by Ivan Klíma
That I had the nerve to hold that against her! That single night? And you’re with her – she meant my wife – all the time! You’re acting the model husband! The hypocrisy of it! What kind of life are you leading? It’s all so miserable and vile!
I couldn’t think of an excuse. I tried to placate her with presents.
I don’t want you to buy me. I want you to love me!
I do love her, but I can’t go on like this. I’d like to find some conciliation – with her and with all those I am fond of, but I can’t muster the courage to reveal the truth to all of them. And she keeps urging me more and more often: When will you finally make up your mind? Have you no pity at all?
For whom?
For yourself. For me! How can you treat me like this? She cries.
Her husband has gone away. She has remained behind for a week, entirely on her own. One day she’ll be entirely alone with only her stones, they are more merciful than me. What kind of life had I made for her? she cries. Well then, so lie for my sake if you can’t speak the truth for my sake!
At home I say that I’m off to visit a friend whose daughter is getting married.
A good idea, my wife says, you’re always at home on your own, at least it’ll make a change for you. And she begins to wonder what present I should take along for my friend’s daughter. And she’ll bake me a guggelhupf cake for the journey.
But there’ll be plenty of food at the wedding! And we kiss goodbye. It’s shameful. How can I treat her like this!
We arrived at a chalet in the foothills. In the small wood-panelled hall tropical plants are growing and lianas climbing, even though spring has not yet come outside, a black terrier is lying lazily and devotedly by the feet of the woman guarding the door. I stiffen as I show her my identity card, which proves me guilty, but the receptionist cares little about other people’s infidelities, she has her own worries and my lover inspires confidence in her. Indeed the two women chat together as if they’d known one another for years, while the terrier on the floor regards me without interest as I wait in this strange hall like a faithful unfaithful dog.
Our room looks out on the lake. For a while we gaze at the deserted water, then we embrace. She wants to know if I like it here, if I’m glad to be here with her. I assure her that I do and that I am. At our moments of ecstasy we whisper to each other, as we have done for years, that we love one another.
Before supper we set out for a walk. We stroll round the lake and continue through the woods until we find ourselves on a wide piece of flat ground in the midst of which, as in a dream, stands an extensive wooden construction: a pattern of roofs, turrets, silos and metal hoppers. Probably a stone-crushing mill or a building for the shredding of old banknotes, securities and secret documents, all brought here by the lorries which are now parked in the deserted yard. We don’t see a living soul anywhere, only a few rooks cawing from beneath a tall wooden tower. For a while we stand waiting, in case a face appears in one of the windows, or somebody yells at us to get out of here. She is also anxiously looking about in case some vision appears from somewhere in the darkness, but nothing happens, except for the wind making a half-open door creak now and then. We step through that door. In the vestibule, where everything is covered with a layer of grey dust, towers the metallic bulk of some machinery. The huge motionless wheels glisten greasily in the twilight. We climb some rusting iron stairs, up to a boarded platform above the machinery. Through a narrow window we can see the woods and beyond them part of the lake, now darkening in the fading light. Across the sky float drink-sodden faces with reddish noses. Through the cracks in the walls or in the roof rustles the wind. Do you still love me at all? she asks. She picks up some old sacks and rags. She takes off her coat and her soft leather skirt and lays them down on the blackened boards, we make love on the platform of the abandoned mill.
The dusk is obliterating her features. I see her now as I saw her when we first met. I feel as though I were returning to those days, or rather as though I was outside any definite time. With her I am outside anything, and that emptiness bewitches me. I am tossed by the waves, I rise up in my net so high that I can see absolutely nothing from it.
The floorboards are creaking, the wind is rattling some loose corrugated iron, grains of dust are swirling in the air, but these sounds merely heighten the silence in here, the absolute isolation. I say tender words to her and she replies to me. Then we just lie by each other in the darkness. I am conscious of the familiar scent of her body and the smell of stone and timber, and suddenly it hits me that I know this enclosure, that I’ve been here before. I feel the icy touch of fear, even though I have probably only been reminded of the wooden huts in the fortress ghetto of my childhood, or perhaps of the wooden floors of the barracks to which I was forcibly confined, and where death reigned. At just this moment I have to think of death!
My uneasiness won’t go, we make love again, I clutch her to myself in the darkness of this seclusion, in my own ecstasy, I press myself to her, grateful that she is here with me, that she has climbed up with me to this spot which is more suggestive of some elevated hell, where the bones of sinners are ground to dust, than a place intended for love-making.
Out of the blue she asks: Do you also make love with your wife?
Her question snatches me back into the present.
I don’t want you to sleep with another woman, I want you to be with me alone! She draws away from me. Do you hear what I’m saying?
I hear her. What am I to say? How can I chase away her question, how can I chase her away, she who’s lying next to me, when she wants nothing but that I accept the consequences of the fact that I am embracing her, that I’ve been embracing her for quite a few years now, that I call her to me and that I hasten to her whenever she calls. The meanness of my situation and my behaviour overwhelms me and stifles all the words within me.
