stroked his thigh lightly. ‘When did you get back?’
‘Today, of course.’
‘You must be tired. We don’t have to go anywhere. I’ll lose a bit of weight at least. I put on weight when you were away. I missed the exercise!’ She laughed. ‘Tell me what sort of time you had there.’
‘I’ve told you. I couldn’t bear to be without you.’
‘Did you have a girlfriend?’
‘Yes, but I wasn’t in love with her. I can’t love anyone else the way I love you.’
‘What was she like? Have you got a photo of her with you?’
‘No!’
‘Didn’t she give you a photo when she heard you were coming here to me?’
‘There’s something I’m beginning to remember …’ The scene returned to him so powerfully that he could actually see the cripple and if he’d been able to draw like her, he could have sketched a portrait of him. ‘I found myself a really miserable job at Waterloo – nothing to do with medicine. I used to travel to it every morning. One day when I was getting on the underground train in Finchley there was a little guy on crutches standing there staring by the newspaper stand. He wasn’t buying or selling anything, just leaning on his crutches gaping. He was still young and he was ginger-haired the way that only the English can be, or rather the Welsh or the Scots. And he was staring at me. He had to go and choose me out of all people. He was smiling but it wasn’t a pleasant smile, there was something cunning or hateful about it.’
‘And were you scared of him?’
‘No. I somehow knew I needn’t be afraid of him.’
‘Is that all?’ she asked when he fell silent.
‘No. That was only the beginning.’
She pressed him to her. ‘Do you still love me?’
‘Yes. I love you so much that I had to come back and didn’t care what would happen to me.’
‘Do you think they’ll put you in prison?’
‘It doesn’t matter. I knew I couldn’t stay somewhere I had no chance of seeing you.’
‘I wouldn’t want them to send you to prison. At least not now that I’m with you,’ she explained. ‘That guy at reception -didn’t you notice the way he was looking at you?’
He shook his head. ‘I wasn’t looking at him. My eyes were on you.’
‘You ought to have been looking. You ought to be a little wary – when you’re with me, at least. I’m married, don’t forget. But you didn’t finish telling me about the ginger man.’
‘Oh, yes. Well, just imagine, when I got off the underground at Waterloo station that fellow was standing at the top of the escalator. He was standing there watching me as I rose towards him.’
‘I expect he was tailing you. And he’d come there by car.’
‘At that time of day the underground is the fastest way to go. He was standing there on his crutches. Ginger and smirking. No, he didn’t follow me. He went off towards the exit and didn’t look back once. So I decided to follow him, even though I was on my way to work. He was making for some working-class houses that are all over that area, and I set off after him. He lurched along on those crutches like a walking scarecrow. Eventually he disappeared inside one of the houses – a working-class brick house. I hesitated for a moment but I knew I had to go in after him. The passage was lined with doors and no other way out. I should have left, but instead I started to ring their bells one by one. It occurred to me that I wouldn’t leave, that I couldn’t leave, until he had opened his door and explained to me how he came to be at the station. But he didn’t open up. I started to thump one of the doors and shout. I made such a racket that it must have been heard on the street, but the door didn’t open and the silence inside seemed to me almost deathly. Like the first time I set foot in an autopsy room or a mortuary. I’ve no idea where the fellow disappeared to. Unless he jumped out of the window. With those crutches.’
He was so absorbed in his story that for a moment he had forgotten all about her. Now he looked in her direction. She was asleep.
He got up. The heat was almost unbearable. He went over to the window and tried in vain to open it. Even the floor tiles in the bathroom were warm. He turned on the cold-water tap but nothing came out. So he ran a little hot water into the basin and washed his face. He caught the sound of footsteps quietly approaching in the corridor. They stopped when they reached their door.
He waited for them to start moving away again, but silence had descended on the corridor again. He realized that he was afraid. He ought to open the door and find out who, if anyone, was standing outside, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. He stood there wet, naked, tense and alert in the middle
of a strange bathroom in a country which, although he had decided to come back to it, was in reality now also alien to him, and his fear increased by the moment.
He returned to the bedroom. She was sleeping. Red and white reflections played on her naked body. Why were the windows here sealed? Why had the desk clerk watched him so closely? Did he know him from somewhere?
