The Ultimate Intimacy

by Ivan Klíma

  Pagodas in parks, the red walls of the Imperial Palace, gates with yellow roofs. The fish market and bicycles flashing past like a shoal of fish. Those under sentence of death being hauled off to execution on a cart; rebellious intellectuals and con men, smugglers, corrupt officials and murderers. The ever-curious crowd goggling at those who are about to die. When the crowd becomes enraged, it hurls books into the flames. Brainwashed children burn the works of old Chinese masters along with those of foreign devils, or goad an old man along: they thrust a four-sided hat on his head and hang a sign around his neck saying ‘STINKING TEACHER CHANG PREACHING THE CAPITALIST ROAD’. They make him kneel before a portrait of Mao and recite from memory some of the dictator’s articles. Then they dance the Dance of Loyalty and hang a wall-poster of loyalty on the wall. They all sing ‘The East is Red’; all in the name of some senseless, self-destructive revolution, all in a country where until recently the old were esteemed as nowhere else in the world.

  The Yellow River and in it Mao, the fat, ugly and cruel unifier of the country. Even on the day before he died millions of brainwashed children and old people were shouting: May he live a thousand years!

  How many years, how many months, how many days does Matouš have left? He would like to leave his burrow behind, leave behind the world of screeching tramcars, a world well-disposed to con men, loose women, cancer and bad poets, whose works mostly did not get burned, and find a place of silence wherein he would hear nothing but his own breathing. But the fan whines and the solitude presses on his brain and all he can see and hear are mindlessly roaring crowds.

  If only his bad wife were to look in; she regularly drops by for money. It is two months since she was last here. She was probably too ashamed to come to the hospital, or else she knew he had no money there. But at this moment he would give her whatever she asked for, provided he had enough. Maybe she would make it up with him and stay till the end.

  Matouš believes he is endowed with a special gift of perceiving the aura that surrounds every individual, so that at moments of clairvoyance he is able to discern when the aura is so weakened that the person no longer has enough strength to live. But he is incapable of seeing his own aura and this fact does not help his peace of mind.

  He knows he ought to rise above all the cares that flow from his awareness of his own self, cut the umbilical cord that connects him to the outside world. Instead of succumbing to anxiety, he ought to advance with equanimity towards the Great Coalescence. Except that he spent the whole of yesterday gawping at the television in order to dispel his loneliness, distract his thoughts and not miss what life had to offer for the brief moment that fate still granted him. But on Sunday mornings there are only children’s programmes on television. So he pours himself a glass of wine and some lines of poetry come to him:

  Drink wine, anyway,

  do nothing

  Float away

  Fathomless longing.

  In his stomach the wine is instantly transformed into boiling lead that rises back into his throat.

  The eyes of a jade Buddha stare at him from the glass case opposite his bed. Oh, monks, this, then, is the noble truth about suffering: birth is suffering, old age is suffering, sickness is suffering, death is suffering, contact with unpleasant things is suffering, when one does not attain what one wishes it is suffering …

  Suddenly he makes up his mind. It’s Sunday, he’ll go and hear the husband of that motherly matron preach. Maybe his sermon will cheer him up.

  He enters the chapel after the service has started. The place seems half-empty to him. Perhaps it’s always like this, or perhaps it’s because the holidays are beginning. All the same, Matouš does not sit down but stands behind the last row of pews trying to make out whether the pastor’s wife is also in church.

  Shortly after his own arrival, another woman enters. She is strikingly attired and her long hair with its faintly Titian red hue hangs halfway down her back. She stands alongside him, opens the hymnal and when she has found the hymn, joins in the chorus.

  Matouš doesn’t join in the singing; he doesn’t know the melody and the text seems to him imbued with a belief in something he finds utterly foreign.

  The pastor’s wife is sitting right in the first row. He easily recognizes her plump figure and the slightly greying hair which, instead of being hidden under a nurse’s cap, is combed up high into a bun. Matouš’s mother wore her hair the same way.

  The pastor is too tall and gaunt and it seems to Matouš that there is something ascetic about his appearance, or maybe something intense. He emphasizes each of the words he now reads from the Scripture as though wanting to attest that each word was a stone in a foundation or an unshakeable rock. Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal, but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.

  It’s interesting that even in those far-off times people didn’t have anywhere to hide their treasures from thieves. Confucius also lived in a time of wars, discord and crime, but believed that in some earlier age harmony, justice and wisdom had reigned, and we must return to those values if we wish to remedy the way things are.

  The pastor continues with his reading. The text emphasizes that people should not worry about their future or fear that they will have nothing to eat or wear. Then the minister starts to interpret the text. In his opinion, people have become plunderers, always wanting to own something. Nothing of what they already have seems enough to them and in a way they turn into bandits, taking where they can, plundering anything that cannot protect itself, whether it be someone weak and helpless, an animal, a tree, any living thing. They even plunder the dead resources of the earth and transform them into enormous quantities of things which soon turn into piles of waste.

