The Ultimate Intimacy

by Ivan Klíma

  He would definitely be needing them, he had assured her, but she had made no response.

  During her visit he had tried to persuade her once more that she ought to be doing something other than her present job.

  Hana now writes out who did how many hours overtime on the ward. She had never before entertained the thought that there was no longer any need for her to stay here obliging nurses to wash out soiled linen as quickly as they could. Daniel had inherited a house and sold it for a lot of money. He had told her for how much, but she had preferred not to take it in. They definitely no longer depended on her earnings.

  Maybe she could do social work within the church or even establish a Diakonia centre in their own building. There were guest rooms there; one was empty and Alois was still using the other, but it was high time that he found somewhere else to live.

  Not long ago, when she and Daniel were on a trip to Northern Bohemia, she had seen a centre where the handicapped were producing pottery and had even built themselves a kiln. They could try a different activity, such as weaving, painting on glass – flowers on glass – that was something she could learn to do herself and then teach it to the handicapped.

  As she contemplates her potential new vocation, it occurs to her that it could open up some new avenues for her, and that she should definitely talk to Daniel about it. It’s unlikely he’d reject her idea. She actually picks up the phone and tries to call him, but Daniel is neither in his office nor the flat. Eva answers and tells her that Daniel has some meeting with the moderator, but she is glad Hana has called because Daddy had left her a message to say he wouldn’t be coming to the concert at the Rudolfinum this evening as they had planned. If Hana wanted, Eva could go with her instead of Daniel – ‘but only if you really want me to, Mummy’. Hana says she’ll be pleased for her to come, of course, and then asks if Marek and Magda are home from school yet.

  Magda is already home, Marek has a practical class in the afternoon. Suddenly Magda’s voice comes down the line: ‘Mummy, I’ve got some great news for you. I got an A for my essay on Hus.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘I knew what he said about truth. Seek the truth, listen to the truth, learn the truth, cleave to the truth, defend the truth and that.’

  ‘I’m pleased to hear it.’

  ‘But there’s something you won’t be pleased to hear.’

  ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I wrote “I done”. I knew the right answer, but I just goofed because I was nervous.’

  ‘OK, Magda. But I have to hang up now. The doctor’s waiting for me.’

  ‘Bye then, Mum. And come home soon.’

  Hana goes about her work with a vague sense of disappointment and dejection that no longer has anything to do with what the director told them that morning. Something unpleasant has happened that she can’t exactly put her finger on, or she is reluctant to contemplate. It clearly has something to do with her home and with Daniel. When did it last happen that Daniel gave anything precedence over a concert? Besides which, they were supposed to be playing Bach. And why hadn’t he phoned her – why had he only left her a message? After all, he knows she is at the hospital all day.

  It strikes her that there is something wrong with almost everyone these days – people are changing. She notices it all around her, at the hospital and in the congregation. Maybe Daniel is changing too. Now he has more work, more money and more freedom. After years of crouching in the shadows, he has come out into the light and it has blinded him.

  Perhaps she’s doing him an injustice. Maybe he simply had to rush off somewhere and couldn’t get through to her on the phone. The hospital line is often engaged. Or maybe there was no one at the nurses’ station.

  Hana checks the medicines that a young lad on civilian military service has brought up from the pharmacy, but she ponders on the fact that Daniel has changed: he is less affable and definitely does not behave like someone who longs for her company. Sometimes she even gets the impression he’s avoiding her and evading conversation about anything but the most mundane matters.

  It occurs to Hana that every love tires in time. Perhaps their love has grown tired too, and the two of them remain together only for the children, and because it is right that people should stay together when they have promised to.

  The medicines are in order. The young lad on civilian military service asks her if she has any jobs for him and she tells him she has nothing for the moment and that he may take a rest.

  That evening Hana sits with Eva at the concert. They are playing Bach’s violin concertos. On their way there Eva seemed to her pale and out of sorts and said virtually nothing. And now she is sitting here all slumped and Hana wonders if she has been taking drugs again, although it is possible she is just not feeling well.

