by Ivan Klíma
She had scarcely reached puberty, which happened around her thirteenth year, when she started to draw the attention of all kinds of men, from her own age group up to men old enough to be her father, but nothing convinced her that she was worthy of genuine interest, let alone love and admiration.
She married when she was nineteen. She tried to persuade herself it was because she was attracted to the man, but more likely it was because she wanted to leave home. Filip, her first husband, was closer to her father’s generation, though he was nothing like her father, which was probably what attracted her to him most. He had an interesting and manly job – airline pilot – and spoke several languages, was a good tennis-player and an equally good dancer. Admittedly, he did have one thing in common with her father: he liked to talk about death, not hers but his own – one day his plane might crash. When he first told her this, she clasped him in her arms and begged him to give up flying as she was afraid for him. Her fear evidently excited him, as from then on he would take pleasure in recounting to her the disasters that had cost his colleagues their lives.
At the time of their marriage, she was in love with him and genuinely anxious about him, to the extent of going to meet him at the airport during the first few weeks. He loved her too and prided himself on having such a young, beautiful and interesting wife. As he flew on overseas routes, he used to bring her expensive (and, to most people in the country, inaccessible) gifts. When in time he noticed that her devotion exceeded the level of affection he was accustomed to, he fell prey to the usual masculine vanity. Bára was his property, a mere accessory to his perfection. He started to treat her with increasing unkindness, constantly stressing all her faults: she wasn’t punctual, she lacked purpose and didn’t even pass muster either as a wife (she paid too much attention to studying instead of to him) or, later, as a mother. Little Saša screamed (because of her, naturally) often the whole night through, when he needed to sleep so as to be fresh for work the next day. He crushed the last: remnants of any self-confidence she had. When she discovered that while she was spending her days and nights (or at least that was how it seemed to her) looking after him and his little boy, he was off making love to some air hostess, he explained to her that it was her fault for not creating a proper home.
She rushed straight back to her mother. Was it possible, she asked her, that men could be so mean, so blind to anything but themselves, so selfish, that they were incapable of seeing a true picture of the world or of their nearest and dearest? But her mother was too devoted to her own husband, who had actually saved her life, to accept such a generalization. She counselled Bára to be more patient, as she too had been patient.
Bára now began to think about doing away with herself after all, of entering the darkness for good and making a thorough job of it this time. The trouble was, things had changed: now she had a son to consider. So instead of killing herself she got a divorce. Shortly afterwards she fell in love with a man with a biblical name, a builder of Towers of Babel, as she used to call him. At that time, Saša was three and Samuel forty-three. He was actually two years older than her first husband, once divorced (he would divorce a second time on her account) and had a daughter from each of his marriages. She married him – she was convinced – out of love; she admired him and for a long time believed she had found the very best of men. She gave up her acting studies for him, and transferred to a course in architecture. Almost every day during the first months and even years after their marriage they would talk about the work that united them, mostly about his projects, which were surprisingly unconventional and liberal for their time. They would also pore over the specialized foreign journals that he was able to get hold of, and discuss – she with greater tolerance, he mostly with his own particular kind of haughtiness – all the various architectural and building projects around the globe.
When she had completed her studies, she realized that while they might share the same opinions about new materials and how the building of high-rise, pre-fabricated housing estates was a crime, on the most essential thing they would never agree: for her, the most important thing in life was the man she loved, whereas for him it was his work or rather success in his work – in other words his career. Compared to her first husband he was more cultured and well-mannered, but he increasingly required her to subordinate herself to the routine and lifestyle to which he had become accustomed. What this routine required from her was to minister to his comfort. Its aim was to ensure him peace and quiet for his work. For his wife and his own son there remained little time in his life and even less enthusiasm. For his stepson there was nothing at all; he should be content that he had a place at the table and a bed to sleep in. At first Bára strove to satisfy his requirements in an effort to wring out of him a recognition which she wrongly confused with love. There was never any acknowledgement; her acquiescence merely fed his sense of superiority. She soon realized that her second husband was also selfish and self-centred and she was merely an adjunct to his ego, simply a very young mother caring for an ageing child. Her relative youth just meant it was an even greater sacrifice.
And so, after a few years of marriage, Bára started once more to be troubled by the thought that her life was slowly slipping away and she was achieving none of the things she longed for. The dusk was gradually falling, the night was approaching and she got less and less chance to enjoy the sun.
At that time she started to imagine love with another man; for the time being he was indeterminate, and most likely non-existent and therefore unattainable: a kind, unselfish and wise person who would not genuflect with admiration before his own ego and not regard his wife as a mother to look after him. But these fantasies did little to help her, they were so utterly unattainable that they merely left her dejected and she began to suffer bouts of depression again. She resisted the temptation to be unfaithful not so much out of moral conviction but more out of fear of her husband killing her if he were to find out. He was jealous by nature and he grew more suspicious with age. Apart from that, she had no wish to harm someone with whom she had had many good times, with whom she had once been deeply in love and who had given her much.
