by Ivan Klíma
Too many people run to Christ to fill their emptiness. When it doesn’t work they start to fill it with something else – but the living Jesus, Jesus on the mountain, means nothing to them. The Ten Commandments? If He were to appear now and approach someone with the commandments, I doubt they’d follow Him. The Ten Commandments belong to another age. These days they call it a paradigm. We are seeking a new postmodern paradigm, we debate it in seminars. We argue about what is permitted these days and where the boundary is that must not be overstepped. We’ll soon be asking whether any such boundary exists at all.
When she was on her way out, I told that architect woman she could stay longer if she liked. I don’t know what made me say it. Well, actually I do. I find her presence thrilling in a strange kind of way. Even so, no sooner were the words out of my mouth than I took fright. What if she takes my words as an enticement? We sat for a further two hours almost. I think my behaviour was artificial. On the one hand I displayed an exaggerated interest in her life, asking her about her husband, even about the first one, as well as about her two sons, while on the other I was incapable of concentrating on her answers. I was thinking about those words she had spoken and which I had passed over in silence instead of categorically denying them: ‘Maybe I’d like to know whether you’d be capable of loving me.’ I had looked at her and realized what a beautiful and interesting woman she was.
For a short while she talked to me about her work and about modern architecture: about vaulted cubism and functionalism. She said tourists in Prague only look at the old buildings and fail to realize all the gems of modern architecture that are strewn around the place.
I know that’s her speciality; I’ve never set eyes on anything she has created, but she talked with such enthusiasm that she enthused me as well.
Then I drove her right to her house. When I got back, I was happy I had resisted a foolish temptation but at the same time I was aware of a familiar sense of longing. That was how I used to feel years before when I would part from Jitka and the world would feel empty without her. Another thing that excited me about this woman was that she had Jewish antecedents. I realize that this is inverted prejudice, but I have always had the feeling that those who belong to the people of the covenant – even when they are totally unaware of the commitments it entails – have inherited something special. Surely somewhere within the consciousness of the entire lineage there must lie hidden the revolutionary insight that we are all made in God’s image and an offence against God is therefore an offence against man, and in turn an offence against man is an offence against God.
The things I brought back from Mum’s included all sorts of old textbooks and other literature. To my astonishment I discovered among them a copy of the History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolsheviks) published in 1946. Dad must have bought it with the intention of learning the history of the country whose army had just liberated us. For a short while I leafed through it, finding in the margins my father’s notes – sometimes only exclamation or question marks, in other places expressions of horror such as ‘dreadful’ or amazement – ‘surely not’
On a couple of occasions I started to read some of the actual text and was astonished at the amount of lies, vulgarity, distortion and foul abuse. Dad had drawn wavy lines under them. The thought struck me: is it possible that people actually believed all this nonsense, all these fabrications and artful deceit, and that perhaps millions of people had believed it, even those who had lived through the events themselves, who had the opportunity to discover the truth and speak to eye-witnesses?
Fanaticism and the need to believe in an ideal blinker our vision. When can we be even halfway sure that what is proclaimed actually happened the way it is described, particularly when the news about it comes from people having blind allegiance to their faith?
The reliability of testimonies to past events is something that continues to fascinate me. Christ is the present and the future, we declare. But He is first and foremost the past. Whichever way I interpret the Bible, I am dealing with events that happened and were recorded two thousand years ago. My gaze is therefore fixed on the past. Most people’s gaze is fixed on some point in the distant future. No, that’s an exaggeration. Most people gaze neither into the past nor the future, they explore neither truth nor lies, they gaze at the television.
When we were still in Kamenice, our local Secretary for Church Affairs was a fellow named Berger, a former PE teacher. Maybe they had chosen him for his physical fitness and sobriety, in view of the fact that the previous incumbent had fallen asleep in a ditch when he was in a drunken stupor and frozen to death. I was required to apply in person to the Secretary every time I wanted to organize an activity that in any way went beyond my regular services. Sometimes he would make a personal visit. He would take a seat in my office, Jitka would bring him a coffee and he would start to persuade me that everything I did was a waste of time, as in the space of two generations there wouldn’t be a single Christian left in our country, apart from a few crazy old grandmothers. He knew the content of all of my sermons and would warn me against any political allusions. I used to assure him that I had no interest in politics. ‘I know full well what you mean when you talk about the Jews being taken into captivity and yet they never stopped believing in a Messiah who would free them.’ When I objected that that was simply the way it was, he would say: ‘Sometimes I really can’t make up my mind whether you’re a shrewd operator or just naive.’
When Jitka died he came to the funeral. ‘Death is terrible, Reverend,’ he said to me. ‘You have my sympathy and I hope your faith helps ease your pain.’