  Then she stops thinking about Eva and pays attention to the music. Hana doesn’t have perfect pitch like Daniel or her step-daughter but when she listens to powerful music she falls into a strange trance in which pictures and live scenes pass in front of her eyes. She closes her eyes, so that Daniel often thinks she has gone to sleep, while on the contrary she is experiencing something so powerful that she is suffused with an ecstasy that she has never experienced even during love-making.

  The dejection of the morning quickly leaves her and she screws up her eyes. While she is still aware of the violinist’s face, it is gradually transformed into the pimply face of the journalist who invited her to his home and served her tea and talked to her about a river that melts. He had said: You’re an angel. You’re completely different from other women. You’re better. Those words now blend with the music and together they caress and fondle her until she quivers beneath their touch. Then she notices that the journalist’s face is growing handsome; he is now wearing a Geneva gown with a white band, and the other members of the orchestra have donned gowns too and are no longer playing on the concert platform but on a beach by a pond. A big pond with lots of water – it may be the sea. Hana suddenly realizes that the conductor is now looking straight at her and giving her a sort of sign with his baton, inviting her to join him. At that moment she becomes aware of her heart thumping, like in the old days, like the time when Daniel first invited her for a date and she realized that she could love him. Something she thought would never happen to her again could actually happen. Maybe if she accepted that invitation … But at that moment something starts to surface from the water: a long, dark object – it’s a coffin – and it rises higher and higher. Alongside it, four pale girlish faces also emerge, they are bridesmaids in dazzling white dresses from which the water gushes in streams; they are bearing the coffin. They pass in front of the orchestra and come to a halt in the open space just in front of Hana. They carefully put the box down on the sand.

  The music is still playing. The violinist, whose face is no longer visible, steps over to the coffin and leans towards it, as if playing solely for the one who is inside. And the one inside can hear because the lid slowly rises and Hana beholds a female figure. Oh, how well she knows that face from the photographs as well as from Daniel’s carvings, even though he imagines she has never noticed: it is his first wife. The face is as white as the bridesmaids’ dresses, the wax-like ghastly face of the dead. But she is alive and approaching Hana with her hands stretched in front of her. Get back, you accursed creature, Hana whispers, you’re the one who still steals his love from me, you always stole his love from me, and yet there’s nothing for you here among the living. The white, accursed thing starts to stagger and then collapses lifelessly on the ground. At that moment Hana becomes aware of a painful sympathy for the poor creature; after all Jitka has a daughter here, whom she hasn’t seen for eighteen years. It must be awful for a mother not to see her own daughter for eighteen years and not to be able to hold her even once. People are sorry for the orphan but don’t spare a thought for the mother. Tears of pity gush from Hana’s eyes over that wasted, unfulfilled maternal love.

  The orchestra are coming to th
e end of the finale. The violinist has his own face back again and he and the conductor are bowing and shaking hands.

  Hana glances at Eva; the girl is as white as that apparition a moment ago.

  ‘Is there something wrong with you? They didn’t play badly, surely?’

  ‘It’s nothing, Mummy.’

  ‘Would you like to go home?’

  ‘No, Mummy. It’s just… I just need to pop out for a moment.’

  After the concert Daniel is waiting for them on the steps. He wants to know how the concert was. Eva says it was lovely. It occurs to Hana that she ought to tell him about her vision, but suddenly it strikes her that it had been not just unreal, but also ungracious: it had been nasty to Daniel, in that she had thought tenderly about another man; nasty towards Jitka who is long dead and it is therefore unbecoming to be jealous of her. It shows Daniel in a good light that he didn’t completely forget Jitka, that he tried to capture in his carvings the memory of that face which, after all, will never come alive again on this earth. In the afterlife only God knows what face we will be endowed with, if any at all.

  They walk side by side across the bridge, ahead of them the illuminated castle buildings, below them the water whose odour is indiscernible, smothered by the smell of the city. Hana notices that Daniel stoops slightly as he walks, as if sagging beneath some load. She also notices that his shirt collar is badly turned down and the striped shirt he is wearing doesn’t go with his checked jacket.