He continued to listen intently There was still no sound from the corridor. Outside a car sounded its horn and from a long way off a strange rumble started to approach. It could be the sound of machines in an unseen factory or the sound of tanks on the move. Whose tanks? All tanks were under the same unified enemy command. Why had he returned, in fact? Had he really come back on account of the woman who happened to be with him at this moment but actually belonged to another man? Had he returned for this moment of ecstasy that he could have found more easily elsewhere, as he’d never had a problem finding women to experience it with?
He sat down in the armchair. He took a sheet of writing paper out of the folder and started to fold it into a shape he remembered from his childhood. He no longer felt any yearning, or even happiness at being close to the woman he had yearned for. He felt hungry, tired and vaguely uneasy. Where would he go tomorrow? And the following day? He was too old to go back to his parents and he had no home of his own. All he had was a room for tonight and tomorrow morning. Unless he prolonged the stay and persuaded her to remain a day or two longer. The thought of having to leave the room and go out into the street seemed unbearable.
The rumble of the distant tanks did not stop. He completed the shape and laid it to one side on the glass table top. Then he got ready to start another one.
‘Doc,’ he heard from behind him, ‘what are you up to? Why aren’t you here with me?’
He started. ‘It’s a sort of game.’ He inserted his fingers into the paper pockets and opened and closed the paper mouth.
Heaven, hell, paradise
where’s your soul to go?
Into heaven, into hell
Just like so.
‘Where are you now?’ she asked.
He listened to the roaring from outside. He thought it was coming closer. When the soldier knocked down the door, he ought to tackle him. But the only weapon he had available was the bottle opener. ‘Here,’ he replied, ‘with you.’
‘And what about your soul?’
‘I don’t know if I have a soul.’ When he was small he had believed he had one and that it was immortal, but he had seen too many people die since then, and little had remained of their souls after their brain cells had been eroded by old age or disease. He was going to say something more but she spoke first. ‘No, you don’t have a soul. That’s why you’re able to do those things so well!’
Yes, that’s what he was to her – a means of pleasure. While he happened to be around. Who had been the means when he was away?
‘What’s hell?’ she asked.
He shrugged. He knew she wasn’t expecting a serious answer. None the less he said, ‘I went to see a play when I was over there. There were these people shut in one room, where they were together all the time. For eternity, you understand – the same people. That was the author’s idea of hell.’
‘And what’s yours?’
‘I don’t know. I think hell is different things for different people. Hell is being defenceless when someone is pointing a pistol at you and telling you he’s doing it because he loves you. Hell is suffering. Having a bad conscience. Being bored. Listening to lies. Hearing the truth. Losing your freedom …’
‘You’re beating about the bush. And how about paradise? Do you know what paradise is, at least?’ she asked.
It struck him that paradise was a state of innocence. Being unaware of evil. The absence of fear. He could only think of negative definitions. Paradise was the presence of God, of course, and hence the absence of death. Therefore paradise was a delusion. But there was no sense in saying any of that out loud. So all he said was, ‘I would like to be with you entirely one day. And for you to be with me alone.’
‘I’ve been entirely with you today,’ she pointed out. ‘Do you think I could be with you even more than that?’
‘You wouldn’t have to leave me for someone else, there would be just the two of us. In a secluded house with a garden.’
‘Just a moment ago you were saying that was precisely what that play thought was hell.’
‘But it would be possible to leave that house. And have visitors.’
‘Yes. And lie out in the garden and sunbathe. In Brazil. Or Spain. Would we have a swimming pool?’
‘Why not?’
‘Okay. That villa could stand right by the seaside; that would be even better. And in the evenings we’d visit some little tavern or pizzeria. What would we drink?’
‘Wine,’ he suggested.
‘Wine, naturally. But what kind?’
‘That would depend on what we were eating. You’d drink the kind of wine that happened to take your fancy’ Then he remembered, ‘Do you remember that little hotel by the dam? We were there all on our own and the woman in charge brought us Italian wine wearing a ball gown.’
‘No,’ she said, shaking her head.