  Matouš senses agitation welling up from within him. It is a state he is familiar with. Sometimes he can engender it when he has drunk several pots of strong green tea. At such moments, objects start to become transparent; plants and all living things become surrounded with an aura of gentle colours and he is able to discern the traces of past contacts and the outline of imminent death, decay and putrefaction. And at that moment he realizes that the pastor’s aura is fading; it appears and then disappears like the twinkling light of a distant star. The pastor has not long to live. Maybe he suspects as much; Matouš can detect nervous anxiety in his words. It is also odd that whenever the pastor looks towards the place where Matouš is standing, his speech seems to falter and it is as if he has lost his thread. Only when he turns away does he continue with possibly even greater emphasis.

  During the last hymn, the pastor hurries out and so does the woman at Matouš’s side. His agitation gradually recedes.

  A middle-aged man stands outside the door shaking everyone by the hand. He also greets Matouš. ‘You’re here for the first time today, aren’t you?’

  He confirms this and explains that he was in hospital and the pastor’s wife invited him.

  ‘It’s nice of you to have come,’ the man says with pleasure. ‘I hope you have enjoyed being with us.’

  The pastor’s wife also notices him. ‘You really did come then, Mr Volek?’

  ‘I said to myself it would do me no harm to go to church once. But actually I was only looking for an excuse to see you again.’

  ‘There’s not much to see,’ she says. ‘But my husband will be pleased if you come more frequently.’

  ‘I actually agreed with quite a lot of his sermon,’ he says, chiefly to please her.

  ‘Really? You ought to tell him. He’d be happy to hear it.’

  ‘I don’t know when I would have the opportunity.’

  ‘If you like, and if you have no particular plans, you can join us now,’ she suggests. ‘You can have lunch with us. My husband will be back at noon; he has another service today. And our children will enjoy li
stening to you. I have spoken about you at home.’

  Her invitation takes him aback. Could he really have captivated this woman? He protests that he could not be such an inconvenience. But the pastor’s wife dismisses his protests. They are always having someone home for lunch.

  And so he manages to enter the flat in the manse.

  In fact, it is a very long time since anyone has invited him to lunch. He has no friends, only acquaintances, and he tends to meet them in pubs or wine bars.

  Stepping into the front hall, he certainly does not have the impression of entering a manse. The walls of the front hall are hung with posters: Michael Jackson; alongside him some space rocket on course for Saturn; and below that the open jaws of an enormous salmon begging to be protected.

  ‘Marek and Magda hung all of them there. The poster with the salmon was sent to us by my husband’s sister. She lives in America,’ the pastor’s nice little wife explains and leads him into the living room where normal pictures hang on the walls. On the piano stands a vase of purple irises. ‘You see? I have really nice patients who bring me flowers,’ she says with approval. ‘If you like you could take a seat here – there are lots of books on the shelves, or you could play the piano, unless you’d prefer to take a walk in the garden. I have to get on with the cooking.’

  He follows her out, of course, and even suggests that if she had some French beans, dried mushrooms, soy sauce, pepper and something he could use to make a meat broth, he could cook a piquant Chinese soup.

  To his surprise the pastor’s wife accepts his offer and brings him everything he has requested and also lends him an apron. ‘We are used to our guests making themselves at home,’ she explains. ‘If you didn’t enjoy it, you wouldn’t have offered. And you really will be helping me, as I still have my packing to do.’

  So he prepares the meat broth while the good wife at his side scrapes the potatoes. He has no objection to such a division of labour here, he senses the relaxed, homely atmosphere – a good home. When they were still living together Klára would refuse to cook. He had to cook for himself or they would go to the pub. She said to him once: ‘When you buy a car I’ll cook you what the Queen of England has for dinner.’ But he could never afford a car and she never even cooked him the handful of rice that the Chinese ricksaw driver has for supper.

  A freckled little girl with glasses bursts into the kitchen. The pastor’s wife says it’s their Magda, and he loses his composure slightly, being unused to dealing with children and aware that it would be a good idea to entertain the little girl somehow. He recalls the fable of the giant leviathan that could appear in the form of fish or fowl and as a bird could rise to a height of ninety thousand miles, in other words higher than any satellite or rocket. The trouble is, the fable does not really have a plot and turns into a morality story, unsuitable for telling, least of all to children.

  Happily, Magda ignores him and takes a banana from the fruit basket, asking whether she ought to pack Eva’s old black swimming costume or take her own old one. When Mrs Vedra suggests they go out the next day to buy a new one, Magda exclaims that that would be super and dashes out again.

  ‘You have a pretty daughter.’

  ‘Except for the glasses. Her eyes are getting worse all the time.’

  ‘I’ve worn glasses since I was ten. My eyes won’t get any worse now.’

  ‘The doctor promised me it will stop when she reaches puberty.’

  ‘You said you had two children of your own and one step-child, Matron. If it’s not too bold a question, was your husband divorced?’

  ‘The very idea!’ There was a note of amazement or even offence in her voice. ‘His wife died when Eva was just a baby.’

  ‘And did you always work in a hospital?’

  ‘Yes. After the Charter they wouldn’t let my husband remain in Prague. He was only allowed a little church in the highlands. It took me almost an hour to get to work from there.’