She pushes me away, gets up hurriedly, dusts down her skirt and dresses. For a while she rummages in her bag, then strikes a match and runs down the creaking stairs. Tell me, who do you think you are? she asks when we are back in our room. You think I have to take everything from you, you think I couldn’t find another man like you? Maybe she really couldn’t find another man who’d treat her the way I do, she adds, who’d treat her like a slut from the streets.
I never ask her how she lives with her husband, but now I say that, after all, she isn’t living on her own either.
What did I mean by that? The fact that she had a husband suited me very well. If she were on her own I’d have dumped her long ago, I’d be afraid for my splendid marriage.
A few weeks ago we were at the cinema together. In the interval she noticed that in the row in front of us sat her husband with a strange woman. From that moment onwards I could see that she couldn’t keep her eyes on the screen. When the film was over she kissed me hurriedly, I mustn’t mind her leaving me now, and she ran off after those two. The following day we met as usual. Her eyes were swollen from crying and from lack of sleep. Her husband, she explained to me, had consistently denied the existence of that woman, now at last she’d caught him. They’d been awake all night, she said things to him he’d probably never forget, she’d reminded him of what he’d be without her. In the end she’d given him a choice: either he stayed with her alone, or else he could pack his things and leave. He had to promise to stay with her.
I was afraid she might have had to make a similar promise. But she had not accepted any talk about herself and me: that was totally different. After all, she’d never denied or concealed my existence.
I am disgusting, she now screams at me, first I get her into such a humiliating and shaming situation, she’d never thought this kind of thing could happen to her, and now I have the effrontery to reproach her with it.
She starts to sob.
How long have I now been listening to her passionate accusations which seem to her flawless? I am the only guilty party and I have no hope of defending myself.
She ch
anges her clothes and attends to her eyes. She’ll have a drink somewhere but she doesn’t want me to come with her.
She wants me to persuade her to stay with me or to let me go with her. She loves me, she merely demands that I should decide for her, she is afraid that otherwise she might lose me. In order not to lose me she’s going out. She slams the door behind her.
On the other bed, near enough for me to touch it, lies her open suitcase. Immediately next to it lies her leather skirt, the stone dust is still clinging to it.
The Garden of Eden, as a learned rabbi described it two thousand years ago, has two gates adorned with rubies. At each of them stand sixty thousand comforters. The joyful features of each one of them shines like the light in the firmament. When a just and faithful person approaches they will take off his clothes, in which he’d risen from the grave, and clothe him in eight robes of clouds of glory, on his head they will place two crowns, one of precious stones and pearls, the other of gold from Parvaim, into his hands they will place eight twigs of myrtle, and they will say to him: Go forth and eat your nourishment: in joy!
Each person, according to the honour he deserves, has his chamber, from which flow four springs: one of milk, one of wine, one of balsam, and one of honey. Sixty angels hover over each just and faithful person. They repeat to him: Go forth and eat honey in joy, for thou hast devoted thyself to the Torah, which is like unto honey, and drink wine, for thou hast devoted thyself to the Torah, which is like unto wine.
For the just there is no more night, night-time is transformed for them into three periods of wakefulness. During the first the just becomes a child and enters among children and delights with them in childish games. In the second he becomes a young man, he enters among young men and delights in their games. In the third he becomes an old man, he enters among old men and delights in their games. In the midst of the Garden of Eden grows the Tree of Life, its branches reach out over the whole garden and provide five hundred thousand kinds of fruit – all different in appearance and taste.
The just and faithful are divided into seven classes and in their midst the Holy Everlasting, blessed be his name, explains to them the Writ, where it is said: I shall choose from all the land the faithful, so they can dwell with me.
When I awoke in the morning I realised that I was alone in the room. Her skirt and suitcase had disappeared. It was odd I didn’t wake up when she packed her things, I am a rather light sleeper.
I went down to the hall where the talkative receptionist was watering the plants.
The lady had been in a hurry to catch the morning train, she told me. She asked how long I intended to stay. But I had no reason to stay on at all. I went back up to my room and began to pack my things. I realised that my predominating sensation was relief.
We have been expelled from paradise, but paradise was not destroyed, Kafka wrote. And he added: In a sense, the expulsion from paradise was a blessing, because if we hadn’t been driven out paradise itself would have had to be destroyed.
The vision of paradise persists within us, and with it also the vision of togetherness. For in paradise there is no such thing as isolation, man lives there in the company of angels and in the proximity of God. In paradise we shall be ranged in a higher and eternal order, which eludes us on earth, where we are cast, where we are outcast.
We long for paradise and we long to escape from loneliness.
We attempt to do so by seeking a great love, or else we blunder from one person to another in the hope that someone will at last take notice of us, will long to meet us or at least to talk to us. Some write poetry for this reason, or go on protest marches, cheer some figure, make friends with the heroes of television serials, believe in gods or in revolutionary comradeship, turn into informers to ensure they are sympathetically received at least at some police department, or they strangle someone. Even murder is an encounter between one man and another.
Out of his isolation man can be liberated not only by love but also by hate. Hate is mistakenly regarded as the opposite of love, whereas in reality it stands alongside love and the opposite of both of them is loneliness. We often believe that we are tied to someone by love, and meanwhile we’re only tied to them by hate, which we prefer to loneliness.
