by Ivan Klíma
‘Or I’m lying in bed,’ Marika went on, ‘on my own at home again and all of a sudden the light comes on in my bedroom and when I go to switch it off I notice that the lights are on all over the flat. And yet they were all off when I went to bed. So I call out: Is anyone there? I switch them all off one by one and when I go back to bed they all come on again.’
‘You’re having us on,’ Alois declared. ‘Someone was home and you didn’t know.’
‘Do you mind?’ Marika said, taking umbrage. ‘Who could have been there? Mum had gone out, one of my brother’s inside and the other one’s in Ostrava. I was there all on my own, I can swear it on my mother’s death!’
‘No, don’t do that,’ I said to her, ‘save your oath for something really important.’
‘And what is really important?’ someone asked.
Only six months ago I would have replied: fidelity, for instance. Or honesty. Or decency. I didn’t reply.
‘Forgive me, I didn’t intend to criticize you,’ I said to Marika. ‘I wanted to say that I believe you. There are things that happen that one just can’t explain and they remain a mystery forever. The entire Bible message is one great big mystery, although I wouldn’t want to compare it.’
When the young people were gone, I wondered whether I really did believe Marika, or whether I had said it because I wanted to defend her dignity in front of the others. I wasn’t able to make up my mind, all I knew was that I would like to have believed her.
I dreamed that I was still quite young and attending the booksellers’ training school, apparently quite unaware that I would one day become a preacher and on the contrary being interested most of all in the girls. I made a date with one of them who had just quarrelled with her boyfriend. When I arrived to meet her at her house I discovered I was wearing odd shoes. I tried to conceal the fact by hiding my right foot behind the left one. She invited me upstairs and I was relieved that I could change out of my shoes into the slippers that she had prepared for me. We did some petting and then went out again. We were already outside when I realized I was still wearing the slippers. She told me to wait downstairs: she would bring me my shoes and we could leave the slippers in the letter box. Then I realized that she would now discover I was wearing odd shoes. I dashed up the stairs after her in order to explain somehow. But she only laughed and praised me for having each shoe a different colour. She told me it had cheered her up.
Each shoe different. The left foot from a different home than the right one. Making love in a strange flat and praise for something I’m trying to conceal.
3
Máša Soukupová was sitting opposite him and making an effort to speak coherently. Her husband had moved out and he wanted to take the children. He had hired a good lawyer and they were planning to prove in court that she was incapable of bringing up the children. And she had actually signed some paper when she was in a state of shock at learning that her husband wanted to leave her. It was possible that the paper said she agreed that he should take the children.
The sound of the piano could be heard from downstairs. In recent times, Eva really had played at least four hours a day, sometimes just improvising in a mournful and laboured fashion. Something was still bothering her. On a few occasions her eyes looked as if she had been crying. Whenever he asked her something he would get fragmentary replies, mostly just a single word.
‘How do you like school?’
‘OK.’
‘Is there anything the matter?’
‘No, I’m all right.’
He ought to have a proper talk with her, find half a day to talk to his own daughter before something irreparable happens. Instead he was sitting here with Mrs Soukupová, and even if this poor woman wasn’t here, he would most likely be using any spare time to meet the woman he oughtn’t to be seeing.
‘But I took good care of them, Reverend. I didn’t leave them for a moment. It must be two years since I last went to the cinema or the theatre, apart from the puppet theatre. And they depend on me. I’m their mother after all! Surely they can’t take them from me! Surely God couldn’t allow it!’
God had already allowed other things. Sometimes when Daniel considered all the things He had allowed, he doubted whether He would display the slightest interest in what was happening to mankind and the world, let alone to any one individual. But he didn’t say so. Nor did he say what not so long ago he would have said: that it was only a test, that the Lord had tested even Job, and when he stood the test, He blessed him more than ever before.
‘You must fight to keep your children, Máša. And I’ll ask Dr Wagner to represent you.’
‘But how will we live?’
‘You have to tell yourself that there are lots of people worse off than you, Máša. There are mothers whose children die. Others give birth to blind or crippled babies. And you’ve not been left entirely on your own. You have the Lord Jesus and all of us, your brothers and sisters, who support you.’ He stopped short, sickened by his own words, his hypocrisy. It was as if he wasn’t talking to her but to his own wife. Even though he had not abandoned Hana, had not moved away, not taken the children; instead he always returned to them and behaved affably as if he still dwelled with them in love and peace. Who was behaving worse, in fact, he or Máša’s husband, who had made his choice? Let what you say be simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’; anything more than this comes from evil.
‘Life is like that, Máša,’ he added. ‘There are also moments when we are put to the test and we have to come to terms with that. Maybe it’s better to separate than to live without love. Now your heart is too full of pain, but it will pass and you’ll start to see that life’s worth living.’
The piano fell silent.
Máša thanked him tearfully for his words of comfort, though he knew he had been no consolation. However, he shook her by the hand and stroked her hair as she was leaving.
Then he went down to the chapel, but his elder daughter was gone and he did not even find her in her room. She must have left a few moments before Máša.