A few days later I went to see him and mentioned that I desperately needed to return to Prague where my parents could help me take care of Eva who was six months old at the time.
He told me he understood my position and that it should be possible to arrange. I don’t know whether it was really he who sorted it out but shortly afterwards the ban on my preaching in Prague was lifted, for a while at least.
I’m writing about all and sundry in an effort to get that woman out of my mind, to avoid writing how I have yearned for her, how I have an urge to meet her again. An urge for love or for sin?
There was this quote from Marti in a recent issue of The Protestant: ‘Religion and eroticism – a wild, but inseparable, couple. Even though they fight like cats and dogs, call each other names and curse one another, the one cannot last long without the other. Where religion is dying, eroticism wastes away and becomes simply sex. Where eroticism is dying, religion shrivels up into abstract metaphysics (as was once the case) or into arid ethics (as it is now).’
I also recall what Balthazar the Cabalist says in Durrell’s Justine: ‘None of the great religions has done more than exclude, throw out a long range of prohibitions. But prohibitions create the desire they are intended to cure. We of this Cabal say: indulge but refine. We are enlisting everything in order to make man’s wholeness match the wholeness of the universe – even pleasure, the destructive granulation of the mind in pleasure.’
Where is the boundary between freedom and licence, between responsibility and self-denial that no longer serve life but inertia? Inertia that is one of the signs of death!
I’ve written nothing for almost a month. Have I lost the courage to be intimate with my diary? Or have I found a different form of intimacy?
I definitely don’t have the courage to contemplate the consequences of what has happened. A month ago, B. called and asked if I could spare her a moment. There was a note of urgency in her voice and it struck me she had had some misfortune or other. I told her that I would of course find time for her, and straight away if necessary. She then asked if we might meet in the Small Quarter as she happened to have some business there at that moment. She described to me a bistro halfway along Carmelite Street where we could meet.
I arrived there in under half an hour and when I sat down at one of the small tables I could not rid myself of a sense of som
ething unbecoming. Fortunately the bistro was empty, with just a sickly melody wafting from some unseen loudspeaker.
She arrived a little late. She started to apologize in her usual overstated fashion and thank me for coming. I ordered wine for the two of us and asked her if anything had happened to her.
She said she was suffering from depression, a feeling of anxiety that there was nothing permanent in this life, in her life, in people’s lives, in the life of the Earth. Not even in the life of the universe, she added.
I pointed out that there was something permanent in life and the universe too.
‘God, you mean,’ she said and straight away objected that she didn’t want any false consolation, that she’d sooner get drunk on wine than on some illusion. Then she spoke about her marriage. It was possible to put up with anything if one had a little support from one’s partner. She maintained that she loved her husband but she had no support from him. On the contrary, she had to support him. ‘You’re different,’ she told me, ‘you’re strong, you don’t foist your burden off on to other people, you help them with theirs.’
Just as on the previous occasion, there were moments when I couldn’t concentrate on what she was saying but instead simply registered the melody and tonal colour of her voice, and her appearance. I was also distracted by her fingers that involuntarily drummed the rhythm of the obtrusive muzak.
As we emerged from the bistro it was already getting dark. I wanted to say goodbye, but she detained me, saying that her mother lived a short way from there. Her mother was away at a spa and she had the keys to the flat. She had to go and water the house-plants; perhaps I might like to accompany her.
I remained silent and she asked if remaining silent always meant just remaining silent in my case. I continued to remain silent.
Her mother’s flat is in an old Small Quarter house: just one room with a view on to a narrow little courtyard. Old furniture dating back to some time at the beginning of the century, a brass menorah on the high bookcase. On the couch lay a black cushion with a Star of David embroidered on it in white. The room was full of vegetation with a cheese plant in one corner and a dragon arum in a large flowerpot, while fuchsias and pelargoniums blossomed on the window-sills.
She went into the bathroom and filled the watering can. She asked if I was cross with her for bringing me there. I told her I wouldn’t have come if I hadn’t wanted to. While she was watering the plants she spoke to me continuously about how I was a remarkable person, the most remarkable person she had ever met. She said she could sense the goodness of my heart and also my wisdom, that there were words concealed in me that I didn’t dare speak. I told her she was remarkable too and that I sensed in her a passionate longing for understanding, compassion and love. I repeated what I had already written to her: that she sought God, but projected her search on to people.
She said: ‘I’m just looking for a good man, a living man. I’ve been looking for you.’ She came over to me and instead of backing away and making a quick departure, I took her in my arms.
It’s strange how at that moment it struck me I’d first set eyes on her the day my mother died. Whose hand had thrust her into my destiny on that particular day?