  ‘And did you have no option?’

  ‘My husband had a really tiny salary. Admittedly people would make us gifts of food, but I realized the congregation was too small to support us.’

  ‘And now you wouldn’t need to?’

  She shrugs. Then she says, ‘No, not any more. My husband got back an apartment house in Vinohrady in the restitution and sold it for a lot of money. But I wouldn’t like to be stuck at home.’

  ‘And what would you like to do?’

  The pastor’s wife again shrugs, seemingly unsure of what she would like to do.

  ‘You could find something nice to spend your time on.’

  ‘What do you have in mind?’

  ‘There are so many opportunities nowadays.’

  The matron shakes her head and he quickly adds: ‘I don’t mean having fun, but doing something where you’d be your own boss.’

  ‘I’m hardly going to start a business somewhere. I wouldn’t know how, anyway.’

  ‘I could easily imagine you managing some trust to assist disabled children. Or lonely grandmothers.’

  The pastor’s wife ponders his words. She neither says anything, nor protests. Maybe she could make a contribution towards the publication of his poetry. ‘And what plans do you have for your money?’

  ‘I don’t concern myself with it. We bought the children new clothes. And my husband bought himself a car. He needs it, since he also has the charge of a congregation in the country.’

  ‘But it must be an interesting feeling to come into wealth all of a sudden.’

  ‘No, I prefer not to think about it.’

  He observes this woman. Her hair is already greying, but the skin on her arms is still smooth and her round face is almost free of wrinkles. If she were to dye her hair she would look younger. But it would seem she has no desire to, in the same way she has no desire for money. That is, if it were possible for a woman not to have any desire for money. How much could they have received from the house sale? How much is a lot of money? Money interests Matouš; it would help him lead an independent existence. But he had had nothing to demand back in the restitution, his forebears had been ordinary peasants or workers. One of his grandfathers had been a gamekeeper and he could have asked for his shotgun back if it had actually been his own.

  And did returned property also belong equally to the spouse? Probably not – at least not during the life of the recipient. If this good wife were to divorce she’d remain poor, she’d only be rich when that preacher-sermonizer of hers died and returned to the Lord, which shouldn’t be long by the look of it. Unless he divorced her first. But pastors probably don’t divorce, and certainly not very often. But what about their wives? He hasn’t any notion of how pastors’ wives behave. Most probably just like any other woman in our part of the world; you can win their favour so long as you find the right way to their hearts. But that was an art he had never mastered.

  When the soup is cooked, he mentions that he not only has oriental cookbooks at home but also Chinese and Japanese prints and a collection of interesting objects and some figurines, mostly of the Buddha. ‘When you pay me a visit I’ll be happy to show them to you.’

  The matron remains silent for a moment, and then says, ‘I’m sure my husband would find that interesting. He is a very good carver himself. Though not of Buddhas.’

  And so, despite using her husband’s interest as an excuse, she actually accepts his invitation.

  7

  Daniel was waiting at the Smíchov bus station to drive Eva home. He had always waited for her like this ever since she was small and would come home from different camps. He had waited for her even when there was no longer any real need for him to do so, and when in fact it was no longer appropriate. But seeing that he always came to meet her half-brother and half-sister he was afraid his eldest child might feel neglected. Maybe – even though he didn’t like to admit it – he wanted to make sure no one else was waiting for her. Also he was worried where she might go if he left her a free choice.

  Eva was the v
ery last to appear in the door of the bus. ‘You’ve come to meet me, Daddy?’

  ‘And why wouldn’t I?’

  ‘I thought you were cross with me.’

  ‘What made you think so?’

  ‘You know very well. Petr wrote and told me that he admitted to you I had asked him for speed. But he talked me out of it. It was given to me by some other people.’

  ‘Given or sold?’

  ‘They wanted something for it.’

  ‘You talk about it as if you were buying a hot-dog.’

  ‘But I only bought it a couple of times and then Petr talked me out of it.’

  ‘We won’t talk about it now.’

  ‘I’m really sorry. I ought to have talked to you about it, but I was afraid you’d be upset.’

  He felt he ought to point out that he was upset about what had happened and not about the fact she hadn’t told him about it, but he’d first have to make the same comment about his own actions. It needs a lot of courage to admit to an action that one is ashamed of and knows to be wrong. One’s reluctance to hurt someone else is just an excuse; in fact it is a lack of courage.

  ‘What’s new at home?’ Eva asked.

  ‘Mum has gone off to Grandma’s with Magda and Marek. And Marek has started to read like mad. The last few days before they left he moved into the library and started to devour books. Mostly about astronomy and nature, but also my theological writings. And before I forget, we discovered that our daughter had started taking drugs!’

  They reached the car. ‘We’ve got a new car?’ she said in surprise. ‘And you didn’t tell me in your letter.’

  ‘Didn’t I? Maybe I didn’t think you’d be interested. The next time we buy a car I’ll let you know.’

  ‘I’ve been reading too,’ Eva said. ‘Grandad has an interesting book about Bach. And I played the piano a lot.’