He went all the way up to the attic and found his son with Alois as he expected, making improvements to their home-made telescope. ‘Have you discovered anything yet?’ he asked.
‘You couldn’t discover anything with this telescope,’ Marek explained. ‘It’s impossible to see anything that isn’t in the Milky Way.’
‘We’re sort of learning to observe, that’s all,’ Alois added.
‘What I’d be really interested to know,’ said Marek, ‘when I see all those stars – what I can see of them anyway – is how it was all created. The stars, the sun and the earth.’
‘You don’t think God created it?’
Marek shrugged. ‘Our Principal says: Reason was more likely the outcome than the origin.’
‘That’s why everything is so rationally organized, I suppose?’
‘I don’t know, Dad. But it couldn’t have been as simple as it’s described in the Bible.’
He noticed that Alois was listening with expectant interest.
Of course the world we all live in is moving faster and faster away from the one inhabited by those who wrote down the Bible message, and the interest that people have in it will continue to wane. How much easier it was for preachers in the days when the earth was the centre of the universe and the moon and stars were there to rule the night, and the lamps of heaven had simply been kindly lit by God so that the night should not be so hopelessly dark.
‘I understand what you’re saying,’ he said to Marek. ‘The universe arose fifteen or maybe eighteen billion years ago. A billion either way doesn’t matter, it’s beyond our imagination anyway. It is expanding. The earth and the sun are somewhat younger. Stars are born and die. There are more stars in the universe than we can count. The Lord told Abraham: Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them. There are black holes and white dwarves. All those things can be determined. But what was at the beginning, whether it was divine intention or
a big bang when all of that came into existence from a speck of matter, is purely a matter of belief.’
Unlike his companion, Marek continued to look sceptical. And Daniel wasn’t pleased with his own speech either. In such a universe, a God who created it and at the same time assumed the form of a Jewish infant, who grew up, was baptized by John, preached, was arrested, condemned and shamefully executed, seems less and less likely, less and less possible, harder and harder to defend.
‘Listen,’ he said to Marek to cover up his uncertainty, ‘you didn’t deign to come to the service last Sunday? Or did I miss you?’
‘No, I wasn’t there,’ his son reluctantly admitted.
‘It’s no fun listening to your dad on Sunday as well?’
‘It’s not that,’ his son replied. ‘I just didn’t feel like it. If it wasn’t you preaching I’d feel like it even less.’
‘And what did you feel like doing?’
‘I did some reading.’
‘About black holes?’
‘Why about them in particular? I read a novel.’
‘About what?’
‘It’s hard to explain, Dad. Science fiction.’
‘A journey into space?’
‘No. It was about another civilization. But they were ants, not humans.’
‘You found that interesting?’
‘Fairly. But it’s made up, a civilization like that doesn’t really exist. And even if it did, we’d never find out about it.’
‘Are you sorry?’
‘About what?’
‘That you’ll never find out about the ant civilization?’
‘If it existed, yes. It would be a pity if we never found out.’
‘Fine, Marek, I’m glad you have an interest in those things, but perhaps you could spare me that hour on a Sunday?’
‘The hour’s not the point, Dad!’
‘What is the point, then?’
‘I just believe that everything was completely different from the way the Bible says and the way you preach it.’
‘It’s certain that nothing was literally the way it is written in the Bible.’
‘Well, there you are.’
‘But nor was it exactly the way it is described in scientific texts either.’
‘That’s possible, Dad. But what those books say is more likely.’
‘Marek, it’s not a question of what is more likely. The essence of the Bible message is not about how life developed, but how we ought to live it.’
‘People don’t live by it anyway,’ Marek commented stubbornly, and suddenly Daniel had nothing to refute him with.
‘So you won’t be going to church on Sundays any more, then?’
‘It’s not that, I’ll be coming all right,’ Marek said, suddenly startled at his own defiance.
He had not managed to persuade Marek. Likewise, he was incapable of talking to his daughter or finding out what was troubling her. He had failed to comfort Máša or advise her how she ought to live. He had not managed to stay faithful to his wife. He wrote letters to Bára that were possibly tender and in which he spoke of his great love for her, but he couldn’t bring himself to yield to her entirely.
He had been incapable of bringing anything to a satisfactory conclusion recently. His life was definitely out of kilter with the Bible message and even with ordinary human decency.
As he was coming downstairs, he caught sight of his wife who had just rushed out into the passage. ‘Dan, where have you been? I’ve been looking for you everywhere. There’s just been a call from the police in Plzeň. They’ve arrested Petr.’
4
Samuel
Samuel returns from a two-day business trip to Ostrava several hours earlier than he told Bára he would. Bára isn’t home, of course. The flat is tidied and empty, and it doesn’t appear to have been heated. There is just the musty smell of stale tobacco smoke in the air. Aleš must be at his grandmother’s and Bára will be somewhere with some chap. He still suspects young Vondra, he’s good-looking and he definitely has a better way with women than Samuel had at his age, not to mention now. When it was Bára’s birthday he brought her a rose. And he’s always looking in on her whenever he gets a chance. Not long ago, he offered to accompany her to Příbram on business. Bára refused, but that might only prove she’s more cautious than he is. He calls his mother-in-law. Yes, Aleš is with her; Bára said she had something to attend to. No she didn’t say what or with whom; she never gives her details. His mother-in-law wants to know whether she is to bring Aleš, or whether he is to sleep at her place.