  They are now walking along in silence. Hana realizes she could never leave Daniel, not so much on her own account as on his; Daniel is probably unaware of it, but without her he would be left like a child abandoned somewhere on an empty shore.

  7

  Three days before Bára’s birthday, Daniel invited her to a restaurant for dinner. He brought her a letter he had written to her in a sort of trance, and also a gold ring with a small diamond. (He had never given a woman a ring before, not counting the wedding ring he had given Jitka.)

  ‘You wrote me a letter?’ she said. ‘Should I read it? No, not now. When I’m with you I have to make the most of you and not be reading.’ Then she opened the little box and for a moment she gazed at the ring. ‘You’re crazy, Dan, a thing like that. How am I to explain it at home?’

  ‘Perhaps you could say it was a gift from your first husband.’

  ‘From him of all people!’

  ‘From your mother, then?’

  ‘How could Mum afford it on her pension? You’re crazy, I don’t need a ring, do I, when I have your love?’

  ‘Don’t speak about it any more.’

  She slipped the gold band on her finger and for a few seconds looked at it with delight. ‘It’s a perfect fit, it’s obvious you know my hand off by heart.’ She kissed him and then she recalled: ‘I’ve invited my son Saša to come too, I hope you don’t mind?’

  Daniel was astounded. ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘He knows about you anyway.’

  ‘You told him about me?’

  ‘Ages ago. Mum too. They are my folks. And I don’t want to keep anything from my folks. He likes you, even though he’s never set eyes on you, because he knows you love me and you don’t boss me about like his stepfather. I also thought you might put him straight about some things.’

  ‘I’m supposed to start putting him straight about things, at our very first meeting?’

  ‘No, I don’t mean it like that. It will be enough for him to meet someone who knows what he lives for. While being a good person.’

  ‘I’m not sure if I fulfil those requirements.’

  ‘He’d so much like to have a father, because there has been no decent man in his life. I deprived him of his own father. Or his father deprived himself of me and the boy. It makes no difference, but he gave the boy nothing. And his stepfather never accepted him. He simply provided for him and let him know it. As far as he is concerned, Saša is a good-for-nothing wastrel. And it’s possible that he, my little boy, is indeed growing up wild. Nothing appeals to him, work least of all. All he does is play basketball and tennis, or watch people shooting each other on television. He also enjoys fiddling around with all sorts of little mechanical gadgets and getting music out of them. You’re not cross with me for inviting him without asking you first?’

  ‘No, you did right.’ It was the right thing to do in a wrong situation. If you loved someone you had to take them lock, stock and barrel, which meant their folks above all. ‘I’ve not been faring too well with young people just lately.’

  ‘In what respect?’

  ‘In trying to persuade them about anything that I believe in. Not even my own children. Sometimes I get the impression that they’re persuading me.’

  ‘One’s own children are the hardest to persuade. One’s own husband and one’s own children,’ she added.

  The lad was slim and almost as tall as Daniel. He seemed to have inherited his high forehead and hair colour from his mother, but otherwise he was quite unlike her. His eyes were light blue. ‘They gave me a really silly name,’ he said, introducing himself, ‘after some Russian tsar or Pushkin. Mum adored Pushkin when she was young. Mind you, she still is young, but she was eighteen years younger then and identified with Tatyana. She’s still got the one about her on her bookshelf and she makes me read it:

  ‘Such a heavenly gift,

  To be strongwilled and wild,

  Of mind so swift,

  Passionate – but tender as a child. ’

  ‘Saša,’ Bára cut him short, ‘don’t you think you’ve said quite enough to be going on with?’

  ‘It’s only because I’m shy,’ the boy said and blushed. ‘Thank you for the invitation. Mummy says such nice things about you that I wanted a chance to meet you. But I don’t need to stay to dinner, I’m sure you have things to talk about.’

  ‘We can all talk together,’ Daniel suggested.