Then we made love. I felt such ecstasy that I lost awareness of everything but her closeness and tenderness – and conceivably the long-forgotten tenderness that I used to feel with my first wife at such moments.
It was only when I had torn myself away from her that I was struck by the realization of what had just happened, of what I had done, and I was filled with horror and an overwhelming desire that it had all been just a dream from which I would awake into my usual innocence.
‘Blessed is the man who endures trial, for when he has stood the test he will receive the crown of life which God has promised to those who love him. Let no one say when he is tempted, “I am tempted by God”, for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one; but each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin; and sin when it is full grown brings forth death.’
‘Surely we have every right to,’ she said, sensing my mood. ‘Surely there can’t be anything wrong in love, can there?’ As we said goodbye, she asked when we would see each other again.
Instead of saying never, instead of saying we couldn’t see each other like that any more, I asked her if she really wanted to see me.
‘And don’t you want to see me?’ she said in astonishment.
I couldn’t find the strength to say that I didn’t.
We met there again on four further occasions while her mother was at the spa. More than once I wanted to tell her that we couldn’t continue with what had happened, but the moment I set eyes on her I was incapable of saying anything that might separate me from her for good. Whenever we made love she said: ‘Love can’t be a sin – you know that, don’t you?’
I think to myself, yes, but it depends what kind of love, in what circumstances – but I am looking into those dark Jewish eyes, so full of passion and anxiety and pain, and instead of all the things that burden me at that moment I tell her that I love her.
The most terrible thing of all, it seems to me, is that it’s true.
She would say: the most terrible and the most beautiful, because it joins that which cannot be joined, and maybe that’s exactly the way life operates.
3
It was already dark as Daniel returned from the presbytery meeting. From a distance he could make out the figure of a man leaning against the lamp-post directly opposite the chapel.
‘Waiting for me, Petr?’ he asked when he reached him.
‘Sort of, Reverend. But if you’re busy, I can come back some other time.’
‘Come along in. I’m always glad when you turn up. Besides, you haven’t called on us for ages. Has anything happened?’
‘No, apart from the fact that my sister’s getting married.’
‘That’s good news, isn’t it?’
‘The guy she’s marrying is decent enough, but I won’t be able to stay there any longer.’
‘Oh, yes. I forgot you’ve been living there. Have you somewhere else to go?’
‘Not easy to find at the moment.’
‘We’ll come up with something. If you don’t find anywhere, there’s still another guest room here. But I’d have to talk to the elders.’
‘Thank you, Reverend. I knew you wouldn’t leave me in a fix.’
As they climbed the staircase Petr staggered and Daniel only caught him at the last moment. ‘I had a couple of drinks at my sister’s,’ he said by way of explanation.
‘So long as you didn’t do anything worse …’
‘And I chucked in that job last week. I don’t like gardening.’
‘I suspected as much. Mr Houdek wrote to me about it. And can you think of something you’d enjoy more?’
‘It’s not really a matter of enjoyment, Reverend. The thing is I’d like to achieve something and for that I need some education. And that means earning some money.’
‘What would you like to achieve, Petr?’
‘But I’ve already talked to you about it, Reverend. I’d like to preach. Like you, for instance. So that I can tell people they must turn away from the darkness towards the light. Reverend, you’ve got a bit of an inkling, but I’ve known it at first hand – the horror that people live in.’
‘I have to congratulate you on that ambition, Petr. But do you have any notion what you might do to earn more?’
‘Possibly. But I don’t know whether you’d approve.’
‘I’ll approve anything that’s above board.’ He led him into the room with the piano. Hana and the children were most likely in bed asleep. So he went to make some tea. He suspected bad news. It was the job of clergy to receive bad news. Worst of all he was still concealing bad news within himself and there was no one who could relieve him of it.
He came back with the tea. ‘So how are you going to make a li
ving? If you don’t mind my asking.’
He shrugged. ‘I could be a dealer.’
‘In what?’
‘Whatever was around.’
‘That sounds fascinating. And what if they catch you?’
‘They won’t.’
‘You said that once before.’
‘I was still wet behind the ears then. I was operating solo. Or rather with a gang that was as stupid as I was. And anyway it wasn’t good. I used to steal as well.’
‘Whereas now you’ve decided that you’ll deal honestly in drugs.’
‘I haven’t decided anything, Reverend. I’ve decided I want to do something useful with my life, but if I’m to do it, as I explained to you Reverend, I need to earn something. You can’t do anything without money these days.’
‘Your news doesn’t please me. I thought you’d opted for a different way of life.’
‘But I have. I haven’t done anything wrong so far, have I?’
‘Not so far … Petr, try and recall what you used to say to me when I visited you there. That you never wanted to end up behind bars again. And just a moment ago you were telling me you wanted to preach.’