by Ivan Klíma
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I expect it’s because it seems a greater punishment to me to live with guilt than to die, though I realise for some people it presents no problem. Or because underneath I believe that in the end everyone is capable of understanding their crime and starting to regret it. At the same time I know it’s not the case. Most people never regret their misdeeds.’
‘I’m curious to know whether you wouldn’t do it because you feel it’s wrong, or because you know it is.’
He pondered for a moment and then said: ‘I wouldn’t do it because of me!’
3
When Alexandra came to the door, he didn’t even recognise her. He had not seen her for a long while – not since he left for the States. Then she had had short fair hair like his wife, now she had dyed it black, and wore it low on her forehead. She also outlined her eyelids in black. Across her left cheek there ran a scar carefully masked with powder. She was wearing a red T-shirt and a short leather skirt, and still looked like a little girl.
She greeted him in the tone of voice we usually reserve for people we’ve seen the day before. ‘Oldřich told me you’d be coming, but he phoned just now to say he’d be delayed.’ As she came closer to him he found himself enveloped in a fine, artificial perfume. ‘You don’t mind waiting here for him, do you?’
‘So long as it doesn’t put you out. I was only after his advice about something.’
‘You’re not the only one.’
‘It’s not for myself.’
‘Don’t apologise. He likes giving advice, it makes him feel important.’
She led him into the sitting room. He was taken aback by the ostentatiously antique furniture. It was most likely the same furniture as all those years ago, except that he hadn’t noticed such things then.
‘Would you like a coffee?’
‘No thanks, I don’t drink coffee.’
‘Oh, I remember now. You didn’t drink coffee, vodka or wine. But maybe you drink wine by now?’
‘I’m happy as I am.’
‘Lucky man. You don’t have any vices at all?’
‘I play tennis.’
‘That’s not a vice. Haven’t you even given your Alena the slip on the odd occasion?’
He shrugged.
‘Don’t you find it boring, living that way?’
‘I expect it is, but I’ve never learned to live any other way.’
‘I’d teach you, but it’s your affair.’ She brought a bottle and some glasses. She poured him some soda water, herself a glass of wine. ‘I like a drink, if only to cheer me up a bit – even in this graveyard. The last time we met, things were rather more cheerful. You were just off to America or somewhere. You didn’t even send me a card.’
‘I’m a dreadful correspondent.’ He couldn’t see why he should have sent her a postcard, seeing that he hardly knew her.
‘That, I’d really enjoy, travelling round the world. But I expect you just shut yourself up in a library somewhere and sat there reading and drinking weak tea with no sugar.’
‘I drove all over from north to south. Right down to Texas.’
‘Texas? That sounds so grey-green. I bet they have a sea coast.’
‘There is a gulf, but I never got that far.’
‘I’ve never been to the sea at all. I just might have made it once if Ruml hadn’t gone and given me a baby. I had to sit at home instead. That’s why I never got to university either.’
‘You wanted to study?’
‘Why not? Everyone thought I’d go on to college.’
‘And what are you doing these days?’
‘Don’t even ask!’ She went into the room next door and he heard the sound of drawers being pulled out. She returned with a long strip of film. He took it from her and held it up to the light. A brown puppy with drooping ears looking out of a yellow kennel next to a speckled hen scratching by a purple fence.
She studied him, then came and stood behind him as if she wanted to have a look herself. He felt the soft touch of her hand on his right shoulder.
‘That’s what I do. Colour in the frames.’ She leaned over him for a moment longer, then stepped away and took the strip back. ‘I’ve already squandered three years of my life on it. At first I thought I’d learn something in the process. But it’s just a bore.’ She moved her chair a bit closer to him. They were so close, their knees almost touched. ‘When I come in at night my eyes are sore from it.’ She raised her eyes to him as if to let him see just how sore they were. They were a light blue like his daughter’s.
What expectations did she have of him? None, most likely. It was a summer evening and she was bored. And what expectations did he have of himself? Wasn’t he bored too? No, surely not. But he was so strait-laced and unbending: as dry as the Negev Desert.
‘Does Alena still work in the library?’
He nodded.
‘It’s a daft world where women have to work. Having to look after their children, their husband, their furniture and go out to work on top of it all. I can’t even read in the evening, or paint, my eyes are so tired. Would you like me to put on a record?’
‘If you like. And you did painting before?’
‘When I was still at school. I used to paint there every day. Since then I only paint on the odd occasion.’ She got up and put a record on the gramophone.
From the corner of the room there came the sound of a husky jazz singer. ‘What sense would there be in dusting the furniture, ironing shirts, frying schnitzels and tossing off the odd still life?’
She continued to stare at him. He was incapable of concentrating on her words. It would be better if he got up and left. Instead he asked: ‘Would you show me your paintings some time?’
‘You want to see my paintings? Why should you look at them? There are plenty of pictures around by people who are better at it than me and you won’t even have the time to see half of them. There’s so little time, don’t you think? Sometimes when I get up in the morning it really hits me and I panic. I’d really love to escape.’