  ‘Thank you. Musil doesn’t talk to me; I get on his nerves the moment he claps eyes on me. And my dad only asks me how are things in school because he hasn’t got any idea what to talk to me about when we see each other twice a month.’

  The waiter brought them menus. ‘I really am afraid I’m going to be in your way,’ the boy apologized, ‘and anyway I’m not used to going to such posh places.’

  ‘Neither am I,’ Daniel said quickly, ‘and I don’t intend to become used to it either.’

  ‘Do you think I could have the lamb stuffed with chicken livers?’

  ‘Have what you feel like.’

  ‘Maybe it’s a daft idea; I’ve never eaten anything like that before. The Big Boss doesn’t take us out for meals and Dad only takes me to a sweet shop sometimes or to some buffet where he has a beer and orders me some sickly muck.’

  ‘Saša won’t drink alcohol,’ Bára explained.

  ‘And what would you like to talk to your father about, for example?’ Daniel asked him after ordering the food.

  The lad shrugged. ‘I don’t know. With the lads and the girls we just talk drivel. You know what I mean.’

  ‘Are you going out with someone?’

  ‘Of course, but I can’t talk about it. Not here, at least.’

  ‘I didn’t mean to pry. It’s just that I have a daughter of your age and a lad just a bit younger.’

  ‘I know. Mum told me. She knows them from the church where she used to go to see you.’

  ‘Saša,’ Bára interrupted, ‘you’re talking too much. The reason I went to church was to hear something to raise my spirits.’

  ‘That’s true, that is the reason she went,’ the lad chimed in. ‘She often got the blues. We all suffer from depression, in fact. It’s a kind of virus we have: we are all frightened of the Boss and of death. The Boss – Musil I mean, the architect, the Doctor of Science and laureate is only afraid of death, of course, but quite a lot because he’s old and has high blood pressure. He’s always swallowing pills. We used to call him the Builder of the Tower of Babel because he had a hang-up about grand
iose projects, but now we just call him the Pill Popper. And we also call him Vampire Bat. Whenever he gets a downer he starts to wail. He climbs up on to Mum’s shoulder and starts to suck her strength. Then Mum has to comfort him. But there’s no one to comfort Mum: I can’t, and anyway when the catkins arrive on the trees I start to whine too because I can hardly breathe. Aleš is healthy but he’s still small and silly. And then you came along. But Mum deserves you, she’s a lovely person.’

  The waiter interrupted his monologue and started to serve their meals from large metal bowls.

  ‘Wow,’ the lad commented, ‘I feel like the Little Prince. We’ll have to persuade Pill Popper to bring us here too some time.’

  ‘Saša’s putting it on a bit,’ Bára said. ‘He’s acting as if he grew up on bread and water.’

  ‘Come off it, Mum! When did we last go out for a meal?’

  ‘Last spring at the seaside,’ Bára said. ‘Were you living in a cave, or what? And we went there on your account, because the doctor recommended sea air for your allergy.’

  ‘And it did me good too!’

  He observed the two of them. It seemed to him that they were merely continuing a long-established game in his presence: the fellow-conspirator son taken by his mother into another home in search of true love, and now brought here because she was still searching, while the son was seeking a father. The question was whether it wasn’t already too late for both of them. Even though the expression ‘too late’ was one he always challenged – at least as far as faith was concerned.

  ‘I used to go to Divinity classes,’ the lad said. ‘Mum wanted me to and Musil let me. But it meant nothing to me – no, nothing’s too strong – very little. It was all too otherworldly. All those miracles and angels and fallen angels and hell and damnation. Anyway, I immediately forgot it all.’

  ‘I used to send him to the Catholic class,’ Bára explained. ‘I could have sent him to a Jewish class on account of Mum, but there wasn’t one. I wanted him to hear something about God at least, so that he could make up his own mind. The trouble was their teacher wasn’t like you. He hadn’t the slightest bit of enthusiasm, he was just bitter somehow, and he talked to them more about hell than about the need for people to love one another.’