That depends on when Bára will come home.
She’s bound to be home soon, it’s not six o’clock yet.
Sam tells his mother-in-law he’ll call her later. He could have spoken to his son, but he didn’t think about it in the surge of rage. He walks nervously around the empty flat; he dislikes emptiness, it unnerves him. He tries phoning the office but there’s no one there any more. What sort of business could Bára have to attend to?
She could have all sorts of business. Bára is almost unbearably active. She manages to do the housekeeping, work in the office, deal with clients and also act on television from time to time. When he comes home dog-tired in the evening, Bára is there teaching Alesš something, chatting to Saša, making phone calls, singing and she’s even willing to talk to him until midnight about his ailments, his work or the political situation, and after all that she expects him to make love to her.
There was a time when he regarded her activity as a positive attribute, but now that he is continually tired, he finds Bára’s craving for life, activity and constant change infuriating. What infuriates him, he realizes, is her youthfulness. She does not yet feel death at her back or understand how futile is the longing to touch everything, try everything and be part of everything.
He should have realized it when he married a woman so much younger than himself. Except that at the time he was still full of energy and Bára’s submissiveness concealed her craving for life.
Of course she has no business to attend to. Why should she tell her mother? Anyway, the two of them stick together against him; all women stick together against the common enemy – men.
He then dials the number of Vondra’s flat. Vondra is home and immediately wants to know how he fared in his negotiations in Ostrava. ‘Very well, excellent, in fact,’ Samuel says, even though things didn’t go at all well, but he isn’t in the mood to talk about business matters.
Vondra says he is pleased to learn of Samuel’s success and they say goodbye. For a moment Samuel has a feeling akin to relief. Then he realizes that Bára could have been lying there all the time in the arms of that playboy. What’s more, she could be lying in the arms of thousands of other men he knows nothing about.
He switches on the television where they are just giving the weather forecast. He listens to it: a fine autumn day is expected, but it won’ t be fine for him. He doesn’t feel like watching the news, but the room feels so inert and empty that he turns down the sound and just watches the pictures move.
Bára is still not home. There is nothing for it but to wait; time that drags on interminably because there’s nothing else to do, nothing sensible to concentrate on. Occasionally, when he gets held up somewhere in the evening, he tries at least to call her, but the phone always tends to be engaged and he can only conjecture who she might be talking to. Whenever he finally gets through and asks her, she says it was to a girlfriend or her mother, or that Saša was gossiping.
He knows that it could well be true, but is not necessarily so: Bára is deceitful. She manages to smile at him even when he can feel her iciness. The smile merely conceals her real intentions. But she’s quite adroit and alert and never lets the cat out of the bag, never leaves any real clues. Her countless phone calls are innocence itself and she never leaves any love messages in her handbag.
And when he asks her to be home on time, Bára explains to him all the commitments she has and tells him he some
times comes home late too. He ought to put a stop to her television appearances, at least. Those rehearsals or performances are just a pretext for her to go and see her cronies.
But if he tried to talk her out of anything Bára would start to wave her rights in front of his nose. He has noticed she has been reading feminist pamphlets lately. Although there was hardly any need for her to read them, she could write her own.
Some sort of actors’ dressing-room appears on the screen. Samuel can imagine his own wife in it, and she’s not alone, of course.
For God’s sake, it’s only too obvious to him that there is no keeping an eye on a woman: she can make love anywhere – on the floor, on a table, in an armchair, on a heap of straw, in a wood, in a meadow, standing up in a gateway, on a car seat or in some shed where building materials are stored.
When they were at that reception given by the English last week, he noticed that she was approached by men he didn’t know at all. Where did they know her from? He registered the note of pleasure in her voice that they were interested in her. They addressed him with respect too. Indeed, many of the guests would have been honoured for him to spare them a moment, but his mind was elsewhere: he was watching Bára and feeling so hopelessly deserted and betrayed, that in the end he dragged her off home on the pretext that he wasn’t feeling well. So she steered him to the car and insisted on driving even though she had drunk at least four glasses of wine. And when they got home she made him take some tablets as if she didn’t know full well that his illness was simply caused by her.
At half-past eight Bára arrives at last. ‘You’re home already?’ she says, and in her voice feigned satisfaction is mixed with fear and disappointment. She comes to embrace him, but as she brings her face close to his, he detects the odour of wine and refuses to kiss her. ‘Where have you been so long?’
Bára has a perfect alibi ready, of course. In the afternoon at the building department and in the evening she dropped by Ivana’s because she had promised her some drops to prevent migraine. And she actually takes a brown medicine bottle out of her handbag: ten drops in a small bottle of water. Water to be added as the contents are used up.