At the onset of depression she would generally consult a tarot reader whose predictions contained much to raise her spirits: unexpected good fortune or a man who would steal her heart. She even predicted her a new marriage. When the depression was at its worst, Bára would lose all interest in life and be terrified of death. She would want to run away somewhere, put an end to something and start something afresh. What was there for her to start afresh, though? And she had nowhere to run to. Besides, she now had two sons and they needed her and she loved them.
In the course of her life she had acquired a number of woman friends. When she was in a good mood and managed to snatch a free evening for herself, she would call on Helena, a fellow student from her second period of study. Helena was the sort of person she could go to a wine bar with to drink wine and chat about nothing in particular. When she needed advice on child-rearing or consolation during desolate periods of marital vexation she would seek out Ivana, whom she had known since the time they were both studying acting at the Academy. Even though Bára abandoned the course after the third year and never returned to the Academy, the friendship remained. Ivana never went into acting but got married and had three children in five years. Her hobby was homoeopathy. Whenever Bára’s anxiety states were at their height she would rush off to her friend who would prescribe for her anacardium or pulsatilla, although the remedies would never work. Either Bára didn’t take them for long enough, or she didn’t dilute them enough, or she and Ivana were simply not capable of determining her fundamental problem.
All the same, Bára was sure she could find a very precise name for her fundamental problem: lack of love.
What if she were to try going to church occasionally, it occurred to her friend at their last meeting. She didn’t attend any church, did she?
It had been a long time since Bára had attended
church.
Why?
Most of all because she had stopped believing in God, or at any rate in the one they preached about in church. When she was a little girl she had very much wanted to believe. Even when she was studying she had still tried; in those days to go to church not only meant admitting to one’s faith, it was also a sign of opposition to those who forbade belief. And then it struck her that what they preached in churches was too rigid, it hadn’t changed for a thousand years. The very symbol of a man or God dying in pain on the cross was an almost perverted emphasis on suffering and death.
On the contrary – her friend explained to her – the cross symbolizes the fact that death has been overcome. Even so, the cross was something like an execution block or the gallows, it would always symbolize for her a cruel and violent ending of life.
Ivana didn’t feel well enough versed in theological questions to argue with her. But the minister at the church she attended was an excellent man, both wise and interesting. She always came home from his sermons with a sense of having been cleansed. He was a man of love, she said with unusual fervour. What’s more, he had many talents – he sang, played the harmonium, wrote poetry, composed music and could do wood carving. And he had behaved with courage under the old regime; for several years he was banned from preaching at all in Prague. Perhaps he would be able to explain what she found inexplicable.
Bára did indeed attend the church the following Sunday. She didn’t make her presence known to Ivana, however, and left during the final hymn. A week later, she did the same. When her friend asked her what she thought about the sermons, Bára replied that she had found them stimulating, but nevertheless she had the feeling she was incapable of believing. What people believed in was simply a dream about God coming down among people in order to conquer death. That was how she saw it anyway. It was a dream purporting to be reality. But death ruled the whole universe, after all. Nothing, no sacrifice, could end its sway.
Ivana thought it was possible that the minister’s preaching wasn’t up to his usual standard. He was absentminded these days. The first time Bára was there, his mother was dying. Most likely he hadn’t got over it quite yet. Ivana also wanted to know why Bára always dashed off before the end.
How could she shake the minister’s hand when she wasn’t able to believe in what he preached?
But if she were to speak to the minister privately...
But he was in mourning, after all. She could hardly bother him at this time. Besides she was always in a rush; Sam would take it very hard if she were to neglect him on a Sunday morning. He always wanted her around him.
Did she think she wouldn’t come next time then?
Bára said she wasn’t sure. She concealed the fact she had already spoken to the minister, that she had given him a lift. She didn’t even tell her how he had caught her imagination not only by the urgency with which he preached about the need for love, but also by the tenor of his voice and his gestures, which she suspected concealed some deep sadness or suppressed passion.
5
Daniel had been having disc trouble all that morning. The pain ran from his hip right down to the big toe of his right foot. He had first slipped the disc when he was climbing a rock in the Elbe Sandstone Mountains; he had lost his footing slightly and only realized that something had happened to him the next morning when he found he could not bend to put on his boots. Jitka had helped him to his feet and supported him as they went along in spite of his protests.
It might have been the pain or the weather – a blanket of smog lay over the city more reminiscent of autumn – but he had the impression that everyone he had met that day was either cursing or complaining. First thing that morning Magda had announced to him that she would most likely fail maths because she hadn’t the first idea what it was about, ‘and nobody,’ she added reproachfully, ‘is capable of explaining it to me’. Then Máša Soukupová telephoned and wept over her ruined marriage.