‘Ruffino. We drank a whole bottle of it though we weren’t able to make love. There wasn’t anywhere handy – you had to be home that evening.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I never remember things that have happened. I expect I had to get home, if you say so. You know I’m married, don’t you? But now I’m with you and at this moment I’m ready to drink any old wine. What is the time, anyway?’
‘I don’t know. It must be fairly late. Perhaps midnight. Can you hear that rumbling? Are those tanks?’
‘Is the restaurant closed already?’
‘Yes, I expect so. Listen to it, for heaven’s sake!’
‘You promised me tomato soup!’
‘Don’t think about it now. It’s too late. I haven’t eaten today either. Not a thing.’
‘But you’ve got a different stomach, haven’t you,’ she said. ‘It’s no consolation to me that you’re hungry too. Won’t you put on some music, at least?’
He turned the knob. ‘They’ve packed up already. It’s late. They’ve switched it off so that the hotel guests don’t disturb each other. Though mind you …’ Someone’s attempt to prevent him being disturbed seemed absurd at that moment. In this country. And to the sound of distant engines and caterpillar tracks.
‘I’m thirsty,’ she said. ‘Bring me some water, at least.’
The tiles were still warm and still only the hot water worked. Once more the sound of creeping feet came from the other side of the door. Hell is fear, it struck him. And paradise is the absence of fear, the certainty of safety. The certainty of loyalty. That was why paradise was a delusion.
She drank several gulps of warm water. ‘What are you standing there for? Why don’t you come here, at least, seeing you don’t want to go anywhere any more? Or don’t you love me now?’
‘If I didn’t love you I wouldn’t be here.’ And he had a longing, an absurd longing, for certainty, for safety, for her loyalty.
She clung to him. ‘And we wanted to go to the cinema,’ she said ruefully.
‘We will go. We’ll go often, you’ll see.’
‘Do you think so? I don’t know that we’ll ever go again. But I wanted to go today. Maybe they won’t even send you to prison. Maybe you just imagined it all.’
‘What did I imagine?’
‘The business with that hunchback. You just imagined it. You’ve got nothing to worry about.’
‘He was lame,’ he corrected her.
‘I’d be more afraid of that guy at reception. He’ll tell them you’re here if they ask. All of a sudden there’ll be a knock on the door and it’ll be them. And I’ll cop it along with you!’
‘They don’t know I’m here.’
‘They don’t know you’re here?’ she said in amazement. ‘But they put you in the register.’
‘I didn’t show them my identity card. I borrowed your husband’s when I was at your place. They never check the photo, they just want the document. I thought it would be better for you if I didn’t sign in under my own name.’
‘You borrowed his identity card and didn’t even tell me? So I’m actually here with my husband. I’ve simply been fulfilling my conjugal duties.’
‘Are you cross?’
‘No. Why should I be?’ she said in surprise. ‘My only worry is that you won’t love me so much if you think I’m just fulfilling my conjugal duties.’
‘I love you. Nobody could love you more than I do.’
‘That’s why you came so far,’ she said. ‘To prove it. And you registered under his name, so it was actually him who’s been showing his prowess. I love you for that.’
‘I want you to love me for eternity.’
‘“Eternity”? Eternity and really. You always use the funniest words. Isn’t it enough that I’m here with you?’
When he woke up it was already getting light. There was someone walking up and down the corridor and it filled him with such terror that beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. He listened to the strange footsteps without moving. They went away and then came back again. Someone was standing guard outside the door. His head ached. Most likely due to the heat and the agitation, not to mention the lack of sleep and hunger, possibly.
She lay next to him, asleep. She hadn’t washed last night and make-up was smeared over her eyelids and cheeks and there were droplets of sweat on her forehead. A puffy, smudgy, ordinary woman. She was the reason he’d returned. She was the reason he’d walked into a trap.
He was hungry. He quietly opened his suitcase. Several dirty shirts, some magazines and a folded suit. Not a single sweet or even chewing gum. He closed the case again.
‘What are you rummaging for?’ came her voice. ‘You don’t happen to have a pistol there, do you? People like you have to carry a weapon, don’t they? And don’t look at me now. I’m ugly in the morning.’ He heard her footsteps and then from the bathroom the sound of running water.
She emerged naked, but immaculately made up once more. ‘Do you still find me attractive?’