‘Escape where?’
‘Somewhere I’d know I was alive. Do you fancy running away with me?’
He shrugged.
‘I’m rattling on, aren’t I? And I’m letting you sit here with just a soda water when I bet you’re hungry. Wait a sec and I’ll make you some soup.’
‘Please don’t go to any trouble.’
‘I’ll enjoy it!’ She went out.
His throat was dry. He drank the rest of his soda water but it did nothing to slake his thirst. Moreover he felt hemmed in here, it was a space quite different from the one he was used to moving around in. A few steps more and he’d find himself on a very slippery slope. If he didn’t escape now the walls would close in, whirling about an invisible axis, and he would find himself trapped. He peeped into the kitchen. Alexandra was just pouring ketchup into a saucepan. The crimson liquid reminded him of blood.
‘I don’t think I should detain you, seeing that Oldřich doesn’t look as if he’s coming.’
‘I should think he’ll come: he promised you, after all.’ She shrugged. ‘You won’t even wait for a drop of tomato soup?’
‘I’d better not, if you don’t mind.’
‘I don’t mind. It’s your bad luck – I make a good tomato soup, with ham and double cream.’ She turned down the gas, distant now and indifferent. She saw him to the gate: ‘Don’t feel you have to wait five years before you call again.’
The gate slammed behind him. He was suddenly overcome with regret: it welled up from somewhere deep inside him. To escape somewhere, to where you’d know you were alive. But where was that place, and in whose company?
4
It was almost eight o’clock – but he didn’t feel like going home to an empty flat. He was right to have left her. He was pleased he had got away in time, but the regret did not leave him. He ought to do something to take his mind off it.
Why had she stared at him so ha
rd? What could she find fascinating about him? He had never thought of himself, even as a young man, as someone attractive to women. He was unsure of his appearance. If he was suddenly summoned to an interrogation and asked to describe himself, he probably wouldn’t be able to. He would have difficulty in stating for certain whether his lips were full or thin, he didn’t know where his birth marks were without having to think, or what shape his ears were, and if he was given some paints and told to mix from memory the same shade of brown as his eyes, he would certainly fail. On one occasion when he entered a tailor’s cutting-room where several mirrors were installed, he happened to catch sight of his reflection in profile and it took a moment or two before he realised that the stocky fellow with the prominent nose was himself.
So the only thing he knew about himself was that he was rather ponderous, unrhythmical, unmusical (he had never learned to dance or to sing the simplest of melodies, and when he was doing his military service he had even had difficulty keeping in step with the rest) and he was clumsy with his hands.
Magdalena used to maintain he had an interesting or even beautiful nose but he hadn’t used to take comments like that seriously. In his younger days, he had been such an impassioned speaker and debater that people found his energy attractive. But he had talked less and less lately. He had developed an aversion to repeating other people’s ideas and experiences, or his own: to repeating anything, in fact. And since most conversations consisted entirely of repetition – phrases, events, ideas, opinions – he usually kept quiet. And if he did start to speak he would dry up after a few sentences. As a rule he didn’t confide in anyone else, but didn’t discourage others from confiding in him.
Why had she confided in him? Was it because he was already old and inspired people’s confidence?
He stopped at the corner of the Old Town Square. He ran up to the first floor, and was scarcely through the door when his mother appeared in the front hall. ‘Close the door quickly,’ she told him, ‘or we’ll have the place full of flies. And take off your shoes!’ She had an obsessive dread of filth, and of flies in particular. Throughout the period from spring to autumn when a fly might conceivably make an appearance in the square, all the main windows in the flat had to be kept shut. The maximum his father was allowed during those months was a frame of fine wire-mesh in place of the ventlights.
‘Go and wash your hands in the kitchen, your father’s in the bath!’
He went to the kitchen and she brought him a towel. ‘He wants to fly to Brno early in the morning,’ his mother grumbled. ‘One of their motors has broken down. They called him this afternoon. He’d be flying this evening if he could. He’s always at it. You ought to tell him to stop rushing around like this. While he still has the chance – before he wears himself out.’
He smiled. His mother had voiced the same anxiety for twenty years at least. Though one day her constant fears could be sadly justified.
‘You’re hungry, I’m sure. And just when I have nothing in the house.’ Always now that Hanuš was abroad (albeit still legally) and inaccessible, she livened up whenever he arrived and fell over herself to do things for him.
‘I’m not hungry. It’s too hot to have an appetite.’
‘So what’s the reason you’ve dropped in out of the blue?’ she asked suspiciously.
‘I happened to be passing.’
‘We had a letter from Hanuš. He’s found himself a new flat. One whole floor of a house, with a view of the garden from his study. It’s quite a big garden and there’s a bed of peonies right opposite his window, and they’re in flower.’ His mother described the view as if she’d just got back from a visit to Hanuš’s new flat. ‘But I don’t like the way he’s settling in. He’s acting as if he meant to stay for good.’