He ought to go and lie down. But before he could make up his mind Dr Wagner appeared, ostensibly to borrow some books from the library. It took them only a moment to choose the books, but instead of leaving, his visitor started to complain about society being bogged down in the basest materialism, and how life was dominated by money, brutality and vulgar sex. ‘Fewer and fewer people believe in spiritual values – who has anything to offer now, apart from the church?’
Daniel could have pointed out that even the church was incapable of firing peoples’ imaginations any longer. Only some crazy sect with a new saviour or at least Christ’s Delegate at its head was likely to do that. For fanatics like these, people were prepared to give up all their property or even commit mass suicide. Instead, he merely said that the original church had expected Christ’s coming and a pitiless judgment on all sinners. And were there so few sinners? But what people have a right to judge them?
Yes, that was his own view entirely, the lawyer agreed, particularly when they themselves were not judges and had simply stolen a list of names and printed them and thought that was enough to prove the guilt of those in question.
‘I’ve been thinking about your father,’ and Daniel finally realized the reason for his visit and why he was delaying his departure. ‘In your situation I would let the matter rest. You’ll never discover the truth after all these years anyway’
‘But there must be some files, some records, preserved still.’
‘Not necessarily. And even if there were, what kind of truth do you expect to find in the sort of records they kept?’
‘But I’d naturally like to find out something about the circumstances at least.’
‘If you say so, Reverend.’ In that case, Dr Wagner saw two options. Either to find someone in the Ministry and persuade them to look in the file – if it existed; this would probably not be free of charge. Alternatively, he could try to find some of the scoundrels who interrogated his father and had him on their books.
The idea of bribery was abhorrent to Daniel. And the thought of talking to such individuals even more so. But what he regarded as abhorrent was immaterial at this moment.
Dr Wagner was scarcely out the door when Alois burst into his office, still in his working clothes.
‘Has something happened to you?’
‘Me? No, not me!’ He tried to brush the bits of lime off his overalls on to the carpet. ‘But we had an accident at the building site. Fyodor, this young Russian guy, took a header off the scaffolding.’
‘Was he killed?’
‘No, not outright anyway, but he’s in an awful mess.’
‘Did you call an ambulance?’
‘Of course, but they kicked up a stink about him having no insurance. He was working the way they do nowadays, on the black. A Russian nigger, know what I mean?’
‘Which hospital did they take him to?’
‘Your one. Where your wife works, I mean.’
‘Do you want to phone there?’
Alois shrugged. ‘The other fellows said they’ll let him stew, seeing he isn’t insured and he’s a Russian anyway’
‘They wouldn’t do that,’ although Daniel wasn’t entirely sure about this.
‘He never spoiled anyone’s fun. He didn’t know Czech – that’s true, apart from the sort of things you’d rather I didn’t say here. And a few words he needed for the job. When he’d say words like “beer” or “buddy” it sounded Russian anyway. He said his father was here too, as a soldier.’
‘When?’
‘Couldn’t tell you.’
‘I think I can work it out.’
‘I just thought it’d be better if you phoned, they’d just tell me to f—’
He wouldn’t get to bed now. The lad wouldn’t care about his back pain; he was waiting for him to do something. After all he’d preached to him about loving one’s neighbour and the boy was now doing just that. He was showing concern even though he didn’t have to.
He sent him to get changed while he limped off to get a painkiller.
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br /> They parked in front of the surgical block.
‘What are you doing here?’ Hana was always pleased when he dropped by unexpectedly. Then she led them to the ward where the injured fellow lay. Alois pulled a chair over to the bed and started to tell him something, more with gestures than words.
He looked at the foreigner whose father must have been one of those he had vainly told to go home twenty-six years before. It was better to come as a labourer than as a soldier; on the other hand the soldier had returned unscathed, whereas this lad lay here pale, covered in bandages, his lips drawn back with the pain, his blond hair soaked in sweat.
Was our fathers’ iniquity truly visited on us after all? It certainly was a fact that here on earth we bore the consequences of their actions.
The orthopaedist that Hana took him to see, and that she had talked to Daniel about previously, asked: ‘Do you have some connection with the labourer, Reverend?’
‘No. A lad in our congregation is a workmate of his. I promised I’d enquire how he was,’ Daniel said. ‘Apparently he wasn’t insured; does that complicate things for you?’
‘Most definitely. I’ve just had the scoundrel he works for here. He was in a bit of a panic and so he offered to make a contribution but when he heard what an operation would cost he backed down. He’d sooner pay him the plane fare back to Kiev where he came from.’
‘So you won’t be operating?’
‘It would be a fairly complicated operation.’
‘And costly?’
‘With the post-operative care, Reverend, about a quarter of a million. That’s all. Because in this country a doctor still gets paid less than a bricklayer. The Germans would charge you at least three times that.’