Hate will remain with us so long as we do not accept that loneliness is our only possible, or indeed necessary, fate.
When we got back the others had gone on a little way with their equipment, up to the seats on which, while it was improper to sit down while on duty, one could comfortably put down the bottles of beer.
The foreman smoked and talked a lot. He promised better jobs to all of us, provided of course he managed to gain influence in the organisation. He’d send us to clean at the building sites, where, admittedly, you may get a damn tough job but you can earn more. I could move up into his place, he’d fix that. He’d make some significant changes without delay. He’d try to introduce some light mechanisation, he’d also make sure they drove us straight to our workplace. This would save a lot of time, we’d make more money, our earnings would really go up. That’s what he’d do, whereas those in charge of street cleaning now didn’t give a monkey’s, all they were interested in were their own bonuses, and they relied on perverts walking about all ponged up like hard-currency tarts.
The foreman was getting more and more agitated, and less assured. He stopped talking only when he took a swig from his bottle or when he looked in the direction of the prison, from where, it seemed, he was expecting the insidious attack.
He wouldn’t like us to think he was afraid of anything, he knew what was what, and he’d been in a few tight spots in his life. Had he ever told us how, years ago, when they first introduced the supersonic MIG-19s, it happened that a machine, almost as soon as it had taken off, sucked in a pigeon or some other bird, and instantly plunged down again. It was piloted by his chum, Lojza Havrda. He should have ejected straight away, stands to reason, but because it was a brand-new plane he didn’t want to abandon it. Naturally he was way off the runway, and as he tried to brake his MIG he took along with him anything that stood in his way: bushes, empty drums, and the mock planes outside the hangar. Worst of all, he was headed straight for the new quarters. They were just having their midday break when someone yelled: Get the hell out! He’d looked out of the window and saw the eight-ton giant, fully tanked up, tearing straight towards them. No one quite knew what was happening, they leapt out of the back windows. He alone stayed behind and watched Lojza wrestling with that kite. It was like a dream, but a few yards from the men’s quarters he braked it to a halt. Now of course he should have got out of the crate as quickly as possible, but not Lojza! And he, the foreman, had wasted no time then, jumped out of the window and raced up to the plane. Found Lojza in the cockpit, all bloody, unable to move by himself. He got him out of the harness and carried him down on his back. Not till he’d dragged his mate to the crew quarters did it occur to him that the whole caboodle could have blown up, and them with it.
‘And did it?’ I asked.
The foreman hesitated, as if he couldn’t remember, then he shook his head. ‘The fire crew drove up and sprayed it with foam.’
‘D’you know that he gave me a picture?’ Mrs Venus said to me.
‘Who?’ I didn’t understand.
‘My old gent, of course. About a month ago. A big picture he had over his bed.’
‘Oil?’
‘Virgin with the infant Jesus. Said to me: “You take this picture, dear lady, I can’t see it any longer anyway.”’
The beer was finished. The youngster picked up the empties and put them into his big bag; he’d take them back to the supermarket. He was walking slowly, as if the uphill journey exhausted him.
I too found it difficult to breathe. A blanket was spreading over the city, and smoke and fog were billowing right down into the streets.
I thought we wouldn’t see each other in a hurry, that she’d also made a decision for me. She hadn’t just left the chalet in the f
oothills, but she’d left me as well, she’d been wise to withdraw from me. Even though the dawning day would now and again greet me with dead eyes, I still felt a sense of relief.
For nearly a month we both remained silent, then I phoned her to ask how she was.
She’d been in bed for the best part of a week, she informed me, she couldn’t even move, she felt so sick. Her voice was full of pain, reproach, but also tenderness. I suddenly realised that I’d been waiting for that voice all that time. I was still close to her, so close she could move me with a few words.
Why did you wait so long before you rang? she asked. You were offended? I was able to offend you after all you’ve done to me?
This is a way of telling me she still loves me, she’s waiting for me. An hour later I give her a purple gerbera and kiss her. Her lips are dry.
She’d gone to the country when she didn’t hear from me, she’d planted some trees, she’d obviously injured her back, for three days she’d lain motionless in her cottage, alone.
She limps over to the bed and I fill a vase with water.
A neighbour had found her and called for an ambulance, at the hospital they’d given her a jab so she could at least manage the bus ride. And I hadn’t even phoned her. You could really forget me so soon? she asks.
I know I won’t forget her as long as I live, but for her the inevitable question is: What good does it do to lie somewhere all alone?
You’ve never considered staying with me altogether?
She’s testing my resolution, my devotion, she forgets that I couldn’t very well stay with her even if I wanted to. After all, she’s got her husband. Maybe she’s prepared to drop him, but I’ve never asked her to do that, I’ve never wanted that kind of arrangement.
How could I possibly not consider it?
But what good is that to her? she asks.
What good is it to her that I have spent nights reflecting on how I would, how we would, live – what use is it to her when nothing has actually changed, when I’m not really with her, when I see her only in secret?