She refused to countenance the thought of Hanuš staying overseas and never returning to the country where he was born, where she was born, the country for whose freedom, as she believed, her two brothers had died, and where her ancestors had been born and buried. His mother was deeply attached to her home town and its speech, and in that she differed from his father, who was only attached to his machines – which knew no homeland. All she had known so far – two wars and imprisonment – weighed on her and made her grumble, although she never associated her afflictions with her country itself. Foreigners had brought them every time, after all. Whereas his father constantly analysed the reasons for what happened in order to forecast the future, his mother let the future alone, and accepted it all fatalistically. His father, perpetually prepared for the worst, was undoubtedly relieved that his younger son at least had managed to remove himself beyond the borders of this least secure of areas. To his mother it seemed that she already had the worst behind her and subconsciously she expected fate to bring her some relief. There was an anxiety deep within her soul, but she refused to pay it any greater tribute than her yearning to have her sons close by her.
‘You ought to write to him. When was the last time you sent him a letter?’
He couldn’t remember, but said: ‘Just recently.’
‘You should write, you should tell him to start thinking about coming home. The longer he leaves it, the harder it’ll be for him to get used to it here again.’
‘But he’s a grown man.’
And what expectations did he have of the future? He had inherited his father’s capacity for logical thought, but also his mother’s dislike of treating her life’s experience with logic. Moreover he had the foolish habit of forgetting the past, so how was he supposed to draw conclusions from it? It could well be that the day was not far off when the doorbell would ring and messengers in some new guise would finally hand him the long, narrow strip with name, date, number and irrevocable verdict; but should he let the fear of it poison his days beforehand? That must surely have been the attitude of most of those during the war who were destined for the final solution and then fared worse than he. And most likely it was the attitude of those destined for the final solution after the February coup of ’48 – and where had they ended up? Had he graduated from law school just a few years earlier he might well have pronounced sentence on them. An awful thought.
‘But he listens to you,’ his mother continued. ‘He respects you. He knows you understand this sort of thing.’
‘All right, I’ll write to him.’ Perhaps he was foolhardy because he had always got off scot-free so far. Or more likely because he plain refused to accept escape as the only way out of danger. What would become of the human race if we all opted for escape?
‘And what are the children up to?’ his mother asked, changing the subject.
‘They’ve already gone,’ he replied, aware that this news would not be warmly received. ‘I drove them all to the country on Saturday.’
‘And they didn’t even bother to come and say goodbye.’
He had begged Alena to take the children over, but she hadn’t found the time, even though she postponed the departure twice. Like most women, she was not enamoured of her mother-in-law and did what she could to avoid her. He was obliged to take the children to see his parents on his own. He suddenly felt a pang of resentment towards his wife for not having done him that little favour. Goodness knows where she’d been gadding about those two days. The last evening, she had only come home just before midnight. Then she had fallen asleep as her head touched the pillow, though she knew very well they wouldn’t see each other for at least a week. ‘I’ve had a lot of work on my plate,’ he explained, ‘and I just didn’t have time to bring them over.’
He didn’t like complaining but now he felt a need to talk about himself. In the old days, when he was still a boy, he would go to his mother every so often and launch into a lengthy narration of everything that had befallen him recently. She would listen and he would find relief. But what was he to tell her now? That they were piling cases on to him and making attend endless meetings and pep talks where he was forced to listen to things he found repugnant? That he was sleeping badly and waking
up in the small hours worrying about what he would do when they kicked him out of his job? That for a long time his wife had not felt amorous towards him? That he now hated getting up in the morning as there was nothing to look forward to, nothing hopeful? That, on top of it all, for the last week he had also had the household to look after, with all the shopping, the children’s meals to cook and even the laundry? That this afternoon he had been to see a friend, but only found his friend’s wife at home, and she had said things to him which, however meaningless, still rang in his ears?
‘You mustn’t overdo it,’ his mother said. ‘You’ve got bags under your eyes.’
‘They’re not from overdoing it.’
‘What are they from then? Adam,’ she asked anxiously, ‘you’re not doing anything foolish again, are you?’
‘What do you mean “again”?’
‘You know very well what I mean. Getting up to something with those friends of yours who were given the boot.’
‘You’ve no need to worry.’
‘I hope you learnt a lesson from what happened to you that time over your article.’
He knew that his mother would go on to remind him of his father’s time in prison. Of all the things that had ever happened to her she only ever recalled the worst. The lesson she had learned from everything was that resistance was undesirable, that one should not have different aspirations from other people, that one should only aspire after what was permitted. ‘You’ve no need to worry,’ he repeated.
‘I do worry, because I know you too well. You’re like your father – always wanting to save the world.’
‘Don’t be upset – it’s ages since I wanted anything of the kind.’ At most he wanted to save himself – but how? Which was the path of salvation? What was the country, where was the place where you would know you were alive?
He could see the black harmonium in the corner. The brick floor still covered in dirt, the warm light shining in through the narrow dormer window and forming a sharply edged cone; a girl, her face hidden in the darkness, gently touching the keys and he in an unprecedented ecstasy escaping upwards to where he would be able to live according to his soul’s needs.